RINGITONE STAR ALI-Z HOSTAGE OF EAST AFRICAN PIRATES

East African Ringitone star Ali-Z was hamstrung and taken hostage by

automatic weapon toting pirates in the early hours of Sunday morning

off of the East African archipelago of Zanzibar. Several of his guests

were injured and robbed of their possessions at a champagne brunch

after-party to the Death Star Unplugged environmental awareness

concerts which had taken place  the previous evening up and down the

Swahili speaking East African coast.

Guests were snapping pictures of several frogmen who were posing as

black-pearl divers when suddenly the leeward sides of the boats in the

flotilla were simultaneously boarded by men in Barawa lungis

brandishing spearfishing guns. Ali Z in a typical show of Swahili hospitality

welcomed the men to eggs Benedict, ice cold Moet and showed them several bikini clad

aid workers who were dancing to the sounds of Zenji Flava and Ringitone

on the lido deck of his Scarab cigarette speedboat. The leader of the

group, later identified as Slinger Francisco promptly unsheathed a

Turkana simi concealed in his waistcloth and hamstrung the

unsuspecting Z and catching in mid-air, his large Cohiba cigar and placing

it in his mouth, proceeded  to instruct guests to remove all

valuables. Forcing them to walk the plank, Francisco made off with mad

cheddar as a despondent Z lay bleeding in pool of Crys, piss and

bilgewater. Just hours later a video surfaced on a repatriationist

website showing a haggard Ali Z in good spirits in the dark makuti

backdrop of the BPLA hideout. He said, "In the future I will shut the

fuck up when I don't know," and said  "I am being treated well and am

learning alot. And they gave me, like a mosquito net and whatnot, so

its all good!"

"Oh my god, that was so whacked! I couldn't believe how mean they

were." Remarked Kathy Johannson, commonly known Clove-Nyce, a member

of The Spyce Girls, the Swanglish bubblegum Ringitone trio made up

entirely of ex-pat Anti-Excision activists from Berkeley who was among

those who performed at the Death Star concerts and had been aboard Z's

boat "Fiesta Mami" when the incident took place.

BPLA, the Black Pearl Liberation Army is a ambiguous group with no clear 

aims dominated by the whims of

its leader Slinger Francisco, a shadowy figure who has in the past had

links to Mungiki and Mashiftah criminal elements up and down the East

African Coast. He has also has been identified as a major player the

illegal " African blood pearl" trade and has been linked to the

alleged mercenary activities of Haines International in a failed coup

attempt in the tiny oil rich islands of San Pedro. Francisco who was

born, Natty Morgan, in the rural Jamaican Parish of Westmoreland rose

to prominence as the charismatic polygamist leader of the millenarian

Church of the Rice Bowl movement in the late 70's which grew out of

the shantytowns and back alleys of Illtown, East Orange. After being

indicted for tax evasion and e-mail fraud in the famed Borman Six Case

he was jailed at Clinton State Correctional facility for Women where

he made a daring escape and fled to Guyana, reluctantly welcomed by the

Burnham government. Years later he resurfaced as the chakacha crooner

The Stinker with a string of hits including "White Man's Hell is a

Black Man's Paradise" and  "Don't Touch Me Pylons, Holly".

"Our thoughts go out to you Ali Z. Stay strong and keep it real, son,"

the Zenji Flava artist Case Quarter appeals in a stylish PSA run

hourly on the African video channel MTV BASE. If you want to sign the

petition calling for Ali Z's speedy safe return, click on the link

below.

http://www.myspace.com/lulunyeusi

Friends: A cartoon by Investor's Business Daily's Michael Ramirez, a copy of which was also published on the editorial page of the July 17 Chicago Tribune (Sec. 1, p. 14). -- Where is the slightest hint that, lurking in the background throughout the whole saga of Major League Baseball and performance-enhancing drugs, the individual Major League Baseball player depicted-at-left as a bloated, exploding, cancerous-looking body into whom the syringe injects its chemicals, is and has always been Major League Baseball? When one of World Wrestling Entertainment's juiced-up celebrity athletes died violently, the first persons at whom the news media pointed their fingers were the principal owners behind the WWE. So how come the same news media don't point their fingers at MLB's owners, their Permanently-Acting Commissioner Bud Selig and his top executives?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Friends:

It is expected that Barry Bonds will break Major League Baseball's all-time home run record, currently held by Henry Aaron, before the end of the 2007 season. 

Bonds will have broken Aaron's record via the juice.  Via cheating.   In other words, Bonds will steal Aaron's record from him.  Because the only way that Bonds ever came close to Aaron's record in the first place was thanks to the juice. 

To this day, Major League Baseball protects Bonds.  A business enterprise that has extorted billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded stadiums, and that ought to possess less credibility in our eyes than a group of kids tossing around a ball or playing a game of tag, protects its most famous cheater.   And as fan disenchantment with this fact has risen, especially this season, so has MLB-ESPN-type hype about the "superstar" athlete and his assault on the home run title.

Question: As MLB's annual All-Star game travels to San Francisco next week, try counting the number of times somebody kisses Barry Bonds's ass.  Then tell me who is victimizing Barry Bonds.

And tell me how it can possibly be that a liberated commentator on the American Sportsworld could get this one story this fucked up.   An athlete-hero cheats, this cheat is protected by the professional sports league for which he plays, and is fetishized to the maximum capacity of the corporate media whose products are indistinguishable, ultimately, from the sporting events and athlete-heroes they cover (How's that for synergy?  It may even out-synergize presidential politics), and I am supposed to believe that the commentator who rushes to protect this same athlete-hero and the whole apparatus that enables him is [fill in the blank]?

You've got to be kidding.

Ought not a leftist commentator cultivate the seeds of disenchantment that already have taken root in the hearts and minds of fans, and are struggling to grow? 

Major League Baseball (Hompage)
ESPN - MLB (Homepage)
World Wrestling Entertainment (Hompage)

"Zirin and Bonds," Paul Street, ZNet, June 20, 2007

"Baseball and Steroids II," ZNet, March 8, 2006

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Okay. For what it's worth, I recently (in a piece sub-titled "Why I've Been Skipping to the Sports") quoted Zirin favorably on why people like sports (despite all its problems) and watching major athletes.  I am with EBPatton and Mike Albert in arguing against elitist demoniziation of "ugly [and largely working-class] Americans" for liking sports. See my comment above (somewhere) on my real issue being the capitalist perversion of sports at its highest levels especially.  

