One, Two, Three, Many Kash Patels

This tweet, with its accompanying photograph, went viral this weekend. With any luck at all, it will cost Bo French the election for Texas Railroad Commissioner.  Even Karl Rove, Ted Cruz, and other Texas Republicans were offended, though others were reluctant even to pretend they were.  French has a long history of racist remarks, but he won the primary election for the post and has the support of the oil and gas industry.  He's borne down on this tweet, mocking his critics.

Liberals too scolded French for his bigotry.  Most of what I saw was in the "Oh, how can you say such awful things?" mode, which is fair enough, but there was little if any attempt to go beyond that and dismantle the assumptions that underlay French's tweet, which was something of a dogwhistle but obvious enough. Take this Houston public-media call-in show.  The hosts spend twelve minutes being indignant, but I expect more and better from public media.  (Not that I get it.)  French would prefer that there be no non-white students, or residents for that matter, in Texas.  From his responses to criticism, I gather that he assumes (or knows that his backers assume) that Indians and other foreigners are crowding out "American" (i.e., white) kids for admission to the University of Texas.

Politico reported, though:

Two of the students in the photo told the Dallas Morning News that they’re U.S. citizens. Most UT students are Texans — state law requires that 90% of each freshman class come from in-state — and there is no evidence that the students in the photo French posted are foreigners.

The Texas Tribune was helpful:

French said UT was “filled with foreign nationals” and argued that the school has prioritized foreign students and workers. However, under state law, 90% of UT freshmen must be in-state residents, while the remaining 10% are international students or out-of-state students. International students comprised about 4% of undergraduates in the 2025-26 school year.

UT offers automatic admission to all in-state residents in the top 5% of their high school graduating class. Under state law, 75% of UT’s freshman class must be admitted under this policy. The remaining students are admitted through a holistic process that considers factors such as grade point average, extracurriculars and personal essays.

French doesn't care about facts, of course, and I don't think most liberals do either.  But they should at least pretend to. I watched a YouTube video today on American slavery by Jamelle Bouie, in which he acknowledged a bit sheepishly that many people on all sides of American political debates don't really care much about facts, but said that it's still good to be armed with them when you encounter bad claims and arguments.  I agree.  

Remember Kash Patel's locker-room celebration with the US hockey team in May?  I do, but I'd forgotten that "In 2019, an event at a Houston stadium headlined by Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi drew over 50,000 attendees.  French’s comments could alienate those same voters, said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican consultant in Austin."  Republican elites are quite cozy with right-wing Hindus of the sort that currently run India.  That's not why Bo French wants to run them out of Texas, of course.  Racists pretend to care that immigrants won't "assimilate."  The kids in that photo sure as hell have assimilated.

Freedom of Expression for Me But Not for Thee, One More Time

A friend posted this tweet by Billie Jean King this morning:

I suppose that King meant "public condemnation" to imply "public condemnation by the President," but even if so, she's wrong.  And since she left out the specific case, I'll begin with the more general statement she actually made, since many people would agree with it.

Freedom of expression does not mean that a person may not have to face public condemnation.  If you express unpopular views, or just views detested by a large number of people (who may not be the majority), you can expect to be condemned publicly.  Liberals and progressives are just fine with this principle for views they detest -- Republicans, Bible thumpers, white racists, Donald Trump.  In many cases they demand not just condemnation but the suppression of such views by the State.  It's only when opinions they agree with encounter pushback that they become more purist, though they are ready to demand the suppression of the views of their critics, as King did.

The First Amendment, and the general principle of freedom of expression, assume that there will be public debate, without making any assumptions about the quality of that debate.  (And a good thing, too, since the level of public debate is generally not high.)  What is important is that someone should be able to express a highly unpopular opinion without being silenced -- by the State or any other force.  Someone who wishes to express a highly unpopular opinion had better expect to encounter hostile responses; one very annoying tendency visible among liberals is that, for example, they should not be made to "feel like an outcast" (via) for taking an unpopular stand.  This would be bad even if they didn't feel that no such consideration need be extended to those whose opinions they hate.

It's to their credit that the athletes themselves, as far as I've seen, don't seem to be demanding that they not be criticized.  Perhaps because most of them are black and are therefore closer to political struggles of the recent past, they knew from the outset that standing up against the majority would make them lightning rods for hostility. 

