Week 1: Redskins @ Giants

I woke up this morning at 5 AM because I could not sleep any longer.  Yes, I am too anxious for opening day of the National Football League.  So I decided to see what the talking heads on television had to say about today’s games.  On the NFL network, Brian Baldinger, Sterling Sharpe, and Joe Theismann host a show called playbook so I decided to watch.  The focus this morning was the NFC, and therefore I was especially excited to hear what they would say about the Giants-Redskins matchup today in the Meadowlands.

Following what seems to be the kind of customary moves of reasoning among the national punditocracy, Baldinger and Sharpe constructed their respective cases for the Giants in this game with an immediate disavowal of an anticipated counterargument and then move to the “meat” of their case.  Baldinger’s progression was less egregious than Sharpe’s: Baldinger said that a lot of attention will be paid to Albert Haynesworth, but Justin Tuck’s versatility is the key to the game and to the Giants’ victory.  Although it is foolish to ignore the impact of the league’s best defensive tackle—who was brought in to stop the Giants’ rushing attack—his case for Tuck was compelling and the defensive end is surely a factor that Jim Zorn and his offense will have to contend with all day.

But it was Sharpe’s “argument” for the Giants that was particularly puzzling.  He began by saying that he would not mention Plaxico Burress and the New York Giants again for the rest of the season, however the one thing he will say today is that Burress’ absence will be felt for some time because the receiver was such a vital target for Manning over the past few years.  This point, with which most agree, was the lead in to his larger point that the Giants will be fine with their young receiver corps, but it might take a month or so for them to gel with their quarterback and be more comfortable in the system, as they get more opportunities with Burress and Toomer gone.  Sharpe spent some time talking about rookie wideout Hakeem Nicks’ size and ability to out-muscle cornerbacks.  He sees in Nicks great upside.  But this is what was so curious about Sharpe’s analysis: because the Giants’ receivers will be get more comfortable as the season goes on and Nicks will eventually blossom into a starter, the G-men will beat the Redskins today, Sharpe seemed to suggest.  It was a confusing case that made little sense.  (Of course I was prepared for this: Sharpe picked the Cowboys to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl because of their running game.)  But it is exactly what these pundits don’t mean or want to say that is most often what needs to be highlighted.  In this case, it was Sharpe’s focus on the Giants’ wide receivers that has to be spotlighted.  And it is there I begin with my keys to the game.  (Theismann, to his credit, talked about the inexperienced Giants’ receivers in an effort to make a case for a Redskins’ victory.  He was laughed at and called a “homer.”)

·          Giants’ Receiver vs. Redskins’ Secondary: Carlos Rogers is starting and the secondary should continue to build on the solid season they had a year ago.  Although they did not produce enough turnovers, the unit is rarely out of position and each player understands his respective role in Blanche’s schemes.  With the improvements to the defensive line and the maturation of Chris Horton at safety, the secondary will have plenty of opportunities to produce interceptions.  Furthermore, Eli Manning’s tendency to throw it up and hope for the best—and now with Super Plax gone the “best” is not there—will allow the defense to make plays on the ball.  Finally, the Giants’ young receiving corps will have to gel quickly with Manning if they want to move the ball down the field.  I think this is too tall a task for the unit in week 1 against a solid secondary and Manning will struggle moving the ball through the air.  Advantage: Redskins’ Secondary

 

·          Giants’ Pass Rush vs. Redskins’ Offensive Line: The Giants have one of the best defensive lines in the NFL and they excel at rushing the passer.  Last year, the defensive line wore down at the end of the season, so management decided to stack up on free agents.  (They also get Osi Umenyiora back after he sat out the entire year on injured reserve.)  The Redskins will have to counter this fierce pass rush with a healthy Chris Samuels watching Campbell’s blind side.  Next to him will be Derrick Dockery who returns to the Redskins from Buffalo.  This should sure up the left side of the line.  Stephon Heyer will have his hands full at right tackle again—last year on the first play of the year Justin Tuck beat Heyer for a sack.  Zorn will have to counter the speed and dynamism of the Giants’ rush by putting Campbell in the shotgun—a formation with which he is comfortable—and a mix of slip screens, draws, and quick hits to receivers.  Advantage: Giants’ Pass Rush

 

