Barry Bonds, Michael Vick, and Some Other Viewpoints

[sdelmonte]

So, everyone thinks Barry Bonds is a bum, and that Michael Vick is guilty, right? Think again.

Here are two interesting articles from ESPN.com that explore the issues.

Scoop Jackson wears a Bonds jersey in Chicago, and gets a different reaction than he expected.

Black Atlanta reacts to the Michael Vick arrest, and to history

Food for thought, I would say.

Comments

[akawil]

This blog post by Matthew Yglesias is also an interesting counter-comment on the Barry Bonds issue.

reaction to articles on Bonds

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Lots of interesting reading. My initial reactions:

[re Jackson]

Bonds is (by most accounts) a jerk, but is also one of the best baseball players in history, and was even before he started using steroids in 1999 or 2000. That said, I really don't like him breaking the career home run record that Aaron set, partly because I don't feel he did it honestly, partly because he did it in an era of cheap home runs regardless of the cause (more on this in a moment), and partly because Hank Aaron was my first "favorite baseball player" (back when I was 6) so I don't like anyone breaking his record who doesn't seem "deserving".

Nonetheless, I wouldn't be openly hostile to someone wearing a Bonds jersey, and I don't many other Bonds-haters would either-- not because everyone is especially civil, but simply because it's not the sort of thing people get very emotionally worked-up over. So why is Scoop Jackson so surprised by the lack of reaction he got wearing a Bonds jersey? People will "boo" Bonds from the stands, but that's about it; they're not taking to the streets or turning to violence.

(I'm reminded of an Onion article from the time of the O.J. Simpson trial, taking about the "riots in the suburbs" following the not-guilty verdict, as if the situation were just like the riots resulting from the not-guilty verdicts of the LA police officers involved in the Rodney King beating. Of course no such thing happened after the Simpson case; even though a majority thought Simpson was guilty, they weren't emotionally worked-up about it, because, unlike the King police verdict, there was no sense of a "greater" injustice being done.)

Incidentally, how old is Jackson, that baseball sometimes "made (him) feel like the part of the Constitution that considered (his) grandfather three-fifths of a human being"? His grandfather was born before 1865? Really? I suspect that Jackson is either mistaken or (more likely) that he's using hyperbole to try to strengthen his point, but if so, it had the opposite effect on me. Keep the facts accurate, please.

[re Yglesias]

It's odd when the commenters are better-informed than the writer himself. In particular, regardless of the cause, and contrary to what Ygelias claims, home runs jumped signficantly above historical MLB norms during the 1995-2005 decade-- about 50% to 70% higher. (Ygelias cites only De Vany's paper. But De Vany cherrypicked his data, comparing only the 1961 and 2001 seasons, in order to conclude that although the home run rate was higher in 2001, it wasn't significantly higher.) Perhaps steroids were not a major factor in that massive increase, compared to smaller ball parks, expansion, different baseballs, etc. I doubt it. But even if they were, it diminishes the meaning of Bonds' numbers.

reactions to article on Vick

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

[re Thompson]

Since I'm both libertarian-leaning and someone who often thinks of PETA demonstrators as a bunch of poseurs, I'm sympathetic to those rallying for "innocent until proven guilty". Nonetheless, even the article admits that New Order's target is unclear and "moving"-- it's not all the whites of Atlanta, nor the PETA protesters. Indeed, it's not clear who the target is (anyone who jumps to conclusions?) or what should be asked of them. Corporations? Please, it's just not realistic to expect image-conscious corporations like Nike to wait until an actual court verdict before dropping Vick as an endorser. (Same for the NFL, which is currently holding out Vick from training camp, with pay. It's not reasonable to expect them not to act to protect their image.)

The most interesting paragraph in the article, to me, was the following:

Kwame, who is sitting a few feet away, agrees. "We cannot forget the past until we have fully and properly confronted the past," he says. "Some people are like, 'Hey, man, why can't we just move on?' It's because we haven't dealt with it properly."

I'm of two minds on this.

On the one hand, accurate historical education is a good thing, and horrible ugly facts should not be softened, they need to be acknowledged. (For me, that notion is made easier to see when I replace "blacks" in my mind with some other group. A lot of people remain ignorant about the Holocaust, or about horrors done to American Indian tribes.)

On the other hand, it's possible to get too stuck in the past. I think it was Mark Steyn who pointed out that the strength of the U.S. was the ability for immigrants to forget the past, unlike parts of the world still carrying on Hatfield/McCoy grudges from hundreds or thousands of years ago.

I find it more useful, and less likely to turn people off, when people focus on bias and injustice in the present. While some historical facts are useful to explain that present-day situation, not all historical facts are equally relevant. For example, to help explain why present-day blacks are disproportionately poor, I don't think it's that useful to refer to the situation as "the legacy of slavery", as if all 150 years since slavery are all a direct and nearly-inevitable result of it. (I especially don't like the implication that I, despite being the descendant of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1909 and 1952, should somehow share responsibility for that slavery.)

I think it's more useful and relevant to talk about the way the modern-day judicial system works (or doesn't), about educational bias in the recent past, and even about the institutionalized prejudice (not protecting blacks' property claims much less their lives, firing black federal workers, etc.) that came about during the so-called Progressive Era. When, instead, all of a group's historical legacy is lumped together indiscriminately, I find that it weakens the argument.