National Review Man Maybe Tries To Make A Funny About Soccer, Hurts Self In Process

You know the biggest problem with conservatives and humor? Did you answer "because they're such bullies and boors you can never figure out if they're being serious or not"? You are exactly right! Congratulations to you! As a perfect example of our inability to distinguish between whether one of their ilk is engaging in actual criticism or attempted funny-making, we give you one Tim Cavanaugh, who went all maximum bloviate about soccer over at National Review.

Tim does not like soccer, because it is full of terrorists, or it makes people terrorists, or maybe both. We couldn't quite follow because we were still too busy trying to figure out if we should be laughing at it because it is funny, or laughing at it because it sucks. Haha of course it is the latter.

It isn't just that Cavanaugh is hell bent on comparing apples to bowling balls, like when he compares the violence of soccer fans to whether or not American athletes go to jail for things they've done. It isn't just that he tries to explain that soccer cannot be a world-uniting force because police in Sao Paolo busted protesters of the World Cup. It isn't just that the column thuds at you with the weight of one thousand pounds of derp. It's his nonsensical YEAH FOOTBALL 'MERICA FUCK YEAH ideas about sportsball strategy that he tries to disguise as The Funny.

There is more strategic thought involved in a first-down running play that gains two yards than there is in all twelve or so hours of a soccer match.

Hahaha he totally joked about how long soccer is hee hee hee. Christ, man, soccer is actually the sport that literally takes only 90 minutes and change to play EVERY SINGLE TIME (barring ties in certain games, blah blah blah) unlike the unending slog that is football. Also, perhaps we could actually invite some soccer hooligans 'round to explain how soccer strategy works to Timmy?

It's also Tim being either super mad or super pretend funny mad that soccer invites nation-level celebrating as opposed to the internecine warfare that is good old American sport.

In fact, international soccer unites people against other people. While there is theoretically nothing wrong with that in the context of sports, the blind patriotism around the World Cup, like the cheap nationalism surrounding the Olympics, is creepy. Even more unsettling is the secondhand patriotism whereby, for example, my Middle Eastern nephews, lacking local heroes, get cussing-mad over the fates of Germany and Brazil and other nations they’ll probably never set foot in.

So wait. Which is it? Are you mad that soccer fans align with their own country or are you mad that soccer fans align with other countries? Are you just mad all the time?

Are you mad that you tried to make a funny about soccer and dictators and it fell flat like this?

Is it really an accident that Benito Mussolini was among the first beneficiaries of a home advantage at the World Cup; or that one of the world’s most beloved living footballers, Diego Maradona, is a louche socialist, a friend of Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a flagrant cheat in both taxes and soccer?

Hmmm. We don't know. Is it really an accident that Kobe Bryant is an ALLEGED WE TOTALLY SAID ALLEGED rapist? Or that Aaron Hernandez can't stop perhaps actually murdering people? Or that John Rocker is a washed up unrequited racist? 

See? We can do this shit all day, which is why you should leave the humor to us, National Review.

[ National Review ]