Football was always a deal we made with ourselves. We adopted it for its brutality, which was embedded in a context that happened to be perfectly suited to television and to gambling, but which we could convince ourselves was only… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
There is a barbarism in the American soul, and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
This has been the new normal since September 11. Everyone knows, but nobody says, that if something happens again, the elite consensus in this… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
There is a lot in American politics (and in American life) that is angry, greedy, reckless and violent. — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
You know, what genuinely makes me uneasy with the way things are going are not - is not really that Trump is going to do everything he said he was going to do, it's that he has no idea of his job as president. Plus, the people who have been up close and realized that he has no idea how… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share
The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
In order to get big things done, sometimes, presidents have to be deft at moving the pea around under the shells. — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
There was no way to lock down, or tighten up, or Fail-Safe into Security Theater a race that covers 26.2 miles, a race that travels from town to town, a race that travels past people's houses. There was no way to garrison the Boston Marathon. Now there will be. — Charlie Pierce Copy Share
To recognize that head injuries were as essential a part of football as they are of boxing would be to erase the fine distinction… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
School districts around the country, and the taxpayers that support them, have a moral right to the information the NFL might have concerning the… — Charlie Pierce Copy Share Image
