Marc Thiessen has some really abhorrent opinions–his love for torture, for instance. He also has crappy opinions about sports (via Jon Chait):
The world is crazy for soccer, but most Americans don’t give a hoot about the sport. Why? Many years ago, my former White House colleague Bill McGurn pointed out to me the real reason soccer hasn’t caught on in the good old U.S.A. It’s simple, really: Soccer is a socialist sport.
Think about it. Soccer is the only sport in the world where you cannot use the one tool that distinguishes man from beast: opposable thumbs. “No hands” is a rule only a European statist could love. (In fact, with the web of high taxes and regulations that tie the hands of European entrepreneurs, “no hands” kind of describes their economic theories as well.)
I suspect this is tongue in cheek, but I really can’t tell. If it is, Thiessen’s sense of humor is sidled in the very small section of his brain that also contains his conscience. If it’s not, well then his conscience still isn’t taking up very much space.
Thiessen is often wrong, but he’s also wrong about Americans not “giving a hoot” about soccer–as I wrote last week, the percentage of Americans who were “excited about the World Cup or “watching closely” is larger than the percentage of self-identified Tea Partiers. I guess you could say that’s still not very much, but then you’d be admitting that Tea Partiers are more fringe than soccer fans.
At any rate, I love this part:
Soccer is also the only sport in the world that has “hooligans”—proletarian mobs that trash private property whenever their team loses.
Populism! The only thing more pretentious than someone using the word “proletariat” outside academic argument is someone using it as a pejorative.
