Dave Zirin: Game Over

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Today, someone mentioned on twitter that Jewish heritage day at the A's came up. I replied that this day was second only in my pantheon of grossness to Pink day at the ballpark. I don't like my baseball on the same plate as my religion. I don't like my patriotism on the same plate as my baseball, either. It gets messy and the two don't taste good together. Some might say this means I don't like politics and sports together, and I guess this is true. I felt squeamish the celebrations during the baseball games after the bombers of the Boston Marathon were caught. It just felt like, well, clapping at Temple. But according to Dave Zirin, you can't separate politics and sports, and reading "Game Over," you know he's right. So maybe I just don't like their politics on my baseball field (though that's not true about religion- I don't want my religion on my field, either).

Here's Zirin's point: athletes are basically not supposed to be political beings. When they sign their contracts, they sign away their rights to speak out about anything. (Think Ozzie Guillen and his "misstep" as Marlin's manager: he expressed admiration for Castro's longevity as a dictator and faced major fallout from his management, MLB and the press.) On the other hand, "at every sporting event we are encouraged to colletively celebrate the displays of nationalism, patriotism, and miliatry might that festoon every corner." Think beyond the national anthem: think fly overs, the new (hideous) camo jerseys, corporate culture of sponsorship, etc. When we attend mainstream sporting events, we witness giant spectacles of homoeroticism while passively supporting (or more, paying for) homophobic corporations that further homophobia in boys growing up with these mens as role models. And don't even get me started on the Olympics (I wouldn't want to throw a wrench in THB's next venue!) Sports are political. Somehow, this doesn't bother me nearly as much as the religious and nationalist part.

Zirin's book is uneven. It clearly reads as a bunch of previously-published essays glommed together into a book, which is unfortunate. Some of the parts are really great, and I learned a lot about the NCAA and the awful exploitation of the kids playing ball for our enjoyment. The NCAA makes so much money, it's ridiculous, and the kids don't get a dollar, not even for the sponsored gear that's plastered all over their bodies. If they get cut from the team, no matter for what reason, they lose their scholarships. Tough shit dude, you're here for an education, I mean to play sports, I mean for an education. Can't play? See ya. I even felt sorry for the bajillionaire NBA and NFL players who got locked out by owners pleading poor even though they were double-bajillionaires, ten times over. Did you know that after football, NFL players don't get health care? Sure, they're rich, but they get beaten up for a living, for our (well, not mine) entertainment and then don't have any right to healthcare, which most of us would agree is a basic human right. Let's just say that post NFL they have more than a few pre-existing conditions that might disqualify them for health insurance. But I didn't like how Zirin conflates gender and sexuality- I'm sure he knows the difference but his essay mushes the question of the treatment of female athletes, gender distinctions and homophobia into one, and they're not. And although I'm convinced: the Green Bay Packers are the best, we need more good examples. If you're going to read a Zirin book, I'd go with "Bad Sports." Otherwise, follow him on twitter (he posts a lot of his articles there) or check out his podcast, Edge of Sports.

Joe Queenan: One for the Books

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Queenan may have written this book as an anti-eBook treatise (I don't know if he did but suspect he might have) but it's really a piece about his love affair with books and reading. I can't blame him- I kind of love physical books, too- a friend is here looking at my shelves and asking why they're labeled by BISAC codes. (Answer? How else is someone supposed to find something?) Queenan doesn't organize his books by BISAC codes: he organizes them by texture and height. Can you blame him? What an aesthetically pleasing way to go! He goes further: books are toys. I totally relate to this:

I like to play with my books, to ark them up, to give them a lived-in look. I like to stack them up on the shelf and move them about and rearrange them according to new parameters-height, color, thickness, provenance, publisher, author's nationality, subject matter, likelihood that I will ever read them. Then I put them back the way they were.

My parents know that I do this, too. From the time I was a child I've been pulling all of my books (ALL of my books) off of the shelf and arranging them on the floor only to put them back again in some other permutation. I do this now, too. Maybe they shouldn't be by BISAC code, come to think of it. Maybe they should be by color or by alphabet, regardless of subject. And those graffiti books should be on the other side of the house.

Queenan does some things that I find inspiring: one year he read only short books. One year, a book a day. And he knows he will never read Middlemarch. He doesn't talk to his friends about books because he knows he wont' agree. Also, he hates the Yankees. Queenan will not read books about the Yankees, Yankees fans, or supporters of the Yankees. Including Salman Rushdie. I wish I could be this strict, but it would take more work than it's worth, I think. I'd have to research who likes the Yankees, and then I would have to think about the Yankees. I'm just going to quote how he feels about the Yankees, because it's SO GOOD:

This vindictive attitude is rooted partly in principle and partly in pathology; I, like most Americans, resent the Yankees' success, wishing that my own cheapskate teams would also go out and purchase championships by the fistful. But I further reject the notion that Yankees fans experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat the way the rest of us. They are fans who have not paid their dues. Yankees fans, not to put too fine a point on it, suck, and the rest of us do not. Rooting for the yankees, as a friend of mine who roots for the Cubs says, is like rooting for the air. 

