This story is pretty embarassing to soccer players, anyone who knows anything about audio editing and human beings in general. A high school soccer game in North Carolina featured part of a Hitler speech over the PA.

The excuse given was (follow this closely): The team used “on to victory” as a slogan. One member of the team is a German exchange student and taught the other kids to say it in his language — indeed, German is a fearsome language appropriate for aggresive sports; that’s why they often use it to train police dogs.

Some nitwits on the team decided to capture the slogan, in German, to play over the PA. But instead of, I dunno, recording it with a microphone (a $10 one from Radio Shack could do the trick, or even a built-in one on a laptop computer if you yell right into it and boost the volume afterwards) or just saying it over the PA in person they decided to take the three words from a Hitler speech.

Then, they couldn’t get just those three words and ended up with a significant chunk of the speech. They ran with it anyway; thus the problem.

I’m not sure if they recorded it on cassette or CD, or what original they were working with, but in the digital domain a free program like Audacity could solve that issue in about 10 seconds. Same for a cassette player’s record button. And even if the clip had been properly edited, having Hitler yell your school slogan is just stupid.

I’ve tried to speak out against the media’s nonstop bashing of rural folks and Southerners, but sometimes people really should stop throwing reporters red meat.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.