Episode 151: Transphobic legislation, NFL Free Agency Madness, and Dr. Adia Benton on Sports and COVID-19
This week the gang’s all here with feelings of solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk about the humor of social media in dark times. Then, we discuss the terrible legislation barring trans athletes from participating in school sports [9:24] and suggest how to stop its passing. Jessica sits down with cultural anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on sports [20:31]. Finally, it's Shireen's turn to lead us into our conversation on Tom Brady, Cam Newton, and NFL Free Agency [38:05].
Of course you’ll hear the Burn Pile [57:36], our Bad Ass Woman of the Week and what is good in our worlds.
Links
URGENT: Idaho is hours from enacting anti-trans bill amid coronavirus pandemic: https://www.powerplays.news/p/urgent-idaho-is-hours-from-enacting
Idaho’s legislature hasn’t addressed the coronavirus. But it has passed 2 anti-trans bills this week: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/18/21184941/idaho-coronavirus-anti-trans-bills-birth-certificate
Report: NFL Teams Put Clauses in Contracts for Failed Physicals Amid COVID-19: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2882006-report-nfl-teams-put-clauses-in-contracts-for-failed-physicals-amid-covid-19
DeAndre Hopkins tried to soften blow, but perception of toxic Texans remains for Bill O'Brien: https://sports.yahoo.com/de-andre-hopkins-tried-to-soften-blow-but-perception-of-toxic-texans-remains-for-bill-o-brien-to-clean-up-212241701.html
Roger Goodell, NFL happily cashing in on the coronavirus pandemic: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/ny-roger-goodell-nfl-free-agency-coronavirus-20200321-ptb4qvzi2raw3gyv44f5dnqg4q-story.html
The NFL Is Wrong Not to Delay Free Agency Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/16/coronavirus-nfl-should-delay-free-agency
Aboriginal hockey player says someone cut her hair after game in Nova Scotia: https://globalnews.ca/news/6649832/teen-hockey-player-hair-cut-nova-scotia/
Records show USA Gymnastics Safe Sport funding continues to lag: https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/18/records-show-usa-gymnastics-safe-sport-funding-continues-to-lag/
Otters Welcome Kiana Scott to Scouting Staff, First Female Scout in OHL: https://ottershockey.com/article/otters-welcome-kiana-scott-to-scouting-staff-first-female-scout-in-ohl
AFLW: Melissa Hickey announces retirement: https://www.geelongcats.com.au/news/578605/aflw-melissa-hickey-announces-retirement
Transcript
Brenda: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down: it’s the feminist sports podcast you need, even, and maybe especially, when we are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and there are not too many sports actually taking place outside of our homes. Our heartfelt wishes of health and safety go out to the world right now. We’re thinking a lot about those in precarious economic positions, who can’t afford to distance, to stay at home, or to access healthcare. I’m Brenda Elsey, associate professor of history at Hofstra University, and this week I’m joined by all my co-hosts: Shireen Ahmed, freelance writer and sports activist in Toronto, Canada, and ideologue of the toxic femininity charge; the brilliant Dr. Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State University; Jessica Luther, baker, PhD-er and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape in Austin, Texas; and the unsinkable and whip-smart Lindsay Gibbs, sports reporter and founder of the amazing newsletter on women’s sports Power Plays.
On this week’s show we’re going to discuss anti-trans athlete bills, specifically in Idaho, and the NFL free agency – and perhaps future draft madness. And Jessica has an important interview with cultural anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton about COVID-19 and sports. But before all that…We’re on the internet all the time. [laughs] Extra-all the time. I wanted to ask about things that sort of struck you as funny or ridiculous, tweets that sent you into some sort of relaxing laugh-place. Jessica, you got anything?
Jessica: Yeah, I do. I’m gonna read you this tweet that I saw, and it’s really serious until it’s not. I will explain it, so let me just read it: “My dad's test just came back positive today. Mom getting tested tomorrow. I saw them less than two weeks ago, so now monitoring my health more closely. They're 65+ so I'm pretty terrified even if they seem to be doing alright so far. Apologies for tweeting this as a celeb penis.” The account is “JON HAMM’S PENIS”! [laughter] So, I tried to look up whether or not their parents are doing okay and it was really hard because they’re still staying on topic and there’s just a lot of penis material on the Twitter account. So, that made me LOL even though I really hope that their parents are okay.
Brenda: Wow. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, it’s not really a tweet, I just wanted to give a shoutout to everyone who’s up in #ClubQuarantine last night, especially DJ D-Nice, who somehow has been doing this for multiple days but yesterday did this for over 8 hours, like…Multiple hat changes, it was all of Black Twitter, it was such Black joy, and then it was just people who like Black people and then, as things tend to happen – we’re trendsetters – its was brands. Netflix was there, the NBA came in, every presidential candidate, or the Democratic ones…Elizabeth Warren tweeted “Nevertheless, we danced.” – or did that on IG Live, I cracked up. So yeah, it was really fun. Jackson tried to battle him, and I was up way later than I thought I would be, drinking and dancing in my kitchen, so I’m a little hungover. Shoutout Club Quarantine, no guys groping you! It was the best of both worlds.
But really, my favorite tweet was actually a TikTok that was the put on Twitter by David Kaspbrak, where it starts with the Adele song Someone Like You and it’s from her live performance and it’s just one gummy bear and then it’s everybody! – it pans around the room as everybody starts singing and then it’s just gummy bears everywhere! You maybe have to see it to really appreciate the effect, but it’s been making me smile.
Brenda: Shireen?
Shireen: I have been thoroughly enjoying the different sportscasters doing workouts from their livings rooms – shoutout to Serge Ibaka, who’s been fabulous. My friend Christopher Curtis, in Montreal, has been doing remakes of movies with his cat Ulysses, and his handle is @titocurtis and Ulysses is this beautiful ginger cat, just awesome. Chris hasn’t been feeling great, he’s in self-quarantine and he’s raising money…Just stuff like that is very uplifting for me, I really love it. And in addition to that, I think there’s a lot of fun things happening. If we look for joy, people are really great. But the one thing I came across that really wowed me was Elisha Nochomovitz, a French marathoner. The man ran a marathon on his balcony! On his balcony!
Brenda: Yeah, yeah…I saw it!
Shireen: He ran a marathon! He spent 6 hours and 40 minutes running 42.2 km around this 7-meter balcony in his apartment in Toulouse.
Jessica: Wow, marathoners…are a different breed.
Shireen: I know. I took a shower on Thursday and I’m like, I’m good, I’m tired now. I worked out in the shower and I’m like, done. This man ran a marathon! I find it uplifting, but at the same time I’m kind of salty because I’m not as productive as I think I need to be, but that’s okay. Anyway, man literally ran a marathon on a balcony. Wow. That’s all I got.
Brenda: Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, for me there were two tweets, one of which I think Brenda will shout out…
Brenda: Yeah, I got that too.
Lindsay: The other was somebody who really has never made me laugh or smile, but Ben Roethlisberger [laughs] the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who, three days into quarantine, posted this video on the Pittsburgh Steelers account…He looks like he has been in quarantine for two years! His face is sooo puffy, and he has these blunt bangs across the top that look like the owner of the Oakland Raiders, what’s his name?
Brenda: Davis?
Lindsay: Mark Davis, yeah. And then his beard is–
Jessica: Oh my god!
Lindsay: I mean, we’re talking beyond caveman…
Jessica: Sorry, I looked it up. I looked it up!
Lindsay: We’re talking beyond caveman, even. It’s sooo big. He looks AWFUL. [laughing]
Shireen: It’s sort of like, hipster-gone-terribly-bad. Almost.
Lindsay: Gone terribly bad, and it just brought me so much joy because I’m feeling very ugly in quarantine, you know, we’re at the beginning of this and I’m in need of a haircut and my eyebrows done, but seeing Ben Roethlisberger made me feel very pretty, so…
Brenda: [laughing] Wow. This last one, the tweet that made me laugh this week also comes from someone who usually doesn’t make me laugh or smile, which is: Mike Huckabee. I have to credit all of my co-hosts for bringing my attention to this, especially Linz who, as a southerner in particular, felt really moved by this particular tweet. It’s his advice to all of us who are struggling…[Lindsay laughing] Mike Huckabee says: “Those of us from rural south–” which I guess is somehow also racially coded as not-Atlanta or something? “–know how to handle toilet paper shortage. Eat more corn on the cob! The corn isn't important, but the cobs–” [Brenda laughing, unable to speak] My god. Okay. “The corn isn't important, but the cobs are free and work great!” Now here’s the best part: governor Huckabee is worried about what you’re gonna do with that cob. He says, “Just don't flush them!” [Lindsay laughing] Who’s your audience, Huckabee?! Then, as if he’s Mother Teresa, he ends it with “You're welcome!” [all laughing] Yessir, okay…
Amira: Especially for you, we’ll send out a video of Brenda discovering this tweet in real-time!
Brenda: I really would like to see his instructional video on how he uses those cobs. Alright…So, this week there’s been a number of nefarious legal and policy decisions that seemed like they were slipping through as we evolve and really become concerned with the pandemic that we’re facing. One of those in another in a series of anti-trans athlete bills. Lindsay wrote about in Power Plays, so Lindsay, I wondered if you could intro us into this discussion.
Lindsay: Yes, thank you. So, I also did, in addition to writing about this for Power Plays, a hot take segment on the Burn It All Down feed with Ashland Johnson, the founder of Inclusion Playbook, so you can go back and listen to that. This is such an important topic that we want to cover it on the main show as well. There’s about 18 anti-trans bills being pushed through legislatures all across this state that all specifically target sports participation for trans youth right now. A lot of state legislatures are shut down right now or only prioritizing the coronavirus because, you know, international pandemic and everything. But Idaho is committed to its bigotry, so the bill that I wrote about this week is called HB500 which is dubiously called the “Fairness In Women’s Sports Act” and it would require anyone participating in girls’ sports whose gender is questioned to undergo hormone level monitoring, chromosome analysis, and an inspection of the athlete’s internal and external reproductive anatomy in order to participate in sports. Obviously these are incredibly intrusive procedures, and a reminder: we’re talking about youth and school sports. These are kids that will be subjected to this.
So this bill right now is so urgent, because it actually passed through the Idaho legislature this week, and it’s currently sitting on the desk of Idaho governor Brad Little. We might know by the time you’re listening to this episode whether he has vetoed this bill, which is what there’s a campaign to do – once again, listen to the hot take with Ashland for information about how you can help with that campaign. Idaho knows that if they push this bill into law that they will be sued, but they’re wiling to, it seems, spend millions of dollars defending this in court, defending this bigotry. The National Center for Transgender Equality sent out an open letter signed by organizations this week, and I want to read one of the top parts. It says, “Despite the bill’s stated intent – to protect and promote girls’ sports – this bill would compromise access to sports for many vulnerable youth while doing nothing to support young athletes or to address real threats to girls’ sports. This bill blatantly targets an already-marginalized community in athletics and decreases their participation in sports. Transgender youth already participate at significantly lower rates and already feel unsafe in athletic spaces.”
Brenda: So just very briefly, in terms of the cost, I found it amazing that they just discussed openly “we know we’ll be sued,” and I want to just say, the Republican representative that sponsored the bill, Barbara…I’m not sure how I say it, Ehardt, who does work in the Idaho legislature, has been using Title IX over and over and over again to argue that somehow trans girls and women athletes are negating Title IX, that’s what she said. I just want to name her by name and say that particular Republican legislator is making that argument. Jessica, I know you wanted to talk a little bit about athletes?
Jessica: Yeah. I wanted to re-up…I really appreciated Lindsay’s hot take with Ashland Johnson and I thought that Ashland had this amazing point about the women…What was the name of the bill again?
Lindsay: “Fairness In Women’s Sports Act.”
Jessica: Yeah. Ashland made a really good point that we are literally in the middle of a conversation right now around the US women’s national team and just female athletes around the world about what we need and want for fairness and equity in sports, and it’s not this! It’s not like it’s a secret, what it is that women are asking for in order for there to be “fairness,” and I just thought that was such a good point. I was just…I don’t know why, I live in Texas and I’m well aware of Republican legislatures that don’t give a shit, but just…There are three anti-trans bills that they put up in Idaho this session and at least two of them, including this one that we’re talking about right here, the Attorney General of Idaho is like, these are unconstitutional! Or that the AG’s worried that there’s unconstitutional things that they’re just putting forward. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe they wanna push them through the courts and somehow work on the constitutionality of these, but just sort of the level of bigotry and bravado around that will always stun me, I hope. Because it is just shocking…They’re saying that HB500 violates the 14th amendment of our constitution, and yet these people are so committed to this in a time of global pandemic, that they’re still meeting and voting this through. I’ll just always be shocked about that.
Brenda: Yeah. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, not only is it rightfully being called unconstitutional, but also a lot of people are speaking up about how they are making the argument, in particular a Duke law professor, whose work is quoted 3 times in the bill, has been on record saying that the sponsors misused her research and she is part of a letter that’s calling for the governor to veto the bill and saying that this is not at all what my research is saying about this. You know, I think that to the points that were made, and we talked about this in burn piles, and certainly I want to also direct you to episode 95 when Jessica interviews friend of the show Katie Barnes to talk about their work on this topic and the inclusion of trans athletes in sport. But a point that we’ve made over and over and over again is not just about hurting and barring these youth athletes, these trans athletes, but it’s a political message that is really targeting trans people. Like the bathroom bill, it makes sport become political. And the fact that in this moment this is still a priority tells you that sometimes the hate is the point. It’s so disgusting.
Brenda: Shireen.
Shireen: Yeah, thanks. I wanted to just circle back to something that I come back to a lot. One of the people who has really helped me unlearn what I knew about trans folks is Katelyn Burns, someone I consider a really good friend. She had a thread about…She does a lot of work about trans women and these type of bills. Anyway, she has one particular thread that we’ll add to the show notes, and what she does is she talks about trans athletes and the first openly trans woman to compete in an Olympic qualifier, who finished in 230th place. What this thread is basically doing, and she’s really great at helping us along and understanding, what she’s doing is she’s highlighting – I’m quoting her directly – is “to counter the media disinformation campaign that turns every slight athletic achievement by a trans woman into a global transphobic storyline.” Which is exactly what this bill in Idaho is based on, that trans girls will have this massive advantage. The studies and the data don’t show that, that’s not actually true.
So I think this is really important to keep in mind, just how the narrative is being constructed to be very much against women in general. Getting back to something that Linz said, I am gutted and infuriated, but this particular bill is talking about kids. It’s talking about youth. It’s talking about young girls. It’s so upsetting to me that this is what’s happening. I don’t know how someone can just…It’s not even about parents tolerating this kind of thing, but how as a society can you target kids? I’m sorry, this is just so upsetting.
