boonville blog, by jeff egnaczyk - you are listening to me talk

Boston and Racism

About a year ago I was watching the Yankees beat the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in a bar with my friends. The camera panned to the stands to follow a foul ball. I remarked that Yankee games had so many more characters than a Red Sox game. It's true. You look in the stands and you see so many of those New York sports fans. Brash, loud, dressed in heavy Yankees gear. They aren't generally my type of guy - I'm more low key - but I love seeing them. It's just a different type of fan.

Let's compare that to a Red Sox game. There are some loud and obnoxious types but for the most part, since the team started selling out every game, you get a middle class white clientèle. My friends, all Sox fans, brought that up. There are more characters in New York in general. It's not strictly race that gives you the diversity of fans in New York and the homogeneity in Boston, but it must help. The conversation turned to racism and the perception that Boston is a racist town. Now I, the Yankees fan (see, I'm a good and fair person, Boston), said I thought that was unfair. Boston is the only major city I've ever lived in (and I've always lived on the outskirts near Boston University) so I have nothing to compare it to. My hunch though is that Boston gets an unfair rap relative to other cities. Sure, there are some major issues with segregated neighborhoods and flat out racism (historical, re: busing, the Red Sox and modern day). Do you think cities in the southeast are beacons of racial harmony though? How about Texas or the midwest?

Now our conversation stuck close to racism as it affected sports. I made this argument and my friends said it didn't matter. Boston is a major sports market. It has to compare itself with New York, Chicago and DC, not Buffalo, Nashville and San Antonio. That's both fair and not. If Boston is going to run with the big boys in terms of attracting high level talent they are going to get compared to the big boys on a range of factors. Half of me would love to see Boston get the shaft. New York teams, my teams, would profit greatly. It's also not fair though that Boston is stuck with this stigma when other places may be worse and aren't examined as closely. Again, I have no evidence but the number of times I've heard "Boston is racist" backed up by what happened in 50s, 60s and 70s with no mention of other cities makes me think this is something everyone just "knows" and therefore in need of examination.

Bostonist links to this ridiculously weak post at The New York times that seeks to figure out what town is the most racist. Of course the author calls out Boston with a couple of anecdotes. One such story is the "longstanding bigotry in the Red Sox baseball organization". That's a good point, but why cherry pick sports organizations? Wouldn't it have been more honest to also point out the Celtics' great historical record with African Americans? They drafted the first African American, had the first all black starting five and the first African American coach.

I grew up in Boonville, New York. When I came to Boston to study computer engineering at BU I saw diversity all over the place - Indians, Asians, Eastern Europeans Jews and fewer African Americans and Hispanics. That was something different to me. I thought I was in Diversity City. That wasn't exactly true though. When we talk about racism and diversity in this country it really does boil down to black and white. I say that with no level of scorn, no Oppressed White Man Syndrome bitterness. It's just the way things are. Looking back at our nation's history, can you blame people for thinking this way? The problem is that, just as people fall back on stupid stereotypes for minorities, they also tend to do the same when determining who is a racist and who is not.

BOOBZ!!1

The fine levied by the FCC for the infamous wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl (which I totally missed) was overturned by an appeals court. In particular it was the arbitrariness of the fine that the court did not like. That kind of sums it up for our nudity standards in America. Male boob, no problem. Female boob, freak out all over the place, half a million dollar fine. The standards department is run by a bunch of people icked out by the female body.

We have this obsession with sex in the United States. There are two sides to this coin. There is the side that seeks to bring sex into everything. You can see this in magazines that do provocative spreads with any athlete, actress or singer who happens to be attractive. Any person who shows their face on television must attain a certain level of mainstream attractiveness. Overtly we're just requiring beauty but I think it probably all leads back to sex. We are bombarded daily with sexually suggestive images.

There is also the opposite obsession in this country. This obsession seeks to censor every aspect of human sexuality. It says that there is something immoral about enjoying all but a small subset of sexuality. I believe that this latter obsession fuels the former. As long as the moralizers seek to censor there will be those who are drawn to that which is forbidden. It is very similar to the way we encourage "underage" drinking by restricting alcohol from adults, creating a mystique around a safe, simple and pleasurable act.

I don't find the display of human sexuality immoral but I do dislike it in excess. When it pervades all aspects of culture, reducing a person's worth to their sex appeal it ceases to be fun. I try to ignore it at that point. I don't think censorship has no place anywhere in society. Sexuality and nudity are natural though. Stamping them out everywhere, save the bedroom of a married couple, is repressive and at odds with reality.

The documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated (my review) makes the point that of violence, profanity and sexuality, only the last two get close scrutiny. You can get away with a lot more violence in film and television than profanity and sexuality. Shooting a man in the head is somehow less offensive than "fuck" at the Grammys or a woman's breast at the Super Bowl. I'm not a big fan of censoring any of the three in a fictional or non-fictional setting. One is art, the other is reality. Neither of those should be stifled. It is telling that the one we let off the hook is the most destructive of the three. Dare I say we see too much of ourselves in that violence? Maybe it reminds us of the way we treat each other and the way we treat the rest of the world and we hesitate to condemn the TV out of fear that we are going to condemn ourselves. (Now that was deep, huh.)

Update: (7/22/2008 6:28:53 PM) Matt Yglesias says the same about the PG-13 rating that The Dark Knight received.

Museums and Photography

I've been to a lot of museums from Boston to New York to Philadelphia in the last few years. They're interesting and I usually take the time to try and learn at least one thing (which usually annoys my wife). Museums, you've probably heard of them.

One thing that irritates me about certain museums is the no photography policy. Boston's own Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, while being free on New Year's Day, doesn't let you take photos of Gardner's expansive art collection. In Philadelphia the same goes for the Mutter Museum of medical oddities and the US Mint. Apparently the government is worried about counterfeiters stealing our precious coin making technology. At the Queens Museum of Art I was told I couldn't take pictures of Yue Minjun's Symbolic Smile exhibit.

This is garbage. A museum exists to disseminate knowledge. It exists to expose people to culture and art. If you're trying to keep people from taking pictures then you're trying to keep it all to yourself. What good is that? It's not the public good for sure.

Update: (7/20/2008 11:42:53 AM) Also, the Budweiser brewery in New Hampshire didn't let us take pictures of the bottling. Like anyone would want to replicate Bud Light. We disagreed with their policy:



And Queens:

The Sharper Image

I was at a Sharper Image store a couple of months ago. The company went bankrupt in February and the store was in fire sale mode. Even with everything at 50-60% off there wasn't one thing I would have paid money for in that store. It's amazing that a store that sells nothing but crap could stay in business for 31 years.

I think the appeal of a store like that was the novelty of technology. People thought adding technology to anything made it better. Now technology is so commonplace that everything The Sharper Image sells ceased to be novel and became boring (on top of being crap).

Obama Endorsed By Muslim

I know the next line of attack by Republicans against Barack Obama. Turns out that Muslims (MUSLIMS!) love his Iraq withdrawal plan. We can't be having that.

Ugly Pictures

Over the years I have heard many complaints about graphic signs used by protesters. Abortion protesters use this tactic a lot, showing pictures of destroyed fetuses. Sometimes they're exaggerated. I've also seen it from anti-fur protesters showing the cruelty of animal traps or animal farms. Anti-war advocates use it to show the true cost of war. Recently, anti-torture protesters use them to show just how far our country has slipped.

They are disturbing, no doubt. There are certainly children or maybe even adults who could see these images and be scarred. As long as these signs exist in a public space I see no reason why they should be banned though. A quick search finds that while a public speech ban like this has happened in the past, it does not seem all that prevalent. So maybe I'm making a free speech issue out of very little. On the issue of "taste" - speech is free, but it can still be called out as ugly - I'd say I'm still mostly on the side of the protesters, with one caveat. If you are showing legitimate, undoctored images then you're exposing the truth. I have no problem with that even if I disagree with your position (like in the case of anti-abortion protesters). It might be unsettling but much of life is unsettling. I'm in public so I don't have a right to stop your speech. However, if you're showing off some ridiculously exaggerated image then I think your sign is crap. The "taste" issue boils down to how truthful you are.

