On land, America has surrounded Iran by having troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. At sea, she has dozens of ships, with a permanent naval base in Bahrain. Assassinations linked to Israel and America have happened inside Iran, and American drones have flown over the country, with one shot down. On the economic front, America is leading an oil sanction. So with all this intimidation and threat of violence, this is what our Peace Laureate President has to say, in his recent State of the Union, “We will stand against violence and intimidation.” Here, Obama was referring to Syria, who is yet another victim of our intimidation if not, soon enough, violence.

Without a doubt, America is the world leader in violence and intimidation, and the US, UK and Israel alliance is the true axis of evil, for these countries have been behind so much violence and turmoil for several decades now. They instigate, spearhead, package and sell violence as a normal, day to day business. First in war and looting, they are a much graver threat to world peace than Iran, Syria and North Korea ever were, or could be. Most lives worldwide are untouched and cannot be molested by what’s decided in Tehran, Damascus and Pyongyang, but a mere sneeze in DC, London or Tel Aviv can send scores to the emergency room.

When this empire is over, and it cannot end soon enough, I doubt that it will be remembered for its artistic achievements, for Americans themselves are completely indifferent to all of their artists. Even the highly educated among us would have a very hard time naming a single living American painter, sculptor, composer or poet. Practitioners of meditative forms, they cannot compete with the hyper kinetic seduction of pop music, pop dancing and sports. Americans cannot think about the arts because their minds are crammed with hundreds of athletes.

In his State of the Union, Obama started out by thanking the troops. He praised their teamwork and urged us all to emulate them. This teamwork ethos is inculcated most effectively in sports, for both participants and spectators, but also at the workplace. Now, unity and sacrifice are certainly laudable, but only when they serve honorable goals, which are clearly absent if you happen to be in the US military, occupying a Goldman Sachs cubicle or drawing a paycheck from the Carlyle Group, etc. Soldiers speak often of fighting primarily for each other, and this makes perfect sense once you’re already on the battlefield, but if they would only step back and reflect, a near impossibility in the herd culture of the military, where the highest virtue is abject obedience, they might discover that they are just dumb, stupid animals being used, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger. Hell, they might realize that they are even less than dumb, stupid animals, for an animal’s strongest instinct is safety. Beside a contemporary American GI, I can’t imagine any primate that would volunteer to be shot at just so another SUV could be sold, not even a mouse lemur with a brain weighting just two grams.

As America moves its war pieces into place, the folks back home can watch helmeted pseudo-warriors crash into each other with each play. In our culture, repeated collisions are a primary excitement. The players’ immediate aim is to gain yards, which are carefully tabulated, with the climax happening in an end zone, a goal which, unlike other sports, cannot be crossed by the ball alone, but must be accompanied by one’s own body. This hard fought, much resisted entry is called a touchdown, as if one has been airborne and homeless all this time. In the end time, the blessed among us will be allowed into that final, celestial end zone, where we can whoop it up with a real Touchdown Jesus, Vince Lombardi and Joe Pa. The Cowgirls will shake their pompoms and more, and Billy White Shoes Johnson will do his funky chicken dance.

Meanwhile, on this depleted uranium, corexit, cesium, agent orange and corn syrup mess of an earth, we can look forward to this game on Sunday, where military jets will roar overhead and there will be a huge flag the size of the field itself, with soldiers standing at attention. During the broadcast, troops stationed overseas will be shown so we can all thank them in our hearts for allowing us to watch these simulated wars at home, and when an actual war starts, we can watch that too. Between real and fake wars, car commercials. It’s so exciting, all these wars all the time.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had said he was “personally disappointed” in Joe Paterno for not doing more to alert authorities in the Jerry Sandusky case, while acknowledging that Paterno did nothing illegal and followed university rules for conduct.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who, as attorney general, assigned only one investigator to the case in 2009, while devoting almost innumerable personnel and financial resources to prosecute high-profile cases that could help lead him to the governor’s office.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had the authority to order the arrest of Jerry Sandusky as soon as the claims were made, but who allowed the investigation to drag two years.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who stepped up the investigation only in the third year, after he was elected governor.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who accepted about $200,000 in campaign donations from trustees of Sandusky’s Second Mile foundation and then danced around questions of why, as governor, he authorized a $3 million grant to the Second Mile.

That would be the same Tom Corbett, who as an ex-officio member of the Penn State Board of Trustees, with the power to increase or decrease state appropriations to the university, big-footed his presence to demand that the Trustees do something to Joe Paterno.

Now, let’s look at the Board of Trustees. On January 22, the day that Joe Paterno died from lung cancer, the Board issued a honey-dripped PR-laden written commemoration.

That, of course, would be the same Board that, influenced by the harpies of the media and a horde of the public who knew everything about everything, except people and football, had wanted to terminate Joe Paterno’s contract after his teams had losing seasons in 2003 and 2004. He was too old, they said. He was getting senile, they claimed. His coaching strategy was too conservative, they cried with the shrill cry of a wounded hyena. But an 11-1 season in 2005 quieted their panic. And so they stewed, knowing that a football coach, educator, philanthropist, and humanitarian had a greater reputation than all of them combined.

That would be the same Board that violated every expectation of due process, listened to the other sanctimonious hypocrites who were quick to condemn someone without knowing the facts, and by a cowardly and impersonal phone call violated four levels of the chain of command and fired Joe Paterno hours after he had announced his retirement. It was their pathetic way to make people believe they, not the most recognizable person in Penn State history, were in control. The reality, of course, is they botched the firing in a feeble attempt to protect themselves, not Penn State and, certainly, not the rights of a tenured full professor, who had given 61 years of service to the university.

That, of course, would be the same Board that should have known for at least six months, and probably longer, of a grand jury investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s conduct, but apparently had no crisis management plan to deal with what would become the greatest scandal in its 156-year history.

That, of course, would be the same Board that had operated in a culture of secrecy that regularly violated the state’s Sunshine law and enjoyed its status as receiving state tax moneys while not having to be under the glare of the public right-to-know law.

That, of course, would be the same board that includes the CEOs of U.S. Steel, Merck, and a major division of the Bank of New York Mellon; and an assortment of senior executives from insurance, investment, and education. Even a retired assistant managing editor of The New York Times is on the Board. And, yet, this Gang of 32, which should have known better, bumbled, stumbled, and proved that malfeasance and incompetence is what it should be best known for. For the most part, they acted like undergraduates struggling to earn a grade of “C” in a course in human relations, having already decided they didn’t need the course in business communications.

Now, let’s turn to the new president. The Board forced the resignation of a respected 17-year president for not doing enough to investigate the Sandusky allegations. By most accounts, the new president, formerly the provost and executive vice-president, is a decent person with a good academic reputation. But, is it credible that if the No. 1 person should have known more and done more, how could the No. 2 person be ignorant of the allegations. Nevertheless, the Board sent the newly-minted president out on nothing less than a belated PR field trip to calm the rising storm against the Board for its incompetence and insensitivity in firing Joe Paterno. At three meetings with hundreds of alumni, the new president, facing alumni wrath, did little to alleviate their anger. But, he promised the university would do something—he didn’t know what—he didn’t know how or when—to honor Joe Paterno.

Of course, since the Board was so inept, secret, and hypocritical in its own actions, it had no idea what it was going to do. The Board statement the day of Joe Paterno’s death merely stated the university “plans to honor him,” and is considering “appropriate ways.”

The greatest honor will not come from the Board, the administration, or even the Legislature, many of whom sought the media spotlight to pander to certain voters by condemning the coach. At the statue by Beaver Stadium, thousands of students, staff, faculty, and community residents are coming to pay their respects. Hundreds had met him, for he was one of the more accessible persons in the community, often walking home alone from practices and games; his phone number was in the book; his home was in a quiet residential area not a mansion on a hill reserved for the wealthy. Most of the mourners had never met him, but they all knew him.

On Tuesday, about 27,000 people from all over the United States stood in line up to three hours to walk past the body of Joe Paterno, guarded by past and present scholar-athletes. NFL super-stars and football fans, academics and those who never went to college, all were there to honor the man who was an outstanding quarterback and cornerback who earned an English literature degree from Brown University, one of the more prestigious in the country; a man who later created the “Great Experiment” to develop and promote a winning football program that would make education and citizenship more important than sports, and would make “success with honor” more than words.

Within ten minutes, mourners grabbed the first 10,000 tickets for a Thursday memorial at the Bryce Jordan Center. The center capacity for the memorial is 12,000.

Sue Paterno need not have worried when she quietly asked some mourners to keep her husband warm. When journalism turns into history, it will be written that Joe Paterno had done more than was expected, in every part of his life. The people, not the governor or the trustees who will quickly be forgotten in the cold, will keep Joe Paterno warm.

This is El Clásico in Bethlehem, a city where you either support Barca or Real; to support another team is at best unheard of, at worse disgraceful.

In a region which is dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has been for over 60 years, El Clásico provides a welcome break from life under occupation and a chance for Palestinian football fans to be like any other throughout the world: sing songs, curse the referee and yo-yo up and down off a seat for 90 minutes. And for the Christians in the crowd it’s a chance to drink the local Taybeh beer — brewed just a few kilometres away in Ramallah — and for the odd Muslim as well it seems…. as long as you’re elusive about it.

As one Palestinian Barcelona fan once told me “Our days and our conversations always revolve around the conflict, but when Madrid and Barca play, that is the only thing on our minds.”

Bethlehem famed as the birthplace of Jesus and immortalised in dozens of Christmas songs about little donkeys, shepherds and of course its famous son, is very different from the idyllic Christmas card image we see perched on our mantelpiece every December.

Today’s Bethlehem is surrounded by a concrete wall which at its highest point is over 8 metres tall — twice the size of the Berlin Wall — and has two crowded refugee camps on either side of it, each pocket marked with bullet holes. The residents of Bethlehem even need permission from the Israeli military if they want to travel the 7km to visit friends or family in Jerusalem. And permission is hard to come by. Life here is not one full of optimism.

But at the start of any El Clásico in Bethlehem, optimism is in abundance. Hundreds always gather to watch; their plastic seats sprawled across the ground in front of a giant screen, a looming military watchtower nearby, but ignored. The need for seats is minimal however. Men, women, children and families spend their time up on their feet shouting support in Arabic, English and Spanish: almost as if there is an unwritten code where the more languages you use, the better the fan you are.

The make-up of fans in Bethlehem is around 50:50; the almost identical numbers of Barca and Real fans make the atmosphere of the place electric. As with every encounter between the two teams, the tension is evident; it is fair to say that this game is more than just a game in the little town of Bethlehem.

