low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that some consider more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself.
Is that what professional sports has become for the American public? It’s tempting to judge this whole steroids saga as a unique merger of greed and sports but I think it is indicative of a larger, more inclusive Winning is Everything philosophy that I will deal with later in this series.
Other media distractions
Is it merely coincidence that other stories sharing the theme of steroid abuse fail to catch the eye of the corporate media? I would be more inclined to attribute this to poor timing if I were not already well aware of many ignored or underreported stories deserving public attention that did not receive it. When I first started giving public presentations on our election mess several years ago, Ariana Huffington’s piece “Just Say Noruba” made a great opener. In it, Huffington examines the news coverage three stories got on the six major news networks over seven weeks in early summer, 2005. The stories: the court case and ultimate acquittal of Michael Jackson, the disappearance of blonde co-ed Natalee Holloway while vacationing in Aruba, and the release of the Downing Street Memos, minutes of a meeting which discussed the Bush administration’s commitment to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent manipulation of intelligence to justify going to war. This last was, by any measure, a major story, deserving our attention.
Huffington’s research yielded the following: Downing Street memos: 56 segments (with two networks having no segments at all and three more having ten or less), Natalee Holloway: 646 segments, and Michael Jackson: 1490 segments. While the Holloway story got more than 11 times the coverage of the Downing Street Memos, the Jackson story easily prevailed with so many more lurid features: a high-profile celebrity, race, pedophilia, homosexuality. Who could ask for anything more?
I have long complained that the media focuses on all the wrong things. This is but one example of that tendency. We have critical elections just around the corner. States have tripped over one another to grab the earliest possible dates for their primaries. Now we have an even longer, drawn-out campaign season. We’re spending even more precious time focused on the superficial. Who’s willing to talk about the terrible state our elections are in? In effect, the elections are distracting us from the way our elections are run. Which is what counts in the long run. The secret vote counting – done on computerized voting machines using proprietary software – that has taken over our nation is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room everyone avoids mentioning. It means that We the People have been shut out of our elections by private vendors. This is maddening. To quote Nancy Tobi, stalwart New Hampshire defender of election integrity,
Democratic elections are the protective shield defending the new American Republic. Public control and citizen oversight of government is nowhere more important than in elections. Publicly run, observable voting systems with checks and balances, secure the free, fair, and open counting of votes.
If you still believe we should just trust the vendors and our election officials to protect our constitutional and sacred right to vote and know that the vote has been counted properly, you have not been paying attention to the endless recitation of failed elections and lost votes. Please. Let’s get serious here and focus on the issues that really matter.
I’ll give the last word to Mr. Gonsalves on the danger of confusing the sensational with what is newsworthy.
There may be "no crying in baseball," but when there's far more hue-and-cry about steroid-using sports stars on athletic fields then there is about juiced up cops and private mercenaries roaming real life battlefields in which the lives of spectators are more at risk than the participants, it's a sad day.
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
As my favorite sport, and the one I was best at ( full scholarship to college because I could throw the ball about 90 MPH) I hate this furor and how it has cast aspersion on the game and everyone connected to it .
When even marginal players are making millions does anyone wonder why players endanger their health to gain an edge? When 450 foot home runs put behinds in the seats one understands why ownership turned a blind eye to the practice. I believe that instituting drug testing is necesary immediately. I further believe that we should just call the whole era the "steroid era" put it behind us and get on with the game.
During the era of Ruth we had "red juice", during the Willie Mays and Hank Aaron years it was amphetamines, now its steroids. I wonder what will be next, bionics?
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 3:05:30 PM
it looks like at least partly it will be a more wholesale move into HGH (human growth hormones). they are, as yet undetectable, which is part of the allure. players will always be one step ahead of the testers.
but strict testing is an imperative. i was totally removed from this whole issue since baseball really means nothing to me. but i've gotten caught up in the undertow. this must be torture for you to view the sport you love/d and played be so tarnished.
regarding money and power, money is a form of power.
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 3:13:20 PM
Like you Ardee I love the game. I can bore you to death with how I believe it mirrors life, but won't. I too was on the hill. No 90's for me though. When it came time to choose music or college baseball, it was tough. I consider myself lucky I had two choices and passions. Music won.
The edge. Any way you can. The money seduces most. Only 750 job slots. Millions waiting in the wings. Choices. Ruin their late life for a day in the sun or lose your spot at third. The money does corrupt.
Will they test? If enough pressure is brought. But as long as those butts are in the seats......
I wish it was played fair (sans whatever hoped for advantages). Baseball is such a beautiful game. To me it'll always be beautiful. With the different eras, it still amazes me after 100+ years that on a ground ball to short, the guy is still out by that much.
by
mikel paul (11 articles, 1 quicklinks, 8 diaries, 457 comments)
on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 10:12:28 PM
you are a terrific writer. your ability to take an idea, ie. steroids in sports and apply it to so many areas of life, eventually ending with your main interest, election reform,
is extremely well done, provocative and instructive. I have forwarded much of your articles to people who matter to me.
JV
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 5:39:50 PM
well done, Ms. Brunwasser.... i'm also not of the baseball persuasion... only luv basketball if it's our Dookies playing... and sometimes, Tarheels ... our home (now after 41 yrs - the other half NC) is in the heart of the Atlanta Braves... but, we watch at home ... just never could figure the reason for enhancing one's body with drugs ... even tho the performance may be better to their liking ... as we've always told our 3 kiddos (now, 58, 52, and 50 in Jan.), YOU are the keeper of your body - and you've only got one.... don't mess around with it ... there's no replacement ... i'm of the opinion if the players can't use the bodies they're in, then get out
of sports ... their salaries should be cut in half... ya gotta hit back where it hurts ... M-O-N-E-Y..
PEACE, jean b.
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 9:30:48 PM
As a former semi-pro ballplayer and an author/historian, I claim a portion of turf here. So I'll vent my spleen for a few minutes.
The media are all over the steroid issue in baseball, but for the wrong reasons. They don't care about basic fundamentals like INTEGRITY or LEGITIMACY. What they're all about is: "Will this mean Roger Clemens won't make the Hall of Fame?" Or, "Should Barry Bonds give up his home-run championship?" Yada, yada, yada.
There is a direct link here to election integrity. And, mirabile dictu...the same villain is lurking in the shadows! It's the mainstream media, of course. They love controversy, but not where it intrudes on their corporate welfare...in which case, they dismiss any issue out of hand. Stolen elections are not, repeat not, worthy of coverage. But whether Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should make the Hall of Fame? Yeah...that's newsworthy, because the question can be framed in the form of a debate, not one of decency or ethics.
Did Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens cheat? Of course they did, and the whole world knows it. Will their ethics become the final issue to be decided? Of course not. The word "ethics" now belongs to some 19th-century dictionary, no longer available in libraries.
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