Go Jets Ho!

My friend Katie recently made one of her spectacular but brief (comet-like!) appearances in New York City, courtesy the 30^th street station Bolt Bus, and handily coaxed me, despite the hecticness of the midterm season, into attending the screening of the soon to be released documentary, The Island President.  Because her brother Craig has garnered associate producer credit on the film, we unabashedly planted ourselves, with all the smugness of next of kin, in the front row in order to take in this extraordinary film.  It presents the life of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives—described as a modern day Atlantis, these islands are indeed veritable jewels adorning the Indian Ocean, and are the favored resort of Bollywood star and European adventurer alike.  Sadly, these idyllic islands are poised to sink ignominiously into the ocean waters that seem to lap with such limpid, gem-like beauty on each side.

Nasheed’s sudden ascent to power at age 41 placed him at the helm of the lowest lying country in the world, the leader of a nation literally washing away before the inhabitants’ own eyes, faced with little hope of survival unless a dramatic change in environmental policy is made by larger, neighboring countries (see: India.  And China.  No small feat to demand that these burgeoning industrial titans stem the tide of their ever increasing consumption and polluting output.) 

What the Maldives does have going for it is a leader shrewd enough to realize that he needs to maximize on, not bemoan, his islands’ decidedly underdog status in this skirmish.

Although the Maldives may be the last place on the mind of a Jets fan, it is interesting to note that Nasheed, in the midst of a PR campaign at the United Nations in New York City, and in preparation for the Copenhagen Climate Summit so crucial to his cause, nonetheless found time in his tireless schedule to grab a burger and a coke at a local sports bar, where he took in a match played by the Jets’ division rivals, the Buffalo Bills.  Although the audience is only afforded a short glimpse of the scene, we nonetheless see Nasheed and his close cabinet members taking in the Bills’ match, at first with interest but some natural degree of confusion, which seems to vanish as they get involved in the atmosphere of the New York sports bar and find themselves rooting for the local team with genuine enthusiasm.  I was struck by the image of the no-longer-quite-so-young and physically petite leader of a hapless, drowning nation rooting for a team that has only managed at its best moments to lose four consecutive Super Bowls (and that back in the 1960s) and which takes as its mascot the buffalo, an animal which was once King of the American Prairie and has since been rendered nearly extinct. 

This begs the question I posed in a previous post: does the cheering of a hapless team somehow mirror the constancy one must show in a foundering nation, even if the prospect of getting submerged forever flickers in the horizon? It seems to be that there must always be some of us who reserve their energies for championing the most important cause of all, that of the underdog. 

I only wish that Nasheed had chanced upon a Jets’ game, so that we could link his story more closely to that of our chosen team.  For which Jets’ fan does not understand the deep and abiding appeal of rooting righteously for the less favored team on the field? 

Today, it was the Bills who faced the Jets, and it was the Bills who seemed to demonstrate better consistency and crisper play supplemented by clear communication between teammates.  Bills’ player Stevie Johnson may have enjoyed his early celebration, in which he seemed to mimic a gunshot wound to the leg, the better to rub salt into Plaxico Burress’ injury while presaging a Bills victory.  And it seemed all too clear that the Jets would most certainly lose the game to a team demonstrating better coordination on all necessary fronts.  And yet, we dared to exhale at the very last when the maligned Plaxico and a shaky Mark Sanchez managed to finally, critically, connect, opening up the berth for Holmes' satisfying catch.  And although we were still rattled, we dared to believe in an imminent Jets win.  It would not matter how well placed the theatrical #13 was in the Bills’ end zone in the game’s final moments. The tide that seemed all too ready to drown the Jets suddenly washed them to the safety of higher ground.