Category Archives: Pop Culture

Before The Fall

28 Monday May 2012

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Cylon Raiders, Battlestar Galactica miniseries (2003), May 28, 2012. (http://tombsofkobol.com). BSG Theme Music (2003) [UK Version]

It’s Memorial Day ’12. It’s been thirty years since that fateful Memorial Day ’82. A part of me, the child that I was, still remains in that day, in the weeks and months before that day.

Little in my life in the previous three years bore a real resemblance to a carefree childhood. But I somehow managed to pretend my way through the three-year-period that included the birth of my younger brothers Maurice and Yiscoc, my idiot stepfather walking out with our food in October ’80, and the first year of the Hebrew-Israelite experiment (see my “Peanuts Land” post from last month).

The speed-of-light shockwave that was my love for Crush #1, and the interrelated turnaround of my grades

Solar flare, aka Coronal Mass Ejection, c. 2010, May 28, 2012. (NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA Instrument). In public domain.

in the previous three months gave me a tenuous lifeline to what remained of my childhood self. Making it rain A’s in March, April and May that year reaffirmed the person I thought I was in sixth grade, despite the “Captain Zimbabwe” taunts that began from A and the Italian Club as we approached Memorial Day Weekend (see my post “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe’” from May ’09).

But the teetering and temporary bliss of grades and the crush on Crush #1 could only distract. They couldn’t delay, even as much as they helped me deny. They could in no way prepare me for the blinding light, the initial shockwave and heat, the full blast effect of what was coming.

It was 5 pm that Memorial Day Monday when it began.

“I’m sick and tired of you treating me this way. I’m sick of you not lovin’ me!,” my stepfather yelled.

“What do you mean ‘love you’?,” Mom said. “Most women wouldn’t even put up with your stinkin’ ass. And now you want more money for a business that I’m not even a part of? You must be kiddin’!”

Mom was on the phone in the master bedroom, while my stepfather yelled into the phone in the kitchen, back in the days when land-lines ruled the world. She picked up the bedroom phone because my stepfather had made a long-distance call to his wayward mother in California, at a time when we were seriously behind on paying the bill. I didn’t understand why he’d want to continue to talk to a woman who abandoned him as a baby to his relatives in Richmond, Virginia and Trenton, New Jersey in ’50. It seemed to me that Maurice was wasting time and money on a woman who cared for him as little as he cared for us.

I was lying down on my bed across the hall from the master bedroom, trying my hardest not to pay any attention to the unfolding drama. With both of them yelling over the phone, though, I couldn’t block their argument out any longer. So I sat up in my bed — giving me a view from our room across the hall into Mom’s bedroom — and continued to listen.

This was one of many arguments over bills and my stepfather’s wack attempts to start a telecommunications business. He had used $2,500 of Mom’s precious money to get a New York State business license for “Sun-Lion Communications” (see my post “Dumb Ass Communications, Inc.” from March ’11 for more). Somehow, Mom’s $15,000-a-year income was supposed to be enough to feed six people and get a business off the ground floor? “Their arguments are insane,” I thought.

I usually could tune them out. But not this time, and not anytime since.

“Who you talkin’ to, bitch!,” Maurice yelped as he punched Mom in the jaw. He followed up with a kick to her stomach and a forearm that knocked her into the queen-sized bed. With each hit he shouted “Are you gonna gimme some respect, bitch!” A moment later, Maurice poured an industrial-sized bucket of water on Mom to wake her up, but that didn’t completely work.

Parisians in shock, tears as German soldiers march into Paris, June 14, 1940. (National Archives). In public domain.

For a full two-minutes, I just stood there. I was in shock, scared for Mom, scared for all of us. Somewhere in that time, my stupid stepfather had escaped the apartment, not to come back for two days, while my mother lay there, nearly lifeless.

I snapped out of it, determined to wake my Mom up. She was groggy, concussed from the battering she took. I sat her up, talked to her, and eventually helped her out of her waterlogged bed down the hallway to the living room, where she lay on the couch for the next day or so.

