An interesting recent article on the Smith and Carlos 1968 medal stand protest focusing on a total crap article written by Brent Musberger (he was an obscure columnist in Chicago at the time).
Smith and Carlos looked like a couple of black-skinned storm troopers, holding aloft their black-globed hands during the playing of the National Anthem.
Also you can tell the story of the 1960s just fine without two people I never heard of.
Um. It was kind of a big deal.
You cannot tell the story of the 60s with talking about seth e.
Yeah, I sounded like an ass in that sentence.
All I mean is that I don't know those names - at least out of context - and so it's funny to read a sentence that says "You cannot tell this gigantic, complicated story without the self-evidently famous names you've never heard of."
The sentence drove AWB to start a comment with "Um."
You might not recognize their names, but I'll bet you'd recognize the iconic picture.
(Looking it up.) Vaguely? I kind of knew there was a sports event where the Black Power salute was made, and it was controversial, but it's more honest to say this was a real gap in what I knew.
You might not recognize their names, but I'll bet you'd recognize the iconic picture.
Indeed, this is true of many events associated with the Civil Rights movement.
But now that I've looked it up, now racism is over.
....though the two athletes in question might bristle, I suppose, at being characterized as part of the Civil Rights movement.
Has sports shown itself to be unusually progressive?
No, because, especially in some sports, minorities who excel are publicly discussed either as "beasts" or as perpetual children. However, the history of sports can be useful for teaching something about the history of integration because (a) kids and non-political adults might care about sports, and (b) the segregation is so obviously anti-meritocratic. When you try to talk about the history of racism as a history of, say, black families from the city not being allowed in white suburban pools, racists easily conjure up a picture of rowdy, rude people bothering the nice polite whites while they're relaxing. We don't see the whole thing happening in front of us, so the racist can make of it what he wants. With sports, though, almost no one these days is going to honestly say that someone who can hit farther and run faster and all that can't play because of skin color.
The real problem is that, since minorities and women have become more prominent in sports, the old "gentleman sportsman" ideal has been undermined by journalists--just like minorities and women in academia have not been invited to the academy to become "gentleman scholars," but instead the profession is increasingly seen as overpaid nannies who should learn how to deliver curriculum by email. I think we've forgotten why sports integration was seen as such a big deal because it doesn't mean what it used to to be a sportsman.
now racism is over
I hear there's still a major problem with racism against whites in Obama's America.
Until the recent internet discussions, I didn't really know the Smith and Carlos story. I would have recognized the raised fist gesture and been able to place the photo in a general time frame, but couldn't have identified the men in it or that it was the Olympics.
Wow, next Heebie is going to tell us she doesn't know about Sweet River Baines.
Heads down, Clenched fists, neutral territory, 1968. Way cool, 60s in microcosm
Brent Muss was an asshole, but we were all assholes in 1968. Some obscure Chinese astrological sign, year of the butthurt. I remember us honkies gathering in our front lawns and listening to urban riots in the next burg like it was a sporting event. Even the racists brought marshmallows. We were all really pissed.
I was there, well, I was watching and stuff. Smith and Carlos weren't all that right, it depends on whether you thought/think America was the scumbucket of the world and should be shamed at any opportunity. I have enough magnanimity to accept that that might be a matter of opinion, and although while the lil children sing "It's a Small World After All" or "What the world needs now is Love sweet Love" you choose to yell "Death to Racist Imperlialists!" is a matter of taste.
Stone did it fucking perfect in Dog Soldiers with the metaphor of the filmed boxing match. Fucking home-run.
Uhh, what was the question, American fascists?
(Most of this, as with the Caro bio controversies, has to do with kids wallowing in retrospective unjustified smugness.)
16: Who is a man who has never been in my kitchen?
Now I have to go look up PeanutFreeMom!
but we were all assholes in 1968.
Not me. I was a fetus for almost all of it.
Some obscure Chinese astrological sign
Year of the Monkey! Totally racist.
If not for Smith and Carlos it would have been a way, way bigger deal when Mary Lou Retton turned her back to the flag and gave a black power salute on the podium.
12 said it well enough. As far as telling the complete (whatever that means) story of the civil rights movement, of course they can't, but they do offer an interesting frame to get started.
Sports as metaphor for life-in-general? I'm okay with that so long as we don't let it go on for more than ten minutes or so.
Sports, like life, should only go on for ten minutes or so.
21: I don't have any sense of larger sport history, but I think it would be a huge deal if Smith and Carlos did such a thing at the Olympics this year rather than when they did in 1968. At live sporting events, I'm always uncomfortable with the national anthem and I know that players who feel the same way (often because they're Muslim though occasionally Mennonite) have gotten major complaints about it. There are progressive things that happen within sports, but the tendency I think is to keep everything controlled in as conservative a way as possible.
We should all be more like fruit flies.
If not for Smith and Carlos, Thorn would be delightfully earnest.
I'm charmed by the idea of taking "Mary Lou Retton does a black power salute" seriously as a counterfactual.
but we were all assholes in 1968
Seriously. I would shit myself and make other people clean it up. I would cry and wail if I didn't get exactly what I wanted, and on top of that, I wouldn't even say what I wanted. My mother had to guess.
27: I wasn't actually taking it seriously, because it cracked me up! I don't know, I think racist pigeonholing in sports commoditizes people and there's a lot of stuff going on that I don't know how to talk about, in part because I don't know and don't care about a lot of the pertinent background. And women should totally be coaching men's teams, because they are irrefutably more athletic than all the paunchy old guys who get to do it and that makes me mad every time.
These people seem pleasant enough.
Obama probably wasn't yet living the pot-smoking popular teen Hawaiian life, in 1968.
Speaking of race and sports, NBA commentary has long had a stupid convention where you compare white players to white players and black players to black players. There's some great rant of Larry Bird's about how disrespectful it is to his game that people keep comparing him to white americans who are all way worse basketball players then him. Anyway, there seems to have been a breakthrough on this front recently, as everyone compares Harden (black, from LA) to Ginobili (Italian, from Argentina).
It's remarkable that sexism in reference to coaches is so strong, that not only don't women get jobs coaching, Laimbeer (former NBA player, 3 time WNBA winning coach) can't seem to get an NBA head coaching job because coaching women doesn't count.
Smith and Carlos got the attention of the whole damn world, not just the United States. That's why it was and is important.
Dave Zirin's credibility plummeted after his rather overly credulous articles about the plight of poor old Maurice Clarett, who just happened to have been out looking for witnesses' homes in an SUV full of guns one night before his trial began.
Sports themselves aren't progressive, but they provide wonderful and often well-publicized moments that are often very useful to progressives. But how many sports events and victories can be used to illustrate conservative beliefs? Do Tebow's victories prove that being a good Christian leads to success? How much racist nonsense gets tossed around every Olympics?
more athletic than all the paunchy old guys
Coaching team sports doesn't require athleticism; it requires deep knowledge of the sport. Which is why players go into coaching when their playing careers are over.
Which is why players go into coaching when their playing careers are over.
And do so well, as a rule. [Snort. Chuckle.]
How many coaches didn't play the game?
12 gets it right, but IMO the importance of Jackie Robinson specifically is pretty precisely rated as "important." Il mean it was the late 1940s and all of a sudden you had a black superstar in the most iconic American sport (and one who really did fit the gentleman athlete stereotype). This was about 20, arguably 30, years before you started seeing similar black characters in film or TV.
37: I know, I know, but this far into the Title IX era and whatnot, we can get women on ESPN not even just doing the feel-good courtside interviews ("Oh, seriously, coach? You want your team to play hard and score points in the second half? What insight!"!) but providing actual commentary, and yet men are still coaching way too many of the women's teams and no movement in the other direction. I know this is a stupid pet peeve, but it is one.
I've been thinking about NickS's comment the other day about how boxing is for desperate people because I was incredibly moved by some of the stories of the young women who will be on the US boxing team at the Olympics, and yet I really can't watch boxing without immediately feeling sick.
24
I had forgotten about the national anthem thing. Took the family to roller derby the other night, as one does, and it even showed up there. Which I of course thought was really strange. These are completely amateur leagues, basically intramural sports for grownups, and (begin cultural bias) heavily tattooed ones at that.
I suppose it confers some sort of legitimacy or something? It was still weird.
Even Olympic boxing makes you feel sick? It's way less bothersome than other boxing, as matches are short (so it's not a question of beating the crap out of someone until they can't take it any more) and people wear helmets.
But how many sports events...can be used to illustrate conservative beliefs?
Munich '72 was the go-to example for Arab blood-thirstiness for a couple of decades before 9/11.
More to the point, though, the equation of hard work with individual success is pretty pronounced in sports commentary, where even success in team sports is frequently attributed to individual "leadership". Not coincidentally, there trope about natural talent versus hard work seems to arise mostly when comparing a successful black athlete with a successful white one.
39: Sherm Chavoor, arguably the greatest American swim coach (developed Spitz, revolutionized workout distances) could not swim. But clearly exceptional in that.
43: I was just about to say that Olympic/amateur boxing is an entirely different sport than professional boxing.
43: I haven't tried Olympic boxing since I was 4, I guess, and saw it on tv and screamed and hid under a chair. I probably will try to watch the women's, if Mara isn't around.
39: There are zero male coaches of women's basketball teams who have ever played women's basketball, right? Let's avoid the whole pro thing and just say that at the college level, why should a woman who played at the highest level not be a better choice for Podunk U's men's team coach than a mid-level male player just because she didn't play men's basketball? I realize the sports have slightly different approaches and women's basketball has tended to be slower and more team-oriented rather than star-driven, but I honestly think this is a ridiculous sexist historical artifact. I know I've read that as women's sports get more prestige, they also tend to get more male coaches. I don't think that's purely about quality rather than sexism.
45: I doubt Béla Károlyi ever did much on the uneven parallel bars, either.
Sherm Chavoor sounds like two different slang names for drugs. Isn't "Sherm" weed mixed with PCP?
I grew up without a tv and I'm unusually sensitive to watching violence, though having the tv on all the time these last years with Lee should be doing some work to desensitize me.
Smith and Carlos got the attention of the whole damn world, not just the United States. That's why it was and is important.
Jesus, the world was not suffering an attention deficit in 1968.
Yeah, great, let's bring political controversy to the Olympic Sites! Munich 1972! Get some attention!
Now y'all know me, while you open the box to give the social gyroscope just a little tickle, I'm pulling back for a full-on roundhouse kick.
And unlike those confidant liberal and moderate masters of extremely fine calibration, when the system goes all death-spiral, I am not counting on years and years of windbaggery providing the lung capacity to fellate the autopilot back to level flight.
Which is what the college-educated Urban professionals did in 1968. Fellated Nixon.
40: Oh totally. This is part of my argument, I think, in that it's important to look at integration in the 40's-60's as crucial to the popular images of minority athletes as elegant sportsmen in a way that is hard for us to imagine now that we don't tend to think about athletes that way.
If anyone ever happens to be in Kansas City for any reason, I highly recommend the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. It was one of those "Holy shit, why didn't I know any of this?" experiences.
In a quite different arena, the college where I've been teaching this year, athletics still have this flavor of "gentleman-scholar-sportsman." At other schools, my brightest students half-apologize when they admit they're in a sport, as if they're afraid I'll suddenly think they're meathead idiots. Here, although there are some profs who think of athletes that way, the students talk about participating in the great old traditions by doing sports. It's obviously totally privileged boarding-school-type thinking, but I guess I find it charming that even my smartest students do really serious competitive sports on the side. They don't see a contradiction there.
Now y'all know me, while you open the box to give the social gyroscope just a little tickle, I'm pulling back for a full-on roundhouse kick.
Shorter bob: "One of these days... POW!! Right in the kisser!!"
Zirin's credibility aside, I would take issue with any proposition about the progressive effects, values or significance of sports -- professional sports especially, but also large-scale college sports* and, in its way, competitive children's sports: cooperation and teamwork blah blah etc. blah are less miraculously virtuous than ESPN seems to want me to believe that many preening, ostentatiously-dressed jackasses men believe, and the lessons -- "loyalty" and "respect" are tributes to be exacted and enforced with violence; "your" notional professional team's activities are important; victory is success and success is zero-sum; Bill Simmons isn't working out a complement of only-child-of-a-'70s/80s-broken-home issues in an ongoing series of barely camouflaged homoerotic reveries; "strength" and "toughness" are real; Jesus helps people win; being part of a crowd is a healthy part of life -- are questionable if not entirely spurious.
* Cough Penn State cough University of Montana sexual assault reporting cough everything else cough.
The last time I saw any sports on TV was at a family gathering on Molly's side. A woman with a husky voice was doing the play by play. I was quietly pleased that ESPN had chosen a woman for this job--and not a chirpy sexy woman either.
Then everyone in the room started making fun of the home team, saying that if they didn't suck so much, ESPN would have sent a "real" announcer to cover the game.
Chuck Norris bob, a roundhouse probably isn't the best way to kick somebody.
34 gets it right
17: Smith and Carlos weren't all that right, it depends on whether you thought/think America was the scumbucket of the world and should be shamed at any opportunity.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, you ignorant slut, but your framing is BS and consistent with that of asswipes from Brent Musberger, Avery Brundage on down. I watched it age 14 and thought it one of the more magnificent Olympic moments in US history--a very moving and respectful display received in the most shameful way by the sports and political establishment (and the majority of US citizens for sure). They were thrown out of the Olympics village for God's sake.
There was a minor and even more overtly racist response in 1972 when sprinters Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett were thrown out of the games (and banned for life) for being "disrespectful" and slouching while on the medal stand for going 1,2 in the track 400 meters. (And this a day or two after a US girls swimming relay team was fawned over for giggling their way through the national anthem.)
but IMO the importance of Jackie Robinson specifically is pretty precisely rated as "important." Il mean it was the late 1940s and all of a sudden you had a black superstar in the most iconic American sport (and one who really did fit the gentleman athlete stereotype).
Arthur Ashe is a good example as well (though he was later).
I don't think anybody is claiming that sports are uniquely progressive, just that they offer enough opportunities for progressive politics that it's a mistake to dismiss them.
It also occurs to me that one reason why sports stars can be such powerful symbols is that they can be in an unusual position of both representing minority groups, and being excluded from the mainstream, while still very much having something import to lose that's obvious to any mainstream viewer.
Thinking about Ali, even before he was banned from boxing for opposing the draft, when you watch the press conference in which he says that he is a follower of the honorable Elijah Muhammad and no longer wants to be called Cassius Clay -- it's a big deal.
He's both taking an important stand, and he's risking a lot. Athletes have short and unpredictable careers and he was at the top of the game and nobody could know what it would cost him to do that.
The link in 30 is amazing. I thought I'd been to parties.
55
Agree, but not enough that I will bar my kiddo from playing. I have a feeling that the re-education sessions will be massive, however. So there's that to look forward to.
I also wonder if everything was more politicized in the 60s and 70s. I watched Slap Shot for the first time recently, and the biggest thing that struck me was how strongly issues of class were foregrounded, without it feeling like the film was trying to make a big deal out of them.
The minor league hockey players were clearly working class and drove crappy cars and lived in crappy apartments and nobody made an issue out of it, it was just part of the movie -- unlike the image, which I associate with Friends, but feels like the default for many movies/TV shows, of attractive people living in expensive cities with no visible means of support in palatial accommodations.
I do think that Slap Shot has more political consciousness than many sport movies, but I also think it was the era. Everything was a little more politically conscious.
I am not convinced that Friends is a good example of a sports movie.
If we consider a roughly contemporaneous (to Friends) sports movie about the minor leagues perhaps we will find that issues of class, income, and the urban/rural divide are more prominent.
I thought I'd been to parties.
Heh. That link came over our (coed) fraternity mailing list with the message "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
We had relatively strict rules about taking pictures at those kinds of parties, but I have nonetheless had to do some untagging on facebook.
Slap Shot is one of the best American movies about class and deindustrialization, period. But it's also true that the 1970s were just different. I mean, Saturday Night Fever was an absolute blockbuster and teen star vehicle, and holy crap is that a dark and depressing movie (which I love).
I've been semi-dreading the Slap Shot remake.
I thought I'd been to parties.
I love the photos of the women gleefully putting curlers in the men's hair.
I am not convinced that Friends is a good example of a sports movie.
Yes, of course, different genres have different conventions about reality. But, while I haven't seen Bull Durham in years (decades), my memory of it is far less political than Slap Shot was.
On preview, I'm glad to see that Halford agrees with me.
55 is pretty spot on in the specific role of sports in society. But speaking of juggernauts, the growth of organized sports and its increasing overlap with consumerism in general has been to me one of the most interesting sociological trends over my lifetime.
I may have done this here before, but a question I've found interesting to ponder is: When do you think the last Super Bowl/World Series/Olympics will be? And what will stop it.
2017, when the venomous mutant crustaceans swamp the last stadium. July, November? Who can tell?
From the link in 66:
A fan who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.
The porn versions just write themselves.
and thought it one of the more magnificent Olympic moments in US history--a very moving and respectful display
With clenched fists, in what was called the "black power" salute. Martin Luther King made that gesture every day, there must be thousands of pictures.
Isn't that sweeeet? I also approved! The context, of course, was that cities were burning and young people getting shot all over the world. Every fucking day, it seemed. Paris Prague Tokyo Baltimore Baghdad Cyprus Athens.
Me, I was 17 and hoping this fucking abbatoir would go up in flames before I got drafted.
Personally, I think all head contact sports will come to be viewed as barbaric (on the order of jousting) over the next fifty years. Although there is a late-empire fatalism version of me who thinks we will escalate to Rollerballesque future.
Finding out which is all the fun!
The idea that movies in the '70s were more attuned to the gritty realities of class and poverty than more recent movies is of course true. The idea that a comparison of Slap Shot with Friends would shed light on that distinction strikes me as questionable. The fact that Bull Durham does deal with the same issues (in a dopey, soft-focus, morning-in-america kind of way) suggests that a useful comparison would be relatively more nuanced.
this fucking abbatoir would go up in flames before I got drafted.
If I have your life history straight, there's still time.
If you really want to track the change in attitudes towards class in sports movies you could do worse than watching the Rocky movies in order.
The idea that a comparison of Slap Shot with Friends . . .
Yeah, the Friends reference was unnecessary, but I don't think it obscured my basic point.
North Dallas Forty is another good one from the era.
You know, there was an alternative gesture in 1968, involving a fist, but with the first and second figure extended and spread apart. This was essentially a "Stop The Fighting" message. But fuck the DFH's. They were mostly white.
Clenched fists ok with you as a greeting or message to strangers? After a long fucking summer of violence, death, and destruction? Glad it warmed your cockles.
Radical fucking chic will never die.
Going back to the conversation about Sports and politics, I was remembering Tim Burke's great article about the anti-apartheid divestiture movement in which he comments:
What really made the difference in putting international pressure on South Africa? Divestment, I think, was the least important tactic. Its main significance was that it allowed many young people who wanted to show a disdain for apartheid to do so in the most conveniently local setting and therefore to make the revulsion for apartheid more powerfully global. More important by far in terms of making that revulsion felt within South Africa was the sports boycott. I remember some activists I knew seeing that as trivial, but that just showed how little we understood the mass psychology of South Africans. American college students building shantytowns was easy to sneer at, but not being allowed to play rugby abroad? Shit got real at that point.
Long Gone is another good one, if you can find it. Virginia Madsen and William Peterson in their prime, which is fine prime, and serio-comic discussions of racism in 50s minor-league baseball.
87: Yes, I was going to proclaim the death of irony.
87,89:No irony.
I was and am fine with as much death and destruction as possible.
And that was the Smith/Carlos message on the podium.
Make no mistake, after a summer in which thousands of American blacks were beaten, gassed and shot, it was a message of violence.
"We will shoot back now."
Glad to have you aboard.
No irony.
Right, because you killed it.
It's always heartening to see someone overcome prejudice by being reminded of their true principles.
90: Oh, sure. Given demographics about the reverse of South Africa's, the only people caring much about a message of violence were the guys trying to decide between their .30 caliber rifles or that new-fangled .223 with the bad rep in Vietnam.
Apparently the blog needs a little history, haven't heard of Carlos & Smith?
I like This One from 1922
"This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!" Stokely Carmichael
Not going to jail no more?
"Off the Pigs" was fucking real in 1968, if real only in sentiment and rhetoric.
A perfectly cromulent multi-racial medal stand in bob world.
92: The performance has indeed been simultaneously masterful and shameful.
I think Chris Y has it right when he says that a large part of the power of their action is that it happened on the world stadium. If you put it in the context of the Cold War's race to be the best nation on earth and the "USA! USA! USA!" fervor of the Olympics, you can see how a black power salute on the podium was both utterly radical and meaningful. They had just won medals for their nation, a nation that didn't recognize them as equal citizens, and they were daring to call the US out on it in front of the world - a powerful shaming action. You can tell the story of the 60s without it, but it's still a wonderfully illustrative example of the larger forces at play.
Expanding a bit on Knecht's 44, the entire sports narrative is based on the idea that destiny apportions rewards according to merit, and nothing else. Yes, the ball bounces oddly, and sometimes bad calls are made, but the ultimate result can only be explained by Pure Justice.
I've never seen it studied, but I'd betcha that sportswriters skew politically further to the right than business writers.
96: Try shameless.
I read Soul on Ice on acid. I cheered the Weathermen and cried for the SLA and I am not embarrassed about it.
I am ashamed of the following forty years of pusillanimous servility, although I mostly just withdrew rather than sold out.
Hey, Feebles! I'm old and a threat to no one. And this generation apparently thinks the raised fist is a sign of peace and love. Or whatever. Can't work with them.
"Off the Pigs" was fucking real in 1968, if real only in sentiment and rhetoric.
" if real only in sentiment and rhetoric"? Isn't that the same as "not real"?
I had to explain to Rowan what "off the pigs!" meant after pressuring him to watch a Black Panther documentary we had from Netflix. It was kind of a high point in foster parenting, but only kind of.
100:That's an empirical question.
97:Yeah, thank goodness Carlos & Smith informed a world unaware of American racism, so they could retroactively award MLK the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
102.2: People pay attention to the Nobel Peace Prizes?
I am desirous of the nonexistent sarcastic emoticon.
You people sure seem to like getting trolled.
Hence the "masterful" in 96. Personally, I'm trying to see if I can get him to reproduce the Musberger quote in 1. Almost there!
106: teo could tell us about his date.
Well, I know heebie is seeking to provoke a reaction (and bob is being bob), but I was surprised to find out that the gesture was quite significant to my father-in-law in the UK - he knew more about it than, say, heebie - so I do think that one of the interesting things about it is the world's reaction. And thus I am nattering on.
Not really directly tied to "professional" sports, but anecdotally it's always seemed to me that some of the highest rates of interracial dating and/or marriage occur in jock/athlete social sets.
Personally, I think all head contact sports will come to be viewed as barbaric (on the order of jousting) over the next fifty years.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to this point of view, at least at a professional level. But on the other hand, the world would be a little poorer without number 1 on this list (and its accompanying description).
What's the alternative?
Seining, gilnetting, trawling, jigging, etc. Trolling is just one of many options, though it is known for producing a particularly high-quality product.
At the Memphis airport they put coleslaw on Polish sausage. Perhaps sauerkraut reminds them of the Munich Olympics?
Newton had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for repeatedly stabbing another man, Odell Lee, with a steak knife during the summer of 1964. He served 6 months in prison, and by 27-28 October 1967 he was out celebrating release from his probationary period. Just before dawn on 28 October, Newton and a friend were pulled over by Oakland Police Department officer John Frey. Realizing that he had stopped Black Panther leader Huey Newton, Frey called for backup. After fellow officer Herbert Heanes arrived, shots were fired, and all three were wounded.[15] Heanes testified that the shooting began after Newton was under arrest, and one witness testified that Newton shot Frey with Frey's own gun as they wrestled.[16][17] No gun on either Frey or Newton was found.[17] Newton stated that Frey shot him first, which made him lose consciousness during the incident.[18] Frey was shot four times and died within the hour, while Heanes was left in serious condition with three bullet wounds. With a bullet wound to the abdomen, Newton escaped the scene by carjacking a local man at gunpoint. Black Panther David Hilliard took Newton to Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. He was admitted, but was soon handcuffed to his bed and arrested for Frey's killing.[19] Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter for the killing of Frey and was sentenced to 2-15 years in prison.
Chicago Eight (from Bobby Seale)
"September 9, 1968 a Federal grand jury was empaneled to consider criminal charges."
"The eight defendants were charged under the anti-riot provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968[5] which made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot."
Also in 1968, Cleaver led an ambush of Oakland police officers, during which two officers were wounded. In the aftermath of the ambush, Cleaver was wounded and seventeen-year-old Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed.[9] Charged with attempted murder, he jumped bail to flee to Cuba and later went to Algeria. Following Timothy Leary's Weather Underground assisted prison escape, Leary stayed with Cleaver in Algeria; however, Cleaver placed Leary under "revolutionary arrest" as a counter-revolutionary for promoting drug use. Cleaver later left Algeria and spent time in France.
Yeah, look at a Olympic picture and understand the history.
I didn't know about the story in 61, but it's certainly another reason to wish for someone to dig up Avery Brundage and desecrate his corpse.
OK. Done. Carry on with corpse-talk.
Huh. I should probably chew more or something. That was quick.
The gate agent was either raised in Scotland or is a great actor.
If I were a Diamond Elite member, I'd be on the plane. Stupid class-based society
I don't think you want to chew Avery Brundage's corpse, Moby, but I commend you for thinking of innovative corpse-desecrating techniques.
It's my go-to corpse desecration method.
121: could be both! Did you check that it's not Sean Connery?
I don't know that I would really call cannibalism an innovative technique.
If I were a Diamond Elite member, I'd be on the plane divorced.
The Pop Warner youth football program just enacted tougher safety measures. Progressive?
I didn't think Moby was suggesting eating Brundage (having already eaten in 118), just chewing him.
How long has he been dead? There might not be much left of the corpse but bones, in which case "gnawing" rather than "chewing" would probably be the more appropriate term.
According to Wikipedia he died in 1975, and sounds like a pretty despicable guy.
PBS had a very nice Jesse Owens documentary a few months ago on whatever program runs on Sunday nights that had lots of horrible Avery Brundage content.
127: Because of all the models I would seduce.
I know you guys all know how to Google, but maybe you weren't all that interested, and some of this conversation is breaking my heart.
Tommie Smith stated in his autobiography, Silent Gesture, that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute, but in fact a "human rights salute".
Smith and Carlos were largely ostracized by the U.S. sporting establishment in the following years and, in addition, were subject to criticism of their actions. Time magazine showed the five-ring Olympic logo with the words, "Angrier, Nastier, Uglier", instead of "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Back home, they were subject to abuse and they and their families received death threats...
[Australian bronze medalist Peter] Norman, who was sympathetic to his competitors' protest, was reprimanded by his country's Olympic authorities and ostracized by the Australian media. He was not picked for the 1972 Summer Olympics, despite finishing third in his trials. Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral after his death in 2006.
In 2005, San Jose State University honored former students Smith and Carlos with a 22-foot high statue of their protest. A student, Erik Grotz, initiated the project: "One of my professors was talking about unsung heroes and he mentioned Tommie Smith and John Carlos. He said these men had done a courageous thing to advance civil rights, and, yet, they had never been honored by their own school."
On 3 March 2008, in the Detroit Free Press editorial section, an editorial by Orin Starn entitled "Bottom line turns to hollow gold for today's Olympians" lamented the lack of social engagement of modern sports athletes, in contrast to Smith and Carlos.
Internationally, in a 2011 speech to the University of Guelph, Akaash Maharaj, a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee and head of Canada's Olympic Equestrian team, said, "In that moment, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman, and John Carlos became the living embodiments of Olympic idealism. Ever since, they have been inspirations to generations of athletes like myself, who can only aspire to their example of putting principle before personal interest. It was their misfortune to be far greater human beings than the leaders of the IOC of the day."
But, you know, fuck 'em.
Free Huey Rally Feb 1968
Raised fists around that terrific picture of Huey in the rattan chair
Another Free Huey Rally Sept 68 ...raised fists everywhere
Smith and Carlos from San Jose State, just a skip from Oakland.
Fine guys, I liked them then, I admire them now.
I also admired Newton, Seale, and Cleaver. How bout you?
134: I didn't really respond, but I find the picture very moving and both of them seem to have been gracious and thoughtful after the fact, too, from what I've read.
Two flights on a CRJ, both seated next to someone small. Hooray.
I was 17, so what did I know? Bob of course was full of the wisdom of years. FWIW, As far as I remember, I admired Newton and Seale but I had reservations about Cleaver. However, I thought his "arrest" of the egregious Leary was fucking funny. I always thought Leary was a wanker, even when I was tripping out of my skull.
And Smith and Carlos were the shit - still are as far as I know.
...that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute, but in fact a "human rights salute".
Wow, with raised fists all over American television in 1968, it is absolutely tragic that the Smith and Carlos silent gesture, totally disconnected and in opposition in meaning to all those other raised fists, was completely misinterpreted. Stupid people.
Brundage and Mustberger could have been shot. Fuck em.
But I will oppose the bowdlerization, censorship, cherry-picking, and sweetening of the fucking 60s, for those sensitive souls who would be troubled by an honest history.
The passage from his autobiography:
By everything, of course, I include the reason for the death threats, the feeling that I would not live to enjoy my gold medal, the reason both John Carlos and I were even on the track in Mexico City: the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Read that name again, very closely, and put aside what you thought you knew about what happened on the victory stand in Mexico City that night. This was not the Black Power movement. To this very day, the gesture made on the victory stand is described as a Black Power salute; it was not. Nor was it only black athletes talking about boycotting because they don't like what's going on. It was the Olympic Project for Human Rights. It was more than civil rights; that's why it was called human rights. It's just that pressure was taken by the black athletes; we stepped out and did what should have been done by young groups much earlier. It wasn't dope-smoking, arm-pumping punks, as the other protestors of all types from that era are portrayed. We were students and we were very dedicated to the Olympic Project for Human Rights. What we as black athletes took on for the whole world was a very basic platform that should have drawn support from everybody everywhere. But no one else wanted to join us.
Here's a snippet (from People magazine! I forget it was that old) on Harry Edwards from 1978 after he barely got tenure at Berkeley (denied on the initial vote). Edwards was at San Jose at the time and a prime organizer behind the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
A recent article giving a bit of the broader history. Learned something new, which was that Bob Beamon after his record jump and third-place finisher Ralph Boston more subtly protested Smith and Carlos's earlier banishment (rolled up sweat pants w/black socks, and barefoot respectively). Picture.
I will say that I think that Smith, Carlos et al do protest a bit too much on the Black Power salute front-their choice to use that form of protest was certainly at least influenced by it. But as Led Zeppelin says, "You know sometimes raised fists have two meanings."
