I can understand why someone with no interest in soccer would be bored by the World Cup. But there’s a peculiar defensiveness to Shafer’s public posturing, to his need to explain why the rest of the world’s delight holds a negative value for him. He’ll accept sporting tweets for the World Series and the Triple Crown, but not for a phenomenon that, frankly, makes the World Series look like a Little League competition in Poughkeepsie. Sorry, Jack, but I think you’ve got to expect that the biggest sporting event in the world is going to dominate the conversation every four years. Publicly trumpeting how you are cutting yourself off from this dialogue is an unworthy form of American isolationism. But at least Shafer is resisting the tide based on little more than sheer annoyance. Whether she’s pretending or not, Coulter is giving voice to those who see soccer as a threat to American exceptionalism and preeminence. Their deprecation is rooted in fear and ugly xenophobia, and that’s just sad. Because there’s nothing to fear here. One of the things you begin to understand as you fall deeper under the spell of the World Cup is that soccer on this grand stage is the closest thing we have on this planet to a language that everyone can understand; whether they are Cantonese speakers in a Hong Kong subway station or favela-dwellers in Rio or corn-fed Iowans in a bar in Sioux City. It’s an irresistible new world order. Next time around, the volume will be even more deafening.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:40:26 +0000
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