Maybe he said "Thurgood Marshall should go to hospital"

[Jose Luis Luviano]

Our old buddy Chris Buttars is at it again.

Someone should chalk "All men are created equal" on his driveway.

[I_Believe_In_Kreis]

Did anyone see this masterpiece by Doug Robinson in the Dnews? I just wrote him the following e-mail (sorry it's so long - I was mad):

Doug,
I usually don't care about the misinformation that gets printed every day in the Deseret News, but your article on Real Salt Lake is way over the top. Allow me to make a few corrections:
1. "...Peter Corroon vowed he wouldn't spend public money on Dave Checketts' soccer stadium...." He didn't spend one penny on the stadium. All the public money is going to infrastructure around the stadium.
2. "....they're breaking ground for a new publicly funded stadium." Again, no public money is going towards the stadium.
3. "....the bottom line is they're spending public money on a stadium...." Did I mention there's no public money going towards the stadium?
4. "....for a team that refuses to reveal its financial records...." Tell me, did the Deseret News or SL Tribune reveal its financial records when seeking public money for a new printing facility? I thought not.
5. "....a sport that operates in virtual anonymity in America...." That's funny, I swear I could've heard that the Real Madrid game, in addition to being a sellout, drew a 7.7 share on KSL, making it one of the highest rated sporting events ever shown on that station. Yes, it sounds like nobody likes soccer.
6. "....that plays in a league that has failed in several previous incarnations." I wasn't aware that MLS had existed before. I assume you're referring to the NASL which never had half the attendance of MLS, half the income of MLS, and did not own the broadcast rights to the World Cup like MLS (who just sold those rights for the next World Cup to ESPN for $145 million - essentially free money).
7. "A poll shows 59% of the public opposes stadium funding." Once again, public funding of the stadium was never on the table. When the poll was reworded to include the part about infrastructure, opposition went from 59% to 40%.
8. "You didn't even get to vote on it." Yes, you did. You voted on it when you put thee people in office. Are we to put every single motion on the ballot? Why should we even have elected officials in the first place? Let's just have a public vote for everything!
9. "The powers that be decided they were more qualified than you to decide the issue." If I recall, the same thing happened with a similar unpopular project called TRAX, and now nobody can get enough of that. Frankly I'm glad the citizens of Utah (myself included) don't get to decide every last thing - we wouldn't have indoor plumbing if that were the case.
10. "....studies consistently show that public funding of stadiums does no such thing [economic development]...." While that is the case for baseball, football, and basketball, soccer is quite different. Nobody comes from out of state to see the Jazz (to be fair, nobody comes from in state either), but World Cup qualifiers and international friendlies draw people from around the country, if not the world. The 2005 qualifier brought $13 million in additional sales tax revenue alone to Salt Lake County.
11. "Even the media jumped on the bandwagon for him [Checketts]." Are you serious? Do you read your own newspaper? Since the stadium deal was proposed I have not seen one article in either paper that does anything besides trash the stadium idea. Pro-soccer letters to the editor have gone unprinted or censored.

Please Doug, stay away from writing about soccer and stick to things you understand. Your article today butchered more than a few facts, but the sad part is, people trust what you're telling them because you're a newspaper columnist. If you feel any moral obligation to report the truth, you will issue and apology and make clarifications in your next column, but I'm not going to hold my breath until that happens.

[Czar Jake]

That's a great response, IBIK

[Jose Luis Luviano]

Take out the part where you mention the fact that their printing plant got a subsidy, and they may print it.

Mexican League games in LA will sometimes get higher Nielsen ratings than NFL games.

And those 92,000 in the Coliseum for Goats Lite - Barcelona don't count to Doug, I suppose.

[Donk]

I sincerely believe that half the reason soccer is not more popular in the US is that the established sports media is against it. I will never understand a sports media person who says soccer is boring, but yet can fill a 3 hour show with BASEBALL and NASCAR! If a baseball is 1-0, it's a great , great defense, pitcher's battle, if a soccer is 1-0, boring. Maybe it's just that they don't understand it, but seriously, how hard is it to actually pay attention, maybe ask some questions, read some books, watch some matches, to understand the , isn't that what these people are paid to do? Of course, I've been fighting with the Ogden Standard Examiner to actually cover high school wrestling for 10 years, and all weve been able to get is coverage for state and region tournaments, even though some of the best wrestling in the state comes from the area that they supposedly serve.

With the stadium, it seems that people that I talk to and explain what the money is going for and where the money came from thinks it's a great idea, but their original opposition always seems to come from misrepresention from the newspapers and tv news places. This is wy I cancelled my newpaper subscription, it seems to be more and more irrelevant to my interests.