Lena Dunham
Yesterday Terry Gross did a lengthy interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Lena Dunham, the 25-year-old creator of the hit HBO show "Girls." The show has drawn criticism because its four characters are all white women, 20-somethings in New York. And Gross's interview made news for Dunham's acknowledgement that she will seek greater diversity in the next season.
Below are two excerpts from the interview, which I think demonstrate important social attitudes. First, Dunham says that she was writing what she knows, and wanted to be "super-specific" to her own experience, and that world is half-WASP, half-Jewish. So she really didn't know anything about a diverse racial experience, and didn't think to put it in the show.
The second excerpt involves Dunham's sensitivity to gay people's experience. She knows a lot of gay people; and she calls her character in the show "liberal and enlightened" on gay issues, but also with traces of homophobia.
The social attitudes exhibited here are the elite attitudes that I shared till I threw myself into Palestinian solidarity work. The American establishment today is a mingled Jewish-WASP one (my wife and I are typical), in which being enlightened means being thoughtful about gays. But that extension of spirit doesn't really include people of color. It's just outside the frame. And don't expect to see any Arab-Americans in the cast... Dunham:
You know, I am a half-Jew, half-WASP, and I wrote two Jews and two WASPs, like I really - and something I wanted to avoid was sort of tokenism in casting and not speaking - you know, if I had one of the four girls, for example, if she was African-American, I feel like, you know, not that the experience of an African-American girl and a white girl living in Brooklyn are drastically different, but there has to be specificity to that experience and specificity that at this point I wasn't able to speak to. And so I thought about it, I really wrote the show from sort of a gut-level place, and each character was a piece of me and/or based on, you know, someone very close to me. And only later did I realize that it was four white girls. And so as much as I can say it was an accident, it was an accident, but I also later, as the criticism came out, I thought: I hear this and I want to respond to it. And I also, you know, the show - I don't know if this - I want - this is a hard issue to speak to because all I want to do is sound sensitive and not say anything that will horrify anyone or make them feel more isolated. But I did write something that was super-specific to my experience, and I always want to avoid rendering an experience I can't speak to accurately, and I want to avoid, you know, kind of classic network tokenism in casting because although I think that people of color are severely underrepresented on TV, I'm not sure that that's always the solution. That being said, you know, as I said in an interview with Huffington Post, like, now we have the opportunity to do a second season, and believe me, that will be remedied. I'm really excited to introduce new characters into the world of the show, and some of them are really great actors of color, and some of them are white actors, and we're going to continue to try to tell really honest stories, but the world of the show is definitely growing more diverse....
I was really hoping that my, you know, my gay male friends - of which I have many - would find it hilarious and not think that I was, you know, that I was expressing my own deep-rooted homophobia because it was really important to me to look at the honest way that an - even though Hannah is an enlightened, liberal girl probably thinks about gay men as her target audience, she still is not pleased to find out that she was dating one.
This is one inarticulate young woman. In her interview she sounds remarkably shallow, even for a 25 year old. Now I know why HBO is not on my list.
But she is right about one thing – the large urban environment is a highly segregated one, especially in terms of color. I’ve seen and noted that myself. And it’s not just New York or eg, Boston. It’s even high tech meccas like Silicon Valley. Though at least there it would be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid Asians. Even there, when it comes to social settings, like still gravitates to like. And Jewish gravitates to everything white, like milk to honey.
Although I don’t live in the States, I have family and very close friends over there and communicate with people living across the pond every day, I read more U.S media(almost only U.S media in fact) than any European media, as well as blogs, journals etc.
Race is, first of all, a much more debated topic than in Europe. Here we may talk loosely about cultures or religions, almost always implictly talking about Islam, but not so much about race in of itself.
I also think Europe is, at least racially, more integrated. 50 % of all black men in the UK have a white wife, and almost as many black women have a white husband. (In the younger generations, there are even a little more black women who are newly intermarried).
In Europe, or at least in the UK, class is the main divider and social marker, unlike in America where it was and remains race.
As for segregation… I read a lot of economic blogs and journals and I try to read a few economic working papers from NBER a week to keep up to date, and the research that, EPI institute, among others have done show to more segregation today than in the 50s(although it depends a little how you count but still).
From my relatives, at least those at Ivys, I hear stories of quite profound segregation. They claim Asians tend to self-segregate most, and since they are about 25 % it has a larger impact.
