I want to give a brief plug for a Gaines Center fellow, James Chapman, who is starting a project called the Lexington Video Challenge?  What does it entail?  See the video below:

Chapman simply asks us to create a video that captures what Lexington is all about.  He’s interested in how we “brand” ourselves as a city, what we do, and what images we perpetuate about ourselves.  Since this is a jury project for the Gaines Center, I presume that there will be some synthesis and answer to how the humanities can help us think about these challenging questions. If you’re an expert filmmaker, give this challenge a shot.

Yesterday the Library and Information Science world was abuzz when the University of California at Santa Cruz announced that it is seeking applicants for a Grateful Dead Archivist position.  According to the job posting, the ideal candidate would have an ALA-accredited MLS (and all of the relevant professional knowledge and experience that such training entails) and an “expert knowledge in the history and scholarship of contemporary popular music and American vernacular culture, preferably the history and influence of the Grateful Dead.”

What a great job, right? John Stewart jumped on this one last night in his opening sequence to The Daily Show. A job that requires expert knowledge of the Grateful Dead and top-flight organizational skills?  Stewart’s monologue is nothing more than a string of pejorative conceptions about what it means to be an information professional.  Clips like this are why there’s so much professional insecurity and meaningless backpedaling in LIS graduate courses.

Still, I’m seriously thinking about applying for this job, and I hired an interview coach to grill me on possible job interview questions.  I’ve got the educational credentials (and more) plus some experience.  Here’s a top three list of potential questions I could hear.

1.  So, Mr. Battista, do you feel that Jerry became a little too attached to the mixolydian riffs in the “Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain” medley during the Summer ‘72 tour?

2.  What’s your favorite “Dark Star?”

3. How do you account for Donna’s inconsistent vocals in the Summer ‘77 tour?

Should I apply?

After a long day of thinking about how I’m going to unfold my dissertation project,  I feel like I need to do a little free-wheeling, easy cultural studies writing.  I saw a repulsive and reprehensible commercial for Wal-Mart the other day.

U.S. forces approach a camp that appears to be in a desert landscape.  It’s not clear whether we’re to take this desert camp as being in Afghanistan or Iraq, but since the commercial unfolds as a paean to troop support during this holiday season, and troops are being sent to Afghanistan, rather than Iraq, by the thousands, I suppose we’re meant to believe that this is the Afghanistan desert.

A magical music score begins to play as the soldiers look to the heavens with a sense of awe and wonder.  It’s snowing in the desert! An impossibility.  A miracle, and a sign that somewhere a prayer has been answered.  And it has.  In some undisclosed shopping mall back home, a thirty-something mom and her son leave the Santa booth and the mother stoops to ask her son what he wishes for.  “Something for daddy.”

Whatever emotions this commercial seeks to evoke have to be based on the fact that most United States citizens are completely oblivious about what happens in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  Sure, it doesn’t snow much in Iraq, but it does happen, as we discovered earlier last year.  And when it does, there certainly isn’t any accumulation (like this Wal-Mart spot depicts).

And, of course in Afghanistan, brutal winters, dry, cold temperatures, and snowfall aren’t the sign that some magical Christmas spirit has been appeased by the wish of a spoiled rotten brat in New Jersey.  Snow happens every winter, and it can be extreme. All of this is to say that the commercial “works” because Wal-Mart’s target audience doesn’t know much about Afghanistan weather, just as it knows little about the perilous war in which our country is becoming increasingly entrenched.  There’s nothing magical or festive about snowfall in the Afghani desert when U.S. troops are there.

Of course, the real repulsive aspect of this ad spot is the way in which Wal-Mart takes its slogan, “Live Better,” and attaches it to U.S. imperial conquest.  Yes, the United States military does help us live better in situations like this, perhaps because it protects existing systems of capital economy.

