The Trump Card

In my opinion, here’s the thing that everyone is missing about Donald Trump and his “run” for president.  

He’s metaphorically building an enormous, garish mansion that is completely at odds with zoning, neighborhood standards and city codes, and then, once it’s completed, he will walk away and never even occupy said monstrosity. And he’s doing it for one reason and one reason only: BECAUSE HE CAN.       

Allow me to explain.

He’s not stupid.  He’s not smart enough to be president, but he’s not stupid.  He knows he can’t win. He also knows that he cannot damage his reputation or his brand by being crude, tasteless and over-the-top.  His brand IS crude, tasteless and over-the-top.

He’s running for president BECAUSE HE CAN*.

*The Donald loves all-caps, as illustrated by his financial disclosure form that bellowed his net worth at” TEN BILLION DOLLARS!”

He’s rich and famous and he can do whatever he wants. And that is the only reason he is running: BECAUSE HE CAN.

And that is what separates Trump from almost every one of us.  He seems to do everything in life simply BECAUSE HE CAN.

I CAN run naked down the street, empty my bank account to buy a used helicopter, assault a mounted police officer, burn down a 7-11, eat 27 pizzas at once and throw an aquarium filled with exotic fish off the roof of the tallest building in town. I won’t of course, because after doing these crazy things the consequences of my actions would come crashing down upon me. I know this, and therefore I don’t.

But Trump is uniquely unburdened by consequences. And this wonderful condition allows him to do something as crazy as run for president, verbally attack an entire nation, and accuse a war hero of cowardice despite his own lack of military participation. And keep going.  He’s just getting starting on the crazy train toward irrelevancy for executive office.

Will he show up drunk during a debate?
Flip off Charlie Rose during an interview?
Implore Vladimir Putin to “kiss his Irish ass!”

Who knows? 

Look, if Jeb Bush doesn’t get the nomination he trashes the family win-streak.  If Scott Walker fails, he hits the ceiling on his political career. If Rubio flames out, he faces the real possibility that a Latino can’t win with Republicans. They are all driven by fear that they will lose.

But when Trump inevitably exits the race and declares victory for having moved the party more toward his way of thinking, he will gleefully move on to the next thing.

He fears no consequence because there is none.  He can’t lose because he has no objective.

He’s a super-rich loud mouth today and he will be a super-rich loud mouth tomorrow.

His ridiculous mega-mansion of a faux presidential campaign will stand as a monument to a man with no vision, no scruples and no burden.  

And of course, The Onion validates everything I'm saying.

Picture This...

There are more than 2 billion people with camera phones in the world.  There are 1.8 million CCTV cameras in England alone.

Needless to say, the odds of something NOT happening on camera these days is exponentially less than when I was younger. And I grew up in the age of TV and the birth of the Internet and other visual revolutions.

Literally, several billion dollar enterprises that have become some of the most important brands in the world (YouTube, Instagram, etc.) exist mostly as a repository for the detritus of video shot by average people around the globe.

I bring this up because of this: a shark attack caught on video that has now been seen around the world about 16 kagillion times.  In startling detail, we see a surfer being stocked and then attacked – luckily unsuccessfully from the sharks point of view.  However, in detail and clarity that I’ve never seen before the world got to see an honest to goodness shark attack when absolutely none was expected.  It may be – up until this point in history – one of the rarest images ever seen.

And that’s the thing. With so many cameras pointed practically toward every square inch of the world, the rare and the amazing and the impossible to believe are going to start becoming common 

place.

Think of what that could mean to our worldview:

• If aliens visit earth, we will see them
• If Bigfoot exists, we will see it
• Same for the Loch Ness Monster
• Ghosts, check
• The second coming? Film at 11!

“The Revolution Won’t Be Televised? Ha!

One of My Favorite Lies

Mid to late July is typically a pretty slow month for sports in America.  Football is really still a month or so away, basketball has been over for a month and baseball is caught somewhere between the All-Star Game and the playoffs.

It’s also the time of year rampant with one of my favorite lies.

One of my favorite lies is uttered by some of the best liars going…sports commentators.

The lie they all say goes something like this: “Boy, I wish we could stop talking about (Subject X) and get back to talking about the real action on the court, field or ballpark.”

Ha!!!!

Sports commentators love, no need, the off-the-field controversies.  They need them to stay employed and their networks and newspapers need them to stay in business.  A famous commentator and one of the more honest of the bunch often says about his own network: “We don’t broadcast sports, we broadcast competition.”

He’s half right.  They don’t broadcast sports, they broadcast conflict. And controversy and scandal are just synonyms for conflict.

