We Owe the Dead Because We Care for the Living

Posted on 07 Feb 2015 by Frank Moraes

I was having a conversation with Ramona Grigg recently. You probably know her from one of her blogs Ramona’s Voice and Constant Commoner. Anyway, we were discussing the new book that Harper Lee is publishing. I became substantially less excited when I found out that it wasn’t something new, but rather a novel she had written before To Kill a Mockingbird. Generally, reading that sort of thing is disappointing — just a historical curiosity. But maybe not. We’ll see. Regardless, this led to a discussion of author’s intend.

Grigg mentioned that she had checked out a book of Willa Cather’s short stories, and discovered in the introduction that the author had explicitly said she didn’t want the included stories published. But here they were. Grigg was horrified by this and so didn’t read the book. That shows an admirable level of ethics. After all, Cather is long dead. But it got me thinking about the issue. And fundamentally, I don’t think it is a matter of Cather or any other dead person. But I do think that it is really important to respect the dead — because of the living.

In chapter 13 of the first volume of Don Quixote, this issue is discussed at the funeral of Grisóstomo. He is, from my vantage point in life, a supremely silly young man who killed himself because a young woman he loved, Marcela, didn’t love him back. But before he died, he asked that all his writing be burned with his body. As a result, his friend Ambrosio was set to do just that. But an outsider, Vivaldo, bristled at this idea. And he presented a fairly compelling argument for not following Grisóstomo’s wishes:

You would treat them even more harshly and cruelly than would their owner himself, for it is neither reasonable nor right to obey the wishes of someone who commands you to do that which goes beyond all reason. Who would have thought it right had Augustus Caesar consented to the divine Virgil’s dying wish, and allowed the Aeneid to perish? Accordingly, Señor Ambrosio, consign the body of your friend to the earth, but do not consign his writings to oblivion, what he ordered because he had been wronged, you ought not to execute out of imprudence. Rather, by preserving the life of those documents, which bear eternal witness to Marcela’s cruelty, let them serve as an example to those who live in future times, to shun and flee from such dangers.

Ambrosio won’t budge on this, because he was Grisóstomo’s friend. So Vivaldo grabs some of the papers and Ambrosio allows him to keep and read them, but will not allow more. It is all a set up for Cervantes to insert a rather long poem into the text. Cervantes always considered himself a poet above all else. But no one takes him seriously on this score — including me. Even in Spanish, they seem mediocre to me. In translation, they are usually dreck.

But this argument between Ambrosio and Vivaldo leaves out what I think is the most compelling of arguments in favor of honoring Grisóstomo’s request: the way it affects the feelings of the living about how they will be treated in death. Whether one believes in an after life or not, it can’t be that the dead care about how we treat them. Consider the ending of the Iliad. After killing Hector, Achilles drags his body around from his horse. That greatly distressed Hector’s father, King Priam. But it clearly didn’t distress Hector at that time. The idea of it, however, did greatly distress Hector while he was alive.

That is why I think honoring the wishes of the dead matters. And I suppose that puts me down on the baby side of the “save a baby or the last copy of Shakespeare’s complete works” question. It would be sad if we didn’t have the Aeneid. But I’m afraid that life is for the living. And that is why we honor the dead.

Afterword

For this article, I used Burton Raffel’s excellent translation of Don Quijote.

Fat and Happy Is Better Than Beautiful

Posted on 03 Feb 2015 by Frank Moraes

When a man like me who has been skinny his entire life, suddenly finds himself fat you are likely to see some serious work on him explaining why his new hefty size is really a great thing. Now I want to point out — I’m really only David Mitchell fat, not Chris Christie fat. And most people outside of Southern California don’t actually consider Mitchell fat. But the NIH thinks I’m just on the line of “overweight”; and at all times before, I was right on the line of “underweight.” You just can’t win with these people. Or more to the point, I just can’t win.

