From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Turn Off Your TV: part 9
Date: 12 Dec 92 19:41:7 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

This is part of a series currently running in New Federalist newspaper.
For subscription information, please contact me by E-mail.  If you missed 
any of the earlier postings in this series, please contact me by E-mail
and I will send them to you.

Turn Off Your TV--Part IX

The Making of Sports Into a Secular Religion

by L. Wolfe

We're back again for another dialogue. I'm sure by now most 
of you know the way this works: since watching television lowers 
your capacity to reason, we keep the set off while we have our 
discussion.  So, if it's not already off, as I hope it is, go 
over and turn it off.

In this section, we are going to discuss the way you are brainwashed 
by spectator sports and the way television has facilitated that 
brainwashing. I have a sense that what we are going to say might 
anger some of you, but bear with me and see the argument through 
to the end.

We might as well get right to the point: those of you who call 
yourselves {fans} of one or more teams of any sport, be it baseball, 
football, basketball, hockey or of players in more individualized 
games such as tennis or golf, are {addicted to a mind-crippling 
infantilism that reduces your power of creative reason.} And 
it is that power and {only} that power of morally informed, 
creative reason that makes man different from the animal.

Let's make some preliminary observations to support our thesis.

As we have stated time and again in this series, man is created 
in the living image of God and has been given by his Creator 
the Divine Spark of reason. It is that quality, that Divine 
Spark, in each of us that makes us truly human. Anything that 
reduces our capacity to reason makes us less human, more like 
an animal.

Organized sports in this country, and especially professional 
and college level sporting events, are {mass brainwashing experiences}, 
precisely along the lines outlined by Gustav LeBon and Sigmund 
Freud in earlier parts of our report. They cause the individual 
personality to regress to a more infantile, more irrational 
state; while watching a sporting event, a person becomes part 
of a mass of similarly addicted infants who fixate on events 
taking place within the defined boundaries of a {playing field}, 
in a {game} whose rules are arbitrarily defined.

Each sporting competition is a thinly disguised celebration 
of what your brainwashers have called {instinctual human aggressiveness}, 
the same kind of aggressiveness that people like Freud say {proves} 
that you are an {animal} driven toward destruction.  These aggressive, 
destructive drives, says Freud, are {part of man's animal nature}. 
Sooner or later, man must succumb to the power of such drives, 
Freud and neo-Freudians claim. The purpose of society, according 
to Freud, is to regulate and control through various forms of 
coercion, the outbursts of this innate bestiality against which 
the human mind is ultimately powerless.

Christian civilization is premised on a contrary view of humanity. 
Man, created in the image of his Creator, seeks to perfect his 
existence through use of creative reason in search of Truth; 
that is the only acceptable definition of perfection as a human 
process. Society is organized to provide man the means by which 
to accomplish this task, nurturing those powers of creative 
reason and affording the opportunity for man to act on that 
reason in an effective manner.

To the extent that one needs a fit body to serve the power of 
reason, exercise and sports can play a {limited} role in man's 
search for Truth. But muscular activity can {never} be a substitute 
for nurturing one's creative powers. Morally informed reason 
rules the body.

Modern sports, especially as organized as a mass spectator event, 
serve a contrary purpose. Besides acting as {ritualized} celebrations 
of aggressiveness, sports create an {illusion} of perfection, 
acted out within the measured boundaries of the {playing field} 
and according to the arbitrary rules of a {game}; perfection 
becomes something that is {counted}, a thing which is measured, 
that has been severed from man's relation to Truth and to his 
Creator.

Mass organized spectator sports, as presented and marketed through 
television, thus work to undermine the most basic concepts of 
Christian civilization. With their endless piles of statistics, 
with their arbitrary rules, with their mass spectacle, with 
their celebration of power of muscles and instinct over the 
human mind, and with their worship of heroic deeds in the absence 
of reasoned activity, they create a form of {pagan ritual}, 
that has become a {substitute religion} for most Americans.

So that's our thesis restated:  sports is {a mind-destroying 
pagan religion}.

I warned you that it might be hard for some people to swallow, 
since I know how addicted many of you are to {your} sports. 
After all, if you are an American, and especially an American 
male, you have been raised in a {sports-dominated} culture. 
We're going to take a look at that. We'll first examine the 
penetration of spectator sports into our culture, before re-examining 
the psychological underpinnings of the mass brainwashing operation.