Zirin walked into a space that is too vacant because of left over-hostility to sports per se.

I think/hope "on the field" includes the steroid issue and the related home run freak show that took off in late 20th and early 21st century and of course BB is a poster boy ---- along with Mark M (white) and S Sosa (blk) and others ---- of that revolting episode.  Somewhere Peterson gave the statistics on BB et al.'s home runs before and after juice and of course its just ridiculous from the perspective of someone who loves the American pastime as artistry (I gew up playing it some and still hit the batting cages)...which is not to deny that some pitchers have used steroids (Clemens is suspected; I don't know the facts).  

If McGwire had stayed on and was the one chasing Aaron, I'd be disgusted by him as well.

That by the way is a counter-factual that Zirin should pursue (maybe he has): "what if it was juicehead McGwire chasing Aaron instead of juicehead Bonds this summer?" How different would that be? My sense is the steroid disgust would taint MM in that case a great deal but that yes the response would be more favorable in the white majority fan base. 

I'm writing under this name as I'm not on my personal computer and can't access my password for krekouche right now.

Mr. Street, I don't think Zirin dismisses you or other people who dislike Bonds for legitimate reasons.  He specifically said in his article after acknowledging legitimate reasons for dislike:

"But much of the reaction to Bonds is simply bad old-fashioned racism. "

Race may not play a part in your personal dislike of Bonds, but it does play a part without a doubt in the "almost surreal level of hostility" that Bonds receives from many in America. 

As far as your point about Obama, I'm aware of your situation.  I've read your articles for years and your blog since you started it.  In the political arena you have many substantive issues for you to aim your critique, so that when someone tries to play the race card on you, it should be easy to defend yourself.  When it comes to disliking Sports "totems" (as Peterson refers to them) then one doesn't really have much to substantiate their dislike other than for things that person does on-the-field.  I have no doubt you personally are turned off by his behavior in interviews and his (possible) lying to a grand jury in San Francisco.  But I have serious doubts that the extreme hate of Bonds in America generally is based on such good reasons.  

I will add (to inadvertently remind folks of the original post) that I have long received a modest number of e-mails doing the same thing to me on Obama that Zirin is doing on people who have good (non-racist) reasons to dislike Bonds. Some people will write me and totally ignore the actual substance of my Left critique and then simply and childishly inform me that I reject Obama because he's black. Oh, okay. It's an interesting charge against someone coming out with his second major book on and against anti-black racism and for racial equality and justice in the U.S. Such loose charges discredit serious anti-racist sentiment and struggle. I am reminded of Norman G. Finkelstein's brilliant book Beyond Chutzpah, where he details American Zionists' over-the-top determination to find anti-Semitism in any and all critiques of Israel. The American Jewish Israel lobby discredits legitimate concerns about anti-Semitism and other forms of racism and ethnocultural chauvinism with their over-the-top accusations. In a simiar vein, Zirin discredits serious anti-racism efforts by going so over the top on peoples' response to Bonds. Of course there is a certain part of the white population that hates Bonds and even Obama (who tries to accommodate white racism to a significant extent...he's running for president in a white majority nation after all) simply because they are black. That's a terrible thing but many "fans" dislike Bonds without being Jack Johnson haters just like people can dislike the conservative mixed-race Obama without being a racist and can criticize Israel without being Holocaust admirers/denialists.

 

Christopher Hitchens doesn't worship celebrity atheltes (as far as I'm aware).  But the MO is very much the same (as was stated unambiguously in the third paragraph).  That MO involves the crafting of exaggerated straw men with whom the pundit-warrior does battle.  Hitchens still collects residuals from the vitiated Left for his successful employment of this strategy.  Though for the kind of reason you mention (i.e., its sheer grossness), he has ceased to fool as many people as often as he did in the earlier years.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

 

Comparing Zirin to Hitchens is amusing considering that the criticism of Zirin was his over-the-top comparison of Bonds to Jack Johnson.

Hitchens advocated the Iraq war and is responsible for helping to persuade many liberals to support it.  His hands carry the blood of over 100,000 people.  Zirin may be "infantile" but let's get real.

 

 

 

Friends:

In a repeat performance (see "The Unforgiven: Jack Johnson and Barry Bonds," ZNet, June 20), Dave Zirin writes:

The question we need to pose is why so much anger, so much visceral, throbbing fury is directed at Barry Bonds, and why do we in the bleachers or at the bar so casually accept it?  If we ask the question, we will begin to get at some less than comfortable answers.

It's hard to gauge how much "anger" and "visceral, throbbing fury" over Barry Bonds is really out there.  People who fall victim to the deeply irrational communicative prisons of the American mass (though elite-serving) media wind up obsessed with and angry and furious over all kinds of crazy celebrity-totems and similarly non-existent demons: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Jessica Somebody, Lindsay Lohan, Rosie O'Donnell, whoever.  (I happen to be reading these names straight off a major U.S. news website.  And I will leave it up to Dave Zirin to tell us whether the obsessions with these celebrity-totems are good or evil.)

But my strong hunch is (a) that Zirin is exaggerating, and (b) that his exaggeration is strategic: The alleged angry, visceral, throbbing fury towards Barry Bonds over nothing more than Bonds's "unforgivable blackness" gives Zirin a racist straw man in the bleachers and in the Sportsworld with whom he can do battle, and show his fans on the vitiated American Left how brave a warrior he is.  (Though I doubt he'd ever bother with celebrity athletes, Christopher Hitchens' MO is exactly the same.  And the fact that he retains many fans on the vitiated American Left is hardly a coincidence.) 

People who doubt this ought to take a look back at coverage of Barry Bonds in the years prior to the raising of consciousness about the connection between "superstar" athletes and performance-enhancing drugs.  Frankly, Barry Bonds used to get his ass kissed; and to this day, Major League Baseball protects him.  He was deservedly regarded as one of the best baseball players of all time.  (For all of the bubble-gum card reasons that Zirin knows by heart.)  Absolutely none of this was denied Bonds.

