Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 361
February 6, 2014
February 6, 2014: House Histories: Caroline Osgood Emmerton
[Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The House of the Seven Gables
(1851) is one of the 19thcentury’s most interesting historical novels—but the real House is full of significant American histories in its own right. This week I’ll blog about five such histories, leading up to a special weekend Guest Post from one of Salem’s foremost AmericanStudiers!]
On the unique and inspiring woman who made the house into the House.Caroline Osgood Emmerton (1866-1942), whose grandfather John Bertram became one of Salem’s wealthiest and then one of its most philanthropic merchants in the Great Age of Sail, likewise used that family fortune in support of one of the most active and influential civic lives in the city’s history. She and her family endowed and funded countless Salem efforts, from the Public Library and Public Welfare Society to the Seamen’s Widow and Orphan Society and the Salem Fraternity Boys Club. She helped found the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, still going strong in the 21stcentury as Historic New England. But most unique and to my mind most impressive of all her endeavors was her creation and development of the city’s first settlement house.Emmerton started her settlement house in 1907, nearly two decades after Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago, so the idea itself wasn’t particularly radical (if still important and far from common across America’s communities). But Emmerton’s next step is what truly distinguished her settlement house—the house was located in a building across the street from what was then known as the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, and in 1908 Emmerton decided to buy that mansion and convert it into the historic and cultural site the House of the Seven Gables, the proceeds from which could support the settlement house’s activities and outreach. The new site opened into 1910, and to my knowledge it was a first—that is, just as there were already plenty of other settlement houses, so too were there lots of historic and cultural sites inspired by authors, artists, social and cultural leaders; but Emmerton’s house, combining remembrance and service as it did, was as far as I know one of a kind.Hull House and Addams have been the subject of various and often convincing critiques in recent years, as has the “Americanization” movement to which settlements houses (including Emmerton’s) generally connected. But while that movement certainly could slip into prejudice or discrimination of various kinds, it also had the potential to recognize and embrace unifying American experiences across national, ethnic, and racial lines; and I would argue that Emmerton framed her effort in precisely that latter way, noting, “If, as is generally conceded, the settlements do the best Americanization work, should not this settlement excel whose home is the ancient House of Seven Gables, the foundations of which were laid by the first immigrants who came here long ago, strangers in a strange land.” I can think of few more compelling, nor more American, connections than of early 20th century immigrants to Salem’s 17th century settlers—and, as the next two posts will highlight, the House has continued to make and act on such connections. Last House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the unique and inspiring woman who made the house into the House.Caroline Osgood Emmerton (1866-1942), whose grandfather John Bertram became one of Salem’s wealthiest and then one of its most philanthropic merchants in the Great Age of Sail, likewise used that family fortune in support of one of the most active and influential civic lives in the city’s history. She and her family endowed and funded countless Salem efforts, from the Public Library and Public Welfare Society to the Seamen’s Widow and Orphan Society and the Salem Fraternity Boys Club. She helped found the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, still going strong in the 21stcentury as Historic New England. But most unique and to my mind most impressive of all her endeavors was her creation and development of the city’s first settlement house.Emmerton started her settlement house in 1907, nearly two decades after Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in Chicago, so the idea itself wasn’t particularly radical (if still important and far from common across America’s communities). But Emmerton’s next step is what truly distinguished her settlement house—the house was located in a building across the street from what was then known as the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, and in 1908 Emmerton decided to buy that mansion and convert it into the historic and cultural site the House of the Seven Gables, the proceeds from which could support the settlement house’s activities and outreach. The new site opened into 1910, and to my knowledge it was a first—that is, just as there were already plenty of other settlement houses, so too were there lots of historic and cultural sites inspired by authors, artists, social and cultural leaders; but Emmerton’s house, combining remembrance and service as it did, was as far as I know one of a kind.Hull House and Addams have been the subject of various and often convincing critiques in recent years, as has the “Americanization” movement to which settlements houses (including Emmerton’s) generally connected. But while that movement certainly could slip into prejudice or discrimination of various kinds, it also had the potential to recognize and embrace unifying American experiences across national, ethnic, and racial lines; and I would argue that Emmerton framed her effort in precisely that latter way, noting, “If, as is generally conceded, the settlements do the best Americanization work, should not this settlement excel whose home is the ancient House of Seven Gables, the foundations of which were laid by the first immigrants who came here long ago, strangers in a strange land.” I can think of few more compelling, nor more American, connections than of early 20th century immigrants to Salem’s 17th century settlers—and, as the next two posts will highlight, the House has continued to make and act on such connections. Last House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
February 5, 2014
February 5, 2014: House Histories: Hawthorne’s Houses
[Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The House of the Seven Gables
(1851) is one of the 19thcentury’s most interesting historical novels—but the real House is full of significant American histories in its own right. This week I’ll blog about five such histories, leading up to a special weekend Guest Post from one of Salem’s foremost AmericanStudiers!]
On three ways to think about the inspirations for Hawthorne’s House.After Samuel Ingersoll, the Salem captain who purchased the House from John Turner III in 1782, died at sea in 1804, the House passed to his daughter Susanna. A successful businesswoman and cultural figure in the city, Susannalived in the House with her husband and nine children until her death in 1830. She was also an older cousin of one Nathaniel Hawthorne (he was born in Salem in the same year Samuel died, 1804), and for much of his childhood Nathaniel visited Susanna and the House, learning of its histories, stories, and legends from her and her family. When the novel’s narrator writes, in the book’s opening paragraphs, about his familiarity with the House and its effects on him upon each visit, it’s fair to say he’s speaking directly from young Nathaniel’s experiences.The narrator also uses a particularly interesting phrase to describe himself in that opening: a “town-born child.” Hawthorne’s birth home was on Union Street, less than half a mile from Susanna’s house; in the mid-20th century it was moved to the grounds of the House of the Seven Gables. But I would make more of the description than just its literal accuracy. After all, many of the histories to which Hawthorne connects his fictional house—most prominently the Salem Witch Trials, but also the different stages of Salem and American history that his novel traces—are not explicitly linked to the actual house, and thus were likely not part of what he learned from Susanna. Yet they are all very much part of Salem’s history more generally, and so—despite Hawthorne’s argument in the Preface that his book has “more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex”—it’s very possible to read the book as a historical novel of Salem.I would connect Hawthorne’s House to one more New England house, however: the Old Manse, the prominent historic and cultural home in Concord where Hawthorne and his new wife Sophia Peabody lived from 1842 to 1845. This is a very debatable idea, but I would argue that House of the Seven Gablesis Hawthorne’s most American novel—to my mind, both The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The Blithedale Romance (1852), while set in recognizable American communities and moments, focus a great deal on human nature and relationships in more universal ways; while House deals centrally with the issues, stages, and meanings of Salem, New England, and American history. And if so (or in any case), it’s worth noting that Hawthorne lived, during some of the most productive years of his burgeoning literary career, in one of the most symbolically historic American homes, a site full of the kinds of communal and national stories with which he would likewise imbue his fictional House. Literary inspiration is always multi-faceted, and Hawthorne’s House had nearly as many possible origins as it did gables.Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On three ways to think about the inspirations for Hawthorne’s House.After Samuel Ingersoll, the Salem captain who purchased the House from John Turner III in 1782, died at sea in 1804, the House passed to his daughter Susanna. A successful businesswoman and cultural figure in the city, Susannalived in the House with her husband and nine children until her death in 1830. She was also an older cousin of one Nathaniel Hawthorne (he was born in Salem in the same year Samuel died, 1804), and for much of his childhood Nathaniel visited Susanna and the House, learning of its histories, stories, and legends from her and her family. When the novel’s narrator writes, in the book’s opening paragraphs, about his familiarity with the House and its effects on him upon each visit, it’s fair to say he’s speaking directly from young Nathaniel’s experiences.The narrator also uses a particularly interesting phrase to describe himself in that opening: a “town-born child.” Hawthorne’s birth home was on Union Street, less than half a mile from Susanna’s house; in the mid-20th century it was moved to the grounds of the House of the Seven Gables. But I would make more of the description than just its literal accuracy. After all, many of the histories to which Hawthorne connects his fictional house—most prominently the Salem Witch Trials, but also the different stages of Salem and American history that his novel traces—are not explicitly linked to the actual house, and thus were likely not part of what he learned from Susanna. Yet they are all very much part of Salem’s history more generally, and so—despite Hawthorne’s argument in the Preface that his book has “more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex”—it’s very possible to read the book as a historical novel of Salem.I would connect Hawthorne’s House to one more New England house, however: the Old Manse, the prominent historic and cultural home in Concord where Hawthorne and his new wife Sophia Peabody lived from 1842 to 1845. This is a very debatable idea, but I would argue that House of the Seven Gablesis Hawthorne’s most American novel—to my mind, both The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The Blithedale Romance (1852), while set in recognizable American communities and moments, focus a great deal on human nature and relationships in more universal ways; while House deals centrally with the issues, stages, and meanings of Salem, New England, and American history. And if so (or in any case), it’s worth noting that Hawthorne lived, during some of the most productive years of his burgeoning literary career, in one of the most symbolically historic American homes, a site full of the kinds of communal and national stories with which he would likewise imbue his fictional House. Literary inspiration is always multi-faceted, and Hawthorne’s House had nearly as many possible origins as it did gables.Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
February 4, 2014
February 4, 2014: House Histories: Loyalists
[Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The House of the Seven Gables
(1851) is one of the 19thcentury’s most interesting historical novels—but the real House is full of significant American histories in its own right. This week I’ll blog about five such histories, leading up to a special weekend Guest Post from one of Salem’s foremost AmericanStudiers!]
On the sizeable American community we hardly ever think about at all, and why we should.I mentioned in yesterday’s post that the House was sold to Samuel Ingersoll in 1782 by the third generation of its original family, the Turners; they did so because John Turner III had lost more or less all of the family’s sizeable fortune during the Revolutionary War. As best historians can tell, Turner lost it all not only because of excessive spending and poor financial acumen but also, and most saliently, because he and his family were Loyalists, supporters of Great Britain during the lead-up to and events of the Revolution. By 1782, only a year before the war’s conclusion with the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Loyalist position had become a clear loser, economically and socially as well as militarily, as reflected concisely in Turner’s loss of the House in that year.Thanks to the power of hindsight, because the Revolution ended the way it did, it’s easy to think of the Loyalist position as a loser’s choice from the get-go. But it wasn’t, and not only because of just how fully the war went against the colonists for the first few years (nor because of how crucial French aid was to the ultimate turning of that tide). While there were of course no opinion polls in the 1770s, it’s also quite likely the case that Loyalists (or Tories, as they were often known) outnumbered Revolutionaries for much of the Revolution’s early period. Which, if we’re able to step back from our false sense of the Revolution’s inevitability, makes all the sense in the world—pragmatic sense, given the overwhelming power and military superiority of Britain and what would have happened to Revolutionaries had they lost the war; and philosophical sense, given how absolute of a change the Revolutionaries were arguing and fighting for.In any case, the Loyalists represented a sizeable Revolutionary community, a third side in the conflict that complicates a binary America-England vision of the war. And outside of Benedict Arnold (who of course is remembered much more as a traitor than a Tory), I’m not sure we include Loyalists in our collective memories and narratives at all. Perhaps the new TV series Turn, which premieres on AMC later this year, will feature Loyalist characters, although the initial glimpses seem to pit its early Revolutionary spy protagonists against British forces rather than their Tory neighbors. Which is really the most central point of better remembering the Loyalist community—that the Revolution was far more of a Civil War than we like to admit, pitting neighbor against neighbor, Americans against Americans, all fighting for their homes and their vision of a homeland. Such a shift in our narratives would be hugely difficult, of course—but far more reflective of the complexities of history and, as a result, of their relationship to our own divisions and debates. Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the sizeable American community we hardly ever think about at all, and why we should.I mentioned in yesterday’s post that the House was sold to Samuel Ingersoll in 1782 by the third generation of its original family, the Turners; they did so because John Turner III had lost more or less all of the family’s sizeable fortune during the Revolutionary War. As best historians can tell, Turner lost it all not only because of excessive spending and poor financial acumen but also, and most saliently, because he and his family were Loyalists, supporters of Great Britain during the lead-up to and events of the Revolution. By 1782, only a year before the war’s conclusion with the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Loyalist position had become a clear loser, economically and socially as well as militarily, as reflected concisely in Turner’s loss of the House in that year.Thanks to the power of hindsight, because the Revolution ended the way it did, it’s easy to think of the Loyalist position as a loser’s choice from the get-go. But it wasn’t, and not only because of just how fully the war went against the colonists for the first few years (nor because of how crucial French aid was to the ultimate turning of that tide). While there were of course no opinion polls in the 1770s, it’s also quite likely the case that Loyalists (or Tories, as they were often known) outnumbered Revolutionaries for much of the Revolution’s early period. Which, if we’re able to step back from our false sense of the Revolution’s inevitability, makes all the sense in the world—pragmatic sense, given the overwhelming power and military superiority of Britain and what would have happened to Revolutionaries had they lost the war; and philosophical sense, given how absolute of a change the Revolutionaries were arguing and fighting for.In any case, the Loyalists represented a sizeable Revolutionary community, a third side in the conflict that complicates a binary America-England vision of the war. And outside of Benedict Arnold (who of course is remembered much more as a traitor than a Tory), I’m not sure we include Loyalists in our collective memories and narratives at all. Perhaps the new TV series Turn, which premieres on AMC later this year, will feature Loyalist characters, although the initial glimpses seem to pit its early Revolutionary spy protagonists against British forces rather than their Tory neighbors. Which is really the most central point of better remembering the Loyalist community—that the Revolution was far more of a Civil War than we like to admit, pitting neighbor against neighbor, Americans against Americans, all fighting for their homes and their vision of a homeland. Such a shift in our narratives would be hugely difficult, of course—but far more reflective of the complexities of history and, as a result, of their relationship to our own divisions and debates. Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
February 3, 2014
February 3, 2014: House Histories: Salem and the East
[Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The House of the Seven Gables
(1851) is one of the 19thcentury’s most interesting historical novels—but the real House is full of significant American histories in its own right. This week I’ll blog about five such histories, leading up to a special weekend Guest Post from one of Salem’s foremost AmericanStudiers!]
On the under-remembered transnational starting points for the house and its city.The House of the Seven Gables was constructed in 1688 for John Turner, a newly prominent Salem sea captain and merchant. In Hawthorne’s novel, the House originates in a distinctly American conflict, a battle over land between two immigrant settlers (the working class Matthew Maule and the elite Colonel Pyncheon) that also involves a deed to “Indian land” and that culminates in conjunction with the Salem Witch Trials. But the historic House owes its existence far more to transatlantic and international connections, not only as the source of Captain Turner’s rise and wealth but even more so when it was sold to the family of Captain Samuel Ingersoll in the late 18th century, during the period of the city’s history known as “the Great Age of Sail.”Ingersoll’s fortune developed concurrently with and in direct connection to the opening of the city’s (and world’s) newest trade ports: those in China. Salem captain Elias Hasket (E.H.) Derby is generally considered the first to sail his ship to ports in mainland China (among many other eastern destinations), and through his efforts and those of fellow Salem merchants the city (and its Derby Wharf) quickly became the center of those new trade routes. Those connections to the Far East meant significantly more than just new trade or economic possibilities for the city and nation; as scholar Caroline Frank argues in her innovative and impressive Objecting China, Imagining America: Chinese Commodities in Early America (2011), the presence of Chinese goods (as well as Chinese merchants and artisans) in the United States profoundly influenced any number of social, cultural, and artistic communities and conversations.So does it matter that Hawthorne leaves out such international connections (other than the minor but very interesting character of the Italian organ-grinder), or that our collective memories of Salem focus almost entirely on the Witch Trials rather than these transnational links? I would argue that it does, and not just for reasons of completeness or accuracy. It’s far easier for Americans to emphasize and argue for isolationism, or xenophobic perspectives on other nations (such as, right now, China), or a homogeneous vision of our national past and identity, if we consistently leave out the ways in which every moment in and part of our history has developed through such transnational connections and influences. Given the centrality of Salem to our images of 17th century America, it would be particularly important to remember just how transnational that city was, from its origin points through its heyday and (as that organ-grinder demonstrates) into the 19thcentury and beyond.Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the under-remembered transnational starting points for the house and its city.The House of the Seven Gables was constructed in 1688 for John Turner, a newly prominent Salem sea captain and merchant. In Hawthorne’s novel, the House originates in a distinctly American conflict, a battle over land between two immigrant settlers (the working class Matthew Maule and the elite Colonel Pyncheon) that also involves a deed to “Indian land” and that culminates in conjunction with the Salem Witch Trials. But the historic House owes its existence far more to transatlantic and international connections, not only as the source of Captain Turner’s rise and wealth but even more so when it was sold to the family of Captain Samuel Ingersoll in the late 18th century, during the period of the city’s history known as “the Great Age of Sail.”Ingersoll’s fortune developed concurrently with and in direct connection to the opening of the city’s (and world’s) newest trade ports: those in China. Salem captain Elias Hasket (E.H.) Derby is generally considered the first to sail his ship to ports in mainland China (among many other eastern destinations), and through his efforts and those of fellow Salem merchants the city (and its Derby Wharf) quickly became the center of those new trade routes. Those connections to the Far East meant significantly more than just new trade or economic possibilities for the city and nation; as scholar Caroline Frank argues in her innovative and impressive Objecting China, Imagining America: Chinese Commodities in Early America (2011), the presence of Chinese goods (as well as Chinese merchants and artisans) in the United States profoundly influenced any number of social, cultural, and artistic communities and conversations.So does it matter that Hawthorne leaves out such international connections (other than the minor but very interesting character of the Italian organ-grinder), or that our collective memories of Salem focus almost entirely on the Witch Trials rather than these transnational links? I would argue that it does, and not just for reasons of completeness or accuracy. It’s far easier for Americans to emphasize and argue for isolationism, or xenophobic perspectives on other nations (such as, right now, China), or a homogeneous vision of our national past and identity, if we consistently leave out the ways in which every moment in and part of our history has developed through such transnational connections and influences. Given the centrality of Salem to our images of 17th century America, it would be particularly important to remember just how transnational that city was, from its origin points through its heyday and (as that organ-grinder demonstrates) into the 19thcentury and beyond.Next House history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
February 1, 2014
February 1-2, 2014: January 2014 Recap
[A recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
