Ann Coulter Doesn’t Like Soccer, Because Liberals and Immigrants Do

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s
latest column pokes fun at soccer for being a lame sport
enjoyed by liberals because, she believes, no one gets hurt, there
are no individual successes, and a lot of matches end in scoreless
ties. The last observation is difficult to dispute, but the first
two are on flimsier grounds. She points out in football there are
few scoreless ties even though it’s “a lot harder to score when a
half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.” I suppose
it’s all a matter of perspective. I’ve heard rugby fans, for
example, scoff at how dull football is. Despite Coulter’s
romanticized notions of football, like most things American it
seems to be becoming about
safety first too.

Nevertheless, Coulter chose a fun, newsy topic and hooked in to
her wheelhouse—conservative horror at the changing world around
them—so good for her. I’m not going to defend soccer point by point
from her column, soccer doesn’t need it, I don’t need it, and you
don’t need it. I did, however, find this kicker about soccer and
immigrants interesting:

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.

It’s a stunning bit of historical illiteracy—if your
grandparents were born 100 years ago, they could well have been the
children of the generation of immigrants that at the time were
flooding into this country from Europe. That wave of European
immigration actually helped soccer become quite popular in the U.S.
in the early 20th century. In fact,
a mostly-amateur team consisting of six players born in Great
Britain took the USA to third place in the 1930 World Cup, the
first World Cup and to date America’s best finish in the
competition. The French called the American team “shot putters”
because of how bulky the players were—sound  pretty
“American.”

Immigrants today may look different than the ones a hundred
years ago (although “race theorists” of a hundred years ago often
tried to differentiate
southern Europeans from their less recently settled in the U.S.
northern European kin), but they’re largely interested in the same
things—building lives, families, and businesses in the U.S. And
following soccer. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a nation made up
of immigrants remains influenced by each successive generation of
it.

Ann Coulter wisely kept her soccer comparisons to football,
invented in the Ivy League (liberal elite alert!), and avoided
invoking that great American pastime of baseball. Baseball itself,
of course, was brought to the U.S. from England by an even earlier
wave of immigrants than the ones that helped produce America’s most
successful World Cup team ever. With America it’s immigrants all
the way down.