he. says. hello there thanks for choosing the r t news channel for your news the top story tonight libya and heavy on c.n.n. crossfire as being heard over the capital tripoli that's despite the head of the country's armed forces saying he's ordered an immediate cease fire and international aerial offensive against colonel gadhafi forces which is now in day two has been criticized by the out of me call it civilian deaths for his part barack obama says america's role in the military intervention will be a limited one but his u.s. cruise missiles take

a leading role in coalition operations many are drawing comparisons to the beginning of the two thousand and three draft. and russia has called on allied forces to refrain from using indiscriminate force but stressed is unacceptable to use the un security council mandate for purposes other than protecting civilians one thirty one am here in moscow our programs continue next see investigates the game plan between the worlds of sport of politics when it comes to steer in american society to me. politics has no product to play on the field of strife of competition. throughout history we've been told that sports and politics don't mix and this is. why i lose you think that sports people should take a political view of no. we've been told that in the arena of sports it's all about

things like achievements athletic performance competition individual is more playing the game and playing it well that's all that matters. 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 sport performances and actions patriotic in their own right and seemingly in seeking was 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 and was the starting say. my basketball team the fighting quakers at new york friends my god we were terrible but sports remain a life unlike 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 is welcome to that is bridge where cars

were both famous for me 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 in your frenzy getting everybody to chant usa usa usa i mean it was sick i came to watch a game but 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 dave zirin and i 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 what 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 by. historians have long known that you can find out a lot about the wider culture by looking at sports culture. and history has taught us that sports is never just something that we just sit back and watch that sports always. had an important social function and the history of american sports is no different it's here where societal and cultural meanings play out are 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 we'll 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. friday. that's up. with everything in the world of sports has traditionally been thought of as a male i. masculine pumped up comfortable violence immunes of like they get shown vulnerability of any kind of. sports culture offers a role models for what it means to be a man and real men will do whatever it takes to win. when it. is never 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 and they man up they shake it off they get back in the game take physical investment where you're hurt you're sure you're tired just what will be built up 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 matters are paying you in for being masculine means being able to inflict pain and to endure it no matter. violence and without regard for the consequence. to least. important to me personally could lead. to this where image moves beyond personal identity to link up with and reinforce larger forces and values in the culture most notably militarist in for the ball 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 goods even if he has to use the shotgun. with short bullet passes and along comes the marches his troops into enemy territory balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemies the friends of line. and the militarization of sports culture might be even funnier if so many guys didn't take it so literally they swore. they don't do a brick and you know what about you they will kill you they're out there to kill you. hurt him you hurt me you're going to pull my legs i'm a come right back out of. 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 looks like she's involved in 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 pleased. the appropriate. is going to war isn't political there's nothing in. this hour works it naturalizes ideas and images that deflect 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 the dominant narrative in sports culture presents a narrow glamorize view of militarism and violence that conceals many of the costs and consequences of this fictionalized ideal of male invulnerability. so you can do anything you. want 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. sri. three . six. six out of ten former players say they have suffered at least one concussion while

playing the average n.f.l. career is three and a half years and 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 sanitize in a lie about the real life consequences of violence. and most importantly if sports glamorize war if they in effect deceive us about the reality in tragedy of war are we looking at a form of propaganda here. i say. back in two thousand and one woman was coming off the best year of his career he was picked for sports illustrated's all pro team and he just turned down

