Celtics Title Town

I know that it's generally frowned upon to bring politics into sports discussions, because they are invariably divisive, but it's impossible to overlook the connection between sports and politics at times.  For example, one can't really discuss the Olympics without discussing politics.  The whole thing is a giant exercise in propaganda, a false portrayal of a world wracked with political, economic and military strife, as a joyously never-ending festival of diversity, a hotbed of human excellence.

Sometimes the link between athletics and sports is made more obvious, though.   Tim Thomas, for example, was accused of 'politizing the event' by refusing to go with his fellow Bruins to a White House reception.  How could he have been politicizing an event that was already inherently political?  Also, when US troops are trotted out at sports events for some sort of honor, that clearly politicizes those events, yet no one seems to take note of this elementary fact.  

If you ask me, sports are fundamentally political in that they form the Circuses part of the the Bread and Circuses that keeps the mass of people from recognizing their own political power.  As it was in Rome, so it is today.  That doesn't keep me from loving sports, though.  One has to try to be able to separate the thing itself from its politicization in a world where everything is politicized, one way or another.  In fact, I'd say  it's more than plausible to argue that human beings are inherently political in everything they do.  That makes it more important to be able to see past the politics in order to appreciate the essence of things at times.  Other times, the politics becomes unvoidable.

Redsarmy reports that Rondo will join Paul Pierce, Michael Jordan and others in a fundraiser for Barack Obama.

Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo are teaming up with Michael Jordan to help President Obama raise some campaign cash:

The Hall of Famer will headline a celebrity basketball game on Aug. 22 in New York that will double as a fund-raiser for President Obama, the Obama campaign said Tuesday.

Other high-profile participants in the Obama Classic will include Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics, Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks, and WNBA stars Sheryl Swoopes and Dawn Staley.

The financial stakes appear to be very, very high:

The basketball game is being used as a lure for donors, whose contributions will automatically enter them in a contest to win tickets to the event. Jordan and NBA Commissioner David Stern are co-hosting a $20,000-per-person fund-raising dinner with the president afterward, according to the Associated Press.

Of course Rondo has every right to support the candidate of his choice.  We all recognize this as a cornerstone of human rights in general.  But if Rondo goes through with this event, I will lose a great deal of respect for him.   One of the things I find endearing about Rondo is that he seems to be an iconoclast, more akin to Tim Thomas than to Michael Jordan.  Jordan - as I see him, anyway -  is famously addicted to money, power and success.  I beg you, Rajon, do not let that man guide you to the Dark Side.   If you want to make a difference in American politics, don't  pay homage and tribute to the Big Dog in the White House, the man who has done more than any other president before him to trash the constitution, to plunge the world into strife and war and to wreck the global economy (and that's saying a lot, considering the Murders' Row of presidents who preceded Obama into office).

Rondo, if you want to make a difference, here's a political cause that might make a lot more sense, one where your support could really make a difference ...

A new organization has been called forth, to “break the silence” among African Americans on the unfolding sagas in North Africa and the Middle East....

The new formation, called African Americans for Justice in the Middle East and North Africa, describes the Arab Spring as “a global altering process that has unleashed forces in struggle against neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, and despotism. It has served as an inspiration for resistance movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Europe (against neo-liberal/austerity economics), and here in the USA with the Madison, Wisconsin demonstrations in early 2011 and more recently the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together movement.”

The organizers say they are committed to “advancing the demand for a democratic foreign policy on the part of the USA that is based on mutual respect, non-intervention in the affairs of other nation-states, recognition of national self-determination and repairing the damage that it has created through its imperial foreign actions.”

...

The unprovoked war on Libya, where U.S.-backed racists massacred and “purged” Black Libyans and African migrant workers – a war that Obama told Congress was not a war at all, since no Americans were known to have died – should have provoked a clear break with the president’s policies by the Black Left, as Dr. King broke with President Johnson over Vietnam, in 1967....Clearly, “a global altering process” is underway, involving a wholesale American assault on the most fundamental concepts of international law and national sovereignty, all in the name of “humanitarian intervention” – a Bush invention, now a full fledged Obama doctrine, his answer to the “Arab Spring.”

I would ask Rondo to consider more carefully in politics than he would in basketball, who are you passing too, and what is the game plan?   Darth Jordan and Darth Obama may promise you power and prestige, but at what cost to your integrity?  There is a bigger world out there, where the paths may be rockier, and lonelier, but where the air may be less polluted, where  the companions may be truer of heart and where the journey may be more rewarding in the end.  Don't take the easy way.   Don't be blinded by the glitz and glitter.  Search for better goals, better guides, and the path less trodden.