Instead, it was only when the general blind faith in the "superstar" athletes' natural talents was surpassed by the suspicion that the same athletes were in some fundamental way cheaters, i.e., were juiced-up on chemicals, not just talent, hard work, and nutrition, their heroic feats and record-breaking home runs also a function of the juice, that Major League Baseball's Home Run Heroes began to run afoul of writers and fans.

Fans who now believe that juiced-up "superstar" athletes are in some hard-to-define way cheaters and phonies, trying to pull one over the fans' eyes, and their new record-breaking performances tainted, are not necessarily bad things.  But rather than welcome these suspicions, rather than see in them the seeds of disenchantment with the whole Sportsworld, and therefore seeds worth cultivating, Dave Zirin sees something threatening.

"Racism in the bleachers: Debate over steroid use doesn't excuse threats of violence," Dave Zirin, San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 2007
"Zirin and Bonds," Paul Street, ZNet, June 20, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

I'm afraid they are beyond the point of return. Only a silver bullet can save them from their disease. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

If Fidel cured Maradonna of drug addiction than perhaps he can cure Cheney and the rest of the Washington Mob of their addiction to messianic militarism. I think Dubya and the rest should think about checking into a Cuban rehabilitation clinic. They could head down on the pretext of checking out Guantanamo and then slip over to Havana for some good anti-imperialist counseling sessions. If they responded well maybe they could get some face time with Fidel.

There is greatness in sport and this is my 5 cents just so I dont look too ignorant... Where sport meet the greatness of heart - here is maradonna & castro

Maradonna tell Cuba he will lead the anti-Bush march

Maradona SCORES!

Cured Maradona

I like the way Paul compares Sports to art. (BTW Paul, you are a terrific writer—this bears repeating). I once called one of my athletic friends an “artist of the instant.” But then again, I think advertising ads aesthetic value to products (think: brand named water?)—and there's little accounting for my taste. Most people who watch pro wrestling have a sense of humor about it that I know of—it's really a hilarious spectacle where the hype is transparent, and where your favorite legendary moments can be immortalized for a second with instant replay. So much is disposable in society—but sports can take those “perfect moments” and freeze them in a culture's memory. Has anyone seen the movie Idiocracy? It features a future of diminished IQ, where a pro-wrestler becomes US President (and shoots a machinegun into the air at the State of the Union). There seems to by a “hype continuum”—but I have a little more trust in your “average Joe” to be able to distinguish sports from war promotion… eventually. But that's me. Ebpatton—I don't think anyone's trying to pick a fist fight with you. If anyone's a Derridian here, and a wus, it may be me. Jacques was a nice guy who cared, and even though infuriating to many who would wish that he'd “just get to the point”—he often had something judiciously relevant to say on various topics. I'm not saying you don't know Jacques. No one does anymore: he's dead. But I don't see his relevance, other than to be defensive about some sort of high-brow/low-brow accusation. Post-modernism often dissolves this high-art/pop-art schism—and looks to interpret more popular art forms, like sports, in new ways and in a more dignified light (and yes, sometimes politically critical). There can be something sort of ironic in criticizing what you like or where you come from (and the pleasures need not be guilty): self-deprecation rather than self-flagellation.

Friends:

In this corporatized, mediatized, pharmaceuticalized, and, in the final analysis, Dave-Zirinized Sportsworld (wherein the History of what the Athlete-Hero has accomplished comes alive as the "soul of the whole world's history"), there is never any sure way to tell who sleeps in the same bed with whom -- and where World Wrestling Entertainment leaves off, and the rest of the major leagues begin.  Or, to quote Oliver Stone's David Ferrie: "Who the fuck pulls whose chain?  Who the fuck knows?  Fun 'n' games."

(Quick aside: I'll spare everybody a comparable quote from the New Pearl Harborites. Though anybody interested in two glimpses at how the Ministry of Disinformation is faring these days should check out: "On the Use Value of Conspiracy Data for the Power Elite," ZNet, March 28, 2007; and "Duelferland," ZNet, October 9, 2004.)

 But -- a simple question.  Reading the five following installments from the Sportsworld, which of the four writers whose bylines appear below do you think makes the best bagman overall?

1. Joe Cowley
2. Chris De Luca
3. Dayn Perry
4. Ken Rosenthal 

"Trade won't come easy," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, June 25, 2007
"Williams has seen enough," Chris De Luca, Chicago Sun-Times, June 26, 2007
"Exclusive: Buehrle extension near," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, June 27, 2007
"White Sox future may hinge on deadline," Dayn Perry, FOX Sports - MSN, June 27, 2007
"ChiSox signing Buehrle or playing games," Ken Rosenthal, FOX Sports - MSN, June 27, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Update (July 2): It appears that the services performed by certain sportswriters on behalf of the "beat" they ostensibly cover can surpass even that of New York Times correspondents who cover "national security" affairs. -- So, to repeat my earlier question: Who do you suppose makes the best bagman of them all? 

"Buehrle to Boston?" Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday, June 24, 2007
"Trade won't come easy," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Monday, June 25, 2007
"Guillen feels for Williams," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Tuesday, June 26, 2007
"Exclusive: Buehrle extension near," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Wednesday, June 27, 2007
"Buehrle Deal: Now or never," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Thursday, June 28, 2007
"The big deal will get done," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Friday, June 29, 2007
"Buehrle deal is dead," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Saturday, June 30, 2007
"Here's the deal," Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday, July 1, 2007
"Is tonight Buehrle's swan song?" Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun-Times, Monday, July 2, 2007

I believe most sports fans are ignorant -- ignorant of the possibility of a classless economy, and sports' role in such, not to mention many other things. But that wasn't what I asked.

I specifically asked if you thought they were stupid, not ignorant. What is your degree in, anyway? It can't be math or science, since you're not analytical enough for that. I would have said English, since you seemed to like the post-modernist Derrida, but I would assume an English professor would know the difference between "stupid" and "ignorant." Then again, maybe to a post-modernist, it's all the same.

Of that, I am certainly ignorant. Anyway, if you want to call me ignorant, just come out and do it. I don't mind. I like brutal honesty. Someone (a Marxist whose classism I was exposing) in these forums called me a prick once. Honestly, I got a laugh out of that.

