National Football League
280 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10017

Dear National Football League:

While baseball may be our "national pastime," the High Holy Day of American sports remains Super Bowl Sunday. While not a football fan, I am a Super Bowl consumer. I enjoy the game as an excuse to get together with friends, drink beer and hold society in contempt. On this most American of holidays, it would behoove us as a nation to utilize our propensity for spectacle and sensationalism to cast light on our many national heroes in the too often irrelevant halftime extravaganza.

I confess that I have a hero in mind: a native son of Terre Haute, Ind., an organizer, writer, pacifist and five-time presidential candidate. Frustrated with the myopia and ineffectuality of craft unions, he founded the American Railway Union in 1893 as a means for railroad workers to gain industrial strength. No stranger to prison, he was jailed for his part in the bitter Pullman strike of 1894, where he learned firsthand how the capitalist state will unleash military muscle to break working-class resistance. I speak of no less a man than Eugene Victor Debs.

Debs is worthy of a halftime show not simply because he twice polled nearly a million votes -- in the presidential elections of 1912 and 1920 -- but because of his ability to Americanize the class struggle. Debs was the only figure on the left capable of uniting the disparate factions vying for power in the working-class movements of the time. Debs enjoyed tremendous popularity with American workers of all ethnicities and regions. His skill as an orator remains unprecedented in the labor movement to this day.

A song-and-dance spectacular, or perhaps Robert Duvall reading some of Debs' famous speeches, would make for educational entertainment between halves. I hope you will give this idea every consideration. While only the working class holds the key to smashing oppression and building a true democratic republic, the National Football League has the power to inspire would-be revolutionaries searching for inspiration and direction between the halves.

Sincerely,
Kenneth H. Cleaver

The NFL responds:

Kenneth H. Cleaver
P.O. Box 810
Bedford, NY 10506

Dear Mr. Cleaver:

We appreciate your interest in our plans for the Super Bowl and, most particularly, the halftime show.

We have designed the halftime show over the years to provide entertainment for the fans in the stands and at home. We have avoided adopting any causes or tributes because it tends to become relatively controversial as individuals judge the NFL for imposing beliefs on the public. In the history of the game, the only time we adopted a specific mention was in 1982 during the strife in Poland. Our themes have been centered on worldwide themes involving children when we have adopted one focus.

As a viewer of the Super Bowl, we trust you have viewed the halftime shows and have seen how we have attempted to avoid antagonizing or focusing on any element of the fans of the NFL.

If we change our focus, we most certainly will remember your suggestion.

Sincerely,
James H. Steeg
Vice President, Special Events

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