In the early 90s, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf had a promising career ahead of him in the NBA as an up-and-coming star. That all changed in 1996 when he refused to stand for the US National Anthem and called the US flag a symbol of oppression. The NBA retaliated by suspending him, and Abdul-Rauf spent the next two decades playing exclusively for international leagues. On this episode of Edge of Sports, Abdul-Rauf looks back on his protest and how engaging the literature of revolutionary icons like Malcolm X influenced his decision. Elsewhere in the episode, Dave Zirin takes aim at Ron DeSantis’s use of sports to stage a political takeover at the New College of Florida, and Dr. Ron Bishop joins the show to discuss how sports media covers mental health.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf is here, only on Edge of Sports. [Singing 00:00:05]
Welcome to Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and this week we are talking with a former NBA player who is ahead of his time in more ways than one. In addition to having the sweetest of shots, this player made waves, made history, and frankly changed my life when he refused to come out for the national anthem in 1996 while playing for the Denver Nuggets. In the last year, he released his long awaited memoir, In the Blink of an Eye for Kaepernick Publishing, and he is the subject of the incredible Showtime documentary Stand.
His name is Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Also, I have choice words about Ron DeSantis’ use of sports, and they’re not kind. I’ll be turning no cheeks. And then, for Ask A Sports Scholar, we have a much better Ron, Dr. Ron Bishop, to talk about his critical work on how the media covers mental health in sports. But first, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, welcome to Edge of Sports.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Oh, thank you for having me.
Dave Zirin:
I said in the intro that in 1996 your stance literally changed my life, and I know I’m not alone. I’ve always wanted to know this, was making that level of a social impact even on your mind?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
That’s a great question. I wanted to make an impact simply because I began to read. After getting The Autobiography of Malcolm from Coach Brown at LSU, his life really changed the way I started to see myself and what I wanted my history to say for itself. I think I’ve always been wanting to be conscious guy growing up because you see things, and I speak about this a lot, you see things that bother you, but you don’t necessarily know how to articulate them.
Your heart is there, but you’ve been conditioned to be silent, to say nothing, to just play the game, but your heart is yearning for something else. After I read The Autobiography of Malcolm and then I began to read a little bit more, I said, man, my heroes changed. It began to be thinkers and people that were making a major, major difference. You don’t know what impact it would have, but you know that you want to go out swinging, so to speak.
Dave Zirin:
You mentioned Coach Dale Brown at LSU. I imagine he wasn’t handing out copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X like they were towels on the way to the shower. What do you think attracted Coach Brown to that book in knowing that it would be something that you would respond to?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
You know what, for years it didn’t dawn on me to ask him that question, and finally one day I decided to ask it. His simple response. I said, “Coach, what made you give me that book?” His response was, “I don’t know.” I said, “Do you think that it’s because I came out of Mississippi?” He despised Mississippi. He would always, well, not always, on occasion when I would answer questions, he would check me like, “Hey, speak from your heart. Let them know how you really feel.” I said, “Is it because you thought also that I was a bit passive and you were trying to bring me out of that?”
He said, “You know what? That’s very much possible why I gave it to you.” But outside of me adding that, giving him those cues, his initial response is, “I don’t know,” but I’m happy. I said, “Look, whatever it is, I’m happy that you did.” For me, I told him that was the outside of giving me the green light and me coming to LSU and all of that. I said, “That was the best thing that you could’ve ever done for me and I appreciate you for it.”
Dave Zirin:
Wow. I mean, I’d like to go back to the stance you took in 1996. Did you know at the time what it could cost you in terms of your career? Did you know it came with that level of risk?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
You know, Dave, I knew that there were risk obviously, because again, I began to… Even before reading The Autobiography of Malcolm, just the little knowledge I had of Muhammad Ali and what he wanted through. And then the more you began to read and people who end up going against the grain, so to speak, you see the type of things that happened to them. However, there was a part of me, this, I guess, delusional hope that, listen, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do on the court.