Truth be told, however, we probably shouldn’t consider people like me overweight. Or at least we shouldn’t when it comes to health. When it comes to nude extras on Game of Thrones, there is a different scale. But I’m afraid that such criteria have blinded our thinking in terms of health. Two years ago, a major synthesis of research involving three million people over decades found that overweight people (with a BMI between 25 and 30) were actually 6% less likely to die during the average period of the studies looked at. That isn’t that big a deal — it could be noise, although the result is statistically significant. What’s more, the effect could be due to better medical care.

What I find far more interesting is that much of the reporting on the study was dismissive. The focus was generally put on the finding that it was still bad to be obese. And indeed it is. And maybe it is good to focus on that in a country where over a third of the population is obese. But if the only finding of the study was that obese people had a higher mortality rate than thinner people, it wouldn’t have been reported in The New York Times. And it doesn’t even seem worth mentioning regarding a study that contradicts the linchpin of what most everyone thinks is required for good health.

I think it is all to do with what we find beautiful. We fetishize youth and thinness. And as a result, we try to justify claiming that being young and thin is healthy. It must be; it’s what is attractive! And this results in almost all advertisements that I see involving young and thin people. That’s even true when the ads are explicitly portraying “old” and “fat” people. According to Plus Model Magazine, ten years ago, plus size models ranged in sizes from 12 to 18; today, they are between 6 (!) and 14. The average American woman is a size 14.

Overall, the main thing is that people should just get on with their lives and accept who they are. The thing about me is that I like eating. And I cook far better than I ever did when I was my old skinny self. And I just can’t imagine starving myself in the name of living a bit longer — especially if those years (Months? Weeks? Hours?) were spent without the joy of my many signature dishes. And this leads me to my main point.

I cook with butter. Butter is wonderful. Butter tastes good. In fact, there are few things as wonderfully delicious as Basmati rice with just a little bit of butter. I could easily live on that. And I really don’t care about the health consequences of my love of fat. As I see it, what is considered “good nutrition” changes every couple of years anyway. And people running around desperately trying to avoid death has always struck me as a criminal act against the gift of life.

It just so happens that today, the good nutrition fad seems to line up with what I do, Pretty Much Everything We’ve Been Taught About Dangers of Eating Fat Is Wrong. I won’t go into all the details of the recent research because I don’t care. I’m going to eat the way I want. Yes, it would be bad to have an all-butter diet. But you wanna know a secret: an all butter diet would taste terrible. My advice: have a diverse and delicious diet, so even if it does kill you, you will have a good time along the way.

Oh, that reminds me: moderate alcohol consumption is good for you too. But again: I don’t actually care. Alcohol is a great drug in that it tells you very clearly how much you should consume. All this information — ideal body weight, fatty foods, alcohol — is the best argument I’ve ever heard in favor of a loving god.

Update 3 February 2015 3:27 pm

I just watched last night’s The Nightly Show and they were doing the episode about obesity. It isn’t much of a discussion, but it does seem that the issue is in the air.

Education, Wisdom, and Profound Sadness

Posted on 02 Feb 2015 by Frank Moraes

David Foster Wallace is the kind of person I wanted to be when I was younger. He was not only a great writer and thinker, but he was also good at the kind of things that I’m good at — namely math. But now, I’m just very happy to have lived in a universe where David Foster Wallace wrote novels and essays. I’m a better person because of it. Had Wallace been happy, that would be one thing. But he suffered from great depression throughout much of his life and he eventually took his own life.

But a couple of years before that, he gave a commencement address Kenyon College. The resulting speech was an essay, “This Is Water.” The title refers to a common observation that fish don’t “see” water. The thing that they are literally swimming in is invisible to them. Similarly, humans existed for tens of thousands of years without ever recognizing that the sky had a color: blue. It is this fact that had long mistakenly been used to claim that Homer must have been blind because of his odd color descriptions.

