REACTION TO SUNDAY MORNING OP-ED PAGE

REACTION TO A SUNDAY MORNING OP-ED OF THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 18, 2007
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NOTE: I share this with you knowing that you are not likely to be privy to the columns discussed. Joseph Brown, an African American is an editorial writer for The Tampa Tribune. He wrote a column titled “Sports Franchises Score Big With Subsidies.” He specifically mentions billionaire Milton Glazer owner of the Tampa Bay Bucs, who didn’t put a dime in the building of the multimillion dollar stadium but still collects 100 percent of all proceeds in parking and the concession stands for other events as well as Buc home games.

Pat Buchanan, an Irish Catholic, writes a column titled “General Wanders Into Cultural War Free-Fire Zone.” He scolds General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with one brush while providing the rationale and support for his comments on homosexuality and adultery on the other. Buchanan is a knowledgeable journalist, but is not convincing.

David Brooks, a practicing Jew, always seems to cut through the politics of the left and right to allow light to shine through the latticework. He writes in “Democrats Tap Dance Around Iraq” that stalwarts such as Senator Carl Levin, when push comes to show “no guts.” His views usually resonate with me. But I feel in his effort to be fair in this piece he is pusillanimous.

My other comments, which may seem spurious to the reader, are meant to illustrate my perspective, which may or may not resonate. I don’t feel there is enough of that. I’ve never cared what readers will think of what I say. I am more interested in what the reader thinks, if he or she thinks at all, about life forces and events that invade the world, an invasion that could cause collapse if we do not pay attention. I share this with you in that spirit.

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March 18, 2007


Joseph,

Today's Commentary section (March 18, 2007) was lively with you, Pat Buchanan and David Brooks, three astute observers of our passing times with reasoned commentaries of passing events.

Last Friday, I went to a book signing of a 75-year-old lady that now lives in North Carolina, and has written two books, one a mystery, the other a small collection of stories. She is a former teacher and these are her first two books.

The reason I happened to be there is that an author friend in North Carolina, and a fellow Clintonian (Iowa) asked that I meet her. Well, she was absolutely delightful, and there was a large overflowing turnout of friends and relatives, and even former students, as she once lived in this area (Forest Hills).

What I found palpable, however, is that it was not a "reading" audience, or, indeed, an audience that you typically found in bookstores. The women were more comfortable talking about their children, jabbering away and not listening to the lady; the men talked about "the Bucs" and the "NCAA" basketball tournament, while seemingly only my wife and I were listening to her.

Appropriately, nearly all of them bought books, books I wonder if they will read from a woman, who I hope writes as delightfully as she presents. If that is the case, it will be a loss if they do not read her.

So, what does this have to do with columns in the Commentary section today? I read with interest yours on sports moguls scoring big with community subsidies; Buchanan’s on military morals; and Brooks on Iraq.

Regarding your column, I didn't vote for the Community Investment Tax Credit that was funded by taxpayers to build a football stadium for Malcolm Glazer and the Tampa Bay Bucs. I actually applauded former Mayor Bill Poe for his outstanding but fatalistic attempt to stop it. As a matter of fact, I also opposed football coming to the University of South Florida (USF), writing a column in your paper to that effect saying that when USF qualifies for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, I will support USF football.

You are a University of Iowa graduate as am I, and I am a Phi Beta Kappa key holder as well, and you know they don't give them out with Cracker Jacks at Iowa.

Most of us do not go to professional sport games; most of us do not watch an entire game on television; most of us are struggling to stay afloat while the Glazers et al of professional sport make the Fortune Magazine Billionaire List. When it is "all about them" and the rationale that they so cleverly promulgate, blackmailing a community with "if you don't do this I will leave," then a community is stuck on its own petard.

Something is wrong with this picture when economics solely determine the health of a community. So, I find the arguments pro and con as irrelevant as much as specious.

Economics and sports were actually the measure of the downfall of Rome.

