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Dome Denied to Gustav's Victims
By Dave Zirin
Check out the massive padlock on the Superdome. That will tell you all you need to know about Hurricane Gustav and the federal government's carefully orchestrated response. The padlock, which looks roughly the size of a Frisbee, is set firmly around the doors. It articulates a message that would be clear to even a Bush or a Brownie: this storm will not be Katrina. By that I don't mean, "We've learned a lot in the last three years" or whatever talking points the White House is putting out.
The padlock makes clear that the public relations hurricane battle has been well engaged. There will be no photo ops of 30,000 people herded into a luxury stadium that magically morphs into a homeless shelter from hell. There will be no opening up the stadium to the poor and unwashed, not after spending $185 million bucks to rebuild the dome and not with the NFL season right around the corner. There will be no one left behind, even if it means putting people on buses, taking them hundreds of miles away and not even telling them the destination. And, more than anything else, the padlock in all of its metallic, glistening glory, is a self-indictment. It is an admission that despite what we were told three years ago, a stadium isn't really shelter; that the act of forcing people at gunpoint into the dome was a criminal act; and that believing any stadium could have redeeming social value as an emergency evacuation center, is a lie.
The padlock on the Superdome prevents any more ugly backdrops for When the Levees Broke II, and preserves the pristine field for Drew Brees, Reggie Bush and the rest of the New Orleans Saints. But it also raises more questions than answers: if people aren't in the dome, then where are they?
(14) CommentsSeptember 2, 2008
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Olympics Wrap-Up: Marco Polo Would Be Proud
By Dave Zirin
Not since Marco Polo has anyone traveled so far up China's Silk Road with such amoral élan. But there was Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, knight of the court of King Leopold's Belgium, three-time Olympian in the grand sport of yachting, standing astride Beijing at the close of the 2008 Olympic games. In front of 90,000 at the Games' he said, "Tonight, we come to the end of sixteen glorious days which we will cherish forever. Through these games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world."
But what did the world really learn? From NBC's coverage we learned that China is totally awesome, Michael Phelps can really swim and Usain Bolt is way fast. Oh, and there are pandas there. some of whom died in the Sichuan earthquake. We can't forget about the pandas.
As the Washington Post's veteran columnist Thomas Boswell wrote in his last missive from Beijing:
(20) CommentsAugust 24, 2008
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Overlooked and Unappreciated in Beijing
By Dave Zirin
If a dynasty isn't noticed, can it really dominate? Lisa Leslie doesn't think so. Leslie just won her fourth consecutive gold medal at her fourth consecutive Olympics--an unparalleled streak. If you've never heard of Leslie, you might think that she was master of the power walk. But Leslie has been the star of that most high profile of sports: basketball. But it's women's basketball which means, as Leslie has said, they are ignored, particularly relative to the various dream teams and redeem teams that men's basketball have produced.
Leslie has led the US women's basketball team since 1996 and in her last Olympics she led a trouncing of Australia, 92-65. "We weren't going to be the team to let Lisa lose," said new star Candace Parker, who scored fourteen in the final. "We wouldn't let her Olympic career end that way." The US has won thirty-three straight games in the Olympics and only lost once, in 1992 in Barcelona.
We should recognize the infinite dominance of the US women's team. We should appreciate the way women's basketball under coach Anne Donovan has continued to excel despite the improvements in the international game.
(3) CommentsAugust 24, 2008
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Jamaica Bolts to the Top
By Dave Zirin
"All I can say is, 'Yo! Jamaican sprinters taking over the world!'" said Usain Bolt, who has, for my money been the preeminent star of these games--even bigger than eight-time gold medal winner Michael Phelps.
Jamaican athletes won five of the six Olympic track medals but a botched handoff in the women's 400 relay prevented them from winning all six. The US was 0-6, a tally predicted by the great track coach Ron Davis who saw the trials and simply said to me, "This won't be pretty." At six-foot-five, barely resembling a sprinter so much as an NFL wide receiver, the breathtaking Bolt led the way for Jamaica's gold rush. Bolt set world records in the 100 and 200 meters during the games and raced a blistering third leg of the relay.