Okay, time to eat some cereal and head to work, making barbecue sauce for everyone's July 4 keggers...

I highly recommend Chomsky's book that came out a few years ago called New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, particularly chapter 4: "Naturalism and dualism in the study of language and mind"

A point expressed throughout the book is that science understands very little about the internal mechanisms of mind. It follows that AI or any modeling of behavior is not going be very deep. Attempts to model the neuron activity of small worms shows that we cannot even understand very simple behavior. We pretty much have a complete lack of understanding of the internal mechanisms of mind/brain. The best thing we have, according to Chomsky are the internalist models of Universal Grammar -- which go very deep in explaining the human language ability. The models don't however explain free will, or the creative aspect of language (why we say and do the things we do), only the mechanisms in the mind which we use to express ourselves.

David Peterson— My recommended readings are fairly basic, but intelligent (as far as I can fathom). I need to stray more, away from the center of various canons, just as I need to be a little less abstract and general in my thinking and follow the peculiar more often. As I've mentioned to others on ZNet blogs before, I may tend to be more conservative, in many ways, than I would otherwise, due to my mental malady—but it can be difficult for anyone to embrace both their normalcy and their oddity. I think the marriage between calculation, logic, and computational AI is fairly straight forward—I switched my own emphasis from strict AI to socio-biological cognitive modeling awhile ago. There does indeed seem something special about human insight (or maybe even animal insight: I'm leery of those who would completely divorce “human nature” from “animal nature”—if there is such a “thing”). This reminds me of brilliant “a-ha!” moments, and ingeniously “thinking outside the box”—both of which may require more flexibility of approach than linear deductive reasoning (or searching problem spaces, etc.). There is definitely something qualitatively different from calculated reason with insight! I've always been impressed by the way Chomsky-the-scientist has room in his thinking for what he doesn't know (although he's often skeptical of such)—and might be scientifically “unknowable” (like consciousness). I think there can be much intellectual conviction, if not insight, in the words “we don't know... yet.”

JD Casten:

I'll have to share your recommended readings with some friends, as they go way beyond what I delve (rather than dive) into.

But your fourth paragraph raises a very provocative point: Namely, that in the field of "artificial intelligence" (at least as of now), "common sense is harder to replicate than perfect logic."   

I suspect that this is true.  But now consider what lessons we might draw from the fact (presuming that it is true).  For starters, does it tell us more about "common sense" or "perfect logic" or the current state of "AI"?  Consider also that it's been several generations already that human-made machines have been able to add and subtract and multiply and divide. And yet no machine -- please correct me, if I'm mistaken -- has done anything like replicate human insight (which we're forced to leave largely undefined).  Is this because human insight doesn't possess the same degree of seriousness as even simple arithmetic? 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. I still look at Nelson Goodman's stuff from time to time.  Though most of my artworld-related books have long since disappeared from my collection.

Postscript 2. So that wanderers will not be completely lost: JD Casten Website.

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EB Patton: 

I don't believe that sports fans are ignorant.  Not in the least. 

Only the ignorant ones are.

But the point generalizes to all human endeavors with which I have any familiarity.  And has nothing to do with sports.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Okay, let's see here...

A genuinely leftist approach to "sports" would be oriented around one set of goals above all: To demystify and delegitimize the Sportsworld, to help liberate its consumer-junkies from their need for a daily fix, and to resuscitate from deep inside of them something more elemental -- the otherwise buried human instinct for play.

I dunno. I have no idea what "Sportsworld" is supposed to be. A Kevin Coster movie about a flooded corn field where everyone looks for a dry ballpark?

Anyway, the above paragraph sounds to me like Peterson is calling sports fans stupid. But since Peterson writes like a post-modernist, I really don't know what he's saying. I don't know what Peterson's field is, but it's not physics.

Let's say Peterson's right though, and sports fans really are no different from drug addicts whose substance of choice is ESPN. Why do they watch? Why do sports fans watch sports instead of play sports, or read Chomsky, or whatever it is Peterson thinks they should be doing?

Has Peterson thought about any of this, or does he just think ESPN's viewers are the electronic equivalent of pot-heads?

To put it another way: A leftist commentator would approach the Sportsworld exactly how Wittgenstein advised one to approach philosophy: Like kicking away the ladder after you've climbed up it, you'd be free of the Sportsworld, and look upon the human play-instinct with clear eyes.

Again, it sounds to me like Peterson thinks sports fans are stupid. Maybe I'm wrong, but dammit, that's what this sounds like. Until I get clarification, that's my position.

Instead, in his work, Dave Zirin clings to athlete-heroes like Linus to his security blanket, and is so locked-into the Sportsworld that he liberates nobody. Can you imagine a quote-unquote leftist approach to Hollywood that asked us to hang onto celebrities?

WTF is Sportsworld? I'd really like a definition, please. And no, telling me to read Derrida won't count. So Zirin's a flake on Bonds. I read What's My Name, Fool? I didn't think it was Parecon: Life After Capitalism, but it didn't suck either. I've read better, I've read worse. We can discuss someone's book on Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins after it's written (or at least brought to my attention).

What has always amazed me is how many people Zirin has managed to fool.

Christ. This stuff is infantile. But his shtick sure plays well.

See, I think this is it right here. I think Peterson is jealous that Zirin is selling more books than he is. Maybe I'm wrong. *shrugs* All I can say is that I've read Peterson's blog postings, and I think Zirin's shtick isn't the only shtick that plays well -- just apparently not well enough to sell as many books as Zirin.

I've be happy to retract all of this and eat humble pie for the rest of my life if Peterson would just say he doesn't think sports fans are stupid.

Finally, from a subsequent posting, Peterson writes

Whereas Dave Zirin's clinging to athlete-heroes (or totems) is worshipful and nothing short of fetishized (mystified and mystifying, I might add), and ought to be picked apart by any Left critique of the Sportsworld, rather than mistaken for such a critique; my own personal tendency is to cling to batting cages, go-carts, minature golf (Or do you say "Putt-Putt"?), pool halls and bowling alleys -- also real alleys and street corners, which were always a lot more fun and inherently playful than the Chicago Public Parks. (Which were pretty fun in their own right.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Or maybe I don't. But Peterson still didn't bother to deny my claim that he thinks sports fans are stupid.

