Ann Coulter Can Go Jump in a Lake Full of Soccer Balls!

In my last post, I was rather confused about whether I wanted this nation to become a soccer nation or not. I started out definitely against it, but that is before I was for it.

I seem to he John Kerry of the blogosphere.  And that isn't good.  You don't want to be the John Kerry of anything.

But when I read Ann Coulter's attack on soccer in her June 25th column I felt my blood boil.  I normally don't care what Ann Coulter says, and maybe I shouldn't now.  But I know this woman gets many dollars for her speaking engagements and I don't think that is right; anyone who writes this sort of senseless scrimflam shouldn't be paid for opening her mouth, but rather for keeping it shut.

That is one sort of but not really very hot, ultra-conservative, soccer hating lady.

Allow me to address her objections one by one:

(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks

Are you kidding me?  Keepers have howlers, strikers miss PK's.  When Lionel Messi strikes the ball with that left foot of his the world stands still, and when it hits home to lift his team over the Iranians and into the round of 16, there is glory.  

I think that you, Ms. Coulter, forget as well that football, American football, is the ultimate TEAM sport.  If one man on the line misses his blocking assignment the touchdown doesn't happen, because the QB is put on his ass. 

Soccer is a team sport indeed, but it can be influenced by individual brilliance and individual error.  So you are wrong.  Individual achievement is a huge factor.  Let's move on.

(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.  

I don't see how little girls and boys playing together tears at the fabric of our country.  Allow me to say, though, that there comes a point where the women's game and the men's game split, just as they do for all other sports.  

As for the whole "Athletic Talent" thing, well, in my opinion soccer players are among the greatest athletes in the world, every bit as good as our best football or basketball players.  I'd like to see you try to run around a field for 90 minutes, and then control a ball off the chest and volley into the top corner of the net, just over the keeper's finger tips, to the roar of the crowd.  If that isn't athletic talent finding expression, then I don't know what is.  

(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.

What is wrong with a tie?  Just because our sports have driven them from American sports doesn't make them bad.  While I admit that most 0-0 draws are horribly boring affairs, there are some that can be incredibly exciting, notable the nil-nil draw that Brazil and Mexico played to last week.  

Oh, and Miss Coulter, in soccer they are called "halves", not periods; though our Latino sisters and brothers do call them "tiempos", which can be interpreted in English as periods.  Is there something you want to tell your adoring public?

(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box. 

Wow.  

Why should we enjoy something that imitates warfare?  Why should we celebrate people being carted off the field?  Why shouldn't little kids get juice boxes after soccer games (or baseball games or football games, for that matter)?  Seriously.  What is your problem?

See point one above.  Soccer has plenty of opportunities for individual disgrace.  At the higher levels its a rough sport, a tough game, with occasionally bone shattering tackles.  Illegal bone shattering tackles perhaps, but nevertheless. 

And your quote from Lady Thatcher sort of kicks the poppets our from under your main point.  Every time England and Germany get together on the pitch, the war is in the back of the mind.  When England start to lose (as they normally do), their fans have no problem singing things like "If you won the war, stand up!" or the always classy "10 German Bombers". 

Stupid gits.  

(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them! 

Well, the goal keepers can use their hands, so I guess they are still human if no one else is.  Then again, have you met Jens Lehman?  

(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is. 

You have many options for viewing, Ms. Coulter.  If you don't want to watch the World Cup, well, there is an entire network devoted to discussing your favorite sport, all year round, talking endlessly about how "exciting" it is.  Though what is so exciting about watching grown men smash into each other for about 11 seconds and proceed to stand around for the following 2 minutes is something I don't understand.  

(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it. 

All things in America have been foreign at one time or another.  We are a nation of foreigners, built on a constant influx of new ideas and cultures.  We are always changing.  

On your second comment I can only point to the fact that there African-Americans on the team with whom the sport apparently never caught on.  I think you are just trying to somehow be cute and inclusive here.  It doesn't become you.  

