Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Coulter argues the reason people are watching soccer now is because of Sen. Edward Kennedy's 1965 immigration law.
"I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer," she wrote. "One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time."
She also says soccer is not a "real sport." A real sport, she argues, requires individual achievement and "the prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury."
"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," she wrote.
Tweeters also joined in on the chorus of criticism.
"Ann Coulter meets a new low. I have no words. Probably the worst column I've read. And I don't even like soccer," one person tweeted.
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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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!
• 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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 don't even know how to respond. She's daft. That's it.
The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy
As one comic noted, it's gotten to the point where you can't tell the parodies of right-wing rants from the real things...
Valete,
JohnS (who played soccer, who has watched the World Cup for the last 20 years, who's great-grandfather was a land-owner in Texas and who's great-great-grandfather was as a land-owner in Virginia)
Valete,
JohnS
"You don't believe data - you test data. If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely <expletive deleted> ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around"
Isn't there enough proof by now to have her sectioned or something? I know people who are clearly more mentally stable than this person who have spent time in mental institutions.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
I think she's worked a deal with her family. They're concerned about getting a phonecall that Coulter's neighbours are reporting a really bad smell and that they'll have to go to her house to find a decaying corpose, so they need a way to be periodically told she isn't dead yet. Now, that can't mean going over and visiting her, because, well she's Ann Coulter and I'm pretty sure not even direct relations are willing to spend time talking to her, so instead every so often she just writes some insane bs sure to get to spammed across the internet, just to let her family know she isn't dead yet.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/27 03:04:52
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Meh. Once again she tries to get the attention of people she knows will go bat s#!t crazy making some outrages claim. It's what she does best and gets paid a lot for.
That said, I do not like soccer, in fact, I hate it. I pay attention for a few minutes during the world cup but don't actually root for anyone. But I respect the talent soccer players have and the amount of training they go through. I think the amount of endurance they have is insane and something I think anyone who is an athlete to enjoys athletics can respect.
I only have room for one true love for sports. Football. The American kind.
Crazies are always funny. Once read a feminist blog claiming all sex was rape. Its stuff like this that provides a good amount of laughter during a long day at work.
Gonna read this site now, judging by your comments its somewhat run of the mill to see stuff like this there?
She's a talking head who says outrageous things to sell books to and get on the news. She repeats this every time she has a new book. She's tall, thin, and blonde, so is frequently on an infotainment network that is fond of thin blonde women of a similar political stripe.
I'm a little surprised you've never heard of her, with how familiar you typically are with American politics.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
She's a talking head who says outrageous things to sell books to and get on the news. She repeats this every time she has a new book. She's tall, thin, and blonde, so is frequently on an infotainment network that is fond of thin blonde women of a similar political stripe.
I'm a little surprised you've never heard of her, with how familiar you typically are with American politics.
heard her name before and I think I vaguely recall her being an author, but I think she quickly found her way into my "people who I can completely forget about with no negative effects" column.
Jimsolo wrote: That being said, it's not like she's the only American celebrity to make jokes about soccer being the most boring sport in the history of ever.
It's not the "soccer is boring" comments that are the issue, it's most of everything else she said.
d-usa wrote: "When the Internet sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending posters that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing strawmen. They're bringing spam. They're trolls. And some, I assume, are good people."
easysauce wrote: heard her name before and I think I vaguely recall her being an author, but I think she quickly found her way into my "people who I can completely forget about with no negative effects" column.
Yes, she fits in well with Alan Grayson, Rush Limbaugh, Alan West, Michelle Malkin, etc etc etc.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ninja'd!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/27 03:31:06
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
I hadn't heard of her either, but she has to be a troll.
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.
Despite the fact that a game of football goes less than half the time as a game of NFL . *applause*
I have no idea how she managed to bring the metric system in but that really stood out as a big troll win. I am disappointed though, ann coulter just informed me I am not a man, neither my thumb nor my foot match the measurement described.
she is hilarious though...
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.
Yes I agree Ann, women participating in sport means it isn't a serious sport, luck they are introducing knitting as a serious sport for women next olympics.
I am upset that she considers boxing not a real (no use of opposable thumbs) sport as it seems to cover her other criteria.
Manchu - "But so what? The Bible also says the flood destroyed the world. You only need an allegorical boat to tackle an allegorical flood."
Shespits "Anything i see with YOLO has half naked eleventeen year olds Girls. And of course booze and drugs and more half naked elventeen yearolds Girls. O how i wish to YOLO again!"
Rubiksnoob "Next you'll say driving a stick with a Scandinavian supermodel on your lap while ripping a bong impairs your driving. And you know what, I'M NOT GOING TO STOP, YOU FILTHY COMMUNIST"
Manchu - "But so what? The Bible also says the flood destroyed the world. You only need an allegorical boat to tackle an allegorical flood."
Shespits "Anything i see with YOLO has half naked eleventeen year olds Girls. And of course booze and drugs and more half naked elventeen yearolds Girls. O how i wish to YOLO again!"
Rubiksnoob "Next you'll say driving a stick with a Scandinavian supermodel on your lap while ripping a bong impairs your driving. And you know what, I'M NOT GOING TO STOP, YOU FILTHY COMMUNIST"
Ouze wrote: I'm a little surprised you've never heard of her, with how familiar you typically are with American politics.
She really dropped off the radar in about 2006, I'd say. Her and Michelle Malkin and a couple of others that really paved new ground for Republican crazies seemed to have done about all they could do, and in order to keep their place as the crazy end of right wing politics they either had to get more fanatical (as Malkin did, especially on race) or just start making weird comments about random nonsense, like Coulter.
But that doesn't get you anywhere near the same coverage, so for anyone who came to this after, say, 2006, I'm not surprised they don't know her. It's a bit of an age test, like when you're talking about Dick Morris and you realise the other person in the conversation doesn't know that before both Democrats and Republicans hated that Republican douchbag Dick Morris, both Democrats and Republicans hated that Democrat douchebag Dick Morris.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/27 04:41:49
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Man, I can't believe you guys actually care about this. Of all the things she's been saying over the years you (and the rest of the internet apparently) get mad at this? o.O
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/27 04:40:45
Ouze wrote: Yes, she fits in well with Alan Grayson, Rush Limbaugh, Alan West, Michelle Malkin, etc etc etc.
I'm pretty sure Alan West is genuinely crazy.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
I don't get soccer.
Its insanely boring to watch. Nothing ever happens. You play hours to maybe score one goal and win. And it can end in a tie.
Sure, there is action, but its pointless action. It almost never amounts to anything, just passing the ball back and forth while making feeble attempts at scoring which might occasionally succeed.
And you've got entire countries who eat it up? People got nothing actually interesting to watch obviously.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Its insanely boring to watch. Nothing ever happens. You play hours to maybe score one goal and win. And it can end in a tie.
Sure, there is action, but its pointless action. It almost never amounts to anything, just passing the ball back and forth while making feeble attempts at scoring which might occasionally succeed.
And you've got entire countries who eat it up? People got nothing actually interesting to watch obviously.
Sounds a lot like baseball.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/27 05:13:58
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
No, stuff happens in baseball.
Soccer is literally no more action filled than a couple guys passing a ball back and forth between themselves. Except there is a bunch of guys instead of just 2.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD! 
Go watch some 
