Sisters are doing it for themselves…

I am a comic scholar. I used to be a comic reader, but as a comic scholar I get paid to read comic books. It’s a nice gig, and I hope I keep it.

Over the weekend it was my privilege to participate in Understanding Superheroes at the University of Oregon. There will be much more in this about that terrific conference. But I wanted to share here a video that I learned about on my way to the west coast that celebrates Black superheroines.

Enjoy.

forest>trees

So the usual suspects in the media are commenting about Chicago losing the opportunity to host the 2016 Olympic games to Rio. Despite what they say, this effort was neither arrogant nor a fool’s errand. If that was the case, the President of Brazil, Prime Minister of Japan and the King of Spain would have skyped in their statements of support for their own bids instead of flying to Copenhagen to deliver them personally. Of course, facts will not stop Obama’s critics.

What’s truly interesting is why Chicago lost out to Rio: affirmative action. No South American nation had ever hosted the Olympics, the USA has hosted more than any country except Greece. Brazil is an emerging economy, right on the heels of China and India. US economic shenanigans almost pulled the nation into a world-wide Depression. Brazil is a multi-racial nation and Rio a sprawling city with too many guns and too much crime. The US is a multi-racial nation and Chicago a sprawling city with too many guns and too much crime. So I guess that last point evens out.

See, if William Safire or Irving Kristol were still alive they might point out the delicious irony of the US’s first Black president making an appeal for the Olympics only to lose out to another country primarily for the sake of fairness and (geographic and economic) diversity. I guess it’s much more satisfying to crow about Obama failing, even if it isn’t true.

ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha

Yeah I’m an iPhone snob, but this is hilarious

Fatness Studies?

So, there is a book coming out in the fall called the Fatness Studies Reader.   It’s not out yet, but one of the advance blurbs declares the collection

A path-breaking anthology, and the first to map this emerging field. Leading scholars and activists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds explore the pervasiveness of prejudice based on body size, and challenge conventional policy responses. By focusing on goals of health, fitness, and social tolerance, The Fat Studies Reader redefines the ‘problem’ of weight and invites more promising solutions.

See, this is why academics are so easily mocked. I haven’t read any of the essays, but here is an interview with two of the editors, Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum. You can listen below:

Fatness Studies interview

If you don’t feel like sitting through the entire thing, just know that the editors engage in sophistry throughout, refusing to answer basic questions about the difference between being slightly overwieght and obese.

They also repeatedly compare fat discrimination to racial discrimination! Um, being overweight is not the same as being Black!  Just ask Jarad from Subway!

I can’t believe this even has to be said, but clearly…

I don’t mean to demean the problems associated with being fat, and clearly there needs to be a more nuanced approach to this issue in America, but Fatness Studies? This is foolishness.

Discovering David Anthony Durham

Often we don’t hear about someone until after they’ve won an award. This is certainly the case with David Anthony Durham, a young writer who just won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The Hugo award recognizes speculative fiction (aka science fiction), but Durham has written four novels only one of which, Acacia, qualifies at sci-fi. Durham’s website is here, and you can read excerpts from all his novels there.

Hat tip to Rich for the heads up.

false consciousness or just stupid?

There are lots of political commentators that find the idea of false consciousness displeasing, in part because it tends to flatten out the appeal of social processes that people find compelling by focusing solely on the economic impact of those choices. For example, that a working class family tithes 10% of their income to the church might not make financial sense, but this fails take into account the social and communal values that a struggling family might obtain from the church. This failure to understand the non-instrumential appeal of values is the primary critique leveled against Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas.

But what are we to make of Kenneth Gladney, a Black conservative tea party activist involved in an altercation while protesting Obama’s proposed healthcare plan in St. Louis?

A few days after the fight Gladney made an appearance before a

crowd of about 200 people. His attorney, David Brown…read a prepared statement Gladney wrote. “A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”

Supporters cheered. Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance

Yes that’s right. A black man got beat up for standing up for the values of right-wing conservatives by protesting against Barack Obama’s healthcare plan and it turns out the dude has no health insurance. SMH

Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with…

You know, everyone talks about the good old days (lets talk about them shits)…but the innovation associated with this remix of the Wu’s Mystery of Chessboxing remind me of how far Hip Hop has fallen. Its funny when you don’t realize how good you have it at the time, but suffering through the artistic efforts of Soldja Boy Tell Em and 50 truly brings it home.

Enjoy

Asian American Comic Con…

will be happening this Saturday. The creators of the wonderful Secret Identities anthology will be there.

peep it if you can.

