MARK TWAIN: And the NewSouth Books Controversy

Many associate reading with a high school English teacher we can’t imagine ever having been young.   To be fair, the teachers have done the best they can.  Seeing that they were probably good students themselves, somewhat idealistic and naïve in desiring to pursue the goal of education, instructors are not the perfect candidates to comprehend violence, drug abuse or nymphomania.  They have practically nothing in common with the skinhead, pot smoker, slut or loser.  They will probably have problems keeping up with the simple adolescent rebel.  With the overcrowding of schools, they may limit themselves to the students they can handle: the good, compliant and well-behaved student who lacks the imagination to question anything.

When it comes to education the debate always becomes political concerning what our children should read.  And when we speak about censorship, the one book always mentioned is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.  Huck Finn was a troublesome novel from the start, though its author understood how to use such adverse publicity to his own benefit.   After the novel was banned in several Boston libraries in 1885 Mark Twain remarked that such publicity guaranteed another 5,000 copies of the book would be sold.  Literary historians have been trying to figure out since that time why this particular novel has been so targeted.  Why not instead go after some dime-store smut novel?  Why not concern ourselves with the journals of Marquis de Sade?  Why not ban Mein Kampf?

The answer concerns the quality of our education because Huckleberry Finn is about as far as most English teachers are ready to take the debate.  The novel has been so defended by scholars that educators know somewhere they will find an intellectual justification for teaching it in class.  However lame the argument will be teachers know that they will never have to argue about the merits of the novel from their own perspective.  What is wrong is that the teachers really do not believe in Huckleberry Finn.  They believe in the novel only as a piece of history, a novel that must be placed in the context of time.  They present it as a quaint, entertaining piece of fiction, but they’ve never felt personally challenged by the narrative.

The novel, of course, is controversial because of the use of the term “nigger.”  Here is where we come dangerously close to exceeding the teacher’s comfort zone.  The teacher has been trained to point out that: (1) Twain never used the term “nigger” in a derogatory fashion; (2) the term was part of the common idiom in the pre-Civil War south; and (3) the point of the novel is that “Nigger” Jim was in fact a human being.  That probably would be the end of the discussion in a rural school in Kansas or North Dakota.  It might go over if a black teacher taught it to an all-black school.  There would be more problematic if a white teacher were to teach it to a school that was made up of mostly black students.  Most teachers would never use the term “nigger” themselves but, historical context aside they know damn well what the term implies.  Still, since the novel is a beloved phenomenon most scholars would rather explain away its faults than be accused of censorship.

 NewSouth Books is now trying to make it easier for our educators.  Not only are they willing to publish a book for our schools with the offending adjective left out, they are even willing to change the wording as if Twain had never written anything offensive to begin with (the term “nigger” will now become “slave” and “Injun” will become “Indian”).  We’re told that there will be a suitable introduction to this new volume explaining why the publishers believe such a step is necessary.  The publishers will even pat themselves on the back by proselytizing how this will encourage more young people to learn to appreciate a classic piece of literature.  I’m guessing little will be written concerning how NewSouth Books hopes to make a bundle in financial deals with schools.

NewSouth Books will have its defenders.  If these individuals are sincere at all, the mistake I still believe that they are making is that they overestimate the impact that reading will have upon the young.  Most students are so apathetic about reading in the first place that they only become eloquent when scratching out graffiti upon the bathroom walls.  They will not go out of their way to read Huckleberry Finn.  They certainly will not go out of their way to read Marx, Proust or Joyce.  Their interest might be peaked by one or two books of Henry Miller, but this will die very quickly.  As it is, many students will get more steamed up about a romance novel that appears in a Good Housekeeping magazine than by anything they will ever read in a school library.   Therefore, I think we should worry more about our child’s ability to read at all than attempt to create imagined controversies.  Why not let the kids read the Communist Manifesto or Lady Chatterley’s Lover?  I would be proud of any child who could make his way through Ulysses and still be able to figure out any alleged obscenities. 

I will say, however, that those calling this “political correctness run amuck” may want to be careful about what they wish for as the uncensored Twain often did not make for happy reading.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is mild in comparison to other of Twain’s works.  The Innocents Abroad first published in 1867 portrayed American’ tourists as rubes that groveled at the feet of their European ancestors.  Cannibalism in the Cars was a short story where members of Congress stranded on a train started consuming each other while all the long adhering to parliamentary protocol.  In 1901, Twain wrote two essays entitled To the Person Sitting in the Darkness and To My Missionary Critics lambasting the imperialist policies and religious pretensions of the McKinley’ administration (and supporters) concerning American intervention in China and the Philippines.  (So controversial were these essays that Vice President Theodore Roosevelt referred to Twain as a traitor.)  Letters from the Earth (not released in printed form for more than fifty years after Mark Twain’s death because Twain’s last surviving daughter would not allow this book to be published while she was still alive), What is Man and The Mysterious Stranger are as darkly pessimistic and anti-religious writings as anything published in the English language.  Far from comprehending the phenomena of Mark Twain, cultural conservatives only embrace the cheery humorist that was largely a fictional persona created by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain).

