NFL negligent in prevalence of Dementia in retired NFLers?

NFL spokesman, Greg Aiello, said in an e-mail message that the study did not formally diagnose dementia, that it was subject to shortcomings of telephone surveys and that “there are thousands of retired players who do not have memory problems.”
“Memory disorders affect many people who never played football or other sports,” Mr. Aiello said. “We are trying to understand it as it relates to our retired players.”

Yeah yeah, but are you really?

More and more retired National Football League players are speaking out about the dangers of concussions.  Cleveland Browns' great Jim Brown, who has guested several times on the FAN 590 radio show Primetime Sports with host Bob McCown, has come out and said that the league and current players need to do more not only financially, but publicly to raise awareness about the dangers of brain trauma as a result of collisions on the playing field.  Dizzy spells are no longer just dizzy spells, and passing out can no longer be ruled a straight forward case of dehydration.  The New York Times is reporting that Early On-set Alzheimer's (when the disease manifests itself before the age of 65) or other memory related illnesses are diagnosed in NFLers at "a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49."

This is scary stuff, especially considering the NFL in the last round of labour negotiations managed to wrestle guaranteed contracts away from its players.  That means any player who begins to show signs that his cognitive abilities-  as a result of various hits to the head - are deteriorating, can be outright released from his contract. The highest rate of workplace injury occurs in the arena of professional sports. So I ask, if you were a fireman, how would you feel if the city you worked for did not believe in the inherent risks of smoke inhalation and sent you into a burning building; a few months later, you begin to develop asthma and your contract is eventually terminated.   Fortunately, our Canadian firemen and women are well taken care of, so why wouldn't a multibillion dollar industry like the NFL do more to protect its most coveted assets?

Defender Telegraph, page 7, No. 001 

Rihanna stars in Animal Locomotion II for Vogue Italia

 

After the smashing success of Vogue Italia's commemorative issue to Black women a few months back, the Italians are at it again in this month's issue with a stunning and somewhat controversial photo exposé on Barbadian pop princess Rihanna.  Photographer Steven Klein, playing Eadweard Muybridge here, sets Rihanna up in front of an anthropometric grid, similar to those used by early race scientists to measure bodily features with photographs.  It's certainly interesting considering that Muybridge's Animal Locomotion project, to which Klein's photos resemble the most, never featured any women of colour.  Only one African-American man, strangely enough a boxer named Ben Bailey, was featured in Muybridge's study of human locomotion that included over one hundred White subjects.  Why now I ask?  Many critics are likening these photos to early investigative police photography, using Rihanna's recent dust-up with defamed ex-boyfriend Chris Brown as the catalyst.  But these images say much more about early Western anthropological and photographic sciences than police photography. Klein is provoking a dialogue about the myths of human form.  It's certainly not as flagrant as Annie Leibovitz's Vogue cover photograph of NBA star Lebron James with supermodel Giselle Bundchen in a recreation of the King Kong trope, but it's in the ballpark.

Defender Telegraph, page 3, No. 001

In response...

In response to comments:

Sabrina said:

Are there any other forms of cultural media, for example films or magazines created by the Black community, that can be viewed as a counter archive or an attempt to reclaim the image of African-American athletes? Nice Blog btw!

Hi there,  thanks for commenting!

Counter-archives or other media referencing sports developed specifically by the African-American community are a bit tough to come by - which is why I'm so interested in the topic. The Source magazine is a self-proclaimed voice for African-American music and sports fans, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that it's a progressive one.  I distinctly recall a sub-heading for an article profiling NBA player Latrell Sprewell called 'SHOOTING SPREE'...  Everybody duck!

I would look at Spike Lee's incendiary film Bamboozled, which cleverly blasts both Black and White stereotypes in the American entertainment industry.  However, the brilliant African-American scholar W.E.B. Dubois's early 20th century Georgia Negro Exhibit was the first photographic counter-measure developed by an African-American to combat oppressive iconography/imagery proliferated by White supremacist scientists. Dubois even goes as far as to use some of the exact archival layouts used by eugenicist Francis Galton, only to invert their meaning with photographs of well-dressed and distinguished African-Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Look for an analysis of Dubois' project in Shawn Michelle Smith's (see link) book Photography on the Color Line.

Hope this helps!

m

A Mission Statement...

During my first year in the Documentary Media MFA program, I devoted much of my research to exploring the history of 'white science' and its relationship with early anthropological photographic exploits. White scientists Eadweard Muybridge and Francis Galton in particular, athleticized Black bodies, while concurrently demeaning Black minds. As a result, my research from this perspective analyzed the African-American athletic legacy/struggle through the 'gaze' of mainstream Western culture and media. This explains my use of cyanotype in a attempt to represent, and in turn, subvert many of these early scientistic race theories.

This year, being my thesis year, I intend to develop work that represents the African-American athletic heritage through the gaze of Black communities in the United States. It is my belief that no archive is complete until it is balanced against a counterpart. Therefore, I am hoping that my work this semester will elaborate on African-Americans' athletic achievements as they were viewed through the eyes of this dynamic community in the United States.

Defender Telegraph, page 1, No. 001