Thursday, July 30, 2009

Things You Can't Get Out Of Your Head



On Wednesday, I heard Frank DeFord's weekly NPR commentary for "Morning Edition." I usually look forward to hearing Mr. DeFord's comments. He knows his subject (sports), has a sharp wit, and is not afraid to use it. I was disappointed in this week's broadcast, however. Unless he was being satirical in a manner too subtle for me to pick up when I was not 100% awake and alert, he seemed to lay the blame for the relative unpopularity of women's professional sports squarely at the feet of women everywhere.

I would love to hear his answers (yes or no), and then his reasons for each of them, to the following:

(1) Did he consider that women still make much less than men, thus severely reducing their ability to spend the money it takes to attend women's sporting events?

(2) Did he consider that women still bear--disproportionately--the burdens of keeping up the home and the daily care of the family, leaving them with much less free time and energy to attend women's sporting events?

(3) Did he stop to think that maybe not enough time has passed since the inception of Title IX to build a base of women who have played women's sports and who thus can be expected to be fans for life?

(4) With the same observation about Title IX, does he not recognize that women's sports have not received major TV coverage for a long enough time to reinforce and build that budding fan base?

(5) Did he not consider the effect that women not being allowed to play the single most popular sports, football and baseball, have on their willingness to become fans of those or of other sports?

(6) Did he not consider that for many, many, many people, women's sports are for wimps? One example: softball is what guys with beer bellies play on the weekends, and women may prefer to play or watch baseball to women's softball--even though women play the game at a level and with a speed that is actually scary, even to men. Furthermore, Mr. DeFord's "lament" at the quick demise of women's professional soccer is disingenuous. Nobody in America likes soccer enough to support a sustainable professional league, and it's only the bias favoring men's sports that's keeping men's major league soccer alive at this point.

(7) Did he consider the plight of women of my generation (those of us old enough to have finished most of our domestic responsibilities yet still young enough to work and thus have some discretionary income)? I was an only child and my dad wanted a boy. He got me, which was fine with him, but his idea of family time was to raise me to love the sports he loved, watched, and played. And women's sports in those days, except for Olympics-related ones [thus inaccessible to most of us because we didn't have the opportunity or talent to participate--Ed.], did not exist for the average sports fan, on TV or anywhere else. What is worse, whenever a woman of my generation exhibited any real knowledge of sports, the men all fled in horror. They claimed they wished the women in their lives would care about sports, but whenever one did, they feared being shown up, and their fragile egos made it that much harder for women to develop the habit of being sports fans in the first place, let alone fans of women's sports.

(8) Did he not consider that as women have come to participate in traditionally "men's" sports, that viewership of those sports has increased, and that it may be just a matter of TIME before the kind of female fan base needed grows to self-sustainability?

Maybe the key is to stop having separate leagues when at all possible. I'd like to see some studies done to determine whether, at the professional level, women really are too small, too fragile, and/or too slow to compete on the same turf as men. Bowling, golf, baseball, even tennis [how many male tennis players do you know who'd be willing to play either of the Williams' sisters?--Ed] . . . indeed, every sport that relies more on skill than on brute strength, can and maybe ought to be played co-ed at the professional level. But again, it would take time to develop the players, change the attitudes of the financial backers, and develop programs to air, thus increasing the viewership, thus increasing the fan base.

Dare I say that it's men and their fragile egos who once again are thwarting the sports dreams of women--and thus that Mr. DeFord's commentary thus is just full of it?

Monday, July 27, 2009

Where Apologies Are Owed, Apologies Will Be Given


I learned earlier today that the woman who made the initial 911 call about the possible break-in that turned into the controversial arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates [see previous blog post, "A Whole Lot Of People Are Missing The Point"--Ed.] said absolutely nothing about the race(s) of the two men she thought were breaking into what turned out to be Professor Gates's own home.

My apologies to her for the unwarranted assumption I made within the body of my previous post. Not only did she not say anything to the 911 dispatchers about the race(s) of the two men she saw, she didn't even see their faces, and so probably could not have known who apparently was forcing open the front door of Gates's house.

Again I apologize. I regret my error, and will try to learn from it. The moral of this story is that no one is 100% free of prejudice, and one of mine tends to be that rich people are prejudiced against minorities. I will watch my own presumptions more carefully in the future.

