Morales hard fouls his rival in the nads

October 5, 2010 12:54 PM

A knee to the groin may be more Vinnie Jones than Machiavelli, but it was no less effective for Evo Morales in asserting his presidential authority.
posted by Burhanistan (57 comments total)

Zinedine Zidane approves.
posted by the painkiller at 12:57 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

If only all the world's leaders would solve their problems with football games and groin shots, the world would be... well, a different kind of place.

And the news would be anchored by Tom Burgeron.
posted by bionic.junkie at 1:03 PM on October 5, 2010

Man, we have some craziness in our politics, but the most boring politicians. Would Barack Obama, or George Bush, or Bill Clinton, or the other George Bush, ever knee a dude in the groin?

Now, Nixon, he'd have G. Gordon Liddy knee you in the groin, but there still wouldn't be that personal touch.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:06 PM on October 5, 2010 [8 favorites]

Well, that's the Evo Morales I know.
posted by falameufilho at 1:07 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

This would be an excellent way to break filibusters - Rochambeau
posted by backseatpilot at 1:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

En las pelotas.
posted by zerobyproxy at 1:12 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I seem to remember a VP shooting someone in the face....
posted by nevercalm at 1:12 PM on October 5, 2010 [12 favorites]

Don't be Evo?
posted by chavenet at 1:13 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ia this the thread where we post videos of politicians being unsportsmanlike?

See also: Boris Johnson rugby tackling his opposition in a football match.

Idi Amin drowning beating the opposition in a swimming contest.

With bonus points for hilarious Chuck Norrisesque in the comments
posted by MuffinMan at 1:14 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

EVO SI!
posted by jontyjago at 1:16 PM on October 5, 2010

There was an article -- can't find it now -- I read several years ago, one guy's memory of playing intramural basketball at Yale against George W. Bush, where the future president started a fight designed to get a key opponent thrown out of the game.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:17 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Some people take soccer/football really really seriously. (Yes, yes, I know the war wasn't really about soccer.)
posted by kmz at 1:18 PM on October 5, 2010

Sport brings out the best in people.
Athletes learn teamwork, oh, and dirty tricks. A high school wrestler told me that a senior taught him how to break knees...
posted by Cranberry at 1:18 PM on October 5, 2010

Sport brings out the best in people.
Athletes learn teamwork, oh, and dirty tricks. A high school wrestler told me that a senior taught him how to break knees...

I'm going to go with no, on that. It's not sport, it's the culture or cultures playing the sport.
posted by uraniumwilly at 1:20 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Today was my very first day volunteering at a hospice. I sat down with a guy who was a missionary in Bolivia up until July when he came to for medical treatment at Johns Hopkins and ultimately to this hospice to live out his remaining days.

In all seriousness, this morning before I read about this incident, he told me today that Evo Morales sacrifices babies to the sun god.
posted by josher71 at 1:22 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

The match swiftly deteriorated into a bad-tempered, foul-filled contest which arguably mirrored the Andean country's combative politics.

I like to imagine the Christmastime match between the trenches during WWI was like this.
posted by Artw at 1:23 PM on October 5, 2010

Coño, que huevón.
posted by jquinby at 1:25 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Pope Guilty, I seem to recall that both Clinton and the younger Bush played rugby union, where knees in the balls aren't just common, they're de rigeur.

In the men's club rugby competition in Australia, it's the done thing for players to line up before the match, knee each other in the balls, kick one another in the face, spit blood and teeth fragments on each other, shake hands then start play. In a proper ruck if your testicles aren't being pummelled repeatedly by boots and fists you're not trying, and I've heard of coaches inspecting their players' groins at half-time and substituting players who don't show enough abrasion, blunt impact or hernia. It was usual long before it was fashionable for union players to shave their pubic hair, as it makes it easier for the after-match team trip to the reconstructive plastic surgeon.

There's a reason it's the game of doctors and lawyers.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:25 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I seem to remember a VP shooting someone in the face....

