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Tag Archives: Miami Dolphins

The ’72 Dolphins and Baby-Boomer Narcissism

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

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Tags

17-0, 1972 Dolphins, American Narcissism, Baby Boom Generation, Baby Boomers, Civil Rights Generation, Elitism, Gen Xers, Generation X, Generation Y, Hypocrisy, Miami Dolphins, Millennials, Narcissism, NFL, Perfect Season, Self-Aggrandizement


For as long as I’ve been alive, America has confronted me with its Baby-Boomer narcissism. This idea that the Boomers were the generation that forever changed the country and the world, the folks who’ve shaped our popular culture — and the response of younger generations to it — has been around for more than sixty years. The Beatles, Watergate, Vietnam, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stone, Roe v. Wade, “I Have A Dream” — Boomers have taken credit for it all. It sometimes makes me wanna puke.

Bill and Hillary Clinton (nee Rodham), circa 1971, Yale University, New Haven, CT. (Charles F. Palmer/HuffPost via http://clintonlibrary.gov/photogallery.html?galAlbum=28).

Bill and Hillary Clinton (nee Rodham), circa 1971, Yale University, New Haven, CT. (Charles F. Palmer/HuffPost via http://clintonlibrary.gov/photogallery.html?galAlbum=28).

Along with the arrogance of this constant supposition of their centrality to the sort-of-historical is the obvious factual ignorance that comes with it. It’s as if the ’80s didn’t happen and Generation X wasn’t born and didn’t grow up. Or the ’90s were only about Baby Boomers having kids of their own. Or that Boomers somehow didn’t vote for the likes of Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 — seven times in all!

But nothing, absolutely nothing, has demonstrated Baby-Boomer narcissism more than that annual rite of fall that has been the ’72 Miami Dolphins celebrating when every NFL team has lost their first game of a given season. The remaining members of that team get together with the hopes that no other NFL team finishes the season with a perfect record. It’s a sad sight watching elderly men long out of professional football show their glee on TV and in pictures when every team has at least one loss on the season. Every. Single. Year.

Yet it so represents this nation of Baby Boomers that have ruled this roost for so many years. Before most Gen Xers were old enough to vote, much less protest, Baby Boomers had coined us “slackers” and “apathetic” about life and politics. Heck, Baby Boomers took away Gen Xers’ right to drink — but not to die in war — just as the first Gen Xers turned eighteen! And for the past ten years, Boomers have turned their critical eye to Millennials, looking for flaws in their politics, voting patterns and vapid obsession with pop culture. As if Millennials didn’t cut their self-absorbed eyeteeth on a steady diet of Baby-Boomer megalomania.

President Barack Obama honors the Super Bowl VII Champions and their 1972 perfect season, East Room, White House, August 20, 2013. (UPI/Kevin Dietsch). Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/08/20/Obama-welcomes-72-Dolphins-to-the-White-House/UPI-27321377029133/#ixzz3HopWhqwX

President Barack Obama honors the Super Bowl VII Champions and their 1972 perfect season, East Room, White House, August 20, 2013. (UPI/Kevin Dietsch).
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/08/20/Obama-welcomes-72-Dolphins-to-the-White-House/UPI-27321377029133/#ixzz3HopWhqwX

So when Mercury Morris or Bob Griese or elder statesman Don Shula have gone on TV year after year after year to gloat about their perfect season, it doesn’t reflect pride in their 17-0 record. It’s a reflection of their desperation, a selfish attempt to hang on to a past that is irrelevant in today’s NFL. And yes, it’s their fault. Kind of like when civil rights Boomers who claim the blood and name of the movement, yet root for younger generations of social justice activists to not do so well as them. All while taking ginormous amounts of credit for every good thing that happened during their watch years and years ago.

Is there something to be done about this? Maybe. We could try to ignore these winners of yesteryear and the annual ESPN champagne cork-popping graphic in honor of the ’72 Dolphins team. Or, better still, we can say, “Enough!” Forty-two years is long enough to celebrate the so-called perfect season. Especially when it was on a fourteen-game schedule.

As for the rest of the elite Baby Boomers, you can continue to self-aggrandize, as if three million protesters and stoners could fully represent the other 76 million Americans born between 1945 and 1961. Just remember. Gen Xers and Millennials will be the near-final arbiters of your history. It will be one in which you were as responsible preemptive war as LBJ and Robert McNamara, as accountable for NSA and a virtual police state as Nixon was for Watergate, as culpable for climate change as Ford and GM. That’s as much your narcissistic legacy as the anti-war movement and free-love.

Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start The Fire" (video screen shot), 1989. (http://denverlibrary.org/).

Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start The Fire” (video screen shot), 1989. (http://denverlibrary.org/).