Barcelona were the victors last night (18/01/2012), and for half of Bethlehem that means a night of celebrations which inevitably spill out onto the streets in the early hours of the morning. For the other half, it’s a night of what could have been. However the result in the wider context has very little relevance, the game on the other hand does. What happens in Bethlehem on the evening of an El Clásico: the excitement, the passion, the joy of winning, the sadness of defeat — allows thousands of people who have been imprisoned simply due to being Palestinian, have a sense of freedom like any other avid football fans throughout the world.

The occupied Palestinian territories are choc-a-bloc with Barcelona and Real Madrid fans; it almost makes the West Bank and Gaza, the place to be for such a night. This is despite a military occupation, where water, trade, vehicles and an impoverished people are managed by a militaristic nuclear power. Hats off to the Palestinians, because for an apparently ‘imagined’ people they sure do create an atmosphere rivalled nowhere bar the cities of Barcelona and Madrid themselves.

Today, however goes back to the daily grind: Applying for permits to farm your land and visit relatives, though you probably won’t receive them; making it to work without being fired because you were held up for hours at a checkpoint for no reason bar your age; hoping no-one you know falls ill, hospital treatment is never guaranteed. Never mind the daily humiliation of having your day-to-day life controlled, the threat of being attacked by militant settlers, or being gassed for non-violently protesting that giant wall that runs through your families centuries old land, rooting up your olive trees and livelihood.

There are slight sighs of boredom in other parts of the world, complaining that Barcelona and Real Madrid play each other too often in a year. In an area of the world where constant conflict grinds individuals down, that constant hope for victory in the next El Clásico is just what this place needs; and the more games, the better.

The Gospel of Tacking on of Student Fees that Often Have Nothing to Do With Academics

What I refer to as the “corporate climate” is the transition of the modern university from its academic mission to its financial mission. In large state universities that have cash cow athletic programs, almost none of the funds these athletic departments generate go to the general student body or academic programs, and often students are still saddled with fees that often have nothing to do with academic instruction. When I was in graduate school, my institution charged fees for recreation (use of its recreational facilities), transportation fees (parking permits and shuttle bus rides), and technology fees (computers and networks). While I was a student, I never used the fitness center, never used the bus system (I had a bicycle), and while I did use the university’s computers and networks, the technology fee was primarily in place to pay for software upgrades that were unnecessary. One of the aspects of the computer technology business is to always sell upgrades to the consumer when the consumer is already comfortable and efficient with the current version of a software program. The need to push what are essentially useless upgrades is what keeps the likes of Microsoft and Apple in business. Universities have jumped on this bandwagon by swearing allegiance to Blackboard which has a virtual monopoly on classroom management software and Microsoft, whose array of office products is required for nearly every computer terminal supported by the university computer system.

Falling Diverse Interaction Outside of the Classroom

Gone in today’s university experience is the nexus of rich student interaction where diverse students often congregate and exchange ideas over a burger: the campus dining hall. The campus dining hall has largely been replaced by high end dining chains that often cater to wealthy students. This has been a blessing for universities because they can lease out their academic buildings to the highest bidder. Independent local dining establishments or coffee houses often have to struggle to acquire a student clientele against corporate chains that have an inside track to a student customer base, thanks in large part to universities looking to cash in by leasing space to corporate dining establishments who can afford the high lease rates.

The University as the foundation of “moral values” such as “integrity” or “character”

This is largely an antiquated notion as the university has largely outgrown its monastic past. The number of arrests of college athletes and coaches, the number of students arrested for underage drinking year after year, the number of campus rapes all point to a systemic breakdown in values in the American university. It is laughable that universities are still in the business of promoting moral values, especially when they actively promote wage inequalities within their own ranks. As an institution of capital, the university sees no problem today in relying upon cheap labor, in the form of adjuncts and graduate assistants, for student instruction. I can recall as a graduate assistant making nearly a fourth of my salary as a full time worker in the private sector while having considerably more responsibilities: the primary of which was to shape the next generation of minds. This was while I was also completing my own course of studies and neglecting job prospects that I would have otherwise engaged. It is morally repugnant for universities to rely upon underpaying their adjunct and graduate instructors while also raising tuition and fees on the very employees who are charged with teaching undergraduates.

The moral outrage at Penn State is more than justified but I think the situation requires that the public look more closely, more intensely, at the inner lives of universities and the economic disparities they perpetuate. That administrators who profited while these abuses occurred should speak mightily about how as a corporatized entity, the university has sought the same status of corporations in trying to shield its questionable practices and abuses from the public eye.

If Stern hadn’t prematurely hinted, some months ago, that many of the more militant owners were already willing to jettison the entire season if they couldn’t get some big-time cost relief, his announcement would’ve had even more impact.  As it turns out, lots of people—fans, players, sports writers, agents—already half-expect the season to be scrubbed, which would be unfortunate.  But that’s how far apart the parties seem to be, and that’s how much pre-negotiation, doom and gloom hype there was.

As in all such disputes, the main issue is money.  And that seems bizarre, given that neither side is exactly hurting for dough.  Indeed, the players and owners are in the highest income brackets known to man.  Most of the players are millionaires and most of the owners are billionaires.

According to InsideHoops, a player who’s completely untested, who’s not spent one minute in the NBA, who wasn’t a stand-out college player, who wasn’t even drafted, but who was lucky enough to get signed by a team, makes a minimum of $473,604 per season.  He could ride the bench all year, play a grand total of 50 minutes for the whole season, and still earn that figure.  And, of course, if you’re Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, we’re talking tens of millions.  Not too shabby.

For those sports fans who’ve been paying attention to the negotiations and are trying to decide which side to root for—the ungrateful players or the greedy owners—let me offer some unsolicited advice.  Root for the players.  Root entirely for the players.  Why?  Because they’re the only ones with the talent.  Simple as that.

As crazy and inflated as entertainment (sports, music, TV, movies) money is (didn’t Lady Gaga make $100 million in 2010?), if we have to pay somebody exorbitant sums of money, it may as well be the ones with the discernible talent.  Otherwise, with all that money being generated, we’re going to be paying it to people without any talent….and that’s not only wrong, it’s offensive.

What skills does it require to be a professional basketball player?  Answer: vertical leap, quickness, shooting touch, vision, stamina, court instincts, determination and perseverance.  What skills does it take to be an owner?  Answer: wealth.  Which means the Koch brothers could be team owners.  All they’d have to do is buy themselves a team.  But who’s going to be impressed with the Koch brothers becoming team owners?  Who’s going to care?

Can we all agree that there’s way too much money available for movie stars, recording artists, and professional athletes?  Can we all agree that entertainment money is ridiculous, that it’s absurd, that it’s nutty, that—given the poverty in the world—it’s an outrage?  But outrageous or not, let’s make sure, at the very least, that most of that money goes to the people who “deserve” it.  Those with the talent.

Romana Clay: Welcome to Mind over Media, where the news is news. I’m Romana Clay. As should be obvious to anyone, the Internet has supplanted newspapers as the primary source of news for increasing numbers of people. Last year, a survey by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 41% of respondents chose the Internet as their primary news source, whereas a mere 10% chose a newspaper. The proportion was highest, as might be expected, among people aged 18 to 29. But is this decline in newspaper popularity due to technological innovation, or are newspaper owners and editors chiefly responsible for its demise, and is this demise permanent? Today, we begin a two-part investigation of the declining relevance of print journalism with Professor Joseph Howe, Director of the Centre for Media Integrity in Victoria, B.C. Welcome to the show.

Professor Joseph Howe: Thank you.

RC: Professor Howe, let’s get right to the point: is the Internet dooming print journalism to technological extinction?

JH: First of all, an established machine or technique does not simply die because a newer or better one comes along. The television did not spell the end of movie theatres, as many feared. The discovery of polyester, nylon and other synthetic fibers did not put established textile industries out of business. The automatic transmission did not make the standard transmission obsolete. Each maintained its economic niche or adapted to create a new one. In the face of technological innovation, history shows that co-existence, not extinction, is more likely. So there is no basis for blaming the Internet solely for the decline in daily or weekly newspaper readership.

RC: But newspapers are dying; even the New York Times admits that print’s days are numbered. Doesn’t the Pew poll show the newspaper going the way of the buggywhip?

JH: Not really. Yes, the newspaper has lost audience and revenue to the Internet, and it will never be as important or as influential as it was in the pre-computer age. On the other hand, newspapers have on-line editions, as well as on-line advertisers and subscribers, so it isn’t a total loss. Having said that, newspapers—in fact, all media—have to adapt to a world where they can no longer dictate truth and shape reality. But instead of adapt they fight.

RC: But newspapers have an Internet presence. Is this not a sign of adaptation?

JH: A minor one, largely forced on them by circumstance, but not a true adaptation. You see, the Internet is probably the greatest force for truth and democracy since the invention of movable type in the 16th century, and this terrifies the traditional media, especially newspapers.

RC: But why should they be terrified?

JH: Because they don’t serve the public good; they serve the corporations that own them, and through them the political interests and lobby groups that these corporations support. You will not find newspapers turning to the Internet to write balanced, rational reporting, for example, on the Middle East, the environment, labour issues, or national security because serving the public interest is bad for business. The tragedy of our time is that as the Internet helps people become better informed, newspapers become ever more shallow and manipulative as they prop up the official fictions that sustain their corporate owners.

RC: You said that newspapers are shallow and manipulative, but hasn’t that always been true to some degree?

JH: Yes, but the Internet has shown us just how shallow and how manipulative they are. Before the worldwideweb, we had no external reference point. Sure, there have always been counterculture or dissident publications, but none that could challenge the authority of the newspaper or reach a mass audience in real time.

RC: You’re not saying that the Internet is perfectly honest, are you?

JH: No, of course not. There’s a lot of garbage out there, but among the garbage is the balance and contrarian views that are conspicuously absent in newspapers. Without the Internet, the world would not have been able to expose the official fictions surrounding, for example, the September 11 attack, Operation ‘Cast Lead’, or the attack on the Mavi Marmara. The Internet is a threat to corporate power, and therefore newspapers, as corporate properties, cannot accept the need to adapt. Mendacity, not technology, lies behind the fall of newspapers. It all comes down to opportunity cost.

RC: What do you mean by ‘opportunity cost’?

JH: The cost of honesty versus obedience. Let’s say a newspaper runs a properly researched story or opinion piece on a matter of great public importance. If it runs up against corporate political interests, the writer could lose his job.

