How Stephen H. Webb is Ruining America: A Jeremiad

(Note: this is a tongue-in-cheek parody of this First Things article by Webb about how soccer is ruining America. The words I've changed are in bold.)

Update: 11:43 P.M. Links and some further thoughts added at the end of the post.

Update, March 27: It's become clear that Webb intended his article as satire. Still, it was pretty harsh and at least some of the criticisms seemed genuine. Anyway, the guys from the excellent Avoiding The Drop spoke to Webb and had him watch a soccer game for the first time ever and report in. I guarantee you'll like him much more after reading this. Sounds like they may even have made a convert!

(By the way, he also talked to Jason of Match Fit USA before this and I missed it. Also worth a read).

Soccer is Stephen H. Webb and his ilk are running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people critics of soccer as if they can do no wrong. Every kid criticism is a winner, and nobody no grumpy old man is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball society going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer Webb and his kind came first is hard to say, but soccer is their writings are clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is are being undermined to the point of no return.

What other game kind of rant, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch read? (Stories about bowling and golf come to mind, but reading the sound descriptions of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer form of these diatribes is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Crusades against soccer is are the fluoridation of the American sporting scene literature.

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

1) Any sport criticism that limits you to not using your feet brain, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, anti-soccer writing is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands his brain. We have the thumb intelligence, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb brain lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our handsbrain. Have you ever seen a deaf stupid person trying to talk with their feet without their brain? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet react without your brain. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial best instincts , but might not have thought about the consequences. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, Writing or talking without your brain is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Frank Tyger not say, "There is no evidence that the tongue is connected to the brain?" Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? Did Terry Pratchett not say, "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance." No, hands brains are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God wise men), while feet the brainless are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of GodEinstein’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.

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

Thus, when inventing new methods of writing while using your brain, you had to face the fear of disfigurement being laughed at 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 blogosphere chanting, “Hey batter batter!” "Fire Joe Morgan!" 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 on the anti-soccer Interwebs today it is the parents uninformed who do all of the yelling.

3) Everyone knows that soccer brainless writing is not a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer arguing without thought is not a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less points you score. Even the way most games of these arguments end, in sudden death without a point, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a gamewriting where so much energy results in so little advantage coherent thought, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out without making a point, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery. These pointless argumentsShootouts are such an anticlimax to the game progress of dialogue 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.

4) And then there is the question of gender. I know my daughter will women everywhere won't kick me when she they reads this, but soccer is uninformed arguments are by and large a game for girls. Girls are usually too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball writing pointless diatribes, and they often do not have the bloodlust for football Internet arguments. Soccer Informed debate 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, soccerinformed debate mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.

Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from socceruninformed debate, 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 pointless argument is not a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America. For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccertrivial argument’s success on the political left or the political right, which, after all, worked together for years to bring European decadence and despair to lower the bar of civil discourse in America. The left politicians tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism pointless debates fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left politicians could not accomplish through these intellectual fadsfutile arguments about political matters, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through futile arguments about sport.

Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer Trivial argument is may be of foreign origin, that is certainly possibly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a These inane arguments are self-inflicted wounds. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer unsupported arguments on the Internet in droves. Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills. American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is Internet arguments are the perfect antidote to television and video games. It They don't forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game world. Soccer and television Internet arguments are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.

I should know. I am an overworked teacher journalist, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the (imaginary) 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! Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams making inane arguments 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 provide any factual support to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “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 meaningless debate contest a very happy family.

Stephen H. Webb Andrew Bucholtz is a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College penniless journalist and blogger. His recent books include American Providence and Taking Religion to School haven't been published yet.

Related: A nice FJMing of Webb over at Avoiding the Drop.

Update: 11:43 P.M. The intertubes are alive about Prof. Webb's piece! Here's a brief smattering of some of the other pieces I've seen so far.

- The Wall Street Journal decided to pick this piece up? I thought they had standards...

- A great post on the matter at the always-excellent Unprofessional Foul.

- A good take from Carlos Caso-Rosendi via the comments here; he noticed this piece long before the rest of us.

- Another strong piece on the matter over at Ginge Talks The Footy.

- Alex Massie offers a British perspective on Webb's nuttery over at his blog on The Spectator's site.

- A more political take on the matter at Philosoraptor.

- A good letter in response from Chuck Adams.

It's amazing that this has provoked so much reaction already, but in some ways, it proves the theory I expounded in this post. The extreme arguments get all the attention. If Webb had merely written a piece saying that he didn't like soccer, he'd be just one voice among many and no one would care. Because he takes it to ridiculous levels and brings in politics, religion and nationalism, people around the world suddenly know who he is (and he gets himself a nice WSJ byline). I'm sure there are plenty of people watching, and that certainly isn't going to encourage civil or reasoned debate. Moreover, Webb makes every group he represents (Americans, conservatives, Christians, baseball fans and probably some more that I missed) look bad by comparison. The title of my post is perhaps an exaggeration, but there's a nugget of truth in it. In my view, it's this tendency Webb represents towards extreme positions and non-rational debates that just turn into mudslinging and flame wars that's ruining our society, not soccer.

Satire? On the Internet?

This story from Alana G (via TrueHoop) is hilarious, but frightening. As most probably know, the NBA is holding its All-Star weekend in Phoenix over the next few days. Reporter Niki D'Andrea of the Phoenix New-Times wrote a cover story about a "tattoo cap" on NBA players that commissioner David Stern was supposedly thinking of implementing, which turned out to be based off a satirical story by author/blogger Con Chapman which was republished on his community blog page at Fox Sports. D'Andrea explains her rationale in a blog post here:

"Though our knee-jerk reaction to the tattoo cap story was that it might be a joke, what it touted seemed possible. Commish Stern had already instituted a business-casual dress code for NBA players going to and from games -- in an attempt to thwart a trend toward hop-hop attire among some players. Also, Suns players we interviewed thought the tat cap story was true and complained about the alleged plan in our article. Calls to NBA headquarters for comment weren't returned before "In the Flesh" went to press. In fact, they haven't been returned to date."

