Dave Zirin | The Nation
Jeremy Lin and ESPN’s 'Accidental' Racism
The spectacular New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin just made more headlines by leading his team to victory over the defending champion Dallas Mavericks, with twenty-eight points and a career-high fourteen assists. But that’s not the only reason Lin is in the news. Outrage erupted when ESPN’s website posted a headline about the NBA’s first American player of Chinese origin that read, “Chink in the Armor.” Seriously. An ESPN anchor previously used the same phrase in an interview with Knicks Hall of Fame guard Walt Frazier and it had also been uttered on ESPN radio. But the webpage was captured and the frozen image went viral.
ESPN quickly posted a statement as bloodless as it was insufficient, which read: “Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile website posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.” Then they told the media that this would be their only comment on the matter. After outrage ensued, this was followed by another statement that the headline writer has been fired and the anchor has been suspended for thirty days.
There are only two conclusions one can draw from all of this. Either ESPN has a group of stone racists sitting at the SportsCenter Desk, hosting their radio shows and writing headlines (doubtful), or they have no anti-racist mental apparatus for how to talk about an Asian-American player. As a result we see again that people of Asian descent are subject to a casual racism that other ethnic groups don’t have to suffer quite as starkly.
No one at ESPN would talk or write about a lesbian athlete and unconsciously put forth that the woman in question would have a “finger in the dike.” If an African-American player was thought of as stingy, it’s doubtful that anyone at the World Wide Leader would describe that person as “niggardly.” They would never brand a member of a football team as a “Redskin” (wait, scratch that last one.)
They wouldn’t do it because a mental synapse would spark to life and signal their brain that in 2012, unless you’re speaking at CPAC, that’s just not OK. This collective synapse was forged by mass movements for black and LGBT liberation in this country that have forced a lot of people, particularly white straight men, to have a clue. There simply hasn’t been a similar national struggle built by people of Asian descent. I spoke about this with William Wong, longtime journalist born and raised in Oakland’s Chinatown, and he said, “We haven’t had a national mass Asian-American civil rights movement because our numbers have been small and diffuse thanks to various exclusionary and discriminatory laws. Our communities are also too diverse in terms of American history and intra-Asian cultural and political differences. But we should note that many Asian-Americans in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were energized by the larger civil rights movement to organize an Asian-American movement in states like California, Washington and New York where we had the numbers to come together.” This is true. In places with concentrations of people willing to stand up, Asian-Americans have come together across differences of language and origin to demand respect and equal rights, often in the face of terrible violence.
The question is, what happens now. We have seen everyone with a media profile trying to grab a little bit of Jeremy Lin’s shine. Sarah Palin is posing with Linsanity shirts. The cringe-inducing David Brooks is writing unreadable columns about what Lin “represents.” Every sports/culture/political writer wants to have their say and bask in Lin’s glow. Let’s see if people rushing to stand with Jeremy Lin will stand up for him as well.
If one good thing comes out of this, maybe sportswriters can stop saying that they don’t think the issues of race and ethnicity have anything to do with Lin’s emergent celebrity. Of course it does. That’s why the hate is so ugly and supporters are so fiercely protective of his seat at the NBA table. The very kind of casual racism Lin has faced—the anti-Asian Twitter jokes, the Yellow Mamba signs, the mock Chinese talk, the catcalls from people attending the games—is something every single Asian-American has experienced at one time or another. That it happens at all is a sad fact; that ESPN is now in a position of having to apologize for something which never should have happened shows just how far we have to go.
Last week in an ESPN column, Asian-American writer Jay Caspian Kang is quoted as saying, “If you can’t look at Jeremy Lin and see why America is the greatest country in the world, well, then you don’t understand America.” We’ll leave aside for a moment the substance of this comment: the fact that the United States, in the theater of war, has performed genocidal crimes against people who were called the same epithets as Jeremy Lin. We’ll leave aside the fact that people of Asian descent were interned on US soil or the hate crimes they silently suffer in schoolyards and on street corners that persist with little national outrage or discussion. We’ll leave that aside, and just say that in the wake of his own employer’s accidental slips, Kang should perhaps amend his statement to, “If you don’t understand why racism still infects the Lin story and why there is an urgent need to stand up against it, then you really don’t understand America.”
Jeremy Lin! Why the Knicks' New Star Is Not the New Tebow
Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow! Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin! Every sports columnist with opposable thumbs (about three in ten) has compared the New York Knicks point guard and the Denver Broncos quarterback, seeing one as a doppelganger of the other. Bill Simmons, perhaps the most read sportswriter in America, used the rapier wit that made him famous and summed up the general consensus by tweeting, “My Tebowner has been replaced by a Jerection!”
It’s not just sports columnists. Politico, our national source for electoral cliff notes, and the Huffington Post, America’s go-to site for finding out what Fabio thinks about education reform, both posted “Lin is the new Tebow” links.
It’s understandable why the comparison is made. Both players revived depressed franchises just by getting in the game. Both play with a joy that seems to infect their teammates and raise everyone’s level of play. Both had their doubters, no question. And both are devout Christians who aren’t shy about thanking God in post-game interviews.
It’s an easy comparison. It’s also dead wrong. The conflation of their stories does little more than burnish Tebow’s credentials at Lin’s expense.
Let’s really look at both players. Tim Tebow was a first-round draft pick who won a Heisman trophy and two national championships at football powerhouse Florida. Jeremy Lin was an undrafted player out of Harvard, cut by two other teams and riding the Knicks bench before his unprecedented emergence. Tim Tebow had his own army of supporters chanting his name and exhorting the front office to get him on the field. Jeremy Lin played because the Knicks had no other options. Tim Tebow based on pure statistics just isn’t very good yet. He completed 46 percent of his passes and ranked twenty-seventh among NFL quarterbacks in passing efficiency. Jeremy Lin in his first five starts just set a record for most points in NBA history. Think about that. This record isn’t held by Wilt, MJ, Kareem or Lebron. It’s held by Jeremy Freaking Lin. He is one of three Knicks ever to have at least twenty points and seven assists in five straight starts and he did it in his first five starts.
