One of the bigger stories of the past week or two - it was well-covered in the newspapers and on TV and shouted about on social media - was President Trump’s anger over football players who refuse to stand and salute during the playing of the national anthem.
In a speech and some tweets, he urged football team owners to just fire any player who refuses to stand up and salute, then added that the game is in decline because referees are calling too many penalties.
A lot of the coverage has been, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. Stories tell what Trump said and what the players said. When he disinvited NBA star Stephen Curry from coming to the White House with his winning team, the Golden State Warriors player pointed out that he had already said publicly he would not be going. LeBron James chimed in, tweeting to his followers “going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up...”
The New York Times, ever accurate, pointed out that James has twice as many twitter followers as the president.
But, the rules and restrictions of journalism put one really important thing down towards the bottom of the Times long, long story about the Trump outburst. It had to.
There often isn’t much flexibility in writing a newspaper story. It may seem that way when you start, when the paper or the computer screen is blank. But, the minute you write that first sentence, you are getting locked in. Fast.
This happened. So, that happened. And where did it happen or why did it happen? Who did it, who reacted to it, what are people saying about it? What does it all mean? Who gets hurt? What does it cost? What does it say about us? Question after question after question, and the story soon ends up following one sentence after another like a train on the tracks.
Pretend it’s a chess game. The starting player can make any move they want - dozens of good ones, hundreds of oddball ones and a lot more stupid ones. Just like a story can start wherever you want, then follow any path you pick.
But after you and your opponent make a few moves, the wide-open game has become a Kabuki dance of thrust and parry. And the wide open path you started down when you wrote the first few paragraphs of your story has become the only path it can follow.
Most of the coverage I have seen on this controversy has focused on Trump’s suggestion that owners fire players who do not stand up during the anthem, and the owner’s response - including owners who supported Trump during the election - that he was absolutely wrong, disrespectful of the game and its players, and perhaps unaware of the meaning of a contract.
This, of course, put a small but interesting nugget of the story down towards the bottom of some newspapers and left out of others and out of most 60-second broadcast stories. That was Trump complaining that referees were ruining the game by trying to control rough tackles.
“They’re ruining the game. They’re ruining the game. That’s what they want to do. They want to hit. They want to hit. It’s hurting the game,” the president was quoted as saying.
That’s the little thing that says so much.
It says that the president is unaware, or does not care, about the risk - we could actually call it a near-certainty - that most of today’s pro football players face the likelihood of brain damage. Many already have it, although how serious it may be can’t be determined. Yet.
The most comprehensive study to date, done by Boston University and the VA Boston Healthcare System, lasted eight years and looked at the brains of 202 deceased former football players. One of the worst kinds of brain damage, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, can only be verified by an autopsy of a player’s brain.
(Now if I were following traditional journalistic standards, there would be several paragraphs here about CTE and the difficulty of detecting it, or perhaps a sidebar on the disease if the paper had enough space. But, since I am retired, I am free to let you look it up yourself)
Anyway, that study of the brains of the former players - at all levels - showed 177 of them had CTE. It also showed three of 14 people who only played high school football had CTE, and 48 out of 53 college players had CTE.
There are other studies, opinion surveys actually, that show a lot of teenagers would be willing to trade the last 10 or 15 years of their life if they could instantly get fame and fortune right away. Being 80 or 90 and living on social security doesn’t look as good as having a couple of big houses, beautiful girls on your arm and the applause of millions of people, not to mention seeing dozens of people wearing your jersey whenever you go out in public.
No, as our president says, “they want to hit.”
I wonder how much money there is to care for the brain-damaged in his new health care bill.
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