Serena Williams

There is a very nice article on ESPN.com about Serena Williams.  When the Williams sisters first burst onto the scene, I was one of the many people who worried they were ruining the women’s game.  They represented what already seemed to have happened in the men’s game:  all power, no grace, no guile, no finesse.  I remember watching Wimbledon in Brussels in 2000: I cheered for Martina Hingis – she was more of the traditional women’s tennis mold – the last bastion of the "right kind of tennis player." 

Upon reflection, this view seems wrong, very wrong for a lot of reasons.  Why we would place the change in tennis on the Williams sister;s power game, as opposed to something else like the "Bolleteri Way" of mastering a serve and two hard topspin ground strokes and then letting the rest come together as it may, is, in and of itself a questionable move.  Furthermore, as it turns out, the Williams sisters were a transition in the women’s game.  They made women’s players learn to have to deal with power so that other tricks of the trade became difference makers in who wins and loses.  Fans of the sport owe the Williams sisters big time for this, and, the need for the presence of Serena Williams was never more clear than in this Australian Open. 

While many in tennis have moved past the Williams sister to embrace the new wave of "pretty girl" players, like Sharapova and up-and-coming talents like Nicole Vaidasova- who are young, hit hard, and are thin.  Not only is Serena Williams noticeably the only black athlete deep in the women’s tennis draw, but we also here nothing about how her figure means that she is out of shape, that she’s not trying hard enough, that she can’t take tennis serious for long periods of time.  This type of commentary crosses over into the realm of horrible stereotyping both in terms of female body image and also, and just as regrettably, sounds like the sort of comments we feel more comfortable saying and hearing about black athletes. 

Serena beat both these stereotypes AND the entire field of women’s tennis at the Australian Open (Justine Henin-Hardenne did not play, and so Serena’s biggest test this year has not been taken).  To be fair, Serena was a little tired out in deep matches.  She seemed intent to try to end points quickly in the matches she played that did go longer.  But maybe this is the best that a 25 year old Serena Williams with her body type can manage after some time off, even with serious commitment to get back in shape. 

Regardless, here’s what we know.  The new "tennis princesses," even the ones who seem really cool because they don’t like being thought of as a princess (Sharapova), they all brought some weak stuff to the Aussie Open – not in terms of their weight, but in terms of their game.  Serena had more mental stamina than the temperamental Vaidasova, and Sharapova’s weak serving in the tournament was destined to be gobbled up by a Serena Williams who would be having none of that.  Serena’s all around game was clearly the best in Melbourne on the women’s side, and she was the most exacting in punishing her opponents mistakes.  She may not be Roger Federer, she probably cannot beat many of the top ten consistently if they happen to be "on" (whereas one can be on and not even win a set against Federer),  but Serena is game to go out and attack all of her opponents with the same level of play every time.  Serena’s game is not just power, it’s also focus, intelligence, patience, and nowadays, maturity. 

Serena Williams is back and she has put women’s tennis back on its mission: no weak stuff on center court.  I,  for one, fully support her in her quest. 

The French Resistance

The Washington Post has an amusing article on France’s attempt to ban all smoking in public indoor places.  A couple of fun things in the article: 

"I am against the ban, because it’s a question of liberty," said
cigarette-waving Guillaume Dejesse, 20, adding that he always respects
the wishes of nonsmokers. "In France, we say one’s liberty ends where
someone else’s begins, as if there is a border between freedoms, and
where yours start, mine stop."

You know, we’ve heard of John Stuart Mill too (pssst!  He’s not French)

My other favorite section:

Outside the Sorbonne, Louis Jesu, 19, said he would continue smoking
in public places regardless of the law. "It’s a tradition in France.
Everyone goes to bars and smokes. And everyone will defy this law."

"Some will smoke only to defy the law," said Michael Barbut, 20, laughing and puffing away.

THAT can be said to be French.  France, destructive shut-down strike capital of the world, perhaps understands what Montesquieu meant by "Spirit of the Laws" in terms of citizen power better than anyone else.  If a law is unpopular, just defy it.. and have everyone else defy it too.   A nice reminder that part of executive power belongs to the people, because if a law is impossible to execute,  then  it has effectively been nullified. 

