[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes football as a distraction from important political issues, equating its popularity to that of drugs.
In this quote, Terry Eagleton expresses a strong critical perspective on football, suggesting that it serves as a numbing agent for the masses, similar to addictive substances like opium or crack cocaine. He implies that the obsession with football diverts attention from necessary political change and reinforces a status quo that benefits those in power, highlighting the conformity represented by iconic figures like David Beckham. Eagleton ultimately argues that any serious political movements that seek to challenge this dynamic would struggle to gain traction in a world so captivated by the sport.
In practice
In a discussion about how sports can sometimes distract from political activism.
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All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
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Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.
Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly—because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to god and there’s always the chance that a folly will.
Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory.
It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.
With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.
What's the difference between the Lone Ranger and God? There really is a Lone Ranger.
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