Tag Archives: sports

Time to Retire the R-Word

by Aale Thomas Posted on August 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones has joined the ranks of publications that refuse to utter the name of Washington DC’s pro football team. In fact, that’s now what our style guide calls them: “Washington’s pro football team.” Personally, I’d prefer the Victorian era affectation of using initials. I never quite understood why old novels were littered with things like Mr. K—- or Bishop M—–, but why not make use of it anyway? We could refer to Washington’s pro football team as the R—–s. This has the added advantage of automatically giving it the veneer of vulgarity. Dan Snyder’s team would be the R-word, to go along with the N-word and the C-word and all the others.

But here’s a question: Is there a similar movement afoot to change the name of Cleveland’s pro baseball team and Atlanta’s pro baseball team? It’s true that the I-word and the B-word are less offensive than the R-word, but on the other hand, the team logo in Cleveland sure beats Washington for offensiveness. And that hatchet thing in Atlanta is just plain annoying. I know that both those teams have taken some heat for their names, but not as much as Washington. Anyone know if that’s changing?

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Time to Retire the R-Word

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Ditching the Redskins, Once and for All

by Sheeritwern Posted on August 9, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at Slate yesterday, editor David Plotz wrote about the site’s decision to never again refer to Washington’s professional football team as the Redskins. In explaining the change, Plotz argued that although the franchise’s (racist) first owner, George Preston Marshall, likely chose the name in an effort “to invoke Indian bravery and toughness, not to impugn Indians,” ultimately “the world changes, and all of a sudden a well-intentioned symbol is an embarrassment.”

It is an absolute embarrassment—for the NFL, for the nation’s capital, and for nanny-underpayer/owner Dan Snyder, who has stubbornly vowed never to change the team’s name, even in the face of common decency and a federal trademark suit.

And so, in an admittedly small gesture, Mother Jones is also tweaking our house style guide, joining Slate and a group of other publications, from The New Republic to Washington City Paper. From here on out, we will refer to the team online and in print as “Washington” or “Washington’s pro football team” or, if we get sassy, “the Washington Redacted.”

For those of you who come to Mother Jones for your breaking NFL news…never mind, I can’t even.

There is a chance, however, that the term will end up back on our pages. We certainly won’t strike it from a quote. And if we end up writing a post or two about how Snyder still hasn’t changed the name, despite increasing scrutiny, we reserve the right to use it again—if only to highlight how incredibly out-of-touch and backward the Washington football team’s owner truly is.

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Ditching the Redskins, Once and for All

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Redskins Hall of Famers Say Team Name is Probably Offensive, But Shouldn’t Change

by caringk63 Posted on July 26, 2013

Image: Keith Allison

This week, two Washington Redskins hall of famers added their voices to the chorus arguing that the team should change their name. Sort of.

Darrel Green and Art Monk both appeared on the local radio station WTOP, and were asked what they thought of current Redskins owner Daniel Snyder’s assertion that he would never change the name. Monk said, “[If] Native Americans feel like Redskins or the Chiefs or [another] name is offensive to them, then who are we to say to them ‘No, it’s not’?” He also said that the name change should be “seriously considered.” Green agreed, saying “It deserves and warrants conversation because somebody is saying, ‘Hey, this offends me.’”

The Washington Redskins have been fielding questions about their name, which refers to the way colonial Americans described Native Americans, for a long time now. As Wikipedia points out, “slang identifiers for ethnic groups based upon physical characteristics, including skin color, are almost universally slurs, or derogatory, emphasizing the difference between the speaker and the target.” And many Native Americans have called for the team to change their name out of respect for their culture and history.

But now Green, at least, has backed off from saying that the team should change the name. He told another radio station later: “In no way I want to see the Redskins change their name. So that just makes that clear. And I’ll speak for Art, there’s no way he wants it, and I guarantee he didn’t say it, and I know I didn’t say it.”

