I 

am sitting here writing this 
column, and in another tab 
of my nifty web browser, the 

New York Knicks are playing. I 
am alone, hunkered 
down in my basement 
as 
wet 
muck 
falls 

from the sky outside. 
Nobody wants to watch 
sports with me. 

In 
the 
seconds 

before I tell people that 
yes, I’m a sports fan, a 
pit of insecurity forms 
in my gut. To give you 
a sense, I’m an English 
major with a women’s 
studies minor, I live in a 
co-op previously called 
Michigan Socialist House, my 
full name is Isaiah David Aaron 
Zeavin-Moss, I’m from Brooklyn, 
N.Y. and I campaigned for Bernie 
Sanders. And the people I speak 
to 
generally 
associate 
sports 

with obnoxious men who yell 
misogynistic things about each 
other and excessive drinking and 
people rioting in the streets in 
destructive ways after their teams 
lose. My friends, dear to me, see 
these instances of gross behavior 
and they write off the entire 
institution of sports.

But 
this 
attitude 
ignores 

fundamental elements of sports. 
All social arenas as large and as 
layered as the world of sports 
— music, politics, etc. — contain 
cultures within them. And these 
subcultures respond in varying 
ways to the thing which they all 
are celebrating. For example, you 
are reading The Michigan Daily. 
This means you must respect 
journalism. But there is an entire 
cult within journalism that spends 
hours debating the merits of the 
Oxford comma. People spend 
hours talking about the difference 
between paratactic and hypotactic 
writing styles in ways you would 
find obnoxious. What does any of 
that mean, you ask? Who cares? 
You wonder as your jaw hangs 
wide open and your friends around 
you struggle not to laugh because 
of the mayonnaise you have on 
your chin that you’re ignoring 
in order to make a point about 
how outraged you are about the 
conversation topics that people 
find worth their time? Yeah! Me 
too! But here I am, gnashing away 
at my keyboard for the sake of this 
newspaper.

Certain publications even use 

ludicrous, 
offensive 
language 

just to grab your attention. This 
is corrupt. News sources, as 
such, know they have your trust 
and they will manipulate you 
because of it. And yet no one on 
this campus would see somebody 
reading a news source and, with 
a blanket statement, simply say, 
“Oh. I don’t like news sources. 
Now, since that person’s reading 
one, I’m going to judge them. 
I don’t want to be friends with 

someone who reads newspapers.”

There is no nuance in this 

closed-minded 
perception 
of 

sports. Sports is (are? Sports lets 

you have fun with 
grammar! The beauty 
is in the ambiguity, 
people!) a celebration 
of psychologies, of 
thinking about these 
people as characters, 
of 
narrativizing 

their 
lives, 
of 

finding 
moments 

of attachment with 
these 
figures, 
the 

same way we watch 
shows or politicians 
on TV and think 

about how cute or fun or silly 
this person is and wow I love 
watching them just speak.

I think about this sort of 

narrativization all the time. 
Throughout 
my 
childhood, 

my family and I would watch 
as our favorite players would 
act out their extensive secret 
handshakes 
in 
moments 
of 

triumph. We would watch as 
they would hug each other, 
crying, after defeat. We would 
criticize how the most famous 
player would hog the ball, to the 
detriment of our team. Haven’t we 
all experienced these phenomena 
(communally 
grieving 
over 

disappointment, grappling with 
the selfish person who acts 
selfishly in what should be a team 
effort (think of your latest group 
project for reference))?

Last night, even, I had a dream 

about one of the Knicks’ most 
dynamic players, Joakim Noah. 
Noah is new to the team this 
year, and he was having a really 
hard time with the pressures, the 
limelight, of New York City. He 
actually went to a school where 
I knew people, and we connected 
over this! I consoled him. We 
sat in the backseat of an Uber 
together, and I told him a joke: 
What do you call a man with no 
arms and no legs who’s trapped 
in a pot of vegetables? Stu! And 
he laughed! Oh, what joy, what 
sheer joy. There we were — me, 
the blubbering and drooling and 
snot-drenched boy coming to the 
aid of the 7-foot, man-bunned, 
NBA superstar, canoodling and 
commiserating over all that 
life has thrown at us. These 
people can become figures in 
our lives whom we admire and 
adore, onto whom we project our 
own admirations and fears and 
insecurities, with whom we live 
and grow up.

