Talk to enough of the American cultural elite about the upcoming World Cup and you’re bound to hear about those ignorant xenophobes in the fly-over states and their backwards claims that soccer is un-American and a gateway to socialism.  Unlike the demographics of soccer in the rest of the world where it is the game of the masses, the bulk of soccer in the United States is confined to women’s leagues, recent immigrant enclaves or upper middle class suburban communities where births are particularly awkward as one has to accommodate the silver spoon protruding from each babe’s rear.

Despite optimistic attempts at tapping into the star power of international brands like Beckham, Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States is at best considered an emerging league and, more frequently, is the butt of jokes in the American sporting world.  This truth puts America at odds with the rest of the world, not because anyone is defending the quality of the MLS (everyone agrees it sucks), but because soccer is, by far, the most popular sport in the world.

The World Cup is not only the biggest sporting event on the planet, IT IS THE BIGGEST EVENT, end of story.  FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, estimates the viewership of the 2006 World Cup final at 715 million viewers.  Despite this kind of worldwide interest in the sport, the average American is barely aware of the World Cup and is still saying things like, “If they got rid of the goal keepers I might watch it.”  The reasons for this kind of unawareness are complex.  Access is one of them. Twenty years ago, following major European games basically required learning a second language and hunting around for obscure international newspapers.  Even today, coverage of world soccer on American sports websites is thin.  But the problem is not just access.  You also have cultural crusaders in what How Soccer Explains the World‘s Franklin Foer calls the “anti-soccer lobby”.

Says Foer: “There exists an important cleavage between the parts of the country that have adopted soccer as its pastime and the places that haven’t.  And this distinction lays bare an underrated source of American cultural cleavage: globalization.”   The message is clear: parts of the country – the blue parts on the electoral map – tend to be more susceptible to globalization and are therefore more interested in a global phenomenon like soccer. The red states cling to guns and religion and baseball and shun outside influences like soccer. Zeroing in on the anti-soccer lobby, Foer sums up the haters’ sentiment as he quotes USA Today’s Tom Weir: “Hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pickup, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing with the remote control.”

Foer quotes prominent American conservative, former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp who, in 1986 said the following on the floor of Congress: “I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it”; that “a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist (sport).”  It seems that wild claims on the Congressional floor about creeping socialism never go out of style.

Foer also quotes radio shock jock Jim Rome who raved, “My son is not playing soccer.  I will hand him ice skates and a shimmering sequined blouse before I hand him a soccer ball.”  With this kind of rabid and fundamentally maddening reasoning adding to the national conversation, it is no wonder that many stay away from soccer.

Max Bergmann for the Huffington Post: “What is so bizarre about this is how much the neocons sound like American-hating Europeans. Both dismiss American talent, American enthusiasm for soccer, and American understanding of the game. Just as neocons — and other soccer-hating sports writers of my parents generation — insist that we don’t get soccer and don’t care, European soccer writers are right there with them saying that Americans don’t get it and don’t care.”

David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange / The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer, claims that American soccer fans  “tend to lean liberal”  like Holland’s national team because they are “predisposed to liking the country itself”.  He then waxes lyrical about how Holland “represents the best that bourgeois society has to offer: a genuine liberal spirit, the epitome of a certain idea of civilization.”

Soccer Against the Enemy’s Simon Kuper writes, “The game remains too good a way of understanding the world to discard.”  “In the States, being a New Fan is often a mark of being a cosmopolitan.  Soccer’s advance in the country is an idex of how American daily life is globalizing.  The two groups of Americans who are probably keenest on the game – immigrants and their direct descendants on the one hand, and the highly educated on the other – are precisely the most globalized Americans.” (He includes Obama, “the alleged West Ham fan… son of a U.S. born mother and immigrant father,” in this cross-section of America).

In The Ball is Round / A Global History of Soccer, David Goldblatt quotes British historian Eric Hobsbawm who wrote, “The twentieth century was the American century in every way but one: sport.”  Goldblatt says, “This is not exactly news to anyone, but it remains an extraordinary and under-explored anomaly; an almost unique reversal of the dominant patterns of global influence and power.”