I also hope my error does not distract from the larger point of my previous post, however. Professor Gates had every right to be angry and upset about being confronted by police, and even though he did not keep his cool, the police still should have walked away the second Gates produced his identification. And to anyone who says that the black police officer on the scene totally defended the arresting officer's actions, I ask: what else is he going to say? He is a cop. He has to work with Sgt. Crowley and the other members of the Cambridge police force every day for the foreseeable future. If he challenged Sgt. Crowley's account, he'd be ostracized by his fellow officers. If he said nothing, he'd be seen by his fellows as not being supportive, and thus be ostracized just the same.

I will see no need to change my ultimate conclusion until and unless I am shown that exactly the same thing that happened to Professor Gates has happened to white men accused of breaking into their own homes and who also were less than pleased with the police coming to investigate.

And remember, my ultimate point is simply this: sometimes the most effective use of power is NOT to use it. Prof. Gates may well have been hypersensitive, but he was in his own home, and I cannot understand why Sgt. Crowley, trained as he was in not just avoiding racial profiling, but in teaching other police officers how to avoid it, did not simply walk away.

One suspects that in the end, this entire incident had less to do with race than it did with excessive testosterone, on both sides.

Friday, July 24, 2009

A Whole Lot Of People Are Missing The Point


Forgive me for throwing in my two-cents' worth, but I must post my thoughts about the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for "breaking into" his own house. Gates, who is black, was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by a white police sergeant, James Crowley, for disorderly conduct when Gates continued to upbraid Crowley after Crowley had seen proof that Gates was in his own house. Many are defending Crowley, who is by all accounts an excellent officer, and who indeed teaches younger police officers the wrongs of racial profiling. Many (myself included) are outraged that Crowley arrested and handcuffed Gates at all, despite the fact that the charges were later dropped. President Obama called the officer's actions "stupid" at the end of his press conference Wednesday night. I have to agree.

First, the real source of the problem has been totally ignored so far. That source? The woman who called in an apparent break-in and robbery in progress. Yes, she was correct to call for help instead of investigating herself, but here's the problem with what she did: if she was so aware of what was going on in her neighborhood that she saw Gates leaning his shoulder into his front door in an effort to get it to open, why didn't she recognize Gates? Her brain seems to have shut itself off the moment she noticed that the man at that door was black. That's the real root of the problem.

Yes, Gates could have restrained himself and his tongue--but why should he have had to? He was in his own home. He'd proven to the police it was his own home. The ER character Halle once pointed out to a white character that "for black folks, it's always about race." And it is. People who say Crowley did nothing wrong because he would have done the same thing had a white suspect so berated him are forgetting that no white suspect ever would have found himself in the position in which Gates found himself in the first place. Let alone the fact that Gates is a professor at Harvard. His status and his skin color simply don't match in the minds of way too many people in this country, and they mix and match their reactions to Gates' behavior by pointing to whichever factor suits their prejudices. He is a professor, in his own home? He should have understood the neighbor's concerns and been grateful that the police responded so quickly to protect his property values. But he was out of line in the way he spoke to the officer? He's a hypersensitive [read that "uppity"--Ed.] black man. In short, he's in a no-win situation, a situation no white person would ever have had to face.

The other major point that occurred to me, and which seems to have occurred to no one else besides Joseph McMillan, the head of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, is that the police contact with Gates should have ended the second Gates proved who he was and that he was in his own home. Crowley should have just walked away, even if Gates continued to excoriate him verbally. He should have closed his ears and kept on walking. The man was in his own home. He had every right to be upset. Let him blow off steam. Don't try to talk him down; don't even listen to him. The fact that the disorderly conduct charges were dropped proves Crowley could have just walked away. The charges were not dropped due to adverse publicity, for the charges were dropped before the events had become widely publicized.