Coupla things: If you don't want your gesture to be misinterpreted, it might be a good idea not to pick one that already has a storied history with several different competing interpretations. Just sayin'
I was talking to my labor organizer friend the other day, based on something someone else in the radical scene had said a long time ago, namely that, working-class men get a lot of shit for being ignorant or uneducated, but think of all the working-class guys you've known who can rattle off years of baseball statistics, which they then use to analyze current players and teams. Yet, on the US left, one of the huge cultural markers (cross class) is a disdain for sports in general, and football and baseball in particular. Soccer is okay to geek out about, of course.
Finally, the Olympics, as I've said before, are completely fucked. Virtually all the athletes are now essentially professionals, even if they aren't directly receiving a paycheck for playing a game or whatever. There's too many chemicals, new materials, computerized analyses, etc. Sportsmanship is almost completely dead, and the ostensible vision of the modern Olympics, that they be an antidote to jingoism and prejudice, has also fallen by the wayside. The whole thing is just an excuse to sell more Coca-Cola.
143.b - I don't think of baseball stats geekery as a working-class marker, Bill James' history as a night watchman notwithstanding.
143.c - You and the gnawed-upon corpse of Avery Brundage should chat!
football and baseball in particular. Soccer is okay to geek out about
I love football and can rattle off statistics, but find baseball and soccer incredibly boring to watch. I'm heterodox, bitches!
Are there soccer stats nerds? It is not something I've ever heard about.
Other things I haven't heard about: disdain for baseball as a cultural marker for the left.
Well, I'm glad I'm not a 20th century historian, or I'd be kinda embarrassed. (As is, I'm just wondering what it was I read about the whole affair.) But I do think that it was interpreted differently than it was intended and either way I have immense respect for them.
On soccer, I've been enjoying watching the Euros quite a bit. It's nice to be in a country where the games are aired at a reasonable time.
I should say, it's nice to be in a time zone where the games are aired at a reasonable time.
Other things I haven't heard about: disdain for baseball as a cultural marker for the left.
Yooohoooo, over here.
Are there soccer stats nerds?
I suppose there are bound to be, but it doesn't seem like it would lend itself to the sort of statistical nerdery that baseball or basketball do.
Are there soccer stats nerds?
There are, but soccer stats tend to be a lot simpler than American football stats, so nerdery is mainly channelled into obscure facts about clubs' league positions and KO outcomes over the past hundred years or so.
Cricket stats, on the other hand, are a fantastically rich field for nerds, and serious cricket nerds can take any sabermetrician with one hand tied behind their back.
Martha Coakley, of all people? Truly she defines today's left.
There is in fact a fantasy league for the Premier League, but I have no freaking idea how it works.
Cricket stats, on the other hand, are a fantastically rich field for nerds, and serious cricket nerds can take any sabermetrician with one hand tied behind their back.
This, and that comment the other day on the 1st Amendment, makes me think chris y wants to celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 by fighting it again.
"Soccer tactics nerd" takes the social place of "soccer stats nerd" because of the relative paucity of stats.
Exhibits A and B are Jonathan Wilson and Michael Cox (the latter of zonalmarking.net).
Turns out we slagged on Brundage a good bit back in 2008, so thought I'd collect some of the "good parts" as a jumping off point for 2012:
1) Avery Brundage in 1971: The Berlin Games were the finest in modern history...I will accept no dispute over that fact. [Hitler's original reaction to getting the games was to denounce them as: inspired by Judaism which cannot possibly be put on in a Reich ruled by National Socialists.]
2) Brundage fought giving Jim Thorpe his 1912 medals back. Turns out that Brundage competed against Thorpe in the 1912 games and, of course, lost to him.
153. You could try reading the rules, but they're all about soccer stats...
156: Yeah, it's like the guy went out of his way to be on the wrong side of history in every possible way.
157: My active antipathy towards the concept of fantasy leagues precluded me from doing that.
I think most baseball stats nerds are stereotypically professional types. Didn't Dan Okrent invent fantasy baseball?
159: Fist bump. Human rights style, of course.
158. Joan Antoni Samaranch could probably match him blow for blow.
Well, Saramanch was something of a protege of Brundage, so he learned from the master.
But yes, Saramanch does sound pretty odious as well.
160.last: Yep, "rotisserie" league, ...named after the New York City restaurant, La Rotisserie Française, where its founders met for lunch and first played the game.
Okrent went on to set an abysmally initial bar for the role of NYTimes Public Editor.
During the Spanish Civil War, he was conscripted into the Republican forces in 1938, at the age of 18, to serve as a medical orderly. However, he was politically opposed to the Republic, and escaped to France. He quickly returned to Nationalist Spain under Francisco Franco and enrolled in the Spanish fascist movement Falange.
Meanwhile Brundage was rising in the IOC ranks and actively involved in pro-Nazi organizations in the US.
Snark from the previously mentioned David Zirin: In fact, the grand difference between Brundage and Samaranch was who they would choose as their favorite fascist - with Brundage being more of a Hitler man.
Professional athletes have the most successful labor unions in the United States in the past 30 or so years (aside from the cast of Friends), which makes them the most prominent leftists anywhere.
Also, a fair number of profesional athletes have run for office, a few on the Democratic, if not the Left, side. Probably more are Republicans though.
A discussion fascist potential/resonances/valences/etc. in individual sports vs. team sports is a thread unto itself:
I'm sure Okrent did something memorable as non-ombudsman, but I basically remember him for numerous, Stupidest Man Alive-inspired attacks on Krugman.
There are, but soccer stats tend to be a lot simpler than American football stats, so nerdery is mainly channelled into obscure facts about clubs' league positions and KO outcomes over the past hundred years or so.
This used to be true. Now there are a ton of "football analytics" statheads. See here.
("Moneyball" seems to be even more misinterpreted in the context of soccer than it was/is in baseball, if such a thing is possible.)
Finally, the Olympics, as I've said before, are completely fucked. Virtually all the athletes are now essentially professionals, even if they aren't directly receiving a paycheck for playing a game or whatever.
You're probably the last person I would have expected to be taking that position, Natilo. That's... rather Victorian of you.
Is disdain for sports a cross-class marker of the left? At least 1/2 of the lefties I know seem into at least one of the big 3 pro sports.
The fastest growing team sport for youth in America is lacrosse, which until recently has been seen as an elitist prep school sport. It isn't and never was, as the best players were from Baltimore, not Greenwich. Jim Brown is in the lacrosse Hall of Fame, All American from Syracuse. It is said that he loved beating up the white boys.
College football has been about money almost from the start. See "Horsefeathers" by the Marx Brothers.
The SEC (not the government regulatory agency) had to let go of segregation if they were going to remain competitive.
Team sports help us learn to work together for a common goal, and that a team playing well together can beat a more athletically talented team. Happens all the time.
176: Sports fandom is a proxy for victory, power, freedom, manliness, non-whiteness -- the qualities that mild-mannered educated white men crave. Mumble Bill Simmons mumble Sausagely mumble David Remnick's girlishly enthusiastic writing about boxers mumble.
Lots of prominent athletes run for office. They generally are motivated by their intense Christian faith, their personal extreme wealth, and the high name recognition they enjoy which means fund-raising and advertising are easier.
Here's some I can think of
Wilmer Mizell - Republican
Jim Bunning - extreme Republican
Steve Largent - extreme Republican
Jim Ryun - extreme Republican
Jon Runyan - Republican
Chris Dudley - Republican
Tom Osborne - Republican
Bob Mathias - Republican
Jack Kemp - moderate Republican
Tom Gola - moderate Republican
Peter Boulware - black Republican
J.C. Watts - black Republican
Lynn Swann - black Republican
Craig James - clownish Republican
Kevin Johnson - Democrat, mayor of Sacramento
Dave Bing - Democrat, mayor of Detroit
Heath Shuler - right-wing Democrat
Bill Bradley - Democrat
Randy Bass - Democrat
176: I keep hearing that it is, yet I can say that I knew which major football and baseball teams were the favorites of my grad school professors. (They're not particularly leftist, but they'd count as such under the way the term is typically used.) I suspect it's about as much of a marker as arugula, good for rhetoric, not much else.
