According to William Rhoden ( NYT Feb. 21), it is folly to believe in "manufactured images" based on sports marketing. Who could disagree? But not every public image is inauthentic. We sometimes believe, as millions did with Tiger, in a public figure as being genuine in his or her respect for a profession, even for politics, or for a sport. In this sense I still believe, for instance, in Rafa Nadal, in Kim Clijsters, in Paul Farmer, in Meryl Streep. I believe in golfers like Graeme McDowell (NYT March 6) who call penalties on themselves when they could almost certainly get away with a technical infraction. I believe in Derek Jeter even though I'm not much of a baseball fan. Tiger himself may well have lived up to that standard on the golf course.
We can also believe in such figures as adhering to normal if not elevated standards of good faith in private behavior as well as in their professional sphere. We can even hope that their private standards are higher than that: Roberto Clemente, Arthur Ashe. In this sense too I believe in Nadal, Clijsters, Farmer, Streep. "Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,/Yet grace must still look so."
Rhoden seems to say that since everyone is fallible, it is naive or hypocritical or both to believe in anyone in this sense. I may be as unwilling as Rhoden to believe again in Tiger (or in John Edwards and many others) in this sense. But to make that deep recoil a universal principle is a form of refusing to care because one may be hurt. That way lies the desert. It's not the only available habitat for people in general, nor for sports fans.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
While I'm Falling
I have found Laura Moriarty's writing convincing and moving since I first encountered it in a personal essay she read aloud at Exeter in the fall of 2001, a piece that I continue to cherish and that I think of together with Scott Sanders' "The Inheritance of Tools" and Chang-Rae Lee's "Coming Home Again." Since then I've read her first novel, The Center of Everything, which I loved and will read again, and now While I'm Falling, whose characters I half expect to meet sometime.
While I'm Falling is in one way very narrow in scope: it is the story mainly of a college student, Veronica, whose parents have just divorced, and secondarily of the student's mother, Natalie. The setting, in Kansas, has a radius of perhaps fifteen miles. But in another way the story conveys intimations of universality. Grace Paley said she wanted her characters to have "the open destiny of life," and Moriarty's characters share this with them. Life in her stories is uncertain and fluid; but its vicissitudes allow for recoveries as well as disasters. The outcomes of every kind all seem equally probable. As I read I sense no agenda besides truth. I swear I would recognize Veronica and Natalie if I met them on the street, and I would be glad to see them.
While I'm Falling is in one way very narrow in scope: it is the story mainly of a college student, Veronica, whose parents have just divorced, and secondarily of the student's mother, Natalie. The setting, in Kansas, has a radius of perhaps fifteen miles. But in another way the story conveys intimations of universality. Grace Paley said she wanted her characters to have "the open destiny of life," and Moriarty's characters share this with them. Life in her stories is uncertain and fluid; but its vicissitudes allow for recoveries as well as disasters. The outcomes of every kind all seem equally probable. As I read I sense no agenda besides truth. I swear I would recognize Veronica and Natalie if I met them on the street, and I would be glad to see them.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
King Corn
Last night I got to see the whole of King Corn and to hear Ian Cheney respond to questions about it. Previously I had seen an abridged version and heard Curt Ellis do Q&A. Nothing but pleasure in both events.
It's wonderful as a piece of film-making and makes me want to see their other work. (Go to www.wickedelicate.com.)And it also pushes back against our contemporary political culture, so full of misrepresentations and acrimony. In King Corn there are two major interviews with people whose views are antithetical to Ian and Curt's--but the interviewees are treated respectfully, even empathically. Not only does this
aspect of the film make it deeper and more humane; it also makes it more persuasive. I'm tempted to show it to my students in relation to their choice of rhetorical strategies. Another achievement of King Corn is that even though it is topical and explores public issues that are hugely consequential, it is never shrill and always immensely entertaining. It's playful, for God's sake.
It's wonderful as a piece of film-making and makes me want to see their other work. (Go to www.wickedelicate.com.)And it also pushes back against our contemporary political culture, so full of misrepresentations and acrimony. In King Corn there are two major interviews with people whose views are antithetical to Ian and Curt's--but the interviewees are treated respectfully, even empathically. Not only does this
aspect of the film make it deeper and more humane; it also makes it more persuasive. I'm tempted to show it to my students in relation to their choice of rhetorical strategies. Another achievement of King Corn is that even though it is topical and explores public issues that are hugely consequential, it is never shrill and always immensely entertaining. It's playful, for God's sake.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
read this book
Timothy Tyson's Blood Done Sign My Name (2004) has been well recognized among American historians and was well reviewed, but I hadn't heard of it til my daughter Anya gave it to me for Christmas. I finished it tonight.
One of the extraordinary things about this book is the voice in which Tyson chose to write it, which makes me want to speak more personally than I normally would in even an informal review; but first--
his book is a personal history, a family history, a community history (of Oxford, NC, in 1970,disclosing the antecedents and consequences of a racial murder), a state history (esp. 1898-1980), and a reflection on national history as it has been shaped by slavery and white supremacy. It is powerful conceptually, thematically, linguistically, and philosophically; and it is unpretentious to boot. It's both original and brave--professionally speaking it would have been safer to write in a more orthodox mode. But its personal voice is both appealing and, I finally saw, indispensable. In that way it reminds me of Kenji Yoshino's Covering, another remarkable work that most people would have done a different way (and so would have been unable to do).
The book begins with a day in 1970 when Tyson, then ten, is told by a neighbor that his (the neighbor's) father and brothers have just killed a ... black man. (The other boy uses the inevitable, dehumanizing term in the context; Tyson uses real names throughout.) The book unravels the story factually and emblematically.
When I was a graduate student at Cornell in this period (1967-1970), no one was murdered on campus, but there were guns whose relevance was racial, as a famous Newsweek cover photo showed (in one light). It's been a long time, but Tyson's book has stirred the memories. I'll see if I can write about them (separately). Whether or not I can do that, I gratefully salute Timothy Tyson.
One of the extraordinary things about this book is the voice in which Tyson chose to write it, which makes me want to speak more personally than I normally would in even an informal review; but first--
his book is a personal history, a family history, a community history (of Oxford, NC, in 1970,disclosing the antecedents and consequences of a racial murder), a state history (esp. 1898-1980), and a reflection on national history as it has been shaped by slavery and white supremacy. It is powerful conceptually, thematically, linguistically, and philosophically; and it is unpretentious to boot. It's both original and brave--professionally speaking it would have been safer to write in a more orthodox mode. But its personal voice is both appealing and, I finally saw, indispensable. In that way it reminds me of Kenji Yoshino's Covering, another remarkable work that most people would have done a different way (and so would have been unable to do).
The book begins with a day in 1970 when Tyson, then ten, is told by a neighbor that his (the neighbor's) father and brothers have just killed a ... black man. (The other boy uses the inevitable, dehumanizing term in the context; Tyson uses real names throughout.) The book unravels the story factually and emblematically.
When I was a graduate student at Cornell in this period (1967-1970), no one was murdered on campus, but there were guns whose relevance was racial, as a famous Newsweek cover photo showed (in one light). It's been a long time, but Tyson's book has stirred the memories. I'll see if I can write about them (separately). Whether or not I can do that, I gratefully salute Timothy Tyson.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Female Sports Violence
Female Sports Violence: Choosing a Context
The furor over Elizabeth Lambert's rough play in her Mountain West Conference women's soccer semifinal has so far been mostly about gender roles. It offers a chance for a second conversation, one about the ethics of sports--individual sports and sports as a whole. Both conversations also have a bearing on many other professional workplaces. If you haven't seen what Lambert did and would like to have that as background, here is a three-minute clip: newsy.com
Different sports (and other professions) have different cultures. Some but not all of these differences are about violence. Others are about cheating.
In contact sports what levels of roughness are acceptable or even desirable are a matter of continuous debate and adjustment, as in the relatively new rules designed to protect football quarterbacks. When refs may penalize players (and thus teams) for "unnecessary roughness" or "flagrant fouls," they make judgment calls. Where these sports--basketball, soccer, others--include women, conceptions of gender may well be involved. (Conceptions of maleness may be involved even in the absence of women.) That conversation is worthwhile.
But there is a broader conversation that the country generally avoids, a conversation about the idea and not just the rules of sports. In football and baseball, players often seek to deceive referees and umpires about whether they have actually caught a pass just above the ground or a foul ball that the player has chased into the first rows of spectators. Modern television technology provides something of a reality check, but the culture of the sport usually endorses the attempted trickery. Suppose a professional player admitted--on the field, in the moment of decision-- to having only trapped a pass or caught the baseball on a bounce off a seat. Does anyone think he would be celebrated by his teammates for his sportsmanship?
