Help This Man Find Honest Work

I’m starting a personal campaign to help Chuck Klosterman find a new job. For those who don’t know, Klosterman is the latest in a line of writers for “The Ethicist” column in the New York Times Magazine, a parade that began after Randy Cohen was let go in early 2011.

Klosterman is no ethicist. His background is sports and pop culture, having written for Spin magazine, Esquire, GQ, and ESPN’s Grantland.com web site, among other publications.^[1] He was hired by The Times Magazine’s new (2010) editor, Hugo Lindgren, who also has a background of writing extensively about sports and music. What a coincidence.

Okay, so what’s gotten my goat? It was the answer to this ethical question in Klosterman’s column Sunday, the headline of which was “Foul Ball.” As posed by Jeff McNear of Larkspur, California, the question was:

At a baseball game in San Francisco, my friend Fritz managed to catch a foul ball. A kid sitting a few rows behind my friend was also among those scrambling for the ball. Urged on by 50 surrounding fans, my friend gave the ball to the kid. The fans cheered. Not two minutes later, a rival fan showed up and offered the kid $100 for the ball. With his parents’ encouragement, the kid exchanged the ball for the cash. My friend was outraged. Should the kid have refused the cash, split the money with my friend or given all the cash to Fritz?

Klosterman replied that it was “profoundly depraved” to sell the ball. He wrote, “The boy wanted the ball for motives that had nothing to do with its resale value.” It was “an intangible gift … a memento from a live event that can’t be replicated, an expression of camaraderie between two people who (in theory) love the same game, and the physical representation of a unique memory.” 

Baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. Blah, blah, blah.

In addition to the offense of weepy sentimentality, Klosterman is guilty of assuming facts not in evidence. Here are some things that are missing from his reply:

• We don’t know whether the scenario is described accurately. This is Klosterman’s rendition of what McNear said that his friend told him, so it’s double hearsay.
• Even if the description is accurate, there are some important things we don’t know: how old "the kid" is, for example. Is he seven? Seventeen? It could make a big difference.
• We don’t know why the kid wanted the ball. Even if, as Klosterman assumes, he wanted it for reasons other than resale, we don’t know what those reasons were. Maybe he was going to throw it back on the field because it came from someone on the visiting team.
• We don’t know the economic status of the family. Maybe the parents desperately need the money and the boy knew that.
• We don’t know the boy’s baseball background. Maybe he doesn’t much care about the game, or maybe he’s a player himself and has tons of baseballs at home and doesn’t really need this one.

Facts are essential to any discussion of ethics, and the sketchy details of this case and the insufficient factual analysis make me question Klosterman’s qualifications to be writing an ethics column. I am bothered by his shallow reasoning. I am bothered by his lack of intellectual rigor. And I am bothered that he uses The Times Magazine to express an opinion on something he doesn’t know enough about.

If the scene painted by Mr. McNear were used as a springboard to some witty and insightful social commentary, I could forgive the factual gaps. But Klosterman’s profound conclusion is merely this: “Though the family had every legal right to sell this gift, it was wrong of them to do so.”

He should go back to writing about sports and pop culture.^[2] 

—End of Part One—

(Continued tomorrow.)

____

[1] See http://pages.simonandschuster.com/chuckklosterman.

[2] Apparently, many readers agree: surveys show that only about 20% of them agree with the answers in his column. See http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/how-often-do-readers-agree-with-chuck-klosterman-as-the-ethicist/.

On Change, Oceans, and Weird Time

"California here I’ve come,

Right back where I once was from."

Yes, I’ve made a big move, and various aphorisms come to mind:

• Change is the only constant
• Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
• When you’re finished changing, you’re finished
• Change is good, but dollars are better

Whatever the apt expression, I’ve made this transition and am settling in once again to the Southern California lifestyle. The beautiful city that I left 36 years ago feels surprisingly familiar. Just a few feet above downtown airplanes still glide down to land beside a bay dotted with sailboats. Balboa Park still harbors the zoo, museums, and the Navy Hospital where I was stationed for a couple of years. And the various city neighborhoods — North Park, Hillcrest, Mission Hills — still have their individual charms.