The question is how? How has Jamaica, a nation of 2.8 million people, so thoroughly humbled the world? The climate helps. The poverty in Jamaica helps as well. But what really deserves most of the credit is Jamaica' s thirty-year-old national track & field program. Track is like the NFL in Jamaica, a national sport whose heroes are held in the highest esteem. Of the forty-six medals won by Jamaica in Olympic history, forty-five have been in track. Success has bred success. Now Jamaica is the global champion in their national sport.
(21) CommentsAugust 22, 2008
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Remembering Gene Upshaw
By Dave Zirin
The last thirty years haven't exactly been kind to the labor movement. It's been a story of slow death, with decades of falling union numbers, stagnant wages and disappearing pensions--all signs pointing toward total oblivion. It's been the era as former UAW President Doug Fraser put so aptly, "The one sided class war."
That's why it's so important for anyone who wants a fighting labor movement, to take a moment and remember the late president of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), Gene Upshaw. Upshaw died on Wednesday at age 63 of pancreatic cancer. In addition to a storied Hall of Fame playing career with the Oakland Raiders, Upshaw headed the NFLPA since 1983. When Upshaw started, the average NFL salary was $112,000. Today it is more than $2 million. Of course the game has exploded with cable television and publicly funded stadiums turning revenue streams into floods. But Upshaw led victorious fights at the negotiating table for free agency and higher wages against the wealthiest, most well-connected and most conservative ownership class in sports. Dave Meggyesy, former NFL player who headed the West Coast office of the NFLPA until his retirement last year, said to me yesterday, "I worked with Gene for twenty-five years. We did hundreds of team meetings together and so well complimented each other. I knew intimately how good a leader he really was, how much he cared for the players and how strong and tough, relentless really he was to 'make it right' for the players. We shared that vision, we would do whatever it took until the last man standing."
The great criticism against Upshaw was that he and the union didn't do enough to help retired players. In a charge led by Mike Ditka--an anti-union zealot--they said the union was allowing former players, broken down by the game, to live penniless and destitute. I have written about this before and I find these charges to be without merit. It's like blaming an oil workers union for high prices at the pump. Yes, the way some former players live, old and broken before their time, is a sin. But to put that on the feet of Upshaw and the union, is simply wrong. As former NFLPA President Troy Vincent pointed out to me, the last collective bargaining agreement saw pensions for players who retired before 1982 increased 25 percent. After 1982, they went up 10 percent.
(10) CommentsAugust 22, 2008
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NBC Makes Mockery of McKay Legacy
By Dave Zirin
This past year saw the death of legendary sports broadcaster Jim McKay. McKay made his mark in history when he anchored the round-the-clock coverage of the killings of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics. At the time no one said, "Why is Jim McKay doing this? He''s a sports guy!" McKay, a man of considerable gravitas, made it all seem seamless. One can only wonder what McKay would think of NBC's coverage of this year's games. My "what would McKay think" moment happened not when I was watching the Olympics, but during a recent edition of the NBC Nightly News.
A story appeared about a reporter's search for a woman who had been "disappeared" by the Chinese police. Her crime was to protest the bulldozing of her home to make way for Olympic facilities. She was one of as many as two million who saw their homes destroyed. The reporter searched and searched for this woman, and came up empty. They don't call it "disappearing somebody" for nothing.
If her "crime" in this scenario, was non existent, and the crime of the Chinese police is horrifying--then what of the crimes of NBC? Why take a story like this and outsource it to the news department while the sports commentators present a picture-perfect Western fantasy of Chinese growth and profit potential? This story should have been integrated into the coverage of the Olympics, so the world could know the price paid by the poorest members of Chinese society--a price of course paid through extreme coercion.
(44) CommentsAugust 21, 2008
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César Maxit: A Real Olympic Hero
By Dave Zirin
The Beijing Olympics will be remembered for people like Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and Nastia Liukin. But we should also remember César Maxit. Don't know César? He is a young Argentine-American architect living in Washington, DC. He is also a member of the protest group The Ruckus Society. That means that if scaling a wall with a banner or rapelling down the side of a building where the IMF was meeting was an Olympic sport, César would be in the contention for the gold (and if power walking is an Olympic sport, then why not?)
César made the trip to Beijing along with four Tibetan-Americans to make a statement--any statement--for a free Tibet while the world was watching China.
Before César could even plan his action, he was felled by unforeseen foes: air and water. Pollution in Beijing will smack you like a right cross. "I was laid up for days," he told me. "But then I thought, 'This is nothing compared to what they go through in Tibet.'" César staggered out for the opening ceremonies on 8-8-08 with his three compadres. You don't travel across the world for Pepto Bismol.