As for Jews, I do think that WASP/Jewish integration is now so great it is indistinguishable. There are still minor divides, but if you look at the first, say, 20 employees of Facebook, or the co-founders of Pinterest(the most important one is a guy named Silberman), or look at the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists who are most successful you see names like Andreesen Horowitz, you see a great mixture of Jewish and WASP/Germanic names. But they’re all white.
It reminds me of how Buffett came to power when he was young, he idolized a Jew and the Jew rejected him because of past racial wounds, but Buffett’s naive and persistent wish to look past history and merge the best and the brightest from both peoples soon made even Graham melt.
But whatever can be said of the healed Jewish/WASP divide, it hasn’t spread between the races, only within intra-ethnicities.
It also reminds me of a comment that Max Blumenthal made in an interview I listened to a while back, when he was an up-and-coming progressive journalist and went to this conferenece, many of whom bonded during the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. And he said that he kept thinking to himself how extremely white all the surroundings look like. I do think most young progressives today are people of color, but the higher up you go, especially in media, the whiter it gets.
Some of the most white companies are media companies, and this is a hypocrisy many of the left never want to talk about. If I am cynical, I may be sensing that they are projecting their own racial insecurities and white guilt upon Dunham, because she is so young and succesful, and that he is staking the same path as they did and they never atoned for that, so they’ll do it through her.
“Some of the most white companies are media companies, and this is a hypocrisy many of the left never want to talk about.”
I learn so much from your comments Krauss! I never know “the left” did all the personnel work for media companies, and was able to insinuate its own racial biases and insecurities into the media work-force. What incredible hypocrisy! I’ll never trust socialism again!
“They claim Asians tend to self-segregate most”
Another point on which discussion will be closed, thanks to Krauss. Darn those wily Celestials! Why I bet they engineered the Alien Exclusion Act their very own selves!
Krauss is right on mark though.
Asians do self-segregate.
I am Asian. I never really identified as Indian though. The few times in my life when some racist made me feel alien, were when I most felt like the Other.
But yea, it’s very clique-ish in America. My friends in high school were mostly minorities – Black, Hispanic, Korean, etc.
I have dated mostly white girls though. And I notice that Indians – both male and female, have white friends usually. That isn’t a rule though. I’m upper middle class and so were these other Indians. So that’s who they had around them. Upper middle class white people.
My sister went to a Passover and has a Jewish friend. She told me about it because she knew I was passionate about the Israel-Palestine conflict. She’s much younger than I so her politics are non-existent. I do recall that she had some Christian fundie history professor who referred to the Palestinians as ‘the Arabs’ this and that in her class when she spoke up in their defense one day. She was a freshman in HS at the time.
My old HS. One of the top HS (private schools) in the country. But I heard the idiot got fired because of too many complaints or something.
Anyway, Krauss is right. Personally, the creator of this lame show should not change a thing. Her life lacks minorities and the show is her life (to a degree).
People want to see the yuppie/hipster girl/guy in their 20s living in the big city with relationship problems but only through the edgy “HBO” (‘no limits’) lens.
It’s tacky as hell. Judd Appatow is getting stale. This stuff is not real. It’s as contrived as a shitty sitcom like Friends.
But people eat it up.
I mean, in India people love those horrible musicals (that I had to watch growing up, with my parents). No one wants to see the real India.
Maybe no one wants to see real America. Or maybe we aren’t making the choices because it’s not a simple matter of ‘if you can will it’ kind-of-choice.
Cliff, good comments especially from the personal background. probably you get asked a lot why you care so much about I/P. I obviously agree with you about the cliquishness (see my comment below).
recently, a young jewish Lady – from the upper middle class – I know married a fello from India – of largely the same background – upper middle class. Both in New York. They had one full day of Indian traditional marriage festivities followed by another day that included a jewish wedding style ceremony with hupa and all. Then another day of just fun with their young New York hipster friends. Everyone looked so colorful in the pictures, and the Indian groom (who is totally Americanized though he looked Bollywoody-handsome with touches of attitude a la The devil may care Dude shick) looked in his element wearing a kippa with a look of whatever.
Race is, first of all, a much more debated topic than in Europe. Here we may talk loosely about cultures or religions, almost always implictly talking about Islam, but not so much about race in of itself.
Do you notice differences based on particular countries? In particular, with regard to Germany, now that Germany has recognized ethnic Turks as German citizens, has that translated into social relationships?
