I speak of the World Cup, an event that drives some of my friends to think of themselves as enlightened internationalists, don skirts, and claim interest in a sport that they never once mentioned in the preceding 47 months. This time around, the Fancy Lads' Spectator Bowling League is sending my co-blogger abroad, while another friend sashays to Old Europe because he thinks he likes soccer.
I'm hanging back with Mohammad Ali-Abadi. Ali-Abadi, head of Iran's Vice President for Physical Education, summed up my feelings quite nicely:
"I will ban athletes with an effeminate look ... It is really disgraceful for Iran that young people step onto fields wearing make-up. When a man enters the field with dyed hair and groomed eyebrows he is disrespecting society."Amen to that, my brother.
I've watched little soccer, but I've seen enough to notice all of the haircuts and grooming that it requires.
Iran, you and I have more in common than I thought. We can all sit back and rip on A.J. Hawk, but at the end of the day, I want athletes to be unkempt and ugly. Sports should not incorporate glamour on the playing field. Soccer is about neat haircuts and preening, with some prissy, new-millenium European nationalism thrown in as seasoning. This is evidenced, among other things, by all the singing that goes on in the stands.
President Bush's waffling on this issue should make us all concerned. In his celebrated interview with Bild am Sonntag (the one where he lied about catching the biggest perch in world history) Bush simply does not go far enough toward labeling soccer un-American: