Free Michael Vick?

Here's the thing: I'm not much of a fan of Michael Vick as a football player. I don't care for his undisciplined approach to quarterbacking. He's clearly a brilliant talent but I cannot understand why in his five years as a pro he could not show greater skill development. Even before Vick's legal troubles arose many football analysts shared the view that his career was at something of a crossroads, wondering whether his overall play would ever live up to his awesome physical gifts. And after two years away from football while serving time in jail for running a dog fighting ring it isn't even clear he can return to the sport as a quarterback, let alone pick up where he left off as a star performer. Even so, I was all set to write an indignant post in support of him and decrying the recent decision by the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, that Vick must wait an indefinite time period before he can return to the playing field. Initially I thought the decision to be grossly discriminatory. After all, Vick served 23 months in jail and is a convicted felon with all the stigmatic accouterments that come from being released into American society as a felon. He's done his time and now wants to return to his chosen craft in order to make a living. He's estimated to have lost upwards of $100 million in salary and endorsement monies due to his conviction and has filed for bankruptcy. How much more punitive, I was ready to argue, should society be for his given crime? I was set to assert that for the NFL, or any other employer for that matter, to evaluate his employability based on his previous conviction was prejudicial and essentially un-american. Undoubtedly my thoughts are also influenced by an instinctive sense of empathy I feel towards Vick and other minority ex-cons. I happen to share an overarching conviction held by many in the African-American community that blacks are disproportionately jailed in America. The consequences on family structures and the larger community compound exponentially as released felons often have great difficulty assimilating back into society, creating a self perpetuating cycle of violence and disfunction.

However, I've come to believe that the commissioner has acted fairly towards Vick, perhaps just barely, but fair nonetheless. In reaching this conclusion I sought to generalize the circumstance and put in place of Vick any citizen, of any race or any profession. And contextualized thus it occurred to me that many, perhaps most, businesses given a similar set of particulars would be wary of allowing a felonious employee to resume a job where the employee is a public face of the brand. To be sure, Vick was at one point a major element in the NFL's branding and imaging as a league full of hip, cutting edge competitors. His transgressions at best re-cast him in the eyes of some of the public as the prototypical celebrity athlete who believes himself above the law and at worst a murderous villain. These perceptions may be slow to reverse if they ever do. Furthermore, and as aforementioned, Vick's legal troubles served to effectively veneer a career that had been at a crossroads in any case; his star may have been in descent. So, quite reasonably, the NFL wants to see how its consumer audience reacts and how Vick reacts to returning to the intense crucible that is professional sports celebrity in America. I think there's nothing inherently wrong with the NFL seeking to protect its brand in this way. Although the NFL is arguably the premier sports league in the US today, there are other professional and semi-professional sports leagues out there where Vick could ply his trade. He just may not make millions in those other leagues. I'm not prepared to support the notion that anyone, let alone someone who so callously and cavalierly threw away so much wealth and opportunity, ought to be guaranteed the right to by paid millions of dollars.

Its quite fascinating how two of the bigger new stories of the current cycle, the Vick ruling and the Gates/Crrowley incident, reflect upon our society's continuing struggles with race and class. And for arguments sake I'll throw the birther movement against Obama into the mix too. Perhaps upon first glance each of these stories seems to hinge mainly on endemic racial themes. However, when we look deeper I'd argue that in all three, respectively, raw capitalism, class values and politics play the predominant role with race but a secondary variable. Would Michael Vick have received further punishment from the NFL if he was not a minority? I hope I've successfully argued above that there's a strong possibility a white player would have received similar judgement by the league's marketing mavens. While race surely remains a factor in how the American public responds to a celebrity, it is no longer THE determining factor; for the most part we've evolved to become equal opportunity capitalists. If it had been a white male scholar who, while in his own home, verbally abused a patrolling officer would the officer have arrested him? I'm dubious but I'd still venture that the larger contributing factor to the arrest, infused by the notion that the officer in question was widely considered an 'expert' at racial profiling, was Gates lack of deference to the badge, which I'd suggest is largely a phenomenon of class. Finally, would fringe right-wingers be harassing a white democratic president about the validity of his birth certificate? Perhaps not but based on the manner in which the GOP went after Bill Clinton (but then again perhaps he was black too??!) throughout his presidency it's clear that certain republicans strongly dislike liberal presidents of all races and will be vociferous in their opposition to their legitimacy.

So I guess the moral/lesson implicit here is that we'd all do well to do a better job at working towards understanding opposing viewpoints. In today's America, complexity is the rule, simplicity the exception; that is, race is but one factor in a long list of rationalizations we'll use to screw each other... :) Sigh...alas, I couldn't keep a straight face long enough to let go without injecting a dose of law of the jungle aphorizing. Oh, and if you're maybe wondering why I chose not to equivocate the Sotomayer hearings alongside those other racially inflected news items, well, her treatment by the GOP was all about race, sorry can't be generous and magnanimous on that one.