Krauss, Elliot, compared to the USA, proportionate the the whole population, aren’t there higher percentage of blacks in USA than in places like France or Germany? And isn’t the percentage of Islamic people in Germany and France nearing the percentage of blacks in USA’s population? And in England? If so, maybe the numbers in relation to the whole population of a country is as reasonable an explanation as focus on race v focus on class? Also, I always hear, e.g., US discriminates by race while England discriminates by class, but I wonder how true that actually is; maybe it’s just bad form in America to socially pronounce one’s class bias, coupled with consumer product aggregate method, which is good form?
I’d be interested to see numbers and analysis. One detail that supports the England vs. America distinction on race and class is speech, in particular dialect and accent.
For instance, if you are listening to the radio in the U.S., you can typically tell right away if the speaker is Black or White. In distinction to this, in the UK, Blacks (and other minorities) have the same regional accents their White neighbors have.
I think you are right that “class” is off-limits in America, while “race” is not. Perhaps the reason is that skin color is an undeniable reality, while we like to think that all Americans were created equal with somewhat equal bank accounts. This feeds into and off the dogma that one’s economic well-being is an outcome of one’s own efforts, and not the result of pure luck in a racially skewed system.
Perhaps there is also a comfort factor here. For all its problems, the US has had experience handling race. Ideologically, the US can countenance race issues. On the other side, because of its economic ideology, the US still cannot get a handle on class inequities.
For instance, the epidemic of racism in certain European countries such as Holland comes from not having had any prior experience handling people of different skin color and ethnic origin. The US (and other “new” countries) has more experience. This means more successes and more failures, but it also means that you better know what to expect than parts of Europe which are new to this game.
“They claim Asians tend to self-segregate most, and since they are about 25 % it has a larger impact. ”
Do you mean people of Far Eastern (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) ancestry or people of Indian subcontinent ancestry?
I remember reading some time ago that in the US a woman of Far Eastern ancestry was more likely to marry a white man than a man of Far Eastern ancestry. I don’t know if that was true or not.
They claim Asians tend to self-segregate most, and since they are about 25 % it has a larger impact.
From my experience, there’s some truth to that but only partially. After all, Asians are not all made of one cloth. For example, Koreans are no more comfortable with Taiwanese than they are with “whites”, Japanese do not tend to congregate with Chinese and the ones from India form their own groups which are not free of the baggage of the castes they came from. If you ask any young Asian, they’ll tell you that self-segregation on campus is only partly voluntary. For the most part they might claim to feel not entirely welcome, as they cannot hide their “foreign-ness”, so they pull with those in their comfort zone.
There is a school in the town where I lived which was under court order to integrate a certain number of residents from a less affluent town a short distance away. People at that school also claimed that the blacks “self-segregated”. Though if you spoke to some of the black kids they’d tell you they felt excluded by class more so than by race.
I believe that the truth is that American schools – all the way through college sometimes – can be extremely cliquish. And the cliques form more around class and shared culture than anything else. There’s always that top clique of the well-to-do and that’s what may pull the Jewish and wasps together. It’s the unholy embrace of the self-proclaiming “elites”, kind of like what Phil implies. Their members are closer to that coveted – and maligned – 1% than their equally talented and accomplished but racially different counterparts. Oftentimes, the latter are further down the rangs of the ladder only because they have fewer “connections” and/or less access to capital (depending what field they are going into). Maybe this sounds like a generalization, but just how many Asian Americans are likely to get a job interning at NYTs if they go into journalism? how many breaks someone who fancies themselves a writer or film maker going to get?
Have any of us seen many TV pundits who are Asians? is it a coincidence that so many pundits are Jewish?
As for progressivism, I agree with you Krauss. the further up the eschelons of media power one goes the more white and LGBT supporting they become. And that’s the sad thing – to the 1%, support for gay marriage and immigrant rights (that do not threaten them one bit) – is what defines the progressive. It’s beyond pathetic, but having trust funds in your future can be strangely insulating.
Danna, in my own experience there’s a lot of truth in what you say.
So, her HBO show will have the four chief characters saying “you know” even more than she does in her planned interview excerpted here? Such an elite, we have these day, the cream of the WASP-Jewish crop? Whatever.
Yeah, we know.
Meanwhile, here’s some semi-related news from the foreign state that is just like us, just as we are all told, you know:
Keep your daughters away from Arabs: link to ynetnews.com
Public invited to inform on those renting to Arabs:
link to ynetnews.com
She looks somewhat like Stanley Ann Dunham, yes?
