by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
First, I'd like to sincerely thank Jon Stewart for announcing that he's leaving The Daily Show on a Tuesday. Why? Because, while it might appear to some that this announcement was intentionally timed (at least in part) to screw up my blog schedule, it's obvious to me that he must have known how completely lost, confused and conflicted I already was about which essay to post this week, and by making such a historic announcement at this moment, he would force me to literally abandon and throw out everything else (including the truly horrible piece I was trying to write about Valentine's Day) and, right off the cuff, write about this event.
Like many people, my first reaction to the announcement was one of shock, sadness, and frankly concern for the future. Since taking the helm back in 1999, Stewart was the driving force in transforming The Daily Show from an occasionally cute, quirky and comparatively unknown late night show on a barely known cable channel into an internationally renowned and respected, critically "super-acclaimed" and incredibly popular institution of American news, politics and culture. Frankly, it would be very difficult if not impossible to overstate the impact Stewart and his team have had on the show, the Comedy Central network and indeed on the public at large.
I have been watching The Daily Show fairly religiously for well over a decade now. It has always been very good, often hilarious, always entertaining, thoughtful, relevant, television, but I would argue that, over time, it has become far more than that; I believe that The Daily Show has actually been performing a vital service to our Republic.
Over the last 30 years in particular, I have become increasingly convinced that the changes that have been made in our national education policies have been (perhaps even intentionally) systematically breeding out creative and critical thinking skills. America, it seems, has been producing ever increasing numbers of automatons who fail to even desire to adequately question, think critically or act in ways that are necessary to secure the healthy future of a democratic Republic such as ours. In the midst of that ongoing, slow motion tragedy, Jon Stewart has been the front man for a small army that is obviously trying to fight against that trend. Using biting, intelligent satire and a gift for exposing hypocrisy in an amusing way, Stewart (along with his writers and staff) have been teaching young Americans what their schools would not and do not: how to think critically about their government and society and, just as importantly, the importance of doing so. The result? There is no question in my mind that The Daily Show has influenced the opinions and voting habits of millions of Americans in a positive and healthy way. And, of course, they've made us laugh (and sometimes cry) a LOT in that process. I have long said that both Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert should be recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in fact, if they are not recognized in this way before President Obama leaves office, I will consider it a specific and glaring failure of his Presidency, a shocking and sad inability to appropriately and adequately acknowledge these men and their substantial contribution to America).
And while I'm on the subject of Mr. Colbert (who recently stepped down after an incredibly impressive and socially valuable seven year run of his own), let's not forget that we very likely wouldn't have any idea who he was were it not for The Daily Show, which has shown an impressive ability to regularly reinvent itself and consistently and continually attract incredibly talented people. Early on, I used to worry each time an incredibly bright and funny "correspondent" moved on, but each time the show's supporting cast lost a Steve Carrell, Rob Corddry or Stephen Colbert, there was a John Oliver, Aasif Mandvi or Samantha Bee to take their place.
While the show is certainly best known for its willingness to watchdog our nation's politicians and our hopelessly biased, corporate controlled media, it has hardly been content to confine itself to just those areas. Over time it has fearlessly stepped in to address other issues as well. In fact, there are very few matters of injustice or inequality in our society that haven't been exposed and, when appropriate, skewered by Stewart and his amazing team. In short, The Daily Show has done what our mainstream media has so consistently failed to do in recent decades; it has showed us what we need to see, exposed us to ideas and perspectives that force us to listen and learn and grow from them ... and they have done all of this in a way that makes viewers both laugh AND think. That, is an incredibly rare and important talent and skill, and that is why my first reaction was immediately a sense of loss, followed by sadness and concern about what the absence of such a voice might mean.
