Malcolm Gladwell Fumbles on the Goal line

Scott L. — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:53:12 +0000

Malcolm Gladwell’s article about football in the New Yorker is a thought-provoking piece – albeit one that had me throwing a couple orange flags.

The meat of the article is pretty solid – there’s an epidemic of dementia and other brain injuries among professional football players. The research that Gladwell is looking at shows that it isn’t the one-time hard hits that may be the most danger: it’s the constant knocks to the head that players take as part of the game.

But what could be a pretty straightforward article is sidelined by a misplaced hook. Gladwell likes a little sensationalism in his science. He asks that, with the dangers of football possibly inherent to the sport, how different is it from the damage done by dogfighting?

L.G. willingly submitted his dog to a contest that culminated in her suffering and destruction. And why? For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday. In the nineteenth century, dogfighting was widely accepted by the American public. But we no longer find that kind of transaction morally acceptable in a sport. “I was not aware of dogfighting and the terrible things that happen around dogfighting,” Goodell said, explaining why he responded so sternly in the Vick case. One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he’d start to have similar doubts about his own sport.

Consent, Malcolm.

Dogs don’t understand dogfighting. It’s cruel because they are animals – they are maimed and killed for entertainment value while having no ideas of the potential risks, nor do they have any alternative.

Gladwell really weakens his argument by trying to make the sensational connection between a violent and dangerous sport like football with a morally-repugnant one like dogfighting. And, for a very smart man (who I am a big fan of), he seems to miss the pretty obvious point.

When an person joins up as a linebacker in the NFL, they know that there is the chance to get injured. If they aren’t willing to accept that risk, they can say no. They can go off and become car salesmen, or airline pilots or anything else. Dogs don’t know the risks of dogfighting, nor do they have a choice to be fighting dogs or not. They are abused and forced into the ring with their owners.

Choice and consent. By ignoring those two variables, Gladwell might as well be arguing that two teenagers having sex is on par with bestiality.

It’s not. Because we all know that the average human can consent to sex with another human, while an animal can never fully give that consent.

It’s a shame, because other than that ridiculous bit of emotional nonsense, Gladwell brings up some good points. Gladwell argues players may not be sufficiently warned of the risk, or cared for by the league, and that more can be done to minimize those risks – all good points, all of which I strongly agree with.

But they’re overshadowed by this weak connection. Not to mention that he says football may be closer to dogfighting, where injury is inherent in the game, than it is to stock-car races, which are dangerous but can have that danger minimized – and then goes into how football has done the very same thing as racing by making the sport safer over the years.

But the main objection at the time was to a style of play—densely and dangerously packed offensive strategies—that, it turns out, could be largely corrected with rule changes, like the legalization of the forward pass and the doubling of the first-down distance from five yards to ten. Today, when we consider subtler and more insidious forms of injury, it’s far from clear whether the problem is the style of play or the play itself.

But there’s not much to back up that last thought – football equitment is forever being designed to be safer, and rules are always being changed to protect players. (The banning of horse collar tackles in recent years being one.) What makes Gladwell thing we’ve reached the limit of how safe the sport can be while innovations continue?

Gladwell has some good stuff here, stuff that’s worth wading through the dogfighting mess. Next time, he should really just take a timeout before gambling on sensationalism like this.

Right and Wrong on Roman

Scott L. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:07:33 +0000

I’ve been formulating my thoughts on the whole Roman Polanski thing. It has been on my mind after all, it does intersect between two of my favourite subjects: film and the law. Hell, if we could somehow work delicious cookies into the mix, we’d have ourselves a trifecta.

I know there area lot of big egos in Hollywood, but I was honestly surprised that Harvey Weinstien had the gall to come out with an argument in Polanski’s favour that basically boiled down to “drugging and raping a 13-year-old, whatevs.”

I mean, talk about jumping headfirst without looking. He says that Polanski has already suffered for his “so-called crime.” (Child rape, Harv. If you’re going to try and convince people that that’s not immoral/illegal, I’d recommend using a stronger argument than just a smug hyphenate. )

Yes, while Roman might have suffered by not being able to pick up his Oscar (probably stings a bit) and having to live in France for 30 years (that one, not so much), I sincerely doubt most legal minds would consider that a sentence. Unless the US has switched from an incarceration model of justice to the less popular “exile to a beautiful and vibrant country” approach. (If that’s the case, I’m driving to the border tonight, knocking off a liquor store and hoping for Italy.)

Harvey doesn’t come out and say it, but everyone who wants the US to drop the case again Roman is doing it for one reason: he’s a good filmmaker. Really. I love his work, I’m not going to deny that. But at the same time, no matter how you and “Marty” Scoreses may wish otherwise, artistic minds are subject to the same laws as everyone else. Society as a right to punish those that harm other people. And to punish those who flee the law to avoid their sentence.

Even if, as a society, we agree that Chinatown was pretty sweet. The artist’s bad deeds should never be excused by the quality of their work.

Now, on the flip side of that, you’ve got Rex Murphy arguing in the Globe and Mail that Polanski’s child-raping ass should be stripped of the term artist. Murphy’s argument is just as misguided (though not as morally-reprehensible.) While the artist’s morals shouldn’t be judged on the quality of his work, it’s also not fair to assume the opposite: quality work can only come from the morally sound.

Murphy argues that the word artist has lost it’s meaning when applied to a “ill-co-ordinated puppet on stilts or the latest pop tart ululating her dream to be the next Madonna.” I don’t disagree with him there, but no objective observer would argue that Polanski falls into those categories. I’m sure that if Rex was asked if Polonski’s films were art BEFORE the crime was committed, there would be no disagreement. But he’s letting his knowledge of Polanski’s horrible, criminal deed colour his perception of the man’s work.

In pointing to “real artists,” Murphy mentions Beethoven and da Vinci. But Beethoven was a man who believed in the monarchist system, where the common person had no voice. And I doubt very strongly that Murphy would agree with da Vinci’s views on race relations, or women’s rights. The modern, sophisticated person would think them outdated, possibly barbaric. But we separate the person, and their flaws, to judge their work on the merits alone.

It’s a clarity that only comes when one looks at things objectively. The Mona Lisa is art. So is The Pianist. The latter was made by a criminal. And he should go to jail.

EDIT: Edited for some HTML errors that kept popping up. Also, my first go around, committed the faux pas of not linking to either Weinstien or Murphy. My bad.

Delusions of Grammar » Arts and Culture

Malcolm Gladwell Fumbles on the Goal line

Right and Wrong on Roman