When the Forest Goes All Incognito

As I write this, the Jonathan Martin/Richie Incognito imbroglio is reaching a crescendo as the Miami Dolphins, the organization whose workplace is either, in the words of a third Dolphins offensive lineman, Mike Pouncey, home to a “band of brothers,” or, conversely, as toxic as downtown Chernobyl, or, possibly, both simultaneously, take center stage on the national broadcast of Monday Night Football. Among the Martin/Incognito story’s many facets, which have been discussed ad nauseum on every sports radio broadcast I have tuned into during my daily commute for the last week, the element I find most revealing is that when Martin’s agent complained to Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland about Incognito, Ireland’s proposed solution was for Martin to punch Incognito in the face.

Ireland’s response tells us exactly how the Dolphins “family,” building on Pouncey’s idea of a “band of brothers,” functions. Ireland, from his position in senior management, is the father who greets his son’s report that the neighborhood bully just bloodied his nose by telling his son to get his butt back outside and not to even think about coming home until he has settled his score with the bully. The countless fathers who have used this approach always believe that they are doing what’s best for their sons, who, for all of the obvious reasons, must learn how to handle themselves. Just so, Ireland thought he was doing Martin a favor when, via his exchange with the agent, he essentially sent Martin back out the front door with his bloody nose.

What is so odd and, ultimately, galling about this scenario is that an organization worth at least half a billion dollars by the most conservative assessments, an organization that pays its players tens of millions of dollars, and its coaches and management millions as well, would ascribe to an ethos that is the product of endemic poverty. The cycle of violence in which a father sends his son out to the streets to sink or swim, desperately hoping that his son will prove just violent enough to swim (too little and too much violence both placing one at risk of drowning), is rooted in streets from which there is literally no way out. Each son thrown to the wolves by his father (for those lucky enough to have a father to do the throwing) serving as one more example of systemic economic injustice playing out one violent episode at a time.

The Miami Dolphins are rolling in money while mimicking the desperate and violent practices of those who have little or no choice, and who have been deprived of that choice through the violence perpetrated by a system set up to benefit the Miami Dolphins of the world at everyone else’s expense. It is the ultimate form of hubris and one we don’t even talk about as we natter on about whether Incognito is a racist bully or if Martin is a mentally unstable wuss. It is exactly where we are at the tail end of 2013, when we have never been less capable of seeing the forest for the trees.