The argument that Wallace is making is that we need to try to see the water. We don’t want to go through life effectively dead. And we mostly do. So much of life is habit. We operate on autopilot. And it is really for the best for us to question a lot of our easy assumptions. He goes into some depth, but not about politics or philosophy. Rather, he suggests moving past our self-centered world and trying to see things from other people’s perspectives. As an example, he describes being stuck in traffic and rather than cursing the people in front of him, imagining that in front of him is a father rushing his sick daughter to the hospital. It probably isn’t what is actually happening, but it does get us out of our default perspective that all that really matters is ourselves.

Where I think Wallace gets into troubling territory is when he suggests that a liberal arts education might be good for doing this kind of thing. I understand: he was talking to graduating college students. And things might be different at Kenyon College. I do think that a liberal arts education ought to be good for this. But the way higher education is now managed, it isn’t much more than a product. A liberal arts degree means that the student has taken an undergraduate writing class and an upper division literature class. She’s taken one or two history classes. Generally, she’s taken a little of this and a little of that and there is very little that brings it all together.

Even more than this, I fear that college is mostly just another system of control. More than anything, a college degree says, “This student is unlikely to upset the corporate order.” Indeed, that’s largely what we see among the upper-middle class liberal writers: people who know just how much they can push against the existing power structure. And their college educations are largely the reason that it doesn’t occur to them that pushing harder might be a good thing.

I do think that a broad and varied liberal education is really helpful in seeing what is meaningful in life. But it isn’t essential. And there are many for whom such an education means nothing other than maybe a better job. But if it does expand your perspective, I’m not sure that’s so great. I feel that I’m fairly good at seeing things from different perspectives and giving people lots of benefits from the constant doubts. And I certainly feel I’m a better person now than I was before. But I’m not happier as a result. In fact, the more I feel that I see society clearly, the more I am a prisoner of a profound sadness.

The Super Bowl Isn’t Good for the Economy

Posted on 01 Feb 2015 by Frank Moraes

As we prepare for the biggest game of the year in the most boring sport, I thought it would be a good time to consider some economic and political issues regarding the Super Bowl. Let’s start with the fact that the first Super Bowl was in 1966. Bart Starr led the Green Bay Packers to the first two championships. But it is wrong to think of it as that big a deal. What it really was, was a corporate merger.

You see, the NFL was always just what we think of as the National Football Conference (NFC). But in 1960, the American Football League (AFL) started up and it did quite well. It did what companies in a free market are supposed to do: compete! But the NFL didn’t like that. So the two companies saw that they could make more money if they stopped competing and cooperated. So the first Super Bowl was part of the process of the AFL integrating into the NFL as the American Football Conference (AFC). I suppose it does make the whole thing more exciting, but it also makes ticket prices higher and gives football teams undue influence on local governance.

But the Super Bowl is great for the economy, right? It stimulates spending? Not especially. Mike Cassidy at The Fiscal Times lampooned this idea, The Super Bowl’s Economic Impact: Not So Super:

Like a family driving their SUV to get double bacon cheeseburger combos, everything about the day is wholesale, venti, XXXL. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), Americans are expected to spend $14.3 billion as they watch the Seahawks battle the Patriots in the big game’s 49th iteration. It’s the nation’s second biggest eating day, a huge weekend for big-screen sales and routinely the record-setter for all-time TV ratings.

Cassidy brought up three points to counter this. First is the fact that $14.3 billion is not that much when you consider that American consumers will spend $12 trillion this year. If we look at the daily level, the Super Bowl is roughly half our spending. But of course, the spending for today does not take place in a single day. Still, it is sort of impressive. But that’s not the whole story.

The $14.3 billion dollars is a very deceptive number. If people weren’t eating food while watching the Super Bowl, they would be eating food while doing something else. This isn’t to say that the Super Bowl doesn’t increase spending. But it is to say that that the extra spending is far less than this headline number. As Cassidy noted, “It’s a great day to be a pizza delivery guy or a Best Buy investor. But it’s a bad day to be in pretty much any business that doesn’t involve watching football from your couch.” And that isn’t the whole story either.

