My Quiet Life

so glad you noticed this too. i was appalled and looking for someone on the internet who heard what I heard. maybe he’s a fierce player who’s fierceness deserves a low baritone emittance. Oh please let that be true…

I think they did but it has been pointed out to me that his nickname is “Moose” which could, possibly, maybe, be what was shouted.

I’m actually a bit relieved that there are Americans who’ve heard this too. My husband and I were starting to wonder if we were the ones guilty of ignorance for not knowing that the guy was known as “Moose” - we’re British and don’t get to follow the season too closely. But I don’t remember hearing the “sss” sound that would have followed on from the booing sound if they were saying “Moose”.

Bears fans (most of the audience there is rooting for Chicago) yell “Moose” whenever Muhammed is showcased, as has been the case every Bears game I’ve watched this year. Similarly, New Orleans fans yell “Dooce” whenever Saints’ back Deuce McAlister does well. You can bet with egos that football players have, Muhammed would be raising all kinds of hell if he were getting booed, especially when he is doing well.

It’s like at a Titans game when Dreeeewwww is yelled when Drew Bennett catches a pass. There’s even a commercial in which Peyton Manning watches a moving crew lose control of a piano — “They’re not yelling, boo, says Manning. They’re saying “moooovers.” Another thing about football fans: They are extremely tolerant of diversity when it involves someone who can catch passes like Mushin Muhammed.

I was wondering the exact same thing at the beginning of the game. But I figured it out the second time around.

Glad that got cleared up.

His first name is in fact “Muhsin,” not “Mushin,” and it is pronounce Moo-sin. That is what they are hollering.

PHEW! i was disgusted when his named was called during the intros and everyone booed. my mom and i instantly had a feeling that it was because of his last name, but prayed we were wrong. another event that day had already begun my pessimism concerning the intolerance of americans, for me. directly afterward, i got onto google to see if there were any live forums where anyone had said anything - no luck. so this morning, i typed in: muhammed booed super bowl, and found this. THANKS :D

[…] That I watched. I caught the Superbowl last night. I noticed what I thought was booing too for a player named Muhammed. Glad to hear they were yelling his nickname Moose. […]

I swear I thought they were yelling, “Jeeeewwwwww!” So you can imagine how confused I was…

It’s always weird when the fans are split 50/50 and spread out all over the stadium at the Super Bowl.. none of the cheers sound right.

[…] Speaking of football and identity politics, there was a discussion on Chris Wage’s site about the “boos” several commenters heard directed at Chicago’s Moohsin “Moose” Muhammed. Apparently, when you put together people who: a. don’t understand that Americans give nicknames to sports names they can’t spell or pronounce (Coach K and Doctor J, for example) and b. see America through racial identity blinders (one commenter described her “pessimism concerning the intolerance of americans [sic]”), they tend to misinterpret little things into evidence of American racial intolerance. […]

This has to be the funniest bit of bed-wetting liberal hand-wringing ever.

You overstate it. It’s only evidence that it wasn’t a localized phenomenon, not that it’s not a liberal phenomenon. This is about as funny as Jerry Falwell going after Tinky Winky a few years back.

With all the real injustice in the world it seems kind of odd to me to get worked up over a perceived injustice done to a man who has enough fuck-you money to buy and sell pretty much everyone in the ‘audience’.

I think they booed Muhummad because his name sounds Muslim. He’s actually a christian.