I should’ve called the cops. As much as I’d been taught not to trust them, I just should’ve dialed 911 and done the deed. What a coward I was! I should’ve done what Jennifer Lopez’s character did in Angel Eyes (2001). It certainly would’ve been easier. In that one decision, I could’ve reported Maurice’s heinous crime, gotten him arrested and jailed, and ended this sham of a marriage and family. Assuming, of course, that my Mom would’ve pressed charges.

Instead, I settled for a psychological and literal guerilla war which left me battered myself by summer’s end and willing to commit suicide within nineteen months. Most of all, I was stuck in that moment (Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of), in the weeks and months before that moment, for nearly seven years.

Pre-Prom Paradoxes

26 Saturday May 2012

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“Stop Defacing Signs,” a stop sign ironically defaced, June 24, 2011. (Scheinwerfermann via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

This week a quarter-century ago was my Class of ’87 senior prom. Though I may tell some of the more boring and significant stories from this prom one year, this won’t be the case this year. Especially since the days before presented themselves with a theme that has remained a constant in my life for more than three decades — irony. If irony were a food, I could feed all of the Global South with it, and still have enough left to keep me in protein and P90X recovery drinks until I turn seventy.

And irony was a full-blown buffet the week before the prom. What told me that maybe my prom date “J” wanted more out of this arrangement than I did was an incident at our Humanities Program honors convocation that Tuesday evening (see my post “Prom-Ethos” from earlier this month). Mrs. Flanagan (then the Humanities Program coordinator for Mount Vernon High School) and the Mount Vernon Board of Education wanted to honor us collectively for making Humanities a grand success.

We had a keynote speaker, one who was a recent college grad and MVHS alum who had started her own business and wanted to talk to us about the value of the education we were about to pursue. It was an opportunity for our parents to share in our success.

My Mom decided to come to this event, only the second time she’d been to MVHS in four years. We got there, with Mom dressed in her best business dress, with high heels, hair done, light-brown makeup powder and black cherry-red lipstick on. I was somewhat dressed up, with a collared shirt, cheap black shoes and the polyester black pants my mother mail-ordered for me at the beginning of the year. The event was in the school cafeteria, where we were to have punch and snacks before the festivities began.

The first person I introduced my Mom to was J, whose mouth fell open like I’d slapped her in the face. She looked at Mom as if I’d been cheating on her with Lisa Lisa.  “J, this is my mother,” I said a second time. J just stood there, angry. Then she walked away in a huff.

“What’s wrong with her?,” my mother said in complete disbelief herself, with the “her” part lingering in my ear.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Clio [Muse of History] reading a scroll, (Attic red-figure lekythos, Boeotia c. 435–425 BCE), The Louvre, March 17, 2008 (Jastrow via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Crush #1 must’ve seen the whole thing unfold, because she came over right on cue, gave me a hug, and then politely introduced herself to my mother.

“Thanks,” I whispered as I walked over to talk to J while Crush #1 had a conversation with my Mom, something I’d hoped my prom date would do.

“That’s not your Mom,” J said when I reached her table. As if I would lie about something as serious as that.

“Yeah, J, she is,” I said, pissed that she’d assume that quiet me would suddenly become bold enough to bring an older women to a Humanities.

I knew Mom looked young, but she still had twenty-two years on me. Since she didn’t want to talk about it, I just walked away and joined in the conversation between my former crush and the woman who was the reason Crush #1 was my former crush.

That Crush #1 came to my rescue was ironic and poetic, given the ways in which my muse has come to my rescue over the years. That one of my nicest classmates acted a bit like an ass that evening contradicted everything I’d seen her do and say over the previous six years. That anyone would think that low-confidence me could walk into a ceremony with a thirty-nine year-old woman was both idiotic and ironic. Yeah, even in the land of friendships and emotions, irony walked with me, hand-in-hand and stride-for-stride.

Curriculum 2.0 – Been There, Done That

21 Monday May 2012

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Nekyia: Persephone supervising Sisyphus pushing his rock in the Underworld. Side A of an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 530 BCE, from Vulci, February 13, 2007. (Bibi Saint-Pol via Wikipedia). In public domain.

