I seem to he John Kerry of the blogosphere. And that isn't good. You don't want to be the John Kerry of anything.
But when I read Ann Coulter's attack on soccer in her June 25th column I felt my blood boil. I normally don't care what Ann Coulter says, and maybe I shouldn't now. But I know this woman gets many dollars for her speaking engagements and I don't think that is right; anyone who writes this sort of senseless scrimflam shouldn't be paid for opening her mouth, but rather for keeping it shut.
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| That is one sort of but not really very hot, ultra-conservative, soccer hating lady. |
(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks
Are you kidding me? Keepers have howlers, strikers miss PK's. When Lionel Messi strikes the ball with that left foot of his the world stands still, and when it hits home to lift his team over the Iranians and into the round of 16, there is glory.
I think that you, Ms. Coulter, forget as well that football, American football, is the ultimate TEAM sport. If one man on the line misses his blocking assignment the touchdown doesn't happen, because the QB is put on his ass.
Soccer is a team sport indeed, but it can be influenced by individual brilliance and individual error. So you are wrong. Individual achievement is a huge factor. Let's move on.
(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.
I don't see how little girls and boys playing together tears at the fabric of our country. Allow me to say, though, that there comes a point where the women's game and the men's game split, just as they do for all other sports.
As for the whole "Athletic Talent" thing, well, in my opinion soccer players are among the greatest athletes in the world, every bit as good as our best football or basketball players. I'd like to see you try to run around a field for 90 minutes, and then control a ball off the chest and volley into the top corner of the net, just over the keeper's finger tips, to the roar of the crowd. If that isn't athletic talent finding expression, then I don't know what is.
(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.
What is wrong with a tie? Just because our sports have driven them from American sports doesn't make them bad. While I admit that most 0-0 draws are horribly boring affairs, there are some that can be incredibly exciting, notable the nil-nil draw that Brazil and Mexico played to last week.
Oh, and Miss Coulter, in soccer they are called "halves", not periods; though our Latino sisters and brothers do call them "tiempos", which can be interpreted in English as periods. Is there something you want to tell your adoring public?
(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.
Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.
Wow.
Why should we enjoy something that imitates warfare? Why should we celebrate people being carted off the field? Why shouldn't little kids get juice boxes after soccer games (or baseball games or football games, for that matter)? Seriously. What is your problem?
See point one above. Soccer has plenty of opportunities for individual disgrace. At the higher levels its a rough sport, a tough game, with occasionally bone shattering tackles. Illegal bone shattering tackles perhaps, but nevertheless.
And your quote from Lady Thatcher sort of kicks the poppets our from under your main point. Every time England and Germany get together on the pitch, the war is in the back of the mind. When England start to lose (as they normally do), their fans have no problem singing things like "If you won the war, stand up!" or the always classy "10 German Bombers".
Stupid gits.
(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!
Well, the goal keepers can use their hands, so I guess they are still human if no one else is. Then again, have you met Jens Lehman?
(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.
I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.
I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.
You have many options for viewing, Ms. Coulter. If you don't want to watch the World Cup, well, there is an entire network devoted to discussing your favorite sport, all year round, talking endlessly about how "exciting" it is. Though what is so exciting about watching grown men smash into each other for about 11 seconds and proceed to stand around for the following 2 minutes is something I don't understand.
(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.
All things in America have been foreign at one time or another. We are a nation of foreigners, built on a constant influx of new ideas and cultures. We are always changing.
On your second comment I can only point to the fact that there African-Americans on the team with whom the sport apparently never caught on. I think you are just trying to somehow be cute and inclusive here. It doesn't become you.
8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.
Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.
I adore the metric system because to an Engineer it makes sense, even though you'll be happy to know we still build American war machines with the US Customary measurement system and huge dollop of Patriotic Pride.
Bur really, who in their right mind would want to measure mass in slugs? Did you know that in US units that is what you are supposed to do? Does it sound so appealing to you now?
Bur really, who in their right mind would want to measure mass in slugs? Did you know that in US units that is what you are supposed to do? Does it sound so appealing to you now?
Yes, you are right about the metric system though and our public schools. When ever my liberal public school family is driving from New York to Boston we always have to take the 200 miles posted on all the road signs and convert it in our heads to kilometers (321.869 km) so that our brain-washed public school minds can make sense of the world around us, which since the 1980's has seemed to move away from the whole "should we or shouldn't we do the whole metric system" thing.
And it's more like 215 miles, by the by, if we are being cute, which we most definitely are. You started it. Admittedly, it probably depends on from what point in New York you are starting out at and to which point in Boston you are arriving, but I'll do anything to score a point on you.
(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."
The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)
Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.
Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.
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.
I think what we learned from the David Beckham experiment, aside from how naive it is to think that one man, however beautiful, can sway the opinions of a nation, is that soccer will probably never be the number one sport in this nation for the foreseeable future.
And it was a good thing. It re-set expectations. Major League Soccer stepped back and said "we have a good thing going here, who cares if we aren't number 1?" The league hasn't folded, and has recently had a very successful expansion into Seattle.
You may want to pop your head out of the little bunker you've made for yourself. The David Beckham experiment was seven years ago. Since then soccer hasn't gone away, it is slowly "catching-on". Are we a soccer nation? No, definitely not. But more and more it has a space in our culture, and I think slowly it will get better as MLS improves, the US men's team get better, and as our demographics indeed slowly shift into something else.
I say why fight? I have a dream that America can be a better place as it changes. A different place, but a better one. There is no reason that soccer can't be a part of that, just as there is no reason that the best of our values (freedom, liberty, diligence, kindness) can't be a part of that as well. There is no reason that good old American Football can't be a part of that either, aside from the whole concussion/gladiator thing and the fact that it really is kind of boring....no other sport I can think of manages to pack 30 minutes of heart stopping action into a four hour package. Eventually we'll catch on, and the NFL may well go the way of boxing.
If all that comes then I say let it come, for as Thomas Jefferson once said:
And it's more like 215 miles, by the by, if we are being cute, which we most definitely are. You started it. Admittedly, it probably depends on from what point in New York you are starting out at and to which point in Boston you are arriving, but I'll do anything to score a point on you.
(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."
The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)
Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.
Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.
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.
I think what we learned from the David Beckham experiment, aside from how naive it is to think that one man, however beautiful, can sway the opinions of a nation, is that soccer will probably never be the number one sport in this nation for the foreseeable future.
And it was a good thing. It re-set expectations. Major League Soccer stepped back and said "we have a good thing going here, who cares if we aren't number 1?" The league hasn't folded, and has recently had a very successful expansion into Seattle.
You may want to pop your head out of the little bunker you've made for yourself. The David Beckham experiment was seven years ago. Since then soccer hasn't gone away, it is slowly "catching-on". Are we a soccer nation? No, definitely not. But more and more it has a space in our culture, and I think slowly it will get better as MLS improves, the US men's team get better, and as our demographics indeed slowly shift into something else.
I say why fight? I have a dream that America can be a better place as it changes. A different place, but a better one. There is no reason that soccer can't be a part of that, just as there is no reason that the best of our values (freedom, liberty, diligence, kindness) can't be a part of that as well. There is no reason that good old American Football can't be a part of that either, aside from the whole concussion/gladiator thing and the fact that it really is kind of boring....no other sport I can think of manages to pack 30 minutes of heart stopping action into a four hour package. Eventually we'll catch on, and the NFL may well go the way of boxing.
If all that comes then I say let it come, for as Thomas Jefferson once said:
“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
Man. I really wish he had managed to say that in a more quotable form. A man of few words, indeed! Clay Jenkinson, you have once again led me astray.
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