So David, do you think sports fans are stupid, yes or no?

Thanks for the link and wise words. www.jdcasten.info is this “humble” poet's personally run vanity website—through various lures, I get a little over a dozen unique visitors daily to my “museum of me.” Paul Guyer's essay ends up being more sympathetic with Kant. Although I agree with Herder's noting that Kant could stand to be a little less transcendental (not transcendent) and more down to earth—in defense of Kant, Kant does balance his jargon laden way of saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” with worldly Common Sense (the sense of the community) that suggests we can generally agree on what is good art. Contemporary art has for some time now become about stretching the limits of what could be considered art. Hence my own interest, similar to an AI theorist finding that common sense is harder to replicate than perfect logic, looks towards what makes Clichés, Kitsch, and Truisms almost unquestionably invisible even though ubiquitous. But then again, one's doodles don't always coincide with one's theories. My favorite pair of Analytical books on the philosophy of art is: Philosophy of Art; a Contemporary Introduction – by Noel Carroll Theories of Art Today – Edited by Noel Carroll And for Continental Aesthetics, this book has a good selection: The Continental Aesthetics Reader – Edited by Clive Cazeaux Some might find them worth Checking Out. Does anyone know of any good books on activist art? I've heard this is good: The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics – Milton Glaser & Mirko Ilic

JD Casten:

Great website. Thanks for calling it to my attention. -- Are you exclusively in charge of it?

"Free Play and True Well-Being: Herder's Critique of Kant's Aesthetics," Paul Guyer, May, 2006 

By the way: On all questions concerning life's madnesses versus its responsibilities: Don't ever sell the former short.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Derrida (yes, sometimes very wrong) likes to play games—and not always the language games that “plain written” Wittgenstein seems to mystify many people with in his later philosophy. The work of those two seems quite simple compared to Joyce's Finnegans Wake taken as a philosophical work (“This is me Belchum sneaking his phillippy out of his most Awful Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly”)—neural-symbolic/archetype dialectics. Taking the possibility that scientific form, actually has some significant content.

I think it's useful to remember Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value. When the Jordan-era Bulls had their championship runs in the 1990s I was hooked on the spectacular artistic use value of Michael Jordan (and sometimes Scottie Pippen). His performances were often close to magical and transcendent though I suspected you needed to have played basketball on a somewhat serious level to get a sense of just how remarkable he was (same for Bird and Magic and before them Dr. J and Earl Monore and Maravich and Jerry West and others)on the court. To me watching Jordan was to look through a new window on an aspect of human potential.

I had the same feeling growing up watching Bobby Hull (Blackhawks), Bobby Orr (Bruins), Willie Mays (Giants), Pele (Brazil) and especially (for some reason) Gale Sayers (Bears). Seeing these guys perform was priceless. And it fed active athleticism....we'd hit the courts and (try to) learn how to spin like Earl Monroe; hit the ice and learn how to slap shoot like Bobby H; play center field and try to run back on a fly ball like Willie etc. We totally idolized these guys back in grade school. (Some of the discussion here seems to have a bit of a false dichotomy between watching and doing...at least by my experience you watched to learn how to do).

What was different by the 1990s besides the passing of youth was the expandeed commodity (exchange) value of big time professional sports. The money involved under the new winner-take-all economy of global capitalism was so off the charts that it became fairly sickening to anyone who distrusted wealth (as I was brought up to do)...and this with full awareness that the owners got more.

When I was a kid you'd look on the back of a major leaguer's baseball card and it would tell you that he sold insurance or ran a restaurant in the off season. This made you think that he was at least partly in the same human community that you inhabited. You had a feeling that Rocky Colavito (Indians) was playing baseball mainly for sheer love of the game --- its use value --- and not only or primarily for its exchange value...to get filthy rich. Now you don't know. You hear about guys making millions while hitting .205. Meanwhile the real proletariat has seen its buying power stagnate for decades and can hardly afford to take its families to more than one game a season. It hits you in the gut the wrong way.

I find myself more drawn to minor league baseball and high school athletics, wondering which players might possess the ability to make it big and not spending all that much time watching the ones who do make it to the big show. Still, there's a level of artistry that can only be seen at the highest (if now fiflthy rich) levels and I still occasionally want to see the best at work.

In any event there nothing wrong with appreciating athletic artistry at all levels from a Left perspective as far as I'm concerned. People simply are not equal in their abilities and that's actually kind of cool and fascinating. There's something remarkable about seeing the best do their thing. What's perverse is the socially constructed disparate pricing of people's inherently and wildly divergent athletic use values. What's wrong is the capitalist context.

Friends:

Whereas Dave Zirin's clinging to athlete-heroes (or totems) is worshipful and nothing short of fetishized (mystified and mystifying, I might add), and ought to be picked apart by any Left critique of the Sportsworld, rather than mistaken for such a critique; my own personal tendency is to cling to batting cages, go-carts, minature golf (Or do you say "Putt-Putt"?), pool halls and bowling alleys -- also real alleys and street corners, which were always a lot more fun and inherently playful than the Chicago Public Parks.  (Which were pretty fun in their own right.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

...and I'm not talking about the Stallone movie. Patton, I tend to like what you say in this place, but this last bit is over the top. (Much prefer your great remarks at Mitchell Szczepanski's recent blog.) Peterson never wrote that sports fans are stupid, never wrote that sports are stupid. He did, however, write that sports---big league, marketed sports---attracts "consumer-junkies" (often true) and that Zirin's stuff, at least the two articles he linked to, is "childish". I don't think Peterson has to defend himself from undeserved charges, and I certainly don't think he's earned the charge "seeming narrow-minded classist". Saying that Zirin writes childish stuff and that sports encourage hyper-consumerist behavior is not classist. Me? Never liked spectator sports. The real deal is always better. Ditto for sex. Keir The Hague

SK:

Not sure whether you'd ever find these gems if I posted them to the long chain on Norman Finkelstein and without my prompting.  Therefore, be sure to check these:

"Can Derrida Be 'Even Wrong'?" Mark Liberman, Language Log, September 29, 2003
"Postmodern Essay Generator" (Homepage)

In the first, we read about a "parlor game" that involves the writings of Jacques Derrida.  "The point [of the game] was that Derrida's admirers are generally unable to distinguish his pronouncements from their opposites at better than chance level, suggesting that the content is a sophisticated form of white noise. On this view, as Wolfgang Pauli once said of someone else, Derrida is 'not even wrong'."  (PS. The author hyperlinks to an electronic version of Giovanna Borradori's 2003 book of "dialogues" with Derrida and Jurgen Habermas: "Philosophy in a Time of Terror," another hardcore exercise in systematic distortion -- though in Habermas' case, not simply noise.) 

