Fernando Leon/Getty Images Well, there's no denying that Ann Coulter knows how to make headlines.
While the rest of America is celebrating Team USA's advancement into the World Cup knockout round (despite losing to Germany earlier today), the conservative columnist is slamming the sport in her latest article for her website, claiming, "any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay."
And here, we thought it was an opportunity to put on our patriotic hats, cheer and drink beer.
But we couldn't be more wrong if we're listening to the words of the political commentator, who not only suggests that soccer is not a "real sport," but also believes that the popular pastime pushes a liberal agenda on the American public.
"Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer," she writes, "In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls—all in front of a crowd...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.'"
"Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys," Coulter continues. "No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level."
The 52-year-old blonde also blasted the lack of scoring in soccer ("No other 'sport' ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer") as well as the inability to use your hands in the game (never mind that soccer players are some of the most talented athletes in the world).
"What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs," she writes. "Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!"
And somehow, she even found a way to group Beyoncé's popularity together with the rising interest in the sport.
"I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer," she says. "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."
Unfortunately for Ann, soccer is catching on, as the match between U.S. and Portugal on Sunday night was the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history. And despite the fact that viewership has yet to rival the Super Bowl (as Ann so eloquently points out), futbol is undoubtedly becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.A.
But Coulter's true beef with the sport seems to lie in the fact that "it's foreign" and therefore, in her eyes, should be deemed un-American.
"If more 'Americans' are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law," she writes. "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."
And we promise you, Ann: We all tuned in to the thrilling game here at work, today. Some of our great-grandfathers were born here and some of them weren't. But we all came together to cheer on Team USA—and what's more American than that?