Sports broadcasters and commentators who perpetuate this lie are like politicians who claim they hate government or corporate lobbyists who hate the tax code.  Politicians need government or else they have nothing to lead and lobbyists create odious and burdensome taxes in order to stay employed and rake in huge billables by trying to eradicate the same odious and burdensome taxes.

Think I exaggerate?  Deflategate, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Caitlin Jenner, domestic violence, Lebron’s hairline, Serena’s size, Tiger’s girlfriends. And networks are in business to make money. Every second they are on the air needs to be paid for.  Do you really think they would spend hundreds of hours broadcasting breathless debates about this if it lost them audience share and advertisers?

And do you really think the breathless broadcasters who keep the story alive really hate doing it?  Of course not.

And so the lie continues.

On Serena and Hope

Within the last week or so, Serena Williams won her 695th* Grand Slam and Hope Solo – the greatest goalie in US soccer history - helped her team win the world cup.
* Slight exaggeration.

And despite such grandeur of individual and collective athletic achievement, a lot of news inevitably includes the fact that Ms. Williams is continuously subjected to racist invective and body shaming, while Ms. Solo is ridiculed in almost frat-boy hilarity for numerous transgressions against family and friends – including assaults and drunken behavior.

Ultimately many reasonable people fear (with not a little justification) that these two women are treated unfairly and are subjected to criticism that would not be directed to male counterparts.

To which I say, they are, and a small element of that is actually a sign of female sports progress.

True, most typical guys can’t handle all that is Serena.  Oh sure, we men can appreciate a great technical female tennis player who can simply play the game much better than us.  However, many cannot accept the fact that unless we are a world-class athlete in our own right, she would beat us in EVERYTHING. We have a hard time wrapping our minds around the fact that her athletic prowess and her mental toughness and her utter devotion to excellence are far better than we can even imagine. Serena Williams is a better athlete and better at her craft than almost any male in any sport ever.

And so we do what men do: we hate and find ways to tear down.

With Hope, we snicker and roll our eyes when we probably should gasp and shout.  We openly laugh about a disorderly conduct and physical assault when we should react with the same disgust as we did with Ray Rice or Greg Hardy.  But we don’t – because she’s a girl.

And so we do what men do: we hold firm to our belief that only men can cause trauma and fear.

That is how both women are treated unfairly. One is hated and derided for being physically better than we are; the other is let off the hook for terrible transgressions because we can’t accept that a woman could really be a monster.

I posit however, a bit of a silver lining in all this. In some ways these two amazing athletes and all the attention they garner is a step in the right direction. Even if some or most of the attention they are being paid is for the wrong reasons – the fact that attention is being paid on par with what male superstars get, is a sign of real progress.

First, in no way am I condoning or pardoning the sexism, body shaming, double standards and racism that these women face. It is wrong. 100 percent.

However, behind a lot of those evil and vile thoughts is a common thread that is woven into the sports fabric of men’s sports as well: Pettiness.

To wit:

LeBron James is in arguably the greatest basketball player in the game today and arguably the greatest ever.  Further, he is tremendously charismatic, unbelievably unselfish for a superstar and by all accounts a good person, husband and father.

Yet, I cannot think of another male athlete who has suffered as much pure pettiness as he. From dozens of blogs carping about his hairline, to the incontrovertibly stupid fact that ESPN hosts and broadcasters continue to this day to castigate his primetime show called “The Decision” when he announced his intention to leave Cleveland and go to Miami – despite the fact that it WAS ESPN’S IDEA AND THEY BROADCAST THE SHOW!!!!

Finally, no player has ever taken less talented teams to the NBA Finals than he did with both Cleveland teams, yet millions of people chirp about his 2-6 Finals record.

Terrell Owens was a great wide receiver, perhaps even a Hall of Famer.  He certainly embodied the near-Olympic ideal of the freak athlete wide receiver that was bigger than linebackers but faster than defensive backs. Terrell Owens won everywhere he went. He helped the 49er’s and the Cowboys make the playoffs and he helped take the Eagles to the Super Bowl.  He never had any issues with domestic violence, drugs, or really any issues off the field at all.

Yet, Terrell Owens is almost universally hated by petty NFL fans: fans who openly routed for wife beaters, cocaine users and fathers who skipped out on their kids but booed him mercilessly because he had an ego and he liked to boast and brag. And now that he is out of football and suffering financial difficulty, the schadenfreude is amazing.

But pettiness has its roots in something far more fertile and closer to our core as humans and males: jealousy.

We hate on male sports stars because we are jealous: of their fame, of their prowess of their money of their sexuality of their lifestyle.  The hate and pettiness disguises are true feelings of envy and want. 

And so, the pettiness toward Serena and Hope is the awkward and strange transference or our male jealousy on female form.