This school year, my son’s school district, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, began implementation of what they call Curriculum 2.0. This new curriculum, formerly known as the Elementary Integrated Curriculum, has been in the works for the better part of a decade. As MCPS explained in a flyer to parents, Curriculum 2.o will be one that will “better engage students and teachers, and dedicate more learning time to subjects such as the arts, information literacy, science, social studies and physical education. By blending these subjects with the core content areas of reading, writing, and mathematics, students will receive robust, engaging instruction across all subjects in the early grades.”

Why is better engagement of teachers and students necessary, and how will an integrated curriculum make this possible? The answer to the first part of this question is much more obvious than the answer to the second part. In light of county-level and state-level testing (in the latter case, the MSA for third, fourth and fifth grades), an engaging and integrated curriculum will enable students to be better prepared for the heavy doses of critical reasoning and reading comprehension that this testing involves, at least theoretically.

What hasn’t made much sense has been the implementation process itself, as Curriculum 2.0 became the curriculum for kindergarten and first graders in this 2011-12 school year, with the option of having it for second graders at some schools (like my son’s school in Silver Spring). Meanwhile, third and fourth graders won’t become part of Curriculum 2.0 until 2012-13, and this year’s fifth graders won’t see Curriculum 2.0 at all. It seems as if the implementation process was about as well planned as the SS Minnow’s tour of the South Pacific.

But that’s not the only story here. For someone’s who’s spent a great deal of time attempting to understand

A One Thousand and One Night manuscript written in Arabic under the second half of the Abbasid Era (750-1258 CE), February 9, 2008 (Danieliness via Wikipedia). Released into public domain via cc-by-sa-3.0 license.

the circumstances under which I grew up, including my times in Mount Vernon, New York’s public schools in the ’70s and ’80s, MCPS’s Curriculum 2.0 is sort of like deja vu all over again. Except that in the period between ’76 and ’93, the kind of curriculum MCPS is implementing now was mostly for Mount Vernon’s gifted and talented students then, students who were part of the district’s Humanities Program, particularly those in the Grimes Center for Creative Education. The motivations for developing a similar curriculum three and half decades earlier came out of the need for racial integration and preventing White Flight, and in the process, a measure of academic excellence. Different circumstances in search of the same results, I guess.

A piece of evidence I uncovered a few years ago while working on Boy @ The Window shows how much educators reinvent the wheel in terms of curriculum development, a pitfall in education on which Diane Ravitch has been proven correct for the past thirty years. Charlotte Evans wrote in her April 1981 New York Times article on the Grimes Center that there “is a flowering of creativity at Pennington-Grimes [Grimes had combined with Pennington in the 1980-81 school year] that is evident in the hallways as well as in the classrooms.” Leroy L. Ramsey, New York State Department of Education Administrator of Intercultural Affairs and Educational Integration, when asked by Evans to comment, said that “the intent” of a school like Pennington-Grimes “was to break racial isolation and to stop white flight, and we have done that in Mount Vernon.”

As detailed by Evans in her April 1981 New York Times article, with the

[c]oordinating [of] language, math and science with social studies in the same way, first graders study the family and its roots, how people live and lived in different places. Second graders focus on prehistoric times – the old and new Stone Ages; third graders on the ancient Middle East, fourth graders on Greek and Roman civilization and sixth graders on the Renaissance, Reformation and the Age of Discovery.

This interdisciplinary approach to creating a magnet-style gifted track curriculum did not stop with a focuson other histories and cultures in social studies. “Fifth-graders, for example, specialize in studying the Middle Ages in Islamic nations and in Africa and Europe,” but they also “read Arabian Nights in connection with their Islamic study and went on to African folk tales,” according to fifth-grade teacher Mattie Lucadamo. In addition, there were other “flourishes,” such as “learning the foundation of Hindu-Arabic numbers” and “study[ing] astronomy, tracing it back to the Babylonians.”

It never ceases to amaze me how we as educators, education researchers, and governments spend time, money and human resources recreating what was already in existence, in this case, when I was my son’s age. But, like with the experiment that was the Grimes Center and Humanities, parents with resources will find a way to game the system. In one case, an innovative program was moved to Mount Vernon’s predominantly White North Side in May ’80, and tended to give more preferences to White students in general.

