With the help of grade inflation, Nationals Park passes the Socialist Realism test

The new baseball park here in Washington seems to be getting excellent reviews from the folks who matter — baseball fans. Moreover, the Washington Post’s highly-regarded baseball writer, Thomas Boswell, has given it a thumbs-up. He calls it “a vibrant, intimate new ballpark already basking in praise.”
The park has at least one flaw, however; it is not politically correct. That’s the underlying verdict of what purports to be an architectural critique by Phillip Kennicott of the Post.
Kennicott says he finds it “hard not to focus on the economic aspects of this architecture.” But his “economic” critique proves to be only a way-station on the road to a political analysis:

Washington is a city where people can stare straight at the most powerful symbol of their democratic enfranchisement, and still feel absolutely powerless to change the course of our winner-takes-all society.

And Kennicott isn’t stopping here, either. He concludes with a geopolitical analysis in which China and perhaps Iran emerge as our betters:

At a time when the United States is losing a global argument about freedom and democracy, when China and countries along the Persian Gulf are proving to an attentive developing world that top-down leadership is the best and most efficient route to prosperity, the capital of the so-called free world built a monument to its national pastime that gets a C-plus.

I need to spend more time in the back sections of the Post, where the paper’s id evidently resides.
JOHN adds: I take it the message is that if we elect Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, we’ll get “top-down leadership.”
To comment on this post, go here.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses