Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 68

Fear of Flying

During my spring break, I'm going to Switzerland for a week. I'll be staying with a host family and doing a fairly intense week of French stufy. I'm hoping to build in a couple of days to get into France also and see some things. This summer I hope to go back and take my son (who just started back studying French) for a few weeks and some of the same.
But something occurred to me the other day when I put down my deposit -- I am afraid. Like really afraid. I've never been in a country where English wasn't the dominant language. I've never been anywhere -- save a few neighborhoods in New York -- where English wasn't all around me. I've been studying French for about a year and a half now, and the experience has been so much more than conjugations and vocabulary. All around me I now hear people speaking the language which I recognize, but do not understand. I was sitting in a cafe in Cambridge last semester and the couple next to me were arguing in French. It was terrifying.
Studying a second language is like very slowly absorbing the notion that intelligent life exists on other worlds. And that scares me because I don't know who these people are. I don't know if they're going to laugh at me. I don't know if I'm going to offend them. I don't know if the Swiss like black people. (I have homeboy who went to Barçelona and his tales still scare me.) I don't really know anything beyond, "Je suis Américain."
I think about this and begin to understand the ethic of staying in the hood -- wherever your hood may be. I understand people who want English to be our official language. They are afraid. They don't know what might happen. And neither do I.  Please don't try to reassure me. I suspect that being afraid is part of it. And I know that the fear isn't very rational. Let me be scared. It's not like I can turn back. I'm out on the ledge now. Time to jump.

The Small, Petty, Fraudulent Vendettas of Lance Armstrong

Dan Wetzel has a (partial) list of people Lance Armstrong tried to ruin after they accused him of doping. For those living under a rock, Armstrong has now confessed that the accusations were true. Here are two examples:

Let's talk Betsy Andreu, the wife of one your former teammates, Frankie. Both Andreus testified under oath that they were in a hospital room in 1996 when you admitted to a doctor to using EPO, HGH and steroids. You responded by calling them "vindictive, bitter, vengeful and jealous." And that's the stuff we can say on TV.
Would you now label them as "honest?"
And what would you say directly to Betsy, who dealt with a voicemail from one of your henchmen that included, she's testified, this:
"I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head. I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will ... definitely make an impact on you.."
What do you say to Emma O'Reilly, who was a young Dublin native when she was first hired by the U.S. Postal team to give massages to the riders after races?
In the early 2000s, she told stories of rampant doping and how she was used to transport the drugs across international borders. In the USADA report, she testified that you tried to "make my life hell."
Her story was true, Lance, wasn't it? And you knew it was true. Yet despite knowing it was true, you, a famous multimillionaire superstar, used high-priced lawyers to sue this simple woman for more money than she was worth in England, where slander laws favor the famous. She had no chance to fight it.
She testified that you tried to ruin her by spreading word that she was a prostitute with a heavy drinking problem.
"The traumatizing part," she once told the New York Times, "was dealing with telling the truth."

I'm not sure what I think about drugging when everyone else around you is drugging. I don't think lying is a very good idea. I think trying to destroy people for telling the truth is a good deal worse. It's that all-out war that really sets Armstrong apart. This isn't just a "doping scandal." It's something much creepier.
H/T Mike & Mike.

The Small, Petty, Fraudulent Vendettas Of Lance Armstrong

Dan Wetzel has a (partial) list of people Lance Armstrong tried to ruin after they accused him of doping. For those living under a rock, Armstrong has now confessed that the accusations were true. Here are two examples:

Let's talk Betsy Andreu, the wife of one your former teammates, Frankie. Both Andreus testified under oath that they were in a hospital room in 1996 when you admitted to a doctor to using EPO, HGH and steroids. You responded by calling them "vindictive, bitter, vengeful and jealous." And that's the stuff we can say on TV.
Would you now label them as "honest?"
And what would you say directly to Betsy, who dealt with a voicemail from one of your henchmen that included, she's testified, this:
"I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head. I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will ... definitely make an impact on you.."
What do you say to Emma O'Reilly, who was a young Dublin native when she was first hired by the U.S. Postal team to give massages to the riders after races?
In the early 2000s, she told stories of rampant doping and how she was used to transport the drugs across international borders. In the USADA report, she testified that you tried to "make my life hell."
Her story was true, Lance, wasn't it? And you knew it was true. Yet despite knowing it was true, you, a famous multimillionaire superstar, used high-priced lawyers to sue this simple woman for more money than she was worth in England, where slander laws favor the famous. She had no chance to fight it.
She testified that you tried to ruin her by spreading word that she was a prostitute with a heavy drinking problem.
"The traumatizing part," she once told the New York Times, "was dealing with telling the truth."