That’s what happened in March to Ottawa Sun columnist Michael Harris, who had his column taken away after he had the temerity and good sense to condemn Stephen Harper for being in contempt of Parliament. Publisher Rick Gibbons denied any cause and effect, of course, saying that Harris’s column was cancelled to make way for ‘new voices’, but that’s just the standard newsspeak to justify corporate censorship. The same thing happened to Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin five months earlier. The good news is that he was picked up by the Toronto Star.

On the other hand, if a paper runs mindless pap, it risks losing readership. One of the most bizarre cases of this occurred last October when The Vancouver Sun ran a fawning eight-part series on Justin Bieber just because he was in town for a concert. Even the managing editor couldn’t hide his embarrassment.

RC: If the Internet is providing the news and analysis that newspapers cannot or will not provide, what do newspapers have to offer their readers?

JH: Newspapers still do a decent job of reporting local news—crime, fire, city council, that sort of thing —and there will always be a readership for it. Beyond that, not much. To avoid angering their corporate owners, one tactic is to lard the paper with mountains of non-news—advertorials, soft features, sports and infotainment—so that readers won’t notice the absence of real news. The newspaper, and media in general, is really little more than a Weapon of Mass Distraction, and the exodus from print to web reflects the growing belief that a news diet should feed the mind, not starve it.

RC: Can you give us an example?

JH: One egregious example took place in Vancouver during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The editors of the Picayune-Mirror repeatedly tanked the front page in favour of redundant, trite cheerleading pics of the Vancouver Canucks, who made it all to the way to the finals. If you look at the monitor, you’ll see a series of front pages of the Picayune-Mirror. Yes, the playoffs was an important local event, but that does not excuse throwing away the front page, especially when the paper’s back page is also the sports ‘front page’. Given the already bloated sports section and the reporting overkill in the news section, there was no justifiable reason to bastardize the paper. On most days it looked like a Canucks sandwich—all bread and very little meat.

RC: Why did the editors do it?

JH: I asked that exact question, and was simply told that the publisher gave the order to give the Canucks the same saturation coverage as the 2010 Olympics—sports reduced to news filler. Why this was necessary, I never found out, but you can tell from the headlines that accompanied these pics that news judgment played no part: ‘Rock this Town!’; ‘Drop the Puck!’; ‘Make Your Plans’. What made the editors think they were being paid to be cliché-addled hustlers?

RC: At this point, news-hungry readers had to be asking themselves: ‘What news is not reported?’ ‘What do I need to know that I’m not being told’?

JH: Exactly! Clearly the Picayune-Mirror doesn’t respect its readers, so it forces them to go elsewhere for news, and the Internet is the most likely place.

RC: Has the Picayune-Mirror or any other paper actually lost readership?

JH: I can’t say for certain because the newspaper climate in most cities is nearly monopolistic. Apart from the throw-away transit rags, the Picayune-Mirror is one of two dailies in Vancouver, but since both are owned by the same company, circulation figures and reader attitudes cannot be taken at face value. However, we can reasonably conclude that newspapers are doomed, but not just for technological reasons.

RC: Thank you, Professor Howe. (to camera) When we return, Picayune-Mirror editor Bruce James will join us via satellite. (Two-minute commercial break) We’re back, and joining us from Vancouver as promised is Bruce James editor of the Picayune-Mirror. (to the TV monitor) Mr. James, you’ve been following Professor Howe’s comments. How do you respond to his comments about the state of newspapers and yours in particular?

Bruce James: Well, obviously I take great exception to Professor Howe’s characterisation of my paper. I don’t think he understands it at all. The Picayune-Mirror isn’t a broadsheet like the Globe and Mail, so it doesn’t have to live up to his high-falutin’ standards. It’s a parochial tabloid. Our readers aren’t interested in international or national news—they want to read local stories, the ‘picayune’ details from their neighbourhood. They also want to see themselves, their interests, reflected in the paper. That’s why we put on the front page the kind of story we think readers would be talking about.

RC: But doesn’t Professor Howe have a point when he criticizes you and the other editors for filling the front page with redundant sports pics that have no news value?

BJ: Who says they have no news value? Sports is news, and the Canucks were the biggest news story at the time.

JH: No, Mr. James, they weren’t. A hockey series, no matter how important, is not ‘news’. That’s why there are separate news and sports sections. Besides, you had the whole back section to promote the Canucks; you didn’t need to tank the front.

BJ: I resent your use of the term ‘tank’!

RC: (cutting in) Mr. James, I think Professor Howe’s point is that the back page, which also had a full-sized hockey pic and a thick hockey section, seemed adequate to the task, and that giving away the front page seemed like overkill.

BJ: Our readers are interested in the Canucks, and we give them what they want.

JH: Even if that means under-reporting real news? Last I checked, the Picayune-Mirror was a newspaper, not a sports paper.

BJ: I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job!

RC: (cutting in) Uh, gentlemen…

JH: Well, then, perhaps you’d tell us the news value of running a Canucks calendar or pictures of fans on the front page.

BJ: I don’t have to account to you!

JH: All I want is a straight answer to a simple question, but you seem incapable of giving one. You think you can exempt yourself from having to do honest journalism by using the excuse that the Picayune-Mirror is just ‘a tabloid’.

BJ: How you could equate the measure of me as a journalist based on whether or not I address the musings of someone so insignificant as yourself?

RC: (cutting in) Mr. James, that’s quite enough!

BJ: Then I suggest you tell your guest to show me some respect!

JH: (to James) You mean the same kind of respect you show your readers?!

RC: (cutting in) All right, that’ll do. Let’s take break and see if we can all calm down. (The camera pulls back and cuts to a commercial, and then the argument continues off-camera.)

BJ: (to Howe) I’m getting a little tired of this line of questioning.

JH: (to James) And I’m getting tired of your refusal to answer questions.

BJ: I am not interested in offering you my comments!

JH: Oh, that’s great! And you call yourself an editor?!

BJ: Now you…

RC: …Gentlemen! We’re on in 30 seconds and I would like to move the show to another topic. So let’s put our anger away, shall we? (short pause.) Okayyyy, we’re back, and I’d like to change focus a bit by going back to something you said earlier, Professor Howe. You said newspapers are forcing readers to go to the Internet by under-reporting real news. Can you elaborate?

JH: I hardly know where to begin. Well, take international news, which is just as important to local readers as local news is. In 2008-2009 Israel launched a genocidal attack on the Gaza Strip called Operation ‘Cast Lead’. It was a wholesale massacre of civilians based on trumped up charges that the Hamas government had launched rocket attacks. In fact, the attack was six months in the planning. It rightly disgusted the world, yet there was virtually no mention of the illegality of the attack or of Israel’s use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus, which are expressly forbidden by law. I asked Bruce James at the time if he would write an editorial denouncing the use of these banned weapons and he said he would if I produced proof. I did, but he reneged.

BJ: (cutting in) I never said anything even close to writing an editorial condemning Israeli action! Given we had not to date written an editorial supporting their action, something I supported, why would I commit to writing an editorial condemning their action. I was well aware Israel admitted to using them in Lebanon. I personally do not support the use of these weapons, but I also don’t support Hamas missiles attempting to destroy another country’s vital desalination plant.

JH: Your knee-jerk equation of Hamas rockets with Israel’s use of DU and white phosphorous is grossly immoral and dishonest. One Jew had died in all of 2008 before the assault. Does a ratio of more than 100:1 dead Arabs to Jews sound like justice to you? Does this not sound like genocide, especially when Israel was deliberately starving Gazans and denying them medical care?

BJ: You lose all credibility with me when you play the genocide card, and your vitriol and hate have rendered reasonable discussion impossible! Go fuck yourself. You, sir, are a frothing, horrid little man. (James takes off his clip-on mike and storms off the show. Clay and Howe look at each other in disbelief.)

RC: (visibly discomfited) That…did not go nearly as well as I had hoped.

JH: No, indeed, but at least he showed our viewers why the newspaper is dying.

RC: We’re out of time, which is probably just as well. (to the camera) On our next show, Professor Howe and I will look at how the media frames and decontextualizes the news.

(Camera pulls back. Credits roll. Fade out.)

Basketball without a middle class is a game where people are playing selfishly, trying to pad their stats at the expense of the team because there is no security.

– Etan Thomas¹

When I was young, a group of us would gather on a sandlot and divide ourselves into teams, share bats, balls, and gloves, and we would play baseball late into the evening. If a bunch of young kids can organize themselves into teams and have fun playing on any available park or lot, then why can’t adult, millionaire, professional athletes do the same?

Lockouts loom in the NBA and NFL; it is owners pitted against players. One fact stands out starkly: there is no sport without the players; the same can not be said about the owners.

Sport fans want to see and follow their teams and favorite athletes. The solution seems simple: the players just need to take control of their own futures. They are already organized into player unions, so why not go the next step and become owner-players?

Why not control the revenue, the schedule, travel, the number of games, deciding upon the rules, etc.? Why not take charge of their own security and safety? No need to deal with billionaire owners, just take matters into your own hands and play. The union just needs to organize itself into a league.

The players also have a chance to be at the forefront of a progressive society. For example, why should sports be classist?

Football, basketball, baseball, and hockey (all plagued by recent dissension between owners and players) are team sports. Games are not won by one or a few players alone.

Case in point, after Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins in the National Hockey League’s best-of-seven Stanley Cup finals, the media began looking for scapegoats, and the hapless, highly paid Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo was an easy target.² Following Vancouver’s loss, players being interviewed defended their beleaguered goalie and stated — correctly – that it is a team game. Luongo stated likewise.

I accept the premise that it is a team game. However, if this premise is correct, then why is there such a huge discrepancy in the salaries paid to players on the teams? Do they not all show up for practices and the games and put in the required effort?

Seniority aside, do certain public transit bus drivers in one city get paid more than their colleagues? Do certain public school teachers in one school district get paid more than their colleagues?

Why then do professional athletes uphold an inequality in remuneration? If players support the inequality, then how can high-paid “stars” shirk criticism for poor play by pointing out it is a team sport?

Players have a chance to throw off the shackles of ownership demands by becoming owners themselves, but how will they eliminate/handle classism in their sport when they have control?

Player-owners would be empowered to limit stress from overly long seasons, injuries, and the pressure of expectations. Equality in remuneration should do much to diminish the sting of media criticism placed upon high-paid “stars.” Remuneration based equally on effort and sacrifice will place the emphasis on games being a team sport.

And what about the fans? There is classism in who can attend games caused by high ticket prices. Will players make their sport a sport of the people by helping make games available to the widest possible audience?

