Our Long National (League) Nightmare is Over - Plus, More LeBron James Talk.

I was 25 the last time the National League won the All-Star Game; my Lady Type Friend was approaching her senior year of high school.  High school!  She was in third grade when I graduated (Louie CKs sitcom this week had an element with his sleeping with a woman who liked that he was so old, his skin so loose, his smell like something dying - he'd say "I was born in 1967!  I paid 3 dollars to go to the movies!"  And it would really get her going.  I hope that isn't the position in which I find myself).

I turn 40 in a couple of months.  But thanks to Brian McCann, Game 1 of the 2010 World Series will be played in San Francisco.

I can't hear you, I have my fingers in my ears.  I'm sure you're making some sort of relevant point, but the National League finally won the All-Star game and I'm still enjoying that.  Sure, somehow even with 34 man rosters the game turned on the pitching performances of a couple of middle relievers (yes, Kuo has had a good year, he's on my NL fantasy team - but no you should not take middle relievers, in almost every circumstance, to the All-Star Game - they aren't as good or as valuable as starters - how often do failed set up men become solid starters?  Take Roy Oswalt, leave Evan Meek at home) but the NL won and I'm a lifelong NL fan and this pleased me and I remain pleased.

Now - to the other thing - in Tendown 34 I talked about the reaction to LeBron James through a class based labor/management lens, discussing the sports media/fans as tools of the corporate state.  I also referenced a subordinate observation, the racial element of seeing white men set fire to a black man's jersey.  That part of it, less noteworthy to me at the time, drew a response - and since Jesse Jackson then stepped into the same spot this week, but with a significantly bigger hammer than I felt needed to be swung, I thought I'd amplify.  I did so in the comment box -- but it wouldn't let me write to the extent that I wanted to, so I put up some introductory thoughts in comments and now here we are.

Sports provides a forum for fans (disproportionately white males of a working/middle class) to vent emotions they are socially constrained from venting. There are multiple ways in which that manifests - but one of those ways, in my view - is the..cathartic release of white males in screaming at or engaging in mock violent displays about young black men. That doesn't mean white men don't get angry at white athletes, but the quickness to anger, the level of outrage that white fans demonstrate at the behavior of black athletes seems, across the board, disproportionate to the actions of those athletes (like Joe Buck screaming about Randy Moss's fake mooning at Lambeau Field). There are diaries of American servicemen from the Philippines a little over a hundred years ago, talking with a frankness that one does not get to hear anymore, about how it was fun to kill Filipinos, sort of like getting to kill deer but better.  That doesn't mean every serviceman took/takes a little pleasure from getting to inflict violence on someone who isn't quite seen as fully human as is he, but it also doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  I see a subtextual undercurrent to that initial round jersey burning (the specific form of behavior to which I referred) it gives a channeling to a racial anger which can't be given voice in other places. I have been in stadiums, heard sports call in shows - where there was a particular brand of venom that dripped from white voices aimed at black players, and I would argue this type of emotion has a racial element.  I've lived as a white sports fan a long time; I have heard taunts that were facially neutral (about performance, let's say) from white men aimed at black men - that struck me as bathed in something extra.  Doesn't mean it's everyone - but I don't think it's just three guys in Row 365 either. 

That quickness to outrage comes from multiple sources - the one Jackson used is loaded and just hard to have a reasonable conversation about race once you use it - but the idea is the one I wrote about, whites can feel betrayed when blacks who they feel they have chosen to elevate sbove the rest then leave them. Again, back to diaries, slaveholders of escaped slaves would write about their personal betrayal - and with real pain and passion would write, usually the woman of the house "why would Bob leave us, we treated him so well, it is a knife to my heart" when a slave would leave. There is, I'd suggest, an element of white sports fandom who views the black millionaires whose jerseys they wear as the fortunate beneficiaries of their generosity, "hey, I pay your salary, without me you'd be working at McDonalds". And then if there is a felt betrayal of that generosity - that card of white acceptance is pulled and pulled with feelings of hurt "with all we did for you, this is the thanks we get."

Again, it's not the dominant way I see the story. I'm more interested in the same sorts of impulses told through a prism of class, which is why I didn't do this type of amplification in the initial post (that and I'm about a half second from parking Tendown on the side of the road given the demands of my current courseload and the doubling/tripling of class size in the past couple of quarters) I assigned to the racial element the subordinate position I'd argue it deserved. I don't think every Cavalier fan upset that LeBron James is going to Miami is a racist, which is why I didn't say it. I don't think that having racial elements to a Cavs fan's reaction necessarily means that Cavs fan is racist. I'd be upset if I were a Cavalier fan - which is why I specifically referenced my own incidents of sports fan betrayal.

Finally - a thought experiment, as a commenter referenced that Larry Bird would have received a similar reaction had he left Boston.