These are conversations outside of the media per se. You have these conversations. People are talking about this stuff everywhere. This is obvious. It’s in your face. They’re going to see my body of work, they’re going to hear it, and it’s not going to get to that level, so to speak, and how naive I was to think that. But I wasn’t unaware of it. You don’t know how much of pushback it’s going to be, but I learned quickly. But I had already made up my mind at the same time too, that whatever comes out of it, this is the decision that I’ve decided for myself.
I say this a lot. I mentioned that, oh, I want to live and die with a free conscience and a free soul, whether people like it or not. And I mean that. But I didn’t know exactly, but I knew that, okay, something’s going to happen, you just don’t know how much.
Dave Zirin:
What do people not understand about your motivations, your political motivations, your personal motivations to not come out for the anthem?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Making this decision didn’t come out of a vacuum obviously, but we all have our experiences and growing up in the South, the things that I had to endure, whether it be feeling that I was miseducated, whether it’s going through being misdiagnosed, just so many other things, not having a father, and to see the Ku Klux Klan and the overt racism that you experience, these things shake and they form how you think, how you see yourself, but also how you see the world around you.
For me, I’ve always been taught that… I didn’t have the words then. You hear these beautiful quotes about people, if you want to find yourself, lose yourself in the service of others. I was always taught to pray for others more than you pray for yourself, and it’s bigger than you. For the most part, I grew up with this philosophy. The more I began to read, like I said before, and the more I began to become acquainted with different thinkers and stuff and the struggles, I’m like, wow, this is what it’s about.
These are the things that’s pushing me. I’m always trying to think of how can I as a human being benefit others? How can I reach a point of selflessness that a lot of these people seem to have? These are the things that begin to inspire me. This is what pushes me to make these decisions. I’m not perfect, nobody, but this is what gives me peace. This is what gives me happiness.
Even in light of the disappointments and the pain that comes with it, I find more enjoyment and peace and contentment in making these types of decisions than I do knowing that I see things and being silent about them and knowing that deep down I’m a coward if I don’t stand up for them. These are the things that push me among many others.
Dave Zirin:
I’ve heard you in the past mention thinkers like Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky, and of course, you mentioned Alex Haley, Malcolm X, as some of the people that you were reading. The media drilled it down though to Islam. He’s doing this because of Islam and the ridiculous nature of our media exposed in the way they covered you in 1996. But I did want to ask you, the anti-Muslim bigotry you faced, I mean, it was awful.
I think it foreshadowed the post 9/11 era when attacks on Muslim people were so normalized by this government. As a person who in 1996 had only been practicing the Islamic faith for just a few years, what was that like for you? Was that an eye-opener for you to see them go after your religion like that?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Of course. It definitely opens your eyes to how you hear all of this talk about freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and especially during times of war and of crises, how this sense of nationalism and we all have to be together in one country and all of this stuff. And then you realize like, whoa, that’s not really the way… I knew it before, but especially when it hits you personally. Let’s just face it, it’s more intense, because you actually feeling this is attack on you and then it branches out into now not just you, now they’re attacking your faith.
It angers you. I mean, look, we’re human beings, and God puts anger in us. It angers you. It disappoints you. It saddens you. It frustrates you. All of those feelings were there amidst others. Dave, man, I was and still at 54 years old, I’m in a sense also unmoved by it. I’m not intimidated by it. I’m like, listen, man, there’s a saying in Islam [foreign language 00:11:33] When it’s all said and done, to you be your way and let me be mine. We all going to have to answer for the decisions that we make.
Dave Zirin:
I’ve always known that about you in terms of how you approach problems, how you approach ideas. I mean, it’s always been in a way that I think is defined by intellectual engagement, not just shouting at people what you think. I think that’s a hell of an example for others. Just a question, why do you think that some of the most influential and important political athletes in history were either adherence to Islam or in some way in dialogue with the Muslim faith?