The `Sporting' War

As we have said before, the most effective brainwashing of Americans 
is the kind that they don't realize is happening, the so-called 
soft brainwashing.

I want you to think back to an image we referred to earlier. 
In February 1991, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf gave an internationally 
televised briefing on the strategy and tactics of the ground 
war component of Operation Desert Storm. At the time, the press 
compared the general to a {successful Superbowl coach} giving 
a description of the {game plan} that had earned him victory.

Schwarzkopf had conceived the war {as if it were a football 
game} and had redefined a classic military flanking maneuver 
in {football terms} as a Hail Mary play. He had first explained 
what he was doing in those {football terms} to his staff; he 
reiterated that explanation to the American people. He was speaking 
a {language}--the language of sports--that {he knew} most Americans 
would understand.

In fact, most of the war was presented to the American public 
as {if it were a spectator sporting event}, complete with statistical 
analysis that measured every aspect of the fighting--the numbers 
of dead, the numbers of bombs dropped, the numbers of bullets 
used. This was the {scorecard}, as the Pentagon and other briefing 
officers called it, and as the press, and especially the television 
news, reported it.

In the end, the American people followed General Schwarzkopf 
as he tallied up the {score}: according to the numbers, our 
side had {clearly won}, just as the football team that scores 
more points wins its game. And just like with a televised football 
game, the U.S. propagandists, including Schwarzkopf, tried to 
keep Americans fixated on the events on the {playing field}, 
in this case the ostensible battle between ``coalition'' and 
Iraqi armies.

Left off the {scorecards} were the horrific casualties to innocent 
Iraqi women and children and the devastation to that nation's 
vital {civilian} infrastructure. Such pictures have for the 
most part even today been kept from the American people to preserve 
the image of the ``clean war'' fought within the bounds of {good 
sportsmanship.}

How well did this presentation work? Think about your own responses 
to the war and to the Schwarzkopf briefing. Didn't you find 
yourself {rooting} for the {home team}, the Americans and their 
allies? And didn't you feel elated when you were told and shown 
the results with maps and charts, in much the same way that 
you might feel if your favorite team won a championship like 
the Superbowl?

Around the country, in the same bars where the television sets 
feature Monday Night Football or the Basketball Game of the 
Week, there were reported to be raucous celebrations after the 
``victory'' in the Gulf War, similar to what occurs when the 
home team wins such televised games. ``I feel like we've won 
the Superbowl,'' one middle-age bargoer told a reporter that 
night. ``No, better, like we've won two Superbowls.''

Remember our Hal Becker, the brainwasher from the Futures Group 
who disdainfully calls all of you ``homo the saps.'' Back in 
1981, he commented on the Vietnam War experience. America, he 
said, ``wants a clear winner, like in a football game. {Our 
mythology of sports} demands it. When we didn't get a clear 
winner in Vietnam, support for the war fell apart.... We need 
to beat up on someone. Then our {sports psyche} takes over and 
we understand what happens. You win big and the score comes 
up on the evening news.''

When a survey was taken after the war asking Americans to name 
a figure from history to which they compared General Schwarzkopf, 
few people named military leaders like General Dwight Eisenhower 
or General Douglas MacArthur. Instead, {many people} named the 
late Green Bay Packer football coach, Vince Lombardi, the winner 
of the first two Superbowls in 1967-68. Lombardi is, among other 
things, famous for a quote that General Schwarzkopf admires:  
``Winning isn't everything. It is the {only} thing.''

The {sports psyche} that Becker refers to is imbedded deep within 
American culture. It is why people understood what General Schwarzkopf 
was talking about with his ``Hail Mary Play'' and it is why 
{he himself understood what he was doing in that way.} It is 
reflected in that Lombardi quote about winning. It should more 
appropriately be called the {jock persona}, a mythical mass 
personality type, whose values are determined by the {lessons 
of the playing fields}.

Our Sports Addiction

I want now to focus on the mass penetration of sports into our 
lives.  And here television has played a critical role. While 
our sports-dominated culture did not begin with the television 
age some 40 years ago, it has been {transformed} and {universalized} 
by television.

For one thing, the sheer amount of sports has expanded exponentially 
in that period, as well as the ease with which one can {participate} 
in a spectator sporting event.

Let's take a look at some basic numbers. Of the 6-8 hours each 
American watches television a day, and the 42-56 hours he or 
she watches a week, it is estimated that at least 6-8 hours 
involve sports programming. Obviously, there are many people 
in the society who have less interest in televised sports; women, 
for example, are more addicted to their soap operas than to 
sports, so the average viewing figure is misleading. Among a 
sizeable segment of the population, especially the male population, 
who are addicted to sports, the number of hours a week devoted 
to sports viewing will average well in excess of 16 hours. We'll 
put that another way. Among this segment of the population, 
which is demographically teenaged to middle-aged males, a person 
spends the equivalent of {one full waking day, every week} watching 
sports.

But the addiction is even worse yet, because among that segment 
of the population most addicted, the numbers can go even higher: 
as much as 30 hours a week or even more could be spent in front 
of the tube watching your favorite teams.

Sounds impossible? Think about this: You are a fan of your local 
basketball team and your local football team, and a fan of your 
local hockey team as well. Each of the games of these teams 
is carried on either network or other free television or on 
cable (most sports fans {must} have cable or satellite dishes 
that have access to cable channels for this reason). Your football 
team plays once a week during the season, in a game that lasts 
between 3-4 hours; your basketball team plays 3-4 games a week 
in games that average 2-3 hours; your hockey team plays a similar 
number of games averaging about 3 hours. The seasons themselves 
overlap. There will be some conflicts when games on a given 
day either occur at the same time as each other, or overlap, 
but it is easy to see that there are {at least} 20 hours of 
sports viewing {easily} possible just in what we are discussing.

But if you are a {real fan}, then you can't miss the Monday 
Night Football game, even if your team is not playing; and you 
might also want to watch an ``important'' college football game 
on Saturday afternoon and maybe even the second game of the 
professional football doubleheader on Sunday.

None of what I am describing is far-fetched for the ``normal'' 
sports addict. And when you total it all up, you come to about 
{30 hours a week during the seasons described spent in front 
of the television set watching sporting events}. We are excluding 
from these figures a person who attends a sporting event, since 
if he is in attendance he {probably} will not be watching the 
game on television--although there have been an increasing number 
who bring their Sony ``Watchman'' television sets to games.

Eliminating also extremely popular sports like golf, tennis, 
wrestling, and boxing, and concentrating on what are considered 
the major sports--baseball, football, hockey, and basketball--brainwashers 
profiling the American population have found that there is what 
appears to be a {universalized addiction} to all these sports. 
Most {fans} will watch all the sports named, with the possible 
exception of hockey, which still lacks franchises and therefore 
fans in many parts of the country. This universalizing process 
is the result of a proliferation of teams fueled by television 
revenues and a television-created mass audience.

Sports and TV

At the dawn of the television age in 1950, there was only one 
truly national sport, baseball, which had a 152 game season, 
running from April to October, when the World Series is played, 
for 20 teams divided into two leagues. The National Football 
League had a schedule running from September to December, with 
a single championship game. The National Basketball Association 
had many fewer teams than it does today, playing a shorter season 
culminating in a championship series, while the six-team National 
Hockey League, with teams only in New York, Boston, Detroit, 
Chicago, Montreal, and Toronto playing from October to March 
in a 50-game season, culminating in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Now, 40 years after the mass proliferation of television and 
15 years after the start of the mass penetration of pay cable 
networks, football and basketball have joined baseball as truly 
national sports, with hockey expanding its regional base.

There are now 28 baseball teams playing a 162-game season, extending 
from April to October, with a spring training from February 
through April that features some televised games; the season 
culminates in playoffs, which in turn end in the World Series. 
The NFL now has 28 teams in two conferences playing a 16-game 
schedule running from September through the end of December 
when playoffs are held which end in the single-most viewed sporting 
event, the Superbowl in late January. The NBA has 27 teams playing 
an 82-game schedule, which runs from October to the beginning 
of April, with playoffs that can run until May. The NHL now 
has 24 teams in an 82-game season running from October to mid-April, 
with playoffs that can run until early June.