Existentialism is an Optimism

The late Robert Solomon wrote a very nice piece on the importance of existentialism, where he says some of the things that I have always felt about the existentialist camp.  Existentialism opens doors for the careful reader.  It opens doors to try to understand the value of understanding, overcoming, and even accepting responsibility and treasuring life.  Camus writes in his famed take on Sisyphus that we should imagine him happy.  He was punished for stealing away more of life, for not wanting to let it go.  Despite the illness and melancholy that Friedrich Nietzsche carried with him on pretty much a daily basis, he was still a writer with great style, flair, and vivacity.  Some critics portray Nietzsche as a sick man writing sad stories… I think this is wrong.  Nietzsche fashioned ways to be full of life.  Heidegger reopened the question "What is Being?" and it has been taken to new and exciting frontiers, and certainly not all of them are depressing.  Hannah Arendt wrote once that man is "the author of miracles."  Part of the spirit of existentialism, the part I like the best, reminds me of a portion of one of my favorite R.E.M. songs:

All the people gather
Fly to carry each his burden
We are young despite the years
we are concern
We are hope despite the times
All of the sudden, these days
Happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever you go…

Regardless of where we finds ourselves "thrown", as the existentialist might say, we are there together, and there is possibility.  The wondrous nature of this fact, is, in my view, not to be taken lightly by one who is looking to find value in their own life.  there is this special joy of togetherness and possibility, and no matter how much other things may cover this up from time to time, it’s reality is always there.  The more I am aware of it at times, the more I let myself revel in the awareness of this fact, I have found, the happier I would say that I have been. 

Grissom, Chaffee, White

For two summers, I worked at the National Archives in College Park, MD with my room mate from college, Brad.  Brad’s father has worked for NASA for quite some time, and I was a typical space-crazy youngster growing up.  Between the two of us, it didn’t take us long to figure out something was unusual when we came back with records at the same time from the archives: his with a cart that said "Chaffee" and mine that said "Grissom."  Brad sniffed it out first.  He walked to the back of the room  (it was sorted alphabetically) and found records requested under the name "White" as well.  "Can’t be a coincidence, can it?" Brad asked.  Well, not really asked, it was mostly rhetorical.  Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence.  Actually, it was Brad who asked them first.  They were all now middle aged men, three children of the astronauts lost in the Apollo 1 fire.  They had come to do some research on their parents’ careers together.   I remember Scott Grissom the most, because I handled his records personally the most.  I noticed that he had an NCAA Championship ring – I asked him about that at one point – baseball I think he said.   More than anything else, I remember thinking about how important they seemed to each other, three children who all lost their fathers in a very public way. 

I also remember thinking that I’d always remember meeting them, and how handling the history of  the archives had, for me and Brad, turned into touching history in a very direct way – a much more direct way than the picture of Nixon and Elvis and John Wayne’s Army Intelligence application that they show all the visitors who tour threw the place. 

But it also hit me how distant space exploration seems to have fallen as a concern.  As interesting as this was for Brad and I, no one else cared very much, not even after we explained who they were, and what their father’s role in history had been.   Then again, what exactly is their role in history?   It seems like space is dead, at least when it comes to the public.  Space exploration tells us something about ourselves.  Both in terms of telling us new things, new facts about being in the universe that we live in, and in terms of providing seemingly insurmountable challenges that we nevertheless are able to overcome.  Not since man made fire has there been anything so stunning, so utterly arresting symbolic overcoming as man setting foot on the moon.  somehow we’ve lost the spirit of space.  The idea that after we do something seemingly impossible, we come back and say, "Wow, well, what else can we do?"  Perhaps NASA is a little archaic, and perhaps public money should not be sunk in such large quantities into such epic projects of imagination, but somehow, some way, I think it would be good for everyone if we could try to rekindle just a little bit of that spirit.   

The nature of the universe out there is one of the great page-turners of the human experience, one in which for many of us, our imaginations have raced to fill in the pages that we have yet to (and may never get to) read.  I’d like to see as much of the storyline moved forward in my lifetime as possible.  I’d like more reminders that there’s still so much to learn better, and I’d like to see what I think I know dumped upside down as many times as possible in my life.     For to go looking for something and to find it is the essence of human being, and for all the things in our daily lives that cover this up, I feel like hearing about great discoveries in space once again sets the nature of our being free again.   

WETA Opera Saturdays…

I expressed some disappointment that WGMS in DC had given its classical library to a public station, WETA.   However, I am currently listening to  the Saturday Metropolitan opera program, and it’s fantastic!  Right now, they are at intermission in Madame Butterfly, and they are interviewing director Anthony Minghella, and performers Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, and Maria Zifchak talking about the production of   the Opera, and talking with opera critics about what is working about the performance.  It’s a great, great program. 

What are We, Anyway?

Mistaken identity abound in an NiT discussion:

Egalia of TGW writes:

Tens of thousands of Americans are descending on D.C.
today to tell the crazed decider in the White House that in this
country the people are the deciders.

Sorry Egalia, but that just isn’t the case. The United States is not
a democracy, regardless of how many times you hear people say so. We
are a republic. We have something in this country called elections and
regardless of whether or not you like it, George Bush won the last
election. So regardless of his 35% approval rating, he can do whatever
the hell he wants to. He is the Commander in Chief, not you or me, or
Chuck Hagel, or Chris Dodd, or anybody else who has the luxury of
sticking their finger in the air to see which way the wind blows before
making a decision.

