On the Social Affairs Unit Dalrymple opposes the blame shifting that followed the deadly riots in Egypt. Fans of soccer (sorry, football) won’t like his take on their sport…
Football rots the mind and ruins the conduct. Among other harmful effects, it deforms the ambitions of young men from poor areas; it deceives them into thinking that it is the way out of their economic problems and the sovereign way to obtain diamond studs for their ears, so essential to their dignity. Their chances of success are not much higher than that of buying a winning lottery ticket and in any case it appears that such young men in England do not even have the elementary self-discipline necessary to compete with foreigners in this activity.
…but they might enjoy the alternative chants he says the Egyptian rioters should have issued:
We are fools, we are morons, we are criminally stupid, we are murderously idiotic!
…and…
We are like children! We deserve no freedom! We must be beaten with truncheons!
It’s not just fooball that rots the mind, celebrity worshipping and gang culture can be blamed as well.
I think if foot ball does rot your brain then it’s because you didn’t have much of a brain to rot in the first place.
Not everyone is a hopeless monomaniac, living in a world of mutual exclusivity.
The good doctor comes off as being quite bitter. Then it occurs to me that boys who are not terribly good at sports in school tend to be bullied by their classmates. That might explain a lot.
Diddums!