In the second, every time you click on the hyperlink, your computer will be directed to a never-before-existing, syntactically sound text with a fictitious title and author that parrots the post-modern style of "discourse."  (Somebody's software program generates these things on the nonce.  No matter how many times you click-on the hyperlink, a novel text -- at least I believe they're all novel -- is generated that contains passages which are more or less indistinguishable from the most enlightened "discourse" of some of the world's leading post-modern text-generators.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

Postscript. Also check out: "'Israel's Sacred Terrorism', Livia Rokach (3rd Ed., 1986)," ZNet, June 26, 2007 

Yes, sports serve the function Chomsky says they do. I agree with Chomsky. Sports are used by elites to promote "irrational attitudes of submission to authority." But that doesn't make sports intrinsically bad.

It's like pornography. There's a segment of the left which thinks porn is inherently sexist. I agree with critiques of porn that say its current manifestations are sexist. But that doesn't mean that, after we've overthrown capitalism and replaced it with parecon, and after we've won comparable revolutions in kinship, culture, and polity, that porn won't exist.

Put another way, will porn exist in a good society? I say yes, though obviously in a different form. I think the same is true of sports. Sports may be used by elites for nefarious purposes, but that doesn't mean sports are somehow intrinsically bad, or that competition on a field, court, or track is somehow intrinsically bad.

Perhaps, as Albert wrote in Realizing Hope, sports will morph into some sort of non-competitive activity. I'm not sure I agree, but I also think he could be correct. I also don't think it matters for much for activists in 2007. I think what's important is for us to realize that, whatever function sports play currently, and however ugly their current manifestation may sometimes be, sports in and of themselves are not inherently bad. Just like pornography, in and of itself, is not inherently bad.

But when someone like Peterson hits sports and sports fans, and then (apparently) runs away, that is inexcusable. I don't like everything Zirin writes. But neither does Zirin's work suck either. But to leap from a critique of Zirin to a seeming excoriation of sports and its fans -- which is what Peterson seems to do, but he hasn't bothered to come back and clarify his remarks -- is just too much.

Most sports fans are not stupid. Even sports fans who have never heard of Chomsky know enough about market-based capitalism to have a basic, if unconscious, understanding of the way the world works and sports' role in it. It's funny you mention the Steelers. I grew up a Steelers fan, watching them in their glory years with my father (who I have since determined was an asshole -- but that's a whole 'nother story).

I'm not a Steelers fan anymore -- I don't have a favorite NFL team. But what I really want to say is this: I have always been a fan of sports, and I have always been around fans of sports. If I were to relate Chomsky's views on sports to most sports fans, the vast majority would understand and agree with what Chomsky is saying, in my opinion. It might take a little time to explain the nuances to some of them. But I believe they would all understand it.

This notion that just because someone is a fan of Dale Earnhardt, Jr., that he (or sometimes she) must be an idiot is not just insane -- it's horribly classist and coordinatorist. Sports fans are not stupid! And a love of sports does not mean one can't simultaneously aspire to overthrow capitalism and replace it with classless participatory economics.

But being a narrow-minded classist, as Peterson seems to be -- that will prevent any social change from occurring, whether said desired change is ending U.S. imperialism, stopping global warming, winning a single-payer health care system ... or winning a new economy. Tactically, trashing sports is a bad idea. But strategically, it's not even necessary. Just like with porn, sports can (and will) exist in a good society. That's my opinion, anyway.

Well, fan is short for fanatic:

"A person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause."

Which brings to mind jingoism and other "unreasoned enthusiasm" that goes to the heart of many problems.

In recreational sports I don't feel there's anything wrong with rooting for a home-town team or whatever. I know Chomsky's main criticism of sports is that he believes it instills wider attitudes that go outside the domain of recreation, like "unreasoned" radical nationalism. But for me, I know the difference between rooting fanatically for say, the Pittsburgh Steelers (as I do) and "rooting" for the US to be the dominant world power in a "bigger game" of "life".

Of course there are the problems of capitalism, no real participation by "fans" (as Peterson was saying), etc. I also think it's the main goal to break out of the Sports Industry and the Hollywood-esqe romanticism around the "stars".

But if one's goal is orgarnizing people and helping with education or liberation, you have to deal with the existing world. Sports fans aren't idiots, obviously, but they generally are entrenched in the "system" as it is, and can't break their illusions instantaneously, nor can society as a whole change capatilism and the unequal distribution of resources instantaneously. In that sense, I think Zirin is reaching out to a wide audience who can gradually grow their awareness of bigger issues.

 

Mr. Peterson,

I still would like to know why you hate sports so much, and why you apparently think all sports fans are idiots.

Since I started this sub-thread and didn't at all want to get so grossly explicit, perhaps I should explain my intent. I was reacting (a bit obscurely, I suppose) to atomcrasher's unambiguous ideal of "doing what you like," which is what De Sade is all about. Sade is good to know about (though horrible to read) because he is probably the only intellectual who ever unequivocally identified power with inflicting pain. He showed the emerging industrialists of his time (who were scared by Voltaire and Rousseau etc.) how to keep people under control in the inevitable "democracy" they were being forced to accept. He is the true spirit of capitalism, and I like to recommend him to people like atomcrasher in the (probably foolish) belief that they'll see the error of their attitude.