8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine. 

Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles. 

I adore the metric system because to an Engineer it makes sense, even though you'll be happy to know we still build American war machines with the US Customary measurement system and huge dollop of Patriotic Pride.

Bur really, who in their right mind would want to measure mass in slugs? Did you know that in US units that is what you are supposed to do?  Does it sound so appealing to you now?

Yes, you are right about the metric system though and our public schools.  When ever my liberal public school family is driving from New York to Boston we always have to take the 200 miles posted on all the road signs and convert it in our heads to kilometers (321.869 km) so that our brain-washed public school minds can make sense of the world around us, which since the 1980's has seemed to move away from the whole "should we or shouldn't we do the whole metric system" thing.

And it's more like 215 miles, by the by, if we are being cute, which we most definitely are.  You started it. Admittedly, it probably depends on from what point in New York you are starting out at and to which point in Boston you are arriving, but I'll do anything to score a point on you.

(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."

The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)

Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.

Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

I think what we learned from the David Beckham experiment, aside from how naive it is to think that one man, however beautiful, can sway the opinions of a nation, is that soccer will probably never be the number one sport in this nation for the foreseeable future.

And it was a good thing.  It re-set expectations.  Major League Soccer stepped back and said "we have a good thing going here, who cares if we aren't number 1?"  The league hasn't folded, and has recently had a very successful expansion into Seattle.

You may want to pop your head out of the little bunker you've made for yourself.  The David Beckham experiment was seven years ago.  Since then soccer hasn't gone away, it is slowly "catching-on".  Are we a soccer nation?  No, definitely not.  But more and more it has a space in our culture, and I think slowly it will get better as MLS improves, the US men's team get better, and as our demographics indeed slowly shift into something else.

I say why fight?  I have a dream that America can be a better place as it changes.  A different place, but a better one.  There is no reason that soccer can't be a part of that, just as there is no reason that the best of our values (freedom, liberty, diligence, kindness) can't be a part of that as well.  There is no reason that good old American Football can't be a part of that either, aside from the whole concussion/gladiator thing and the fact that it really is kind of boring....no other sport I can think of manages to pack 30 minutes of heart stopping action into a four hour package. Eventually we'll catch on, and the NFL may well go the way of boxing.

If all that comes then I say let it come, for as Thomas Jefferson once said:

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

Man.  I really wish he had managed to say that in a more quotable form.  A man of few words, indeed!  Clay Jenkinson, you have once again led me astray.  

 

   

Is America a Soccer Nation? Good God, I hope not. But Maybe I do. I don't know. I'm Confused.

The question has been asked over the past several World Cup's -- has soccer finally caught on in America? Or are we just witnessing a gush of patriotic fervor as the US Men's Team advances through to the second round?  Are we finally becoming a soccer nation?

I hope not.  

This is not because I feel that soccer is a threat to our nation or patently "un-American", as Ann Coulter suggested in her recent, horrible, misguided column (I'll deal with her later).  It is merely for the selfish reason that I have something that is, essentially, mine.  

Being a soccer fan in this country has long given you a special bond with anyone else who is a fan. To find someone who knows who Lionel Messi and Jose Mourinho are, to find someone who understands relegation and the UEFA Champions League structure;  it's something close to being in a foreign land and finding someone in the market square who grew up in your home town.  You have common reference points and backgrounds and you're able to go into a local bar and talk about those things over a beer.  They speak your language.  It's refreshing.

My family speaks that language.  My boss at work speaks that language.  A few other friends speak it as well.  I can say "did you see that United crashed out of the Champions League" and they get it, instantly, what that means and how significant it is.  With anyone else you have to explain who United are, what the Champions League is, how you get in, how it's structured.  It's like saying to someone "Ich habe Kartoffeln in die Hose!" and having to teach the person to speak German so that they understand a rather simple (though in this case baffling and intriguing) proposition.

So it's kind of a niche. It's a comfortable little world.