Here’s the reply I wrote:

The characterization of what "we are" in terms of our system of
government is actually a much more complicated story than either the
characterization of Egalia or GlenDean. No one is "the decided" for
anything outright. Everything in our political regime is negotiable,
and that is one of the elements that makes our regime a good one. No
respectable republic would have a strict separation of powers, and we,
in fact, do not make this mistake. None of our functions of government:
judicial, legislative, executive can be carried out by one branch
alone. This thrusts every decision into a vast network of political
exchanges and repercussions, that, most of the time, force enough
negotiations to happen that the decisions are highly unlikely to be
highly offensive in nature to very many people. The President cannot
execute war power alone, nor should he be able to if he or she cannot
demonstrate that the long leash given to plan and devise foreign policy
while being left alone for a long period of time seems to be blatantly
ineffectual to the public. Nevertheless, there is not a strict
definitional position of what the President’s power is. Sometimes he
can defy the Supreme Court (like Andrew Jackson with the Trail of
Tears), sometimes he cannot (like the Nixon tapes). If the public is
sufficiently emboldened to stop the President, they can finds ways to
do so (all of the major impeachment attempts in American history – save
Nixon I suppose one can argue – have been motivated more by politics
than actual legal problems). The President is getting what he wants
right now because Congress would rather say this won’t work and have a
"gotcha" moment for later than oppose him right now. If the "surge"
doesn’t bring change, I would expect we will see a "decider" who will
not decide very much of anything anymore.

 

Confusion Reigns…

I don’t really understand Colbert I. King’s objection to the DC Uniter Poplar Point Stadium Project.  Some rich guys want the city to improve its infrastructure around the site, and in exchange they’ll develop the land… and apparently is the catch is that the rich people don’t want to do this because they are humanitarians, but because they want to be wealthier.  This IS how land development works in all non-sports related ventures as well, right?  Mr. MacFarlane is even going one step further than Major League Baseball and the Lerner family went, and willing to actually risk their own money on constructing the sites themselves.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that DC does not pay enough attention to the welfare of its communities in many instances, particularly those across the river.  But it seems more than practical, no matter how liberal-egalitarian one gets, to still say that we ought to "give to welfare what is welfare’s and give to business what is business’."  This seems to me an eminently reasonable business deal.   The objections… well I just don’t get them.   Let me go through some of them.

1. MacFarlane and partners care more about money than improving Ward 8.  – As long as they give resources to people in Ward 8 and let them do with them as they will, does it matter why?  I mean, maybe Ward 8 should hold out for MORE than a soccer field or two, but that requires tougher negotiating, not moral indignation that this deal might be struck in the first place. 
2. "Oh, yes, the new soccer stadium and development rights could be awarded to MacFarlane without competitive bidding."  -  gwah?!?  MacFarlane OWNS the soccer team!  how can you have competitive bidding for developing a stadium that a: MacFarlane is paying for and b: for a team that MacFarlane could simply elect not to move into the stadium if someone else wins development rights?  As an aside, this is not MLB, flush with cash, bullying poor DC around.  This is Major League Soccer, a league whose economic situation is so precarious that it needs to have its owners in possession of their stadiums because the franchises cannot be profitable any other way.  MacFarlane owning United and not owning the Poplar Stadium is simply out of the question given the MLS financial situation. 
3. MacFarlane has hired lots of insiders to make sure the deal goes through.  – Yes, which means that he’s learned from the debacle that was the Nationals Stadium funding.  Let’s not forget to mention that United has been, long since MacFarlane came on board, trying to acquire the land for this site for several years, patiently clearing many bureaucratic hurdles and sitting on the sidelines while the Nationals got their park first, and shared RFK with the Nationals because the city made them.  DC United has been pretty fair and accommodating to the District.  Why wouldn’t they hire some inside people to make sure that they finally seal the deal? 
4. One of these "ringers" received campaign donations by a company that has now hired his services and in which many of the members donated the maximum amount of money for his campaign for the school board.  – What exactly does this evidence?  This is a very, very thin, and very unfair accusation of impropriety.  If you have instances where inappropriate behavior has taken place that’s one thing, but you cannot have corruption without corrupt acts. 