Brenda: So upsetting. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate: I think if you’re listening to this podcast right now you care about girls’ and women’s sports, and one of the reasons it is imperative for those of us in this community to speak out about this at every turn is because they are using women and girls’ sports and the protection of women and girls’ sports explicitly as violence against the trans community in this case. So I really think silence is violence in this case, and I know it’s hard right now, there’s so much on all of our minds, there’s so much daily stuff to think about. It can feel like your voice doesn’t carry any weight on any issue, but if the women and girls’ sports community does not speak out against this then people from both parties – because it’s important to say there are some states that have Democratic governors that are also trying to push through these bills – this is bipartisan bigotry. This community needs to be much louder. I need more from the Women’s Sports Foundation, who I know has done some, but we all need to be louder and make sure that you are not using the name of women and girls’ sports to discriminate against trans youth. It’s just not acceptable. On Burn It All Down we want to continue to call on our listeners and our community to speak out and to fight against this.
Brenda: Now, Jessica’s interview with cultural anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton about COVID-19 and sports. They talk NBA and the scarcity of tests, whether the Olympics should and if they will happen, and what we should expect in terms of sports returning.
Jessica: Hello, flamethrowers. Jessica here. I’m joined today by Dr. Adia Benton, a cultural anthropologist who studies global health, biomedicine, development and humanitarianism, and professional sports. An associate professor at Northwestern University, Dr. Benton studies patterns of inequality in the distribution of and the politics of care in settings socialized for scarcity. This means understanding the political, economic, and historical factors shaping how care is provided in complex humanitarian emergencies and longer-term development projects, like those for health. Her first book is titled HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone and it was published in 2015. It explores the treatment of AIDS as an exceptional disease and the recognition and care this takes away from other diseases and public health challenges in poor countries. She’s working on a second book about the global movement to improve access to quality surgical care in poor countries, using it as a case study for describing and understanding ideological formations in global public health. We thought of her immediately when brainstorming who to talk to about COVID-19 and sports. Welcome to Burn It All Down, Dr. Benton.
Adia: Hi Jessica, thanks for inviting me.
Jessica: So, I thought we could look back first and I wanted to get your assessment of how you think different sports leagues or organizations around the world have responded to COVID-19. Is there a good example? Is there a bad example? How are you thinking about this?
Adia: You know, it’s funny. I keep revising my assessments every time this year about a different sporting situation. I kept going, when I first started talking about this, I was like, “Tennis did a really great thing!” like with Indian Wells so early. But there were a lot of people who were like, they’re just moving the Laver Cup, they moved Roland Garros without telling anyone…
Jessica: Yeah, they did!
Adia: Right! So I was kind of like, oh, yeah, so maybe they suck in some ways. Obviously these are different organizations too, right? So there was a very specific local context to Indian Wells and it was cancelled fairly abruptly, and that’s because California was on a lockdown. But you know, tennis did okay in some respects, not so okay in others. I think the European partners need to be a little bit more frightened.
Jessica: Yeah, that’s interesting. I do want to talk about the NBA. This league has been at the forefront I think, especially in North America, and I think even beyond that in the discussion of sports and the COVID-19 crisis, it seems like it was really important that the NBA sort of shut everything down very quickly. I wanted to hear what you thought about Adam Silver’s decision to…I think they suspended for 30 days and then said they were indefinitely suspending it. But I also wanted to ask you about the testing, because this has been a real hot button issue. For anyone who doesn’t know at this point, it was the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma Thunder, they cancelled the game before it started. Rudy Gobert, Jazz player, was diagnosed with COVID-19, and since there are multiple players now – 10? – there’s a fair amount…
Adia: There’s quite a few!
Jessica: Yeah, that have tested positive. And one of the things is that they’re buying the tests privately, the NBA and the teams, and they’re testing everyone which is, I think, good. Everyone should be tested. But then everyone’s wondering at a time when the general US public doesn’t have access to a lot of tests, is this okay? Adam Silver – again, the commissioner – he has defended this basically by saying to point fingers at the US government for having tests, don’t point at us for paying for them. So I wanted to get your take on how quickly Silver moved in terms of ending the season, but also what are you thinking about all of these tests?
Adia: Right. So this one’s super complicated, but also not, right? [both laugh] So, yay Adam Silver for having a bit of handle on this in the sense that like, yes, shut it down. Be the leader in saying fuck it, shut it down, right? But those first tests were actually not privately funded.
Jessica: Oh, they weren’t! Oh, that’s right! The Oklahoma ones weren’t.
Adia: Exactly! And that’s the first piece. That was actually pretty shocking. We’re talking about a time when, on average, the state is doing 55 tests a day, they did 58 in Oklahoma. The health department processed 58 tests, and from what I read, and I’m not sure if this is really true (the timeline doesn’t sound exactly right) but it took them six hours to do it.
Jessica: Wow…Wow!
Adia: It was probably more like 24, 12-24. Let’s think about it like this: Gobert’s testing through that Wednesday morning, that game was Wednesday night, the team doctor rushes out to the court and says hey, you can’t play this game. So we’re talking about no more than 12 hours on that day, and so 58 people, let’s just assume that’s the team – 15-20 people – coaching staff, people who probably touch players–
Jessica: Trainers.
Adia: Trainers, right, and sort of other people who are on the cusp of that circle. You have to wonder who wasn’t being tested, like drivers, cleaners, and so on and so forth. But also thinking about who else in Oklahoma was not being tested that day.
Jessica: Yeah, because they were testing the Utah Jazz.
Adia: Right! Their maximum daily capacity at that time to process tests was something like 100.
Jessica: Wow.
Adia: So of course people are pissed about what this looks like, because they were not privately funded, they were very much about state capacity. There are people who say, well, how do you that there were even that many tests to do in Oklahoma? Well, they were rationing. Everybody was rationing and continues to ration. We obviously know that there’s COVID-19 in Oklahoma because COVID-19 is in Oklahoma, but the thing is…To be fair, to give a little bit of platitude, this was a known case and you want to test all the close context of a new case. He was not feeling well, but clearly something else was going on too. I’m glad that all these people are being tested privately now, but we still are dealing with this problem, this bigger problem of logistics and health departments being able to test people. The NBA, great for them shutting everything down. Weird how they handled this testing situation, but of course I think ultimately what we see is that it can function, public health can actually function if the tests exist.
Jessica: Good point.
Adia: I think that’s one thing that was proven. I think what we also saw was that these privileged circles were the only ones to make the system work, and that’s why some people feel some unease about what the NBA was able to do, but I think it’s because we see what’s possible.
Jessica: Right.
Adia: We also see what’s not possible for us.
Jessica: Right. That’s a really good point. So, let’s look forward now, and I’m gonna ask you the question that I’m sure you’re suspecting: should the Olympics be cancelled and will they be cancelled?
Adia: Ahh. I think they probably should be cancelled given that our…Basically, even if Japan is able to bring down their cases right now to this point where it’s manageable, what they’re going to struggle with is people coming from all over the world as potential new transmitters of the virus.
Jessica: Right, right.
Adia: So that’s one thing. There’s also the issue that a lot of us won’t be able to travel, you know? A lot of us are not going to have our outbreaks under control in time. I mean, a lot of the sports that are going to have events in the Olympics can’t have their qualifying tournaments right now, so how fair is that for countries that might be experiencing and dealing with outbreaks. So I think it probably should be cancelled. Olympics, as you well know, are disruptive to the countries where they are and the communities where they’re located in many ways that are detrimental and can be devastating to communities. That was certainly true for the Tokyo Olympics in the 60s, and this would be no different. Everyone’s worried about the economic losses but that’s kind of where we are everywhere. I think that's actually one of the bigger issues: who can be prepared, how fair will it be, who will be able to convene in that site…But still, like you said, their claws are in, they’re digging in heels or whatever…
Jessica: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm…
Adia: I bet they could probably come up with a way that it could work. They’ll probably say, “oh, we’re screening everyone, people have to sit three seats apart…” [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah.
Adia: “Athletes will not be in contact with each other!”
