Slate.com is the preeminent place on the Internet for joyless contrarian douchebags to show off the big words they know but can’t use in conversation, and it’s never more irritating than when they try to write about sports. Slate’s most recent piece on the NFL is a tirade against the awfulness of the Arizona Cardinals by a Boston writer obviously still pissed that the Patriots beat the Cards but didn’t make the playoffs.  Here’s a taste:

The game is afflicted by announcers who spend an awful lot of time wrapping football in the Great American Family Values comforter. They festoon it with jingoistic baubles and cheap patriotic gewgaws.

Oh, that’s so much worse than stuffing SAT words wantonly into a sentence.  Is there room on that festoon for propagandistic jimcracks and nationalist curios?

For all the macho posturing of its principal propagandists, between the jiggering of the schedule and the conniving of the draft and the socialistic revenue schemes, and the desperate grab for any mechanism that will flatten out the differences between really good teams and really bad ones, the NFL is the league that comes closest to the biddy soccer league philosophy of making sure that everyone gets a trophy.

Be sure to read the whole thing so you can get to the phrase “gooey encomiums.”  Or don’t, actually.  Your blood pressure will appreciate it.