Shocked by the refs? Where've you been the last 30 years?
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Shocked by the refs? Where've you been the last 30 years?
To every football fan out there who watched in shock and the opposite of awe Monday night as replacement refs stole a game from the Green Bay Packers even after the Seattle Seahawks' Golden Tate failed to steal the football in the end zone, who set Twitter on fire after the blown call and vowed to boycott both NFL Commission Roger Goodell and his local bookie, who groans as a never-ending pasta bowl of "booth reviews" drags afternoon games into prime time and who wants their state lawmaker or President Obama or some higher power to ban scab officials, for the sake of the Republic, I ask only one thing:
Um, where the hell have you been for the last 31 years or so?
Outsourcing an important skilled job to inexperienced workers willing to do it for lower pay? Check. Billionaire CEOs determined to break a union over about as many dollars as are buried in the couch of their 50-yard-line luxury suite? Check. Trying to take away employees' pension plan and require them to gamble their future on Wall Street? Check. Putting an inferior, schlocky product on the market and not going broke by underestimating the suckerhood of the American people to continue buying their $117 tickets, watching their cable TV network and buying their sponsors' lite beer?
Checkmate.
Let's do an official review. First they (by "they" I mean Ronald Reagan) came for the air traffic controllers, way back in 1981, and you didn't speak out because either you didn't fly or you just figured you'd knock back an extra martini at the airport bar. Then they came for the assembly line worker, and you didn't speak out because you were too busy watching the falling prices at Wal-Mart. Then they came for the public employees in Wisconsin, and you didn't speak out because (insert "cheesehead" joke here.) Then they came for the teachers in Chicago and you didn't speak out because you were waiting in vain to be clued in by some politician who wasn't in the back pocket of the hedge funds.
Then they came for the NFL refs -- and you went bat-guano crazy. You talked consumer boycott. You called your congressman and begged him to do something. You pleaded with Big Government to do the right thing, to force the greedy pro football owners to take the regular refs back, to do the right thing by these noble working men who just want a fair shake.
It's a little late, guys.
Let's be honest, when the NFL owners decided to lock out the refs rather than bargain in good faith back in June, you probably weren't paying close attention, were you? That's OK -- in 2012, a gaggle of rich guys trying to crush a small labor union is the ultimate dog-bites-man story, even in the high profile world of pro football. At this point in the history of American capitalism, it reminds me of a story that a prize-winning investigative reporter back on Long Island used to tell me about the mobsters he'd covered, that they were the kind of guys who drove around with massive rolls of hundred-dollar bills and threw wooden slugs into the tollbooths on the Triborough Bridge.
Why? Because they could.
And so why won't the NFL negotiate with the referees' union over its pay demand that amounts to roughly $100,000 a team per year, or roughly the price for a gimp-kneed backup linebacker? Why is it trying to make the refs quit their other jobs and work full-time, without paying a full-time salary, and trying to convert the union's pension plan into a 401K?
It's not because the $9-billion-a-year NFL needs the piddling amount of extra cash. It's because they can.
It reminds me of the time in the 1980s that an airline company was bought by investors including a high-flying (no pun intended) new venture capital firm. A couple of the pilots with concerns about airline safety sought to form a union -- an idea which management greeted, according to a court's finding, with a coercive effort that included telling the pilots it might freeze salaries, bonuses and benefits, and then two of the union organizers were flat-out fired. The company was called Key Airlines, the venture capital came from Bain Capital, whose founder Willard Mitt Romney was also a Key director. Now Romney wants to be president of all of us.
Is this a great country or what?
But now one terrible blown call on Monday Night Football, and everyone is suddenly Norma Rae or something? You say you want to boycott the NFL? That's great. That worked (briefly) for Caesar Chavez and the grape pickers of his United Farm Workers, but it took a lot of given Sundays. The team owners who pal around with Mitt Romney are counting on your apathy, just like they did down at the factory and at the airport.
If you want to fix football, you're probably going to have to fix America. And that, my friend, is a full-contact bloodsport.
- You can't be convinced, you've made that clear. Drone bombings and other offenses don't matter as much to you. You've made that very clear.
And I have no problem judging you, just like you have no problem judging others.— RG - "Yet it costs you nothing, and nobody is watching you."
