The essential dynamic of most national sports teams is this: there is an administrative infrastructure of privileged coaches and managers and administrators who have the power to decide who plays and who doesn’t and why and when, and then there is the talent who actually achieves (or not) the desired results and provides the real “value” of sport: the entertainment of watching a competition.
When Canada decided to play Christine Sinclair and America decided to play Megan Rapinoe at the 2023 World Cup, it was the administrative side in action, deciding that certain players were “owed” the right to take the field in critical games even if their talents have largely faded and there were better players on the bench. Look at the best players on the winning teams: they are invariably young.
When Spanish players protested the ridiculous regimen coach Jorge Vilda imposed on the team during training (checking their rooms at night to see if they were there, searching bags for purchases, taking the bus instead of a plane to matches), management refused to hear them and demanded that they apologize before they could be considered for the national team. Think about it: we do not play, we do not have the skills, we do not train, we do not diet, we do not sweat, but how dare you question our decisions of what you must do. It’s obscene. Bend your knee.
And then there was the kiss. I note that most news outlets conspicuously did not broadcast the video of the horrible, shocking, terrible, disgusting, misogynistic, patriarchal buss. I think it’s obvious why. It was incredibly brief, and we see Jenni Hermosa embrace Rubiales as part of the transaction. That doesn’t alter the fact that it was inappropriate and unwanted, but the context makes it less clear that this was some kind of monstrous gesture that must be punished with dismissal.
The Inevitable Double Standard!
I am not exaggerating. But I have to stop a minute and insist here loudly that there is a monumental effect going on in which everyone must be swept up into and compelled to join the stampede and denounce the incident as a terrible act of sexual aggression. It is not that. It is trivial. It is incredibly transient. It is a stray impulse, a clumsy gesture. It does not deserve the attention it is getting and I refuse to kowtow to the hoards on it. And I am getting more and more disgusted by the movement behind it by the minute.
Many are calling it a “sexual assault”. Oh, that’s smart: the next time someone hears the term “sexual assault” they will think it might refer to a kiss that lasted less than a second. Or it could be rape. Or forced sodomy. Who knows? It’s all sexual assault.
And now, it has ridiculously, absurdly, comically made the FRONT PAGE of the NEW YORK TIMES. Yes, it has. A fucking kiss that lasted less than one second.
Jenni Hermosa has released a statement. I cannot confirm it but I would be willing to bet a pocketful of change that it was written by a feminist probably connected with the player’s union, and not by Hermosa.
A video has surfaced of the women’s team on the bus after the game making light of the incident, joking about it, shouting “kiss, kiss” when another man enters the bus, and looking at video of a female journalist kissing a member of the Spanish men’s team after a victory a few years ago.
There was a time when some anti-communists cited concerns about Santa Claus being a pernicious red influence on our children. They should have stuck to Stalin. The Santa Claus reference is remembered for ever as an exemplar of an overwrought movement that lost it’s mind getting hysterical about imagined insidious elements everywhere. The feminists should learn from them and stick to real sexual violence.
It has become about something else. It has become something Megan Rapinoe can seize upon as evidence of how horrible her life is because she is bullied and oppressed by the patriarchy even though by any objective standard Rapinoe lives an incredibly privileged life and even gets invited to play in a critical game when she is well past her prime (check out her performances at the 2023 World Cup: she was distinctly terrible– she couldn’t even lift corners into the box.) To witness Rapinoe trying to leverage this incident into just how much she personally has suffered is more than obscene.
The kiss has become the Trump of the World Cup: sucking all the oxygen out of the room when it should be better spent on describing how remarkably exciting and beautiful the games were: the final games of the tournament were simply outstanding: thrilling passing, great shots, passionate defense, and compelling narratives. You idiots– yes, I mean it– are obsessing over a trivial incident that is robbing the tournament of distinctive achievements. You make this trivial gesture a monumental issue and then complain that it is Rubiales who distracted everyone from your glorious championship.
If the argument is that the entire regimen, the control and power exercised by the administrative parasites who plague all major sports should be deposed, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, I am enthusiastically on side. Let’s dismantle it. Fuck the coaches and managers: give the power to the players. Let them elect the coaches and managers, or dismiss them, as is their wont; let’s please, please, please dump the vast array of parasitical support staff that accompany athletes to tournaments, get the best seats, stay at the best hotels, take away their medals if they smoked marijuana, and are never really kissed by anybody.
National Review’s writer Charles C. W. Cooke claimed that the women’s game is substandard. As he recently put it, “It’s not good sports.” The final had exactly what he accused the women’s game of lacking: a fascinating clash of tactics played with speed and mesmeric flow, tense and fierce. Atlantic
I hope activists fuck off with their hysteria about a kiss and take on the real enemy, the structure of international sports organizations, the fascistic culture of FIFA and the International Olympics Committee, the parasitical coaches who are as often as not women, and the flag-waving rabble of rabid nationalists who only care about a sport if their team wins the medals.
But they won’t. Rubiales will resign and most of the world will breathe a sign of relief and act as if the crisis is over and the real powers of Spanish Football will remain untouched and unharmed and will all be sitting in the best box seats again at the next tournament. You fools. You have been gaslighted again. And you will be again and again and again.
Incidentally, I have been unable to determine if the short video of “the kiss” that I found online is sourced from ESPN, FIFA, or what. I don’t know if the medal ceremonies are as protected as the game itself. Maybe it is. Either way, one wonders how much taxpayers contribute to the costs of training, transportation, game facilities, and so on, and then, why the hell should they be denied the right to see video of the games, at least after the live broadcast? I have not seen CBS, PBS, NBC, the New York Times, or anyone else post video of the kiss or of any part of the game.
Just how many parasites are there?
When the Beatles dropped by to see Elvis in the mid 1960’s, they were astonished that he had about 11 assistants living with him to take care of his every whim and need. The Beatles at the time had 3 for all of them.
Elvis was a shallow, credulous, fat, drug-addled pop star by then. The Beatles went on to create some of the most remarkable music of the 1960’s.
No coincidence.