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| January 31, 2007 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth, insurgent49 Why Do They Call It Pigskin?
“ ... we'll do everything we can to protect the American people, and continue to stay on the offense ...”
“... the change of personnel is putting our best players in the best positions...” - George W. Bush, speaking to NPR’s Juan Williams, 1/29/07 
I kept hoping it would pass, but then I heard, once again,
the jeers of the tough guy football players. My class was watching a
movie, and they connected a nerdy character to a student outside the
range of their semi-circle of desks.There has been hostility between the football players and whomever they choose to bully since school began. I remember a student debating with one of them on the topic of soccer versus football. The football advocate, unable to muster a winnable argument, resorted to denouncing soccer as a “girl’s sport.” The soccer player, meanwhile, has been made to pay for his challenge to the uniquely American sport of football. He is now the object of pointed, immature jokes. The student works to handle the stress. I asked him, the other day, to try dropping his shoulders down a bit. Why do jocks and bullies just tend to end up playing football? You’ll know, this Sunday, what I’m talking about. Even though you’ll try to not to laugh at Budweiser commercials dreamed up by frat boys, you will slide your hands together as the game gets underway, groan oof when a receiver is knocked off his feet and you’ll thrust your pelvis toward the TV at your touchdown. One of my college professors tried to prove, using clips on a giant screen, that the Super Bowl is officially a U.S. holiday. He liked to use the term genre, pronouncing it in his best French lilt. This was a genre of buxom cheerleaders, beer, plastic against plastic and cars driving along roads forgotten of traffic. “Guess what day of the year has the highest rate of domestic violence against women?” I asked my colleagues at school. A teacher didn’t look up from his lunch. “The Super Bowl.” Another said he couldn’t believe it. “In Anchorage, there is a Ski For Women partly because of that statistic,” I said. “And, how hard is it to believe? You watch all this violence on TV and you know what happens when your team loses. I saw that the other day, when a few men just walked out of the bar—pissed off.” “People get drunk,” the teacher said, biting into his sandwich. “It’ll take me a minute to check, but I’m pretty certain the highest rate of domestic abuse against women happens during Super Bowl Sunday.” But, when Googled the key words, I found many web sites reported the figure as “an urban myth.” I muttered the results of the search glibly to my cohorts. The teachers continued their talk about the game—Colts, Bears, bets, what kind of pizza they would order. I followed a link to FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to learn whether indeed I had been misled, to try to restore credibility, and to build toward a feminist denouement. “It appears that while there are no definitive statistics, which I find hard to believe, an ad was shown during the Superbowl last year that hinted at the high rate of domestic violence,” I called out from behind my screen. “I bet these urban legend articles are in response to the ad.” “Look it up for yourself.” I’ll stand behind the reports of clinic directors and counselors who say the percentage of cases of women assaulted spikes during the January holiday. Kids tackle each other beneath their fathers’ shaking fists, find their way, years later, in bars below their Greek-lettered mansions, drinking Bud Light, and praying when the shrugged-shouldered, ex-soccer player comes out to kick the winning field goal. It’s our culture, our genre, our holiday—one in which women cheer or bring beer. Go Bears. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. 'Red Alert' appears on insurgent49.com every Wednesday. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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