The Body Briefcase
Sports uniforms mask a great reality. They come in all designs and colors. The different colors and creative logos become such a rich tapestry in each professional sport that you start to really believe these teams are entities separate and distinct from each other when in fact they are part of a whole. The athletes are actually one single group of employees in the same industry with the same set of bosses.
Often, it's the athletes themselves that get most confused about this, and yet, at times, an athlete shocks you with his or her intelligence and shrewdness. In the National Football League, a standout employee named Le'Veon Bell refused his service this year to the league. It was the last year of his current employee contract, and Bell plays a position-- running back-- that puts him through a sort of meat grinder physically. All football players endure it, but at running back, the grind is particularly harsh. His team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, gave him 406 touches during the 2017 season, which was more than any team gave any other player in the league. He was naturally expecting more of the same workload this season, and with the Steelers and everybody else not necessarily planning to reward him financially, at the age of 27 this coming summer, at such a physically-brutalizing position, Bell vowed to keep his body as (relatively) healthy as it can be this year in anticipation of his next contract, presumably the last and most lucrative of his career.
Bell is betting on himself, as the rest of us working stiffs must also do at one time or another during our working careers, and many of Bell's colleagues have understood what he was doing. His sacrifice took $14.5 million in guaranteed money out of his hands this year and put it back into the hands of the Steelers and the NFL. Veteran running back Jonathan Stewart said, "At the end of the day, it's just a business and your body is your briefcase. If your body is banged up, if something happens to your body, then your briefcase isn't worth anything... He's banking on himself, which a player should always do." Bell's bosses had offered him a contract this year that put him financially with the top group of players at his position, but Bell's talent and achievements have been above that. And when a group is being exploited, it often requires that a member of that group make such a sacrifice to draw attention to the exploitation.
But for many of Bell's Steelers workmates, the grumbling, private and public, started early in the holdout this summer. They complained to the local media that Bell was being less than loyal--
to the uniform. This was the breaking of a long and sacred tradition for players on any team not to comment publicly about the contract situations of other players. His head coach and work supervisor, Mike Tomlin, a former player, was asked about the effect of the holdout on the team, and replied, "We need volunteers, not hostages." This past week, when the deadline passed for Bell to join the team and still be eligible to participate in the postseason, and Bell still refused to cede, a group of his teammates ransacked his locker and looted his possessions. His nameplate was ripped off. One, linebacker Bud Dupree, posted a viral video about the pair of Bell's Air Jordans he was taking for himself.
It's already been an NFL season during which another player, safety Vontae Davis of the Buffalo Bills, retired from the business at half-time of a game. This was also an unprecedented action. In doing so, Davis said his body no longer possessed what it needed to continue playing. He had missed much of the 2017 season due to injury, and it was clear to observers that he had been struggling during the first two weeks of 2018. One play, one sideswipe, one collision, that's all it takes, but Davis' teammate, Rafael Bush, said, "I think I did lose a little respect for him as a man"-- and then pronounced that because Davis had quit mid-game, he had been disloyal, yes,
to the uniform.
In the second half of the Bills game, Davis' defensive unit only gave up three points, and likewise, the Steelers' entire team has thrived without Bell-- a 7-2-1 record so far, and currently a six-game winning streak. Just as importantly, a new running back has stepped in and thrived. James Conner is 23 years old, three years-- and three seasons--- younger than Bell, bound to the Steelers with his individual contract for several more seasons, and ready to be put through the meat grinder Bell has already endured. He's on track for 349 touches this year.
When Bell took to Twitter this week and asked his followers what they were thankful for during this holiday, Steelers rooters en masse snidely responded to the question with the words "James Conner." It turns out that maybe Bell was disposable. According to many fans, he was. And that's his point exactly. He gets that it's a business. Fans will be fans. They're loyal to the uniforms. They root for laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld used to say in his standup act. But with the Collective Bargaining Agreement coming up in 2021, and a strike or work stoppage being a certainty, according to the executive director of the players' association, the raiding of Le'Veon Bell's locker sends the exact opposite message of player solidarity. His co-workers should be showing the utmost respect for a player that's making a sound financial decision, one that benefits all of them, but too few are. League-friendly writers of this most loyalty-inspiring sport will now take to slamming Bell in the media, downplaying his "market value," and it's a distinct possibility that he'll face the full Colin Kaepernick treatment this off-season, if the teams collude to make Bell an example case to suppress any changes in the next labor agreement that might fully guarantee contracts, offer lifetime health benefits, and/or find parity pay with other professional sports.