So what should the future hold for America and soccer?  Will we continue to see the cultural cleavage grow as it is pushed up by soccer, or are there other options?  As a Swede I’ve had to nurse my own disappointment at not having Sweden qualify for this summer’s World Cup with the hope that the US will go far instead.  The US advanced to the quarter finals in what many considered the coming of age of the US team at the 2002 World Cup.  Americans that had previously not paid attention to soccer learned that the US could not only compete in the sport, but that it had a chance of dominating.   Although the 2006 World Cup was a disappointment, continued American successes, along with the forces of globalization will hopefully result in a burqa being tossed over our supple cleavage.  America has always enjoyed a new frontier to conquer.  Why not soccer?

“Soccer’s mission in the United States is not, I think, to supplement or challenge American football, baseball or basketball, but to offer a conduit to the rest of the world; a sporting antidote to the excesses of isolationism, a prism for understanding the world that the United States may currently shape but will increasingly be shaped by.”  (Goldblatt )

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It’s time for the detractors and tea partiers and general naysayers to take a deep breath, pack up their signs and book their one-ways home.  Health care reform passed tonight in what even Fox News concedes is a victory for President Barack Obama.  The bill passed 219-212 with Republicans stamping their little feet all the way.  The bill is now headed to Obama to be signed into law and is what CNN calls, “the most sweeping American social legislation in more than four decades”.  The path for progress has finally been cleared and Obama has passed the biggest test of his presidency.

Victory had been far from clear.  In January, when Republican candidate Scott Brown won the senate seat held previously by the late Ted Kennedy, opponents of health care reform danced in the streets because Democrats had lost their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority that they had been counting on to pass the health care reform legislation.  In addition to this setback, Democrats were severely divided on the details of legislation being shaped and wallowed in analysis-paralysis.  On top of that, conservative spin masters were doing their level best to introduce wild misinformation Sarah-Palin-style about supposed “death panels” afforded by the new legislation and Communist-style takeovers of American health care.  The air was thick with the fear-mongering babble of conservative detractors that believed that if they could repeat the same lies often enough, people would believe it and progress would be halted.  Not so.

Truly herculean efforts by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democratic powerhouses, led by a newly-confident Obama, stood up for what they knew was right.  They fought harder than many thought they were capable of fighting.  Obama first postponed and then canceled his trip to Asia and Australia as the end drew closer and closer.  Those that had felt Obama had lost some of his umph were either delighted or disgusted when he made campaign-style speeches to huge crowds as late as Friday, March 19 when he addressed an enormously supportive student crowd at George Mason University, VA.  Yesterday he gave the most personal, direct and soul-baring speech of his presidency to House Democrats.  The crux of his argument was a quote from Lincoln,  “I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”  Obama spoke to Democrats, knowing full well that he was asking many of them to risk their careers.  In doing so, he asked them to dig deep and think about why they chose public service in the first place: “Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican… somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, ‘I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own.’ ”

We hadn’t seen this Obama in a while but what Obama proved tonight is that he could do more than win the most significant election in a generation; he could pull off one of the greatest comebacks of recent political history and truly grab the reins of leadership with both hands.  As both friend and foe predicted, Obama’s success as a leader hinged on his ability to deliver on health care.  The Republicans knew this and fought accordingly.  But in the end, it was Obama that won.  As he said tonight: “We rose above the weight of our politics. … We are still a people capable of doing big things.”  And this is a president who is still capable of doing great things.

We’ll end on how Slate sums up the closing acts of the circus that was the House debate today:

“Minority Leader John Boehner used his time to deride the process that led to the bill’s passage. ‘Can you say it was done out in the open?’ he asked. His rhetorical device at times backfired. ‘Do you really believe that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it?’ ‘Yes!’ shouted Democrats. Boehner fired back, ‘You can’t!’ ‘Yes we can!’ yelled Democrats.

When the vote tally reached 216, a cheer went up stage right. Democrats hugged and kissed. Republicans stood with crossed arms. It didn’t take long for Democrats to settle on their victory chant: ‘Yes we can!’ ”

Welcome to a new day.

