State DJ for Sports

by S.M. Oliva
by S.M. Oliva

In the decade-plus that I've lived in Washington DC, I've been a regular listener of Steve Czaban, a sports talk radio host heard locally on WTEM-AM and nationally on Fox Sports Radio. Czaban and I have exchanged many friendly e-mails and phone calls over the years, and he's be kind enough to invite me on his national program to discuss legal and economic issues in sport from a libertarian perspective. So what I'm about to say is in no way motivated by any personal mistreatment of me by Czaban.

Czaban has long described himself as a "libertarian with a perfect Republican voting record." Readers of LewRockwell.com will immediately smell a rat. While Czaban is friendly towards libertarians on certain economic issues, he's a hard-core statist on the big-ticket items: He's unabashedly pro-war, pro-empire and pro-state.

One area where Czaban's authoritarianism comes up in daily sports talk is drugs. For the past several days, Czaban has been banging the drum over Michael Phelps, the U.S. swimmer ostracized by the media for smoking a plant. Czaban summed up his case against Phelps as follows:

I would hope in the year 2008, that we could all agree that smoking marijuana is a serious moral failing in our athletes, and that we won’t just sweep it under the rug. I would hope that all sports could draw the line at illegal drugs of all calibers, even the misdemeanor ones like pot.

A "serious moral failing in our athletes" is a heavy charge. It's also laughable coming from Czaban. As I said earlier, I've listened to Czaban on the radio for more then 10 years. I know his schtick pretty well, and it includes the following:

• Czaban is an enthusiastic advocate of sports gambling: He has broadcast shows from inside Las Vegas sports books; he does a weekly segment on a Milwaukee radio station where he portrays an NFL handicapper; and he openly encourages gambling on amateur athletics like the NCAA Tournament. Keep in mind, sports betting is illegal in most parts of the United States.
• Czaban is a paid endorser for alcohol. A beer company sponsors segments on his radio programs, and he's made personal testimonials for the products.
• Czaban regularly advocates the consumption of stimulants and junk food. While it's a "moral failing" to smoke a natural plant even one time, it's okay to consume large amounts of caffeine and processed cheese on a daily basis.
• Czaban promotes the sexual objectification of women, including many female athletes under the age of 18.

Now let's put this all into some context. Czaban's argument against Phelps is that since he's a famous athlete, he's a "role model" and his body and person belong to the "public" as represented by the media. Phelps essentially defiled public property by allowing himself to be photographed – in a private residence – smoking a plant that the government has arbitrarily declared illegal. Even when Phelps is not competing, it is an unequivocal "moral failing" for him to treat his body as personal property.

Keep in mind, Phelps was largely out of the public eye when a newspaper violated his privacy and published the plant-smoking picture. The Olympics had been over for months and the photo itself was several months old. This entire "scandal" was pure media fabrication. Media sociopaths like Czaban had to go out of their way to crucify Phelps; there wasn't even a crooked North Carolina district attorney to create a pretext of "news."

In contrast to Phelps, Czaban is on the radio every single day – three hours in DC and three more nationally – promoting the various practices I described above. Everything he advocates is far unhealthier then smoking a plant, but he's a moral person while Phelps is a "loser." Czaban insists that it is never socially or morally acceptable to smoke a plant if it has been banned by the government. Since Czaban only advocates legal vices (well, except for the non-Nevada gambling), that clearly makes him the moral superior of Phelps.

And that's really the crux of the argument. Phelps' "moral failing" was that he didn't calibrate every private and public move to glorify the state. If Phelps had come out and advocated the genocide of human beings in Iraq and Iran, Czaban would have applauded him – because Czaban considers genocide a moral birthright of the American people. If Phelps had advocated increased use of paramilitary raids to deprive cancer patients of plant-based pain treatments, Czaban would have applauded him – because Czaban considers the police state a necessity to prevent individuals from sliding into dependency on substances that he personally disapproves of (at least publicly). But if Phelps comes out and says, in effect, "my body is not the property of Steve Czaban or the state" – well, then, you're morally depraved and need to be punished.

Anti-athlete bigotry is one of the few acceptable prejudices within the mainstream media. Folks like Czaban are proud cheerleaders for raping the bodies of any man or woman who dares to compete and achieve.

From a libertarian perspective, we certainly should be concerned about the "role models" who influence our children. We need to keep our kids away from bad people like Steve Czaban – who preaches the unthinking acceptance of state authority – and encourage them to read the words of people like Karen De Coster:

No one ever stops to question how it is that marijuana became illegal while much more potent drugs – nicotine and alcohol (and rubber-stamped prescription drugs) – are entirely legal. Going further, no one questions why any of these things should be deemed illegal. That's because they don't want to know the truth behind America's drug war policy. They don't want to think through it and formulate some common-sense conclusions. They don't want to follow the money trail or understand the power and control aspect of government drug policy . . .

[ . . . ]

The categorization of pot smokers as trouble-making, ne'er-do-well, societal misfits is a most disturbing portrait painted by decades of government propaganda justifying its fraudulent and violent drug wars and the placing of peaceful people in cages, like animals, for the "crime" of using (or selling) a drug that has not been approved for general use by the chain of power cascading on down from the gang of monopolists in Washington D.C.

In fairness to Czaban, when you're an overweight 40-year-old suburbanite with an easy job, multiple hi-definition televisions, and all the beer, caffeine and processed cheese you can consume, there's not much incentive to think for yourself. Sure, it would be easy to open your mind and actually study the horrors brought about by decades of government drug policies. But it's even easier to agree with the state and denounce Michael Phelps.

February 9, 2009

S.M. Oliva [send him mail] is a writer in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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