Abracadabrah

I create as I speak

So If Zidane was Objecting to Being Called the Son of a Terrorist Whore...

as the London Times claims...and regarding that comment as a great insult, then that is a bit of all right, uh, not that it excuses, etc, etc. Well as long as Zidane was objecting to the terrorist part as well as the whore part. As we always say, it's a good thing when moderate Muslims object to terrorism!

Materazzi denies the terrorist remark, of course, but in such grandiose terms, who could possibly believe him.

"It is absolutely not true," Materazzi said. "I did not call him a terrorist. I'm ignorant. I don't even know what the word means. The whole world saw what happened on live TV."

Uh huh. He lives in Europe and he doesn't know what the word "terrorist" means.

Apparently, his dander was up, because after he gave Zidane the nipple twister, holding onto his shirt:

"[Zidane] turned towards me and scoffed at me, looking at me with super arrogance, up and down.

"He said 'if you really want my shirt, you can have it later.'

"It's true, I shot back with an insult."

The BBC's expert has an alternate, or additional, version of what was said.

The BBC's Ten O'Clock News also called in experts to study the television footage of the incident and determined the following:

Materazzi's first word to Zidane was "no" before he then told him to "calm down".

He then accused him of being a "liar" and wished "an ugly death to you and your family" on the day the Frenchman's mother had been taken to hospital ill. This was followed by "Go f*** yourself".

Not that it excuses Zidane's idiocy in being kicked out of the game, and potentially throwing the victory to the Italians, after France outplayed them through the entire second half and during both overtime periods. In the moment, he demonstrated a regrettable lack of sang froid.

Meanwhile Bernard Henri Levi serves up a platter of self indulgent tripe about Zidane's urge as a man to demythologize himself. Which makes me wonder vehemently why the WSJ published it.

Okay, if the column were satire. But judge for yourself:

The only plausible explanation for so bizarrely scuttling everything ... is that there was in this man a kind of recoil, an ultimate inner revolt, against the living parabola, the stupid statue, the beatified monument, that the era had transformed him into over these past few months.

The man's insurrection against the saint. A refusal of the halo that had been put on his head and that he then, quite logically, pulverized with a head-butt, as though saying: I am a living being not a fetish; a man of flesh and blood and passion, not this idiotic empty hologram, this guru, this universal psychoanalyst, natural child of Abbe Pierre and Sister Emanuelle, which soccer-mania was trying to turn me into.

Quel horreur! I'm still feeling a little nauseated.

Besides, Levi's wrong. If Zidane is like anyone, he's more of a Julien Sorel, the hero/anti-hero from Stendhal's Red and the Black. French rebel from the underclasses, who makes it all the way to the top after years of work, and poised there, explodes into a moment of violence, thus, incomprehensibly, destroying himself utterly.

And of course, here is the slash/fans versions of the Materazzi-Zidane confrontation, A Love Story. Well you knew that was coming after the nipple twister Materazzi admitted to already. Which you can see here from the front view.

The resolution of the vid sucks, though, a comment you can take in any way you like. It's true in all the ways I can think of.

And here are a two vids demonstrating Marco's thuggish style of play.

Heh, I think I'm the only conservative blogger defending Zidane. All the rest are reduced to making "stupid Frenchie" jokes.

I'm not above French humor either in the right context, but when it comes to soccer, I'm finding it unoriginal.

posted by Alcibiades @ 1:26 PM