Eco has a big disquisition on the fundamental horribleness of sports in Travels in Hyperreality. I disagree with it basically completely, but I bet Flip'd like it.
I do remember going to a talk where Carl Sagan -- big astronomy personified, the bastard -- ranted on for a while about how horrible professional sports and sports fandom was. My leftish but I guess basically apolitical buddy made repeated "air sniper rifle" gestures.
Wait, are you saying that Sausagely writing about Dave Berri's Win Shares the NBA is craving, "power, freedom, manliness, [and] non-whiteness?"
I'm not convinced.
181: I remember the one about jeans better. Was Eco complaining about Italian/European soccer-as-politics or what he called, in re Berlusconi, "media populism" as embodied in major sports generally?
184: per my memory sorta both. It definitely wasn't purely Europe-focused.
178: And young wordslinger Dave Zirin trying to take out the old guy. A 1940's Western with all the significance thereof.
186: Generations X and X.5 (or whatever) are pressing hard from under the desks of media fixtures of the older generation, who seem permanent until they die, retirement being out of the question. Frustration begets accusation.
fastest growing team sport for youth in America is lacrosse
I was in Charlotte this past weekend for a lacrosse tournament my son was playing in, and I was surprised how many people were there and from how far away. It really does seem to be exploding. I'm taking him up to Roanoke College on Saturday for goalie camp.
Roanoke College on Saturday for goalie camp
Be sure his lax camp isn't a laxbro indoctrination center.
179: KJ should also be listed as right-wing democrat
171:Thanks for linking to that Flipper. It lead me to search and download the Sontag essay. Some of Sontag's ideas have come up in discussions of Mishima Yukio and understanding of parts and aspects of Japanese culture.
I think she is dated, basing the analysis on "fascism" possibly hinders the discussion as much as advances it, and I have got to get around to some Bataille.
Watched This One last week 6/06, and thought:"Now that's some perfect gorgeous Mishima." Sports! As political metaphor! Musumi Kenji is really fucking good, good enough to interrogate the story while reverently telling it.
Is disdain for sports a cross-class marker of the left? At least 1/2 of the lefties I know seem into at least one of the big 3 pro sports.
I have little to no interest in sports anymore. I watched the Mavericks win the Championship, but that was it, and haven't watched or listened to a Ranger game in twenty years.
Wait. Some don't think I am of the Left.
175: Perhaps I should clarify. If the Olympics are going to be quasi-professional, then just go ahead and make them professional in every regard, pay the athletes and have done with it. I'd be no more opposed to that outcome than I am to any other aspect of capitalist mass culture.
If, however, you want the Olympics to be an amateur event, then you have to take out all the paid coaches, sports doctors, engineers, huge corporate sponsors, etc. etc. Let the competitors honestly compete based on their own abilities, not those of a gigantic medal-seeking apparatus.
I think the Jim Thorpe controversy underscores this point. Basically, he got screwed for being an Indian who was good at something, but more specifically, there was already at that time a lot of ambiguity about the amateur vs. professional distinction, and so he was vulnerable, based on his race. Compare that to the Salt Lake City IOC scandal, where these creepy old businessmen and apparatchiks are getting wined and dined and bribed with public money that ought to be supporting the event and the athletes.
I'm not saying people can't practice their sport, or spend any money on it, of course that would be absurd. What I'd like to see is people who are actual amateurs competing. Why do we even care who can run the fastest mile or ski the fastest course or whatever, when that's all they've spent their lives on since they were 3 years old? What kind of life is that anyway? Olympic athletes should DO OTHER THINGS. Sigh.
179: There's also Alan Page, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice and former Viking. And DFLer, I'm pretty sure.
I'm not saying people can't practice their sport, or spend any money on it, of course that would be absurd
And all the world over, each nation's the same
They've simply no notion of playing the game
They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won
And they practice beforehand which ruins the fun!
192 -- dude you went into orgasmic raptures about the Mavericks all through their playoff run and when it looked like they could still be contenders this year.
What I'd like to see is people who are actual amateurs competing.
AKA rich people.
197: Each nation throws darts at phonebooks in proportion to population. Those picked HAVE to compete. If they die during an event they get an ice floe named after them. Those countries without phones can go fuck themselves.
What about those countries without ice floes?
197:I said I watched the playoffs last year.
This year I checked the standings and stats, but didn't watch a single game of basketball.
I keep half an eye on the Rangers online, but they are no longer doing well enough.
Excuse me, I am lost in confusion about Mishima again. Ken really is a masterpiece.
You know, for all y'all hate him Mishima AFAIK never really hurt anyone and was mostly ridiculed during his extreme periods. Unlike Genet, who actually was a violent asshole and directly connected to violent causes and people.
I should link, ok, I Will Link to Kotsko's recent piece on Zizekian irony.
...mime the dominant ideology to such an extreme that you reach its internal contradictions and it begins to break down.
200: Cap and trade what ice is left? I will leave this for Krugman & Friedman to work out.
The fastest growing team sport for youth in America is lacrosse, which until recently has been seen as an elitist prep school sport. It isn't and never was, as the best players were from Baltimore, not Greenwich.
Let's not go bananas here. Until recently it has been an elitist prep school sport, and an elitist suburban sport (the number of people who actually go to prep schools is tiny). It's preposterous to suggest otherwise. Baltimore and Long Island, which is where Jim Brown was from, were practically the only exceptions ... until recently.
"Colleges use lacrosse to recapture suburban students"
Lacrosse doesn't require as much equipment or facilities as most people might think. Colleges have been adding lacrosse teams to attract kids whose families can pay the full sticker price.
Hopefully the parents at all the less elite high schools that are starting lacrosse teams realize this, and are not hoping that lacrosse is their ticket to big big savings by way of a college scholarship. Even at places like Virginia there are barely any lacrosse scholarships.
Until recently it has been an elitist prep school sport, and an elitist suburban sport (the number of people who actually go to prep schools is tiny).
Also mostly limited to the Northeast.
Completely OT, can anyone recommend for a friend a restaurant and/or activity in San Francisco (aka "the City")? My list is about 15 years out of date.
Even at places like Virginia there are barely any lacrosse scholarships.
Even there, practically no one gets a "full ride". The coach will take his 16 scholarships and divvy them up- 25% to you, 15% to you, etc.
Uh... can you narrow it down any?
What, "good stuff in big city" isn't specific enough for you?
The request was general, but I think he's looking for a nice but not absolutely over the top crazy expensive dinner rec. Maybe a breakfast/brunch one too. Friend from east coast who is extending a business trip, assume a broad range of tastes.
restaurant and/or activity
If it's "and," then reasonable activities might be "eating" or "drinking."
I <3 the Asian Art Museum, but I haven't actually spent enough time in SF to say anything very useful. Going for a long walk around Golden Gate Park and/or the Presidio is nice too, though.
Basically I got a "what should I do/where should I eat" email and am relying on you guys to look awesome. I assume without knowing that he's staying near the financial district or Union Square.
207 i reasonable, but it would have been fun to read the odd suggestions.
I realize I'm being totally useless.
Nah, it's the emoticon that's problematic.
Until recently it has been an elitist prep school sport, and an elitist suburban sport
Depends on how far back you go
http://collection.corcoran.org/collection/work/ball-playing-among-sioux-indians
Basically I got a "what should I do/where should I eat" email and am relying on you guys to look awesome.
And what's our incentive to help you with this?
Maybe he'll defend your intellectual property.
215: There's actually a long and sordid history of rich white guys deliberately formalizing and standardizing lacrosse specifically in order to exclude Native Americans from it, largely under the guise of the same valorization of "amateurism" that led to the Olympics.
