Diesel seems to want me to do a travelogue, but I'm not sure what else there is to say that's sports-related other than that we went to games at Chavez and McAfee and enjoyed both of the parks immensely, even if the games themselves were pretty boring. So I'll take up the Easterbrook issue instead, since it interests me more.
I've also liked Easterbrook's stuff in the past, and I also have a number of problems with the latest TMQ offering. For one thing, this installment seems notably more prolix than usual. He's always written long, but he usually keeps me reading, and this time I found myself scrolling past paragraphs at a time. Part of it is the subject matter; the preseason has not even started in earnest, and so he's left to ruminate on things neither I nor, I imagine, many other of his readers care a whole lot about: the player's union, Harry Potter, the AFL, lawnmowers, and so on. I understand that his broad expertise and interests are supposed to be part of his appeal, but still, I think this is a big mistake on his part: just because it's the preseason doesn't mean you have to bombard us with all of this irrelevance. If you're not generating any interest from me -- one of the more academic and longer attention-spanned football fans you're likely to find -- it's probably safe to say you're boring the shit out of pretty much everybody. The answer's simple: cut it short. Of course, much of this points toward the biggest problem with Page 2, which is that there's apparently no editorial oversight whatsoever, except for the censors watching out for anything that could be construed as anti-Disney. I've covered this at length before.
His stances on a lot of the topics also strike me as gratuitously contrarian, in some cases bizarrely so. The Sopranos critique, for instance, simply baffled me: he blasts a mafia series for being too violent and too breasty? Then he rips it for not being realistic enough, basing most of his claim on obscure details like the botany of the Pine Barrens and the intricacies of liquor licenses in New Jersey? Spare me. It's drama, not reality television. Don't be such a technical dick.
And it only gets worse from there: He even goes so far as to call anybody who claims to like the Sopranos for the family scenes a liar. Here's an idea, Easterbrook: I think the Sopranos was so innovative because it was perhaps the first phenomenon-popular TV series that dealt with crime and social issues without designating the good guys and the bad guys. Maybe it's such a great show, such a cultural institution, not because it has a lot of violence and tits -- you can get both on late-night Showtime (or so I hear...) -- but because David Simon created some of the most interesting and complex characters television has ever seen. Maybe it was considered so innovative because it was really the first successful foray by a premium cable channel into multi-season dramatic series, and because it turned out to be such a high-quality show. It had great actors, great directing, spectacular writing -- it was essentially an 80-hour-long good Mafia movie. That's never been done before, and it paved the way for even better stuff, such as the single greatest television series ever made, The Wire.
He seems to be basing a lot of his judgments, against the Sopranos and elsewhere, on staunchly moralistic grounds. So, yes, I do think he's starting to sound preachy. Actually, he's starting to remind me too much of a preacher: one minute he quotes the Bible, and the next he's quite lecherously discussing thongs and making cracks about the natural hair color of cheerleaders. It's all a little weird to me, a little creepy and repressed, and it smacks of everything I hate about born-again-ism: the judgmental worldview, the superiority, the hypocrisy, the evangelism.
However.
I've also got some real problems with the first half of your letter to Easterbrook. It's ridiculous to claim that the man's "rational worldview is being seriously compromised by (his) religious zeal." Speaking of arguments being compromised by zeal, how about comparing Easterbrook to Ann Coulter? If you want to talk about writing pap, how about referring to TV psychics as "mystics"? I mean, the dude's a fellow at probably the single most respected think tank in America. He's also an editor at one of the smartest magazines extant. He's a multipublished author, a respected thinker, and, what's more, he's one of the few public figures in the contemporary tsunami of self-righteousness who's brave enough to admit when he is wrong. For that last, especially, I admire him. I hardly think questioning his very commitment to reason is justified here.
I also think your entire Harry Potter argument is incoherent and irresponsible. Easterbrook makes a completely reasonable -- and, I think, astute -- observation that the Harry Potter series skirts the issue of religion and/or God. If true (I have no idea), that's a notable absence: you won't find many 200-page novels that don't mention God in some sense, much less a series of a half-dozen books, some of which weigh in north of 700 pages. The issue of God and religious belief is even more important in children's books, I think: parents should understand and appreciate whether and how their children are being indoctrinated by what they read (and watch, and hear, for that matter).