Now I'll address what I take to be King's more specific reference to President Trump's attacks on the athletes who protest against American white supremacy, while generally supporting American military aggression.  It's true, as the friend who posted the tweet on Facebook argued, that the words of a President carry more weight in the public sphere than those of most citizens, though not (as she also argued) that they take "the form of law."  Admittedly, partisan fans of a president will want to see them that way.  But my friend, like so many Democratic loyalists, wasn't nearly as concerned about (for example) President Obama's prejudicial remarks about Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, let alone Obama's general war on whistleblowers.  Privately, she probably would have agreed with them even if they had the imprimatur of a president she admired, but like most Democrats she ignored them or minimized their impact on the well-being of people who'd been accused of crimes.  Nor, if I recall correctly, did she object to Obama's public criticism of Fox News, though right-wing partisans reacted to it in much the same panicky way that Democrats are now reacting to Trump.

Though I agree that a President's public statements will carry a lot of weight, it struck me funny to see my friend making the claims she did just as the owners of the NFL, and the NFL commissioner, struck back at Trump's demand that protesting athletes be fired.  Former NFL coach Rex Ryan, who'd campaigned for Trump, announced that he was "[bleep] off."  (Presumably bleeped by ESPN, where he appeared, rather than by Democracy Now!, who quoted him.)  Pushing back against the Leader of the Free World is harder than pushing back against a single football player, but it can be done, and it's being done.  (I'm with "former NFL player Donté Stallworth," who also appeared on DN! this morning, and warned against letting Trump hijack the protests into a controversy over himself, though that already seems to be happening.)

P.S. When I pointed out some of this, my friend replied that I should "tell it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff" in connection with Trump's announcement via Twitter last summer that transgender troops would no longer be allowed to serve in the military in any capacity.  This was a notably ill-chosen rebuttal, because, first, Trump sent that tweet as a declaration of policy, which was not the case with his denunciation of the NFL protestors; and second, because the Joint Chiefs did not accept the tweet as having the "form of law."  They announced that until a policy had been worked out formally, they were going to ignore Trump's announcement and transgender troops would continue to serve.  Until Trump signed a memo implementing the ban, it wasn't law.  The tweet itself did nothing.  This case also supports my general distaste for the hopelessly inadequate way liberals have been responding to Trump's provocations.

"Every Man Does Not Look Like Brad Pitt"

Dave Zirin interviewed the gay ex-NFL player Wade Davis for The Nation, and alas, Davis (who is "now the executive director for the You Can Play Project", which indicates he thinks he's some kind of spokesman) didn't do a very good job.  When the inevitable "objectification" (aka "What do I do if a gay guy looks at me in the shower?") question came up, Davis said:

You know, it all comes down to having experiences. I guarantee that if Jonathan Vilma has a chance to sit down with myself or any other gay person, he’d be like, “You know what? These old ideas that I had about gay people… they really aren’t true.” It’s not all Jonathan Vilma’s fault. Our country has a very monolithic way that they show gay men—the Modern Familys and what not. The exposure’s great, but let’s have some nuance to show that there are different types of gay people, so Jonathan Vilma’s mind can expand and he can say, “Oh, every gay man doesn’t want me.” Most guys look terrible naked, and I should know. And, straight guys look too… there’s a perception that straight guys don’t check out other guys’ penises, and that’s a lie. The one difference is that some straight guys get uncomfortable and think that every gay man wants them. Wrong. Every man does not look like Brad Pitt.

The best thing here is Davis's pointing out that "straight guys look too."  It's not necessarily erotic, it's more the expression of competitive anxiety over penis size -- though such anxiety doesn't necessarily exclude erotic interest.  But yes, having spent some years in locker rooms, whether under compulsion for high school PE or of my own free will when I was working out, I know that if every man who looks at other men's bodies in a locker room is gay, there are hardly any straight guys in locker rooms. 

But aside from that, Davis's remarks are a mess.  What "looks terrible naked" is open to considerable variation, and you don't have to "look like Brad Pitt" to be desirable.  (Not all gay men want Brad Pitt in the first place.  Or Channing Tatum, or whoever.)  This is just more of the same old garbage which puts down everyone who doesn't look like a model or movie star as too ugly to fuck.  Luckily, those of us who don't look like models or movie stars still do get laid, and checked out in the showers for that matter.

Besides, I wonder how many straight men really will be reassured by being told that they're too ugly to fuck.  Again, in my experience, many straight men -- and not only straight men -- are disappointed when they find out that a given gay man isn't secretly seething with lust for them.  And some, especially athletes like Vilma, may still want to ask "But what if some gay guy does want me?"  That's easy enough: you say, "No, thanks" or "Yes, please," depending on your own wishes.  It may help to reassure them that no matter what they look like, not all gay men will want them.  On the other hand, some straight men enjoy being admired and desired.  The real problem for people like Jonathan Vilma is that they think that just being looked at, admired and desired, unmans them.  But there's nothing much they can do about that, since they'll be looked at, admired and desired even when they're fully suited up for the game.

Zirin and Davis use the word "objectification" for this, but that's too easy: not all desire objectifies, and indeed objectification doesn't have that much to do with erotic desire -- it's about control, about seeing erotic relations as a power struggle from which the man must always emerge the victor.  (For many gay men, of course, being a bottom is victory.)  Should Zirin and Davis have gone into this?  If they're going to touch on straight male anxiety about being "objectified," yes.  I don't think we're going to be able to resolve homophobia and antigay bigotry unless we can think about such things.  About thirty years ago Joanna Russ wrote:

I’ve always thought that patriarchal male sexuality must be a rather difficult business. To over-simplify: A partner’s hostility or boredom is ordinarily a real turn-off – and yet this is exactly the situation under patriarchy, where so many women are not interested, not excited, not participants, and not happy. Yet men must penetrate and ejaculate if there are to be any babies – and so the problem for patriarchy (whether you think of this as a one-time invention or a constant process) is to construct a male sexuality that can function in the face of a woman’s non-cooperation or outright fear and hostility.

As long as that's the case, and I think it is the case, it's not surprising that the existence of openly gay or bisexual people is going to generate anxiety among many heterosexuals.  That means we not only need to talk about such issues, we need to do some hard thinking about what they mean in people's real lives.

The More It Changes, The More It Is the Same

Then ...

... and now:

Then ...

... and now (actually 2009):

I don't mean to make a big deal out of this. (Unlike this blogger, who harumphed that it wasn't "appropriate," and that there "ought to be a bit more gravitas when you meet the president, I think. Maybe I'm too stuffy.") Still, the continuity ought to be noticed.

A Mad Tebow Party

I've only made one glancing comment about Tim Tebow on this blog so far, but he apparently continues to fascinate many. One of the main reasons I've paid him so little attention is that, as my readers know, I don't care about sports at all. If the media, including the liberal and left blogosphere, weren't so obsessed with his tendency to drop on one knee and thank Jesus whenever a play goes well, I wouldn't even know who Tebow is. I do care about religion, since it is more likely to impinge on my life, but one point on which I agree with my mother is that People Like That Just Want Attention, and (unlike her) that you shouldn't give it to them. I see two possibilities with Tebow: either he's just doing it to get attention, in which case he shouldn't get it; or he's perfectly sincere and unselfconscious (which is probably giving him too much credit), in which case his personal religious observance is no one else's business and they should stop rubbernecking. 

Of course, pro football, like so much that concerns ordinary Americans, is a hotbed of religious nuttery, and specifically Christian religious nuttery. A blogger at the Washington Post wrote that "some of us are still uncomfortable with the QB's constant flaunting of his Christian faith, beginning virtually every interview thanking Jesus and ending with 'God bless.'" Hell, couldn't that describe most R&B and hiphop albums too? No matter how grossly misogynist the content, the CD acknowledgments always put thanks to God and the rapper's mother at the top of the list. In a different realm, a memory of Red Skelton's ending every TV show with "Thanks, and may God bless" just surfaced in my old brain. That doesn't bother me any more than "Merry Christmas" does. 