217: I'd rather he stopped being a tendentious dick when arguing with me, but I don't have any useful information about SF so the point is probably moot.
And what's our incentive to help you with this?
If you live in San Francisco, you'll know where you may be able to rob a relatively well-heeled tourist.
My list would be something like:
Asian Art Museum
Go for a run in the Presidio/Golden Gate park
Eat at this weird old school Italian restaurant in North Beach whose name I forget
Eat at this German restaurant (Suppenkuche, I think? I went to it a bunch)
Don't have a burrito in the Mission
I think this guy would have been better off realizing how big the distances in California are, but whatever.
218. While I totally agree with the first part of your statement, the excluding Native Americans would be at best a second order reason. Standardization of rules is what makes contests watchable. Calvinball may be fun to play, but it would be hell to watch.
The Flip-Pater played lacrosse at his fancy New England prep school and never discussed either.
I guess I'd say "The Ferry Building" too, but that postdates my Bay Area residency.
While I totally agree with the first part of your statement, the excluding Native Americans would be at best a second order reason.
The main "rule" I'm thinking of is "amateurs only," which in context was definitely aimed mainly at excluding Indians (who were poor enough that if they were any good they had generally played for money at some point, much like Jim Thorpe).
Here's a fun activity: go to all the tourist attractions and interrogate them about how they keep track of their visitor statistics. Don't accept their answers lies.
Let me be the first to suggest Suppenküche, Tu Lan, Arguello Super, Boulette's Larder, The Richmond, or the South Korean consulate.
219: Oh, come on. I like and don't actually want to get into a fight with you.
This lacrosse stuff is all from my hazy memory of an article I read years ago, but I'm pretty sure the main point stands.
Here's a fun activity: go to all the tourist attractions and interrogate them about how they keep track of their visitor statistics. Don't accept their answers lies.
Many of them are even run by the NPS!
assume a broad range of tastes
The Tenderloin has him covered, then.
I like and don't actually want to get into a fight with you.
Huh. Well, I guess you should have thought of that earlier.
Dude are you actually this much of a whiny asshole? OK, I apologize for being correct about the way in which the national park service calculates attendance at Yellowstone, and arguing about it.
Sushi-A-Roni in Japantown sounds good.
Dude are you actually this much of a whiny asshole?
Apparently so.
All right, I retract 232 prospectively. I actually don't want to get into it, but relax a little.
Also mostly limited to the Northeast.
The center of power seems to have shifted to the mid-Atlantic states.
I don't want to get into either, so I'll drop it and take just solace in that fact that you do at least now seem to understand that I am in fact sincerely mad at you.
The center of power seems to have shifted to the mid-Atlantic states.
I was defining "the Northeast" pretty broadly to basically include that area, but I accept that the lacrosse heartland may have shifted/expanded a bit recently.
I could recommend restaurants in Berkeley more capably, but I don't think they justify the train ride. The views from across the bay might, though.
I know Berkeley better, but I don't think that's a likely option.
There are already some Pride events happening, too.
Possibly out of date, but one could combine lunch/xiaolongbao at Shanghai Dumpling King with a walk from Ocean to China Beach. That's what I'd do.
xiaolongbao
God, I love those things.
Last time I was in SF, I got a fervent recommendation from a local to go to St George distillery on Alameda Island. But due to certain exigencies I did not go.
210, 220: speaking of Avery Brundage!
Eat at this German restaurant (Suppenkuche, I think? I went to it a bunch)
Hah.
Yeah, it's still swell.
I know I said I would drop it, but since 237 seems to come across as much more passive-aggressive than I intended, and since Halford seems genuinely mystified about my reaction, I feel like I should clarify a little.
I don't care about the underlying issue in the Yellowstone thread, about which he seems to ultimately have been basically right (through no fault of his own). A lot of the stuff he said in the course of that thread, however, while obviously meant in jest, nevertheless seriously hurt my feelings. I know he didn't intend to do that, and he doesn't seem to have even realized he had until just now, but it was still hurtful and I'm having a hard time getting over it.
I feel like I was making a good-faith effort to provide him with information on a subject he had shown some interest in and on which I had a bit of knowledge, and he not only totally ignored what I said and continued to argue vociferously on behalf of the preconceived notion he came in with but also threw in a bunch of inflammatory rhetoric and personal insults. As it turned out his preconceived notion was basically right and my impressions from experience were wrong, which, fine, whatever. Like I said, I don't care about the actual issue; it was the manner in which he conducted the argument that bothered me. I'm a very sensitive person (perhaps, as I have noted before, too sensitive for Unfogged), and I get my feelings hurt easily. I realize this is my issue to deal with rather than anyone else's.
This wasn't an isolated incident, either, although it was the most directly painful to me personally. I've noticed Halford displaying this style of argumentation over and over again in lots of different threads. There are plenty of other people here whose argumentative styles bother me in a similar way as well, so this isn't really just about Halford personally. Whenever I'm involved personally in threads like this it drives me crazy, but usually I'm not, and what I've come to realize is that I just need to steer clear of these arguments entirely.
Writing this all out I realize that it probably sounds pretty whiny, but I don't care. This has been bothering me for a long time, and I felt the need to say something about it.
Yeah, it's still swell.
And, more importantly (given the weather lately), they have a beer garden a couple of blocks away.
OK. I certainly didn't ever intend to actually make you feel bad. This place has a certain rough and tumble style of argumentation, which is often half or more than half in jest (inter alia, the swearing, the ability to stake out strong claims, the weird over-arguing about minor points, etc.) which I and some other folks here enjoy. I mean, the whole thing was pretty ridiculous and part of the fun (I think) is the ability to argue about pointless things. I for one would be sad to see that go, but maybe others disagree. I appreciate almost all of your comments and don't think I actually ever insulted you personally in a way that could reasonably be taken seriously (and certainly didn't mean to do so) but if you feel personally offended, I apologize.
If Halford's friend is an east coaster, he should be guided toward something particularly west coastish and SFish, no? Perhaps the Asian Art Museum and the German restaurant fit that bill, so that's fine. Otherwise he should certainly take at least a gander at the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the three times I was in SF, I hung out for an hour in the Haight -- I mean, Haight-Ashbury, how can you not see that? it seems different from its former profile -- and had dinner at the Greens Restaurant, which included a nice walk around whatever neighborhood that is, and there's a bookstore there.
If Halford's friend is more cosmopolitan than I have been when I visit unknown areas, that's a different matter.
250: which apparently is incredibly crowded at all times? When we were out there recently my friend was discussing that beer garden and said (dismissively) the he'd decided that actually it was sort of hip in SF to wait in line for things.
He should go to Alcatraz. Because that's what I would do if I were in SF and had extra time. I'm pretty sure it would give me goosebumps and make me uncomfortable in a way that I kind of enjoy. Like looking at dungeons in old castles in Europe.
I'm pretty sure it would give me goosebumps and make me uncomfortable in a way that I kind of enjoy.
Because you enjoy being very cold?
253: If you want cool things without having to wait for them, that's what Oakland is for.
(It's not surprising that place is packed all the time, since there are relatively few spots with decent outdoor seating. See also: Zeitgeist.)
I'd wear a sweater. Halford, tell your friend to bring a sweater.
he should be guided toward something particularly west coastish and SFish, no?
Yeah but I don't know if he'll be able to get a medical marijuana card on such short notice.
I thought about Alcatraz, as well as something called, er, Moonlight Bay? (Which I think is pretty out of the way.) Both would have taken more time than I had; or, were not of interest to the friend I was visiting. Cripe, a person could visit City Lights Books, but it really depends on what kind of person that person is.
Given a full day of extra time, a trip further south to see the rocky coast full of sea lions and such would be grand.
This place has a certain rough and tumble style of argumentation, which is often half or more than half in jest (inter alia, the swearing, the ability to stake out strong claims, the weird over-arguing about minor points, etc.) which I and some other folks here enjoy.
