There's nothing like a little dust-up between millionaires and billionaires to start us thousandaires yawning. And when the upcoming pro football season is in danger of being cancelled because of it, we're likely to say: a plague on both your mansions.
Too bad, because the current struggle between labor and management in the National Football League not only reflects the current attacks on unions across the country but conjures up, even if in cartoon fashion, some crucial American issues: racism, classism, sexism, recreational violence, and the health-care gap. No wonder football seems to have replaced baseball as the national pastime.
While the legalities of, and mathematics behind, the issues at the heart of the NFL dispute may be complex, the basic issues are not. The league's owners cry economic woe, while refusing to open their books. They insist on adding two games to the present regular season of 16 games and at the same time are trying to reduce the players' share of revenues. Moreover, they have been remarkably unwilling to guarantee long-term health benefits to the players, even as evidence mounts that dementia and early death are linked to the sort of brain trauma commonly suffered in football collisions.
Source: http://motherjones.com/media/2011/05/nfl-lockout-good-thing
Marisa Coughlan Shanna Moakler Portia de Rossi Jolene Blalock Nichole Robinson