The final issue — and the nail in the coffin of the Super Bowl stimulus — is that people generally have fixed incomes. So any extra spending today will be offset with less spending in the weeks ahead. So all the Super Bowl does is move spending around and focus it on a particular day. If Americans tended to over-save, then an excuse to consume might be welcome. But Americans already have extremely low savings rates. We don’t need the encouragement of the Super Bowl.

Not that I care about that. I think an excuse for a party is always good. What I don’t like is the idea that we should thank our corporate overlords. They are doing everything they can to oppress us. The Super Bowl is a big money maker for them. That’s why they do it. They shouldn’t be treated as though they care about the social good. Because they don’t.

Afterword

You are, of course, allowed to enjoy the Super Bowl. But baseball is a much better game:

How to Approach Death

Posted on 25 Jan 2015 by Frank Moraes

Recently a pensive disciple of mine (a certain Criton[1]) asked me: “Master, how can we best approach death?” I replied that the only way to prepare for death is to convince yourself that everyone else is a complete idiot.

Seeing Criton’s amazement, I explained. You see, I told him, how can you approach death, even if you are a believer, if you think that, as you lay dying, desirable young people of both sexes are dancing in discos and having the time of their lives, enlightened scientists are revealing the last secrets of the universe, incorruptible politicians are creating a better society, newspapers and television are bent on giving only important news, responsible business people are ensuring that their products will not damage the environment and doing their utmost to restore a nature in which there are streams with drinkable water, wooded hillside, clear, serene skies protected by a providential ozone layer, and fluffy clouds from which sweet rain falls once more? The thought that you must leave while all these marvelous things are going on would be intolerable.

So try to think, when you sense the time has come for your departure from this vale, that the world (six billion beings) is full of idiots, that the dancers at the disco are all idiots, the scientists who think they have solved the mysteries of the universe are idiots, the politicians who propose panaceas for all our ills are idiots, the journalists who fill page after page with vacuous gossip are idiots, and the manufacturers who are destroying the planet are idiots. In that moment, would you not be happy, relieved, and satisfied to leave this vale of idiots?

And then Criton asked me, “Master, when must I start thinking like this?” I told him that one mustn’t start too soon, because a person of twenty or thirty years of age who thinks that everyone else is an idiot is an idiot himself who will never attain wisdom. We should begin by thinking that all the others are better than us and then shift bit by bit, having our first doubts around forty, revising our opinions between fifty and sixty, and attaining certainty as we aim for one hundred, ready to call it quits just as soon as the telegram containing the summons arrives. Convincing ourselves that everyone around us is an idiot is a subtle, shrewd art, not at the disposal of the first Cebes to come along with a ring in his ear (or nose). It requires study and toil. You mustn’t go at it too quickly. You must get there gradually, just in time to die with serenity. Right up to the day before, you must still think that someone you love and admire is not an idiot. Wisdom consists in recognizing only at the right moment (and not before) that he too is an idiot. Only then can you die.

The great art lies in studying universal thought a bit at a time; scrutinizing changes in customs; monitoring the mass media day by day, the statements of self-assured artists, the apothegms of politicians who shoot their mouths off, the philosophemes of apocalyptic critics, the aphorisms of charismatic heroes; studying theories, propositions, appeals, images, and visions. Only then, in the end, will you experience the insight that everyone is an idiot. And at that point, you are ready for death.

Util the end, you must doggedly insist that some people say sensible things, that a certain book is better than others, that a certain leader really desires the common good. It’s natural, human, and proper to our species to resist the idea that all people are idiots, otherwise why go on living? But at the end, you will understand why it is worth the effort and how it can be a splendid thing to die.

Then Crito said to me: “Master, I wouldn’t like to make hasty decisions, but I suspect that you are an idiot.” See, I replied, you are already on the right track.

