Sit and Deliver

Football has finally started. Football is the one sport that truly captures the imagination of most Americans like nothing else. We have many options for TV and entertainment but football is still tops in the ratings game. Hence the reason so many identity groups, political activists, the military, awareness campaigns and businesses want to attach themselves to the brand.

Marketers go where consumers are and politically motivated social justice campaigns do likewise. Because of these campaigns separation between sports and national politics is almost non-existent. The most recent example is Colin Kaepernick who refused to stand during the national anthem because he supports BLM (black lives matter) or something similar.

The reason for not acknowledging the anthem, “I am not going to stand up to show pride for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” said Kaepernick to the reporter who asked about his sitting. The degrees of separation between the way black people are treated and the national song are too many to list. He has never been a bright kid but being dumb isn’t a crime. Someone on his team will no-doubt point out the contradiction in his thinking toward the USA. You know, the country he got rich in.

A helpful teammate will argue the fact that Colin, an adopted kid with a heap of athletic ability, achieves in a meritocratic system not possible in an ‘oppressive country’. How many rich athletes made their millions playing in Pyongyang or Riyadh? Does anyone emigrate from America to Guinea to earn money playing soccer, or any sport? How many adopted kids have a chance at success given the restrictions on family birth, clan, or tribe that constitute an individuals' future prospects in India? 

Colin doesn’t have to love the country or even like it. He should take the occasion to pretend he is playing in a foreign country and respecting their laws and customs even if he doesn’t agree with them. How would we treat someone from Brazil, Russia or Algeria if they refused to even stand for the country’s anthem? Ask this American basketball player what changed his mind. Precedent exists for athletes being selfish about the national anthem.

 Almost all of us would do at least one thing different if we were president. Some would rearrange entire books of regulations to benefit themselves or deny benefits to others. We don’t always like or endorse the policies of the government but we work to make it better. Disrespecting the anthem doesn’t say anything about the country, but it says a lot about Colin.

 Two aspects affect Colin’s ‘non-stand’ stand. One, he wants to be more than just a jock by using his high profile as a status for political causes. Like most of us he noticed the positive attention the press gave to NBA stars who made a plea for inner city cooperation between police, civic leaders, protesters. At the ESPYs Lebron James, Carmello Anthony and others made passionate calls for tolerance, cooperation, understanding among groups. They didn’t say much of substance but it was reported that way. ESPN had their anchors and contributors treat it like a sea change for sports in culture, athletes and activism. 

Colin Kaepernick could use that kind of press, it is the best sort. Stars get praised for not only raw ability but also their dedication to causes.

Secondly, he listened to people he shouldn’t have and chose his friends poorly. Take a player with a rebel image, mix with a sycophantic entourage and incredibly dumb decisions pop out. What’s behind his unpopular ‘non-stand’ is probably a combination of hubris and terrible influences.  Look for Colin Kaepernick to be standing during the anthem by the end of the season. I expect the team and coaching staff, along with some PR types, to convince him to do the right thing.

Movie Favorites

I am not on Twitter but I always enjoy reading lists people create about their favorites. It reminds me of conversations I have with my five year old niece. They go something like this: “What’s your favorite color? You can pick two if you want? Ok…mine is ummm..pink! So what’s your favorite animal? I’ll give you 30 seconds, Go!...No wait, stop! You can’t say dog cause that’s too easy. Now you have 10 seconds”

I’ve thinking about movies. Not so much ones that are ‘critically acclaimed’ but ones I like, a lot. So here is my short list.  

7. Red Dawn because it’s awesome! If you were a kid in the eighties you knew two things for certain. 1. Michael Jordan was the best. 2. The Russians were going to attack us any day. So someone did the only sensible thing and made a movie about it. It was pretty broad in scope and didn’t bog down in geopolitical realities. The ruskies are the enemy but one gets the sense any country would do as a villain. It isn't an ideological movie despite the crack-down by the Communist occupiers. At its core this film is about boys becoming men and facing nearly impossible choices. The Cold War and potential nuclear disaster were in the ether. The USSR dominated Eastern Europe through fear and oppression, the West through democracy and Capitalism. This one is great because the heroes are kids.

6. Braveheart—because passion and violence make a wonderful mix. Who doesn’t love films with romance, betrayal, fraternity, and tribal loyalty? This one covered a lot of ground and has been criticized for its un-truthfulness. Hollywood always reminds us that in order tell a riveting story, directors and writers must take liberties with the facts. If Hollywood despises an actor/director they tell us it was terribly inaccurate or completely fictional. I imagine everyone knows where Gibson falls on the scale. Gibson makes viewers winch in imagined pain and recoil at the cruelty of the characters. It has to be graphic and messy or we don’t feel the intensity coiled like a spring in every scene. This is a Mel Gibson signature, the wronged man seeking revenge with nothing to lose.

5 and 4. Godfather I and Godfather II--because it has everything to do with accepting leadership and ruling an empire. Ok, so maybe it’s a drug and prostitution empire controlled through crime syndicates in New York and Vegas. Still, it’s an empire and Michael’s reluctance to be involved initially pushes the story along. Leadership is the theme dominating the second half of part 1 as Michael falls into the role of ‘Don’. Each decision he makes for the ‘family’ further isolates and insolates him from them. I am not sure if the movies were written for the viewer to imagine being this powerful and having to make these tough decisions. When I see the movies I feel the anger Sonny feels when his sister is beaten, I sympathize with Tom forced to deal with a cruel ‘Don’, and feel Kay’s hatred toward Michael when He tells her ‘she won’t leave’. The Godfather is a Greek tragedy set in 1960’s America. 

  

3. Back to the Future—because time travel is wonderfully decadent if done right. The film is a grab bag of eccentric characters, fast moving plots, family history, and clever contrasts between fifties button-down culture and 80’s looseness. It also has fun with the question every kid with an imagination has asked “What if we could travel back in time?” While the guitar jamming Marty McFly and his time traveling Delorean are the fun effects, this is essentially an adult movie about do-overs and changing realities. It is about undoing mistakes of the past and writing the novel, punching the bully, fighting for the girl and becoming an alpha. People everywhere have regrets. A high school dance is a perfect setting for a do over on life. What adult hasn’t wanted to ‘fix’ some decision or mistake early in life?  

2. Tombstone—because Western genres tell the unvarnished reality of life during the Cowboy era. I don’t know how true to life the versions of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday are, but I love the relationship the two friends have and how it transcends law and order. The OK Corral gunfight is one of those historical debates where little is known about who fired first or which side, the Earps or the cowboys, fired first. This one is probably another example of Hollywood making the story a little more palatable by filling in the details? The film explores the lawman tradition of the Earps and the lawlessness of the town as two contrasting elements bound to collide, despite the brothers’ efforts to sit-this-one-out and make money. Mining towns were known for gambling, booze and prostitution; Tombstone was no different.

1. Forest Gump—because I adore American history and this movie tells the controversial parts of it delicately. The character of Forrest is really just a vessel by which a story of America in its turbulent period (1950-1960’s) gets retold. By making Forrest a mentally challenged boy, the viewer watches with detached amusement as he witnesses segregation, the Vietnam War (and protests), Ping Pong diplomacy and addictions of his friends. Forrest Gump essentially holds a mirror up to society and shows us the good and the bad. Gump is uncontroversial as a person precisely because he doesn’t understand the intricate politics of the time he is in and he isn’t jaded by it. He is a static character in a film where America is the main actor. It undergoes massive change, and charts a path from the conservative 50s to the explorative 60’s and 70’s. Jenny and Lieutenant Dan are at opposite ends of the cultural upheaval. Both go through similar turmoil as their lives follow the essential thread running through the entire film “Is a life random or does fate play a role?”

The list is hardly exhaustive but these ‘lists’ always make me think. Ask me again in a year and it might look different. 

Ping Pong and the Olympics

Why is Ping Pong in the Olympics? Everyone has a sport that makes them say “Why is this here?” Ping Pong (table tennis) is mine.

  My first introduction to ping pong was at age 15 when my dad bought a table to set in the basement. He lived alone at the time and had a decent game room size area, perfect for ping pong. It was a long room with close sides that would have been miserable for pool. Any time we visited it was the first thing my brothers and I did. We rushed down the plastic covered steps to the linoleum floor as the temperature became instantly cooler. That musty basement smell that is part slick pipes part laundry room invaded the senses. It had a simple L shaped design with an old pinewood bar tucked into the corner. I could never decide if the bar had been used by the previous owners. It looked like a set piece for a high school play more than a functioning liquor cabinet.

The Ping Pong table entertained us and anyone who happened to visit. Johnsons are fierce competitors. As such, paddles and nets were frequently damaged from tantrums. Ping Pong balls got crushed regularly and the walls developed holes and marks from items hurdled in their direction. If any one brother developed a superior attitude or displayed a fist pump or flexed muscles in a way considered braggadocios, a scrum ensued resulting in even more damage to the walls. Shouting in joyful fits, after a win, was the equivalent of flipping a bat after a home-run. One gets even in the rematch.

 There is always a rematch.

Fights were common because…well…competition.  The house survived despite the abuse the basement, some sucker agreed to buy the place when it went up for sale. I always thought I was a decent table tennis player until I joined the Army and realized I was below average. The years of charging down the steps gleefully to slap the little white ball back and forth hadn’t paid off as much as I imagined.