And what you conveniently fail to mention, Diesel, is that the religion issue arises not because Easterbrook artificially holds Harry Potter up against other children's series -- as both you and your selective quotation of the column suggest -- but because Rowling decided to directly quote the Bible multiple times in the final book.
Easterbrook's observation of this phenomena remains exactly that: an observation. He soon drifts off into a critique of the Golden Compass series and anti-Christian books in general (more on that later). He never commends Rowling for including Biblical quotations; he just points them out and discusses them. By so doing, he's actually empowering any parents who may read the column to make their own decision regarding the religious content. So to accuse him of inventing the issue in order to "bully" anybody, much less atheists, is both disingenuous and irresponsible. I understand that you're very attuned to the precariousness of the atheist position in an increasingly religion-dominated world, but I think you're inventing the oppression in this case.
However, again.
The second half of your letter could not be more accurate. I absolutely and vehemently agree with you about Easterbrook's use of the word "jihadis" when describing the three other "anti-Christian" authors. That is hyperbole at its most asinine, and it shocked me when I first read the word. I expect much better from a mind like his. He does have some history of head-up-assedness when it comes to his choice of words, especially when critiquing movies and books, and this latest column -- especially the "jihadi" -- seems like the kind of thing he might wind up regretting. Respected intellectuals simply can't go around comparing their rivals to terrorists in an international forum. It's indefensible, it's stupid, and it's wrong. Further, I think it warrants an apology.
If it does, though, I bet he gives that apology. I'll give him that much credit, and to me, that means an awful lot.
Showing posts with label Gregg Easterbrook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gregg Easterbrook. Show all posts
Thursday, August 09, 2007
An Open Letter to Gregg Easterbrook
Dear Mr. Easterbrook,
For some time now, I've really enjoyed your Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns, and I know I'm not alone in this regard; your work is wildly popular, because I think you do an outstanding job of writing erudite and entertaining commentary pieces on the NFL. Hell, you do better straight game analysis than half the hacks that ESPN employs to, ostensibly, do straight game analysis.
However, I've got to say that your most recent offering was, at best, pure pap, and at worst the kind of abrasive (and paranoid) Christian rhetoric that our airwaves are already saturated with.
It's no secret that you're a Christian with strong beliefs, both when it comes to your personal faith and your view that faith is an important component in society. Since non-football-centric quips are a part of your routine, I've always been fine with the religious content, as relatively scarce as it was.
But in your most recent column, about 1/12th of which actually dealt with football, it appears you have made a conscious decision to begin banging the same drum that luminaries like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter have made ignominious careers of percussing. The pro-Christian rhetoric was voluminous — you use the terms "christian" or "christianity" nine times, quote two bible passages, take two different digs at psychics (whose brand of mysticism you conveniently dismiss), and state the "worship service-attendance figures" of Europe are "troubling" — to the point where I was wondering if you had lost a bet to your pastor/priest/reverend (in spite of your anti-gambling stance). Is this what you think intelligent football fans want to read?
Two things you said, in particular, led me to believe that your otherwise rational world view is being seriously compromised by your spiritual zeal.
• In your apropos-of-nothing "review" of the latest Harry Potter book, I quote:
The postwar United Kingdom has produced three blockbuster young people's fantasy series, the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, the "Golden Compass" series by Philip Pullman and now the Potter volumes. All feature astonishingly capable English schoolchildren with magic powers. The Narnia books are explicitly Christian; the Golden Compass books are explicitly anti-Christian; what about Potter? Though J.K. Rowling's 4,000 pages concern supernatural forces, the soul and communication with the dead who exist in an afterlife, religious issues are missing from the series. The wizards and witches of the Potter world celebrate Christmas, but otherwise seem to have no religious views and never pause to reflect on where their power comes from or what the spirit world might be. Perhaps Rowling concluded that in the contemporary milieu, it's totally fine to market a children's story containing numerous scenes in which children are tortured or murdered, but mentioning God would be too controversial. (Emphasis mine)
I understand that you see the Potter series as part of a larger body of U.K.-based children's works, but I fail to see how the religious content of the first two have any bearing on the latter. Did it ever occur to you that Rowling may not have considered herself a part of this group, and thus saw no reason to add the variable of religion into her stories? I, as one, did not realize that the onus was on children's authors to make definitive statements regarding the worthiness, veracity, or societal role of religion. Yet, as opposed to simply assuming that Rowling saw no need to involve such content in her works, you infer that is in fact the author's desire for a lack of controversy that serves as motivation for the omission. This is precisely the kind of bullying that the Jesus jackyls have been laying on the American public since the Clinton years; the second anyone disregards religion, it's an automatic condemnation of it, or the result of some fear of running afoul of the "massive" anti-Christian population that accounts for roughly five percent of the population. For a man of your considerable intellect, it's a particularly indefensible position to take. Remember, it's you, not Rowling, who introduced the subject in the first place.