No, Crowley technically may have done nothing wrong, but he of all people should have known that exercising his police power under the circumstances would come to no good end. He may claim it's because he doesn't look at people's races in making his decisions, and he may really believe it. He may even be right. But that's not really the point. The point is that some people on the receiving end of the exercise of police power have collectively been on the receiving end of centuries of abuse of that power. Crowley was in the position of power and authority in the situation in which he found himself vis-a-vis Gates. He could have chosen NOT to exercise it out of deference to the right of a man in his own home to be, well, pissed off. He should have made the choice not to exercise his power in that situation. The fact that he did not choose just to walk away demonstrates that he still has a big blind spot in his thinking about and understanding of the realities of race relations in this country. Judging from much of the subsequent commentary, Crowley is not alone. And that is very, very sad.

Friday, July 17, 2009

The World Is Diminished


I just heard the news that Walter Cronkite died earlier this evening, at the age of 92. Long regarded as "the most trusted man in America" (seriously--a Gallup poll in the 70s confirmed it), Mr. Cronkite was hands-down the greatest of a great generation of journalists.

He'd have preferred the term "working reporter." And that's what made his stint anchoring the CBS Evening News for nearly 20 years so extraordinary. No one knew his personal political proclivities; no one cared. They knew he'd give them the facts, as unadorned as possible by even a nuance of opinion, and that he'd never either inflate his own importance or talk down to his audience. He created and embodied, for all practical intents and purposes, the original concept of the "anchorman."

Yes, he let his feelings on occasion seep through. I saw his broadcast of the news of President Kennedy's assassination, and even at the age of six-and-a-half, I recognized the since-famous moment where he removed his glasses and wiped a tear from his eye as genuine grief . . . for the loss of Kennedy the man, for the loss of Kennedy the president, for the loss of hope in the country and even the whole world.

I also remember him removing his glasses in July of 1969, wiping the sweat and tension from his brow, as the whole world got the word that "The Eagle has landed" and that men were for the first time on the Moon.

It's more than a bit ironic that his death comes as the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission is upon us. Mr. Cronkite lived to see the 40th anniversary of the lift-off. Alas, the 40th anniversary of the actual landing is still a few days away. Funny how it seems so immediate in my memory and yet so distant that I have to squint my mental eyes to see it . . .

I know that Mr. Cronkite was not happy retiring from his anchor desk when he did. He was essentially forced out. Not that he let that stop him from continuing to read, learn, and study the events of the world, participating in special reports on momentous subjects as he saw fit. But in a way, I'm glad he was taken from the anchor desk when he was. He was a working reporter who wrote his own copy. His early training with UPI during World War II trained him to get all the details, get them right, and get them out fast. He would have died long ago if he had stayed and been forced to turn into the purveyor of shallow entertainment that too much of our 24/7 news cycle has forced news anchors to become.

He was born in Missouri, and he got his journalism education at Texas. He was an educated man, but educated in a very plain-spoken way. Not unlike certain other famous Midwesterners: Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant. [If you doubt me about Grant, please go read his "Memoirs," which Twain edited and made sure were published so that Grant, dying of throat cancer, could provide for his soon-to-be widow and family. The work is a monument to plain-speaking.--Ed]

Mr. Cronkite also had "the voice." His stentorian baritone, delivered with perfectly measured modulation, has been oft copied--but never equalled. I think one of the most subtle on-going tributes to Mr. Cronkite's influence and importance is Keith Olbermann's occasional adoption of the Cronkite delivery. He tends to do it while reporting a bit of fluff, but it is done with respect and to make the point (without ever being so crass as to say so) that anchoring a newscast "ain't what it used to be." I'll bet Olbermann is sick at heart that he was away from his "Countdown" desk this night.

Walter Cronkite made the world a better place. He embodied the call to our better selves, the call to strive for greatness, that was the hallmark of the best of John Kennedy's speeches--and which attitude is about impossible to find much of anywhere these days. The world is a darker, lesser place without him in it. We were lucky we had him while we did. Requiescat in pace.

Monday, July 06, 2009

Some Man Wrote That Editorial



I was reading the editorials in today's Omaha World-Herald, a paper whose editors frequently make Attila the Hun look like a reasonable person, when the following (reproduced in its entirety) caught my eye:

It was a strange scene when U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California cried foul during a recent congressional hearing. Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh referred to her as "ma'am" during his testimony, and she pointedly directed him to refer to her as "Senator."

In this age when a traditionalist mind-set sometimes collides awkwardly with a progressive one, the term "ma'am" has become an oddly divisive term in certain situations.