I quoted Etan Thomas at the outset from an article titled “N.B.A. Lockout: Can Players Save Owners from Themselves?” However, if the players possess a revolutionary zeal, a better question might be: Can Players Save Themselves and Society from Being Owned?

1. Quoted by Dave Zirin, “N.B.A. Lockout: Can Players Save Owners from Themselves?” New Yorker, 1 July 2011.
2. TSN.CA Staff, “Luongo, Sedins Will Shoulder Most of the Blame for Canucks,” TSN, 16 June 2011.

That said, there is one aspect of this story that I think everyone is overlooking. The first question that should immediately come to mind is: why are the owners engaging in an action that could potentially cost them countless millions of dollars in lost revenue from ticket sales, merchandising and broadcasting rights? Seems pretty self-defeating, doesn’t it?

The only possible explanation is that the owners have closely examined their books and realize what no one in a position of authority in this country will officially admit: that they are facing a dramatic long term drop in revenues and the only way they can keep making a profit is to cut player salaries. Already we see evidence of this in the recent bankruptcy of the Los Angeles Dodgers—long one of the most profitable franchises in Major League Baseball—and the fiasco that has befallen the ownership of the New York Mets, who lost a bundle investing with Bernie Madoff. The Great Recession has reduced attendance for all the major sports leagues and declining advertising revenue has squeezed the networks that broadcast the games.

So what does all of this have to do with teachers? Quite simple, really. State and local government employees are receiving layoff notices all around the country for the same reason the NBA and NFL players are being locked out—declining revenue as the economy slowly implodes.

Because the stock market has risen dramatically with the bailouts that followed the 2008 crash and good times at least outwardly seem to have returned to Wall Street, it has masked the fact that any billionaire whose business is based upon selling actual goods or services in the real economy is seeing his or her profit margins shrink dramatically. Shifting focus overseas to still-booming markets like China has helped offset some of the losses here in America, but long term trends everywhere have to be troubling for those whose portfolios depend on the health of the global economy.

If there was any solidarity among the laboring classes in America these days, the NBA and NFL players would be walking a unified picket line along with the teachers, police officers, factory workers and retail managers who are all suffering as the Great Recession grinds on. They would unify in their demand that the necessary sacrifices be shared equally by labor AND capital.

The fact that such an idea sounds patently absurd when you say it out loud just shows why it will never, ever happen. Instead, the plebes will fight each other to the death over an ever-shrinking number of crumbs while the elites steal away with the cake like a thief in the night.

It has become painfully obvious in recent years that the purpose of the mainstream media is to serve as what the late Joe Bageant used to call the “American Hologram,” distracting the masses from noticing how they are being robbed blind by the corporate and Wall Street elite who own that very same media. From celebrity spectacles, to reality shows, to official propaganda presented as “news,” hundreds of cable and satellite television channels are dedicated to pulling the wool over the eyes of the bovine herd whose minds have become as flabby as their waistlines.

No other entity serves to provide a greater volume of utterly vapid content to the voracious American media machine than the National Football League. Believe it or not, there was actually a time not terribly long ago when professional football received attention only from the opening weekend in September through to the championship game in January. Nowadays, however, thanks in large measure to omnipresent cable network ESPN — which has regrettably done to sports programming what MTV has done to popular music — coverage of the NFL lasts all year long; from the interminable run-up to the spring draft, through an endless series of mini camps, to the mid-summer training camps, to a month’s worth of meaningless exhibition games, to the overly long regular season, to weeks and weeks of playoff games and finally culminating in February with that most quintessentially excessive of American secular holidays, the Superbowl.

Here in Washington, debates about who deserves to win the Redskins’ backup tight end position are treated with more seriousness and deliberation than whether our nation should go to war yet again. The local media outlets pay blow-dried ex-jock pundits big bucks to analyze the solemn utterings of the head coach with the same gravity as if he were the president giving his annual State of the Union address, and a Redskins loss on Sunday is considered a much greater tragedy than the latest reports of civilian deaths inflicted by our military as part of the so-called global war on terror.

Our national obsession with the sport goes way beyond obscene. As the season approaches, millions of fans with way too much time on their hands spend countless hours neglecting their families while anxiously deliberating whom they are going to draft for their fantasy football teams — putting far more thought into which player is going to be their backup running back than to which candidate they are going to vote for on Election Day. Televised NFL games spur sales of gigantic flat screen HDTVs, because it is so very important to be able to clearly see every pore of the acme on the face of some poor schulb sitting in the stands during the countless crowd shots shown in between nearly every play.

The broadcasts themselves have become an orgiastic display of mindless consumerism. Every season, the commercials for that holy American trinity of beer, cars and fast food get dumber and dumber in a race to find the lowest common denominator that seemingly has no end. It all culminates on Superbowl Sunday, which has become such a grotesque marketing spectacle that even non-fans tune in by the millions just to watch the latest collection of slick sewage spewed forth from the minds of Madison Avenue hucksters designed to convince the proles to spend money they don’t have on stuff they don’t need.

Even worse than watching the games on television is actually attending in person–packed into a crowded stadium with 75,000 of your fellow human beings screaming like banshees on every play. Pulling into the parking lot before an NFL game, it doesn’t take long to realize why there is no hope of convincing Americans to power down their lifestyles voluntarily before peak oil does the job for them. Every other car is a Hummer, a big ass pick ‘em up truck or super-size SUV; and every other fan driving them is super-sized as well — their favorite player jerseys fighting desperately to conceal their protruding bellies and the seams of their blue jeans straining against the pressure from all that cellulite. These people not only believe in American Exceptionalism, they eat it as well.

Endless displays of patriotism precede the game itself, and it seems to get worse the farther the nation sinks into the abyss. There was once a quaint time in America when, before a major sporting event, someone just sang the National Anthem and that was that. Nowadays, before the anthem is played a military honor guard appears accompanied by the strains of “God Bless America” and the hideously jingoistic “Proud to be an American.” The anthem, itself, is often accompanied by a flyover of air force jets, which never fails to get the crowd roaring as if they have just witnessed the emperor giving thumbs down to a wounded gladiator. If the game is being broadcast on Fox, every commercial break will feature a shot of soldiers stationed overseas waving at the camera and greeting the folks back home, because there is no American institution too sacred to be exploited by expatriate billionaire Rupert Murdoch in pursuit of his right wing political agenda.

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the so-called “labor” dispute between the NFL owners and the players that is threatening to cancel the season is all the angst it is causing among so many fans who will not earn as much money during their whole working lifetimes as many of the players do in just one season. It’s the millionaires versus the billionaires, and yet dopes who have barely a pot to piss in are choosing sides in the dispute.

So you can count this recovering NFL fan as one who is rooting for the standoff to continue indefinitely, bringing us autumn Sunday afternoons of silent stadiums, empty sports bars and billiard matches on ESPN. It is probably far too much to hope that the cancellation of the NFL season might cause millions of dazed fans to snap out of their collective trance and wake up to how their nation is being stolen from them by the predatory elites who run in the same social circles as the NFL owners.

No, that is certainly far too much to hope for. But a man can dream, can’t he?

According to the Washington Post, the Grizzlies’ “surprising success has been the perfect pick-me-up for the city” in the midst of the floods. Unfortunately, the paper fails to mention that in addition to providing this so-called “pick-me-up,” the Grizzlies have siphoned off $250 million in public bonds for the construction of their state-of-the-art arena, which, according to journalist Neil DeMause, has had a woeful “economic impact” within Memphis despite ownership’s claims to the contrary. As DeMause explains, the city and county tax receipts from the arena amount to $5.3 million a year, “or less than a third of the annual cost of paying off the $250 million in construction debt.” He also rightly points out that there is “no discussion of the opportunity cost of missing out on what else could have been done with $250 million in public bonds,” and that “the city would have been better off selling bonds to hire more schoolteachers.” In a city where the child poverty rate is twice the national average, worshiping the community-building power of a sports franchise that has effectively crowded out spending on much needed social programs qualifies as nothing less than absurd.

Even commentators who understand this contradiction have set it aside to celebrate the kinship between Memphis’s “blue collar” character and the “gritty” resolve showed by the Grizzlies on the hardwood. After acknowledging that the Grizzlies’ success won’t cure the city of entrenched unemployment or a 67 percent high school graduation rate, ESPN.com columnist LZ Granderson giddily suggests a likeness between the “resilience” of Memphis residents and the performance of “rugged [Grizzly] players like Zach Randolph.” He believes that “the physical play the team shows on the floor is indicative of the spirit of Memphis, and something that the people in the area can relate to.”

The romanticism of commentators like Granderson papers over the fact that the Grizzlies do not represent the interests of working families. The fact that the average price for seats to a Grizzlies home playoff game stood at well above $100 serves as a sufficient reminder that, in this day and age, professional sports cater to the desire for conspicuous consumption among a new urban elite rather than provide affordable entertainment to those seeking refuge from thankless low-wage work. If journalists want to dole out kudos for community-building in Memphis in recent weeks, they should ditch the odes to the Grizzlies and pay more attention to the work of grassroots organizations like the Tennessee Justice Center and Tennessee Citizen Action. The recent coalition building efforts of these groups resulted in the commitment of governor Bill Haslem to reduce proposed state budget cuts to health care and education.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this all before. When the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010 commentators reveled in how the team embodied the city’s “resiliency” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps, but the Saints have done little to facilitate genuine economic or social recovery in New Orleans, and the story will be no different in Memphis, no matter how many NBA titles the team brings home. With this in mind, let’s bench the idea that sports teams somehow empower the communities that they exploit.

It comes in the early middle of the movie when the lone female “city slicker” asks her male counterparts why baseball is so important to them. Phil Berquist (played by Daniel Stern) responds: “When I was about eighteen and my dad and I couldn’t communicate about anything at all, we could still talk about baseball. Now that was real.”

The moment is at least mildly poignant, first, because it’s obvious Phil loved his father deeply and baseball provided them a “real” forum to communicate through. Second, because even though Phil and his dad loved each other, the only way they could relate was through the clichéd, statistical vernacular of a wholly inconsequential children’s game played by grown men.

Berquist’s statement—the pathetic nature of which is never really considered or expounded upon—is still ludicrously germane to any discussion of American manhood today because sports frame the American male psyche.

Generally speaking, sports define early male ego and often establish a basic though flawed criterion for prepubescent, pubescent and young adult male worthiness in terms of socialization, popularity and, yes, even procreation. Sports establish a cultural norm that men have a hard time giving up and/or trying not to live up to even years after they’re physically able to do so. That’s where collegiate and professional sports come in.

