Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiFootball Socialism
YOU WOULD think the National Football League and the wage gap have nothing in common. But if the nation shared its resources like the NFL, we would be in a much better place. For instance, even though their world has momentarily crumbled around them, Republicans keep saying that any attempt to close the American wealth gap is "class warfare."
In a January interview on Fox television, White House spokesman Tony Snow was asked about the 2008 Democratic candidates for president making an issue of the split between the haves and have-nots. Snow responded: "Well, look, people have tried to use class warfare in the past, and it hasn't worked." Later he added, "More power to people who try to play the class warfare argument. The fact is, it doesn't match up with our experience."
Within the Republican Party, one long-shot presidential hopeful, former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, recently made some headlines by saying that top-tier contender John McCain "has fought conservatives time after time, even invoking the rhetoric of class warfare to oppose the Bush tax cuts."
Never mind that the Republicans, largely because of Iraq, but partially because of their inattentiveness to growing inequalities (so graphically captured by Hurricane Katrina), were thrown out of power in the House and Senate. Snow keeps hanging onto his deck chair on the tilting ship, saying illogical things like, "When one tries to play class warfare, sooner or later it touches upon every class."
Enter the National Football League. This week, it agreed to revamp what is arguably the most successful form of socialism in the United States. It made some adjustments to its revenue sharing plan. The league's teams, which currently number 32, have shared equally in national television revenues going back to the early 1960s. The Mara family of the New York Giants and George Halas of the Chicago Bears realized that it had to be done to give tiny cities like Green Bay a chance to field competitive teams. Halas even once advocated a new stadium for the arch-rival Packers.
Four and a half decades later, the Chicago Tribune wrote that the decision to share revenues was "the single most important reason the NFL enjoys unmatched prosperity" today and has become the nation's top spectator sport. Shared prosperity means more teams with a legitimate chance to win the title. More competitive teams mean more fans.
In the last 11 baseball World Series, for instance, only one team has come from a metropolitan area ranked 20th or lower, as compiled by the US Census. The lowest-ranked city to celebrate a World Series champion in the last 11 seasons is 18th-ranked St. Louis.
In the last 11 Super Bowls, seven teams, including 154th-ranked Green Bay, 39th-ranked Nashville, 36th-ranked Charlotte, and 34th-ranked Indianapolis, have seen their teams go to the Super Bowl. Green Bay won in 1997 and Indianapolis won this year.
For the lay person, the details of the latest agreement are not important, except to understand that roughly the top half of the league in revenues (big-city and otherwise popular teams can make additional money through luxury seats and skyboxes), will pool money to give to the lower half. The plan passed by a 30-2 vote. Patriots owner Robert Kraft proclaimed to the Globe, "I think there was a feeling from a number of us that we appreciate what a great league we have and how special it is. We're partners inside."
Outside the NFL, too many Americans wait for a partner. Study after study details how the wealth gap is growing in the United States. The Economic Policy Institute last year found that the average wealth of the 20 percent of American households has grown from 15 times the national median in the early 1960s to 23 times the median today. While household debt for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans grew 10.6 percent during the first term of President Bush, it rose 28.2 percent for people in the 61-80 percentile.
Middle America is waiting for its Mara family and George Halas. Class warfare already is happening. Democrats claim they are willing to wage it, but even when Bill Clinton was in office, the gap kept growing. In Buffalo, the 47th-ranked metropolitan area, Buffalo Bills treasurer Jeffrey Littmann said the revised NFL revenue sharing plan "allows us to be part of that move forward to solutions instead of just trying to figure out how to survive."
It would be a better day if a little bit of that socialism rubbed off on lower-ranked Americans who are figuring out how to survive.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com
© 2007 The Boston Globe
9 Comments so far
Show AllThe US military is a socialized institution -- though extremely tiered as we've seen. Just ask officers how many services are provided, groceries subsidized at commissaries, etc. The US military is a socialist institute! It's a scream.
