The Political Implications of the World Cup
Posted on July 3, 2014
"Football Pallo valmiina-cropped" by Pallo_valmiina.jpg: Christopher Bruno - sxc.huderivative work: Sir James (talk). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
A friend of mine, let’s call him Paul, hates soccer and didn’t watch a second of the World Cup.
He is not particularly alone. Ann Coulter, that modicum of balance and rationality, stated flatly that watching World Cup Soccer is un-American.
My guess is that Democrats by and large like soccer a lot more than Republicans.
But Paul and Ann represent an increasingly smaller percentage of the American people.
Soccer moms mostly hang out in the suburbs and they are the typical swing voter.
Thanks to Title IX, plenty of soccer Dads – be they Republican or Democrat – see the possibilities of their daughters getting big fat scholarships to college to play soccer.
Since soccer first invaded America’s shores (in the modern era) when we hosted the World Cup in 1994, it has slowly but surely gained fans and followers.
While Major League Soccer League is still not as popular as the European Leagues (why watch the minor leagues when you can watch Chelsea and Liverpool and Arsenal), it is popular enough to have Washington D.C. planning to build a new stadium dedicated solely to soccer.
The men’s soccer team’s ethnic diversity represents the future of America.
It wasn’t particularly easy to figure out what color or race or ethnic background of many of the players. Was he black, white, Hispanic, Asian? Who knows and who cares? He’s an American and for God’s sake’s, let’s hope he scores a goal.
Our World Cup Team is a melting pot, just like much of America. And that melting pot is skewing ever so slightly browner.
Conservatives like Ann Coulter might lament this changing face of America, but politicians don’t have luxury of pining for the past. They have to embrace the future.
Because, that’s where the future votes are.
So, I would recommend that Republicans start brushing up on the rules of soccer, and maybe start going to a few games.
This World Cup should serves as a wake-up call to the GOP. America’s changing and we might as well embrace the change rather than being run-over by it.