We are now into our second week of the European Championships (Euro 2020), which was delayed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As always we have been privileged to see gripping performances, fantastic play and epic goals. But what struck me the most is the solidarity and sportsmanship shown by players and fans following the on-the-field collapse of Danish attacking midfielder Christian Eriksen on June 12 during a first-round game against Finland. Everyone on on the field and around the world was stunned. Thankfully, he has recovered and is undergoing continuing treatment at the hospital.
What has followed has truly been inspirational. Finland captain Tim Sparv expressed his concern following the incident. He and his team wore warm-up shirts in support of Eriksen. Even though I cannot speak or read Danish, I intuited that "Hele Danmark er med dig, Christian" (a large sign displayed by Danish fans) meant "All of Denmark is with you, Christian". The power of empathy and solidarity is truly amazing. For me, this is the beauty of sports. They can overcome linguistic barriers and extricate the best of humanity from the deepest recesses of our current selves. I was moved when after the moment that Eriksen collapsed Finnish and Danish fans chanted his name from one side of the stadium to the other. When the Danish team returned to the field, emotionally devastated, the Finnish team stood and applauded them. I have always enjoyed the "guard of honor" which we have seen football (soccer) teams has used to show respect for opposing players and coaches. But this gesture touched me. I wish all sports could showcase humanity like this.
Kevin De Bruyne
But the most endearing and sincere gesture came from Belgium and super star Kevin De Bruyne. Just before the game began, Belgium's Jan Vertonghen presented Denmark with a Belgian shirt covered with signatures from the Belgian players encased in a frame. This is pure class. But for me the most poignant moment came when Kevin De Bruyne scored the goal that won the game for his team and broke the hearts of millions of Danes. Instead of engaging in a wild celebration, De Bruyne displayed no open exhilaration and extorted his teammates not to show up the opposition. He did this out of respect for the Danish team and their fans. This is what being a great sportsman is all about. I follow Burnley and De Bruyne and his Manchester City teammates frequently wallop that team in the Premier League, but I tip my hat to him. He is class and we need more people like him in this world.
And then we have Bo Schemblecher, who was coach of the University of Michigan football team from 1968-1990. Recent revelations by his son Matt accuse a former university team doctor of sexually abusing him and that his father, Bo, did nothing about it. Now amidst this scandal, some former University of Michigan football players have started a petition to defend the now deceased coach's legacy. We have seen a similar reaction in wake of the firing of Pennsylvania State University's (American) football coach Joe Paterno for his failure to act to prevent the abuse of young boys by one of his coaches. I have always had misgivings about how sports-centric the US has become. But now it appears that sports allegiance has superseded morals and ethical values in our society.
Football (soccer) is far from perfect, but it is more likely to provide shining moments that remind us that we have more in common that we acknowledge. Right now, in Europe they are celebrating humanity, while on "our side of the pond" we celebrate celebrity.
For the last several weeks the US has been bookended by two cases that are symptomatic of what is ailing our society and country. For just under a year now the US has had to do some soul searching following the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of the now former police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was recently found guilty of all three charges in the death of George Floyd and is now in prison awaiting sentencing. This has bought a measure of relief to the Black Lives Matter movement and to the wider African-American population, especially to those who live in the Minneapolis area.
The other case that has our country in its tight grip involves Dejywan Floyd, the man who succumbed to road rage and shot and killed the passenger (who happened to be white) of a vehicle that had passed him on the I-95 highway in North Carolina on March 25th. The George Floyd case is representative of the police violence perpetrated against Black men that we have seen far too often. The Chauvin conviction is a small first step to addressing this issue. The Dejywan Floyd is more complicated. The issues at play are the easy access to guns and the phenomenon of road rage that turns normally calm people into violent lunatics.
Source: https://www.wgal.com
The Dejywan Floyd case has not received the same media attention that the George Floyd case has. And that is understandable given all that is at play in the Chauvin trial. But I think a far more insidious factor is that our country is not really ready to tackle the issue of road rage (we could also make the case about violence against woman since the murder is a male and the victim a female). We have already seen the strong resistance to any form of gun control. The violence committed against George Floyd was egregious; the violence committed by Dejywan Floyd is harder to pinpoint because it is almost ephemeral, evaporating like the morning dew on a late summer morning after the act was committed. Road rage lasts seconds and dissipates where the violence exhibited by Chauvin lasted longer, was more embedded in his personality and, more importantly, was captured on video. In the Dejywan Floyd case, there were no witnesses to the crime other than the father and children who watched their wife and mother die needlessly.
