Secondhand Sun

FIFA president Sepp Blatter is aptly named, as many have commented during this year's World Cup, but today really takes the cake. He's threatening to take the Golden Ball award away from Zinedine Zidane.

"I have ordered our disciplinary committee to open an enquiry regarding that episode," said Blatter. "We will await the result before taking action. The presumption of innocence until proven otherwise is and remains a sacred principle."

He added in an interview to Italian national newspaper La Repubblica: "The winner of the award is not decided by Fifa but by an international commission of journalists. Having said that, Fifa's executive committee has the right and the duty to intervene when faced with behaviours that are against the ethic of sport."

Indeed they do. If the lip readers are correct and Materazzi made race-based insults to Zidane, FIFA must sanction him severely. In these circumstances if Zidane is stripped of his prize, it's nothing more than an endorsement of racism.

FIFA has not said whether they are investigating the content of the remarks that provoked Zidane. He is scheduled to do an interview on French television in a few hours, so if he decides to share what was said, we will know soon enough.

Of course FIFA cannot have people, deciding on the basis of Zidane's example, to headbutt others. No doubt this is a very serious concern. I'm curious how many people might actually make this decision, so let's have a little poll:

Posted by Joanna at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gene Weingarten, for the uninitiated, is a humor writer for the Washington Post. All the cool people in Washington, DC read his online chat at washingtonpost.com. One of the many things I've always liked about Gene is that he's always been respectful of women - no, respectful isn't the word, because he's not terribly respectful generally speaking. But he doesn't respect women less than men: there's equal opportunity irreverence in his work, and it's really quite delightful.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that, in yesterday's chat, he reveals a belief that abominable beer commercial about the "Man Law" of "You poke it, you own it" is funny.

The idea of men owning women, either because they stuck their penises into them or for any other reason, just isn't funny. And not even Gene Weingarten can make it funny.

Posted by Joanna at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)