I'm not sure what I think about drugging when everyone else around you is drugging. I don't think lying is a very good idea. I think trying to destroy people for telling the truth is a good deal worse. It's that all-out war that really sets Armstrong apart. This isn't just a "doping scandal." It's something much creepier.
H/T Mike & Mike.

A Word on Our Bad Reputation

Yesterday the Atlantic ran an advertorial on Scientology. It caused a small scrum (as it should have) on Twitter. Last night the advertorial was taken down. Here is the company's statement on the matter:

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism -- but it has -- to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge--sheepishly--that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.

I think what made this episode particularly ill-considered was the fact that Lawrence Wright's reporting (some of it done for the New Yorker) on Scientology was about to be released in book form. With that said, I fully agree with this statement. I think the fact this troubled so many people is actually evidence of The Atlantic's brand strength. And I think the swift and candid response is evidence of how much we treasure the name.
People screw up. I think that's fairly natural. But I also think it's important to respond honestly and directly when you are confronted with your screw-up.

A Word On Our Bad Reputation

Yesterday the Atlantic ran an advertorial on Scientology. It caused a small scrum (as it should have) on twitter. Last night the advertorial was taken down. Here is the company's statement on the matter:

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism -- but it has -- to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge--sheepishly--that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.

I think what made this episode particularly ill-considered was the fact that Lawrence Wright's reporting (some of it done for The New Yorker) on Scientology was about to be released in book form. With that said, I fully agree with this statement. I think the fact this troubled so many people is actually evidence of The Atlantic's brand strength. And I think the swift and candid response is evidence of how much we treasure the name.
People screw up. I think that's fairly natural. But I also think it's important to respond honestly and directly when you are confronted with your screw up.

On the Radicalism of Leaving

Early in her epic tale of the great migration, The Warmth Of Other Suns , Isabel Wilkerson quotes the social scientist John Dollard:

Oftentimes to just go away is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this case, it is one of the few ways in which pressure can put.

I'm relatively early in Wilkerson's book. Already it strikes me as a marvelously written, deeply engrossing, thick depiction of pre-Civil Rights, post-Civil War black America. It's the kind of book which those of us who are always saying "Why isn't their movie about..." should immediately purchase. Several times over. Give a copy to your uncle, your kid, your mother.
At any rate, what impresses me about this quote is Wilkerson's attempt to argue that the Great Migration was not just thing that happens, but was a kind of resistance -- a "folk movement," she calls it -- with no need for figureheads and leaders. Booker T. Washington opposed it. As did Frederick Douglass, who died a few decades before the deluge but was familiar with talk of abandoning the South.
I don't know how well Wilkerson ultimately argues this point. But I look forward to finding out. As it stands, I'm tearing my way through the book. This is what I mean about a book where the work is done in the thinking, not the reading.
*Painting by Jacob Lawrence from his series on Harriet Tubman

On The Radicalism Of Leaving

Early in her epic tale of the great migration, The Warmth Of Other Suns , Isabel Wilkerson quotes the social scientist John Dollard:

Oftentimes to just go away is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this casem it is one of the few ways in which pressure can put.

I'm relatively early in Wilkerson's book. Already it strikes me as a marvelously written, deeply engrossing, thick depiction of pre-Civil Rights, post-Civil War black America. It's the kind of book which those of us who are always saying "Why isn't their movie about..." should immediately purchase. Several times over. Give a copy to your uncle, your kid, your mother.
At any rate, what impresses me about this quote is Wilkerson's attempt to argue that the Great Migration was not just thing that happens, but was a kind of resistance, a "folk movement" she calls it with no need for figureheads and leaders. Booker T. Washington opposed it. As did Frederick Douglass, who died, a few decades before the deluge but was familiar with talk of abandoning the South.
I don't know how well Wilkerson ultimately argues this point. But I look forward to finding out. As it stands, I'm tearing my way through the book. This is what I mean about a book where the work is done in the thinking, not the reading.
*Painting by Jacob Lawrence from his series on Harriet Tubman

Kendrick Lamar's Forever War

Last week Alyssa made a point I've been thinking a lot about, in relation to some of the art that really has affected me over the past few months:

If there's one thing that marks our current era of popular culture, it's an obsession with cool of the kind exemplified by Quentin Tarantino's movies, or with transgressive badassery, of the sort that's characterized so many anti-hero dramas. And the way most people achieve that cool or badassness? The deployment of violence.

