10 | T HURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Athletes’ retirements are fundamen-
tally unusual. The delusions of invinci-
bility that help players climb to spec-
tacular sporting heights are often the
same delusions that find them hanging
around for too long.
Few of them ever actually chooseto
walk away. More often, a livelihood is
cut short, unceremoniously, by injury
or by the posting of a preseason roster.
“I have never met an athlete who
willingly retired from sports,” the
agent Leigh Steinberg, a four-decade
veteran in the business, told me. In-
stead, he said, players get pushed out
because “they’re too old; no one wants
them; they’re too injured.”
This partly explains the collective
gasp you heard from the sports world
when the superstar quarterback An-
drew Luck announced last weekend
that he was retiring from the Indianap-
olis Colts. What really shocked those
booing fans and the dumbstruck me-
dia, though, was that Luck had violated
the cardinal norm of sports culture —
playing through the pain — after a
career of fidelity to it.
Scholars call it “hegemonic mascu-
linity,” a fancy phrase defining the
traditional male ideal as being stoic,
tough and aggressive. The body is an
instrument of violence in this rational-
ization — alienating the player from
his own feelings of tenderness, or at
least neutralizing them via cortisone
shots.The football helmet, in particular, is
not just a form of protection but a
means of dehumanization — a mask
that prevents players from feeling
“feminine” empathy and encourages
them to unleash violence on their
faceless opponents. And that violence
has, historically, been a source of per-
verse joy for fans and grunts alike.
“It’s intoxicating, it’s a drug, a drug
that gives you the most incredible
feeling there is,” the former San Fran-
cisco 49er linebacker Chris Borland
once claimed of the
“euphoric high” of
his playing collisions.
“Outside of sexual
intercourse, there’s
probably nothing like
it.” (Despite this
drug, however, he
left the league after
one season for fear
of getting brain
damage.)
Football announcers legitimize this
macho violence with their regular
homilies of adoration for those who can
suck it up and work through that pain.
That is the cruel paradox of the
sport: Participation almost guarantees
eventual injury, yet the culture simulta-
neously celebrates only those healthy
competitors who survive the winnow-
ing.
And those survivors dare not call it
“luck,” lest the meritocracy of an in-
tense training regimen lose its luster.
Tom Brady’s ability to defy the cruel
and inevitable gravity of aging gets
sold, literally, as “The TB12 Method.”
Brady had gracious words for Luck(“Everyone has the right to choose
what he wants to do”), but at age 42 he
must surely also see some kind of
moral — and manly — vindication in
soldiering on as others bow out.
N.F.L. veterans who cope with a
lifetime of pain, from arthritis and
failing knees to headaches and memo-
ry loss, have to minimize, trivialize or
write it off as an inevitable burden to
bear, a mentality fortifying masculine
norms.
They did what they “had” to do.
Indeed, apparently the biggest hurdle
for the lawyer representing concussed
ex-players against the N.F.L. (a case
that could cost the league upward of
$1.4 billion) was getting retirees to
overcome their attachment to these
mythologies of manliness.
Against this backdrop — with a
career’s worth of rib cartilage shorn, a
kidney lacerated, a concussion and a
lower-leg mystery malady — Luck’s
choice somehow shocked the nation.
No one can or should question his
toughness, but the callousness embed-
ded in sports culture demands that we
nonetheless do.
The former quarterback Steve
Beuerlein gave the loudest voice to the
macho take: “This I cannot defend or
justify,” he tweeted. “No scenario
where retirement is defensible.” Luck,
he declared, “owes it to his team” to
keep playing despite his injuries.
Luck is part of a generation of play-
ers unlearning those masculine
“truths” about hardened self-sacrifice
and the nobility of suffering. The me-
dia, incidentally, is as well.
ESPN has had to rethink its packag-ing of pain as pleasure: It pulled its
“Jacked Up” recurring segment that
spliced together neck-snapping,
spleen-splitting hits and redid the
“Monday Night Football” opening
credits montage in which the two
teams’ helmets collide in an explosion
of kinetic lightning. Such tropes now
look less thrilling and more ghastly.
“I think that death looms over every-
thing,” Greg Bishop, a senior writer for
Sports Illustrated, told me. “A big hit,
definitely — you look at maybe some-
thing you would have celebrated be-
fore, you don’t celebrate as much now.”
In 2017 — a year after Borland,
Calvin Johnson, Jerod Mayo and four
times as many N.F.L. twentysome-
things had begged out early as in 2011
— sports broadcasting saw its first
high-profile resignation when Ed Cun-
ningham of ESPN stepped away from
calling college football because of his
“growing discomfort” with brain
trauma.
Sensitivity is, therefore, perhaps
inching in. But our shock at a player’s
willingness to opt for self-preservation
over inevitable bodily immolation
shows how deeply rooted that toxic
masculinity remains.