“The American establishment today is a mingled Jewish-WASP one (my wife and I are typical), in which being enlightened means being thoughtful about gays. But that extension of spirit doesn’t really include people of color. It’s just outside the frame. And don’t expect to see any Arab-Americans in the cast”
Being “thoughtful about gays” has no economic component. Some of the same well born wasps and jews are gay, its been shown that people are more sympathetic when they have gay people in their lives; whatever else is true about the gay experience in the US, elite gays face no economic sanction for being gay, unlike “people of color” who do indeed face sanction, both social and economic. because of “who they are.” gay solidarity is perfect for the bourgeois. the morality behind the movement is obvious, but unlike activism that would “help” the vast majority of “people of color” in the united states — where organizing and other acts of solidarity would require actually going to working class and poor neighborhoods– sexual preference related activism can be done from the comfort of your beach house. and it is.
What do you expect from a girl who went to St Ann’s and Oberlin? She’s out of college less than four years ago and gets a HBO show produced by Judd Apatow. Hmmm. This doesnt bother Weiss – this obvious insiderism that is absolutely rampant in “pop culture” circles, where people who went to st ann’s and oberlin are rammed down the publics throat as representatives of the “young” experience in america. as if most young americans are “struggling” artists living in flats in soho or something. Weiss just wants the few “people of color” who went to st anns and oberlin to be represented on judd apatow produced shows? Not really a rallying cry.
The beef with Dunham isnt that her show under represents groups of people, the beef is that her show drastically OVER represents people like her. Her experience is one that the powers that be love to portray, the young graduate from a good school, living pretty well and trying to make it in the big city, amongst other well educated young people doing the same. What percentage of the population does this depict? She and her ilk are the safe bet, a little “edge” but nothing that would rattle any cages, and we all know how much people love shows about well to do white people living single in NYC – my girlfriend calls the show “Sex and the City for awkward, relatively unattractive hipsters”
( or is that what I called it?).
The remedy to this problem is not to add a few more awkward, relatively unattractive hipsters who happen to be black or hispanic to the show, the remedy is to not watch shit like this. After all, if in the next season there is a character that went to horace mann, NYU film school, lives in a flat in tribeca and happens to be black, is that really “diversity”? If you say so. Personally, I dont think Phil has given up his “elite attitude”
it does bother weiss, i have written about kinship networks before. this sure suggests one, but im not entirely sure, and i dont like throwing the charge around. certainly i benefited from a jewish kinship network, i know it; but i cant extend that conspiracy to others automatically
“and i dont like throwing the charge around.”
What did you do, erase the archive of your articles?
What conspiracy? Its done in broad daylight. I dont think its a jewish thing – although apatow’s casts do speak for themselves- I think its an elitist thing. in fact, i know it is
dan, i heard garry marshall in an extended interview recently and he explained that he felt that part of his responsibility as a producer/director was to employ members of his extended family, and i don’t think that his sense of obligation is all that different from many others in his position. that doesn’t necessarily add up to a ‘kinship network’ as phil so delicately puts it, but it certainly doesn’t add up to a meritocracy either.
“What do you expect from a girl who went to St Ann’s and Oberlin?”
all the authenticity of Lana del Rey
link to youtube.com
There are other forms of English literature
link to youtube.com
“the remedy is to not watch shit like this”
Easy there, Dan. Don’t push it. Next thing you know Phil will be reporting on cutting-edge, hip-hop, gangsta-rap productions like “Death of a Salesman”!
Mooser: “I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, people don’t seem to take to me.”
I am grateful for Phil Weiss for educating me about this HBO series. I had never heard of “Girls” until reading this piece. I’m with you Dan (and Danaa) about avoiding this kind of stuff.
Dan, I disagree with you on your characterization of the gay issue. Gay couples in states where gay marriage is not recognized suffer from economic and other hardships. Any positive changes in this regard are quite recent. This means that almost all gays in the U.S. have suffered economically for being gay.
-Now that the gay issue is mainstream, the powerful elites can embrace it with no fear.
-It surprises me how many gays don’t get the issue of Palestinian oppression. I guess it’s like another former outsider group – the Jews – not getting it either.
I said “elite” gays, Elliot.
