Ann Coulter: Immigrant Soccer Fans Are Leading America Into Moral Decay

[Underseer]

Do you think conservatives and libertarians have any idea how funny the rest of us find Coulter to be?

 

[dismal]

It certainly is amusing to watch all the conservoprogressives being successfully trolled by her.

 

[funinspace]

Do you think conservatives and libertarians have any idea how funny the rest of us find Coulter to be?

LOL...the only place I read any of her writings, is right here...Yeah, she is quite the whack job, and so bizarro that it is sometimes even funny.

FiS
moderate green libertarian

 

[ideologyhunter]

The Coulter strikes again -- showing the same instant mastery she's already achieved on Native Americans (unimportant nomads who never had land to steal), stem cell research (Booo, there are no benefits), evolution (Darwin bad, walkin' talkin' snakes good.) You go, Ann. (One of Stephanie Miller's call-ins had a new name for Coulter: Blondie McProstate.) My fave Ann moments come when you conjoin her description of Hillary as 'pond scum' and Dem. Convention women as 'pie wagons' with her book on how liberals are the name callers.

 

[doubtingt]

Well, maybe if we informed Americans that the US did not, in fact, create any of those sports that'd change. Basketball was created by a Canadian,

The modern professional sport of basketball was created in the USA and was not created by any single person. Attributing something like modern basketball to a single person is an inaccurate and simplistic way to view history.
Naismith is credited with the first version of the sport, but even though he was Canadian, he came up with it as part of his job in Springfield Mass, USA where the first game was played, and played by Americans.
The first professional league was in the US, and outside the YMCA, most organized games occurred among American colleges where, along with early American pro leagues, the modern version of the sport was developed with Naismiths original rules heavily altered. IOW, in the sport of basketball that Americans love is the modern sport of basketball played mostly by US colleges and the NBA, and that sport is heavily a US creation.

American Football is just a variation of Rugby which was invented by the British,

That's like saying that every sport that uses a ball is "just a variation" of the first sport that used a ball. Meaningless. The two have very little in common, which is why devout NFL fans haven't a clue what is happening when they first see a Rugby match, and the same for Rugby fans.

and (WORST OF ALL!) Baseball was actually invented by the *French*, passed through to the British, and then finally adopted in the early US.

Once again, a sport is defined by its rules, and if the rules are not the same then it isn't the same sport. The existence of prior sports with vague similarities but vast and critical differences, doesn't make it the same sport. The sport we refer to as baseball today is not all the same sports you are referring to. The sport we refer to as baseball that is loved by Americans was created and developed largely within the US.

Like people do generally, we like the things we are good at.

I don't think this is right at all. When we look at football (soccer); it's almost universally popular everywhere on the planet; even in countries that rarely if ever win an international match.

It is more popular most places than the USA, but it is not at all universally popular. When you look at the % of the populations that play soccer (not professionally), which indicates popularity, it varies wildly among nations and predictably correlated with how good those nations are in international competition. Asia, Africa, and many Eastern European countries have lower popularity and they don't do that well. It is most popular in the same Western European and central and south American countries that tend to dominate in international competition. Notable exceptions are Russia, and specific countries in Africa like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Zambia, and South Africa, where is it more popular than most African countries and are all countries ranked in the top 60 worldwide.

 

[dystopian]

The modern professional sport of basketball was created in the USA and was not created by any single person. Attributing something like modern basketball to a single person is an inaccurate and simplistic way to view history.
Naismith is credited with the first version of the sport, but even though he was Canadian, he came up with it as part of his job in Springfield Mass, USA where the first game was played, and played by Americans. The first professional league was in the US, and outside the YMCA, most organized games occurred among American colleges where, along with early American pro leagues, the modern version of the sport was developed with Naismiths original rules heavily altered. IOW, in the sport of basketball that Americans love is the modern sport of basketball played mostly by US colleges and the NBA, and that sport is heavily a US creation.

