According to NPR [ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102591978&ft=1&f=3 ]:

A soccer coach says he was joking. But when parents didn’t get it, Michael Kinahan resigned from a Massachusetts youth soccer league. He sent an e-mail saying “losing is for losers.” He said the team would be known as “Green Death,” and that parents should cheer instead of sitting there “sipping mocha-latte-half-caf-chinos.”

…Honestly, I’m not surprised. Today’s soccer-parents (and many adults their age—that being slightly younger than the baby boomers) are children themselves who stare blankly into space, then throw a fit when someone breaks their meaningless concentration. The fact that just an email can escalate to someone loosing one’s job is the least surprising aspect of this story. These unengaged parents can throw quite a fit; and they’ve been doing it all their lives… they are the ones who will sue you for anything, paint over the arts, and raise a nation of undereducated brats, i.e. these parents are the modern manifestation of evil in our society (in line with other evils of western culture in recent history a la the Nazis, the KKK, the Evangelicals-in fact some may even fall into these groups).

The best part though is that one person who I assume is the only enlightened parent supporting the soccer team and felt she needed to comment on NPR’s website [ same link as above ]:

Red Hake (Red99) wrote:
To be fair you have to read his e-mail, keep in mind that the letter is written to the parents not the kids. The letter does have a sort of disclamer note alerting the reader that he is long winded and that they might need a sense of humor to read on. He has also written an e-mail resigning from his volunteer coaching position, this and the original can be found at -barstool sports-.

He explains that he is poking fun at the very same mentality he is accused of having. The entire second half of his letter is written in jest, some of if a little bitting if you have thin skin but in jest never the less.

He has coached many of these girls before and year after year thay want to be on his team because thay have fun. 

It all comes to end (apparently) when Mr. and Mrs Thurston Howell III (yes – this is a Gilligans Island reference)get offended.

The blow up of this from e-mail to the parents to someone (not him) posting it on the internet to local and reagonal papers and news stations to NPR picking up this story is a testament to our overal compleat lack of a sense of humor, the revolting level of political correctness and the apparently shallow uninteresting lives we lead that allows us to get somting this far out of proportion.

Now, while this parent has some spelling and punctuation issues, the last paragraph is dead-on. Behold another example of failure on a human level.

Tonight, I went to see Grey Gardens at the Studio Theatre in DC.

So the basic story: American royalty, the family of Jackie O, has fallen from wealth, propriety, and personally hygiene. Interesting musical– a little peculiar and funny.

I would describe this production as the most beautiful failure I’ve seen in a while.

The visual qualities of the show were wonderful. The set was relatively simple, but there was a fantastic use of projections. So often the projections were more texture and color than defining actual shapes. They added the perfect extra something to the stage picture.

There was a particularly nice visual moment late in the show: there’s a number where the main character is feeding the cats, and the company (characters from act one) are fulfilling the rolls of the cats and there is the ghostly sense as they are relics of a former life. Really quite nice to see.

That said, the production really was a failure. The whole point of creating theatre is to tell a story and this one didn’t get told to the fullest. First, there was a sound issue: the performers were just hard enough to hear that the audience can get the gist of the story and miss every nuance in the writing. Second, and more importantly, the character arc wasn’t high enough. Intellectually we get it; but we never feel any of it. We’re still left on the outside looking in.

I left the theater feeling like the show was like a nice thing to put on a shelf. The pretty piece of art that never touches you.