[Its an apolitical show. So why do politicians keep talking about
it? It’s ironic that so many people have hung the American
self-image on a show with its roots in a mildly condescending joke
about ugly Americans. ] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE STRANGE BIPARTISAN APPEAL OF TED LASSO  
[[link removed]]

 

Joanna Weiss
May 2, 2021
Politico
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ It's an apolitical show. So why do politicians keep talking about
it? It’s ironic that so many people have hung the American
self-image on a show with its roots in a mildly condescending joke
about ugly Americans. _

, POLITICO illustration/Photos by Apple TV+

 

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker delivered his annual State of the
Commonwealth address at a supremely difficult moment. It was late
January; the state was emerging from a surge in Covid-19 cases; the
vaccine rollout was hitting early stumbles; the populace was tense.
Alone in his office, barred from the usual pomp and circumstance,
Baker spoke for 20 minutes about challenges and progress, safety and
statistics. Then he wrapped it up by talking about television. Or,
rather, one television show, Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso.”

The half-hour sports comedy, whose second season is coming in July,
has become both a word-of-mouth hit and a quirky metaphor for the
political world. Baker binged the show with his family over three days
last fall and has been evangelizing ever since. The governor of Kansas
has held it up
[[link removed]] as
an emblem of state pride. Both liberal and conservative writers have
staked a claim to it—even though it contains exactly zero political
content. Instead, it’s an underdog sports fable, starring Jason
Sudeikis as an optimistic football coach from Kansas, hired to coach a
fictional English Premier League soccer team. Except that Ted
doesn’t turn his cynical team of misfits into a set of unlikely
champions. He does something more surprising: He turns them into
people who are _nice._

And niceness was what Baker was asking of his constituents, as he
referenced a pivotal moment in the show: During a high-stakes game of
darts in a British pub, Ted tells his opponent to “be curious, not
judgmental,” lest he wind up vastly underestimating Ted’s dart
skills. Baker compared that reflexive dismissiveness to the toxic vibe
of Twitter and the unforgiving public sphere. “Social media, too
many politicians, and too many talking heads thrive on takedowns and
judgments,” the governor said, his voice uncharacteristically
plaintive. “I often wish I could just shut it all off for a month
and see what happens.”

 

[Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly]

Top: Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker delivers his televised State of
the Commonwealth address from his ceremonial Statehouse office on
Tuesday evening, Jan. 26, 2021, in Boston. Bottom: Kansas Gov. Laura
Kelly speaks to reporters, Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, during a Statehouse
news conference in Topeka, Kansas. | Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via
AP, Pool; AP Photo/John Hanna

That a Republican governor from the Northeast would pine for the mood
of an earnest streaming sitcom makes perfect sense in 2021—a year
that started out with hope, but swiftly devolved into disastrous news,
rising fear and pent-up frustration, all tossed into a Twitter
cauldron that amplifies everyone’s worst assumptions. (When
Baker tweeted
[[link removed]] about
the show after his speech, the responses were as cutting as ever, and
boiled down to: Why aren’t you vaccinating people as fast as
Connecticut?) “I talked about that scene in the pub with the dart
game because, Lord, I wish more people were like that, these days
especially—and especially people in my world, in public life,”
Baker told me in an interview this week. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly
intended a similar message with her April 1 proclamation naming Lasso
the “Kansas Coach of the Year”—an April Fool’s joke that
contained more than a hint of real-life aspiration. Kansans know that
Sudeikis, who also writes and produces the show, grew up in the Kansas
City suburb of Overland Park, said Sam Coleman, Kelly’s
communications director. And they recognize the attitude Ted projects;
it’s what’s locally known as “Kansas nice
[[link removed]].”

“What she wanted to get across most was this idea of ‘Kansas
nice’ and how you treat other people,” Coleman said of Kelly.
“Everybody feels that there’s been enough cynicism in the last
year, and this show is the antithesis of that.”

You could imagine why Baker and Kelly would be especially attuned to
Ted Lasso’s perspective: Baker is a Republican governor in a
legislature controlled by Democrats; Kelly, a Democratic governor who
faces a Republican supermajority in both legislative branches. Both
regularly need to build bridges without abandoning their roots (Baker
also needs to distance himself from Donald Trump while appeasing the
pro-Trump stump of the state GOP). But “Ted Lasso” isn’t just
speaking to embattled politicians; the show has been embraced by
commentators from every point on the political spectrum, each claiming
that it represents a particular vision of the best of America. And if
those visions are incompatible—well, “Ted Lasso” can be anything
to anybody. In _The Atlantic _last fall_,_ Megan Garber wrote
[[link removed]] that
the show reflected the death of American exceptionalism; she cited a
scene in which Ted gives his players classic green toy soldiers as
inspiration, and a Nigerian player politely declines, saying, “I
don’t really have the same fondness for the American military that
you do.” But in _The Federalist_ this spring, The Heritage
Foundation’s Katharine Gorka cited
[[link removed]] Lasso’s
affection for those little plastic soldiers as a sign the show is
fundamentally conservative. “If Leftists Knew How Much ‘Ted
Lasso’ Undermines Them,” her essay’s headline read, “They’d
Cancel It.”

It seems a widespread notion, then, that Ted Lasso has some crucial
quality that politics is lacking, no matter which party the show
belongs to. But what is it?

[Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso]

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso. | Apple TV+

It’s ironic that so many people have hung the American self-image on
a show with its roots in a mildly condescending joke about ugly
Americans. The Lasso character originated in a pair of cheeky NBC
Sports promotional videos from 2013 and 2014, when the network had
bought broadcast rights to Premier League games. The Ted in those old
spots is cocky and clueless, parading around the soccer pitch in short
shorts and aviator glasses. The joke is that he tries to impose an
American way of doing things on the Brits, without a hint of
self-awareness: When his players start calling him “wanker,” he
assumes it’s a sign of respect.