December 30: 2013 in Review: The Marathon Bombing: A series on 2013 stories I didn’t cover on the blog starts with the year’s biggest and darkest Boston event.December 31: 2013 in Review: Nelson Mandela: The series continues with ways to AmericanStudy the iconic 20th century leader.January 1: 2013 in Review: The Pope: Three American connections for the radical new pontiff, as the series rolls on. January 2: 2013 in Review: Iran: The challenges and importance of remembering the complex, interconnected histories of the US and our most prominent current adversary.January 3: 2013 in Review: Aaron Hernandez: The series concludes with the histories and perils of our national love affair with gangsters.January 4-5: Ani DiFranco and Slavery: A special addition to the series, in response to a very recent event and controversy.January 6: San Fran Sites: Angel Island: A series on Bay Area places and stories starts with the value of seeing a complex American site in person.January 7: San Fran Sites: Palace of Fine Arts: The series continues with the deeply strange and yet also inspiring artistic site.January 8: San Fran Sites: Alcatraz: Why it’s not so great to turn a prison into a tourist site, and why it might be okay, as the series rolls on.January 9: San Fran Sites: Muir Woods: The arguments for experiencing a natural wonder in solitude, and why it’s fitting to do so more communally as well.January 10: San Fran Sites: Remembering Chinatown: The series concludes with some thoughts on the past, the present, and a way to bridge the gap.January 11-12: Ben Mangrum’s Guest Post: A special Guest Post from one of the founding editors of the great new Ethos Review site.January 13: Spring 2014 Previews: A Fantastic Intro: A series on what I’m looking forward to this semester starts with the life skills my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy course helps teach.January 14: Spring 2014 Previews: Novel Perspectives: The series continues with the narrators we like and those we don’t in my Post-1950 American Novel course.January 15: Spring 2014 Previews: A New Awakening: The most persistent challenge I face in my teaching and how I revised my Am Lit II syllabus in response, as the series rolls on.January 16: Spring 2014 Previews: Writing Our World: What I’m comfortable with for my new Writing II class, and what I really need your help with!January 17: Spring 2014 Previews: The Book Talks Resume: The series concludes with three upcoming book talks that will take me to new places, literally and philosophically.January 18-19: Crowd-sourced Spring Previews: Responses to the week’s posts and some of what my fellow AmericanStudiers are looking forward to this spring—add your previews in comments!January 20: The Real King: My annual MLK Day post kicks off a series on engaging with the complex histories behind the Civil Rights Movement.January 21: Civil Rights Histories: Rosa Parks: The series continues with the good, better, and best ways to remember an iconic figure and moment.January 22: Civil Rights Histories: Murders in Mississippi: Two cultural representations of a tragic event, and what each leaves out, as the series rolls on.January 23: Civil Rights Histories: George Wallace: Why we can’t remember a lifetime through its worst moments, but why we do have to focus on them nonetheless.January 24: Civil Rights Histories: Yuri Kochiyama: The series concludes with the inspiring American life that pushes way past racial binaries and ethnic categorizations.January 25-26: Crowd-sourced Civil Rights: Another crowd-sourced post, this one drawn from the civil rights responses and connections of fellow AmericanStudiers.January 27: Football Focalizes: Concussions and Hypocrisy: A Super Bowl-inspired series starts with the hypocrisy at the heart of 21st century football fandom.January 28: Football Focalizes: Racism and Forgiveness: The series continues with the controversial story that’s partly inspiring, and partly not so much. January 29: Football Focalizes: Rape and Recognition: Questions that we’ll never entirely answer, and why it’s vital to ask them nevertheless, as the series rolls on. January 30: Football Focalizes: RGIII and Winning: On winning and losing, success and failure, and iconic American figures and narratives.January 31: Football Focalizes: The Bigger Question: The series concludes with a bigger question about the role of football and sports in 21stcentury America.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics or themes you’d like to see covered in future series? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!
December 30: 2013 in Review: The Marathon Bombing: A series on 2013 stories I didn’t cover on the blog starts with the year’s biggest and darkest Boston event.December 31: 2013 in Review: Nelson Mandela: The series continues with ways to AmericanStudy the iconic 20th century leader.January 1: 2013 in Review: The Pope: Three American connections for the radical new pontiff, as the series rolls on. January 2: 2013 in Review: Iran: The challenges and importance of remembering the complex, interconnected histories of the US and our most prominent current adversary.January 3: 2013 in Review: Aaron Hernandez: The series concludes with the histories and perils of our national love affair with gangsters.January 4-5: Ani DiFranco and Slavery: A special addition to the series, in response to a very recent event and controversy.January 6: San Fran Sites: Angel Island: A series on Bay Area places and stories starts with the value of seeing a complex American site in person.January 7: San Fran Sites: Palace of Fine Arts: The series continues with the deeply strange and yet also inspiring artistic site.January 8: San Fran Sites: Alcatraz: Why it’s not so great to turn a prison into a tourist site, and why it might be okay, as the series rolls on.January 9: San Fran Sites: Muir Woods: The arguments for experiencing a natural wonder in solitude, and why it’s fitting to do so more communally as well.January 10: San Fran Sites: Remembering Chinatown: The series concludes with some thoughts on the past, the present, and a way to bridge the gap.January 11-12: Ben Mangrum’s Guest Post: A special Guest Post from one of the founding editors of the great new Ethos Review site.January 13: Spring 2014 Previews: A Fantastic Intro: A series on what I’m looking forward to this semester starts with the life skills my Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy course helps teach.January 14: Spring 2014 Previews: Novel Perspectives: The series continues with the narrators we like and those we don’t in my Post-1950 American Novel course.January 15: Spring 2014 Previews: A New Awakening: The most persistent challenge I face in my teaching and how I revised my Am Lit II syllabus in response, as the series rolls on.January 16: Spring 2014 Previews: Writing Our World: What I’m comfortable with for my new Writing II class, and what I really need your help with!January 17: Spring 2014 Previews: The Book Talks Resume: The series concludes with three upcoming book talks that will take me to new places, literally and philosophically.January 18-19: Crowd-sourced Spring Previews: Responses to the week’s posts and some of what my fellow AmericanStudiers are looking forward to this spring—add your previews in comments!January 20: The Real King: My annual MLK Day post kicks off a series on engaging with the complex histories behind the Civil Rights Movement.January 21: Civil Rights Histories: Rosa Parks: The series continues with the good, better, and best ways to remember an iconic figure and moment.January 22: Civil Rights Histories: Murders in Mississippi: Two cultural representations of a tragic event, and what each leaves out, as the series rolls on.January 23: Civil Rights Histories: George Wallace: Why we can’t remember a lifetime through its worst moments, but why we do have to focus on them nonetheless.January 24: Civil Rights Histories: Yuri Kochiyama: The series concludes with the inspiring American life that pushes way past racial binaries and ethnic categorizations.January 25-26: Crowd-sourced Civil Rights: Another crowd-sourced post, this one drawn from the civil rights responses and connections of fellow AmericanStudiers.January 27: Football Focalizes: Concussions and Hypocrisy: A Super Bowl-inspired series starts with the hypocrisy at the heart of 21st century football fandom.January 28: Football Focalizes: Racism and Forgiveness: The series continues with the controversial story that’s partly inspiring, and partly not so much. January 29: Football Focalizes: Rape and Recognition: Questions that we’ll never entirely answer, and why it’s vital to ask them nevertheless, as the series rolls on. January 30: Football Focalizes: RGIII and Winning: On winning and losing, success and failure, and iconic American figures and narratives.January 31: Football Focalizes: The Bigger Question: The series concludes with a bigger question about the role of football and sports in 21stcentury America.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics or themes you’d like to see covered in future series? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!
