Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Dave Zirin on American Football

New World Notes #612, 28:17 (November 26)
Broadcast quality MP3 (39 MB)
Decent quality MP3 (13 MB)

Harvard's Ben Ticknor, 1930

Progressive sports commentator Dave Zirin explains the upper-class origins of American football. And he shows football's connections with "muscular Christanity" and with 19th century US imperialism.
 
The game has always been violent and has caused countless player injuries and deaths--but Zirin argues against those who would ban the sport. Zirin's solution: for all jobs--including NFL football--is this: support the workers in their struggle to control workplace rules and working conditions.

I have never been a sports fan. I think the last football game I watched was in 1968. We--that is to say, Bucknell--won. Or maybe we lost. Who cares? Instead of warming the bleachers, I should have burning my draft card.

But even I find Zirin's talk to be to be witty, interesting, and well worth a listen.

Dave Zirin

I have condensed Zirin's talk, which he delivered at the Socialism 2012 conference, in the Chcago area, in September 2012.

This program was originally broadcast, as NWN #240, in October 2012. Audio files downloaded fro the links, above, are identified as #240.



Sunday, November 17, 2019

Thanksgiving, Conquest, Genocide

New World Notes #611, 28:217 (November 19)
Broadcast quality MP3 (39 MB)
Decent quality MP3 (13 MB)


An alternative view of the European "settling" of the U.S. Three views, in fact, ranging in tone from Jim Hightower's wry humor to the Firesign Theater's comic satire to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's matter-of-fact catalogue of horrors.

Hightower tells of American settler-Indian feasts before the one in Plymouth. The Firesign Theater reenacts how the West was won. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals many shocking details of the settlers' genocidal war against North America's native population.

With an afterword by KD.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The Firesign Theater segment is taken from their sketch, "Temporarily Humboldt County." Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz was interviewed by Abby Martin on The Empire Files. I have edited and condensed the interview for radio broadcast.


This year two high schools in my county have changed the name of their mascot from "Indians" to "Redhawks"--possibly in honor of Connecticut's second-greatest maker of handguns, William B. Ruger. Or possibly not  Above: Ruger's classic .44 Magnum revolver, the Redhawk, introduced in 1979. Go, Redhawks!