The Apple TV+ series came six years later, a passion project of
Sudeikis, who partnered with Bill Lawrence, the creator of the upbeat
sitcoms “Scrubs” and “Cougartown.” And while some dialogue
from the original NBC promotional spots is lifted almost
word-for-word—jokes about how Ted doesn’t realize British football
can end in a tie, and can’t grasp the concept of
“offsides”—the mood and meaning are completely different. The
character has taken a subtle but important shift: Now, his naive
optimism represents, not self-centeredness, but openheartedness. This
version of Ted fully acknowledges that he knows nothing about the game
the rest of the world calls football. He understands what it means to
be called a wanker, but he accepts the jab as part of a coach’s job.
And there’s a poignancy to his situation: He has accepted the job
because he promised his unhappy wife that he would give her space—a
whole ocean apart, if it helps.

The characters around Ted, meanwhile, start off as cynical and
combative as anyone on social media these days: an aging football
star, bitter that his best days are behind him; an arrogant franchise
player who won’t share glory with his teammates; a billionaire team
owner who is consumed with fury at her philandering ex-husband. (The
show’s conceit is that, unbeknownst to Ted, she has hired him to run
the team into the ground.) Ted knows how hard it will be to get
through to them. But he tries anyway, with relentless positivity and
an American can-do attitude that some viewers have taken as a
statement of purpose. In a _Slate_ review headlined “Ted Lasso
Makes America Good Again,” Willa Paskin wrote
[[link removed]] that
“the show vends a soothing vision of a red state-coded American as a
kindly, gentle internationalist, as well as a world in which American
soft power still works and does good.”

In truth, people overseas might not be as charmed by Ted Lasso as us
Yanks; _The Guardian_ panned the show
[[link removed]] last
August, as did an _Irish Examiner_ sports columnist who groused
about “lazy American stereotyping” and wrote that “this show may
do more for Anglo-Irish relations at this very difficult time in our
history than the Clintons ever did.” The notion that kindness could
be an American export didn’t entirely compute over the past few
years—certainly not when the head of state was insulting everyone in
sight.

But on this side of the Atlantic, “Ted Lasso” has been racking up
awards, prompting fan fiction and inspiring clothing lines on Etsy,
based on some of Ted’s most optimistic messages. The show’s
audience has grown steadily
[[link removed]],
building by word of mouth. And throughout its growth, the show has
managed to transcend the culture wars, which is even more surprising
considering the timing of its original release: August 2020, in the
heart of a fraught presidential campaign that was explicitly
presented, by one side, as a battle for kindness over viciousness.

That the show was never seen as partisan owes itself not just to its
apolitical content but to the way Ted’s sheer morality seems to cut
across boundaries—everyone could see him as a reflection of the best
version of themselves. Midwesterners saw themselves portrayed,
authentically, as an American ideal. (“As far as seeing Kansas
reflected in media, in Hollywood, it’s not something you see that
often,” said Coleman, from the Kansas governor’s office. “People
would point to ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or maybe ‘Superman’ … It
means a lot to people to see the reflection.”) Religious people
[[link removed]] were
drawn to a show that wears its morality on its sleeve: A column on the
website Baptist News Central last year cited a scene about forgiveness
as “an incredibly Jesus-y moment.” The coastal media reveled in
the sheer surprise of enjoying a series that wasn’t filled with
anti-heroes or comically terrible people; Miles Surrey, a
Brooklyn-based critic for The Ringer, called
[[link removed]] the
show “subversive in its hopefulness.”

And everyone seems to agree that the show is an antidote to a deep
cultural problem. There’s a swelling idea that we’ve reached a
national topping-off level of bile, a moment when every negative
thought can be instantly unleashed on the world and picking fights on
Twitter has become its own sport, and whether you blame Trump or the
woke left, you can acknowledge that it’s gone too far. For a
politician, trying to do the best possible job amid an ever-evolving
pandemic, the desire for some grace is irresistible.

Of course, to be in politics is to invite judgment—and Baker
acknowledged that public life has never been easy. He’s
been reading
[[link removed]] a
lot about Abraham Lincoln, he told me, “and my God, the things
people said about him … it was brutal, just brutal.” And in
Washington, where partisanship is still as bare as ever, it’s hard
to believe that any “Ted Lasso” appreciation will keep the
viciousness at bay.

But perhaps if the states are labs for democracy, they can be labs for
decency, too. Coleman told me that when Governor Kelly issued her
April Fool’s proclamation, thanking Lasso for representing barbecue
sauce and “efforts to find empathy for and common ground with
everyone,” a prominent member of the Kansas Republican party tweeted
that this was the first thing he’d ever agreed with her on. And
Baker said that after he delivered his speech, he heard from other
governors who told him they might now watch the show, too. Now, as
vaccines go from scarce to plentiful and states like Massachusetts
start relaxing their Covid restrictions, Baker is optimistic that the
zeitgeist will change, with “people starting to feel more positive
and balanced.” He told me he’s been tracking a lot of health
sites, and came across a study about the emotional and physical
benefits of hugs. Ted Lasso would be all over that.

_Joanna Weiss is a writer in Boston and the editor of _Experience
[[link removed]] _magazine, published by Northeastern
University._

_Subscribe to the Politico Digital Edition_
[[link removed]]

_Subscribe to the Politico Print Edition_
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit portside.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]