five thirty pm in moscow these iraqi headlines strikes from above in libya as a multinational force launches an aerial offensive against gadhafi forces with dozens reported killed libyan leader is promising a long war and says he's opening up weapons depots for civilians. iraq obama says america's role in the military intervention in libya will be a limited one but as u.s. cruise missiles take a leading role in coalition operations many draw comparisons to the lead up to the iraq war in two thousand and three. and russia's call on allied forces to refrain

from using indiscriminate force in libya it stressed it's unacceptable to use the u.n. security council mandate for purposes other than protecting civilians. out next hour he takes a look at the game plan between the worlds of sport and politics when it comes to securing u.s. society to me. politics says no proud to play the field a stright truck. throughout history we've been told that sports and politics don't mix and this is. a bit like why lose you think that sports people should take american political view you know . we've been told that in the arena of sport it's all about things like achievements athletic performance competition individual is seymour playing the game and playing it well that's all that matters. to a shilling and yet everywhere we look there seems to be

a strange contradiction of this no politics rule prominence and powerful displays of nationalism and patriotism and military might that seemed nothing if not political all of it set against politics of an entirely different kind throughout the history of sports. performances and actions patriotic in their own right and seemingly in keeping with one of the oldest credos of athletics to do one's best with respect for others and the rules of the game without feeling. this is a film that takes forced seriously as a cultural force a shared social space and a political force that reflects an intern shapes are often conflicting ideas and beliefs about who we are how we view others now we see ourselves as a country. i'm

dave zirin and i love sports i grew up idolizing guys like lawrence taylor gary carter and magic johnson. i played baseball in high school i was the starting center. my basketball team the fighting quakers at new york friends my god we were terrible at sports for my life and like most young boys in this country one message was fed to me every time i took the field or watched a game the idea that sports and politics just don't mix we're all supposed to just kick back relax and enjoy the show everyone out of welcome to the district where carney was able to read but for me all of that changed back one day in the early one nine hundred ninety s. i'll never forget it i went to madison square garden the world's most famous arena to watch a basketball game it was during the lead up to the first gulf war in one thousand

nine hundred one and that half time i kid you not one of the mascots started to beat up this guy who was wearing this arab costume and the jumbotron was whipping the crowd up into a frenzy getting everybody to chant usa usa usa i mean it was sick i came to watch a game and i got served something else entirely. this was about as explicit a political spectacle as you could imagine to discuss athletes and activism we now welcome gave xyron and i've basically made a career out of trying to understand that murky place where sports and politics collide as a writer as a commentator on e.s.p.n. and other major networks and in my sports radio show you know we got a hell of a show this week you know what's up with this is where sports and politics collide and one of the first things i discovered was that sports is political in ways we don't often even notice especially on the level of culture where our ideas and attitudes as

a society are shaped. historians have long known that you can find out a lot about the wider culture by looking at its sports culture. and history has taught us that sports is never just something that we just sit back and watch sports always. it had an important social function and the history of american sports is no different it's here where societal and cultural meanings play out our very notions of who we are and how we see each other not only as americans but as individuals as boys and girls and men and women ideas about gender and race and class. and as will see sports culture produces stories that become the dominant narratives that make certain ways of seeing the world normal conventional just the way it is at the same time actively trying to silence anything or anybody who doesn't fit in this accepted frame this is what our football crowd credit.