As numerous writers have pointed out, Tebow wouldn't get all that love from the fans if he were, say, a Muslim. The right-wing writers have a point when they complain that liberals and leftists would be much less likely to jeer at an equally pious Muslim athlete -- but then, those same right-wing writers would not be defending a pious Muslim athlete; they'd be attacking him. So we're stuck with another partisan divide, as when the Right attacks Obama for doing what they loved when Bush did it, and Liberals love Obama for doing what they hated when Bush did it. 

So I'm in a bind myself, for the same reason. I don't approve of liberals attacking or mocking Tebow, because it gives him undeserved attention and allows conservative Christians to play the martyr by playing into the paranoid delight in persecution so many of them indulge. (Especially when the "persecution" consists of nothing more than verbal disagreement or mockery.) Besides, I believe that much of the liberal mockery comes from the same source that leads college students to freak out about open-air evangelists on campus: being still flush with the high-school herd mentality, they can't imagine that anyone would do something that would cause them to stand out and be laughed at -- let alone persist in the face of such laughter. (Many liberal attacks on Ron Paul seem to have the same motivation: just making fun of him should send him scurrying to the shadows, but it doesn't work! What's wrong with the guy? By the way, I had a strong sense when I watched the video clip of Alabama fans molesting a passed-out Louisiana fan that the same mindset was at work there: Hey, he's all alone! He's acting weird! There are a lot of us! We can do anything we want to him!) 

On the other hand, as I've often noticed before, while it's okay in the liberal mind to make fun of bible-thumping Christians, it's not okay to make fun of Christianity, let alone Jesus. "Real" Christianity as it exists in liberal fantasy is self-evidently a good thing, and Jesus himself was way cool, right? Then a day or so ago the writer Robert Wright explained "Why Liberals Shouldn't Dis Tim Tebow (or Jesus)", closing with the following paragraph:

I should admit to a factor in my thinking that won't carry weight with other people: My parents, who brought me up southern Baptist, also brought me up to respect other people's religious beliefs. The southern Baptist part didn't stick, but the other part continues to make sense to me independent of the tactical considerations above. Explaining why would call for a whole 'nother post.

Wright's parents weren't very good Southern Baptists, then, though I suppose it depends what you mean by "respect[ing] other people's religious beliefs." Maybe he means that publicly attacking other people's beliefs is tacky. Just sticking with Christianity, exhibiting and demonstrating disrespect for other people's religious beliefs is built into the faith, with Jesus' own (public, according to the gospels) attacks on his fellow Jews as the model. Other New Testament writers followed his example, especially with rival Christian teachers. When I point this out, Christians generally argue that it was different because Jesus' targets deserved it: they were hypocrites and legalists and whatnot. But most Christians who attack other Christians justify themselves on the same grounds. 

I suspect that Wright is confusing respect with someone's right to hold or express religious beliefs with respect for the beliefs themselves. The former is good manners, and more or less an obligation in a pluralist society that protects religious freedom; the latter is not an obligation, though good manners should discourage us from mocking others' beliefs gratuitously, lest they attack ours. Conservative Christians might bear that in mind themselves, but much of their culture consists of denunciations of other Christians' beliefs. (I read a fair amount of fundamentalist polemics against liberal Christians -- or "apostate" Christians, as they often called them -- in the 1980s and 90s, so I know whereof I speak.) They aren't really interested in getting along with others; triumphalism is more their style: a total victory over the ungodly, that is, just about everybody but them. But the rest of us shouldn't sink to their level, if only because pluralists should be concerned in how to get along with others, and should know that there's no such thing as total victory over your opponents in the real world. In so far as liberals are indulging in triumphalist fantasies themselves, they're not as different from fundamentalists as they like to believe.

Playing Eleven-Dimensional Football

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the American left, such as it is, isn't doing very well. That's not exactly a new problem, and just why it's so has been much discussed and debated. I don't have the answer myself, and maybe the disturbing stuff I've been noticing lately isn't representative.

One problem is trying to figure out who is the American left; American leftists spend a lot of time and energy attacking each others' credentials, so one easy way out would be simply to say that the writers I'm going to criticize here aren't True Leftists. It's too reminiscent of Christian anathemas for comfort, though also a reminder that getting rid of religion doesn't automatically get rid of the misbehavior associated with religion: unbelievers just start doing the same nasty things in the name of History, or the People, or whatever. So I'm not going to worry about who's really a leftist and who's not. I'm not even interested in whether I'm a leftist, which I have from time to time been told I'm not. Maybe I'm really a rightist who believes that wealth should be redistributed downward. (And maybe I'm really a heterosexual who sucks a lot of dick.)

