{"id":573898900,"date":"2026-04-10T20:09:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T00:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573898900"},"modified":"2026-05-19T18:37:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:37:44","slug":"if-youre-gonna-blow-something-up-give-it-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/04\/10\/if-youre-gonna-blow-something-up-give-it-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"If you&#8217;re gonna blow something up give it meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For my part in the conference today I spoke on panel titled Games of Power: The Weaponization of Sport for Political Gain. <\/p>\n<p>The premise of the panel acknowledges the long history of sport as a battleground, the interrelationships of politics and sport, and the dynamics of regional and national interests that are oftentimes at play. The topics included how sport functions as a contested space where political actors, institutions, and movements seek to assert power, shape narratives, and mobilize public opinion, often while using sport as a weapon.<\/p>\n<p>I talked about identity fusion theory, within the context of nationalism, using the Winter Olympics and the men&#8217;s locker room hockey phone call example. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/apr26\/apr13.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I later asked the question, &#8220;What is it to be a 28-year-old athlete, on a gold medal high, and laughing at a punchline from the president of the United States?&#8221; I also talked about sport as a soft power, and how that political influence and persuasion might be changing. (The Global Soft Power Index seems to think the U.S. numbers are softening.)<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, I said this should perhaps be a conversation about sport in a new era. If that sounded wise it was only because of what my colleagues on the panel said after that.<\/p>\n<p>I will take part in two more panels tomorrow. The rest of my day I spent in various audiences, doing the Academic Nod.<\/p>\n<p>This evening, before dinner, we caught some fireworks almost by chance. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/apr26\/apr14.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Call me old fashioned, but I think fireworks should be memorialized. That&#8217;s a lot of sound and fury &#8230; and some money &#8230; that someone is exploding for no real reason. The least we can do is record it and view it from every conceivable angle. <\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=xaaa68e\"style=\"width:100%; height:100%; position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; overflow:hidden; border:none;\"allowfullscreentitle=\"Dailymotion Video Player\"allow=\"web-share\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>This series of percussive explosions wasn&#8217;t even about nationalism. Call me old fashioned again, but I miss the days when fireworks displays meant something. They told a story, dagnabbit! <\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t mind me, I&#8217;m going to go yell at this cloud of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide.  <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerwildatlanticway.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I&#8217;m sharing extra videos that we didn&#8217;t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=xaaa3wc\"style=\"width:100%; height:100%; position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; overflow:hidden; border:none;\"allowfullscreentitle=\"Dailymotion Video Player\"allow=\"web-share\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>That is <a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/03\/17\/cuan-na-haisleime-and-keem-bay\/\">Cuan na hAisl\u00e9ime<\/a> &#8230; (still not a series of letters that comes readily to my typing fingers) another casual side-of-the-road view that would be an absolute show stopper most anywhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For my part in the conference today I spoke on panel titled Games of Power: The Weaponization of Sport for Political Gain. The premise of the panel acknowledges the long history of sport as a battleground, the interrelationships of politics and sport, and the dynamics of regional and national interests that are oftentimes at play. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14,62,6,10,114,112,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573898900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-friday","category-ireland","category-memories","category-photo","category-scholarship","category-sports","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573898900"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573898904,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898900\/revisions\/573898904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573898900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573898900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573898900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}