January 31, 2014
January 31, 2014: Football Focalizes: The Bigger Question
[In this Super Bowl week, a series on some of the American issues and questions with which the sport can help us engage. Join the huddle in comments, please!]
On one more big question about football in 2014 America.I’ve used football to engage with some very big American and human questions this week—racism and rape, historical hypocrisy and mythic success—and I don’t mean in my title to suggest that today’s question is bigger than (or even as big as) any of them. Instead, I mean that this is a bigger question about football itself—or rather sports themselves, although by any almost any measure football is the most popular sport in 2014 America—rather than about those related but certainly more all-encompassing issues. And the question, to put it bluntly and somewhat hyperbolically, is this: has football become what Karl Marx called religion, “the opium of the people,” a pleasant distraction from the huge problems plaguing our society, nation, and world?As the week’s posts have indicated, football is of course far from free of those social and cultural problems; moreover, as Dave Zirin argues in the piece hyperlinked under “a pleasant distraction,” it’s insulting to sports fans to insinuate that they turn off their brains or broader social engagement as a result of (or even during) their sportswatching. But those conditions and caveats notwithstanding, I think it’s still entirely fair to ask whether something like the NFL doesn’t serve (just as entertainment mediums such as Hollywood films and television can) as an escape from the inequalities, the crises, the looming disasters that define so much of the world around us in the early 21stcentury. Isn’t that, after all, the core of what NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell means by “the shield,” the layer of insulation separating the NFL’s image from the complexities and messiness of the world beyond?To be clear, such escapes are entirely necessary and beneficial—I’m not sure anybody could spend all day every day thinking about the hardest challenges facing us and our world, and I know it wouldn’t be healthy to try (there’s a reason why President Obama is such a big sports fan). But if and when the escapes get so big and become such central focal points, it is important to take a step back and consider whether they’ve become in at least some ways part of the problem, whether specifically because of the investment they require (see: those ticket prices) or broadly because of the collective focus and energy they swallow up. Football might not be opium, but it’s hard to deny that it can be a circus (as in “bread and circuses”), and that it wouldn’t hurt for us to find ways to step outside of the tent a bit more often than we tend to these days.January recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
On one more big question about football in 2014 America.I’ve used football to engage with some very big American and human questions this week—racism and rape, historical hypocrisy and mythic success—and I don’t mean in my title to suggest that today’s question is bigger than (or even as big as) any of them. Instead, I mean that this is a bigger question about football itself—or rather sports themselves, although by any almost any measure football is the most popular sport in 2014 America—rather than about those related but certainly more all-encompassing issues. And the question, to put it bluntly and somewhat hyperbolically, is this: has football become what Karl Marx called religion, “the opium of the people,” a pleasant distraction from the huge problems plaguing our society, nation, and world?As the week’s posts have indicated, football is of course far from free of those social and cultural problems; moreover, as Dave Zirin argues in the piece hyperlinked under “a pleasant distraction,” it’s insulting to sports fans to insinuate that they turn off their brains or broader social engagement as a result of (or even during) their sportswatching. But those conditions and caveats notwithstanding, I think it’s still entirely fair to ask whether something like the NFL doesn’t serve (just as entertainment mediums such as Hollywood films and television can) as an escape from the inequalities, the crises, the looming disasters that define so much of the world around us in the early 21stcentury. Isn’t that, after all, the core of what NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell means by “the shield,” the layer of insulation separating the NFL’s image from the complexities and messiness of the world beyond?To be clear, such escapes are entirely necessary and beneficial—I’m not sure anybody could spend all day every day thinking about the hardest challenges facing us and our world, and I know it wouldn’t be healthy to try (there’s a reason why President Obama is such a big sports fan). But if and when the escapes get so big and become such central focal points, it is important to take a step back and consider whether they’ve become in at least some ways part of the problem, whether specifically because of the investment they require (see: those ticket prices) or broadly because of the collective focus and energy they swallow up. Football might not be opium, but it’s hard to deny that it can be a circus (as in “bread and circuses”), and that it wouldn’t hurt for us to find ways to step outside of the tent a bit more often than we tend to these days.January recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
January 30, 2014
January 30, 2014: Football Focalizes: RGIII and Winning
[In this Super Bowl week, a series on some of the American issues and questions with which the sport can help us engage. Join the huddle in comments, please!]
