URI prof links Brady's image, white nationalism

PROVIDENCE — A University of Rhode Island professor writes in a new book that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s portrayal in media and popular culture, including Brady’s own representations of himself, aligns with “white nationalist post-racialism.”

The analysis by Kyle W. Kusz, an associate professor in URI’s Department of English, encompasses a 22-page chapter in a book published by Palgrave Macmillan, “The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Sport.”

Kusz writes that his examination of “performances of white masculinity” by both Brady and President Donald Trump illuminate “how they represent the cultural (re-) emergence and valorization of a white masculinity that unapologetically desires a manly omnipotence ....”

Along the way, he likens the “visual aesthetic” of an Under Armour commercial starring Brady to “Triumph des Willens,” a Nazi propaganda film with scenes of vast troop formations.

The Under Armour commercial, he writes, uses a black and red color scheme, “militaristic” sounds, and an “army of Bradys ....”

The chapter has drawn attention on WEEI sports talk radio in Boston and on the internet, daring local sports fans to buy the handbook and digest passages such as: “Even further, the ‘boys’ who feature in Brady’s photos of his trips to the Kentucky Derby are a group overwhelmingly made up of white men.”

Andy Gresh, a former URI football player turned sports broadcaster for Rhode Island radio station WPRO, said in a phone interview that he found himself reading Kusz's essay while stopped at a red light.

Brady isn’t thinking about the race of whoever accompanies him to Kentucky, Gresh said. Kusz’s writings are disrespectful to sports fans and to Brady, he said.

“To the people who root for him,” said Gresh, “it doesn’t matter whether he’s white, he’s black, he’s green.”

Gresh, who also writes a weekly column about the Patriots for The Providence Journal, said he didn’t expect to delve deeper into the issue for the sake of his listeners.

“My audience will regard this as ridiculous,” he said.

He added: “This guy is working his hardest to try to find a way to connect Tom Brady with what he feels is the most hideous side of Donald Trump.”

Kusz said by phone that he has received more than 100 emails from angry people.

He asserted that he is interested in Brady’s usefulness for Trump and white nationalists, but he has not called Brady himself a white supremacist, as some have accused Kusz of doing.

Brady, says the chapter, has “an apparent preference for being in the company of elite white men.”

Citing Brady’s endorsement of a $211,000 Aston Martin sports car and Tag Heuer watches, Kusz also writes that New England’s quarterback “presumably authorizes his branded self to be located in class-exclusive spaces.”

In these places, he writes, Brady is "invited to be seen as a superior elite white man who has the world at his fingertips.”

Says Gresh: “Talk about passing judgment on someone when you don’t know them .... He is a high-level athlete who wants to do well in business.”

Kusz writes that Brady’s home and family life is “thoroughly” organized by the “logic of white male prerogative.”

“We see how Brady requires that his in-season preparation takes precedence over all other family activities and responsibilities,” says the article.

Representatives of the Patriots and Under Armour did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The Providence Journal asked a URI spokesman, David Lavallee, if the university embraces the professor’s observations. In response, Lavallee emailed a statement highlighting URI’s compliance with the First Amendment and “cornerstone values” that promote “independent choice, intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness and free expression."