There’s too much outrage and too little honesty coming from both sides of this debate.  I hope NewSouth Books continues in its plans to print the expurgated volume of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and that not a single school system purchases a copy.  I also hope the unexpurgated version of Huckleberry Finn sits side by side in the library with The Merchant of Venice, Catcher in the Rye and Mein Kampf * (to show that the destiny and life of Hitler - the great fruitcake - should have been boring, ludicrous and inconsequential as evidenced by his writing).  Finally, whether The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is or is not read in the schools in the final intended form that Mark Twain allowed to be published, I hope that what is presented in our schools is not just material that educators feel they can comfortably present.  The term “nigger” is a word that is hurtful to a large group of descendents of slaves in the United States, and the term will not disappear simply because it is officially deleted from published material.  Racism needs to be directly confronted.  Unfortunately, racism will never completely go away.

*In 1939, a reporter named Alan Cranston (and later United States Senator) was sued by Hitler’s publisher for copyright infringement for attempting to bring out a more accurate translation of Mein Kampf than had already appeared in English.  Hitler’s publishers were worried that American readers might make the assumption that Hitler was an anti-Semite if a too accurate translation of Mein Kampf was actually released in English.  Too bad for Hitler that he won his lawsuit only after a half-million copies of the Cranston’ translation already was sold.

January 6, 2011 

© Robert S. Miller 2011

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2008: Yes We Can (Maybe)

I’ve written about the Iowa Caucus and the conventions for both major political parties, so I suppose I should say something about the general election.  However, if I honestly felt I had nothing more to say than what has already been printed in the newspapers and editorials I would hope that I wouldn’t say anything at all.  People speak too freely about politics as if only their side had any relevance.  We see our neighbors stick up their campaign signs or slap political bumper stickers on the back of their cars and we immediately form an opinion of them.  If that opinion is negative, we immediately put up campaign signs of our own as if that sort of statement makes us seem superior.  The other side is always wrong, more biased or engages in more negative campaigning.  This seems obvious, or so we think, because the other side’s media sources are loaded with misinformation.

Close to a quarter of a million people were in Grant Park where Barak Obama made his first public appearance after it was announced that he was elected to be President.  I suppose it was to be expected that there would be a lot of celebration going on.  This was a victory for the black youth in the crowd and for the civil rights’ workers that had sacrificed so much during the 1960s.  These individuals have a right to celebrate.  And then there are the rest.  Outside of telling them to go to hell, I’m not sure how to respond to Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow and Oprah Winfrey for feeling duty bound to tell the rest of us how to vote.  Likewise, to be fair, in Arizona where John McCain gave what was probably the most gracious concession speech I’ve ever heard, celebrity supporters like Patricia Heaton and John Voight can sulk and go home to their million dollar mansions after learning that their candidate lost.  Most of us cannot fully comprehend what we have at stake in such an election to get emotional about the outcome, and the best action we can take is to wait.

There is something to be said about Barak Obama, however.  I was struck by how alone he looked when he walked out on the stage to give his speech.  Unlike his running mate, Joe Biden, he doesn’t seem to enjoy himself when he’s speaking to the crowds.  Certainly, Obama is very good at giving speeches, but I doubt he believes in all of the hype.  I hope he doesn’t anyway or else the slogan for “change” and the chant, “Yes we can!” is going to get old very quickly.   Obama, like many other intelligent men, has probably had to look interested while having to endure the opinions of many individuals convinced of their own genius that have never uttered an original thought in their entire existences.   To be elected, Obama has had to depend on many individuals that he may not like and say things that he may not necessarily believe.  Yet to be a great leader (or so I imagine the politicians all tell themselves) he also must have the confidence to believe that his abilities make all the minor deceptions necessary if that is what it takes to be elected.  Every President from Washington to Lincoln to George W. Bush probably needed to do the same thing.  Such seeming aloofness that Obama happens to exhibit was also characteristic of great and unflappable Presidents like Jefferson and Lincoln.  On the other hand, these qualities were also at least partially responsible for the overreaching of the Wilson and Nixon administrations.  Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon were men with lonely thoughts left unchecked because neither had any real friends to share them with and put matters into perspective.