I'm not doing it for attention, I'm doing it because I refuse to support these policies. And I won't vote against my principles, just because these are the only two teams that can "win".— RG - Your choice, no question, and to be respected. But you'll still accept the consequences, and then question my choice as morally inferior. To that I say f--k off.
- It is certainly morally inferior to support a president who secretly and without oversight bombs civilians. You just don't like it pointed out. — RG
- ==]] You condemn making a moral argument, then make one yourself.[[==
I'm not making a moral argument, you are. I'm not arguing that I'm morally superior by voting for Obama. You are arguing that you are morally superior on the basis of your decision about who to vote for.
==]] Electing Obama will not change the paradigm for the working poor. [[==
I'm not the one arguing about my vote creating a paradigm shift. You are the one who, laughably, is making that argument.
==]] He's been in office for 4 years, and poverty and inequality has risen. [[==
Still with the complete inability to understand cause-and-effect, correlation vs. causation, controlling for variables, and looking at issues with a non-binary mentality, eh?
Well, at least we can say that you are consistent.— Talking point sleuth - "I'm not arguing that I'm morally superior by voting for Obama."
Yes, your tons of criticisms of me and other Republicans for not caring about the working poor were not an appeal to morality. Stop the nonsense.
"I'm not the one arguing about my vote creating a paradigm shift."
Yes you are: "Those other issues are meaningful to me, and will differentially impact tens of millions of Americans."
You falsely believe that a vote for Obama will positively affect these tens of millions of people, yet ignore that the same vote is indeed a tacit approval of drone bombing, etc.
— RG - ==]] I'm not doing it for attention, [[==
OK. Glad you cleared that up. My impression was that constantly declaring your moral superiority in blog comments by virtue of your voting decisions was somehow a pathetic attempt to gain attention for your moral superiority by virtue of your voting decisions. Can't figure out where I got that idea. Lol!— Talking point sleuth - This criticism would mean something if it weren't coming from a person who thinks he is morally superior because he supports policies that redistribute money to the poor. — RG
- ==]] I'm not doing it for attention, [[==OK. Glad you cleared that up. My impression was that constantly declaring your moral superiority in blog comments by virtue of your voting decisions was somehow a pathetic attempt to gain attention for your moral superiority by virtue of your voting decisions. Can't figure out where I got that idea. Lol! (HTML deleted)— Talking point sleuth
- MSL, yes the right for labor to organize is universal. As is the right of management to not hire organized labor. But comparing the consequences and underlying issues between labor disputes in pro sports to labor disputes in among average citizens is absurd. Its apples and oranges. And in fact, I'd say comparing teacher union disputes to private sector blue collar union disputes is also apples to oranges. Trying to get people to rally around pro-union ideas based on the NFL refs lockout would be like saying the movie John Q is a real life lesson on why there should be free universal healthcare.— Greg S
- I believe the lesson here is that outsourcing work to inferior labor, to undermine labor's bargaining position or break the union entirely (certainly not just because it saves a few more dollars as you would agree the NFL owners don't need), can backfire. While it's not directly analogous here, time will tell if the outright banning of collective bargaining for public sector workers will result in an inferior product. You need to convince me it won't.
- ==]] And I won't vote against my principles, [[==
Good for you, RG. So maybe you should be a bit less quick to assume that others are voting against their principles because they decide that there is enough of a substantive different between Romney and Obama to merit a decision to vote for one as opposed to the other.
Don't injure yourself patting yourself on your back.— Talking point sleuth - "So maybe you should be a bit less quick to assume that others are voting against their principles"
My point is, you don't have principles. Presidents can end drone bombings, there is ZERO proof they can end poverty on income inequality. You've chosen to all but ignore the deaths of innocent people at the hands of our president in hopes of more redistribution.— RG - "substantive different between Romney and Obama to merit a decision to vote for one as opposed to the other."
Theres that binary mindset again.
— RG - This reminds me of a DVD I have of old SNL skits and in one Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain are on a political talk show called Point/Counter Point. I forget Jane's point, but when it was Dan's turn he started by saying, "Jane, you ignorant sl*t..."
I try to turn away from the phony left/right argument, and know most of it is a divide and conquer kind of thing - get us fighting among ourselves so we don't notice what the "elites" are doing - if only the right weren't such ignorant sl*ts...— Hamlet
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