Yeah, and the guy apologized to him for all the trouble he caused by getting shot. Every year we should celebrate the memory of that day - I propose a Cognitive Dissonance Day™.
posted by empyrean at 1:26 PM on October 5, 2010 [6 favorites]

> There was an article -- can't find it now -- I read several years ago, one guy's memory of playing intramural basketball at Yale against George W. Bush

I think that was Maraniss' profile-- or I'm mistaking it for the one in which, discussing W's habit of fouling on the court, Jeb Bush describes his sibling as a "hard case".

An intended antidote, perhaps, to those cheerleader photos.
posted by darth_tedious at 1:32 PM on October 5, 2010

That was a ballsy move.
posted by ghharr at 1:33 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well - there's this picture of Bush bashing a dudes face in on the field.
posted by symbioid at 1:45 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

OK, maybe not "bashing his face in" but -- is that standard Rugby behavior?
posted by symbioid at 1:45 PM on October 5, 2010

Do not take the piss out of Idi Amin. Idi Amin was a heavyweight boxer when he was in the army ...
posted by cstross at 2:00 PM on October 5, 2010

Bionic.junkie, I think Idiocracy already covered the future of news anchoring.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:17 PM on October 5, 2010

Evo juevos.
posted by ZaneJ. at 2:24 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Vinnie's last name wouldn't be "Jones".
posted by telstar at 2:47 PM on October 5, 2010

I certainly hope he at least got a yellow for that.
posted by norm at 2:49 PM on October 5, 2010

If Obama did this, people in Texas and Arizona would flip the fuck out.
posted by hermitosis at 2:58 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I knew this would happen when Morales put those Dutch players on his Cabinet.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:04 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I love how it's just casually thrown in at the bottom of the article that the president of Bolivia is a current reserve player for one of the country's minor league football teams.
posted by 256 at 3:25 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

is that standard Rugby behavior?

the answer to that would be: yes
posted by jammy at 4:05 PM on October 5, 2010

is that standard Rugby behavior?

Since we're linking to google image searches, yes. (technically rugby league, technically NSFW)
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:13 PM on October 5, 2010

I love how it's just casually thrown in at the bottom of the article that the president of Bolivia is a current reserve player for one of the country's minor league football teams.

I love they casually throw this in ...As a young man, Morales's passion on the field for a union of coca-growers' team helped him become union president, launching his political career.

This guy is the President of the country. Gee, and they wonder why the "war on drugs" doesn't seem to be working.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 5:05 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Does this mean Zinedine Zidane could run for office? please say yes.
posted by LMGM at 5:08 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, we Canucks had Jean Chrétien grab a protester by the neck.
posted by bwg at 6:05 PM on October 5, 2010

That Idi Amin video is amazing. He was just so cheerful in his pummeling of the other guys. As charismatic as he was genocidal, I guess.
posted by Forktine at 6:06 PM on October 5, 2010

it's good to be president
posted by victors at 6:35 PM on October 5, 2010

I'm pretty sure there are legitimate coca-growing operations, just as there are legit heroin poppy farms.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:43 PM on October 5, 2010

I keep seeing that "A knee to the groin..." byline while skimming the mefi front page, and immediately singing it to myself to the tune of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".
posted by luvcraft at 6:52 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure there are legitimate coca-growing operations, just as there are legit heroin poppy farms.

Sure. Some people win the lottery too, but I can predict without fear of being contradicted that you won't. The point is not that an infinitesimally small part of the market is arbitrarily "legitimate"; but that it is impossible to control such a drug when the democratically-elected President of a freaking nation owes his political success to his leadership of a drug-grower's union, and that no one thinks that this is noteworthy.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2010

Well, I think I'll not bother assuming he's some sort of druglord without a modicum more proof.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:53 PM on October 5, 2010

Evo Morales sacrifices babies to the sun god.

I thought he was born in Kenya...or did he murder Vince Foster? I just can't keep this stuff straight any more.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 7:53 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

they wonder why the "war on drugs" doesn't seem to be working

It's all Evo Morales's fault!
posted by Jimmy Havok at 7:55 PM on October 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

PareidoliaticBoy but that it is impossible to control such a drug when the democratically-elected President of a freaking nation owes his political success to his leadership of a drug-grower's union, and that no one thinks that this is noteworthy.