Obama/Gates vs. Popo

I had intended to write about the state of the health care debate and Obama's lack of effectiveness at framing the issues for the citizenry. However this Gates thing has flared up and I think my opinions on Obama's self-injection into the matter encapsulates my broader thinking on his job performance in sum. To put it plainly: he don't know what he doin', man. Dude really doesn't fully understand the job of president yet, IMHO. Which is OK, it's a heck of a difficult job and each new president learns how to do the job as he goes along. I do hate to be continually derisive but I have the impression Obama's feelin' his way in the dark still. He's making a lot of unforced errors. Unforeseeable errors to be sure, and errors are not wholly unexpected, to be kind. I've said it before, in these first six months we are witnessing the downside of Obama's relative inexperience. Having said that, I continue to believe that he is on the road to becoming a great president; he's mostly got great instincts for the job and I have no doubts that his heart is in the right place. I hold him to a higher standard and he comes up short sometimes (OK often), as politicians often do. I'm frustrated that Obama hasn't been able to offer more passion and show more assertive leadership, I find him unnervingly passive. I get concerned that even as my perception is that he has shown himself strong and resolute in a crisis (after all the nation has been mired in an economic crisis his entire presidency), his passive, taciturn, reserved approach to communicating with the American people on nearly all matters will encourage his enemies at home and abroad to test him. It's fine to speak softly but every now and again in the current world we live in it's vital IMO that the American president flex "the big stick". This can be achieved rhetorically and Obama, particularly during the primary battle with Hillary, has proved he can be a master of the idiom. Where's the Obama who spoke with such passion and conviction after Iowa or at the Democratic convention (both in 2004 and 2008!)?? Got to at least flash some of that juice every now and again if only to keep the skills up, right??

The Gates flap is perhaps a perfect microcosm of the President's current shortcomings with regards to tone and effective messengering. It's inexplicable to me why a politician who generally has been so measured about racial matters would dive headlong into such a murky affair. To be crystal clear as to my position, a feeble 58 year old man of any race shouldn't be arrested in his own home for disorderly conduct. However as a purely political matter, at it's essence, the Gates affair is a 'he said/she said' event of individual perception and, indeed, individual bias. And as such there was almost no political upside for the POTUS sufficient to justify wading into it. Outside of being seen as sticking up for a friend, just about anything Obama would have said about the matter was sure to enflame or offend a great many people, with little to gain IMO.

Most American adults, of any race, who've ever had opportunity to watch the police work likely can shape an opinion of how the incident may have escalated out of control. If you're African-American, particularly if you're an African-American male, chances are you've actually experienced a similar situation and/or have someone close to you who has. If you're of another race, there's plenty of TV shows that illustrate policing techniques, from COPs to Americas Videos to fictional dramas. So there's no shortage of mental images we can muster to imagine what happened in the Gates home. But the essential point seems to me that none of us were there, the President wasn't there. Putting aside Obama's personal loyalty to his friend Prof. Gates and perhaps even his own personal bias as an African-American male, it simply wasn't Presidential IMHO to imply in any way that the police acted improperly. Even with - - especially with - - his disclaimers about not knowing all of the facts and his acknowledgement of personal bias, the President of the United States should have known to use more conciliatory language, if only as an act of political expedience. Coming at the end of a press conference ostensibly focused on health care, his self proclaimed top priority issue, this was a particularly egregious error of poor timing and unskilled diplomacy from someone who ought to know better.

If it sounds as though I'm agitated about the matter it's because I am. The bigger picture is that Obama, as 'the first black President', is no different than any other of the Black pioneers in medicine, sports, entertainment, politics. There's simply too much at stake given the fragile nature of race relations in this country for him to get 'caught out there' on such an easy trip wire. Everything any president says reverberates in the canyon of public thought and policy from the moment it leaves his or her lips for the rest of eternity. If Barack Obama and I are having a private conversation as private citizens and discussing the Gates issue and BO says that he thinks the police "acted stupidly" I say, "yeah man damn skippy, that s**ts ridiculous." Truthfully though, in most instances two black males conversing about such a matter would never even have to go so far as to venture an opinion; OF COURSE the police acted stupidly in arresting a 58 yr old man in his own home. Yes its possible that there wasn't a racial element to the incident but, so far as most american black folks are concerned, its far more likely that there was racial bias involved. Starting with the neighbor who called in to police to report, "two blacks breaking into the house." Be that as it may, the POTUS has a responsibility to stand up for both law enforcement and the citizen; he cannot be seen as taking sides. If all the facts of a case are known, that's a substantially different matter altogether; I'd say in that circumstance the POTUS is obliged to weigh in and utilize the bully pulpit to guide the nation in the direction he feels appropriate. I'll also admit that no matter how the President had handled the question he likely would have taken flak from an important element of his voting bloc. But his choice of words inflamed the situation in a way that showed a lack of forethought and self discipline IMO. At the moment I heard his comment I inwardly thought to myself, "I wish he hadn't said that but I'm glad he did." Followed immediately by a wincing, "man, I wish he hadn't said that...what the f**k was he thinking?" Followed by, "why couldn't he demonstrate the same passion for health care or energy policy?? Why doesn't he bash 'just say no' republican talking heads with the same pep and animus??!"

