The Shakespeare authorship (non) controversy

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There isn’t a Shakespeare authorship controversy.  No such controversy exists.  Shakespeare’s plays were written by William Shakespeare, glover’s son from Stratford-on-Avon and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s men.  They were not written by the Earl of Oxford or Francis Bacon or Queen Elizabeth, or Christopher Marlowe, or anyone else. There does not exist any evidence whatsoever to support any other conclusion. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.  Period.

I hate doing this.  First, I hate just stating something dogmatically like that; it goes against my deepest instincts. I’m not that guy.  And I hate debunking conspiracy theories.  It doesn’t do any good. People who believe that the CIA/Cubans/Mafiosi killed Kennedy, or that Obama was born in Kenya, or that George W. Bush blew up the Twin Towers, will NOT be persuaded otherwise; they are, in my experience, completely impervious to evidence.

And the Shakespeare authorship conspiracists are, in my experience, an agreeable bunch of people.  First one I ever met was many years ago, when I was acting in a summer stock company in southern Indiana.  One of my co-actors was a committed Oxfordian, and he challenged me to read The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Man and the Myth, by Charlton Ogburn Jr.  I thought, why not?  I read it, and had two reactions–a violent dislike for the writing style of Charlton Ogburn Jr., and an utter conviction that Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays. But I stayed friends with my co-actor. He was a nice guy, and a good actor.

Jim Bennett is a Facebook friend of mine, and another agreeable guy.  Also an Oxfordian.  He recently published an an article in the Deseret News, arguing that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford.

Now, I think there are lots of very good reasons to summarily reject this theory.  First, there exists absolutely no evidence to support it.  We know Oxford wrote and published poems, and he was praised for his plays, though none have survived.  And he liked the theatre, sponsoring a boy’s company.  But none of that constitutes evidence.

Jim Bennett’s article says that a guy in Oxford’s position couldn’t write plays openly, and so used a pen name.  But that’s silly.  Oxford wrote plays publicly, was known to do so, and was praised for it.  His plays haven’t survived, but that’s not remotely unusual; most plays that were produced in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period, at least 90%, weren’t published.  Plays were owned by acting companies, in the sense that the manuscripts were physically owned and controlled by someone, in that pre-copyright era. Publishing them worked to the company’s disadvantage.  You might sell a play that wasn’t in your performance repertoire anymore to a publisher for a little extra cash, and publishers were known to steal manuscripts, or hire folks to sit in the theater and write down as many lines as they could and publish that–it was an unscrupulous and deeply competitive publishing environment.  But mostly plays weren’t published.

There were two kinds of publications in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period; quartos and folios.  Think of them as ‘paperbacks’ and ‘hardbacks.’  Quartos were smaller and cheaper, folios larger and more expensive.  The reason we have the Shakespeare canon today is because after his death, two actor friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published them in the First Folio.  Only one other playwright from that period had his plays published in a Folio edition–Ben Jonson, who self-published a Folio, basically a vanity project. Anyway, the First Folio has thirty-six plays, and is the only reliable source for twenty of them.  It’s missing two: Pericles, and Two Noble Kinsmen: we have those plays in quarto form.  But without the Folio, well, our world would be terribly impoverished.  We owe Heminges and Condell a great debt.

So, okay, Heminges and Condell had profited their entire lives from those plays. Literally profited–they were shareholders in the most popular theatre company in England, their popularity derived mostly from the plays for which they held more or less exclusive performance access. They published the plays, partly, because they weren’t as popular anymore, but also, as an act of friendship, as their preface makes clear.  They wanted to correct old errors: previous publications were, in their words, “maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious imposters.”  The First Folio came out in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, and nearly twenty after Oxford’s death.  If Shakespeare, the actor, didn’t write them, wouldn’t his claimed authorship be a perfect example of a ‘fraud’ by an ‘injurious imposter?’  Perfect opportunity for two guys in the know to set the record straight.  If in fact Oxford used Shakespeare as a pen name because it was politically dangerous of him to claim authorship while he lived, well what possible harm could come from coming clean twenty years after his death?

But Heminges and Condell continued to assert that their old actor friend, William Shakespeare, had written them.  Why would they do that?  Well, best answer is because he did write them.

Now, you can say that ‘William Shakespeare’ was simply a pen name for a different author, who for reasons of his/her own chose to remain Anonymous.  So who was the real author?  Well, presumably a female writer might have wanted to use a pseudonym. We don’t know how many ladies-in-waiting Elizabeth had–we have names for twelve.  Could have been any of them.  What about Elizabeth’s Privy Council?  Cecil, Bacon, Walsingham, Raleigh, Dudley, Essex, Devereaux?  Coulda been any of them too.  I mean, Oxford’s not a terrible choice, but he’s by no means the only possible choice.  His girlfriend, Anne Vavasour–also a lady-in-waiting, and boy did Oxford get in trouble when he knocked her up–is every bit as likely.  In the sense that there’s no evidence for her either.

Jim makes a big deal of the Sonnets, arguing that they have a biographical component that works for Oxford and doesn’t work for Shakespeare.  Sorry to say, but parsing the Sonnets for biographical info is a pretty fruitless exercise; there’s just nothing in the Sonnets that rises to the level of evidence for authorship.  It can be legitimately ‘proved’ that whoever wrote the Sonnets was straight, gay, male, female, old, young, ugly and gorgeous.  They’re poems.  They’re works of fiction.  They’re also really good.  A few of Oxford’s poems have survived, and they’re not half bad. They’re also not Shakespeare.

And there is a biographical problem that eliminates Oxford entirely. We know when he died, in 1604.  Macbeth was first performed in 1606, and makes specific repeated reference to the Gunpowder plot of 1605.  Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, and Oxford couldn’t have.  So there’s that.

You’ll hear stuff like “the plays are full of politics–they had to have been written by a politician.” Piffle. The Inns of Court was where government types hung out, and it was across the river from Southwark. How much could an enterprising playwright learn just hanging out in pubs?  Plus, most of the politics he just got from Holinshed’s Chronicles.  The first big book of British history, and a huge bestseller–it was Shakespeare’s favorite source.

Ultimately, though, I find the notion that Oxford had to have written the plays because a half-educated hick from Stratford couldn’t have repugnant.  There’s a class thing going on there, an assumption that of course the author of those magnificent plays had to have been an aristocrat.  To me, though, if we read the plays and have to conclude any single thing about their authorship, it would have to be this: they were written by an actor.  They were, first and foremost, written by a man who spent his life working professionally in the theatre.  They were not the product of an amateur, a dabbler, a dilettante playboy like our pal Eddie de Vere.  They were constructed by a master craftsman, a man who knew how to build a character and sustain dramatic action, how to keep a story moving on-stage.  They were written, in short, by William Shakespeare, professional actor, and also a glover’s son from Stratford.

Conspiracy theorists are ultimately unpersuadable. If you’re on the fence, though, remember this.  Nobody, absolutely nobody has been studied more thoroughly than Shakespeare.  The numbers of scholars who earned tenure by writing about Shakespeare has to number in the thousands. And the percentage of people who have spent their life studying Shakespeare and who believe Oxford wrote the plays is effectively zero.  This isn’t just professional jealousy and prejudice. They believe the Stratford Shakespeare wrote the plays  because that’s what all the evidence says.  All of it.

 

The Constitution

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The Constitution is really pretty short, and the prose is old-fashioned, but pretty clear.  But people still get confused about it.  When I was in college, I remember a roommate ask me if federal income tax was constitutional.  Someone had said it wasn’t, in one of his classes.  I was amazed.  Uh, Sixteenth Amendment?  Of course income tax is constitutional.  But you’ll still hear the argument that it isn’t.

So, one of Utah’s Senators, Mike Lee, is pretty much always described by his supporters as a ‘constitutional scholar.’  This doesn’t mean what it sounds like: far as I know the man has no peer reviewed publications in the scholarly literature for constitutional law.  If I’m wrong, tell me, but I can’t find any. His Dad was Solicitor-General, and Mike clerked for Samuel Alito–I’m not saying he doesn’t have credentials, but I don’t believe ‘constitutional scholar’ is one of them.

No, what that phrase means is that he’s a ‘constitutionalist,’ which is to say, a conservative who believes that the Constitution calls for a small, limited government.  He’s a Tea Party Republican, a movement conservative.  I don’t know if he aligns with other ultra-conservative groups.  Does the Tea Party mean the same thing as constitutionalist, or Eagle Forum, or John Birch Society?  As a liberal, I tend to conflate them all together, which probably isn’t fair–I suspect that there are minor differences between all those positions, and that Lee aligns with some of them and does not with others.

Anyway: Constitutionalist.  Here’s that position the best I understand it: the Framers, inspired by God, created our constitution, which serves, for some Mormons at least, as almost a fifth book of scripture.  What they intended was a small, limited government, with very specific duties and responsibilities enumerated.  Any action by the federal government not consistent with those enumerated is, by definition, unconstitutional.

