The Deep Humiliation of Watching My President Accept A Made-Up Major Award
FIFA's Shlobel Peace Prize works like a charm
The World Cup draw is a celebration of tedium designed to make soccer look exciting by comparison.1 The last time the World Cup was in the US, Robin Williams tried to liven things up, but even the most coked-up performer in the history of entertainment couldn’t make the draw interesting. It is, after all, just people pulling ping pong balls from a bowl, and if you’re not willing to use the Telemundo trick of having the task performed by astonishingly hot women in impossibly tight dresses, there’s not much tos see.
But this year’s event had an odd feature: FIFA presented President Trump with a new award, the FIFA Peace Prize. The prize acknowledges…uh…contributions to peace in the field of…ya know…kicking…and throw-ins…and such. Trump was the first-ever recipient, and will surely be the last. It was a transparently fake award designed to manipulate someone — FIFA literally did The Simpsons’ “Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Excellence” joke.
It’s hard to convey the sense of intense embarrassment that I felt watching my president accept the award. Imagine the FIFA braintrust coming up with that idea. “The World Cup is in America,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino says to his staff, “How do we get on the president’s good side?” It’s a tough question with high stakes, and the answer reveals a lot about America’s new place in the world.