This World Cup has shown me what it would be like if this nation became a soccer nation.  Our resident Cleveland Browns fan has gone out and purchased many dollars worth of Team USA gear.  I've had to listen to Mike and Mike muddle their way through the tie breaks for the group stage and complain about how they aren't fair.  I've seen the hipsters running amok in what once was a quiet taverns, wrapped in the old red white and blue, screaming at the TV every time the ball touches the penalty box, like Gus Johnson but more annoying because it's like Gus Johnson with waxed mustachios and bare arms and he's right there.  Next to you.

I don't like it.  Not any of it.  I've got this nice, little thing, it's mine.  Go away.  Find your own thing.

But even I have to admit that if soccer did gain a greater "foothold" in this country (though I would argue that it has long had more than a foothold) it may not be the end of the world after all.  Soccer American style doesn't have some of the negative overtones that soccer in Europe has. As an example: here an offensive lineman gets kicked off the Miami Dolphins for bullying a fellow team-mate and saying some very bad things; There entire ultra-fan clubs are linked to neo-nazi thought and openly chant very bad things during the matches, even at their own players.  Hell, one ultra-fan club of Red Star Belgrade turned itself into a paramilitary unit during the Yugoslavian wars and they did some very, very bad things.  

We are a long way from the Balkan Wars of the early 90's, and FIFA and UEFA have their anti-racism campaigns and the like, but it doesn't sit well when fans are tossing bananas on the field and chanting racist slurs.  It is a huge problem, and it only seems to be getting worse.  American soccer, for all the history of racial tension in this nation, doesn't have that.  It's fans are inclusive rather than exclusive, welcoming one and all, cheering loudly for any man or woman of any race that wears the shirt.  

It seems that, perhaps, my exclusivity mirrors my European counterparts rather well.  Plus, if I have to be bothered in the bar during the match, I'd rather sit next to a smelly hipster than an uncontrollable racist.  I'd take that trade any day.      

So, there you have it, another well thought out, well reasoned blog post examining two sides of the issue in a rather muddled and rational way.  And I wonder why this blog never gains traction.

Oh so close!

I had a good day today, but it could have been a great day if it weren't for two things.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 AM (which is actually sleeping in for me, as I am usually up around 4:45 to try and drag myself into work by 6:30) and headed down the stairs, fired up the ol' computer and started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix.  As one hour passed into the next and no one else in the family stirred I realized that I might be able to finally finish the series.  

I have been watching Breaking Bad for years.  I began watching it when it first came on and I decided I didn't like it, but when I gave it a second chance after the back episodes were Netflix I decided I liked it after all.  At the time I was able to get up through the end of Season 4, and shortly thereafter the first eight episodes of season 5.

Then the long wait began.  The second half of season 5 didn't start until 2013, and while I was aware of it I never got to watch it, despite the recently required DVR.  I could just never remember to record the show.

At last, at the beginning of this year, season 5 episodes 9 - 16 were available on Netflix.  I couldn't wait.  I started episode 9 and....

...And it slowly dawned on me that I had no idea what was going on. So I went back to a place that made sense to me, about halfway through season 3 when Walter White starts working with Gustavo Fring, and started from there.

It's been a long road.  My wife won't watch it with me, so I have to watch it early on the weekends or in the evening on my own computer.  I have fallen asleep during many episodes and had to watch them over again.  I began to despair that I would never finish the series.  Indeed, when I recently went out to sea on a newly repaired submarine and contemplated the remote possibility that we might submerge to crush depth and become a soda can in Davy Jones' Locker, the thought that I would never really know what finally happened on Breaking Bad neslted up umcomfortably against the idea that I might not see my family ever again.

With 5 minutes to go this morning in the series finale, the call came from up on high (my wife stamping her foot on the floor to let me know that the baby was awake).  I protested, I pleaded, but to no avail;  I was reminded that all hobbies are subject to the requirements of the service.  So, I would have to watch Walter White die another day.

