A JEREMIAD!

I don't know what a Jeremiad is, and perhaps that makes Earthworm Jim above a smarter man than I. However, after reading his article, I'm leaning towards believing that he is just autistic and is a damn savant with words. I think this guy could epically break down the reasons that we should all stop breathing for 30 minutes in order to turn the conflict in Darfur into rainbows.

Professor Stephen Webb (also known as Professor Touchboys, as he teaches at all-male and completely unsalvageably gay Wabash College) has a bone to pick, and he's picking the freshest bone-pickingest topic currently floating around in America today...soccer! Like totally, fuck soccer.

But really. I don't like soccer. I do. So I should be with him, right? No. See, Steve, just because I don't like soccer doesn't mean it should not be played or it's ruining America or it's making our ducks gay. That's crazytalk, which is apparently the discipline that you teach over at Wabbish.



Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it.

Probably because they can still somehow sleep at night?




Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is being undermined to the point of no return.

Ok. Waiting to see what this has to do with soccer, but I think I have an idea where it's going.



What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.)

What does this have to do with unnecessarily rewarding our kids? Golf is fucking gay, but they have nice grass. Bowling is boring, but noises are made. Baseball? You know, douche, a lot of people think baseball is boring as hell too but somehow do not express a desire to remove it from the spectre of major US sports. They just don't watch it. Some people like soccer. Deal with it.




The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock.

Where is the difference in dimensions among basketball, hockey and football? That analogy is like doing your taxes while being forced to blow a dude at gunpoint.



Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.

Posses? Pursuing their prey? Are you the guy who airbrushed Allen Iverson's tats on the Sixer media guide? He's right, though. When I think of soccer I picture roving gangs of Puerto Ricans pistol-whipping homeless people.



For those who think I jest, let me put forth four points, which is more points than most fans will see in a week of games—and more points than most soccer players have scored since their pee-wee days.

For those who think my douchebaggery has reached epic proportions and cannot be exceeded, let me put my points in list form.




1) Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability.

What? I don't get it. Are everybody's legs the same? Are the liberals of America suggesting that we should all be disabled or chop our fucking arms off or something? This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. Does baseball discriminate against those who aren't strong enough to hit the ball as far? Can you hold the bat with your legs? Is a football player allowed to whip the ballcarrier with his cock?



Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with their feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.

Oh my God. Because we have thumbs and can pray, we should only play sports that allow us to use our hands. Soccer is making us athiests. Ever consider that a deaf person try to talk with his feet? And the Iraqi who threw his shoes at Bush was following animal instincts?

Did Chris Brown beat Rihanna with his feet?

Should we give the middle toe instead of the middle finger?

God will create fucking hurricanes and floods but he would never kick you or make you smell his feet. He leaves that up to the little kids. Does God ever threaten to pimp slap us?

Soccer is spitting in the face of Jesus. You can't make this stuff up.




2) Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up. Take baseball, for example. When I was a kid, baseball was the most popular sport precisely because it was so demanding. Even its language was intimidating, with bases, bats, strikes, and outs. Striding up to the plate gave each of us a chance to act like we were starring in a Western movie, and tapping the bat to the plate gave us our first experience with inventing self-indulgent personal rituals. The boy chosen to be the pitcher was inevitably the first kid on the team to reach puberty, and he threw a hard ball right at you.

When I was a young child, they used to punch us in the face before every baseball game. Tapping the bat on the plate was our first step into forming a cult. It was so demanding. I mean, you could strike out! Woe be the kid that strikes out in a fucking baseball game. Especially considering that the pitcher has pubes.




Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out. The spectacle of your failure was so public that it was like having all of your friends invited to your home to watch your dad forcing you to eat your vegetables. We also spent a lot of time in the outfield chanting, “Hey batter batter!” as if we were Buddhist monks on steroids. Our chanting was compensatory behavior, a way of making the time go by, which is surely why at soccer games today it is the parents who do all of the yelling.

As opposed to soccer, where nobody lost except for the team that scored less goals. What is the point of this? Baseball is good because the kids yell "Hey batter batter"? That's why it's awesome? That's why baseball isn't an affront to Jesus himself?



3) Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score.

What? You think scoring less is a good way to win a soccer game? Please. Tell me what is wrong with foreigners. And Foreigner. Because for my money, "Cold as Ice" is the greatest rock ballad ever created.




Even the way most games end, in sudden death, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a game where so much energy results in so little advantage, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery. Shootouts are such an anticlimax to the game and are so unpredictable that the teams might as well flip a coin to see who wins—indeed, they might as well flip the coin before the game, and not play at all.

Yes, the 150,000 people in the stadium are so pissed that they have to be there. We get it, soccer bores you because there isn't any scoring. Great. Hockey too, probably. And yes, penalty kicks are pretty gay. I would like to see the percentage of games that end in shootouts, though, because I'm betting it's less than "typically".




4) And then there is the question of gender. I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls. Girls are too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball, and they do not have the bloodlust for football. Soccer penalizes shoving and burns countless calories, and the margins of victory are almost always too narrow to afford any gloating. As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.

I think your daughter should kick you for procreating. Why are girls too smart for baseball but not soccer? Is shoving rewarded in baseball? Or basketball? Or any sport? Soccer mimics childbirth? Are you fucking kidding me? Reminds me of the most prodigious mother of them all, Pele. It's like that guy's vagina was made out of pure elastic.





Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from soccer, if only because it is a sport all about running. It is as relentless as it is easy, and it is as tiring to play as it is tedious to watch. The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America.

It would be better if it was a plot to overthrow America. Sure, it would be the world's worst plot to overthrow America ever, but at least it would be trying.




For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccer’s success on the political left, which, after all, worked for years to bring European decadence and despair to America.

For those who weren't born with extra chromosomes, however, such a comparison would be exponentially more difficult.



The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.

The left, when done raping American babies, turned it's evil rapedicks toward sport. What portions of American cultural heritage they could not destroy through communism, they targeted with soccer.




Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer is of foreign origin, that is certainly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a self-inflicted wound. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves.

Conservative subarban families, the only families who should not be impaled upon poison-tipped black dildos, are absolutely slitting their wrists over this soccer fad. They are getting in their conservative minivans and conservatively driving right into the fucking liberal deathtrap of soccer. And then they are getting out and bringing oranges.



Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills.

Baseball is not intimidating, football does not start until fall and usually doesn't start until kids are a bit older, and I'm guessing basketball skills are acquired much quicker than soccer skills are. You can use your fucking hands, man.




American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and relevision are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.

You act like the right fielder doesn't exist in baseball.




I should know. I am an overworked teacher, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the kids to watch while I work in the evenings, they need to have spent some of their energy. Otherwise, they want to play with me!

I hope your books are better than this piece. Let me guess "LAKE EERIE: How Liberals Brutally Murdered Lacy Peterson"?




Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time. My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried.

"Oh my God, are you going to call her a cunt if she fucks up? You look like such an intimidating fellow!"




“Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family.

I'm sure your appearance and the fact that you wrote this embarrasses your daughter as well. Soccer players...beware. Stephen Webb is out there and he is going to bookworm your sport to death.

Fucking liberals.