There is now a total, year-round brainwashing immersion of huge 
numbers of Americans in televised spectator sports: As the sports' 
leagues expand, as the seasons enlarge, the addicted are becoming 
{more addicted} and the television set is the major source for 
their {fix}.

Before television, the four mass spectator sports under discussion 
had a total yearly attendence of 30 million (1950 figures, approximate). 
Now, their total in-person attendance is more than tripple that 
figure.

However, well over {1 billion} people watch such events on television.  
The television audience for the Superbowl {alone} is more than 
100 million in the United States and another more than 200 million 
worldwide! According to some estimates, by the turn of the century, 
with the further penetration of America by wired cable systems, 
viewership for major sporting events will almost double. And 
remember, we haven't even included college football or other 
popular sports in our figure!

We are not talking here about so many billion viewers who each 
watch a single, different sporting event. We are talking about 
the {habituated viewing} of several hundreds of events by a 
segment of the population that numbers in the several {tens 
of millions} and the viewing of a hundred or so events by another 
population segment double or triple that figure.

The Psychology of a Fanatic

As we learned in the previous sections of this report, the soft 
brainwashing process that alters or creates social values relies 
on {habituated} viewing habits. And this brings us to the first 
point of our thesis, which many of you sports addicts may have 
challenged when we first offered it. Your repeated habituated 
viewing of sports, especially televised sports, has altered 
the way you think. In fact, the more you watch sports, the less 
capable you are of morally informed reasoning.  You are losing 
your mind to your {fanaticism}, to your addiction to sports.

{Sports are totally unimportant and meaningless activity for 
human existence. Whether one team or another wins a particular 
game, whether it be a minor league baseball game or the Superbowl, 
it is totally and absolutely meaningless} for the present and 
future existence of human civilization on this planet.

The problem is that most of you don't really believe this. Oh, 
you can accept it in the {abstract}, all right.  You know that 
whether the Redskins or the Cowboys win won't make a bit of 
difference as to whether the depression is ended. But sports 
are a part of your {private mental life}, they are like a {personal 
possession} that has little objective real value, but to you 
has a great deal of subjective, emotional value. And you really 
don't like someone telling you what to do about these {personal 
parts} of your life.  You sort of resent it, don't you?

But now take a good look at yourself.

It's Sunday afternoon. You sit
in front of the television set, your hands sweating, as your 
favorite football team is locked in a tight game with their 
bitter rival. The clock is ticking down. One more good play, 
and they'll be in range of the winning field goal. The pass 
is completed. You thrust your fist in the air, as the home stadium 
crowd roars its approval through the television set's speakers.

Your hands are wet with sweat; the crowd is cheering. They line 
up for the field goal. You can't sit still; you rise from the 
chair. Now, you can't even watch and you look away from the 
screen. The kick is up. ``It's ... it's goooood,'' says the 
announcer and you jump up and down, as the fans in the stands 
are shown celebrating. They've won, you think, and you {feel} 
great.

If the kick had missed its mark, and {your} team had lost, you 
would have {felt} bad and dejected and so would all its other 
fans, both in the stadium and watching on their television sets.

For the three or so hours of that game, the world outside the 
television set {did not exist}. People were dying in Bosnia. 
Others were starving in Africa. Within a few miles of the stadium, 
youth were destroying themselves with drugs. The economy continued 
to go to hell. But for those three hours and especially those 
last few moments, that world, {the world that matters}, did 
not exist.

{Emotionally} this game and all other games, to one degree or 
another, do {mean} something to you. This is the infantile {emotionalism} 
that we are talking about. It does not involve your reasoning 
capacity at all; it bypasses it completely, putting you into 
a state of emotionalized fantasy, disfiguring your creative 
reasoning power in much the same way as an intense sexual fantasy.

If someone should try to deny you your {fix}, to turn off your 
7-30 hours of sports on television a week or reduce your viewing 
hours, you'd scream bloody murder and maybe even physically 
assault whoever tried to enforce such an unwanted change in 
your addictive behavior. That is how {addicted} you are to your 
{emotional fix} on sports.  And this is one of the ways in which 
you are {brainwashed} by television.

{To be continued.



----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com