let's. listen to what the world of sports has traditionally been thought of as a male i. masculine pumped up comfortable violence immunes again and again showing vulnerability of any kind of. sports culture for some role models for what it means to be a man and real men will do whatever it takes to win. winning. these are whether that means taking steroids to hit more home runs or pitching on a bloody ankle sports culture tells us that real men are willing to sacrifice their bodies for the team they play with pain they man up they shake it off they get back in the game take physical investment it's your burden your soul your tired just

what will be. and nothing in bodies and reproduces this masculine ideal better or more effectively than n.f.l. football they were shown weakness never shown weakness only friend of measure pain you improve being masculine means being able to inflict pain and to endure it no matter. violence and without regard for the consequences. least. for. hurting. him her soon could be. this where image moves beyond personal identity to link up with and reinforce larger forces and values in the culture most notably militarism in football the object is for the quarterback otherwise known as the field general to be on target with his aerial assault riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with

deadly accuracy in spite of the bullets even if he has to use the shotgun. with short bullet passes and long bombs emergencies troops into enemy territory balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemies the fence of life. and the militarization of sports culture might be even funnier if so many guys didn't take it so literally it's war. britain you know what about you they will kill you they're out there to kill you if i don't hurt him you hurt me you're going to feel my legs i'm a come right back out. soldier professional sports leagues actively promote this idea making it so commonplace in our culture that we don't even notice it we don't even question it regulations in woking the super bowl forty three general david petraeus will toss the coin. and it's not just the national football league i went to a baseball game a few years back and it turned out i was also attending something called military

appreciation night before the opening pitch with george w. bush in attendance a whole group of marines were sworn in at home plate then the p.a. announcer came in and said for those of you in the audience who also want a career in the military please. the appropriate. is going to war isn't political then nothing if. this is the hour. it naturalizes ideas and images that the flecked attention away from other realities and this is where it really starts to. many people who follow professional football were saddened to learn last week that the hall of fame shattered by webster died at the age of fifty after years of combat on the field he had heart disease and brain damage however it is hard to find a former pro football player whose body hasn't paid a very high price a dominant narrative in sports culture presents

a narrow glamorized view of militarism and violence that conceals many of the costs and consequences of this fictionalized ideal of male invulnerability you do feel like you are. like so you can do anything you. want to where you want to go in the militarized spectacle of football especially there seems to be no room for the statistical fact that this sport takes a terrible toll on the human body. one two three. three. six. hernia surgery six out of ten former players say they have suffered at least one concussion roleplaying the average n.f.l. career is three and a half years the average player will die twenty years sooner than the rest of the population twenty years it probably wasn't worth the kind of pain i'm in

now but when i do it again absolutely all of which raises the question. does the cartoon version of violence we see in american sports culture sanitized. about the real life consequences of violence. and most importantly if sports glamorize war if they in effect deceive us about the reality and tragedy of war are we looking at a form of propaganda here. i say back in two thousand and one tillman was coming off the best year of his career he was picked for sports illustrated's all protein and he just turned down a nine million dollars contract to stay with his team the arizona cardinals pat tillman was tough and he was loyal then came nine eleven. had respect for the unfolding tragedy the n.f.l.

postponed a week of games but tillman went further than that he joined the army rangers my great grandfather was a pro harbor and a lot of my family has given up and i have been a strong foreign wars and i really haven't done a damn thing this was the real deal a pro football player giving up a lucrative career to serve his country in the field of battle a true patriot and a true american hero news of another american as republicans to attention to me obstruct replies and service. will be able to a multimillion dollar contract in professional football has been killed pat tillman was dead his memorial service was aired on national television the army awarded him a silver star for his gallantry in action against an armed enemy they said tillman's convoy had been ambushed in afghanistan they said tillman charged up the hill to protect his men but was shot down by the taliban but there was only one problem it was a lie when he died in afghanistan on april twenty second two thousand and four the

army told his family he'd been killed by enemy fire. after courageously charging up a hill to protect his fellow army rangers but that story didn't hold up he was really killed by friendly fire shot accidentally by his fellow soldiers and maybe the worst part about all of this was that this white washing of tillman story also hid what might be the most important part of his story he thought the war was you know we really thought it was and he thought it was going to be a disaster and you know you don't in the army you're not supposed to talk about you could you not he posed to talk politics and pat didn't shut up you know he told everyone you encounter this war as he was in fact when tillman was redeployed to afghanistan in two thousand and four he began reading the anti-war activists noam chomsky in the last ten years the united states has devastated civilians and. tillman told his mother he wanted to meet chomsky in person after he returned to

