Anger (Is Not A Good) Management (Style): A Meditation On The American Way Of Rage

Well, If LeBron James wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave Ohio, he knows it now, doesn't he? Historians, what does this picture remind you of?

I started thinking about why Americans feel entitled to their anger early this morning. At around 5:20 I turned right onto a road I normally take to go to my rowing club. As I approached a bridge leading to a major intersection, I saw that my lane was blocked with orange cones, and a sign that said "Road Work" was on the left hand sidewalk. I couldn't see over the bridge because it was arched, and there was no one there to tell me what to do. Proceeding slowly and with caution, I drove to the peak of the bridge in the oncoming lane (often what one is asked to do, at the direction of a worker designated to help) and saw that the intersection was completely blocked by people resurfacing the road I needed to cross.

At that moment, a DOT worker ran toward me, screaming angrily. When he reached my car, I rolled down my window to ask for instructions as to where I could cross and he yelled: "What's wrong with you?! Are you stupid? Get the hell out of here! You don't belong here!"

Frightened, but mainly interested in getting out of there, I raised my voice to interrupt him and said: "How can I get to the other side? Which bridge should I take?" Then followed a torrent of abuse, and no instructions. I asked again, more forcefully, and he replied:

"I don't care what you do, you c**t," he yelled. (If I am confusing you with my ampersands, think female body part used as an epithet.) As I began to back slowly down the bridge, hoping that no one would turn the corner and slam into my car, I will admit that almost involuntarily my middle finger separated itself from its betters in the universal gesture of contempt, at which point he screamed "C**T!" repeatedly until I was out of sight.

I mention this story because anger has been in the news a lot lately. It's something we are all encouraged to have nowadays, as if rage, like Adderall, increases our capacity for civilized problem-solving. Tea Party activists, for example, are united as a national movement by absolutely nothing but their anger, which journalists talk about as if it were a national resource. Some report on it in the midst of their own fits of mindless rage, while the more serious ones discuss Tea Party anger in hushed, admiring tones as if anger were a radical philosophical position rather than -- to point to more personal contexts for understanding rage -- symptoms of depression and paranoia. As Bob Bennett, the Utah Senator defeated by a Tea Party activist, said on the News Hour Wednesday night, honoring anger alone is like worshipping nihilism. "The concern I have about the anger that we're seeing that's being fed by talk show hosts and others," Bennett said about the anger vote, is that "it will be like a wave that comes in and smashes on the beach and destroys everything there, and then recedes back into the ocean, and leaves nothing behind it but empty sand....Anger is not a sound strategy for governing [and] once you are in office, you have to have some solutions."

Bennett has a good point here, and it reminds me why I admire some conservatives who I disagree with profoundly. It reminds me that the problem with anger -- displayed in the political arena -- is that it is often a way of diverting attention from the fact that you don't know how to solve a problem, and are offering a show of hyper-masculine belligerence in its place.

Take, for example, the DOT worker's abusive behavior. A better example, to return to the burning jersey picture, is the outrage being expressed over LeBron James as he leaves the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami. Why on God's green earth should James have stayed in Cleveland longer than seven years? Why should he have had to earn his way out with a championship for a city that hasn't won a championship of any kind since 1964? I mean no disrespect to the city of Cleveland (I'm from Philadelphia, after all), but the man isn't actually an industry; and basketball is a mere sideshow to the actual political story of why Cleveland has been on its economic uppers since the 1970s. Although the city estimates that James generates $150 million a year in tourist dollars, I would really love to see where those numbers come from, and know why Cleveland doesn't have a better plan than basketball for bringing that money in. If LeBron James' career had been ended by an injury tomorrow, the money would have been gone too: wouldn't it have been better to invest in a high-tech sector than in a sports star? How much would Cleveland love a LeBron whose career was over? Would Cleveland think that it "owned" a white basketball star in this way, and that he should be so grateful to them that he would put their desires before his own?

And I hate to ask this, but don't a lot of people leave Ohio (nice as it is) to seek their fortunes elsewhere?