• Later in the same section, in reference to Golden Compass author Philip Pullman:
I found Pullman's arguments against Christianity puerile -- like recent anti-Christian books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, the "Golden Compass" volumes resort to the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities. Pullman, Dawkins and Harris are anti-faith jihadis: they don't just want to argue against the many faults of Christianity, they want faith forbidden.
I will not insult you by claiming that you haven't read the works of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, both of whom recently authored books taking different angles in the argument against religion and a belief in God. However, I wonder if the same perspective that causes you to view Rowling's non-involvement in the debate as either condemnation or cowardice has also influenced the conclusions you've drawn of those clearly anti-Christian works. Both state they believe religion is a destructive force on both a personal and societal level, but to state that either of them wish to have religion "forbidden" is an outright lie. The furthest either of them go is to state that theocracies, like the ones that exist in the middle east, should be fought against at all costs. Your routine mockery of blitzes involving more than five defenders does not suggest you think the NFL should outlaw them. Likewise, Harris' and Dawkins' mockery of religious faith does not suggest they believe faith itself should be against the law.
Furthermore, to refer to both of them as "jihadists" of any kind is the kind of flippant rhetoric we expect from your intellectual lessers, no different than the idiocy of people who refer to strict school administrators as Nazis. Agree or disagree, these men have written books in an attempt to add to the ongoing conversation about religion and society. They have not killed anyone, coerced children into becoming suicide bombers, or threatened the life of those who dare to disagree with their theological stand. One wonders if, upon reflection, you would be willing to consider the writing of either Harris or Dawkins as being equivalent to the kind of hatred that's spawned the murder of Theo Van Gogh, to name one victim of Islamic jihad.
However, it's your criticism of Harris' and Dawkins' methodology in defending their arguments that really struck me as stunning, particularly when you were guilty of using the same tactic in your "defense" of the NFLPA later in the column. You claim both authors were guilty of "... the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities," which isn't an entirely unfair assessment. I'd argue with you as to whether either had an obligation to actually do so, as neither claimed to be presenting a "balanced" assessment of religion or belief in god, and I can imagine that had either attempted to do so, the books would have been so onerous as to be unreadable. Anyone with a single brain cell to his or her credit can find plenty of works that attempt to justify religion or prove the "positive qualities" of spiritual faith. I doubt a single one of those books treats the opposition with any more concern or respect than those of Harris or Dawkins.
(And, anyway, the authors didn't so much pretend that belief has no positive quality, as much as challenge that particularly trite justification. Believe it or not, there's an argument to be had that all supposed "positives" of religion are overstated and scarcely substantiated. I can argue that I once saw a seven-man blitz work for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2002 against the Giants; does that mean that I can say you "ignore the positive qualities" of the seven-man blitz?)
But considering your view on Harris' and Dawkins' work, I found your cherry-picking of the NFLPA's "accomplishments" with respect to player contracts to be ironic. I'll assume everything you say is true, and concede that the recent barrage of criticism directed toward Upshaw and Co. is both unfair and exceedingly shrill. However, when discussing the average contract figures, percentages of revenue, and growth of the salary cap, you completely fail to mention one huge factor: NFL players' contracts aren't guaranteed. I know you know this, Mr. Easterbrook, so I'm forced to conclude that you felt the inclusion of such information would dilute your argument.
This issue is the easiest source of derision for the NFLPA (the disability benefits issue notwithstanding, since you've correctly pointed out that we really don't have a clear view of whether or not that many legitimate cases are being denied). No sport is more loaded with occupational hazards than the NFL, nor does any sport chew up and spit out players like the NFL. Currently, the players assume all of the risk when it comes to career length; owners can cut ties with damaged goods at any point (or at least until the end of the season in which the injury has taken place), even though it was for the franchise's benefit that the player became hurt in the first place. Of the football/baseball/basketball troika, the most dangerous sport of the three is the only one that doesn't offer guaranteed contracts to players. That the NFLPA hasn't managed to advance further in this cause is the union's biggest black eye, and I'm pretty sure football players wouldn't mind taking the MLBPA's smaller cut of revenues in return for the security offered by guaranteed deals.
