Athletics and politics
I was disgusted to see that a group of Iowa football players appeared on stage to “endorse” a political candidate. While it’s great to see college students getting involved in politics, using the Iowa football program to give an endorsement to a political campaign is a clear violation of NCAA advertising rules. I also wonder how the rest of the Iowa football team, the majority of whom did not appear at the rally, feel about an endorsement being offered on their behalf.
Jayne Lady
Reading the report titled “‘No rules broken’” brought to mind the investigative journalism exposure of the Nixon’s Watergate and Sen. Howard Henry Baker asking, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
It prompts me to wonder how Trump knew the athletes were there, how did they come to be there as a group, the footballers all spiffed up tie and blazer best, and grouped so that they and the wrestlers could quickly climb up on stage when Trump separately beckoned them. And how were UI officials able to so quickly make it clear that no rules had been violated with no apparent need to ask anyone anything about anything, or if they did who asked whom and when did they ask it?
Of course, safely ignored in the matter of exploitation will be the fact that with apparent NCAA approval, student-athletes are to be used as pieces of rigged economic systems in which college sports are promoted in service and celebration of the well-heeled at the expenses of the many.
Right good business uses them to hock their bill of good on big boards in the stadium and via those long, game-delaying TV commercial big bucks flow into the right places. Which for armature athletic sake is not down to the sizzling or freezing gridiron where participants are jarring and jacking around getting their concussions and dislocations for less than minimum wage.
As with the down-and-out during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the masses of humanity entertained with bread and circuses in the old Coliseum — but today make that beer and football in Kinnick with our military-industrial complex getting its share of promotion by flyovers by planes of war and some teams playing at times in camo uniforms.
Sam Osborne
Trump tomato-thrower shouldn’t be applauded
As much as I believe Donald Trump deserves more than a mouth full of tomato sauce, here is the problem I see: This doesn’t change hearts and minds; it’s not an appeal to reason at all.
Nobody who believes in spirit of the First Amendment throws vegetables or anything else because they disagree with what others say. Just as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion on a First Amendment case Snyder vs. Phelps:
“Indeed, the point of all speech protection … is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful … in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment … Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation, we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle.”
Does Andrew’s First Amendment to civil disobedience give him the right to throw peanuts at someone who is deathly allergic to them and declare it as such? Andrew has done nothing meaningful; he has debased the whole principle of free speech and liberty into something juvenile. This in my opinion is more un-American than Trump. Trump at the very least so passionately believes in the First Amendment he will say whatever as disagreeable as it is. What he says however is still a peaceful exercise of the First Amendment. If what Andrew has done is lauded and celebrated behavior like something on Jersey Shore, then I truly fear for my country.
Varun Vajpeyi