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AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER (ANN COULTER)
Ann Coulter Webpage ^ | June 25, 2014 | Ann Coulter

Posted on 06/25/2014 8:47:40 PM PDT by fkabuckeyesrule

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

(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.

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."

Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.

(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.

(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.

Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.

(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.

(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!

(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.

(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.

(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.

Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?

(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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: cup; world
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To: DesertRhino
Mostly yeah,,, Real Americans don’t like that sissy Euro sport. Only immigrants and liberals.

Yeah, libs and immigrants are sneaky that way.


61 posted on 06/25/2014 9:45:40 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: fkabuckeyesrule

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.

___________________________________________________________

Coulter hit a grand slam and TKO with this article....

Right in the ten ring.


62 posted on 06/25/2014 9:50:11 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Fungi

‘Soccer is baseball by another name.’

Baseball is in a class completely by itself. No other popular team pro sport has the defense being in charge of the ball. It gives it a completely different feel than basketball, hockey, football or soccer. And there are some tremendously ridiculous home run calls and walk off calls in baseball.

Only baseball has any sort of effective self policing in this era. And it still has its jerk problems. Hockey comes closest. These other sports with penalty systems, modern star-biased officiating and/or short seasons where each game is so important that you can’t commit penalties that affect the outcome of the game create massive jerk wads. Dancing around and chest pounding after even a mundane play, I mean come on. At least in hockey and soccer they don’t break out the buffoonery 30 times during a game.

Freegards


63 posted on 06/25/2014 9:54:26 PM PDT by Ransomed
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To: dragnet2

Well, that would explain why more people watch USA soccer on ESPN instead of Univision. Or maybe not.


64 posted on 06/25/2014 9:54:54 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: fkabuckeyesrule

Boy, when she’s right, she’s right. Joe Scarborough is orgasmic about this stupid third-world game. He invites men with annoying British accents on to comment on this inane sport while baseball goes unreported. Grrrrr!


65 posted on 06/25/2014 9:54:57 PM PDT by miss marmelstein (Richard Lives Yet!)
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To: 21twelve
Of course as a Seahawks fan I loved watching those pansy-assed, latte licking Lenin loving Seahawks destroy the Broncos.

That may be the city but not the team. The Niners get the same rap because of San Francisco.

The two meanest, baddest, toughest teams in the NFL are the seahawks and Niners.

Yeah, I'm a Niner fan and see you next year again in the NFC Championship!

66 posted on 06/25/2014 9:57:47 PM PDT by Doomonyou (Let them eat Lead.)
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To: miss marmelstein

Thing about USA soccer, as opposed to baseball or even being President, one needs to be a US citizen to play.


67 posted on 06/25/2014 10:00:14 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: fkabuckeyesrule

I like the Aztec-Mayan version of Soccer. When a score is made, the teams get to strip the spectators of all gold and jewels.

And the losing team gets their hearts cut out.

Now THAT is playing for keeps!


68 posted on 06/25/2014 10:00:48 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need more than seven rounds, Much more.)
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To: 1rudeboy
Well, that would explain why more people watch USA soccer on ESPN instead of Univision.

Soccer? Univision?

wow...

Look boyrude, the government turned the U.S. into a foreign flop house, made citizenship all but pointless....Were talking tens of millions of foreigners and illegals. Obama got voted into office by half the stinking country...lol

Of course there are those who'll watch soccer...gezzz.

69 posted on 06/25/2014 10:04:48 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: dragnet2

And that’s my point. Are these commies and illegals trying to trick us by waving US and Gadsden flags and chanting U-S-A? If so . . . .


70 posted on 06/25/2014 10:06:47 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: fkabuckeyesrule
I have enjoyed a couple of world cup games this time round, but there's no denying that soccer is a corrupt and arbitrary sport founded on diminished expectations, which makes it popular in third world, and by the same token very un-American.
71 posted on 06/25/2014 10:06:48 PM PDT by mojito (Zero, our Nero.)
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To: rcrngroup

She could have written an entire article about the Soccer floppers. Ow-—weee!


72 posted on 06/25/2014 10:20:47 PM PDT by Loud Mime (arguetheconstitution.com Check it out.)
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To: mojito

I like that it is so hard to score a goal in soccer, I think that’s pretty unique. Seems to me the current trend of equating the sport’s potential to score points, goals, or runs so easily with great entertainment is definitely part of the general liberal trend nowadays. Give me a 1-0 complete game shut-out any day. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of ending in a tie or both scoreless, though.

Freegards


73 posted on 06/25/2014 10:23:18 PM PDT by Ransomed
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To: rcrngroup
At least they should put a sudden death tie breaker into the rules!

...and after several days maybe someone would suddenly die.

74 posted on 06/25/2014 10:23:45 PM PDT by smoothsailing
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To: Ironfocus

In college I was on the varsity soccer team - - even though I played, it was boring. After that season I played Rugby. Loved it. That’s a man’s game.


75 posted on 06/25/2014 10:24:05 PM PDT by Loud Mime (arguetheconstitution.com Check it out.)
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To: 1rudeboy
Were you not told half the stinking country voted for Obama and continue to support corrupt political parties...all while waving American flags?

Are these commies and illegals trying to trick us by waving US and Gadsden flags and chanting U-S-A?

Why yes they are boyrude.

You not noticing is no surprise.

Are these commies and illegals trying to trick us by waving US and Gadsden flags and chanting U-S-A?

You don't get out much do ya?

How did ya get so naive boyrude?

76 posted on 06/25/2014 10:24:20 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: fkabuckeyesrule

While I LOVE the NFL, I quite enjoy soccer especially the World Cup. Some amazing athletes.


77 posted on 06/25/2014 10:25:19 PM PDT by RIghtwardHo
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To: mojito

You see the clock running, but it’s not running down. It’s going the other way. So your jaw is resting on your chin, eyes glazed over, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Will this ever be over?”
It’s something like listening in church to a blowhard right out of seminary, and the clock is at 163:00 and gaining, then some faggot runs onto the field, blows a whistle, waving his arms and everybody trudges off a field the size of Rhode Island.
And you’re sitting there thinking, “I’ll never get those two hours, or however long it was, back.”


78 posted on 06/25/2014 10:28:23 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: JudyinCanada

Soccer is for kids who can’t hit the ball.


79 posted on 06/25/2014 10:33:13 PM PDT by proudpapa (Scott Walker - 2016)
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To: dragnet2

It appears to me that, because of your antipathy (or apathy) regarding soccer, you are ascribing your political beliefs on its fans. That’s a serious problem and I hope you get professional help.


80 posted on 06/25/2014 10:33:36 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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