We are jealous of Serena because she is big and powerful and competitive and fierce and she loves to show off and preen and strut and vanquish. Just like we would do if we were in her shoes.

We are jealous of Hope because – despite her unforgivable and loathsome abuse toward family – she’s a bad-ass who lives very much like the renegade outlaw biker we secretly fantasize about.

And if there is jealousy there is also relevance. No matter what gets you to the match or the TV be it hate and pettiness, you still watch. You still have conversations, albeit conversations filled with snide and derisive comments, but still, you talk about Williams and Solo.  Like you talk about James and Owens.

That is progress for women’s sports. In fact, the conversation is even more important than the watching.  We watch women’s tennis, but we talk about Serena. We watch women’s soccer, but we pontificate on Solo.   

Same for James and Owens. The conversation is so much more important because conversations equal true mind share that hooks us like dope. We aren’t addicted as sports fans to quality games and athletic precision – no, we are addicted to conflict and argument and posturing and the feeling of superiority.  And a controversial athlete that evokes an emotion is so much more important to the long-term viability of the sport they play.

Academics and Football - Time Constraints on Alpha Males

At first, when I read this, I didn't know what to make of it.  Almost all the top high schools in the nation DO NOT have football teams? 

Why?
 

They have other sports teams, and seemingly have all the other trappings of high school sports – games, pep rallies, school spirit etc.

So why does a lack of football go with top academic high schools, and – by extension – does football go with the lower rung of high schools?

I have a theory. And my theory has nothing to do with any perception about the “dumbness of football jocks” or brain damage or anything else.

My theory relates to a simple concept: time.

Like it or not, high schools tend to be dominated in terms of culture, and social structure by alpha males. In a traditional football high school, the alpha males tend to play that sport. Like almost every other mammal, alpha males are the biggest, strongest and fastest – which happen to be necessary for football. The other necessary ingredient in football: time. Football devours time.

Football is the most intense and time consuming of all sports. From the length of the games, to the amount of training to the amount of off-the-field preparation and off-the-field celebration and worship; football takes a huge amount of time and effort.

As such, if a particular school’s alpha males are consumed by one thing (football), then those males do not have a lot of spare time to dictate culture and social structure. So like a pack, the rest of the students may be left with a sense of passive following.

Further, the alpha’s effort in football really only benefits themselves and their select colleagues (other members of the team). In other words, the football alpha’s are celebrated and worshiped, but that celebration and worship doesn’t translate into anything truly shared and tangible. The student body can’t emulate them. Football by its very nature (necessitating size strength and speed) is exclusionary.

However, what if a school’s alphas were not help prisoner to the time and effort constraints of football?  What if they had more free time? Free time to dictate culture and social structure, a larger portion of which could theoretically by dedicated to academics?

In many ways it comes down to a simple math equation.

Let’s say the average number of hours in a school year is around 1,000. At a typical football high school, the alphas might have 20 to 40% of those hours taken up by football. At non-football high schools, the alphas that play less time-intensive sports like baseball, basketball and soccer have around 10% of their time taken away. That’s an extra 100 hours per year dictating culture and social structure.

You don’t think an extra 100 hours per year doesn’t make a difference?

Alpha male at football-playing high school A might be throwing touchdowns and leading his team – and by extension – his high school to gridiron glory, but, because of the huge time commitment, that’s about all he can do and little else for the rest of the school.

However:

Alpha male at high school B without football isn’t quarterbacking any team. Instead, he’s using his time to do other things, and since he’s in an educational environment, many of those other things include academics. 

And unlike Mr. alpha at high school A, where his major contribution is something no one else at school can do (throw touchdowns), the alpha at high school B can lead by example through academics, which is something a lot more students can follow.

Close the Beaches but Not the Highways

We are American's, we don't do nuance or incremntalism.

You have an 11 million to one chance of being killed by a shark.  you have a 1 in 100 chance to die in a car crash at any point in your life. 

There have been six shark attacks off the east coast in the last few weeks - non fatal.  In that same amount of time, there have been - according to statistical modeling - 121 auto deaths in states along the same coast for roughly the same amount of time.

Beaches however, will close. Roads and highways will not.

We know for an absolute fact that there will be a certain number of deadly car crashes per number of cars and miles driven.  We do not know for any ascertainable fact when and where the next shark attack will happen - fatal or otherwise.

For beach goers there is no "safe" time to go into the water, just as their is no "unsafe" time to go into the water.  Shark attacks are mind-numbingly rare and they always will be.

For drivers, anytime you get on the road, you risk your safety and that of your passengers. 
But, we have to have cars and travel and commerce.  We don't have to have swimmable beaches. 

So we panic over something insignificant and completely ignore and gloss over something that is incalcuably more dangerous. Driving.