I had a very unproductive day yesterday. On the way into my office I caught a glimpse of hordes of soccer fans spilling out of a bar onto the street draped in red, white and blue. It wasn’t my plan when I left the house that morning, but by about 9:15 am I found myself on a barstool swirling a greenbean in a bloody mary, screaming my head off for team USA with a crowd of surly soccer fans.

This was a seismic shift for me. A week earlier, I had sat with a friend (who actually plays soccer in an adult league) saying that I was thinking of being a curmudgeon this World Cup just because I didn’t like this pressure to be a fan the world seems to be putting on me. Where the hell were all these hard core soccer fans when I was growing up? Nowhere.

So even though it pains me, I have to admit I understand where Ann Coulter is coming from when she wrote on her blog that “I hate the force fed aspect of soccer.” I think the reason her post on “AMERICA’S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER” is that it really hit a nerve with a lot of people.

The difference between Ann Coulter and me, however, is that I decided I should actually have an opinion based on understanding, not ignorance. Clearly there’s a groundswell happening. Why?

So, I stumbled into the bar.

What did I see? An awesome game, to start. I loved the passion and athleticism of the players. I loved being able to actually see the team dynamic playing out differently—the coordinated, patient play of the Germans and the fierce, defensive effort of the underdog Americans. I loved the nationalism! It was so fun to be American with all these other Americans cheering for America with the same passionate fervor I root for the NY Giants.

Cheering for America to beat Germany. What could be more patriotic than that? Ann Coulter would friggin’ love it. But she’s an ignorant twit, so she never will. Instead, she dismisses it because “it’s foreign.”

Ann’s post was definitely a crowd-pleaser if you’re a soccer curmudgeon—like I was a few days ago. She takes some genuinely funny jabs like asking how can it be a real sport if girls play with boys? How can any sport always have a score of 0-0? How can a sport be a sport if you can’t use your hands”

“Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it’s European.”

See, here’s where ignorance becomes dangerous. ‘I hate soccer and I hate liberals, so clearly they are the same thing’ is the logic. And if you actually watch a single game, you’ll see that the story she weaves is based on blithe ignorance, not astute observation.

She says, “individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer.” I watched one game and saw US Goalkeeper Tim Howard individually achieve a dozen amazing saves.

She says, “the prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport.” I watched one game and saw two American players smash their heads together in a collision that surely left them both with major concussions.

She says, “soccer is not ‘catching on.’” I watched one game with hundreds of people spilling out of bars on Polk Street at 9 am on a Thursday.

Of course, it’s just poking fun at soccer—who cares? The menace, however, is that this is exactly the way that a right-wing mouthpiece like Coulter influences people when she’s talking about politics on FOX News and whatever other soapbox she can climb upon. And influencing politics based on blithe ignorance is dangerous business. Blithe ignorance is but a fine line from blatant dishonesty.

Ann Coulter says that interest in soccer is a sign of the country’s moral decay. If anyone knows about moral decay, it’s Coulter.