The Dominion - sports

Checking Militarism

Moira Peters — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 06:33:05 +0000

Public broadcaster giving airtime to war

SACKVILLE, NB—For years, Don Cherry has been using his segment after the first period of CBC's Saturday night hockey broadcasts to honour Canadian troops and actively promote Canada's military mission in Afghanistan. During Christmas 2010, Cherry visited military bases in Afghanistan and even launched a few weapons.

On January 8, 2011, a new group known as Hockey Fans for Peace protested outside Rogers Arena, home of the Vancouver Canucks. Fed up with Cherry's one-sided promotion of the war, they asked to debate Cherry during a live broadcast. (Many watchers of CBC News would agree that genuine debate on Afghanistan has been generally lacking.)

A former NHL coach, Cherry co-hosts "Coach's Corner" during the first intermission on CBC's weekly Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) broadcast.

Cherry is well known as a right-wing, "pro-Canadian" who is skeptical of the value and work ethic of European hockey players, but he has increasingly used his platform to promote militarism and to support the small Canadian Army contingent that has been in Afghanistan since February 2002.

While this has nothing to do with hockey, CBC brass permit Cherry to promote Canada's military mission and "support the troops" on the national public broadcaster during hockey games. For Cherry, supporting the troops morphs into a call for the country to "stick with the mission" so their sacrifices will not be in vain. The CBC, in one of many signs of its fear of the Harper government, won't shut down Don Cherry’s militaristic rants or offer equal time to representatives of the majority of Canadians who disagree with him.

One of the most durable buttresses of militarism is found in the world of sport, and advocates like Don Cherry and his critics are just the latest in a long tradition.

Military training all over the world had a significant element of sport in it because fitness is needed in battle. In Social Darwinist thought, sport was encouraged during industrialism to ensure that "the nation" would remain "vital" and able to flex its military muscle. As articulated by World War II General and US President Dwight D Eisenhower, "the true mission of American sports is to prepare young people for war."

After September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the NFL worked with the US Department of Defense to hold an NFL Kick-Off Concert at the National Mall in August 2003. It was broadcast live on ABC along with an hour-long special on "Operation Tribute to Freedom," a program designed to "honor soldiers and give them opportunities to thank the American people for their support." These links between militarism, sports and entertainment "normalize war, rendering it habitual, seemingly rational, and largely immune to challenge," as articulated by Robert L Ivie. Having gone to war, the state, media and allied institutions attempt to maintain public support for the effort—a task that has proven more difficult in recent years.

Links between contemporary Western sport and war are endorsed and perpetuated by sportscasters and sports networks. Progressive sports writer and Edge of Sports Radio host, Dave Zirin, noted of the 2011 Super Bowl, “The sheer tonnage of militaristic bombast with patriotic trimmings was like Top Gun on steroids.” The Olympics have repeatedly been used to support corporate, militaristic and colonial agendas. US Memorial Day and Canadian Remembrance Day are occasions for networks' overt support for war, and ESPN's Sportcentre's Top 10 and the CBC's HNIC both feature annual celebrations of the military on their countries respective holidays. The leagues, owners and corporate interests push both militarism and conservative politics. Many NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA teams hold annual "Seats for Soldiers" events and "Canadian Forces Appreciation Nights."

Each of these events feature undisguised expressions of militarism, and many athletes, teams, and leagues have supported the military by visiting troops abroad. The defense industry continues the militarization of sport with athletic sponsorships such the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl.

Some athletes themselves provide financial support for war, as with the Strikeouts for Troops program, a national project that has raised over $1 million since 2005 from contributions made by more than 60 professional baseball and football players, fund raising events, fan donations and corporate partnerships.

Others do so by holding events for soldiers and their families. In both 2007 and 2008, Tiger Woods donated 30,000 tickets to the AT&T National Golf tournament to service members and their families. Woods, whose father Earl was in the US Army Special Forces (the "Green Berets"), is known as a strong supporter of the military, saying that he would have joined up if he hadn't made it as a professional golfer.

At the same time that professional sport enlists support for militarism, it also serves as a major source of resistance to war. While athletes have a reputation for being more conservative than other celebrities, not all professional athletes endorse militarism, war or conservative politics. And, despite all the multifaceted connections between sport and war, there is also a long history of athletes acting as tools for peace.

One of the greatest heavyweight boxers, Mohammed Ali (born Cassius Clay), went to jail for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War and was stripped for a time of his championship.

At the 1968 Mexico City summer Olympics, two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who won gold and bronze medals in the 200-metre sprint, stood on the podium while US national anthem played, their heads bowed and a black-gloved fists raised, Black Power-style, as a protest against racism at home. They were expelled from the Olympic Village and the International Olympic Committee stripped them of their medals.

