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Want to know why the image of the ugly American persists around the world?
Because they do dolt-headed things like preventing Cuba from sending a team to the first year of an international sporting event called the World Baseball Classic that's to be played next March.
The competition, which would be a true World Series unlike the championship of professional American baseball which has that self-aggrandizing title now, is to be held in several different locations over 18 days with 16 teams of pros from around the world.
Cuba, where baseball is a religion, can't attend because an agency of the U.S. government, something called the Office of Friggin' Asses in Control — pardon me, that should be Office of Foreign Assets Control — will not issue a licence to Cuba.
You see, that country stands to make some revenue from the broadcast rights to the tournament, which haven't been awarded yet. That would apparently break the U.S. embargo on trade and relations with Cuba.
Can you say error, U.S.A.?
Haven't we learned our lessons from the boycotted Olympic Games of Moscow and Los Angeles that political boycotts of sporting events are pointless?
Why is it athletes, most of whom have only a passing interest in politics must so often make the sacrifice to prove a point?
You can bet that this is more than a little personal for a certain former owner of the Texas Rangers who tries to manage the White House, and was apparently taught elocution by Casey Stengel.
Stengel, of course, is one of the guys who was famous for mangling the language before Dubya made it a profession.
One of his classics was, "good pitching will always beat good hitting, and vice-versa." My personal favourite is his spring-training advice to, "line up alphabetically according to height."
Maybe Bush should heed another quote from Casey Stengel: "I stayed up last night and watched the Republican Convention all night long. I watched all of them talk and listened to them and seen them and I'm not even interested in politics. If you watch them and listen to them, you can find out why."