On Feb 6, 7:25=A0pm, Immortalist wrote:
> AMY GOODMAN: We=92re going to continue, though, now with Dave Zirin,
> sports columnist, author of a number of books about politics and
> sports. His latest is A People=92s History of Sports in the United
> States.
>
> Dave, talk about the other issues that you=92ve been following, as well
> as around the Super Bowl, though not particularly this ad against
> abortion.
>
> DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, this ad almost takes all the oxygen out of the room,
> which is too bad, because there=92s a terrific story about the
> relationship between the city of New Orleans and the rise of the New
> Orleans Saints. I mean, count me as somebody who=92s a serious skeptic
> when it comes to all those stories about how a team is lifting a city
> out of its doldrums, like when the Detroit Tigers made their run last
> year, and people were saying, =93Oh, it=92s lifting up the city in the
> context of the recession.=94 A lot of that is hooey. It=92s absolute
> hooey. It=92s used to fill copy in the sports pages. But with New
> Orleans, it really is different.
>
> I=92m a big believer that sports is like a hammer, and you could use a
> hammer to build a house or bash somebody over the head. And this is
> one of those cases where sports is really speaking to the best angels
> of people=92s nature in New Orleans.
>
> I was speaking to Malik Rahim, who I know you=92ve had on your show
> before, a former Black Panther Party member, someone who has been a
> community activist in New Orleans for thirty years. And I asked him
> about the role that the Saints are playing in the city. And I expected
> Malik to be a bit of a skeptic about it. But Malik said to me, =93I
> haven=92t seen people in the Ninth Ward or in Algiers this happy since
> Katrina. And I haven=92t seen African Americans and working-class whites
> talk to each other so much in all three decades since I=92ve lived in
> New Orleans.=94 And I think it=92s really helped by the fact that, more
> than any other team in the NFL, players who play for the Saints, post-
> Katrina actually live in the city and are part of the rebuilding
> effort in the city. So there=92s a real connection there between team
> and city that, honestly, you just don=92t see anymore.
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dave, you=92ve been involved in plans for a Super
> Bowl party that has an anti-militarism theme. Could you talk about
> this whole issue that you alluded to earlier of the involvement of the
> military in Super Bowls?
>
> DAVE ZIRIN: Oh, yeah. Well, that=92s the whole funny thing about, =93Oh,
> we can=92t have advocacy ads for the Super Bowl.=94 But last year David
> Petraeus flipped the coin at the Super Bowl. Every year, you have the
> fighter planes fly overhead. It=92s a huge recruitment day for the US
> armed forces. And particularly in the context of the war on terror,
> the Super Bowl has been an absolute center for military recruitment on
> a year-in, year-out basis.
>
> And this year I=92m teaming up with the Iraq Veterans Against the War,
> IVAW, and we=92re actually going to have a Super Bowl party at the IVAW
> house here in Washington, DC, where we=92re going to watch the game,
> without question, but we=92re also going to speak about de-linking the
> fun of football with the reality of war. Far too often, sports is used
> as this idiotic metaphor for war=97quarterbacks are field generals, and
> they throw bullet passes or bombs=97when in reality we know that war is
> very different. War is life and death. War is long periods of boredom
> punctuated by horrifying terror. So, if you want to just watch the
> game and have fun watching the game but also speak out against
> militarism, please email me, dave(at)edgeofsports.com, and I=92ll hook
> you up at the IVAW house here in Washington, DC to watch the big game.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: What about New Orleans Saints player Scott Fujita, who
> you profiled?
>
> DAVE ZIRIN: I mean, this has just been a terrific thing for me to see
> Scott Fujita get a lot of attention over the last couple of weeks,
> just because the Saints are in the Super Bowl. Scott Fujita is a
> linebacker, went to Cal Berkeley. He also is adopted by Japanese
> parents. He=92s a Caucasian guy, big blonde guy, six-five, 260. His
> family is Japanese, his adopted family. And his father was actually
> born in a Japanese internment camp, and his grandparents were
> interned, as well.
>
> And so, when the war on terror started, Scott Fujita started to speak
> out against Dick Cheney, against the secret prisons, because he spoke
> about what happened to his parents. He went public to ESPN and said,
> =93Look, we had internment camps in this country. We cannot have this
> again. That=92s not what this country needs to be about.=94 And so, Scott
> spoke out against that, and so I developed a political relationship
> with Scott.
