Nothing Is Un-American

A German coaches the US National team, and it's time for the World Cup. This combination results in people who don't know what they're talking about making big, sweeping generalizations about what it all means. The result: a rather spectacular 24 hours wherein the New York Times published a piece claiming Klinsmann was making US soccer less American and the Wall Street Journal published one claiming he was making it more so.

Meanwhile, Brits are whining that USA fans use their own lingo too much and shouldn't use correct lingo… in the same article. A classics professor is writing the de rigueur "Soccer is Un-American" article. (The premise of this brief piece is obvious, but if there is anything that is Un-American (there isn't), it's some fusty old twit in a tweed jacket getting the vapors about the Romans.)

This self-contradictory pile is all very American. One of my wife's most prized possessions is a keychain from the Eugene V. Debs Memorial Kazoo Night. The Eugene V. Debs Memorial Kazoo Night was held annually at Tiger Stadium until it was torn down. Labor people would show up at a baseball game to give each other trinkets and pay tribute to a guy who was locked up for protesting the USA's involvement in World War I. With kazoos, evidently.

The keychain created for this event at the national pastime of the most capitalistic society yet implemented reads "Lock Up Capitalist Lackeys." The United States contains multitudes.

------------------------

One of these multitudes last washed his hair in 1976, several years before he was born. He brought an acoustic guitar to the World Cup. Another is here because his family was fortunate enough to emigrate from Haiti. Clint Dempsey's parents sold some of their guns to finance their kid's soccer career. Jermaine Jones is here because his dad was still in Germany 30 years after World War II ended. Michael Bradley is the spear-bald son of a spear-bald soccer coach. Matt Besler's just a normal guy.

The confusion about just how American soccer is, and how American USA soccer is, is based on a conception of America that erroneously excludes things. The US soccer team is a bunch of second or third generation immigrants and Americans who fell in love with the weird kicky game, because who knows why but go to hell if you want to tell me what to do.

If we didn't invent it we stole it, or are in the process of stealing it, and putting it in ourselves. We are less advanced in our assimilation of soccer than we are pizza. We are nonetheless coming.

If you hate it, oh well. No one cares, because the most American thing is: don't tread.

----------------------------

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO