"Crowd goes flat as US team falls to Ghana" by Maggie Cassidy, Globe Correspondent | June 27, 2010
American flags lined the walls, beer dripped from the ceiling, and the crowd of 150 people rolled and rattled the Banshee pub in Dorchester yesterday afternoon every time striker Landon Donovan broke down the sideline, or goalie Tim Howard pawed the ball away from his net.
But don't drink, kids.
But in the end, the crowd decked in red, white, and blue had its hopes dashed as the United States suffered a 2-1 loss to Ghana in the World Cup’s Round of 16 — the event’s first knockout round — which was being played in South Africa.
At least you have a drink to cry in.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect to cry.... it was like a punch to the gut,’’ said Jill Clark, 26, who was overcome with emotion after 120 minutes of roller-coaster game play....
Bottoms up, 'murkn!
Clark was one of the many members of the American Outlaws represented at the Banshee yesterday. The group, which is the New England chapter of a national soccer fan organization called Uncle Sam’s Army, watches US and other soccer games at local bars as excitement continues to grow around the sport in America....
Related: Somerville a Soccer Town
Yeah, for an agenda-pushing afternoon when there is nothing else to do.
Less than an hour earlier, these spectators had been responsible for the jubilant response to a penalty kick awarded to Clint Dempsey. Even before Donovan lined up for his strike — which he buried for the equalizer — fans reacted to the call with huge high fives, “U-S-A’’ chants and an all-around ruckus that sent beer flying upward to the ceiling, resulting in a constant drip of beer throughout the rest of the game....
It's raining beer?
--more--"
This is a Red Sox town:
"If the election were held today, the
Related: Broken foot puts Pedroia on sidelines
Doesn't look they will be winning much on the ball field in the coming weeks.
Another goner, no joke:
"In the basement bar where a few dozen members gathered yesterday to socialize and watch the World Cup....
--more--"
Puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?
Another dumb idea: Out of line
Also see:
"The World At War: AFRICOM vs Ghana in the Round of 16
We Are The World, and as I write, we are preparing for another battle, the next in a month-long series of short, controlled skirmishes which will draw the attention of billions of people, although neither the individual skirmishes nor the series have any actual significance. Such is the power of modern marketing.
The imminent clash pits the huge and mighty USA -- which just recently admitted running overt and covert "clandestine operations" in at least 75 "sovereign" nations -- against the small and mostly impoverished African nation of Ghana. Despite the disparity in resources, USA is not considered a "prohibitive favorite". Such is the nature of modern football (which Americans insist on calling "soccer").
Recently, at a family gathering, one of the older women -- a mother of three boys, two of whom joined the Marines as teenagers -- was talking about the Vietnam-era anti-war demonstrators. Many people believe that the anti-war movement forced an end to the war. I wouldn't go quite that far, but at the very least the anti-war movement proved to me that some Americans still had functioning brains and hearts.
I don't see that very much anymore; the brains appear to have turned to mush, and the hearts to stone. I was hoping the old woman was about to say something of a similar nature, but instead, looking back on the protests, she said, "That was so difficult for the parents!"
Given the circumstances, there was little I could say. I certainly couldn't say what I was thinking: "The parents!? It was difficult for the parents?? How do you think it was for the children???"
First we had to throw off all the propaganda we'd been fed by our schools, by our parents, by the teevee and the radio, the movies and the newspapers and all the rest of our so-called "culture"; then we had to bring ourselves face-to-face with the fact that our government had made a policy of killing millions of innocent people, who had no means to harm us and no intention of doing so, for fun and profit. It was a repulsive revelation, especially in the midst of all the Disney-crap we'd been "brought up" on.
But even that wasn't enough, because having learned what we had learned, having taken the stands we had taken, we then had to endure the rejection of our parents: and we saw with our own eyes how the people who had brought us into this world, fed us and held us, taught us and loved us, turned against us when we brought to light the most vital truth of their lives, preferring the deadly fiction to which they were accustomed, and with which they were so much more comfortable. And now, "it was so difficult for the parents". Such is the power of modern American stupidity.
None of this makes any difference, of course, to the billions preparing to tune in to the match between USA and Ghana. Very few of the world's sporting fans seem to know or care whether Ghana is seen by USA as nothing but a tiny component of AFRICOM, which in itself is simply one cog in the Pentagon's plan to rule the world by force. I know people who will be standing and cheering and yelling "USA!! USA!!" all afternoon, but I cannot share -- or understand -- their sentiment.
I want to see the whole world screaming for Ghana. I want to see the whole world waking up and aligning itself against the USA, not only in world football but also -- much more significantly -- against the American plan to rule the world.
I want ordinary, "decent", "intelligent" Americans to see the unprovoked murder of even one innocent person as an intolerable outrage; then I want them to understand that their country has murdered millions upon millions of innocent people, not just at one time and in one place but repeatedly, all over the world, for decades. And I want them to realize that their chant of "USA!! USA!!" is -- for the rest of the world -- the most obscene of non-violent gestures.
Not that it matters in the slightest to anyone, but it breaks my heart to realize that the country of my birth is a serial mass murderer, and that even despite the horror that is USA, many of the allegedly most intelligent people I know, including elderly and supposedly wise members of my extended family, still support it, while seeing any prospect of facing the truth about it as "difficult for the parents".
I want the so-called "Family of Man" to take a stand. I want to hear millions and millions -- billions -- of voices, jeering and whistling every time an American player touches the ball. I want to hear billions of voices jeering and whistling every time an American president tells another outrageous lie, every time the American military launches another unprovoked attack against innocent people, every time ... every time ...
I know none of this will happen. But then again this is football, where everything is artificial and nothing matters. Surely a battered old man with a broken heart can have a dream now and then, can't he? Isn't that what the beautiful game is about?
--MORE--"
(Germany is getting revenge for WWII today; they are beating England 2-1 at halftime)