In the case of Curriculum 2.0, the more aware parents will send their kids to Kumon or Kaplan or other testing centers to give their kids every opportunity to do well in this new curriculum, score in the top percentiles on the MSA, and garner the gifted label in time for middle school.

The Hypocrisy of Religion As A Weapon of Fear

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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My Bible (KJV) combined with a French mace (circa 16th century, on display at Morges military museum, August 20, 2010), May 12, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins; Rama via Wikipedia). In public domain.

During my three years as a Hebrew-Israelite (between April ’81 and April ’84), I found more than a few of our ideas and practices confounding. So many issues around issues of blood, kosherizing food, the dangers of using Ivory Soap or saying “Hello” to callers on a telephone. I was in a cult during the most out-of-sorts periods any of us face — middle school and puberty (see my post “Balkis Makeda’s 2nd Coming” from May ’11). Not good, as anyone who knew me during my A.B. Davis Middle School years can attest, for better and worse.

One of the most puzzling practices at 616 and even at the Hebrew-Israelite temple in Mount Vernon was in what my idiot stepfather and the rabbis would have us read. We read more than simply the Torah, the Prophets (or Nevi’im), the Writings (or Ketuvim) or the Talmud. No, on rare occasions, we cracked open the good old King James, and found ourselves in the middle of Matthew or Mark.

The passages that our fearless religious leaders assigned were very specific. They were only assigned for the purposes of showing us what ancient Israelite life had become in the centuries since the fall of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the enslavement and scattering of the ten Lost Tribes. That was it. No discussion of Jesus’ miracles, his defiant sense of social justice and protest, his life, death and resurrection. The rabbis didn’t even publicly acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, much less the son of God.

I asked, more than once over those three years, “If we are Hebrew-Israelites, then why are we reading the New Testament?” I never got a straight answer. “Oh, Jesus is among the men of Judah, like Moses or Saul or David.” Or “Jesus was like a prophet, in the tradition of Jeremiah or Daniel.” Or “Because I’m the man of this house, and you do what I tell you to do, BOY!,” as  “Judah ben Israel,” my idiot stepfather, would yell.

I knew enough back then to know that the ancient Israelites, ten of those Twelve Tribes, were enslaved and dispersed during the time of the Assyrian Empire, not to mention the Babylonians that conquered the Assyrians. And all between 722 and 586 BCE. By the time the Persians freed the remaining two tribes (Judah and Levi) in 539 BCE, the others were lost to history. So why would Jesus be relevant in a religion based on the history of a group that was scattered centuries before Jesus was born? Why focus on the New Testament in low dosages? Why care about any passages from the gospels at all?

Fast forward twenty-eight years from my Christian conversion to the age of pseudo-Christian evangelical fundamentalism as a proxy for prejudice, hatred and fear. So much of this social issues garbage comes from literal Christian interpretations of the Old Testament. Last I checked, the Old Testament in question here is the Torah, and I haven’t met a whole lot of pastors or priest who are Judaism experts.

The burning of the knight of Hohenberg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, by Diebold Schilling (1482), February 17, 2005. (Lysis via Wikipedia). In public domain.

We’ve been fighting for half a century over abortion — which is essentially addressed for pro-life advocates in Exodus and Leviticus as “Thou shalt not kill.” Lethal levels of disgust and hatred directed at gays and lesbians because of three passages in Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, and one of them over what amounts to attempted gang rape. Really? Our strength as Christians is defined by how well we understand and practice what’s in the Old Testament? Any Christian that believes that this is more important than the Gospels or Jesus’ charge to us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is a really hateful person. Period.

Though Vice President Joe Biden forced his hand through his support of gay marriage on NBC’s Meet The Press this past Sunday, President Barack Obama did the right thing on Wednesday by outing his truer pro-gay rights and marriage self. You know, the president’s evolving view that took him right back to where he was in ’96. Still, it was a historic moment to see President Obama with ABC’s Robin Roberts proclaim his personal support for gay and lesbian marriage and LGBT rights in general.