Collegiate and professional sports allow grown men to continue participating in the defining norm of their youth peripherally, passionately extolling the virtues of the spectacle and, on some level, competing vicariously though each generation that follows in their footsteps. This is why most elderly men know more about Mickey Mantle than McCarthyism. This is why most middle-aged men know more about Michael Jordan than the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Plainly put, professional and collegiate sports are a colossal drain on the American male (and female—but male in particular) attention span and they keep him from seriously focusing on dozens of events and developments that more directly and eminently affect his existence. And the little background and understanding that too many American men do have regarding these phenomena is largely gathered cursorily through slanted cable news or belligerent talk radio. It is a dire cultural and societal problem.

The Texas Rangers have a wildly successful ticket sales campaign that says “Get your Texas Rangers Tickets now and watch history being made.” Except history isn’t being made by the Texas Rangers, especially not in any real, relevant, or broadly meaningful respect. And it’s not being made by the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Mavericks, or anyone racing out at Texas Motor Speedway either.

Real history is not made by grown-ups who play children’s games or folks obsessed with Hot Wheels for adults. It’s made by serious people addressing serious problems. It’s made by protestors and visionaries. It’s made by leaders and inventors. It’s made by heroes and contrarians.

History is not reported in the sports pages and you won’t find it on a baseball diamond or football gridiron or under a basketball net.

That’s why American men, in particular, must be called out. Their self-indulgent, superficial dalliances with college and professional sports now start in August and preoccupy them all year round. Football. Nibs of hockey. Basketball. World Series. More football. Bowl games. Baseball training camps. March Madness, Baseball, NFL draft, more baseball, NFL training camps. Then tailgate and repeat.

If an insidious presence in this country had actually investigated, researched and formulated a long-term societal scheme to limit meaningful male participation in and broad awareness of the most profound cultural and political processes and events of our time (or any time), I’m not sure they could have come up with a better idea than American sports. They are now scheduled so perfectly that they keep a daunting percentage of the male population from ever having to think real hard about much else besides sports. They go from one season to another, following overlapping seasons concurrently. They buy season tickets. They join fantasy leagues. They keep statistics. They participate in office game and tournament pools. They bet with bookies. Their obsession with college and professional sports is so profound that college coaches make more money than tenured professors and professional children’s-game stars make more in one contest than good elementary, junior high or high school teachers make in an entire year (including summer school duty).

Think about that for a second. Isn’t it markedly unreal?

When sports are more real and more valuable to us than our children’s educations, aren’t we lost, gone astray and courting cultural disaster?

Isn’t about time we men put down our pom-poms? Don’t we have more important stats to keep track of? Shouldn’t we concern ourselves with more pressing issues?

History is being made these days, but mostly without our involvement and certainly without our consent. And the teams that are winning “most definitely” want to keep it that way.

This is the subject of Gabriel Kuhn’s newest book, Soccer Vs. the State:Tackling Football and Radical Politics. A former semi-professional soccer player, Kuhn explores sports ground currently tilled by writers like Dave Zirin. However, while Zirin critiques the entire world of professional sports, Kuhn focuses entirely on soccer. Interspersing leaflets, interviews, and articles with his own contextual narrative, Kuhn presents the reader with an alternative vision of soccer from the World Cup to grassroots football clubs organized by squatters and political activists. Underlying it all is a critique of modern capitalism and its effect on the sport.

It is difficult for fans of professional sports in the United States to conceive of their favorite teams not being owned by a a group of multimillionaires or a corporation. From MLB’s Yankees to the WNBA’s Mystics, the reason these teams exist is to turn a profit or, alternatively, to operate as a tax write-off for the owners. Sport itself is secondary to almost every owner. With the exception of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, who are owned by several thousand of their fans, the fan of professional sports in the United States and Canada is nothing more than a consumer whose credit cards exist for the pleasure of those who own their favorite team.

The phenomenon of multimillionaire ownership of soccer clubs is relatively new. According to Kuhn’s history, many teams were founded by workers and existed within a framework that prevented corporate ownership. As the purchase of several English Premier League teams over the past few years by foreign and British corporations proves, this is no longer the case. With these changes in ownership has come a change in the way the fan is treated. To the dismay of the most devoted working class fans, fewer standing room tickets (known as the terrace) are sold. Instead, ownership is insisting on reserved seating at higher prices. This practice not only limits the fervor of the fans who previously stood on the terrace, it limits the number of those fans admitted into the stadium. To their credit, fan clubs of teams that have instituted these changes have protested the reduction in terrace tickets and have met with some success in getting more such tickets.

Like most sports, soccer is riddled with sexism, homophobia, and racism. Kuhn describes several efforts by fans and players challenging these negative phenomena. From Germany’s Bundnis aktiver Fussballfans (BAFF) to various players who have openly challenged the racism of other fans and players, Kuhn describes and active anti-racist culture within international soccer. He further describes various fan cultures known for their leftist and autonomist politics. Most famous of these are the fans of Hamburg’s St. Pauli fussball club. The team itself is not noticeably anti-establishment. Indeed, its stadium was named after a Nazi who used slave labor to make his millions. However, during the peak of the German squatter’s movement in the 1980s, the team was adopted by residents of Hamburg’s Hafenstrasse squats. These fans began showing up at games with antifascist flags and banners. Eventually, the team came to be a favorite of left and autonomist soccer fans around Europe, with their away games packing stadiums with left and anarchist punks and politicos. The BAFF’s fanzine exists today, although with a less political edge to it than in days past.

If you are a soccer fan, this book is a must, especially if your politics lean left. The same applies if you are just a sports fan in general. Imagine a Major League Baseball game where the bleachers are filled with fans making their opposition to anti-immigrant legislation known. Imagine a whole section of fans not standing when those warplanes fly over while the Star Spangled Banner is sung. Gabriel Kuhn, like those writers alluded to at the beginning of this review, gives the sports fan who finds the displays of nationalism and unabashed commercialism so prevalent on the playing field an alternative vision of what sports fandom could be.

Consequently, as H. L. Mencken observed, the United States found itself in the grip of third-rate men. “Third-rate men, of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards.”² And third-rate men, as Cardinal Fleury observed nearly three centuries ago, need “very little history.”

Thus, today we have Tea Party know-nothings — supposedly concerned about America’s famous historical illiteracy — actually exposing their own historical illiteracy when they spout ideologically self-serving quotations, supposedly from the writings of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, that haven’t been found in those writings.³ Newt Gingrich, who professes to know some history, talks incoherently about President Obama’s, Kenyan world view. Mike Huckabee babbles nonsensically about Obama’s youth spent in Kenya while Michele Bachmann — who makes that flaming idiot, Sarah Plain, look like a rocket scientist — not only tells her supporters that our Founding Fathers worked hard to rid the country of slavery, but also asserts that the famous battles at Lexington and Concord took place in New Hampshire. When I hear these people speak, I’m ashamed for my country.

Instead of studying their history, most Americans cherish myths, especially the myth of American exceptionalism. Thus, even though most Americans still lead lives of “quiet desperation,” they take comfort in the myth that God chose America to be his new “City upon a Hill” (as John Winthrop put it) and, thus a beacon of Christian faith and liberty for the entire world.

The myth that George Washington could not lie about chopping down the cherry tree was eventually debunked. But it was no less ridiculous than the comforting myth propagated by Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, depicting “George Washington as none other than Joshua commanding the armies of the Children of Israel and leading them into the Promise Land.”⁴

Equally ridiculous was the myth propagated on March 20, 1908 by the Special Base Ball Commission on the game’s origins. It concluded that Civil War hero, Abner Doubleday, invented the game of baseball in Cooperstown, New York in 1839.

The Special Commission was the brainchild of A.G. Spalding — a former ball player who subsequently gained wealth by supplying baseball gear to countless teams — and it shaped its conclusions to fit Spalding’s fervent belief that baseball had to be an American invention, not English, because it was a vigorous, manly game befitting the people of this great country.

Applying the historical illiteracy that has made the U.S. famous, the Commission simply accepted the word of Abner Graves, who, as a five-year old living in Cooperstown, supposedly saw Doubleday “scratch out in the dust the diagram of a new game called baseball.” (Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, John Thorn, p.275.) Had anyone on the commission attempted to ascertain Mr. Doubleday’s whereabouts in 1839, as did journalist Will Rankin, they would have discovered that Doubleday was not in Cooperstown, but serving as a cadet at West Point.

But Rankin had credibility problems of his own. Although Duncan F. Curry (original president of the New York Knickerbocker baseball club) told him in 1877 that “a diagram, showing the ball field laid out substantially as it is today, was brought to the field one day by a Mr.[Louis] Wadsworth,” Rankin subsequently reversed himself and claimed that Mr. Curry actually said it was Alexander Cartwright.

But, according to baseball historian John Thorn, Cartwright deserves credit for nothing except proposing the establishment of “a regular organization” that in 1845 became the Knickerbockers. Nevertheless, because the Knickerbockers have been credited with formalizing many of the rules that eventually were adopted by Major League Baseball, many Doubleday doubters gave Cartwright undeserved credit as the inventor of baseball.

According to Mr. Thorn, who is a serious historian, “baseball” was first mentioned in a children’s book published in England in 1744. The first written reference in the U.S. was by a student at Princeton in 1786, which referred to playing “baste ball.” In fact, Princeton had banned ball playing near the president’s house in 1761.

The town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts banned playing baseball near its new meeting house in 1791. But, if one can believe George Stoddard — who played in the 1850s and claimed that his great-grandfather played roundball in Upton, MA — the Massachusetts game was played in Upton as early as 1735.

Stoddard’s assertions notwithstanding, Thorn is convinced that baseball’s origins are to be found in England. But, he’s also convinced that American baseball, as we know it today, owes much to the rules established in 1845 by the New York Knickerbockers.

Whereas the Massachusetts game had four bases, with the striker standing between first and fourth base, and the Philadelphia game had five stakes, each 30 feet apart that had to be circled before a run was scored, the New York game had a baseball diamond with a home plate and rules stipulating that the distance between first and third bases (as well as between home and second base) be 42 paces. At 2 and one half feet per pace back then, home to first was 75 feet, rather than 90. The pitcher’s position was 45 feet from home plate.

