A perfectly hateful column from Bob Kravitz on the eve of the Super Bowl

I'm 50 and felt the need to shower after reading it.

 

But I think there's a difference between your negative reaction to it and, say, a 21-year-old's. You probably read it and disagreed with it, perhaps even vehemently. But you know about labor strife. You're at least aware of it. A 21-year-old may have never met a union member.

 

Or sees union members as a bunch of lazy, whiny people trying to keep a gravy train of cash rolling in while they do nothing but sit around, drink coffee and complain when their salaries get cut to $45/hour and create rules that make it impossible to get fired.

That portrait of unions might be correct in some isolated areas, but that is largely a baseless, incorrect assumption that is read by many as fact.

 

I just thought Kravitz was digging, and went overly negative as part of the newspaper's excessively homer coverage.

Not sure there's a need - or logical reason - to assign political or generational reasons for liking or disliking this particular column.

The problem is that the idea of Unions, and what they accomplish for workers, doesn't matter anymore. Not every Union follows that ideal; some are victims of mediocre or selfish leadership and/or lazy rank-and-file. Others are blessed with strong leaders and workers who understand that the Union is there to lift the status of all workers, not just hear their own individual gripes.

I don't get how anyone can be completely pro- or anti-Union. I'm pro-smart Unions, and anti-dumb ones.

None of which diminishes Kravitz' self-righteous bile in this column. Definitely one in which he wrote like the guy pictured smirking in his mug.

 

Agreed, Piotr. Very smug and self-righteous writing, even though I still feel the topic is worth discussing. And you're right about ambivalence toward unions. My father was very much on the management side in his industry (petroleum refining) and on three different occasions worked to keep his plants going during strikes. So I got a lot of anti-union rhetoric as I was growing up. On the other hand, I worked with the rank and file in those plants during summers and one time when I took a year off from college, and I got to understand the pro-union side, plus I've been an hourly wage-earner my entire career in newspapers. As you said, there's no black or white where unions are concerned. A good union can be an invaluable part of a smooth-running industry, but a bad union can kill an industry quicker than any other factor (Exhibit A: the American auto industry).

 

Not to veer too far off path, but one problem is that the National Labor Relations Act was written for a completely different era, and has now become nothing but a political football interpreted at the whims of whatever party is in power at the moment.

 

I don't think a lot of players then had any real understanding of their own union.

 

Which is probably why so many former football players are whining about the lousy benefits they negotiated for themselves. They want today's players to get for them what they were too meek (disinterested?) to get for themselves.

 

I've got no problem with his "take," and I've got no problem with the timeliness of the column.

What I've got a problem with is the self-righteous indignation ... that he doesn't even get around to explaining. If he's going to interview FOUR separate, directly involved sources, none of whom have a problem with Payton's actions 23 years ago, and he's going to go against every quote that he includes in his story ... then he should do a better job of explaining why he disagrees with everyone he quoted.

Just in reading the piece, his indignation came out of nowhere. (I know it didn't come out of "nowhere," because I certainly agree with his principles on crossing picket lines, but as a writer -- he did a piss-poor job of writing about the issue. It's all bark, no bike.)

 

Near as I can tell, the point of this column was to make me, the reader, not admire Sean Payton for coaching an NFL team to the Super Bowl. And I'm supposed to feel this way because Payton was a replacement player 22 years ago? I'm supposed to feel this way even though Kravitz couldn't find anybody Payton supposedly screwed over by doing this?

Essentially, I'm supposed to dislike Sean Payton just because Bob Kravitz does? Sorry, I'm hanging on to my two shits.

 

Yeah, but I think this is a different criticism than some of the initial ones: Basically that Kravitz is a dick for raining on the Saints' parade. Someone even put "JOURNALISM!!!" in all caps with an exclamation point, Zag-style.

Certainly I can get on board the idea that he didn't execute the column satisfactorily.

 

Well, I think his failed execution of what could have been an acceptable premise kind of makes him look like a dick, yes. Whatever his point might have been about scabs, he ruined it by a) failing to find anyone who felt "wronged" by Payton; and b) writing with a level of indignation that was out of proportion to ... well, what anyone else was saying.

I mean, it felt like I had to wipe the spit off my face, just by reading it. Why is THIS GUY so angry at Payton when the people directly affected by a 1987 NFL replacement player aren't remotely as angry about it?

That makes no sense.