Full Archive

When Snow Melts: Vancouver’s Olympic Crackdown

News Flash: Winter Olympic officials in tropical Vancouver have been forced to import snow - on the public dime - to make sure that the 2010 games proceed as planned. This use of tax-dollars is just the icing on the cake for increasingly angry Vancouver residents. Officials are feeling the anger, and the independent media, frighteningly, is paying the price.

Who Dat? Dat's the Super Bowl Champs!

The New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl 44. I can’t believe I’m even typing the words. Five years ago this was the team considered most likely to be moved to Los Angeles. Four and a half years ago, after the levies broke, the concern was not whether there would be a Saints, but whether there would even be a New Orleans. I’m not sure whether it feels like a dream or positively preordained. If nothing else, it’s an emotional release from all the idiocy that surrounded the big game.  

Note to ESPN’s Jemele Hill: Tim Tebow is not Muhammad Ali

First let me put my cards on the table. I consider Jemele Hill, sports columnist for ESPN.com, to be as incisive and interesting as they come. She has been a frequent and fearless guest on my radio show and is always aces on the air. That's why I'm so gobsmacked by Jemele's latest column, subtly titled, Laud the Courage in Tim Tebow's Stand.

Tim Tebow and CBS: United Against “Choice”

The cultural power of the Super Bowl cannot be overstated. That's exactly why CBS' utterly hypocritical decision to air an anti-abortion ad funded by Focus on the Family and starring Tim Tebow was both wrongheaded and revealing.

An Idiot Among Us: Paul Shirley on Haiti

In most cases, I've believed strongly in the right of professional athletes to state their political beliefs loudly and proudly. The concept that jocks should just "shut up and play" denigrates our collective freedom to stand up and be heard. But defending an athlete's right to speak is far from defending the political content of their words. Case and point: former NBA journeyman Paul Shirley.

The Vancouver Olympic Blues

When I arrived in Vancouver, the first thing I noticed was the frowns. The anger wasn't far behind.

Silver Lining for Vikings Fans (Politically)

Yes, there is misery in Minnesota. But there is also a silver lining, and I'm not talking about the joy in Green Bay at the spectacular fall of Minnesota QB Brett Favre. It's about the politics of stadium funding.

NFL Owners Stiff-arm Fans/Union

Call it the Super Bowl for lawyers and the reckoning for football fans. On January 13 the owners of all thirty-two NFL teams asked the Supreme Court to shield them from anti-trust laws. Their argument is that the league does not comprise, despite all evidence, thirty-two individual competing units but is made up of one "single entity."

MLK wasn't an athlete, but he understood importance of sports

One thing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: the man understood sports. I don't mean that King was any kind of a star athlete. The only sport that the young, roundish "Mike" King was known to excel at was pocket billiards, which isn't exactly a sport (the golden rule: anything that you can gain weight or smoke cigarettes while doing is not a sport). But Dr. King understood with remarkable acuity the political and symbolic power of sports. He understood that the athletic field -- and athletes -- could be a powerful megaphone for civil rights and racial justice.

"We are a Forgotten People": An Interview with Haitian NBA Vet Olden Polynice

Olden Polynice played center in the NBA for 15 seasons. During that time, he distinguished himself as more than a hardnosed rebounder. He was the most visible Haitian athlete in the history of the United States. In 1993, Polynice was the first U.S. athlete to ever join a hunger strike during the season to protest the treatment of H.I.V. positive Haitian refugees imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Today Polynice lives in Los Angeles and runs the Olden Polynice Hoop Foundation. He calls himself "an activist for Haiti until the day I die.... whether it's chic or not." I spoke with him about the current post-earthquake calamity.