If Larry Bird leaves the Celtics and a black owner of the Celtics writes a letter calling him a "coward", 'cause that's the word that was used, - and black Celtics fans start burning Larry Bird jerseys, because that's the action that took place - is there a racial element to that story? Do white sports fans see that and say "no racial element there at all - nope, nothing to see there"? Does anyone really believe we don't have a national conversation about race in the aftermath of watching young black men setting fire to an iconic white athlete's jersey, over and over again? 

Fear of a Black Planet

One of my favorite episodes of Frontline ever was a piece on the 10 year anniversary of the OJ Simpson verdict; it was smarter about the actual trial than the culture has allowed us to be and contextualized it in the context of race relations.  Near the end, there was a segment in a South Central Los Angeles barbershop (the general consensus of the patrons, that the LAPD "framed a guilty man" was earlier offered in the documentary by a criminal procedure class at Georgetown Law) which ended with two of the African-American men doing a run about Simpson finding out he wasn't really accepted in the white community just like Michael Jackson found out he wasn't really accepted in the white community because at the end of the day, "white people call rich black people niggers."

In one of my previous health care pieces I got the jump on Jimmy Carter in suggesting the hyperbolic reaction to Obama bears a relationship to his race.  That doesn't mean that if you oppose Obama you're a racist - it doesn't even mean that Joe Wilson, Congressman from South Carolina who had previously opposed the removal of the Confederate flag from the state's capitol, had Obama's race consciously in his mind when he shouted out "you lie" during his address to Congress.  We've seen the same combination of dumbness, demogoguery, and corporate dollars in action mobilize in opposition to health care reform before.

What Obama's race does do is makes it easier for his opponents to get to that fevered level, makes it easier to cross that bridge to move him from "politician whose policies I disagree with" to "terrorist, Nazi, death panels, Muslim, Kenya, Manchurian Candidate, socialist, Arab."

There is a level of opposition to this health care bill that genuinely believes Obama is looking to destroy the United States - that his secret goal is to kill Americans.  They have filled talk radio with it, sent countless forwarded emails across cyberspace with it, that language existed at McCain-Palin campaign rallies, at the tea parties, the town hall meetings, the 9-12 March on Washington.  And some of it is clearly stoked - stoked by Simple Jack saying Obama has a "deep seated hatred for white people" or Rush Limbaugh saying "in Obama's America" black kids cheer as white kids get beaten up on a school bus (and the solution to that should be "segregation"), or by the National Republican Senatorial Committee who issued a poll which included the following question:

Rationing and Restricting Health Care - Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:
             
A "quota" system which would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about another poll, a RNC poll that asked if people were concerned that political party affiliation might be a basis for determining who received treatment under a government run health care plan.  There is a feeder relationship in play here, Fox News and right wing talk have positioned themselves as the "real news" - where you won't get lied to by liberal facts like global warming or evolution.  Exponentially, the number of Americans who can live hermetically sealed in propaganda bubbles, uncluttered with thoughts other than those spewed at them by those married to the Christian and/or plutocratic right, has increased.  When you add the official imprint of the Republican Party, whether it's Sarah Palin connecting Obama to terrorists, calling his health care plan "evil", or Texas governor Perry using the word "secession", or that poll question - using the racially loaded word "quota" in the context of Obama's health care plan to imply that white people would lose access to doctors - it is just enough gas to set those predisposed to those sorts of thoughts aflame with anger.

You don't need to be racist to oppose Obama, but there haven't been guns at town hall meetings of the President before, there haven't been school district boycotts of Presidential speeches before, there haven't been Congressmen shouting out "you lie" at the President before, phrases like "terrorist fist jab" and "pals around with terrorists" weren't used to attack a President before. 

White Presidents, as Bill Clinton has pointed out, get attacked and attacked hard.  But less in a way which has as its premise the idea that they aren't really the President.  That they shouldn't be treated as the President.  There are lots of ways, to wrap this health care debate back to the first Obama speech, to think about what happened to Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, but there aren't white Harvard professors arrested under similar circumstances.  If we see a South Carolina congressman shout something at first African-American President that hasn't been shouted by a Congressman at a white President - or a Boston cop arrest a black Harvard professor for something a white Harvard professor has never been arrested for - it doesn't stretch the boundaries of fair play to fit that in a racial frame. 


Last week, a Republican congressman from Missouri used an anecdote about monkeys stealing golf balls to explain the condition in which conservatives find themselves in today's Washington.  Simple Jack and Rush Limbaugh have used the word "reparations" to explain Obama's motivating purpose behind social policy.  Limbaugh called Obama "an angry black guy". 

When some of his opponents see Obama, they don't see the President of the United States - they see "just another n***** in America."