But back to psychologies. How, 

for example, do these young 
men cope with the immense 
pressures that come with their 
job? Baseball players have fewer 
than five milliseconds to react 
to a professionally thrown pitch. 
Imagine having that amount of 
time to perform an act which will 

decide the story written about 
you for the rest of time. How 
would you respond to that? These 
are people — everyday people, 
with backstories of triumph and 
tragedy and success — who are 
all responding to these pressures. 
Should we not embrace this 
institution?

And of course I think we need 

to criticize sports for all of those 
moments of crude, disgusting 
and violent behavior. They ought 
to be examined and they ought 
to be rooted out. On this campus, 
for example, I often cringe during 
gamedays where a crowd of 
essentially all white people drinks 
and parties while essentially only 
people of color clean up cans from 
the ground. Or, as has happened 
twice this semester alone, I was 
walking to the game with friends 
of mine from another school 
when University of Michigan 
students saw us and said, laughing, 
“Faggots!” What does that say 
about my school, that my tour of 
my everyday life here included 
this? And this violence is certainly 
part of the culture of sports.

But it’s also connected to 

cultural 
elements 
outside 
of 

football games. Greek life, for 
example, where so many infamous 
parties take place, promotes 
certain prototypically masculine 
ideals 
which 
put 
enormous 

pressure on its members to deride 
those who do not set those same 
standards for themselves. The 
people who, knowingly or not, 
decide not to take part in those 
standards become “faggots.” But 
something about the football 
games helps to bring out this 
culture, it is certainly true.

The University, then, must do 

more to combat this behavior. 
There must be greater awareness 
demanded of its students of 
certain social issues. A more 
concrete administrative effort 
to combat this hate speech — not 
in the form of advertisement 
campaigns or slogans, but in 
concrete, visible action. There 
needs to be a greater effort to 
promote understanding of why 
this language is so impactful and 
so destructive. 

Like all structural systems, 

sports has its deep, foundational 
flaws that are connected to other 
elements of American culture. 
But the solution is not to turn our 
collective heads from these flaws. 
Instead, we ought to consider 
them, to work on fixing them, while 
also embracing all the beautiful 
elements sports offers its audience: 
to celebrate camaraderie and to 
project our own fears and fantasies 
and expectations and loves and 
wishes, and to pour ourselves into 
them through narrativization and 
celebration of human will.

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, December 8, 2016

In defense of sports

MAX 

LUBELL

LAURA SCHINAGLE

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

SHOHAM GEVA

Editor in Chief

CLAIRE BRYAN 

and REGAN DETWILER 

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

Carolyn Ayaub
Claire Bryan

Regan Detwiler
Brett Graham
Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Ben Keller
Minsoo Kim

Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Ali Safawi

Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Ashley Tjhung

Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

ISAIAH ZEAVIN-MOSS | COLUMN

ISAIAH 
ZEAVIN-

MOSS

Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be reached 

at izeavinm@umich.edu.

MAX LUBELL | COLUMN
Ben Carson is unfit to run HUD
Y

ou 
wouldn’t 
trust 
a 

football quarterback to 
perform 
neurosurgery, 

and we shouldn’t trust 
a 
neurosurgeon 
to 

lead the Department 
of 
Housing 
and 

Urban Development. 
But 
unfortunately, 

President-elect 
Donald 
Trump 

does. 
Trump 
has 

nominated University 
of 
Michigan 
alum 

Ben Carson to head 
the 
department 

as secretary. Carson’s lack of 
experience and rhetoric prove 
he is unqualified for the position. 
As secretary, Carson’s decisions 
could have devastating impacts 
on fair-housing policies.

For context, the Department 

of 
Housing 
and 
Urban 

Development is an incredibly 
important agency, with 9,000 
employees and a budget of 
over $47 million. The primary 
goal of the agency is to operate 
several programs that provide 
housing assistance to low-
income families. The agency 
runs the Section 8 voucher 
program 
and 
the 
Federal 

Housing Administration, both 
of which play essential parts 
in providing housing support 
to millions of Americans. The 
department also enforces the 
Fair Housing Act to combat 
housing discrimination.

Just to be clear, nothing about 

Trump signaled that he was 
going to appoint an exceptional 
candidate. After all, this is 
the same person whose racist 
convictions guided his decision 
to deny housing to Black and 
Puerto Rican people back in 
1972. Trump didn’t do anything 
to 
disconnect 
from 
this 

background on the campaign 
trail. Whenever Trump spoke 
on the subject of urban housing, 
he had a tendency to conflate 
the “inner city” with “African 
Americans.” These are some 
pretty big red flags in regard 
to how Trump would structure 
an 
agency 
whose 
primary 

goals include enforcing a Civil 
Rights law he violated. Even 
still, Carson’s appointment is a 
pretty low blow.