We can’t be talking coincidence when we speak of you, Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, maybe different faiths or strains of Islam, but sharing that dialogue with the Muslim faith. Jim Brown, who was never a Muslim, was in dialogue with the Muslim faith. What is that about in your mind? Have you ever thought of that?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Yeah. I mean, that’s one of those questions that you can get into a lot of different areas. But just the first couple of things that come to my mind, just generally speaking, I think that like anything, there’s information that they come across with whoever introduced them to Islam, whether it was books or whether it was personalities that just resonated with them. And then I think Islam has that… Well, I know that Islam has that component because we were conditioned in Christianity historically to think more passively, like you get slapped, turn the cheek.
And then give them your other cheek. And then after that even, give them piece of your cloth. Your clothes or overcoat. But we’re never told about where Jesus tells his disciples when oppression had reached a point of almost no return, kind of like Martin Luther King and nonviolence. And then all of a sudden, there’s the greatest purveyor of violence is US militarism, capitalism, whatever. Now he’s assassinated because now, yes, non-violence is a tool, but it’s not an end all. You have the right to defend yourself.
Islam has that component kind of like the Old Testament, an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. If you aggressive upon me, I have the right to defend myself and aggressive upon you. We weren’t taught necessarily what Jesus tells his disciples to sell your garments to buy swords. Now, he wasn’t telling him to do this because they’re getting ready to go cut apples. They’re going, no, no, oppression has reached a point. I think that resonates with just the human being to know that, hey, man, hold on. I’m not obligated by God to tolerate this.
That’s something that appeals especially to us living in this country because what we’ve had to endure and how we’ve been taught, that version of responding to crises. You got to respond to it. This is the more civil way of doing it, while we’re being uncivilly knocked upside the head. I think those things appeal to a lot of, in particular, African Americans because of that history.
Dave Zirin:
You spent years not being in the public sphere after your career, and now we have the incredible book, which I spoke about in the introduction, Blink of an Eye, Blink of an Eye, and we have this incredible movie Stand on Showtime. What has that been like for you to step out into the public eye and in effect reintroduce yourself to a new generation?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Challenging, exciting, all at the same time, interesting. Because you know better than anyone that even if you write a book or you do a documentary, you’re never ever able to put every last thing in it. You try to pick out what you can and definitely it’s truthful. That was one of the biggest struggles with me. I’m not a professional writer, so you have to lean on other people in terms of also, hey, what makes the transition smooth and what doesn’t?
What’s too many examples of the same examples? You got to pick and choose, but it’s beautiful. Also, there’s a younger generation that didn’t know about me and they’re being introduced, and they’re thinking a little different.
Dave Zirin:
I see that.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Right. They’re thinking a little bit more different and challenging things a little differently than what we were doing. Some of it is just beautiful. They seem to be in some ways just undeterred like, hey, man, this is what I think and this is what I feel. It’s nice. I love traveling and having this dialogue. I’m learning so much in having this dialogue, being able to reach back with the youth, but also those people that were there that experienced it, some of the people that were older and continue to learn.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. You’ve been generous with your time, but there’s no way I’m going to let you go without asking just a couple of hoops questions. I mean, come on, you’re Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, for goodness sakes. When I told folks that I was interviewing you, about four different people thought they were being very original by saying, “Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, that’s Steph before Steph.” It’s almost a cliche. I was like, I get it, I get it. He was Steph before Steph. But I wanted to ask you, I’m sure you’ve heard that, what’s your reaction when you hear that comp?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Man, look, to still be in the conversation with especially somebody like that, I’m humbled. I’m immensely grateful, but there’s always someone. I don’t care how great someone is, it’s hard to reinvent the wheel. You just want to go down in history. The crossover was here before I was born, the behind the back dribble, the off the glass, hesitation. But you just try to leave a mark to where people remember you for doing the same thing that someone before you was able to do to inspire you.