There are some differences, of course. The downtown, once neglected and blighted, has been revived with condos, skyscrapers, the convention center, and a new ballpark where I got sunburned one recent Sunday afternoon. Gentrification has improved some of the older urban neighborhoods, adding new restaurants, shops, and multiuse facilities to the historic Spanish architecture. And the bus system, awkward at best in the 70s, has been augmented by light rail; I am able to get virtually anywhere without a car. (I sold mine in Atlanta and don't plan to buy another.) 

One constant is the vast Pacific. It continues to loom off Point Loma as big as eternity, and it pushes its marine layer ashore every morning this time of year. “June gloom,” as the locals call it, because the sun doesn’t come out until after 10 a.m.  Egad!

There’s another problem with the Pacific — it seems to be on the wrong side. My internal GPS system orients toward the nearest major body of water. In St. Louis it was the Mississippi; in Chicago it was Lake Michigan; in DC or Daytona Beach it was the Atlantic. The first time I moved here I was 180° off for about three months. 

I was talking recently to my Uncle Fred, a Miami native, and he asked how far east I had to go to get to the ocean from my apartment. I said, “Oh, about 2,200 miles. But if you’re asking how far it is to the Pacific, it’s about five minutes to the west.” I guess I’m not the only one for whom the ocean is on the wrong side. LOL

The other major adjustment I need to make has to do with the clock. Although I’ve lived in nine different states, in my whole life I’ve always been on either Eastern or Central time except for 2½ years. But of course California is on Pacific time. Sports Center comes on here at three in the afternoon! The telecast of an evening baseball game from New York or Boston, for example, ends here about 7:30 p.m. And I will be able to stay awake until the end of a Monday Night Football game for the first time in many years.

Back in the 1970s when one of my Navy friends was transferred from San Diego he wrote me from Norfolk that he was glad to be back on “real time.” Not me; I’m liking Weird Time. It’s a nice change. 

Here are a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure. 

Farmer's market on my block

My apartment complex

View from near my place

My Navy Hospital office building

View of the bay and downtown from Point Loma

Here's my contact info:  4021 Falcon St. #409, San Diego, CA 92103. Phone: (770) 757-1815. Please look me up if you’re ever in the San Diego area.

Fighting The Tyranny of Stuff

Stuff, n: Household or personal articles considered 

as a group. Unspecified material. Worthless objects.

I'm going to be moving next month, and I’m determined to simplify my life. I’m selling my car, donating most of my furniture, and getting rid of “stuff.”  

For years I have schlepped stuff around the country, to nine states and about 20 different addresses. There was always more stuff than I ever really needed, and I seldom if ever used some of it: casserole dishes, candlesticks, folding chairs, patio furniture, a beat-up old armoire, a bulky old television, etc., etc. After one of my Navy moves I found boxes that had stickers on them from three different moving companies … and they hadn’t been opened since they were packed, three addresses earlier. Who needs this much stuff? 

I used to think this stuff meant something important because it reminded me of someone or someplace that I didn’t want to forget. What about those important tchotchkes from Italy or Ireland or Hawaii? I’ll take a picture of them and remember them that way. I don’t need three dozen glasses of various shapes and sizes. And I only use one coffee mug at a time; why do I have eighteen? Is the “Car Talk” mug that I got with a contribution to NPR really all that important? 

How about the extra bed frame for the spare bedroom that I won’t have in my new one-bedroom apartment? Some formerly homeless family can put it to good use if I give it to a charity here in Atlanta.  

The pictures I’ve scanned into my computer; the memories are in my head. They’re better than possessions, and a lot easier to carry. Good-bye to stuff.

This feels good. It’s cathartic. A fresh start in a new place. Effective in mid-June (date TBD) I will be living in the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego, CA. (See below.)

 

 

The apartment complex is basically the entire square block from left to right and back behind in the picture. The neighborhood has a bit of a Greenwich Village feel to it. There are some small shops along Washington Street, the east/west thoroughfare in the foreground. And yes, for you eagle eyes out there: there’s a Starbuck’s in the building. (Green sign.)  

I'll post my address when the move has been completed. My phone number will stay the same: 770-757-1815.

"California here I come ...

right back where I once was from."

Some Things to Ponder

Here are some questions I’ve been churning in my head lately. Perhaps you can help me wrap my mind around the answers.