a nine million dollar contract to stay with his team the arizona cardinals pat tillman was tough and he was loyal then came nine eleven. 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 you know have this gone 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 reproaches attention to me of sacrifice and service children who gave up a multimillion dollar contract in professional football has been kill cats home and 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 it a war was illegal you thought it was a mistake you thought it was going to be a disaster and you know you don't in the army you're not we'll 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 activist noam chomsky in the last ten years the united states has devastated civilians inserted in your film and told his mother he wanted to meet chomsky in person after he returned to the united states was there any solace in the story of the military told you about how courageous. 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 time wayne movie the reason this misrepresentation of pat tillman matter so much is because it's still vividly exposes 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 a science of them by the media sports complex good morning america tour but this is all. right which is exactly what happened recently when fox n.f.l. sunday commemorated veteran stay. i broadcasting from the 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 at the u.s.o. center on this very airfield here rather than bothering to mention that stillman had turned against the war the fox commentators dressed in full camouflage used his life and death to promote war. time the us military and the n.f.l. has. 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 that relationship grew immensely during world war two and today that bond 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 and with men who fight against them when they believe them to be unjust. do you think think. you know just insanely upset and i think you know like when you kind of it's back on and he just he just laughing oh i can't you know this is just you know those are those in private as exact words this is criminal. it's as though questioning and wondering and thinking critically about the role sports plays in the wider culture is somehow abnormal uncool and unmanly and it's just this attitude that throughout the history of american sports has marginalized entire groups of people.

seemingly exhausted the store of. faith 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 they. respected scientists even argue that sports would make women infertile. sex crazed or just plain insane then along came the bicycle bicycling is a lot of fun good exercise and a fine means of transportation 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 eighty ninety 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 some of the runners fell to the ground to catch their breath perfectly reasonable right they were winded 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 limpet officials promptly banned the women's eight hundred meters for thirty years. but 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 in at like men. this all changed in the one nine hundred 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 it was called the women's movement the world has never been the same since. and the struggle reflected itself on battlefields as unlikely as the boston marathon the race is going to be six miles three hundred eighty five yards from us

in turn to boston this is normally. done 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 rules are somewhat gilded when a girl is wearing number two sixty one he's listed in the program with leather for the first. 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 pitting 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 models of masculinity the violence and paranoia of the

marathon director vs the strength and solidarity of the other male runners. at the center of it all the resolute focus of kathy switzer in that moment sports to 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 some fellows and such a big ego trip it's now worth it i don't you know i don't know if you know really the only. one 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 carrying the mail is to frame it over and over again to go away. from girl bobby ridge boys mrs billie jean king on the tennis court and he was from tonight it's a mess that's being billed as an epic battle of the sexes in front of

a sold out crowd at the houston astrodome she beat the retired tennis star bobby riggs 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 line 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 right dr facing what it made the most serious i think. thirty seven year old

really do you admit it you had a home and. now environment the revelation had an immediate blowback costing or a ton of prestigious money billie jean king was contract to make television the. company is not. the new york daily news corp the company is. saying she was too strong a personality that she was overpowering the product he denied that the company's decision had anything to do with mrs king's disclosure a lesbian relationship would 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 there were few useful spark such widespread resentments in backlash from panic men is a crucial part of the history of sports and of this country it all goes back to its kind o. nine in one thousand nine hundred eighty 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 at of three 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 and pretty much stop covering women's sports altogether. coverage of women's sports on t.v. news and highlight shows as nearly evaporated since one nine hundred eighty nine from a high of nine percent of airtime devoted to women athletes in one nine hundred ninety nine to an unbelievable one point six percent in two thousand and nine the best deal for show period episode is brought to you by colder 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 in the snow old ladies i was asked by r.l. call jack so on telly this fixation on women's bodies is no different from playboys women of the olympics issue or n.b.c.'s primetime coverage of women's beach volleyball a sport that just so happens to be played inside the bikini's on synthetic retail's want to go down as one of the hello never forget athletes are no longer the focus they're just another excuse to sell women's bodies to male viewers who need some t.v.'s here and. culture is that so much a given to you that if there's a person on the mark with the divide given to the shia and sunni the saudi

integration and suppression of the shia majority and more rain again highlights how sectarian. template to be official on t.l.c. cation giuliani phone the i pod touch for me to stop still. enjoy life on the go. video on demand cheese minefield cultures and omissions feeds now in the palm of your. question on the call to call. the worlds. bringing you the latest in science and technology from around russia. the future of coverage.

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