Melissa: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. The NFL season is kicking off tonight y'all so you know what that means, big hits, big kicks, and of course, big touchdowns.
Jason: Did the Jacksonville Jaguars win the Super Bowl?
Speaker 3: No.
Jason: Will they ever win the Super Bowl?
Speaker 3: Jason, I can't predict the future, but no, they won't.
Melissa: There's no denying that football is more than America's most popular sport, it's also all tied up with our national identity and that's something that The Nation's Dave Zirin explores at length in his forthcoming documentary, Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.
Speaker 4: Given that the NFL itself admits that it's more than just a game and has a powerful influence on the culture, I'd argue that it's every American's job to take a close look at the values and ideas the NFL promotes, and to ask whether the shield and everything it's come to represent have done more to reveal what's best or to obscure what's worst about this country.
Melissa: Joining me now is Dave Zirin, Sports Editor for The Nation, he's a co-producer, co-writer, and star of Behind the Shield, a project in partnership with the Media Education Foundation. Dave, it's always great to have you here.
Dave: Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Melissa.
Melissa: What are some of the big issues that the NFL is grappling with right now?
Dave: Wow. Right now, as we speak with the NFL is dealing with first and foremost, is the reality that they are in crisis, and they are always in crisis for the simple reason that they're always reactive to whatever crisis is taking place. The latest one really has to do with what their relationship is with their fans who are not men. 47% of NFL fans are women and yet the league fosters a constant disrespect towards women through how it operates on a team-by-team level.
Whether it's scandals regarding signing players who have been accused of horrific tales of sexual assault or whether it's in the case of the Washington football team how it treated their own cheerleaders and their own cheer team. It's just the worst kinds of labor conditions you can imagine, sexual exploitation. These stories pile up upon each other and they make it very difficult to be a fan. If you happen to be somebody, not just a woman fan, but if you just happen to be a fan who's against sexism and misogyny, the league makes it very difficult.
Yet, at the same time, the league needs those fans desperately because they're the largest growing section of their fan base. Let's remember, this is a league that does not really have a presence outside the United States so it needs to build its internal market as high as possible, yet it trips over itself at every opportunity.
Melissa: Let's make that really concrete. Can you talk about Deshaun Watson, Cleveland Browns quarterback, he's accused of sexual assault by at least 30 women. Trading the off-season and then there was a small suspension, now suspended for 11 games, but what does all of this say about the NFL and who's allowed to play, and under what circumstances?
Dave: Well, it's interesting because anytime we talk about who's allowed to play in the NFL, the figure that comes to mind is Colin Kaepernick on one knee for the San Francisco 49ers back in 2016. The ways in which he has been turned into a pariah over the last six years, a Super Bowl quarterback unable to take the field, unable to find a contract, all because he dared say that racism is a bad thing and police violence is a bad thing. He did so while wearing an NFL uniform during the national anthem.
That is unacceptable to the people who really run the NFL, who are not NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, and his cronies, but it's actually the people who are the franchise owners who make these decisions. People who support right-wing policies and politicians by nine to one margin. They make the decisions. For them, the thing that Deshaun Watson did which is incredible accusations, dozens upon dozens of accusations from a sexual assault ranging from that to sexual misconduct is the official phrase that they use.
That is somehow okay in their moral calculus, using their moral compass. Yet, Colin Kaepernick is somehow radioactive and I think that tells us a great deal about the politics that guide the National Football League.
Melissa: Given that there are no convictions for Deshaun Watson, one could argue that this is actually a good labor practice to not as an employer find someone guilty before they have been found guilty. Tell me why you see it a little differently.
Dave: That's always one of the trickiest things with these cases is you don't want the NFL acting as this extra-legal body making decisions that the court system has not. However, we have to factor in how terrible our court system is when dealing with violence against women, when dealing with sexual violence, when dealing with all these issues, in the bar for getting any kind of conviction in this country around these issues is really high. Meanwhile, you have the National Football League which really is a public-facing company, of course, it is.
It needs to have its own standards as far as what's acceptable and what's not in terms of who gets to wear the uniform and who gets to wear the vaunted shield. If they look like they have incredibly high tolerance for players who find themselves in these situations, what it does is that it sends a cultural message which is far more powerful than if say the corner store makes a similar decision. In the National Football League, we're talking about the closest thing to a national language that we have in this country.
A cultural unifier that nothing else can compare to if we're just talking about the masses of people who actually watch it, vibe it, and enjoy it. That part needs to be taken seriously as we assess the standards that we hold players to.
Melissa: As you evoke Colin Kaepernick, so many people said, "I don't want politics in my football," talk to me about that. Is politics in football?
Dave: It's so interesting and this is really one of the central thesis of the film that we did Behind the Shield, shout out to Jeremy Earp and Loretta Alper who put all the incredible work in to make it something I'm really proud of. When we talk about politics, so often that shorthand for rebel athletes, for the Colin Kaepernick's, for the Michael Bennett's or shorthand for political issues like racism, sexism, homophobia which seem to pop up in the NFL like weeds. What we don't talk about is how the NFL franchise owners shape their own political message and push that out towards fans.
We never talk about that and I'm talking about the hyper militarism that takes place with games, I'm talking about the partnerships with the US armed forces, I'm talking about the representations of gender that they present, representations of manhood that they represent, all of these things whether you agree with them or disagree with them are in fact politics and that should be reckoned with on its own terms.
Melissa: For everybody who's ready for some football, is there a way to engage this game and still responsibly hold on to these critiques?
Dave: Well, it's such a great question and I certainly know people who would say, "Absolutely, not." They would come on your show, they would knock people over to come on your show and make that point. I think something differently. I believe that this game is not something that we should reject, but something that we should strive to reclaim. The starting point for doing that is being a conscious sports fan and being aware of the messages that are being pumped through our play.
Melissa: Dave, we're at the start of the season, but do you have a Super Bowl prediction?
Dave: I do. I think people should take very seriously the team out of Baltimore, the Ravens named after Edgar Allan Poe's work. I know you appreciate that wrinkle, Melissa, but Poe finding his home in Baltimore. I think the Baltimore Ravens are going to fly and take it all this year over the Green Bay Packers, the only team that's actually owned by fans and not a franchise owner.
Melissa: Dave Zirin is Sports Editor for The Nation. Thanks as always for showing up and chatting with me on The Takeaway.
Dave: Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
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