Jessica: Yeah, right. Oh my gosh, that’s such a huge issue at the Olympics. It’s also interesting to think, just about NBC itself, they must be freaking out as well. I’m sure they’re putting their pressures all over this.
Adia: I can’t imagine how much they’re losing on so many sports events. I mean, everyone is, but that’s again what I’m saying, everyone’s losing here – the spectators, the fans, we just don’t have our entertainment, we’re locked down, we don’t have anything to watch.
Jessica: It’s true. My son the other day mentioned that I was watching a lot of competitive reality shows, and I’m like, wow, that’s so astute. I feel very seen…And judged, a little bit [laughing] in this moment! But yes, I think I’m compensating.
Adia: You need some kind of competition.
Jessica: I know. It’s true. So, Shireen wanted me to ask you, about when this is all over, or at least when it dips really far down, when we get a vaccine or whatever the moment is, when we’re sort of on the other side of this: how long will it take and what will it look like for the recovery of sports, economically and socially? What should we expect as fans, as outsiders, when we’re watching this? Will it take a really long time to get everything rolling again? What are you imagining?
Adia: Yeah, I think it depends on how well folks can keep the back end running. I was thinking about the NFL, what is their training gonna look like? What’s baseball’s training gonna look like?
Jessica: I know, that’s interesting.
Adia: Right? Actually baseball might be able to pull this together because they’re outside and not really that close to each other!
Jessica: Fair!
Adia: Except for the dugout, right. It’s funny to think about sports this way though, like, how close do you ever have to be to someone?
Jessica: Yes.
Adia: I’ve been tennis every week under these lockdown conditions because my coach is like, “you don’t have to see me! I’m on the other side of the net!”
Jessica: It’s true!
Adia: “We don’t have to communicate! You can hit the ball.” And so I think that’s sort of the thing: how well stocked, how well supplied the back end is, right? How much training can happen, how much recruiting can happen, how deep the pockets are of the organization to keep people doing what they have to do until they can actually put them back on the court or the field, whatever. Right? They may try to modify the spectating experience, like if you want to watch basketball maybe you just have to pay a subscription fee. I know it sounds kind of dystopian…
Jessica: Well, sounds like being a WNBA fan! So maybe all these men or all these people who aren’t women’s sports fans will finally understand…
Adia: You know what, maybe this is the big equalizer.
Jessica: Yeah!
Adia: Maybe this is gonna be the equalizer. The men are gonna have to actually see what it’s like. This is what I was saying with the NFL: they’re not holding their annual league meeting, it’s because some people who aren’t used to being uncomfortable are uncomfortable. They’re afraid to be next to each other, oh my goodness. [laughs] Yeah, so I think it’s about the back end. When scouts can’t go look at new folks to field, that’s probably gonna change a lot of things. Are you gonna have to watch more tape, are you gonna be making more gut decisions about who fits your team? So yeah, I think it depends on the sport. I’m hoping that we get our sport…This is sad, I’m feeling selfish. I’m hoping we get our sports back by the end of the year.
Jessica: End of the year. Wow.
Adia: Yeah. Does that seem too late, or too early?
Jessica: It seems far away.
Adia: It seems really far away.
Jessica: I want people to be healthy much more than I want sports, but still. What do you think this means…Shireen also asked me, what does this mean for rec leagues, or more community-based sports that people are playing, what will it look like when this is over and that’s getting back up, because they don’t really have the back end, right?
Adia: No, we don’t. And I say “we” because we coach a soccer team for small kids, and we’re postponed until April – and who knows what that's going to ultimately mean, because you have to be in contact with other people.
Jessica: Yeah, so maybe cancelled.
Adia: So it may be cancelled, so I say the individual sports will probably still see some movement, so I think this is actually really one of our means of socializing and being well together, which also means it’s subject to the discipline of social distancing, and that’s something that…Our bodies are the center of that experience, so this is something else that we’re gonna feel, and I think we’re gonna feel that through the summer at least. I think it’s gonna be a little bit easier in the summer because we can sort of keep our distance and whatnot, but…Whew! We’re also gonna have cabin fever by then at that point too.
Jessica: Yeah.
Adia: So yeah, it’s sort of dire.
Jessica: I’m so happy to have you on, Dr. Benton! [both laughing] Thanks for all of these words of encouragement! No, I mean, this is good to know. I do think setting an expectation that’s realistic is way healthier than just crossing our fingers and hoping it’s next week or something.
Adia: Right. That’s sort of something I had to give up on a couple of weeks ago and I realized I was going to be at home with the kids trying to figure out what we were gonna do in those exercise breaks between reading, writing, and doing our own thing. So yes, absolutely. Damn it, I wanted to be uplifting and hopeful!
Jessica: No, you’re wonderful. Thank you so much. Where can our listeners find you on the internet?
Adia: So, my Twitter handle is @ethnography911.
Jessica: Perfect.
Adia: Ethnographic emergency.
Jessica: I love it, that's great.
Adia: Occasionally I blog too, same address – ethnography911.org.
Jessica: And I can speak from personal experience that following you is a good choice for people to make, especially in this moment in time. So thank you again Dr. Adia Benton for being on Burn It All Down.
Adia: Thank you so much.
Brenda: Alright, moving on to a topic that’s a little bit lighter and brighter, maybe, if we can get it that way: NFL free agency. Shireen, you wanna walk us through that a bit?
Shireen: Absolutely! Hello flamethrowers, hold on to your hats, hijabs, and whatever else, because we’re gonna talk about NFL free agency from someone – myself – who does not love the NFL or care. So let’s go! NFL free agency, we’re three weeks into this. Now, the biggest news you might’ve heard is Tom Brady is going from the Pats – Amira will cry about that later – but we’ll get into that a little bit more–
Amira: I am not crying about this! Jeez.
Shireen: Sorry, I got confused about this. Cam Newton is leaving the Panthers, I think Linz might cry about that, but I like said we’ll get into it. Although the NFL season is actually over, it’s not usual offseason business anymore because absolutely the sport has been affected by COVID-19 due to travel bans and social distancing, usual clubs can’t actually meet with potential players and doctors can’t do team physicals that they would normally do. So this means that there are free agents out there who remain unsigned at this time who would normally not be. There are a few good things happening, and I’m gonna go through them, depending on which side and which team you root for. So bear with me, friends, as we go through this list – I make a couple of notes myself, personal opinions, obviously.
First: Tom Brady got a 2-year $50 million deal. He’s leaving the New England Patriots and going to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s great for Tom Brady, but that’s pretty much who that’s for, that’s pretty much the only person that’s good for. New England doesn’t come out great on this, more on that in a little bit. Tampa Bay definitely does. He actually joins this team with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin who are two receivers, but he doesn’t have a lot of luck in that passing department to other people. So, who else benefits from this is that the AFC opens up. So this entire division of the NFL, and this is really funny – I didn’t realize Tom Brady’s nickname is TB12, it sounds like a substitution of the virus in my opinion. But anyways, TB12. It opens it up when he leaves. The AFC and the New England Pats specifically have had 17 titles since 2001, so I like when sports open up and other people can share in the prize. But that’s just me – we never want them to be accused of being like the UConn women’s basketball team now would we?