And he loves libraries, especially for the things that don't belong there.

One of my favorite passages should ring true to lots of readers:

I one tried to devise a term to describe the euphoria a person feels when he approaches the end of a book he has not enjoyed reading. I think the term is in fact "euphoria," as the closest I ever got was Buchendungfreudejoie. Others share my inability to chuck away a book once they have slogged a good way into it. One of the best friends I have ever had says that when reading a book she dislikes but cannot quite bring herself to abandon, she is thrilled when she suddenly, unexpectedly stumbles upon a passage so awful or disgusting or immoral that it would make it a crime to continue holding the book in her hands.

Isn't that what books are for? To give us that out that life doesn't ever seem to come up with?

Peggy Orenstein: Cinderella Ate My Daughter

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This book made me realize: I'm an asshole when it comes to liking books. It's possible that in the past I have felt that thb was this way: every book I recommended was just "so-so" or had a million problems with it. But after reading "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" and finding a million problems with an overall pretty good book, I've realized that either a) I am hypercritical/picky about books or b) I'm turning into my father. (Turning into? Both?) In 1995, Peggy Orenstein wrote "Schoolgirls," and, as an impressional teen, I still remember how important that book was to me. The big issue then was self-esteem, and Orenstein nailed it.

The big issue now with girls is, well, actually I have no idea, because I'm a grown up and I don't have kids and don't really pay that much attention. But I do notice how pink is back, and how pink, combined with consumerism, is somehow supposed to be empowering for women (fight cancer, buy something pink!). I also notice how Disney is *the thing- you sort of have to live on a tropical to not see small children in Disney princess outfits. I haven't found a tropical island to live on. And of course there's the hypersexualization of young kids, although that seems to have cooled off as a topic when obesity came around. Now we talk about fat and take it for granted that kids wear bikinis and tight tee shirts and sparkly booty pants. It's not weird that they do- it's weird that we don't talk about it. Remember when we didn't have reality tv? Remember when we didn't have reality tv that involved 5 year olds dressing like beauty queens? It's hard to remember, and I'm not kidding.

So Orenstein's "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" is a welcome look into this bizarre land of what it means to raise a girl now. Only... it's either a piece of reporting (Orenstein mentions a couple of times that she's a journalist), or it's a diary of a mom trying to raise her kid right (in Berkeley), or it's a sociological piece, or it's... none of the above. And at 192 short pages, it's none of the above successfully. Not very helpfully, the publishers have given it the BISAC codes of 1. Girls-Psychology, 2. Femininity, 3. Mothers and daughters. I wonder what Orenstein would make of that- a whole section for girls?

"Cinderella" touches on so many things that I want to know more about. Orenstein clearly did a lot of work for this book- or to raise her own daughter after decades of working on this stuff. She says upfront that she was hoping for a boy, and who can blame her? It's a nightmare out there for raising a strong, confident girl: one who wants to achieve without falling into the traps of either rejecting society's norms to to the point of being an outcast but also without accepting them to the point of needing to be beautiful, weak and adored for her external beauty. So did Orenstein write this book because she had learned all of this stuff and had a wealth of knowledge to share (I wouldn't blame her)? Or did she write the book but not quite go deep enough into any of the subjects? We get snippets of each phase of her daughter's age and along with it, snippets of information: why the Disney monopoly is dangerous, what the pink marketing trend is all about, why playing together cross-genders is important, etc. But there is clearly so much more to say. Just when I got involved in a discussion about dolls or Miley Cyrus, time to hear about Orenstein's daughter and then move on.

But I'm not sure this is really a flaw with the book. The book is very readable, Orenstein is very humble and honest about reality: she knows she's a feminist and she knows that society is a tricky place to navigate as a feminist. She doesn't think she has all the answers as a mom, or as an "expert." I just wanted more, and I have a feeling that Orenstein has it, just not in this format. Give me more, dammit! Great topic, poor execution.

Brian Chen: Always On

Got a cell phone? (I know you do. Even THB has one.) Got a smart phone? You probably do, even if THB doesn't have one. Got a tablet? Take it everywhere? Use it all the time? Use one of these things more than a computer? Yes, if you're honest, probably. Brian Chen knows all about it. He's not critical of it, he just knows about it and in his short "Always On," he shares a bit about what the iPhone has done to create the "anything-anytime-anywhere" world we now live in. The book, written in 2010 and published in 2013 is, amazingly but not surprisingly, out of date already, thanks to the very phenomena he writes about. The book is uneven and at times Chen seems giddy about technology, but you can't really blame him- he writes for Wired; it's his job to love this stuff.