How does Wal-Mart get away with exploiting foreign war against “terrorism,” hijacking the pain of real people who are dying there every week, and using the emotive force to enhance its brand image for the upcoming holiday sales rush?  Wal-Mart says that it cares about the plight of U.S. soldiers, yet it throws chicken scraps at veterans hospitals and programs.  In 2008, the retailer donated $3.6 million to veterans educational programs.  This is great, but it’s chump change for a business that profited $12.73 billion dollars in 2008.

Yuck.

I’ve been asked to share my experience with blogging to instructors at the University of Kentucky.  What better strategy than to go meta and write a blog post about blogging?  In a year (allegedly) the University of Kentucky Writing Program will spearhead a significant curricular shift, which is part of the university’s larger general education program change.  Writing instruction will become more aware of changing methods of communication and will strive to incorporate the spectrum of media and technology that’s now available.

The Writing Program will be offering a series of PDS(s) on the intersection between writing and these new media forms (photography, video, audio recording, and blogging).  For now, we’ve decided that blogs are the baseline tool that will allow students and instructors to explore and test the limits of converging communication patterns.  Without blogs, we’ll be unable to circulate much of the multi-media work that we do and that we’ll ask our students to do.

The Rhetoric of Blogging

Blogs are changing the way we read, understand, and disseminate information. By calling attention to the transience and immediacy of information, they are arguably even changing the way we write.  Sites like the Huffington Post are able to offer a diverse range of writing, commentary, news, analysis, and information.

Blogging Success Stories

• Stuff White People Like
• The Mudflats

Rhetorical Functions of Blogging

• Embedding links in post
• Nestling photos and videos
• Polls
• Immediacy
• Intertextuality
• Self-reflexivity

Pragmatics

Choose a theme.  Have a vision for a blog that foresees what might follow whatever project or position you’re currently tackling.  Think about the niche your blog can have in the public audience.

Develop a strong RSS subscription list.  Find efficient ways to know which blogs are influential and to whom.

Fix Buffalo Today

Barefoot and Progressive

Uses

Pedagogy:  We can use blogs for class discussion, participation, announcements, etc. – The New Testament as Literature

Photo blogging or photo journalism- Disposable Words

Video journalism

Podcast or audio project hosting:  Et in Arcadia Ego

Writing and media

Techniques & Terms

Tags v. Categories

RSS

Pingback/trackback

Good Examples

Pigs in the Parlor: Note the work done with photographs.

The Well Wrought Urn:  By linking to other major news sources, writers can insert themselves in a public conversation about situations that matter.

My institution, The University of Kentucky, continues to receive national media coverage for the embarrassments that take place on campus and in its administrative meetings.  Our latest shameful news is that the University Board of Trustees met today to discuss whether or not they would accept Joe Craft’s proposed gift of $7 million and the handcuffed obligation to spend it on a new dorm for its college basketball players.  The new dorm, if built, would be required to have the name “coal” in it, mostly because Craft is the CEO of Alliance Coal, LLC.

As expected, the Board of Trustees didn’t spend much time worrying about the ramifications of their decision and quickly voted to accept the gift and move forward with plans to build the new “Wildcat Coal Lodge.” There has been a great deal of buzz on campus the past few days, and now national media outlets are turning to cover the incident, and not without an attitude of condescension and pity either.

Check out what Dave Zirin, a sports editor at The Nation and the host of Edge of Sports Radio, has to say on the Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC):

This clip is interesting, even if misguided in its guffawing focus on the idiocy of naming buildings after coal, but Maddow does ask a good question about the role that private industry now holds in college athletics.  This five-minute interview is yet one more sign that we need to supplement our news diet with more sources and more information than what appears on television.

Joe Craft has already donated millions of dollars to the University of Kentucky Athletics Association so it could build a new practice facility for the men’s basketball team.  This project, while largely funded by Craft’s own pocketbook, did force the university to dip into its coffers (which, by the way, come from state tax payers), even though university administrators protested and said that UK is suffering from a “crisis in undergraduate education.”

