Wow...now here's an HSO!

Kind of agrees with your post Coonass, but definitely takes it a step further.


Insults in Cup final foul as well
If slur led to Zidane's head butt, then Italy won tarnished gold
01:26 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 12, 2006
It isn't France's Zinedine Zidane for whom I feel most sorry in the aftermath of his swan song turned dirge in the World Cup final. It is for the wonderful game of international soccer.
For just as I suspected while watching Zizou – as Zidane is fondly known – get tossed from the title game for spearing Italy's Marco Materazzi in the chest with his head, he was provoked not by something as clear-cut as a mere unsportsmanlike act.
Instead, he was incited by some sort of insult that most reports have suggested was the type that this World Cup's organizers in particular and global soccer's keepers in general have been working so steadfastly to distance their sport from – the slur against color or heritage.
What exactly was said we do not yet know. Materazzi has denied every specific utterance attributed to him, including those deciphered by lip readers contracted by various European news outlets in recent days. Zidane's handlers said he's so shaken by the incident that he hasn't been able to speak about it. Maybe in a day or two, they said.
But we do know that whatever Materazzi said was offensive. Materazzi admitted as much the other day after extensive probing.
And we do know that Zidane is the son of Algerian emigrants to France, that he is a Muslim, that he is very proud of his background and that soccer's governing body, FIFA, last March announced it would penalize any players, teams and fans who disrespected the game's Zidanes because of their heritage.
We also know that Materazzi is the son of famous Italian coach Giuseppe Materazzi, who once managed Lazio, an Italian team the son is contracted to play for this season. Lazio is infamous for being the favored club of Mussolini, Italy's World War II fascist dictator.
Its fan club – called The Ultras – is notorious for a faction in it that has stooped over the years to hurling racist chants at opponents of color and waving Nazi flags during matches against AS Roma, a team widely supported by Rome's Jewish community.
And they've been accused of unfurling banners emblazoned with the most vulgar of racial epithets that can be hurled at people of African descent such as Zidane.
None of that is to call Materazzi guilty simply by association. However, if a FIFA investigation now under way finds Materazzi guilty of taunting Zidane with racist words at soccer's most revered moment, soccer must punish him and do so severely.
If soccer believes, as do many of its fans, that Zidane's expulsion from the biggest game cost France the 2006 World Cup trophy, the game should even consider stripping Italy of the golden award.
In fact, if fair play is as integral to soccer as the corner kick – what with the traditions such as a team voluntarily stopping play when an opponent goes down in pain – Italy should even consider surrendering the most coveted award.
It has been easy for some observers to immediately criticize Zidane for losing his cool, because his reaction to whatever happened was clearly a flagrant act. But where is the criticism now of Materazzi, who hasn't yet apologized for the insult he admitted he used?
And why is it so difficult for so many to understand that some words and phrases can be so hurtful as to inspire what appear to be unimaginable acts like Zidane's? They would do themselves well to review Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy's etymology Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word to learn that courts of law in this country have ruled that there are indeed what we call "fighting words."
They are, as Kennedy cited from a 1942 court case, "certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include ... insulting or 'fighting' words – those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."
Or, in this latest case, a head-butt.
And if there is anything that can kill the so-called beautiful game of soccer that is a favorite in most of the world – from Europe to Africa and across the sea to the Caribbean and South and Central America – it is the abject ugliness of racism.
The good news is that the sport knows it. The bad news is that it is having a dickens of a time stamping it out.
A "Say No to Racism" campaign, which FIFA unveiled for the World Cup just ended, isn't enough, however. It really needs to level the sanctions it unveiled just before the competition commenced if, in fact, this incident resulted from a breach of basic respect for fellow man.
E-mail kblackistone@dallasnews.com