(29) CommentsAugust 20, 2008
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US Misses Shot at Iranian Superstar
By Dave Zirin
Everyone knew these Olympics would be political. We knew the stadium-sized gap between the so-called Olympic ideals and the commercial feeding frenzy in Beijing would stagger the faint of heart.
But we are also now seeing, in the towering form of seven-foot-two- inch Hamed Ehadadi, the hypocrisy of a United States that will sing the praises of China and ruthlessly punish Iran, defining the "axis of evil" on an ethically bankrupt scale. Ehadadi plays the center position on Iran's national basketball team. In four Olympic games, he scored 16.5 points and grabbed ten rebounds. Most impressively, he dropped 21 on an Argentinian team loaded with pro talent. NBA front offices salivated and began to line up to talk about contracts. One of the teams interested in Ehadadi was the Memphis Grizzlies, where he could enhanced their already formidable team featuring explosive wingmen OJ Mayo and Rudy Gay. But then the State Department stepped in. "We have been advised that a federal statute prohibits a person or organization in the United States from engaging in business dealings with Iranian nationals," is how Yahoo! Sports quoted the NBA legal counsel.
David Stern and the league office followed suit, ordering all clubs to cease and desist talks with Ehadadi's people. The cowardice of Stern is really striking. He likes to sing the praises of the NBA's embrace of globalization. Players in China, who arrive in the NBA with a hometown fan base in the hundreds of millions are welcomed with open arms. Yet Iran clearly is just a bridge too far.
(14) CommentsAugust 19, 2008
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Is Michael Phelps Really the Greatest Olympian Ever?
By Dave Zirin
Eight gold medals. Seven world records. And most remarkably, transforming laps in a pool into must-see-TV. Michael Phelps has truly exceeded the hype and has derserved every accolade he's received. In slightly over thirty total minutes of swimming, Phelps defied our imagination about the athletically possible. Even NBC, so terribly awkward in its coverage of China, so self-censoring when broaching the politics of these games and so hackneyed when relaying the little soap opera vignettes about individual athletes--handled the Phelps story with gusto.
Now the only question left is the one without an answer: is Phelps "the greatest Olympian ever?" This is what's known as a "sports radio question." It's the kind of idiotic discussion point that has a commercial value precisely because it can be debated forever without any resolution. Phelps as "greatest Olympian" may turn out to be what finally supplants "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" on countless call-in shows and in corner bars.
Since every sports yakker on the street has his or her opinion on this, I might as well give mine. The case for Phelps lies in the unprecedented eight gold medals (and the record fourteen for his career overall), his remarkable mental and physical endurance and the fact that he bested the greatest swimmers in the world using a variety of strokes. In an era of sports specialization, he is swimming's Bo Jackson.
(47) CommentsAugust 18, 2008
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Blind to Bolt in Beijing
By Dave Zirin
The ultimate Olympic event is the 100-meter dash. From the greatness of Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, to the ignominy of Ben Johnson--it has in many ways come to define the Olympics. This year a man with a name that comes out of central casting, a name straight out of Dickens--Usain Bolt of Jamaica, set a world record of 9.69 seconds at the Bird's Nest.
Bolt, in breaking his own world record, even slowed up at the end, pounding his chest, which has some wondering if he could have come in at 9.64, or even better. This is what the Olympics should be all about--watching athletes exceed our wildest dreams as to what is physically possible. There was just one problem with this amazing moment in sports history--it wasn't televised here in America. Instead men's basketball was being broadcast. Does anyone believe for one moment if US track star Tyson Gay had made the finals, this would have happened? In fact, unless you were following the race on a live blog you wouldn't have known a record fell at all. (And what does a "live blog" for a 10 second race look like? "The race begins." "Now it's over.")
As one poster at Washington Post.com put it, "Seriously, I'm sitting here watching the basketball team destroy Spain when I could have been watching the first person in history beak the 9.7 second mark? NBC has been dropping the ball all week on what they have been showing. They think that just because we are in America, all we want to watch are Americans." Another person called it "Shocking and disappointing." And yet another said pointedly, "Hey NBC, you SUCK."
(72) CommentsAugust 16, 2008
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