Balls to you, Ann Coulter

During the halftime break in the Germany versus USA match, I stumbled upon a piece by conservative American pundit Ann Coulter, declaring hating soccer to be America’s favourite pastime.

Coulter wrote of the beautiful game, “Any growing interest in soccer a sign of nation’s moral decay.”

Who would have expected such a broad statement from a warrior of the American Right? Please stop here and click the link above and read it for yourself. Go on, I urge you.

And we’re back. What did you think of it?

Ann Coulter has long been an unapologetic voice for conservative values, some saying she veers into Tea Party territory. And that’s fine. George Brandis was, in spite of himself, correct in his “people have a right to be bigoted” statement.

Coulter’s diatribe against soccer interests me. Is it borne of a need to stir the pot of what must be an easy target given its timing? Or are things slow in the hard right media lane these days? Certainly Coulter isn’t afraid of drawing some rather long bows.

Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer.

Clearly Ann is not familiar with the brilliance of registas like Andrea Pirlo, or the rampant individualism of any member of the 1982 Selecao, but let me assure her that individualism is everywhere in football.

Maybe if she saw some of the obscene player salaries she’d be more convinced?

When baseball players strike out, they’re standing alone at the plate.

And yes, when players miss crucial penalties, they too stand or slump alone. The penalty spot is not a mounded area, granted, but the solitude of failure is evident to a tree stump.

Just ask Franco Baresi, Roberto Baggio and David Beckham. She may be aware of the existence of the latter, given her insularity to all things European.

But the gifts keep on coming, and identifies what is in her mind an unwelcome coercive racial shift, as if somehow an evil European influence is brainwashing and converting wholesome white America into liking soccer.

Coulter goes on to compare this lament to the infiltration of the evil metric system into American schools, insisting as if trying to convince herself that the imperial one is eminently easier and more rational. But, as she says, “it’s foreign”.

Coulter debases soccer via use of ratings and viewer numbers, as if these are the only KPIs for a sport’s validity. But the piece’s nirvana is reached when the old enemy, immigration, rears its ugly head.

She somehow links the emergence of soccer (that she persistently doubts the popularity of throughout the post) to, wait for it, the 1965 Immigration Act introduced by Ted Kennedy. The resultant demographic shift is responsible for the game that Coulter decries so much.

That’s right, any child whose great grandfather was born in the USA is assuredly not watching ‘soccer’, according to our great sage.

She also states with some authority that all sport should be a form of subliminal warfare, even quoting Margaret Thatcher’s quote after Germany had defeated England, “Don’t worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.”

I wonder if Coulter has ever watched any of the derbies that act as proxy regional and cultural wars in any given country, let lone a Germany versus Netherlands World Cup match. Maybe it is a little too subliminal. Maybe the juxtaposition of nationalism and soccer by figures such as Franco and Berlusconi is more up her alley.

Coulter delves into evolutionary biomechanics in accusing soccer of not utilising our human advantage of opposable thumbs. I can already see David Attenborough wincing.

Coulter ends by hoping for a time when “new Americans” not only learn English, but drop their soccer fetish. A nicely crafted phrase guaranteed to get her devotees moist with nationalistic pride.

After such a poorly argued diatribe, based on nothing other than ignorance and unabated xenophobia, this is the dusting of icing sugar on top of what is a very stupid cake.

Thanks Ann, and balls to you.