Just to be in that conversation, man, to be mentioned still by both young and old and people to appreciate the hard work you put in. Even though I didn’t have the career nowhere near that Curry has had in terms of the… I say always about them, they have a fluorescent light, not just a green light. They can shoot that thing. It’s a guards game now, so it’s just different. But just for people to see the similarities, because there’s always… I say, look, man, there were people doing this before me, all of this type of stuff. It is just a humbling experience, man. I’m grateful.
Dave Zirin:
And then my last question, today’s game, you mentioned the fluorescent light, threes, threes everywhere, pace and space. How would you have done in your mind in such an NBA, because Lord knows the ’90s NBA was not this? Do you like this version of the sport?
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Not all of it. I don’t like all of it, but I love the fact that I’ve always detested people putting someone in a box in the context of we grew up and big men, you’re down low. Even then I was like, well, but what if you got a guy that he’s a big man, but he’s playing against somebody like Shaq that weighs almost 400 pounds? But this guy, if he learns how to dribble and he learns how to shoot, he can bring Shaq out and pull a Durant on him. He doesn’t have to pound all day. What if we need him to dribble the ball up because you know what I mean?
To take pressure off of us. The more you learn, the more versatile you are, the more valuable. To see big guys and forwards being able to handle the rock, shoot threes, and do all of those guard moves, I love it. I’ve always felt that that should be the case. Even guards learning how to post up, right? Because you’re going to be in different scenarios. I’m not attracted to… In the course of the game, you have a wide open shot. It’s a mid-range shot, but you would throw it to the three and you give up those things. I don’t like the fact also that sometimes the big man has become obsolete.
I think there’s value that part of the game as well. And to some degree, I train some of these guys and they say, look, when I’m attacking you and I’m face up, of course, you can’t touch me. But when I turn to the side, you can kind of nudge a little bit. I’m like, okay, I get it. You asked me the question, I would like to say because I fashioned myself on being able to get my shot off of anybody, and if I could do it during that era when it was hand checking and a little bit more physical [inaudible 00:21:34] face guarding or whatever, I would like to say that yeah, it would’ve been a whole lot…
I would like to say it would’ve been a whole lot easier and I would’ve got way more attempts up. It’s almost like shooting practice in a scenario like that. It would’ve been nice. It would’ve definitely been nice to experience, but that won’t ever happen.
Dave Zirin:
I know shooting practice for you is really layup practice given your shots.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
I appreciate that, man. I appreciate that.
Dave Zirin:
Oh, come on, man. Sweetest shot of the generation as far as I’m concerned. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, if you’ve been so generous with your time. The book is amazing, In the Blink of an Eye, the documentary is eye-opening, Stand on Showtime and Hulu and other platforms. Thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports TV.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
No, thank you, Dave. I appreciate it.
Dave Zirin:
And now, some choice words. Okay, look, you may or may not be familiar with the New College of Florida. This is the tiny 700 students school that the state’s Governor Ron DeSantis has turned into a social experiment by firing a mass of allegedly left wing professors, shutting down entire departments like gender studies, eliminating its diversity, equity, and inclusion workforce, forcing out students, and hiring flunkies to run it, including a media addicted racist named Christopher Rufo.
Wow! For people who rail against woke cancel culture, they have proved in practice what’s been obvious from jump. They don’t give a damn about free speech or a free exchange of ideas. They are leading a war against any discourse that is objectionable to the dark money billionaires pulling their strings. DeSantis and his trolls are quite open about what they’re doing. They want this tiny school to be their Fort Sumter, an opening shot in the name of what they crave to do to education throughout Florida and the United States.
They want to see ideological purges and ruined lives all in the service of an unaccountable right wing authoritarian agenda. And again, they’re open about this and damn proud of how they’ve hollowed out the New College. Every fired professor or expelled student a pelt on their wall. But why am I talking about it here on Edge of Sports?
Well, one reason is that I recently heard the Dream Defenders, a resistance organization in Florida, and a fired New College professor speak, and I was stunned that in the state where my mom was raised and my grandparents took their last breaths, a fascist thought laboratory has been born. But that’s not the only reason.
