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