So let’s take those points one at a time.  The Framers absolutely did not intend to create a small, limited government. In fact, limiting the size and scope of government wasn’t really part of their deliberations.  The Framers had experienced small, limited government.  They already had the Articles of Confederation, and hated the weak, ineffectual government that resulted.  They had experienced limited government and knew how badly it worked.  The real arguments in the Constitutional Convention were about other matters entirely, but all pre-supposed a strong, active, powerful federal government.  That’s why the stuff they really argued about had to do with big states vs. small states.  Since the government was going to be strong and big and powerful, then how could small population states possibly survive?

One inventive solution was to get rid of states.  David Brearley, a delegate from New Jersey proposed getting rid of existing state boundaries entirely.  Start over.  If all the states were the same size, we wouldn’t have big state/small state squabbles.  It may sound nuts to us today, but Brearley offered it as a serious proposal, and it was seriously considered.

Okay, this is high school civics class level stuff, but to reiterate basic history: James Madison went to the Convention with a plan in mind, the Virginia plan, which would have allocated Congressional seats on a population basis.  Small states opposed it, and the New Jersey plan gave each state equal representation.  With the Convention deadlocked over this issue, Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed a compromise: a bi-cameral legislature with different representation in each. The point was, this wasn’t a debate about the size and scope of government.  It was about checks and balances.  Since government was going to be big and powerful, how do we prevent any one faction or branch from dominating?

This is important enough to reiterate: the central Constitutional doctrine is NOT limited government, it’s separation of powers. The single biggest underlying principle of the entire Constitution was not to limit the power of government, it was to diffuse it.

Were there no limited government spokespeople at the Convention?  Not many, no.  The most famous and vocal ‘limited government’ guy in America in 1787 was probably Patrick Henry.  He was invited to the Convention, and refused to go, saying “I smell a rat.”  When he finally read the Constitution, he detested it, and fought ratification.  Small government delegates did however join the Constitutional deliberations, including a highly respected figure like George Mason, who fought it to the end and refused to sign it.  Elbridge Gerry, Luther Martin, John Francis Mercer, John Lansing–all were strong advocates for a small government; all attended the Convention, and all refused to sign the document it created.

That’s why the Bill of Rights was so central to the ratification debate. Remember, nobody had ever done this before.  This constitution thing–this was a genuine innovation. That’s why Nathaniel Gorham, of Massachusetts, was taken seriously when he proposed that we Americans adopt a king.  (Gorham even had a candidate for the job: Prince Henry of Prussia).  A monarchy seemed . . . safer.  It’s what everyone else had.

So it’s hardly surprising that the Constitution scared some people when they read it.  It was a big, powerful central government we were creating there; could it really do the job? The promise of a Bill of Rights assuaged fears at a time when ratification genuinely seemed like a long-shot. Obviously, the Bill of Rights is a deeply treasured constitutional innovation.  But it was necessary precisely because this new government the Constitution created was, by late 18th century standards, scary big.

It still is.  It’s still supposed to be.

We don’t know who came up with the language of the Constitution. It was a time when the ability to write well was a prized gentlemanly accomplishment.  But the Preamble is gorgeous:

We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

A few points: first, the Framers never intended this document to shackle coming generations.  There’s not word in the Constitution about ‘building freeways,’ or ‘creating the internet,’ or ‘providing universal healthcare,’ but the constitution was always intended to be flexible enough to provide a framework for future innovations and inventions.  It’s a wonderfully expansive document, with provisions for amendment. I love the fact that, during the Convention, Georgia, which had the smallest population of all the states, consistently voted with the big states.  Why?  Pure optimism. ‘Yeah, we’re small now, but you just watch. . . ‘

The Framers also knew they hadn’t created a perfect document.  At the end of the Convention, when Benjamin Franklin was asked to give a celebratory final address, the best he could do was say, ‘hey, this is probably the best we could do.’   And in retrospect, the Constitution’s pro-slavery provisions doomed our nation to an eventual Civil War.  The Second Amendment asserted its grim prerogatives, and 600,000 kids died way too young.  But other amendments followed: the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth.  Our shameful legacy of slavery and racism persists, but we have also seen progress.

But it’s not like the Framers were themselves perfect.  They were hardly a diverse group; all of them rich, white men, from privileged backgrounds. They had their eccentricities. Gouverneur Morris lost a leg as a young man, but that didn’t prevent him from a life of lechery and casual adultery–he even tried to seduce Dolley Madison!  Thomas Mifflin was a drunk, William Blount was a crook, and Hugh Williamson believed in space aliens. Two of them died in duels; others died in debtor’s prison.

And they were slave owners, not all, but most of them.

So let’s not sugar-coat ‘em.  A buncha smart, rich, white guys created a remarkable document.  They created a large, powerful, rich, vibrant government.  But when you hear Constitutionalists say things like ‘Obamacare is unconstitutional,’ well, no, it’s not.  Let’s state things accurately: Obamacare’s thought to be unconstitutional by a tiny minority of very conservative scholars.  Conservatives understand the Constitution differently than liberals do.  That doesn’t mean ‘conservatives believe in following the constitution, while liberals want to trash it.’  That’s insulting and silly.  Worse, it’s not true.  Conservatives and liberals just disagree.

 

 

 

SLAM: a personal history

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A few days to SLAM.  I’m already getting nervous.

I wrote another version of this post for the SLAM blog, but wanted to expand on it here.  I love SLAM, and hate it, and am terrified by it, and wouldn’t miss it for anything.  Here’s how it works.

SLAM is this event sponsored by Plan B Theatre Company in Salt Lake, my favorite company in the world.  It’s a 24 hour theatre experience.  On Friday, two weeks from now, I’ll drive to Salt Lake and meet with the Plan B torturer in chief artistic director, Jerry Rapier.  We’ll get a title, see the set, be handed the names and headshots/resumes of 3-5 actors.  Our task; to write a 10-minute play that night, overnight, and deliver it the next morning.  The actors and directors will then rehearse all day, and they’ll perform the play, off-book, Saturday night. Here’s a link for info and tickets. If you’re in SLC this weekend, come see it!  You’ll be blown away, I promise.

That means that on Saturday, May 4, an audience will see a play in full production that did not exist twenty-four hours earlier.  My task, after delivering the script, will be to catch up on my sleep, then come back to the theater and writhe in my seat.  Watching the plays is terrifying.  The playwrights are all friends, and we’ve talked about it, how we all say the same prayer, sitting there in the theater.  “Please let mine not suck the worst.”

I live in Provo.  When I write for SLAM, I drive to Salt Lake, get my info, and then drive back to Provo to write.  That forty-five minute drive is immensely important.  I like driving, and I use that time to think about the play.  Usually, by the time I make it home, I’ve got at least an idea to work with, and sometimes, I have the whole play mapped out in my head; at least a rough draft of it.  Of course, over the course of the night, I’ll usually put the play through two or three more drafts, (length is a real challenge–my first draft is always too long), but generally, the drive south is crucial.

My first year, I had no idea what to expect.  My title was The Butcher, the Beggar and the Bed-time Buddy, and driving home, the only thing I could come up with was this:  three actors to work with; three possible characters in the title.  So I came up with a ‘butcher,’ an elderly wealthy rancher; a daughter who kept ‘begging’ him for money for her siblings; and a ‘bed-time buddy,’ his mistress.  The play had monologues, was very repetitive—I was told it was a memorization nightmare.  Tony Larimer, a wonderful older actor, had the line “fill your lungs!” referring to the stench of a feedlot, a smell he likes, because it’s money in his pocket.  In performance, I had the strong impression I was hearing that line a lot, more times than what I’d written.  Tony told me later, he used ‘fill your lungs’ as filler, to give himself time to remember what he was supposed to say next.  He patted me on the arm and said “that line was my default mode, dear boy!”  One of the great memories.

Anyway, the play turned out okay:I was eventually able to expand it to full-length, with a new title: Miasma, which Plan B later produced. 

The next year, my title was Spoiled Cheese. Driving home, I thought, ‘well, what would spoil cheese?  The end of the world!  That’d be tough on cheese!’  That led to a post-apocalyptic scenario, with an Adam and Eve, now ejected from the Garden (Central Park), ruefully remembering various cheeses they recall having eaten. In performance, I thought it was intriguing but incoherent.  Re-reading it today, it’s still intriguing but incoherent.  Not a great play, but also not terrible; my actors were good enough to make it watchable. 

We sometimes draw SLAM titles from a hat, so I have no one to blame but myself for another food related title the next year: Blood Pudding.  With a cast of three women. two younger, one older.  Hmmm.  Driving home, I wondered it might be intriguing to explore the aftermath of a robbery.  I thought of three employees at a restaurant, locked in the meat locker; two tough girls, blase and cynical, and their older, ineffectual manager.  The girls have been robbed many times before, and are mostly concerned that they’ll get paid for this one—one of them, turns out, used to date the robber.  One of my actors was Colleen Lewis, a wonderful actor, but a thin, stylish, lovely young woman, hardly anyone’s idea of a mean, ornery tough chick.  But she played the role beautifully.