Now, Craft has organized a group of influential coal barons, bankers, and other Lexington figures to form a group called “The Difference Makers.”  The Kentucky Kernel features a story with a list of these people.  These are precisely the people who exploit Kentucky’s land, people, and economies.  They have access to the highest percentages of concentrated wealth in the state, and they could use their financial clout and resourcefulness to raise money for the university’s general education fund instead of its already bloated athletics department.

Craft’s group had the audacity to announce their plans during an on-campus forum on coal and the university last week.  Almost all of the university’s electricity comes by way of Kentucky coal, and various university leaders met to discuss the future of this energy resource and our responsibility as an institution to seek alternatives.  Instead, it became another forum for Kentucky’s coal industry to advance its agenda vis-a-vis UK programming.

Back to Maddow’s point.  Doesn’t this decision by the Board of Trustees constitute some sort of egregious violation of the line between corporate advertising and educational endeavor?  It does, but she should have focused on the fact that such uneasy collaboration has been going on for a long time, mainly out of sad necessity.  I’m currently sitting in the William T. Young library, writing in the Toyota Reading Room, a space that’s been subsidized by a predatory multi-national automotive company that’s done more to dismantle union labor in Kentucky than any industry except coal mining.

Universities like UK willingly turn to corporate deals and agreements because they feel as if they need the money.  They are underfunded by state legislatures to be sure, but more often than not, universities simply allow billion dollar companies to profit off of their clientele.  They get little in return.  A good recent example is UK’s decision to allow Apple Computers to build a store in its Student Center.

What Maddow and Zirin also neglected to mention is that the Board of Trustees’ vote today is just one example of a longstanding partnership between the interests of big coal in Kentucky and University of Kentucky athletics.  Last week, Friends of Coal sponsored a men’s basketball practice, which UK students could attend if they subjected themselves to watching women’s volleyball and men’s soccer games.  Friends of Coal also sponsors replays at home football and basketball games.  The formula for the coal industry, and a lot of other industries in Kentucky for that matter, is simple:  find the product people in the state care about more passionately than anything (Kentucky basketball) and find ways for them to associate their positive passion toward it with their own product (in this case, coal.)

Zirin hits the nail on the head again.  Lee Todd won’t do anything to stop this because he see all things university related as a business transaction.  He hasn’t actually taught in a university since the early 1980s, he’s a former board member of IBM, and he’s hopelessly skewed by the values of the marketplace.  The sun is not shining bright on my old Kentucky home today.

This article appears in North of Center.  I hope everyone in the downtown Lexington area picks up a copy.

Rejecting Nobel’s Audacity of Hope:  Why We Should Not Appreciate Barack Obama’s Peace Prize

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it would give President Barack Obama the 2009 Peace Prize, I, like many people, reacted bitterly.  Having won a Peace Prize, Obama stands alongside Al Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Henry Kissinger, political figures and past Nobel Prize winners who have perpetuated military and economic violence in the name of national security.

U.S. citizens should not continue to uphold the Peace Prize as worthy recognition for leaders like Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, or Mother Theresa, Nobel Laureates whose legacies of sacrificial reconciliation and peacemaking have been hijacked by an international community who is enamored with Obama’s charismatic appeals to Hope and Change.

The fact remains that President Barack Obama is a warmonger.  I don’t think this is an overly-pejorative term.  Obama has merely taken the Bush-era foreign policy of violence and conquest in Iraq, where the United States military industrial complex sponsored a relentless pursuit of oil, and transferred it to Afghanistan, where we are now waging another amorphous war against terrorism and spending billions of dollars in the name of “national security.”  The Huffington Post reported this week that our exploits in Afghanistan are far more dangerous than the Iraqi campaign has been.  At least 800 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and many more civilians have lost their lives at the hands of U.S. military aggression, which has indiscriminately chased Taliban forces through the rugged Afghani landscape.