I love you like a fat kid loves cake…

I am no fan of 50, but I always appreciated the elemental simplicity of this line. Sometimes, simplicity is best because it communicates a genuine sincerity.

Which brings us to brotha brub. Watching this makes me happy. Enjoy.

Why We Hate Duke

March Madness is upon us. It is time for your co-workers to harass you about filling out a bracket for your office pool because March is synonymous with college basketball.

Which means it’s time to root, passionately, against Duke.

After all rooting for Duke is like rooting for the Yankees, like rooting for Microsoft, like rooting for snow in Chicago: why would you?

But it wasn’t always this way. 19 years ago, the Duke Blue Devils were the Cinderella team, the team that everyone was pulling for, a force for good in a world of moral relativism. For Duke was the only thing standing in the way of UNLV.

The UNLV Running Rebels, the defending national champions in 1991, seemed to symbolize all that was wrong with college basketball. Their best player, Larry Johnson, was built like a linebacker, looked about a decade older than other players on the court and sported two gold teeth.

The Rebels’ players hailed from impoverished neighborhoods like Brownsville in Brooklyn, the 5th Ward in Houston and South Central Los Angeles and seldom earned degrees from the university. They played an aggressive and athletic style of basketball that seemed one step removed from the playgrounds. Their coach, Jerry Tarkanian, in what can only be described as a preemptive strike, sued the NCAA in order to forestall any investigation of his basketball team. This was happening even as members of his squad associated with Mafiosi like Richie the Fixer Perry. Perry is best known for

Help[ing] perpetrate the Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal (1978-79) and the 1973 Superfecta harness racing scandal in New York state….Perry is mentioned in Nicholas Pileggi’s 1985 best seller, “Wise Guy,” a biography of Lucchese family soldier Henry Hill, who is now in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Hill called Perry a dealer in inside information for sports bettors.

And here’s Perry relaxing in a hot-tub with three members of UNLV’s National Championship team.

Still, UNLV won their title the year before by crushing Duke by 30 points! So, even as America rooted for Duke to pull off the upset and stops UNLV’s band of outlaws, there seemed little chance that it could happen.

While UNLV remained the unstoppable juggernauts from the year before, Duke was not the same team. The players victimized in the blowout of the previous year, Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley, were a year older and now knew what to expect from UNLV. Most importantly, Duke now had Grant Hill, a freshman forward more talented than any player on either roster. And their coach, former West Point cadet Mike Krzyzewski, was driven to avenge last year’s embarrassment.

UNLV’s overconfidence and Duke’s passion led to 79-77 Duke victory and transformed Duke from a plucky school that existed in the University of North Carolina’s shadow to the nation’s darlings. Coach K was now college basketball’s coaching icon. The Blue Devils were America’s team, at least in March.

And what does America love, if not a sequel? The next year Duke was called on to defend their title against a team of upstarts: Michigan’s Fab Five. Michigan started five freshmen, and seemed poised to upset what traditionalists believe is a fundamental basketball precept: experience produces victory. The Fab Five wore baggy shorts, black socks, their Nike sneakers flew off of store shelves.

If UNLV represented a morally ambiguous brand of basketball, the Fab Five seemed to embody style over substance. Except here was Michigan, one game from winning a National Championship with a team of freshmen!

Duke beat back the Fab Five’s challenge in 1992, becoming the first team to win back-to-back titles since John Wooden’s legendary UCLA teams in the 1960s. America, at least the America that exists in the minds of network and cable television executives, was sold: Duke was the gold standard of College Basketball.

There was just one problem. Duke made their name by beating Black teams known as much for their swagger as their talent in the early 1990s. The early 90s were the years of the Soundscan revolution, when Hip Hop elbowed its way into the cultural mainstream to be consumed by millions of suburban whites. Duke was increasingly the foil, the team your father rooted for, the corporatist institution arrayed against players who embraced, and were embraced by, Hip Hop culture.

Worse, Duke is, well, white. I mean really, really white.

While most college basketball teams might feature one or two white players, Duke’s teams regularly have 6 or more. So the image of Duke became the staid, fundamentally sound team that continually suppresses teams that rely on expression and creativity. Duke became the Establishment, the team everyone loves to hate.

None of this is fair. Duke plays an entertaining and efficient brand of basketball, their players graduate and generally stay of out trouble, Coach K deserves every accolade he has received.

But, every March I will root, passionately, for Duke to lose. And millions and millions of you will join me.