Honorary Stupidity

09 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Sports

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Brandon Marshall, Bullying, Commodities, Cris Carter, ESPN, Fandom, Harassment, Hazing, Hostile Work Environment, Inhumanity, Jonathan Martin, Mark Schlereth, Miami Dolphins, N-Word, NFL, NFL Network, Ostracism, Racism, Richie Incognito, Ricky Williams, Warren Sapp


MLK's "Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity saying, November 8, 2013. (http://bitterrealities.wordpress.com )

MLK’s “Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity” saying, November 8, 2013. (http://bitterrealities.wordpress.com ).

There are so many things I could say about Richie Incognito and the vocal group of Miami Dolphins and ex-NFL players who’ve been supporting him versus Jonathan Martin over the past six days. That NFL players are Neanderthals. Or that Black players and ex-players like Cris Carter, Warren Sapp and Ricky Williams need their own education on what is and isn’t racism or harassment. Or that ESPN and the NFL Network have pushed this story without bringing a more critical lens to it.

There are two points that emerged this week, though, that bother me more than anything else. The idea that Incognito is more “Black” than Martin. Because Martin doesn’t sound “Black,” doesn’t act out of willful stupidity like “Black” NFL players, because he’s biracial, because he attended Stanford University, because his parents are Ivy League-educated. Last I checked, on and off the field, Martin’s treated as Black, regardless of his “unique” background. And Incognito’s still a White guy, one that threatened his teammate and his family, calling him the N-word on and off the field. Aside from the fact that the idea of a White guy being an “honorary Black” guy is offensive in general (see Maya Angelou’s idiotic praise of neo-conservative President Bill Clinton as “our first Black President” for Exhibit A) there’s this reality. No matter how “Black” Incognito can allegedly act, it’s an act, one which comes out of his Whiteness, and with it, an ultimate sense of cultural superiority.

Richie Incognito, Miami vs Oakland, Oakland, CA, September 16, 2012. (June Rivera via Flickr.com/Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

Richie Incognito, Miami vs Oakland, Oakland, CA, September 16, 2012. (June Rivera via Flickr.com/Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

The other equally disturbing point is that because the NFL locker room is a unique place of hyper-masculinity, that what goes on there isn’t subject to public scrutiny. If that’s the case, why not go back to the days of alcohol in the locker room, where players could shoot up steroids and amphetamines? Or have strippers and groupies in the locker room as well? The NFL locker room, like other work sites, is not a static place, but an evolving one. If it wasn’t, then seventy to eighty percent of the players in it these days wouldn’t be Black, Latino or Samoan. It’s a stupid argument, one exactly like those made by NYPD and LAPD officers, construction workers and White supremacists.

Luckily, there are players and ex-players like Brandon Marshall and Mark Schlereth whose understanding of and sensitivity toward this issue has been exemplary. They are in the minority among the professional athlete and sports world set so far, unfortunately. Martin’s former teammates have unified in their portrayal of him as a villain and traitor and Incognito as the “real nigga” on the football field and in the locker room.

The reason for this should be obvious, at least for those of us with either uncommon sense or with a social justice core. Humanity apparently has no place in the world of sports, especially in football and even more specifically where Black football players are concerned. For owners, front office managers and fans alike, they are merely commodities. Ones that all often criticized for or envied over their salaries and torn down publicly for their sins and crimes. The players and ex-players see themselves as warriors and gladiators, or, in the case of the media savvy, as cut-throat businessmen. None of this allows for any sympathy or empathy for football players who have been genuinely harassed or abused.

Beef cattle on Eefie Hill. North Atlantic in the background, United Kingdom, August 18, 2005. (John Comloquoy via http://geograph.org.uk). Released to public domain via Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

Beef cattle on Eefie Hill. North Atlantic in the background, United Kingdom, August 18, 2005. (John Comloquoy via http://geograph.org.uk). Released to public domain via Creative Commons Share-Alike 2.0.

It has meant that players like Incognito — or in previous generations, Michael Westbrook and Bill Romanowski — have fellow players willing to stand up for their criminal behavior, for in fact creating a hostile work environment. Players who suddenly respond like human beings to a dehumanizing workplace have found and do find themselves shunned by the fraternity. And to quit and air out the dirty laundry? It may well be easier to quit La Cosa Nostra and continue to live than it has been for Martin to quit the Miami Dolphins.

I, for one, don’t expect NFL locker rooms to change as a result of the ongoing investigation of Martin’s harassment allegations, no matter how true they may actually be. But I do suspect that even in the Dolphins’ locker room, there are players who haven’t forgotten their humanity, whose understanding of race and masculinity goes beyond a rap video or the N-word. At the very least, there will be much more to come in the form of dirty laundry, and not just from the Dolphins, either.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

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Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

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