There is a cancer on Salon, to steal a famous political discussion from years past. And its name begins with H.

I wish I could stop pointing out how bad a writer she is, how she drags down the intellectual and social standards of this online venue. But I have a problem, shared by Rob and a few others, that keeps us from avoiding the cancer. Unlike so many of Havrilesky's defenders, we have souls.

We've tried to stop treatment. We try to include some discussion of the real world of television, even as we sling focussed radiation blasts at the tumor. A spoonful of medicine helps the chemotherepy go down, so to speak. But we have to do something to keep Salon from becoming another "OK" or "Us" or "Weekly World News."

Since most people have pretty much abandoned this particular article, waiting for Havrilesky's next messy discharge this Saturday, this post will probably go unread. But then, real heroism isn't done when anyone is looking.

The complaint I have about the luxury of this school is that she had to eliminate many of the students who might have gone to it. Yes, she can't feed the entire world or educate every child in Africa. But if she had gone cheaper - like using 100-count or even 66-count sheets, more than anyone else has in Africa - she could have made room for the full 250 students who made it to the final round.

And yes, it is tied to her sense of self and her childhood deprivations. But why is the author so surprised by that? Practically nobody gets rid of the demons that tortured their early lives. Those are hard-wired, no matter what swindlers like Dr. Phil might say. The abuse I received at the hands of sports figures in my high school years - including something damn near rape by a black football player - is one of my important formative experiences. Because of that I would never stop to help football players if their bus was stranded on the side of the road, and I'd be tempted to try to run over a few of the thugs if given the opportunity. The only difference is, my running over football players would only improve the human race's gene pool and increase the supply of oxygen for intelligent life forms. Oprah's insistence on cushy stuff for impoverished girls means that many more impoverished girls won't get bare-subsidence help.

It's European. That means that if you like it, you are sophisticated, unlike those louts who follow baseball or American football or NASCAR or WWE Wrestling.

What self-delusion. All sports are foul wastes of time, for the players and the spectators, but soccer is particularly bad because of the pretensions of its American fans. Do they really believe they are better people because the sport they're watching only allows players to use their feet? Do they think that because they only serve Perrier in the stands, instead of Diet Coke, the game is more elevated?

I have no particular hatred for soccer. It's a sport, therefore it's automatically evil. It's just curious how certain poseurs assume it's superior because it wasn't created by us foul, disgusting, racially-mixed Americans.

And yes, they wasted $250 million. Hell, they waste money holding any kind of sports anywhere. (The real "welfare queens" in America are the owners of sports arenas and ball parks, who get their cities to pay for their little megalomaniac hobbies.) But thinking that they'll get people to love soccer because its greatest player has been bribed to come here...that's stupid. I remember a similar thing with Pele a few years ago. Notice how much that helped soccer's popularity in the United States?