Monday, June 14, 2010

World Cup indoctrination


Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

It's also the time when all these "progressive" soccer geeks won't shut up about soccer being so wonderful because it's so European, Latin, African etc. (hint.... anything non-American.) It's all part of the "If it's American, it must be something big, loud, corporate and evil" or "if it's American, bad ........ Not American, goooood".

Look dude, it's not the right wing noise machine doing all the squawking it's those damn vuvuzelas buzzing the entire game.

Seriously, in what sport do you need to manufacture that much noise in the crowd. Over the weekend, my honey do list was repeatedly interrupted as part of recurring thunderstorms, so I flopped my butt on the couch to catch me a little of the South Korea/Greece game and the US/England match.

The incessant noise during the game was irritating to say the least. If the games are so exciting, why the need to pump in sound? So you won't hear all the snoring?

Look, I'm not a soccer hater. I'm sure if I were exposed to the sport as a kid, I probably would have more appreciation for the sport. But I can't stand the douche bags that insist that I'm less evolved because I would rather watch lacrosse, auto racing, curling, or, frankly, a baseball game.

What I find most interesting about this article is that it was not provided to NPR via Sports Illustrated or ESPN but The Nation, a liberal rag. But of course like all things NPR, they'd have you believe that both sides are covered which is why they have NRO and The New Republic as other content contributors.

That's a two against one, which happens to be the score to one totally kick ass soccer game. But in the NPR world it's called equal time. Kind of like having a luke warm conservative like David Brooks (or David Gergen) against a fire breathing liberal like Mark Shields.

Regardless, I'll probably watch the remaining US games because I love to watch competition, true reality programming. Given that the sports world is a little slow right now, I can view that in front of collegiate softball. Unfortunately, d-bags like Dave Zirn will keep telling me how we need to be more like Europe well after the World Cup is over.

More......

2 comments:

Bbeq said...

I think my soccer-playing 9 year old said it best when we were watching the 2nd half of the US/England game. She told me "Um mom? You know soccer is a lot more fun to play than to watch.".

gordon gekko said...

Look, I spent the better part of twelve years in the Track and Field community. I don't insist that people need to discover the finer points of the javelin or pole vaulting.

In fact, like your daughter it's much more fun to play than to watch.