Greg Howard at Deadspin summarizes Green’s argument:

He just thinks we should talk about it, and then decide not to. … Snyder won’t, though, because he’s rich and powerful and racist. And sadly, some of the only ones capable of challenging him, who can make a difference, are his players. But when they, like Green, scamper in line with the racist owner of the league’s most historically racist franchise, it gives off the impression that a racial slur as a team name is OK, acceptable, a source of pride, even when we all know it’s not.

In May, ten members of Congress sent letters to every NFL team asking them to push for a change of name. Snyder’s response was “the Redskins will never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER. You can put that in capital letters.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell contested the claim that the name was offensive, saying that instead it was “a unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect.”

Actual Native Americans disagree. Amanda Blackhorse, of the Navajo Nation, writes in the Huffington Post:

I find the casual use of the term r*dsk*ns disparaging, racist, and hateful. The use of the name and symbols used by the Washington football team perpetuate stereotypes of Native American people and it disgusts me to know that the Washington NFL team uses a racial slur for its name. If you were to refer to a Native American, would you call him or her a “redskin?” Of course not, just as you would not refer to an African-American as the n-word, or refer to Jew as a “kike” or a Mexican as a “wet-back” or an Asian-American as a “gook,” unless you’re a racist.

She points out that it doesn’t really matter that the Washington Redskins find the name acceptable and honorable, if those who they are referring to do not. Blackhorse and four other Native Americans have filed a petition with the United States Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) arguing that the Redskins name violates the section of trademark law that says that trademarks that “disparage” people or bring them into “contempt or disrepute” isn’t eligible for registration.

It remains to be seen whether the addition and then retraction of Green and Monk changes the tone of the debate. Snyder is unwilling to bend, and the team’s lawyers fought Blackhorse’s petition.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Man Who Coined the Word ‘Sack’ in Football Dies at 74
New Study: NFL Players May Be More Likely to Die of Degenerative Brain Diseases

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Redskins Hall of Famers Say Team Name is Probably Offensive, But Shouldn’t Change

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Hooray! Another Sports Team Gets Showered With Public Money!

by aniaxff2 Posted on July 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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The city of Washington DC is investing $100 million in a new stadium for its soccer club. Why? Hard to say, really. The club’s owners say they can’t make a profit playing in aging RFK Stadium, but it’s not really clear why that’s the city’s problem. In any case, what makes the whole deal palatable is that it’s being done via a complicated land swap that includes some goodies for city residents. Matt Yglesias points out just how ridiculous this is:

Note that while we superficially have a story about sports subsidies here, the real devil’s work is being done by accounting. Imagine we had already sold the Reeves Center to a private developer and moved the government offices across the river and had $100 million sitting around in a room somewhere. Now we’re debating what to do with the $100 million. The option “use it to buy land and then give it for free to a soccer team” would probably not seem very appealing to people. But since selling the Reeves Center and moving the offices is a very good idea, including that swap as part of the bundle rather than considering it separately makes the plan look pretty good.

Actually, you never know. It might very well seem like a good idea. America’s love affair with showering money on profit-making sports enterprises is a never-ending source of awe. Why on earth do we do it?1

1Don’t even think of saying that it pays for itself by generating lots of additional business and tax revenues. Just don’t.

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Hooray! Another Sports Team Gets Showered With Public Money!

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The Segway Polo World Cup is Everything You Imagined

by Damian7899 Posted on July 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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All things considered, the relocation of the Segway Polo World Cup from Lebanon to Washington, DC ranks pretty low on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s list of crimes. “The polite way of saying it—the PC way of saying it—is the situation with the Syrians,” explains Kelly Davies, chief operating operator for Ijma3, the Arab technology firm that’s sponsoring the event, when I ask how the world’s most prestigious tournament for people playing polo on Segways ended up on a solitary patch of field turf at Gallaudet University, the nation’s leading institute of higher learning for the deaf.

“The issue is Syria.”