So, #3: Teddy Bridgewater, he’s going to the Carolina Panthers by way of New Orleans, and this is exciting for the Panthers, and Teddy Bridgewater who’s making a shitload of money. When I was prepping for this segment I could not believe the salaries. Wow. Also, #4: Darius Slay, he’s going from Detroit to Philly on a 3-year $50 million extension. So, this is pretty incredible; he’s going from the Eagles. Slay is one of the 3 defensive backs to go to the Pro Bowl in the last 3 years, so this is a big deal. #5: Detroit Lions have nine picks in the upcoming draft, which is very important, and Matt Patricia has his work cut out for him – he’s the coach, he has a lot to do, but yay, go Lions! Because Detroit needs some love, and I hope that’s gonna come in the form of this. I think there’s a lot of other things happening…Nick Foles is going to the Bears, he’s been the starting quarterback for four years before, and this is a big deal. Now, everyone needs a quarterback, from what I understand. Of all this have you noticed I have not talked about Colin Kaepernick? Because man’s not getting hired. We’ve got so many segments and opinions on that, all which lead to the burn pile because of systems of oppression and antiblackness that exist.
Now, losers: LA Rams, not a lot of money and basically they’re not doing great – this is just my summary. Now, they’ve got key defensive players: Dante Fowler Jr, Cory Littleton, Michael Brockers, Clay Matthews, Nickell Robey-Coleman, they don’t have a place necessarily and are getting shifted all over. #3 – I don’t think I was listing them before but in my head I was – Melvin Gordon held out for an extension contract despite missing preseason camp and four games of the season. So, it didn’t work out for him, still unsigned. Now, don’t know how to pronounce this properly, and at this point I really don’t give a shit if I don’t: Jameis Winston? Uh, who was replaced by Brady to the Bucs. So, first QB in Super Bowl era to lead the NFL in passing yards and play for a different team the following season. You’re like, what the fuck?! Like, how could it get so bad? Well, hold onto your hats because it gets worse! So, there was this article by Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report, March 21st 2020, just a couple of days ago, and the title of this was “why doesn’t anyone want him?!” Um, maybe because he’s an abuser? He was given a 3-game suspension in 2018 for assaulting an Uber driver, maybe!
What I love about that is Brad Gagnon did not mention any of this in his piece. Yes folks, football writers are literally talking about him without mentioning this at all. “How can you do this?!” Oh, I don’t know, because you’re a fucking sportswriter. Anyway, there’s rumors about him going to the Pats or the horrible Washington team with a racist name that I won’t mention. He may never land a job. Do I care? No. Here’s a mug for all my tears. [Lindsay laughing] Now, to wrap this up really quickly, I’m just gonna tell y’all that who’s coming up in front, there’s some predictions from the New York Post – I can’t believe I’m quoting the Post, but – Buccaneers will come out on top with Tom Brady; down at the bottom of the list, and I’m not gonna go through all 32 teams, the Rams are at the bottom. The championship window is closed, and you know what? Just hire Colin Kaepernick, somebody. What’s wrong with y’all? That’s my roundup.
[all clapping]
Lindsay: [Laughing] That’s the best. It takes a global pandemic and all other sports getting cancelled, but Shireen reads up on the NFL!
Amira: Shireen’s finally talking about the NFL!
Jessica: That was the most joy I’ve had all week.
Lindsay: That was amazing.
Jessica: It was perfect.
Shireen: I had so much time to prep, y’all.
Lindsay: You can tell!! [laughing]
Brenda: Clearly, clearly.
Lindsay: Oh god. Okay.
Brenda: Well, in this case to our benefit. Linz?
Lindsay: I can’t…I’m still recovering. I need a minute.
Jessica: Well. That’s hard to follow up. I will say, the NFL free agency this year has been really interesting because it is kind of the only sports news we have going on, so, as a fan of sport, I’ve enjoyed it – thinking about the future and when sports will return, the impact of all these moves and the next season of football, even though I don’t really watch it anymore. But it’s also just weird hearing about it. There’s this weird thing on the timeline on Twitter where you’re watching people be fired and furloughed and all sorts of things around COVID-19, at the same time you’re also reading about multi-million dollar contracts. Not that those…I firmly believe those players deserve all that money, but it’s such a strange contrast in the world. It’s something fun to talk about but then I feel bad about it.
I wanted to point out that Jenny Vrentas at SI has a really good column about this, she made some really good points about the fact that NFL free agency moving forward is not great, in a lot of ways. If they push with this it’s gonna pull team employees, players, agents away from their families and communities at a time they should be at home, that players are gonna be…I’ll just quote her, quote: “Players will be asked to make life-changing job-related decisions during a period when many will be managing all kinds of other stressors. More broadly, it’s dangerous for a sports league to set a business-as-usual precedent regarding something (free agency) that is neither urgent nor essential, when doctors and officials are urging Americans not to proceed with business as usual.” So, I say all that because I do feel weird about it, but I also wanted to mention that Bill O’Brien at the Texans is – because here in Texas this is just huge news – he traded away DeAndre Hopkins, which–
Amira: For a ham sandwich!!
Jessica: For nothing! For nothing. And for people who don’t follow the NFL (Shireen) this is a huge deal. DeAndre Hopkins is one of the best offensive players of the country. He’s certainly a huge part of Houston Texan’s offense itself. Deshaun Watson’s a very good quarterback, but a good quarterback needs good wide receivers, and now Hopkins is gone! I just want to quote my friend, Dan Solomon; he wrote about this for Texas Monthly and he said, quote, “In seven seasons, Hopkins was already one of the greatest players the Texans had ever seen, a likely future Hall of Famer who has years of greatness ahead.” And Dan makes this really good point that the Texans are a new-ish team and one of the things they’re trying to do to build the fanbase is you need great players, you need to keep them around and create this history around these players. There’s not really a lot to hang your fandom on in Houston. So it doesn’t make sense for what’s happening on the field, it doesn’t make sense for what’s happening off the field so, Bill O’Brien, what the hell are you doing?
Brenda: Oof. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I just wanted to pick up that point about Hopkins because one of the things that came out in the wake of this ridiculous move was a lot of shocked faces and Michael Irvin relaying this story where DeAndre basically talked to him about beef that he had simmering with Bill O’Brien. He talked about how Bill O’Brien called him into his office and basically said that he’s never had to have a meeting like this with a player over issues of behavior since he met with Aaron Hernandez when they were both in New England. Which is appalling, he’s somebody who actually was a murderer. Like, it’s not…First of all, just stop. But then he did not, he kept going. He also talked about how he was concerned about DeAndre’s “baby momma” which is of course racially coded language. He has two kids by two women. You know who does that also? Matt Leinart! Tom Brady! A million other white dudes in the NFL who are never gonna be called in to talk about their baby mommas. It’s just bullshit.
Well, DeAndre Hopkins wrote a tweet not denying the story but seeking to kind of temper it and move on and pivot to focus on his new team, multiple other former Texan players came out and basically said this is not surprising at all, this is “who Bill O’Brien is.” Jaelen Strong talked about how he didn’t like him because he was “a product of my environment” and he actually sat him and decreased playing time. You had people who came on record and said how they got into it with Bill O’Brien after his son was born, because he missed training camp for two days and was called into the office to say he didn’t know if he could handle family and football; the way he needed to prove it was to show upset emotions in the face of being critiqued in this way.
Mind you, this is somebody who, when he was in New England, Tom Brady and Brian Hoyer nicknamed him ‘Teapot’ because he was notoriously known for having a bad temper. You’ll remember that one video of him and Tom Brady screaming at each other on the sidelines…This is somebody who has a long history of being criticized by players for how he runs the ship, and we’re talking about a franchise that but three years ago then-owner Bob McNair was still alive, said he “didn’t want the inmates running the prison” in the wake of people kneeling in support of Colin Kaepernick and against other comments made by ownership. In this iteration of the Texans, they keys have really been handed over to O’Brien, so certainly this is not a story as much as Hopkins and others might want it to kind of temper and go away. But I think a lot of people are gonna keep their eye on Bill O’Brien moving forward.