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Bjorn Karlman

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It‘s been a battle between two of the best things about America:  Individual liberty on the one hand and shared responsibility on the other.   In the debate on health care we can’t resort to Dubya-style prattle that framed political dramas as a battle between good and evil.  It’s just not that simple.  There are good ideas and good people on both sides of this debate.  I don’t often speak in the first person on CultureMutt but I have no problem making this exception because of the extreme importance of what is at stake here.  I want to address this on as personal a level as possible.

Health care in America is an embarrassment, it is woefully inadequate and completely unacceptable in the world’s richest and most powerful country.  How is it that in America, the world’s sole superpower, we have huge slabs of the population that are one illness away from bankruptcy and devastating, personal failure?  How is it that insurance companies are able to deny people coverage based on pre-existing conditions?  This is cruel, this is heartless, this is fundamentally un-American.

I will admit that as a Swede, I often compare America to what I have in my country of birth.  Yes, Sweden has socialized medicine and yes, this does bias me in favor of providing health care as a right for all.  But I made a very conscious decision ten years ago to move to the United States.  The reason?  I still believe with all that is in me, that America is the land of opportunity.  I still believe that things – very good things – can be done in this country that cannot be done anywhere else.  I am proud of my adopted country and I defend it whenever I travel.  This is where I want to live and this is the country I am committed to on a level that makes me feel deeply invested in doing all I can to improve this country for all that live here.

What is special and what is unique in America is an unwavering belief in the possibilities of what we can achieve as individuals and what we can achieve together.  No other country on earth can claim the kind of environment that America offers to all that live here: superior opportunities to thrive and prosper.  I will admit that I came to America because I personally wanted to thrive and prosper and be supported in my drive to do so as an individual.  But having lived in America for 10 years now, I can say that the American promise has proved to be about more than just individual success: it is about our shared destiny as a people.  The good news about America is that this is a country where we give a damn.  This is a country of compassion.  This is a country where we care about other people; where we pick up our fallen in battle; where we work TOGETHER in the hope of improving our collective existence and that of future generations.  No matter how controversial, infuriating or deeply disappointing the path, we CANNOT allow the firestorm that is the health care debate to allow us to forget about this fundamental truth.  There is a better way than this.

Let’s not pretend that the health care reform bill that will be voted upon tomorrow in the House is without fault.  It certainly has weaknesses and compromises.  I am tempted to get on my soapbox as usual and pontificate on what the bill REALLY should look like but this time I won’t.  This moment is too important.  The bottom line is that our current health care has failed.  People are hurting, people are vulnerable and the time for change has come.  Just as it took courage and overlooking imperfections and potential political ramifications to vote in Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor decades ago, it will take courage to bring health care reform today.  The time for stalling is over.  This country is better than this.  We are better than this.  And the America health care reform will bring is better than this. May the House prove it by voting for Health Care Reform tomorrow.  In the words of President Obama this afternoon, “Let’s get this done!”.

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Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks was back in the news this week after it had been discovered that seven arrests had been made in Ireland due to a plot to kill him. In 2007, Vilks’ work depicting the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog was published in the Swedish Nerikes Allehanda newspaper. Vilks’ work had originally been featured in an arts project before it was published by the paper. It caused widespread anger in the Muslim world as well as a bounty of $100,000 to be placed on his head by a group linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq and, as the BBC reports, “a 50% bonus if he was ‘slaughtered like a lamb’ by having his throat cut.”

After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and created the country’s biggest international blowup since World War II, you would have thought basic common sense would have discouraged any similarly-inspired artwork.  But no, Vilks carried on and his work caused such an uproar that Sweden’s embassy in Pakistan had to express regret over his art and the subsequent hurt caused while stating that it could not prevent the publication of the material because it would interfere with the freedom of the press.

Vilks at the time chimed in saying that his work was art and told the Associated Press, “I’m not against Islam. Everybody knows that…”  The Christian Science Monitor quoted Vilks after the $100,000 bounty had been placed on his head: “I suppose this makes my art project a bit more serious. It’s also good to know how much one is worth.”  The same article reports that Vilks created his controversial art “as an editorial comment on self-censorship, freedom of expression, and religion.”