President Obama no more deserves a Nobel Peace Prize than does George W. Bush.  Yet so many political pundits and uncritical liberals give Obama (and the Norwegian Nobel Committee for that matter) the benefit of the doubt.  This is a preemptive award, they say, one that may compel Obama to steer U.S. military policy in such a way that would make him a worthy Peace Prize recipient.

I think this is magical thinking.  Since his administration took office, President Obama has selected hawks like General Stanley McChrystal to further entrench the United States in overseas combat.  We may remember McChrystal as one of the brass responsible for the Army’s shameless cover-up after the Pat Tillman friendly fire death.  Obama has increased the troop level in Afghanistan by 33 percent; he has sent an additional 21,000 men and women to fight in 2009 alone.  General McChrystal, whom Omama handpicked to head the campaign in our new rendition of the war on terror, has asked for at least 40,000 additional troops, and Obama, even as he accepted the Peace Prize with humility, refused to rule out the possibility that he would grant McChrystal’s request.

Now, thousands of U.S. soldiers, many of whom have already served multiple tours in Iraq, are preparing for lengthy deployment in Afghanistan, where they face the insurmountable task of creating a democratic order ex nihilo.  According to the Nobel Committee website, the Peace Prize is bestowed upon those individuals who “have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”  Obama has precipitously increased the standing army of the United States, and his actions have encouraged other world leaders to do the same.

We should not be proud of our President as he accepts this award.  His unwavering financial support of Israel’s military aggression has not fostered peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  During the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama kept his critic (and former Peace Prize winner) Jimmy Carter away from the convention and allowed him only a brief video message.  Obama’s underlying fear was that Carter’s role in Middle East peacemaking would cost him votes.

By default, the Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military should be ineligible for a Nobel Peace Prize, if that award is to signify anything meaningful.  Of course, an award is just an award, and Barack Obama can bring about peace in ways that most world citizens cannot.  But the aftermath of the 2009 Peace Prize award is a familiar echo of an international trend.  We support Barack Obama without holding him accountable for his actions.

Several weeks go North of Center published my article on the prospect of a new Rupp Arena.  To my knowledge, IMG/ISG and the UK Athletics Department have yet to release any official news on the project, although those well-connected people have stumbled upon some rumblings.  See Kentucky Sports Radio’s blog post, “Is There a New Arena in the Works?”

The Cost of Replacing Rupp Arena

Corporate Welfare and Lexington’s Basketball Tradition

Every time I watch a home University of Kentucky basketball game that broadcasts nationally on CBS or ESPN, I hear announcers regurgitate the same platitudes about Rupp Arena.  It is a cathedral, a sacred space, the epicenter of the basketball-crazed Bluegrass Region.  Glory, honor, and heritage ooze out of every nook and cranny in the arena.  Rupp’s rafters bear witness to an unparalleled tradition of excellence, and its court has been graced by college basketball’s all-time great players and coaches.  Such reverence from these announcers makes it seem as if Rupp Arena is Lexington’s most functional building, or at least a space good enough for its rabid fan base.

Oh, were it that simple.  Lexington taxpayers should be suspicious next month when the London sports marketing firm IMG/ISG releases a feasibility study to determine whether or not Lexington can replace Rupp Arena, which is now 33 years old.  The study, authorized by the Lexington Center Corporation and endorsed by the University of Kentucky, will detail the logistics behind financing and building an arena that, for many people, seems to be superfluous.  Worse, it smacks of corporate welfare, an all-too familiar scenario in Kentucky, where politicians divvy out tax breaks, subsidies, and preferential treatment to profiteering entities that least need a helping hand.

The prospective new Rupp Arena raises several questions for Lexington, a city whose leadership has shown itself exceedingly willing to spend public money in ways that benefit private enterprises.  Each year, taxpayers in the United States spend over $2 billion on privately-owned sports stadiums and arenas.  How much public money will go toward building a new arena in Lexington?  Who will profit from a new arena?  Can the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG), which faces a $27 million budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year and is obliged to provide its citizens with infrastructure upgrades, justify contributing any money toward a new basketball arena?