Being competitive doesn’t a winner make…

Many of the guys I played against in the barracks had also grown up with a table in the basement or garage. They were quicker to return serves, aimed for corners and hit much harder--ditto for college. Every move they made was faster, sharper. I was worse than most of my friends.

After college I did a stint teaching English in China and found out what happens when a country treats a recreational activity with tenacity and purpose. I wasn’t completely naive to the excellence associated with Chinese table tennis, but I was surprised how deep into the culture the roots go. It isn’t a stretch to say nearly anyone in the country can compete at a high level, at least what I call a high level. I don’t mean everyone is an Olympic quality athlete, that’s silly. I mean that everyone has experience with and exposure to ping pong at some level. The same way that a nineteen year old boy raised on a farm in the Midwest knows how to load and fire a shotgun. Country life demands familiarity with firearms and Ping Pong skills for Chinese kids equals hunting skills for Texans.

The Chinese school was a highly rated private school for local and foreign kids, similar to boarding schools in New England. It had a poorly maintained track for running, basketball courts, and outdoor ping pong tables. This was a first for me. The tables were made of concrete and used a 2x4 plywood strip like a net splitting the table in half. To pass the time I used to watch the Chinese kids during their breaks play. It took about 3 seconds to know I had NO chance. It wasn’t that they were better as much as they adopted a different way to play the game. It was wildly different. The players move around a lot more looking to score with short swings and quick stabbing shots instead of the full arm extension swing I used. Gone was the back and forth volleying that I expected.

Volleying was anathema to these kids.

The players held the broad part of the paddle in their palm like an over sized cell phone. They didn’t use the handle. I rarely followed the ball with my eyes once it left the paddle. It moved too quick and I was never sure who had scored when the kids went chasing after a roller. Every kid seemed to be an expert at this game I only had marginal knowledge of.

I can’t bring myself to watch a sport on tv that feels more like an activity for competitive siblings (also see bowling) than a medal worthy affair. Not that I don’t appreciate excellence and dedication in all areas of life, table tennis just ranks a little lower on my scale. Besides, when NBC shows table tennis events I have to imagine how many interesting sports I’m missing. Mercifully they don’t show it too often.

 I think a camera placed in the corner of a family game room would be more exciting. We could call it, An Evening with the Johnsons. Americans would tune in for the cursing, the throwing and breaking, the stomping off, the argued calls and most of all…….the rematch. 

They say that 'A Hero will save us...'

Do we expect heroes to be born every generation and save society from itself? To take a look at the mess, shake his/her head and whip up a solution? It seems we do. Our movies are full of caped super-humans sent (by whom?) to save earth, punish evil doers, and set injustices right. Is it just escapism and wonder or does it lead to a mindset that great people solve great big problems?

 I heard a caller on a radio show the other day say “That Donald Trump...he’ll fix this mess we’re in”. I didn’t catch what the topic was being discussed and I didn’t even catch the reply from the host. I was caught off guard, focusing on something else when that sound clip just shattered my daydream. “What the hell” I said aloud, incredulous “Does he really believe that?”

I’m not picking on Trump, just imaging what kind of superman it would take to fix a country or even one problem in the country. We are in a debt hole that no amount of spending or borrowing can fix. Americans are entering a post Christian phase that will split the country even further along religious and ethnic lines. We don’t have a coherent answer for terrorism, immigration, health care or unemployment. It doesn’t matter if you like Clinton, Trump or a third party, change is not a top down phenomenon and the fact that many people think so feeds the hero myth.

 Ideas in the US start small. A retirement banker at Johnson & Johnson devised a way for employees to earn tax free money in a savings account. His brilliant 401K idea transformed the way businesses passed on some of savings to its workers in the form of retirement accounts. Over 90% of companies use this model today.

Or how about MIT professor ‘doc’ Edgerton who took an obscure lab instrument (stroboscope) and used it for flash photography and underwater pictures. His high speed cameras and nanosecond images of a bullet splitting an apple or an arrow going through a playing card are as much art as photography.

 Most innovations work this way. 

A person who works in an industry develops a better way to do X. The new way or technique is perfected, copied and mass produced so that everyone has access. IPhone cameras allow aspiring film makers to shoot homemade movies, while social media allows him to share it. It isn’t just cameras and investment ideas, methods for design get mass produced too.

Architecture firms are using wood instead of concrete in modern luxury apartments and urban buildings. For years wood was a no-no because of the close proximity to other buildings and the fire hazard inherent in wood. Ever seen a forest fire? Imagine a wood fire spreading in an urban area. The city would be rubble in a few hours.

 New methods for compressing the wood and covering it with a fire-retardant coating make it possible to stack layers of it together and create high rises  that are cheaper and quicker to build. A few structures exist but new materials and new ways of thinking might end up changing cityscapes in fifty years. Maybe even Donald Trump will put up a new structure in mid-town Manhattan, somewhere to store his ‘fix-it-all-before-noon’ machine.