For me this goes back to Wolverine (who I loved as a kid) and mohawked Storm knocking Scrambler's teeth out during the Mutant Massacre, or Colossus snapping Riptide's neck. For those of who came up in the relentless violence of the Crack Age, there was the sense that all the nonviolent pieties of Martin Luther King, Jr. were totally irrelevant. (Bizzy Bone had it about right "Beg your pardon to Martin / But we ain't marching we shooting.") The point was that we lived in a time of great violence and what was needed was more violence wielded by a noble hand. What I didn't realize then was this idea--a Champion of Noble Violence--is probably as old as humanity. 
Hip-hop, if not always premised on nobility, is certainly premised on transgressive violence. I loved the music, but (with some exceptions) that basic premise is why the music always felt a little off to me. I mean this about even my own favorites. I eventually wrote this need to always be badass Superman as simply what the music was, as something that could never really be any other way. As I got older the Champion pose became harder for me to take--not just in my music, but in movies, in comic books, and maybe (not sure) even in video games. Consequently, I moved away from a lot of things I loved as a kid.
A few weeks back, I went on at some length about Joe Haldeman's Forever War, and I think it was largely because I was happy to read a fantastic adventure story where the protagonist survives not because of great brawn, superpower, or even superior intellect. Mandella is smart, but far and away his greatest attribute is his sheer, dumb-ass luck. In that way, There was something refreshing about a hero greatest power amounts to not getting shot in the head. As virtually all of Mandella's comrades are killed off he seems to saying "I am glad it was not me." But behind that is something else--"that very easily could have been me."
That same kind of everyman vibe runs through Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. "The Art of Peer Pressure" has a series of great lines ("I hope the universe love you today.") but my favorite is one of the simplest, "Look at me," raps Lamar before pausing and continuing. "I got the blunt in my mouth."  
It's such a simple line but there's something about his phrasing that abandons the superhero pose, that takes off the mask and reveals that dumb, ordinary black boy that so many of us have been. Good Kid is the first album I've heard that drops the Batman pose, and yet remains trapped in Gotham.  Much like how Mandella is not some ace star-fighter pilot, Lamar is not Compton's Most Wanted, he is "Compton's Human Sacrifice." And he carries that vulnerability throughout the album. The fact is that most black boy's in Lamar's world are more human sacrifices than badasses.  And even if some are truly the latter, all contain a portion of the former. 
Perhaps this aesthetic is a bit conservative, but this is the art I love. I understand that there are drug-lords who double as soccer moms. I get that there are serial killers who kill serial killers, and worlds premised on big men with big swords and other worlds where being good at your job but horrible to your wife makes you noble. But then there are the normal people. And they have stories too.

More Guns, Less Crime: The Switzerland Example

In this rant last week Alex Jones cited Switzerland as one of the last remaining redoubts of gun culture. This post by Ezra Klein, in which he talks to Janet Rosenbaum about her research, does a good job examining that claim, but the Wikipedia article is also pretty informative:

The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for "recruit school"), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the "militia" in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers). 
Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, military police, medical and postal personnel) at home. Up until October 2007, a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm) was issued as well, which was sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use had taken place. 
The ammunition was intended for use while traveling to the army barracks in case of invasion. In October 2007, the Swiss Federal Council decided that the distribution of ammunition to soldiers shall stop and that all previously issued ammo shall be returned. By March 2011, more than 99% of the ammo has been received. Only special rapid deployment units and the military police still have ammunition stored at home today.
When their period of service has ended, militiamen have the choice of keeping their personal weapon and other selected items of their equipment.[citation needed] In this case of retention, the rifle is sent to the weapons factory where the fully automatic function is removed; the rifle is then returned to the discharged owner.[citation needed] The rifle is then a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle.

There's a lot more in the article, but we became clear to me is that Switzerland does have a gun culture--one that is heavily regulated by the government, right down to counting your bullets. Leaving aside that Switzerland has a fraction of America's population, leaving aside that gun ownership in Switzerland is still much lower than here in America (29 percent of households to 43 percent, respectively), this Swiss model strikes me as the kind of governmental intrusion that someone like Alex Jones is in no hurry to invite.
In our gun culture, as in so much else, we are unique. There's just no comparison.

Tips for Autodidacts and Gamers With Jobs

I don't know if there's anyone else out there whose on the same path as me in terms of learning a language. But if you are on that path, and if you enjoy video games, I'd encourage you to try playing them in a different language. Against my better judgement, I use Steam to purchase most of my games these days. One feature I love is how you can change languages for Steam, and thus all the games that support your language.
Alors maintenant je joue mes jeux videos en français, toujours. 
Last night I booted up Mass Effect, and I only have sliver of an idea of what's going on. Enough to know that Nihlus is awesome--"Je travaille seul." I feel like if I can't get to France just yet, I'll lifehack my way as far into the Atlantic as possible. The effect of changing languages differs with each genre and each game. The language barrier doesn't mean much in strategy. But it means a lot in RPGs.
For me, the feeling of being lost is one of the best things about learning a new language. As someone told me on twitter this weekend--you are left with toddler ears. And that's just it. This is really the only time you get to be a kid again.