The recent “basketbrawl” in the Palace at Auburn Hills, Michigan that saw Indiana Pacers basketball players climb into the stands to exchange pokes at fans after one had tossed a drink on one of the players has been the subject of many comments.
The pundit rumbling ran from criticism of street thug attitudes of NBA players to out-of-control fans.
What strikes me as the problem, however, goes far beyond bad behavior by a few at a basketball game.
It goes to an affliction that inspires bad behavior by Americans in general. Maybe it’s part of being the world’s Super Power. The supreme position pervades the society starting with its leadership and extending to the rest of us.
Americans enjoy enormous benefits of empire as Romans and other subjugators once did. We don’t recognize, except with arrogance, the booty it brings us. Most believe we actually earn our riches rather than collect them as the spoils of power.
This sense of privilege has become part of the American culture, seen most simply in our sports and the behavior surrounding high-priced professional play. Entitlement seems an accessory to being American today.
Fans believe they have the privilege of abusing players. Players feel they have the right of retribution. Sports reporters judge they have the dispensation to scold both players and fans (but treat owners gently).
Fans pay big bucks to enjoy sports. Players earn big bucks to entertain fans. Owners entitle themselves to bigger bucks and squeeze the fans for what they can get.
When Ron Artest of the Pacers climbed into the stands after being hit in the face by a paper-drinking cup, he had the misfortune to have his actions recorded by a TV camera. Brain-searing cable TV repetition showcased the event.
Artest was suspended for the rest of the season and other players were given stiff suspensions. The fans so far seem to have evaded responsibility but some will likely also suffer.
The owners of the Palace, ensconced in upscale suburban Auburn Hills - not as one fan described it as in Detroit, our “dirtiest city” - apparently will pay no cost; free to sell as much liquor, beer and wine as before.
The repetitive TV clips of the violence framed the fracas as a major national event, as if our world would collapse without public knowledge of the event. (Notice the major play given the $12-million “resignation” of Butch Davis on the front page of the Plain Dealer – headlined “Bye, bye, Butch” - and the acquiesce of sports television news to film owner Randy Lerner’s press conference - at his request. Is there any other proof needed of reporting according to class dictates?)
Were the Palace fisticuffs that important? Or is it just another example of our expanding sense of privilege? Fans feel the right to toss beer, soda, or verbal abuse on players and players feel their due to pummel abusive fans.
The sense of privilege extends far beyond the sports venue.
Such a heady sense of the right to do anything if one has the power to do it leads the President, the Congress and the American people to entitle themselves to invade another nation at will, and to destroy cities because we can do it. It gives us the right, apparently, to alter the Geneva Accords to our liking and to give a new description to torture. We of power can do anything.
The culture is shot through with this sense of privilege. We are special people. So above others.
Who are the top politicians today – the strutting President George Bush and the swaggering Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their haughty demeanor wreaks with this sense of privilege. Both are very popular public figures, though very questionable leaders. They fit the times. They suit the bully culture.
A look at how our major corporations and their leaders have been acting also reveals this sense of privilege, well described in The Raw Deal, a book by Ellen Frank, a senior economic analyst for the Poverty Institute at Rhode Island College.
Frank describes how a number of corporations revved up their stocks in the 1990s only to have them crash. Stockholders and employees tied in to company stocks via 401(k) plans bore the enormous cost as corporate heads bailed out before the crash.
We saw Global Crossing’s stock tumble from $100 a share to become worthless. Yet CEO Gary Winnick exercised his options and walked away with $734 million. Wasn’t it his right as an insider?
“An investigation by the Wall Street Journal and Thomson Financial analysts estimates that top telecommunications executives captured a staggering $14.2 billion in stock gains between 1997 and 2001,” she further writes. If they can do it, why not?
Qwest Communications director Phil Anschustz, she notes, cashed in $1.6 billion in two years before Qwest’s stock, loaded with debt, lost 96 percent of its value.
I only mention these examples of corporate thuggery by arrogant corporate chieftains from only a few pages of The Raw Deal, suggesting that entitlement runs rampant in Corporate America.
We cannot cure the world until we cure ourselves and we are in no mood to pursue the humility it would take to accomplish that.
Art helps the economy again at Channel 19
Some months ago, I asked, “… What do they do for an encore?” after the TV news news cheap broadcast of former Brookpark Mayor Tom Coyne’s drunken, naked body.
Well, now we know.
The answer is the escalation to a TV reporter’s naked body on Ch. 19, the station that dares to take “news” to its most absurd.
It wasn’t news. It was a rating period titillation and the reporter’s claim that she participated for art’s sake is pathetically ridiculous.
Frank Jackson for Mayor?
To be truthful I never thought of Frank Jackson as a mayoral candidate. However, I did not think of him as council president either, a post he now holds.
Jackson didn’t seem to me as someone who pursued personal power as he operated quietly as a ward council member interested in the people he served.
However, as they say, he saw his chances and he took them. He will make a formidable candidate for mayor, mostly because he’ll probably be the only candidate who can honestly claim to represent the interests of actual Cleveland residents, most of them poor and black.
Jackson operates quietly, keeping his moves close to the vest. He always has. I intermittently would stop by his office to talk with him. I did not sense a great desire for higher office.
What I did see, however, was a council member clearly engaged with the problems that affected his ward, and willing to compromise only when he felt he had achieved benefits for them.
Though some believe he would be a hindrance to the invisible ruling elite and their desires, he’s willing to compromise. He pushed through Council legislation for a convention center though the plan fell through. He also cooperated to give the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the extra savings from interest on bonds after the bonds were refinanced, a $2 million immediate payoff with continued added revenue for it.
Jackson’s penchant for deal making could be good for city residents. He always wants something in return for something. Little of that political give and take has been evident for the last 20 years as politicians of the ilk of Voinovich, Forbes and White gave away city assets to corporate interests for no or little return.
His candidacy could be a welcome assurance to a debate long overdue in Cleveland – the deliberation over allocation of resources for Clevelanders, distinguished from the economic needs for those who need the city for private interests.
Ideastream combines WVIZ, WCPN
Public television, WVIZ, and public radio, WCPN, have combined under their efforts under Ideastream, which a new financing mechanism that also calls for some collaboration for the two non-profit entities.
One of the major Ideastream efforts has been the airing of “A Quiet Crisis,” along with publication by the Plain Dealer. It also has done collaborative ventures on regionalism.
“Ideastream” has become the new corporate logo of public broadcasting here.
As a combined entity in 2002, Ideastream had $7,959,787 in contributions, gifts, and grants with another $4,452,302 in government contributions for a total of $12,411,869 in revenues.
Salaries of the top executives were WVIZ’s Jerry Wareham $191,060 with another $29,240 as an employee benefit contribution and WCPN’s Kathryn Jensen, $153,800 with $24,003 in benefit contributions.
Convention Center Study
Why doesn’t the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Authority make its proceedings more accessible to the public?
The search committee has been holding meetings but the public isn’t made aware of the proceedings. The facilities authority hasn’t promoted its deliberations because, I would charge, it wants to do public business in relative privacy. A very bad start to a body that will ask for hundreds of millions of public funds.
This is the 21st Century, but instead of making information available via the internet, open to most of the public, the authority, headed by Bill Reidy, also chair of the Gateway Economic Development Committee, operates essentially in secret.
The reason this publicly named authority acts so arrogantly is relatively simple: It wants an answer that fits private interests’ needs, not the public they supposedly serve. from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldo@adelphia.net (:divend:)