Anyway. What got me onto this topic was a post at The Distant Ocean last Sunday, a blog I've often found useful but often criticized. Yes, it was the night of the Heterosexual Oscars, and John Caruso was teed off because some guy posted a long article at Common Dreams dissing the Superbowl.

Robert Lipsyte, still bitter all these years later over the "high school jocks" who "shouldered him in the halls", decides to take a ride on the reliable left hobby horse of football bashing. It's a by-the-numbers bit of doctrinaire liberal cultural analysis that hits all the points you'd expect to see: vicarious proxy war, sexism, testosterone, soccer rejectionism (which he somehow fails to link explicitly to homophobia, though the subtext is certainly there), and even dog fighting to give the whole exercise some currency. ...

Funny thing, though: neither the commenter nor Caruso shows where anything Lipsyte said about football or the Superbowl was wrong; they were just complaining about his tone. It's exactly what a lot of liberals say about Noam Chomsky (also notorious in certain circles for failing to genuflect before commercial sport, unlike the butch Ralph Nader): he's so humorless, so bitter, so harsh, so elitist, so sure he's right and everybody else is wrong. Yet Caruso, so far, remains a fan of Chomsky, who's been under attack from other leftists again lately. Which isn't to say that Chomsky (or anyone else) is above criticism, but criticism should be halfway intelligent.

Lipsyte ... predictably misses the single most important one: that football is an interesting game to watch, in many ways and on many levels.

I won't go through all of those, but I do want to point out one that I haven't often seen mentioned: despite its reputation among people who don't know any better, football is a thinking person's game. It's deep and strategically complex, on offense and defense. I've always described it as the chess of mainstream sports (compared to the checkers of baseball or the tic-tac-toe of basketball). It takes years to fully appreciate everything that's going on during any given play of a game, and even after you've spent years watching it you can't really take in every aspect of every play. At any given time I might be paying attention to the line, or the secondary, or the backs, or the receivers (and even that just scratches the surface, since within those divisions I might be watching the safeties or the defensive backs, the running backs or the tight ends, etc). Or I might follow something else entirely, or take it in as a whole instead of focusing on any of the parts. ...

Pull the other one, why don't you? Sure, intellectuals can find pretty patterns while watching American football, as some of them have done with boxing and other sports. I don't find any of it convincing, but what matters is that none of this addresses what Lipsyte actually said.

I don't begrudge a person hating football for any number of reasons, even as I feel sorry for anyone who can't appreciate the unique beauty of a perfectly-thrown spiral perfectly caught. I watch much less of it than I did as a kid, actually, and I agree with a lot of the criticism I've read of football in particular and professional sports in general (and I've got plenty of my own gripes). But the notion that disliking football is some badge of ideological purity, and the particular brand of condescending dimestore psychologizing you see in the annual spate of Super Bowl-bashing exercises like Lipsyte's, are just the kinds of things that push people away from the left.

It's really generous of Caruso to pity me and others like me who don't enjoy watching football. (Sarcasm alert! for the irony-impaired.) But I don't really feel that I'm missing anything, any more than I feel that my failure as a connoisseur of opera, cheeses, or fine wines is a disability. Or cricket -- the list of things I don't love, but other people do, is probably as long as yours. And talk about "self-congratulatory disdain," the kind of patronizing toadying to Joe Sixpack that Caruso indulged in that post is the sincerest form of contempt.

Caruso also quotes a commenter on Lipsyte's article (no permalink, posted by lhhj

2011-02-06 12:24; bold type is Caruso's):

I do not particularly identify with pro football fans and, yes, we all understand the bread-and-circus-excessive-violence-late-empire aspect of the spectacle. The problem with this essay, however, is not so much its thesis, but rather its tone of self-congratulatory disdain for all those presumably insecure, threatened, and really rather stupid, macho American men out there who channel their insecurity into football. One paintbrush. Maybe many of these guys can still find some beauty and grace in the game. If so, then fine. But I also believe that the air of smirking cultural contempt expressed in parts of this essay is a real problem for the left and has been for quite a while.