The election was not a landslide, but it also was not particularly close.  A five percent advantage is somewhat substantial when you consider that neither major candidate was an incumbent.  The Democrats did a better job of blaming the other side for the looming “financial crisis” that we’ve heard so much about since the month of September.  Really, both parties were to blame.  The Republicans have done nothing to keep down government spending and probably have spent too much time bailing out big business no matter what mantras it has repeated concerning the merits of the free market.  Yet while Democrats bemoan what they call “corporate welfare” on the part of the Republican Party, they fail to acknowledge that it’s the very growth of the government that especially occurred between the years of 1932 to 1968 that allowed the government the ability to prop up large corporations and to make determinations as to what industries should succeed and what businesses should fail.  This eventually resulted in more corporate mergers of mega companies occurring than in anytime in history since the 1990s.  We’ve heard recent justifications of the Wall Street bailout that emphasize the point that many banks and businesses are now “too big to fail.”  Yet how these businesses went from big companies to corporate conglomerates was that the corporations received favorable loans while the sole proprietorships and small partnerships disappeared.  These same small businesses were simply unable to compete and had no hopes of ever being bailed out by the government.  (I say this at the risk of sounding too much like Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and third-party candidate that probably would have done no more to absolve the abuses of government than anyone else running for President, and who has now further embarrassed himself by referring to the first African American elected as President as being an “Uncle Tom.”)

Much of the Republican Party establishment has probably failed to appreciate what has just occurred, or understand the role that they have played in the defeat of their chosen candidate.  John McCain was a decent choice that had little chance of winning, no matter who he may have chosen for his running mate.  Yet the choice of Sarah Palin was indicative as to how far the Republican base would go to sabotage his campaign.  Palin, whatever her qualifications to be Vice President truly could be (and the American’ media did everything in its power to tell us that those qualifications were not there), was McCain’s gift to the conservative pundits that would rather sacrifice an election than concede that many of their ideals were politically and socially impalpable.  No emotionally secure individual should ever feel threatened by the personal behavior of others that in no way physically threatens other individuals.  The behavior may irritate us, but there are better ways to deal with irritation than legislation or amendments to constitutions that promise retribution.  And I'm all for decency because there is so little of it in much of our culture, but decency can seldom be created by decree.  If the Republican Party continues to claim they are the supporters of limited government and strong national defense, let them stop looking around the country and the world to pick fights with individuals too conscience stricken to even once in their life have picked up a gun.  To continue claiming we live in a free society, we have to drop a social agenda that does not allow private individuals to do what they want or else the concept of freedom becomes a fiction.  And the Republicans are as guilty of using the tax code for social engineering as any Democrat.  If they truly believe in the use of tax cuts to relieve the burden of the middle class, make the tax cuts universal rather than engineering complicated tax breaks that only individuals with six and seven figure incomes can take advantage of.

Yet the Democratic Party also needs to stop short of showing glee by proclaiming the demise of the Republican Party.   For one, they need to keep in mind that similar pronouncements were made about the Democratic Party after the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004.  For two, a party that has a platform of advancing civil rights and civil liberties (and helping the poor) while at the same time advocating a stronger centralized government may not appreciate how schizophrenic holding such differing objectives can be.  That same strong and centralized government besides bringing us Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy also brought us Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush that used their executive powers contrary to what the liberal establishment may have wanted to achieve.  (Yes, I know that LBJ was a Democrat, but today’s Democrat is not particularly nostalgic about Johnson’s policies concerning the war in Viet Nam.)  Big Government is almost impossible to reign in no matter what well meaning justifications and legislative acts are created by the most tolerant and enlightened of individuals.  Somehow, governmental control eventually gets in the hands of the wrong people.

And then there is the Iraqi’ War.  The latest discussion has been that there may not be any major withdrawal of the troops until 2011.  The dirty and not so well kept secret about the Democratic Party is, despite all of their pious talk of “bringing the troops home,” that the party leadership (Clinton, Kerry and Edwards) has voted to fund the war from the very beginning and have never truly faced George Bush down on the issue.  I know, “Bush lied,” and this is the major justification they can give for caving into a President they claim to have never trusted.  The reason that Obama has escaped scrutiny is because he was not in the United States Senate when the major proposals were voted on in 2002, 2003 and 2004.  When he takes office, Obama will have a Democratic controlled Senate and Congress behind him, so we will see if he truly does move up the timetables for withdrawal.  However, I think that opponents of the war should prepare to be disappointed.