"Always On" is iPhone-centric because Steve Jobs (still alive at the time of writing) and Apple were at the forefront of creating anything-anytime-anywhere phenomena with their iPhone and other phones had to hurry to catch up. Also, Chen explains, the vertical integration that Jobs, the control freak, built into the phone was key to its success. Other smartphone companies couldn't initially compete (and now are way behind in market share) due to the fact that they didn't control the whole process. Apple built the whole physical phone and the whole ecosystem including iTunes and the App store. Other companies like Google and Microsoft figured this out later. In the meantime, customers both benefited and suffered from Apple's invention. The App store has a bajillion apps which can do everything and will be able to do more. They've made some people extremely rich and saved people's lives. On the other hand, they're subject to Apple's rigorous screening that borders on censorship: when we depend on one company for so much of our content and assume that that is all that is out there, our world becomes limited by their whims. Further, Apple is very careful about what kinds of coding can go into the apps because the company is terrified that something will get in there and "break" or modify the phone. This means that creativity is stifled; hacking for good is often a way of making new and cool stuff. No hacking allowed on the iPhone.

My main quibble with this book- besides that it's not very well written (it's fine for what it is)- is that Chen can't seem to decide which side he's on and doesn't acknowledge that. The book opens with a heartwarming story about a guy who saves his own life while trapped in a building thanks to his iPhone. He chuckles at the idea of technology making us stupider, and later in the book talks at length (for a short book) about the idea that our brains have been changed by technology. Although he gives both sides on both of these issues, it's clear that he favors the "no, we're not stupider" and "no, we're not changed" arguments. We get a personal anecdote about how he tried to unplug with disastrous results for both him and his people. Then comes the chapter about privacy. Chen pretty clearly is worried that the "always on" culture is dangerous. "We should ask," he writes, "How can we use these technologies so that data can benefit us rather than cause harm?" This is the smartest thing he says in the whole book, but it comes on page 189, 3/4 of the way through the book, and should probably come before all of the other stuff, if it's what Chen believes. Instead, it comes later, and I can't figure out if it's what he thinks, or if it's what he thinks about privacy issues. Bottom line, this is a decent, fast read with some interesting history on our new smartphone appendage.

East Oakland?

Something I wrote for Oaklandwiki on East Oakland. I hate when people call things "East Oakland" Just Because They Can, or because they don't know any better. Link here, though it may be changed by the time you see it- the good and bad of a wiki!

East Oakland loosely describes a large part of the city of Oakland and includes a number of neighborhoods. "East Oakland" is often synonymous in public language both in- and outside of Oakland as "the ghetto." Our Oakland has a great piece mapping how the media delineated East Oakland over a series of articles.

Complicating the fact is that what is described as "East" Oakland is in fact South Oakland, as directionally, Oakland is much longer North-South than East-West. The widest part of the city is just south of the Bay Bridge, and cuts across straight through Oakland pretty much 1/3 of the way South of the city. 

Many people, perhaps the majority or residents and outsiders, think that anything East of Lake Merritt is East Oakland. This would mean that anything with "Avenue" in the street name or East followed by a number (i.e. East 22nd or East 14th (now called International Blvd)) is East Oakland. This is a huge, diverse swath of territory: literally from 1st avenue on the shore of Lake Merritt to past 109th Ave at San Leandro. Running over 100 blocks North-South (see above) and from the flats to the hills and encompassing the majority of 5 of 7 City Council districts, this hardly seems appropriate. Certain neighborhoods would certainly object if it were portrayed this starkly. Maybe East Oakland would only be described as City Council Districts 5, 6 and 7, and the Southeast portions of Districts 2 and 4. This would eliminate the stigma of "East Oakland" from neighborhoods such as Crocker Highlands, Montclair, Glenview and even Eastlake. 

The linguistic implications of calling something "East Oakland" are huge: many people will not travel to somewhere that is considered "East Oakland" because it's considered dangerous. One might argue that the surge in gentrification in places like Old Oakland, Uptownand Temescal could not have happened in "East Oakland" because the downtown and North Oakland names did not carry such a stigma. Sure, they were empty and people from Oakland know that West Oakland has it's own share of problems, but there's nothing like the gangster, lost-cause feeling of East Oakland. This, in turn, leads to a vicious cycle: dollars aren't spent in "East Oakland" so businesses stay away from East Oakland. People don't move to East Oakland because there are so many empty houses and so few services. "East Oakland" the geographic area spreads as "East Oakland" the cultural problem self-reinforces.

