Posts Tagged ‘honduras’
Analog TV Lives in DC!
Don't throw your rabbit ears away just yet, soccer fans. At least not until the CONCACAF Gold Cup is over.
I watched last night's USA/Honduras match in glorious analog, complete with an old-school non-digital antenna hooked up and pointing skyward.
The match was broadcast live from RFK on WMDO-47, an over-the-air Spanish station that is part of the Miami-based Telefutura network, itself a subsidiary of everybody's favorite telenovela source, Univision.
If you've got the lowest tier cable TV, you wouldn't have been able to watch the game, since WMDO (like the Anglo Fox Soccer Channel, which is also showing some Gold Cup games) isn't in every package.
But if you've got no cable, like those of us now forced to live on a budget, you could cheer our boys on.
The supposed drop-dead date for analog TV in the U.S. was June 12, when the federally mandated switch to digital kicked in. Apparently something got lost in translation, because not only is WMDO still clogging up the airwaves with analog signals, but the station doesn't even offer viewers a digital option.
City Desk’s Futbol Diplomacy Plan Falling Into Place!
Turns out Manuel Zelaya WILL be in DC tomorrow. That's when the Honduras national team, which Zelaya used to control before his military gave him a red card and booted him out of the country, will face the US squad in a CONCACAF Gold Cup game at RFK.
Zelaya flew out of here on Sunday, headed for the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. But the folks who deposed him blocked the runways at the airport there. So Zelaya had to reroute to neighboring Nicaragua.
Now, AP is reporting that Zelaya is coming back to DC to meet with Hillary Clinton, to try to get the U.S. to put more pressure on his deposers to let him back in his home country.
I'm no Condoleezza Rice, but, as proposed in this very space last week, I'd advise Hillary to advise Zelaya to get his butt into a good seat opposite the TV cameras at RFK tomorrow night, to show the folks down south that El Presidente is backing the boys on enemy turf as they face Los Yanquies. (Sure, I learned whatever Spanish I know from listening to Los Lobos, so I have no idea if anybody down there calls Zelaya "El Presidente" or us "Los Yanquies." But tell me it doesn't sound right!)
Then after the game, Zelaya can board the team plane and head back to Honduras. Nobody's gonna block that runway!
Brilliant! I mean, um, fantastico!
Futbol Diplomacy: Bring Zelaya to RFK!
A source at the Sports and Entertainment Commission tells me that there's not any hint that next week's Gold Cup soccer match between the beautiful losers of the USA national team and the Honduran national team will be affected by what's gone on. It's on.
I've read there's been a coup down south.
Apparently newly ex-President Manuel Zelaya, who was just thrown out of the country by his military, can't go home. Coup leaders say that if he shows up in the capital city of Tegucigalpa he'll be arrested.
The U.S. is in Zelaya's corner in this one. So why not turn this game into something huge? Let the State Department invite the deposed guy to our Nation's Capital to watch his old soccer team play our boys. If Zelaya sucks up to the futbol fans back home, and the Hondurans manage to escape with a win, he could fly back with the team and take his job back.
