Spurs fans cause anti-Semitic chants hurled their way?

Slate’s “Soccer” problem

      First of all, let me say that Steven Fatsis’ impassioned objection to the word “Yid” being used by Tottenham Hotspur football supporters to describe themselves contains a vital truth which I’d like to reiterate.  This word should never be chanted by any side in the Premiership or any other league in any sport for any reason-- full stop. That’s the future I want.  Is that clear?  I hope so, because I also want to say that while this is true – 100% true – there elements of Fatsis’ Slate article that show a misunderstanding of Football, London, and the deplorable history of the English class system which are worth pointing out.  Worth pointing out in so many ways that it’s hard to know where to kick off.

     The November 2012 article from the Daily Mail­ that Fatsis quotes seems like as good a place to start as any.  I would recommend not using this paper as a source, even if the BBC links to it!  (Hey, I enjoy reading the Mail and I’m not saying it’s not OK to write about sensationalist crap—but you gotta know that’s what you’re doing!)  Because this newspaper dug up some former Spurs players last year willing to go on record as embracing ethnic slurs doesn’t mean that’s what the club,  the supporters (of which I am one) or English football as a whole want.  Perhaps Fatsis could have quoted some more of Daniel Wynne, a man who thinks it is OK to call himself a “Yid.”  If he had, we would have learned that Wynne is descended from Holocaust survivors.  While this doesn’t mean it’s OK for Spurs fans to chant “Yid” (sorry, but I’m going to keep saying that because I know people have short attention spans) I think that it does underscore that there are perhaps differences between what it means to be Jewish in the UK compared to the US.  Is it too much to admit the possibility that, however alien it may seem, and that while it is as I agreed, completely wrong for non-Jewish supporters of Spurs or any other team to use this slur, that an actual Jew in another country thinks it’s OK? 

     Yup, I think it’s wrong that supporters chant the word, but I’m here to let you know that the image of Spurs fans being some kind of right wing bigots who started waving the Israeli flag around out of some kind of irony is totally off base.  When I first saw Spurs in the 1980s I was taken there by a Canadian Jew.  We both lived in Stamford Hill at the time, which was, as it is now, a noticeably Jewish neighborhood.  At the time I didn't care one way or another about Spurs' connection to the Jewish community, but my friend might well have.  What was a guy like him supposed to do?  Support clubs that really had anti-Semitic supporters, or go with Spurs who embraced Jews?  English Jewish comedian and commentator David Baddiel’s assertion that Spurs fans are only 3-4% Jewish (which may or may not be true) is moot if the reason some of that small percentage are there is because they feel more welcomed at Spurs.  Could it be that the majority of Spurs fans historically felt as if they were rallying around their Jewish neighbours?  If they were, are they required to do it in a way that we all find tasteful?  Whatever the answer, Baddiel is fine at Chelsea—despite that paragon of racial harmony (NOT!),  John Terry, leading the team onto the pitch every week.  I think that part of what’s going on in the minds of commentators in US markets is a misunderstanding of the culture of some of these football clubs.  In the Daily Mail interview that Fatsis quotes,  Baddiel  says “the debate seems to have got mired into being just about Tottenham fans.”  THANK YOU!  Are Slate readers just not ready for this kind of complexity?  I think they are ready, but it would seem from Fatsis’ article that he doesn’t agree.  There are football clubs in Europe that have openly fascist supporters—Rome’s Lazio, for instance, who’s supporters attacked Spurs fans during last year’s Europa League competition.  Are Spurs fans to blame for this?  I certainly don’t think so.  If you take the view that they are, the implications are shocking.

On a similar note—while it’s wrong for supporters to chant “Yid,”—comparing Spurs fans actions to the expropriation of American Indian symbolism by US major league teams is a mistaken application of a justified sense of outrage.  The Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves and Washington’s NFL team represent corporate appropriation of racial identity.  This is qualitatively different because of Spurs actual association with the Jewish communities of north London.  The mascot of Tottenham Hotspur is not a Jew—it’s a rooster standing on a football.  Jews are included among the supporters, and historically, the owners, who have included rags (trade) to riches businessmen from working-class East London.