It's also true, the left in America has often been at odds with commercial entertainment (which is what pro sport is), often for good enough reasons. Nowadays we tend to forget that well into the 60s the American left was bitterly hostile to pop music, including rock'n'roll, preferring the purity of traditional folk ballads and blues. That was the environment that nurtured Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and other protest singers of the period, until Dylan kicked over the traces and electrified. None of which in any way invalidated the criticisms of the entertainment business as business, the relentless dumbing-down of popular arts by commercial (and later corporate) interests that continues with a vengeance to this day.

I just reread Lipsyte's post again, and I don't find "the notion that disliking football is some badge of ideological purity" or an "air of smirking contempt" in it, though I find plenty of both in Caruso's post. (Maybe in some of the commenters.) That might just be my own blind spot, so you should read it yourself if you care. And Caruso admits that "I agree with a lot of the criticism I've read of football in particular and professional sports in general (and I've got plenty of my own gripes)." So what is the beef? If you don't like Lipsyte, read Dave Zirin for a left, antiracist, anti-imperialist critique of sport as we know it today.

I've said my say about the Superbowl, the World Cup, and competition generally in these precincts. There are many people I like and respect who feel differently, and while I occasionally challenge their adoration of this team or that, it doesn't strike me as terrifically important. I don't say that people shouldn't enjoy football or other sports; I only say that if they want respect for their pleasures, they should respect those of others. And if they claim to have a larger worldview, one that takes in not only pro sports but social justice around the world, they need to attend to the same kinds of analysis and criticism that Caruso said "push people away from the left." No, it's not the tone; it's the substance.

Caruso's tone, though, could use some work. He begins his post by jeering that Lipsyte is "still bitter all these years later over the 'high school jocks' who 'shouldered him in the halls'", as if that weren't a good reason to be bitter. As it happens, though, Lipsyte didn't say that he was shouldered in the halls by high school jocks, but Caruso puts those words in quotes as though he did. Lipsyte was addressing readers who might have received such treatment. For the record, I never was shouldered in the halls. I just never found football, or any other sport, worth paying attention to.

"Shouldered" is the least of it, though, since high school jocks often go further than that with impunity. (By the way, did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?) That's a problem that needs to be dealt with, not jeered at. On the other hand, Robert Lipsyte is a sportswriter himself, and I wouldn't assume that he doesn't enjoy football or other sports. (Reading Susan Cayleff's biography of Babe Didrikson Zaharias reminded me just how bad most sports journalism traditionally is, however, especially the egregious Paul Gallico. It's one of the things that helps to keep me off sports.)

I don't enjoy sports, though. I don't have to try to learn to like them so that I can be a normal guy. Normality is, how you say, overrated. Nor do I have to pretend to like them so I can reach out to the Ignorant Masses; that sort of condescension has always alienated people. If I have any place in an American left (and I think I do), it has to be as myself, and I don't expect everyone else to make themselves over in my image either. Clearly there has to be a lot more thinking about this. Blaming a post at a liberal blog that most Middle Americans are never going to read is not a good way to start.

Caruso's post reeked of the same attitude that I find so winning in Barack Obama's attacks on the "professional left" (sometimes made through his lackeys, of course, but they're his), and probably for similar reasons. This isn't limited to Caruso, of course, or like so many other things I take on in this blog it wouldn't be worth writing about. Certain persons on the left have long said very similar things. Some of them were dreaming about former days, when burly workers struck against the bosses, when Woody Guthrie wrote "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar, when Leadbelly had to perform for white audiences in bib overalls so he'd seem Authentic. (For black audiences, like most bluesmen he wore a suit.) The left in America has often been in crisis, much like American manhood come to think of it, and it seems that every blow it has taken in the past thirty years has made things worse: the election of Ronald Reagan, the installation of George W. Bush, the election of Barack Obama, Republican victories in the 2010 midterms.

Now, I'm not saying that all these things haven't bothered me too. I know that writing a blog isn't political activism, but I confess I don't know where to find a Left I want to join. If it's going to be self-righteously racist, misogynist, and homophobic, I'm going to have to attack it as much as I attack the Right.