I’m also talking about the New College because I’m frankly sickened that sports is one of the ways that DeSantis has openly and proudly forcing an ideological cleanse upon the student body. In a recent press release posted on the official Florida Government’s website, a press release that frankly reads like a memo to the billionaires that own him, DeSantis boasts of the success at the New College since his hostile takeover.
He crows that in addition to canceling departments and destroying people’s lives, which yes, he brags about, the former Yale baseball player celebrates and “the introduction of intercollegiate athletics outside of existing intramural sports by forming six teams and a scholarship fund for incoming athletes and recruitment of nearly 150 student athletes since launching the athletic program in the spring.” Just think about that, 150 new student athletes out of just 700 students. Consider those numbers and let’s be clear.
This ain’t about sports, and this definitely isn’t about giving poor student athletes the chance at a college education. This is about the state government sending millions in taxpayer money to the New College so they can basically buy a new right wing student body through the means of athletic scholarships to replace those they forced to leave.
Remember, they are building an athletic department at a school of 700 people so they can throw free college money at athletes coming largely from Christian private schools so they can change the ideological makeup of the school and replace the students who have been driven out. This is about nothing less than taxpayers subsidizing a purge. Look, I love sports and I make no secret about that, but I also know that sports is like a fire, and fire can cook you a meal or fire can burn down your house.
DeSantis is using sports to burn down that school in service of an agenda defined by bigotry. I remember when Andrew Gillum running against DeSantis in that first governor’s race in 2018 said that he didn’t think DeSantis was a racist, but that the racist all thought DeSantis was a racist. That gave Ron way too much credit. In DeSantis’ Florida, marching Nazis gather in front of Disney World and scare children. Seriously, that’s the atmosphere he’s fostered. Yes, Ron DeSantis might be an Ivy League racist with a dark money polish, but he’s a racist all the same.
Maybe that’s why he was booed last month at a vigil after three people, Angela Michelle Carr, Jerrald Gallion and AJ Laguerre Jr., were murdered by yet another Nazi in Jacksonville. Maybe that’s why one of the Dream Defenders said to me that Ron DeSantis may as well have pulled the trigger. There is a movement that must be built in Florida against the DeSantis agenda, but make no mistake.
Whether he becomes president or not, and he won’t because he is the charm of a rabid possum, what has happened at the New College is already a trial balloon for what the dark money billionaires want to do to education across the country. Athletes, I have no doubt, will play a part in the coming resistance, but part of that resistance will have to be a refusal to be pawns in their game. And now for Ask A Sports Scholar. We have the author of A Little Less Conversation: The Thematic Evolution of Sports Journalism’s Narrative of Mental Illness.
We have him right here, and I’m so glad to have him, Drexel University’s own, Dr. Ron Bishop. Ron Bishop, thanks so much for joining us on the Ask A Sports Scholar section of Edge of Sports TV.
Ron Bishop:
Happy to be here. Good to see you again, Dave.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, it’s great to see you. My first question is about the title of the book. It just throws me a little bit. Why call it A Little Less Conversation? We want more conversation about mental health in sports?
Ron Bishop:
That’s a great question. I think for my money, I was sort of wadding through all of the different stages in the history of the narrative, it just occurred to me that one of the newer trends, I guess, or themes and coverage is what I’m very awkwardly calling for the moment the we need to keep a dialogue going frame more thing.
Towards the end of the book, and maybe just because it had taken me four years to write, it just seemed as though it was time to stop talking and actually maybe put a little bit more action toward helping athletes at all levels, not just professionally, of course, who are, A, struggling or experiencing mental illness and also are trying to determine whether or not it’s something that they’d want to share for whatever reason to benefit others or to just get their stories out there.
It has to do, I think too, and I know lots of folks, your listeners or your viewers, will be not big fans of Rob Manfred and the commissioner class in professional sports, but they like to pat themselves on the back for, again, that we’re engaged in the dialogue. They tend to get stuck in it rather than actually then…
Although there have been some positive moves, more teams hiring psychologists and having mental health help available, but it just seemed to be enough with the conversation, let’s do even more for the athletes because it affects nationally within the general population. Of course, I think one in five is the last number. And certainly within the athletic population, it’s a major issue.
Dave Zirin:
Let’s talk about how the media reports on this. Because as someone who doesn’t look at it nearly as closely as you have, I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been progress in how the media discusses this, but your research says that this evolution has actually been much more distorted and much less this linear line of progress. Is that fair?
Ron Bishop:
I think so, yeah. Again, it’s been a very, I think, positive and productive journey for me, but I did find three overlapping phases, and the first one I guess should be qualified somewhat with the fact that sports journalism as a field or as a chunk of the field had just started coming into being the likes of Tim Rene and others had just started becoming sports journalists. I mean, editors at that point were begrudgingly giving more space to sports and making sure that that space was severely limited.
The question occurred to some sports writer friends of mine when I would run this by them in the initial stages of the research, is it folly to expect members or practitioners of a very, very new part of the craft to express or to cover mental illness or what little there was being written about it at that time with a degree of nuance and sensitivity, but I still thought it was an important baseline. That first stage ranging from the late 1800s until maybe just before I guess Jimmy Piersall hit the scene was marked by very sensationalized, very over the top, very insensitive, to say the least, coverage.
When Piersall and his contemporaries who tried to or made the attempt to share more about their experiences, it became more of an encumbrance or an inconvenience. I mean, Piersall’s case is actually a bit of an outlier because he did gain so much publicity and was such an outsized personality, of course.
But other athletes at that time, Herschberger and some of the others that are mentioned in the book, who were a little bit more obscure, their mental illness would lead to, in some case, the choice to end their lives or just a great deal of suffering, the teams would then be positioned as being burdened by it rather than having to do anything positive or constructive to help the athlete through what was going on. And then a lot of coverage after the fact.
In the earlier chapters, some of the athletes would be, “Well, he always seemed moody,” when at the beginning of what was going on in that athlete’s life, they were just being dismissed as crackpots or angry or sullen or a variety of different adjectives that are used. As in the case of Martin Bergen and some of the other athletes, when they tragically took their own lives, and in Bergen’s case, he killed his wife and son, then all of a sudden there was this overperformed shock on the part of his teammates.
But by the time we hit, sorry to jump around, but by the time we hit the ’60s and ’70s and Tony Horton and Alex Johnson and most notably Lionel Aldridge, the great Packers star, we start to see the development or the genesis of this template that I talk about that lasts into today where athletes like Aldridge and Bert Yancey, the PGA golfer who I wish I had had more time to talk about, step up and become spokespeople for the mentally ill, for groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness and others.
They occupy a little bit more space. But the tricky part in that third phase is that instead of, and this goes back to your first question, instead of then using that as a cue to bake in more nuance and sensitivity and information into coverage, sports writers, you still are an excellent one than I was one many years ago, sort of go to the formula. It becomes a means of making the reader or the viewer or the clicker, I guess, comfortable with the experience rather than doing a deep dive into what it’s actually like.
A lot of that has to do with the amount of control that athletes have over their public statements and their public image these days. The sports writer is already faced with that. But then on top of that, I guess, the inclination to then dive in and maybe go deeper… And there are some who have, and that, again, circles back to your first question. There is improvement, but there still is this over-reliance on this it’s a very heroic thing.
There’s a lot of big differences too when we look at male versus female athletes, and especially athletes of color versus white athletes, and also the severity of the mental illness.
Dave Zirin:
Wow! The irony here is, as you said, this is a societal problem, not an athletic problem. One imagines that sports writers have either dealt with this or members of their family or friends have dealt with mental health challenges. I keep going back to this question about why this is such a tough nut for sports writers to crack. Is it all about trying to create something palliative for the audience, or are we dealing with something else here? My suspicions lend me towards that mental health issues just don’t fit neatly with the narrative of sports.