To many progressives such as Sen. Boxer, the term evidently is a symbol of retrograde thinking, a throwback to the day when married women went dutifully by their husband's name ("Mrs. John Smith").

To Gen. Walsh on the other hand, the term "ma'am" was merely one common in formal military usage.

In any case, the general's intention clearly was to show respect. By no means did he deserve such a hard-edged, public reprimand.

Although the taste of self-righteousness was no doubt satisfying to Sen. Boxer, it is excessive for a U.S. senator to make such a show of taking offense when obviously none was intended.

On such matters, the senator should beware of leaping to be so judgmental. It would help if she would raise her consciousness and devote more energy to appreciating cultural diversity.

There are so many errors of logic in this that it is difficult for me to know where to begin. One thing I will admit up front: I did not see the hearing in question, so I have no idea whether the World-Herald editor's description of the event is even accurate.

Is it possible that Sen. Boxer had, at some point prior [either before the proceedings began or earlier during them--Ed.] politely asked the general not to use "ma'am" and he ignored her request, which caused her to make the more pointed comments she made (presuming the editorial recounting is correct)?

Is it possible that the editor's description of the incident is not totally accurate? One person's upbraiding is another's mild request--especially when it's a woman speaking to a man.

What would the World-Herald editor have said if the tables were turned? I have had the personal experience of being excoriated by a judge for calling him "sir" instead of "Your Honor." But the judge was an older, white, male, in charge of the proceedings, and I was merely a participant, the child and spouse of career Air Force members, trying my darnedest to be polite, but getting the protocol wrong. No one thought the judge was out of line. Maybe Sen. Boxer wasn't, either.

How does the World-Herald editor know that "no disrespect was intended"? Did the editor call the general and ask? Words reduced to writing and descriptions of events (once reduced to paper) have an odd habit of sounding neutral. Why, this is the very stuff of diplomacy, to say the meanest thing in the nicest way, so that the other diplomats get the point but the general public does not. The editor was awfully quick to ascribe noble motives to the general and evil ones to Sen. Boxer. Maybe she didn't intend any disrespect, either, but she just wasn't as subtle about making her point as the general apparently was in making his.

Besides, even though "ma'am" is a term "common in formal military usage," the general was not in a military setting. In this country, the civilian authority controls the military. Hasn't the World-Herald editorial staff ever heard of "When in Rome, do as Romans do"? He was testifying before Congress. Yes, he is a military officer speaking in his official capacity. But he is speaking to his employers, the American people, via their elected civilian representatives. His military duty is to show them the respect THEY expect, not force them to accept his version of same.

Of course, the key to the entire snide little piece is the use of the word "evidently." Using it lets the editor ascribe all sorts of nasty motives to Sen. Boxer, yet deny nefarious purpose because the editor was only "speculating." He doesn't really know. Since many people do not read editorials with the skeptical care they should, they forget the "evidently" and go on about their lives believing that Sen. Boxer is a bad, bad, bad--liberal--bad, bad human being. Even if that's not "technically" what the editorial said.

The editor even got careless: "married women went dutifully by their husband's name"? Unless the World-Herald offices are a hotbed of fundamentalist Mormonism, it should have said "married women went dutifully by their husbands' names." Good grief! The World-Herald could use some better copy editors.

Not to mention that the closing line about "cultural diversity" is entirely irrelevant, and contradictory to the main point of the editor's comments. He was defending the use of traditional terminology by a traditional wielder of power against the exercise of a protest to same by a female, non-traditional wielder of power--who actually was the one in charge in that situation. The only cultural diversity the World-Herald seems to accept is the cultural diversity of white males.

The World-Herald editorial staff could do much worse than to take its own advice: "Although the taste of self-righteousness was no doubt satisfying . . ., it is excessive . . . to make such a show of taking offense when obviously none was intended. On such matters, [one] should beware of leaping to be so judgmental."

You may ask me why, when it exasperates me so much, I continue to read the World-Herald's editorial tripe. All I can say is, "keep your friends close--but keep your enemies closer."

Still, I may have to quit reading the paper in any event. I don't know how much more of its official hypocrisy and stupidity my blood pressure can stand.