Independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audre rapoport foundation. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Anne gumowitz. The betsy and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Welcome. Let us now praise common sense. Once again a president was about to plunge us into the darkest waters of Foreign Policy where the ruling principle becomes, when in doubt, bomb someone. Strategists in the white house, militarists in the think tanks, the powerful proisrael lobby aipac, and armchair warriors of all stripes, neoconservatives and liberal humanitarians alike, were all telling barack obama to strike syria, no matter the absence of any law or treaty to justify it, no matter the chaos to follow. Do it, they said, to show you can, or whats a super power for . But they hadnt reckoned on public opinion. The people said no, not this time. Not after more than ten years of soldiers coming home broken in body, screaming nightmares in their brains, their families devastated. Not when our politics is an egregious fraud, unable to accomplish anything except enable the rich, while everyday People Struggle to make ends meet. Jeannette baskin, who lives on Staten Island not far from the statue of liberty, who describes herself as neither republican nor democrat, told the new york times, we invest all this money in Foreign Countries and fixing their problems, and this country is falling apart. Dont think these people callous, those pictures of children gassed in syria sicken them. But there are limits to military power when religious rivalries and secular passions come armed with blowtorches. A retired educator named alice ridinger in hanover, pennsylvania, spoke for multitudes when she also told the times that while she finds the use of chemical weapons terrible, she fears the deeper involvement that could follow a military strike. I dont think that would be the end of it, she said. Truth is, no one knows what would happen once the missiles fly. Not the white house or pentagon. Not the cia or nsa. Not even the allseeing oracles of cable television, the editorial writers of the wall street journal, or the seers of such influential publications as the economist, hawkish now on syria despite having been wrong on iraq. In time, the white house, congress, and the punditry could all be grateful to a suddenly attentive and stubborn public. They may have been spared a folly, thanks to this collective common sense that became so palpable it was a force in its own right. Now politics and diplomacy have a chance. Perhaps only a slight chance, the Washington Post reports that the cia has just begun delivering weapons to rebels in syria, deepening americas stake in the civil war. But we cant know if politics and diplomacy work unless we give them a try. Meanwhile, give a cheer for common sense. So with the drums of war quieted for the moment, millions of us will take a deep breath and turl the time to the yankees and the red sox, the giants and the broncos. Yes, its that ti when our National Pastimes compete and collide, and there imply arent enough h alluring distractions offered. The weekends so packed with games its hard to keep up with whos on first and whos been knocked flat on their backs. Or, to be a bit more cynical, whos on steroids and whos being carried unconscious to the locker room. Which is why ive asked dave zirin to help us keep sce. States. The reporter who, you may remember, challenged the president of Bridgestone Firestone on whether his product should be the official tire sponsor of e suthr bowl while the company was fighting a lawsuit for allegedly using child labor in liberia. Zirins the first sportswriter in the long history of the nation magazine. He hosts sirius xm radios popular show edge of sports. And hes written several provocative, even scathing books on sports and society, including, bad sports how owners are ruining the games we love, and this his most recent, game over how politics has turned the sports world upside down. Oh, yes, utne reader named dave zirin one of the 50 visionaries who are changing the world. Welcome to the show. Oh, its great to be here. You go back a long way with your chronicling of sports. How did sports grab you . Well, i mean, i grew up in new york city just an absolute sports freak. I mean, i memorized statistics, i followed all those great new york city teams in the 80s, the mets, knicks, unbelievable. My room was a shrine to these people. I mean, folks like darryl strawberry, keith hernandez, lawrence taylor. And i never really thought about or cared about politics very much. And that really changed for me in 1996 when i was in college in minnesota. At the time, there was a player for the Denver Nuggets named mahmoud abdulrauf who made the decision to not go out for the National Anthem before games. And when because . Because he said he felt like it violated his religious principles. And he didnt believe that there should be a conflation of sports, and as he put it, paying worship to a flag. And so a reporter got wind of it and went to him and said, what are you doing . Dont you realize that that flag is a symbol of freedom and democracy throughout the world . And rauf said, well, it may be a symbol of freedom and democracy to some, but its a symbol of oppression and tyranny to others. Now when he said this, the sports world just blew up. I mean, espn was, like, rauf spits on the flag. Booyah. And