Segway polo works a lot like regular polo, except instead of riding horses, the players are on Segways, and instead of invoking glamorous images of a centuries-old aristocratic tradition, the players are on Segways. Billed as the invention that would change the course of mankind when it was unveiled in 2001, the Segway has instead fallen into more of a niche market, used primarily for tour groups and the tech-obsessed. It’s also been hampered by a string of bad publicity. President George W. Bush famously fell off of one, and three years ago, James Heselden, the company’s owner, died after he lost control of his scooter and fell off a cliff.

The Segway Polo World Cup features nine teams from five countries—Germany, Sweden, the United States, Lebanon, and Barbados. The winner receives a trophy called the Woz Cup, in honor of the sport’s creator, former Apple computer guru Steve Wozniak. Although notably absent, Wozniak, who is known simply as “The Woz,” is referenced in almost every conversation I have at the world cup, sometimes in the first sentence. Segway polo players tend to describe their attachment to the game in terms of degrees of separation from the Woz.

On the field, the action is spirited. “I’ll be honest, when I saw the Segway was invented I thought, ‘Wow, this will make lazy people lazier,'” admits Jennifer Sandserson, the event coordinator, on Monday evening. (Segways polo players typically work up a sweat over the course of the game, but to Sanderson’s point, upon the conclusion of a Sunday evening game, one of the American players did yell “Nap time!”) But Sanderson has been won over in the last few days. “Oh my God, the European players and the Lebanese and the Barbadoes players they take this so seriously as if it’s their whole career!”

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Your Weekend Longreads List on America’s Pastime

by pfyee4hn Posted on July 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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With the NBA and NHL seasons coming to their respective conclusions last month, and football still months away, baseball is the lone remaining major sport as America celebrates Independence Day. In its century and a half of existence, baseball has provided the country with a never-ending stream of heroes, villains, and plenty of folks who sit squarely in between. Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite pieces of long-form journalism about America’s complicated relationship with the national pastime.

For more long stories from Mother Jones check out our longreads archive. And, of course, if you’re not following @longreads and @motherjones on Twitter yet, get on that.

Baseball Without Metaphor | David Grann | The New York Times Magazine | September 2002

Barry Bonds may have been baseball’s most feared hitter—as well as its most hated. The reigning home run king was denied entry to the Hall of Fame this year thanks to his role as the central figure in the sport’s massive steroid scandal, raising questions about what we value in athletes and their on-field accomplishments.

Perhaps no one has been more ravaged by this new machine than Barry Bonds, the most dominant player of the modern era. At the very moment when Bonds is edging closer to the all-time home-run record, when in another age he would be lionized for his grace and strength, he has become a new kind of archetype—”The poster boy for the modern spoiled athlete” and ”a symbol of baseball’s creeping greed and selfishness, complete with diamond earring.”

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu | John Updike | The New Yorker | October 1960

Another icon who had a love/hate relationship with his hometown fans, Ted Williams is considered one of the greatest hitters in Major League history even considering the seasons he missed while serving as a fighter pilot in the Korean War. His hatred for the Boston media and refusal to doff his cap to the fans became just as much a part of his legend as his batting crowns and All-Star game appearances.

The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and Nestor.

Mourning Glory | Chris Ballard | Sports Illustrated | October 2012

Here, Ballard explores the small town of Williamsport, Md., where the deaths of two ballplayers three years apart loom large over high school baseball coach David Warrenfeltz and the rest of the local sports community.

In the months that followed, Warrenfeltz was haunted by his friend’s death. He wrestled with why this happened to Adenhart, not to him—why he was allowed to keep playing baseball when Nick couldn’t. Even years later Warrenfeltz would be driving and suddenly have to pull over, tears blurring his vision. Maybe that helps explain why he returned home after finishing college, to make a life in the place his friends once dreamed of leaving. Why he became a coach.

