“The Cold War on Ice”
The cover story in our latest issue, “The Cold War on Ice” by John Rodden, is an account of one young woman’s experience growing up in Communist East Germany. It’s long and full of fascinating detail. Since it’s summer-reading season (and we’re on our summer schedule, meaning you have twice as long to read this issue), I thought I’d open up a forum for discussion here. What are your impressions of the story?
What stuck with me most was the loss of innocence that Ute experienced, looking back at her youth with new eyes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was obviously painful for her to take in the breadth of the betrayal and mistreatment she had encountered, and it left her wondering what else she should question or mistrust. A grim emotional legacy.
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Very interesting to get the experience of a particular person, although the doping of East German athletes is hardly breaking news any more (and, Gott sei Dank, we have no such problems among our sportsmen and women here in the US, do we?)
But I think the story might inspire a bit of introspection about the role of athletics in this country, professional and amateur (to say nothing of that third category, “amateur” in quotes). Some years ago William Bowen and James Shulman exploded many of the comforting ideas that surround varsity sports at the college and university level (e.g., that they make money for the institution, that they teach leadership qualities, that they encourage alumni giving, etc. etc., none of which turn out to be true). But one might look at professional sports too. How you calculate it, I don’t know, but presumably all of us are paying in one way or another for the swollen payrolls of, say, the NY Yankees or the Red Sox, or for those enormously expensive commercials in, say, the Super Bowl or the World Series. In other words, by paying higher prices for the goods advertised, we are submitting to a kind of taxation — and by our backing for these spectacles, we are giving our assent to suc taxation
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Is there a kind of moral taxation as well? I don’t remember the author’s name, but I had an interview with him on NPR about a book he’s recently written about the increasingly pervasive habit of cheating, and though he’s by no means pointing the finger simply at sports of course, he cited a fair number of examples from professional athletics: e.g., the failure of the commissioner of baseball to lift the home run crown from the steroid-ridden Barry Bonds, and restore it to Hank Aaron, to whom it rightfully belongs. And, as he points out, since athletes are role models for many, the prevalence of cheating suggests that the practice is normal and permissible.
Of course, if you want to raise your eyes beyond the confines of the US, take a look at FIFA.
Nicholas, why insist on saying, “well, our society is just as bad”? Do you really believe that?
I found the story interesting but not particularly thought provoking. One thought, though, is that East Germany is what can happen when idealists who consider their ideals for organizing societies more important than individual human beings are put in control of things. The better is, indeed, often the enemy of the good.
Frank Deford had a recent comentary on venality/hypocrisy etc, across international spoty.
I’d say BTW we’re becoming just as bad as big money sport reaches down into High School under the duress of satisfying multiple 24 hour sports networks.
In related news, the PBS series Secrets of the Dead has an episode called “Doping for Gold” about the East German practice of using drugs to develop athletes. I missed the broadcast last night, but you can watch it online. There’s also a transcript and lots of other information on the subject.
Yes, a school’s athletes make money for their schools, sometimes mounds of money. And what are those athletes paid? Measley scholarships which require hours, and hours and hours of practice time and the suffering of physical pain injury. In my opinion, that is immoral.
It is disgraceful that those kids are not paid a fair wage. Yes, yes, I know that college sports is supposed to be for the joy of it. Well, I’ve got news. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about irrational egos that want to associate themselves with the accomplishments of the hard-working athletes and who will pay fortunes to support them and their programs (even when it is against the colleges’ rules that stipulate that the athletes get no monetary or other rewards from alumni). At least the cheating alumni understand that the athletes *deserve* more compensation.
Being the products of such a cheating=ridden system, it’s no wonder that once the athletes graduate they bargain for all they can get for playing professional sports. And it’s no wonder that some of the cheat. That was the college system, after all.
David Smith — Sorry, but I don’t believe that I said, “well, our society is just as bad,” and I don’t find any such words in my post. Nor did I infer in any way that the US is “just as bad” as the now kaput DDR (if that’s what you mean). I simply raised the question of whether we might find ways to count the costs of big-time athletics in this country (at the college and university level, as well as the professional level). Particularly in a time of economic stringency for many, such an exercise might be illuminating.
“One thought, though, is that East Germany is what can happen when idealists who consider their ideals for organizing societies more important than individual human beings are put in control of things. The better is, indeed, often the enemy of the good.”
Call me stupid (many do), but I have a hard time resolving Catholic objections to a society that extolls individualism above all else, on the one hand, and Catholic objections to repressive regimes that undermine individual thought and action to some perceived greater good on the other.
I’m not trying to be provocative. Certainly subordination of oneself to the teachings of the Church is supposed to lead to holiness and salvation. It is also an individual’s free choice. I don’t think that Catholics who call for less focus on the individual are advocating something like East Germany.
But, just as a kind of exercise in imagination, what WOULD a Catholic society in which the individual is is less paramount and the Church more look like? I think of St. Thomas More’s “Utopia” as a kind of model for Catholic society, albeit a someone dated one. Thoughts?
For one thing, Jean, it would have to be voluntary.
David, exactly.
So what are we to make of Catholics who want to encode Catholic proscriptions against abortion, euthanasia, birth control, divorce, gay marriage, etc., in the legal system?