The National Review Online is a conservative news outlet, so it is a kind of a strange place to see a commentary piece devoted exclusively to Team Handball. The title of the article: “An All-American Sport” with the smaller byline “The USA could dominate Men’s Handball” gave me the instant impression that another genius was going to tell me how to fix our sport. Instead, it was much worse.

To the author’s credit he does warn his reader with the following sentence in all caps:

“UGLY AMERICAN ALERT. I AM ABOUT TO OFFEND THE REST OF THE WORLD AND ANY AMERICANS WHO PLAY HANDBALL.”

He wasn’t kidding. In contrast to the plethora of recent articles wondering why this great sport isn’t more popular in the U.S., this article’s author derides Team Handball as the dumbest event he’s seen to date and as a sport with no rules played by factory workers. This inane piece is not even worth my time to describe further, but I asked myself, “Who is this clown, anyway?”

Turns out that the author ,Mark Corallo, is a public relations specialist who has been the public spokesman for Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, John Ashcroft and others. A veritable who’s who list of …. Well, this isn’t a political website, so I’ll let you judge for yourself as to whether his client list adds or detracts from his credibility to analyze and critique Team Handball.

National Review Online: An All-American Sport: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225333/all-american-sport/mark-corallo

Wikipedia entry for Mark Corallo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Corallo
Corallo Media Strategies Bio: http://www.corallomedia.com/pages/aboutmark.html

Note to DC players: Be sure to drop Mark an email to invite him to your next practice. info@corallomedia.com