• Recalling that “the medium is the message” (see my 3-part series on Marshall McLuhan in February and March of last year), what inventions or discoveries in human history rival the iPhone’s message (i.e., its effect on society)?

o   Television and radio, perhaps?

o   Antibiotics?

o   The wheel?

o   Discovery of fire?

• Why do some people get so upset about who other people love? Why can’t we all just effing leave each other alone and mind our own business?

• Why are we still fighting in Afghanistan?

• Regarding the state of news reporting today—

o     Is there any such thing as real journalism anymore, or is it all just infotainment?

o     Would Edward R. Murrow consider Rush Limbaugh an ignorant vulgarian, beneath his contempt?

• On the prison system—

o     Why does the U.S. have 25% of the world’s jailed prisoners but only 5% of the world’s population? Is it because our “war on drugs” is working really well?

o     Why did California spend nearly twice as much on prisons last year than it did on higher education? (Other states had similar numbers.) Is it because they value what people learn in prison more than what they would learn if they were in college? Or is it because to go to college is to be a snob, as Rick Santorum says?

• Regarding the health reform law:

o      Tea Party leaders oppose it and healthcare professionals support it. Who do you suppose knows more about the subject?

o      Why don’t people realize that “insurance” involves spreading risk and that the only way we can begin to get costs under control is for everyone to share that risk? (Even the Heritage Foundation proposed an “individual mandate” 25 years ago.)

o      Every other civilized country covers its citizens’ healthcare needs, but we have the most expensive, least efficient system on the planet and it doesn’t cover everyone. Is that perhaps because the “free market” doesn’t work well for healthcare?

 o    Have we forgotten that according to the Constitution a purpose of the Federal Government is to “promote the general Welfare”?

• Considering the presidential nomination process:

o      Other than pollsters, lobbyists and the media, who benefits from the months-long primary season?

o      Do we get better presidential candidates now than years ago when party bosses picked them?

o      What happened to critical thinking skills? Is it too much to ask that politicians use them?

o      Why would a candidate ever take a “pledge” to do or not do something? Perhaps they have forgotten Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admonition: 

"A foolish consistency is the 

hobgoblin of little minds, 

adored by little statesmen 

and philosophers and divines. "

And on a lighter note— 

• Casablanca turns 70 this year. Here’s looking at you, kid!

• Why couldn’t Portland have Southern California weather? And why is it so oddly wonderful and wonderfully odd?

• How could two of the three toilets on my flight home go out of service for four hours?

• Did my seatmate on the flight have one too many? Does she forget Dorothy Parker’s little ditty:

I like to drink a Martini,

But only two at the most.

Three I’m under the table,

Four I’m under the host.

Finally, not exactly a light note, but a quote that's appropriate for this week's Supreme Court arguments:

Every power vested in a Government is 

in its na­ture sovereign, and includes by force 

of the term, a right to employ all means req­uisite and 

fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power.  

–A. Hamilton (Founding Father), speaking about 

the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.

Random Thoughts, Various Things

Here are some miscellaneous things I’ve been thinking about—

Politics.  I pay as little attention as possible to the political campaigns, but from the snippets I pick up Rick Santorum is a nut case. As The Washington Post said recently, Santorum may appeal to paranoid religious conservatives, but attacks on JFK, apocalyptic talk of a “war on people of faith,” and calling it snobbery to go to college sound crazy to most of us. Zealotry won’t gain the votes of moderates and independents, and it’s they who choose presidents.

As for Mitt Romney, this gaffe-prone stuffed shirt boasts that his wife drives two Cadillacs, has friends who are NASCAR team owners (not mere fans), and thinks $10,000 is a friendly wager. With such credentials he won’t attract many working-class Americans.

The President should just sit back and let the Republicans commit unforced errors and disqualify themselves.

A side note.  This primary campaign foolishness is a direct result of switching over to the popular election of convention delegates. Yeah, sure, pure democracy is a great theory. But it requires a well-informed electorate, which we clearly don’t have given the state of the news media today. (Thank you, Roger Ailes!) Were we really any worse off when candidates were chosen by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms?

