While reluctant to get involved in e-mail disputes, I am so shocked and appalled by G. Parsons' comments on violence and the superbowl that I feel I must respond. Parsons, since he is logged into Screen-L, is presumably a media scholar of some sort and at least an academic, and yet is working from truly frightening classist and sexist assumptions. First, the history of European football, or soccer, as we call it here, is truly complex and has deep roots in the working class. While I do not condone violence of any kind, it is also important to realize that the media portrayal of football hooliganism, in England at least, has been, in part, an effort to disparage the kind of class identity that has been forged through soccer fandom. And as for the relative excitement of the two sports, has Parsons read Mike Real's piece on the Superbowl in which he states that there are approximately two minutes of action during the whole interminable telecast? Second, the very word 'nagged' reveals deep patriarchal assumptions about stereotypical female behavior with no sensitivity to the exploitation of women within the domestic sphere. And I cannot believe that Parsons truly means that's it's okay to beat someone up because she "nags" you. Roberta Pearson Annenberg School for Communications University of Pennsylvania