But it’s for reasons completely disconnected from statistics where the differences blare like a siren. Tim Tebow’s commercials and personal branding speak about how everyone has always doubted him, but in reality, he’s has every privilege and advantage. He was home-schooled but was still allowed to play Florida high school sports. He was allowed to play in a college spread offense built around his rather unique skill set. He was drafted in the first round even though many scouts saw him as a mid- to high-round project. He is treated like an All-American superstar even without the game to back it up. His clean-cut, Evangelical whiteness has caused Republican politicians, sportswriters and Katy Perry to simply swoon. His connections to the right-wing edge of the Christian evangelical movement have gone uninvestigated and escaped mainstream criticism. (And yes, he’s already making noise about running for office after retirement.)
Not to shock anyone, but Jeremy Lin is Asian-American. Clearly, this fact plus the Ivy League pedigree made scouts disinclined to see what’s clear in front of our face: that the young man has game for days. I and many others saw it in the 2010 summer league when Lin traded blows with number-one overall pick John Wall. Lin’s skills didn’t appear overnight: just his opportunity. Tim Tebow had the benefit of the doubt. Jeremy Lin was just doubted.
There are soft liberal sportswriters who say primly that they don’t notice color and just like Lin’s game. Hogwash. As former Georgetown coach John Thompson says, “The only people who don’t notice color are blind.” There is nothing wrong with noticing that Lin is an absolute trailblazer. We should celebrate the thrill and pride Lin is causing among people of Asian descent because he is making history.
One Asian-American friend of mine, wrote to me:
I love Jeremy Lin! As an Asian American, i take pride in the fact that he’s the first notable Asian American NBA player of my time. He’s completely inspiring to me because as a kid i gave up basketball due to Asian stereotypes of being “studious”. To me he represents a new inspiration for all the little Asian American kids out there who want to play basketball.
Another, whose family is from the Philippines, wrote:
This goes much beyond a straightforward racial pride thing. All of the often quiet forms of racism directed at Asians, his existence is actively smashing. Not just the joyless model minority thing, but all the things said about Asian men, all the perpetual foreigner bs, all the hokey idiotic long duck dong, Mickey Rooney characters.. In your face is what i think when i see him play… From the signs alone you get a glimpse of it encouraging other AA people to say F-U to that sh^#%t too. It’ll take a world of things to change anti-Asian racism, no doubt…. [but] I’m happy as hell thinking about my Filipino dad and brothers.
Jeremy Lin counts for something very positive, on and off the court. I would argue he has Tebow beat… on both counts.
Whitney Houston: My Love Is Your Love
I’m a sports writer and don’t pretend to know anything about music. I listen almost exclusively to hip hop that stopped being recorded fifteen years ago (Organized Konfusion, Tim Dog) or whatever my 7-year-old daughter is into this week (please don’t ask.) I also don’t pretend to know anything about the addictions and demons that plagued Whitney Houston. But I know how it feels to hear that Whitney Houston is dead and I’m trying to come to grips with why I can’t stop thinking about her voice.
Maybe it’s because Whitney lent that singular vocal instrument to two of the most iconic collisions of music and sports. There was Whitney’s National Anthem performance, all confident volume, at the 1991 Super Bowl, which was the forward-marching soundtrack of the Persian Gulf War. I’ve found that people’s opinions of her anthem tend to reflect their opinions on the war itself. Those who favored Operation Desert Storm see it as a patriotic tour de force. Those who stood against the war remember it as a bombastic sonic eardrum buster with the subtlety of a blowtorch. Whitney also recorded the 1988 Olympic anthem “One Moment in Time,” essentially an adult contemporary version of Eminem’s Lose Yourself. In other words, you’d need to be comatose to not feel an involuntary goosebump.
But the real reason I’m writing this isn’t because of some sports tie-in or because I think I have anything to say about Whitney’s musical contribution. It’s that her remarkable voice was always there during some of the most intense moments of my younger life. Every junior high dance was punctuated by Whitney. She accompanied those moments of sublime adolescent intensity where a dance, the touch of a hand, a smile or a scrawled phone number, made being a teenager fleetingly bearable. Nineteen-eighties school dances in New York City meant Run DMC, Bon Jovi, Roger Troutman, Michael Jackson, Bananarama, Springsteen, Lisa Lisa, Joan Jett, Prince, the Beastie Boys, Talking Heads and at least three Whitney songs, with “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” or “How Will I Know” always in rotation. You could rely on Whitney for that flirty fast song, and for the slow dance to end the night, with “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” the favorite.
Whitney was part of a mosaic of 1980s music that was more musically inclusive and less segmented by the crude race-based marketing that dominated the 1990s. A portion of this inclusivity, certainly with Whitney and Michael, was because record execs were trying to “whiten” their look and sound in the 80s for max appeal. But both (as well as Quincy Jones) were talented and transgressive enough to not let industry pressures swamp their sound. The result was a crossover that led, before the industry figured out how to package, market and segregate it, to a burst of rare creativity when commerce comfortably danced with art. Now the fame industry has claimed another life. It was hard to watch the Grammys last night and not wonder where all these painted, praying, preying, people were when Whitney was spiraling down. Bruce Springsteen started last night’s Grammy show singing his new single, “We Take Care of our Own.” He was singing to the wrong collection of people.
