athletes vs writers

the evening news notes how those poor canadian olympians only get $1100 a month to help pay the bills and put food in their mouths. i began to feel sympathy, but then considered what the role of athletes are compared to, say, writers and painters and musicians.

olympians basically provide two things: entertainment and a sense of nationalism (or local pride, for smaller scale athletes). i'm probably shooting off at the mouth here, but i really don't see what they do to enrich our understanding of humanity or expand our concept of the human experience. i guess this isn't their mandate, but simply providing entertainment and national binding does not rank high on my list of things to pay taxes to support.

i do have sympathy for olympians in that they are working hard to do what they feel passionate about. unfortunately this may necessitate working another job to help make ends meet since $1100 is a small sum of money if you have any substantial bills. and i assume equipment, special nutritional requirements, and travel for small competitions must be pricey for olympians in training.

but then i consider someone like your average canadian writer. i recall the average annual salary for a successful canadian writer, who works more than full-time, being somewhere under twenty thousand a year. that's how much a writer who brings home medals (or pulitzer or booker prizes) makes. then there's poets, who i understand make only a few thousand bucks for each book of writing. finally, there's writers who have been busting their ass for over a decade, using every free moment, and still not making one damn cent at it. that's the category i fall into, unfortunately.

pity the government won't spot me $1100 a month so that i can write books and maybe bring home a literary medal. after all this thought, though, i have to concede that there are canada council grants available to established writers (emphasis on established). still, i bet that an astronomically small number of canadian writers receive anywhere near $1100 a month to write. if you figured out what percentage of serious writers get that kind of support cash, and compared that to the percentage of serious athletes that get similar money, i'm sure athletes take the lead by far.

there is also a small matter of what province you live in. if you live in bc you get to enjoy the mountains and ocean and nature that make this province so bloody amazing, but then you get to suffer the absence of provincial support for the arts.

in the end i'm wondering if i resent athletes because i think what they do is, in the larger picture of human consciousness, rather trivial. i hope not. i hope i'm not just a snootbag that thinks what artists, writers, and musicians do is somehow superior because they enhance our lives in a deep and meaningful way and have the potential to invoke substantial social change. whereas athletes make us yell at the tv set, wave flags, and feel good about the fact that our country has a citizen that can [insert event here] faster, harder, longer, stronger than another country's citizen. i like playing sports as much as the next person, but i certainly don't expect to get paid for it to compete professionally. what i'm ultimately getting at is some kind of gripe with the whole concept of professional athletes and organized sports, but that's a matter for another day.

{August 13, 2003 11:05 PM}