Have been reading the Huffington Post online for a while now mainly due to the fact that I can't stand any English papers and the BBC is far to xenophobic for me. Today there is an article on pundidry that has made me laugh and I think worth a read. If nothing else it will mean you avoid crap from phil mcnulty, martin samuel, and the like. Posted an extract and the link to the article below. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/idd...e-of-the-p_b_1941740.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-sport "BBC's flagship show Match of the Day has an interestingly familial dynamic. Gary Lineker is the impish, ingratiating little turd who tries to invite himself into the nation's living rooms by grinning like an imbecile and making a succession of cheesy puns, each calculatedly **** enough not to arouse any suspicion among the denizens of middle England that he has any ideas above his station. Alan Hansen is his stroppy and sour-faced elder brother. He is annoyed that he has had to cede the affection of menopausal housewives to young Gary and so he pretends he is in pursuit of nobler ideals by banging on about things like man-marking at corner kicks and using words like "shocking", "poor" and "shambolic" which make him feel authoritative. Mark Lawrenson is the rambling, senile and paranoid grandad who moved back into the family home when he ceased to be able to make it to the toilet on time. Lawro is doleful individual, his world-weary melancholia thrown into ever sharper relief by the increasingly absurd collection of STRIPED shirts he has taken to wearing. He has the befuddled air of a man who has been in a coma for many years and has now cruelly regained (some semblance of) consciousness in a world he doesn't understand; a world of flying machines, vajazzles and Mario Balotelli. Anyone who heard him commentating on the European Cup Final this summer would have reached the conclusion that his talents would perhaps be better employed counselling the terminally ill: 5 minutes with him and they would embrace the blessed release of the grave. One tweeter put it very elegantly when he said: "Lawro could be sat in a bath drinking from the cup of eternal youth with Mila Kunis caressing his balls and still sound pissed off to be there." An honourable mention has to go to that totem of blithering stupidity Garth Anthony Crooks who, though not an integral member of the family unit, is impossible to get rid of whenever there's a free meal on the go. Wittgenstein famously wrote that is a lion could speak, we could not understand him. By this he meant that even if the lion was using English words, the frames of reference through which he would describe the world as he perceived it would be so remote from our own that we would not have a clue what he was talking about. So it is with Crooks. The sentences he burps up are all plainly composed of perfectly ordinary English words but the sequence in which he strings them together renders them completely meaningless and of absolutely no relevance to the events he purports to be describing. Now this by no means marks out Crooks as unique in the world of football punditry but the wild-eyed, hand-flailing earnestness with which he delivers up these syntactical splats makes one wonder sincerely about the man's reason".
Nope, not one LOL Now, if they'd analysed Andy Gray analysing zonal that might've been funny. The only pundits worth a listen to my mind are Gary Neville and Pat Nevin. Ex-players avoiding cliches and received media ideas. Some fans should try that. Talking crap is hardly the exclusive domain of the BBC. People want to hate on pundits. Jimmy Hill invented the format. he was despised but also the most watched. It's a bit ironic an American finding the BBC xenophobic. You'd probably hate more countries if you actually knew where they were. Letterman even had to admit he didn't know Northern Ireland isn't in England, which was odd considering how the USA funded paramilitary terrorism for so many years. Not that I have anything against Americans. I lived there for two years. They're puppydogs who just want to be loved, really. They just keep pissing on the carpet is all.
There is a clue in my member name "American Connection" so your first assumption may need some revisiting. I'll try and help, I am from Liverpool and my partner is American. We met while I was working over there, her in San Fran and me in Sunnyvale. We know where a lot of countries are and promise to learn about more of them in the future. Still even without meeting me she had been over to the UK, Ireland, France, Italy and many parts of the world due to her job so is fairly good with an atlas. As for hating more countries, I am not sure we hate any, or anyone for that matter, we take people on face value, some are thoughtful and informed, while others, well some are just Muppets.
Imagined slight. Fookin nancies. Americans, what's that, Americans are cool, they're indians, the rest, imports, bad imports
Quality article - I have lost all faith in the English media and pundits. Gary Linekar was caught joking on Al Jazeera tv when a Muslim player was on his knees, bowing down and Linekar said - "looks like he's eating grass again" ... But yet, there is no uproar about it, no newspaper space dedicated to it. It's funny what makes front page/back page news in this country.