What is an interesting aside to every Presidential election is the lament concerning lack of voter turnout.  Actually, in the last three elections since 2000 voter turnout has increased.  This year’s election showed voter turnout rates nationwide at somewhere around 64 percent, the highest rates we have seen in forty years.  This is actually quite low compared to the rate in many European nations, but I for one am not one of those persons distressed by this fact.  We do have more college educated people today, so it’s not surprising that rates are somewhat growing.  Yet I’m not particularly interested in having my vote cancelled out by a bunch of undecided voters that finally cast their ballot based upon a bunch of drivel that they have recently heard on television.  Now perhaps I am being uncharitable in making such a statement because I sometimes do tend to judge people too harshly.  However, the voter that says they did not decide on whom to vote for until they actually entered the voter booth does not sound like a promising prospect to me.  What motivated them to make their choice?  One candidate’s name was listed further up on the ballot than the others?  One’s name was too difficult to pronounce so they lost a vote?  One candidate’s name sounded like a close relative?  I understand struggling with what candidate to vote for, but I certainly hope that the struggle is over something relevant and had been thought about over the course of many months.  We tend to blame the candidates and the media for not informing us about what is going on.  It’s not their fault.  That information is already out there if we really want to look for it.  The candidates and media by mouthing platitudes are merely providing us with the information being requested by the very most important individuals voting in every election: the undecided voters.  In short, the message is being dumbed down precisely for them.  We don’t need an educated electorate.  What we need is an experienced electorate whose knowledge is derived from a direct connection with the world and senses the direct consequences of what will occur if a certain official is elected.  I heard somewhere that young voters did not turn out to a much greater degree in this election than they did in 2004.  If that’s the case, it is only going to cost them because eventually politicians and everyone else are going to quit caring for what they think.

And in an election that was all about “change,” let’s deeply consider a few things before we try to throw the old items out.  Let’s pause and consider why items like the Electoral College, our method of voter registration, our crazy private institutions (i.e. businesses, churches and the press) that don’t always seem in tune with the wishes of our government, and the cantankerous electorate have functioned so effectively for so long - though no one has every really diagnosed why.  We live in an ungrateful nation if we don’t see that so many traditions have worked better here than almost anywhere else.  (My only wish now is that I will not be beleaguered in 2016 with arguments over the Presidential election of 2008 as we have been beleaguered for the past eight years concerning the election of 2000 and how the outcome could have been different.)

To state the obvious, Barak Obama is our first elected African American President.  That is one thing that should have been made allowable more than 200 years ago, and it shouldn’t have just come allowable at this point in time.  I wish the President–Elect well.  Other than a few Republican hopefuls that are now looking towards the Congressional elections of 2010, it benefits none of us if Obama ends up being a failure as a leader.  However, as with any President that is always a possibility, and we should do our best not to let this destroy our lives if the new President does not live up to our expectations.  When our happiness becomes dependent upon the leadership of one man - that is more indicative of problems than if we mistakenly voted in a buffoon.  We can live with buffoons in the government so long as we don’t become dependent upon that same government.

November 16, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

SUPER BOWL XLII: What Could Have Been “The Perfect Season”

The New England Patriots as a football team are about as loveable as the New York Yankees are as a baseball team.  Almost everyone in America outside of the New England area hoped to see them beat at least once during the regular season (most people preferring the Indianapolis Colts to the Patriots as a team that they would have liked to see go undefeated).  The Patriots scored an NFL record 584 points during the regular season.  They went into the Super Bowl with a record of eighteen and zero.  They’re coached by Bill Belichick, fined early in the season $500,000 for allegedly videotaping defensive signals of the New York Jets during the September 9^th Jets-Patriots game.  (Pennsylvania Senator Arlan Specter was so offended that he now feels a Senate investigation is in order.)  Belichick’s response to the allegations was to then run the score up on a number of opponents throughout the first half of the 2007 season.

 

 In addition, during the off-season, the Patriots acquired receiver, Randy Moss.  Moss has made a number of public relations gaffs throughout his career, but none as significant in the fans’ minds as when, while as a Minnesota Viking, he did a mock “mooning” to Packer fans in Lambeau field.  That so many in the football establishment were outraged at Moss’ behavior (in particular, Joe Buck in the announcer’s booth) says they are more worried about image than actual behavior, and that they haven’t been paying enough attention to some other off-field events of football players (including the time that Moss almost ran down a city worker with his car in downtown Minneapolis).  Fortunately for Moss, he will be forgiven almost anything for catching 23 touchdowns and gaining more than fourteen-hundred yards during the season.

 

Much of the pre-game hype involved Patriot’s Quarterback, Tom Brady.  Brady was the AFC’s Most Valuable Player.  More importantly to those who support the paparazzi, Brady formerly dated Bridget Moynahan, who gave birth to a child back in August (and who may or may not be Brady’s son), and Brady is now currently dating “Supermodel” Gisele Bundchen.  After winning the AFC Championship game, Brady was seen leaving Bundchen’s apartment during the morning hours and wearing a walking cast for his injured right ankle.  It’s remarkable what the tabloids made out of all of this.

