I‘ll just call him “Guy X.” More details than that about the man I’m reluctant to give. But he’s the one who made the pithy and perhaps politically incorrect observation about the recent Germany-Greece soccer game in the Euro 2012 tournament.
How and why I, as a devoted fan of American football — pro, college and even high school — got hooked on this soccer stuff is fodder for another column. But hooked I am.
So when the Germans went up 4-1 on the Greeks in their recent soccer match with only a few minutes left in the game, I wondered out loud, “Isn’t there a slaughter rule in soccer?”
“Who’s playing?” Guy X wanted to know.
“Germany’s up 4-1 on Greece,” I told him.
Guy X then talked about the score being some kind of karmic, poetic justice: The European nation that was fiscally responsible and saved money was beating the one that racked up massive deficits.
And the fiscally responsible, economically sound, money-saving nation, Guy X observed, was being asked to bail out the fiscally irresponsible, profligate one.
I told Guy X that I absolutely, positively agreed with him, and that I was as happy with the score as he was. (Although that wasn’t the final score: The Greeks scored another goal in those last few minutes to make it 4-2 Germany.)
I wasn’t having any of this “root for the underdog” nonsense when I watched the Germany-Greece soccer match.
Guy X extended his argument away from Germany, Greece and soccer and brought it home right here to the US of A.
There are people here, Guy X noted, who are responsible, save their money and make sound financial decisions. Some of them become quite rich in the process.
Then, Guy X continued, there are others who aren’t fiscally responsible. The ones who don’t save their money. The ones who make stupid financial decisions.
Some of these people are the ones who produce little to nothing when it comes to things like finding and keeping a job. Guess who, Guy X said, is expected to “bail out” such people and keep them afloat economically?
Why, the ones who produce, who save and who are fiscally responsible, of course.
I have no idea whom Guy X will vote for to be president this November. It might well indeed be one Barack Hussein Obama, currently the president of the United States. He sure got enough voters in a sappy electorate to cast their ballots for him four years ago.
But there is one party that believes people who save their money, are fiscally responsible and make sound financial decisions shouldn’t have their humps busted — and their wallets raided — by the government.
And then there is the other party, the one that treats people who do all those things as enemies of the state.
I’m betting Guy X will cast his ballot for Mitt Romney come November.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
