Continuing on my recent infatuation with "Stupid People Making Good Marks" and "Our age is being marked by a pervasive and inveterate sloppiness," I'd thought I'd comment of a recent hubbub that has erupted in response to certain comments made by Leonard Weaver, a former fullback for the Philadelphia Eagles. I refer to him as a "former" fullback because as a follower of the Eagles, I know that last season he suffered what in all likelihood was a career-ending knee injury that will all but guarantee that he will never again be the recipient of a paycheck for his on field activities.
So what exactly did Weaver say that has caused this growing hullaballoo? As reported by CSNPhilly, Weaver said the following with regard to the current stalemate between NFL owners and players:
"We as players want to make a statement that you know what, we love playing for you all, we love your owners, you know? We love you guys very much, but at the same time we need to see some equal opportunity here and stop treating us basically like Adrian Peterson said, like slaves."
Apparently folks take offense at a professional athlete - who, like a modern-day gladiator slave, may be cast aside by his owner as soon as his economic usefulness expires - invoking "slavery" to describe his economic condition. Problem is that the folks taking offense at Weaver's comments are not just wrong, they are demonstrating abject ignorance. Their reaction demonstrates just how successful our country's predator class has been in its quest to destroy what was once the U.S. of A.'s greatest generator of economic wealth - it's educational system.
Admittedly, Weaver was less than articulate in invoking the context of slavery. And by failing to provide any context for Weaver’s comments, the reporter and every reporter who picks up this story demonstrates their abject failure to perform their craft. However, not too long ago, everyday Americans would have immediately understood the context that Weaver was attempting to frame the debate between NFL owners and players.
Not too long ago, everyday Americans, or at least the ones with whom I associate (typically college-educated professionals), would have been familiar with the writings of Adam Smith, Aristotle or Cicero. I also suspect that not just so-called "elites" would have understood him. For instance, I'm pretty sure that even a few wenches who toiled away in 19th century textile mills would have even had a sufficient education to understand Weaver's comments. And as devout followers of the Greeks in both theory and practice, our Founding Fathers would have certainly understood Weaver’s invocation of slavery to describe the economic condition of NFL players.
Instead for the last 24 hours or so, I have been treated to an incessant stream of tweets and Facebook updates from these supposedly educated and frequently effete snobs who are blasting Weaver for making such "tasteless" comments. My favorite tweet that was "uttered" by one of my supposedly-educated acquaintances was "Bentleys are the new slaveships." To which I respond, "Ahh, so very witty you witless tool."
Based on the popularity of "Spartacus," the television series that portrays the lives of gladiator slaves and the obvious parallels that the show draws between the lives of Spartacus and the lives of present-day professional athletes (NFL players in particular), I would have suspected that the public would have been more receptive to Weaver's comments. Perhaps next time, he ought to make reference to the show.
Whether or not Weaver sticks to his words, the popular and pretty much universal reaction to Weaver's comments evidences that the historical understanding of "slavery" has slipped from the American consciousness.
"Slipped" is perhaps the wrong word. Rather, I'd argue that it is no coincidence that the NFL's labor dispute is concurrent to the various labor disputes that have overtaken our state capitols. Just as Scott Walker and his patrons now wage war against collective bargaining rights, the same folks have driven from the minds of ordinary Americans through a purposeful deconstruction of the American educational system the conception of "wage slavery."
Other than a few marginalized souls (Chomsky comes to mind), very few folks realize that once upon a time people understood "slavery" to not just encompass the situation in which a person was actually owned by another but also the situation in which Leonard Weaver and his fellow NFL players now find themselves. To the extent this condition was linguistically distinguished from our apparently ordinary understanding of "slavery," it was distinguished as "wage slavery." The works of theorists who described the condition of wage slavery and its deleterious effects on stuff like democracy - the likes of Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, Aristotle, Cicero and, dare I say, Marx - were once part of the cannon of American education. Now, they are forgotten. In their place, American culture has been infected with a mass delusion as to the true nature of our economic condition.
The fact that it is left to our age's gladiators to remind us of this forgotten dynamic convinces me that what we are in the midst of the second Dark Ages.
And to be clear, the marks referred to in this title are those that take offense at Weaver's comments