I agree that top-level sports isn't exactly progressive in nature with its silly wages and advertising deals. That doesn't mean I don't like it though. I'm a big fan of football ("soccer" for you Yanks...), though not as a big as I was before, and follow many other sports. Sports can be a very good thing, especially for children. And if we try to take on sports with the goal of getting rid of it, just forget about growing a movement strong enough to do anything. That said, I generally look at sports and "entertainment" as our version of the Roman gladiators and the "games". It's a way of keeping people away from taking interest in the important matters of running society and making decisions, by keeping them occupied with something else. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

sk you are kidding right? dont tell me someone posted this horror ( 120 jours de sodome) on youtube.. this is bad taste.

Reading doesn't seem to be his strong point; viewing this will be enjoyable tho as it reveals many kindred souls.

I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly; I may not be. But it seems to me that you're suggesting there's something wrong with being a sports fan? Some of Zirin's stuff is good. I can't get with Bonds though, no matter how much Zirin writes about him. But I still like sports. I see no contradiction between being a pareconist and a sports fan.

In my fantasy world, I'm either Larry Bird, Johnny Unitas, or Roger Federer, depending on the season.

Aah, the familiar "blame the victim" excuse. People in Africa are poor because they are lazy towelheads that don't work. Real nice. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

I find many of Zirin's articles useful and insightful. I've personally referred many people to ZNet to read his articles -- folks who would have otherwise had no interest to visit this site. Hopefully they continued to read other things on ZNet.

 

my kleenex fight pertain to the candidate campaign and link you provided.. he even tried to make fun of Edwards for being widely seen as attractive.

Paul:

A genuinely leftist approach to "sports" would be oriented around one set of goals above all: To demystify and delegitimize the Sportsworld, to help liberate its consumer-junkies from their need for a daily fix, and to resuscitate from deep inside of them something more elemental -- the otherwise buried human instinct for play.

To put it another way: A leftist commentator would approach the Sportsworld exactly how Wittgenstein advised one to approach philosophy: Like kicking away the ladder after you've climbed up it, you'd be free of the Sportsworld, and look upon the human play-instinct with clear eyes.

Instead, in his work, Dave Zirin clings to athlete-heroes like Linus to his security blanket, and is so locked-into the Sportsworld that he liberates nobody.  Can you imagine a quote-unquote leftist approach to Hollywood that asked us to hang onto celebrities? 

What has always amazed me is how many people Zirin has managed to fool.

Christ.  This stuff is infantile.  But his shtick sure plays well.

"The Unforgiven: Jack Johnson and Barry Bonds," Dave Zirin, ZNet, June 20, 2007
"Zirin and Bonds," Paul Street, ZNet, June 20, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Atomcrusher (oops, sorry--crasher), you should read the Marquis de Sade--you'll love him.

I agree that in the context of an entire nation's wealth, someone who earns exponentially more than the average person does indeed owe a lot to society. I haven't read the sources mentioned, but I'm well aware that the wealthy owe their wealth to inequalities and unfairness of all sorts. In the context of professional baseball, though, on the topic of Barry Bonds being a role model, or a nice guy who smiles and grants all autograph requests, interviews, and adheres to the rules of the Industry's media racket -- he has no responsibility whatsoever. In that sense he can be viewed as someone standing up for Left values somewhat (refuting authority, resisting a ridiculous system). Correct, it doesn't make him Jackie Robinson.

But he's used a pawn and a tool by the owners and Sports Establishment, and he and other athletes are considered by the fans as circus-clown puppets whose existence on this Earth is solely for their entertainment purposes. In that context, Bonds' attitude is understandable. Maybe like Buffet, Bonds is someone who benefits from this system but admits the truth about it also.

I think if Bonds were white the extreme hate of him generally would be less severe. McGuire actually admits he did steroids, temporarily broke the 40-year old single-season HR record, and you don't hear a peep of hate.  

The owners make more because they risk more. They put up the capital they worked to create. This is what all you loser leftties and radical crackpots can't get through your totalitarian skulls: the virtue of hard work, which brings wealth, which gives you the power to do what you like, including supporting Obama (who I loathe) if that's what you want.  This is why you guys are poor and pissed off, like so many in those exploited ghettos you claim to care about.  How about trying to hold down a job and learning how to invest your savings?

Things are especially bad in the NFL, where careers last 3-4 years and crippling injuries are rife. Selena Roberts has been doing some excellent work on all that (including the pathetic NFL position and behavior on player concussions)at the New York Times. My sense is that the football players have the least protection. (It would be nice but unimaginable for the Times to cover U.S. foreign policy like SR covers the NFL). Oh sure the owners make more and its terrible and their vast opulent fortunes and profits outstrip those of the athletes - that's well known on the Left and in organized labor though not quite as well known in the populace. Sure they exploit athletes (even multi-millionaire athletes); they're capitalists after all. People who call into raise this issue on sports talk shows will generally be mocked and shut down for sure; it's pretty much taboo like you say. But no Barry is not going to work as a focus of Left energies (Zirin is pretty much flim-flamming here). And it's not the same sociopolitical environment (around race) as the Hank Aaron era...it's still racist in my opinion but the contours of the problem were starting to shift in relevant ways into the post-Civil Rights age of neoliberal racism that I talk about (see the level 1 v. level 2 distinction)in the Dissident Voice/BAR piece linked at the top of the original post. Zirin doesn't just go back to the 1970s...he reaches back to the Jack Johnson (lynching) era for God's sake. The notion that Bonds doesn't owe anyone anything is totally grotesque in my opinion (sorry). Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon has determined that “social capital” accounts for “at least 90 percent” of what people “earn” in collectively rich industrialized nations like England, Japan, Germany and the United States. Simon's definition of “social capital” includes natural resources, “good government,” and the presence of advanced technology and organizational skills. Simon says that a moral argument can be made for mandating a flat income tax rate of 90 percent on the wealthy. There is no moral or social-scientific basis for the opulent minority's claim (and Barry is in the opulent minority, even if the owners are further up in the income/wealth pyramid) that it “deserves” every dollar it “earns.” No less an expert on – and beneficiary of – American wealth inequality than U.S. mega-billionaire Warren Buffet acknowledges that he owes most of his personal fortune to "social capital" (Took down last blog piece because it may be distracting and it can go up later).

