Bryant: Veterans Speak Out Against The Militarization Of Sports

Howard Bryant has written a new book — The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism — and he recently contributed an article to WBUR's website.

Veterans Speak Out Against The Militarization Of Sports

While researching my book The Heritage, I was struck by the enormous effect the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have had on sports — how they look, how they're packaged and how they're sold. Before 9/11, giant flags and flyovers were reserved for the Super Bowl. Today, they are commonplace. Even the players wear camouflage jerseys. The military is omnipresent. And it's by design.

The public accepts this as supporting the troops, but one group of individuals — the veterans themselves — is more skeptical. ...

Bill Astore is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who writes about the increased militarization of sports — and its perils — on Bracing Views, his personal blog, as well as the website Tom Dispatch. ...

"[I]t's not something that I see should be flying over a sports stadium before a baseball game or a football game. You know, these are weapons of death. They may be required, but they certainly shouldn't be celebrated and applauded." ...

Astore grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts ... He's an avid Red Sox fan, and when he watches sports, he sees the perpetual selling of war, and something very cynical: patriotism for sale, with troops as bait. ...

In the years following 9/11, professional sports took a healing gesture and transformed it into a way to make money. In 2015, Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake released the report "Tackling Paid Patriotism," which criticized the deceptive, taxpayer-funded contracts between the Pentagon and virtually every pro sports league. ...

[Astore:] "I was disgusted by it. ... [T]o learn that these had been paid for — that corporate teams, teams owned by billionaires, basically, were collecting money from the military. Paid for, obviously, by you and me, by the American taxpayer. Well, it was sad." ...

The ballpark ceremony obscures the realities of war and, by focusing on soldiers, inoculates the government from antiwar criticism. Bill Astore tells me it's a form of emotional manipulation. ...

Recruiting is a main reason the military is embedded in sports. In an interview for my book, I told three-star General Russel Honore I didn't want the Army recruiting my son while he watched the Red Sox. His response? "You better hold on to them, if you don't want them in the Army. We're gonna recruit the hell out of them. That's how we man the force." ...

I asked one baseball executive, who told me his sport promotes the military not out of patriotism but out of fear — the fear of being called unpatriotic. Nearly 20 years after 9/11, Bill Astore believes these rituals have served their purpose.

"We sing 'God Bless America' during the seventh-inning stretch, because, well, that's what we do now," Astore says. "We have a huge flag and military flyovers because that's what we do. We celebrate a military person after the fourth inning because that's what we do. And we've come to expect it. ... [A]ll of this needs to be ratcheted back ... to a simpler time — when you played the national anthem, you respected our country and then you play ball. And you just enjoy the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed."

We can — and should — ratchet it back even further than that. Playing the anthem and making any kind of patriotic display is NOT the way baseball was "meant to be enjoyed". Perhaps when that was first done, there were veterans who believed that the intrusion was wrong to the same extent Astore is disgusted by this current display. It's all on a continuum.

Most people do not salute the flag or sing the national anthem before they begin their work day. There is absolutely no need — or coherent reason — for professional baseball players (and other athletes) to do so.

Bryant comments that "recruiting is a main reason the military is embedded in sports". In April 2014, my partner and I saw three games at Fenway Park. She wrote that those games

were marred by only one thing: nearly constant propaganda for the US military. This is not an exaggeration.

Throughout Fenway Park, as in many sports venues, monitors show a TV feed of the action on the field. Right now, between innings, the Fenway Park monitors show a continuous feed of advertising for the United States Army. During the game, the ads continue on a sidebar beside the action.

Let that sink in a moment. The constant advertising crammed into every moment of the ballgame, and the constant linking of sports and the military, are now joined in this doubly offensive development.

There is something particularly Orwellian about watching a baseball game while a constant stream of silent images of war and military run in your peripheral vision.

The military never stops recruiting, of course. A steady supply of new, young members is essential to its existence, and sports is not the only avenue pursued by recruiters. In the United States, children as young as five - kindergartners, in other words - sometimes come home with worksheets that mention careers in military, asking "Which branch would you choose?"