These questions are complex, and since IMG/ISG (the prospective investor) stands to profit from a new arena with luxury suites, more seats, and top-notch amenities, their feasibility study may not address these issues directly or honestly.  UK Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart and Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry have already said that tax dollars will not support a new arena if it were built, but that promise, and the prospect that private financing will come through in a global recession, is fleeting.

To me, building a new Rupp Arena seems like a profound misappropriation of public energy and ingenuity, if not money.  Lexington has many problems that take precedence over upgrading its basketball arena, and they are problems that will require long hours of work to ameliorate.  In anticipation of IMG/ISG’s feasibility study, I offer a tale of three cities:  New York, Seattle, and Lexington.  Each tale provides a radically different example of how a community can decide to treat the relationship between sporting venues, corporate profit, and public assets.

New York

Those who want to finance sports venues with public money have long argued that new stadiums boost local economies by providing jobs and fostering business.  This logic, which has been proven false, dictated financial policy in New York over the past several years, when the city financed two new baseball stadiums.  The New York Yankees and Mets, the two wealthiest baseball corporations in the world, demanded public support for their new venues, and George Steinbrenner, whose Yankees franchise was worth $1.2 billion in 2007, even threatened to move his team to New Jersey if New York didn’t pony up tax dollars to defray the cost of building a new stadium.

After much political posturing, city officials, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, approved New York’s stadium projects.  The Yankees seized land in the South Bronx and began building on a plot where Macombs Dam Park once stood.  The park, a recreational area where many of the poorest residents in the Bronx played tennis, basketball, and baseball, was sacrificed so the Yankees could benefit.  The stadium construction project included plans to replace Macombs Dam Park, but when the city announced that a lack of funds would delay the park’s relocation, Mayor Bloomberg downplayed the hiccup by telling reporters that “you don’t have progress unless you inconvenience a few people.”

It’s hard to see the progress in New York, though.  In the end, the New York Independent Budget Office calculates, city and state taxpayers contributed over $528 million to the new Yankee Stadium and at least another $234 million for the Mets’ new park, Citi Field.  A good deal of that money comes from tax exempt bonds and other inscrutable subsidies programs, which means that the Yankees and Mets can take the city and state taxes they’ll owe New York and use that money to pay off their construction debt instead.  Because of the stadiums, the city and state will not receive millions in much-needed tax revenue over the next decades, and so far, the new stadiums have generated little to no new jobs or economic growth.  Meanwhile, Steinbrenner and Mets owner Fred Wilpon reap the profits that come with their new digs.  The entire New York stadium episode shows how far a city will travel to assist private corporations that do business in it, regardless of the economic and social cost to the community.

Seattle

In Seattle, a much different ethos has prevailed over time.  There, the NBA’s Sonics played in the undersized KeyArena (built in 1995).  When Howard Schultz, the billionaire team owner (and co-founder and CEO of Starbucks), could not procure tax funding for a larger arena, he sold the team to other local investors.  Voters denied Schultz because they were already frustrated that the Seattle Legislature had committed over $800 million to new baseball and football stadiums during the 1990s.  So when the Sonics came looking for money, Seattle residents formed a task force called Citizens for More Important Things, a group that turned public opinion against subsidizing billion-dollar sports corporations.

Finished with doling out money to already-wealthy sports franchise owners, Citizens for More Important Things focused efforts on getting funding for healthcare, education, and affordable housing initiatives.  On their website, they ask a compelling question: if city officials can pay for stadiums, why can’t they pay for the things Seattle needs.  Today, Seattle has an ethic of separation between sports and public money so stringent that the city recently passed a federal rule forbidding its publicly-funded Metro Transit from running direct shuttles to and from baseball and football games.  Seattle citizens hardly blinked in 2008 when the Sonics, under new ownership, asked for money once again and threatened to leave if they did not get it.  When taxpayers refused to subsidize a new hoops arena, the Sonics packed up and moved to Oklahoma City.