On winning, perception, and American idols.In my first post in last year’s Super Bowl-inspired series, I focused on a December 2012 controversy surrounding Washington Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III. At the time, RGIII was perhaps the biggest story in the league, not only for his stellar rookie season but also because of his unique personality and seemingly limitless potential (and not just as a football player). But in the 2013 season, the stories and controversies surrounding RGIII reflected instead the fickle nature of such stardom—he began the season recuperating from the prior year’s season-ending injury, never quite seemed to get back to where he had been in that rookie season, and before the end of the year had been benched in favor of backup Kirk Cousins (a move that, along with the team’s dismal year, may have precipated the firing of head coach Mike Shanahan).Obviously it’s far too premature to say that Griffin has definitively lost his star potential or status (just as it was probably, in retrospect, too early to grant him that level after his rookie season alone). But there’s no question that the narrative has changed, and more exactly that Griffin is now no longer considered (notwithstanding his unquestionable talent) a definite “winner” in the NFL. Debates over winning vs. talent have long been a part of both the NFL specifically (see: Brady vs. Manning and Montana vs. Marino, to cite only two examples) and the sports world more broadly (see: Russell vs. Chamberlain, to cite perhaps the best known example of all). But such debates, and more specifically the power of being considered a “winner,” also have a great deal of valence in our larger culture and society—as illustrated by the example of Donald Trump, whose multiple bankruptcies and other public failures haven’t apparently dimmed his “winner” status in much of our collective perception.There’s certainly an element of universality, of simple human nature, in such idolization of “winners” (whatever the specifics or contexts of their situations). But these emphases are also closely tied to many different core American narratives: of individual success and the self-made man; of rags-to-riches stories and the American Dream; of the meritocracyand the mobility it promises. All of those narratives have a significant degree of circularity at their core: if RGIII wins, it’s because he’s a winner and has made his own success; if he doesn’t win, it’s because he’s not a winner and is lacking what it takes to get there; and so on. But perhaps these two back-to-back seasons can help us see the other side of these questions, the ways in which contingency and context have so much to do with winning and losing, success and failure. Injury notwithstanding, RGIII was fundamentally the same quarterback and person in 2013 as in 2012; if his circumstances and thus his results changed, that doesn’t mean we have to change the narratives as well.Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On winning, perception, and American idols.In my first post in last year’s Super Bowl-inspired series, I focused on a December 2012 controversy surrounding Washington Redskins rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III. At the time, RGIII was perhaps the biggest story in the league, not only for his stellar rookie season but also because of his unique personality and seemingly limitless potential (and not just as a football player). But in the 2013 season, the stories and controversies surrounding RGIII reflected instead the fickle nature of such stardom—he began the season recuperating from the prior year’s season-ending injury, never quite seemed to get back to where he had been in that rookie season, and before the end of the year had been benched in favor of backup Kirk Cousins (a move that, along with the team’s dismal year, may have precipated the firing of head coach Mike Shanahan).Obviously it’s far too premature to say that Griffin has definitively lost his star potential or status (just as it was probably, in retrospect, too early to grant him that level after his rookie season alone). But there’s no question that the narrative has changed, and more exactly that Griffin is now no longer considered (notwithstanding his unquestionable talent) a definite “winner” in the NFL. Debates over winning vs. talent have long been a part of both the NFL specifically (see: Brady vs. Manning and Montana vs. Marino, to cite only two examples) and the sports world more broadly (see: Russell vs. Chamberlain, to cite perhaps the best known example of all). But such debates, and more specifically the power of being considered a “winner,” also have a great deal of valence in our larger culture and society—as illustrated by the example of Donald Trump, whose multiple bankruptcies and other public failures haven’t apparently dimmed his “winner” status in much of our collective perception.There’s certainly an element of universality, of simple human nature, in such idolization of “winners” (whatever the specifics or contexts of their situations). But these emphases are also closely tied to many different core American narratives: of individual success and the self-made man; of rags-to-riches stories and the American Dream; of the meritocracyand the mobility it promises. All of those narratives have a significant degree of circularity at their core: if RGIII wins, it’s because he’s a winner and has made his own success; if he doesn’t win, it’s because he’s not a winner and is lacking what it takes to get there; and so on. But perhaps these two back-to-back seasons can help us see the other side of these questions, the ways in which contingency and context have so much to do with winning and losing, success and failure. Injury notwithstanding, RGIII was fundamentally the same quarterback and person in 2013 as in 2012; if his circumstances and thus his results changed, that doesn’t mean we have to change the narratives as well.Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
January 29, 2014
January 29, 2014: Football Focalizes: Rape and Recognition
[In this Super Bowl week, a series on some of the American issues and questions with which the sport can help us engage. Join the huddle in comments, please!]