This is an industry that tends to people’s talent and not to the people themselves. It’s an industry that claimed Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston before they reached fifty. Its body count transcends musical categories and includes Tupac, Biggie, Kurt, Marvin, Amy, Jimi, Janis and too many others to name. Those who lay all these deaths at the altar of their “personal responsibility” need to explain why so many, from young starlets to Ol’ Dirty Bastards, have been left for dead. I’ve wondered before what it says about our country that the people who in theory should be healthiest among us, professional athletes, tend to die crippled and young. I wonder today how we can look at the music industry as anything other than what it is: a parasite feeding on the very people it should nurture. Of course, many survive its clutches, but Whitney didn’t. Now every memory I have of those dances in darkened church basements, wearing my shell-toe Adidas with fat laces and Coca Cola T-shirts, swaying to Whitney’s voice, is interrupted by the reality that my joy fed the same machine that eventually claimed her life. I don’t know anything about music. But I know that Whitney, like Lady Day, didn’t live to see fifty. That’s a shame and a sin, and in a sane world it wouldn’t be theirs to bear alone.
Feel the Lin-sanity: Why Jeremy Lin Is More Than a Cultural Curio
When frighteningly fickle hoops fans are chanting “MVP” after your first career start, then you know you might be something special. When you become the first player since Lebron James to have at least twenty points and eight assists in your first two NBA starts, then you know the sports world will take notice. When you provide an infectious glee to a group of teammates who look at you with naked, near tearful gratitude like you’ve dragged them from basketball purgatory, then you know you have made an impact. When you are also the first American-born player of Chinese/Taiwanese descent ever in the NBA as well as a Harvard graduate, and you play with a black-top flair that defies preconception and prejudice, then you know you’re poised to draw unbridled attention. When you do it all in New York City, then you have to know that the hyperbole will not be constrained or contained. Welcome to Lin-sanity, otherwise known as the feverish outpouring of adulation heaped upon the new starting point guard for the New York Knicks, Jeremy Lin.
Lin has become a magnet for attention. He’s, on one hand, part of a tradition of NBA players who don’t fit in stereotypical boxes and then attract eyeballs. Remember Jason “White Chocolate” Williams, the tattooed Caucasian with game courtesy of Rucker Park. Seven-foot three-point shooters like Dirk Nowitzki or diminutive players like Muggsy Bogues, Spud Webb or Earl Boykins or tall point guards from Magic Johnson to Shawn Livingston always drew initial attention just because they possessed the shock of the new. No sport is as naked as the NBA, with faces and bodies on full display for crowded fans and HD cameras and when we have someone who breaks a superficial mold, attention will always follow.
But Lin already represents something more significant. When Jack Johnson became the first African-American heavyweight champion, using a style both cerebral and severe, he defied racist conceptions of white supremacy as well as stereotypes that decreed African-Americans didn’t have the intelligence to apply strategy and smarts to sport. We can say the same about Jackie Robinson when he did more than just break baseball’s color barrier and win the Rookie of the Year in 1947. Robinson also played with a grace under pressure that challenged white—and even many black—preconceptions about mental toughness on the highest stage. In addition, he did so while playing with an energy that forever changed the game. Or consider Martina Navratilova. Yes, she blazed trails just by being an out and proud LGBT champion tennis player. But she also played with a muscled strength and swagger that changed women’s sports forever. The Williams sisters owe as much to Martina as they do to Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson.
This is the power of Jeremy Lin. It’s not just that he’s a cultural curio: “Asian-American from Harvard in the NBA!” It’s the way he plays the game. Asian-Americans, in our stereotypical lens, are supposed to be studious and reserved. We would expect nothing less than that the first Asian-American player would be robotic and fundamentally sound; their face an unsmiling mask. In sports, we haven’t moved that far from the days when we expected Jack Johnson to be a wild, undisciplined brawler in the ring or Martina to play on the baseline. Instead, we have Jeremy Lin threading no-look passes, throwing down dunks and, in the most respected mark of toughness, taking contact and finishing baskets. Before last night’s game against the Wizards, as the CBS Sports Blogger Hardwood Paroxysm wrote, Lin had played 136 minutes and had seven plays where he was fouled and scored. By comparison, Golden State Warrior star Monta Ellis played 795 minutes and had only eight. Yesterday, Lin smashed chins with the Wizards John Wall, and played the rest of the game with a Band-Aid loosely hanging from his face.
But most impressive—and transgressive—is that he plays with a flair and joy that in two games has given a dour, mopey Knicks team a sense of purpose and joy. His pre-game handshake alone with teammate Landry Fields has more intelligent soul than Donald Glover.
The Knicks have been a depressing operation all season, best exemplified by their all-star starter Carmelo Anthony, who catches the ball, holds it, holds it and holds it, as teammates slouch their shoulders, frown and do everything short of taking out their phones to make post-game plans while waiting for their star to shoot. Only with Carmelo’s injury have we seen the emergence of “Jeremy Lin’s Knicks.” They pass the ball like they’re playing hot potato and at every timeout the team is on their feet at the bench: smiling, laughing and looking like they are the luckiest people on earth because they are being paid to play hoop.
In the middle of every sideline giggling, chest bumping, mosh pit is their point guard, Jeremy Lin. This is the true heart of Lin-sanity. It’s not the Asian-American piece, although the pride he’s producing is nothing to dismiss and people of Asian descent have been breaking ankles on courts for decades. It’s not the Harvard piece. It’s not even the flair that makes you question stereotypes of how he’s “supposed” to play. It’s that when he’s doing his thing, you forget all the superficials and all the racial detritus, and just see his grin and feel the joy. Maybe it won’t last. Maybe he’s just played well against awful teams. Maybe Carmelo will play the role of Nurse Ratchett, ordering the Cukoo’s Nest to stop having fun and making Coach Mike D’Antoni give Jeremy Lin a basketball lobotomy. But for now we can relish in the Lin-sanity: a player who breaks the ultimate stereotype: making tired NBA players look like they’re having the time of their lives.