I finally got away from food-related titles when I drew Behind the Blue Door the following year.  Driving home, I wondered if I could do something Iraq-war related, perhaps something metaphorical. I vaguely remembered that a lot of homes in Iraq had blue doors. Safely home, on the internet, I learned that blue is considered good luck: blue=sky=paradise. The set looked like it would support something fantasy-related, and so I ended up writing a knight in shining armor, his fair maiden, and Jesper the Self-Loathing Jester.  That was one thing that came to me driving home, that character name.  One of my actors, Jason Tatom, is an old friend, and I will never forget the big grin on his face when I told him he would be playing Jesper the Self-Loathing Jester.

The play then shifted back and forth from fantasy to nightmare—knights and dragons, to Iraq, and then back again. Every time the knight killed the dragon, three more dragons took its place–the central conundrum of the War on Terror.  Daisy Blake and Paul Mulder were terrific, as was Jason, who, as Jesper, also got to tell a number of exceptionally tasteless jokes I found on a website that night.  No-arms-no-legs jokes?  IEDs?  Works.  Blue Door remains one of my favorite SLAM pieces.  

The next season, a major SLAM change—we went from three actors to five.  I liked it, personally—liked the opportunity to tell more complex stories.  I’m sure it was also easier on the actors; memorization is always a challenge.  Anyway, my title was Burning Desire, and we had a set to work with that I also found provocative; really mysterious and gothic.  I had a great cast too, Jayne Luke, who I’ve always admired from afar but had never worked with, plus Jay Perry, Tracie Merrill, Nancy McAffee and Nick O’Donnell. Driving home, I thought maybe I could start with Jayne dying, her family waiting for her on the other side.  I started there, and Tracie played the same woman forty years earlier, in the pivotal moment of her life, when she rejected and kicked out her son, played by Jay Perry.  Jay and his father, now dead, wait in an anteroom of the afterlife, a kind of waiting area with vending machines–Jay wonders if he should have gotten a Danish to greet his Mom with.  Nancy, meanwhile, played an Angel of Death.  We were able to move back and forth in time, in a story about regret and loss and forgiveness.  I’ve been working on expanding it–I like the play a lot.  

I then got sick, had to take a year off.  When I came back, we were back to three actors, and the playwrights had been thrown another curve—we all got the same title.  Alt Control Delete.  I had been reading Moby Duck, a book about bath toys that washed off a cargo ship and were floating all over the world.  I thought of environmentalism, about the possibility of going  Alt Control Delete and basically starting over with our poor beleaguered planet.  I liked everything about the play that resulted except the ending, which just sort of fizzled out. But Christie Summerhays was magnificent, playing an arctic environmentalist dealing with the destruction of an ecosystem.  

The next year, we got the biggest curveball yet: no title at all.  I would have thought that this would be freeing, but it turned out to be anything but.  Drove me crazy, not having a direction. But the set—just some benches—gave me something to work with, and, on my drive, I finally thought it might be fun to just do a comedy, set it in a DMV.  Called it Gaming the DMV.   I liked the play, but afterwards, I realized it wasn’t as funny as it could have been.  Opening night, I kept thinking up jokes I wished I could have thought of in time to put in the play. My cast saved me, though, with Jason Tatom, Kalyn West and Claire Wilson, a teenaged actress who was astonishingly funny and great.

So, we’re doing it again.  Couple weeks, back on the bicycle, climb on the horse again, back in the cockpit.  The creative folks have promised us lots of curveballs this time.  I have no idea what that’s going to be about.  I keep telling myself that I really love SLAM.  And I do.  It’s terrifying, exhilarating, uncomfortable, exciting.  It gets my adrenaline flowing like nothing else.  Theatre without a safety net.  Fill your lungs!  Please let mine not suck the worst. 

Jason Collins

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Yesterday, Jason Collins of the Washington Wizards came out.  He therefore becomes the first active male professional American major team sports athlete out as openly gay.

All those modifiers are necessary, because there have certainly been other prominent gay athletes.  Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King in tennis.  Greg Louganis, the Olympic diver.  Sheryl Swoopes in women’s professional basketball.  John Amaechi, in the NBA, and Dave Kopay and Kwame Harris, of the NFL, all came out after they retired, as did Billy Bean in baseball and, most recently, Robbie Rogers, an English premiere league soccer player.

What makes Jason Collins unique, therefore, is that he’s still an active player, a current male team sport athlete who still has to deal with whatever issues a pro locker room brings. All that icky showering and so on.  So, another milestone passed, another bridge crossed. And pretty uneventfully, in this case.  Since his coming-out article came out yesterday in Sports Illustrated, he’s received overwhelming Twitter support, including heartfelt and enthusiastic congratulations from Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson, from Steve Nash (“Maximum support!), from NBA commissioner David Stern (“proud you assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue”, from Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama, from fellow player (irony alert) Rudy Gay, and from RuPaul (“I’m still gayer than you!”).

All his former coaches weighed in positively.  Kevin Love and Metta World Peace (the NBA needs a guy named Understanding), tweeted their support.  Current players with Collins’ back; basically a Who’s Who of stars: Dwayne Wade and Al Horford, Paul Pierce and Baron Davis, dozens more.  There have been, so far that I know, zero negative responses from NBA players, past or present.  Collins says that if anyone says anything privately, he’ll deliver an elbow and a hard pick and then let it go.  There are basketball ways to deal with homophobia.

To me, it’s interesting that it’s Jason Collins.  Richard Greenberg wrote a terrific play ten years ago about this scenario. Take Me Out is about a baseball player coming out.  Saw it on Broadway and liked it immensely, while still quibbling over plot points.  In Greenberg’s play, the ballplayer, Darren Lemming, is a superstar; he was thought to have been based on Derek Jeter.  (Uh, after Minka Kelly, Hannah Davis, Jessica Biel et. al., no, I don’t think Derek Jeter’s gay.) Take Me Out opened on Broadway at a time when there were rumors about Mike Piazza, who probably isn’t either.  Point is, Jeter and Piazza are both first ballot Hall-of-Famers. Greenberg’s point is that to do something like come out, a player would need the protection of genuine athletic greatness.  No one’s going to hassle Derek Jeter.

That was then, this is now.  Jason Collins is hardly a star.  He’s a journeyman career backup center.

Here’s his profile: graduated from Stanford, with his identical twin, Jarron Collins. Both brothers are seven feet tall; neither would have a career if they weren’t.  Basketball is a sport that rewards height, and a seven-footer can play professionally without being particularly athletic.  Jarron Collins played for the Jazz, and both Collins brothers fit the same profile–they’re not very quick or fast or strong, and aren’t great jumpers.  So take a guy who is very tall, but not much of an athlete, a disciplined and intelligent man.  Well, he can learn how to shoot–shooting’s just muscle memory, just takes practice.  Both Collinses can hit a fifteen foot jumper.  Jason Collins can get good rebounding position, and he can set a pick or screen.  He can’t block shots, despite his size (he can’t jump), but he can hold his position and take a charging foul.  He’s not a good one-on-one defender (not quick enough), but will battle the other team’s center, using his size. He plays, in other words, an inelegant style of basketball, not pretty, but in a limited role, effective.  Make Jason Collins your starting center, and you’re not likely a good team, but bring him off the bench and play him 12-15 minutes a night, and he can help you.  My point is, that’s not really the profile I would have suspected for the first out ballplayer.  And yet, it really is exactly the same profile John Amaechi had–and Amaechi came out within a couple of years of retiring from basketball.  Don’t know what to make of that, probably nothing.  Just this: so far, at least, superstars haven’t been the ones to out themselves.  Maybe they feel like they have too much to lose.

I assume Collins likes basketball.  But as an intelligent, articulate, disciplined guy, with a degree from Stanford, he could have pursued a number of careers. Pro basketball pays the best. Ten years in the NBA will allow him the financial independence to do literally anything he wants to do with his life.  And he’s only 34 years old, a young man, with a bright future.

His announcement is interesting in other respects.  He’s an identical twin, and very close to his brother, Jarron, but Jarron’s straight and was apparently completely taken by surprise by Jason’s announcement.  Their Mom, though, wasn’t surprised by it; said she’d always known.

For those arguing that being gay is or isn’t biologically determined, the Collins brothers would seem to complicate the issue or confirm biases, depending.  I don’t think it matters.  Sexuality and sexual orientation are complicated matters, and for me, this happens to be one instance where the best evidence is actually anecdotal.  Jason Collins says he’s known he was gay for years, that it dates from when Jarron was dating a girl seriously and he wondered why he didn’t seem to feel the same way about girls that his brother did.  Why is that story not enough?  The dude’s gay.  Power to him.