But it's the anger that seems to be the story here, since apparently LeBron James was responsible for Cleveland and can be justifiably treated as if he had left a wife and six children stranded at an SRO in Toledo. Why? Because the fans have a right to be angry! The Indiana, Pennsylvania Gazette agreed this morning that Cleveland "got played" by James; Cavs fans are publicly defacing LeBron posters and burning their souvenir jerseys in the street. One Cleveland sportscaster announced that James would "enter the hall of shame" along with Art Modell, the football owner who took his team to Baltimore without even announcing it (now it becomes clear why that was not such a bad choice.) The Cav's majority owner, Dan Gilbert, published an idiotic open letter to fans where, among other things, he calls James' departure "shameful" and a "cowardly betrayal." See Paul Harvey's analysis of the letter at Religion In American History.

You might ask, What about the circus that always overwhelms actual competition in professional sports -- isn't it a silly and unnecessary waste of time and money? The answer is yes. It isn't bricks and mortar, or high-wage jobs, that are being supported by superstar athletes. It isn't schools or hospitals. What is supported is a fantasy that the spiritual and economic well-being of working people (as opposed to say, the well-being of Nike, the team owner or the NBA) is related to the success of an athletic franchise. The idea that LeBron James has wronged the entire city of Cleveland belongs in the same category as the misimpression that Tiger Woods betrayed his fans and his sponsors as much as he betrayed his wife and children when he had (what sounds like nasty, impersonal sex) with dozens of women.

Anger is too much with us nowadays: it's become an easy alternative to thought, planning and the hard work that goes into creating tangible successes around things that matter. Worse, in a country where there doesn't seem to be a right to work, to a good education, to health care, to protection from corporate negligence, to family planning services or to food, "our anger" seems to be the only thing to which everyone seems to agree we have a right, and an obligation to perform, as a daily act of citizenship.

On The Butler-Duke Final: Is Academic Excellence So Difficult To Combine With Athletics?

What the Los Angeles Times dubbed the final between "feel good Butler" and "real good" Duke turned out to be tighter than everyone thought, although I missed the game for an evening lecture at Zenith. When I am Director of the World, no lectures will be held on the evening of an important National Championship. Think about this when you are casting your vote.

But this brings me to a topic: the jaws that have dropped all over the country that two schools with a 90% team graduation rate made it through the bracket to the Big Game. Of course, Duke has been doing this for decades, but Butler was more of a shocker, since they operate as a good-sized liberal arts college (about 1,000 students more than Zenith) and have a basketball budget a tenth the size of Duke's (probably eight times the size of Zenith's, but now I'm guessing.) Of course, Butler draws on a local midwestern population where the public schools are good and childbirth is always a struggle because the little tykes come out with basketballs in their hands, but still. It was a big deal.

Add to this Cornell making the Sweet Sixteen, and there has been a general fluttering this year about the capacity of a few students to overcome their studying habits and press on to play championship basketball.

Of course, we already knew women could do this, right? But we take it for granted that most young men won't, and that tolerance for high levels of misbehavior and academic failure are part of the price a university must pay for athletic excellence (i.e., a team whose gear people will buy and that will bring home sumptuous television contracts that can be plowed back into more athletic facilities.)

Like so many things about university life, these tradeoffs are cynical and unnecessary: it is that old problem of assuming that things are as they seem. We talk about the "culture" of big time sports, as if we were anthropologists in The Land That Time Forgot, rather than looking at how we might change programs where the athletes are not doing college level work and are spending their spare time wreaking havoc on other students. Furthermore, if you look at schools that have a low graduation rate for their big budget teams, you often see overall low graduation rates, and students not able to get into the classes they need to attain the BA in four years. I remember a few years back when it was revealed that a Big Southern Football Power had a graduation rate of well under 10% for its national championship football team, but guess what? The university as a whole was under 40% for a BA in six years. And the team has not repeated its championship performance either, as its star players drifted off campus, mostly to the various forms of unemployment you are vulnerable to without an education or a pro contract. Hence, a few (not so very radical) thoughts for the NCAA about the relationship between athletics and education.