At the other end of the ethical spectrum is golf, where players call penalties on themselves, sometimes in situations where they would be unlikely to be caught or would at least have a plausible defense. These penalties may cost them tens of thousands of dollars in prize money. Golf is usually an individual sport, so the players are not typically up against the potential mockery or anger of teammates. But given the generous way players usually talk about their opponents, and the way they habitually respect the game itself, it seems likely that their behavior would be the same--and would not be faulted--even in a team context. It is a sport whose culture does not change when one shifts from the amateur to the professional level. If anything, its ethics become more formal, more distinct, and more deeply consensual.
Tennis--admittedly, another non-contact sport--is an interesting case of a sport where standards of behavior are visibly up for grabs. After a period in which verbal abuse of umpires was routinely tolerated, there are now fines, though not always significant ones. The New York Times ran an op-ed this summer whose writer, an economist, urged players to exploit the new challenge rules in bad faith for competitive advantage. (He did not urge them to break the rules.) In a televised match a few weeks before, Nowak Djokovic essentially conceded a key point to Andy Roddick because Djokovic knew the call, which had gone against Roddick, had been in error. Roddick won the point, the game, and the match. Was Djokovic a fool, or was he someone who wants to play a game in which victory and money are not the only values? Can you imagine Rafa Nadal cheating, or abusing his opponent?
These two sets of issues--levels of roughness and respect for the meaning and function of rules--are not unrelated. Both involve continuous choices in situations where a player may not be able to simultaneously maximize both the chance of victory and his--or her--loyalty to the sport itself. The people--men and women--now engaged in assessing Elizabeth Lambert's rough play would serve the country well if they broadened the discussion. So would bankers and investment professionals.
The furor over Elizabeth Lambert's rough play in her Mountain West Conference women's soccer semifinal has so far been mostly about gender roles. It offers a chance for a second conversation, one about the ethics of sports--individual sports and sports as a whole. Both conversations also have a bearing on many other professional workplaces. If you haven't seen what Lambert did and would like to have that as background, here is a three-minute clip: newsy.com
Different sports (and other professions) have different cultures. Some but not all of these differences are about violence. Others are about cheating.
In contact sports what levels of roughness are acceptable or even desirable are a matter of continuous debate and adjustment, as in the relatively new rules designed to protect football quarterbacks. When refs may penalize players (and thus teams) for "unnecessary roughness" or "flagrant fouls," they make judgment calls. Where these sports--basketball, soccer, others--include women, conceptions of gender may well be involved. (Conceptions of maleness may be involved even in the absence of women.) That conversation is worthwhile.
But there is a broader conversation that the country generally avoids, a conversation about the idea and not just the rules of sports. In football and baseball, players often seek to deceive referees and umpires about whether they have actually caught a pass just above the ground or a foul ball that the player has chased into the first rows of spectators. Modern television technology provides something of a reality check, but the culture of the sport usually endorses the attempted trickery. Suppose a professional player admitted--on the field, in the moment of decision-- to having only trapped a pass or caught the baseball on a bounce off a seat. Does anyone think he would be celebrated by his teammates for his sportsmanship?
At the other end of the ethical spectrum is golf, where players call penalties on themselves, sometimes in situations where they would be unlikely to be caught or would at least have a plausible defense. These penalties may cost them tens of thousands of dollars in prize money. Golf is usually an individual sport, so the players are not typically up against the potential mockery or anger of teammates. But given the generous way players usually talk about their opponents, and the way they habitually respect the game itself, it seems likely that their behavior would be the same--and would not be faulted--even in a team context. It is a sport whose culture does not change when one shifts from the amateur to the professional level. If anything, its ethics become more formal, more distinct, and more deeply consensual.
Tennis--admittedly, another non-contact sport--is an interesting case of a sport where standards of behavior are visibly up for grabs. After a period in which verbal abuse of umpires was routinely tolerated, there are now fines, though not always significant ones. The New York Times ran an op-ed this summer whose writer, an economist, urged players to exploit the new challenge rules in bad faith for competitive advantage. (He did not urge them to break the rules.) In a televised match a few weeks before, Nowak Djokovic essentially conceded a key point to Andy Roddick because Djokovic knew the call, which had gone against Roddick, had been in error. Roddick won the point, the game, and the match. Was Djokovic a fool, or was he someone who wants to play a game in which victory and money are not the only values? Can you imagine Rafa Nadal cheating, or abusing his opponent?
These two sets of issues--levels of roughness and respect for the meaning and function of rules--are not unrelated. Both involve continuous choices in situations where a player may not be able to simultaneously maximize both the chance of victory and his--or her--loyalty to the sport itself. The people--men and women--now engaged in assessing Elizabeth Lambert's rough play would serve the country well if they broadened the discussion. So would bankers and investment professionals.
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