What’s It Like To Sing The Anthem At A Baseball Game? The Story Of One Man’s Perilous Fight | Drew Magary | Deadspin | July 2012

What could be more American than belting out the national anthem before a baseball game? It may be a minor league game, but Magary still makes it his patriotic mission to not screw up too badly.

AND THE ROCKETS’ RED GLAAAAARE …

Singing this part feels like jumping a motorcycle off a rising drawbridge. It’s just a straight crescendo, going up and up and up. If you trip anytime before “glare,” you’re fucking dead. You won’t make it.

Inside Major League Baseball’s Dominican Sweatshop System | Ian Gordon | Mother Jones | March/April 2013

Prospect Yewri Guillén died of a preventable bacterial infection at a Washington Nationals training academy in the Dominican Republic. It turns out the Nationals, along with many other MLB teams, have no certified trainers or doctors at their camps, where they risk the health of their Dominican ballplayers to bring cheap talent back to the US.

Guillén’s death is the worst-case scenario in a recruiting system that treats young Dominicans as second-class prospects, paying them far less than young Americans and sometimes denying them benefits that are standard in the US minor leagues, such as health insurance and professionally trained medical staff. MLB regulations allow teams to troll for talent on the cheap in the Dominican Republic: Unlike American kids, who must have completed high school to sign, Dominicans can be signed as young as 16, when their bodies and their skills are far less developed.

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Your Weekend Longreads List on America’s Pastime

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Zojirushi SJ-SHE10 Stainless Steel Tuff Sports Bottle, 32-Ounce

by Myrna Posted on June 16, 2013

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How Shutterfly and Other Social Sites Leave Your Kids Vulnerable to Hackers

by Cynthia Trevino Posted on May 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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This spring, with millions of kids across the United States participating in sports leagues and other activities, coaches and harried parents are turning to social sharing websites to keep everything running smoothly. The most popular option is Shutterfly, which boasted around 5 million visitors per month as of March 2012. Shutterfly’s free “Team” service allows users (which includes anyone over 13) to upload photos of kids, home addresses, emails, gender information, phone numbers, school names, jersey numbers, and game schedules—all in one place. The American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) has a partnership with Shutterfly, and coaches actively encourage parents and coaches from over 50,000 soccer teams to utilize the service.

But there’s a catch: Even though Shutterfly’s privacy policy claims that the whole site is protected with SSL—a strong form of Internet security used to prevent websites from being hacked into—it isn’t actually using the encryption for much of the website, including the team pages that contain detailed information on the kids. While plenty of sites across the web don’t use this extra security, it’s more worrisome for a large social sharing site not to do so, especially one that features kids’ sensitive data. (Facebook, Twitter, and Google all use SSL, as do banks and many sites that conduct credit card transactions.)

Emails from representatives for Shutterfly, obtained by Mother Jones, show that the photo-sharing company has been aware of the problem for at least six months, but hasn’t taken action to fix it, nor asked users to remove their kids’ information from the site. That means that sensitive information about children can be easily obtained by anyone with basic tech skills, a quick download of a program called “Cookie Cadger,” and a computer with the right equipment.

“I was an AYSO coach for my younger son last fall, and I went to a coach training session where I was given a flyer about how to set up a Shutterfly account for my team,” says Tony Porterfield, who is also a technical lead engineer for Cisco in Los Altos, California. “So I went on, I set up a roster, and then I realized right away that there was no SSL security. I couldn’t believe it. I thought: ‘We’re protecting our credit cards, but we’re not protecting our kids?'”â&#128;&#139;

Eteamz, which claimed “at least several million members” as of 2008, is another social sharing site catering to youth sports teams that doesn’t use SSL across its entire site, also in apparent contradiction to its privacy policy. And TeamSnap, which has about 2 million users, two thirds of which are children, didn’t use SSL across much of its website until being contacted by Mother Jones on May 2. At that point the company moved swiftly to encrypt most pages containing sensitive personal information, though some pages on the site remain vulnerable.