Lexington

Lexington is not like New York or Seattle because its team, the Wildcats, is a collegiate franchise, not a professional one.  The Wildcats are not privately-owned like the Yankees Mets, and Sonics, and Big Blue fans do not have to worry about the team relocating to another state at the whim of greedy entrepreneurs.  However, in many ways, Lexington parallels New York and Seattle.  We stand to learn a great deal from how these cities financed sports and entertainment venues.  Lexington faces, like most U.S. urban areas, significant financial challenges and social inequalities, so stories like what happened in New York and Seattle may be able to help us hold our leaders accountable as we try to figure out how they spend public money.

My tale of three cities is complicated by an entangled web of allegiances and financial interests that links UK basketball to Lexington’s government and businesses.  UK is not unique among top-tier college programs in that it lets external corporate entities profit from its most lucrative product, athletics.  Television companies generate billions from advertising revenues, clothing outfitters make millions from merchandise licensing agreements, and the list goes on.  However, UK is virtually unique among colleges in that it does not own its own arena.  Most universities own on-campus venues, where they play the majority of their games, but UK pays rent to the Lexington Center Corporation, a non-profit 501 c4 corporate agency of LFUCG.

Until the mid-1970s, UK played in its on-campus arena, but downtown merchants, in search of revenues, strong-armed the university administration into signing a lease at yet-to-be-built Rupp Arena.  As Betty Boles Ellison claims in her book, Kentucky’s Domain of Greed, Power, and Corruption, “The practice of protecting downtown Lexington at the university’s expense is so ingrained and incestuous that it continues today.  Few people ever give it a thought, and if they do, surely ask no questions.”  Ellison estimates that since moving into Rupp Arena in 1976, UK has lost millions of dollars in advertising and concessions revenue.

It’s almost impossible to tell whether or not citizens of the Commonwealth are getting screwed over because UK rents space at Rupp Arena.  Basketball revenues are funneled into the Athletics Association coffers, not general education funds.  Ellison’s bombast journalism notwithstanding, it’s likely that UK’s arrangement with Rupp is mutually beneficial—the city and its non-profit corporate arm make money they wouldn’t otherwise generate, and the university doesn’t have to worry about maintaining its own facility.

Similarly, it’s almost impossible to say who benefits from a new arena, and to what extent.  Rupp Arena is currently backed by the Lexington Center Corporation, the Downtown Development Authority, the Downtown Lexington Corporation, and other abstruse hierarchies who benefit financially from UK basketball.  And if IMG/ISG has its way the University of Kentucky would become the first major collegiate program to have a privately-financed stadium.  IMG/ISG therefore stands to become the next foreign corporate conglomerate that makes money off of Lexington.

It could be that the cost of a new Rupp Arena should be measured in what would get ignored in Lexington, not how much tax money (if any) gets spent.  I’ve found that such an opportunity cost analysis is much easier to work though than figuring out the trail of public and private dollars that flow in and out of Rupp.

In 2007, when rumors surfaced about a new Rupp Arena, Mayor Newberry suggested that the project would be funded by TIFs (Tax Increment Funding).  When Kentucky Legislators approved the TIF model for all counties within the Commonwealth, they intended to legalize a funding mechanism that allows cash-strapped municipalities to revive blighted urban areas and decaying infrastructural systems.  TIFs offer the illusion that we can create money out of thin air; they are breaks that excuse businesses of the tax they would owe if the value of their property were increased.

All too often, when TIFs are used to fund sports and entertainment venues, they turn into tax breaks for corporations.  TIFs are a ruse, a way that politicians and arena proprietors can claim that the public won’t have to pay for a new arena.  The truth is that the public does pay, often for 20-30 years after a new arena is completed because local governments lose out on tax revenues.