—Umberto Eco
Quoted in “On the Disadvantage and Advantage of Death”
In Turning Back the Clock

[1] The two names mentioned — Crito and Cebes — refer to Crito, a dialog where Crito argues for Socrates to let him buy his teacher’s freedom.

The Worst American Addiction

Posted on 02 Jan 2015 by Frank Moraes

There is a kind of addiction in the United States that is destroying it. It isn’t new. In fact, it has been around for so long, it is invisible. It is the addiction of superiority. If you watch the right kind of television, you will see it everywhere. My favorite example is the court show. I find these shows deeply disturbing. In fact, I find them so disturbing that I’ve come up with a theory — probably wrong — to make them more palatable. I believe friends get together and pretend to sue each other to make a little cash and to get their faces on the television. But clearly, if most viewers thought this, they would not watch. Indeed, even with my theory, I find the shows repellent.

The way the shows work is by stimulating endorphins that make the viewer feel superior. “At least I don’t sleep with my best friend’s husband and then steal her television set!” Oh, can you feel that flood of endorphins?! That feels good. And I’m all for that! Please, my fellow humans: be happy. It’s a good thing to do. All I ask is that you superiority junkies admit that you do have an addiction and that you aren’t any different from a random heroin addict who gets her endorphins more directly.

I see the people watching the court shows and Fox News as being minor addicts. The major addicts design their entire lives around their addictions. For example, they will never drink alcohol because it is a drug. But what they are really doing is stimulating their endorphins because they feel superior to the person who drinks to stimulate her endorphins. These same people will tend toward “healthy” food (how ever that might be defined this week) and against tasty food. There is really no end to the ways that a superiority addiction may manifest itself. People might hoard money or they might vote against their political interests.

From the outside, we may see the hardcore superiority addict as a sad person. But I suspect that is wrong. Your average heroin addict may seem sad on the outside but with her brain swimming in synthetic endorphins, she is very likely happy as one of the happiest clams. So we shouldn’t feel sorry for the superiority fiend. But just the same, we should not be codependent. If she wants to feel good about herself because she eats better and drinks better and votes better than the rest of us, that’s her right. But we needn’t buy into that delusion.

In a perfect world, such superiority addicts would quickly disappear. Our reactions to them would make it clear that their ascetic lifestyles were just a way of getting high. So when a ascetic and a glutton are both offered a delicious piece of chocolate cake, the glutton’s acceptance of the cake is exactly the same as the ascetic’s refusal. And if the ascetic’s real motivation (endorphins from a sense of superiority) were widely recognized (and, hopefully, mocked), the ascetic would take the cake. Because being addicted to a feeling of superiority is a great weakness.

Choose the cake!

Afterword

I’m not that found of chocolate myself. I mean, I’ll eat it. I’ll eat just about anything that is sweet. I’ve even been getting into coconut because it is combined with lots of sugar. But don’t get the wrong idea about me. Most people think I’m a sugar addict, but I actually like fatty foods a lot more. Of course, after a great fatty meal, nothing is so great as a sugary dessert. Or better: a sugary, fatty dessert. Ice cream sundae!

A Better Tribe on New Year’s Eve?

Posted on 31 Dec 2014 by Frank Moraes

Infidel753 offers a thought on this the arbitrary end of the year, A Vague Musing at Year-End. Basically, it is a short love letter for diversity. He mentioned the “dying era of religious and tribal conformity.” I’m with him on that but I’m afraid I’m deeply pessimistic. One of my favorite words — used always as a great compliment — is “idiosyncratic.” But I fear that we are not built to love the idiosyncratic.

I think a great deal about the film Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s not a film I much like. It was just Ed Wood trying to make a whole feature out of some home movies with his old pal Bela Lugosi. Much better is Glen or Glenda — the full exploration of the pleasures and the pains of being the man he was. But what bothers me is that most people only know these films because they are seen as “bad.” But they aren’t bad. They are just strange — different from what other filmmakers chose to produce. To me, Glen or Glenda will always stand as a great example idiosyncratic art — art that is done for the sake of tickling the brain, not soothing it.

