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The Nation's Pulse
Unnecessary Presidential Roughness
Life in the Choom Gang was more dangerous than the game of football.
Last week’s Winter X Games killed more people than 90-plus years of National Football League play. Should anyone’s conscience really bother them for watching the Ravens play the 49ers on Sunday?
Barack Obama labels himself “a big football fan” on the eve of the Super Bowl. But he envisions a kinder, gentler game, one that won’t force us “to examine our consciences quite as much.” Barack Obama told the New Republic, “If I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football.”
“Of all games I personally like foot ball best,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote football founding father Walter Camp in 1895, “and I would rather see my boys play it than see them play any other.”
TR’s wish came true. During the 1905 season, when the gridiron incited more controversy than it does now, son Theodore Jr. played on Harvard’s freshman team. Every bloody nose and laceration made headlines. When Yale’s freshmen eleven roughed him up, Ted Jr. reassured his father that press reports theorizing that he had been targeted were “all bosh” and “rotten talk.”
Ted Jr. played in a more dangerous game than even the one Baltimore Raven Ed Reed will play in this Sunday. “I am with Obama,” the hard-hitting safety told the Baltimore Sun. “I have a son. I am not forcing football on my son. If he wants to play it, I can’t make decisions for him. All I can do is say, ‘Son, I played it, so you don’t have to.’”
More dangerous extracurricular activities await teenagers than football. Barack Obama didn’t play football in high school. He signed up for the “Choom Gang,” a collection of ’70s slackers dedicated, as their name implies, to smoking marijuana. Like Ed Reed, Obama made a name for himself making interceptions. “When a joint was making the rounds,” David Maraniss explains in his recent presidential biography, “he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted ‘Intercepted!’ and took an extra hit.”
What brain injuries did those kids endure?
The president’s blindside hit on football, like most blindside hits, lacks proportionality. Last season, football hits killed four players. Smoking tobacco, the habit that the commander in chief indulged for decades, killed more than 400,000 Americans last year, according to the government Obama presides over.
It doesn’t take a mathematics professor to tell us that 400,000 is greater than 4. Even a constitutional law instructor could figure that one out. Some activities pose greater dangers than a game of football.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. knew this better than most. As a fiftysomething World War I veteran, Roosevelt posthumously earned a Medal of Honor for storming Utah Beach — so much as you can “storm” with a cane — on June 6, 1944 alongside much younger men. The only general to land on the French beaches during that first attack wave, Roosevelt survived only to die of a heart attack in a field tent a month after D-Day.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. wouldn’t have become himself had he gone out for the Choom Gang at Harvard instead of the football team. Reaching our full potential as human beings involves embracing challenges, not avoiding them in the back of a smoke-filled VW bus.
Life is a rougher game than football. It occasionally requires self-abnegation, teamwork, and perseverance. Sometimes it demands that when we get hit, we hit back. Other times it tells us to walk away. Most importantly, it teaches us to get up after we get knocked down.
The hysteria over football ensures that tens of thousands of kids miss out on these important life lessons. The instruction imparted in front of a video-game screen, or at the backend of a Choom Gang-style pot circle, just doesn’t stack up.
Theodore Roosevelt, who knew nothing of Xboxes or reefer cigarettes, understood that fields build men while so much else stunts them. His namesake lived as a validation of this idea.
Photo: UPI
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 2.1.13 @ 6:26AM
Mr and Mrs Obama are Marching Mommies, dedicated to striding the world screaming NO NO! at informed consenting adults. Thanks be to God that he had no son.
spike59| 2.1.13 @ 6:51AM
Much like I've resigned to telling my daughters tales of the good old days of trick-or-treating WITHOUT adult supervision, my youngest daughter is resigning herself to a future of telling her kids about the days when she played center and defensive end on a thing called a 'youth football' team
Stephie| 2.1.13 @ 7:50AM
You know, his comments, "if I had a son", is odd. If I were one of his daughters, I would start to think my daddy was disappointed in my gender.
But then, I'd be disappointed that I ended up with a father like him.
markenoff| 2.1.13 @ 9:58AM
Remember, to Obama children are "punishment".
SUBVET| 2.1.13 @ 10:35AM
A "down low" punishment.........
TLP| 2.1.13 @ 2:03PM
I understand it when he say: "If I had a Son, I'd think twice about letting him play Football".
If he had a Son, he'd probably either be Gay, Super Gay, or in Prison on a Drug Conviction, and the only Football Game President Bathhouse has ever seen, is the one in The Longest Yard movie, and he doesn't want the guards to hurt his boy, because he's probably Gay, and in love with that Mana Tao whatever his name is, Hawaiian guy.
Pecos Pete| 2.1.13 @ 8:04AM
My mother would not allow me to play football. I was devastated. All of my friends played, but I couldn't. She was on the school board and the football coach would not consider approaching her with an appeal. Thus, I became the schools student photographer during football season.
Basketball became my sport, and to "belly up to the bar" I became a rather rough player to prove I was capable of being in the game. My mother's decision changed my life in so many ways that are incalculable. That was the first Y decision tree in my life. Later, after high school, I played football and, of course, had a terrible collision that broke my back thus proving that mothers have more common sense than their children.
TLP| 2.1.13 @ 2:11PM
"My Mother's decision changed my life in so many ways that are incalculable."
Really? Cause I've Calculated that all of your Proficiency with Show Tunes is probably a direct result of that decision, do to all of the Dance Lessons that followed it.
Maxwell| 2.1.13 @ 8:58AM
I still recall the pictures of Barry riding a girls bike, putting up the drapes, & throwing a baseball like a girl.