The point is we aren’t a society where a man or women slides into office and punches the big red button (why are they always red?). We aren’t looking for heroes and we shouldn’t think that easy solutions are around the corner. Americans have financial and spiritual problems that can only be solved at the community level. Churches play an outsized role in this regard, they link communities together better than any existing organization.

The search for heroes or leaders with all the answers is a lazy way around solving the problems we have created. It’s using the credit card to go to Maui for two weeks and then calling Visa to report it stolen.

The problems facing the country are too numerous to list. The question Americans have to ask ourselves is ‘what kind of country do we want to be?’ Answers will differ but I don’t think many would say ‘a poor and weak one’ because without a prosperous country nothing else is possible. Top down solutions, like Mad Libs, are poorly written fill in the blank answers that can’t address individual issues.

 Obamacare and food stamps are top down, better building materials and retirement accounts are bottom up.

Presidents and office holders at every level are important we shouldn’t assume they are useless. An honest statesman can bring attention to an issue and push for change quicker than a roomful of industry executives. It is essential for national security that leaders in Washington cooperate with other governments on cyber security and terrorism. The work of getting our house in order financially and being responsible citizens falls to us.

    

I don’t believe most Americans think secret powers reside in the oval office or that simple fixes and tweaks are enough to get jobs back. Too many of us wait for top down solutions, federal allotments for unemployment, food and housing before we fix ourselves. Start small. Pay off the debts. Work. Create. Get involved in the community because America needs it. Be your own hero.

  

      

Of Beats and Boundaries

Remember when you got into a fight with your brother over his ‘borrowing’ of your Walkman? You know the one, tape recorder… full range of buttons...foam covered ear piece headphones…exposed tin connector on top. You paid fifty bucks! Your sibling didn’t respect the accepted borrowing rules and instead took what he wanted without remorse. You caught him that day. He forced your hand. You had to make a line between the beds to separate items in the room and outline the boundaries.  It got tricky with the chest of drawers but no matter. You even demonstrated which side of the room was yours by making a sweeping hand gesture outlining your domestic kingdom (Walkmans live there). He did likewise for his side of room. A tenuous peace resulted. Had either of you tried to remove the line or nudge it one way or the other, fisticuffs.

China is having similar disputes in the South China Sea. They’re drawing lines; imaginary dashed boundaries no one respects, but still lines.

They haven’t had the means to patrol the region since the late seventies and even then, not as much as a regular navy. A quick reasoning of the dispute: China has stationed soldiers on these tiny islands and reefs, in some cases dredging sand and materials to create a semi-permanent structure. Why? A country without a navy is vulnerable at sea. A navy that patrols a thin area 50 miles out from the land and nothing else isn’t worth much. It needs space to control for defense but also for commerce to protect its fishing, mining and oil industries. The only water to control is the one contained in Beijing’s “Nine Dash Line”. See above.

The Chinese map showing supposed territory from Beijing is laughably large and too far removed from the mainland to be taken seriously. In drawing imaginary lines down through international sea lanes and building defensive naval outposts, the Chinese upset governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

The Philippine government, tired of having its fisherman harassed, took Beijing to court (Hague) over the legality of the claim to such a massive territory. The ruling, released a week ago, was a rebuke to China’s supposed ‘historic’ ownership of the territory surrounding the sea in question. Will it affect Communist party policy in the seas? Probably not, but it gives other governments cover to fish and develop the area. Rulings from International courts don’t have an enforcement mechanism, but a favorable ruling at least establishes a baseline for future incidents.

The Chinese government drew a line separating their stuff from other countries’ stuff. Problem is they drew in stuff that wasn’t theirs.

 If China wants to move the line, the line moves. The US is the only country with enough of a presence in the territory to enforce maritime law or ‘freedom of the seas navigation’. It amounts to De facto defense for countries engaging in commerce (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia) that can’t defend themselves on the ocean. The US Navy is the best guarantor of peaceful resolutions of maritime spats right now. It doesn’t have territory in the region but it does have allies and a dedication to ensure commerce is unimpeded.

Will the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) go to war to dominate the region? At this point I don’t think so but they are betting that the Americans won’t risk defending any single country in the area through war either. This is why they aggressively trudge up sand bars and station soldiers in middle of the nowhere. They have an increasingly large military with advanced weapons, nuclear technology and an impressive arsenal with no place to go. They’re boxed in, landlocked to the west and north, and hemmed in by the US in the sea. Only option for them is aggression and a demand for space.

The way forward is probably through compromises or bilateral agreements between each government and Beijing. Each party gets something while giving up a little something. One gets the Walkman Monday through Friday (bring your own tapes) and the other can use it on the Weekends. 

Not respecting territory of the countries in the region will lead to conflict. Hopefully this is not inevitable.