Oh yeah...spoiler spoiler.  Sorry.

Then, this evening, there was the USA - Portugal match.

I chose to watch the match at Hampton's Park Lane Tavern, which has always been a hub for good beer, bangin' fish and chips, and waitresses wearing short kilts; during the USA's competitive matches it becomes a small operating station for Sam's Army.

I had never watched a World Cup game in a bar before, and I wanted the experience.  My wife and 5 month old (5 MONTH OLD) daughter came with me, and things went about as I expected;  5 month old was a little spooked out by the noise, the people, the new place, and bummed out by the lack of ceiling fans (which she loves).  My wife seemed happy enough though. It was the closest thing we have had to a date in ages.

The game was certainly exciting, and the Tavern was full and raucous especially after the USA equalized 1-1 in the 64th minute; When Demepsy made it 2-1 in the 81st all hell broke loose.  But then, right at the death, a perfect cross from Christiano Ronaldo found Varela in the box and ended the game in an unsatisfactory draw that probably wasn't deserved.  A US victory would have made that game one of the greatest in US National Team history.

Oh no!

Ah, but take heart my fellow soccer fans!  The US control their own destiny in the group, and it was a good game.  I thought they played very well, much better than I honestly expected.  I remember Klinsmann saying that his goal was to show that this team can go toe to toe and more with anyone, and though a major test against Germany beckons so far they have not been found wanting in that regard.

So there you have it.  Two events which were good, but oh so close to being great.

ISIS? Well, there is a World Cup on, but sure, I'll talk about that

Life as always assumes shades of light and shades of darkness.

On the one hand you have what is shaping up to be a great World Cup.  The games have been good; there have only been a handful of draws and one of them (Mexico v. Brazil) was a classic example of the rare but extremely entertaining nil-nil draw; I saw the greatest goal I have ever seen, and on top of all that the USA managed to beat Ghana 2-1 in spite of the best efforts of the Devil of Wednesday.

Even the dire predictions on world cup disaster haven't happened.  So far all the stadium's are still up, no one's been beheaded, and there is no shortage of speedos or thongs on TV or available for purchase at your local speedo and thong store.  Logistical hiccups?  Yes.  Counterfeit tickets?  You betcha.  An over zealous Alexi Lalas? Absolutely.  But all that seems miles away, and if you turn the sound off when Alexi Lalas is speaking and play instead some Peruvian flute music the effect can be almost delightful.....well, no, it's still pretty awful.

On the other hand, you have ISIS making deep incursions into Iraq, setting up a harsh brand of Sharia law, and maybe tipping Iraq into another sectarian conflict, undoing all the work we did to try to put the country back together again after pretty much blowing it up in the first place.  Even if the nation does recover and manages to push ISIS out, they may still end up a more broken nation, more decentralized.

The news media has been arguing about what to do since the offensive began last week and who's fault the deterioration of the situation actually is.  Most liberals seem to want to place the blame squarely on Bush's shoulders for having the US invade Iraq in the first place, while most conservatives naturally blame Obama for pulling out troops in 2011.

Is it possible that (gasp!) both are to blame?  In my opinion, the invasion of Iraq was probably the worst foreign policy decision this country ever made. We had no grasp of the underlying politics, we had no understanding of the culture.  We were naive and stupid and clumsy.  At best we allowed ourselves to believe a tenuous connection between Saddam Hussein, WMD's, and terrorism; at worst the American public was deliberately deceived concerning the reasons for going to war.

Once we were there it took us a long time to get it right, to figure out how right a sinking ship.  Thanks to new counter-insurgency tactics coalition forces managed to stabilize the country.  4 years after "The Surge" the Obama administration pulled out our troops, and I suppose the question we must ask now is was that enough time?  All of the books I have read (okay, fine, the TWO books that I have read and the History Channel) all say that it takes many more years, on the order of 10 or more, to successfully quell a counter-insurgency to the point where the war is over.  Was 4 years enough?

Evidently, maybe not.

