The men of the MacKenzie family have a particular weakness for speechifying.

We enjoy jalapeno kettle chips more than we ought to, and we all think we’re much funnier than anyone ever tells us, but our real flaw is speechifying.

So, naturally, we love the movies and plays of Aaron Sorkin, who never encountered a conflict that couldn’t be solved with a rousing, well-intentioned speech by an educated white guy.

With all those flaws, it should be little surprise that this bit from his film The American President is one of my favorite lines in all of film.

That’s a rallying cry that your uncles, your grandfather, your second cousins and pretty much anybody who has been in the room with us in a serious debate knows and knows well. It’s speechifying 101. It’s catnip to our big dumb man-cat brains.

It’s also a good way to live.

And it’s why I was utterly livid at the attitude of moronic speechifying men after the Women’s World Cup.

Start with FIFA President, Gianni Infantino. The Swiss dollar store Mr. Clean substitute, concluded one of the most balanced women’s world cups in history, one of the most exciting and truly globalized celebrations of women in sports with an utterly tone deaf and moronic attempt to mansplain what women who want things to keep improving ought to do:

“Pick the right battles. Pick the right fights. You have the power to change. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. You do it. Just do it.”

….

“[Equal pay for men’s and women’s world cup teams] would not solve anything. It might be a symbol but it would not solve anything, because its one month every four years and its a few players out of the thousand and thousands of players.”

Gianni Infantino

Okay so awkwardly…I agree with a lot of the first paragraph. I want to encourage people to make advocate for change. But I’m a shmo on a keyboard in Minnesota opining to my kids. Gianni Infantino is in charge of international soccer from the highest to the lowest levels. Fighting the fights that need fighting is a laudable goal. It’s advice I give to you and to my students. It isn’t advice I dole out to people who are trying to get me to change my mind about a policy I can control.

Infantino’s call to action isn’t “GO GET EM!”, it’s more “get off my back already and go do something that matters.”

For proof look at the second paragraph quoted. Women players at the elite level have been agitating for equal pay (goodness knows the American women certainly deserve it given how wildly they outperform their male counterparts). So for Infantino to toss it away as meaningless and symbolic after telling people to advocate for change is a complete Not-In-My-BackYard, psuedo-supporter cop out.

Infantino could make equal pay in the professional game, the confederation tournaments, the club level, a requirement to host or play in FIFA’s gold-standard tournaments. Pushing athlete-activists to go somewhere else and give up on a goal he could help influence is a big ol’ sack of bull-puckey.

So here’s a more honest translation of Infantino’s mealy-mouthed attempt at unity

“Look, gimme a break alright. You want all these things so bad, go ask other people to do it…I don’t know what you could ask for or who you could ask, but I want you to do it somewhere other than here.

I know you’ve wanted equal pay…but, no. I’m not convinced, and as I said before…I’m tired of hearing you ask for it, so go ask someone else.”

–Gianni Infantino’s Inner-Monologue (SATIRE)

And yet, Infantino’s comments are only one prong of the pitchfork of stupid that ended the world cup. The other end belonged to the president of the Spanish federation, Luis Rubiales.

After watching a collection of superb athletes win the world championship, Rubiales decided it was a good time to grab star player Jenni Hermoso and give her a kiss on the lips.

When people said it was wrong, he said those people were “idiots and stupid people”. When Hermoso told an interviewer that she “didn’t like it”, he (and his office) pretended that she made a statement claiming it was “natural celebration”. When the government called it “a form of sexual violence” and likened it to long running issues in Spanish society, he complained that it was all “false feminism, that doesn’t seek justice or truth.” Even when Hermoso filed a criminal complaint, he insisted he wouldn’t resign.

All the speechifying and justification and stubbornness in the world couldn’t cover up that Luis Rubiales crossed a line, and that Hermoso and her allies were fighting for what they believed in.

In the end they won. In the end, I hope and believe that those advocating for equal pay for women athletes will win. In the end, I believe that the fight will be won, and that the simplistic scratch satisfied by a bit of well-intentioned speechifying will lose.

The women’s world cup is great, but the players symbolize more than tremendous performers. They embody one of my favorite bits of speechifying in the face of some of my least favorite speechifying.

You don’t fight the fights you can win. You fight the fights that need fighting.