I’m not sure how we get past this whole tribal identity. I agree with Infidel753 that such identity based upon religion is getting less strict. Just the same, we seem to be transferring one kind of tribal conformity for another. Now we have much greater opportunities to find other people who are more consistent with who we are. So we aren’t dependent upon having friends drawn from the neighborhood that we grew up in. Now we can draw from people all over the world. My concern is that this just makes our tribal identities even more rigid. Maybe it just makes our prejudices seem all the more true and unquestionable.

In this regard, I feel fairly safe. This is because I find myself always working the margins. I think of myself like a Puck — disruptive but benign. If people started to properly appreciate Glen or Glenda I’d be right there to point out that it’s a dreadful film! Or maybe not, because in such a world, I would probably just be an accountant. Such a reasonable world would need not Pucks! But the thing about the Puck is that he is, ultimately, a lonely creature — desperate for fellowship but destined to disappointment because of his nature.

Still, I have my friends. And they are an eclectic bunch. The one thing they seem to have in common is that on any issue which we are both passionate, they know that I am wrong. In other words, I am quite blessed. But I see problems. There is a kind of background noise of agreement. And these are things that I really won’t brook disagreement about — things like the death penalty. Or on the positive side, the importance of empathy above all else. And it is based upon these kinds of things that we do have a tribal identity.

So we disagree about my many passions. No one will read Don Quixote — at least all the way to end. No one will watch Glen or Glenda — at least all the way to end. No one treats my ontological theories with anything but scorn. But we all desperately wish for a more humane and just world. And I would really like to believe that we are connected in this way because we are right. But I fear it is just that we are a tribe.

Regardless, I hope the new year moves in the direction preferred by my tribe. Because, you know, we’re right.

Food Processor Potato Pancakes

Posted on 22 Dec 2014 by Frank Moraes

I have family visiting this week, so obviously my mind turns to food — or more toward food than it normally does. This morning, I am making potato pancakes. I’ve taken of late to making huge numbers of the buggers and freezing them. They reheat in the toaster oven surprisingly well. But today they will be eaten the way they were meant to be eaten: hot off the grill. There really are few things in life that are better.

There is something that I’ve been doing to make my life easier. Instead of grating the potatoes, I use the food processor. This works okay. Or rather: it works okay. But there is a problem. The food processor changes the consistency of potatoes in two ways. First, the strings are not as long. Second, the strings are thicker. There is nothing to be done on the first point. But there is something that can be done on the second.

By processing the potatoes, compressing them into the bottom and processing again, you can get them to roughly the correct thickness. (Don’t use your fingers, for God’s sake!) I find this to be rather a pain to do. But freeing myself of potentially grating my fingers is worth it. And it is necessary. The pancakes just don’t taste right when the potato pieces are too thick.

As for the length of the potato pieces, this doesn’t much affect the taste. But it does affect the visual aesthetic. The pancakes end up looking more like mashed potato pancakes. There is none of the thin edging with the weedy texture. That’s a shame, because I really like that. But there is much to be said for convenience and the lack of pain.

I’m probably out for the rest of the day. We are going sightseeing. (It is morning as I write this.) And wine tasting — hopefully. Have a great evening!

Nazi Gumball Ring… Or Is It?

Posted on 13 Dec 2014 by Frank Moraes

My friend Will brought my attention to this curious article, Toy Vending Machine Gives Tulsa Boy a Nazi-Themed Ring. A Oklahoma mother was shopping at a dollar store when her son got the ring pictured there on the left from one of those little toy vending machines.

My first reaction was that it must be a prank being perpetrated by the boy or his mother. But when the local news ponied up some serious coin, they found a dozen other rings just like it. This led me to my second reaction: it must be something done by someone who works for the vending machine company. That could be a prank but it could also be a stunt done by some neo-Nazi. That got me searching Google Images.