And see, that’s where this gets fun. Jason Collins is a black basketball player, a center, and gay.  That’s how he put it in the SI article.  So count the exploded stereotypes; Jason Collins is not, I don’t know, swishy.  He’s a blue collar dude, a tough, hard-nosed player who plays a very physical style of ball.  He’s a pick setter, a screener, a rebounder.  He takes on the meanest, toughest players in the league, and he battles ‘em to a standstill.  None of that impacts, or is impacted by, his sexuality.

Why did he come out?  He says it’s because his roommate at Stanford, a straight guy, also a Kennedy and currrently a Congressman (Joe Kennedy) told him about marching in a gay rights parade, and he thought, ‘dude, he’s straight and he’s marching for my rights?  Why wasn’t I there?”

One wonders what effect this will have on Collins’ career.  I think it’s quite possible that his career may have ended were it not for this announcement.  This last season, he was a back-up center for the Washington Wizards, a terrible team. A bad, older player on a bad team, in other words. His contract is over, and he’s now a free agent, able to sign with anyone.  I wonder who wants him.  He’s not actually all that good–never was.  Maybe New Orleans, backing up Anthony Davis.  He could be a mentor for a talented young center, as much a coach as teammate.  And New Orleans would certainly welcome him, one would think.

But my gosh, the reaction is interesting, isn’t it?  No negative responses, none?  Nothing but support, from teammates, coaches, league officials, politicians?  Everyone happy for him, everyone saying ‘good for you!’  It’s not like homophobia has disappeared, but isn’t driving it underground a victory?  Have we really come this far, that fast?

One last detail: players can choose their uniform numbers. Last year, Collins changed his number to 98.  Yesterday he explained why.  It was in honor of Matthew Shepherd.  Poor Matthew Shepherd, of Wyoming.  Beaten to death by homophobic psychopaths.  In 1998.  So Jason Collins is out.  So, here’s one more voice, added to the chorus: Good for you, big guy.  Hoop it up, dude, and we all got next.

 

 

 

Oz, the Great and Powerful: a review

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Oz, The Great and Powerful has been in town for awhile, a movie my wife and I wanted to catch, but one that was always sort of a second choice.  Great cast: James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis.  Sam Raimi directed.  The trailer was terrific, gorgeous. Finally, Saturday, we took it in.  The trailer was right–it’s a lovely film to look at.  Oz is magical, luminescent.  The film, however, not so much.

Terrific production design, a first-rate cast and a really fascinating premise, turns out, isn’t enough. You can have all that, and still end up with a lackluster, even annoyingly smug little movie, if the writing’s bad.  As we left the theater, I overheard folks dissing the actors: “James Franco was terrible, wasn’t he?”  That kind of thing.  Audiences do that–think an actor is to blame for a weak performance.  Most of the time, the actor’s up there doing the best s/he can with a poor script.  And that’s what dooms Oz, The Dull and Mediocre.

I used to teach a class at BYU, TMA 114, remember it fondly, a class on basic dramatic structure. Basic Protagonist/Objective/Obstacle kind of stuff–a class for freshman.  And when we talked about the attributes of an interesting protagonist, the most important one was volition.  A protagonist, to be compelling, has to drive the action of the story.  The protagonist has to make the most important decisions, has to have a strong and interesting objective, something s/he wants desperately.  A non-volitional protagonist is a character to whom things happens, as opposed to making things happen. What you want is a volitional protagonist.

Sometimes you can write a non-volitional protagonist and make it work: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for example, manages to be an interesting film despite a non-volitional protagonist.  Forrest Gump has a fairly non-volitional protagonist.  But more often, you end up with a film like Glitter, the Mariah Carey vehicle from like ten years ago, where the main character makes no major decisions about anything, ever, and as a result comes across as the most weak-willed, unwatchably annoying character ever filmed.

So you want a strongly volitional protagonist.  Look at the Wizard of Oz.  You know the film, 1939, a young Judy Garland incandescent as Dorothy, with the great Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch.  Dorothy arrives in Oz, and essentially from the beginning of the film tells everyone she meets that she wants to go home.  That’s her objective throughout, and there’s hardly a moment in the film when her character’s not pursuing it.  And the Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow (even Toto, the dog) are there to help her achieve it.  And they also have strong and interesting objectives of their own. And the result, of course, is one of the greatest films ever made, with a tremendously compelling main character. Dorothy is the protagonist, and we root for her throughout. Even the song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow” supports her quest: ‘why, oh, why, can’t I?’

And that’s precisely the problem with Oz, the Quotidian and Unremarkable.  James Franco plays Oz; short for Oscar Something Something.  He’s a conman, a circus conman, a stage magician.  He’s all misdirection and showmanship, but fundamentally shallow and soulless, with a tawdry seduction routine involving music boxes, which he buys en masse.  He climbs in a hot air balloon to escape a jealous husband/boyfriend, and a gale blows him away to Oz, shifting the movie from black and white to Technicolor (in a meaningless homage to this film’s much superior predecessor).  He arrives in Oz, meets a pretty girl, Theodora (Mila Kunis), a witch, who takes him into the Emerald City and tries to enlist him to kill the wicked witch.  He pulls the music box act on her, and seduces her.  (It’s a family film, and the question of what exactly happens sexually between them is left deliberately vague, but her subsequent actions only make sense if we assume he really does seduce her, and then dumps her.)

Turns out, though, that the wicked witch he’s agreed to kill for Theodora, is actually Glinda (Michelle Williams), the good witch, and Theodora and her sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) are the evil witches.  Glinda’s been waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy from her father, a powerful wizard, that after his defeat, another wizard would come and free Oz.  Glinda convinces herself that this new wizard is James Franco.

But through most of the film, Franco’s Oz doesn’t know what to do or how to do it. He sort of drifts through the film, following the lead of whichever pretty witch he’s happened to talk to most recently.  When he’s with Theodora, he does what she says; when he’s with Glinda, he does what she says.  Finally, the last twenty minutes of the film, he figures out a way to con the Wicked Witches, and uses his prestidigitation to Win the Day, and with it, Win the Girl. He’s interesting for twenty minutes. Otherwise, he’s a weak character, skating by on charm.

Of course, in part, that’s James Franco.  In something like 127 Hours, when he’s playing a character with a strong objective, he can be terrific.  But he’s a good looking guy, a bright guy, almost too talented for his own good.  When asked to host the Oscars, he basically floated through the night, grinning and reading his lines, but adding nothing of his own to the occasion.  It was a lazy performance.  In this, he’s certainly convincing as a conman and sleaze.  But when he tries to deepen and enrichen the character, it seems perfunctory. And the writers did him no favors. He’s playing a character without a strong objective, and he seems, as a character, correspondingly aimless. I’m not sure he’s a good enough actor to manufacture a forceful personality not directly suggested by the script.

He’s not, in other words, Rachel Weisz. The actresses fare a bit better, although the character objectives they’re asked to play are non-specific and vague, and you can see how hard they have to work to give this gorgeous-but-listless film some energy.  Rachel Weisz is the queen of strong character choices, and makes the most of an underwritten role.  As unconvincing as Evanora is, Weisz commands the screen in all her scenes; also she looks terrific.

Poor Mila Kunis has the worst-written part in the film, poor thing, an innocent girl who for some reason is also just wicked–no explanation, she just is.  Then, when seduced and spurned, she literally turns green with envy, puts on the whole Margaret Hamilton regalia.  In other words, at the very point where her character gets interesting, she has to assume a characterization initially created by another actor.  And basically her role is to fly around, cackling, and making dire threats she never seems to act on.  It’s a thankless role; I suppose she does her best with it.

And Michelle Williams; my gosh, what a waste.  Raimi has Michelle Williams in his film, and can’t think of anything more to do with her than have her play The Pretty Girl.  She’s the most astonishing actor, the queen of indies, a woman of extraordinary range and interpretative power.  She actually even does some nice work here.  Glinda is a woman of faith.  Her father said a wizard would come, and by golly, here one is, so I’m going to believe in him, period.  She has no illusions about Oz’s integrity or magical abilities; she decides to Believe, as an act of will.  That’s a subtle thing to convey, and Williams sells it; sells religious faith and basic goodness.  And then at the end of the film, this strong and faithful woman, having saved her kingdom, is supposed to be satisfied with her big reward–some projection booth nookie with James Franco.  Blech.  That ending left such a sour taste, I couldn’t wait to leave the theater.

It’s the kind of film that gets more depressing the more you think of it.  We saw it on Saturday, and I’m writing this on Monday, during which time my reaction has gone from “it’s okay, not terrible” to “major disappointment.”

It’s not the source material.  They could have done more with it, the writers. (For one thing, why does Oz never question, like, his own sanity, being transported to a completely different magical realm named after himself?  Wouldn’t you be looking around for the guys with the butterfly nets?)  The musical Wicked also plays fast and loose with both the Oz myth, and its own source, the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked.  I like Maguire’s novel a lot more than I like the musical, but the show does have some great songs, and Elphaba is a strong, volitional protagonist.  Oz: The Moronic and Offensive will be deservedly forgotten this time next year.  Dorothy’s Oz will live forever.