Athletic graduation rates are the canary in the coal mine. If a school does not value its student-athletes, and does not hold them to a high standard, that says something about how they value all their undergraduates. Are classes merely seen as a chore that students slog their way through on their way to the alumni association, or is there care taken to structure majors, provide the classes and advising students need, and support the development of academic skills? When athletes are caught in off the field criminal and social scandals, what does that say about the atmosphere that is more generally tolerated on campus by student organizations, Greeks, and the campus administration? Are adults even on campus after Thursday afternoon?

A baseline of academic discipline is a good indicator that athletes will be disciplined in their training habits as well. Learning to defer gratification, manage one's own time, set priorities and have healthy sleep, eating and sexual habits is part of what it means to be a grownup. It is these skills that get a young person through, either in the case of unbelievable celebrity (a scenario for a fraction of student athletes); ongoing pressure (a scenario for all college students including athletes); or a setback (an injury, illness, or surprising failure.) I asked my friend Tim, who went from my class at Oligarch University to the NFL, and was one of the most disciplined students I knew, what got him through a lab science major and varsity football. He smiled and said, "Well, when I had work I needed to do, I would just tell the coach I couldn't come to practice for a couple days." Because Tim was trusted by his coach to give 110% wherever he was, he managed his own life and he managed it well. What would college sports look like if everyone did this?

College coaches could keep their athletes in school by having an expectation that their athletes had taken high school seriously too. Each athlete should have a letter of recommendation from a teacher that speaks to this; on recruiting visits, a coach could take the time to talk to this teacher personally. Furthermore, students that were bounced around from high school to high school to get more starting time, either of their own volition or because of a parent's wishes, should be scrutinized more closely. These are the kids who, I would expect, could be guaranteed not to take school seriously because - why should they? It has never even been as important as their athletics, and they can't be expected to have developed that value system yet. Furthermore, why should they stay in college for any longer than it takes to get a contract or to get hurt? They never have gone to a school to be in school, so how would they even know what that means?

When college coaches, administrators, and alumni cheat and make excuses for themselves, athletes do too. And cheaters never prosper. Oh yeah, maybe for a season. But not for long. Building an athletic program, and building a college, is about the long term, not throwing the dice every year and praying it doesn't come up snake-eyes.

Intelligence, and being able to activate your intelligence in productive ways, matters, no matter what you are doing is a college skill. The notion of the "dumb jock" was invented by people who have never been successful athletes (or perhaps athletes at all.) It is true, the further you get away from money-making sports, the more intelligent people seem to be: crew, track, wrestling, squash, and many other sports that have modestly paid career dividends seem to be full of kids who go on to interesting non-athletic careers (or the very modestly paid coaching gigs their sport offers.) But one wonders whether the low academic expectations attached to the big money sports, not to mention coaches steering athletes away from challenging courses and majors, don't have more to do with the bad academic and career outcomes for these students than does lack of intelligence. Look at what these kids do on the field. A successful college linebacker not only has to memorize a vast strategic plan, he has to be a leader, be able to reorganize that plan on the spur of the moment, and process a tremendous amount of information in a matter of seconds depending on what is unfolding before him. That man may be many things, but he isn't dumb.

My advice to the NCAA is to refuse the notion that Duke and Butler have pulled off something exceptional, or that they are able to do it because they are private, not public colleges. To believe that is to undervalue what education -- and particularly public education -- ought to be; indeed, it refuses what it is, in many places. The truth is what they do can be achieved by everyone if the connection between athletics and education is a productive one that does not exploit the athletic labor of young people at the expense of teaching them.

And for my commenters who view these thoughts as simply naive? Show me the research demonstrating that athletic excellence is hindered by academic achievement, and I will post a picture of myself eating my UConn women's basketball hat.