The BBC, in an August 31, 2007 piece, quotes Pakistan’s foreign ministry on “what it described as a growing tendency ‘among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide… Such acts deeply undermine the efforts of those who seek to promote respect and understanding among religions and civilisations…’ ”

How do you react to such sentiment?  You could go the route of conservative political commentator, Tony Blankley.  After the cartoonist behind the original Danish work, Kurt Westergaard, was attacked in his home by a Somali Muslim, Blankley railed against the fact that “most European journalistic commentary argued that Western writers and artists should, for prudence sake, abstain from such (allegedly blasphemous) expression..”

Said Blankley, “…it is worse than imprudent for Americans (or Europeans) to give up freedoms and ways of life that have been defended for centuries by the martial sacrifice of our ancestors (and current warriors) — and by the intellectual courage of our writers and artists — just because our morally feeble, self-proclaimed ‘educated class’ and elites have lost the will to defend our civilization.”

What Blankley seems to miss is that the problem has very little to do with defending Western civilization and every bit to do with basic intercultural relations.  Just because the free world embraces freedom of speech does not mean that all forms of reason and restraint and respect for cultural and religious differences should be cast to the wind.  Freedom of religion and expression are a basic right in the free world but there are limits; anti-hate speech legislation exist in a number of Western countries that prevent expression of hateful rhetoric based on factors such as race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

With current anti-Islamic sentiment at record highs, there is little difference between irresponsible (blasphemous, in the eyes of some) art depicting Muhammad, and hateful propaganda.  Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are important rights and should remain so.  But cultural cretins like Vilks should think carefully about the responsibilities that come with such freedoms.

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It happened WAY too much.  And it always happened when we were already running late.  Our old, disgracefully dilapidated beast of a Buick would shut off at the bottom of the long, steep driveway to the cookie-cutter Marietta, Ga. apartment complex where we lived.  My high-strung über-Scandinavian mother would then proceed to frantically wind down the car window, stick her head out as far it would go and yell “It STOPPED!!” with shrill, Nordic determination to the annoyed assortment of early-morning drivers behind us.  Humiliated, my sister and I would shrink down in our seats, willing the moment to pass.

This, of course, was only one of the whole smorgasbord of awkward experiences my sister and I had growing up with FOB (Fresh-off-the-boat) parents who had about as much interest in blending into local culture as we did in sticking out like sore thumbs.

I’ve met enough children of FOBs to detect some patterns.  The first of these is that immigrants often have an idealist, nonconformist streak.  It took guts and ignoring naysayers to move from their homelands.  Now that they are here, some of these qualities manifest themselves in a stronger-than-usual sense of motivation. They are also less likely to concern themselves with what others think.  While this singular focus has worked well for them, their children (who are more concerned with blending in) will often find this focus too narrow and abrasive.  I’ve rarely witnessed kids that have been able to change their FOB parents.  It seems that the best thing to do is to appreciate your parents’ work ethic and recognize that they are who they are.

Another thing about FOB parents is that although they (in most cases) chose to leave their home countries, they often are extremely patriotic and nostalgic about the homeland they left behind.  They will wax lyrical about the food, the culture and the beauty of home.  Ask them if they would like to go back though and they quickly shake their heads or talk loosely about what they might do in retirement. If you were born to FOBS and have to listen to your parents and their nostalgic rambling, take it all with a grain of salt.  It is good to be aware of your roots but realize that time and distance have probably embellished the memories of your parents’ home.

One of the more obvious things about FOB parents is their accent and how they carry themselves. Accents rarely change if someone learns a language as an adult so chances are that your FOB parents really sound foreign.  My mom’s accent used to embarrass me, but nowadays it is much more of a source of amusement.  As with most things about foreign parents and their cultural idiosyncrasies, if you can see the humor in the situation, you can actually enjoy it.  On that note, let’s conclude with a video from HappySlip, a YouTube-based comedy series by Christine Gambito, a Filipina American who plays all her characters and who has the funniest take I have ever seen on the FOB experience…

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Bjorn Karlman

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At a wedding near LA with TCK friends I grew up with in the Philippines

I can go from zero to awkward, mumbling mess in no time when Western pop culture predating the late 90s is brought up in conversation. I have no clue what to say because a lot of the time, I have never heard of the actor/singer/quirky 80s celebrity of ambiguous sexuality being discussed. It is painful. I sound American. My Northern European genes make me look like I’ve got straight-laced, Mayflower Puritanical blood.  But I grew up next to sugar cane fields and coffee plantations in the Philippines and I have never seen a single episode of Miami Vice.