Quibbling aside, I don't suppose to tell you what to write or not write, Mr. Easterbrook, and I certainly wouldn't wish ESPN.com to do any more censoring of your columns than what's currently taking place. But I do hope that you can see why the content of this particular work is so bothersome to people like me, who already spend too much of their time dealing with the vitriol spewed by a society of people who use god as a bludgeon against their enemies, and act as if non-belief is a sin against America.
Sincerely,
(Diesel)
Phoenix, AZ
For some time now, I've really enjoyed your Tuesday Morning Quarterback columns, and I know I'm not alone in this regard; your work is wildly popular, because I think you do an outstanding job of writing erudite and entertaining commentary pieces on the NFL. Hell, you do better straight game analysis than half the hacks that ESPN employs to, ostensibly, do straight game analysis.
However, I've got to say that your most recent offering was, at best, pure pap, and at worst the kind of abrasive (and paranoid) Christian rhetoric that our airwaves are already saturated with.
It's no secret that you're a Christian with strong beliefs, both when it comes to your personal faith and your view that faith is an important component in society. Since non-football-centric quips are a part of your routine, I've always been fine with the religious content, as relatively scarce as it was.
But in your most recent column, about 1/12th of which actually dealt with football, it appears you have made a conscious decision to begin banging the same drum that luminaries like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter have made ignominious careers of percussing. The pro-Christian rhetoric was voluminous — you use the terms "christian" or "christianity" nine times, quote two bible passages, take two different digs at psychics (whose brand of mysticism you conveniently dismiss), and state the "worship service-attendance figures" of Europe are "troubling" — to the point where I was wondering if you had lost a bet to your pastor/priest/reverend (in spite of your anti-gambling stance). Is this what you think intelligent football fans want to read?
Two things you said, in particular, led me to believe that your otherwise rational world view is being seriously compromised by your spiritual zeal.
• In your apropos-of-nothing "review" of the latest Harry Potter book, I quote:
The postwar United Kingdom has produced three blockbuster young people's fantasy series, the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, the "Golden Compass" series by Philip Pullman and now the Potter volumes. All feature astonishingly capable English schoolchildren with magic powers. The Narnia books are explicitly Christian; the Golden Compass books are explicitly anti-Christian; what about Potter? Though J.K. Rowling's 4,000 pages concern supernatural forces, the soul and communication with the dead who exist in an afterlife, religious issues are missing from the series. The wizards and witches of the Potter world celebrate Christmas, but otherwise seem to have no religious views and never pause to reflect on where their power comes from or what the spirit world might be. Perhaps Rowling concluded that in the contemporary milieu, it's totally fine to market a children's story containing numerous scenes in which children are tortured or murdered, but mentioning God would be too controversial. (Emphasis mine)
I understand that you see the Potter series as part of a larger body of U.K.-based children's works, but I fail to see how the religious content of the first two have any bearing on the latter. Did it ever occur to you that Rowling may not have considered herself a part of this group, and thus saw no reason to add the variable of religion into her stories? I, as one, did not realize that the onus was on children's authors to make definitive statements regarding the worthiness, veracity, or societal role of religion. Yet, as opposed to simply assuming that Rowling saw no need to involve such content in her works, you infer that is in fact the author's desire for a lack of controversy that serves as motivation for the omission. This is precisely the kind of bullying that the Jesus jackyls have been laying on the American public since the Clinton years; the second anyone disregards religion, it's an automatic condemnation of it, or the result of some fear of running afoul of the "massive" anti-Christian population that accounts for roughly five percent of the population. For a man of your considerable intellect, it's a particularly indefensible position to take. Remember, it's you, not Rowling, who introduced the subject in the first place.
• Later in the same section, in reference to Golden Compass author Philip Pullman:
I found Pullman's arguments against Christianity puerile -- like recent anti-Christian books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, the "Golden Compass" volumes resort to the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities. Pullman, Dawkins and Harris are anti-faith jihadis: they don't just want to argue against the many faults of Christianity, they want faith forbidden.
