Wow, have you been following the incredibly fascinating FIFA scandal as closely as we have? As sports-related fuck-tussles go, it's like the Chicago Black Sox times DeflateGate plus BENGHAZI! It's all about corruption and bribery in the governing body for soccer, or "real football," which is a sport that the rest of the world has had wars over, and which Americans grudgingly haul their children to practice for in minivans, until they decide soccer is uncool and they'd rather spend all their time playing videogames and masturbating. Anyway, last week the U.S. Justice Department, in cooperation with Swiss authorities, arrested and indicted a whole bunch of FIFA officials on big-time corruption charges. And now, because the ongoing investigation has begun to maybe implicate FIFA's president, Sepp Blatter, we learned Tuesday that Sepp Blatter is resigning as president of FIFA, so we won't have Sepp Blatter to kick around anymore, which is sad considering that kids in poor third-world slums actually play soccer by kicking around an inflated sepp bladder. It's all they have.
2021 update: Darn it, our current platform chops up any images not in a 2X3 format, but since I went to the trouble of getting Bill Griffith's permission to do this, here's my authorized theft of his "Mara Liasson" pic:
We're pretty sure the U.S. indictments have something to do with FIFA officials taking bribes for television contracts, but that's only part of the huge scandal that makes FIFA the most notorious criminal organization since the Mafia or perhaps the Warren G. Harding administration. The federal case doesn't even get into the question of whether officials took bribes for choosing locations for the Quidditch World Cup, and it doesn't even come anywhere close to addressing the perfectly horrible abuses of foreign workers brought to build facilities for the upcoming 2022 World Cup games to be held in Qatar. Sucks to be them, but some rich guys who got richer in crooked marketing deals will have to pay some really big fines, so it all balances out. Maybe next the Justice Department will investigate domestic violence in the NFL, hahahaha.
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Still, it is quite a shock to learn that Sepp Blatter is stepping down, seeing as how he has been president of the organization since 1998 and was just re-elected to the post last week. Hadn't he learned anything about how to stay in power by holding military exercises in Texas as a cover for declaring martial law and staying in power forever?
Change and reform are coming quickly to the organization, which should get its act together right quick, we bet:
At a brief, hastily called news conference in Zurich, Blatter said that “FIFA needs a profound restructuring." “I appreciate and love FIFA more than anything else," he said. “And I only want to do the best for FIFA."
Blatter has also asked the organization to schedule a new election as soon as possible, which means, as Media Matters' Oliver Willis tweeted, maybe Scott Brown will soon be moving to Zurich and talking about his deep family roots there.
Yr Wonkette promises to stay on top of this fascinating story as it continues to develop, and to someday look up what "FIFA" stands for.
[ New York Times / Image based on Zippy the Pinhead © by Bill Griffith, used by permission]
Oh, dammit.
Somewhere in Wisconsin, as I recall.