Ron Bishop:
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. As I said, other social issues looked at through the sports writer’s lens taking varying degrees of time to find a space on the agenda, I guess, so to speak, and then to be treated. They all interrupt in one way or another. I was thinking before we got together to chat today about Julio Urías, the Dodgers pitcher, and how domestic violence and what in his case seems to be two very severe and very tragic and violent acts of violence, it punctures the feel good or stay interested bubble that sports writers, again, having been one years ago, try to create for their fans.
There’s a really great scholar up at the University of Toronto, Mark Lowes, who it’s kind of a no kidding statement, but it’s still very powerful that the sports writers gig is to sustain interest in the teams and to go into nuanced tragic details of what Urías’ behavior in another arena or someone really trying to grapple in a non, I guess, performative way or a non-public consumption way with mental illness. It just doesn’t fit, as you were saying. It’s almost as though since they found this…
I was reminded of this with Simone Biles making her triumphant come back a week or so ago. I was struck, of course, by her performance, which was just amazing, but also how almost automatically the mental health element had been stripped down to be so formulaic and so bullet pointed that she had overcome this. They mentioned the twisties. They mentioned her withdrawal in the Olympics and that kind of thing, but now that’s all that’s left of that discussion where she clearly is out there.
In addition to being probably the greatest gymnast of all time, she’s out there trying to be a champion for this. In its own way, that is a bit structured and a bit orchestrated, but again, sports writers are just content to focus on the now rather than go back and really earnestly rehash that. And again, some do, but overall, and especially as more and more sports journalism is practiced in places where still a lot of it is new to me, it’s just a back in the rear-view mirror kind of thing when new developments come up.
Dave Zirin:
I would make the case, I think, that it can be as harmful to speak about mental health as this classical Hollywood narrative of obstacles overcome, and then success and mental stability, that can be as harmful as not talking about it at all.
Ron Bishop:
I agree. Howard Bryant, who I’m sure very well, he calls it this ritual of rehabilitation, where they enter the arena, so to speak, they share their experiences, they go through the gauntlet of interviews, controlled or otherwise, and then it’s not that it’s it or that’s the end of it, of course, because it becomes an ongoing part of that athlete’s history and that athlete’s presence on the public stage, but it does almost take on a…
And I use this term not to be cheeky or anything, but a form of perseverance porn, where they’ve gone through this and now they’re… it’s almost like Mike Mester’s idea. I can’t remember the exact term, but it’s the mental health equivalent to just stick the bone back in and go into the game and be there in Paris in 2024 and so on, which I’m thrilled that she’s going to do that, Simone Biles.
But I think that, again, doesn’t lead us, if any of us, a fraction or a segment of us, would be curious about or know somebody, to cycle back to your point earlier, know somebody in our family that we might want to help, that information isn’t going to be a great deal of assistance. It’s formulaic and triumphant and a lot of things, but does it actually help?
I think that very earnestly, athletes like Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and others, many of whom are chronicled in the book, do it for really good reasons, but then it has to be forced fit into that template that we mentioned that started with Aldridge back when he made his recovery for mental illness after leaving football.
Dave Zirin:
A favorite here on Edge of Sports TV is a former guest, Chamique Holdsclaw. How important was she to this discussion of mental health becoming more broad based, both in the sports world and beyond?
Ron Bishop:
I think very important. I think one of the things that as a, I don’t know if it’s counterpoint to or a parallel track, is the fact that most of the coverage of athletes being either led to or choosing to share their experiences, most of them up until not all that long ago were men and white men largely. In one of the chapters, for example, I talk about the differences in coverage between when Tony Horton wanted to drive himself to improve and Alex Johnson, who won the batting title in 1970 with the Angels, was dismissed under the angry Black man trope.
He was just a cranky, nasty person. But Chamique, Julie Crone, they’re essential because it helped broaden the experience for us as consumers of sports news to let us know that it’s not just men. She publicly discussed her illness. Her experience was still not exactly the most sensitive or nuanced, but as far as what she means to the broader story, it’s just a very powerful part of the trip.
