From The Nation by way of NPR, über-enlightened opinionator Dave Zirin explains why righty wingnuts hate soccer...it's because they're racists, of course:
Among adults, the sport is also growing because people from Latin America, Africa, and the West Indies have brought their love of the beautiful game to an increasingly multicultural United States. As sports journalist Simon Kuper wrote very adroitly in his book Soccer Against the Enemy, "When we say Americans don't play soccer we are thinking of the big white people who live in the suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans [and other nationalities] do play, and watch and read about soccer." In other words, Beck rejects soccer because his idealized "real America" - in all its monochromatic glory – rejects it as well. To be clear, I know a lot of folks who can't stand soccer. It's simply a matter of taste. But for Beck it's a lot more than, "Gee. It's kind of boring." Instead it's, "Look out whitey! Felipe Melo's gonna get your mama!"
But that's just the NFL! Major League Baseball is nothing but white guys! Oh, wait...
And David "Big Papi" Ortiz is from Dominican Republic. He's a twofer! Not shown here are Hideki Okajima, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Junichi Tazawa, all from Japan.
Ace makes some great points about why soccer hasn't exactly caught fire here as a spectator sport.
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Wow. HTML code is all jacked up in this post. Gonna have to fix that up.
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