Most of these guys just make straw-man arguments -- I think most of us know soccer isn't going to overtake the NFL in our lifetimes, but we'd agree it has its place at the buffet table of U.S. sports. But this one was staggering: Just about spit my milk at the screen.
The LA Times' moronic TJ Simers did an anti-World Cup article for the Times' Sunday Opinion section (with a World Cup theme this week). It's too lame to link to, but you can find it if you're a masochist.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-simers04jun04,0,6757516.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions No, I'm not a masochist.
TJ Simers rips someone/something in his column? Knock me over with a feather. He'd lambaste his mother if he thought he could get a rise out of it.
Typical ignorant that thinks because its not the most popular in the US it sux. Lets do some numbers if one in 5 people in the US watched it that would be 64 million, and it would be over 1b in the world. Damn I think that is pretty good dont u guys think ?
It's more like 1 in 1000 people in the world care about American Football. (Could be even less, could be more, I haven't bothered doing the exact math. The fact is, it is much smaller than 1 in 5.) His juvenile vitriol starts looking so putrid when you consider a fact like that. I wonder what his reaction would be when reminded of a factoid like this.
t.j.simers@latimes.com For the previous Bradenton article (letters to the editor): dklement@heraldtoday.com
DO NOT WRITE TO TJ! He loves getting hate mail--he really does this all the time, though not with soccer. He does it with the local teams and players, and he loves getting people saying that he's a moron, etc. Don't give him the satisfaction...angry letters to the Times means that he's doing his job for the Sports section, so don't give them more reason to keep him around. As I wrote on my blog, since he knows nothing about soccer, TJ has no idea that there already have been plenty of doping scandals...so even when he's right, he manages to show himself to be uninformed at the same time.
Does T.J. realize just how many people in the world (i.e. third world countries) have no access to television, yet these people are included in the 1-of-5 figure? I would be curious as to what the figure would be if only European countries were taken into account.
If he did realize, he wouldn't care, because that would get in his way of trying to make a joke and put down soccer.
Just to reiterate: DON'T WRITE TO ANY OF THESE GUYS. It just generates hits to their articles, so they can say to their editor, "look how many hits I generated today." These guys don't care if most of their readers think they're provincial morons, just so they bring eyes to look at the ads. I think soccer-bashing would've dropped even faster than it has in the past decade if not for Trevor T. Soccerfan writing enraged letters to every half-wit who thinks soccer is too low-scoring to ever be popular, etc.
Write a letter to Jere Longman Or Steve Goff Or Tom Timmerman Or Chris Cowles Or Graehme Jones Or Ron Blum Or Joe Curley
What an idiot that guy. I love it how the haters take the time to write about them hating....its called FEAR!
Bruce Arena should invite that guy and Oguchi Onyewu for a breakfast meeting, after they're back from Germany. Let them decide on the racism and illegal immigration issue in that setting. Oh BTW, I'm eager to read the posts of the "soccer basher apologizers" (you know who you're) in response to this quality journalism.
That scumbag. I'd like him to say that garbage to a hispanic's face. The fact that an editor would even allow that filth to get published makes my blood boil. That newspaper should be ashamed of themselves.
I don't blame you. If I was hispanic I would be outraged by that. I wouldn't waste my time writing him an email though. I would send it to the CEO of that newspaper and ask him what the newspapers policy is regarding racism.
The paper was, until recently, owned by Knight Ridder. It has no shame. As for Powers, he gets off on writing columns like that. He likes baseball...yet all baseball fans I know hate his column. I'm not aware of anyone else who evens pays attention to him around here. I did read it on the bus this morning, just because I saw "soccer" in the title. It was refreshing to see he hasn't changed; I've missed nothing since 1994! Thanks for your input, Tom.
So, let's for a second hypothesize that some sports writer wrote an "opinion" column like this: "If the law enforcement authorities really are serious about identifying gang members, they soon will be provided a unique opportunity to record their whereabouts. All the Minneapolis police force has to do is monitor the block-by-block television ratings of this week's NBA Finals. Police should be dispatched to any area in which the ratings reflect an unnaturally high level of interest. That likely signals a concentrated pocket of gang members." You're catching my drift? Now, let's imagine the kind of nationwide coverage which would be generated, if such an inciting, hateful article was published by a "journalistic publication". Now, I would like to hear how whatever has already been "published" is any less inciting and hateful than the hypothetical paragraph I wrote up. Come on, "soccer basher apologizers", I want to hear from you.
What do you want? When a person has a differnt opinion on a sport, who gives a shit. When a person is a bigot, he deserves every bad thing that can happen to him. Your belief that just because people don't get their panties in a wad when there is disagreement on a sport, that means they are bigots too is sad. The guy's a dick. I think any rational person would think that, regardless of whether they like soccer.
Yes, I think he has dug his grave writing an article like this. This is not even about soccer or baseball or basketball or any sport. He is using soccer as a vehicle to spread his gospel of ignorance and hatred. If Jimmy the Greek and Rush Limbaugh were fired from their jobs (and Steven A. Smith should be fired from his job) for such bigotry, this guy deserves to lose his job too.