Until IMG/ISG releases its feasibility study, we don’t know whether TIFs will be part of the new Rupp Arena equation.  But we can ask, however, whether a new arena the most appropriate implementation of the TIF model.  Should we not use our imaginations and establish a project that helps local affordable housing programs get off the ground or revives substandard city sewer systems?

Sources

For estimates of the amount of public money spent on stadiums and arenas, see Neil deMause and Joanna Cagan’s Field of Schemes:  How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit.  I obtained information on the LFUCG budget deficit from Eric Patrick Marr’s Ace Weekly blog story on the Lyric Theatre (Feb. 17, 2009).  The worth of the Yankees and Mets is as reported in a 2007 Forbes story.  Mayor Bloomberg’s comments on the stadium come from a report by ESPN’s Outside the Lines reporter Jeremy Schaap. All information about IMG/ISG’s involvement in Rupp Arena comes from press releases that are posted on their company website.

Last week I went to see the anticlimactic “Rumble in the River,” a preseason-esque 42-0 University of Kentucky drubbing over Miami (OH) in Cincinnati’s Paul Brown Stadium.

It could be that the game’s most interesting moment for me took place before the game commenced.  As per usual, I chose to remain seated during the performance of the national anthem.  Rather than supporting an uncritical linkage between sport and state by standing and singing our nation’s paean to victory achieved by violence, I use the time when the anthem is playing for private spiritual reflection.  What is our nation’s relationship to violence today?  What attitude toward the state should I espouse as a Christian and member of God’s Empire?  And, most importantly, why are organized sports so often exploited as a vehicle of forced patriotism?  (As a refresher, I’ve previously referenced Noam Chomsky’s thoughts on sports, which he says exude a fervor that is easily co-opted for the sake of national allegiance, and the Mennonite Goshen College’s ambivalent relationship to patriotism at its home athletics events).

While I was sitting in my seat last week, one fan from several rows above yelled down at me—I’m presuming at me because I was the only person sitting in my section—and said, “Hey hippie, why don’t you stand up? Do you love our country, or are you anti-American?”  I share this story not to cast myself as a victim.  It’s only a way to say that pro-American rituals, forced patriotism, and nationalistic zeal have crept into our nation’s sporting venues in ways that are damaging to all parties involved.

In fact, what happened to me pales in comparison to an incident in the old Yankee Stadium a year ago, where a man was harassed and eventually ejected from the stadium for attempting to use the restroom during the seventh inning stretch singing of “God Bless America.”  For the man, this treatment constituted religious and political discrimination.  Yankee Stadium had been the extreme for MLB venues in that its ushers often chained off aisles to prevent people from leaving their seats during the song.  However, since that lawsuit, which was settled when the city of New York agreed to pay $10,000 to the aggrieved party, the Yankees have refrained from chaining aisles.  Still, forced patriotism has not gone away.  (And, by the way, it’s still unclear why New York taxpayers had to foot the bill for something harmful done by the New York Yankees franchise).

Just this past weekend, another incident has emerged.  The sports blog Field of Schemes reports that a minor league franchise owner forcibly removed three teens from the stadium earlier this summer because they refused to stand during the rendition of “God Bless America.”  According to the write-up by the local New Jersey paper, Thomas Cetnar, a disgraced police officer and part owner of the franchise, noticed the men sitting during the seventh inning ritual, approached them furiously, and instructed security guards to escort them out of the park.  In Cetnar’s own words,  “Nobody sits during the singing of ‘God Bless America’ in my stadium.  Now the get the (expletive) out of here.”

Field of Schemes astutely points out that Cetnar has nerve calling the Newark Bears’ park “my stadium” when it in fact was paid for with tax dollars.  And, to add an additional layer of irony, Cetnar’s appeal to American loyalty is especially problematic, given his prior improprieties as a defender of United States citizens (he embezzled drug money).