everybody was crowding around and watching this. And i remember seeing one of the talking heads say, well, rauf must see himself as an athlete activist, you know, like muhammad ali or billie jean king. And ill never forget watching that and thinking to myself, athlete activist . What the heck is that . I thought i was this huge sports fan and memorizing all the stats. It seems like theres this whole world that i didnt know existed. And so i went to library, ive started reading a lot of old articles, started digging in the crates, reading old biographies. Found a book cowritten by Taylor Branch, actually, called second wind, its one of bill russells books. And it opened this world to me. And so i started to think to myself, okay, if this applies to the past, how does it apply to the present and how does sports shape our political lives today . And you made a beat for yourself out of focusing on the ground between politics and sports. Well, its such a rich vein because, i mean, on a given week, its never a what am i going to write about . Its, what am i not going to write about . Because theres always so much happening in the world of sports, and theres always so many different ways in which sports, not just reflects our lives, but actually shapes our lives. I mean, it shapes our understanding of things like racism, sexism, homophobia. It shapes our understanding of our country. It shapes our understanding of corporations and whats happening to our cities. I mean, in so many different ways, sports stories are stories of American Life in the 21st century. I know youve seen bill siegels documentary, a new documentary on the trials of muhammad ali. What do you think about it . Its absolutely brilliant. Look, i have seen every muhammad ali documentary. And this is by far the best one ive ever seen for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, there is about an hour of footage in there that i have never seen before. All this incredible footage of muhammad ali speaking on College Campuses in 1968. Speaking out with incredible eloquence against the war in vietnam. And its a remarkable thing to be able to see footage that has so long been underground actually get unearthed for people to see, and to truly appreciate what it was that made muhammad ali so dangerous. Because i think thats what weve really forgotten. And the oldtime leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were concerned that he was going to take them over the deep end, that they exactly. Would lose support in the white house and elsewhere. I think thats something that people today dont really understand is that you had these two titanic social movements in the 1960s, the struggle against the war in vietnam and the African American freedom struggle. And then here you have the most famous athlete on earth with one foot in both. No, i will not go ten thousand miles from here to help murder and kill another poor people simply to continue the domination of white slave masters over the darker people of the earth. Mr. Muhammad ali has just refused to be inducted into the United States armed forces. Notification of his refusal is being made to the United States attorney and the local Selective Service board for whatever action deemed to be appropriate. So hes transgressive on all these different levels. But the other thing when we look at ali is we also have to remember that he didnt show up in the 1960s, like, coming down from planet awesome to educate all of us about politics and sports. I mean, he wasnt malcolm x in boxing gloves or anything. When you look at his life, here he is in 1960, hes 18yearsold, he wins a gold medal at the rome olympics. And his hero was a professional wrestler named Gorgeous George wagner Gorgeous George. And he wanted to bring the showmanship of professional wrestling into boxing. And then the 60s kind of happened to him. And so, and thats one of the things that the movie does, which is so brilliant, is that it shows the way, the time shaped muhammad ali, and then muhammad ali turned and shaped his times. Were you taken by surprise at the range of voices that were arrayed against him across a spectrum from the right, william f. Buckley, to the left, David Susskind . I find nothing amusing or interesting or tolerable about this man. Hes a disgrace to his country his race and what he laughingly describes as his profession, hes a convicted felon in the United States. He has been found guilty. He is out on bail. He will inevitably go to prison, as well he should. Hes a simplistic fool and a pawn. Thats the part that i think people dont know today and dont understand today, because we really, weve done to muhammad ali what weve done to Martin Luther king, is weve turned them into these kind of harmless icons who live above the fray of messy politics. And so just like we dont learn about the Martin Luther king who spoke out against inequality and spoke for Government Intervention to solve social ills, things that would make him, of course, politically controversial today, we dont talk about the muhammad ali who said things like, the real enemy of my people is here. I am not going to speak out against people in vietnam who are fighting for their own liberation, while here at home my own people in louisville are treated like dogs. Youve been drawn and written about Martin Luther king and sports. How did you come to that . Well, it just, it was a fascinating thing