There is a song by the rock group Kansas that reminds us that "nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky," and George Harrison also came to me this morning with the equally true (if depressing) reminder that "all things must pass." One of the most discouraging things about staring down the barrel of my 50th birthday (now just a few months away) has been this growing realization regarding the impermanence of things ... but that realization also serves as a reminder to us (or should) to make sure that we appreciate and enjoy the good things in our lives while they are there. Mr. Stewart has now given the defense of our great nation (and let's be clear, that is absolutely what he has been doing) 16 years of his life, and he has every right to step down in order to spend additional time with his family, explore other avenues of creative expression and/or, well, frankly do whatever the hell else he wants to do. He does not "owe" us another day, another minute. He has done his bit for "king and country" and while we may be sad to see him leave and apprehensive about who will fill the giant hole that will be left when he is gone (which brings us to our new Daily Show segment titled "Who Will Fill Jon Stewart's Gaping Hole On Television?" ... really? That's what we're going with? OK, we'll work on that ...), it seems to me that our first and predominant reaction to the announcement of his departure should be one of gratitude.
So I hope that everyone who reads this essay will join me in saying thank you to Mr. Stewart for all that he has done to inform, entertain and in so many ways improve the quality of the dialog in our society for so many years. I further hope that anyone who sees his departure as a reason to fear for the future because of the absence of his voice, to instead view it as a call to action, an opportunity for us to collectively help fill the void left after his exit. The Daily Show has presented a great example for us to follow. It has encouraged a more active and engaged populace, one that exercises its responsibility to monitor and check its elected officials ... and again, it has done so in a way that has often made us laugh, that brought humor and light to issues of importance and sadness.
Finally, I shouldn't hesitate to add that it's not over yet. In fact, as I type this sentence, somewhere in New York City, Mr. Stewart is literally on stage taping tonight's episode of The Daily Show. We have several months yet to soak in, learn and draw strength from all the ideas and all the laughter and joy yet to come. And can you imagine the send off? Personally, I'm hoping EVERYONE comes back for those last shows. I don't care about the celebrities, I care about the cast. The chance to see Rob Corddry report on some piece of foreign policy goofiness (the "Tae-Po-Dong Missile" segment remains one of the more inappropriate and yet hysterical pieces of TV I've ever seen), or to see Stephen Colbert tell us about "This Week In God" one more time, or to see Wyatt Cenac looking at the camera in exasperation as he deals with some issue of injustice or just absurd stupidity ... the show would have to last hours, but it would be one for all of time.
That day, and that final show are coming. All things have their time and the wonderful time we have had to enjoy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is ending soon. Enjoy it, be grateful for it, say thank you, and if it meant something to you as it did to me, then don't allow the kind of critical thinking and desire for reason that was so core to what the show was about to end. The mission of the show, to entertain and make our nation and the world a better place, is everyone's mission now ... as in fact it always was.
See you next week.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
My Year Without the NFL
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
As almost everyone on the planet knows, Superbowl 49 was this past weekend. The game marked the official end to the 2014 NFL season. What is substantially less known is that I watched less football this past season than I have at any time since I was 12 years old, and this week's essay is all about why.
For my entire adult life, I had been a rabid football fan. I always remember enjoying the game, but I became a BIG fan in high school, and by the time I graduated from college I was hooked. My wife will tell you that the one warning I gave her about marrying me was, "I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't stay out late ... I watch football."
So what happened? Two things. First, the scandals, controversies and problems of the NFL finally became just too big and too bad to ignore. And second, I found a better sport.
The words scandal and NFL are hardly new companions (there are literally so many that there are entire websites dedicated to merely listing them). The NFL has a long and sad history of having its players involved in all kinds of criminal activities. From drug abuse to dog fighting to rape and murder, the league has consistently demonstrated a staggering either unwillingness or inability to get a grip on and control the behavior of its players. So why did I boycott now? What took me over the edge this past year? Well, it's difficult to identify one particular "last straw" that made me say, "that's it, no more, I'm done" to my lifelong favorite sport, but I can tell you how it started and which ones led me to impose my ban.
Over the last several years, the number of NFL players committing suicide (particularly high profile players like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau) has escalated, and there is evidence that many of these players were suffering from traumatic brain injuries (which is easy to understand given the frequency of the high speed, high energy collisions they have with other players). In late 2013, the PBS series Frontline aired a documentary called "League of Denial," in which it exposed an extensive, detailed and intentional coverup on the part of the league. According to the film, the league had significant knowledge regarding the causal link between play in the NFL and the serious medical issues being faced by these players years later (and, far worse, was intentionally hiding that information). That was a last straw, not because it was any revelation to me or anyone else that football is an incredibly violent game, but because the league knew about this particularly horrific side effect for a LONG time and chose to intentionally hide that information.