But there are questions beyond the historical significance (see John F. Kennedy’s June 11, ’63 speech in support of Black activism and civil rights — on the eve of Medgar Evers’ assassination — for more) or the politics of making this announcement six months before the ’12 election. Like, why does anyone who isn’t gay care at all? Because a pastor who spends more time dealing in fear and misinterpreting the Old Testament says to care? Because you don’t want your hyper-heterosexual sense of masculinity (Black or otherwise) or femininity questioned? Or because you and other people in your life love using your Neanderthal sense of Christianity and spirituality as a club to bludgeon others, to blame others for your lot in life?

“Enthusiasms” scene screen shot from The Untouchables (1987), March 30, 2012. (http://loonpond.blogspot.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws due to picture’s low resolution and cropped nature.

I don’t expect anyone vehemently on the other side of this issue to answer these questions, any more than I ever expected my idiot stepfather to explain why we studied the New Testament as practicing Hebrew-Israelites. I love Jesus and what and who he stood for and I believe would stand for today. But these so-called Torah-practicing Christians are very difficult to love.

Meeting Joe Trotter

10 Thursday May 2012

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Conference agenda, 15th Annual Conference on Black History in Pennsylvania, Lincoln University (May 8/9 1992), May 10, 2012. (Donald Earl Collins).

This time two decades ago, I was driving my way home from a conference at Lincoln University in southeastern Pennsylvania. It was a week of more firsts that had become a small sample of a year of many firsts for me since getting into graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh in April ’91. It was my first road trip anywhere, and the first time I’d been in a car since earning my driver’s license in January ’92 (see my post “Taking the Long Road: Driver’s Delight” from January ’12). It was part of my first visit to NYC, Mount Vernon, and 616 since finishing my master’s degree.

That’s where my road trip began, Mount Vernon, as I’d wind my way to Yonkers, the Bronx, the GW Bridge, New Jersey and Philly (where I got lost twice) before ending up on the bucolic HBCU campus. I was at Lincoln University to present at my first academic conference, the 15th Annual Conference on Black History in Pennsylvania. The theme for that year’s conference was “Empowerment: Perspectives on African-American History in Pennsylvania. Somehow, the conference organizers approved me to present my paper comparing elements of intercultural education, multicultural education and Afrocentric education in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia during the 1930s and early 1990s.

Lincoln University entrance and alumni arch, dedicated in 1921, May 10, 2012. (http://lincoln.edu).

If the road trip and the presentation were the only things important about this conference, that would’ve been plenty for me in May ’92. But there was so much more to this first conference for me than driving a Ford Escort in North Philly or getting on stage for the first time since sixth grade (see my post “Peaking As A Sixth Grader” from June ’11). It was my first time around a large number of Black academicians and activists. I met Julian Bond for the first time (his father, Horace Mann Bond, by the way, had served as president of Lincoln University from 1945 to 1957). Folks from the African American studies department at Temple University attempted to recruit me for their doctoral program. Knowing that Molefi Asante was there, I respectfully declined.

Above all else, I came away with two valuable experiences that would have an effect on me for years to come. One was being in the audience for a presentation from V.P. (or Vincent P.) Franklin, whose work on Black education in Philadelphia in the 1920s and 1930s I already knew. His was an extemporaneous presentation that lasted for well over twenty minutes. It was full of quotes, links between different historians’ research, and stories. It was extremely entertaining, delivered in an engrossing public speaking style, though not like some Southern Baptist preacher, either.

I was blown away by Franklin’s presentation. Especially in comparison to the one that I’d deliver some

Conference agenda (inside pages), 15th Annual Conference on Black History in Pennsylvania, Lincoln University (1992), May 10, 2012 (Donald Earl Collins).

twenty hours later. Mine was a well-studied delivery of ten pages of excerpts from my original paper. It was okay, not exactly a winner compared to anything that I’ve done in the two decades since. For it was with Franklin’s presentation and style from the day before that stuck with me. I decided immediately after my lackluster performance to always present my work extemporaneously, to work on my public speaking skills, to understand that presenting one’s work was a very different task than simply reading from it.

