Athletes in chief: putting sports on a pedestal

all out of love: Getting news at school: keeping up with news outside the bubble

Throughout my childhood, I had a problem sleeping. Unlike seemingly everyone else in the world, I hated sleeping. I’d lie in bed for hours, thinking about the cool stuff I was sure I was missing.
Once I thought I’d suffered long enough—generally by 4 a.m.—I would jump out of bed and run down the stairs in search of fun activities. While I never found much more than a warm, staticky TV screen, I did get a lot of TV watching done. My days typically began with a few reruns of SportsCenter until my parents came down and subjected me to the Today Show. This usually just made me angry—I really, really didn’t care about cupcake recipes.
But over time, I learned to appreciate the Today Show. I didn’t start baking cupcakes but I did begin to learn what was going on in the world. Sure, I didn’t have a deep understanding, but I got enough information to dominate political arguments with my other 8-year-old friends. Over time, this interest flowered into a really convincing college essay topic. I wrote about how I read newspapers every morning and followed every update from the Capitol like a really boring gossip columnist. I talked about how I wanted to be involved with politics for the rest of my life and how much I loved knowing what was going on in the world.

all out of love: Insurance woes: Obamacare proving ineffective

106,856. That is the number of people who successfully selected—not bought—a new healthcare plan this past October under the Obama administration’s legislation often referred to as ‘Obamacare.’ The program’s official name is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a moniker that now seems ironic, given recent struggles.
A mere 27,000 people dove into the behemoth website that is healthcare.gov and emerged having successfully selected a plan. For those in need of a refresher, healthcare.gov is the federal government’s version of a highly touted new-age online marketplace; the particulars of the ACA were centered on the assumption of its functionality. In Maine, a state that opted to use the federal government’s website, only 271 people selected a plan by the end of the month.
As kindly noted by Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas, more people caught chlamydia last month than selected a plan under Obamacare. He also noted that more people followed Nickelback on Twitter, and bought Yoko Ono’s first album than selected a plan.

all out of love

Athletes in chief: putting sports on a pedestal

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Drew Van Kuiken

Columnist

November 7, 2013

Growing up in New Jersey, I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by really loud Yankees fans. Those fans were often drowned out by Red Sox fans, ever tenacious in their goal of convincing me that Boston deserves my support. As an apathetic Tigers fan, I’ve loved every second of it. Just kidding.

When Boston laid waste to Detroit’s pitching, it didn’t really bother me. And then, when Boston dispatched St. Louis to win the World Series last week, I wasn’t sure how to feel. On one hand, my friends’ “rediscovered” love for their hometown team brought nothing but bad memories. But I kept seeing Big Papi’s toothy smile, and then I’d smile, and I couldn’t really be mad.

When Big Papi—otherwise known as David Ortiz—spoke after the Boston Bombing, I, along with the rest of the world, couldn’t help but support him. He embodied strength in a time of weakness and became a leader that Boston so desperately needed. And when he hit a monstrous home run to lift Boston over Detroit, almost singlehandedly sending his city to the world series, I felt that same admiration. He is a man who I just want to like. He appeals to me despite my affiliations and I can’t help but root for him.

Of course, my respect for David Ortiz presents nothing new: everybody has random sports stars they really like. Some people have a certain magnetism to them. People wa nt to like them.
And so when we watch a player like David Ortiz, everything turns up roses. He does those stupid Subway commercials and we all half laugh and then we all cheer after his speeches. But is this a good thing?

David Ortiz plays baseball well. Very well. But athleticism guarantees little in the public sphere. Deifying him as a leader of Boston after the tragedy places him in an extremely powerful position. Should we really trust athletes over—slimy as they are—the politicians we elected into office?
Enter Richie Incognito. Incognito used to play on the offensive line of the Miami Dolphins, before he was suspended indefinitely last Sunday. The reason? He reportedly left voicemails and texts on a teammate’s phone that included incredibly vulgar racial language and demeaning comments about the player’s sexual orientation.

He was also a member of the Dolphins’ six-man leadership council.

While many inside the NFL point to this incident as a disturbing peek into what actually goes on in a professional locker room, the problems run deeper than that. While, yes, something clearly needs to be fixed in the way the NFL operates, it’s also time that we as fans reevaluate our own loyalties.

Incognito certainly isn’t the first of his kind. We all watched when Michael Vick went to jail for illegally fighting dogs and Tiger Woods crashed his car while fleeing from a fight with the wife he was cheating on.

Before their respective downfalls these men appeared as spokesmen for causes everywhere. People liked them.

But perhaps the best example comes from Mike Tyson. Tyson made a fortune as one of the best boxers of all time. He also delivered interview gems like “I want to kill people. I want to rip out their stomachs and eat their children.” and he served jail time for rape charges. In almost every way, Tyson is a terrible person. But he still plays roles in movies and garners sympathy from fans, convinced all his problems began with boxing promoter Don King.

We wear these players’ jerseys. We quote their lines from movies and cheer when they discuss things we never expected. We give them admiration and power.

But we don’t know them. We know their on-field personas. And when they come out to speak in the face of a national tragedy, we can only hope they’re sane. We hold our breath, wait to see if their comments offend and exhale when no one seems irate.

My point isn’t that we need to discredit all athletes. Ortiz did absolutely nothing wrong when he spoke after the Boston Marathon Bombing, but Boston’s leadership did.

Many athletes lead upstanding lives and exhaust a positive influence on the world around them. But when we prop them up as leaders of a cause or as the face of an idea, we put them in a dangerous place. They live their lives as athletes and then they suddenly become speakers. Call me insane, but I don’t think it’s right.

I’m not trying to dissuade you from loving a sports player or appreciating their contributions. As a society, we should embrace them. But as a society, we also need to be more careful.

The immense popularity of sports players’ means we often want them to be superhuman; we want their physical skills to translate into rhetorical ability and inspirational morality.

But, unfortunately, it often doesn’t. So even if Ortiz comforted millions with his response to the bombing, he never should’ve become the face of the response.

Boston’s Mayor, Thomas Menino, and other elected officials owed it to their people to step up and be that image. As a society, we owed it to ourselves to look to them. Otherwise, the difference between taking solace in Ortiz and Incognito may just be a matter of luck.

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