 

Now Tom Brady only made sixteen million dollars in salary during the 2007, though this does not count residuals from personal promotions.  It must seem heartbreaking to his agent that he didn’t make more considering that Richard Seymour, a defensive tackle for the Patriots, made $24,691,160.  (In fact, Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, and Bryant McKinnie and Steve Hutchinson of the Minnesota Vikings all have higher salaries than Brady.)  But let’s stick with Tom Brady for a moment.   Brady’s salary compared to other professional athletes is really not out of line.   A baseball player that bats .330, hits more than forty homeruns or wins close to twenty games during a season has a chance to make a couple hundred million dollars during his career.  So what’s a quarterback who threw a record fifty touchdowns during the season and who won eighteen straight games going to be worth? 

 

Three days before the Super Bowl was played, I heard a radio state his reasons for hoping that the Patriots win the game.  His logic was irrefutable.  To paraphrase what was said: a Patriot victory would be good for the economy.  Now there’s no question that the Super Bowl is a huge economic event to begin with.  It is broadcasted to more than 200 nations and seen by more than a billion viewers; Las Vegas had more than one hundred million dollars change hands in their city (and this is only a small portion of the monies that will be wagered on this game); advertisers paid more than three million dollars for thirty seconds of airtime, and it’s estimated that the value of stocks for those who do advertise rises on average 1.3 percent.  But only a Patriots victory would satisfy the greediest, as millions of dollars of memorabilia was to be sold commemorating the first ever nineteen and zero season.  To the powers that be, a Giants’ victory meant  a great upset, but not an upset that would bring in the profits they desired.*  The Giants only won ten games during the regular season and did not even win their own division.  They won football games mostly through defense, which doesn’t excite the most dilettante of fans.  No player would emerge as a celebrity on the behalf of the Giants.  In particular, their Quarterback Eli Manning (not to be mistaken for his older brother, Peyton) was not “Broadway Joe” Namath and did not make good headlines (like Tom Brady).   Thus, a Giants victory would not generate any real or lasting interest.

 

Alas, the economy will have to suffer because the perfect season was not to be.  The Giants as it turned out had a defense.  This should have been no surprise to those having viewed the NFC playoff games, but on a playing field where weather was not a factor, most of the commentators seemed to feel that the Patriots would have an easy time.  Tom Brady, as pretty as he was, could not keep James Butler and Michael Strahan away from him, and Randy Moss could seldom distance himself from Corey Webster.  And then there was the pass from Eli Manning to David Tyree.  The game was not a fluke.  The Giants outplayed the Patriots, and without question this was one of the best Super Bowls ever played.**

 

Like many other areas of entertainment, professional sports bring in a disproportionate amount of revenues.  Unlike most other high-paid professions, the performance of the athletes who are paid the salaries can be statistically measured to a remarkable degree.  If the same standards of measurements were applied to politicians or CEOs as is applied to the starting lineup of any number of championship teams, we’d eliminate the national debt.  Steroid use, drug use and other off-the-field antics of many professional athletes has brought professional sports into disrepute.  It must be said, however, that their actions are generally transparent because of exposure all over the tabloids, and the consequences of their behavior has often been mild compared to the behind the door decisions of those in power.  With this in mind, a nineteen and zero record certainly would have been an accomplishment of note.  For now we will still have to put up with the 1972 Dolphins team that remain the only unbeaten Super Bowl winner and who are alleged to celebrate anytime a team with a perfect record is beaten – thus making their own perfect record seem all the more impressive.  Maybe next year.

 

*Vegas apparently lost $2.7 million in revenue because of the Giant’s straight-up win, which does not seem like a particularly significant amount.  The figure becomes even less significant when one figures most people probably lost the money they won before even leaving Nevada on liquor, prostitution and other wagers.

 

** Any commentary about the overall spectacle of the Super Bowl requires some dull trivia about viewer enjoyment unrelated to the actual playing of the game.  It’s estimated that more than half of the viewers that tuned into to the Super Bowl did so for reasons other than those related to watching the players play football.  There is for these other viewers the commercials, the halftime show and the National Anthem.  Many of the commercials concerned advertisement of beer, and the most popular ads contained adorable depictions of animals.  The halftime show, which was scheduled to last close to thirty minutes, featured Tom Petty, the fifty-seven year old rock star whose most popular songs were written between the late 1970s and early 1980s.  All four songs that he sang could be heard about any fifteen minutes on a “Classic” Rock station anywhere in America.  There’s nothing like featuring a “contemporary” artist that sounds like a cross between John Mellencamp and a Bob Dylan wannabe.  And the national anthem was sung by a winner of the American Idol contest whose name I can’t remember (with that patriotic touch of having the passing of a formation of F16s over head while the anthem is being concluded).  I’m glad I enjoyed the game.