How a Tragic "Soccer Riot" May Have Revived the Egyptian Revolution
There are no words for the horror that took place in Port Said, Egypt last week. A soccer match became a killing field, with at least seventy-four spectators dead, and as many as 1,000 injured. The visiting Al-Ahly team lost to Al-Masri, and what followed will stain the sport forever. Al-Masri fans rushed the field, attacking the Al-Ahly cheering section after Al-Masri’s 3-1 upset victory. People were stabbed and beaten, but the majority of deaths took place because of asphyxiation, as Al-Ahly fans were crushed against locked stadium doors. It was so unspeakably traumatic that beloved Al-Ahly star Mohamed Aboutreika, who famously revealed a “Sympathize with Gaza” shirt during the 2008 Israel bombardment, immediately announced his retirement after the match. A distraught Aboutreika said, “This is not football. This is a war and people are dying in front of us. There is no movement and no security and no ambulances. I call for the league to be canceled. This is a horrible situation, and today can never be forgotten.”
This carnage, however, has produced profoundly unexpected results. The shock of Port Said hasn’t produced a political coma but instead acted as a defibrillator, bringing a revolutionary impatience back to life. Instead of starting a wave of concern that “lawlessness” was spreading in post-revolutionary Egypt, the anger and sadness seem to be reviving the revolution. The Western media immediately used the shock of the tragedy to call for a crackdown on the hyper-intense fan clubs, the “ultras”. As the New York Times wrote, “The deadliest soccer riot anywhere in more than 15 years, it also illuminated the potential for savagery among the organized groups of die-hard fans known here as ultras who have added a volatile element to the street protests since Mr. Mubarak’s exit.”
Other Western observers, sympathetic to the revolution, feared with good cause that the riots would strengthen the hand of a military dictatorship slow to transfer power to civilian rule. But on the ground, a new reality quickly took shape. This might be news to the Times, but the reaction in Egypt has been rage at the military, fueled by a widespread belief that, either through benign neglect or malignant intent, the authorities let the killings happen.
The witness reports of the Port Said survivors are scandalous. They describe a situation where exits were blocked by military police. The stadium lights were turned off, adding to the sense of panic. Hundreds of riot police can be clearly seen in amateur videos, standing around and doing nothing, as if ordered to remain passive.
Every political sector has spoken out against the military police in Port Said. Abbas Mekhimar, head of the Parliament’s defense committee, said, “This is a complete crime. This is part of the scenario of fueling chaos against Egypt.” Diaa Salah of the Egyptian Football Federation was even more pointed, saying, “The government is getting back at the ultras. They are saying: ‘You protest against us, you want democracy and freedom. Here is a taste of your democracy and freedom.’ ”
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has set itself in opposition to the ultra clubs for much of the year, stated that “the lack of security in the Port Said stadium confirms that there is invisible planning that is behind this unjustified massacre. The authorities have been negligent.”
The Revolutionary Socialists of Egypt were more blunt, saying, “The clumsily hatched plot, which could not conceal the shameless complicity of the police, who stood watching the slaughter and killing for hours did not even attempt to protect the victims, carries only one message to the revolutionaries: the revolution must continue…. The ultras groups that joined the ranks of the revolution early on… are still proving every day that they are an integral part of our revolution. “
(See this blog post for video analysis inside the stadium that argues how authorities are to blame for Port Said.)
Chris Toensing, the Editor of The Middle East Report, said to me, “Indeed, many Egyptians consider the ultras uncouth. And some may also say that the real revolutionaries are demonstrating peacefully in Tahrir Square, rather than throwing rocks and Molotov Cocktails. But lots of Egyptian activists argue that in 2011—and maybe today as well—the ultras have been key protectors of the revolution, both physically and structurally, in the sense that they keep intense pressure on the state to listen to popular demands.”
The people also know that the presumed target of the soccer riot—the Al-Ahly ultras—after being a leading street fighting force during the revolution, have become a leading target of the military. The Al-Ahly ultras wear that target proudly, chanting at games, (I’m told this rhymes in Arabic):
Oh you MPs
You turned out to be more rotten than the Police
Raise the prison walls higher and higher
Tomorrow the revolution with lay them to waste
Oh brother, write on the cell wall
Junta rule is shameful and treasonous
Down Down with Junta rule!
Now not only are many Egyptians coming to the defense of the ultras but, remarkably, ultra groups from opposing clubs have pledged to join forces, seeing the attack on Al-Ahly as an attack on all of them. Their unity was sparked when the Al-Ahly ultras themselves released a statement where they didn’t go after Al-Masry but the military, proclaiming, “They want to punish us and execute us for our participation in the revolution against suppression.” The ultras then vowed a “new war in defense of the revolution.”
This proved to be more than just words. On Wednesday, February 1, the military leader Tantawi seemed blasé about the anguish, anger and accusations arising from Port Said, saying, “Egypt is going down the path we planned, We will continue down this path and we will get through this transition.”
On Thursday, protests against military inactivity in the Port Said stadium deaths exploded in Cairo, Suez and Port Said itself. The clashes also marked the one year anniversary of the Battle of the Camels, when Mubarak sent armed thugs riding into Tahrir Square on camels and ultras had their most shining moment, credited with incredible bravery standing in their charging path and forcing them out of the square.
This year, in Cairo, at least 10,000 protesters marched to the Interior Ministry building near Tahrir Square. The battle that followed according to Health Ministry official Adel Adawi, resulted in 388 protesters’ injuries. The flags unfurled were the ultra flags of traditional rivals, Al-Ahly and Zamalek.