On questions that are never entirely answerable—and why they’re still worth asking.In early November, the story broke that nearly a year earlier—in December 2012—a young woman had come to the Tallahassee police alleging that she had been raped by Jameis Winston, at the time red-shirting on the Florida State football team; this season, as the team’s red-shirt freshman quarterback, Winston was the leading contender for college football’s most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy. There were and remain all sorts of questions about why neither the Tallahassee police nor FSU seemed to have investigated the allegations until nearly a year later; in any case, when they did, they decided that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Winston, a decision that was revealed at an early December, controversially upbeat press conference. Less than two weeks later, Winston won the Heisman Trophy by a significant margin (although he was also left off of a number of ballots).Allegations of rape will always (in the absence of some sort of incontrovertible evidence or eye-witness testimony or the like) be very difficult to substantiate and prove, especially when the accused is alleging (as Winston did) that he had consensual sex with the accuser; the Winston case is partly an illustration of that difficult fact of our legal and justice system. But of course, the questions surrounding the authorities’ year of inaction in the Winston case, as well as the parallel questions about the timing of the press conference (at which the state’s attorney obliquely referenced the upcoming Heisman vote, while simultaneously claiming he was unaffected by that factor), raise another uncertain issue: whether Winston’s status on campus and in his city, as perhaps the most sought-after recruit (and then the most acclaimed football player) in the country, impacted either the investigation or its results. It’s entirely possible that those elements had no impact; but we’d be naïve not to consider the possibility that they played a role.Legal questions are not the same as football or perception ones, of course. But if we treat those two kinds of uncertain issues as overtly parallel, it would have at least one distinct benefit: just as the uncertainities surrounding rape charges do not mean that police and authorities shouldn’t investigate such charges to the full extent of their abilities, so too do the enduring uncertainties about the role of status and recognition in a case like Winston’s not in any way mean that we shouldn’t ask and consider those questions as we analyze and respond to such a case. I don’t have any idea what happened with Winston and his accuser, but I know this: from Kobe Bryantto Ben Roethlisberger, to cite only two other high-profile cases, rape and sexual assault are a part of the culture of sports in America, and the least we can do is to treat the issue with the seriousness and analytical rigor it demands. Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On questions that are never entirely answerable—and why they’re still worth asking.In early November, the story broke that nearly a year earlier—in December 2012—a young woman had come to the Tallahassee police alleging that she had been raped by Jameis Winston, at the time red-shirting on the Florida State football team; this season, as the team’s red-shirt freshman quarterback, Winston was the leading contender for college football’s most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy. There were and remain all sorts of questions about why neither the Tallahassee police nor FSU seemed to have investigated the allegations until nearly a year later; in any case, when they did, they decided that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Winston, a decision that was revealed at an early December, controversially upbeat press conference. Less than two weeks later, Winston won the Heisman Trophy by a significant margin (although he was also left off of a number of ballots).Allegations of rape will always (in the absence of some sort of incontrovertible evidence or eye-witness testimony or the like) be very difficult to substantiate and prove, especially when the accused is alleging (as Winston did) that he had consensual sex with the accuser; the Winston case is partly an illustration of that difficult fact of our legal and justice system. But of course, the questions surrounding the authorities’ year of inaction in the Winston case, as well as the parallel questions about the timing of the press conference (at which the state’s attorney obliquely referenced the upcoming Heisman vote, while simultaneously claiming he was unaffected by that factor), raise another uncertain issue: whether Winston’s status on campus and in his city, as perhaps the most sought-after recruit (and then the most acclaimed football player) in the country, impacted either the investigation or its results. It’s entirely possible that those elements had no impact; but we’d be naïve not to consider the possibility that they played a role.Legal questions are not the same as football or perception ones, of course. But if we treat those two kinds of uncertain issues as overtly parallel, it would have at least one distinct benefit: just as the uncertainities surrounding rape charges do not mean that police and authorities shouldn’t investigate such charges to the full extent of their abilities, so too do the enduring uncertainties about the role of status and recognition in a case like Winston’s not in any way mean that we shouldn’t ask and consider those questions as we analyze and respond to such a case. I don’t have any idea what happened with Winston and his accuser, but I know this: from Kobe Bryantto Ben Roethlisberger, to cite only two other high-profile cases, rape and sexual assault are a part of the culture of sports in America, and the least we can do is to treat the issue with the seriousness and analytical rigor it demands. Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
January 28, 2014
January 28, 2014: Football Focalizes: Racism and Forgiveness
[In this Super Bowl week, a series on some of the American issues and questions with which the sport can help us engage. Join the huddle in comments, please!]
On the story that should inspire me—and why it kind of doesn’t.Last July, just as NFL training camps were getting underway, video surfaced of fourth-year Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper angrily confronting and using a racial slur to attack an African American security guard at a June country music concert. It seemed for a while as if the controversy would end with Cooper no longer a member of the team, not least because the starting quarterback at the time (and thus the player with whom a wide receiver would need the most chemistry) was Michael Vick; but instead, Cooper apologized profusely, both publicly and privately to his teammates, was fined by the team, and all involved moved on. Cooper ended up having a pretty successful year (partly with Vick as quarterback and partly with his replacement Nick Foles), and the team, after a disastrously bad 2012 season, won its division and made the playoffs (which as I write this post have not yet begun).There’s a lot that’s inspiring about the Cooper story. For one thing, compared to the divisions and defensiveness that accompanied Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s ignorant and hateful comments (which extended to African Americans as well as gay people), in the Cooper case there was widespread agreement that his words were wrong and hurtful, expressed by the offender himself as well as in the broader conversations. (Those conversations did also include some of the “African Americans use the n-word” pushback that seems inevitable in every such controversy, but most commentators were willing to acknowledge that Cooper’s anger and threat differentiated his comments from other examples.) For another, it seems, at least in the stories and narratives written about the controversy’s aftermath, that the Eagles team and organization has genuinely moved toward what I’d describe as one of my most ideal goals for America: a mixed-race community working to acknowledge and engage with divisive and troubling issues, and finding a new and hopefully more meaningful unity in response to both the issue itself and that engagement with it.That’s definitely one way to see what happened, and I don’t want to dismiss it. But at the risk of being a Debbie Downer, I have to say that there’s another way to interpret the incident’s aftermath, one that would parallel it to the Phil Robertson story instead of contrasting the two: that like Robertson (star of the highest-rated reality TV show in television history), Cooper is very important to his employer; and so that like Robertson, whose suspension from A&E ended after a couple of weeks, Cooper has been quickly forgiven and accepted back into the fold in order to allow him to continue performing that important (and profitable) role. It’s not either-or, of course; the team and ownership could be thinking of such business concerns at the same time that the players and locker room were moving forward in the ways I described above. And I’m not suggesting that Cooper should be forever disgraced or out of work because of one moment and statement. Instead, and as always, I’d simply note that we need to make sure to keep talking about the difficult and challenging issue, to make sure that we collectively ca model that best-case scenario for what transpired with the Eagles.Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the story that should inspire me—and why it kind of doesn’t.Last July, just as NFL training camps were getting underway, video surfaced of fourth-year Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper angrily confronting and using a racial slur to attack an African American security guard at a June country music concert. It seemed for a while as if the controversy would end with Cooper no longer a member of the team, not least because the starting quarterback at the time (and thus the player with whom a wide receiver would need the most chemistry) was Michael Vick; but instead, Cooper apologized profusely, both publicly and privately to his teammates, was fined by the team, and all involved moved on. Cooper ended up having a pretty successful year (partly with Vick as quarterback and partly with his replacement Nick Foles), and the team, after a disastrously bad 2012 season, won its division and made the playoffs (which as I write this post have not yet begun).There’s a lot that’s inspiring about the Cooper story. For one thing, compared to the divisions and defensiveness that accompanied Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s ignorant and hateful comments (which extended to African Americans as well as gay people), in the Cooper case there was widespread agreement that his words were wrong and hurtful, expressed by the offender himself as well as in the broader conversations. (Those conversations did also include some of the “African Americans use the n-word” pushback that seems inevitable in every such controversy, but most commentators were willing to acknowledge that Cooper’s anger and threat differentiated his comments from other examples.) For another, it seems, at least in the stories and narratives written about the controversy’s aftermath, that the Eagles team and organization has genuinely moved toward what I’d describe as one of my most ideal goals for America: a mixed-race community working to acknowledge and engage with divisive and troubling issues, and finding a new and hopefully more meaningful unity in response to both the issue itself and that engagement with it.That’s definitely one way to see what happened, and I don’t want to dismiss it. But at the risk of being a Debbie Downer, I have to say that there’s another way to interpret the incident’s aftermath, one that would parallel it to the Phil Robertson story instead of contrasting the two: that like Robertson (star of the highest-rated reality TV show in television history), Cooper is very important to his employer; and so that like Robertson, whose suspension from A&E ended after a couple of weeks, Cooper has been quickly forgiven and accepted back into the fold in order to allow him to continue performing that important (and profitable) role. It’s not either-or, of course; the team and ownership could be thinking of such business concerns at the same time that the players and locker room were moving forward in the ways I described above. And I’m not suggesting that Cooper should be forever disgraced or out of work because of one moment and statement. Instead, and as always, I’d simply note that we need to make sure to keep talking about the difficult and challenging issue, to make sure that we collectively ca model that best-case scenario for what transpired with the Eagles.Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
January 27, 2014
January 27, 2014: Football Focalizes: Concussions and Hypocrisy
[In this Super Bowl week, a series on some of the American issues and questions with which the sport can help us engage. Join the huddle in comments, please!]