Health policy.  Didja happen to notice that the Affordable Care Act (the health reform legislation that will be two years old later this month) has eliminated lifetime limits on insurance coverage for more than 105 million Americans? No? Well you probably missed that tidbit because facts and thoughtful analysis aren’t entertaining enough to make the so-called “news” these days. For those who missed it, here’s the full meal deal…

Previously, lifetime caps meant that insurance coverage could run out just when you need it most (e.g., due to a serious accident or illness). But under the ACA, health plans renewed on or after Sept. 23, 2010 cannot have lifetime limits, and millions of Americans were in such plans previously. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that 59% of all workers who had employer-based health insurance had some lifetime limit in 2009, and a study by the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans showed that nine out of ten people who bought individual coverage also had a lifetime limit. When you run the numbers, you realize that 70 million people in large employer plans, 25 million in small employer plans, and 10 million with individual policies had lifetime limits on their health benefits before the Affordable Care Act passed. Thus 105 million Americans now enjoy improved coverage without lifetime limits. And Republicans want to repeal “Obamacare.” I don’t get it.

Universal health coverage.  Here’s something else I don’t get — why we don't hear much about a certain politician’s radical proposal for universal healthcare a few years ago. See if you can identify this socialist-sounding individual. He wrote:

One of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life. [W]e have made remarkable progress toward that goal, opening the doors to millions of our fellow countrymen who were seeking equal opportunities in education, jobs and voting.  
      Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care. Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. …[O]ur present system of health care insurance suffers from two major flaws. First, even though more Americans carry health insurance than ever before, the [millions of] Americans who remain uninsured often need it the most and are most unlikely to obtain it. They include many who work in seasonal or transient occupations, high-risk cases, and those who are ineligible for Medicaid despite low incomes. 

     Second, those Americans who do carry health insurance often lack coverage which is balanced, comprehensive and fully protective …. These gaps in health protection can have tragic consequences. They can cause people to delay seeking medical attention until it is too late. Then a medical crisis ensues, followed by huge medical bills--or worse. Delays in treatment can end in death or lifelong disability.

This obviously left-leaning politician went on to propose a “comprehensive health insurance plan” that would offer universal coverage for all Americans. “Comprehensive health insurance is an idea whose time has come in America,” he stated. “There has long been a need to assure every American financial access to high quality health care. As medical costs go up, that need grows more pressing.”

The time was ripe back then to enact a plan of universal coverage. It would have been more “radical” than the health reform law that is now so much despised by Republicans and Tea Party bloviators. But we don’t hear much about this plan today. Why not? Because its proponent was Richard Nixon and the year was 1974, the year of Watergate. If not for that scandal, we would probably have a program of universal health insurance today, and it would be an accepted part of our national heritage: something we’re entitled to, like Social Security and Medicare. It would be another example of pursuing the Founding Fathers’ dream to “promote the general Welfare.”

The happiness project.  In January I wrote about the “happiness class” that my double cousin Doug Smith teaches at DePauw University and also at the Canyon Ranch resort a few times each year. Doug recently made a guest appearance on WOSU-FM, the Columbus, Ohio NPR station. You can hear him talk about what happiness is and how to get it by clicking here. (The headline has to do with a play about Afghanistan, but click on the green play button below the picture and skip forward to 34:45.)

Doug also wrote to some of his happiness disciples recently about pro golfer Rory McIlroy, who seems to know a lot about happiness already even though he’s just 22. In an interview quoted in USAToday Rory compared how he plays the game of golf to Tiger Woods’ approach. He said:

[Tiger] gives out this aura ... ‘I am going to rip your head off on the first tee.’  I felt like that was the way I needed to be to win a major.  But I quickly found out that that isn’t me and that isn’t how I play my best golf.  That was a big day for me, because I realized that I don’t need to be anyone else to win golf tournaments.  If I have my own mannerisms and do my own thing and be the person I am, that is hopefully going to be good enough.

Well, it is good enough, Rory! You're now the #1 ranked golfer in the world. 

Doug’s take on this was, “I think what Rory is talking about is loving the game… [and] playing from something deeper than fear and ego.” The Happiness Project teaches that living comfortably in one's own skin while avoiding fear and ego are keys to finding the kind of deep and abiding contentment we all seek.

Peace, y'all!

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