Brenda: Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, I am having a tough time. I’ve been a Carolina Panthers die-hard fan since 1996, it was their second year of existence, their first year playing in Charlotte. I started going to games…I have been a fan through the 1-15 season – that was 15 straight losses, mind you. I have rooted for lots of bad teams, I do not like being a fair-weather fan. Fandom is important to me, especially now that I cover so many sports, I really don’t get to experience pure fandom that often, and the Panthers have remained that one part. But the way they have kicked Cam Newton basically out the door is almost impossible to stomach and I’m having a really hard time with it. He’s by far my favorite player in franchise history. He dealt with so much shit from the Charlotte community, a lot of racism, a lot of awfulness. And he’s pure joy. Watching him play is pure joy, his entire being is pure joy, and I’m really sad. I’m gonna miss watching him play, I’m mad at management, and also they’ve kicked Eric Reid out the door too, which just makes absolutely no sense.
So I’m grappling with fandom and with where I go from here. I do love Teddy Bridgewater and I’ve always rooted for him from afar. I’m glad that he’s the Panthers’ quarterback and that probably will help me a little bit, but I think it’s tough. When do you draw the line as a fan? For me, domestic violence and violence against women situations have always been where the line is drawn…Every team is gonna make shitty personnel decisions, but I think it’s really hard when you feel like your favorite player was run out of town for not respectful reasons, and when the organization is trying to paint it like it was this mutual decision, and Cam Newton comes out and is like, no, this was not a mutual decision. So I’m sad right now, I’m grieving. I will root for Cam Newton wherever he goes. I will probably remains a Panthers fan but it’s still a little bit to be determined how that fandom is gonna look going forward. So I think it’s a weird time.
Brenda: And Amira, I wanna ask you something similar. I feel like that’s a bridge to asking you something about TB.
Amira: Yeah, so it was really funny…I woke up the morning that it was announced and my phone…I panicked because I thought something happened to somebody, because my phone was blowing up, and everyone was like, “Are you okay!?” and I was like, I’m awake, what are you talking about. And then I found out, and it really made me feel like, damn, I appreciate everybody checking on me but apparently I’ve been living my life in this crazy way that everyone’s so concerned! It was really quite a mirror. Anyways…
Lindsay: Amira, you can’t watch – you hide behind things during games! Of course we’re worried about you! [laughing]
Amira: It was just like…revealing. Anyways, you know, I had actually expected this and I thought it was time and, for me, a kind of trade towards the end of his career was better than whatever messiness is gonna happen down the road. Honestly, the hardest part was just calling my mom, and that’s because – and I’ve discussed this before – when we talk about rooting interest and we talk about what we were raised on, embedded in that is familial ties, it’s friendships, it’s the memories, it's the nostalgia, it’s who you grew up cheering and rooting with. For me, it’s not about necessarily who we were rooting for, it’s who I was cheering and watching the games with.
Since I was a kid we’ve had an amazing 20-year run that quite frankly we all know has spoiled us, and New England sports fans, and the hardest thing was calling my mom and saying this is the end of an era. Because for us, right, it’s not even the recent years…Me being in middle school, coming back from a tournament and listening to the radio, when Brady who was just a game manager at that point came in and went out with a sprained ankle in the middle of the run to the first Super Bowl and drew blood, so comes in on one leg and hobbles, still gets us through that playoff game…Just watching this vagabond team of nothing that had many terrible seasons in the early 2000s turn into a juggernaut that everybody loves to hate in the middle of…I can’t describe how surreal the last two decades have been. I was 11 when this run started, and I won’t recount our dominance for you, Shireen did a good job of that – or maybe I will!
Brenda: Oh god.
Lindsay: No, no, no, no!
Amira: Since 1997–
Brenda: We know.
Amira: Just know, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss us out of the AFC East. I’m really interested to see what happens, how Belichick handles this. But I would just like to end on the note that while that happened, a lot of the free agency moves with the Patriots that actually stunned me had nothing to do with Tom Brady. I’m really sad to see Danny Shelton and Duron Harmon leave; both are joining the Lions under Matt Patricia there. Duron was part of this core Rutgers group…We did retain Devin McCourty, we still have the McCourty twins, but we also lost Kyle Van Noy who held a very special part of my heart as a Patriots fan, he was a fellow transracial adoptee and has a great adoption/foster care foundation; he’s joining the Miami Dolphins which is annoying because I’ll have to see him twice a year in that uniform. And so those are the things that have flown under the radar in the wake of that, but other people are being uprooted, other teammates are being mourned in the locker room….I really hate free agency because I have attachment issues, but I just have to say thank you for checking in with me. I’m okay. I’m with Jess, it feels kind of weird to have this happening in this moment but I would have to say that I thought it was time.
Brenda: Yeah. Speaking of the burn pile, it’s time for everybody’s favorite segment, where we take all the garbage in sports – or garbage related to sports this week! – onto a metaphorical burn pile and set it aflame. Alright, Linz, you wanna start us off?
Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. I’d like to talk about Kelly Loeffler, who is the co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and, as we have discussed in Burn It All Down before, also the newest Republican senator in the US Congress. This is actually not sports related but it is sports-related since she’s the Atlanta Dream co-owner. This week it was reported by the Daily Beast that Loeffler sold off seven figures’ worth of stockholdings in the days and weeks after a private all-senators meeting about the coronavirus. She first reported the sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on January 24th, the very day her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private all-senators briefing about the coronavirus. She had a total of 29 stock transactions over a few week period after this time, all but two of which were sales. One of Loeffler’s purchases was stock in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software, which has seen a small bump in its stock price since Loeffler bought it as a result of the coronavirus-induced market turmoil.
To make matters even worse, she was helping the GOP and Trump spread the message throughout February that the coronavirus was not a big deal and that everything was going to be fine. On February 28th she tweeted, “Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on #Coronavirus readiness. Here’s the truth: @realDonaldTrump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.” And then on March 10th she tweeted, “Concerned about #coronavirus? Remember this: The consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe.” As she was doing this she was offloading her stocks, and I would like to burn that shit to the ground. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: And go to jail.
Lindsay: Yeah, also that.
Brenda: Okay. Shireen: you’re up.
Shireen: Thanks. This is making me very mad, and it will be of no surprise to any of you when you hear why. Also, a trigger warning for racialized and colonial violence. I read a story which was posted in early March; it hadn’t been burned yet so I wanna burn it, and there's always always time. There’s no statue of limitations on burning things.
I read a piece by a journalist named Alicia Draus, and respect to her for the way she wrote this piece and shared it, because I’ve seen these types of stories shared so badly. Rhonda Knight is a 17 year old hockey player who’s Mi’kmaq and she is center and is the captain of the Hants East Rural High School team who came 3rd at provincials this year, she’s a phenomenal hockey player. But something happened at the tournament that actually made her consider quitting the sport altogether. After the game – they lost – she went back to the bench to see if she’d left her stick, and as she was walking back she touched her hair and noticed something: there was a bunch of hair in her hands. Somebody cut her hair while she was walking. Somebody actually cut her hair.
For those of you that understand what braided hair and the symbolism and the significance of it in Mi’kmaq culture is, it’s incredibly violating and just remnants of this brutal past in residential schools and the way that their culture was torn away from them when this happened. Knight has said, and I’m quoting the article, “she was devastated. She says she is proud of her long hair and hasn’t cut it in four years. She is a member of the Indian Brook First Nation and says hair is an important part of her Mi’kmaq culture.” There’s something she said that really stuck with me, it’s that “My hair gives me strength. Our hair, it connects us to the earth.” And I was so upset seeing this, I was so angry, and this type of violence is absolutely unacceptable on any level, but this type…We saw it with Andrew Johnson, the wrestler that we talked about last year, we’ve seen it multiple times, hearing about it…This is absolutely brutal, and it’s violence, make no mistake about it.