Le'Veon Bell understands his power though. Athletes, professional and amateur, have only barely begun to tap into it collectively. As a 20-something wielder of extraordinary cultural influence, he's another Kaepernick or Eric Reid. He's Northwestern University's former quarterback Kane Coulter, who co-founded the College Athletes Players Association, and the University of Missouri football players, who boycotted a major college game a couple years ago over systemic racial injustice on the Columbia, Missouri campus. Bell is placing himself at the very front of the major issue facing his industry, and the biggest one facing the future of any North American sport-- the players' physical protection. Upon the topic, league officials have evaded, obstructed, filibustered, and outright lied. They will continue to do those things. The players are not of 32 different teams, as the bosses would have us believe, they are of one team. Bell is refusing to volunteer up his body to simply be chewed up and spit out, and he needs to desperately care for that talented and vulnerable body because nobody else will.
Teaching the Pilgrims progress
We all get it, right? That the aboriginal people of present-day Massachusetts, the Wampanoags, bailed out the Pilgrims in those years surrounding the first Thanksgiving in 1621? It was an English tradition to have a feast to celebrate the fall harvest, but the first Europeans to arrive in this area at this time were woefully unprepared for the New World. They were religious separatists-- ministers, teachers, radicals of a sort, bounded together by a faith. What they were not necessarily was the either of hunter-gatherers or farmers.
This was the land of plenty, but they were starving. Des Moines native Bill Bryson wrote about it years ago in his book
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Without the natives, our holiday dinner fare would be something along the lines of salt pork, hard tack (a severely baked, almost impenetrable biscuit), dried peas and beans. John Winthrop, a lawyer, wrote home that all he could find to eat in the new colony was oysters, duck, salmon, and scallops when he sorely missed his mutton.
But the newcomers were not just ignorant because they were newcomers. The reality is that they found a more sophisticated agriculture here than existed anywhere in Europe. In today's America, we still all flock to restaurants that serve us the traditional foodstuffs of England, Ireland, Belgium, and the whole of Scandinavia, those great culinary outposts (sarcasm), it shouldn't surprise you to know how sophisticated the Native Americans would have seemed to them. The Indians were enjoying more than two thousand different foods, an unimaginable number to Europeans living in the 17th century. Bryson lists white and sweet potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squash, persimmon, avocados, pineapples, chocolate and vanilla, cassavas, chili peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, and (king) corn. And typically what
both continents of people enjoyed on their plate, the North American version was superior-- strawberries and green beans.
It wasn't just the advantage of climate or a rich soil. The natives knew more about nutrition. They knew that balance in diet was the key to living healthier. They effectively taught the whole of Europe about the concept of crop rotation. Planting beans among the corn, for example, replenished the nitrogen to the ground that corn would take away from it, and Iowa farmers still practice this strategy of sharing in the ground. The Europeans sometimes took the product, but not the lesson. The white potato became a staple with the Irish, but it's likely that a lack of genetic diversity surrounding the crop led to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1800s. And then onto the boat came
even more Europeans, bound for the New World.
The natives also had much to teach about food preparation. Boston baked beans? Native American. New England clam chowder? Native American. Virginia's Smithfield ham? Native American. Succotash, corn pone, cranberry sauce, johnnycakes. The Puritans preferred deep boiling, lack of seasoning, served lukewarm. Probably in line with a religious tradition of deprivation.
So great was the Wampanoegs' surplus of food in 1621 that they could share it, in Bryson's words, with "a hundred helpless, unexpected visitors for the better part of a year." Without this bounty, who knows if more Europeans would have even followed in the Pilgrims' wake? The "land of plenty" had to be demonstrated and explained.
Noises your TV didn't make on Tuesday night
The Democrats spotted the Republicans their usual electoral advantage during these midterms. In my purple-state television market, we watched ad after ad depicting Mexicans and Central Americans climbing over a desert wall, but didn't see any that I know of depicting brown children being held in cages. One side plays tackle football, the other plays touch.
While domestic squabbles keep us occupied at home, dividing us into a simplistic pair of primary colors, Washington stands unified on nearly all international issues, with virtually no media attention being paid to the U.S.'s impact on the rest of the globe, and instead substituted with a lot of cheerleading for American democracy. This is what your TV did
not sound like on Tuesday night...
