Archived Writing

<< back to the search results

That missing sound? Firm slap of authority

Thursday, June 10, 2010

JOURNALISTS DISLIKE AUTHORITY. That’s a generalization, of course, but it’s almost axiomatic. At the least, we are certainly known to do our jobs better if we regard authority with a healthy amount of disrespect.

So it’s weird to hear the chorus of media people baying for President Barack Obama to “go off” (in film director Spike Lee's formulation) and angrily throw his authoritative weight around  -  especially against British Petroleum, of course. (Cartoon, above left, by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle.)

 

Indeed, the weirdness is only exceeded by NBC’s Today program eliciting from Obama his obliging, if embarrassing, response - an unconvincing performance as some irate bossman hunting for exactly “whose ass to kick”.

 

It’s probably too much too hope for, that the media’s sudden enthusiasm for the firm slap of good government marks a final reversal of position - over-compensatory maybe in its tricoteuse screaming, but long overdue in its recognition now that our authorities should actually assert authority. For too many decades - since the days of Ronald Reagan’s bumper-sticker philosophies, for sure - American commentators have largely gone along with the simple-minded notion that “government is the problem, not the solution”.

That old delight in deregulation is now at last being retroactively deconstructed, maybe only piecemeal, but it’s a start. And I’m hoping for an upsurge of analytical dot-connecting, to explore how intertwined our national woes have been, with regulators in ostensibly different areas all similarly asleep at the switch, or predisposed - sometimes even bribed - to look the other way while trouble was brewing.

Is there not, for any enterprising chronicler of ideas, policy and action, a tremendous explicatory opportunity waiting?

S/he could chart compellingly what equivalencies there might be (and in come cases clear connections) between Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve refusing to believe any evidence of a housing-loans bubble swelling toward national and global disaster … the Stock Exchange Commission being unwilling or unable to properly investigate Bernard Madoff or ENRON … the Mine Safety and Health Administration that allowing Massey Energy to get away with repeated safety violations until 29 miners were killed in the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine … and the Minerals Management Service (noted most tellingly for accepting gifts from oil companies, enjoying pornography in the office, and fraternizing and taking hunting trips with industry personnel) which allowed BP, just as one example, to test the Deepwater Horizon’s blow-out preventer at lower than usual pressures, the same preventer that so fatally failed to prevent April 20’s blow-out.

Maybe the temper of the times is now ready for this kind of journalism – it might even help to build some sensible public demand for authority (of the right, strong and judicious kind) in public institutions.

 

  

 

You can follow this column on TWITTER – by clicking HERE  

EVERY WEEK THE CONNECTICUT NPR STATION, WHDD, AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN, with program host MARSHALL MILES
  - Broadcast on Fridays at 7.35am, Saturdays at 4.45pm and Sundays at 6.45pm.

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by  clicking HERE

- and subscribe for a weekly feed of the show

 

                                                       (Also available at iTunes)

 

IT’S NEVER GOING TO BE POSSIBLE to persuade most Americans, even given the best efforts of some more enlightened parts of their media, just how big a deal is football’s (all right, soccer’s) quadrennial World Cup, kicking-off tomorrow in South Africa.

Let’s say I was just happy to see a few grown men - Wasps, at that - reading last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine devoted to the tournament, and the worldwide phenomenon the game represents, in our city’s subway this week.

I’m even happier, more as a South Africanophile than as any kind of sports fan, that this global attention-grabbing event is finally taking place in that wonderful, alluring, badly-scarred but powerful land.

It gives me a chance to recall under-reported instances of football’s place in South Africa’s troubled history.

On the notorious Robben Island, South Africa’s Alcatraz, 1964 saw the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s life sentence (of which he was to serve 27 years) … it also marked the birth of the Makana Football Association, a group of political prisoners who started their own league. "The game of football kept us alive,” recalls Tokyo Sexwale, one of the African National Congress’s more noted, and Soviet-trained, resistance fighters whom the white supremacist authorities sentenced to 18 years “on the Island” a decade later than Mandela. (He’s now Minister for Human Settlements.)

“Everything was prohibited on Robben Island, but we used to smuggle FIFA [the international football authority] rulebooks underground,” Sexwale says. “We even had 'professional' referees and proper disciplinary committees. The Football Association was a vehicle that united all of us. It ran across all political barriers. We realized it was a very important tool for our own solidarity, unity and co-operation.”

One condition of their imprisonment, though, was that Mandela, and his closest lieutenants Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada were barred from participating in, or even watching the matches.

The current national President, Jacob Zuma, was then a referee for the Makana FA, and its very first Chairman was, remarkably, a 16-year old prisoner, Dikgang Moseneke. He’s now, at the age of 63, Deputy Chief Justice of the country’s Constitutional Court, and he’ll be watching the opening World Cup matches with - no doubt - a special proprietary pride.

  

 

ON MANDELA'S INAUGURATION DAY in 1994, I got a tip that something special would happen – so attractive a sidebar prospect that I decided to skip the formal ceremony at Parliament Buildings (which would be well covered, I knew, by my more static TV colleagues). With my own small camera crew, I went to Ellis Park stadium, traditionally the home of white-ruled rugby football. Symbolically, it had been taken over for the more populist South African soccer team (familiarly known as Bafana Bafana, or "our boys") to play against neighboring Zambia.

 

Sure enough, at half-time, my tipster turned out to be accurate, and the Presidential helicopter caused a sensation by unexpectedly landing on the pitch.

Mandela had chosen for his first official duty, once installed, to attend a football game. Or at least, the second half of one - just as soon as he could get there. (He's photographed today, above right, in the Bafana Bafana colors.)

Over their half-time water and oranges, he pep-talked the team. After a troublesome struggle in the first half, they went on in the second to a glorious victory.

 

Inauguration Day for a new era was complete.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -