Gabriel Garnica
Coulter's soccer rant deserves a red card
By Gabriel Garnica
Look, I am as conservative as can be, and I agree with many of the things Anne Coulter writes about, but her latest column, in which she rants against soccer, is an embarrassment.
Her accusations that soccer is too long and too boring fly in the face of facts which show that the average American football or baseball game is often longer than the typical soccer match. Coulter's absurdly ignorant argument that the sport has no individual achievement or heroes, or blame for that matter, is so out of touch with reality as to make one wonder if she needs psychiatric intervention. Tell Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, Messi, and Ronaldo that soccer has no heroes, MVPs, or achievement.
Not content to stem her soccer ignorance, Coulter continues on, arguing that the prospect of personal humiliation, personal disgrace, or serious physical injury is required of any sport. Tell poor Moacir Barbosa, the goalie of the Brazil team upset by Uruguay in the final of the last World Cup played in Brazil, back in 1950, that there is no blame, humiliation, or disgrace in soccer. Barbosa's life was practically ruined, and he was mostly ostracized by most Brazilians, who blamed him for the loss. In fact, Flavio Costa, the coach of the losing Brazilian side, had to exit the stadium in disguise because he valued his continued existence. How about Roberto Baggio, Italian scoring legend who, despite being often named as one of the greatest living players, is often remembered for missing a decisive penalty shot in the final of the 1994 World Cup against Brazil, costing his team the title. Coulter drivels that, when baseball players strike out, they are left standing alone at the plate. Has she ever seen what a player looks like when he or she misses a decisive penalty shot, where the advantage is so stacked in the kicker's favor as to make a miss an utter act of incompetence? Wars have broken out over soccer games! As for serious physical injury, I guess Coulter thinks that outstanding players such as my country's Radamel Falcao Garcia, one of the world's best strikers, missed this tournament because of a paper cut.
Coulter mocks soccer's more internationally used name, football, insinuating that American football is the real football. Considering that 90% or more game play in soccer is using primarily the feet, and 90% of American football involves using the hands, Coulter's claim that American football is real football makes no sense at all.
Coulter rants that soccer has too many 0-0 ties, and spews a shocking bias against her own gender by wondering how soccer can truly express athletic talent when boys and girls can play together. Let's have your average football or baseball player run up and down a soccer field, send perfect crosses like Cristiano Ronaldo recently inflicted on the U.S. team, or score on a bicycle kick or a perfectly placed header, and then we can talk. When a sport's referees are in better shape than many other sports' actual athletes, athletic ability may not be the way to bash said sport! Coulter argues that no serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level. I guess she has not seen girls play softball or baseball with boys, as I have. Women do not play soccer with men at the professional level, so this argument is desperate at best and mindless at worst.
She tells us that she resents the force-fed nature of soccer because, you know, nothing is force-fed in our American culture, at least according to Kim Kardashian and half of the garbage served as TV programming every new season. She constantly compares soccer to American football, and finds soccer far less compelling and much more lacking as a sport. Coulter is entitled to her opinion, but I suspect I know twice as much about American football as she does, and it is not because she is a female. Despite the fact that I love American football, I enjoy a good soccer game as well, and I do not find it necessary to bash other people's taste in sports.
Coulter bashes soccer because it is "foreign" and mockingly compares it to the metric system as what she considers a foreign fad far inferior to American know how. Here, Coulter truly steps into the world of ethnocentric, ignorant arrogance. She infers that soccer and the metric system are like two stupidly bland and useless drugs which liberals pretend are worth our time. She ignores the scientific and mathematical fact that the metric system is, in fact, more universal to use. Coulter loves the fact that an inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, and a yard the length of his belt because, according to her perceptive mind, these are easy to visualize. This must be true since, you know, everyone's thumbs, feet, and belts are the exact same length!
She mocks those who say that soccer is catching on in America, brainlessly comparing soccer ratings to the NFL. One wonders why Coulter did not compare soccer numbers to hockey, or why she does not discuss how fascinating a summer game between two last place baseball teams can be. The reason is simple. Viewed in its totality, Anne Coulter's bash piece on soccer reads like the spew of someone who embarrassingly thinks that international, professional soccer is comparable to weekend soccer clinics in the suburbs. She practically says as much when sarcastically stating that soccer players get ribbons and a juice box at the end of games. Such an obnoxious, ignorant observation makes one cringe.
Not content with the depth and breadth of her useless diatribe against a sport loved by millions around the world, Anne Coulter concludes her rant by inferring that real, true Americans who understand and use English do not like or watch soccer. Since the British seem to know English pretty well yet like soccer, and since I respect the patriotism and fervor of the many true Americans who love this wonderful sport, I would suggest, and hope, that Coulter wrote this piece in some desperate attempt to get attention. Her argument that love of soccer is correlated to moral decay is as ignorant and arrogant as can be, and I can only hope and pray that she was somehow just kidding with that one.
As a proud conservative who loves this country, I cringe when Republican senators make asses of themselves with mindless rants gleefully picked up by the liberal media to support its script that the Right is populated by narrow-minded morons with a superiority complex. Regardless of her intent or, for that matter, what she was drinking when she penned this piece, Anne Coulter has made me cringe every bit as much as the drooling red-neck Republican who says that the only true Americans are those who can trace their roots back six generations on American soil.
She has come off as the Right's Keith Olbermann, foolishly thinking that any political perception she has spreads to the world of sports when, in fact, she merely displays her total ignorance of the sport she bashes, and her likely superficial knowledge of the sports she pretends to know something about. She has done the Right no favors with this embarrassing piece, which merely proves that America is also the land of the obnoxious and the home of the knave.