I've lived in your Chicago area, Indianapolis, Louisville and Tampa, as well as Paramaribo, Brussels and Johannesburg. These are all unique communities with unique histories, and none of which where professional sport was pivotal to that uniqueness. The Chicago Cubs of your fair city haven't been in the World Series since 1945, and then they lost to Detroit, yet the "losing Cubs" fill Wrigley Stadium every game for the love of the sport. This to me defines Chicago not as a loser town but instead as quite a winning city.

You would think a four-sport high school athlete like myself would be caught up in all this hype, but I've moved on, but wonder nonetheless the direction of everything as I am in the last quarter of my life.

Now, regarding the other columnists mentioned.

Pat Buchanan has a facetious argument regarding morality. Morality is always in the mind of the time. All the rational analysis notwithstanding, he's not going to change that.

General Pace, obviously a decent man, demonstrates his ignorance of the times with his comments on homosexuality. I've insisted in my writing that our leaders today are leaderless because they don't understand "it is not all about them."

Leadership is (always) all about the people of the time and how they attempt to cope with it. Moral laws are often laws of fear written by people of another time and circumstance that possess absolutely no understanding of the reality of our time because they are not members of it. Morality has changed greatly as to what is acceptable and what is not over my lifetime, and it has done so because it must.

David Brooks, who always tries to see both sides of a position, points out that Senator Levin, despite his erudition concerning the Iraq War and knowledge of the Iraq people has a blind spot when it comes to leadership.

Levin thinks that leadership "is all about the leaders" and all leaders have to do "is lead" and everything will fall into place. If it were only so easy, or so true!

Leadership is never about the leader. Leadership is always about the people. The people in Iraq are confused, hateful, fearful, and in a panic mode. They need to be understood, and then to be shown by their leaders how to deal with their confusion, hatred, fears, and by doing so to neutralize their panic, and show them the way forward. This is not an easy process and is far more complicated than a physics equation or a sophisticated weapon system. Quantitative and objective thinking has never solved qualitative and subjective human behavioral problems and it never will.

It is getting terribly old, and I will go to my grave saddened by it, but we can get along without leaders but we cannot get along without people who have the gumption to school their leadership in how to lead them.

Everything starts and stops at ground level.

I will confess my bias was showing when I mentioned some literary writers during the discussion period of the book signing, and not a single person knew who I was talking about, including the author of the book signing. My elitism came to the fore as if book reading "was all about me" and my love of literature. But that would be wrong.

These were good people, close to the ground, glad to see each other, happy in community, and bonding in a natural way with a book signing being the synthetic binder of the moment.

I caught myself in my own deception, a deception that frequently visits our leaders. Books are never about the authors that write them in the same manner that leadership is never about the leaders who lead, nor are the columnists mentioned here about their commentaries. The diverse opinions expressed in the Commentary today ventilate the air we breathe to cause a reader such as myself to express my thoughts, as the Commentary "is all about us."

Iraq needs that chance to be "all about them," and it is not going to be provided if the focus is on the leaders and not on the led.

The poor Florida Orchestra of accomplished musicians deals with crumbs and nobody seems to mind. When I first came to Brussels and enter the historic center of town, "the Grand Place" (pronounced "gran plaz") more than a thousand young people were sitting on the cobble stones listening to a Mozart Concert. No major sports team here. That was 1986; God only knows what it is like today.

Professional sport, all professional sport, personifies violence while celebrating perfection. Even basketball, which is supposed to be a non-contact sport, has found players jumping into the stands to beat up fans, or clobbering fellow players sending them to the hospital.

I attend my ten-year-old granddaughter’s volley ball games on a regular basis at the Temple Terrace Recreation Center. They usually lose, usually all three games. They are a team made of white and black kids, and obviously of differing cultural as well as socioeconomic circumstances. But these kids support each other, don't ride each other when they foul up, and don't mope off the court when they lose.

These young ladies epitomize what Grantland Rice said, "It is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game." Well, they play it in a way to build towards being good citizens and leading healthy lives. Will that be destroyed before they are adults?

Before you say, "No," remember the words of the legendary coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers, "Winning isn’t everything. Winning is the only thing."

Those words, which are taken to represent Americana, are killing us, as we as individuals, know a lot more about losing and dealing with it than ever winning. When we deny this, we live in a cave of our own making.

Be always well,

Jim