“…..whatever else is true about the gay experience in the US, elite gays face no economic sanction for being gay..”
many or most of this former outside group don’t get the issue of palestinian oppression because it just happens that this former outside group (jews) are the palestinians’ oppressors. likewise, as once again cognitive dissonance obliterates common sense, most americans don’t get it that u.s. troops are considered to be oppressors by much of the world, afghanistan, iraq, yemen and somalia in particular.
TV as a medium just sucks, dan. the few well done productions just proving the rule even more so. and the problem is, if i might sound like a middle-aged crank, that many of this generation’s creative class are emotionally and intellectually retarded. TV/internetTV is their sole source for inspiration it would seem. a TV show is now just a cute concept, with a series of one-liners strung together in a semi-coherent narrative, none of which can be done without repeated allusions to prior TV shows/TVads/celebrities. as if that were the same as shared history. anyway, mooser has the most intelligent point to make on the subject. don’t let it get its foot in the front door of your home in the first place.
oh, and i forgot. i didn’t hear the interview. was gross being critical of this dimwit’s myopia? that would be rich.
“TV as a medium just sucks, dan. the few well done productions…”
…wouldn’t matter a bit. The act of watching TV, even if it was 24/7 “Death of a Salesman” is bad for you. To avoid its deleterious consequences I always watch TV with the screen turned to the wall, and the sound turned off.
“mooser has the most intelligent point to make on the subject.”
And you were doing so well, marcb, at maintaining your credibility! Well if you want to throw it away in one sentence, that’s your business.
I gave up TV (true story) after I tried to punch a guy (it was over nothing) in Junior-High (?) school like they do on TV. I was expecting a solid sound effect, and for him to be conveniently knocked out for long enough to satisfy the plot. Instead, I missed, split my shirt all under the arm, and he kicked me in the ass when my follow-through turned me around. I decided there and then TV lied, and if that’s how much they lie about punching, how much do they lie about guns and women?
Great post, Dan, and I’m sorry Phil didn’t seem to get it. What makes the output of our Hollywood industry such shit is not that it’s about elites (although it usually is) but the elite attitude it takes towards the viewer. It’s all about manipulating the viewer, and the more skillful the manipulation the more we praise it. Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it’s certainly come to pass in this country.
“It’s all about manipulating the viewer, and the more skillful the manipulation the more we praise it”
The US is such a tragedy. Thirty years of dispossession of the poor and now the middle class. How much are the S&P 500 going to spend to buy the presidency this year?
Eventually there won’t be a social security system. The top 0.1% don’t need it.
And it will happen without the vast majority noticing
link to omg.yahoo.com
“Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it’s certainly come to pass in this country.”
I like this one by Elizabeth Jennings: “Human failings may be forgivable, but if lack of compassion, meanness of spirit, envy or cowardice are present in the poet’s nature they will be evident in his verse. You cannot fake anything if you are trying to write serious poetry.”
I think there are some pretty mean, cruel writers and directors up there in Hollywood. Writers in general are not good people. They need to have a moral philosophy to first lower themselves to the dust where everybody walks instead of waltzing in their high towers from which they look down on people.
“Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it’s certainly come to pass in this country.”
what a succinct summation of 21st capitalism. every commercial development must be bigger, faster, more spectacularly grotesque and intrusive. even the more mundane parts of culture like fashion are straight out of pornography. i don’t mean ‘borrowed’ either, just plucked and planted into the mainstream. it’s even fashionable to have porn ‘stars’ associated with mainstream celebrity. tony bourdain, the TV chef, once had a show on ‘food porn’ or some such crap, and there were continuous references to a porn actor whose apparent claim to fame is his obese, hairy body. talk about an odd food pairing, buffalo chicken wings and some guy who reminds you of a clot of hair in your shower drain. blech.
PeaceThroughJustice, looks like you are also describing MSNBC & FOX news shows.
Well, I just watched the first episode of Girls; it’s sort of like watching a very tedious and dull, boring, and ugly version of Clueless, the movie. Well, maybe not so much. Ditto, Sex & The City. Sort of a movie of 1%er naval gazing, girls edition? It doesn’t speak for the 99% of 20-something girls, yet claims to speak for the millennials. Anyway, if you have time, here’s the whole first episode, which starts with the main character telling her parents all her friends live off their parents at two years out of college, and all she needs from them is another two years to become what they want her to be: link to youtube.com
I have nieces 24 & 25 and they are not like the creepy young ladies depicted here.