Carson 
is 
an 
incredibly 

inexperienced nominee for the 
federal agency. Nothing about 
his education and career as a 
neurosurgeon 
has 
prepared 

him for the role as a federal 
housing expert. Furthermore, 
he doesn’t know a thing about 

running 
a 
federal 

agency. Don’t just 
take my word for 
it; Carson himself 
believes he would 
be 
unqualified 
to 

run a government 
agency. 
According 

to a Carson camp 
aide, “the last thing 
he would want to do 
was take a position 
that could cripple 

the presidency.” And yet today 
we see Carson accepting the 
role as the nominee. 

Prominent 
conservatives 

have responded to the claims 
that Carson is unqualified by 
saying his childhood experience 
growing up in public housing 
naturally qualifies him. That 
is not the case. While living in 
public housing doesn’t inhibit 
an individual’s potential to 
work in government, it also 
doesn’t 
necessarily 
grant 

someone the skills to run a 
government agency. Though 
the experience of growing up 
with government assistance is 
certainly valuable to consider 
when 
shaping 
government 

policy, it does not grant the 
skills necessary for secretary 
candidates. Receiving public 
assistance and running public 
assistance programs are very 
different things. In addition 
to Carson’s lack of experience, 
his individual responsibility 
mentality confirms he is unfit 
to run the program.

Throughout Carson’s self-

acclaimed 
“rags-to-riches” 

biography, he has an incredibly 
pervasive “pull yourself up 
by the bootstraps” mindset. 
Carson has admitted to the 
belief 
that 
“poverty 
was 

really more of a choice than 
anything else.” Furthermore, 
he has openly criticized the 
Affirmatively Furthering Fair 
Housing requirement as “social 
engineering.” 
The 
housing 

rule, which was implemented 
under the Obama presidency, 
requires 
local 
communities 

to halt housing segregation 
and implement procedures to 
address segregation. Carson’s 
statements display a failure to 
understand the social context 
in which housing problems, 
such as segregation, persist.

Housing 
segregation 
has 

a history based on policies 
that can also be labeled as 
what 
Carson 
calls 
“social 

engineering.” 
Douglas 

Massey and Nancy Denton’s 
novel “American Apartheid” 
provides 
an 
analysis 
that 

details 
the 
government 

intervention that created and 
expanded ghetto communities. 
Policies 
such 
as 
redlining, 

subsidizing 
suburbanization, 

slum 
clearance, 
widespread 

denial of Black mortgages, 
public housing concentration 
in minority and low-income 
communities and a lack of 
transportation infrastructure 
have all contributed to the rise 
of the urban ghetto.

Therefore, 
it 
is 
these 

government 
interventions, 

not the failure of individuals 
to pull themselves up by 
their bootstraps, that play a 
significant role in housing 
disparities. It is imperative 
that 
government 
practices 

work to compensate for this 
history. Solutions like the 
Affirmatively Furthering Fair 
Housing rule can accomplish 
this, but under Carson, these 
policies are in danger. As 
secretary, Carson has the 
potential to put us years back 
on 
federal 
desegregation 

efforts.

Unfortunately, repealing the 

fair housing rule is not the only 
damage that Carson could do as 
HUD secretary. He could gut 
the Section 8 housing program, 
which, 
despite 
its 
flaws, 

assists millions of Americans 
in paying their rent. Carson 
could also gut Fair Housing Act 
enforcement efforts, allowing 
businessmen 
like 
Trump 

free rein to discriminate in 
their 
housing 
complexes. 

Carson 
is 
undoubtedly 

unqualified to be secretary of 
the Department of Housing 
and Urban Development. I 
hope that Carson proves me 
wrong 
and 
reinforces 
the 

housing assistance the federal 
agency 
provides. 
However, 

his individual responsibility 
mindset and open criticism 
of desegregation efforts lead 
me to believe he will only do 
damage as secretary.

Max Lubell can be reached at 

mlubell@umich.edu.