They’re not sure who’s actually done this, the other team apologized, but I just wanted to bring this to everyone’s attention. And JH Gillis, the high school that has somebody that’s accused of doing this, they haven’t said anything other than offer a random apology. Now, I wanna burn all of that. At the same time, like I said, Alicia Draus, thank you for sharing the story and reporting on this in a very important way that centers Knight’s experience, because this is the most important, what Rhonda Knight felt and experienced is the most important. But I wanna burn this to the ground. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Jess.
Jessica: So, I have the…not honor, distinction, of doing USA Gymnastics again. They’re back! So, on March 18th, Orange County Register’s Scott M. Reid reported on USA Gymnastic’s expenditures for February, which they had to file with the US bankruptcy court. According to Reid, USAG spent $1.78 million in February. And now, I’m just gonna quote him, “Of that $1.78 million, USA Gymnastics spent $900 on Safe Sport, the organization’s program to educate and raise awareness about sexual and physical abuse within the sport and investigate predatory and abusive individuals. In other words USA Gymnastics spent a fraction of a percentage point of its total budget on Safe Sport in February.” So, just to be clear, I said that right. It’s 900 whole dollars. Okay.
So, Reid goes on to say it’s worse than just February, though that is stark. In fact, for the first 14 whole months since USA Gymnastics filed for chapter 11 – so, that's from January 19th to February 2020 – “Less than 3 percent of all USA Gymnastics expenses between January 2019 and February 2020 were spent on Safe Sport.” As a comparison, USAG spent 10x that much money on legal expenses as they did on Safe Sport. They spent $700,000 more on marketing and communication and media expenses than they did on Safe Sport. That last stat on how much more money has been put into marketing than the actual implementation of the program to combat sexual violence is particularly terrible because part of what USAG has been doing on its public face is constantly reiterating its commitment to Safe Sport! That’s an important part of their ongoing PR campaign to combat sexual violence in the wake of Larry Nassar, and based on these dollar amounts it’s only a PR effort. Shameful stuff, and I wanna burn it. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I’m still burning the IOC, because they are despite so many reasons just continuing to try to proceed with the Olympics – again, set to open on July 24th followed by the Paralympics on August 25th of this summer. Right now if you remember, I feel like I burned or somebody burned the lighting of the torch, now that torch is on its way. We’re not even talking about cancelling the Olympics, they’re still doing a 4-month relay of the damn torch!
Lindsay: Cool. [laughs]
Amira: Particularly because of how much money Coca Cola and Toyota have invested in publicizing this relay, despite the fact that they can’t do a relay though crowds of people, so they’re just trying to do this tradition with on audience, but filming it…The whole thing is just irritating. This is occurring as multiple people, athletes in particular, are starting to raise their voices and push back on the IOC, who are saying hey, we can’t train! How do we qualify? Qualifiers are cancelled. We’re scared about our health. Here are all the issues that we’re worried about, it’s been met by ears that are just not listening at all. Hayley Wickenheiser, Canadian hockey great and current IOC member, broke with Bach this week and said, “I think the IOC insisting on this move with such conviction is insensitive and irresponsible given the state of humanity.” Yes, it is.
But the thing that really had me absolutely enraged this week is in one of these ceremonies at the Greek federation handed it off to the Japanese federation, a speech was made. A speech featuring IOC member and Greek official Spyros Capralos – if you remember, he also in 2012 was linked to black market ticket sales of the London Olympics, and just 7 years later was nominated to the IOC! Anyways, this dude gets up to give a raging speech about how we all are coming together, hope will lead our way and we have to proceed with the Olympics, and he says, “Let us hope that the Olympic flame, symbol of peace and solidarity, will extinguish the virus and defeat it.”
Jessica: What!
Amira: What…
Brenda: What!
[laughter]
Amira: The IOC is reaching new levels of their belief in themselves and what the Olympics can and cannot do. There’s literally no word in the sentence that is a real thing. A “symbol of peace and solidarity”? Bitch where! What do you mean, the Olympic flame is gonna extinguish the virus? Like, hi, you sound Trumpian! That’s not how any of this works. The Olympic flame is not gonna “extinguish the coronavirus” and defeat it, and clinging to this false hope and proceeding as if July 24th is gonna be magically cured and everyone is gonna be well, it’s so asinine, I can not even stand it. Just burn it all down.
All: Burn!
Brenda: I have a rejoinder to that, I have a part two to that burn on the IOC, and this is really rare on Burn It All Down that we actually have a personal stake in our burns, but this is one that I feel really strongly about. There’s a person, his name is one Mr. Michael R Payne, who has decided to attack friend of the show – but also, general public intellectual on the IOC – Dr. Jules Boykoff. And this is not an isolated case, this is a way in which the IOC and FIFA police academics and just generally journalists, and anyone who makes all of the cogent points that Amira just made, and that Jules made in a recent New York Times op-ed that he wrote on March 18th. In that, he argued that amidst this global pandemic the IOC just needed to cancel or at the very least postpone. And you know, he makes all kinds of very sane, reasonable points, particularly when juxtaposed to the idea that the Olympic flame will extinguish the coronavirus…Which is just medieval thinking, right? First we’re gonna put leeches on you and bleed you out, then we will burn you with the flame. That’s what I picture, this medieval torture chamber of doctors. So, Dr. Boykoff, we should say, is a professor of politics and government and he is the department chair at Pacific University.
In response to that, Mr. Michael Payne who works in marketing and television for the IOC wrote, quote, “A remarkably uninformed & biased OpEd from an academic who claims to study the Olympics - says postponement would be difficult but not a single word why–” (Just a pause here in parentheses, the entire thing is why.) “–only talk Cancellation. Totally off base, with zero understanding of real dynamics & a disservice to worlds athletes.” Okay. That was the quote, and this is from someone, this is me, who has had a cease and desist from FIFA several times for articles that I didn’t even get paid for. So, this is how they work. But also, hey Mr. Payne, Jules is a former Olympian and professional soccer player, asshat. And he doesn’t claim to study the Olympics, he has books and research and Fulbrights and has dedicated his life to social justice and the Olympics. So I wanna burn the ways in which they come after people like this…If they’re “biased” – who’s biased? You work for the fucking IOC! Are you kidding? And secondly, I would just like to say friend of the show Jules Boykoff is ethically impeccable!
Shireen: Yeah.
Brenda: And earnest!
Amira: Yeah, fuck off and leave Jules alone.
Shireen: Don’t mess with that, don’t mess with Jules. We will find you.
Brenda: We will find you! And we have found you and your remarkably uninformed attack on Dr. Jules Boykoff, former Olympian! So that’s it, I wanna burn it.
All: Burn.
Brenda: After all that burning, we would like to celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of women in our badass women of the week segment, which is going to be pared down compared to our usual list, not because there aren’t women doing amazing things but simply because there are less sports than usual. Sad face. 😔 First of all, congratulations to Melbourne City FC who clinched their fourth title in the Westfield W-League in Australia.
Congrats to Australian rules football legend Melissa Hickey, captain of the Geelong Cats club team, who announced her retirement from the sport. We wish her the best.
Kianna Scott has been named to the Erie Otters as a bantam scout and is the first female scout in the Ontario Hockey League.
Also, shoutouts to Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe for not only entertaining folks on Instagram with a mini TV show but joining with Shea Serrano to donate money to those impacted and struggling with bills in the midst of COVID-19.
Can I get an earnest drumroll?
[earnest drumroll]
Badass woman of the week goes to…all of the women out there showing up to give free meals at schools, working in healthcare, taking care of sick loved ones, washing their children’s hands all day, reporting on this pandemic, working agriculturally so we can have food, driving buses, and everything else that you all are doing out there. Congratulations to you and all of us for just getting by now.
