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The Collective Wisdom of Individual Ignorance

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January 20, 2017
America, Basketball, NBA, Politics, Sports
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Photograph:A painting shows George Washington giving a speech on the day he became president in 1789.

Tompkins Harrison Matteson/Library of Congress

In theory, democracy is a relatively emotionally detached system, a utilitarian tool for selection based on preference which, at its conclusion, yields the most popular choice for a given role. In practice, of course, it isn’t so simple, as voting methods and the different weights assigned to certain swaths of the voting populace tend to skew results one way or another.

All of this is entry-level political science; you certainly don’t need anyone reminding you of the way things are, especially on this of all days. It seems overly simplistic to just say that sometimes things don’t break the way they should, the way most people think they should, but then, it becomes hard to explain other voters’ tendencies[1] without reverting to childish name-calling and inflammatory rhetoric.

On Thursday, the NBA announced the starters for this year’s All-Star Game. Russell Westbrook, currently leading the league in scoring while averaging a triple-double, was not among them.

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Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence: The TwH 2016/17 Megathread

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December 31, 2016
America, Basketball, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, sexism, Sports
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Brian Kraker / Tuesdays With Horry

Brian Kraker / Tuesdays With Horry

Right from the very start, 2016 stood to challenge us. From the very start, we knew it wasn’t going to be a run-of-the-mill annum, from North Korea’s interstellar aggravation to the deaths of every stranger we thought we knew, from our laughter at nationalistic shortsightedness abroad to the joke turning on us with an apolitically exhausting election cycle that, even now, seems interminable, this year has cast shadows into every corner and fear into every heart, asserting its overwhelming pessimism past the point of absurdity and into realms of dystopian ennui.

But then, light is said to shed out of darkness; without the light, we wouldn’t know dark from darker, and pitch blackness would be broad daylight. As historically low as some of the valleys insisted upon going, a great many peaks, more than we’ll care to recall, shot up with a distinctly human, distinctly empathetic vitality. 2016 was the equivalent of the Gordie Howe hat trick: a goal first, an assist next and one giant, inevitable fight, with indescribable rage having finally boiled over to manifest itself in hideousness antipathy. It is with this in mind that we at TwH look back, one final, bitter time at the insanity of the preceding twelve months, with an eye toward what society has constructed as 2017. If Earth is really dying, and if we’ve only got five years left to cry in, U better live now.

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Chimes of Freedom

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November 23, 2016
America, Blues, Folk, Music, Politics, Religion
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Let’s say, for instance, you were at the forefront of popular culture in the free world, soon to be deposed and cast to a life of relative reality. If you were to host a party celebrating, commemorating and memorializing the occasion in the United States of America, who would you invite? With a good head on your shoulders, and among your own personal favorites, you would attempt to speak to the populace, who have chosen against you in the years ahead, allocating goodwill while bracing for the impact of an unforeseen, unpredictable regime.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama bestowed what will presumably be the final twenty Presidential Medals of Freedom of his record-setting Presidency, in which he dispensed more than any other in history. The man knows how best to leave a party, it seems. In returning to that question, who would play your societal funeral?

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Law is Hell

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August 31, 2016
America, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Television
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John-Turturro-and-Riz-Ahmed-in-The-Night-Of-Episode-8

Obvious Editor’s Note: SPOILERS AHEAD

Entering the finale, The Night Of was either the tale of an innocent man broken by a broken system, or that of a guilty man whose impropriety was slowly revealed to himself and those around him. I began the final episode of the miniseries unsure which I was watching. I didn’t want to believe Naz was guilty. Neither did the show. That’s why we met a quiet, reserved young man in the premier, one anxious to attend a party with a crowd he obviously yearned to be a part of. But slowly we learned about Naz’s seedier past. We learned he sold drugs. He assaulted two classmates. We saw he had the propensity to seek violent retribution again a fellow inmate and aided Freddie’s murder.

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Dreams in Digital

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August 5, 2016
America, Basketball, NBA, Politics, Sports
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Courtesy 2K Sports

Click here for an enlarged version of the above photo; you’re gonna need it.