 

The NFL Draft

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I spent three hours last night watching what has to be the most incomprehensible TV program possible for anyone outside the loop.  The loop, in this case, is hard-core fans of the National Football League, and while our numbers are legion, we’re not ubiquitous; football haters likewise abound.  And not to get too gender-cliche-y, the NFL draft does strike me as a potential battlefield in the war of the sexes.  It’s a guy thing.  Guys like football, action movies, and NASCAR; gals like gymnastics/ice skating, chick flick romcoms, and mini-vans.  Of course there are also lots of exceptions–girls who like football, for example; not to mention Danica Patrick.  But cliches exist because they have some basis in reality.  ESPN has both male and female anchors, and yes, Chris McKendry does draft analysis, just as Linda Cohn is a hockey expert.  Still, I watched the draft last night, and while my wife was exceedingly awesome about it, she conspicuously didn’t watch with me.

Anyway, the NFL draft.  Boy, is it weird.  I’m sort of a football fan, even, and I get how weird it is.  So here’s how it works: college football players are put into a pool of candidates, and NFL teams take turns choosing which ones they want; they then have exclusive rights to sign their selections to a contract.  Yes, it’s exactly the same system used to pick sides in junior high school gym class: “I’ll pick Bobby; okay, I pick Sam.”  Imagine that every person who graduated from college in Accounting were then meticulously ranked and underwent accounting skills tests and interviews, and then every Accountancy firm in America got to pick, in order, which ones they wanted to hire. That’s the basic principle.

I watched last night because of Ziggy.  Ezekial Ansah, who played football at BYU this past fall.  Ziggy is from Ghana, where he played a little basketball, but no football at all, ever.  He joined the Church, came to BYU, and then was persuaded by roommates to try out for the football team.  The roommates thought maybe Coach Mendenhall might find some use for a guy 6’5″, 275 pounds, who was also a fantastic natural athlete–incredibly fast and quick.  And, by all accounts, a heck of a great kid.  Coach worked him out, and couldn’t believe what he saw.  My favorite Ziggy story–apparently at one point, he told his roommates that he thought he’d quit the team.  He liked it and all, enjoyed the camaraderie, liked the coaches and his teammates, but he came from Ghana, after all, needed to put his education first.  I mean, it’s not you could make any money at this football thing, right?  Right?  (Ziggy was drafted fifth, by the Detroit Lions. Last year, the fifth pick in the draft signed a contract for 18.5 million dollars.)

I am a deeply conflicted football fan. I probably would not have allowed a son to play high school ball, for example; not that either of my boys wanted to.  It’s a dangerous, violent game, with serious health consequences for way too many players.  It’s also beautiful, with an occasional athleticism that takes your breath away, and the guys who play it professionally talk about how much they love it, and miss it when they can’t play anymore.  And I look at the NFL draft, and part of me is thrilled for these guys, for the bright (and wealthy) futures their drafting portends.  It’s about opportunity–an opportunity for guys to do well, but also an opportunity for teams to improve themselves.  That’s why we watch–we want to see who our favorite team drafted, and fantasize about how great they’re going to be.

But you also can’t help but notice another resemblance–to a slave auction.  Before the draft, there’s the NFL Combine, where all the players run and lift weights and jump and undergo interviews and take intelligence tests.  Are weighed and prodded and examined.  And the top physical specimens are then selected, without having any choice in the matter.  Ziggy Ansah blew everyone away at the Combine–he’s a sensational athlete.  He also has less football experience than anyone else in the draft.  He’s seen as a ‘project,’ with a ‘high ceiling.’  For that potential, the Detroit Lions will be gambling 18-20 million dollars. And Ziggy will have no choice but to move to Detroit.  He’s from Ghana.  Perhaps he would find a gentler clime more congenial.  Tough noogies–it’s Detroit or nothing.

Now, if he’s a slave, he’s an exceptionally well compensated one.  The draft exists to ensure competitive balance–bad teams get the best players.  And nobody is forced to participate–either in the Combine or the draft. You can choose to do something else with your life.  But if you want to play professional football. . . .

And this is on television? Yep.  The teams select players in ten minute increments. So what happens is that a team picks a player, announced by Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, and the guy who got picked comes up and poses for a picture with him, and then these ESPN talking heads analyze the choice.  Chris Berman (aka Boomer) starts off, but defers to the real experts, Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay.  For years, Mel Kiper was the draft guru.  He was employed by ESPN at what I have to assume is a preposterous salary just to do this, just to work, basically, one day a year.  And, my gosh, the guy really is an expert, with an encyclopedic knowledge of essentially every player on every team in all of college football, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they fit the needs of the NFL teams considering them.  Then, the last couple of years, ESPN hired McShay, a second guy to do the same job.

And it’s one of the highest rated shows on television. Hour after hour, we watch.  Imagine high school graduation.  Imagine, then, that the principal took ten minutes between announcing each graduating kid.  Imagine that your basic high school graduation ceremony took three days to complete. Now imagine it being televised, and getting a twenty share.

Also, if you’re a fan, you’re a fan of one team, right?  I’m a 49ers fan; I root for the San Francisco 49ers.  Obviously, for a kid in Indiana, I would root for sports teams from the Bay area.  Anyway, I was rooting for Ziggy, but after he was drafted, I kept watching.  I wanted to see who my team picked.  And I had opinions!  On who they ought to pick!  I was hoping for a defensive end, a cornerback, or a safety.  They picked Eric Reid, a safety from LSU.  I knew a lot about the guy; fast, good tackler, could be the next Ronnie Lott.  I liked the pick.  And I am, at best, a casual football fan.  In other words, I watched TV for three hours, tension building, anticipation mounting, for one moment that lasted maybe ten seconds (“The San Francisco 49ers, with the 18th pick in the NFL draft, select Eric Reid. . . “)

It is, a lot, like graduation, where you wait in uncomfortable chairs for that moment when your kid gets her diploma.  Or, like, her 3rd grade play, where you know she’s playing the crucial role of Third Tree, and you sit there waiting for her one line (“Trees also provide shade”).  Which you already know, because you drilled her on it for, like, days.  That’s what you’re there for.  You could give a darn about all the other kids.

It’s complete, utter insanity.  The NFL draft, its massive popularity and the fantastic ratings it gets on TV, it’s completely crazy.  It’s not just the most boring show on television, it’s the most boring show you can imagine anyone ever putting on TV.  And I’m, at best, a casual fan of the sport; mostly, I’m conflicted about whether I should keep  watching football.  Let alone a show about sorting young wizards into their respective Houses (Mel and Todd arguing about who Gryffindor drafted). Neither of them wearing a Sorting Hat.

And I watched it for three hours last night.

And it’s on again tonight.  And I’ll probably watch it tonight too.

Guys, let’s face it.  We’re nuts.  Why on earth do women put up with us?

 

 

 

Reinhart/Rogoff.

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How about, just for grin and giggles, we talk some macro-economics?

So in 2010, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economics professors (they’re both at Harvard now; she was at Maryland when she wrote the paper), published a major study. “Growth in a Time of Debt,” about the relationship between debt and economic growth.  To summarize; they argued that whenever a nation’s debt rises above 90% of GDP, it slows economic growth–destroys it, in fact.  This paper proved very influential–was cited all over the place, especially by politicians suggesting that our number economic priority had to be deficit reduction.  Reinhart/Rogoff was laid the the intellectual foundation for European austerity measures.  David Cameron cited it, in Britain.  Paul Ryan did so as well back here in the US of A.  It was a Very Big Deal.

Most other macro-economists disagreed with it, and are on record opposing both the paper and the policies it spawned.  Paul Krugman was prominent among them.  But it took a grad student to completely blow Reinhart/Rogoff out of the water.

Guy named Thomas Herndon.  A grad student at the University of Massachusetts, Herndon was taking a class in Applied Econometrics.  For his term paper, he suggested replicating Reinhart and Rogoff’s findings. This story describes what happened: his profs almost didn’t approve it.  It was too simple, they said.  Just basic math.  For a graduate level class, they suggested he do something more challenging.  But he kept pushing, and they finally let him do it.

And Herndon discovered that Reinhart and Rogoff’s entire thesis depended on a spreadsheet error. That they’d made a simple mistake, probably because they didn’t know how to use Excel.  That economic growth, according to their own statistics, for countries with debt exceeding 90% of GDP, wasn’t negative .1 percent.  It was 2.2 percent, positive.  That they had basically gotten all the math wrong. Because they didn’t know how to use the most popular and user-friendly spreadsheet program in existence. Why had no one caught it before?  Because the initial publication of the most influential paper in macro-economics in my lifetime had not been peer-reviewed.  That the first peer to review it was this kid.  A grad student.