I have no idea who is getting hurt based on Mr King’s arguments, or even why they are getting hurt.  All I know is that the city is being forced to improve its infrastructure in yet another part of the District, there will be more business development, DC United will become a profitable franchise, there will still be cheap entertainment available to the public that actually has broader appeal to its Latino residents than the majority population, and it will, as I understand, help alleviate parking problems in near Southeast by providing shared parking opportunities between the stadium sites (connected by a city funded walking bridge – heaven forbid the city create another way to cross the Anacostia into far Southeast).   Perhaps the money for the infrastructure could be going somewhere else…  but the lesson here, it seems to me is that the city is improving this part of Far Southeast because certain business and political interests are MAKING them.  Southeast residents should learn that they need to transition from telling the Council they OUGHT TO care about Southeast more to they HAVE TO care more, that’s the only successful way to do business with the District Government.  The sooner that residents figure out ways to fashion this for themselves, the more of their development will be controlled by them, and not San Francisco real estate tycoons. 

Now We Can Swim Any Day in November

Last week at Vanderbilt, I sat in on a course at Vanderbilt on Deliberative Democracy and Religion, that is being co taught by Dr. Talisse of the philosophy department and Professor Goldberg of the Law School.  There was a discussion, that got somewhat heated (only because I could not control my tone due to excessive coffee ingestation) about a piece by Nicholas Audi in Audi and Wolterstorff’s Religion in the Public Square.  Josh and I,were intrepid sympathizers with, if not exactly defenders of,  Audi’s position of advocating two standards for reasonable democratic policies.  These two positions are:

1. Secular Rationale:  One must have a set of secular reasons to adopt any government policy that is coercively restrictive.
2. Secular Motivation:  The reasons one gives in support of coercive policies must have a secular motivation that at least beats all other motives.  – This is a tricky one – but as I understand it – it means that if you woke up the next day and learned your religion was a total fraud – you would not support a different policy because your secular motivations would cause you to believe the same thing as before – if not, you are allowing your religious views to dictate government policy. 

So, for example, if you are like this parent, and believe that children should not be exposed to the idea that global warming is man-made because you believe that it is, in fact, an important sign of the second coming, well… we need another reason.  now, it so happens that people DO provide secular reasons for believing that the overwhelming science on global warming is wrong, but we can at least argue with the premises and conclusions of such arguments if we disagree and want to convince others that we are correct.  It’s much harder to do this with the "the rapture is coming" argument. 

We seemed to collectively decide in class that Audi’s argument is a "strong Political Liberalism":  rules for deliberation that require us to ALSO have legitimate motives to get us to our positions of "overlapping consensus."   But if we focus not on the constraints, but all of the negative liberty protection, I wonder if we couldn’t also think of this argument as a "weak Anarchy, State and Utopia."  Audi’s argument is libertarian ONLY against the encroachment of religion.  Dr. Talisse asked last night, "why stop there?"  But he was talking about comprehensive doctrines.  Nozick’s views on comprehensive doctrines is stated quite forcefully in the last section of his book, and he believes that the fact that there is no one comprehensive doctrine justifies the minimalist state, ad the minimalist state alone.  Rawls rejects this proposition entirely, but what’s interesting is that Audi seems to only half reject this.   Since I’ve only read one book chapter worth of Audi’s writing, I cannot be sure how he gets in the middle like this… but it seems a curious spot to end up. 

To link this back to the global warming discussion… while the religious objection gets cleared away by Audi’s theory, what about the claim made by the religious objector that his daughter’s rights are being violated due to secular imposition?  I suppose Audi can say, we can bring it into the light of day and talk about it… that seems great, and it seems like we can have more reasonable reason-giving about such disputes than we can with claims founded solely on traditional or scriptural religious belief.    Yet, we still have to filter these discussions through some sort of collective decision-making mechanism, and how do we know these will get us to "the right answer?"  Or, is this for a class of elites to uphold these standard’s from privileged positions of judgment?  Audi refers to what he argues for as "virtues,"  are we looking at some sort of divide between the philosophers and everyone else?

How Have I Not Heard About This

   
Nothing is funny about movie piracy…. except for this.  This is very funny to me.    I want it… I mean, it’s called Star War The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West. 

You might ask, "Isn’t mistranslated popular culture pretty much a tired gag?"  The Jedi Council is subtitled as "The Presbyterian Church"!  how can you NOT laugh at that! Thanks Tim at "Mother Tongue Annoyances" – this made my day!

Well, this should be a fun campaign cycle…

CNN has a headline story that Barak Obama did NOT, repeat, did NOT attend a Maddrassa as a young by living in Indonesia.   The fact that CNN would send someone to check out the school personally, and come out and refute the allegation so strongly is, in some ways, much better than an apology for the hideous "Where’s Obama?" mistake when they were talking about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts.  Nevertheless, we are likely to hav a long two year haul of pointless innuendo regarding how much Mr. Obama is "with the terorists."  This is an especially awful version of this ploy because it also represents Indonesia in a completely unfair way.  Oh well, I suppose we should all expect to hold our noses now, because we are in it for the long haul, like it or not.