This just sounds like you're engaging in the same kind of nationalistic 'it's OUR sport!!' nonsense you were talking about. "Sure, it was a FOREIGNER who invented the sport, but he did it *here* so we did it and its as american as apple pie... which yes, I know was invented by the Dutch but hey we eat it here so that makes it american. Or something. Look, the point is shut up it's american y'hear!"

The two have very little in common,

I'm sorry, but what? The two sports look pretty much identical to an outsider, other than that one of them uses body armor and the other doesn't. One is very clearly off-shoot of the other. An insider might be able to better notice the difference; but insiders are also going to be more biased about how important those differences are. If the average person whose an idiot when it comes to the sport is going to think the two look damn-near identical, and historians say one came from the other, then we can't say that the two have 'very little in common.'

Once again, a sport is defined by its rules, and if the rules are not the same then it isn't the same sport. The existence of prior sports with vague similarities but vast and critical differences, doesn't make it the same sport. The sport we refer to as baseball today is not all the same sports you are referring to.

Yes it is; just because there have been rules updates over the years doesn't mean it's become some entirely new entity. They're hardly vague similarities; the differences are fairly small and not critical to the base nature of the game. Sports have rules updates and changes all the time, even today. That doesn't mean we suddenly start thinking of them as completely new sports. It certainly doesn't mean we should give credit where it's due; you shouldn't lay some exclusive nationalistic claim to a sport when it was obviously derived from prior developments. Give credit where it's due; the US refined and popularized these sports (albeit it with one of them really only in their own country); it didn't invent them out of thin air.

The sport we refer to as baseball that is loved by Americans was created and developed largely within the US.

They didn't even come up with the name. What they did was take an existing game and refined it; it wasn't "created" within the US, it was *changed* within the US. There is a difference.

It is more popular most places than the USA, but it is not at all universally popular.

I said almost.

When you look at the % of the populations that play soccer (not professionally), which indicates popularity, it varies wildly among nations and predictably correlated with how good those nations are in international competition. Asia, Africa, and many Eastern European countries have lower popularity and they don't do that well. It is most popular in the same Western European and central and south American countries that tend to dominate in international competition. Notable exceptions are Russia, and specific countries in Africa like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Zambia, and South Africa, where is it more popular than most African countries and are all countries ranked in the top 60 worldwide.

The map you posted doesn't show the popularity of football at all; it shows how many people actively PLAY the sport. The overwhelming majority of people who would call themselves fans of the sport do not actually play it. Football is by far the most popular sport on the planet both when it comes to number of players (generally only the red countries on your map are going to have other sports which are played more) as well as the number of fans. Nothing else comes close. Even looking more locally, Football is the most popular sport in almost every country in the world; by a pretty wide margin. When we look at how many people watch the sport; football absolutely dominates. For instance, the total number of views for the various matches of the 2006 world cup exceeded 30 billion. No other world tournament of any sport comes even close to a fraction of that. Cricket is a distant second and field hockey an even more distant third.

 

[blastula]

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to the NFL.

 

[pegasus8]

There is one redeeming point in another idiotic Coulter interpretation to make her sell books, see soccer this time....

We all can watch Coulter Geist grow old and older as she resembles one of the witches who shares an eye with her other sisters. And some of us thought that only Meg Whitman looked like Mr Ed's sister!

Can anyone say nasty ass getting old coke head? Well all in the name of conservative family values though.

Peace

Pegasus

 

[Celldweller]

She can chew on this "moral decay." (During the Germany v. US game)

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Ann is just mad because there is no position on a soccer team called stick with Adam's apple, so she can't play.

She smokes heavily. She probably couldn't run ten yards. The best she could do at sports is being a football yob.

 

[RavenSky]

Ann is just mad because there is no position on a soccer team called stick with Adam's apple, so she can't play.

I've always thought she looked like a praying mantis. One day out of curiosity I googled "praying mantis Ann coulter". I had to laugh at how many people out there think the are thing.