Yeah, I realize that, and I'm not asking to shut that down entirely. I guess I just want to make it clear that I, personally, do not enjoy that type of argument at all. I'm willing to tolerate it every once in a while when I feel the need to argue on behalf of a position that I strongly believe in, but for the most part I just try to stay out of the big arguments. What I do like to do is chime in with my own perspective on low-key discussions of factual issues, and when those suddenly turn into knock-down drag-out fights over small, unimportant issues (which I think is basically what happened with the Yellowstone thing) it's intensely frustrating to me, because it turns the type of thread I like into the type of thread I don't like.
Anyway, I accept your apology and we can go back to being bros.
xiaolongbao at Shanghai Dumpling King
I'm going to be just a few blocks away from this place in less than a month! (Proximity to SDK actually figured into my choice of apartment.)
Halford, if your friend is in Union Square he should go to Powell Street and spend a day drooling over the handbags in the Goyard boutique. That's what I did last week. I'm now revisiting my plan to buy a car in the next year, because my financial priorities may have changed.
261.last: I would totally pay money to see you ice Halford.
Moonlight Bay?
In the interest of nobody dying of exposure after getting hopelessly lost, it's Half Moon Bay.
low-key discussions of factual issues
When these happen, and people weigh in who actually know things, and nobody who doesn't know anything tries to strongly argue some point or other? Oh, it is heaven. Teo, remember our late night rap sessions about early human migrations to the Americas? Good times, good times.
Talk about the Athabaskan language family, teo. Do that for sure.
263: I'm apparently not completely clear on what icing actually is, since I'm enjoying the image of teo stuffing an ice-cold beer down Halford's pants.
264: it's Half Moon Bay
Ah, right. Thanks.
262: Wait, are you up here now? NOBODY TELLS ME ANYTHING.
When these happen, and people weigh in who actually know things, and nobody who doesn't know anything tries to strongly argue some point or other? Oh, it is heaven.
So true. But then again, this is the internet, so. Also, cats.
270. Not yet! And not for very long. But soon, for a short period of time.
272: I am intrigued. I also had XLB for the first time last week and can totally see why you'd want to be near a place that had them.
I just e-mailed you at the address I have, which is not the one linked to your name.
The XLB recommendation sounds like it would give me cred. I've never had them despite the foodies going on about some place in Arcadia for years, and I guess they're poison anyway.
I just remembered the Taditch Grill where i always try to eat on business; I like being reminded of the olden days. Maybe boring to an east coaster, though.
For a more-expensive recommendation from a non-resident, I really enjoyed dining at Fifth Floor. I'm not sure if your friend's tastes lean more towards the $25 bourbon, burger, and beer, or the $120 5-dish celebration of foie gras (six if you include the cocktail).
265 And now I'm off to my date!
I was tired and thinking of going to sleep early, but now I'll stay up for the liveblogging.
266 Teo, remember our late night rap sessions about early human migrations to the Americas? Good times, good times.
That was one of my favoritest threads ever. It should be a regular thing.
For a more-expensive recommendation from a non-resident, I really enjoyed dining at Fifth Floor.
If we're going down that route, I have lots and lots of recommendations. Top of the list would probably be this place which, although it's not in SF, people are talking about as the best restaurant on the West Coast.
For a more-expensive recommendation from a non-resident, I really enjoyed dining at Fifth Floor.
If we're going down that route, I have lots and lots of recommendations. Top of the list would probably be this place which, although it's not in SF, people are talking about as the best restaurant on the West Coast.
180
176: I keep hearing that it is, yet I can say that I knew which major football and baseball teams were the favorites of my grad school professors. (They're not particularly leftist, but they'd count as such under the way the term is typically used.) I suspect it's about as much of a marker as arugula, good for rhetoric, not much else.
I think a segment of the left really dislikes the jock culture as shown for example by the extreme (and rather unattractive) glee at the news of the Penn State scandal. It may not be universal but I think a certain kind of disdain for pro sports is mostly found on the left.
Somewhat in the spirit of 55, I am reading a book, The Dark Side of Sports, which is part of an obscure scholarly series on Sports, Culture and Society; but which deals with the sexual culture of sports and came out just about the time that the Penn State scandal went nationwide (I learned about it from an article on the PSU stuff). The author has what appears to be a terrific resource, the results of interviews with 142 athletes in five major sports at the collegiate, Olympic, and minor and major league levels in which the athletes seem to have opened up to him. If he edited them well and put them together in a format like Terkel's Working they'd probably be dynamite; instead he is progressing through a series of "themes" (masturbation, masturbation in groups, porn and so on) with interview excerpts connected by his not very insightful analysis. I'm barely 1/3rd of the way through, but my favorite sentence so far: Prostitutes participate in what is believed to be the world's oldest profession because there is a demand for sexual services (duly footnoted--#37 in that chapter--so you know he's not just making it up).
I think a segment of the left really dislikes the jock culture as shown for example by the extreme (and rather unattractive) glee at the news of the Penn State scandal.
The only glee that I have encountered re: Penn State is that of the usual Internet assholes (cough Deadspin cough) who joke about everything. Leftists have tended to feast on the suffering of the innocent by going all meta, skipping the infuriating details of human misery and lies in favor of the same old "What does this say about the larger issues: the system of blah blah blah blah, the power dynamics of yadda yadda, the capitalism of consent by etc.?"
It may not be universal but I think a certain kind of disdain for pro sports is mostly found on the left.
That's because the last thirty years have stunted conservatism into a bonsai of power-display fetishism: money, guns, trucks, sports, matériel de guerre, big manifestations when anyone wins anything. There are plenty of dead right-wing types who would have dismissed American jock-worship as so much claptrap entertainment that ought to be replaced with mandatory television readings from the Federalist Papers or whatnot.
What's an example of "extreme" and putatively leftist "glee" at news of the Penn State scandal, exactly? I remember a lot of extreme (and justifiably so) disgust over it, but what I recollect as the most extreme came from sports fans who didn't go to Penn State.
The date went well, although no booty was had. We've got a second one tentatively scheduled for Friday, though.
Speaking of sports, Matt Cain just pitched a pretty good game of baseball.
(And yay for Teo!)
283.2 is absolutely true. At one time the Oxford University Debating Society ("Oxford Union" - one of those institutions where the ruling class practice their trolling skills, see previous thread) used to regularly debate the proposition: "Professionalism is the curse of sport". And it usually won. There was a residual sense of this even when I was a kid.
I think the change is partly linked to the fact that before WWII (roughly, it varies from sport to sport) pros were paid fairly normal working peoples' wages. The idea that people would get the equivalent of top management money for sitting on the bench of a pretty average team was not even in the frame. Much harder to look down on professionals when they could buy and sell you before breakfast.
Rugby union didn't go professional until 1995.
Blog commenting, on the other hand, seems to have gone very professional.
I blame Bob for all the Japanese spam.
GAA sport - Gaelic football (and hurling) - is still amateur, and the whole subject of expenses etc. is a pretty fraught topic. Since rugby union went pro, it may be one of the highest level purely amateur sports around. These guys devote huge amounts of time and effort to their sport. A few of the footballers have gone off to play Aussie Rules competitively.
I think I made the Japanese spam all go away.
I am the LizardKingBreath
I can do anything
I made the Japanese spam go away.
283 to 284. I think James correctly identifies liberal disdain for abusive authority, even if "glee" isn't quite the right word.
It's like the liberal "glee" over Iraq. It's bad form to notice the epistemological failures associated with authoritarian ideologies.
NMM to probably the most famous guy in the world to have my pseudonym as his actual name. Also relevant to the amateurism discussion.
297: That's too bad. Quite a boxer; you were almost allowed to cheer for him in the United States. Not sure if the Times archive links work for people without an account but here is the article from when he upset Duane Bobick at the '72 Olympics. None of his wins were "upsets" after that.
298: Oh hell yes I was cheering for Stevenson in 1972.
