Doug Clark: Not bitten by World Cup fever, an inspiration nonetheless

If you’re like me, you’d rather watch water evaporate than World Cup soccer.

Which means that all I know about what’s going on in the world of the cup is that some player from Uruguay bit an Italian dude during a match the other day.

But was that really so bad?

It certainly was to the sports commentators and soccer purists.

I caught some of them on the tube yesterday. They were all gnashing their teeth over this bite now seen ’round the world.

In my view, however, occasional chomping could be a real boost for non-soccer fans like me.

As in guys who are put off by all the endless running around, the low scoring and matches that end in disappointing ties.

Why not biting?

Look how exciting bloody fisticuffs made hockey.

But what do I know?

Perhaps soccer is the wrong field for boorish, toothy behavior.

The more I think about it, the more I think that government would be a far better venue for this.

“Bite me,” after all, is already a cherished part of America’s political nomenclature.

And sometimes a literal interpretation of that message seems well deserved.

Take those two county commissioners who got us involved in that money drain of a racetrack near Airway Heights.

It was going to be an Airway to Heaven, they promised.

Yeah, right.

Chomp!

Just imagining that makes me feel better.

Wasn’t McGruff the Crime Dog always telling us “to take a bite out of grime?”

Well, something like that.

But the best argument for putting the bite on government is how it could re-energize the public’s tepid interest in our sacred process.

Last Monday night’s Spokane City Council meeting, for example, would have been so much more watchable had it included drama, such as …

COUNCIL PRESIDENT STUCKART: “The ayes have it, 5-2. Although we admittedly know next-to-beans about chemistry and even less about entomology, we have now banned the city’s purchase and use of neonicotinoid insecticides, which may or may not be harming the honeybees.”

COUNCILMEMBER FAGAN: “CHOMP!”

STUCKART: “Ow! Mike just bit my ankle. What the (bleep)?”

FAGAN: “That’s right, Ben. And I’ll bite your other ankle if you don’t can all this airhead silliness and get back to the basics. Stop your urban agriculture fixation and start FIXING THE STREETS!!”

Trust me. This could really turn this city around.

There’d have to be thought and some deliberation put into this, of course.

I wouldn’t recommend any citizen being allowed to just go up and bite a politician whenever he or she felt like it.

Not without getting some shots first.

There’s no telling what sort of dreaded diseases you could catch from biting a local official.

Some rules would have to be established.

No breaking the skin. No ear amputations ala Mike Tyson vs. Evander Holyfield.

Behavior that extreme is better suited for the U.S. Senate.