In the 2000s, among the most outspoken athletes against war and militarism are cyclist Lance Armstrong, Major League Baseball player Carlos Delgado, boxer Anthony Mundine, former NFL linebacker Adalius Thomas, tennis player Martina Navratilova, Ultimate Fighting Champion Jeff Monson and NBA players Steve Nash and Adonal Foyle.

These athletes have faced considerable public criticism for their political stances. Carlos Delgado faced taunts and boos when, in opposition to US militarization, he refused to stand for "God Bless America" played at MLB games. Canadian NBA star Steve Nash appeared at a 2003 NBA All-Star event wearing a T-shirt reading "No War. Shoot For Peace," and was told that "maybe [he] should be in a different country" by US Navy Academy graduate and San Antonio Spurs player David Robinson. Muslim-Australian Aboriginal boxer Anthony Mundine was indefinitely stripped of his 26th-place world ranking, after stating that he did not support Australia's involvement in the "War on Terror."

Numerous baseball players and the Major League Baseball Players Association spoke out against Arizona’s racist, anti—immigrant legislation in 2010. Most recently, members of the 2011 Super Bowl champions, the Green Bay Packers, including defensive captain Charles Woodson, have spoken in support of those protesting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s legislative effort to remove public sector collective bargaining rights and centralize power in the governor’s office. (It is appropriate that Green Bay is the NFL’s only publicly-owned team, and that Woodson is on the NFLPA’s Board of Player Representatives, at a time when the NFL players may themselves be facing a lock out.)

Canadians should be prepared to support the first professional hockey player who comes out in favour of total Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan. And we should all call on the CBC to rediscover its courage and independence and promote genuine debate about the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. True hockey fans should also demand that Coach's Corner return to its original purpose—commentary and analysis on the sport of hockey.

Dr Geoff Martin and Dr Erin Steuter teach at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB. They are the authors of Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror, Lexington Books, 2010.

Cherry the Reaper

Sacrifice

Moira Peters — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:46:54 +0000

sacrifice.jpg

Chicago Thwarts the Bid

dawn — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:06:05 +0000

How one American city dodged the Olympic bullet

WASHINGTON, DC—"This is a devastating blow for the people of Chicago." So said ESPN's Chicago-born Michael Wilbon.

But the decision to send the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio was in fact a victory for the people of Chicago. Pushing back against immense pressure from Mayor Daley's political machine, organizations like No Games Chicago went grassroots, corner to corner, and spoke out against the Olympic storm of gentrification, tax hikes, and police misconduct. They are a model of resistance in the Obama era. Certainly one reason the United States got the high hat was the lingering bad taste of George W. Bush. The global community, after eight years of sneering contempt from Washington, DC, isn't ready to rinse with the Obama mouthwash.

But it's the community activists of Chicago who should feel tremendously gratified. In the Windy City, the hastily formed group No Games Chicago took to the streets, shadowing Olympic organizers at every stop. They turned almost every public relations gambit into challenged, contested, space. They—along with the millions of Chicagoans who expressed their trepidation in polls—saved their city. They have every right to say with pride, "That's the Chicago way!"

As for Barack Obama, he may not be feeling it, but he is the luckiest man alive. Yes, he traveled all the way to Copenhagen and didn't even get a lousy t-shirt, but he is very fortunate his bid went down like it did.

Obama is the first US president to ever appear before the International Olympic Committee and plead for the Games. The Games coming to the Windy City would have been an eight-year distraction and political gold for his opponents. Every time an Olympic project came in late and over budget, every time a scandal hit the tabloids, every time a crime was captured on a cell phone camera it would have been "Obama's Olympic Folly."

The person who really has egg on his face is Mayor Richard Daley. He wanted to show everyone he was a bigger man—and mayor—than his Daddy, with an Olympic-sized stadia to boot. Now expect all the Daley arm-twisting and all the dirty skullduggery in the lead up to both come to light and come home to roost. Mayor Daley, rocking a 35 per cent approval rating, said that the Games would be "a huge boost to our economy, raising it to a new level. The Games will help us recover sooner from the recession that still grips our nation and enable us to better compete in the global economy."

There was only one problem with this argument: the history of the Olympic Games almost without exception brands it as a lie. As Sports Illustrated's Michael Fish—an Olympic supporter—has written, "You stage a two-week athletic carnival and, if things go well, pray the local municipality isn't sent into financial ruin."

In fact, the very idea that Chicago could have been an appropriate setting for the Olympics might have been hatched by Jon Stewart for a four-year supply of comedic fodder. To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest. Even without the Olympic Games, Chicago has been ground zero in the past decade for the destruction of public housing, political corruption raised to an art form, and police violence.

It was also difficult for Chicago residents to see how this would help their pocketbooks, given that Daley pledged to the International Olympic Committee that any cost overruns would be covered by taxpayers.

This is why a staggering 84 per cent of the city opposed bringing the Games to Chicago if it cost residents a solitary dime. Even if the Games were to go off without a hitch—which would happen only if the setting was lovely Shangri-La—not even half the residents would support hosting the Games.

The Obamas, former Chicago residents, should have stood with their city. Instead, we had the sight of Barack, Michelle, and Oprah trying to out-muscle Pele and Brazil for a place at the Olympic trough.

Michelle Obama said in her speech to the IOC, "My father was disabled, and I think what it would have meant for him to see someone in his shoes compete. Kids need to see that and that needs to be celebrated just as much, if not more."

This seems more like an argument to support the Paralympics (a tremendous event) but that's beside the point. Michelle Obama should have realized that if the Olympics had come to Chicago when she was a young girl on Chicago's working class southside, her home may have been torn down to make way for an Olympic facility. No word on how being out of house and home would have helped her disabled father.

The question is, why did Obama risk this humiliation?

Maybe Obama wants the Olympic fairy dust enjoyed by Ronald Reagan at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles or Bill Clinton at the 1996 games in Atlanta. Or perhaps he is returning favor to the developers and other sundry connected people in the Windy City who will make out like bandits once the smoke has cleared. But his intentions are clear: he wants the glitz, glamour, and prestige of the Games and he wants it for the Daley machine. What the people of Chicago want doesn't seem to compute.

But we shouldn't be surprised at this point that Obama is tin-eared to the concerns of Chicago residents. As Paul Krugman wrote September 20 on the banker bonuses, "The administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it's giving taxpayers' hard-earned money away to Wall Street." Shoveling taxpayers' money into the Olympic maw is no better, especially in these tough times.

No Games Chicago organizer Alison McKenna said to me, "I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because instead of putting money toward what people really need, money will be funneled to real estate developers who will be tearing down Washington Park and other important community resources. I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because the nonprofit child-welfare agency that I work for had to sustain budget cuts and layoffs, while Chicago has spent $48.2 million on the 2016 Olympic bid, as of July 2009."

There is an urgency to building resistance to these kinds of priorities. Right now, the right wing is shamelessly adopting populist rhetoric and the power of protest to sell an agenda of racism and fear wrapped in taxpayer protection. The big public voice against Obama's trip to Copenhagen was the repellent Republican National Committee chief Michael Steele who believes, and this is hilarious, that "at a time of war and recession" Obama needs to stay home. It shouldn't be a scoundrel like Steele who represents a party of privatization and occupation who delivers that message.

Now is the time to build a pole of attraction on the left for people furious at corporate greed amidst a recession. This needs to happen, and not just for the Windy City. In Vancouver, the struggle is now defensive in nature as our anti-Olympic heroes strive to find a way to sand off the worst edges of the Olympic scythe, cutting through one of the world's most beautiful cities. It's about building a vibrant protest movement that believes in social justice not the rank divisiveness of the right. Obama likes to say that change comes from "outside Washington." It's time to take him at his word.

Dave Zirin writes for The Nation magazine, among other publications. His most recent book is A People's History of Sports in the United States.

Chicago.Bid.Protesters

Buzz Hargrove joins the NHL!

Geordie — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:51:32 +0000

Former labour leader Buzz Hargrove has ignored retirement and joined the advisory board of the NHL Players Association.

According to Hockeybuzz.com: "Buzz Hargrove (Toronto, Ontario) served as the national president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union since his acclamation in 1992 until he recently retired in September 2008. Hargrove has been one of Canada’s top labour leaders and has extensive collective bargaining experience."

Let's hope the players don't mysteriously lose the right to strike!

Michael Vick

dru — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:36:24 +0000

The WSWS had a great little analysis of the media coverage surrounding Michael Vick. And their interview with Cindy Sheehan is worth a second look, too.

Zirin on McGwire, Ali

dru — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:26:43 +0000

Dave Zirin: "I would also add that half the [Baseball Hall of Fame] is made of players who operated under the ultimate 'performance enhancer', not having to compete against people with dark skin."

For those not familiar, Dave Zirin writes a great column about sports and politics at EdgeofSports.com. He's also got a new book coming out. Check out this bit from his latest piece on Muhammed Ali:

Ali could have recanted, apologized, or signed up on some cushy USO gig boxing for the troops and the cameras, ultimately to go back to making money. But he refused. At one press conference later that year, he was expected to apologize for his "un-American" remarks. Instead he said, "Keep asking me, no matter how long. On the war in Vietnam, I sing this song, I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. Clean out my cell and take my tail to jail. 'Cause better to be in jail fed than to be in Vietnam dead."

Tretiak

dru — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:56:17 +0000

Tretiak, the most famous Commie hockey player possibly in history, is back on the ice in Canada.