Class warfare started when the first group of cave people cornered the best hunting areas. Its as old as humankind and the fact that we try to pretend that it doesn't exist is proof of a pervasive infantilism in American life. Having said that, I agree with NaderLaDuke, using the NFL is a bad analogy albeit a nice try fom the author. It always amazes me though that so many people in this country believe that somehow God righteously anointed certain people to be very rich and other people who failed at gaming the system are somehow unworthy or morally deficient and therefore deserve their poverty.
The Sunday before the 2004 Presidential election my local very Republican, very conservative newspaper urged voters not to vote for Kerry/Edwards because their victory would be the beginning of class warfare in the U.S. I was mad enough to chew nails, or worse...
Class distinction and class inequality has been a part of this country from its inception. My local newspaper of course was appealing to the myth of America in its editorial. Class warfare has been going on non-stop for ?. My newspaper merely wished the losers, the underdogs, not to fight back.
Karlof1 and Iwarrior are correct--The aggressors in any war determine the strategies of those attacked. The only way that "we the people" can lose this war is to keep on pretending it doesn't exist. More exactly we should evaluate to what point this agression against our interests has gone and respond in kind. THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF THEM, BUT FOR THE PRESENT THEY ARE MORE UNIFIED AND BETTER ORGANIZED. Ojnce we start getting unified behind a comprehensive program that we will push no matter what, the game is all over and we win!
Poet's platform--
1. Single payer national health care for all.
2. Corporate income tax to post WWII levels.
3. Reduction of "defense spending 10% per year for the next 6 years with the proceeds being used to fund the reduction of the national debt.
4. Free college education and support for all competent to do such academic work.
5. Reinstitution of the Glass-Stiegel Act. (for the financier and banking crowd)
6. Reinstitution of the National Labor relations act to its earlier form which gave the NLRB some teeth.
7. Tax incentives for the imnplementation of wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and all other forms of renewable and non-polluting and decentralized energy production.
8. Abolishment of agri-business subsidies and encouragement for every lawn to become a garden, orchard, or vinyard.
9. Rebuild a world class passenger rail system. Incentives and subsidies for local mass transit systems to replace choked traffic corridors.
10. Reinstitution of protective tariffs to encourage the promotion of manufacturing and production by Americans.
Somebody say "Amen"!
I agree with gsemsel: It is the Republicans who have waged class warfare. The Democrats like John Edwards who address the issue are merely reporting the casualty count.
The class war is over. The winners are in the White House, and they're not Democrats.
There has been a class war going on. But it wasn't working people who started it. The elites are the ones who dropped the first bomb.
It's funny because there are so many conservatives that are football fans. In fact, most of the sports radio hosts are pretty right-leaning. Of course those people don't see anything wrong with the government bailing out big business or other acts of corporate welfare. Yet, they get hairs in their butts over poor black women getting public assistance.
Class war has been present ever since you needed a certain amount of property to vote, which is now being reformulated in the guise of essential documentation.
Bad analogy. As an impoverished member of the Raider Nation, I don't know anyone who could justify paying $50+ dollars for a nosebleed seat to watch rich guys beat the shit out of each other. Here in violence-strewn Oakland, where the 2006 per capita murder rate matched that of Tijuana, Mexico, we know there can be no justice for the working class without catastrophic economic collapse, followed by the defeat and/or surrender of the police, military, Blackwater, et. all. When the next Katrina-like event hits, you can bet your ass we won't be asking for help. We will help ourselves.
Here's a couple of fun facts.
Wal-Mart opened a store here in Oakland a year and a half ago. They had 11,000 people apply for 400 jobs before the grand opening.
The minimum starting salary for a rookie in the NFL is $260,000 per year.
And I seriously doubt that even a tough guy like George Halas could've stomached being a "front-line soldier" for Wal-Mart...
Customer Service Training for Wal-Mart Greeters - http://www.customerservicetrainingcenter.com/customer_service_training_wal-mart.htm
Wal-Mart Oakland story - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/17/MNGDPE91AH1.DTL