Ann Coulter Wrote Something Stupid . . . About Soccer
I was not going to respond to Ann Coulter's stupid column about soccer. The first rule of the internet is "Don't feed the trolls." On the left and the right, I have read responses that conclude that Coulter has written something so stupid that it can be taken at face value but only treated as "performance art" or "parody." But a good friend asked me to respond, so I will. I still will not link to Coulter's column, because clicks are the life support for her breed of stupidity.
In a nutshell, Coulter wrote a column that attacked soccer as the demon spawn of (1) the feminization of American, (2) quiche-eating, chardonnay-swilling liberals and (3) encroaching hordes of immigrants. She starts with a stupid proclamation, "Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay." She ends with stupid xenophobia:
"If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.
Her logic appears to be that she must hate soccer because she hates all of the people who love soccer. Having decided that she must hate soccer, she reels off the most inane and insane reasons that I could imagine.
She penned this column to generate heat and attention for herself. She revels in the disdain that she generates, and convinces her ardent followers that she (and they) are victims of political correctness run wild.
Please follow below the fold for an in-depth exploration of the method & madness of Ann Coulter's column:
Coulter Point 1: Soccer Is A Socialist Sport Designed To Denigrate Individual Achievement
Coulter's first attack is that "individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer". According to her soccer is not a "real sport" because there are no opportunities for "individual glory" or humiliation. In fact, she contends, the lack of individual achievement is the source of soccer's appeal to "soccer moms".
Of course, Coulter is entirely wrong in her premise. Soccer creates some of the biggest individual superstars in the world. Pele is known the world over, thirty years after he played his last game. Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and David Beckham are internationally famous precisely because of their individual achievements. Soccer's penalty kick system for breaking ties puts more individual pressure and attention onto the players than anything in baseball, football or basketball.
Coulter Point 2: Soccer Is Unisex
Coulter's second crazy attack on soccer is that it is popular with "liberal moms" because "girls can play with boys". This is nothing but a fever dream. At all organized levels, from youth soccer to the World Cup, soccer teams and leagues are separated by gender. But it sure paints an apocalyptic picture for Coulter's fans of a feminized world where the sports have been watered down so that the girls can compete equally with the boys.
Coulter Point 3: Soccer Has Too Many 0-0 Ties
According to Coulter, soccer is boring because it is so low scoring. Of course, in other contexts, Coulter argues that when "scoring" is too prevalent, it demeans the entire nature of human existence. According to Coulter, chastity makes life more exciting, but a strong defense makes soccer boring. It's hard to follow the logic.
Coulter Point 4: There Are Not Enough Major Injuries Or Humiliations In Soccer
You might think that causing life-altering brain injuries was a bug in a sport, but Coulter writes that they are a necessary feature. " After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box." Once again, Coulter peddles the fiction that soccer is an effeminate game devoid of gritty competitors.
Of course, Coulter's writing bears no resemblance to reality. In the most recent example, US forward Clint Dempsey played through a broken nose suffered in the game against Ghana. Dempsey's American uniform ran red with his own blood. Five days later, he played (without the type of fask-mask that Lebron James wore to shield his broken nose) and scored the go-ahead goal against Portugal, despite a face that looked like a scene from Rocky. If data (rather than anecdotes) are more your style, soccer players suffer concussions and brain injury likely caused by heading the ball and clashing heads in collisions.
Coulter Point 5: Soccer Players Can't Use Their Hands
Coulter's next indictment of soccer is that players cannot use their hands on the ball. According to Coulter, this ban violates the laws of nature because "What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things."
But football and hockey, two sports that Coulter celebrates as the apex of competition, also ban players from using their hands to hold the ball. Offensive linemen in football cannot catch a pass. If an offensive player holds his opponent, it is a ten yard penalty. Holding by a defensive player is a five yard penalty and an automatic first down. No hockey player, except for the goalie, is allowed to catch or throw the puck.
Coulter Point 6: Soccer is being forced on real Americans by the Chi-Chi
According to Coulter, the people who are "forcing" soccer on America are also "demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton." This is a strange complaint by Coulter, since Rupert Murdoch and his Fox conglomerate are prime movers in the effort to mainstream soccer. Fox Sports outbid ESPN for the right to broadcast the World Cup in 2018 and 2022. If our Australian media overlords are supporting Hillary Clinton, I must have missed it.
Coulter Point 7: "It's Foreign"
I wanted to use a direct quote to illustrate her unabashed xenophobia. That's her heading, not mine.
Coulter Point 8: Soccer is "like the metric system"
It's hard to follow Coulter's logic here. She claims that soccer is like the metric system because they are both European. She then spends three paragraphs tapping into good-old-American resentment at the efforts during the Carter administration to make people use kilograms and liters instead of pounds and gallons. See, they are all foreign plots to confuse real red-blooded Americans.
Coulter Point 9: Soccer Is Not "Catching On" Because Only Foreigners & Liberals Are Watching
Coulter saved her worst for last. The ratings for soccer are undeniably rising. More people have watched the US World Cup games than watched the NBA Finals or the World Series. But, according to Coulter, this does not count because the people watching are not real Americans. A real American is a person "whose great-grandfather was born here."
The irony is that the friend who asked me to write this column would qualify as a real American under Ann Coulter's test. Her family has been in the United States since long before the Revolutionary War and she loves soccer. She enjoys the "beautiful game" for its flow, its drama and its raw athleticism. She also is a big baseball fan.
Sports can be a great unifier in our society. My great-grandparents (who were not born in this country) became Americans when they rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees (I come from a mixed family). My Serbian father-in-law sits shoulder-to-shoulder with his Dutch, German and Croatian barmates to watch the Chicago Bears. I have watched both conservative and liberal friends post their joy on Facebook when the Spurs won the NBA championship. Hundreds of millions of Americans who ordinarily could not care less about women's gymnastics cheered when Keri Strug landed on one leg to win the Olympic gold medal for the US Women at the 1996 Atlanta games.
Soccer is fostering patriotism and unifying Americans watching the World Cup. Recent immigrants, long-haired students, white collar workers and grizzled veterans are pouring into bars and parks across America to cheer on the US team. This shared rooting interest is part of weaving people together into the American tapestry.
But Ann Coulter is not in favor of shared patriotism, she makes her money by sowing resentment and division. She wants patriotism to be the sole province of her side in the ideological war.
I think US Soccer has a better slogan. "One Nation. One Team."