With any luck, those norms might
eventually evolve. Without Andrew
Luck, the vaunted brutality of the
N.F.L. marches on toward another
season.Michael Serazio
MICHAEL SERAZIOis an associate profes-
sor of communication at Boston College
and the author, most recently, of “The
Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle
in American Culture.”Refusing to play through the pain
Fans in Indianapolis reacting on Aug. 24 after news broke that the Colts quarterback Andrew Luck was leaving the National Football League.BRIAN SPURLOCK/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERSAndrew
Luck’s
retirement
was shocking
because it
violated a
macho norm.NASHVILLE Parnassus Books is nor-
mally the happiest place in Nashville,
cheerful with bantering booksellers
and wagging shop dogs and every-
body-knows-your-name regulars and
out-of-towners wearing the stunned
look of a child in an endless candy
aisle. But when I stopped in last week,
the store was too quiet, too still.
“What’s going on?” I asked Andy
Brennan, the manager. He looked at
me for a long moment. “Amazon is
opening a store at the mall,” he finally
said.
He meant the Green Hills Mall,
which lies directly across the street
from Parnassus. He didn’t need to tell
me what it meant for Amazon to open
a store there. As a writer friend of
mine says, “That’s like Russia rolling
in to occupy Czechoslovakia.”
Amazon may feel like a godsend to
readers who live miles from the near-
est bookstore or library, but to inde-
pendent bookstores, Amazon is Russia,
the First Galactic Empire and Volde-
mort all rolled into one vast, unstop-
pable force for destruction. Because
the cost of business for small stores far
exceeds that for Amazon, the online
goliath has already cost far too many
cherished neighborhood bookstores
their lives.
Independent bookstores have re-
sponded by providing what Amazon’sbusiness model prevents it from offer-
ing: story time for children, signed
first editions, book clubs, personal
recommendations by professional
booksellers whose knowledge of books
is both broad and deep. An independ-
ent bookstore is a crucial community
center, a place to meet kindred souls
and hear favorite authors talk about
their new books.
In 2011, Nashville found itself with-
out a single bookstore of that descrip-
tion in all of Davidson County. The
story of how the best-selling novelist
Ann Patchett and the former Random
House sales rep Karen Hayes met and
created Parnassus Books — “We were
like newlyweds in an arranged mar-
riage,” according to Ms. Patchett — is
now the stuff of legend. Eight years
later, the store still hews to Ms.
Hayes’s first vision for it.
“Mt. Parnassus in Greek mythology
is the home of literature, learning, and
music,” she wrote in a mission state-
ment. “We will be Nashville’s Parnas-
sus by providing a refuge for Nashvil-
lians of all ages who share in the love
of the written word. We will partner
with and support local writers and
artists, businesses and institutions. We
will strive to bring readers the best
books in literature, nonfiction, chil-
dren’s books, local interest, and the
arts in both printed and digital for-
mats. We will provide venues for writ-
ers to connect with readers, and read-
ers to connect with books. By doing
this we hope to complement and add to
the rich cultural character of the
Athens of the South.”Amazon has demonstrated no gift
for creating anything like such a store,
and that’s in part because independent
bookstores don’t operate according to
the normal rules of capitalism. They
aren’t trying to beat each other. They
aren’t even trying to beat Amazon.
They’re creating communities — cozy
places to beat the heat or come in from
the cold.
An independent bookstore is a place
where someone comes around the
register as soon as you walk in the
door and says, “You have to read this;
it has your name all over it!”
Parnassus hosts
some 250 author
events a year, and I
have always felt
incredibly lucky that
I get to sit in that
store and listen to
some of the greatest
authors of my age
read from their new
books. This summer,
I felt luckier still
when Parnassus hosted the launch
event for my own first book. After Ms.
Patchett introduced me, I walked onto
that little stage, looked out at what
seemed to be every reader and writer
in this town, and cried.
Every store I’ve visited on book tour
has its own unique culture, but at
every one I have felt at home. All the
booksellers felt like old friends, and all
their customers, too. In those stores,
readers have waited patiently in line
for me to sign their books.
They have grasped my hands andtold me their own stories of love and
loss, their own stories of heart-lifting
encounters with nature, believing I
would understand. I always do.
Whether a bookstore is in Tennessee or
Pennsylvania, Georgia or New York,
Alabama or Illinois, the people I meet
there are family.
An independent bookstore’s bottom
line ensures the prosperity of its entire
community. Bookstores cherish their
staff and consistently turn customers
into friends. Perhaps most importantly,
they follow a business model that
supports and sustains authors, whose
creative work is the very foundation
upon which the publishing ecosystem
is built.
Anyone who has lived without an
independent bookstore knows how
crucial it is to support the ones that
survive — to buy books there, of
course, but also to evangelize for them,
to let others know what’s at stake.
Books may look the same wherever
you buy them, but that doesn’t mean
that the lowest price is the best value.