Now, on the other hand my father was one of the original 'tough guys', trust me on that. Mama was a true Southern Bell who never lost her accent. When I was nine years old she took me out to the back yard with her 38 & started to teach me to shoot.
They sure don't build parents like they used to.
TLP| 2.1.13 @ 2:19PM
They sure do.
I just finished Cutting Up a Tree that fell in one of my Customer's Yards, with my Husqvarna 455 Rancher Chainsaw, and threw'em in the back of my Truck.
And, my Wife is a Dainty Petite Loving Mom, and Fashion Designer, who dotes on her Children and FOLLOWS MY ORDERS.
My Boys have a BB Gun - they're 7 and 12 - a Bow and Arrow and Target, and they both play Baseball.
Don't worry, Maxwell.
There's still people like your Folks, out here.
And, God Bless your Parents for Raising you right.
C'mon Man!| 2.1.13 @ 3:51PM
Damn straight! Both my boys play football, and we all love it. Yep, they've been hurt and learned to suck it up. They are far more ready for life than any Obama.
TLP| 2.1.13 @ 5:41PM
Contest at Mr. Bowman's Tuesday Column.
Join us.
You won't be disappointed.
Maxwell| 2.1.13 @ 6:42PM
TLP, if you get back tonight, may the Lord bless all of us. Thank you sir for your complement, I appreciate it. Even tho I am into my 60's I still miss my parents.
Now, as far as you go, truck driving, lumber jack, kids that shoot, with a petite wife, I am glad there are parents out there like you! What is the expression, you be da man!!!
c. j. acworth| 2.1.13 @ 9:05AM
I can't remember the exact quote offhand, but Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter that in his opinion, ball games (whatever they may have been in the 18th century) were too rough and inappropriate for a young man. His advice for proper exercise was a long walk in the woods and fields with....a gun! Wonder what Obama would think if one of his kids wanted to take up shooting?
By the way, looking at that photo, I suddenly realized Obama is a lefty. I mean, I know he's a Lefty, but, oh, you know...
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.1.13 @ 9:25AM
Somehow, I can't help but think that the country would be so much better off if Obama was still sitting red-eyed in the back of that van, uttering "Yooooo, Braaaaaa, 'nother hit?" (in Hawaii, Braa is apparently the favored appellation over "Dude").
Most of our troubles started after he staggered out of the minibus.
cicero| 2.1.13 @ 9:36AM
Those calling for an end to football never played the game. As a boy, it was never necessary that you were good enough to be drafted into the pros, or get a college scholarship, but only that you played the game. You took the hits, and gave back as hard as you could. You ended up with validation and a lifetime of stories.
The trouble started when someone decided that the girls should be included in the boys' games. What an idiotic idea. Now, all games have to be "safe enough" for the girls to play. We end up with a girlie man leading from behind.
spike59| 2.1.13 @ 2:05PM
my daughter has played youth football for 2 seasons-center and def end. one day, the QB started whining after a game that he was getting hit too hard, so she showed him a few dozen choice bruises, courtesy of opposing players who agreed with you about girls playing the game, and told him "I get hit on EVERY play, but you don't hear me crying"...the fact is, she usually took harder hits than the boys did, mostly from players trying to 'send her a message'-but, out of the entire team for two seasons, there was only one kid who never missed a practice or game, never showed up late, never complained about anything, and never cried...the final game of the season, the 'star' receiver took himself out of the game, crying that he was 'too tired'...she was in the process of putting a band-aid on her bleeding finger where her nail had been torn off from being stomped on, so she could stay in the game and snap for the last offensive drive of the game-she just rolled her eyes, ran back out on the field, and did her damn job-i will agree with you on the 'girlie man'...but there's a butt-load of girlieboys coming up in the ranks
Butch| 2.1.13 @ 4:13PM
Never even considered NOT playing football when I was in high school. We had pretty skimpy face masks, and lots of action in the pileups. Use of hands on offense was much more restricted than today, and cut blocks (one of my specialties) were legal. We got concussions, sniffed smelling salts, and went right back into the game. Broke my leg my sophomore year, but played two more years. (Hey, second-team All-District my senior year.
After our big Thanksgiving-Day game with our 12-miles-down-the-highway arch-rivals (we dated each others' girls), all the boys from both teams would meet that night behind Lampkin's store, where our two selected gladiators who got in the worst fracas during the game went after it. There are no friends like a football team (at least for me), and the practices were worth it in the end (except for the blisters).
Dukehoopsfan| 2.1.13 @ 4:42PM
I played as a kid. Both of my sons did as well. Several years ago one of my boys was going through a challenging time at work but made it through just fine. He told me that having experienced getting knocked down and getting back up on the field made his adult experience more manageable.
On another note, I read an article a few years ago comparing our gridiron style of football to the Futbol the rest of the world plays. The thesis was that every country throughout history that played Futbol as their national pastime had been severely battered in wars but that countrys which play our brand of the game had not.
Butch| 2.1.13 @ 5:29PM
I read somewhere that the Roman Legions played it. Football is apparently a pretty ancient game in the sense of a group of healthy young men trying to advance an object to a specific destination, and an equally healthy group of you men trying to prevent them from doing it. The article said Julius Caesar complained in writing that the Legions were getting soft because they weren't playing that game enough to suit him. Outside of America and a little bit in Canada, does ANY country play much American football? I know that's what it's called worldwide. I like Duke too. I've always admired the overdogs, especially those who win like that's what's expected. Think the 50s-60s Yankees and the 70s-80s Cowboys.