But most significant were the thousands of Al-Masry fans who gathered in Port Said, demanding answers from police for their passivity during the stadium violence and why the doors of the stadium were closed.
The reemergence of the ultra clubs as a united force against the military regime should send shivers from Cairo to Washington, DC. Last year, as one Egyptian activist said to me, “Getting the ultras to work together in Tahrir might have been the toughest part about deposing Mubarak. They really hate each other. They would spit when saying the other club’s name.” He spoke to me about the need at times to physically force the ultras to stop squabbling and focus on the task of challenging Mubarak.
But after Port Said, it took no effort. An injury to one group of ultras was seen as an injury to all. As James Dorsey, who writes the indispensable blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, wrote that the aftermath of Port Said has sparked “a reconciliation among once implacable foes while at the same time solidifying emerging fault lines in Egyptian society.”
Throughout the past year, as Dorsey writes, the ultras have fought together on numerous occasions, mostly at anti-military protests, in opposition to the Egyptian Football Association, or against the presence of the Israeli embassy. They bled and even died together even as they became more politically isolated by the military’s promise of an orderly and peaceful transfer of power to an elected parliament. Now the Port Said carnage has broken the ultras out of their isolation and raised the question openly about what it will really take to see the military finally out of power. The prospect of united ultras, remarkably, challenges the politics of dead-end gradualism and brings to the forefront the prospect of dramatic change.
Zamalek winger Mahmoud Abdel-Razek also known as Shikabala, Egypt’s top player, said, “Despite the cruelty of what happened in Port Said, this disaster played a role in uniting the fans of all clubs. It might be a turning point in ending intolerance and hatred in Egyptian football. I will go to the Ahly club along with my teammates to offer our condolences to the families of Port Said martyrs. The fans of Ahly are my brothers. I hope Ahly and Zamalek fans can sit together in the stands without barriers.”
Al-Ahly midfielder Mohamed Barakat, has also spoken out, refusing to play ever again until there is true “retribution for those that were killed.”
There have been continuous efforts to marginalize the ultras. Now they are, unbelievably, on the center stage of history. The ultras have done nothing less than propel the Egyptian Revolution back into the Egyptian streets.
The Heroes of Super Bowl Sunday
I emerge from the echo-chamber of Super Bowl Sunday energized and armed with a new set of heroes and folk-tales to pass on to others. My hero on our great (near) secular national holiday wasn’t Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who one suspects would be going to Disney World whether he won or lost. It wasn’t the incredible looking Madonna, spotted backstage drinking her daughter's stemcells, or M.I.A. with her middle finger malfunction. It also wasn’t Clint Eastwood who made a commercial where I think he threatened to murder Detroit.
My new heroes are the people in the Occupy and Labor movements who gathered to protest on Super Bowl Sunday. It certainly didn’t make Sportscenter that night, but several hundred people gathered at the Indianapolis state house to stand up against the recent passage of the state's “right to work” legislation and make clear that the fight was far from done.
They included representatives from the Indiana Occupy movement, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, union iron workers, as well as trade unionists from UNITE and the Communication Workers of America. They came from Indianapolis, Bloomington, Anderson and beyond. Their ranks included radical cheerleaders from Indiana University who chanted, "Lies and tricks will not divide. Workers standing side by side….Union town through and through. You for me and me for you.”
My heroes include Randy, a member of the iron worker's union who came with a delegation all the way from Wisconsin to speak at the rally. Following his words, people chanted, "From Tahrir Square to Wisconsin, we shall fight, we shall win."
My heroes include people named Amy, Ben, Mike, Heath, Ed, April, Jacob, Jubin, Bill and the tireless Tithi Bhattacharya who emailed me at day’s end, “Class solidarity does exist!”
All of these proud trade unionists and Occupy activists showed up even though the AFL-CIO explicitly instructed people not to protest on the day of the big game. They accepted the bullying line that the Super Bowl was not a day for politics. They accepted this even though a brutal anti-union ad played during the game for much of the country.
That's why it's so important that the people were a presence at this Woodstock for the 1 percent, leaving energized and excited about further forging connections between the Occupy and the Labor movements. After all, we don't have $3 million for a 30 second ad. We just have the ability to gather and be heard.
As for the game itself, I think I’ll always remember the stirring words of Gisele Bundchen. For those who don’t know (and if you don’t, then more power to you) Bundchen is our world’s first billionaire Super Model. She’s also the spouse of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. In the aftermath of the game, she was recorded saying, "You've to catch the ball when you're supposed to catch the ball. My husband cannot fucking throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times." One player said after hearing her words, "It's like knocking someone when they are down."
Gisele comfortably carries the billionaire's impatience with the great unwashed breathing her air, who in her mind, are the fools unable to catch her husband's throws. But with her statement, I think we can see why so many people are overdosing on schadenfreude following the Patriots 21-17 loss to the Giants. For years, the Patriots have played with a sense of entitlement. They won three Super Bowls in Tom Brady's first four seasons as a starter and since then, every year, they've played like it was their trophy that some other team was just borrowing. It's an arrogance that has festered and worsened into a scabby crust that surrounds Brady and his coach Bill Belichick with each year of failure. They have become the Randolph and Mortimer Duke of the NFL, screaming after every season ending loss for the stock exchange to "Turn those machines back on!" Then there is Patriots owner Bob Kraft, and his owner’s suite mate Rush Limbaugh, with Limbaugh caught on camera forlornly picking his nose.
Seeing the arrogant and the entitled get knocked down a peg is always welcome. But in the real world it doesn’t mean a damn just because one arrogant and entitled owner’s box cheers, while another weeps. It happens because people around the country are standing up and saying, "Enough is enough." In Indianapolis, it happened because people heroically dared to be heard on a day when everyone told them to just shut up and watch the game.