the united states was there any solace in the story the military told you about how courageous had been oh of course but what's interesting is the story itself seems so contrived this soldier you know running up the ridge line firing at the enemy you know saving his and. it did sound kind of like a john wayne movie the reason this misrepresentation of pat tillman matter so much is because it's so vividly exposed as a fault line in the political mythology of sport it shows how the real man myth that gets reinforced in sports culture often works to marginalize actual men whose true acts of courage even if these take the form of standing up to the governments may be more admirable than the fictional half truths the science of them by the media sports complex good morning america gave them to us with this. book

which is exactly what happened recently when fox n.f.l. sunday commemorated veterans day. i broadcasting from bob graham airfield in afghanistan and proceeded to pay tribute to pat tillman without even hinting at the more complicated facts of his story the memory of pat tillman lives on at the u.s.o. center on this very airfield here rather than bothering to mention that tillman had turned against the war the fox commentators dressed in full camouflage used his life and death to promote war so it's not just military and the n.f.l. has always been a strong. ties between professional football in the us military have existed since the start of the n.f.l. back in nineteen twenty eight that relationship grew immensely during world war two and today that bonds is stronger than ever they allowed pat tillman's personal story to circulate within a larger political mythology in sports culture that seems more comfortable with men

who fight wars than with men who fight against them when they believe them to be unjust. when you think think about this. really. you know just insanely upset and i think you know when you kind of look back on it he just he just laughing it like i can't you know this is just criminal you know those are those are probably as exact words this is chris. this is the questioning and wondering and thinking critically about the role sports plays in the wider culture is somehow abnormal uncool an unmanly and it's just this added tude that throughout the history of american sports has marginalized entire groups of people . seemingly exhausted. when schools began offering physical education in the late eighteen hundreds the prevailing belief was that women were too fragile for such physical exertion. and

you think they respected scientists even argue that sports would make women infertile. sex crazed or just plain insane then along came the bicycle bicycling with a lot of good exercise in the fine print or as absurd as it seems now the idea of women riding bicycles was a profound threat to the male social order the so-called experts scientists how old that riding a bike would implode a woman's uterus or give her what they called quote the bicycle face which was marked by peculiarities including pale complection and an anxious expression this was all part of a larger attitude toward women and physical activity take basketball the sport was invented in one thousand nine hundred one and women started playing it right away they were rough and aggressive despite having to wear dresses on the court alarmed these players were becoming too manly organizers instituted new rules that actually

prohibited physical contact and any effort to hinder the shooter and just like that what started as scrappy and fun was made dainty and dull all in the name of keeping men manly and women womanly. surely women would be allowed to run right i mean it's a no bicycle face no context for it so what could be the problem the women's eight hundred meters debuted at the nineteen twenty eight olympics but at the finish of the runners fell to the ground to catch their breath perfectly reasonable right they were when did you see this with men all the time too but for some reason this was considered so one lady like it caused an international scandal. deeming the sport too strenuous for the frail female form a limp dick officials promptly banned the women's eight hundred meters for thirty years. the idea stuck so much so that one member of the international olympic

committee would actually say in one thousand nine hundred fifty two that he hoped to eliminate women's track and field competition altogether from the olympics so that we all might be as he put it spare the unaesthetic spectacle of women trying to look an act like men. this all changed in the one thousand sixty's and seventy's when women began toward it they broke out of traditional gender roles and took on responsibilities outside of the home was called the women's movement the world has never been the same since. i'm a guy. and this struggle reflected itself on battlefields as unlikely as the boston marathon the race the twenty six miles three hundred eighty five yards from up in front of washington this is normally all male going to most believe that women just couldn't handle the distance but nineteen sixty seven a woman by the name of kathy switzer registered as k v switzer and got into the