Take It

In life you need to go out and take things. This is not something I practice but it's something I know. No one is going to give you what you want, what you deserve. Even if you deserve it and even if it's the right thing to do it's still not going to happen in general. You don't have to be a jerk about it as some might say, but you do have to be assertive. Very few people are thinking about what you want and if they are they could still be wrong. That's counting a lot of good people who make up your family, your friends and your coworkers. It's just not their job to figure out what you want in life.

Like I said, I don't practice this nearly as much as I should. I could probably get a whole lot more out of a lot of people, but I'm generally an accommodating person. If you go out and get things then you're going to have to be aggressive as a rule. I doubt you can get away with doing it once and only once. That takes effort. I have a lot of respect, maybe even a healthy bit of envy, for people who do this.

Link via Kottke.

Biographies

Biographies, whether in book or film form, bore me for the most part. Nixon, John Adams, Ray, Walk the Line or anything like that hasn't interested me much. The style of a biographic movie doesn't excite me. I feel like I'm in a history lesson or a love story. Neither seem to possess any kind of theme other than "this guy was important". Books don't do it for me either. They come off as straight hagiography. There are certain types of historic people that do interest me enough to make me want to read a book about them.

First there's the person who breaks with their group. Malcolm X or Emma Goldman interest me in that respect. Both, as I understand it, looked their ideology in the eye and said no at great risk and cost to their friendships and careers.

Second, there's the person who is in the right place at the right time to advance civilization in a positive direction. Boris Yeltsin fits into this theory I have about great men. I believe - without having researched it - that Yeltsin was acting out of pure self interest. Pushing democracy was a way to gain support for his power grab. In doing so he advanced the lives of millions of Russians.

Finally, there's the person who, as time passes, becomes a conflicting character to modern ideologies. William Jennings Bryan comes to mind. He is identified as a leader in the Progressive Movement but also advocated against teaching evolution theory in the Scopes trial. You could probably say this about pretty much anyone from an earlier time when ideologies didn't line up the same as they do today. Maybe Bryan just interests me since I listened to a lecture on the history of the evolution debate in America.

Everything's Under Control

The ACLU estimates that there are now over one million people on the federal government's terrorist watch list. But hey, you know, Roger Baldwin was once a communist. It must be the ACLU that's in a better position to bring about authoritarianism in the United States, not the big government with the big list of people it's suspicious of. (Even if Baldwin denounced communism and ended up working with Douglas freaking MacArthur in Japan.)

In other terrorism related news, the Chinese seem to have everything under control for this year's Olympic Games:



Take a look at the whole picture set at Boston.com and tell me that it's not just one big show just like the Million Man Watch List. This is what our security policy is. It's the Mooninites strategy. Freak out over everything, waste resources and, above all, cover your ass whether it's rational or not.

Bigger and Less Relevant

In my post about beer snobbery I forgot to mention that the state of American mass market brewing is pretty bad. Jason mentioned that Anheuser-Busch just got bought out by Belgian brewer InBev. In 2005 Coors merged with Molson to become Molson-Coors. South African Breweries bought Miller to form SABMiller in 2002. Then in 2007 Molson-Coors and SABMiller entered into a joint venture that was unfortunately not called MolsonCoorsSABMillerAndAPony but rather just MillerCoors.

I don't claim that this means the beer these breweries produce is selling any less. It does show me that the mass market is going through some contraction. You don't make money off quality, you make it off volume and that what's these moves are designed to do. I don't really know how much craft brews have cut in to the mass market though. It certainly costs more to drink the beer I like. Budweiser is and will for a long time be in just about every bar in America. A mass market beer is still going to please the most people. Plus, you can't really play beer pong with a brown ale.

On a side note, it is funny to see that all the major breweries in America are now owned by foreign companies. Not only does the beer snob drink beer with more flavor, but he's also drinking the beer that's American owned.