And then there was Ray Rice. Sadly, sexual assault and the NFL are also hardly new to each other, but two things about the Rice situation bothered me far more than any other scandal. First, the severity of the initial punishment was to suspend Rice for a couple of weeks. When quarterback Michael Vick was found to be involved in a dog fighting ring, he was suspended indefinitely (that suspension was eventually lifted and a couple of years later, Vick returned). When Ray Rice beat his then fiancé unconscious, he was initially suspended by the NFL for TWO GAMES. The message to me, a father with daughters, was clear; the NFL thinks more of dogs than it does of women. Secondly, it later became clear that the NFL had once again lied and attempted to cover up the truth regarding details of the Rice case (specifically that they knew far more about it than they had initially indicated and had seen detailed video of the incident before they said they did).
Now the truth is that I'm not a big political activist (yes, I did run for Congress, twice in fact, but I don't have any great history of taking part in boycotts etc.), but I am a believer in putting your money where your mouth is, and as an NFL Sunday Ticket holder on DirecTV, there was no question that I was spending money that was going directly to a group of people who I felt were behaving in a reprehensible way, and if I continued to give them my money, then the clear economic message I was sending was that this sort of behavior was acceptable, and that was NOT a message I could tolerate any more. There comes a point where you realize that you're participating in a system that is rewarding behaviors and actions that you find untenable. In years past I'd been able to hold my nose and look away because I enjoyed watching the sport so much, but each time I looked at it now I saw myself as a participant and contributor, and I couldn't do it. So I called DirecTV and I canceled my Sunday Ticket and, even though they couldn't care less and don't track the data on why people cancel, I told them why anyway. And I stopped watching. For the first time since I was 12 years old, I went through the entire pre-season and the first 8 weeks of the regular season without watching a single moment of a single game (even on network TV).
But halfway through the season I told myself that I was being ridiculous, that I was taking it too far. I'd canceled the Ticket, I wasn't giving them money any more, I'd made my statement, what harm could there be in watching part of a game. So I tried. I watched about 5 minutes of a game ... and then I changed the channel. The spell was broken. Everything I saw now seemed to be symptomatic or seemed to be an example of a cultural problem that needed to be addressed. Even the NFL's own acknowledgement of the problem of domestic violence in which it shows players and Hollywood stars near or in tears trying to start the discussion ... but unable to, seemed to me to be the perfect example of what was wrong (you need to SAY "it's not OK!" ... over and over, LOUDLY, and you need to severely punish the people who do it to create a strong enough disincentive to alter behavior).
I have since watched pieces of a few games, and I have kept up a little bit with the game through the news (apparently, as an avid fan of my beloved Chicago Bears, I couldn't have picked a better season to completely tune out ... and I have to say that I was amused and not at all surprised by "Deflate Gate"). I even watched part of the Superbowl (although, let's face it, most of us are watching it for the commercials now anyway), but clearly, my days as a rabid and die hard NFL fan are over.
I mentioned earlier that I had also found a better sport. Two years ago I was in my basement on a Saturday morning riding my exercise bike and, as I sometimes did, I turned on the TV and went surfing around to find something to watch while I peddled to nowhere. As we all know, one of the most frustrating things about cable and satellite TV is that we now have access to hundreds of channels of content, and yet we frequently can't find anything good to watch. Well, as I scrolled through screen after screen of channels, I stumbled on a sports channel I didn't recognize, and found myself watching a live rugby game between a team from South Africa and a team from New Zealand. I was extremely cooled out by the fact that I was watching a live sporting event on the other side of the planet (I love stuff like that, it makes me feel like I'm actually living in the 21st Century), but more than that, I found the game genuinely interesting. As I watched, I learned that there was an entire league called Super Rugby with teams from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. The game was not unlike football in that it was full of fast action, very physical play and some pretty violent collisions, but with no helmets or padding there's a limit to how hard you can hit someone without doing serious damage to yourself (thus there are concussions etc., which their league takes a LOT more seriously, but there are fewer major injuries). In any case, a number of players would end up bleeding from the head at some point during the game (which, after watching for a few weeks, I suspected was a criteria for being interviewed afterwards). As I watched the game (and subsequent games) though, I began to see some interesting differences as well. The first was the level of respect that the players exhibited towards the officials. There are no overt disagreements, and when the referee feels the players are misbehaving, he calls the captain of the team and warns him, and invariably whatever minor issue is going on, stops immediately. During instant replays, viewers get to hear the conversation between the official (whose microphone is always on) and the replay official. The interviews after the game were also fascinating. It was quickly obvious that it is culturally expected that the winners of the game be gracious and magnanimous. They always have something positive to say about their opponents. Every now and then we see this in American sports too, but here it's sadly unusual, there it's literally expected every time (the losers are also usually very complimentary and gracious in losing).