race each of those bills are somewhat gilded when a girl appeared wearing number two sixty one listed in the program with leather gave her first name. which are five miles into the race one of the marathon directors actually jumps off a truck to forcibly remove switzer from the course yelling get the hell out of my race but the men running with her fought him off for them kathy switzer had every right to be there and for them the boston marathon wasn't about proving male supremacy hitting boys against girls it was about people running a race when the pictures from the marathon were transmitted across the globe the world saw two opposing mine. masculinity the violence and paranoia of the marathon director vs the strength and solidarity of the other male runners and at the center of it all the resolute focus of kathy switzer in that moment sports bridge the

gender divide and gave the world a glimpse into what was possible. but maybe the most influential example of the fight for women's equality in american sports was embodied in the great billie jean king. has such a big ego trip that it's now worth it i don't you know not to. do when we think of politics and billie jean king today but a lot of us remember her famous battle of the sexes match against bobby riggs in the early one nine hundred seventy s. so very much pairing the male is supreme i've said it over and over again i still feel that way. bobby riggs plays mrs billie jean king on a tennis court and who spends a night it's a match that's being billed as a battle of the sexes in front of a sold out crowd at the houston astrodome she beat the retired tennis star body in straight sets and what remains one of the most watched television programs in the

history of sports to change the world you had to win i had to win you're absolutely correct and even though there's no doubting the importance of this event and the fact that it was a moment of tremendous symbolism billie jean king his contributions to women's equality far transcend that one match. tennis has always been a country club sport but billie jean king came from a working class background and grew up playing on public courts and when she finally got into the game she fought for pay equity every step of the way she was the first ever president of the first ever women's sports union that organized women's tennis and she was also the first prominent woman to ever be out of the closet. prime a thing with the most serious. thirty seven year old billy admitted she had had a home in. maryland the revelation had an immediate blow back costing her a ton of prestigious money billie jean king was contract to make television. is not

. the new york daily news quotes a company of first. saying she was too strong a personality achieved was overpowering the product he denied that the company's decision had anything to do with mrs king's disclosure of a real relationship to take her years to win back her credibility but she was somebody who never shied away from who she was and what she believed. the fact that these women refused to accept the restrictive gender roles assigned to them and the fact that their refusal sparked such widespread resentments and backlash from panicked men is a crucial part of the history of sports and of this country it all goes back to title nine one thousand nine hundred seventy two law gave young women equal opportunity in education in sports before title nine roughly one out of thirty five girls played some form of sports today that number is one it out of three this is amazing.

it's a reform that has literally changed the lives of tens of millions of women but you wouldn't know that by looking at our sports media according to a series of studies done by sociologists michel messner and sheryl cookie the major networks have pretty much stopped covering women's sports altogether coverage of women sports on t.v. news and highlight shows as nearly evaporated since one thousand nine hundred nine from a high of nine percent of air time devoted to women athletes in one nine hundred ninety nine to an unbelievable one point six percent in two thousand and nine the best. place to buy. the major networks are more likely to promote women as swimsuit models cheerleaders were props for a beer commercial then serious athletes a bikini fashion show the ladies how was that. yeah so

really this fixation on women's bodies is no different from playboys women. the olympics issue or n.b.c.'s prime time coverage of women's beach volleyball a sport that just so happens to be played in tiny bikini's on synthetic reed chelsea want to go down as one of the things that no one ever forget athletes are no longer the focus they're just another excuse to sell women's bodies to male viewers. yes yes. yes my name is daniel schmidt this is julian assange we're here to make a short presentation about that we can fix project. the first step in the fourth day is through to get information out about the real world. to have more. on the matter under. the secrecy is the biggest. going to be

a democracy. but difficult and sauces and dangerous he would hunt me down and kill. this is exactly one of the reasons why we left the pressure because it has become a war of all those all james bond but then all the actual information. thank you. sol the big bill around the won't. we.

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