     Talking of the owners, the accusation that it’s cynical for Spurs to survey its supporters about this issue is based on an assumption regarding what will be done with the results.  Spurs directors—unlike Fatsis—are not assuming anything about the supporters.  It’s only when you know where people stand that you can design a proper and effective intervention.  I certainly want Spurs’ culture to change, but I don’t think that can be done by demonizing people.  I think it can be done by understanding where people are coming from.  I think that that is how this behavior will end—through Tottenham’s owners working with the supporters, not treating them like criminals.  It used to be part of my job to tell African American youth not to use the N-word.  Not an appropriate thing for a white guy from England to be doing?  I  couldn’t agree more except for the fact that I don’t see telling people this kind of thing as enforcing some kind of absolute law from outside.  Actually, I think it’s fine for Black youth to call themselves whatever they like.  But the reason that our youth group would talk to people about not using the N-word was to encourage an appreciation of context—you just can’t say it anytime and everywhere and expect to be respected.  I think that only people with an appreciation of context will change the behavior of Spurs fans.  And part of the context is that it certainly won’t be Chelsea supporters such as Baddiel!

     That brings me to another point.  This situation is unfolding in the UK, which unlike the country where I’ve lived for the past 30 years has no 1^st amendment.  In fact, there are laws there prohibiting much broader forms of speech than the “fighting words” and “fire in a crowded theater” here in the USA.  I suppose it’s a sign of how Americanized I’ve become but frankly I’m a big fan of the 1^st amendment.  Political freedom of expression is worth having, even if you have to put up with opinions you don’t like.  The context that the British politicians are talking in is one of legal restriction on speech.  How much do we want that?  Is that what Fatsis wants?  He, like me, wants to stop Spurs fans from chanting “Yid,” and you can’t deny that arresting people who do it is one way to go.   Loath as I am to stick up for David Cameron, if he condemns the chanting as racist he’s saying that these football fans should be arrested en masse for a felony.  If that happened at White Hart Lane today, as Fatsis implies he would wish, based on his comments about recording the crowd, that would mean arresting people—including Jews like this Spurs fan and blogger—for what they are saying.  I don’t think that Americans, for the most part, want to live in that world, and unlike (on the whole) the people of my homeland I think  Americans have realized they don’t have to.  I think that public shaming can accomplish quite a lot.  For my part I’d like to start by shaming the other clubs in this story instead of shaming Spurs supporters for essentially reacting to being victimized.   

  Andy Dyson

                                   

Why is Bloomberg's Parting Shot of "Racism" Such a Surprise?

 

photo: wikimedia

Last week , outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Bill de Blasio’s campaign for mayor of New York racist, because de Blasio appeared in public with his Black wife.  The interview, by Chris Smith  in New York Magazine is worth a read, if only to understand the world view of someone who thinks it is his wealth that makes the world a better place.  Bloomberg claims to be a uniter, and claims further that it is the rich who support the poor in this world.  What is clear, though, is that Bloomberg understands that many readers would interpret de Blasio showing he has a connection with the black community as divisive simply because de Blasio is showing that interracial marriage- and thus partnerships of other kinds- are possible and good.  Bloomberg knows that anti racists are a threat to white privilege, and that people who want that privilege still vote.  In the kind of coup that only people with his kind of clout can get away with, Bloomberg even got New York Magazine to add to his comments after the interview.  In the “explanation” Bloomberg says he does understand that it’s OK for people to talk about their ethnicity.  So what is really wrong with what de Blasio is doing in Bloomberg’s eyes?  I think it must be that de Blasio is showing that he has a genuine connection to the Black community.  The fact that he has a Black wife is not something to do with de Blasio being Italian, for instance.  Bloomberg rightly thinks that he can get away with claiming that anyone who mentions race is racist—or at least does racist things, since in his added paragraph he claims to deny thinking that de Blasio is personally racist. The whole debacle highlights how essential it is to emphasize that racism is a system of cultural, economic and institutional oppression.

