when all else fails, blame the left
That dreadful monolithic cult known only as the Left has been slowly taking over the United States ever since FDR re-named Marx's Communist Manifesto platform into the New Deal and foisted socialism onto our great nation. Every social, economic and political problem can be traced back to the Left - 9/11, for instance. About 35% of Americans believe in this train of thought, and Norbizness has done a thorough job documenting this phenomenon in the blogosphere. I found a great example of this in the soccer blogosphere.
Y'all know by now that yo soy loco por el futbol. I don't care much for typical American sports, except for the occasional basketball game. This makes me a minority among sports fans in this country. Why is soccer (the world's most popular game) not popular in the United States? Simple - it's the Left's fault!
The left’s attitude to soccer is sheer hypocrisy. Newspapers that run editorials demanding that we accept immigrants never want to cover the sports that those immigrants like. Judges who respect international consensuses refuse to respect the international consensus reached a century ago that soccer is superior to other sports. Professors who promote multiculturalism are Americentrists when it comes to sports. The “Other,” it turns out, is a soccer fan, or else a cricket fan, and America’s leftists generally cannot handle that. A few years ago, I was talking with a young postmodernist professor when I introduced soccer into the conversation. “Soccer?” she said scornfully. “There’s no scoring.” I replied, “Try cricket, then. There’s plenty of scoring there.” “Cricket?” she said, looking utterly bewildered. Then she said accusingly, “You’re not an American.” Postmodernists generally hate America, but not America’s sports, it seems.
I don't expect the MSM to cover a sport that not many Americans are interested in. That would be bad for ratings and newspaper sales. It's a free market, so I hunt down media sources that do cover my favorite sport. They are readily available in the marketplace. Regarding multiculturalism, one can be accepting of other cultural groups without actually liking their cultural habits or styles. For instance, I can welcome immigrants from Korea or India into my community without having to enjoy the taste of Kim Chee or curry.
I'm not aware of any sociological studies correlating political ideology and sport preference. But I'd suspect that one's political beliefs do not predict one's like or dislike for a particular sport. If you polled soccer fans in the United States you'd probably discover their political persuasions are representative of the nation as a whole. There are liberal, conservative, socialist, fascist and anarchist soccer fans.
I sympathize with the author on the minority status of the sport. But blaming a particular political ideology for the lack of popularity of soccer is an exercise in fallacious logic. I don't expect my fellow lefties to automatically like soccer just as I don't expect them to enjoy boba tea, street murals, the Dead Kennedys or Debussy.
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