ESPN hockey, where your favourite sport meets xenophobia

ESPN started it's KHL broadcastings today with Lev vs. Dynamo Moscow game (which in North America seems to better known as "Team Chara vs. Team Ovechkin" game). Now, I didn't see their broadcasting but  judging by the quotes that are going around Twitter, I'm actually happy about this. The game was announced by Barry Melrose and Steven Levy, who apparently were more interested to share their views of Europeans, European hockey and NHL players playing in Europe than to actually do their job as announcers and be aware what is going on the ice.

"Stereotypes are stereotypes and most of them are true."* 

Now, there are so many things wrong with that I don't even know where to start. To keep it short:

1.  Stereotypes are exaggerated characteristics, that work in jokes but should not be taken seriously in real life. Yes, where you grow up/live affects on how you behave and states have the tendency to promote certain qualities as "national" so it's possible that people from same country have some similarities in how they identify themselves. States also have/had the tendency to label other nations (usually enemies) with less admirable attributes so it's understandable that these stereotypes are in our heads. However, none of these means you can just label people under same category without leaving room for individual qualities. Whether or not you like it, we're individuals and saying a person is this and that because of their nationality is an insult to rational thinking and quite frankly rather racist. When I get to know someone knew, I'll make sure I'll base my judgement of them strictly on who they are as a person, not what stereotypes I might have about their nation. And I'd really hope people do the same for me. 
2. If you use stereotypes as an fact, you should probably stop for a moment to think about what stereotypes other nations have about yours, because based on this logic, they're true as well. But then again, I assume Mr and Mrs Stereotypesforever don't really care about other's opinions of them because hey, they're only lousy foreigners with weird habits, what do they know?
3. This is downright unprofessional. Don't like Europe or Europeans? Fine. But your opinion of the continent nor its hockey has nothing to do with your job to announce the game. The habit to be arrogant toward others and treat them like they presented a lower form of life is nothing new, but it would be nice if we could over that at some point and develop an ability to appreciate others' achievements instead of sticking with the "We're the best, anything we have is top quality and if you have something similar, it's just some bush-league attempt" way of thinking. 

Other things you could learn from the game:

• Soviet Union apparently still exists
• I'm actually currently in Russia and I can assure you, it's really Russia, not Soviet Union.
• This sounds a lot like an old man's attempt  to refresh his Cold War feelings and bring up old hostilities - maybe out of despise toward his current job. NHL rocks and Europeans don't even know how to play hockey, right? 
• NHL:ers shouldn't play in Europe because it's against their union
• Maybe you shouldn't be announcing this game?
• bothering to learn to pronounce the players names even somewhat correctly is not an option
• You're an announcer, you're paid to tell people what is going on the ice and you decide it's unnecessary to learn anything about the players or even how their names are pronounced. Now, this pronunciation thing is annoying even with NHL broadcast but when you're doing European games, it's extra ignorant not have the decency to respect the players enough to even make an attempt to learn their names. 

*Quote via @wraparoundcurl