By James, Marco, Hailey, Anna
The utterly vindictive tone of Amy Maestri's rebuttal of Stephen H. Webb's article How Soccer is ruining America, is based upon Maestri’s complete belief that Webb is an ignorant fool that opposes soccer for illogical reasons. This offensive article stems merely from a case of misunderstanding, because in reality Webb and Maestri are on the same side. Although the last paragraph of Webb’s article made obvious his satirical intent, this detail could have been overlooked by anyone who did not take the time to read the article carefully. In her rebuttal, Maestri speaks of three main points from Webb’s article and why they are incorrect. According to Maestri, Webb is incorrect in his assessment about how baseball takes the time to break kids down before building them up. She believes that T-ball, which is a kid-friendly form of baseball, actually does the opposite of breaking kids down and gives them a false sense of invincibility. She is correct when she explains that this argument is really only based on the opinion of the reader, but is incorrect in her deduction of Webb’s purpose for the inclusion of such a weak argument. Webb obviously does not believe that baseball instills any valuable behaviors or notions in the heads of kids. He so obviously refutes this fact by comparing the act of stepping up to the plate to a kid starring in their own western movie. Since the heroes of western movies tend to be arrogant and self-obsessed, Webb is actually trying to convey to the audience that baseball instills narcissistic values in kids. Secondly, Maestri insults Webb’s point about how penalty shootouts are anticlimactic. First of all, it is almost impossible to comprehend why someone would believe that penalty shootouts are anticlimactic because they are literally one of the best climatic events in the sport. A penalty shootout, especially in the World Cup Final, can be one of the most exciting things on the planet and is in fact the reason why millions of people watch this event all around the world every four years. Maestri obviously did not pick up on how the explanation for such a bogus claim could only be satire. Webb uses such an obviously incorrect statement to try and tip off his pro-soccer audience that the article in no way reflects the opinions of the author. Finally, Maestri goes on a rampage about Webb’s sexist comments in the second to last paragraph of his article. First of all, if Maestri had taken the time to really analyze this article without jumping to conclusions she would have noticed that the title and position of the author do not align with his ignorant comments in regards to women. This man is a highly educated professor of philosophy at a university who also happens to live in a household with three daughters and a wife. The insult of women due to sexist beliefs is most usually associated with people with a lower degree of education. This man is by no means uneducated, and therefore it should be assumed that he is making these sexist statements purely for a satirical purpose. Additionally, Webb lives with four other women in his household and could therefore not hole sexist ideals for two reasons. The first reason is that if you are a misogynist living in a household of women, it is very likely that you will soon find yourself no longer living in a household of women. Second, since the author is around women so much he has most likely come to be influenced by their way of thinking. Assuming his family is composed of modern women who believe in gender equality, he will be influenced by their opinions and also support gender equality. All in all, Maestri’s rebuttal of Stephen H. Webb’s How Soccer is Ruining America, is a typical example of misunderstanding and jumping to conclusions. Maestri reacted vindictively in her blog post, but because she completely missed the satirical intent of the piece, it is obvious that she did not take the time to read and analyze the article closely. Maestri made a fool of herself by using the rhetorical strategy of diction throughout her article to insult Stephen H. Webb. Maestri makes a point of using as many curse words as possible in her critique of Webb’s writing, and because curse words are often used by those uneducated individuals with smaller vocabularies, she hurts her own ethos by employing this rhetorical strategy in an effort to convey her infuriation. If Maestri would read Webb’s article again after reading this analysis of her rebuttal, she would probably be able to understand why Webb’s article actually supported pro-soccer ideals through its clever use of satire. |
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