 I always wondered why so many New Yorkers liked Bloomberg.  I’m not surprised that Democrats and Republicans can like the same things any more, but I can’t understand why people who live in a hugely diverse city could have put up with a mayor who has no idea what the word racist means,  let alone allowed him to change the law so he could be mayor for three terms.  I wonder if any of the candidates are offering to reverse this in their platform?  The League of Women Voters guide for the upcoming election has statements by all the primary candidates, and none of them mention this. (A few people running for city council mention that they like term limits for the mayor, though.)

So how did New York—as a voters, at any rate—fail to recognize how reactionary Bloomberg is?  I’m reminded of seeing Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop,  a one-man show by Danny Hoch at the Painted Bride in Philadelphia some years back.  Check out Hoch YouTube or elsewhere (though, please, never , ever watch Blackhawk Down).  At the Bride he recited a number of anecdotes some of which were true, and some of which were none the worse for being  more so.  (this can be seen here, the segment I’m talking about starts at 36:00)  One of them was his tale about being hired to play the role of a Hispanic on the show Seinfeld.  When Hoch arrived on the set in LA he was dismayed to learn that he was expected to play what he interpreted—correctly, no doubt—to be a racial stereotype.  When he objected he was fired before he had the chance to quit, according to his account.  In his performance Hoch expressed dismay that Seinfeld had let him down so much.  He recounted that all kinds of people liked Seinfeld and thought it was great.  Personally, I never liked the show.  It didn’t surprise me a bit that Hoch had that experience, working for a show that is all about the fact that it’s funny that people are mean to each other—and that must be funny because the show was undoubtedly very popular.  So why was this a surprise to Hoch, who has made his living cutting through layers of bullshit?  Hoch recounts—without explaining why—that all his leftist friends, even Black Panthers, etc, like Seinfeld.  Discussing this after the show it was my wife – who also has leftist friends who like Seinfeld who came up with the answer.  Seinfeld is about New York and people from New York love everything about the place.  Therefore Hoch would be less likely to have a problem with Seinfeld than he otherwise might.  Hey, even Steven Jay Gould thought that Central Park might be the best park in the world.  It may be a park in the best city in the world, but unless that makes it the best park it certainly isn’t, even if it’s the front yard of the American Museum of Natural History.  

Obviously, Hoch isn’t taken in by Bloomberg’s nonsense about the rich making everything possible, but given his debacle with Seinfeld it’s easy to see why so many otherwise savvy people could fall for it.  Once Bloomberg was making things better for certain voters in New York, he became part of New York to the extent that he just couldn’t be as bad as it seemed he should be.  It’s not so much that the rich make things possible as that they control things.  To that extent, what is possible is what they want, and that’s not the same thing as making things possible. Here in the USA we’re all New Yorkers compared to the rest of the world, so it’s worth taking off the blinkers and looking at the institutions that constitute our Bloombergs and Seinfelds from a different angle. 

Stephen Jay Gould Lives Fo' Ever!

Stephen Jay Gould is now part of the fossil record.  Or not; I'm unaware of what happened to his physical remains.  I have, though, had the pleasure of checking out a tiny fraction of the huge body of work he left behind.  His short life is a lesson to us all; a man who’s mind encompassed the enormity of the time was here-as are we all-for so short of a time. 

Wonderful Life has three goals.  Gould aims to show that life, and the evolution of consciousness (which seem inevitable since we are here) are far from the ordered affairs that the images of monkeys marching through time to become cavemen imply.  There is way too much chance involved.  The wonderful life of the Burgess Shale deposit of British Columbia shows this through the (relatively) rapid rise and extinction lineages of creatures that boggle the imagination.  But how easily do the rocks reveal their secrets?  Not as straightforwardly as one might think.  For over half a century the fossils of the Burgess Shale were misinterpreted by scientists who were constrained to some extent by conventions of their own making.  As Gould says, the fossils were talking but people weren’t listening.  