Getting to the bottom of things...

So the other day was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. And I watched and read myriad testimonials, recollections and recountings of that singular event. It all blew my mind, made my imagination run wild. On one show they replayed the six moon EVAs, showing the astronauts galavanting giddily around the surface of the moon, collecting rocks, playing golf, unfurling flags, etc. And it was just insane; men had gone back and forth to the moon 40 yrs ago, landed six times, left flags and rovers and s**t and ain't been back since. Can't go back either, as there's currently no vehicle or support system, no current technology that would allow men to return. Many articles dwelled on this incongruity, mainly within the context of questioning what should be the ongoing mission of the US space program, ie mars vs. moon, manned spaceflight vs. robotic, etc. Few seemed to get into the underlying social ramifications/implications, other than in passing, of a society which spent approx $135 billion (in todays dollars) on sending men on an exploration during an epoch of such social upheaval and rampant poverty. As the song poet Gil Scott-Heron commented at the time, "No hot water, no toilets, no lights yet whitey's on the moon..." Well well...But I'm not going to delve deeper into that thicket here. I will say I'm torn about human space exploration. It does indeed seem difficult to me to justify it when there are so many pressing issues here on earth. That I'm a sci fi nerd to the extreme who can quote star wars chapter and verse does little to assuage my ambivalence. My vacillation, though, is about more than economics; I'm all for human exploration of the cosmos. I just have a hard time getting super excited about sub-interstellar space exploration (however when they get a warp drive going I reserve the right to change my position) when there's so much of our own planet that we've yet to fully survey. Indeed, we barely have the technology to research our earth's least accessible areas, such as the bottom of the ocean. I'm an advocate of exhausting our knowledge of the earth, of our home, before we broaden out to the 'stars'.

So I'm hoping here to draw attention to this interesting quirk of human (american?) thought processes: the notion that going beyond the earth is somehow more exciting, more challenging and more valuable than exploring here on earth. Although I haven't the time nor deep interest to explore it fully, I wonder whether this is in fact a truism for a majority of people on earth regardless of nationality or a uniquely American perception. Or perhaps a product of our modern media culture. I wonder if statistics would even bare out my initial premise? Be that as it may, on the face of things I'd probably posit, as some others have, that what I'll call 'space exceptionalism' is a modern phenomenon intrinsic to Americans. It may be in part a relic of the cold war era, of the post WWII era. I mean, there was a time not long ago when triumphant explorers received ticker tape parades in the US. It wasn't so long ago that the american public knew the names of prominent archeologists, paleontologists, astronomers, etc. (and poets, composers, painters and other esoteric fields but thats another kettle o' fish). Gradually and increasingly I'd say we're becoming desensitized by the glut of information available to us and by the wizardry and whip appeal of consumer technology. As more and more men achieve, the once hardly imaginable has become almost mundane. Take for example the scaling of Mt. Everest, a once scarcely fathomable trek with nearly impossible odds against success. It's still considered quite a challenging feat but now folks take cameras - - and even camera crews - - up with them and back home many of us watch less with awe than with detached curiosity. I sense that we've become a culture that's loath to be impressed by anything or anyone. Television commercials tell us we're inadequate all day long, that we constantly are in need of this or that, and I'd say part of the defense mechanism of our collective psyche is to overcompensate and over-inflate our egos. We cannot stand for others to be 'above' us, we need to feel that even our heroes are 'just like us'. We constantly seek opportunity to expose their weaknesses, thereby making them more ordinary. Reminds me a bit of the premise in the movie "The Incredibles" where the antagonist super villain hoped to create a world where, (and I'm paraphrasing)' everybody is super so that no one is super.' I wonder if there's a sociological study out there which gets into the health of the American super ego? Of course we really don't need any study to tell us that whole lotta folks are having a hard time loving themselves these days, which means they likely have a significantly impeded ability to care deeply about the needs of others as well..

But on to the really important stuff, the sci fi: here's a couple links which deal with how much of our planet we've yet to explore:

This first link is a WIRED article discussing the various depths of the ocean and how little we know about depths beyond seven miles down. The main crux of my internal argument against the space program deals with the idea that we cannot readily put a man on the bottom of the ocean or near the center of the earth and yet we're talking about...whitey on the moon/mars. I mean wake me when they get to the earth's crust (or develop the aforementioned warp drive). I'm only awake now because we got a black president but that novelty may soon wear off...

WIRED 12.12.08: "Dive! Dive! Dive!"

This one on the surface sounds on its face like sci fi nuttiness (spoiler: its about living dinosaurs) but who can really say until we actually go into these places/environments, have a good look around and...strip mine the whole g*dd**n place like you KNOW we will! :-/o

True Authority.com: " The Mokele-mbembe"

So my message is explore innerspace, day dream about outerspace...at least until we get a warp drive and a transporter and all that s**t...and we'll need some photon torpedos too, just in case there's some hostile cats or renegade asteroids and stuff out there too...