Dave Zirin:
You’ve been so generous with your time, Ron. Tell us all though, what is next for Ron Bishop?
Ron Bishop:
Well, it’s a strange turn of events since I can’t seem to shut the brain off. I’m actually writing a book on a Black public affairs television show called Positively Black, which began airing in 1970 actually. The host of the show for a long time was a really respected gentleman and labor leader and a thousand other things named Gus Heningburg, whose son was an old friend. As middle-aged men do, a year or so ago, we reconnected on Facebook and we thought, hey, this would be a great idea.
It broadened beyond just his dad to look at… I mean, maybe we could come back and talk about it, but it’s the Kerner Commission and the commitment of broadcasters to Black public affairs shows and the history and the tenor of the times. I grew up right outside of Newark, New Jersey and have very vivid memories of what happened, the rebellion in that timeframe in the late ’60s. As Gus and I became closer and closer friends, at that point, my understanding was not nuanced.
The only thing I really thought was that his dad was really cool because he was on TV. Fortunately, time allows for perspective, and we’re taking a look at the show, which is still on the air in truncated segments, various ports of call on the internet, and looking at where we are now in terms of meaningful discussion of issues important to the Black community.
Dave Zirin:
I’m sure an amazing array of guests on Positively Black to go through.
Ron Bishop:
Yeah. I had the pleasure, just as a quick final thought, of speaking with Nona Hendryx of Labelle.
Dave Zirin:
Oh, wow.
Ron Bishop:
Yeah. She wrote the theme song for the show.
Dave Zirin:
What?
Ron Bishop:
Yeah, no, no, it even gets at… The show’s first musical director in 1970 was Dizzy Gillespie.
Dave Zirin:
What?
Ron Bishop:
Yeah. The person who was the first EP for the show, Tom Skinner, was the only… I mean, you’re going to have to stop me at some point, otherwise I’ll just keep gabbing, but was the only journalist in New York to be in the Audubon Ballroom when Malcolm X was killed.
Dave Zirin:
Oh, dear God.
Ron Bishop:
It’s been amazing. I mean, I obviously could go on for hours. I’ve been investigating and interrogating my own white privilege, as so many of us should do. Just thinking about being in this line of work for a while, how earnest and I guess wide-eyed it all was to think that we could put shows like that on the air and get whites off their collective mental keisters and learn more about the Black community and wish for those days. But anyway, yeah, that’s the next one.
Dave Zirin:
Amazing. One of my favorite moments on YouTube was finding Nikki Giovanni and Muhammad Ali together on a Black public affairs show, and that was an absolute window or portal, if you will, into the world you’re talking about.
Ron Bishop:
Muhammad Ali, just really briefly, does play a tiny role in this. Because on the very first episode of the show in 1970, one of the guests was the black jazz musician activist named Oscar Brown Jr. He had just done a sadly poorly received Broadway show called Buck White, which has its own history and amazing backstory. But Muhammad Ali was actually the lead in that very short-lived musical. The reason that it only lasted, I think, four performances was the critics all ripped him for not being equipped to be a Broadway actor or whatever.
But it was just a little, going back to, I guess in a way, the point of our discussion, it was deemed too Black for Broadway and that Black audiences couldn’t afford the tickets to go see it, and so it died on the vine quickly. But yeah, it’s just been amazing. Everywhere I turn, it’s just one fascinating person after the next.
Dave Zirin:
Well, a quick shout out to the documentary, The Trials of Muhammad Ali, that has clips of Buck White. The director, the late Bill Siegel, just a tremendous filmmaker. Ron Bishop, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports. It was really great.
Ron Bishop:
I appreciate the opportunity, Dave. It’s good to see you again, and we’ll keep in touch.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have for this week. Thank you, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Thank you, Dr. Ron Bishop, and thank you to everybody here at The Real News Network for pulling off this show on a weekly basis. For everybody out there listening, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.
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