{"id":733092,"date":"2010-05-25T15:11:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T19:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d834519bc269e20133ee78af0c970b"},"modified":"2010-05-25T15:12:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T19:12:10","slug":"world-cup-2010-mascot-not-as-offensive-as-some-past-offerings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/733092","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2010 mascot not as offensive as some past offerings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brandfreak.com\/2010\/05\/world-cup-2010-mascot-not-as-offensive-as-some-past-offerings.html\" style=\"float: right;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"2010-fifa-world-cup-mascot-final\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d834519bc269e2013481a9359f970c \" src=\"http:\/\/brandmediaweek.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d834519bc269e2013481a9359f970c-250wi\" style=\"width: 244px; margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; height: 284px;\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The best mascot the U.S. could come up with for the 1994 World Cup was a generic-looking brown dog with one foot on a soccer ball and his mind on chasing cars, taking naps and, well, anything except playing soccer. Because, you know, we don&#8217;t care about soccer here. But at least it wasn&#8217;t an ethnic stereotype or offensive representation of the host country, which is more the norm, judging by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/pics\/world-cup-mascots-borderline-offensive-oddly-mincing#0\" >an illuminating <em>Fast Company<\/em> slideshow<\/a>. (There have also been some vaguely creepy characters in the mix.) Take a look at some of the World Cup mascots of yore: an Argentine cowboy with a whip in his hand; British World Cup Willie, the first mascot, from 1966, who&#8217;s inexplicably sporting an &#8217;80s rocker hairdo; and Pique, a jalapeno pepper wearing a giant sombrero, baggy clothes and huge &#8216;stache that <em>Fast Company<\/em> finds &quot;just a hair behind Speedy Gonzalez&quot; in the gross-cultural-stereotype department. This year&#8217;s mascot is kind of a head-scratcher, if you could find his noggin in that big bouffant. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifa.com\/worldcup\/organisation\/media\/newsid=887044\/index.html\" >Zakumi<\/a>, a leopard who&#8217;ll preside over the tournament starting June 11, represents &quot;the people, geography and spirit of South Africa,&quot; according to a FIFA statement. But there&#8217;s still no explanation for that hair.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Posted by T.L. Stanley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best mascot the U.S. could come up with for the 1994 World Cup was a generic-looking brown dog with one foot on a soccer ball and his mind on chasing cars, taking naps and, well, anything except playing soccer. Because, you know, we don&#8217;t care about soccer here. But at least it wasn&#8217;t an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-34I4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}