 

February 9, 2008

© Robert S. Miller 2008

THE 2008 OLYMPICS: XXIX Olympiad in Beijing

Opening Ceremonies in the “Bird’s Nest”

 

As NBC commentator, Bob Costas, reminds us in his conciliatory (and therefore irritating) voice, this is China’s coming-out party.  And indeed, even in China, one would have to be the most naïve of ideologues to believe that forty billion dollars spent on the opening ceremony by the Chinese could not buy something spectacular.  Why do the Chinese want to make such a great impression?  In what promised to be the most controversial Olympiad held since 1972, the Chinese have been harshly criticized in other parts of the world for human rights violations, their continued occupation of Tibet, the censorship of internet communications coming out of their nation, ill-treatment of dissidents, the jailing of foreign journalists, the air quality throughout their country, and the relative isolation of the people and culture of China since 1949.  The torch relay leading up the Olympics proved to be particularly embarrassing since pro-Tibetan forces protested the carrying of the torch throughout every major city in the world.  President Hu Jintao, in essence “thumbing his nose” at the critics, seemed to be saying with such a lavish ceremony that China could be as economically advanced and modern as any free market nation while being repressive at the same time.  Yet even he wanted to be careful about one particular period in history.  The chronicling of Chinese history during the opening ceremonies skipped from the Ming Dynasty that ended in 1644 (leaving out the Qing Dynast that ended in 1911) all the way to1978 following the death of Mao Tse Tung and the demise of the infamous “Gang of Four” led by Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing.  Even some thirty years later, the Chinese know that Mao would have disapproved of the ceremony.  More importantly, though his portrait continuously is displayed almost everywhere in the country, the Chinese leadership knows that Mao’s reputation in the west precedes him.  It’s a tad bit difficult to justify one’s own human rights record while at the same time revering a man who may have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin and Hitler combined.  So be it.

 

Now critics of Chinese human rights violations like President Nicolas Sarcozy of France and President Bush of the United States could easily have boycotted the opening ceremony.  For President Bush, such a boycott would have been fairly senseless since no President has ever before attended an opening ceremony in any place but the United States.  Such gestures would have been futile in any case since really the idea for having the Olympics in China is in hopes that the country will open up and maybe change some of its practices (such as exporting grain to other nations while letting its own people starve).  Probably, human rights violations will continue whether trade is opened up with China or not.  Boycotts often also have the reverse effect in that it provides unwarranted amount of attention on the Olympic games for other things than for which the modern games were ever intended.

 

The opening ceremonies were to symbolize the “three” great traditions in Chinese thought including I-Ching, Buddhism, and Taoism.  Confucianism was understandably not referenced since the Red Army has long considered the philosophy to be reactionary.  In any case, we had beatings of the drum and dancing in tangent to show-off the cooperative aspects of Chinese culture.  All this notwithstanding, it’s difficult to call the ceremonies an education about Chinese society since so much of what took place in front of our eyes was an illusion.  The fireworks display we now know was enhanced for television by computerization.  There was lip-syncing by a young Chinese girl to a song because the actual singer was considered too homely to appear on international television.  The children dancing with the soldiers came the closest to being a representation of propaganda.  The soldiers we are reminded are the protectors of the state and the Chinese children.

 

A Short History of the Modern Games

 

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is generally credited with reviving the Olympic games in Athens in 1896.  Coubertin held that the games should accord with five principles: (1) with few exceptions (notably, the period of World War II), the Olympic games have been held every four years since that time (recently, the practice of holding winter and summer games during the same year has been discontinued); (2) all sporting events would be modern and would not emulate the ancient Greek games (no mortal combat, etc.); (3) competition would be limited to adults; (4) only amateurs could compete (there should be no “dream” or “redeem” teams); and (5) the games would move from city to city every four years.

 

Some critics decry that the events are no longer limited to just amateurs.  It doesn’t seem fair that a basketball player such as Kobie Bryant, making in excess of $20 million annually, should be allowed to compete in his given sport.  Actually, though, I believe this leads to less hypocrisy.  When amateur status was “strictly” enforced, you had nations “sponsoring” athletes to compete.  The occupation of the players of the famed Soviet hockey teams was to do nothing but train for world competition.  Also, allowing professional athletes to compete opened the games up to all athletes and not just those whose families happened to be rich enough to allow their pampered children to train without engaging in any meaningful employment.

