"...We're Looking For Someone With A Winning Smile, A Way With People...And Very Limber and Flexible Shoulder Muscles..."

There's a new dance sensation sweeping the nation.

And, as the kids like to offer, it's going viral, baby.

In it's more playful moments, it can actually appear to be cute, charming even a little coquettish.

But in it's more often than not usage these days it's simply, at best, annoying and, at worst, infuriating.

So listen everybody /  there's a brand new drug
makin' people apathetic/ till they do the shrug /
do the shrug

Ah, the shrug.

Not familiar with this latest massively manifested move?

Sure you are.

Think back, pilgrim.

You walked up to the hilariously, obviously satirically named customer service desk at your local big box store and spoke thusly....

"Hi, I want to return these __________"

"Uh, do you have a receipt?"

"Sure do. Here it is."

"Oh, okay. Oh, uh, I can't take these back."

"Oh, really. And why not?"

"Says right here on the bottom of the receipt that all returns must be made within three working minutes of one working day after purchase."

"Well, surely a bright, engaging young hilariously, obviously satirically named customer service representative can see that that policy is, well, just silly."

Then comes the shrug / she's doin the shrug.

This buoyant little be-bop even works when you can't actually see it.

"Hi, I'm trying to find out why my cable bill has me charged with fourteen viewings of  "John Carpenter's Hamlet starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Rob Kardashian and Nancy Allen" when I know better than to EVER get near a button that might even accidentally have me ordering "John Carpenter's Hamlet starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Rob Kardashian and Nancy Allen". Could you help me?"

"I'm sorry you've having a problem with that and I can help you today. Could I get the last four numbers of your Social?"

"- - - - "

"Thank you for that information. Could I ask you to please hold for a moment while I bring up your account and verify that you are not a member of any subversive organization, do not subscribe to the teachings of Buddah, Islam or Dr. Oz and that you are, in fact, who you say you are?"

"Uh, sure."

"Thank you for that permission."

A period of time now begins, usually running anywhere from three to eleven minutes, depending on vendor, product and/or your truthfulness about your membership in any subversive organization."

"Thank you for holding. According to our information, you actually ordered this particular movie thirty six times but since you are a loyal customer, we discounted you twenty two times and only charged you for the fourteen on your bill. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

"Seriously, you're going to charge me for fourteen viewings of something I didn't order at all?"

then comes the shrug/ he's doin the shrug.

I honestly haven't been able to figure out if this insidious little response reflex is about incompetence on the part of those who engage in it or simply some kind of tragic neurological manifestation of the overload they, personally, suffer given the volume of customers they must deal with on a daily basis because of the rise in crappy products and/or service in the first place.

Either way, it's a total buzzkill for those of us who stop by the counter or jump on the line, each time filled with a fresh optimism that whoever greets on the other end of either venue will wash our problem away with a zeal and zing that makes OxyClean look like a waste of time.

And, frankly, underneath it all, I really think there's something else going on here.

The shrug is more than just a sloughing off of intention to actually affect any assistance, restitution and/or repair.

It's really becoming the internationally recognized symbol for "I can't really be bothered."

A non verbal edition of the time honored "look, just get off my ass and suck it up, okay?"

Because great customer service is perilously close to becoming a sixty two point Scrabble score oxymoron.

And while there's really no excuse for their behavior, I can totally see a reason why these shruggers shrug in the direction of us shruggees.

In large measure, because so often even those well meaning CSR's who valiantly lift our problem up to their own higher power are often stymied with the shake and shimmy of the supervisor shrug.

Somewhere, sooner or later, up the line, far too often, any potential solution is stymied by the shrug.

Ah, the shrug.

What's next in the evolution of consumer assistance?

Who can say?

Except to note that just as the foxtrot gave way to the twist that gave way to the jerk that gave way to the hully gully......

...the "happy to help" gave way to the "hmm, not sure" that has given way to.....the shrug.

Annoying, frustrating, even infuriating.

But, in all fairness, not as bad as what lurks just beneath the surface of that shrug.

The middle finger.

"...Those Who Have Been Longing To Punch Her Out Have Probably Moved On To A Desire To Soccer...."

Thank you, Ann Coulter.

I finally realize what has been bugging me for a long time.

This past week, the darling of the demonic demagogues offered up the following opine as regards the game of soccer and America's current passionate embrace of the World Cup matches.




I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade — or about the length of the average soccer game — so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

• Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls — all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."

Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.

• Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.

• No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.

Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties — and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.

• The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game — and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.

• You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!

• I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.

• It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.

• Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.

Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.

Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?

• Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear — again about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."

The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)

Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.

Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.



Hmm.

Okay.

First, a necessary disclaimer.

I'm not a big fan of soccer. But it should be noted that I've never really been much of a sports fan in general.

I can enjoy a good game with the best of them but my interests, as a rule, tend to run in other directions.

To each his, her and/or their own.

That said, here's some random thoughts as regards our always amazing Ann's soccer slant.

Let's see.

An internationally recognized sport, popular in countries all around the world.

An opportunity for Americans to be a competitive and spirited contributor to a global activity.

An activity that, for the most part, injects positivity and sportsmanship, even worldwide camaraderie into a global culture often dehydrated from the lack of the cool, refreshing waters of positivity, sportsmanship, even worldwide camaraderie.

An activity that, dare we whisper it out loud, actually brings people of all races, creeds, colors and/or international origins together for brief periods of time.

Well, hell's bells, no wonder Coulter's six foot long knickers are in a twist.

What kind of devil's work is afoot here?

Meanwhile, here's one more thought.

Ann Coulter is a doorknob.

And while this piece isn't even close to the first I've ever written either preaching, pronouncing and/or pillorying the supposed wit and questionable wisdom of this Lenny Bruce in drag wannabe,  it is the first written since the little intellectual itch I've had for such a long, long time has finally been scratched.

For the first time, I now realize who Ann Coulter is.

Andrew Dice Clay.

Whether solely for the purpose of furthering an entertainment based career or just to poke people with a stick to see what kind of reaction will result, Coulter is operating, almost line item by line item, right out of the playbook of the "shock comic" whose presentation consisted of simply spewing whatever foul, flaming, incendiary, obnoxious, even just plain tastelessly rude thing that came into his head out of his mouth presumably to further his entertainment based career by poking people with a stick to see what kind of reaction would result.

And morons, dimwits, idiots, any member of any cast of any TV show that's title begins with the words "The Real Housewives of" and, one can imagine, pretty much the lion's share of the populations of Mississippi and Alabama practically made the master of misogyny a god on the order of those who fling fire to write rules on stone tablets and send misbehaving couples packing from gardens of goodness.

 For the longest time, despite my basic disdain for Coulter's cacophonies and my "mama didn't raise no idgit" awareness that she wasn't exactly Eleanor Roosevelt, I have made an honest effort to get past her snarky and seek out the pearls surely hidden amongst the swine.

Right up to early this past week when she kicked just a little too high, leapt just a little too far, let one idea too many bounce off of her head and into the big net that will, hopefully, some day be used to gather all the wack jobs of the world and put them in the happy place they really were meant to be.

Ann Coulter, it turns out, is neither prophet nor priestess.

Neither tribal elder nor middle aged twit.

Neither prescient political  pundit nor pompous pontificator.

She's just a shock comic in heels.

And making a pretty damn good living at it, too.

So spew on, there, superstar.

Make hay while the sun shines.

And the idgits are listening.

As for me, I finally get it.

And for that, I have to sincerely say....

thanks, Andr.......

uh....Ann.