Why Protests Should Be a Part of Super Bowl Sunday
This Sunday, the greatest multitude in the history of the United States will be tuning into the same television show at the same time. The 2012 Super Bowl, to be played between two major media markets, the New England Patriots and New York Giants, kicks off at 6:30 pm. This year’s game can also be called, “The East Coast Bias Bowl,” the “ESPN Nocturnal Emission Bowl” or the “Pox on Both Houses Bowl.”
Popularity plus polarization will mean epic ratings. It also means a pox of sponsors branding Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Field within an inch of its life. But while the high rollers will party down and Fortune 500 companies will have an unparalleled audience, the city of Indianapolis will reel under the weight of our national party.
Bloomberg News, which no one will mistake for The Nation, headlined an article, “Super Bowl Lands on Taxpayers’ Backs as Indianapolis Stadium Deal Sours.” Bloomberg describes a state of affairs in Indy where “Super Bowl fans are riding zip lines through downtown” while “taxpayers are digging deeper in their pockets to pay for the stadium where the game will be played.”
They report that local officials have had to hike sales and hospitality taxes to pay off $43 million in “unexpected financing costs.” The Bloomberg article joins a withering piece in the Indianapolis Business Journal about how the local economic impact will be less bonanza than meteor. No amount of extra shifts for waiters and parking lot attendants can match the tax burden they will endure in order to play host. But at least city planners can have that zipline and the “800,000-square-foot exposition” called “The NFL Experience”
This Woodstock for the 1 percent in the state capital has, as we’ve been covering, been coupled with the passage of the anti-union, anti-wage, “right to work” laws by the Republican-dominated Indiana statehouse. It seemed earlier this week that the Occupy movement along with the AFL-CIO and joined by a highly supportive NFL Players Association could translate into a serious show of force right at the gate of the stadium. There have been marches this week through “The NFL Experience” of more than 1,000 people, and today NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith spoke and marched in a 400-person UNITE rally at the city’s main Hyatt Hotel.
This has been welcome, with one person describing it to me as “electrifying,” but the state’s union leaders are also explicitly pulling back from any kind of public showing in front of the stadium or on the Super Bowl grounds this Sunday. Nancy Guyott, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO, said today, “The Indiana State AFL-CIO does not plan nor condone any attempts to disrupt the Super Bowl.While we understand the anger and frustration of working Hoosiers’ over the disgraceful passage of the so-called, ‘right to work’ bill, the appropriate outlet will be at the ballot box, not the Super Bowl.” She made clear that no state locals would be participating in any rallies in any kind of official capacity.
De Smith in his Thursday press conference said that the NFLPA was committed to challenging other states where “right to work” laws have been proposed, but did not speak to any action this Sunday. In addition to a sigh of relief from the local media, Laura Crewson blogging for Daily Kos Labor endorsed a plan of action. “With the NFL Players Association having vocally opposed that law, it’s an opportunity to draw attention to labor issues in the state,” she wrote. “At the same time, you don’t want to be the assholes who actually disrupted the Super Bowl, so there’s a line to walk here.”
There are two problems with this approach. The first is this strawman idea that the choices Sunday are either to “be disruptive” or do nothing. A loud and proud picket on the Super Bowl grounds might not win adherents among those who can afford tickets, but it would be a way to raise awareness on a national scale. The same is true if players wore a patch on their shoulder, helmet or even chinstrap. Given the anti-labor and “right to work” initiatives being considered in Minnesota, Arizona and even Michigan, there cannot be enough visibility. Also, given the politics that swamp the Super Bowl, from the corporate branding to the military commercialism to the anti-abortion ads, why should labor be at all sheepish about having a voice on game day?
But no one should assume that the union leadership’s words will be law on Sunday. If the Occupy movement has taught people anything it’s that fortune favors the bold. Already, there is a demonstration called for noon at the Indianapolis state house, but that could be just the appetizer. The Wall Street Journal quoted Tim Janko, a steelworker from northwest Indiana, and Perry Stabler, a retired steelworker, who both said they would be seen and heard on game day. Janko said, “I’m going to picket the Super Bowl because this is wrong,” he said. “I’m going to have a Teamster drive me into town.” Stabler also commented, “Union workers built that stadium, they should have the right to demonstrate in front of it..”
The people of Indiana are angry. I’m not sure telling them that anger has its time and its place is going to do the trick.
Debating the Super Bowl Protests: Is CBS Columnist Gregg Doyel Really Proud to Know Nothing?
I thought I was reading The Onion. Seriously. I was e-mailed an article written by CBS Sports columnist Gregg Doyel about Occupy activists targeting the Super Bowl because of the state’s imminent “right to work” legislation, and I thought I was reading The Onion. I thought it was a caricature of the uncurious, apolitical, sports jock-columnist who belches, “Politics are for nerds! Durrrrrrr….” My confusion came from reading lines like, “I’m not here to tell you what ‘right to work’ legislation would mean to Indiana for two reasons: One, I don’t know. Two, I don’t care.”
When I realized that this was an actual column, and not pretend, I went back and tried to take the arguments seriously. Doyel is “full of resentment that the Occupy movement would use our passion for the Super Bowl against us, infiltrating something we love so we have to focus on something they hate”—namely the “right to work” legislation Doyel doesn’t bother to understand.
Doyel wrote primly of the protest, “It’s inappropriate.” I have to wonder if it was Doyel’s pay check being threatened, whether he would think it appropriate to resist. But for all he knows, “right to work” is a breakfast cereal, so we’re left to wonder.
He then writes, “Protesting the Super Bowl is unfair to the teams involved and the fans of the game.” This ignores two things. The first is that the players, as represented by the NFLPA, have come out loudly and proudly against “right to work.” Nowhere does Doyel mention this crucial fact. Its absence is negligent.
