Two stories every sports writer should read, for different reasons

Some days, you're better for having read the web. Today is one of those days.

Wesley Morris's NYT Magazine piece on white folks' fear of the black man's genitalia, "Last Taboo," sounds uncomfortable. It's not. It is brutally frank, at times hilarious, but throughout, it treats the topic with the respect it deserves--and calls out Seth MacFarlane in the process:

Officially, there are no penises in “Ted 2,” the comedy written by, directed by and starring Seth MacFarlane that was a hit last summer. And yet they’re everywhere — scary black ones. Mark Wahlberg plays a New England knucklehead named John, who swears that you can’t use the internet without running into one. When a mishap at a fertility clinic leaves him covered in semen, a staff member tells him not to worry; it’s just the sperm of men with sickle-cell anemia, a disease that, in the United States, overwhelmingly afflicts African-Americans. John’s best friend, Ted — a nasty animated teddy bear — gets a huge kick out of this: “You hear that? You’re covered in rejected black-guy sperm,” it says. “You look like a Kardashian!"

The sperm bank is the pair’s Plan B. Plan A entails Wahlberg and the bear breaking into Tom Brady’s house and stealing some of his spunk as he sleeps. When they lift the sheets, staring at his crotch, they’re bathed in the golden light of video-game treasure. In another movie, this might be a clever conceit. Here it feels like paranoid propaganda, a deluxe version of what entertainment and politics have been doing for more than 200 years: inventing new ways to assert black inferiority. Now a teddy bear has a greater claim to humanity than the black people it mocks.

Just read it all.

In a piece that really was uncomfortable, Deadspin spun out an obit for/tribute to Jennifer Frey, the one-time superstar sports writer who succumbed to alcoholism in March at the age of 47. Every reporter of a certain age who covered national sports ran into Jennifer. I attended one of her March Madness-tub-full-o-liquor-post-deadline parties. And everyone, even those who didn't know her, had an opinion about her. Not all of them were altogether positive. But everyone acknowledged her talent. What the story touches on, but doesn't quite delve into, is the pervasiveness of drinking in journalism--an old, sad story.

Speaking for myself, but I suspect for a whole lot of other writers, there but for the grace of God...

Crickets

Suppose they gave a Charter vote and nobody came?
That appears to be the intent of the leaders in our fair city of Plattsburgh. Tuesday night, five entire human beings showed up to hear a presentation at Stafford Middle School on whether the city should change its form of government so that it's run by a city manager.
Sounds boring, and speaking as the former chair of the 2015 City of Plattsburgh Charter Commission, I can attest it kinda is. But it's no idle exercise.
The question is on the November ballot. 'Burghers can opt for a professional manager, as nearly half of all local American governments do, or keep the current system, in which the elected mayor oversees all government administrative functions, everything from planning to snow removal.
The depressed turnout was depressing, especially given that a similar forum the week before attracted only 11 hominids. That means a total of 16 people out of a population of 20,000 came to the forums.
Even worse? The people who should really care about this stuff, Mayor James Calnon and city council members, didn't deign to show--with the notable exception of Councilman Dale Dowdle, who attended the Oct. 19 session.
The media were equally neglectful. The Press-Republican covered the first forum--and that was it. No reporter from any outlet came to the second.
You could blame the poor attendance on general civic apathy, or Trump-Clinton fatigue, or the Cubs. But you'd be wrong.
I blame the mayor. Last year, the Charter Commission initially decided to let voters weigh in on three issues in November of 2015: Should the City Council and mayoral terms be staggered so that no more than three of the seven positions would turn over in a given election? Should the ancient Charter language be cleaned up and the document updated? And should the city change to a city manager model from the current strong mayor system?
But Mayor Calnon lobbied publicly and privately against the wording of the city-manager question, until eventually the Commission reversed itself and took the city-manager issue off the table in 2015. In return, Calnon promised to put city manager before the voters in 2016.
But for some reason, Calnon waited until late August to ask the council to put it on this year's November ballot. And he almost lost. Then, he had no plan to get the word out to the public. Former Commission Secretary Rod Sherman jumped on the grenade, and worked hard (for free) to arrange the information-packed public forums on an insanely tight timetable.
Turns out it was too tight. Nobody came. And almost nobody knows the question is even on the ballot, or that a manager wouldn't come into the job until 2021, or a hundred other facts, big and small, that would be useful to voters. The city wasted the time of two city-manager experts, one from Fairport, New York, and the other from Ossining, who drove five hours each way to deliver their knowledge to an empty room.
But there's the Internet, you say! Yes there is. And it's a big, cold, endless labyrinth. Anyone seeking information on the city website must go spelunking; the front page reveals absolutely nothing about the ballot proposition. (If you don't like online scavenger hunts, take this shortcut.)
However, the mayor is crystal clear in his reelection campaign that he doesn't want the proposal to pass. Apparently, he doesn't want anyone to know it exists, either.
An attendee at the Tuesday session wants to drum up a Vote Yes campaign for the manager idea, so the proposition could get an airing for a week or two. Better late than never, and better than nothing, and not nearly as good as it should have been.
To paraphrase Charlie Pierce, this is your democracy, Plattsburgh. Cherish it.

Elise Stefanik grows old

Elise Stefanik, the GOP rep from my district, New York’s 21st, is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, anointed as the future of the party before she even won the seat. Fawning conservative media laud her as a winner who can woo women and Millennials with youthful ideas, and ideals.

As an undergraduate at Harvard a little over a decade ago (like I said, she’s young), she shamed Harvard undergrads in a column about the dearth of women in leadership positions at campus organizations. 

She also threw shade, as the kidz say, on Harvard students who disrupted CIA and Homeland Security speakers during a campus forum on counter-terrorism. "Yesterday was the first time that I was both embarrassed and ashamed to be associated with my fellow Harvard students," she wrote. 

More recently, she’s been the proud co-sponsor of a bill to protect sex-crime survivors.

And yet, Elise Stefanik clings like a zebra mussel to Donald Trump.

Stefanik has refused to drop her support for the GOP presidential candidate despite a dozen allegations that Trump sexually battered, assaulted or harassed women. While Stefanik criticized Trump’s now-infamous bus conversation with Billy Bush, she stands by the GOP’s man—even as many of her colleagues, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, are fleeing him.

Indeed, Republicans last week released a poll showing Stefanik crushing her Democratic and Green Party challengers. Would dumping Trump jeopardize that lead? The congresswoman evidently thinks so. She’s not taking any chances.

Stefanik certainly showed some idealism in her Harvard days. And these days, she says she takes her responsibility as a role model for young women and girls seriously. But her real lesson for all the kids out there is that when you’re a 30-something grownup, you learn to accept certain things, unpleasant things, maybe even criminal things, if you want to get ahead.

No use letting ideals trump a paycheck. 

Return to Glory

There are 21 days until we know the fate of the republic. And so must I emerge from a long bloggy dormancy to chronicle these precious three weeks from my unique perch in my once-in-a-generation voice. Because history demands it.