The other argument in the media is what should we do now?  I found myself surprised to be in the McCain camp with his fighting fighty fighters, as my own knee jerk reaction was that airstrikes were probably in order.  And despite the fact that we'd be entering a sectarian conflict I still think that air support might be something we should provide.  ISIS are bad dudes, so bad that Al Queda doesn't even really want to be associated with them. Having them take over half of Iraq would be devastating and a disaster for the people living there.  And perhaps force is the only language the militants really understand.

On the flip side, while I hate the naive pomposity of fellow liberals who are arguing for a political solution to the crisis, I also am wary of the old school conservative's arrogance in believing that American military might can always altar a situation in our favor.  A good case in point is with Libya, where western military action aided rebels in overthrowing a dictatorship to be replaced by....well, nothing.  The jury is still out on what the consequences of that conflict are.

It would be great if sowing democracy throughout the middle east like a modern day Johnny Appleseed ended up in America's best interests.  We seemed to think it would.  Plant the seeds of freedom with a few bombs and by the following spring the people will be free, they'll be enjoying their $1 breakfast sandwiches, washing their cars on their lunch breaks, the burqas will be replaced with bikinis, and the Dallas Cowboys would be flying in to play the Baghdad Bulldogs on Thanksgiving Day.  And yet here we are now, faced with the prospect of a terrorist organization established in Iraq - ironically the very thing we went to war in the first place ostensibly to avoid.

Arrogance, hubris, call it what you like.  We were wrong.  And while I feel that maybe our duty to Iraq is to continue to aid them, to try to get them out of this mess we have, in part, created, I have a horrible feeling there is very little we can do about it.

Is the Devil of Wednesday still busy?  Maybe he has some good suggestions.  Or maybe he could at least cast a spell that will help John McCain calm down a peg.

Happy Graduation, Graduates!

This past weekend I attended my Brother-in-law's high school graduation.  It's incredible to think that when I first met him he was a tiny little eight year old guy who still watched Power Rangers.  Now he's 18 and he towers over me like a giant, and he knows more about cars than I ever will.

How much of the ceremony he'll remember 14 years on I can't say.  I know that I can't remember much of mine.  I'm pretty sure that Frank Beamer was our commencement speaker.  I vaugely recall that he gave a decent speech with all the normal platitudes, though what exactly he said I can't remember.  I think that I can remember who our valedictorian was.  She had done a science fair project on genetics that had cancer research implications; my entry concerned which brand of store bought cookie could hold the most milk after being immersed for 4 seconds.  I didn't win the science fair.

I remember also not particularly enjoying myself.  Why that was a I couldn't say.  Perhaps it's because I knew that my friends, some of whom I'd grown quite close to, were about to be scattered to the four winds. Maybe it was the first signs of depression that would manifest itself fully in college and never really go away. Maybe my shoes were too tight.  I just don't know.  

The graduation I saw this past weekend was fairly typical.  A band played an endless rendition of "Pomp and Circumstance" as the graduates walked in.  A note to anyone thinking about cutting funding for the arts in public schools:  think again.  Sitting through 15 verses of "P&C" is bad enough, but if it's played poorly that is a horse of a different color (brown, I think). The commencement speaker was from the business world, and he told the assembly that staying connected, being kind to others, and working hard would lead them on the path towards a life of consequence. The kids got their diplomas.  Hats were tossed in the air.  There was much rejoicing.

The valedictorian's address was interesting, though not in a good way.  The speech was essentially a 12 minute metaphor in which the graduates were compared to champagne bubbles heading towards the top of a flute glass.  Among 31,000 other children graduating in Virginia alone, who are also bubbles in this very large glass of champagne, how could the people in this class of 126 rise to the top?  She answered the question and neatly showed us how clever she was by quoting something by Ayn Rand which in a mere two days I've already forgotten.