Another One on Professor Gates

Over the weekend I wrote about Henry Louis Gates. I shouldn't be, given that I did just hear a US Senator do a Ricky Ricardo impression during the confirmation hearings of the first Hispanic ever nominated for the US Supreme Court, but I've been surprised by the degree of apologizing that seemingly moderate thinking people are doing for the behavior of the police. Hell, apologizing is too weak - I just heard Chicago attorney Lester Munson on Dan LeBatard's Miami radio show essentially say that Gates was uppity.

He had met Gates; Gates had that "Harvard arrogance" and he could see a scenario where that arrogance could have manifested into arrest being reasonable in this circumstances.

Honestly - and this tells you how far I am from the current "everyone's a little at fault" view that we've settled on as a society about this - if Gates had cut a full on Rocky III promo, said that he would find the cop's wife and show her what a real man was like, that still wouldn't give rise to an arrest in a free society (note, that's different than saying people aren't arrested in circumstances like Gates - although prominent white people aren't - and it's different than saying disorderly conduct doesn't provide legal cover for the actions of that cop and cops all over this country - I'm talking about a free society, not the United States of America in 2009 which jails its citizens at a rate higher than any industrialized nation in the history of mankind).

I'm not sure, absent an actual threat, if there's any pure speech that should give rise to being arrested in this factual circumstance. Students of mine want to go the other way - I keep hearing the same refrain "you shouldn't talk back to a cop - what do you expect the cop to do?"

Which is good practical advice - but what does that have to do with law?

I find myself in the curious position of agreeing with, of all people, Tucker Carlson (except for his version of the uppity black guy slur that starts this quote) from today's Washington Post:


So I wasn't surprised by what happened in Cambridge. Yes, Gates is a self-righteous whiner who probably cries racism every time he gets the wrong order at Starbucks. What happened to him likely had little to do with race, but it's still appalling. His crime? Failing to be polite to a policeman. Except that's not a crime, or shouldn't be, and the rest of us ought to do all we can to make sure it doesn't become one.

The police are not law. They serve the public. We deify power in this country - to "talk back" to authority - even if you're a Harvard professor (maybe especially if you are a Harvard professor) means you are stepping out of line. Stepping out of place. Carlson is right - you don't have to be nice to the police.

You don't have to be nice to anyone.

Maybe you should be. Maybe it's wise or decent or will keep your train running on time.

But the penalty for rudeness is not arrest. You should not be arrested for yelling "do you know who I am" to a cop. This is not a police state. This is the United States of America. We don't pull people out of their homes in handcuffs for saying unkind things to police.

Has everyone gone mad?

Next we'll have the government reading our emails and listening to our phone calls and holding suspects for years without charge and torturing prisoners and...

Huh.

Authoritarianism is our civic religion.

War - torture - the death penalty - domestic surveilance - abuse of police power -

How much of our civic discussion is really a discussion about power - about authority - about bowing down before the man? How much of the political stances taken by people can be cleaved into muscular terms?

I learned as a very young person that to be pro gay rights meant I'd be labeled as unmanly, as soft - saying "gays are people too" in 1986 would get you looked at as if you were weak, soft.

The same reaction, literally, exactly so - was how my anti-death penalty stance, was my anti police abuse stance - my anti-war stance - was framed.

Liberal positions have been put in this box as insufficiently tough - from torture to animal rights, from Iraq to Cambridge - you either line up with the powerful, either line up with principles of muscularity or you are labeled as feminine, as insufficiently hard minded, as fragile, as effete.

I don't know what to do with that; if our love of authoritarianism is a symbol of patriarchy and/or how much of that, how much of that is our attempt to grab some control in our "lives of quiet desparation" to quote Thoreau. I don't know how much of that patriarchy relates to the version of Christianity, the "my god is bigger than your god" version that holds so much sway in the US (as opposed to the sandal wearing, prince of peace version - I can't tell you which reading is superior, that's inside baseball stuff and I don't play on that field).

But I do know that throughout my life I have felt the same sort of "what are you, a fag" response whether I was opposing the death penalty or opposing beating dogs or in favor of the exclusionary rule or the equal rights amendment. There is an authoritarianism strain in American civic life on which I'm just never going to sign off.

I don't know what role race played in Professor Gates's getting taken off his front porch in handcuffs, but this need to worship at the altar of authority certainly plays a role in our reaction to it.

(Tuesday, Glenn Beck said that Obama's reaction to Gates demonstrates his "deep seated hatred of white people".  My reaction to Gates is stronger than is Obama's.  Does that mean I have a deep seated hatred of white people?  And why aren't we talking about how the Republicans - considering Sotamayor, considering the birther movement - are playing the race card?  When it's Johnny Cochran defending OJ Simpson, we derisively throw the phrase race card around.  When it's a black activist like Al Sharpton weighing in on an issue - we say he's injecting race into another issue again.  But Glenn Beck just said the President of the United States hates white people and....and what?)