Luckily I grew up with other expat kids who were just as lost. We were all Third Culture Kids (we’d grown up in a culture different from that of our parents.)  Instead of being perpetually bummed about the fact that we didn’t completely fit into any culture or country, we bonded over our oddball similarities.  The transition to adulthood has changed very little so here’s my list of TCK traits:

1) Most of us speak English better than our mother tongue and are stumped if some zealous patriot asks us to recite the words to our own national anthems.

2) Whether or not we’ve ever stepped foot on American soil, our accents are often, to one degree or another, American.

3) We are flakes when it came to growing roots anywhere.  I’ve kept in touch with a number of my fellow TCKs and a lot of them have kept moving, never staying in the same place for more than a few years.

4) TMI!  We are used to sharing a lot very quickly because growing up we knew that we didn’t have much time to make friends before we had to leave again. But there is a flipside to this. Steph Yiu on denizen-mag.com puts it well:  “once you get to know us, you might find that we keep you at bay. We’re just so used to leaving (or being left by) people who are close to us that sometimes we don’t want to form very deep relationships, for fear of losing them.”

5) We were raised watching cultures clash on a daily basis so we are OK with grey areas.  We don’t expect life to be black and white.

6) We may have been mature teenagers but for some reason, we take our time “growing up” in our 20s.  For more on that, check out this article by Ann Baker Cottrell and Ruth Hill Useem:  http://www.tckworld.com/useem/art3.html

7) We are unlikely to take jobs in government or the corporate world that involve a lot of red tape/bureaucracy.  Neither do we often follow in our parent’s footsteps professionally:  http://www.tckworld.com/useem/art5.html

If you are a TCK or if you know one well and care to add to this list I’d love to hear from you.  Post a comment.  Just don’t ask me about the Jetsons.

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Bjorn Karlman

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What is CultureMutt and why should you bother reading it? Let me answer those questions by giving you some reasons to stop reading right now:

1) CultureMutt will be shamelessly biased.
2) “Cure Culture Clash” the byline of this new blog, is obviously an impossible suggestion.
3) CultureMutt will not even pretend to be academic in its approach to cross-cultural relations.
4) Some may find topics discussed offensive, disturbing or somehow inappropriate.
5) There is ridiculous complexity to the area of cross-cultural relations and CultureMutt will revel in it.

And now for the sales pitch: Cross-cultural savvy is an absolute MUST whether your goal is wooing that exotic new tight-T-shirted addition to accounts payable; landing the lucrative Tokyo account or simply avoiding looking like a complete idiot on vacation in Florence. Gone are the days when complacent isolationism worked. As Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman puts it, “The World is Flat”. His advice for his daughters is, “Girls, when I was growing, my parents used to say to me, ‘Tom, finish your dinner — people in China and India are starving.’ My advice to you is: Girls finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your jobs.”

If you want success in today’s increasingly globalized landscape then you have to understand people that come from other places and think entirely differently. In the words of Mexican poet and diplomat, Octavio Paz, “Life is plurality, death is uniformity.” The future belongs to those who can understand cross-cultural complexities.

Here are some upcoming blog post titles:

1) “You’re Hired.” When being in the multicultural know can mean a paycheck.
2) Seduce a Swede. Steps 1-5.
3) Offend Anyone Anywhere With These Five Simple Screwups.
4) Haggle like a pro. Navigating a Filipino market without looking tightfisted or being ripped off.
5) Border Skirmish: Boundaries in Cross-cultural relationships.

Your comments and opinions are more than welcome so don’t be a stranger. See you soon.

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Bjorn Karlman

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