A second goal of the book is to illustrate the high drama of discovery.  Personally, I am gladdened enormously by this.  My own understanding of the sciences, meager though it is, has always been aided most by stories of how and why people arrived at their conclusions.  Discussion of the thought process--the mistakes, if you will, or at least the blind alleys--helps a layperson get to grips with the science more easily.  Thirdly, Gould—a great science popularize as well as a researcher—is also concerned as to what he clearly sees as a failure in this regard.  The story of the Burgess Shale – though better understood by the public thanks to him -- is still not well known.  Learning as I do these days from the nested volumes of the internet and the hopefully edifying morsels that make their way onto  YouTube, I can hear Gould’s sonorous tones as well as read his books.  His voice is so reassuring and avuncular, and his style of writing so natural that I can hear his voice as I read.  But am I listening or am I missing the point, analogous to the way that Charles D. Walcott misunderstood the message of the Burgess Shale?

One thing I hear on Gould’s issue of Seven Wonders (youtube.com/watch?v=Wnt8UVItyrY) is his claim that he is “bored to tears” by dinosaurs.  I’m sorry to hear this said out loud, not just because I’m not bored by dinosaurs but because I think it’s sad that anyone is bored by anything—unless of course, boredom with some things is a prerequisite for getting any single thing done, which it may well be.  The fact remains that Stephen Spielberg has popularized dinosaurs more than Gould popularized the Burgess Shale.  But is that a problem?   In Dinosaur in a Haystack Gould expresses his dismay that the fascination with dinosaurs misleads people regarding the true (or best available) picture of the past that we have.  He is also derisive of animatronic dinosaur displays and the lack of real educational substance they bring.  About this I have mixed feelings.  I saw a dinosaur show in Philadelphia some years back that I recollect had Gould’s name attached to it somehow.  While I, like Gould, only had skeletons to look at as a five-year old, and was also changed for life by them, modern pre-schoolers have dinosaurs that look a lot more real.  Does it affect more of them, or affect them more?  Unlike Gould, I don’t assume an understanding of media effects, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it doesn’t matter that much. I think the importance of the Diplodocus, stretching as it still does 25 metres down the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum in London (though now with tail off the ground, mind you) is not lessened by the existence of Dinotopia, JP, or animatronic dinosaur shows at zoos around the world.  They don’t tell the story that Gould wants heard, but they do blow the mind. Maybe the skeletons that blew Gould’s mind—and mine too—would do the trick, but hey, now we have CGI, and ever since I saw that Diplodocus carnegii  slowly being coated with a fine sediment of South Kensington's erudite dust, I wanted to see JP--I wanted to see it BAD. I wanted it bad enough that I endured Gwangi and all the rest with a proud stoicism.   Heck, I remember where I was when someone told me (simultaneously, no less—how can the mind take that kind of assault) the plot of Creighton’s book and the fact that Jurassic Park was being made by Spielberg. Do you? Perhaps, if you’re a paleontologist you do, and you remember the feeling of dejection that Gould may have felt.  For my part, it’s one of the few times I’ve wished I could do a cartwheel.  I think that children are capable of being entertained and of being educated. (I also believe the research that they can tell the difference between Tom and Jerry or Judas Priest and real violence, but that’s another story). I think they deserve both, and getting one doesn’t mean they can’t get the other.  Curmudgeonliness won’t help people tell the difference.  What makes the difference is upping the ante regarding the sense of wonder.  For the most part, Gould does this, so his occasional grumpiness is even more forgivable.  

Gould, no doubt, would have detested my bike messenger bag.  It shows that one-dimensional linear evolution. 

There’s not a jot about the huge diversity of mammals or even primates which never made it, or the more successful (in numbers and variation of species) versions of mammals such as bats and rodents.  It’s all about human beans.  On the other hand , he didn’t (as far as I know) live in Kentucky in the 20-teens, where the above says what I want it to say.  But in honor of Stephen Jay Gould – and even if he was bored with dinosaurs I have to love him – here’s the version for his messenger bag:

BIKES RULE

CREATIONISM SUCKS