I will not insult you by claiming that you haven't read the works of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, both of whom recently authored books taking different angles in the argument against religion and a belief in God. However, I wonder if the same perspective that causes you to view Rowling's non-involvement in the debate as either condemnation or cowardice has also influenced the conclusions you've drawn of those clearly anti-Christian works. Both state they believe religion is a destructive force on both a personal and societal level, but to state that either of them wish to have religion "forbidden" is an outright lie. The furthest either of them go is to state that theocracies, like the ones that exist in the middle east, should be fought against at all costs. Your routine mockery of blitzes involving more than five defenders does not suggest you think the NFL should outlaw them. Likewise, Harris' and Dawkins' mockery of religious faith does not suggest they believe faith itself should be against the law.
Furthermore, to refer to both of them as "jihadists" of any kind is the kind of flippant rhetoric we expect from your intellectual lessers, no different than the idiocy of people who refer to strict school administrators as Nazis. Agree or disagree, these men have written books in an attempt to add to the ongoing conversation about religion and society. They have not killed anyone, coerced children into becoming suicide bombers, or threatened the life of those who dare to disagree with their theological stand. One wonders if, upon reflection, you would be willing to consider the writing of either Harris or Dawkins as being equivalent to the kind of hatred that's spawned the murder of Theo Van Gogh, to name one victim of Islamic jihad.
However, it's your criticism of Harris' and Dawkins' methodology in defending their arguments that really struck me as stunning, particularly when you were guilty of using the same tactic in your "defense" of the NFLPA later in the column. You claim both authors were guilty of "... the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities," which isn't an entirely unfair assessment. I'd argue with you as to whether either had an obligation to actually do so, as neither claimed to be presenting a "balanced" assessment of religion or belief in god, and I can imagine that had either attempted to do so, the books would have been so onerous as to be unreadable. Anyone with a single brain cell to his or her credit can find plenty of works that attempt to justify religion or prove the "positive qualities" of spiritual faith. I doubt a single one of those books treats the opposition with any more concern or respect than those of Harris or Dawkins.
(And, anyway, the authors didn't so much pretend that belief has no positive quality, as much as challenge that particularly trite justification. Believe it or not, there's an argument to be had that all supposed "positives" of religion are overstated and scarcely substantiated. I can argue that I once saw a seven-man blitz work for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2002 against the Giants; does that mean that I can say you "ignore the positive qualities" of the seven-man blitz?)
But considering your view on Harris' and Dawkins' work, I found your cherry-picking of the NFLPA's "accomplishments" with respect to player contracts to be ironic. I'll assume everything you say is true, and concede that the recent barrage of criticism directed toward Upshaw and Co. is both unfair and exceedingly shrill. However, when discussing the average contract figures, percentages of revenue, and growth of the salary cap, you completely fail to mention one huge factor: NFL players' contracts aren't guaranteed. I know you know this, Mr. Easterbrook, so I'm forced to conclude that you felt the inclusion of such information would dilute your argument.
This issue is the easiest source of derision for the NFLPA (the disability benefits issue notwithstanding, since you've correctly pointed out that we really don't have a clear view of whether or not that many legitimate cases are being denied). No sport is more loaded with occupational hazards than the NFL, nor does any sport chew up and spit out players like the NFL. Currently, the players assume all of the risk when it comes to career length; owners can cut ties with damaged goods at any point (or at least until the end of the season in which the injury has taken place), even though it was for the franchise's benefit that the player became hurt in the first place. Of the football/baseball/basketball troika, the most dangerous sport of the three is the only one that doesn't offer guaranteed contracts to players. That the NFLPA hasn't managed to advance further in this cause is the union's biggest black eye, and I'm pretty sure football players wouldn't mind taking the MLBPA's smaller cut of revenues in return for the security offered by guaranteed deals.
Quibbling aside, I don't suppose to tell you what to write or not write, Mr. Easterbrook, and I certainly wouldn't wish ESPN.com to do any more censoring of your columns than what's currently taking place. But I do hope that you can see why the content of this particular work is so bothersome to people like me, who already spend too much of their time dealing with the vitriol spewed by a society of people who use god as a bludgeon against their enemies, and act as if non-belief is a sin against America.
Sincerely,
(Diesel)
Phoenix, AZ
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