Doyel also claims that the spectre of politics will repulse fans “liberal and conservative alike.” Has Doyel ever watched the Super Bowl? Politics swamp the game, whether it’s General David Petraeus flipping the coin, sexist commercials, military flyovers, another nationally televised anti-choice ad or interviews with whomever is in the White House. Still, people somehow have the ability to separate this from the game itself. I watched the game last year with a group of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and if they could separate the politics from the fun of the game, then I think others could do it as well. Also, given the way working people have seen their wages and benefits gutted, who’s to say they wouldn’t be thrilled to know that the game is being used as a platform for something other than godaddy.com?
Then Doyel references my column in The Nation, where I describe the big day as “Woodstock for the 1 percent.” He agrees that the game is unaffordable but says that fact is also “shortsighted nonsense. The Super Bowl generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the host city and surrounding areas, an economic boost that cannot be ignored simply because you can’t go.” But in fact, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal, the Super Bowl will be an overall money-loser.
Doyel doesn’t cite anything in regard to this economic impact he describes. He doesn’t cite anything because the numbers don’t exist. Doyel also doesn’t account for the $650 million of public money that went into building Lucas Oil Stadium (having a new or refurbished megadome is now a prerequisite for hosting the game). He doesn’t account for extra money spent on the kind of post-9/11 security the game demands. He just says it and we’re supposed to accept it.
Doyel ends with a blunt threat, writing, “I’m irritated too. Irritated at the self-centered protesters who would take their unhappiness with the government and aim it at the Super Bowl. Be careful where you aim that thing, protesters. You’ll alienate people who otherwise might be inclined to think you’re right. Lots of people—lots of us—are on the fence on the Occupy movement. Don’t push us too hard. We might hop off in a direction you won’t like.”
There were sports columnists in the 1960s who said people like Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith and John Carlos should just shut up and play, They said sports and politics should never mix. History has not been kind to these sportswriters. I would encourage Gregg Doyel not to join them. I’d advise him to get in touch with the NFLPA, get in touch with the AFL-CIO, and, yes, get in touch with the Occupy protesters of Indiana to actually learn why they feel the way they feel. I’d encourage him to learn the facts and decide for himself. I’d also ask him to not be so proud to know nothing.
Occupy the Super Bowl: Now More Than Just a Slogan.
“Upsetting the Super Bowl—I couldn’t care less. This is about my life and my family.” —Lou Feldman, IBEW local 668
The sheer volume of the Super Bowl is overpowering: the corporate branding, the sexist beer ads, the miasma of Madison Avenue–produced militarism, the two-hour pre-game show. But people in the labor and Occupy movements in Indiana are attempting to drown out the din with the help of a human microphone right at the front gates of Lucas Oil Stadium.
The Republican-led state legislature aims to pass a law this week that would make Indiana a “right to work” state. For those uninitiated in Orwellian doublespeak, the term “right to work” ranks with “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Fair & Balanced” as a phrase of grotesque sophistry. In the reality-based community, “right to work” means smashing the state’s unions and making it harder for nonunion workplaces to get basic job protections. This has drawn peals of protest throughout the state, with the Occupy and labor movement front and center from small towns to Governor Mitch Daniels’s door at the State House. Daniels and friends timed this legislation with the Super Bowl. Whether that was simple arrogance or ill-timed idiocy, they made a reckless move. Now protests will be a part of the Super Bowl scenery in Indy.
The Super Bowl is perennially the Woodstock for the 1 percent: a Romneyesque cavalcade of private planes, private parties and private security. Combine that with this proposed legislation, and the people of Indiana will not let this orgy of excess go unoccupied. Just as the parties start a week in advance, so have the protests. More than 150 people—listed as seventy-five in USA Today, but I’ll go with eyewitness accounts—marched through last Saturday’s Super Bowl street fair in downtown Indianapolis with signs that read, “Occupy the Super Bowl,” “Fight the Lie” and “Workers United Will Prevail.” Occupy the Super Bowl has also become a T-shirt, posted for the world to see on the NBC Sports Blog.
The protests also promise to shed light on the reality of life for working families in the city of Indianapolis. Unemployment is at 13.3 percent, with unemployment for African-American families at 21 percent. Two of every five African-American families with a child under 5 live below the anemic poverty line. Such pain amidst the gloss of the Super Bowl and the prospect of right-to-work legislation is, for many, a catalyst to just do something.
April Burke, a former school teacher and member of a local Occupy chapter, said to me, “I see right-to-work for what it is: an attack on not only organized labor but on all working-class people.… Because strong unions set the bar for wages, RTW laws will effectively lower wages for all. Rushing the passage of RTW in the State of Indiana on the eve of the Super Bowl is an insult to the thousand of union members who built Lucas Stadium as well as the members of the National Football League Players Association who issued a statement condemning the RTW bill.”
As April mentioned, the NFLPA has spoken out strongly against the bill. When I interviewed Player Association president DeMaurice Smith last week, he said:
When you look at proposed legislation in a place like Indiana that wants to call it something like “right to work,” I mean, let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue. This bill has nothing to do with a right to work. If folks in Indiana and that great legislature want to pass a bill that really is something called “right to work” have a constitutional amendment that guarantees every citizen a job. That’s a right to work. What this is instead is a right to ensure that ordinary working citizens can’t get together as a team, can’t organize and can’t fight management on an even playing field. So don’t call it “right to work.” If you want to have an intelligent discussion about what the bill is, call it what it is. Call it an anti-organizing bill. Fine… let’s cast a vote on whether or not ordinary workers can get together and represent themselves, and let’s have a real referendum.