·          Tom Coughlin and staff vs. Jim Zorn and staff: Last year, Clinton Portis ironically called Zorn a “genius” and it was clear that he was critiquing the first year coach.  And for good reason: at times, Zorn seemed to believe his design was all the offense needed to move the ball and score.  He was a bit cocky in his play calling, too, and was a bit over-confident in his system.  It seems that in the off season Zorn has gotten the message and understands how X’s and O’s need bodies and only certain bodies fit certain X’s and O’s.  That is, he has adapted his way to fit his player’s strength as opposed to the strength of the offensive philosophy.  Coughlin is a proven winner with the Giants and he is clearly the more successful head coach.  We have to keep in mind, though, that the Giants lost defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to the Rams.  So, it will be interesting to see how this defense responds.  However, the Giants’ staff still has the edge. Advantage: Coughlin and staff

 

·          Albert Haynesworth et. al vs. Brandon Jacobs: The Redskins have a very good rush defense, but Jacobs and the Giants always seem to run well against them.  So, Daniel Snyder went out and signed free agent Albert Haynesworth precisely for games like today’s.  If Haynesworth is true to form and occupies two or three blockers at a time, the Redskins should be able to slow up Jacobs.  Haynesworth should be key in this game and in the defense’s attempt to be an elite unit: although they were fourth in the league in yardage allowed, they were abysmal in getting to the quarterback and producing turnovers.  Haynesworth will be valuable in this regard, but his primary task today is stopping (or allowing others to stop) Jacobs.  In my view, he will successful here.  Advantage: Albert Haynesworth et. al

FINAL PREDICTION: Redskins 24, Giants 17.  The Redskins will be able to move the ball against the Giants banged up secondary.  Manning will struggle with his new receiving corps and throw at least 1 interception. The ‘Skins’ defense will start to show flashes of dominance.

On Criticism

I think one of the great things about a blog is that one gets to work ideas "out loud."  If you are lucky, dialogue then happen in comments and these conversations enrich subsequent posts. One thing I am interested in is working out loud here criticism.  I will, I think, spend some time trying to figure out what a critic does and what the role of criticism is really.  I mean, I know; but, I want to use this space to think through some things.  So here goes.

If anyone is serious about criticism, he knows that one need not have been a practitioner in a particular field in order to be a sound critic.  That is, one need not be able to paint or sculpt to be a critic of painting or sculpture.  They do, however, need to know everything about the piece, the artist, the history.  As neoclassic German hermeneutics has taught us, we need to know more about a particular work than the artist himself knows; we have to know the ins and outs of the particular canvass and what lies on the horizon of possibilities, even if the artist himself cannot fathom them.

Hence, critics play an important role because they do not only serve "quality control" in the way that a movie critic might in terms of recommending a film, but also because critics keep culture moving forward.  There is no coincidence that during times of vast and important artistic explosion, there is a thriving and concomitant critical class.  We can see this in one of the greatest explosions in Western culture--the modern avant-garde.  (Renato Poggioli details this in his indispensable and classic 1962 text, The Theory of the Avant-Garde.  Even if dada, surrealism, or the absurd isn't your thing, you should still check out this wonderful, wonderful book.)  We can see this operative in hip-hop of the 1980s and 90s: Vibe was a good, solid magazine and folks such as Nelson George and others writers at the Village Voice were as crucial as the artists themselves.  I don't think this is a chicken-egg thing; it just seems that great criticism and great culture happen at once because they push and pull each other.  (I might be contradicting myself here.  I can't tell.)  

I am rambling a bit and I apologize.  But I think part of what ails contemporary culture is a dearth of strong criticism.  (Jacques Barzun says the intellectual and cultural sweep of the West from the Reformation to the present is best described as one from "dawn" to "decadence."  He might be right. But decadence is not necessarily a bad thing if one knows what to do with it, like the Dadaists or blues musicians did.  They possessed know-how because they had and were amazing critics.)  I understand that, because of economic demands, the days of publishing little books or tracts or journals of criticism are, for the most part, over.  But perhaps the internets can become that space, as critics need space and culture needs critics to have that space.  Or am I being naive?  Can the internets really play a role in saving criticism?

Know Something! Read Everything! Then, maybe, Write.

When I was taking a seminar on the history of criticism, the professor made a comment that has stuck with me ever since.  She said, "You don't write until you know something. You can't write until you have read everything."  The context of what she was talking about was context, that is, the professor was referring to writing scholarly articles, books, or any other occasion that requires the author to be "an expert" on the particular field or topic.  (Clearly, she did not mean you don't write anything until you are an expert because she certainly collected lots of writing assignments that quarter.)

