Not Just A Game - Muhammad Ali Teaser - Available on DVD

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Not Just A Game: Power, Politics & American Sports
A Film by the Media Education Foundation
Featuring Dave Zirin

We've been brought up to believe that sports and politics don't mix -- that games are games and athletes should just "shut up and play." In the view of iconoclastic sportswriter Dave Zirin, this mentality cheapens both. In Not Just a Game, Zirin shows that far from providing merely escapist entertainment, sports have also reflected, and at times played a role in shaping, the political tensions and social struggles at the heart of American society. The film takes an uncompromising look at how sports culture has glamorized militarism, commercialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia. But it also excavates a largely forgotten tradition of rebel athletes and sports writers to show how American sports culture, at its best, has modeled forms of courage, resistance, and perseverance that have enriched American life.

Dave Zirin
Named one of the UTNE Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World," Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for The Nation and is host of Sirius XM Radio's popular weekly show Edge of Sports Radio. Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, he is a columnist for SLAM, The Progressive, and a regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, New York Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Pittsburgh Courier, The Source, and numerous other publications.

Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports and What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. His newest book release, A People's History of Sports in the United States, is part of Howard Zinn's People's History series for the New Press.

Zirin has appeared on ESPN's Outside the Lines, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, ESPN Classic, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN's The Campbell Brown Show, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, Comcast Sports Network's Washington Post Live, Al-Jazeera's The Riz Khan Show, C-SPAN's BookTV, and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. He has also been on numerous national radio programs including National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered; Air America's 'On the Real' with Chuck D; The Laura Flanders Show; ESPN Radio; Stars and Stripes Radio; The Joe Madison Show; Pacifica's Hard Knock Radio, and others.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• MEF
• Media Education Foundation
• Media Literacy
• Dave Zirin
• Sports
• Politics
• Gender
• Masculinity
• Militarism
• Commercialism
• Michael Jordan
• Muhammad Ali
• LeBron James
• Billie Jean King
• Jackie Robinson
• Tommie Smith
• John Carlos
• Not Just A Game

[p0llenp0ny]

*yawn* more bread and circuses, please.

[Th3Wab3]

funny that the great majority of people who use sports for a political platform are minorities and women hmmm aka the victimized... not too rich white male athletes taking up a cause contrary to what gave you your wealth...

[givebirthathome]

Let's see....we've heard that actors shouldn't express political opinions, that musicians shouldn't express political opinions, and now sports figures? How much further do we have to go with this before the fact that the government does not legally restrict freedom of speech is empty of value, as there is no meaningful speech left to restrict?