John Roughan: Song of loyalty now changes to a minor key

The Loyal song is getting to me. In a sense, it always did. As soon as the advertisement started on television I'd wind the volume up and jive in the armchair while the family tried to look the other way.

But now it is getting serious. The other day in the car that oddly beautiful tune that doesn't know where it's going until it gets there, had salty stuff welling at my eyes.

And I'm with Russell and Brad. Can I be loyal too?

Most of us in every opinion poll have been with Russell and Brad on their right to make their fortune. But we are loyal.

It is hard to explain to those who think it unpatriotic to order national emblems from China but, to someone of my view of the national interest, loyalty is not defensive and protective.

That, I think, has been Team New Zealand's endearing mistake. The song is getting more poignant with each race we lose.

When the event is long over the music will remain.

Each time we hear the jittering rhythm and those awkward sentiments the song will re-awaken the complicated experience of the past few weeks.

Our Swiss visitors, by the way, have never understood the loyal campaign. Before the match began, when Alinghi's Louis Vuitton post-race celebrations were always tempered by the sight of the black boats slipping back to their dock supremely confident, the challengers found the advertisement truly fearful.

Now, I imagine, they simply dislike what they think it represents. They are Europeans after all, just one generation removed from Nuremberg rallies.

I've tried to tell an Alinghi acquaintance that he is not seeing some dark, virulent strain of nationalism here.

He wouldn't believe it. He has heard the radio talk and read the letters to the paper. He says Alinghi has been abused from the Waiheke ferry, for heaven's sake.

All of that was before they began beating us. Now, I hear, conversation in the challenger's camp runs on rumours of death threats, gratuitous street violence against a vehicle with Louis Vuitton livery, even that certain people are putting to sea in bullet proof vests, though I think we would notice.

Down there in the big Alinghi base they are not enjoying New Zealand. The prevailing sentiment, I'm told, is that everyone just wants to get out of here.

How immensely sad.

Even Louis Vuitton people who have been here for long periods over the years of the Cup, long enough to know our gruff sporting hostility from the real thing, have had enough of us, I hear.

At least when we lost the Rugby World Cup semi-final nobody was here to see us at our worst. This time there are pockets of the world watching the spectacle and the Swiss in particular will be appalled.

They are a restrained people, quiet and capable and considered a little dull by their bigger, brasher neighbours.

I went to their national anniversary celebrations a while ago. Like us, they were not effusive about it, even after 700 years.

To the casual visitor the country looks like three disparate bits of the adjoining nations. The north and east are German, the west is French and the south could easily be in Italy.

Constitutionally the place is a federation of 23 cantons that retain a great deal of autonomy. Historically, Switzerland was founded on a high dose of defensive loyalty, a determination of isolated alpine people to keep the world at bay.

They are still wary of international associations. They refuse to join the European Community, despite sitting in the middle of it, and until recently they would not join the United Nations though Geneva is home to many of its agencies.

They are fiercely democratic, ruling themselves by citizen-initiated binding referendums. Their politicians, in consequence, are not so much leaders as functionaries of the popular will, and much less prominent. If you can't name a President of Switzerland, it's no wonder. Nor, I suspect, can most of the Swiss.

The country's bankers and industrialists would dearly like to join the European Community but the populace in referendums keep rejecting the suggestion.

Perhaps they notice that governments in the EC have a curious understanding of democracy. Few dare give their citizens a referendum on each step of European integration and when they do the citizens invariably vote no.

To EC governments that just means they need another referendum.

The citizens are invited to try again until they get it right. The Swiss know that once in the EC, they would never get out.

In any case, they have all the benefits of proximity to Europe's markets and they are wealthier than the European average. Their cowbell farmers would suffer a cut in subsidies if they joined the common agricultural policy.

While they can afford to keep the world at arm's length, we struggle to embrace it. Listening to our resentment of the challenger's wealth, the Alinghi people must doubt we will ever get back in their league.

But they should know that those solemn people, hands on hearts, ringing the coastline in the commercial, are a deliberate send-up of defensive patriotism. They are, aren't they?

I am sure they were when the whole thing started and we were going to win naturally. To poke loyalty in the face of Russell and Brad was a bit of fun, a bit of spice in the contest.

Now, well, we need something spirited to recover from this. Sing.

Continuous coverage of today's America's Cup race will begin on nzherald.co.nz at 12.30pm.

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