Finally, in these dark times, we like to talk a little bit about what’s good in our worlds. I’m gonna start, which is sadly a very short thing, because I am totally self-isolated, for those of you who don’t know, in a giant house. And so, just two things. One: Messi’s workouts, which was sent to me by Lindsay, thank you for thinking of me for all Messi content. The hilarious thing about them is they’re not inspiring, they’re not particularly good, his kids are wobbling around, and that’s just the best thing in the world, because beIN Sports tries to make it like [dramatic noise] “Work out with Messi!” and it’s like, wow, I can do this. Yeah. It’s not that hard, actually. He’s so normal! So it’s hilarious how they’ve tried to market this as some big deal, and that’s been giving me life, because his little boys are running around and messing with him, as they do. And then the second thing has just been all the people checking in and doing Houseparty…including Burn It All Down’s group hangouts and my brother and sister who got me to play trivia and Pictionary on the Houseparty app, not to promote that app or anything, but just it was awesome. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, so I wanna shout out the New York City department of health memo, now taken down, but I still wanna shout it out. A lot of people have maybe been wondering what to do with sex and the coronavirus – this is a really great memo. I love it. Check out the screenshots if you have questions, or our friend Steven Thrasher has a great thread about this right now. Just some quick highlights: the first thing they start with is “The best sex partner to have is yourself during COVID-19,” which I think is really great. “You are your safest sex partner,” they write. “Masturbation will not spread this, especially if you wash your hands and any sex toys with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.” They go on to talk about ways that it could potentially spread, ways to take care during sex…They talk a lot about rimming, for all those who really need to know about that, but also what I really enjoy is how great their language use is in this. They not only note that if you usually meet your sex partners online or make a living by having sex, consider taking a break from in-person dates – but they don’t stop there, they offer alternatives! They say: video dates, sexting, chatrooms may be better options for continuing making your living by having sex at this moment that also reduces points of contact.
So I really am appreciative of this memo and I wanted to direct everyone’s attention to it, should anybody have similar questions. I’ve already shouted out Club Quarantine, that really was a place of joy and light. I also wanted to shout out just kindness that I’m seeing, little things as well as big things. As you know, my husband’s a creative and his gigs have been all postponed through the summer and little things like a local improv troupe in town hitting him up to say, hey, can we pay you now for work you’ll do in 6/8 months, whenever we’re out of this? Little things like that have been so heartwarming. And of course, virtual happy hours not only with my BIAD family but with my colleagues, with my friends. We’re playing games, we’re Sporcle-ing, we’re just talking, we’re digitally cheering. And for me, somebody who craves social connection in that way, it’s been literally sustaining me. So, that’s my what’s good.
Brenda: Jess.
Jessica: Yeah, for the first time in a long time social media is what’s good! I can’t remember the last time that I enjoyed Twitter this much…I’ve actually been on-purpose logging into Facebook. There are a couple of things I wanted to point out. There is a sports announcer named Nick Heath, he’s British, he’s @nickheathsport on Twitter, he’s been doing live life commentary. So, he’s filming regular life and providing sports-like commentary on top of it. It is so good, so joyful, so well done. He’s hashtagging them #lifecommentary and #livecommentary. But again, it’s @nickheathsport. Scroll his timeline.
I’ve really enjoyed all the live music online; my friend Mobley did a thing on YouTube and Instagram from his studio at home the other day, he’s in self-isolation right now or quarantine because he had been traveling in the middle of all this. I know Shireen’s gonna mention Indigo Girls, that was lovely. Lucius and Courtney Barnett were part of this series that Willie Nelson, he was supposed to host all these people at a live concert here in Austin for SXSW and instead they all did it from their living rooms. But Lucius is saying with Courtney Barnett in Australia…I guess they were in Australia. And it was just so beautiful. So I’ve just really enjoyed the internet, which is not a thing I have said in just so long. And I just wanted to mention Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu, the first three episodes are up. It is so well done. I listened to the book earlier this year by Celeste Ng, it’s really good, and what they’re doing with the show, they’re adding a lot to it. It’s the same story, but not. All the beats are there, all the big plot twists, all that sort of stuff, but one of the two main characters played by Kerry Washington, a Black woman – it was not a Black character in the book, and so they’re doing a lot with that, and I just have really, really enjoyed that.
Brenda: Shireen.
Shireen: Thanks. Like Jess said, the Indigo Girls digital in-house concert was amazing. I absolutely love them, and the last time I saw them was a little affair in ’97, so this was wild for me. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, if you don’t know them. Amy killed on the mandolin, she just was slaying. And then Emily was wearing a Lizzo tee, and they talked about so many things. They talked about first responders and staff and frontline workers, it was really beautiful and it was at one point 57,000 people watching on Facebook Live. The comments were so uplifting, and it was really beautiful. They sang a variety of songs, everybody sang along…The only thing was when they finished I think I was clapping and crying, it was just a really beautiful moment. I needed that tremendously. I also started watching Self Made, the series on Netflix starring Octavia Spencer, and I’m watching it with my boys. Initially I was like, hey, come watch this series that LeBron executive produced. They’re like, yeah! They thought it was about basketball. Wrong! It’s about the first Black entrepreneur/self-made millionaire in American history, it was amazing. They love it. We’re gonna spread it out, there’s only four episodes, we’re gonna spread it out one every night. They loved it, so it was great. Historical context, I love Octavia Spencer.
I’m playing a lot of board games, I’m merciless with my children. I destroyed them at Pictionary, I have no regrets. I’m doing a six-week fitness challenge with Zehra Allibhai, a woman, a fitness expert, at The FitNest, she’s from Toronto. I love it. I’m not as regular as I’d like to be. Last thing I just wanna say, I saw this tweet, and for everybody out there that’s missing a place of spiritual worship, I come from a community where social gatherings and spiritual gatherings are a huge part of our faith and worship, and not going to mosques, churches, synagogues, gurdwaras and mandirs. It can be really hard for people and whatever your temple is, and I get that, so these digital get-togethers with family and spiritual community, whatever, I just see you. I just wanna leave with a quote by Dr. Ingrid Mattson, a Muslim scholar, wrote: “Don’t worry about the masjid, the angels are filling the rows.” And that just meant a lot to me.
Brenda: Linz.
Lindsay: Uh, yeah, I’m gonna be honest, I do not have much. It’s a dark time. But it’s my dad’s 70th birthday, and I wanna wish him a happy 70th birthday. So happy 70th birthday, dad: you better be social distancing.
Brenda: Happy birthday, Linz’s dad.
Shireen: Happy birthday, dad!
Brenda: I’ll be thinking about that as I wash my hands for the correct amount of time today. I’ll say, “[Happy birthday]…to Lindsay’s dad!”🎶
That’s it for this week in Burn It All Down. Though we’re done for now, just a reminder that you can burn all day and all night with our fabulous array of merchandise. [laughter] It feels so trite, but whatever makes you happy and gives you joy. We are at Teespring, so look for those mugs, and maybe our happy faces will cheer you up. Burn It All Down lives on Soundcloud but can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and TuneIn. We do appreciate your reviews and feedback, so please subscribe and rate and let us know what we should do differently and what we’re doing well. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod, and at Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com and you’ll probably get a really wonderful response from Shireen. You can check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, and there you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and a link to our Patreon. While I’m there, I wanna thank our patrons for their generous support and remind flamethrowers about our Patreon campaign where you can contribute a little bit monthly, become and official patron, and in exchange for your support you get special rewards and extra content. We are so grateful for our patrons and all of you for listening. I’m Brenda Elsey, on behalf of all of the Burn It All Down crew: burn on and not out.