Kevin Powers: The Yellow Birds

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The quote on the cover of "The Yellow Birds" is from Tom Wolfe: "The All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab wars." That's a strong comparison, but really, I think maybe Kevin Powers does it. The book is hard to put down, disturbing, sparse and haunting. Clocking in at 225 pages with biggish font and taking place over maybe 8 days over the span of about 8 years, Powers does a lot with a little. We just hit 10 years in Iraq, and just like Mother Jones "we're still at war" feature (every day they have a new picture of soldiers abroad), this book is a reminder that 10 years is 10 years too many. There are no heroes in "The Yellow Birds," just war. Read it.

Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin: Black Against Empire

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It is not easy to find "authoritative" writing on the Black Panthers. In my quest for learning about the Black Panther Party, I've come up with some theories: lots of the Panthers were killed, so couldn't tell their stories; the Party collapsed in on itself so the party has many competing versions; and the Civil Rights version of history is the "acceptable" version, so that's what gets funded/studied. But Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin don't have to guess: "Black Against Empire" *is authoritative, I mean, it's even published by the University of California Press- those guys do their research. Part of the lack of an "adequate history," they write is because of the "character of state repression of the Party [that was] aimed specifically at vilifying the Black Panther Party." This "shaped public understandings and blurred the outlines of the history." In order to overcome this, "Black Against Empire" was written through a process of "strategic genealogy": Bloom and Martin work through the Panthers' political practices through contemporary documents and primary sources, using retrospective interviews and memoirs only as backups. It's a fascinating read, especially coming after reading Elaine Brown's autobiography. If I could have a do-over, I'd read "Black Against Empire" first, and then "A Taste of Power," for reasons I'll get into later.

Bloom and Martin believe the Black Panther Party (BPP) came into being and fell away at a specific time for a reason. Not since the Civil War, they write, "almost a hundred and fifty years ago have so many people taken up arms in revolutionary struggle in the United States." That's quite something when you think about it. The civil rights movement was fading, they say, though that is something I couldn't quite wrap my minds around: Bloom and Martin say that civil rights was failing to deliver what black people really sought. The civil rights movement was a call for citizenship, for "full and equal participation." Legally in the late sixties, African Americans were getting closer to achieving this. In reality, many were still facing the same old shit, and needed a movement that did with the Panthers did: challenged the very authority of the state to grant them that citizenship. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the BPP were angry and felt like they were living as colonized subjects. In founding the BPP they effectively channeled the rage of many other young blacks into a revolutionary group that sought to bypass the institutional channels that the civil rights movement was working through.

"Black Against Empire" basically covers the years from 1966 to 1971, though it is most comprehensive from 1967-1970. This is the time when the BPP were able to ally themselves with the anti-war movement at home and the anti-imperialist movements abroad. Ideologically, the BPP argued that black people were, like other people of color at home and abroad, a colonized people. They argued that theirs was a common cause with the North Vietnamese and all oppressed people and that police (pigs) were the occupying forces. As young white activists started protesting en masse against the Vietnam war and began feeling the blunt end of police oppression, this argument resonated. The BPP was anti-racist and believed in coalitions across racial groups while standing firm on black self determination. Abroad, the BPP found friends in places like Cuba, Algeria and China as they couched their arguments in Marxist language and allied themselves with the communist North Vietnamese.

Practically, the BPP gained strength through its self-defense tactics. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale figured out that one of the best ways to both organize "brothers on the block" and stand up for the black community was to police the police. This was hugely successful: so successful that in 1967 Assemblyman Mulford introduced AB 1591 to outlaw open carry. When Newton famously sent an armed delegation to Sacramento to protest this bill, the media coverage led to even more press and support for the Panthers. Armed self defense thus became a double edged sword of both an effective and illegal strategy for the BPP.

So why do I wish I had read this book first? "Black Against Empire" is presented as an authoritative political history of the Black Panther Party. I believe that it is, but having read Elaine Brown's book first, my impression of the BPP is anchored in her story, which is personal, detailed and by definition, autobiographically skewed. Reading "Black Against Empire" I found myself saying "that's not what Brown said," even though I know that means nothing as everyone lives their own story. I wish that I had read Brown's book saying "That's not what 'Black Against Empire' said." That being said, the two books compliment each other: where "Black Against Empire" is a political history and thus attempts to leave out the highly personal stakes of the BPP, Brown lived it, and her book gives the reader a true sense of the time.  Also, "Black Against Empire" ends abruptly, rushing through 10 years of Panther history, while Brown's direct involvement in the end of the era gives the reader a good picture of the school and the ultimate collapse of the Party.

If you want a book on the Panthers, read this one. With the backing of the University of California Press, it's got the weight of credibility. The authors are thorough in describing other literature and the book clearly leans to the left, which appeals to me. The book looks long, but that's partially due to extensive endnotes; it reads fast. Try it.