Media “Tennis”—ISIS & Football

September 21st, 2014  |   

“While the President is focused so intently on ISIS and on this war and laying out a strategy finally, Americans are more focused on the NFL (National Football League).”

Andrea Mitchell  MSNBC

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People like sports because they get self-esteem benefits from it. People like sports because they have money on it. People like sports because their boy friend or girl friend or family member likes sports. People like sports because it’s exciting. People like sports because it’s aesthetically pleasing. People like sports because, like the theater, it is a venue for emotional expression. People like sports because they need an escape from real-world troubles. People like sports because it provides a sense of belonging, a connection to a wider world. 

Eric Simons, author of The Secret Lives of Sports Fans: The Science of Sports Obsession

Watching The News—Thwock!—Thwock!

Watching television news these days is like watching a tennis match. The news bounces back and forth between two stories, like a tennis ball across a net. Each one vies, for our attention. The war with ISIS, then the National Football League (NFL) stories about players abusing women and children… The war with ISIS, then the National Football League NFL stories…The war with ISIS, then the NFL stories… And so it goes. And so it goes.

Thwock! Thwock! Thwock! Advantage ISIS. Advantage NFL. No love involved.

Questions come to mind. Is football news merely a relief, an escape from ISIS beheadings and the chaos in the Middle East, a Petri dish breeding war? Is there a linkage between dropping bombs on people in Iraq and Syria (and don’t forget Afghanistan), and a football player cold-cocking his wife in an elevator with a left hook, or a star running-back abusing a child? Are these stories connected in some very real way?

I do believe there is a connection, and it involves the wars we fight, the culture we share, and the games we play. It’s violence, man; it’s violence. Better said, it’s men acting violently, warriors and gladiators who wear their own style of protective armor. 

Now, Tennis anyone?

Thwock!—War

 I was the only one in my family to serve in the military, as a Marine infantry officer. I make no judgment about that, nor do I take pride in it. In fact, I am suspicious of those who require someone to have military experience before they are considered authentic. The same goes for folks who flash their military credentials, to whatever advantage, on license plates, bumper stickers, and war-badge-laden clothing.

When I signed up and put on a uniform, I didn’t know what my country was up to in Southeast Asia. I had to learn when I got on the inside. War is about killing people, but thank God I didn’t have to kill anyone. The Vietnam War was a travesty that my country should have avoided, but didn’t. The nation has never owned up to that fact. That war is celebrated when it ought to be lamented with an annual day of repentance.

The African American Spiritual, Down By the Riverside, is a double-edge sword. “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” Sure, I get it. “Gonna lay down my sword and shield” means put an end to war. It also commits us to read, discuss, and resist war so we don’t repeat it.

My life changed when I encountered Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and not some guru in a cave, far away from a war-torn, battle-plagued world. I study war with my Bible in hand, while listening to war-informed voices. Anyone reading my Notes over the years knows about my admiration for Col. Andrew Bacevich, a prophetic voice I pay attention to, even though we have never met. A West Point graduate, he has seen soldiers die in war, even his own son. He’s an informed man of faith, A Roman Catholic, who now teaches at Boston University. His honesty stings and stuns anyone who will listen.

Marine officers carry a symbolic sword on special occasions. This past Christmas I gave mine to one of my grandsons. I know he sees it as a prize. My intention was not that he would revel in the glorification of violence, or the romanticism of war. My hope is that he will see the sword as the one Jesus calls for his disciples to carry. Not, for God’s sake, for a bloody crusade, but for a symbolic Biblical reminder that the sword divides the truth from a lie as it cuts through the demonic illusion that violence is redemptive.

Thwock!—Football

Sports have been a very important part of my life. Put a ball on a field, a net over which a tennis ball flies, a goal dented by a ball or a puck, a fairway green and a sand trap, and well…you get the picture—my heart rate rises, along with my testosterone and adrenaline levels. In past writings, I have said that given permission to carry only four items with me, if I should have to spend time in jail, one of them would be a ball.

Eric Simons hits a hole-in-one when writing about sports in the September/October issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. I can relate personally to all eight observations about why people like sports. Most of all I appreciate his final observation, “People like sports because it provides a sense of belonging, a connection to a wider world.” That certainly rings true for me. My team was my wider-world.  

I played sports in high school—football, basketball and lacrosse—and football and lacrosse in college. I did my share of coaching later. Through it all, the games I played, coached and watched have offered me enormous pleasure, a graceful entry into adulthood, a connection with people, invaluable insights into important values, and a sense of team-play and community that I found lacking in other places in my life. Sports connected me with a larger world, beginning with the people on the team.