The way I see it, why shouldn't Bonds be a narcissistic jerk? The owners of the club he works for and the companies who profit from him are worse. He understands he's a pawn played by the make-believe world of Professional Sports and he refuses to be a phony to facilitate this fraud. Ya, he makes a lot of money, but not as much as the industry which profits from him and profits from the circus that surrounds the sport. It's almost as if we're being played by the Sports Industry to hate the athletes for their gross salaries, while the owners themselves are never brought up in the discussion, with their enormous profit margins and their capacity for power and manipulation. I'm not equating Barry Bonds to a mill worker, but there are some analogies here when talking about their salaries. This is the case with most American professional sports. Unless you're the NFLPA, it's taboo to talk about how much cash the NFL rakes in and it's encouraged to insult the players and call them "crybaby millionaires" when they demand market value from a team.

Zirin makes a good point that when Hank Aaron was about to break the homerun record he received 930,000 letters mostly containing hate and death threats. The sociopolitical climate hasn't changed much since that era, in my opinion. And like or dislike of Barry Bonds for anything other than what he's done on the field seems unjustified -- no one knows the man personally except his friends and family, and most who have strong negative opinions of him have never met him. It's like a soap opera from the media where sports fans are engrossed and believe the script writers.

I do think much of the hate of Barry Bonds has to do with his attitude that he doesn't owe anyone anything (he doesn't) and on top of this he's a black man doing this -- refusing to smile for the cameras and say Cheese and thank you.

 

Barry likes to pout and feel sorry for himself though this may partly reflect depressive impact of long-term head- expanding steroid use. Zirin wants us to know that Barry Bonds is some kind of proletarian hero (at however many million a week) in part because he has "a chip on his shoulder" that is related to the fact that his old man (Bobby Bonds, the SF Giants' steroid-free center fielder after Willie Mays back in the 1970s) was an early baseball trade unionist and caught hell from ownership. Barry Bonds really reminds me of Joe Hill, Harry Bridges and the old black Left packinghouse trade unionist Hank Johnson. When he breaks Aaron's record, I expect whatever ballpark he's in to break into a hearty rendition of "Solidarity Forever." A wave of celebratory direct workplace actions - shop-floor occupations efforts and sympathy strikes culmininating in a pre-revolutionary crisis of the late capitalist state perhaps --- may well spread across the land. This is the weird kind of shit that happens when an actual left is so thoroughly decimated ..desperate and/or disingenous and/or stupid people imagine Bono or Barry Bonds or George Clooney or Angelina or Sanjaya (sp) or Obama as symbols of resistance or something. Last point on the strange Bonds attachment of Zirin (who has done some great pieces on other sports and society topics including the Pat Tillman fiasco): it's a little odd to see not being excited about Bonds' effort to unseat Henry Aaron's record as racist when Aaron is black. I have zero idea what cyrano could mean by "having a kleenex fight over their brain." (I said in the original post that I think Edwards is better than Obama). And I'd like to warn against the use of mysoginist language ("bitches fight") as well.

I've never liked Bonds. I'm sure Clemens and Canseco are asses too, but they don't seem to go out of their way to be jerks like Bonds seems to.

lol, Paul but it look that obama and edwards are having a kleenex fight over their brain.. the worst is they claim that they have substance over cuteness; whats next are they going to pretend to be pseudo witty as the certain stalker who is a cheap physicist?

Well, then Edwards should be the winner. This is subjective of course but I'd have to give the superficial "looks" race to handsome John Edwards. Obama is apparently a little sensitive about being a bit odd looking and he even tried to make fun of Edwards for being widely seen as attractive. 

To the more weighty matter raised by the first commenter (whose identity is poorly hidden), that's partly a false dichotomy ("race v. class"). This is what I had to say about that in a 2002 ZMagazine article titled "Class, Color and the Hidden Injuries of Race":  

"liberal-left intellectuals have...in recent decades spen[t]  a considerable amount of energy on a dubious debate between traditional class-based, social democratic politics and a more modern (or postmodern) politics of identity, as in gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, and race. This controversy is based partly on a false and counterproductive dichotomy, however, for class and race have always been inseparably wedded to one another in the American experience. From colonial origins to the present, failure or inability to comprehend one part of America's simultaneous race and class equations system has undermined the ability to grasp and act on the others. It's about race and class, not one or the other. Among the many developments for which this is true, we could include the colonial Virginia ruling-class's fateful discovery that Black chattel slavery was the solution to their unexpected New World class problem with rebellious white ex-indentured servants, the abandonment of the former slaves after the Civil War (something that partly reflected business class fears about the signals that southern 'Reconstruction' would have sent to northern white wage-earners), and the U.S. 'elite's' unmatched (in the industrialized world) ability to use racial division to keep unions, the welfare state, and independent labor politics at bay. "     

Now of course there are people on the Left who do in fact misuse race and go to absurd extremes to call certain people and opinions racist.  I think left sports writer David Zirin's defense of Barry Bonds and his identification of dislike of Bonds with white racism goes too far.  The ZNet featured article (today) by Zirin (where the author actually equates rampant Bonds dislike with the sort of racism that Jack Johnson faced and the sort that Henry Aaron faced when chasing the Babe Ruth [the white John Gibson] career home run record) is close to ridiculous.  Not because there's no racial content to the Bonds hatred (there surely is) but the analogies are just over the top and do not appreciate the complexity of New Age/neoliberal racism in the post-Civil Rights era. Jack Johnson? Please.

I'm not one to shy away from identifying racism in sports, but that's a bit much.

I have always disliked Bonds intensely (and I've never known a leftist who could stand the guy) both before and after steroid use kicked in and it has zero to do with race.  It has to do with BB being a complete knucklehead (a total narcisstic jerk) while pulling down ungodly fortunes for playing a sport many of would kill to get paid anything to play. Oh, and yeah...it has to do with the related issue of steroids.    

I've felt the same same way about Clemens (white), Canseco (white/Latino) and other non-black and white ballplayers past and present.

Yeah i saw the video , it is cheesy as hell. its strange it reminds me of Trudeaumania were women in Quebec in surveys were asked if they would bed Trudeau. political issues were ignored.. Trudeau was elected on looks appealing to women.

Paul, why do you write so much about race?   I thought crackpot loser leftists wrote about (supposed) class injustice in evil capitalist America.