To some, standing during the national anthem and “God Bless America” is a “matter of etiquette,” as the Star-Ledger’s Sharon Aldaro puts it.  But what if one doesn’t believe that God exists?  Or, how do we respect the experience of those who enjoy sports and athletics, but believe that God and nation should not be confused?  People, like myself, who balk at singing patriotic anthems at sporting events, do so because of deep religious convictions about the way God operates in earth and the way that God’s followers should posture themselves as the live within earthy structures of power.  And we also like baseball, basketball, and football.  Sadly, it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that the imperial nature of sports and nation cannot be separated easily, despite my wishes.

Of course, I don’t expect everyone to hold my Anabaptist precepts about war, God, nation, and peaceful protest, but I do hope that these recent stadium incidents and the subsequent lawsuits will open a new national conversation about that it means to be a citizen and a sports fan.  Some people are already working in this territory.  But we need more.

* Update:  An extended version of this essay will appear in North of Center.  Stay tuned.

This weekend, famed voice for peace and activist Cindy Sheehan will visit Lexington.  She’ll be available at various events and locations this weekend, including a free talk at Transylvania University on Friday, September 12, 7:00 pm, and an appearance at Morris Book  Shop on Southland Drive (the next day, Saturday, between 3 and 4 pm).  Sheehan’s son Casey was killed in Iraq, and in the years since, she’s been an unrelenting voice for peace and reconciliation.  More importantly, she’s made many people aware of the human costs associated with war—costs that our media tries to obscure whenever possible.

My second plug, for those so inclined, is to anticipate a second book, The New American Exceptionalism, by Donald E. Pease.  The book will be published toward the end of October, and it examines various state fantasies that uphold our new manifestation of America’s post-Bush regime.  I’ve heard and read parts of this book, and I can vouch for its relevance and importance.  It includes, among other things, a suggestion that Sheehan has usurped the role of patriotic grieving mother and turned this ideological space on its head.

The violence in Iraq has not ended, nor has United States foreign policy shifted in any substantial way with Barack Obama’s election.  Sheehan and Pease demand that we grapple with their message.

The past few days I’ve been in Washington DC at a Campus Progress training summit.  We’ve been talking about effective journalism, writing good ledes, weighing the ethics of journalism against the challenges of being a college student, and other important facets of the profession.

One of my assignments is to take some digital photographs and construct a brief blog post on the best three of them.  I am not a good photographer.  But I have learned a few basic tactics that might help me to take better pictures in the future, or at least recognize when a photo might be worth saving and circulating.

I stepped outside of the Center for American Progress headquarters and ambled down a few blocks toward the White House.  It’s always good to be in close proximity to Mr. Obama when one works with such progressive movements.  Today the weather is clear, medium humidity, and sunny, but in prior nights we strolled across 1600 Pennsylvania and saw Barack out on the White House front porch smoking a cigarette (his last remaining vice) and staring wistfully into the night.

Today, the Obamas are gone, on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, and so DC housekeepers are busily working.  Late summer cleaning includes a good pressure wash of the White House exterior.

Walking on, I ran into several protesters, of specious origins, who have camped out in front of the White House.  There are voices for peace, voices for war, and voices that cannot be discerned.

One man was shooting (a picture) his friend in front of the White House.  I immediately jumped at the opportunity, thinking of it as a great juxtaposition with the backdrop of peace advocates.  Note how aggressively he documents his achievement, as if he’s a test case for Walker Percy’s model tourist.  I’m using the rule of thirds here, which apparently is good for the human eye:

A few blocks later, I paused for a meditative reflection on nature and culture.  In the foreground rests a tree, carefully cultivated on a street across from the United States Treasury.  Will the financial policies of our nation lead us to ecological ruin?

And finally, I returned to my hotel, which rests a few blocks from St. Matthew’s Cathedral.  It’s front boasts an incredibly sharp image of the pilot of the Galilean Lake.  It reminded me that we live in a nation that badly needs Matthew’s message of radical separation between God’s Kingdom and earthly kingdoms, of which the entire city of DC boasts.  The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, he says, with his index and middle finger extended, a sign of teaching authority.