But Governor Mitch Daniels, who was George W. Bush’s budget director, didn’t get this far by feeling shame or holding referendums. This is the same Mitch Daniels who said in 2006, “I’m not interested in changing any of it. Not the prevailing wage laws, and certainly not the right-to-work law. We can succeed in Indiana with the laws we have, respecting the rights of labor, and fair and free competition for everybody.” In other words, he’s that most original of creatures: a politician who lies.
If Daniels signs the bill before the big game, demonstrations sponsored by the AFL-CIO in partnership with the Occupy Movement will greet the 100,000 people who can afford the pilgrimage to Lucas Oil Field. The NFLPA, I’ve been told by sources, will also not be silent in the days to come. As Occupy protester Tithi Bhattacharya said to me, “If the bill becomes law this week then it is very important for all of us to protest this Sunday. We should show the 1 percent that the fate of Indiana cannot be decided with the swish of a pen by corporate politicians—the Super Bowl should be turned into a campaign for justice and jobs.”
The Final Insult: Nike CEO Phil Knight Eulogizes Joe Paterno
Phil Knight, the founder and chairman of Nike, has emerged following the death of Joe Paterno as the late Penn State coach’s great defender. At a packed, televised memorial service, Knight eulogized Paterno and went on the attack against the media and Board of Trustees, firmly defending Joe Paterno’s actions, or inactions, after learning that his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky may have been a child rapist.
Knight said,
In the year in question he gave full disclosure to his superiors up the chain to head of campus police and president of the school. The matter was in the hands of a world class university and by a president with an outstanding national reputation. Whatever the details of the investigation are, this much is clear to me. There was a villain in this tragedy it lies in that investigation, not in Joe Paterno’s response to it. [ applause ] and yet, for his actions, he was excoriated by the media and fired over the telephone by his university. Yet in all his subsequent appearances in the press, on TV, interacting with students, conversing with hospital personnel, giving interviews, he never complained, he never lashed out. Every word, every bit of body language conveyed a single message. ‘We are Penn State.
The crowd went wild. Knight has also received praise in the evil media for his strong words. Jena McGregor, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a piece titled, “At Joe Paterno memorial service, Phil Knight shows true leadership.” This is true, But it’s leadership right off a cliff and into the kind of moral abyss Coach Paterno rejected with his last public interview.
By Paterno’s own tragic words, he “didn’t know which way to go” and said that he wished he’d done more upon hearing the allegations against Sandusky. We can, I believe, understand that. We can understand how hearing that your dear friend of decades was some kind of monster could produce confusion. We can understand why Paterno would only tell the campus authorities whom he believed had “more expertise” in handling these matters. We can understand his saying nothing over the years, perhaps assuming the matter was taken care of, as he sees the accused rapist walk into his office, or arrive on his sidelines holding a small child by the hand, or using the very showers where someone witnessed the rape of a 10-year-old boy. We can understand how a person could think, “I told the campus police. I did what I legally had to do. And now I don’t want to think about this ever again.” We can understand it, but that doesn’t mean we have to excuse it.
The celebration of Knight’s message by Jena MacGregor and the attendees is another example why so much of the country looks at Happy Valley, Pennsylvania, like some kind of moral Bizarro World. It also drowns out the thousands of Penn State students who held vigils on campus against child abuse or the Penn State alums “sickened” by both the allegations against Sandusky as well as the response by those alumni and students who see Paterno, and by extension themselves, as the real victims in this saga.
What Phil Knight and those attracted to his brand of rhetoric don’t understand is that it’s not “the media” that enraged people against Joe Paterno and Penn State. It’s the fact that we’re human beings and the thought of a respected member of the community raping children makes all of us feel vulnerable in a very primal way. Maybe we were abused. Or maybe we know someone who was abused. Or maybe we have children and drop them off everyday with seemingly caring adults with whom we trust with their care. The unspoken thought, that there is a Sandusky in every town collecting damaged childhoods like Hummel figurines, is terrifying. The idea that someone—anyone—could have stopped Sandusky and didn’t because they wanted to protect a university brand, is infuriating. The belief that Joe Paterno, an avatar of moral righteousness, did the “bare minimum” in the face of this, is for many a mark on his character so dark, it shades decades of good works. I am personally far more sympathetic than that. But that sympathy starts by understanding that Joe Paterno was a football coach and a tenured professor, not a saint. He was fallible. He was right that he “should have done more.” He also sure as hell isn’t the only person who should say that.
The presence of Phil Knight, in particular, as a defender does Paterno an awful disservice. In Knight, we have someone whose company, despite efforts at reform, is still being flagged for using child labor under abusive sweatshop conditions. Much of this is subcontracted so Knight can feign ignorance, but that’s a legal loophole, not a moral one. Think about children as young as 4 or 5 in Pakistan on the assembly line. Think about a company that builds factories in authoritarian regimes so anyone who talks worker’s rights, let alone union, would face harrowing consequences. Or just Google “Nike, and Child Labor” and prepare to be assaulted with information of industrialized abuse. Given the gravity of these conditions, I have no problem writing that Jerry Sandusky, if guilty of every charge, would have to live 100 lives to ruin the number of childhoods emblemized by the Nike swoosh.
In Knight, we also have someone who pays college coaches a fortune so “student-athletes” can wear and by extension advertise their products. We have someone who ploughs millions to the University of Oregon football program funding state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, while the school endures terrible cuts. We have someone who I would argue represents the corrupting of amateur sports and by extension the corrupting of Joe Paterno and Penn State. By defending Paterno, Knight is doing little more than defending himself and the kind of moral relativism he’s brought to campuses around the country.
I’m in no kind of position to pass judgment on what Joe Paterno and his memory “deserves” for his actions or inactions. But I know he deserves far better than to be defended by Phil Knight. It will stand for me as the final insult to Coach Paterno’s good name.
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