© Gabriel Garnica
June 28, 2014
Look, I am as conservative as can be, and I agree with many of the things Anne Coulter writes about, but her latest column, in which she rants against soccer, is an embarrassment.
Her accusations that soccer is too long and too boring fly in the face of facts which show that the average American football or baseball game is often longer than the typical soccer match. Coulter's absurdly ignorant argument that the sport has no individual achievement or heroes, or blame for that matter, is so out of touch with reality as to make one wonder if she needs psychiatric intervention. Tell Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, Messi, and Ronaldo that soccer has no heroes, MVPs, or achievement.
Not content to stem her soccer ignorance, Coulter continues on, arguing that the prospect of personal humiliation, personal disgrace, or serious physical injury is required of any sport. Tell poor Moacir Barbosa, the goalie of the Brazil team upset by Uruguay in the final of the last World Cup played in Brazil, back in 1950, that there is no blame, humiliation, or disgrace in soccer. Barbosa's life was practically ruined, and he was mostly ostracized by most Brazilians, who blamed him for the loss. In fact, Flavio Costa, the coach of the losing Brazilian side, had to exit the stadium in disguise because he valued his continued existence. How about Roberto Baggio, Italian scoring legend who, despite being often named as one of the greatest living players, is often remembered for missing a decisive penalty shot in the final of the 1994 World Cup against Brazil, costing his team the title. Coulter drivels that, when baseball players strike out, they are left standing alone at the plate. Has she ever seen what a player looks like when he or she misses a decisive penalty shot, where the advantage is so stacked in the kicker's favor as to make a miss an utter act of incompetence? Wars have broken out over soccer games! As for serious physical injury, I guess Coulter thinks that outstanding players such as my country's Radamel Falcao Garcia, one of the world's best strikers, missed this tournament because of a paper cut.
Coulter mocks soccer's more internationally used name, football, insinuating that American football is the real football. Considering that 90% or more game play in soccer is using primarily the feet, and 90% of American football involves using the hands, Coulter's claim that American football is real football makes no sense at all.
Coulter rants that soccer has too many 0-0 ties, and spews a shocking bias against her own gender by wondering how soccer can truly express athletic talent when boys and girls can play together. Let's have your average football or baseball player run up and down a soccer field, send perfect crosses like Cristiano Ronaldo recently inflicted on the U.S. team, or score on a bicycle kick or a perfectly placed header, and then we can talk. When a sport's referees are in better shape than many other sports' actual athletes, athletic ability may not be the way to bash said sport! Coulter argues that no serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level. I guess she has not seen girls play softball or baseball with boys, as I have. Women do not play soccer with men at the professional level, so this argument is desperate at best and mindless at worst.
She tells us that she resents the force-fed nature of soccer because, you know, nothing is force-fed in our American culture, at least according to Kim Kardashian and half of the garbage served as TV programming every new season. She constantly compares soccer to American football, and finds soccer far less compelling and much more lacking as a sport. Coulter is entitled to her opinion, but I suspect I know twice as much about American football as she does, and it is not because she is a female. Despite the fact that I love American football, I enjoy a good soccer game as well, and I do not find it necessary to bash other people's taste in sports.
Coulter bashes soccer because it is "foreign" and mockingly compares it to the metric system as what she considers a foreign fad far inferior to American know how. Here, Coulter truly steps into the world of ethnocentric, ignorant arrogance. She infers that soccer and the metric system are like two stupidly bland and useless drugs which liberals pretend are worth our time. She ignores the scientific and mathematical fact that the metric system is, in fact, more universal to use. Coulter loves the fact that an inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, and a yard the length of his belt because, according to her perceptive mind, these are easy to visualize. This must be true since, you know, everyone's thumbs, feet, and belts are the exact same length!
She mocks those who say that soccer is catching on in America, brainlessly comparing soccer ratings to the NFL. One wonders why Coulter did not compare soccer numbers to hockey, or why she does not discuss how fascinating a summer game between two last place baseball teams can be. The reason is simple. Viewed in its totality, Anne Coulter's bash piece on soccer reads like the spew of someone who embarrassingly thinks that international, professional soccer is comparable to weekend soccer clinics in the suburbs. She practically says as much when sarcastically stating that soccer players get ribbons and a juice box at the end of games. Such an obnoxious, ignorant observation makes one cringe.
Not content with the depth and breadth of her useless diatribe against a sport loved by millions around the world, Anne Coulter concludes her rant by inferring that real, true Americans who understand and use English do not like or watch soccer. Since the British seem to know English pretty well yet like soccer, and since I respect the patriotism and fervor of the many true Americans who love this wonderful sport, I would suggest, and hope, that Coulter wrote this piece in some desperate attempt to get attention. Her argument that love of soccer is correlated to moral decay is as ignorant and arrogant as can be, and I can only hope and pray that she was somehow just kidding with that one.
As a proud conservative who loves this country, I cringe when Republican senators make asses of themselves with mindless rants gleefully picked up by the liberal media to support its script that the Right is populated by narrow-minded morons with a superiority complex. Regardless of her intent or, for that matter, what she was drinking when she penned this piece, Anne Coulter has made me cringe every bit as much as the drooling red-neck Republican who says that the only true Americans are those who can trace their roots back six generations on American soil.
She has come off as the Right's Keith Olbermann, foolishly thinking that any political perception she has spreads to the world of sports when, in fact, she merely displays her total ignorance of the sport she bashes, and her likely superficial knowledge of the sports she pretends to know something about. She has done the Right no favors with this embarrassing piece, which merely proves that America is also the land of the obnoxious and the home of the knave.
© Gabriel Garnica
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