One of the implied requirements in this professor's dictate is time.  To read "everything" you need time.  To know "something" you need time.  And with time, comes aging and thinking. With time, comes experience and reflection.  This is why, in my view, so much writing across the internets and other publications has been so bad.  Actually, I should specify and say that the writing itself is not always bad, but rather the argument, reasoning, and research has been bad. Case in point: Ross Douthat of the New York Times.

Douthat is the intellectual wunderkind of the right.  A graduate of Harvard, he worked as an editor at the Atlantic and is now a columnist at the New York Times.  He sits as their resident conservative.  What is so enticing about Douthat is that he writes well, indeed quite well.  The problem is that, given the importance of his perch as the NYT, he does not know enough. He is simply too young and does not understand how to construct an argument.  His columns are often porous in terms of support and syllogistic in terms of logic.  Both of these realities lead to extremely weak columns that, if anything, show that Douthat is not ready for the biggest of big times.

Take today's column.  In it, he argues that "Blue-State" style of governance (read: liberal) is deepening woes whereas "Red-State" style of governance (read: conservative) is lessening the effects of the recession.  He uses California and Texas as test cases, yet gestures to other "Blue-States" such as Michigan and Ohio.  (You see, what makes a state "blue" is if it voted for Obama.  Why this is the case is unclear.  Ohio, for instance, voted for Bush twice.  Why it is blue really makes no sense given the fact that Obama has only been in office for 6 months. Moreover, who a state votes for in a federal election has no bearing on whether or not that state is run "blue" or "red."  But, I digress.) He argues that Texas is weathering the financial storm quite well--they did not run budget deficits, he boasts, while not mentioning that the state has not fulfilled many of its social obligations such as aid to her citizens; whereas California is suffering greatly.  The last point is true, but he failed to mention a little thing called Prop 13 which makes it virtually impossible for the state to raise taxes to deal with its problems.

Furthermore, his lionization of conservative states over liberal states does not take population into account.  States such as California and New York have much greater unemployment, welfare, and other social service obligations than does Alabama or Mississippi.  He never accounts for the realities in the particular states--such as the make-up of the state legislatures and state governorships--because that would make throw winkles into his argument; indeed, it would render the column even more nonsensical.  But then, it would not be as neat and his categories of liberal and conservative would more explicitly be seen as futile, is not as spurious, as they really are.

Now, this I chalk up to Douthat's youth (he is not yet 30) and his eagerness to carry the conservative mantle in the NYT.  It is just that he does not know enough, he has not read enough to do the job.  This is the case with a lot of these writing wunderkinds who come right out of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, get internships and then quickly find themselves experts and writing at the Atlantic, the New Republic, and other similar outlets.  

For an example of one on the left, see the above bloggingheads between Dayo Olopade and Reihan Salam.  Olopade is ubiquitous these days and speaks on so many different issues, most of which concern race.  She, too, is quite young (no more than 25)  and many times does not know what she is talking about.  The reason why I have an issue with her is that she is quickly becoming the go-to-black-female in the written media and will soon be on TV, no doubt.  There are so many more seasoned and, frankly, more knowledgeable black women out there to call on.  God bless Olopade's ambition and energy but she is clearly not qualified to talk about much of what she is asked.  For instance, in the above video Olopade has no idea about what is going on.  Just look at the first 10 minutes or so.  Listening to her talk about the Supreme Court is embarrassing.

I think ambition is a great thing and it is clear my generation has a lot it.  I just wish we would get over ourselves and spends some time learning something and reading everything.  I think Douthat and Olopade are great examples of how striving can get you far, yet once you reach a wonderful height you find yourself lost, not knowing what you are doing, because of a lack of experience and knowledge.   

Chalkboards, AP Exams, and Misogyny

Over at The Root, the online magazine owned by The Washington Post that focuses on issues of particular concern to the African American community (Is that PC enough?), there is an article called "Making School Cool" by writer Cord Jefferson.  In the article, Jefferson outlines a few approaches that he argues might make education and schooling more attractive--i.e. "cool"--to young black boys.  All of these ideas involve dangling material in their faces.  One strategy, perhaps most famously espoused by Harvard economist Roland Fryer, is paying students for achieving well on tests.  Another is getting rid of maxims such as "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" or Mandela's "Education is the greatest weapon" because, according to Jefferson, they ring hollow and "laughable" to young people struggling to survive in the harsh conditions and realities of urban life.  He suggests, however, we replace these expressions with seemingly more enticing lines such as: "'So instead of wasting time on a rap career that odds say will never materialize,' you can tell him, "Why not go to college, study music and business, graduate and then work your way up at a label?  And, if that's not glamorous enough, start a label!'"  