Julian of Norwich saw God’s love in a hazel nut. I found a community in my games.

Thwock!—War

This past week, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to two Vietnam War veterans, one deceased. I admire their courage, even in a senseless and failed war. It was ironical that at the very same time, 28 years ago, Charles Liteky was engaged in a Fast For Life, with two other veterans (WW II and Vietnam War men) in protest of the terrorism our nation was conducting in the Contra War in Nicaragua.   

Liteky is worthy of note. A Roman Catholic priest, he was a chaplain during the Vietnam War and served with distinction. In 1968, President Johnson awarded him the Congressional Metal of Honor for his courageous action. He crawled into the line of fire, and despite painful neck and foot wounds, carried 20 wounded men to a landing zone to be evacuated. Lying on his back, he crawled for help with one soldier on his chest.

Chaplain Liteky, in 1986, just before his Fast For Life, renounced his Medal by mailing it to President Reagan, the only time a Congressional Medal of Honor has been returned. Continuing to witness to the power of nonviolence, Charles Liteky opposed war in Iraq.

Thwock! Football

Why did I play basketball with a house full of black teenagers atrociously labeled, “older, aggressive, retarded, and delinquent boys?” Why did I take a baseball bat and a ball to some kids I visited in a Palestinian village near Bethlehem, the recorded birthplace of Jesus? Why did I throw a lacrosse ball around with a girl who didn’t think she could do it very well? The answer is easy. It has something to do with Eric Simons’ “sense of belonging, a connection with a wider world,” one bigger and more inclusive than my own. A ball serves as an excellent link between people. Take one to a picnic and see what happens among people who don’t know one another very well. It’s an Olympian dream.

It may sound strange to some of my readers, but drinking out of a common water bucket on a playing field as a kid was somehow ineffably connected with drinking from a common chalice in church. Kneeling at a communion rail was like lining up as an end, my football position, next to a tackle. I won’t go into detail, but playing sports helped me understand teamwork, and how to deal with conflict and conflict resolution. The rules and conduct of a game were valuable tools for my life and ministry.

As a boy, I sat in Baltimore Stadium, watching the old Baltimore Colts, now the Baltimore Ravens. My family had seats there when Johnny Unitas threw passes to Raymond Berry. When my mother was dying in a Baltimore hospital, just seven months before 9/11, everyone there, including my mother, was draped in Raven attire. The entire city bonded across racial, age and economic lines. Talk about “connection to a wider world” in a city, Baltimore, where violence is as available as local beer and crab cakes.

Thwock!—War

Governmental, political, and media folks are telling us that ISIS is a threat to our country, that there may be ISIS cells and individuals here right now preparing to strike. Seems to me I’ve heard that song before. Remember President Eisenhower’s warning, that if Laos fell to the communists, countries would topple like dominoes? Do you recall President Reagan’s warning that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were only a two-hour drive from Harlingen, Texas? And don’t get me started on the “better dead than Red” scare.

Chaos, incubated by violence, threatens and scares us. Ironically, it is a chaos that we have contributed to by our own fascination with, and participation in, the very violence we feel called, even by God, to eradicate. Bedazzled by hallucinated visions of our own indispensability and exceptionalism, we don the ancient armor of past crusades intended to save the world from all that fails to mirror our own self-image. With evangelical fervor, we mouth our own values, but they fall on the deaf ears of people unwilling or unable to emulate them, because they are buried up-to-their-ears beneath our violence.

Thwock!—Football

Country singer, Hank Williams Jr. is a big hit with West Virginians. That is, not only with his music, but his politics. Hank’s music and politics fit like chords picked on his guitar. All fifty-five West Virginia counties voted against Obama in both elections.

Hank introduced Monday Night Football on television for 22 years by playing and singing the raucous, testosterone-laced song, “Are You Ready for Some Football?” Even though the NFL and ESPN has relieved Hank of that job because he compared Obama to Hitler, the nation still seems to be ready for some football. This past weekend, NFL games garnered the top television rating for three consecutive nights. No surprise.

When President Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963, two days later the NFL played their scheduled games. Attendance at the games was unaffected. Now that the NFL is in deep doo-doo, not over the violence on the field, but violence off the field, I suspect attendance will not be affected. Open stadium gates and they will come. That is, unless women and, as the Marines say, “a few good men,” turn their backs on the game.

Thwock! War          

Fifty years ago, in August 1964, President Johnson had come to believe that escalation of United States presence was the only solution to the war in Vietnam. He increased bombing. Eighty-five percent of the American public supported his decision. By June 1965 Johnson had increased the Boots-On-The-Ground strength to 75,000. Within a year he added an additional 100,000 troops, and by 1996, 100,000 more troops. We were on the way to defeat Vietnam, as well as losing Johnson’s War on Poverty.