CJ MAYER | COLUMN
Trump, Democrats and the future of populism
P

resident-elect 
Donald 

Trump’s 
rhetoric 

outflanked the Democrats 

in one crucial aspect 
this year: the idea of 
populism. Populism, 
the movement of the 
masses against the 
elite and powerful, 
has 
typically 

been 
utilized 
by 

Democrats in recent 
years to decry Wall 
Street and the “1 
percent.” But in an 
election in which the Democratic 
candidate was a symbol of the 
establishment and ruling class, 
the Republican Party was able 
to steal the anti-elite rhetoric 
from its political rivals. Among 
the many issues where Trump’s 
policies 
will 
likely 
differ 

from his campaign rhetoric — 
especially given his decisions 
in the month after Election Day 
— few could be as stark as this 
appeal to populism. The swamp 
doesn’t seem to be draining all 
too quickly.

It starts with his Cabinet and 

closest advisers. One of the most 
important Cabinet members, 
secretary 
of 
the 
treasury, 

will be Steven Mnuchin, the 
finance chairman for Trump’s 
campaign. Trump repeatedly 
claimed on the campaign trail 
that “Wall Street has caused 
tremendous 
problems 
for 

us,” that he knows the guys 
at Goldman Sachs and that 
these people have total control 
over politicians. He even tied 
Hillary Clinton to Goldman 
Sachs in a final campaign ad, 
suggesting 
Clinton 
would 

implement policies to help the 
banking 
industry. 
Rhetoric 

such as this gave Trump the 
populist mantle. Interestingly 
enough, his pick for the most 
important economic position 

is a 17-year Goldman Sachs 
alum, who drove a Porsche in 
college and named the hedge 

fund he founded after 
an area near his house 
in the Hamptons. This 
doesn’t 
sound 
like 

the man to carry the 
populist torch Trump 
talked about.

And 
then 
he 

announced 
his 

nomination for secretary 
of commerce, Wilbur 
Ross. When George W. 

Bush put his Cabinet together 
in 2001, he was lambasted for 
having too wealthy an array of 
advisers who were out of touch 
with the American people — their 
net worth was about $250 million. 
Wilbur Ross alone is worth about 
10 times Bush’s entire Cabinet.

All 
told, 
Trump’s 

administration could be worth 
up to $35 billion! Let’s not 
forget Steven Bannon, Trump’s 
chief strategist, who will be yet 
another Goldman Sachs alum 
with the immediate ear of the 
president. Raging against those 
affiliated with the banking 
industry and Goldman Sachs, 
Trump has surrounded himself 
with an awfully large number 
of them.

It’s warranted to criticize 

Trump’s Cabinet as out of 
touch because of the collective 
wealth of its members, but in 
reality it comes down to the 
policies they enact and how 
those will affect millions of 
Americans. And the policies 
he has suggested, at least early 
on, are in line with his choices 
for 
advisers. 
For 
example, 

Trump’s 
tax 
plan 
would 

eliminate the federal estate 
tax that targets 0.2 percent of 
the wealthiest Americans. Half 
of his proposed tax benefits 
would directly benefit the top 

1 percent. He has said that the 
federal minimum wage should 
be abolished. 

Trump and Mnuchin have 

said they want to “strip back” 
and 
dismantle 
the 
Dodd-

Frank Wall Street Reform and 
Consumer Protection Act. Dodd-
Frank, enacted in response to the 
Great Recession, was intended 
to reform and regulate Wall 
Street so that a similar crisis, 
like one created by recklessness 
on Wall Street, wouldn’t happen 
so easily again. It’s a symbol of 
the populist reaction to the 
Great 
Recession. 
Trump’s 

desire to dismantle it, jointed 
with his positions on taxes and 
the minimum wage, is a signal 
that the populist rhetoric of his 
campaign could end when he 
begins to actually govern.

When evaluating potential 

Democratic responses to the 
next four years of Trump, 
populism presents a powerful 
chance to take advantage of 
emerging 
voter 
tendencies. 

In terms of rhetoric, the likes 
of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie 
Sanders and their mass of 
followers 
must 
carry 
the 

populist 
mantle. 
Attacking 

Trump directly for what he 
says won’t be enough — look 
no further than the election 
for evidence. Democrats would 
be wise to establish a singular, 
policy-oriented line of attack.

Trump 
rode 
into 
power 

on the wave of anger at the 
establishment, but now he’s the 
establishment, surrounded by 
the same flourishing fish in the 
same swamp. It’s time for the 
Democrats to become the party 
of populism — the party of the 
people — once again.

CJ Mayer can be reached at 

mayercj@umich.edu.

CJ MAYER

MICHELLE SHENG | CONTACT MICHELLE AT SHENGMI@UMICH.EDU