One can easily argue that Jefferson's line is just as hollow as any other.  Moreover, there are serious questions concerning organized efforts to pay students for performance.  Also, Jefferson makes no mention of early childhood education.  And his shallow understanding of why students excel is glaring.  But we need get into here why Mr. Jefferson needs to take an education theory and practice 101 course.

Instead, what I want to talk about is how this article participates in the same kind of debilitating misogyny that has plagued black masculinity for some time.  Jefferson begins his article relating a conversation between youths he heard.  One of the boys was explaining to the other why it was necessary to get a master's degree.  Here is the take away: "Because once a nigga gets his master's, a nigga be bangin' women he thought he could never bang."  Jefferson then admits that after hearing this confab, he thought, "Know what?  Maybe he's [the boy philosopher] onto something."  Later in the article, Jefferson suggests that we can spur our young boys to do well in school and their careers (e.g. get an international business degree and start a company in Paris) by telling them that "exotic women" are at the end of the line.

This kind of misogyny is insidious and shameful.  In Jefferson's calculus, women become flesh, simple material like money and clothes that our young boys can aspire to acquire if they do well on tests and get a college degree.  I don't know what Jefferson was thinking; but the more I consider it, the more I realize that this kind of misogyny is so unconscious, so rooted in American society that even a "thinking" Jefferson would not have noticed it.  I am sure he found the bile he advocated a pragmatic, reasonable solution to make things better.  (Hey, free labor--e.g. slavery, sharecropping, worker exploitation--is also a pragmatic, reasonable solution to some of the qualitative problems of making profit in capitalism.)  But he never stopped to consider where this line of reasoning would leave young women.

At one point in the article, Jefferson quotes the Notorious B.I.G. to legitimate his strategy. Biggie famously rapped, "Money, hos, and clothes--all a brother knows."  Thus, according to Jefferson, we should play to what "a brother knows" as a way of making that brother perform better in schools.  What Jefferson does not realize--and this is true of much so-called hip hop "scholarship"--is that just because a brother "knows" something, that does not mean it is right and that said brother cannot "know" something else, something new.  We need to critique what a brother "knows" in this instance and critique the very conditions that produced that knowledge.   

Jefferson should be ashamed of himself and he owes sisters an apology and a retraction. 

On the Unattainability of Perfection: Race in Eastwood's "Unforgiven"

There are very few things that are perfect, especially in art.  There is, though, John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme," Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano singing the duets in Tosca, Sarah Vaughn's voice, the screenplay to Casablanca, AZ's verse on "Life's a Bitch" from Nas' Illmatic CD (the greatest rap CD of all-time), and the overture to Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro."  This is just to name a few of the few that are perfect.

So, as I was watching Clint Eastwood's film "Unforgiven" the other day for the first time, I realized that here is a film that might be perfect.  It is simply wonderful: the acting, the story, the characterizations, the cinematography, the screenplay, the music.  It was a seamless and cohesive piece of art; "Unforgiven" is truly a masterpiece.

But of course masterpieces aren't always already perfect.  And part of the fun of being a critic--or at least an armchair hater--is to find the itsy-bitsy holes in a masterpiece.  In "Unforgiven," that hole involves the construction of race and how blackness operates--or not--in the world of the film.

The film is a Western that takes place in the 1880s.  Morgan Freeman plays Eastwood's partner; they constitute an assassin-for-hire team.  Throughout the movie, they are outsiders; insults and violence are hurled at them.  Yet no one makes note of Freeman being the only black man in this Wyoming frontier town.  No one calls him "nigger"; no one outcasts him for his blackness.

This really rings hollow.  I get the sense that Eastwood did not want to draw attention to it, as race is not what the film is about.  I also believe that because Freeman's wasn't a "black part," Eastwood believed it did not require a racialized focus.  This is liberalism-cum-naivete gone awry.  Once Freeman's black body is placed in this postbellum Western town, there has to be at least some mention of his blackness--and that mention should, at minimum, be insult.  It has to be. That was the reality of the world in which this movie takes place.  (Remember, lynchings were just about as frequent in the West as they were in the South.)  I am not saying that they need to harp on it, but it needs to be dealt with.

To his credit, however, Eastwood does at two points in the film seem to be aware of Freeman's character's blackness.  After they are told who they are to kill and that the town whores are the ones offering the reward for the kill, someone makes the point that they are defending whores who deal in selling flesh and people whose flesh are sold don't deserve respect.  They cut to Freeman who has one of those subtle yet probing visages that he is known for; the viewer gets the sense that the reaction is a comment on black people and slavery.  This works, but is remarkably quiet.  Also, at the end of the movie when Freeman's character is killed one can read race into the lynching.  But it is more about story and the racial element might not be there at all.