On the gap between what we know and what we do.In the decades prior to the Civil War, virtually every Northern (and American) household contained numerous products made from cotton and other materials produced by slave labor. We tend, in our narratives of slavery and the war, to oppose the North and South, but the realities were significantly different: not only because abolitionism was a minority opinion even in a place like Boston; but also and even more saliently because of those economic and material interconnections between the regions. Those interconnections don’t mean that the North was pro-slavery, exactly—but they certainly mean that the North cannot be viewed or understood as separate from the realities of the slave system. Indeed, if anything it could be argued that the North existed in a state of deep hypocrisy, benefitting from those realities of slavery without having to confront their dark, horrific, everyday details.As I transition to this post’s main topic, I need to be very clear that I am not equating NFL players with slaves, nor the league with the plantation system (equations that have occasionally, and very controversially, been advanced by players or commentators). Instead, I’m making a parallel to the state of deep hypocrisy in which most NFL fans and viewers—communities to which I belong—exist in this early 21stcentury moment. The scientific and medical consensus about what the sport does to those who play it—or at least what it can do, and has done far too frequently—has become clearer and clearer, and the tragic results of those effects more and more overt and undeniable. Yet we still watch, in record and if anything increasing numbers—numbers that amplify the profits and successes of the teams, of the networks that broadcast their games, of the advertisers who flock to them, of the sport as a whole. All those entities are of course caught up in the web of hypocrisy as well—but so, again, are we fans and viewers, including this AmericanStudier for sure.So what’s the answer, not for the league or those other entities but for fans and viewers? One of my favorite current writers and one of the most thoughtful observers of American culture and society, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has written extensively about his own decision to stop watching and supporting the NFL, a decision that would seem the only way to meaningfully act upon what we now know. My knowledge, and in most ways my perspective, mirror Coates’ very closely; yet my actions have not, and I can’t say that I plan to stop watching football games any time soon. (Although I most definitely would discourage my sons from playing the sport if they showed an interest.) Which is to say, I don’t have an answer, not for myself and thus certainly not for anyone else or our culture more broadly. But at the very least, as I hope this blog consistently illustrates in relationship to all its different focal points, it’s pretty important that we think, openly and collectively, about the question. Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the gap between what we know and what we do.In the decades prior to the Civil War, virtually every Northern (and American) household contained numerous products made from cotton and other materials produced by slave labor. We tend, in our narratives of slavery and the war, to oppose the North and South, but the realities were significantly different: not only because abolitionism was a minority opinion even in a place like Boston; but also and even more saliently because of those economic and material interconnections between the regions. Those interconnections don’t mean that the North was pro-slavery, exactly—but they certainly mean that the North cannot be viewed or understood as separate from the realities of the slave system. Indeed, if anything it could be argued that the North existed in a state of deep hypocrisy, benefitting from those realities of slavery without having to confront their dark, horrific, everyday details.As I transition to this post’s main topic, I need to be very clear that I am not equating NFL players with slaves, nor the league with the plantation system (equations that have occasionally, and very controversially, been advanced by players or commentators). Instead, I’m making a parallel to the state of deep hypocrisy in which most NFL fans and viewers—communities to which I belong—exist in this early 21stcentury moment. The scientific and medical consensus about what the sport does to those who play it—or at least what it can do, and has done far too frequently—has become clearer and clearer, and the tragic results of those effects more and more overt and undeniable. Yet we still watch, in record and if anything increasing numbers—numbers that amplify the profits and successes of the teams, of the networks that broadcast their games, of the advertisers who flock to them, of the sport as a whole. All those entities are of course caught up in the web of hypocrisy as well—but so, again, are we fans and viewers, including this AmericanStudier for sure.So what’s the answer, not for the league or those other entities but for fans and viewers? One of my favorite current writers and one of the most thoughtful observers of American culture and society, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has written extensively about his own decision to stop watching and supporting the NFL, a decision that would seem the only way to meaningfully act upon what we now know. My knowledge, and in most ways my perspective, mirror Coates’ very closely; yet my actions have not, and I can’t say that I plan to stop watching football games any time soon. (Although I most definitely would discourage my sons from playing the sport if they showed an interest.) Which is to say, I don’t have an answer, not for myself and thus certainly not for anyone else or our culture more broadly. But at the very least, as I hope this blog consistently illustrates in relationship to all its different focal points, it’s pretty important that we think, openly and collectively, about the question. Next issue tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
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