I immediately noticed that I couldn’t find any Nazi ring that looked anything like this. And even a search on Nazi symbols with birds in them didn’t turn up anything that looked especially like this. Overwhelmingly, Nazi symbols contained birds with their wings outstretched. I’m sure the Nazis saw themselves as very active: birds that soared, not birds that nested. This is the best match I can come up with:

Another question I have is how anyone could do this even if they wanted to. It would certainly be easier to create Nazi swastika decals rather than plastic rings. What’s more, let’s not forget that the Nazi swastika was first and is still part of the primary symbol of Jainism — the most peaceful religion or philosophy in the world:

Image used without permission from Jain Belief

I figure it happened as follows. The vending machine company buys these rings for about a penny a piece from some company in China. The company in China makes rings with all sorts of designs on them. They don’t know what they mean, nor do they care. They are providing stupid plastic rings at unbelievably low prices. And the people at the vending machine company don’t even look at the rings because they usually just have Hello Kitty on them anyway. What’s more, they aren’t as hung up on the Nazis as we are. They remember the Japanese! When they see a swastika, they probably think Jainism, not fascism.

All this means that it probably is a Nazi symbol. But I doubt that anyone intended it as Nazi propaganda. It was just another example of how great globalization is. And it just proves that the market is always right. Heil profits!

Women and the Harlem Globetrotters

Posted on 02 Dec 2014 by Frank Moraes

When I was a kid, I loved the Harlem Globetrotters. I think most kids do. Now I don’t especially care what they do on the court, but I find their business model fascinating. They are entertainers and they’ve managed to spice up the act of a basketball game so that it has a much higher entertainment value. Compare that to the NBA, which really provides damned little entertainment value. This is a problem with professional sports generally: all the players are so great that the exposition of talent doesn’t show much.

The problem with the NBA is that the purpose of each team is to win. That means that the teams will be filled with not just the best players but the best players of the specific kind of game that is played in the NBA. So it doesn’t matter how good someone like Luis Da Silva might be at a particular part of the game. The Globetrotters don’t have this problem. So they are able to diversify their roster.

Let me just note something in passing. I remember a roommate telling me that he didn’t see the point of watching a whole basketball game, when you could get everything out of it by watching the last three minutes. That strikes me the same as reading a book to find out what happened. I suppose there is some value in it. But it indicates that for most people, basketball doesn’t provide a whole lot of entertainment value.

The reason I bring this up is that I came upon an article, Female Globetrotters — 9 Women Who Have Worn the Red, White, and Blue. I had no idea that the Globetrotters had ever had women on their team — much less nine of them. At that time, the most recent female player was Fatima “TNT” Maddox. Here she is on The Arsenio Hall Show. See if you don’t notice something:

Arsenio Hall isn’t that tall! Fatima is tiny — Shorter than I am! — just 5"6'. But Fatima isn’t the only woman on the current Harlem Globetrotters. They also have Tammy “T-Time” Brawner, who is only 5"5'. I know that small men do occasionally play in the NBA, but this is still remarkable. There have only been 24 players who were 5"9' or less in the 68 year history of the NBA. And there have been only three that were 5"6' or less. This season, the Globetrotters added Joyce “Sweet J” Ekworomadu, who towers over the others at 5"10'.

I’ve always found professional spots to be awfully homoerotic. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course; but for something that obsesses a bunch of ostensibly straight men, it seems weird. Unless women are dressed in bikinis, most men are not too interested in watching them play sports. I’m just saying.

The first female Harlem Globetrotter was Lynette Woodard, who joined the team in 1985 — almost 30 years ago. And I understand: the Globetrotters are in a position to do this in a way that the Lakers are not. But sexism in a culture isn’t just or even primarily about explicit exclusion of women. It is also about extolling those things that men excel at and minimizing things where women excel. I think it is great that the Globetrotters have women on their squad.

Afterword

Update 3 February 2015 3:27 pm

Afterword

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See Also