I can’t believe a single inch of space was wasted on this important site about a show as execrable as Girls … if you want a good analysis of it, read the brilliant Eileen Jones over at ExiledOnline
I often don’t get to make time for “good” shows (or at least ones that I like).
I at least figure if it has any merits whatsoever, it will be available to me at some point – and even if it doesn’t.
ONe of these days I am going to make my wife sit down and tell me what religion she is. Last time I asked she told me she believed in a “five-finger” religion, and offered to show me how it worked. When I regained consciousness, I had to admit it was one of the most powerful sermons I ever heard.
This post shows why Phil needed to benefit from a kinship network. How does this have ANYTHING to do with Israel/Palestine?
smd341, so you imply a window into our culture and who makes it is not relevant at all to our foreign policy?
And how dare you speak for the rest of the “establishment” and say it has nothing to do with sympathy for people of color. What do you know? My mother does pro-bono drug counseling work with African-American communities and has done so for most of her life. My father is a psychiatrist and works on making sure adequete healthcare is extended to the underserved. Speak for yourself Phil.
Smd,
You have sympathy for people of color so long as they don’t infringe on your Jewish only country club built on the ruins of Historic Palestine.
The word “establishment” speaks for itself. It has nothing to do with sympathy for people of colour. It controls discourse to maintain its foothold on the pedestal. The media, in both is liberal-left and right-wing variety, espouses values of the establishment. Your example is an exception.
Great post.
I thought immediately that the cast of girls would be a mixture of WASP and liberal Zionist Jews (which isn’t stated anywhere but it’s a damn given at this point – I mean who are you kidding). Basically, our yuppies.
One of the most successful TV sitcoms in recent decades was “Friends”, about a bunch of young attractive yuppies. All white. I once saw an interview with Aaron Spelling, mega-producer of Friends. He apologized for giving Friends an all-white cast, and said he should have had an integrated cast.
But that was then. This is now. Same story!
Much of the rest of the media is the same story. I never reaized how white the guests are on Leno or Letterman, until the Arsenio Hall show started. Arsenio Hall invited black celebrities, lots of them. When Leno invites singers on the Tonight Show, they are typically white singers. Meanwhile, on the music charts, typically 7 of the top 10 songs are by black artists, and sometimes all of the top ten songs are by black artists.
So was it a giant leap for the nation and mankind when we jumped from Mayberry, USA to Friends? Or no?
PS, you could watch sitcoms aimed at the African-American community on BET: link to threegirlsandamic.com
The star of Girls is Zosia Mamet, daughter of David Mamet:
link to letmypeoplegrow.org
David Mamet’s sly Tea Party schtick:
link to motherjones.com
All four of the main girls in the show are from homes of very successful people in the entertainment arts world.
This speaks to my point about most “popular art forms” in this country, if only the scions of wealth and prestige can “break in” – who can make any qualitative statement about how “good” a show is, how “good” an actor is, how “good” a singer is, how “good” a writer is etc, how “good” an artists art is – it seems like for every person how had to schlep it for years, there are fifteen who walk right into “the biz” due to who they were born to.
That’s why I love sports. Your father can be Michael Jordan, but you’re not going to make the NBA because of that fact alone – you have to prove yourself, over and over and over. Sport is the ultimate meritocracy
sports is one of my favorite forms of entertainment too, dan (good father-son bonding material too.) but i’m growing more and more disenchanted with ‘sports’. i told my wife i’m not going watch anymore football after jr. seau blew a hole in his chest, and i got one of those glances. ‘so are you going to stop watching boxing and MMA, too?’ she has a point. anyway, i agree with your argument about talent, it’s just that the system is so friggin’ exploitative and corrupt. bob kraft all weepy-eyed over the death of seau was a bit much. that’s how you make alot of your money bob, off of brain trauma and crippling debilities.
i like zosia in ‘mad men’, though not a great fan of her father’s schtick.
I agree about sports, Dan. After retiring from the Steelers, linebacker Andy Russell was asked if there were things he missed about playing football. He said, “I miss the clarity. At the end of the game I knew whether we won or lost. In my life as a businessman I don.t have that kind of clarity. ” Sports has a clarity that doesn’t exist in art or commerce.
I agree apart sports too. Part of this clarity compared to art or commerce, other than the very physicality of sports talent, the meritocracy of engagement as players, must be the relative simplicity of sports games themselves, of their rules, and the fact the audience knows both, and the games are transparent and open to all–the masses are willing to pay just to watch? What’s more political at base than the art/non-sports entertainment world?