The end result is that I don't really miss the NFL. I found another sports league, one with a game that's also enjoyable to watch and doesn't come with the moral issues that the NFL has allowed to infect and tarnish its image.
The Super Rugby season starts on DirecTV channels 489 and 490 next weekend (Feb 12) and runs well into the summer. And when it finishes, DirecTV also carries the Currie Cup and ITM Cup Rugby league games (which are the intra-national leagues of South Africa and New Zealand respectively) through October. Check it out.
©2015
As almost everyone on the planet knows, Superbowl 49 was this past weekend. The game marked the official end to the 2014 NFL season. What is substantially less known is that I watched less football this past season than I have at any time since I was 12 years old, and this week's essay is all about why.
For my entire adult life, I had been a rabid football fan. I always remember enjoying the game, but I became a BIG fan in high school, and by the time I graduated from college I was hooked. My wife will tell you that the one warning I gave her about marrying me was, "I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't stay out late ... I watch football."
So what happened? Two things. First, the scandals, controversies and problems of the NFL finally became just too big and too bad to ignore. And second, I found a better sport.
The words scandal and NFL are hardly new companions (there are literally so many that there are entire websites dedicated to merely listing them). The NFL has a long and sad history of having its players involved in all kinds of criminal activities. From drug abuse to dog fighting to rape and murder, the league has consistently demonstrated a staggering either unwillingness or inability to get a grip on and control the behavior of its players. So why did I boycott now? What took me over the edge this past year? Well, it's difficult to identify one particular "last straw" that made me say, "that's it, no more, I'm done" to my lifelong favorite sport, but I can tell you how it started and which ones led me to impose my ban.
Over the last several years, the number of NFL players committing suicide (particularly high profile players like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau) has escalated, and there is evidence that many of these players were suffering from traumatic brain injuries (which is easy to understand given the frequency of the high speed, high energy collisions they have with other players). In late 2013, the PBS series Frontline aired a documentary called "League of Denial," in which it exposed an extensive, detailed and intentional coverup on the part of the league. According to the film, the league had significant knowledge regarding the causal link between play in the NFL and the serious medical issues being faced by these players years later (and, far worse, was intentionally hiding that information). That was a last straw, not because it was any revelation to me or anyone else that football is an incredibly violent game, but because the league knew about this particularly horrific side effect for a LONG time and chose to intentionally hide that information.
And then there was Ray Rice. Sadly, sexual assault and the NFL are also hardly new to each other, but two things about the Rice situation bothered me far more than any other scandal. First, the severity of the initial punishment was to suspend Rice for a couple of weeks. When quarterback Michael Vick was found to be involved in a dog fighting ring, he was suspended indefinitely (that suspension was eventually lifted and a couple of years later, Vick returned). When Ray Rice beat his then fiancé unconscious, he was initially suspended by the NFL for TWO GAMES. The message to me, a father with daughters, was clear; the NFL thinks more of dogs than it does of women. Secondly, it later became clear that the NFL had once again lied and attempted to cover up the truth regarding details of the Rice case (specifically that they knew far more about it than they had initially indicated and had seen detailed video of the incident before they said they did).