The second takeaway was in meeting my eventual dissertation advisor, Joe William Trotter, Jr. I met him after the first set of presentations on Friday morning, and ended up sitting with him for part of the Friday luncheon. I learned a few things in that first meeting. Up until that day, the only Black historians I knew in the Pittsburgh area were at Pitt or somehow affiliated with Pitt, including my then advisor Larry Glasco. The fact that Joe was across the way at Carnegie Mellon meant that there was at least the hope of gaining a different perspective on African American history than the stiff responses to Whites misconstruing the Black experience.

What made this first meeting even more intriguing was that Joe was in the process of putting together a graduate seminar for the Fall ’92 semester in African American history. It would be the first time that one had been taught at Carnegie Mellon. No such course existed at Pitt, either, at least as a graduate seminar. It meant that I could expect to get something out of my second year of graduate school (and first year as a PhD student) after all. “Where do I sign up?,” I asked after hearing what seemed like wonderful news at the time.

I returned to 616 twenty years ago on this date recharged and ready for another year of intellectual growth. But I should’ve also returned with far more insight into the politics of race, academia, trust, and academic competition than I actually had. The dynamics within the conference were extremely subtle, like an ultrasonic pulse undetected by most human hearing, but there driving the subconscious crazy anyway.

I didn’t see Joe’s invite to his classroom as a competition for me initially because I was obviously all-too-desperate to move on from Pitt, but not desperate enough to join Asante’s Temple of Afrocentricity (see my post “Writer’s Start” from August ’10 for more). Joe got me, all right. I just didn’t know it yet.

An Open Letter to Paul Ryan (from “Uncle” Jack Ryan)

05 Saturday May 2012

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Dear Nephew:

It is with great respect in which I write you this letter. I know that it will be viewed on a national stage. All with the hope of embarrassing you to no end.

You were once my favorite nephew, Paul. I had so much hope for your future. That you’d establish yourself as a man representing the people. All of the people. Not just someone’s bullshit political agenda. I didn’t help you get into politics so that you could sign up for this. Your budget proposals are a travesty. Your comments about the president and your colleagues are repulsive. You, Paul, are a disgrace to everything I’ve stood for for the past 40 years!

What are your excuses for taking from the poor and giving to the rich? Deficits, debt, big government? No. These are problems created by you and your cronies, by men who dishonored the highest of offices to take food off of ordinary people’s tables. I worked for some of those men. I’m ashamed to see that you’ve become one of them, you sick son of a bitch!

I know that you have your mother and that brother of mine fooled with your claptrap right-wing ideas about government entitlements, trickle-down economics and sacrosanct military spending. Don’t even think about playing that game with me. I will not let you dishonor this country by pretending you have an ideology that cares about ordinary people.

You know, it’s been my experience that sometimes things happen in the heat of the moments. You do or say things that you haven’t had time to process. Like with me and those IRA terrorists all those years ago. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking” was my excuse. It might’ve been just that simple, yes. At least for me. But not for you. You’ve turned my favorite saying “it is wise to study the ways of ones adversary” into an abomination. You’re ideas will bankrupt the country, just as you have bankrupted yourself.

Of course, Paul, you say, “No, no, no!” You say, “Uncle Jack, it’s not about hurting people. It’s about preserving America’s future, making America great again.” That’s bullshit! All of your ideas are about discarding ordinary people, because somehow, a government that helps ordinary people is evil. This time, I say no, no no! Paul, you try to make every issue black and white, including the budget. Well, it’s not black and white Paul. There’s right and wrong! Nephew, you are clearly wrong.

I once worked for a president who tried to throw me and every person who worked for him under a bus. Just like you’re trying to do with 300 million Americans. He tried to convince me to do “the ol’ Potomac two-step.” I said to him, “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I don’t dance.” You Paul, are an expert dancer, but I’m not dancing with you, either.

With Tough Love,
Uncle Jack

Hatin’ the Player Over the Game – Repost (w/ On Ex-Gladiators)

04 Friday May 2012

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Junior Seau (New England Patriots linebacker at the time) during a game against the Oakland Raiders, December 14, 2008. (JJ Hall via Wikipedia/Flickr.com). In public domain via cc.-Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

I originally wrote the post below in May ’10, with off-the-field incidents involving Ben Roethlisberger, my man Lawrence Taylor, and Brian Cushing in mind. Not to mention our secret (or not-so-secret) lust for violence in professional football in mind. I post it again, now shocked, saddened and even mortified over Junior Seau’s suicide on Wednesday. As Paul Daugherty wrote in his SI.com column yesterday, most of us “don’t know athletes. We like to think we do,” but “we just don’t know.”