 

The fifth principle has been the one to create the most havoc.  As we are simple-mindedly reminded of again and again, politics and the Olympics often become entangled.  We had Berlin in 1936 where Hitler wanted to put on for display the superiority of the Nordic athletes (too bad Jesse Owens had to step up and win four gold medals).  We had Tommy Smith and John Carlos give the black power salute on the Olympic Medals stand in 1968 in Mexico City.  We had President Carter call for the boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  We had the Soviet Union retaliate against Carter’s decree four years later by boycotting the Olympics held in Los Angeles.  Most tragically, we had the killing of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972.  Possibly, if we held the Olympics every four years in the same location (say Athens), less likely would be the chances that political intrigue would interfere.

 

Pierre de Coubertin imagined a competition where nationalism would play no role and individual accomplishment would be honored for its own sake.  But if this was the imagined goal of the Olympic games, team competition would have to be eliminated and the only flags waved would be that with the Olympic insignia.  Nations love parading around how many gold medals their athletes have won and will even shop around and bid millions and even billions of dollars to recruit potential medal winners to their countries.  And there’s enough flag waving to appease even the most fanatical of nationalist for any nation.  When the United States won the gold medal in hockey during the 1980 winter games, it wasn’t the medal game but the defeat of the Soviet Union utmost in the memory of most American hockey fans.  After the Soviet Union went down, the winning of the gold medal became mostly a footnote.

 

I don’t want to degrade the accomplishments of the athletes, however.  Just getting to the Olympics is a great accomplishment in itself.  The three gold medals won by Johnny Weissmuller, the four won by Owens, and the seven won by Mark Spitz are a testament to the training and discipline of these athletes.  In 1972, Lasse Viren fell down in the 10,000 meter run, but he was able to get up and win the event.  That same year, Kip Keino won the 3,000-meter steeplechase without ever before competing in the event.  Abebe Bekilla of Ethiopia won back-to-back marathons, the first while running barefoot through the streets of Rome.  Women like Mildred “Babe” Didrickson, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Nadia Comenichi came into their own by competing in front of the world.

 

Yet I lost much of my fascination for the Olympics in general when Ben Johnson, after running the 100 meters in 9.72 seconds, was stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for steroids.  I honestly don’t know anymore if any Olympic record set since that time has legitimacy.  Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey lifted twenty-five pounds more than three times his weight over his head in 1988.  Did drugs play a factor?  Jackie Joyner-Kersey won medals in 1988 and 1992.  Was this accomplished without the use of any banned substance?  Or what about Carl Lewis, the man awarded the gold medal after Ben Johnson was disqualified in the event?  Occasionally, a commentator will suggest that such substances do more harm than good for the athlete.  However, I remember 1972 Marathon winner, Frank Shorter, once stating that athletes are almost always ahead of the game when it comes to use of such substances.  Shorter stated that when 1/10^th of a second can mean the difference between winning a gold medal and not being on the medal stand, athletes are acutely aware of what will give them that extra fraction of an advantage to defeat their adversaries and are willing to gamble on masking agents shielding them from testing positive on any drug test.  We no longer know if athletes are winning due to dedication or due to technology.

 

Let the Games Begin

 

Within one day of the opening ceremony, an American tourist was murdered on the streets of Beijing and the Russian military inflicted almost 2,000 casualties upon the former Soviet satellite and now sovereign nation of Georgia.  Vladimir Putin left Beijing to return to Russia immediately after the opening ceremonies.  With this as a backdrop, the first Olympic competition I was to witness on television was the historically significant sport of Beach Volleyball.  I should be careful not to complain about this too much, however.  If not for the showing of Beach Volleyball, the NBC coverage of the Olympics would mostly have been confined to gymnastics and swimming.  And so long as no American athlete is prominent among a particular sport, there is little chance it will ever be shown on television.

 

Without question, the highlight for most American viewers was the spectacle of Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals.  Granted, with so many different type of swimming events and with Phelps participation in various relays, an athlete could probably not have accomplished this in any other sport.  Still, what Phelps did was remarkable.  Phelps can now look forward to endorsing whatever product he chooses for much of the remainder of his life.  (Now there have already been complaints about his signing a contract with Kellogg’s to endorse Frosted Flakes because it does not seem conducive with what an Olympic athlete would actually consume and, so the health gurus say, he seems to be setting a bad example for our children.  At the same time, consuming 12,000 calories a day as a part of his training regimen is probably not something we would want most of our children emulating.)