Nightmare.  Some kid caught you.  You’re a university professor, tenured and respected, and you’ve published a lot, many articles, and you write something really significant, something people pay lots of attention to.  And some whippersnapper comes up to you and says, “uh, prof?  Seriously, you can’t use Excel?  Wow. Here, let me show you.  You made this simple math error.  It invalidates your entire argument.”  Marketplace of ideas, indeed.

True story: many years ago, I was a grad student, and I had a paper accepted at an academic conference.  I went, and my dissertation advisor invited me out to dinner with some of his friends.  It was me, another grad student, and five of the most distinguished theatre historians in the world.  Completely terrifying.  We went to this incredibly nice restaurant in New Orleans–I couldn’t have afforded anything on the menu, but the profs kindly offered to get the check–and it immediately became clear that the two grad students were on trial. They were grilling us: I was holding my own.  But I had just gotten the seventh edition (may have been the sixth), of Oscar Brockett’s History of the Theatre.  And there he was, in the flesh, Brock himself, the great Oscar Brockett, right there at the table.  And I’d read the book that night, preparing for the dinner, and caught a mistake.  Not a little mistake either–he’d gotten Shakespeare’s birth year wrong.  I mentioned this, and the look on Brockett’s face was priceless.  As was the ribbing he got from his colleagues at the table.

Could have been worse. He could have had Stephen Colbert making fun of him/them. But it is great for the grad student who catches the big boys.  If you catch a big enough prof in a big enough error, Stephen Colbert will put you on his show.

The Colbert clip with Herndon is great, mostly because Stephen Colbert has so much fun with it.  But I loved this fact: Herndon wondered, initially, if he could have possibly gotten things wrong.  So he had his results peer-reviewed.  He showed ‘em to his girlfriend.

It’s certainly possible to feel a bit bad for Reinhart and Rogoff.  But I’ve gotten to feeling a lot less sorry for them since Herndon’s paper was published. Their reaction has been wholly defensive, insisting that their basic conclusions were basically right even when the evidence supporting those conclusions has gone pooft.  Oh, and they admitted that they deliberately left out counter-examples.  Australia, New Zealand and Canada had inconveniently robust growth despite massive debt; R/R excluded them from their data.

The fact is, these two became policy wonk celebs, testifying before the House Budget Committee and the British Parliament and the EU General Council.  Anytime anyone talked about austerity, it was Reinhart/Rogoff they cited, unless they decided to put the guy’s name first, and call it Rogoff/Reinhart.  Now they look like bozos.  Caught by a kid.  (Who now replaces them as policy wonk celeb du jour.  By, among other things, going on Colbert.)

The thing was, as Keynes pointed out in his General Theory, austerity is always going to be puritanically attractive.  When an economy stalls, it’s tempting to see that failure in moral terms.  Our spending was too extravagant, too luxurious; our debt suggests profligacy and imprudence.  We need to cut back.  We need to punish ourselves, tighten our belts.  Look at government, wicked, evil government!  I wouldn’t run my family finances that way!  When I want to buy a new car, by gum, I save up for it!  We’re on a national (look at the moral implications of this language) spending spree.  And we need to stop.

Except none of that’s true.  Everywhere I look, I see a federal government where basic functions are endangered because they’re underfunded.  Say that to people, and they’ll go on a tirade about wasteful government spending.  And sure, there probably is some.  But mostly what needs to happen right now is more spending, stimulative spending. We’re in a Keynes moment, and Keyne’s basic IS/LM model has actually performed superbly in this crisis. R and R published a paper that was deeply and obviously flawed, and they got away with it for three years because it said something policy makers wanted to hear.

So the whole thing would be pretty funny, if it weren’t also serious.  People are suffering out there.  Unemployment is too high and underemployment rampant.  Europe is really struggling.  Austerity has been tried and tested and found wanting.  We know what works and we know what doesn’t work.  Peer review, turns out, works good.  Austerity, not so much.

 

 

The Zen of the Knuckleball

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A major league fastball arrives at the plate at a velocity of around 90 to 95 MPH.  To throw a ball that hard requires that a pitcher turn his entire body into a sling, generating power, not just from his arm and shoulder, but also his thighs, knees, back.  Throwing a fastball is a violent and unnatural act, one which puts tremendous pressure on the shoulder, the elbow, the arm. A list of pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery, an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, in which the ulnar collateral ligament is replaced with a tendon from another part of the body, would fill an All-star roster.

The point isn’t just to throw the ball hard.  Imagine trying to hit a baseball with a stick, thrown at top speed from a distance of 60 feet 6 inches.  Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?  But in fact, professional hitters have extraordinary reflexes and fast-twitch fibers and hand-eye coordination, and if you just throw the ball hard, you’ll get clobbered.  The point is to spin the ball, impart movement on it, change speeds, try to disrupt the hitter’s timing.  Put enough spin on the ball, and it slows down, and drops precipitously at the last second–a change-up.  Or you can spin it so it changes direction–a curve.  Or move laterally–a slider.  And there are dozens of deadly variations on each of those pitches.  Splitters and cut fastballs and circle changes and screwballs and slurves.  All attempts to fool a pitcher, to disrupt him.  To throw the ball past him.

And then there’s the knuckleball.The anti-pitch.  Fluky, freaky. This video shows how you throw one–you push the ball out of your hand using your fingertips.  It’s not really thrown with the knuckles at all.  Thrown much softer–a relaxed, easy motion.  The point is to impart as little spin as possible.  Let the ball float up there, acted on by air currents.  Maybe it drops.  Maybe it sails.  As the pitcher, you don’t know where it’s going, and of course, neither does the batter. It looks like the easiest pitch in the world to hit–a batting practice fastball.  And then it jumps around unexpectedly.  The batter takes his best home run swing, and ends up whiffing, looking completely foolish.

It’s kind of a beautiful thing.  The point of a fastball/curve/change/slider pitcher is to control the outcome–you want the ball to cross a tiny corner of the plate, spinning and curving, at a velocity that makes it nearly impossible to hit.  A knuckleball pitcher, on the other hand, trusts to forces beyond his control.  Invisible air currents control the pitch.  Whatever happens, happens, dude.  But, man, can it be effective.  Here’s the great Tim Wakefield against the Yankees, a playoff game in 2003.  Best hitters in baseball completely helpless against a pitch arriving at home at 63 miles per hour.

And now we have a terrific new documentary, Knuckleball! documenting the 2011 season, and featuring Wakefield, in his last season, and R. A. Dickey of the (then) Mets, who emerged from the shadows that year. It makes sense that it would focus on just two pitchers, because throughout the history of baseball, there are really never more than a couple of knuckleballers working at any given time.  Hoyt Wilhelm and Wilbur Wood, when I was a kid. Then it was Phil and Joe Niekro and Charlie Hough in the 70s and 80′s, Bert Hooten after that.  Wakefield came up in ’92, and just retired, and now it’s R. A. Dickey, the new kid on the block.

But when you consider how few of them there have been, it’s remarkable how good they’ve been.  Two knuckleballers, Wilhelm and Phil Niekro, are in the Hall of Fame.  Joe Niekro could be.  Wakefield’s credentials are perhaps just a titch below that standard, but with over 200 career wins, he’s been an extraordinarily effective and consistent pitcher.  For the most part, knuckleballers turn to the pitch out of desperation.  Guys who want a career, and can’t figure out any other way to get batters out, turn to the knuckler, hoping against hope they can master it.  Most can’t. It’s a tricky and difficult pitch to learn how to throw consistently.  But if you can manage it, you can throw it basically forever. You throw so softly, it doesn’t put much pressure on your arm. Phil Niekro pitched ’til he was 48; Wilhelm until he was 50.  Wakefield had a 20 year career.

But they’re also an interesting bunch of guys.  When I was a kid, my favorite baseball book was Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.  The first great baseball tell-all, profane and funny and moving.  Bouton had been a great fastball pitcher for the Yankees, then blew his arm out.  Ball Four describes, in part, Bouton’s attempt to refashion a career by throwing the knuckleball.  He describes the frustration of it–one day, it dances like a ping pong ball in a hurricane, the next day it spins, and gets hit very hard by large hairy men with clubs in their hands. You get Bouton’s love for the game, his dogged determination and grit.  You also get a sense of a locker room, the rude humor, the casual insults, the camaraderie.  Bouton’s also in the doc; who knows how long his career as a knuckleballer might have lasted, were it not for being effectively black-listed by the baseball establishment for writing his book. But the point is that Bouton was a smart, observant, interesting guy, and a fine writer. (After his baseball career finished, he became wealthy by inventing Big League Chew–a bubblegum that looked like chewing tobacco, for kids who wanted to look especially cool.)

So is R. A. Dickey.  He’s also got a book out: Wherever I wind up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.  It’s a wonderful book, warm and insightful and funny.  I also love his blog.

