ABSTRACT
The tragic and horrifi c events that surround the day of September 11th, 2001, its pre-history and the military, cultural, political, and economic events that have taken place in its aftermath, are telling moments in the history of the US (and indeed the world). With the perspective of time (some 10 years), it is abundantly clear that the events of September 11th continue to shape the material and symbolic worlds we inhabit. At this current moment, and indeed, in the future, this day will continue to shape public conversation, what it means to be ‘normal’ / ‘American’ and thus ‘abnormal’ / other, military policy, economic strategizing, lawmaking, the arts, entertainment, news coverage, education, and religion, to name but a few concerns (see Morgan, 2009). By way of refl ecting on this moment, I introduce this text by quoting Peter McLaren, writing in December 2001, at length, for he captured, ever so poetically and poignantly, the aftermath of these events:
We have entered a reality zone already captured by its opposite: unreality. It is a world where nobody really wanted to venture. It is a world where order has given way to disorder; where reason has given way to unreason; where reality is compromised by truth; where guilt is presumed over innocence; where the once noble search for explanations has been replaced by a dizzying vortex of plastic fl ags, stars and stripes rhinestone belts, coffee klatch war strategists, Sunday barbecue patrioteering, militant denunciations of war protestors, a generalized fear of whatever lies ahead, xenophobic hostility, and point-blank outrage. Soccer moms in sports utility vehicles festooned with images of Old Glory park in dimly lit alleys and then slink into the local sex shop in search of red, white, and blue thongs for couch potato husbands strangely rejuvenated by daily doses of carnage, courtesy of CNN. Public school teachers across the country eagerly prepare new courses on Western civilization. Politicians sporting American fl ag lapel pins plan ways to purge domestic political dissent. Hollywood producers hunker down in their studios and plan new Rambo fi lms. Retired generals shine in their new roles as political consultants, pronouncing the scenes
in Afghanistan as invariably “fl uid,” which is a giveaway that they do not know much more than their interviewers, and probably less. Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz basks in the national limelight again, this time advocating the use of “torture warrants” in specifi ed circumstances when the issue of “time” is crucial. Their reason paralyzed by fear and replaced by the logic of mob fury, American citizens eagerly give up their right of habeas corpus for government assurances that terrorists will be tracked down and killed, or if they are captured, for assurances that they will be tried by secret tribunal and then killed. (McLaren, 2002a, pp. 169-170)
What is most instructive in this evocative prose is the interweaving of the discourses of the state, the citizenry, the corpus, transnational corporatism, the media, and the military. McLaren was, with startling foresight, ultimately addressing the death of civil liberties, of democracy, and of American-led geo-political dominance in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. He spoke of the role of news media in legitimizing images of death and destruction in the name of freedom and of popular texts that (covertly) act to normalize warfare, torture, the demonization and pathologization of the other, and the absolute moral (and theocratic) ‘right’ to impose ‘democratic’ values throughout the world. Absent, however, in this passage from McLaren, and indeed from a vast majority of academic and popular writing after September 11th, 2001, have been discussions of the place of mediated sporting spectacle in understanding the narratives of this date. As argued by Stempel (2006, p. 82), this is despite sport’s being one of the “most explicit and mythologized public spectacles of competition, power, and domination. Consequently, they are important sites where Americans are registering, managing, and shaping the complex feelings about their power position in the post-9/11 world.” This book, which draws on those who have countered this trend by centering on sport-especially the work of Michael Butterworth, Josh Newman, Michael Giardina, Kyle Kusz, Mark Falcous, Ted Butryn, and Samantha King-is but one small step towards understanding the ways in which televised sport, in concert with a coterie of commercial, state, and military ‘partners,’ became complicit with the Bush regime in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001.