The Massachusetts game had no such thing a foul territory. Theoretically, a batter could decide to turn around as the ball came in and smash it past the catcher, which is why some teams played two catchers. Knickerbocker rules not only delineated foul lines but also foul territory. It stipulated: “A ball knocked out of the field or outside the range of first or third base, is foul.” Thus, out of the park home runs, back then, were foul! In fact, the Knickerbockers established “foul” territory because they had trouble getting all their players to show up for a contest. Thus, they established foul territory to delimit the space their understaffed team needed to cover in any game.

Foul tips? Knickerbocker rules stipulated: “Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand-out; if not caught is considered fair, and the striker bound to run.” (Four balls, or a base on balls, did not go into effect until 1863.)

Whereas the Massachusetts rule stipulated that only a caught fly ball was an out, the Knickerbocker rules stipulated: “If a ball be struck, or tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bounce, is a hand out.” Catch a ball on one bounce and it’s an out!

The nine inning game didn’t come into effect until 1857, but even then teams played the full nine innings, because Knickerbocker rules were established for gentlemen whose focus was exercise in the fresh air. In their rules of 1845, the first team to score 21 runs was the winner.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in Knickerbocker rules concerned the pitcher. He was only 45 feet away from the batter, but was forced to “pitch” the ball to the batter, which really meant throwing it underhand so the batter could hit it. The rule stipulated: “The ball must be pitched, and not thrown, for the bat.” As Thorn writes: “The early baseball pitch was like today’s softball pitch, only more restricted: no wrist snap, arm perpendicular to the ground at release, and below the waist. Furthermore, the pitcher was urged to pitch the ball “for the bat.” He was not regarded as an adversary to the batter, but merely as a server; the batter’s true opponents were the fielders.” (p. 74)

The Massachusetts rules of 1858 stipulated the ball must be thrown (overhand) and not pitched. Think about it, when Major League Baseball was established in 1871 it went by Knickerbocker rules — and pitchers still pitched underhanded or sidearm until 1884. Really, we should call today’s pitchers “throwers” rather than “pitchers.”

With the 1884 rule change permitting the throwing of the baseball, “batters struggled to keep up.” Thus, another rule change in 1893 extended the pitching distance by five and one half feet. According to Thorn, “This move boosted overall batting performance by degrees that make the so-called steroid era pale by comparison.” (p. 245) For example, in 1894 four members of the Philadelphia Phillies hit for a batting average over .400!

Perhaps most significantly, Thorn argues that the myth of the amateur, gentlemanly, and all-American origins of Knickerbocker baseball was propagated by A. G. Spalding and Major League Baseball for two reasons: (1) Being historical illiterates, they didn’t know that most of the Knickerbocker rules existed in one locale or another years before they were codified in 1845 and (2) they hoped their myth would bury the reality that “the national game had arisen from a gambling culture in the 1840s that was never free of corruption.” (p. 286)

Before bets could be placed, rules were required — in order to establish a consistent basis for deciding who won. But so was the publication of scores and statistics — so that bettors might make prognostications based upon current information.

As fans increasingly became invested in the outcome of the game, organizations worked to obtain the best players possible. Initially, covert “professionals were given jobs, in the business houses of the team’s backers — jobs where they reported every morning, were visible to callers or doubtful skeptics, and drew small salaries, although few of them ever did a stroke of work.” (p. 144) Thus the Cincinnati Red Stockings listed center fielder and manager Harry Wright as a jeweler. Pitcher Asa Brainard was an insurance salesman, catcher Doug Allison was a granite cutter and so on.

Covert professionalism gave way to overt professionalism in the late 1860s, just a couple years before the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players launched its inaugural season in 1871. Because fans came to see the players, and not the owners, many major league baseball players were in a position to “revolt,” sign with another, better paying team at the end of a season. To end such revolts, the owners established the obnoxious “reserve clause” in 1879 that soon bound each player to his team for life, but gave owners the right to dismiss players after a ten day notice.

Fortunately, the formation of new professional leagues, like the American Association and the Players League, gave players new opportunities to revolt. But with the evolution of the Western League into the American League by 1903, much of that freedom was lost.

Owners realized that the reserve clause allowed them to squeeze the salaries of players. Even more obnoxious, however, was the short-lived syndicate ball practiced by National League owners. “With interlocking ownerships in the bloated National League of 1892 through 1899, a club trailing in the pennant race might transfer a star to an allied club that was closer to the top. Another franchise, situated in a large market, might pool its players with its wholly owned mate in a smaller market, moving the top talent where the greater profit beckoned”Yet another club might exert less than its best effort in a head-to-head series to benefit an affiliated club that stood higher in the standings.” (p. 260) Because Americans hated cartels and felt cheated by such player shifts, baseball during the 1890s “was at real risk of demise.” (p. 255)

As the drinking, gambling, throwing of games and wars between management and labor demonstrate, baseball was never the healthy, vigorous, gentleman’s game its mythmakers foisted upon historically illiterate Americans. But myths have consequences.

Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton argue, in The Dominion of War, that the myth of American exceptionalism — linking the cause of the United States with the cause of freedom — absolved Americans “from the obligation to understand other peoples and places on their own terms and in their own contexts.” (p. 423) Thus, presidents as different as George W. Bush and Barack Obama could invoke America’s commitment to freedom, in order to justify respectively both the immoral invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya.

Similarly, the pristine myths surrounding the origins of baseball not only resulted in the construction of a Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and the placing of a plaque celebrating the contributions of Alexander Cartwright in that Hall, they also provided a permanent foundation for befuddlement and demoralization whenever the dark side of the game reared its ugly head.

It’s time for historically illiterate Americans to grow up.

1. John Lukacs, The Future of History, p.4.
2. On Being American, Library of America, pp. 308-09.
3. Thomas Frank, “Check it Yourself,” Harper’s, April 2011.
4. The War for Righteousness, Richard Gamble, p.11.

They chided both the team owners and the NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) for abandoning negotiations after utilizing a FMCS (Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service) mediator for “only sixteen days.”  Those sixteen days of mediation were alluded to in utter disbelief, as if common sense told us that sixteen days weren’t anywhere near long enough.

What these commentators didn’t seem to realize is that union-management disputes aren’t like diplomatic negotiations or congressional hearings.  This wasn’t a summit meeting between North and South Korea, where, after sixteen days, they’re still arguing over the seating arrangements.

Union-management negotiations are a whole other deal.  Because labor disputes are all about money (as with the NFL, where the two sides are at odds over the players’ share of total revenue), and tend to be brutally direct, there is very little foreplay — and virtually none of the pompous rhetoric and public grandstanding we’ve come to associate with politics and diplomacy.

Sixteen days with a federal mediator in the room?  That’s an eternity.  If NLFPA executive director DeMaurice Smith were candid, he’d likely tell us that fourteen of those days were a total waste of time.

During a strike I was involved in some years ago, we met with an FMCS mediator (an ex-Steelworker rep named John Courtney) a grand total of three times.  The first meeting lasted four hours and it occurred two days before we shut down the facility; the second occurred a month later, and it lasted eight hours; and the third and final meeting occurred on the 56th day of the strike.  We spent 22 consecutive hours at the table before reaching a tentative agreement.

With all due respect to Courtney and his boss, Sam Sachman (who joined us at 11:00 P.M. on the final night), mediation played a very small part in the process.  Although the mediators put their hearts into it, neither side paid much attention to them.  What ended the strike — what got the union to return to work after 57 days — was the same thing that ends most strikes:  the combination of austerity, fatigue, despair and resignation.

As for the football dispute, it will be surprising if it continues beyond the next two or three weeks.  For one thing, there’s simply too much money to be made (and lost) by both sides.  After all, this is a battle between millionaires and billionaires.  For another, April 28 is college draft day, and the closer they get to that date, the higher the sperm count.  The NFL doesn’t want to see the draft come and go without a settlement.

On March 22, the League made a slight tactical blunder when Commissioner Roger Goodell ominously suggested that the owners’ last offer “may not be on the table” the next time the parties meet.  Besides Goodell having no business posing as an objective third party (he clearly represents the owners, who hired him and can fire him), his remarks scared no one.  All he did was antagonize the Players Association.

When management puts a good faith offer on the table, they’re not only announcing to the union that it’s an agreement they can live with, they are, in effect, exposing their hand.  They’re showing the union exactly what they consider important, how much they’re willing to pay, how far they’re willing to move, and what they’re willing to give up.

And you don’t go backwards.  Management can’t suddenly withdraw that offer and pretend it never existed simply because they’ve grown impatient.  They can’t pretend that the union’s negotiating team hasn’t already etched the terms of that offer indelibly on their brains….not if they’re serious about reaching a settlement.

Roger Goodell’s pathetic threat only succeeded in further alienating the players; and given how sensitive these bargains can be, that’s the last thing he wanted to do.  Some advice for the commissioner:  Stick to your administrative tasks, and leave the negotiating to the negotiators.

Format: DVD/62 minutes
Publisher: Media Education Foundation
Subtitles: English

Needless to say, I was eager to see Not Just a Game, the new documentary in which Zirin, in collaboration with the Media Education Foundation, shows why arguing that sport is apolitical is like arguing that Hosni Mubarak deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.  The film does not disappoint, and it successfully takes on the “de-politicized, sanitized, and hyper-commercialized sports world” by tackling four main themes: the militarization of sport, struggles for gender equality by female athletes, struggles for racial justice by athletes of color, and the commodification of sport.

Using footage of Air Force fly-bys and on-the-field military enlistment ceremonies that are now standard fare at sporting events in the U.S., the film begins by illustrating how sports media construct a seemingly natural connection between the hyper-masculinity of elite athletes and the ‘warrior ethos’ that undergirds the culture of the American military.  Zirin argues convincingly that by uncritically building this link, coverage of American sports promotes a sanitized version of ‘war’.  For example, by constructing a direct analogy between ‘combat’ on the gridiron and combat on the battlefield while only showing the details of the former, the media’s presentation of American football encourages spectators to ignore the horrific realities of what is happening in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a case in point, Zirin documents how sports journalists, after aping the military’s concocted story about the ‘heroic’ death of NFL-star-turned-Army-Ranger, Pat Tilman, simply ignored revelations about the fact that he actually died from a friendly fire incident, and that, by the time of his death in Afghanistan, he had developed strong anti-war sentiments.  Of course, acknowledging these inconvenient details might have called into question the legitimacy of dressing up Fox’s football commentators in army fatigues as they broadcast from military bases in Afghanistan.