Polls have closed in most states on the East Coast. And we have a few projected winners already. In Virginia, Mary Stone is victorious. She made the war and resulting famine in Yemen a central part of her campaign. She ran TV and radio ads condemning the Obama-era drone strikes and saying she would get U.S. intelligence and logistics out of the area, ending our support of the Saudi bombing campaigns. Voters polled there say they were concerned with the U.N. report during this election year that says 13 million Yemenis face starvation as a result of the violence. Those predictions would make it the most deadly famine on Earth in 100 years. Debra has some projections in the Northeast...
Yes, New Hampshire voters followed suit, Susan. The murder of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government seems to have galvanized support against our national economic partnership with the Saudi royal family. Brenda Lake, who has been the most vocal critic of the Saudis in the Senate, has been overwhelmingly elected to a third term. She led the fight against President Trump's $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis in 2017 and voters were very eager to come out and give her their support. Only Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu believes the Saudis should get a pass for murdering Khashoggi, but obviously Netanyahu is not a voter in New Hampshire, Susan.
And now, we can project this one out of New Jersey. Carl Stewart, a first-time candidate at the state level, becomes the first district's choice in the House. He centered his campaign on U.S. military operations in Africa. The U.S. has an imperial-scale presence on that continent-- the major regional base in Djibouti, and network bases of AFRICOM in Mozambique, Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, CAR, Chad, Niger, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere. The military presence exists there only to justify itself, and has become a substitute for diplomacy, academic research, trade, and investment. Stewart traveled to Africa this summer, and his opponent ceded the race during a televised debate two weeks ago, admitting on air that he was unaware of AFRICOM and not qualified for the job of congressional representative. Stacey, polls are closing now in Illinois and some Midwestern states?
That's right. And out of Illinois comes the re-election of Margaret Shipley. She's one of the lions of the Senate and she'll be headed back there for a fourth six-year term. Since her first election, in the year following 9-11, she's been the most vocal advocate for improving U.S. diplomatic relations. She was expected to face a tougher fight than the one she got today, but last month, the U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba. 189 member-nations signed on to the condemnation, with no abstaining votes. Only the U.S. and Israel voted against the motion. This U.N. vote was seen as a sort of "canary in the coal mine" for the "leadership" of a nation that Pew Research found carries a 70% unfavorable rating for itself and its president in 25 different polled countries. The U.S. continues to thumb its nose at the world, imposing targeted sanctions at countries and withdrawing from multiple international agreements. The Cuba vote was a piece of good timing for the political fortunes of Shipley, and she's headed back to Washington to continue being a thorn in the paw of the president. Jim is at the electoral map, and we've got a race too close to call in Nebraska. Jim, there's a lot of piggy-backing that's taken place on a key issue to voters in the Cornhusker State...
That's right, Stacey. Guatemala is a place that not many Americans knew much about, but Anna Greenblatt and Ameera Abdul both made it the centerpiece of their opposing campaigns, linking the violence there and across Central America to the U.S.'s failed drug policies and new attempts by the U.S. to intimidate a commission that has held up a fragile peace against an increasingly-militarized Guatemalan government. According to exit polling, older Nebraskans still clearly remember the military-committed genocide in Guatemala in the early '80s, and voters of all ages say they have found it easy to connect the problems of violence in Central America to increased human displacement into North America and then directly to the human violation of Trump's border separation policy for families. This is the passion for human rights and peace among voters that Greenblatt and Abdul were both trying to tap into, and it looks as if a record number of voters have gone to the polls in that state. Only three thousand votes separate the two women with 40% of precincts reporting, and this one is simply too close to call at this point. We're likely headed towards another of Nebraska's famous re-counts. Debra, back to you if you have the projections with polls closing on the west coast. We have a new Senator in the Golden State?
Jim, it's 29-year-old Tyresa Long. Iraq and Afghanistan are still resonant issues with California voters, a state with a lot of military installations. George W. Bush's "axis of evil" was back on people's minds just before election day with Trump advisor John Bolton ushering in the phrase "troika of tyranny" to describe Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in this hemisphere, and Trump telling reporters that he was once again considering the military option, reminiscent of his predecessors' war follies as well as his own during his first two years in office. The legacy of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan still do not sit well in this part of the country, especially as the U.S. continues to issue sanctions on the former country and virtually occupy the latter. Susan...
Jim, Stacey, Debra, it's going to be a long night here in the studio with many races still to be decided and unknown which of the SIX major American political parties will have wrestled control of Congress by the time all the votes have been tallied. We pause now for a commercial message and to turn it over to our affiliates for your local results. We will be back her at midnight eastern time.
You've been watching Election Night in America 2018.
