Soccer is a Marxist plot to destroy America

[Edric O]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680101041299201.html

Wow. Just... wow. This is better than satire. I love Rupert Murdoch's bold new vision for the Wall Street Journal.

[Dante]

Well it's a dumb article, but I can't help but think that he should get people to play rugby instead if he's that upset with football. Sorry, soccer.

[Edric O]

The point is that this article goes far beyond mere "dumb." It is an unblemished gem of the purest stupidity. And, IMO, funnier than The Onion - especially when you realize that there is at least one person out there who actually takes it seriously.

[Dunenewt]

That article should come out on April 1st, I couldn't take it seriously at all!

[Dante]

I dunno, I find stupidity on that kind of level depressing rather than amusing.

[Wolf]

To be fair, while I did find the whole "soccer is a plot to destroy America" and "soccer is Marxist" angles fairly insane, I actually did appreciate what started to become a gendered-comparison of soccer and baseball. I actually somewhat buy the argument that baseball is a masculanizing event; putting focus on launching your seed out of the park with the aid of your teammates. Both the pitcher and the batter sort of stand as competing, fetishized males; both are focused on vigorously "launching" an item/defeating the other, and the outfield/the boys in the dugout serve as a sort of-friendly wolf pack. Really truly, the idea that a batter stands between a pitch and the "impregnation" of the catcher to me is very interesting. Soccer, on the other hand, is much more team oriented, which is something I think we tend to associate with femininity. The lower scores do represent the focus on preventing the sphere of white matter from entering the gaping womb of the goal. In this sense, soccer is actually highly sexualized from the feminine perspective.

On the other hand, there are female elements of baseball (the catcher) and masculine elements of soccer (uh, whenever anyone launches the ball into the goal), that shouldn't go ignored. But don't get me wrong: just because we can do a gendered analysis of sport doesn't mean that that sport is... trying to destroy and corrupt our youth, or... make us filthy communists. I dunno, in that senese, I felt the article was on to something, and I think it would have been better had it fleshed all that out and ignored the rest.

[Rene]

Dragoon Knight should have destroyed the hat when he had the chance  ;D

[Kiyouta]

Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.

...

What? Surely anyone with half a brain cell would stop reading after that one line. Are some Americans *STILL* believing that fluoridation of water is a Communist conspiracy? Oh Obama, how I pity thee.

[Dunenewt]

It reminds me of something Gunwounds would write.

Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it.

That's why its called football...oh wait...doesn't quite work for the Americans...

[Mahdi]

Here I thought the fact you could be 300 pounds of pure gelatin and still pull in $20 mil a year as a pro athlete was what made baseball America's favourite past time.

[athanasios]

And that moron, who probably has never played soccer, is a teacher!

That's why we have so many people with mental disorders. ;)