This topic is much more complex and nuanced than you seem to grasp. Coca has been grown and consumed for thousands of years in the Andes, and is a central element of their culture and economics, way before rich Europeans and Americans decided to process it so they could put it up their noses, and then declare a 'war on drugs' and blame their health- and police-issues on short, brown people.

Some bolivians, and peruvians, etc., feel that the fact that some gringos want to commit slow suicide by chemical means shouldn't mean that they have to chuck away their livelihood and traditions. Evo is one of them.

So yes, this is noteworthy, but not for the OMGDrugs reasons you seem to espouse, but rather for the affirmation of a people's right to their way of life regardless of the pandering and scare mongering of mostly right-wing politicians in the richer countries of the world.
posted by signal at 8:22 PM on October 5, 2010 [10 favorites]

singing it to myself to the tune of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"

A knee to the groin
Might be quite Presidential,
But an eye-gouge is a girl's best friend;
A kiss might be grand,
But not if it's dental
Or one could slip
a painful rip
in a squirrel grip
Play's not free with a referee
If he sends you all off in the end;
To keep fouling all day
you'd best keep behind play
An eye-gouge is a girl's best friend
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:25 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

it is impossible to control such a drug when the democratically-elected President of a freaking nation owes his political success to his leadership of a drug-grower's union, and that no one thinks that this is noteworthy.

Maybe (just maybe) there's more to the world that the US' narrow view of what is, and what ought to be.
posted by wilful at 9:00 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Cristo, lo que es un pendejo.
posted by zardoz at 9:05 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

LBJ
posted by humanfont at 9:12 PM on October 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

it is impossible to control such a drug

Well, if you blow on the spoon before you take a sip, you should be ok.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 10:27 PM on October 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

humanfont, that was easily the most astonishing thing I read this week.
posted by shii at 10:45 PM on October 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

That Idi Amin video is amazing. He was just so cheerful in his pummeling of the other guys. As charismatic as he was genocidal, I guess.

Fun fact, Idi Amin was also an avid amateur boxer:

Stories of the towering field marshal dishing out cash, offering his personal jet to sportsmen before and after any triumph, visiting sports camps to morale boost players or athletes among others during his reign as president are as common. Amin's love for sports dated way back during his youth stage. Standing at 6' 4" and weighing 280 pounds, he was once an East African heavy boxing champion, a swimmer, basketball and rugby player as well.

One of the most vivid images of the sporting head of state, was in 1974 when he rolled up his sleeves, mounted the podium at Lugogo to contest with Peter Sseruwagi, the then national boxing tactician in an under card fight that the big man won with a knockout.

posted by ennui.bz at 12:16 AM on October 6, 2010

There's also the classic John Prescott punching someone in the face.
posted by Stark at 4:42 AM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

which allowed the President to establish genital dominance at the start of a diplomatic relationship.

Oh god that is an amazing link humanfront.
posted by Allan Gordon at 5:19 AM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well, I think I'll not bother assuming he's some sort of druglord without a modicum more proof

Maybe (just maybe) there's more to the world that the US' narrow view of what is, and what ought to be.

This topic is much more complex and nuanced than you seem to grasp.


It seems that I was unclear. Some posters are misconstruing the intent of my comment. That some countries, the U.S. chief among them, attempt to dictate "morality" to other countries and impose their cultural will upon them was precisely my point. I made no claim that Morales was a "drug lord", and the very Wikipedia link I pointed to about the legality of this plant under international law notes the conflict between the goals of the U.S. and the countries of where it grown. This is just one of many why the "war on drugs" is doomed to failure, and is a tragic waste of resources and human lives.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:59 AM on October 6, 2010

It's not sport, it's the culture or cultures playing the sport.

"Sports do not build character, they reveal it."

- John Wooden

humanfont, that was easily the most astonishing thing I read this week.

"My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson. I own the fucking floor you stand on, boy"

- Lyndon
posted by mrgrimm at 10:15 AM on October 6, 2010

which allowed the President to establish genital dominance at the start of a diplomatic relationship.
Oh god that is an amazing link humanfront.
posted by Allan Gordon at 8:19 AM on October 6

can you imagine Obama doing the same?
posted by liza at 10:36 AM on October 6, 2010