It makes me think that there’s something fascinating about this pitch, this odd sort of anti-pitch.  Everything about it seems backward.  You control events by losing control of them–you admit you don’t know where the ball is going, and you’re okay with that fact.  It’s pretty Zen, really–I’ll got with the flow here, I’ll let the ball do whatever the ball wants to do. Only some guys can do that, and they tend to be interesting people, unusually thoughtful, outsiders and mavericks.

And then you get in trouble–walk a couple of guys (always a knuckleball possibility), maybe a wild pitch.  (If you don’t know where it’s going, and if the batter doesn’t know where it’s going, then obviously the catcher doesn’t know either!).  A conventional pitcher, in that situation, wants to throw harder.  The pitching coach comes out, says ‘okay, Ace, time to really bear down.’  If you ordinarily throw 93, now is time to throw 94.  You want to spin the ball more severely, catch even less of the corner, really hum it in there.

But not a knuckleballer.  If you try to throw a knuckleball harder, you’ll spin it, and it’ll get hit. A knuckleball pitcher wants to throw the ball softer. Try less to control events.  Trust even more to chance and fortune.  Like I said: Zen.

I love that.  I especially love it as a writer.  When you’re up against a deadline, and facing writer’s block, the temptation is to force it.  You work yourself into a state, you beat yourself up, you go ‘come on, damn it, think of something.  Write.  Now!

It never works.  And I’ve come to realize there’s a real wisdom to knuckleballing.  Maybe the answer, in times of high stress, is to relax. Trust the air currents more.  Let happen what’s going happen.  Leave things, a bit, to chance.

Throw softer.

BYU Dress and Grooming

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A friend shared this image, a poster from the BYU Honor Code office, and a parody of that poster from the Student Review.  Yes, that’s James Bond being used as a positive example, a guy who follows the BYU Honor Code.  Clean-shaven and all.  Also a womanizer who kills people for a living, but let’s not quibble over nuances.

A couple of points worth making about the BYU Honor Code.  First of all, every college in America has an Honor Code.  They may not call it that, exactly, but every school has one.  If you’re caught cheating on a test, or plagiarizing, you’ll get in trouble.  If you’re a serial sexual harasser, or have multiple DUIs on your record, you’ll get in trouble; state schools, private schools.  BYU is not unique in having an Honor Code.

Where BYU is unique is what sorts of things the Honor Code includes.  You can’t drink, smoke, drink coffee or chew tobacco. You can’t have sex with anyone, unless you’re married. BYU cares what clothes you wear and, if you’re a guy, the length and location of your facial hair.  Tattoos are not allowed, nor are multiple piercings.  Here are the actual rules, if you’re interested.  BYU is a university where students are not allowed to drink or fool around.  Yeah, BYU’s unique.

I taught at BYU for twenty years.  And my feelings about the Honor Code were, to be honest, conflicted. Obviously, some provisions of the Honor Code were there because it’s a Church sponsored school, with its own institutional take on the doctrine of in loco parentis.  Other rules were just public relations. BYU wanted students to look a certain way, clean-cut and well scrubbed. That part always struck me as silly.  I couldn’t care have cared less how my students wore their hair, or their shorts were knee length.  I used to get the giggles, thinking of the Honor Code committee, and how comically solemn committee meetings usually were anyway, and then add sober-sided administrators issuing Talmudic disquisitions on hair or skirt length to the agenda, and ROFL.

But personally, I was actually kind of grateful for the grooming stuff.  Here’s why; my preferred mode of dress and grooming is basically that of a hobo. Left to my own devices, I absolutely would have worn my hair to the waist, gotten my ears pierced, festooned my visible bits with tattoos.  I’m essentially a hippie at heart.  I would certainly have sported any number of styles of beard. Faded and patched jeans, Grateful Dead tee shirts, Hawaiian shirts; heck, I wouldn’t have put anything past me.  Lava lavas.  Kilts.  Jodhpurs.

In short, I would have looked like a pathetic middle-aged guy desperately clinging to a long-vanished youth, and I would have made a public spectacle of myself.  Now, as it happens, I’m also married, and would never have gotten away with any of that.  But here’s my larger point: I don’t know how to dress.  I don’t care.  I don’t just value comfort over style, I value comfort over everything.  BYU’s silly rules simplified my life.  I had to get a haircut every few months.  I had to shave most mornings.  And I had to dress decently, wearing clothes my wife bought for me because she didn’t trust me to buy anything for myself, nor should she have done.

So BYU prevented me from following my own misguided sartorial heart, and I’m grateful for it.  As a teacher, I didn’t care what anyone wore–I couldn’t be bothered.  If I saw a kid with a beard or long hair, I figured he was an actor growing it out for a role.  It would never have occurred to me to turn anyone in for anything.

Boy, some people sure care, though.  As I understand it, one big issue now has to do with a current fashion popular among young ladies, in which they wear a short skirt with long leggings.  This either is or isn’t a violation of the Honor Code, and some people have taken it upon themselves to write nasty notes to perceived offenders, or otherwise chastise them.  One joker wrote one to my daughter.  Apparently, some guys find some women’s fashions sexually arousing, or something, and think it’s the responsibility of young women to dress in a non-arousing way. “When you dress that way, you don’t know what it does to my relationship to the Spirit.”  Or some such self-serving blather.  “I’m a spiritual Giant, I am, except for those times when you make me not be one!”  Blarg.  BYU fauna do include herds of self-righteous dolts–let’s hope they grow out of it.

As a professor I never would have noticed if a girl was dressed inappropriately, because noticing would have required that I look at her, not as a student, but, however briefly, as a sexual object.  I said that badly, I think, but I want to make this clear; my students were there to learn from me.  My job was to teach. I felt it was my professional obligation to treat all students, male or female, exactly the same–as people who were there to learn.  It certainly wasn’t any part of my job to think of any student in any other way.  For me to look at a young woman and think ‘I think that skirt is too short’ would have required for me to consider something as irrelevant to the subject matter as the length of her skirt.

But it’s tricky.  First of all, I wanted all my students to think of themselves as special, unique, valued.  This went beyond trying to remember their names.  If a student had distinguished herself in some positive way, I tried to remember that, and refer to it in conversation.  If a student had asked me a question about something, I might ask her about it later–’did you ever find an answer to such and such?’  So I might say something like ‘cute tee shirt,’ if the student was wearing a clever or funny tee shirt.  I might say something like ‘did you change your hairstyle?  It’s cute.’  Because college aged women do change their hairstyle with some frequency, and like it when people notice.  This is going to sound weird, but the persona I tried to cultivate was ‘older gay friend.’  Odd, because I’m not, in fact, gay. Just romantically uninterested/unavailable/unappealing.  Just this: there’s a fine line between ‘I like that sweater’ and ‘wow, you’re really hot,’ and I tried to stay on the appropriate side of that line, and I think I generally succeeded.

One thing that helped, I think, is that I’m not an attractive guy.  I’m big and I’m not good-looking.  When I say this, understand I’m not pathetically begging for sympathy and reassurance.  I’m perfectly fine with how I look.  Remember–I’m a theatre guy.  When I say “I’m fat,” I don’t mean “I’m consumed with self-loathing!”  I mean it like an actor: “there are parts I’m right for.”

I was a professor of Theatre, a playwright and a director.  And that means being acutely aware of clothing, of social signifiers and cultural constructs, and what message does wearing that outfit send.  I did get to work with costume designers, really good ones, and that was sometimes tricky for me, because I really genuinely don’t personally care about clothing.  But I do care a great deal about stage picture and the look of a show.  So in casting a show, I did have to take looks into consideration.  Again, a fine line: I couldn’t allow myself to think ‘that’s a pretty girl,’ but I could allow myself to think ‘she’s an ‘ingenue type;’ probably not right for Lady Capulet.’  I think I engaged in more non-traditional casting than most other directors in the department, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take looks into account.  I do one time recall telling an actress that, although her audition was tremendous, I didn’t think I could cast her, because I thought she was too pretty to be convincing in the role.  She showed up to the call-back looking like a complete mess–no makeup, hadn’t showered, she said–wowed me with her acting, and easily won the role.

So the modesty debate is an interesting one, on a lot of levels. It certainly does get caught up in all sorts of issues of sexism and misogyny and how our culture constructs gender and gender roles.  So saying ‘I don’t care if that skirt is considered immodest’ doesn’t mean ‘I’m indifferent to issues relating to sexual immorality.’  It means ‘I’m deliberately placing myself outside that particular debate.  I’m absenting myself from considering her physical attractiveness.  She is, to me, a student. I am, to her, a teacher. And that relationship, teacher/student, is, to me, something holy.’

 

 

The Pope of Islam

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The Boston Marathon bombing crisis seems to be over.  As best we know, the guy who masterminded the whole thing is dead, and his younger brother/accomplice is in custody.  Days to come, we’ll learn a lot more, about why this happened, motives and ideologies.

