“And Fly into
Egypt”
Football
in all its variants – rugby, association (soccer), American – originates in
mediaeval England, when young men formed teams to compete in kicking a pig’s
head, a pig’s bladder, a pig’s spleen, and perhaps even a whole pig from
village to village. Some writers have
suggested that the early English lads kicked around the heads of invading
Danes.
When
the referee called for heads or tails, that had to make the Danish prisoners
nervous.
And
why would young men kick pigs or Danes or parts thereof about? Well, because young men do dumb things. Usually they get over it. Not the Danes, though.
In
the 19th century English schools considered the many footer
folk-traditions, established rules to make the play less lethal, and organized
the competition into games that became fashionable.
Association
football, soccer, is said to be the most popular game on the planet, which is
pretty good proof of the Fall of Man. Muscular
young men in footer bags (shorts) run around a field kicking a ball and each
other, and once every two or three years someone makes a score and then marries
a tall blonde and gets knighted by the Queen and tells children to stay in
school and read a lot.
The
best thing that can be said about soccer is that it isn’t as sleep-inducing as
basketball.
Soccer
has long been ill-famed for its unrestrained violence – a primeval pagan blood-lust
of crazed howling, kicking, beating, and biting. All that’s by the fans, of course; the
players are much more restrained.
Thus
there is no surprise that last week in Port Said, Egypt a soccer match between
the hometown Al-Masry lads and Cairo’s Al-Ahly team ended with the reported
deaths of over seventy men.
And
why were no women involved? Because in
Egypt women are not permitted to attend footer matches. Egypt cannot possibly be recognized as a
democracy until women there enjoy the equal right to beat and burn other people
to death just like men do.
One
wonders what their halftime show was like.
And
are the footballs in Moslem countries made of pigskin?
The
squabbling thugs who constitute the (cough) government (cough) of Egypt
investigated the tragedy and concluded that the mess was the fault of the
former chief thug, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in captivity for the past year.
Blaming
a former leader for a present regime’s failings – man, that’s weak; no American
government would ever do that.
Kicking pig-parts around from village to village sounds barbaric, and so does a soccer game
which features a casualty list instead of a final score. Happily, we live in a nation which values
human dignity and human lives – well, except for the Department of Health and
Human Services. One is not sure – is the
Herodian thing Senate Bill Matthew 2:16-18, or House Bill Matthew 2:16-18? Or simply an edict?
Once
upon a time even Egypt was good at protecting children.
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