Now the truth is that I'm not a big political activist (yes, I did run for Congress, twice in fact, but I don't have any great history of taking part in boycotts etc.), but I am a believer in putting your money where your mouth is, and as an NFL Sunday Ticket holder on DirecTV, there was no question that I was spending money that was going directly to a group of people who I felt were behaving in a reprehensible way, and if I continued to give them my money, then the clear economic message I was sending was that this sort of behavior was acceptable, and that was NOT a message I could tolerate any more. There comes a point where you realize that you're participating in a system that is rewarding behaviors and actions that you find untenable. In years past I'd been able to hold my nose and look away because I enjoyed watching the sport so much, but each time I looked at it now I saw myself as a participant and contributor, and I couldn't do it. So I called DirecTV and I canceled my Sunday Ticket and, even though they couldn't care less and don't track the data on why people cancel, I told them why anyway. And I stopped watching. For the first time since I was 12 years old, I went through the entire pre-season and the first 8 weeks of the regular season without watching a single moment of a single game (even on network TV).
But halfway through the season I told myself that I was being ridiculous, that I was taking it too far. I'd canceled the Ticket, I wasn't giving them money any more, I'd made my statement, what harm could there be in watching part of a game. So I tried. I watched about 5 minutes of a game ... and then I changed the channel. The spell was broken. Everything I saw now seemed to be symptomatic or seemed to be an example of a cultural problem that needed to be addressed. Even the NFL's own acknowledgement of the problem of domestic violence in which it shows players and Hollywood stars near or in tears trying to start the discussion ... but unable to, seemed to me to be the perfect example of what was wrong (you need to SAY "it's not OK!" ... over and over, LOUDLY, and you need to severely punish the people who do it to create a strong enough disincentive to alter behavior).
I have since watched pieces of a few games, and I have kept up a little bit with the game through the news (apparently, as an avid fan of my beloved Chicago Bears, I couldn't have picked a better season to completely tune out ... and I have to say that I was amused and not at all surprised by "Deflate Gate"). I even watched part of the Superbowl (although, let's face it, most of us are watching it for the commercials now anyway), but clearly, my days as a rabid and die hard NFL fan are over.
I mentioned earlier that I had also found a better sport. Two years ago I was in my basement on a Saturday morning riding my exercise bike and, as I sometimes did, I turned on the TV and went surfing around to find something to watch while I peddled to nowhere. As we all know, one of the most frustrating things about cable and satellite TV is that we now have access to hundreds of channels of content, and yet we frequently can't find anything good to watch. Well, as I scrolled through screen after screen of channels, I stumbled on a sports channel I didn't recognize, and found myself watching a live rugby game between a team from South Africa and a team from New Zealand. I was extremely cooled out by the fact that I was watching a live sporting event on the other side of the planet (I love stuff like that, it makes me feel like I'm actually living in the 21st Century), but more than that, I found the game genuinely interesting. As I watched, I learned that there was an entire league called Super Rugby with teams from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. The game was not unlike football in that it was full of fast action, very physical play and some pretty violent collisions, but with no helmets or padding there's a limit to how hard you can hit someone without doing serious damage to yourself (thus there are concussions etc., which their league takes a LOT more seriously, but there are fewer major injuries). In any case, a number of players would end up bleeding from the head at some point during the game (which, after watching for a few weeks, I suspected was a criteria for being interviewed afterwards). As I watched the game (and subsequent games) though, I began to see some interesting differences as well. The first was the level of respect that the players exhibited towards the officials. There are no overt disagreements, and when the referee feels the players are misbehaving, he calls the captain of the team and warns him, and invariably whatever minor issue is going on, stops immediately. During instant replays, viewers get to hear the conversation between the official (whose microphone is always on) and the replay official. The interviews after the game were also fascinating. It was quickly obvious that it is culturally expected that the winners of the game be gracious and magnanimous. They always have something positive to say about their opponents. Every now and then we see this in American sports too, but here it's sadly unusual, there it's literally expected every time (the losers are also usually very complimentary and gracious in losing).
The end result is that I don't really miss the NFL. I found another sports league, one with a game that's also enjoyable to watch and doesn't come with the moral issues that the NFL has allowed to infect and tarnish its image.
The Super Rugby season starts on DirecTV channels 489 and 490 next weekend (Feb 12) and runs well into the summer. And when it finishes, DirecTV also carries the Currie Cup and ITM Cup Rugby league games (which are the intra-national leagues of South Africa and New Zealand respectively) through October. Check it out.
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