President Obama has told us that the bombing will be increased in the region, into Syria as well as Iraq. A majority of Americans are supportive of those bombing missions, and now Congress, in a non-partisan vote (Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!), has authorized support for Syrian rebels. So now we will send weapons to rebels without knowing if they are friend or foe. They will fight a Sunni-based ISIS, an enemy we’ve created by our abandonment of them, and who are armed with weapons we purchased. Concerned that ISIS, and terrorist activity will grow, dropping bomb and waging war on people will only increase their recruitment ability, and their desire to strike back at us.

Our rapidly graying, reluctantly conflicted, beleaguered President assures us that there will be no American Boots-On-The-Ground. U.S. Combat troops will not be sent there, he says, because Americans are sick of war, particularly the confusing, losing war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have had our belly full of this phony, trumped-up, costly war we have fought since 2003. There’s no heart in reentering the mess we’ve created. Troops would be sent to Syria and Iraq, countries that no longer exist. No wonder the Administration is reluctant to call this military commitment a war. You can only go to war with a country, and countries are disappearing right before our very eyes. I visited Libya in the early 1990s. Libya no longer exists. It has reverted back to its tribal origins. 

But the President also knows that an air war will not destroy this newly defined enemy, ISIS. In order to destroy ISIS, it will be necessary to have Boots-On-The-Ground. And, by the way, let’s not kid ourselves; there are already Boots-On-The-Ground. Fear mushrooms, as the pictures of people being beheaded are flashed onto our television sets, and the CIA telling us that ISIS has now grown to 35,000 people, with the prediction that the number might triple in a few months. The threat that ISSA recruits may already be here in our country causes the fear to grow exponentially.

I’ll offer a prediction, why not, fans predict the outcome of sporting events, it’s one way of taking a risk. The bombing will continue to expand, and more Boots-On-The-Ground will arrive on the scene to join the ones that are already there. It will resemble the Vietnam War, and we will find ourselves on the same slippery slope, like the one we slid down into a quagmire in Vietnam. And we will feel the blowback here at home, for violence has a recoil all its own. We know that, don’t we?

Thwock! Football

In 1946, when I was eleven-years-old, the first edition of Sport magazine appeared on the newsstand at my Baltimore neighborhood drugstore. Joe DiMaggio was the cover story. I fell in love with the magazine, and waited eagerly each month for a new edition. In August 2000, after 54 years of publication, Sport disappeared from newsstands.

I am forever grateful for the writers that graced that magazine, great writers like Roger Kahn, Dick Schaap, John Lardner, and Grantland Rice. It was Rice who implanted poetic words in my brain, which I have not forgotten. “For when the One Great Scorer comes/To Mark against your name,/He writes—not that you won or lost—/ But how you played the game.” I think those words morphed into a simple belief of my own: It’s less about whether I happen to be right or wrong, but whether I am faithful or not to a power greater than myself—faithful to the God of truth, love and justice.

It was Rice who waxed eloquent over the polluting influence of money in sports. “Money to the left of them and money to the right/Money everywhere they turn from morning to the night/ Only two things count at all from mountain to the sea/Part of it’s percentage, and the rest is guarantee.”

I don’t know how Rice, who died in 1954, would view the increase of money and violence in football, but I know where I am with the game today. If there were a chapter of Football Fans Anonymous, I’d attend. Football is a huge accident on the road. Something tells us that we should not look at it, with its ugly violence, its waste of wealth, its brain-threatening injures, its diversionary power that claims our time and energy, and its pampered players that pump up for the games and then commit violent crimes after they leave the arena. But we do look at it, and drive on to the next game.

I’m done with football. It has served me well in times past, but I’ve no more taste for it. And that goes for war as well. Am I ready for more football? No. Likewise, am I ready for more war? No.

Thwock!—War

Now that Congress has voted to support military aid to Syrian rebels, and air strikes in Iraq number almost 200, the question that hovers like a drone overhead is simply this, are you ready for some war, some more war?

You may not like my point of view, but I’ll offer it anyway. If ISIS is such a threat, out to get your mama in places like War, West Virginia. And, if we are going to declare war on ISIS, and we’ve already done that with dollars, equipment, and “advisors.” And, perhaps even more troops will follow the dollars into combat. And, finally, if ISIS threatens our homeland security, putting all of us in danger, our life together should change radically.

The President and the Congress should call for the reinstatement of the draft. Selective service would then involve all of us, not just the boy and girl down the street, like what happened in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. With a draft in place, a national discussion would surely take place. We would discover if we are ready for more war.  

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