As you’ll see in our following video demo, Porterfield used a computer to set up fake accounts on these websites. Then, with very little technical know-how needed, Porterfield was able to use another computer to download a program called Cookie Cadger and hack into these fake pages with just a few keystrokes. He was able to view and tamper with hypothetically sensitive information—such as home addresses and team schedules—as well as add his email to the team mailing lists to get updates on the whereabouts of the kids. (We’ve blurred and left out key steps in this process in the video.)

“We are aware of this issue and are actively working on a technology solution,” says Gretchen Sloan, a spokesperson for Shutterfly. “In the meantime, we recommend users avoid sending or receiving sensitive information over unsecured Wi-Fi networks.”

Dave DuPont, a spokesman for TeamSnap, said: “The security of any computer system hinges not on any single tool or element, but on a systemic approach to protecting all data, which we steadfastly employ. We’ve since expanded SSL encryption to the Roster and Photo pages, and it is a solid complement to TeamSnap data security strategy.”

A spokesperson for Eteamz declined to comment.

To understand how easy it is to break into a website without SSL security, it helps to know what SSL is. SSL (which stands for Secure Sockets Layer) is protocol that provides assurance that a site is legitimate, that the connection to the site hasn’t been modified by a hacker, and that no one is intercepting information flowing between the user and the site. Secure website addresses will start with “https” instead of “http.” When a website doesn’t use SSL, cookies—the small pieces of data that store your username and password—are not secure and can easily be obtained by a hacker, whose computer can “grab” the cookies over an open wi-fi network.

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How Shutterfly and Other Social Sites Leave Your Kids Vulnerable to Hackers

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Don’t Use Jason Collins As an Excuse to Blame Homophobia on Black People

by Justin Thomas Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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Jason Collins began his coming out essay in Sports Illustrated with the words, “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay.”

There’s a reason Collins chose to mention he was black and gay—as though those two things were in as much tension as being the first openly gay male athlete active in one of America’s favorite sports—but it deserves a more thoughtful examination than the one offered by Charles P. Pierce in Grantland. Pierce, feigning a familiarity with the history of the civil rights movement and the black church belied by the weakness of the evidence he’s able to provide, writes:

His explanation for his decision to come out is rich with the historical “dual identity” forced on black Americans under Jim Crow, and the similar dynamic within which he lived as a gay man. Homophobia in the black community—indeed, even among the leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s—was some of the most virulent and stubborn of all, and there are still some who resent the equation of the gay rights movement with their struggle. In his announcement in Sports Illustrated, then, Collins gave every indication that he’s fully aware of the historic and cultural dimensions of his decision, and of the sacrifices made elsewhere so that he would be free to make it now.

Look, man: It’s called “double consciousness,” not “dual identity,” and it’s an intellectual concept applicable to black existence in America prior to Jim Crow and after its demise. “Dual identity” is what Batman has. And Pierce’s mangling of W.E.B. DuBois is the least of the problems with this paragraph.

There was certainly homophobia in the civil rights movement—but in the 1950s and ’60s, American society was homophobic, and Pierce offers no evidence that the civil rights movement was more homophobic than any other American institution during that period. Given that one of the architects of the civil rights movement’s nonviolent strategy was Bayard Rustin, it was arguably less homophobic than much of society at the time. With a few notable exceptions, surviving leaders of the movement—from Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) to Rev. James Lawson to Jesse Jackson to Julian Bond—are all in favor of gay and lesbian rights.

There’s also little evidence for the proposition that black homophobia is “the most virulent and stubborn of all.” Black folks, who were disenfranchised for centuries, didn’t put any of those old anti-sodomy laws on the books. The legal architecture of discrimination based on sexual orientation is one of the few things in America that dates back to colonial times that wasn’t built by black people.

