Flag on this play: Take down South Carolina’s Confederate battle standard

June 23, 2015

History is not merely written by winners. It’s dictated by them. That’s true at Wimbledon. And it’s especially true in war.

The controversy over a Confederate battle flag flying over the South Carolina State House that has erupted anew in the wake of the Charleston mass murders is yet another example of our failure to understand this. The South lost the Civil War. And the losers do not get to display the trophies of war. If they did, the Nazi flag would be flying over Germany today. How long do you think the former Allies would tolerate that? ...

Charleston and the literature of rejection

June 19, 2015

Well, one thing’s certain: Dylann Storm Roof – really? That’s a name? – is no Rachel Dolezal.

One couldn’t do enough to embrace black culture. The other couldn’t do enough to destroy it, allegedly gunning down nine people at Bible study Wednesday night in Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, uttering the particularly lunatic thought, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” ...

The NFL and the theater of violence

May 28, 2015

The Chicago Bears’ hiring and firing of defensive end Ray McDonald – he of the three arrests for domestic violence, the second of which got him cut from the San Francisco 49ers – tells you that the NFL remains ambivalent about domestic violence.

There are a number of reasons for this. First, we as a nation remain ambivalent. McDonald’s first two arrests were dropped, so who’s to say the third won’t be? Isn’t a man innocent until proven guilty? Shouldn’t he have a chance to redeem himself, earn a living and express his talents?

Except that three arrests aren’t an anomaly. They’re a pattern of behavior. So what to do?

“The league has not really thought through its own message,” said Paul H. Haagen, co-director of the Center for Sports Law and Policy at Duke University. “They are definitely making it up as they go along and leaving themselves areas of discretion. But by leaving themselves discretion and not making clear what the required processes are, there is constant uncertainty and questions.”

The NFL can’t even figure out how to process Deflategate. The players’ union wants Commissioner Roger Goodell to recuse himself but as arbitrator Goodell gets to decide if he should be recused. Huh? How’s the league going to implement a cohesive policy regarding domestic violence when it fumbles procedures regarding the rules of the game? ...

Deflategate: Iceberg, straight ahead

May 22, 2015

So NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will hear Tom Brady’s appeal, despite a request from the NFL Players Association that he recuse himself.

“One of the primary responsibilities of the commissioner is to protect the integrity of the game and to do what’s right for the game of football,” Goodell said.

“That’s my job. We have a process that’s been negotiated with the union that’s been in place for decades. It’s something that we’ve had in place for a long time and we’re going to do it that way.”

What planet is he on? First, there’s the NFL’s constant misuse of the word “integrity.” It means “wholeness.” In Jungian psychology, the integrated self is the self that is all of a piece. Alistair Cooke, the late, longtime host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” once said of Marilyn Monroe that she was a person of integrity – a mess off and onscreen. Cruel but you get his point: “Integrity” doesn’t mean “honesty.” It means that you’d be the same way with the president of the United States that you are with your grocer. It’s a quality that the Dalai Lama and the pope are said to have. It’s not a quality that’s usually associated with football players. What a surprise. ...

Nature teams with nurture in ‘The Professor in the Cage’

April 26, 2015

“The Professor in the Cage,” Jonathan Gottschall’s provocative new book, locates itself at the gridlocked intersection of biology and culture.

The subtitle “Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch” suggests another question, Why are women the nicer sex? and its corollary, Are they really?

The answers are fascinating and complex, though perhaps not as complex as his book makes them out to be.

Part of “The Professor in the Cage” is about how Gottschall, an out-of-shape, disenchanted academic, got involved in the brutal world of mixed martial arts (MMA). His personal story is less interesting, however, than his personal observations. He hits the mark, for instance, when he says that MMA is like gay porn – all those rippling, sweaty physiques grappling with one another in clutches that are at once amusing and arousing. It’s the reason I love wrestling. And I suspect – as the nude wrestling scene in “Women in Love” suggests – it gives men a license to touch one another in a way that conforms to traditional heterosexual society, as do all sports.

But why must male athletic competition be so violent – or at least carry the threat of violence? And why do we secretly – or not so secretly – find it thrilling? ...

She said, they said

April 8, 2015

Well, Rolling Stone magazine has really made a mess of it, hasn’t it?

A report from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, commissioned by the magazine, has concluded that the mag failed to do even basic due diligence in a cover story on a gang rape at the University of Virginia that it was forced to retract.

The author of the article – Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who will keep her job as will her bosses – failed to identify the attacker of the young woman, Jackie, or interview her friends. Apparently, her editors had a remarkable lack of curiosity about such details as well.

“Rolling Stone’s fundamental mistake, (managing editor Will) Dana said, was in suspending any skepticism about Jackie’s account because of the sensitivity of the issue,” The New York Times’ Ravi Somaiya wrote. ...

The ‘Pretty Woman’ theory of customer relations

April 1, 2015

The hullabaloo over the new crop of RFRAs (Religious Freedom Reformation Acts) raises an interesting question about what we owe ourselves and others in the workplace, a subject that figures prominently in “The Penalty for Holding,” the upcoming second novel in my series “The Games Men Play.”

Granted, the workplace there is the NFL, a far more specialized and glamorous environment than most of us will ever know. But whether you work at the local Starbucks or for an NFL team, the questions ignited by the RFRA debate in Indiana and Arkansas remain the same: To what extent may I impose my personal beliefs on others? To what extent may I find offense in theirs?

The answers are actually simpler than you would think if you keep one thing in mind: A business or a corporation is a public entity, emphasis on the word “public.” If someone plunks down a Ulysses S. Grant on the counter of my bake shop, I owe that person $50 worth of baked goods. Period.

Of course, I should present the baked goods with a smile and a good attitude. I might even offer more in the way of sample cookies on the counter. But I must in any event give value for value, regardless of what I perceived the person to be.

Otherwise, we would spend our days in knots about each person we encounter. Chances are very few people are going to share the same values you hold. ...