Racism: It's Wank for Every Fan!
This past weekend, a popular soccer player decided to spend a day off by attending the game of two other teams. This is not an uncommon occurrence; players tend to be fans themselves, and are frequently buddies with players on other squads in the same league. As he left the stadium after the game, he and his girlfriend were surrounded and attacked, and the attacks pretty quickly started to involve racist comments, because as luck would have it, the player in question is Oguchi Onyewu (see user icon), a fellow from Maryland of Nigerian parentage. Meanwhile, stadium security couldn't be bothered to intervene.

Creepy stuff, eh? No question. But because this involves racist comments directed at an American in Europe, discussion of the incident quickly goes straight to hell, moving from "wow, that sucks" to "who are more racist, Americans or Europeans." I should point out that racist behavior among fans in Europe is a hot topic lately, because sadly there have been some all too recent examples of people who can't get over the fact that sports are played and enjoyed by every ethnic group, but it's also far from a weekly feature across the continent. At any rate, the discussion involves all the greatest hits you'd expect from an ill-moderated discussion about racism--semantics, Nazis, hate crimes, segregation, and good ol' US vs. Europe dickwaving.

Personally, I'm just having a hard time deciding which was dumber: a mob attack throwing racist epithets, or the decision to attack a player whose on-field reputation is "huge mean motherfucker."

edit: The thread's been closed, but not deleted, a new one's been posted, and all of you wondering who this guy is and where can you see more of him should take note that he'll be one of the defenders on the US squad in the World Cup in June.