Neighborhood bookshops will al-
ways be focused on people, and their
true currency will always be human
relationships. They can only trust that
readers and writers will continue to
value and support them, too, no matter
what happens in the giant mall across
the street.Margaret Renkl
Contributing WriterMARGARET RENKLcovers flora, fauna,
politics and culture in the American
South. She is the author of the book
“Late Migrations: A Natural History of
Love and Loss.”Bookstores care about us. Does Amazon?
My city is
about to find
out that the
lowest price
isn’t always
the best
value.opinion
It has been an eventful few weeks in President Trump’s
ever-escalating crusade to restrict immigration.
On Aug. 12, his administration announced a rule
change making it more difficult for poor immigrants to
obtain green cards by giving officials more leeway in
assessing who is likely to become a “public charge,”
meaning someone who relies on public services. On
Aug. 21, it introduced a new rule jettisoning the existing
20-day limit on holding migrant children in detention.
The next day, the president reasserted his interest in
abolishing birthright citizenship, the constitutional
guarantee that anyone born in the United States is
automatically a citizen.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s summer
maneuvers can survive the court challenges that so
frequently attend his immigration agenda. On Monday,
a group of 19 states and the District of Columbia filed
suit against his family-detention rule. His “public
charge” rule also drew a flurry of filings, including one
by a coalition of 13 Democratic state attorneys general,
led by Washington state, and one by a separate multi-
state bloc led by California.
Whatever its long-term implications, the president’s
obsession with what he has termed an immigrant “inva-
sion” is already undermining the functioning of his
administration and the safety of the nation.
The Boston Globe reported last week that a mass
diversion of immigration officers from New England to
the Southwest border will bring to a stop the processing
of nearly all 40,000 asylum requests pending in New
England.
Similarly, back in March, senior staff members at
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
were told that, by year’s end, the agency would shut
down its international division, which assists overseas
applicants applying to immigrate to the United States,
to redirect resources to the border crisis.
As if the legal immigration system needed additional
stressors.
As the Department of Homeland Security is com-
pelled to expend ever more resources on the border
mess, other basic elements of protecting the country
risk getting lost, such as dealing with national emergen-
cies or combating the rise of white nationalist terror.
Despite claims by some that white nationalism isn’t a
serious problem in the United States, the acting Secre-
tary of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, affirmed
that there has been a rise in the number of domestic
terrorist acts fueled by this toxic ideology.
This will not surprise anyone familiar with the recent
congressional testimony of the F.B.I. director, Christo-
pher Wray. In an appearance last month before the
Senate Judiciary Committee, he reported that, since the
start of the fiscal year in October, the bureau had made
around 100 arrests related to domestic terrorism, with a
majority of the cases “motivated by some version of
what you might call white-supremacist violence.” He
assured lawmakers that the bureau was “aggressively”
investigating such activities.
Likewise, Mr. McAleenan said that the issue has been
one of his “top priorities” since taking office in April
and that he has asked an advisory council “to help us
study domestic terrorism, especially white-supremacist
extremism and racially motivated violence.”
The White House appears ambivalent about the
threat. Earlier this month, CNN reported that, for more
than a year, the White House rebuffed efforts by Home-
land Security to make domestic terrorism a strategic
priority. One former senior Trump official told the net-
work that the president didn’t like the topic “because
the preponderance of it involves white supremacy and
that’s not something this administration is comfortable
speaking out against.”
More broadly, the president’s immigration approach
continues to fuel instability at Homeland Security,
where several officials — including former Secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen — have been pushed out in recent
months for being insufficiently hard-line. Last week,
Axios broke the news that a top aide to Mr. McAleenan,
Andrew Meehan, was leaving amid tensions between
the White House and department leadership. Mr.
McAleenen himself is regarded with skepticism by
some of Mr. Trump’s more hawkish allies, who have
pressed for his removal. In June, the president voiced
hesitation about permanently nominating Mr.
McAleenan, saying he still needed “to get used to him.”
The appointment in June of Thomas Homan, a Trump
loyalist and an immigration hard-liner, to coordinate
policy as the White House “border czar” was seen by
some as a sign that Mr. Trump lacks confidence in
Homeland Security officials.
Every president brings into office a particular set of
principles and priorities. But when those biases start
undercutting the government’s ability to pursue smart
policies — or even carry out basic duties, a responsible
leader must think less about his personal prerogatives
and more about the nation’s overall security.The focus
on deterring
and detaining
immigrants is
undermining
the safety of
the United
States.
TRUMP IS MAKING A BAD SYSTEM WORSE
A.G. SULZBERGER,Publisher
DEAN BAQUET,Executive Editor
JOSEPH KAHN,Managing Editor
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate Editor
JAMES BENNET,Editorial Page Editor
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KATHLEEN KINGSBURY, Deputy Editorial Page Editor
MARK THOMPSON,Chief Executive Officer
STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON,President, International
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA,Senior V.P., Global Advertising
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing
HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P.,International Circulation
HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific
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undercutting the government’s ability to pursue smartt.me/whatsnws
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policies — or even carry out basic duties, a responsiblet.me/whatsnws
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