Word count: 1027 | Reading time: 5 min read
Pretzel Logic
If you ask Larry Norton, Philadelphia is neither the City of Brotherly Love nor the Place That Loves You Back.
No, Philly, according to Norton, is “The City That Wants To Have Sex With Your Mother.”
Who’s Larry Norton?
He’s a morning-drive radio personality for WGRF-FM, 97 Rock, in Buffalo, NY. To celebrate the Sabres-Flyers playoff series, he and his cohorts placed a personal ad in the Daily News Monday. The ad taunted Flyers fans, promising that the Sabreswould “kick your butt,” calling Eric Lindros “worthless and weak” and inviting Flyers fans to call a phone number in Buffalo, which, though they didn’t mention it, happens to belong to the station.
Plenty of Flyers fans called, all right.
And few of the comments were airable without the station losing its license.
“We got a couple of hundred calls,” says Norton. “We did the same thing with newspapers in Ottawa when they played the Sabres in the first round.”
They might have done the same thing, but the results were oh-so-different.
Ottawa fans said the Sabres suck, but other than that they kept their discussions centered on hockey.
“But Philly fans are a lot more vulgar,” says Norton. “They said things you can’t print.”
Ah, but this is the City Paper.
So here, according to Norton, is a prime example of what Flyers fans have to say to their counterparts in Snow Country.
“I just finished talking to your mother’s cunt while she was eating nigger shit you fucking homos,” was “typical,” according to Norton.
One sentence, three slurs, three curse words and no sense.
Sounds like the average Flyers fan to me.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“There were a lot of anal sex references and homosexual sex references and your mother this and your mother that,” says Norton. “There is a real angry tone to these calls. There is a lot of deep sexual repression in Philadelphia, Ithink.”
Norton has never been to Philadelphia.
After fielding these calls, he says he is not sure he wants to ever come here.
“After hearing from folks down there, all I can say is that I hope that Flyers fans are not representative of all the citizens of Philadelphia,” says Norton. “At the very least, I never want to play street hockey in Philly. I knowthat.”
Zack Hill, the Flyers promotions director, says he cannot believe that Flyers fans would stoop so low.
“I think the Flyers’ fans are the best fans in the world,” Hill says. “They are extremely loyal, more than any other sport. I do not think Philadelphia fans could be that rude.”
Hill grew up in Guam. What does he know?
—-
What’s so nice about the denizens of Ottawa, Canada’s capital city?
Let’s ask Jacqueline Holzman, Ottawa’s mayor, whose mother, luckily for me, was originally named Altman.
Which explains why she returned my call so fast, even if there is no relation. Just another thing that Ottawa has over Philly, where Rendell flack Kevin Feeley is among the many alleged city press officials who routinely ignore our desperate pleasfor comment.
So what does it say about Ottawa that their fans talk about hockey while Flyers’ fans talk about having sex with the mothers of Sabres fans?
“It says that we are focused on whatever the event is,” says Holzman, adding that Ottawa is a highly educated town. “In this case, the event was hockey. We are thrilled to have the Senators back. We got a taste of what the playoffs arelike and we can hardly wait to next year.”
And what does it all say about Philadelphia?
“I will not criticize folks from Philadelphia or Buffalo,” says Holzman, speaking now like a true politician, not a true Altman. “I will tell you that Ottawa fans will not throw things on the ice. We cheer a lot. We control our beerconsumption. But that’s not to say we are boring. We are not boring. We cheer in both French and English.”
Oh, yeah.
Don’t forget.
The Ottawa Tulip Festival starts Saturday.
—-
What do the racist, sexist, homophobic and scatological comments spewed by Flyers fans say about Philadelphia?
Does either political party really want to hold a convention in the City That Wants To Have Sex With Your Mother?
Is this the image America’s Mayor wants to convey to the world?
I try calling the mayor for comment, but, much to my utter amazement, Kevin Feeley does not return my phone call.
Imagine that.
Still, I want to get to the core of the issue.
Why are we like this?
So I turn to a pro. Dr. Richard Cohen, a board-licensed psychiatrist who deals with angry people for a living.
What’s up, Doc?
“It is almost like an Oedipal battle between cities,” explains the good shrink. “Flyers fans are trying to show they are bigger, more confident, that their organ is bigger than Buffalo’s organ.”
The bottom line, says Cohen, is that, in spouting off obscenities, Flyers fans are trying to prove that they don’t have “castration anxiety.”
Castration anxiety?
“They are using their identification with the team to prove they are brighter, better athletes and perform better in bed than Buffalo,” says Cohen.
But why are Flyers fans so much more wrapped up in the sexuality of hockey than Senators fans?
“It sounds like Philadelphia identifies their own competency with their team, instead of living their own lives as separate, individual, autonomous people,” says Cohen. “Instead of having internal things to control their own lives,they are using external things, such as how well their team does, in controlling their mood.”
The fans in Ottawa, surmises Cohen, “are more rational.”
Can Flyers fans be cured?
“I’d tell them to start jogging,” says Cohen, a nationally ranked tennis player with only a mild interest in the Flyers. “They should get into their own sport, so they feel good about themselves, rather than being involved with otherpeople’s workouts.”
There’s one more psychological problem for Flyers fans to worry about.
Anxiety.
Sure, they’ll beat Buffalo.
But they’re just going to lose to my Rangers anyway.
Take that, you *&%$#! Flyers fans.