 

But then what about Jamaica’s Usain “Lightning” Bolt?  He set world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter dash, and in the 4 x 100-meter relay race.  His performance may be in every respect as impressive as the one put in by Michael Phelps.  Should I say that he won the gold medals in a manner reminiscent of the disgraced Ben Johnson?  He ran the 100-meter dash in 9.69 seconds and spent the last ten meters or so beating his chest and looking over his shoulder.  He was criticized by the IOC President for showboating – the President trying to maintain the fiction that all great athletes should be gentlemen.  But we know with great athletes like Ty Cobb, Muhammad Ali or modern athletes like Barry Bonds that great performance is often much more complex than simple dedication combined with good manners.  We’d like all athletes to have that wonderful smile like a Shawn Johnson, the female gold medallist on the balance beam.  But surliness, an amount of gloating and a unique and grating personality may be required to motivate other athletes to one-upmanship.  Every champion wins their battles in their own way.

 

The Chinese won the most gold medals while the United States boasted of winning the most medals.  This was already pretty much predicted.  The controversies surrounding the actual competitions were relatively minor.  The United States dropped a couple of batons, a wrestler felt slighted during a match and tossed down his bronze medal after the flag raising, and an American gymnast whose score equaled that of her Chinese competitor lost her chance for a gold medal in the uneven parallel bars because of a tie-breaking technicality.  The one enduring controversy that will probably outlast the games was the insinuation that some of the female Chinese gymnasts were underage and thus would have been disallowed from competing in the Olympic games.  It’s a bit silly to complain about this too much because the Chinese girls otherwise defeated the American women head-to-head in competition.  The policy behind the rule was intended to protect young girls from the consequences of training at such an early age.  It wasn’t intended to prevent one nation from getting the edge in competition over another.  It’s also a policy that is almost impossible to enforce because I doubt the Chinese will be cooperative or bow in anyway to the wishes of the International Olympic Confederation (IOC).

 

 

The Closing Ceremonies

 

The Olympic ceremonies ended with the passing of the Olympic flag from the Mayor of Beijing to the Mayor of London.  Then we had Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame play a Whole Lot of Love followed by more fireworks (again, probably enhanced for television).  I suppose the Chinese did deliver a quality game in that the Chinese citizens were cordial hosts.  It must be said that the citizens had little choice since any dissent on the streets was immediately quashed by possibly the most expensive security methods ever employed in any Olympic game.

 

But in the end, it was not the Chinese that made these games worth viewing but instead the athletes themselves.  These were the world best athletes, and hopefully every medal winner won their medals while abiding by the rules of the Olympic games.  These athletes worked at their crafts in a way the rest of us can barely fathom, even the Beach Volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh who won back-to-back gold medals.  Though sports like boxing, gymnastics and diving are subject to what sometimes seems like arbitrary judging standards, for the most part the results were something that we can truly quantify.  We can’t say that the man elected President is necessarily the most qualified politician, or that the richest businessman is the one with the best business sense.  We can at least with reason suggest that Usain Bolt is the world’s fastest runner and that Phelps is the fastest swimmer.

 

August 29, 2008 

© Robert S. Miller 2008

MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Introduction

On this site, I've published lists of my favorite movies for each decade.  Some of the movies I’ll mention will have been commercial successes and some will be unknown.  It’s impossible not to be occasionally swayed by popular sentiment.  I do not claim that these movies I list will be the best that have ever been made.  With more than 20,000 movies released in America alone since Birth of a Nation was released in 1915 (a personal favorite of Woodrow Wilson), I’m unable to cast judgment on all of those films.  A few reviewers have tried.  Maybe I’d try too if I made their six figure income to do so.  But even then with a large amount of time at my disposal I wouldn’t be able to remember (nor would I want to) all of the movies that are available.
 
With all of the varied critiques, the awards and reports of box office receipts, it is difficult to not be influenced by outside opinion concerning what is good and what is bad.  It’s far too easy to pass off someone else’s judgment as one’s own.  Whether it’s intentional or not, I often hear the same words and phrases used to praise or criticize a particular movie.  On the other hand, it’s incredibly easy to become snobbish about what one is reviewing and forget that every movie at least has potential.  Just because a movie is made in Hollywood, just because it’s lowbrow or appeals to the masses does not mean it lacks merit.  Pauline Kael used to criticize many movies that did not fit her New Yorker readership.  This was the same Pauline Kael so out of touch with the American mainstream that she woke up shocked one morning in November of 1972 to find out that Nixon had defeated McGovern in the Presidential election.  An intelligent observer would have seen that coming.
 
I’d like your comments.  If you would like to know more about any movie that I mention, I will review or at least summarize what I think about it.  I’m also open to recommendations.  As I mentioned, there are still a number of quality movies I haven’t seen.
 

October 27, 2006 
©  Robert S. Miller 2006