The Kentucky Derby and Everything I Hate About It
The Kentucky Derby is coming up, and I'm unamused. I never paid attention to it, but I decided to think about why it has always rubbed me the wrong way. You know when you hate something but you don't know why you hate it? Well, this was the case here for all of about twenty seconds before I realized why I despise it so much. Let's go category by category.
Stuffy Bullshit
Country clubs, boarding schools, embossed or embroidered initials, using the word artisanal to describe food, unironically playing croquet, the idea of the polo sport…
Why do I hate these things? They all fall under the image of snobbery. There isn't anything inherently wrong with them; but if we're talking about the image they represent, what it tells you is that you're not invited or involved because you're not good enough, rich enough or—dare I say in some cases—white enough.
The Kentucky Derby is like the solar eclipse. Nobody cares about anything related to it until the week before, and then there's mass FOMO. If you're not in the "in group," you're a poor square. It doesn't matter that people don't give a damn about watching horses race for two minutes. All that matters is that they can afford to pretend to give a damn. Ask any one of those Derby observers what they think about horses six months after the race, and you'll hear half of them say, "they make a fine delicacy in Europe." The one exception I have to this category is high tea, but I credit that to having watched Alice in Wonderland too many times as a child.
Gambling
The Kentucky Derby is the most vanilla form of gambling I can think of, which is why I've never heard of a professional gambler being interested in the event.
Besides peeking at betting odds, most choose "lucky" numbers or numbers related to their birthdays or anniversaries and throw their platinum cards at it. Although I don't gamble, I can at least respect someone who analyzes data or looks for an edge to make a more informed bet. (I especially commend anyone who counts cards.) But if you select horses 8, 13, and 2 because you joined a frat on August 13 '02, get a life already.
And besides, the only thing one can really bet on at the Kentucky Derby is the order of the horses as they finish the race. No betting on whether there'll be a half-time show wardrobe malfunction. No betting on whether the Doritos commercial appears before the GoDaddy commercial. No betting on the color of Gatorade that's poured on the winning team's coach. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
To some extent, betting on horses is like the alcoholic's version of bingo, which actually leads me to my next point.