All this to say: 1. "Unforgiven" is brilliant but not perfect.  2. Its lack of perfection is due to good intentions that are supra-cinematic.  The lesson is that for art to be perfect, it has to remain true to itself and not to outside demands.  (Callas' voice might not be pretty, but for what she was doing, and within the demands of the art at hand, it was perfect.) Go see "Unforgiven" and enjoy this almost-perfect contemporary masterpiece.   

Community or Chromosome: Where Is Siblingdom Made?

As I was flipping through the channels this morning, I came across a program on MTV enumerating  the best moments on "True Life."  "True Life" is MTV's flagship series that anchors some of the best documentary programming on cable television.  (Their "16 and Pregnant" is also an insightful and important series.)  One of the countdowns was "best reunions."  This showed soldiers coming back from Iraq, parents being reunited with children they hadn't seen in decades, old loves, and so forth.  But one of the reunions I found particularly peculiar, or at least the dynamics of that reunion.  It made me start to think:

How are siblings made?

I know the simple math: if one shares a biological parent with another, this pair are siblings.  But I am talking about something deeper; I am talking about emotional connections, a network of kinship, a social relation marked by mutual obligation.  

In the show, two sisters reunite.  But one of them did not know about the other until the pursuer located the pursued.  The latter, when informed that this was her sister, asked from whom--that is, was it her sister from her dad or her mom.  (It was the dad.)  That means she did not even know she had a sister until that moment.

And yet, she instantly started to cry.  And cry a lot.  And shake.  She threw herself around her theretofore unknown sister.  But this seemed so odd to me.  All they shared was DNA.  They had never fought over a toy--let alone a boy.  They had never teamed up against their parents or competed for their parents' affection--not even once.  Neither had stolen the other's scrunchy or SWV cassette.

Wouldn't they have needed to be at least cognizant of each other and have shared a meal, a word, some air to warrant that kind of reaction?  It read absurd; yet I could be the crazy one. Maybe there is some kind of in-the-air bond between siblings.  Or perhaps there is a mental disposition that tells us that we need to act a certain way when we find out that someone is our sibling.  My question is not about the specificity of emotion, that is, what it should be; but rather my question is concerning the volume, this woman's outpour of emotion when she found out this stranger at her door should have been having tea parties with her 15 years ago. And it was real, as she did not know about the cameras.

(By the way, those photos above are Invisman52 and his sister.  Yeah, don't hate the player or his fly, horizontally-striped shirt, hate the game--and 1986.)

True Player For Real: Fox News Continues Being The Smartest in the Business

If I asked you two weeks ago what cable news network would be giving legitimacy to the claims of the Birthers--i.e. that President Obama was not born in the United States and consequently Constitutionally disqualified from serving as POTUS--you would have said Fox News.  But no!  It is CNN. Although many of its commentators blast the Birthers, Lou Dobbs, who is one of their most popular hosts with shows on CNN TV and Radio, continues to give the Birthers voice and say that they raise important and valid questions.  Ok, Lou.

But this post is about Fox and how they out-fox and out-Fox their competition.  Bill O'Reilly, the most talented and at times most nauseating cable news host, has called Dobbs' claims absurd all the while upholding his first amendment right to freedom of speech.  Chris Wallace, the host of their Sunday news program, said on Imus this morning that Dobbs and CNN are acting crazy, they are "grassy knoll nuts."  So here you have the right-wing network blasting Dobbs and CNN President Jon Klein for their right-wing craziness.  Fox comes off looking sensible, all the while allowing the birther story to air as they "critique" it.  They also out-Fox their competition because no one does right-wing ideology like them because they get away with it in unimaginable ways.  At this point, we all just say "That's just Fox being Fox."  Yet many groups are calling for Dobbs to be fired for this story which is, really, not nearly as bad as some of the stuff on Fox.

Fox just knows what they are doing.  Because of that, they continue to be on top in terms of ratings and dollars.  CNN and MSNBC not only lack the on-air talent of Fox, but also they do not have the administrative and production wherewithal that Fox does.  That top talent on Fox is denying the birthers and doing it on the daily makes them seem like the place of sanity and reason. (Glenn Beck would be the exception that proves the rule.)  Fox News Channel is, no doubt, that true player for real (and ratings).