Our country has closed the book on Derek Chauvin and justice has been delivered to the aggrieved George Floyd family. Now it is time to turn our attention to another chapter in this most difficult narrative that we are living: road rage violence. Both of the Floyd cases reflect a part of us that we do not want to admit to. In his novel Cousin Bette, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac writes, "Love is the gold, but hate the iron of that mine of emotions that lies buried within us." Thanks to social movements like Black Lives Matter we can dig through our many strata of ignorance, racism, indifference and lack of knowledge and empathy to bring to light important events and issues that must be faced as a nation. There are so many diamonds and minerals that must be examined in their own right; no one diamond shines brighter than the others. We must not forget this.
Taking de Balzac's quote further, the United States is like a coin; one side is made of gold and the other is made of iron. As we all experience the upheaval of social justice, we should be very concerned with which side shines brightest when we are back on our feet again.
They come from two very different worlds (baseball and football [soccer in the American vernacultar]), but they comingle in my being, for I am a fan of both teams. I have been a life-long Yankees fan (nearly 45 years), and I have been rooting for Burnley for the last 12 years, first following them when they toured the United States in 2009. One team, the Yankees, has a payroll of over $200 million; the other, Burnley, features a payroll that just tops $35 million.
But it is Burnley that has shown more heart and grit this season. Featuring no super-star players they depend on the strength of community, teamwork and a solid defensive organization. For the last several years, they refuted the critics who predicted that they would be relegated from the Premier League to the Championship (they finished in 10th place last season) and they frequently "punch above their weight" as the saying goes. They embody the true working-class spirit of their region in Lancashire, United Kingdom.
The Yankees, on the other hand, have been lethargic, languid and almost feckless in their play and results. Losing is one thing (more on that in a minute), but to show no effort or dedication or passion during a run of miserable play is disappointing. The Yankees have won five and lost 10, recently being swept by their division rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays. I watched their games on Friday and Saturday, but did not watch the Sunday game. Why? Because I had watched Burnley play a superb game against the powerful Manchester United at the venerable Old Trafford stadium. They really put it to Manchester United and in the words of many commentators, "made them look ordinary." Given the huge differences in payroll, this is quite a feat. They pressed the Manchester United defense and improved their pace in possession, something they usually do not do and forward Chris Wood was a constant threat. One Manchester United fan commented that "Wood was a handful". Another Red Devil fan from Norway agreed, saying, "Yeah, and such a great attitude. Arm in the back-no diving, no whining. 'All in' duels, hard but fair. Great positioning. Fun to watch and gave our guys a challenging match."
In the end, Mason Greenwood and Edinson Cavani did Burnley in, scoring in the final ten minutes of the game to seal the victory and douse the Clarets with bitter disappointment. I was dismayed by the result, but proud of Burnley; they gave 110% throughout the whole game and were sunk by the brilliance of the young and mega-talented Greenwood. As I mentioned earlier, there is no dishonor in defeat as long as you have played well. Burnley played with the abandon of a team that refused to be daunted by an opponent with a much larger payroll and a more luminous pedigree.
I do not see this passion or effort from the New York Yankees and after the Burnley-Manchester United game I decided to forego the Yankees-Rays game; I was not ready to come down from the high of passionate and gritty play to the desultory form and output we have seen from the Yankees so far this season. It is hard to believe but I now find the Yankees boring to watch. There is no spark, no pulse it seems to get excited about. The season is still early, of course, but right now I am not compelled to watch a team that does not evince passion or excitement.
What can the solution be? Who knows. But contrasting the managers, Sean Dyche for Burnley and Aaron Boone for the Yankees, we can see a glimmer of why the teams have different attitudes. Dyche is fiery and extremely organized at the back and has the respect of his players. Boone is low key and although considered a "player's coach" we have yet to see him bring out the passion that Dyche does with his Burnley players.