The documentary does its best work in the next section, in which it goes beyond a celebration of the same old liberal integration narratives that describe individual athletes overcoming prejudice through hard work, determination, and faith in American ‘democracy’.  Importantly, the film’s success in this regard does not depend exclusively on its discussion of relatively well-documented cases of resistance in sports like Muhammad Ali’s defiance of the draft or the iconic Black Power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics.  While Zirin does provide commentary on these classic examples of radical protest in sport, it is his insistence on highlighting the unrecognized radicalism of athletes whose image is so often tied to the sanitized textbook narrative of liberal inclusion that makes the film so powerful.

Instead of a Billie Jean King who simply gave a shot in the arm to Second Wave feminism by beating Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes,” Zirin reminds us that she was also the president of the first ever women’s sports union and an athlete whose working-class background was a driving force behind her tireless struggle for pay equity in professional sports.  And rather than the early Jackie Robinson, who lent his image to anti-communist propaganda and touted the health of American ‘democracy’, Zirin hones in on the later Robinson, who joined forces with Martin Luther King in the 1960s to combat the ‘triple evils’ of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.  After showing the film to students in a course I teach on the politics of sports media, I asked how many of them knew before watching the movie that Billie Jean King was a union organizer, or that by the 1968 presidential election Robinson was speaking out against African-Americans using success in realm of sports as a substitute for more systematic social change.  Not a hand in the room went up.

The documentary closes with a meditation by Zirin on how the increasing commercialization of sport has been central to the growing reticence on the part of superstar athletes to speak out on political issues.  In this regard, the rise of Michael Jordan marked a sharp departure from the example of competitors like Ali, as athletes began to heed the call of sponsors more than that of their conscience.  As Zirin explains, we have “Ali on the one side, showing how greatness in the ring doesn’t require sacrificing greatness outside of it.”  And we have “Jordan, on the other, ushering in a new age of corporate rule that loves to glorify the image of rebellion while stripping it of its substance.”

If the film has one weakness, it’s that it passes over a more substantive discussion of team owners and league administrators who have gone to great lengths to counteract the radical legacy of social justice struggles in sport, and who have often used their teams and arenas as vehicles for reactionary political projects (including Christian ‘faith days’ at the ballpark and invitations to Sarah Palin to warm up the crowd at hockey games).  Perhaps it would be difficult to find enough footage to support such a discussion in a film like this, especially considering the reputation of many of the more notorious owners for living a behind-the-scenes shadow existence that shields them from public scrutiny (Zirin deals deftly with this issue in print in his most recent book).  Nevertheless, I think that a film set on raising our consciousness as to the political relevance of sport has to engage more directly with the draconian economic and social projects underwritten by owners and league management.

To be clear, everyone—sports fans and non-fans alike—should see this movie.  That said, it will be especially useful for those who teach courses on the history and politics of sport in the U.S.  My sense is that teachers and scholars have been caught up in an endless repetition of the same three examples—Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and the Black Power salute at 1968 Olympics—whenever they want to prove Zirin’s point that sports and politics do mix.  Certainly, these are important stories, and Not Just a Game gives them the attention they deserve.  But the documentary does one better by demolishing the sanitized narratives of athletes like Billie Jean King, Jackie Robinson, and Pat Tilman—athletes who, unlike Ali and Brown, rarely get discussed outside the context of vapid references to ‘tolerance’, ‘colorblindness’, or ‘service to country’.   Hopefully, the movie will cause some discomfort for those who, like many of my students, want desperately to believe that the sports they hold so dear are just a game.

Correspondingly, it’s amazing how many people still believe that professional athletes didn’t coalesce into labor unions until relatively recently—during the turbulent 1960s—and that these collectives were formed as a result of collusion between greedy sports agents, opportunistic lawyers, and militant athletes.

But sports unions have been around for over a century.  The Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players (note that “Baseball” was two words) was established way back in 1885, during Grover Cleveland’s first term as president.  Professional athletes formed their own union while this country was still in the horse and buggy era.  Indeed, the first Model T Ford wouldn’t roll off the assembly line for another 23 years.

There’s no shortage of myths about pro athletes, their wages, and their unions.  Here are three of the most common:

Myth #1:  These guys don’t need a union.

For openers, if they didn’t have a union, they wouldn’t have minimum salaries, defined pensions, guaranteed work rules, or grievance procedures.  They wouldn’t have these things because they wouldn’t have had the muscle to obtain them.  Professional athletes need a union for the same reason nurses, airline pilots and autoworkers need one.  Without a union, they’d be at the mercy of the owners.

And if you trust team ownership, you haven’t been paying attention.  In 1990, major league baseball’s owners were found guilty of collusion, a felony, and fined $280 million.  Team owners are sharp-eyed, hard-bitten businessmen, not sports dilettantes.  Just as defense contractors plunder the U.S. treasury while waving the American flag, team owners like to pretend they’re performing a public service rather than engaging in naked commerce.

Moreover, management’s argument that high salaries are a threat to “small market” teams is disingenuous.  First of all, where is it written that there should be an unlimited number of professional teams?  For 90 years major league baseball flourished with only 16 teams.  Secondly, why are those same free market fundamentalists who object to subsidies and regulations now worried that the Pittsburgh Pirates may face extinction?  It’s the inexorable Law of the Market, boys, and you can’t have it both ways.

Myth #2:  They make too much money.

In a perfect world, school teachers, social workers and existential poets would earn more money and wield more prestige than men who can hit a moving baseball or catch a football.  But it’s not a perfect world; and whether we like it or not, the entertainment industry (including music, TV, movies, professional sports) generates a staggering amount of revenue… billions and billions of dollars a year.

Which raises the question of who should get the lion’s share. Should it be those with the demonstrable talent, the skilled individuals who actually perform—the singers, actors and athletes—or should it be the parasites who cling to these talent people, who draw sustenance from them—the owners, studio executives and promoters?  Also, it’s worth noting that the majority of team owners became wealthy through inheritance.  These “jock-sniffers” (players’ derogatory slang for owners) bought their teams with daddy’s money.

Amazingly, pro athletes figured this out a long time ago.  In 1890, professional baseball players (most of whom were unsophisticated lads fresh off the farm) decided that they didn’t need to be owned.  Unsophisticated as they were, they were shrewd enough to realize that while there were many things a baseball team required—uniforms, a field to play on, teams to play against, spectators willing to pay, etc.—being owned by somebody wasn’t one of them.

Accordingly, they went ahead and formed what was called the Players League, consisting of eight teams owned and operated by the players themselves.  Besieged by threats and false promises, the PL lasted only one season (1890), but the establishment of this players’ co-opt was a revelatory moment in American labor history.

Myth #3:  High salaries are why tickets cost so much.

This is perhaps the silliest myth of all because it ignores a fundamental principle taught in Economics 101:  the law of supply and demand.  Team owners will charge as much as the market will bear.  Simple as that.

Does anyone really believe that team owners would charge less for tickets if their payroll were to suddenly shrink?  That these owners would willingly seek less money for tickets than what they already knew they could get?  Of course, they wouldn’t, and to think otherwise is absurd.  They would continue to charge all that the market will bear, regardless of team payrolls, because that’s the nature of commerce.

Also, who do you think leaks these exorbitant salary figures?  It’s not the players or their agents, who don’t necessarily want fans or other players to know their business.  It’s team management who publicizes them, hoping that John Q. Public will get angry at the greedy players instead of resenting the owners for raising ticket prices.  TV revenue and $1 a year stadium leases assure that no NFL team can lose money, which is why, despite their whining, NFL owners have steadfastly refused to open their books for inspection.

So with the current dispute being a battle between the millionaires and the billionaires, the choice of whom to support seems fairly obvious.  You support the people who matter, who actually contribute, who possess a demonstrable skill, who are, in fact, indispensable to the game.  You support the players.

The objective of every football play is to gain real estate. For tactical reasons, a soccer player often passes a ball backward, sometimes even to his own goalie, but in football, there is only the forward thrust. In fact, a backward pass is illegal. Gaining yards is so important that it defines the success of every play, and of every player who touches the ball. A running back had a successful day if he gained 100 yards, even if he never scored and his team lost. In no other sports are statistics kept of yards gained. A soccer or basketball player can dribble the length of the field or court without tallying anything, but in American football, each yard must be counted.

This nearly continent-size country has always defined itself by rapidly expanding, by gaining yards and miles. Settle the coast, then foray inland. Move the natives out of the way. Get rid of them. Kill them. Half of Mexico was swallowed up, then Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, on and on, until now, America has at least 700 military bases in 130 countries. That’s a lot of yards gained. Granted, there are no people that have not engaged in territorial warfare with their neighbors, but the relentless reach of the United States is unprecedented.

Much more than land, America invades minds. There is scarcely a brain alive that’s not constantly titillated and harassed by American culture. Worldwide, people wear hats and shirts with American words and slogans they don’t understand. They listen to American lyrics and babble English words, even to themselves. In Vietnam not too long ago, a woman asked if I liked the song, “Aleet Beeper.” What she meant was “Careless Whisper.” Whatever its title and whatever it meant, she liked that song. Also in Vietnam, I saw “POLO” stickered onto a Japanese motorbike. This man had Americanized his modest rice cooker, since America is glamorous and cool, much more so than Japan or anywhere else, for that matter.

Humans are warm but machines are cool. Notice the ubiquity of “cool” to denote anything positive in American English. Americans aspire to become hard, tough, and efficient machines that feel no pain. More specifically, they identify with their car, that carapace that enwraps them daily and gives them personality and status. Spending more time with his car than anything or anyone else, the American’s best friend is his automobile. Nowadays, it can even speak and tell him where to go. Year in and year out, car commercials dominate the Super Bowl. Becoming anthropomorphic, they can drive themselves and chat to each other. One can say that the main objective of each Super Bowl is to sell more wheels.

Clueless of the rules, foreigners still tune in to the Super Bowl, since empire exudes not just power, but a kind of sexual allure. The alpha male also demands vigilant attention. He is dangerous and you can’t hide from him. By his cold-blooded calculations or whims, a person in the remotest place may just die in his sleep, killed by a plane or drone, even without knowing why. A recent report revealed that only eight percent of Afghan men had even heard of the attacks on 9/11 of 2001, America’s pretext for invading their country.

Even more than usual, war lurked behind this Super Bowl. Before Christina Aguilera botched “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Lea Michele sang “America the Beautiful,” so there were two national anthems, so to speak. Troops with flags were arrayed behind these singers. As Aguilera fluffed and mumbled, we caught a glimpse of a grinning George W. Bush. Our war-criminal-in-chief would appear again later, as would Condi Rice. After Aguilera’s last note, military jets roared overhead. During the game, we were suddenly introduced to Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, a decorated veteran of our invasion of Afghanistan. He stood with other soldiers beyond the end zone, waving. As has become customary, the announcers thanked all of “our troops” worldwide “for all that they do.” Earlier, there was a shot of American soldiers watching the Super Bowl in Afghanistan.