The fact is, given all we can and should know about neuroscience and brain chemistry by now, it’s clear that not only is professional football right on par with hockey as the most brutal and violent sports on the planet. It’s that the sport itself can and does alter an individual’s brain chemistry, their long-term neurology, especially if played for a serious period of time. It’s the American empire’s equivalent of a gladiatorial sport, where the stars play for keeps, live hard (albeit in the most dark and secret of ways sometimes) off the field, and obviously die even harder as well. And like the gladiators of ancient Rome, there are substantial rewards that come with the life of the NFL, including the ability to craft an image that’s larger than oneself.
The problem for NFL stars is that the career does end, begrudgingly and relentlessly so. But the violence that the mind becomes accustomed to — along with the accolades — does not and cannot, at least, not without help. For whatever reason, Junior Seau didn’t have that kind of help in his life. Seau, like so many of us, couldn’t reconcile his image with his reality, and obviously took his life in no small part because of it. As a fan, I can’t allow this to continue without saying or doing something, hence this repost.
———————-

Lawrence Taylor

Let’s see now. Big Ben Roethlisberger, the great LT and Brian Cushing have all found themselves in trouble in recent weeks. With the law, with the NFL and with fans from all over Football Land. The Fourth Estate and the 4.5 Estate (bloggers) have gone on, and on, and on about how these guys lack discipline, are entitled whiners and complainers, and believe that they can get away with anything. These pop-psychology ruminations are much more pop than social psychology, with some being down-right idiotic. The bottom line is, at the bottom of their tax returns, where the IRS asks for your profession, these players (or their tax preparers) write or type “Football Player” in that spot. And that’s all the explanation you need when it comes to criminal behavior, criminal-esque behavior, and just plain bad behavior.

To be sure, many of these players — and not just in the NFL — are spoiled, entitled, whiny, and do think that they can get away with more than an ordinary American. Sure, some of our reaction to think is colored by race, as the majority of players of two of the three major team sports in this country are Black. But while race is a factor in perception and entitlement a factor in general, the real problem with professional football players is the nature of the game itself, especially in terms of violent crimes.

We somehow expect people who’ve spent a significant amount of their time playing a sport like football to somehow turn off all of the intensity, adrenaline and violence that comes with playing the game and then act like normal everyday people. Most players in the NFL have been playing the sport at least since the age of thirteen or fourteen, with many starting as early as six or eight. Then, with college and the pros, tack on at least eight years of play with hits that would put the average person in the ICU. Yet, once their career is over, or at least, during the off-season, these same players must then become model citizens. Are you kidding me?

For most Americans, few things in our lives are more violent than watching a football game. Police officers, soldiers in combat, and boxers are the only ones who may well experience more violence. And all available research shows how difficult it is for a human being to constantly engage in violent acts and then adjust to a normal life setting (whatever that means). So it should be obvious that a professional football player would have the same kind of troubles, as say, a retired boxer or an undercover detective in

Donte’ Stallworth Hit

transitioning between his world and ours.

In many ways, the most popular sport in our country gives us as much of a fix as it does for the players engaged in the sport. In this sense, there isn’t much of a difference between being an NFL player or being a gladiator during the times of the Roman Empire. Both celebrated, both reviled, both part of our societal hypocrisy over their criminal acts (alleged and actual). Ben will be forgiven once the Steelers start living again, while Cushing’s use of HCG will be forgotten by training camp. LT will at least be defended by many until actual proof is provided of guilt or innocent.

Brian Cushing (Houston Texans)

I’m hardly condoning anyone’s actions, on or off the field of play. But, as long as we keep buying the tickets, jerseys, cable packages, and the beer, all we’ll be doing is supporting the violent and sometimes bloody business of professional football. We can’t have our cake and then eat it too, especially in these cases, even though we’re trying to.