The recent revelation that six Premier League teams and others in Europe want to break away and form their own Super League, where the best of the best play each other weekly and no other teams, especially those with small budgets can participate, is symptomatic of the crisis facing football. What I love about the Premier League is that small teams like Burnley can play against the top-flight teams like Manchester United (they beat Manchester United 2-0 at Old Trafford last season). I would hate to see this change.
Last month I arrived at JFK and took a ride to Connecticut. The driver of the vehicle was an avuncular man in his late-50s to early 60s from Jamaica. He had come to the US many years before. We enjoyed a great conversation during the trip when suddenly he said something that startled me. He said "The problem here (the US) is that women have too many rights. In Jamaica the men take the lead and women should follow." Clearly he comes from another generation and another culture whose views on gender equality are not the same as the ones we value today. I talked to him about this and he was polite and listened, even nodding a few times. Do I think I convinced him to change his view on this matter? Of course not. You cannot change such a deeply held belief in one conversation. I don't know if he could ever be made to change his antiquated views. I don't know if people are able to change after they reach a certain age or a certain point in their life.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the misogyny so prevalent in the "rich, white boy" caricatures that we see revolve around Brett Kavanaugh, only captures a small portion of the people who feel this way. This body of disbelievers in gender equality is much more diverse than we would like to think.
Forty-five years ago the Chilean musician and activist Victor Jara was executed by Chilean solders on the orders of Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who led a US-backed military coup that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende (September 11, 1973). Many Americans are unaware of Jara and the legacy of his music. We are all either too preoccupied with our work, studies, relationships, sports and indifference to know about what happened to him.
In many ways Jara was the Bob Dylan of Chile and his music powerfully transcends the barrier of the years to inspire us now in these dark days of political self-indulgence and reality television shows.
I recently rediscovered Jara's music and was really touched by it. Even if you do not know Spanish, it is worth listening to.
Given the press coverage that the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for a seat in the US Supreme Court and the 24/7 media circus that has followed him since Christine Blasey Ford announced she had been assaulted by him years ago at a party, it is almost a challenge to read about anything else in the world. In fact, the September 28th earthquake that registered 7.5 on the Richter Scale unleashing a powerful tsunami against Palu, Indonesia resulting in the deaths of at least 800 people, has barely registered a blip on the US news media cycle. This is disconcerting, especially for those of us who consider ourselves "global citizens" but it is not alone in being shunned for more "newsworthy" items.
For some time now, the Swedish Academy, that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize, has been embroiled in a controversy that it would much rather go away. On October 1, a court in Sweden sentenced the renowned French photographer and cultural icon Jean-Claude Arnault to two years in prison for rape. Last November 18 women had come forward to charge him with assault. Naturally, Mr. Arnault proclaimed his innocence, but that is not the controversial story here. His wife, the poet Katarina Frostenson, is a member of the Academy, but was not asked to leave. Inexplicably, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, was. Ms Danius was the first woman to ever lead the Academy.
Two former secretaries, Sture Allen and Horace Engdahl, have not only been very critical of Ms. Danius, but they have decried the reaction to the allegations against Arnault. They just cannot seem to accept that a woman held a leadership role in an organization that is essentially an all men's club. Shame on them. It appears that they suffer the same malady that has afflicted many of the who have attacked Dr. Blasey Ford. It is ironic that this mentality retains its global vitality; no borders check this sad condition.
It remains to be seen what will happen with the Brett Kavanaugh-Christine Blasey Ford saga, but one thing that we should keep in mind is this: we should not be distracted by the circus, the media frenzy, the numerous memes travelling the Internet and the screeds and tirades on the blogosphere. We must also look at what is going on with the Swedish Academy and put the matter in perspective. The issue is much more than that of a Democrat vs Republican or whether Kavanaugh is fit for the Supreme Court (I don't believe he is); it is about the issue of balance of male-female power and how it is often balanced in favor of males around the world. Let us not get too caught up in the Kavanaugh-Blasey Ford situation; let us look at other similar situations and bring them to the fore. They also need media attention.
Much like the US Senate Judiciary Committee, the Swedish Academy is a venerable and historic institution that needs to join the 21st century. Only by directing massive media attention at it, can we hope to spur change.