in reading biographies of dr. Martin luther king, particularly the magisterial work of Taylor Branch and then reading some sports biographies about athletes in the 1960s, how much overlap there is. And how much connection there is or the way that Martin Luther king was somebody who just kept a close eye about what was happening in the world of sports. I think dr. King was greatly influenced by Jackie Robinson and Jackie Robinsons breaking of baseballs color barrier in 1947. And years later he said of Jackie Robinson, he was a sitiner before sitins. He was a freedom rider before freedom rides. And he got how important Jackie Robinson was to the struggle. He got that you couldnt talk about the Civil Rights Movement without talking about robinson. And so because of that and because i think of a sense in dr. King that, you know, the arc of history bends towards justice, that when there was an athlete speaking out, he never said, that person needs to just shut up and play. So when his closest advisors like, for example, roy wilkins, spoke out incredibly harshly against muhammad ali, dr. King was someone who would not do that and would actually Exchange Private conversations. And they even appeared together in public at a rally in louisville for fair housing. And most significantly when there was a movement in the late 60s by African American athletes to boycott the 68 olympics in mexico city, which of course resulted in tommie smith and john carlos and their famous raised fist. Dr. Martin luther king defended their right to boycott, calling it an amazing act of nonviolent civil disobedience. And when Martin Luther king decided in 1967 that he would go public with his opposition to the war in vietnam, one of the things that he said was, well, its like muhammad ali says, were all victims of a system of oppression. It is my hope that every young man in this country who finds this war objectionable, and abominable, and unjust will file as a conscientious objector. And no matter what you think of mr. Muhammad alis religion, you certainly have to admire his courage. And so what you had there was Martin Luther king drawing upon the experience of muhammad ali as a way to defend his own position, which at the time, was extremely unpopular. So i always found that incredible fascinating that heres Martin Luther king, his own advisors are telling him, dont stand against the war in vietnam. Keep your focus on domestic issues. And not only does king take that risk, but he mentions muhammad alis name. He mentions the name of a boxer as a way to justify it. And i would encourage people today to really think about, imagine if a similar figure referenced lebron james to say why they were taking a political stand. I mean, it says something about the kind of stature that muhammad ali had. Is there a sports giant today who is speaking to issues of social justice the way muhammad ali did . The main issue is, are there movements in the streets . Because when there are movements off the playing field, they reflect on the playing field. So in the last couple of years, weve seen things like the entire Miami Heat Team with lebron james and dwyane wade, theyre superstars in the lead, all wearing hoods in protest of, at the time at the fact that George Zimmerman had not been arrested for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. And many athletes like Carmelo Anthony of the new york knicks, he was very vocal about that as well. So you saw something there where it connected with players, particularly of African American players, very strongly, that there needed to be justice as a result of the Trayvon Martin case. The other issue that of course is huge right now is the issue of lgbt athletes, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and Transgender Athletes standing up and speaking out for their right to their own humanity inside a locker room. Now historically, a locker room has been, its been called the last closet, like an incredible bastion of homophobia. I mean, this goes back to theodore roosevelt, who encouraged young boys to play tackle football, and said if they didnt they were sissies. So, and he popularized that phrase, the sissy. And it was a way of differentiating, are you going to be a leader, are you going to be tough, are you going to lead the new American Century and play football . Or are you going to be a sissy . And for women who wanted to play sports, you had a similar dynamic where wait a minute, what does it say about you that you want these socalled male attributes like leadership and strength and, you know, physical daring . Like, what does it say about you . Well, you must, there must be something wrong with you. You must be a lesbian or they would say all kinds of things about women who wanted to play sports. And what youre seeing now in the 21st century are people really pushing back against that. So in the last, even just few months, youve had Jason Collins become the first active male player to come out of the closet in the history of north american sports. You had robbie rogers, a professional Soccer Player who came out and then retired at the same time, even though he was just 25yearsold, because he said he didnt think he could be out in the locker room. And then after Jason Collins came out, he got back on the field and played and said, Jason Collins inspired me. And youve had Brittney Griner who is arguably the best womans basketball pl