America is beautiful, but so is every other country. None can match her in mass media allure, however, in collective hypnosis. In a 1997 article for the US Army War College, Major Ralph Peters sums up America’s cultural edge, “Hollywood goes where Harvard never penetrated, and the foreigner, unable to touch the reality of America, is touched by America’s irresponsible fantasies of itself; he sees a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world from which he is excluded, a world of wealth he can judge only in terms of his own poverty.” And, “The films most despised by the intellectual elite–those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex–are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand.”

America is seductive. In fact, the further one is from America, geographically, culturally or economically, the more alluring she can become. Without an actual experience of her, America is pure fantasy, a fabulous rumor.

One of history’s oddest ironies is the name Mỹ Lai, which means “half-American” in Vietnamese. Mỹ is “American.” Lai is “of mixed race.” If a person is “Mỹ lai,” he is half-American. Further, Mỹ in Vietnamese also means beautiful. In colloquial Vietnamese, America is the beautiful country, and Americans, beautiful people. In the half-American village, of a country that called America “beautiful,” American troops killed around 500 unarmed civilians on March 16th of 1968. Nearly all were women, children and the elderly. America seduced, then killed. During one of Israel’s episodic massacres of Arabs—there have been so many, I can no longer remember which one—I saw a photo of a dead child wrapped in a Mickey Mouse blanket. Murdered by an American bomb, she would be buried with her beloved American icon. An American talking rat accompanied her to eternity.

Watching the Super Bowl, Americans and foreigner alike can come away with these clear messages: Fun is not free. We must kill constantly so cars can be sold. We are a virile and vital nation, at least on television. The seats at his spectacle are way out of reach to you, even those who dwell right here, in the cartoony belly of the beast, but your seats at home are free, as long as they haven’t been bombed. Lastly, you can never be like us, the beautiful creatures you see on our shows and movies, but you’re free to stare, stare and stare.

In thousands of high school, college and even pro locker rooms around the country, it is written. During hundreds of thousands of half-time speeches, motivational speaking seminars and out-of-town sales conventions, it is repeated. It defines American sports. It rationalizes American Capitalism. It’s a dangerous lie perpetrated by the shortsighted, the ignorant and the morally suspect.

I played high school and college sports. I understand that in a sweaty, adrenaline-pumped, brainwashed locker room setting, this quote makes a certain sense. But people take these mantras out into the world and live by them and justify scrupulousness with them.

“Winning is the only thing” justifies gathering exceptional players at well-to-do high schools by hook or by crook. “Winning is the only thing” justifies paying future Heisman Trophy winners (or their parents) to play for your school. “Winning is the only thing” justifies future Super Bowl champions illegally filming opposing teams’ defensive play-calling signals to ensure wins.

In the last several years we’ve seen sterling examples of all three. “Sterling” as in trophies. And the unscrupulous winning parties went largely unpunished, so the mantra was affirmed.

Oh, there have been a few hitches, most of the high-profile cases involving women. Tonya Harding obviously took the mantra over the top. Marion Jones ran her way into the record books juiced up on this credo and it backfired horribly. And arguably, unfairly.

Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds hardly share her disgrace. And Alex Rodriguez is still playing.

Tour de France winner Floyd Landis took a spill in 2006, but, for the most part, winning is still the only thing and campaigns to challenge this sentiment haven’t received much traction.

One of my conservative uncles used to say that dollar signs were the only way to rack up points on the scoreboard of life, and I vehemently disagreed. But winning was the only thing for BP on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, and they were so anxious for another big score that they ignored failed pressure tests and skipped or skirted numerous safety precautions. Winning was also the only thing for big health insurance companies when they automatically challenged every medical claim they could to avoid losing revenue. And winning is the only thing that keeps natural gas magnates from coming clean about the current and long-term impacts of the “fracking” method of gas extraction, the induced seismicity it’s led to and the toxins it introduces into our water supplies.

“Winning is the only thing” is what led to the nefarious whisper campaigns that Karl Rove generated to knock off John McCain in the Republican Presidential Primary of 2000. “Winning is the only thing” led to the shocking cover-up of the friendly-fire death of former NFL star Pat Tillman in 2004.

“Winning is the only thing” is also what led to the ludicrous legal rationale for “corporate personhood.” By “winning” the rights afforded under the law to natural persons for corporations, corporate entities established themselves as “super players” who—by the sheer fact of their numbers (human and monetary, but mostly monetary)—normal players or citizens couldn’t compete with in the democratic process. And now the winning edge of “corporate persons” is felt in every election cycle when corporate donations determine our leadership and on a daily basis when corporate-controlled lobbyists—democratic representation on steroids—determine our “rules” or laws and “reffing” or governance.

So let’s set the record straight.

Winning isn’t anything if it’s the only thing.

If you and I aren’t lining up on a level playing field, no one really wins.

If the refs are in either of our pockets, the game isn’t worth playing.

And if one of us is juiced up on performance-enhancing drugs or profit-enhancing legalese, the scoreboard is a disgrace.

How long will we continue to embarrass ourselves? How long will conquests and wealth continue to justify cheating, inequality and kleptocracy?

How long will our hopes for the future continue to take a back seat to destructive victories?

In 1979, Andy Gray (recently in the headlines for what must be the most ludicrous non-story of the year) achieved similar notoriety. He moved home from Aston Villa to Wolverhampton Wanderers (a far more manageable 7 or 8 miles) for what was then the highest transfer fee ever paid between British football clubs – £1.5m.

In 1979 factory work was a fairly well paid job in England. In Grantham, for example, where I live, there were several sizeable factories employing significant numbers of people. They were factories that made highly engineered products requiring people with considerable skill to make them. The town has a proud engineering history (though we’ll draw a veil over the fact that it produced the first battlefield tanks, and remained an arms maker into the 1980’s). Workers normally worked a standard forty hour week with weekend work paid at overtime rates. Now I don’t know what the average wage was for a general operative back then, and it isn’t easy to find out, but if I said about £3 an hour, I’m probably slightly overestimating.

Today all of those big factories have now died (murdered would be a slightly more accurate description); but there are a few small engineering firms doing quite well in the town (green shoots of recovery and all that). I don’t know what general operatives are paid there these days, and I can’t be bothered to find out; but if I said it was about £7 an hour, I would probably be exaggerating (given that the minimum wage is currently £5.91, and modern employers are not famous for paying much more than absolutely necessary).

Now then, 1979 was quite a significant year for something else; for that was the year that a grocer’s daughter became the first female Prime Minister of Britain. And Thatcherism was born. “We’re all in it together” could have been a catch phrase her army of propagandists might have employed as she rolled up her sleeves and set about decimating the bedrock of the British economy – its industry.

Today’s equivalent of Andy Gray costs his employer more than thirty times what would have been paid in 1979. If a factory worker’s wages had increased at a similar rate, she would be on about £100 an hour.

Of course we’re all in it together. I never doubted it for a minute.

What upset Burton, who had donated about $7 million to UConn, mostly for its football program, was that the selection committee for a new football coach didn’t take his suggestion. Not long after Burton’s tirade, the chairman of the Board of Trustees reached out to “mend fences” to keep money where it belongs — in the football program.

While athletics drive many universities, a few consider sports as supplemental to the academic mission. I believe this is how a conversation went at one college located somewhere in America, where the accreditors were questioning the president.

“How did your football team do this year?” asked the chairman of the accrediting team.

“We were 3-and-6, and very proud of our team,” said a beaming president.

“This is serious. What steps have you taken to replace your coach?”

“We hadn’t thought about it,” said the president, mystified by the inquiry. “Coach Samuels is one of the nation’s most respected organic chemists, teaches a full load of courses, then works out the team an hour or two in the evenings.”

“An hour or two?” said the accreditor, mockingly. “No wonder your school has such a dismal record! Most colleges have twice-a-day drills for two or three hours at a time. The students don’t even go to class in the Fall. Your coaching staff must be lazy.”

“We have only two assistant coaches. One teaches sociology, the other is a speech pathologist.”

“Most colleges have a dozen coaches,” said the accreditor. “How can you not have assistant coaches for ends, backs, and nose guards?”

“We have a good staff in our anatomy and physiology labs,” said the president, adding that with additional assistant directors in Music and Theatre, the college produces some professional-class musical comedies.

“Who cares? How many of your athletes went on to professional NFL careers?” The president diverted the question, and excitedly told the accreditor about alumni who went into the creative arts, others who are leaders in social work and environmental science, and of graduates who are among the nation’s leaders in almost every field of scientific research.

“Business!” roared the Chairman. “How many of your graduates are in high paying business jobs!”

The president thought hard, but could think of only three of his recent graduates who went into corporate business, and then only because they couldn’t get any other job. “Of course,” said the president, “a few dozen of our graduates enter law and med school every year.”

The accreditor’s face finally lit up. “Oh, so you do have wealthy alumni! Why didn’t you say so!”

The president shook his head. “Most of our alumni lawyers are into consumer law, and our med school graduates usually become family physicians or work with the poor.”

“Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.” Also not a good sign was the social atmosphere on campus. “I didn’t see any fraternity or sorority houses on campus. In fact, hardly anyone even knows where the nightly parties are.”

“I guess that isn’t helping our cause for reaccreditation, is it?” asked the president. He didn’t have to ask since the accreditor was now writing furiously.

“Your building fund? Any new recreation or student union buildings?”

“We’re planning a new building to house our community service programs.” The accreditor hardly looked up he was so disgusted. “We had two Rhodes Scholars and one Danforth fellowship last year! One of our profs just won a Pulitzer. Ninety percent of our faculty hold the doctorate!”

“Any of them all-Americans?”

“Our Intercollegiate Debate Team was national champion last year! The Student Social Welfare Club led the fight against conversion of apartments into condos!”

“Redeem yourself with committees,” shouted the accreditor. “Do you have more committees than scholarships?”

“We believe most committees are wastes of time that encourage their members to act in irrational and arrogant manners.”

The accreditor’s aide calmed him down long enough so he could ask a final question. “How much of your budget is spent on sending your administrators and faculty to phony academic conferences to pat each other’s behinds?”

“None,” wept the president, “most of our budget keeps students and faculty current in their fields.”

The accreditor slammed his notebook shut and walked away. The president called after him, “When will we know whether we have been reaccredited?”

The accreditor stopped a moment, turned around, and shouted back, “When you become a real educational institution.”