>
> And when the National Equality March was called for this past fall,
> 200,000 people marching in DC for LGBT rights, I contacted a whole
> bunch of athletes to see if one of them would sign on to call for
> people to come to DC and march, and Scott responded without hesitation
> and said, =93Absolutely.=94 And he did an interview with me, where he
> spoke about how set he is that ... marriage should be a right for
> everybody, for all LGBT people, and that LGBT equality should be
> something that cannot wait. And Scott was very brave in speaking out
> for that, because oftentimes I think we see the pro sports locker room
> as being the last acceptable hamlet of homophobia. And so, to have
> Scott Fujita and another player on the Baltimore Ravens, Brendan
> Ayanbadejo, speak out for LGBT rights and marriage rights and civil
> rights, that made a huge difference. So I just have a lot of affection
> for Scott, and I love the fact that he=92s getting noticed and profiled
> by all these big newspapers, because he deserves it.
>
> JUAN GONZALEZ: Dave, I=92d like to ask you about another topic relating
> to football. It got a lot of attention a few months ago, and it
> potentially is perhaps the biggest scandal in the National Football
> League and in football, in general, which is the issue of head
> injuries, two ballplayers and permanent brain damage, and how the NFL
> sought to basically ignore the problem for years. But it has enormous
> implication for children in high school and college sports, as well.
>
> DAVE ZIRIN: You know, a player, a former player, Dave Meggyesy, once
> said to me that when you sign an NFL contract, you sign away your
> right to have a middle age. And it is true. You meet players who are
> in their mid-thirties, and they speak openly about the fact that when
> they=92re in their mid-forties they might not be able to communicate
> with their wife and kids the way they once could. I=92m thinking of
> Andre Waters, who was a star safety for the Philadelphia Eagles, who
> committed suicide at age forty-five, and when they did an autopsy, he
> had the brain tissue of an eighty-eight-year-old with Alzheimer=92s.
> This is very real. And the NFL has tried to sweep it under the carpet
> for decades.
>
> And yet, players are getting faster, players are getting stronger. And
> ironically, the more they make the helmets, quote-unquote, =93safer,=94
> the more dangerous it gets, because players feel like they can be more
> reckless and launch themselves at other players. So, it=92s a very
> difficult situation.
>
> Malcolm Gladwell, the author of so many bestselling books, like Blink,
> he wrote in The New Yorker that maybe someday we would look back at
> professional football like dog fighting and see it as something that
> should be outlawed, just because of the sheer level of carnage that it
> puts on the brain. Yet we all know that the NFL is by far the most
> popular sport in the United States, and it=92s not going anywhere.
>
> So, the NFL has a real problem on its hands. They need to figure out a
> way to deal with this, whether it=92s through equipment or a change in
> the rules, because if it keeps going like this, I think they=92re in for
> some serious problems.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, we want to thank you very much for being with
> us, sports columnist, author of a number of books. His latest, A
> People=92s History of Sports in the United States.
>
> AMY GOODMAN: And Dave, who are you rooting for in the game on Sunday?
>
> DAVE ZIRIN: Oh, are you kidding me? Go Saints! Who dat?!
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/5/dave_zirin_on_super_bowl_fever
You know, I see another corrolary here. People need things like
sports teams to capture their imaginations and to spur on community
spirit and vitality. It may not seem like the same subject on first
take, but I see Obama's canceling of our space program [more or less]
equating to the same relative results as if New Orleans had disbanded
the Saints. It leaves the population voided somehow, empty...like a
great crevasse where once sprung new hope and some sense of future
tomorrows, we are now left aimless, less connected, less motivated as
a nation tied together.
This President has done everything wrong. The sooner we get rid of
this guy the better. We need that space program in the same way New
Orleans needs their Saints. It was something we all could be a part
of, look to as some meaning to our own pitiful existence as
individuals, and thereby find cohesion in that macrocosm we deem our
society. Even more, I imagine it is a disappointment the whole world
feels.
Human Beings belong on new frontiers. I'd have canceled or disbanded
a great many OTHER programs before I would have touched our space
program. But then, that takes the depth to realize the super bowl is
far more than just a game.
It is more the winding up of the mechanisms that drive us, that we
tick on.
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