Everything in Its Own Time

Over at the Notion on “The Nation” website, Dave Zirin offers the hypothesis that the far right might dislike the World Cup either because of rampant xenophobia (my term, describing his description), or just plain old envy over the fact that team USA doesn’t tend to do very well. He also makes the point that there are many people in the U.S. that spend a great deal of time (and money) putting their kids through soccer programs. You know – those Clinton era Soccer Moms we heard so much about, but don’t hear about anymore.

Well, I’ve my own theories on why you don’t hear so much about soccer moms (like maybe a high profile hockey mom), but I’m here to tell you that we soccer moms could easily kick…. No. This is not about proving we’re tougher than those hockey moms, or anything else like that. But I will say that McCain and Palin stickers were far more common in our soccer complex parking lots than Obama ones, in spite of the fact that we’re firmly in Blue territory here in the Pittsburgh Metro area. And no, I’m not even going to begin to analyze why that is.

What I am going to say is folks like Beck and Liddy need to be very careful when they decide to open their mouths about sporting events on the world stage – you know, where the teams represent nations, not cities or neighborhoods. It gets particularly sticky when you consider ones that come up once every four years. Sounds sort of like the Olympics, doesn’t it? And for good reason. The United States is the only country involved in the World Cup that doesn’t call soccer “football”. We’re the odd ones, that have players in protective gear kicking, passing, and running with an odd shaped ball, instead of kicking a round black and white ball. And honestly, there’s nothing really exceptional to that either, especially if you’re talking with someone from Britain – they think all that gear proves that our players are weak, since their rugby players don’t use it.

And regardless of the history of the game, the reason why it is so popular worldwide has everything to do with two things – the fact that it “can” be played with little expense, and it is easy for very young children to learn. The latter is probably one of the biggest reasons why we have so many soccer moms like me in this country. The soccer field is the one place where the really young can play, and get the experience of success in the game early on. It’s much easier for a pre-school age child to kick a ball into a goal than it is for that same child to hit a home run, or get a touchdown. Soccer, at least the way it is taught to very young children, is far less complicated than the other American team sports. And even though the object of the game, and many of the rules are generally the same between soccer and hockey, the kids don’t need to be on ice to play it.

Now, back to that unpatriotic display of nonsense that the country saw and heard out Beck and Liddy. Team USA at the World Cup is no different than Team USA anywhere else, in any other sporting event – period. You want to call yourself a patriot, you support your athletes no matter what when they compete on the world stage. And please don’t insult us by talking about your personal problems with people from other countries, and try to justify it as a common feeling shared by many Americans. We’re not all like you. Some of us even encourage our children to explore other cultures. And in all honesty, Beck and Liddy owe every child that plays soccer in this country an apology – and of course, they owe a public apology to Team USA at the World Cup. It’s the right thing to do.

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Now playing: R. Kelly – Sign of a Victory (The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Anthem) [feat. Soweto Spiritual Singers]
via FoxyTunes