It would be easy to mock D'Andrea, but this could have happened to other people. There are a few specific lessons writers and editors should take from this story, in my mind, in addition to following something along the lines of the Regret the Error accuracy checklist;

1. Double-check your sources and know what exactly they are: D'Andrea writes that they picked up the story from FoxSports.com. However, that site, like many Internet sports sites, combines factual stories and analysis pieces from its paid staff with comments and blogs from community members. Differentiating the two is extremely important, but not everyone does it well. (It can be particularly tough for those who haven't grown up in the Internet age; one of the biggest problems with Buzz Bissinger's Costas Now rant against Will Leitch was how he went after Leitch for stuff posted by Deadspin commenters, rather than what Leitch actually wrote.)


2. Put it in context: The best way to avoid these kind of sourcing problems is to look at whatever material you find in context. Just looking at the URL of the FoxSports post, you can tell it's a community blog post. That should set off alarm bells about the material's accuracy and at least require some fact-checking with other sources. Moreover, if you just look at Chapman's other GerbilSportsNetwork blog posts, it's pretty obvious he isn't being completely serious. In a different story, he features this "quote" from Bill Laimbeer on flopping;


"'Johnny Most used to call me ‘Stanisflopski’,” Laimbeer recalls bitterly, referring to the Celtics’ broadcaster who covered the team’s fierce Eastern Conference rivalry with the “Bad Boy” Pistons of the ’80’s and 90’s. 'I took my art seriously, and today I’m going to lead you through a dramatic interpretation that will help you get in touch with your inner rage–the scene from ‘Gone With the Wind’ in which Scarlett O’Hara curses the Yankees in the garden of Tara.'"

3. Check if it's reasonable: D'Andrea explains in her blog post that the story seemed plausible, given Stern's previous move to institute a dress code. That's true, but regulating tattoos goes well beyond regulating clothing. Moreover, examine Stern's entire "quote":

“We feel it is important that our players not scare the bejesus out of affluent demographic groups with gangsta-style tattoos,” David Stern said at a press conference here today. “Otherwise we might as well name the next two expansion franchises the ‘Crips’ and the ‘Bloods’,” he added, showing off his “street cred” to the admiration of NBA beat reporters.

There is no way in hell that David Stern, one of the most careful people in the world with his words (listen to any interview with him!) is throwing out "bejesus" and "gangsta" in a real interview, much less making references to naming teams after the Crips and the Bloods. Stern has spent much of his recent tenure trying to get the NBA away from the perceptions of gang life; I doubt you'd ever hear him say anything somewhat similar to this. Plus, no serious news story would incorporate the phrase "showing off his 'street cred'". In fairness, D'Andrea may not have been overly familiar with Stern, as she seems to mostly do arts and music pieces (the top six search results for "D'Andrea" on the paper's website are all on music). That will be discussed further later (see point #5 below), but it's a good idea to do a little background research if you're writing in an unfamiliar area, and a quick Google of Stern's interview transcripts would make it clear that this is a way he would never talk.

4. Does anyone else have it? Very little news is actually exclusive to one site these days, especially when it's on something big and national like the NBA. With a story like this, you can bet that at the least, ESPN, Yahoo! and the Associated Press would have something within an hour or two if there was anything to it. It's worth checking back after you've started your story, too; if other news sites still don't seem to be reporting on it, there's probably a good reason why. In this day and age, this isn't the kind of story that would stay quiet for long if there was any truth to it.

5. Write what you know, or check with people who know:
It's almost unavoidable to have to write outside your subject of expertise these days, which often leads to increased errors. As mentioned above, anyone who regularly covers the NBA would likely have smelled something rotten with this one, especially with Stern's quotes. The New-Times doesn't seem to be a sports-intensive paper, but they do have several guys who write sports posts on one of their blogs, including Steve Jansen, Rick Barrs and Paul Rubin. I don't know if D'Andrea checked with any of them while she was working on this story, but it certainly would have been worthwhile; if she did check in and they didn't see anything weird with it, shame on them. Compartmentalization is a problem with newspapers and magazines in general these days, though; tight deadlines and individual beats mean that there often isn't as much interaction across newsrooms and sections as there should be. In almost any newsroom, you can usually find someone who knows a bit about your topic; it's usually worth it to get whatever background you can from them. It's an efficient use of resources to take advantage of the pool of knowledge in your workplace, and it also helps prevent mistakes.

This certainly isn't the first or the last time that people will pick up on a satirical story as bonafide news; a similar case happened this fall when my Out of Left Field colleague Duane Rollins wrote a tongue-in-cheek press release about dropping the "Thigh" from the "Oil Thigh", Queen's traditional fight song. That one was also pretty clearly satirical, coming shortly after the decision to drop "Golden" from the school's "Golden Gaels" moniker, and it was marked with a "satire" tag, but it still spawned a bunch of angry calls and e-mails to Queen's Athletics and Recreation. Other examples are myriad. The moral of the story; don't believe everything you read. Just because it's on the intertubes doesn't mean that it's accurate; as James Watt famously said(and Terry Prachett repeated in The Truth), "A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on."

(Funnily enough, it's in dispute whether that quote came from Watt, Mark Twain or both) [Graeme Philipson, The Age].

(Also, that story is still the lead item on the New-Times website (with an attached correction), even though there's really no reason for it to exist now that the premise has been discounted).