‘Not knowing’ doesn’t mean ‘not voicing opinions,’ however.  And I’ve been reading lots of chest thumping bluster on the inner-tubes about What It All Means.  And one opinion I hear regularly is that this proves– proves I tell you!– that Islam is an inherently violent religion, that Islam is fundamentally about jihad and terrorism, that the soft-headed notion that Islam is a peaceful religion is just more liberal media bias.  ‘Where are the prominent Muslim voices rejecting violence?  All we hear is terrorism, and more terrorism!  This kind of thing indicts their entire religion!’  And so on.

I get that it’s just ignorance.  I get that most Americans don’t know doodly-squat about Islam.  I’ve heard too many uninformed voices, the last few days (or rather, read too many uninformed posts), inventing silly nonsense about Islam.  One deep thinker opined that, as a religion, Islam has basically four tenets: suicide bombers, IEDs, Al Qaeda, and oppressing women.  And until authoritative Muslim voices denounce terrorist acts, in public, loudly and unmistakably, this guy says he’ll continue to think so.

The thing is, I’m hardly any expert on Islam.  I’ve read the Qur’an, but only once, in English translation.  I don’t have Arabic as a language, and I’ve hardly traveled extensively in the Islamic world–been to Israel, but that’s about it.  I’ve studied the religion a little, but not in any detail. I could get a lot of this wrong.  So bear with me, and forgive my ignorance, and if I’ve screwed up, set me straight.

But, yeah.  Islam is a peaceful religion.  The five pillars of Islam are straightforward: 1) the shahadah or creed (there’s only one God and Mohammed is his prophet), (2) daily prayers, (3) caring for the poor, (4) fasting during Ramadan, and (5) a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.  They believe in God, pray to him several times a day, care for poor people, fast, and renew themselves spiritually on a pilgrimage.  It’s awesomely simple and beautiful.

Are there passages in the Qur’an that suggest that God approves of violence?  A few, yeah, which we mostly take out of context. There are maybe ten or fifteen verses all told, most of which deal with defensive war, which the Qur’an does consider morally justifiable–fighting to protect your family and neighbors.  Are there passages in the Bible that suggest that God approves of violence? Sure, like ten times more.  We have the entire book of Joshua to explain away. Does that make either Judaism or Christianity blood-thirsty religions?  Of course not–we look at Joshua in its larger historical context. And the Crusades, and the Inquisition.  We have a history, they have a history.  Let’s call it a draw.

So, yes, we’re in a War on Terror, and terrorists nowadays are Moslems.  All of ‘em, basically; terrorists.  “Uh, what?  Wait! What about me?” That’s Timothy McVeigh, feeling neglected. Joined by Basque separatists, the Shining Path guerrillas, the Red Army, the Irish Republican Army, the Weather Underground, Che, Mao, Pol Pot, Carlos the Jackal. . .  .

So isn’t terrorism mostly a function of actual (and perceived) oppression?  Isn’t it more about politics than it is about religion, or perhaps a combustible mix of religion and politics?  We don’t know anything yet about the Boston guys, but if this is about Chechnya, isn’t the big thing there independence?   When people talk about Afghanistan under the Taliban as an example of an ‘Islamic nation,’ when they suggest that the Taliban’s hostility to education and grotesque mistreatment of women are typical of what happens when you create an Islamic theocracy, I would suggest that the problem in Afghanistan isn’t Islam, it’s the fact that Afghanistan is a miserably screwed-up poor country.  Don’t compare Afghanistan (war-torn, violent, oppressive, Islamic) to, I don’t know, Denmark (peaceful, non-violent, free, Christian).  Compare Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (war-torn, violent, oppressive, Christian).  Compare one screwed-up poor country to another screwed-up poor country.  Conclusion: it sucks to live in screwed-up poor countries.  Stop the presses.

Another factor–the unrelenting destructive power of sheer boredom. The 9/11 hijackers all came from either Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Both are Muslim nations, and both are reasonably prosperous.  But those countries have other things in common–massive unemployment, and a huge income gap; incredibly rich people, and desperately poor people, and not much in-between. 25 percent unemployment in both countries, more or less.   Unemployment means you’ve got lots of educated young men with no job prospects and nothing to do all day. Bored. (Could that describe the Boston guys? Underemployed bored young guys?)  That describes bin Laden, and it also describes Zawahiri and what we know of most of Al Qaeda’s leadership, and most of their recruits.  What does Al Qaeda want?  Essentially, the re-establishment of the caliphate. It’s a political goal. And it’s one that not all Moslems share.

The Shi’a sure don’t.  Okay, so when Mohammed died, he left behind a succession crisis.  According to Sunni Moslems, Abu Bakr Siddique ran things first, then passed the caliphate on to Umar ibn-Khattab, who passed it on to . . . ah heck, you can read Wikipedia as easily as I can.  Anyway, eventually the various attempts to establish a trans-Islamic caliphate failed, and there is no caliph anymore, though it’s the dream of some Sunni (including Al Qaeda) to re-establish one.  Shi’ite Moslems, however, think Mohammed intended his cousin and son-in-law Ali to be successor, to be passed on to his immediate family.  There’s even a hadith (a ‘saying’) of Mohammed to that effect, sort of the equivalent of Jesus saying to Peter, ‘on this rock will I build my church.’ (And a quick look at Christian history shows how much mischief that one caused!) Anyway, when Ali’s grandson, Hussein, was murdered, the Shi’a rejected the Caliphate entirely.  Some Shi’a look forward to a Messianic Mahdi, who come to earth and rule and reign.

So here’s the point: Al Qaeda is working towards the time when a single pan-Islamic caliphate will be restored, when a caliph, called by God, will come and rule the entire Islamic world, unified under Sharia law.  That’s what they’re trying to achieve.  And they see the West, in unholy union with the corrupt Saudi regime, as preventing that from happening.  In other words, as I said before, it’s an essentially political ambition. It’s also crazy.  Seriously: Turkey, Indonesia, Iran and Yemen (just for grins and giggles, let’s toss Pakistan in there too) unified under a single theocratic ruler?  It’s completely insane. Whole lotta wars required to bring that one about.

And everyone knows it. It’s a fantasy, especially when you consider that the Islamic world is hardly united at all about what ‘sharia law’ means.  What percentage of the Islamic world shares those specific goals?  Hard to say, because it kind of depends on how you phrase the question.  Ask Christians how many ‘look forward to the Second Coming of Christ’ and my guess is a majority would say ‘yes.’  But if you asked it this way, ‘if the Second Coming of Jesus included a thermo-nuclear holocaust, would you look forward to that happening?’  The numbers would undoubtedly drop.  So when Moslems are asked if they support a restoration of the caliphate, yes, a majority do favor that.  But when you ask if Moslems support using terrorist means to accomplish the restoration of the caliphate?  Huge, overwhelming majorities oppose it, because nearly all Moslems consider terrorism un-Islamic. Basically, Islamic terrorists are to Islam what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity–tiny groups of fanatics without popular support.

So my friend asks, why don’t we see major figures in Islam condemn terrorist acts, when they happen?  One reason is that Islam isn’t a church.  It’s a religion, but it’s not organized like a Church is, with a President and leadership councils and that kind of administrative apparatus. Islam doesn’t have a Pope.  That’s kind of what bin Laden wanted, to give Islam a Pope. But there are four main divisions within Sunni Islam and two main ones in Shi’a Islam, and they’re all sub-divided.  There are certain imams with some influence, but there’s not an organizational structure that can do things like issue press releases condemning terrorism.  If a mullah in Iran issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, it’s not really binding on other Moslems, unless they happen to agree with that mullah.

But if Islam isn’t a church, boy do Moslems like to organize.  So, okay, just for fun, here’s a list of a few prominent Moslem groups that have consistently and completely condemned terrorism:

The American Muslim Political Co-ordination Committee.  The Islamic Circle of North America.  The Afghan Muslim Association. American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism, the Arab-American Congress, Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Networks Group, the Islamic Society of the East Bay, the Muslim Peace Fellowship, the Zaytuna Institute.

The Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar University, the oldest seat of Islamic learning, Muhammed Sayyed Tantawi, has repeatedly condemned terrorism. Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz and Sheik Uthaimeen, two important Saudi scholars, have come out against terrorism.  Oh, and Every Other Major Scholar of Islam, has come out against the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and terror tactics generally. Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh (Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Senior Ulama), says that terrorist attacks constitute the worst possible violation of Islamic law, hirabah, waging war against society.  I don’t know what the Senior Ulama means, or Mufti either, but the dude sure sounds important. And sensible, and moral, and right.

I’m no expert on Islam, not in any way, not in any sense.  But to say ‘Moslems don’t condemn terrorism’ is just foolish and ignorant and prejudiced.  I looked it up. I Googled ‘Moslems oppose terrorism.’  Found everything listed above.  Took me five minutes.

Meanwhile, two screwed-up young guys did terrible things.  One of them’s dead, the other one’s in custody, badly wounded and trying to make sense of the disastrous mess he’s made of his life.  Let’s just leave it there for now.