I found it to be annoying and condescending.  "Heck" I thought to myself I did, "she probably delights in pointing out, over and over again, that the final battle in 'The Patriot' is actually a mash-up of Cowpens and Guillford's Courthouse, and that Colonel Tavington is actually based on the real-life Colonel Tarleton, who survived the war and returned to England to rise to the rank of General and nearly commanded British troops in the Peninsular War.  Tarleton's dragoons wore green jackets, not red, and..."

And I realized I do the same thing, all the time.  This girl and I are the same.  She was a more annoying, more attractive, and much younger version of myself.

Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1781.  His compatriots would always note that Tarleton was "Not a particularly kind fellow" which loosely translates today into "He was a total dick."  That's one thing, at least, that the movie got right.  Nice hat.

It made me wonder what I would say if I was a valedictorian, especially with the benefit of 14 years additional experience.  I'd probably be tempted to speak to them of the challenges that lie ahead, but I hope the better angels of my nature would prevail and I would trot out the good old platitudes about how the world is theirs if they are willing to work for it.  Graduation, after all, is supposed to be a happy occasion, not a time to bicker and argue about who killed who.  It is my hope that my brother in law, and all others graduating as the school years draw to a close, remembers it always as something happy and joyous.

Congratulations, Graduates!  The world is yours!  Soon you be able to eat cookies for breakfast and no one will be able to stop you.  Because you are adults, you have arrived, you are kings of the castle and masters of your own destiny!  Go on, just take a big honking block of cheese and just bite into like an apple. You know you've always wanted to see what that was like.  Well, now is the time.  You've earned it!  

"He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb, or a T-shirt cannon or something."

Harbor Park, home of the Norfolk Tides baseball team, sits like a concrete and steel jewel nestled among small time shipyards along the Elizabeth River waterfront.  I've been there twice this past week to watch the Tides play in two rather desultory ballgames.  They aren't having a good season (even the Lake Woebegon Whippets gave them a run for their money) and the games were sparsely attended.  I feel that maybe if the Tides reduced their ticket and beer prices by 20% they may put more butts in the seats regardless of the team's performance, but what do I know?  I'm just a naval architect.

Even if the games haven't been so good it did give me a chance to get in touch with all things that make America great.  Things like circular meats of all kinds sizzling on an open flame.  Zany sound effects.  T-shirt cannons.

Then there is our national anthem, which was sung at both games with great feeling.  Whenever I hear it, I always think about how it is probably the only anthem ever written to the tune of a British drinking song.  No guarantees on that, the British have been everywhere and they do love to drink and to sing, but I simply know of no other off the top of my head.  I'm also not willing to do the research to know for sure.

I am, however, quite sure it is the only national anthem that ends with a question.

We never sing it that way, of course.  The anthem is hard enough to sing as it is; trying to end it with an upward inflection as if to ask a question would make it simply impossible.  But the official lyrics of the anthem do have those last two lines of the the first verse (the only one we typically sing) reading

Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?   

I think it is an apt question to ask ourselves, especially as the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings are coming up on Friday.  Discussing the landings with my family in the past, we have sometimes wondered if our nation would be capable of duplicating such a feat, surely one of our nation's finest hours.  

The past 13 years of war have proven that there are scores upon scores of brave men and women who have all the courage and tenacity to fight for our nation, even to the last, and would storm the beaches of Normandy again if that is what was required to guarantee our freedoms.

But what of the rest of us? Could the rest of the nation do it again?  Would we roll up our sleeves and work in the shipyards, the factories, the arsenals?  Would we donate our stockings and start victory gardens? Or would we just subcontract it out to the lowest bidder so that we could go on surfing the internet for cat videos and spend our time arguing about what exactly defines a snack?.  

I don't know if America is a particularly reflective nation, it doesn't seem to be a part of our make-up, which is why remembering anniversaries such as the D-day landings are important. Take a moment to reflect on their sacrifices and those of the men and women who have born the brunt of our wars today.  How best can we honor them?  What do we owe them? Are we worth it?

The answer I'll leave up to you.