Free Men Real Men

A mid-1990s novel of ideas.

The rich philanthropist Ted Arbit is a darling of the media for generously supporting some of its most cherished causes. But secretly, Ted despises the media for promoting values and priorities that he believes are responsible for the demise of his son and the loss of his wife.

One night, while seeking medical care, Ted meets Charles Repord, an ER doctor whose combination of compassion and impartiality contrast with the bureaucratic coldness of the hospital’s administrative staff. As a philanthropist, Ted is ever on the lookout for worthy causes, and Repord’s comportment suggests his hospital as one such cause.

But when Ted investigates Repord’s background, he finds something more intriguing. Ted learns that Repord was a top-notch athlete whose amateur career was cut short by political correctness. Concurrently, Ted has been legally helping Jack Smith, a former star football player who was court-martialed by the army on trumped-up charges. After Ted’s lawyers clear Smith’s military record, Ted helps to reintegrate Smith by buying him a semipro football franchise. As a silent partner, Ted makes only one demand—that Smith recruit Repord as a player for the team.

When the professional football players strike at the end of their regular season, Ted puts up the money to lure the defending world-champion Jacksonville Tigers into a game against the semipro Jack Smith Athletes. Though ostensibly a laughable mismatch, Ted adjusts the odds by requiring the game to be played under the 11 Man rules of the semipro league. Those rules limit substitution and require all players to master skills for offense, defense, and special teams. The Jacksonville Tigers—world champions though they be—are specialists who play only part of a game. The Jack Smith Athletes—semiprofessional though they be—are well rounded and superbly conditioned football players who excel at playing an entire 60-minute game.

The media only knows as true that which it propagandizes, and since it glamorizes the rich superstars and ignores the lowly paid semiprofessionals, the inevitable media narrative is that the Athletes don’t stand a chance of winning. Compounding its sports bias is an ideological bias for political correctness. As Ted well knows, Repord’s views are anathema to the media, and so, Ted schedules a pregame media conference where Repord inflames the media with politically incorrect views on masculinity and female sports. Then, the inflamed media—confident of Repord’s upcoming defeat—widely publicizes the game to draw the largest audience for his athletic humiliation.

With the media in vulture mode, the big corporations fall in line. They clamor to demonstrate their own political correctness by purchasing advertising for the game that they expect will humiliate the politically incorrect Repord.

But the real game is on the field where Repord ignores the propaganda of the media and the big corporations and challenges the inflated athletic reputation of the world champions.