Stinking to High Heaven

“He shoots, he scores!”

Foster Hewitt

***

As a carryover from my unrealized childhood desire to become a sports announcer, when I watch a sports event on television I usually do a play-by-play broadcast in my head. That, of course, will never get me inducted, like Foster Hewitt, the legendary announcer on Hockey Night in Canada, into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto—or into any other sports hall of fame, wherever located. But like Mr. Hewitt I have invented a phrase—while not as sonorous as his goal call—that I have coined for a particular defining moment in a game.

For example, on June 14 in the 35^th minute of Italy's opening round game against England in this year's World Cup finals, Claudio Marchisio found himself in acres of space and was able to easily boot home the initial goal of the match. It was an example of what the announcing voice in my head has named a “deodorant play,” the definition of which is “a play that is made by someone who did not put on any deodorant before the game and thus reeks so much that no opponent cares to get close enough to defend against him.” In Marchisio's case, no Englishman, even were he brandishing the proverbial ten-foot pole, was near enough to make contact with the Italian. 

***

Just the weekend before the England/Italy match in the heat and humidity of Manaus, Brazil, George Will, who is a member of that Washington fauna known as “pundits,” raised the temperature of quite a few readers of his Washington Post column by … well, let the headline in Salon.com tell it:

George Will: Being a victim of sexual assault is a “coveted status that confers privileges”

The Washington Post columnist thinks women are lying about sexual assault in order to get "privileges"

The New Yorker elaborates:

Colleges and universities have now learned, [Will] writes, “that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate”; he sees this quite plainly in “the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. ‘sexual assault.’”

I have a suggestion: 

Since having one's body violated, being battered and bruised, and perhaps being permanently maimed is such a good thing, someone should take the aforementioned ten-foot pole and administer a few well-directed blows against George Will's person. I am sure that he would welcome them. After all, who would reject the opportunity to gain the privileges that the coveted status of victimhood confers?