Smokin' Sunday Radical Roundup: Ciggies, Spys, Sports and Sex Scandals

I Would Do Anything For Love -- But I Won't Do That: Thanks to Ralph Luker at Cliopatria we at Tenured Radical have links to articles by Robert Proctor and Jon Weiner about historians who have testified on behalf of the tobacco industry between 1986-2005. They include Stephen Ambrose, Otis Graham, Paul Harvey, and Michael Schaller. Consultants for the industry who have not testified include Herbert Klein and Irwin Unger. Out of 57 scholars there are exactly two women -- which means what? That the tobacco industry doesn't employ women, or that women told them to take a hike, since smoking is also linked to breast cancer and women are a bit more militant on this issue?

"That's Doctor Moneypenny, James": This has got to be the coolest job I have ever seen posted -- did you even know that there was something called The International Spy Museum? Well there is, it's in Washington D.C., and they are looking for a Curator/Historian! According to the ad posted on H-Net, it is "the only public museum in the U.S. solely dedicated to the tradecraft, history, and contemporary role of espionage." I don't see a deadline, so get your application in now.

I wonder if you get extra points for sending your materials in code on a microdot carefully secured to an otherwise ordinary magazine? Hmmmm?

We'll Know What's In The Closet When We Stop Cleaning House: Faculty at SUNY-Binghamton, beset by a men's basketball scandal, are concerned that those who allowed it --nay, cultivated it -- are still in place. "Interviews with students, administrators and faculty members revealed just how corrosive the trade-offs were in Binghamton’s pursuit of athletic glory," the New York Times reports today. The "crisis of confidence" is most acute in the Department of Human Development, where 10 out of 16 players were enrolled as majors. Many of these players had come from other schools; the department accepted transfer of credit in"courses like Theories of Softball and Bowling I, and [players] were given preferential treatment to stay eligible." Such preferential treatment included running special sections of required courses, compressed into a short time frame, that would allow the players to concentrate on basketball and graduate with virtually no marketable skills. Meanwhile, ordinary requests from regular majors -- like having food available at the downtown location where their classes had been moved -- were denied.

Two questions that no one ever seems to ask in this situation: what was the point of having a high-profile basketball program at SUNY-Binghamton when the university is already well known, for its academics, as one of the finest universities in the system? And why do such scandals, minus the occasional recruiting violation that apparently caused Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma to stop speaking, so rarely occur women's programs? Despite the fact that we know that the money spent on marquee men's sports is rarely returned, even in alumni donations, administrators with dreams of sports glory repeatedly screw over faculty and students, and do so claiming that they are gilding the rose of education by trying to deliver a basketball championship. They also cynically use large numbers of athletes, the vast majority of whom will never be able to finance a life playing pro ball, and thus could really use a college degree and an actual major. It is just not true that big-time college sports make a college or university better! Sports are, and should be, a co-curricular activity: they are meant to keep students in good health, create community, inculcate self-discipline, teach competitive individuals to work as a team and produce leaders. What aspect of programs that cheat, and that elevate the interests of a few community members over the interests of the whole, teaches this to athletes or the student body at large?

But in cheerful sports news....

Silver Medal, Baby! Congratulations to my colleague, Zenith's own Head Coach of Women's Ice Hockey Jodi McKenna, who helped to lead the United States team to a silver medal as an assistant Olympic coach. Nice. Your women are lucky to have a Division III liberal arts education and such a fine example of athletic excellence.

Last But Not Least, German People Naked: Many apologies to those of you who hit the Tiny URL in a recent Tweet (which also posted to Facebook), and thanks to those friends who sent me urgent text messages alerting me that there was an issue with the link. In a mighty strange move, that click would have led you to a German amateur pornography site, where not so nice looking people were sprawled about in quite ugly ways. I really dislike it when pornography is forced on me or others against their will, and it causes my best feminist self to bridle. What is even odder is that most legit porn sites ask you to certify you are of majority age before clicking into them, thus making it a choice for all of us. Perhaps because Germans don't have the same laws we do, this one took you straight to the nasty bits. Anyway: microbloggers, check your Tinies before tweeting! I suspect this is either a glitch that the Tiny people need to work out, or a virus of some kind.