Rather than black homophobia, “stubborn” better describes black resistance to conservative appeals based on homophobia, or the determination of black voters in 2012 who defied a nationwide voter suppression campaign to elect a black president who has himself endorsed the right of same-sex couples to marry. “Virulent and stubborn” doesn’t really explain the sharp reversal in public opinion on gay rights happening not just in the black community but also everywhere else, a reversal so dramatic that the state with the fourth-largest black population in the country became one of the first to adopt marriage equality by a popular vote. In some polls, black voters lag behind other groups in approving of same-sex marriage, but the trend is clear, and black Americans’ loyalty to a party that supports marriage equality makes it clear that however broad the remaining opposition is, it isn’t very deep.

Worst of all, the only evidence Pierce offers for the idea that “the leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s” were the “most virulent and stubborn” homophobes of all (a description that doesn’t even fit Marion Barry) is a link to an article about Rev. William Owens, a Tennessee pastor bankrolled by the National Organization for Marriage as part of their (failed) racial-wedge strategy in 2012 who claims he was a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement.

Well he used to, anyway. Last year, I reached out to three actual surviving leaders of the Nashville sit-in movement, Lewis, Lawson, and Vivian. Not one of them had ever heard of Owens, and Lawson and Vivian were astonished that anyone who might have been part of that movement at that time would be fighting gay rights now. In the last NOM press release I saw, Owens had demoted himself from “leader” to “participant.” If you’re going to slander some of the greatest people America has ever been lucky enough to call her own, you need more examples than one guy history can’t even characterize as a backbencher.

Other than that, sure, he’s a perfect example of how homophobia in the civil rights movement was the most “stubborn and virulent” of all. Cool history, bro.

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Don’t Use Jason Collins As an Excuse to Blame Homophobia on Black People

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Yes, Phil Jackson, You Did Know Gay NBA Players

by Andrew Karolitz Posted on April 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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The NBA career of Hall of Famer Phil Jackson spanned six decades: He played 12 years and snagged two league titles for the New York Knicks before winning 11 more championships as the coach of stars like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal. But during all of his time in the league, he said in a Huffington Post Live interview earlier this week, he’s “never run into” gay professional basketball players.

Maybe Jackson’s Zen-ness got in the way of the 67-year-old’s memory and common sense, so let’s help him out:

In 2011, fellow Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said, “Every player has played with gay guys. Any professional athlete who gets on TV or radio and says he never played with a gay guy is a stone-freakin’ idiot.” So there’s that.
John Amaechi, who came out in 2007 after he’d retired (and who’s mentioned by Kurt Rambis in the above clip), played five seasons in the league in the 1990s and early aughts. He played in 12 games against Jackson’s teams during his career.

More generally, the time when athletes and coaches can deny that there are gay players in pro locker rooms seems to be coming to end. Earlier today, Brendon Ayanbadejo, the former Baltimore Ravens linebacker whose gay-marriage advocacy was criticized by a Maryland state legislator (who in turn was famously blasted by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe on Deadspin), told the Baltimore Sun today that “up to four” NFL players were considering coming out simultaneously sometime in the not-too-distant future:

“I think it will happen sooner than you think,” Ayanbadejo said. “We’re in talks with a handful of players who are considering it. There are up to four players being talked to right now and they’re trying to be organized so they can come out on the same day together. It would make a major splash and take the pressure off one guy. It would be a monumental day if a handful or a few guys come out.

“Of course, there would be backlash. If they could share the backlash, it would be more positive. It’s cool. It’s exciting. We’re in talks with a few guys who are considering it. The NFL and organizations are already being proactive and open if a player does it and if something negative happens. We’ll see what happens.”

The two most-recent big-name athletes to come out of the closet were both soccer players: Robbie Rogers, who played for the US national soccer team, made his announcement in February, while women’s star Megan Rapinoe came out before last year’s Olympics. And while no NFL, NBA, or Major League Baseball player has ever come out of the closet while still playing, that looks like it will change sooner than later. So if the Zen Master ends up taking a job in an NBA front office, maybe he’ll finally run into an openly gay NBA player.

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Yes, Phil Jackson, You Did Know Gay NBA Players

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