By Phil Mushnick - The New York Post
Perhaps I’m a party-pooper by nature and nurture. When I was a kid I heard the music from the ice cream truck then excitedly asked my father for a quarter.
“No,” he said, “they play that music when they’re out of ice cream.”
Unless you never heard that one, it’s an old one. Otherwise, it’s mine. But the risk of being condemned as a killjoy makes me defensive. “Our” team won, didn’t it? That’s what counts! USA! USA!
It’s a relentless insult: TV demands intelligent viewers ignore what they see to believe only what they’re told. Seconds after the US team won the Women’s World Cup on Sunday, Fox’s lead analyst Aly Wagner, former US World Cupper, gushed this:
“The way they’ve lifted a nation! The way they’ve lifted a gender! It’s something to behold! … They’ve done so much more and against all odds!” Was that for our ears or our pancakes?
Against all odds? The US was the overwhelming, odds-on favorite.
They lifted a gender? It was the Women’s World Cup! Even Mike Francesa could accurately tout the winners would be a women’s team.
They lifted a nation? How so? Was Wagner unaware that this team invited scorn, turning off so many who would have normally and naturally fully supported it? Could Wagner have been unaware that “we” were represented by those wearing Team USA uniforms while performing acts of choreographed immodesty and mockery of opponents?
Or was Wagner under the impression Americans can’t distinguish right from wrong, and thus provided blind, drooling, unconditional love?
In Sunday’s 2-0 final over the Netherlands, let’s examine “our” goals.
The second goal was scored in traffic by Rose Lavelle, who next awaited the arrival of teammates for a group celebration — a classy, welcome scene given what we’d seen.
The first goal was the work of Alex Morgan, who drew a penalty kick when nearly kicked in the head. But all-about-me Megan Rapinoe was the beneficiary. She was assigned and made the PK, which, at this level, was fully expected.
As her teammates rushed toward her to celebrate a goal that didn’t singularly belong to her, Rapinoe ran from them, to the far sideline to stand alone while striking an all-about-me diva pose.
The team’s captain, starting when Rapinoe ran half the field to demonstrate nauseating self-regard after her goal against Thailand made it, geez, 9-0, should have had a chat with Rapinoe, suggesting she play with a tad more class.
But Rapinoe, a foul-mouthed stage hog who gave the national anthem her kiss-off in protest of President Tweet — as if it were her duty to exploit US World Cup matches for that purpose — is the captain!
Small wonder those champs at Nike gave Colin Kaepernick the week off to anoint Rapinoe the commercial face of the victorious US team.
As it did four years ago, this team’s win inspired just-dropped-in media to chorus how American girls will now be inspired to play and excel at soccer.
But where, if not the playing fields of the US, did they think the last two championship teams came from, Estonia? Girls’ soccer has been a huge participation sport here the past 30 years.
I encouraged my daughters toward competitive, organized sports. They played tennis, field hockey, soccer and basketball.
But I’m no more willing to issue female athletes pandering, back-slapping, flag-waving blindness than I have to the deteriorating social condition of our men’s sports.
The 1973 Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs tennis match was a made-for-TV novelty act never designed or intended to be taken seriously. It began with King carried into the Astrodome in a sedan shouldered by muscular, brightly feathered gladiators.
And it wasn’t taken seriously until years later, when wishful, revisionist media and moviemakers seized it as the day of dead-reckoning emancipation for young females of all endeavors.
Jim Spence, an ABC exec who helped put together the event, has spoken of hearing, reading and watching the King-Riggs match assigned greater historical importance — when it had none.
But whether it’s 1973 or 2019, we’re relied upon to believe what we’re told, not what we saw, not what we see.
This US team did nothing to advance “the gender,” did not succeed “against all odds” and, because many Americans found it impossible to embrace Team USA, did little to “lift the nation.”