Though they actually began on August 3rd with several group stage soccer matches, the Olympics spring to life in the hearts of most with today’s opening ceremony. Working with a budget of roughly £3 million[1], a tenth of what the 2012 opening ceremony in London cost, a nation ill-equipped to host an Olympics is going to go full-throttle into it anyway, featuring such Brazilian luminaries as Gisele Bundchen and Dame Judi Dench in the Maracana, where the Olympic cauldron will receive the Flame. Much has already been made of the ethical and economic implications of these Olympics, and more awaits. Either way, they’re here now, so we may as well do our best to embrace them.

The U.S. figures to play a prominent role in most competitions, with swimming, gymnastics and track and field being among the most noteworthy. Basketball, also, is notable, though most have written off the tournament as one in which every country aside from the United States is battling for second. That seems reasonable; this country would be loath to repeat a disaster like what happened in Athens in 2004. To mark the Games, 2K Sports has released an Olympic team available for play, not unlike when they did so in 2012 with the Dream and Redeem Teams. So, sure, the real-life versions of these NBA stars are extremely likely to bring home the gold. The NBA2K equivalents pictured above, however, seem bound for much dimmer pastures.

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Hillary and Hobbes

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August 3, 2016
America, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, sexism, Television
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I was at a party my senior year of college when a freshman girl paused after taking a long sip from her PBR tall boy to tell me I reminded her of Miranda. A noticeable chill fell over those involved in the conversation; it was clear to the group that I had been insulted. When I recounted the story to friends over breakfast the next day, the reaction was more of the same.

It was universally understood that the only “good” results when taking a “Which Sex And The City Character are You?” Quiz on Buzzfeed were Carrie and Charlotte – Samantha barely acceptable, if you reported your results with tongue firmly in cheek. But God help you if you got Miranda. Most likely you’d refresh the quiz and start over, settling for Magda or Stanford, and never speak of it again. But we live in a post-“Lemonade” world now – the idea of feminism and the unruly woman go hand in hand. I couldn’t help but wonder…is Miranda actually the most modern gal of the bunch?

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The Pragmatism of “The Night Of”

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August 2, 2016
America, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Television
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nightof4allson

In college, I was on the Mock Trial team. It shares similarities with a debate team, except in the format of a trial. Each year, you’re given a fictional case, with fictional witnesses. You perform cross examinations and closing arguments before judges and get scored on everything from the logic of your argument, to your auditory skills, to whether you wore the correct tie (seriously). I bring this up because it colors how I view The Night Of. I am, by no means, a lawyer – at best, Mock Trial gave me a base understanding of the law and trial processes – but after a few years of pretending to be lawyer, I’ve realized I view this show in a pragmatic way.

I haven’t been as invested in the emotional beats of the show as much as the legal ones. To be clear, the emotional beats are there. The show has hit hardest when following the destruction of the Khan family. Poorna Jagannathan’s blank stare at the throng of reporters outside her home was devastating in its simplicity. Peyman Moaddi’s bewilderment when he learns his son must withdraw from school because of the violent actions of others. Their lives have been turned upside down because of something Naz is accused of doing. But in The Night Of, just like the real world, there is no presumption of innocence, and as a result, Naz’s family has suffered as much as he has.

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How Comfortable Do You Feel in Your Mask?

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July 15, 2016
America, Politics, Pop Culture, Television
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What is Mr. Robot about? Is it simply about a group of hackers cosplaying Fight Club attempting to overthrow the world economic order? That description would be a clean and timely elevator pitch, but the hacking is only a jumping-off point. Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot’s creator and show runner, has asserted that the show was inspired by the Arab Spring[1]. It’s possible that Esmail is trying to use Mr. Robot to make a statement about revolutions in general.

Yet, the show is set within the United States, and the action primarily takes place within New York City. Despite a recent streak of loud and angry political movements, there is no revolution in America, yet; just plenty of discontent about technological dependence, income inequality and a widening generation gap. Mr. Robot undeniably taps into all of the above.

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“The Night Of” is Dark and Full of Terrors

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July 12, 2016
America, Politics, Pop Culture, Television
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HBO

“The night is dark and full of terrors.”

That is a refrain from HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones, but it applies just as well, literally and figuratively, to the premiere episode of the network’s latest eight-part miniseries The Night Of.

The episode takes place over a single night in New York City, following Naz (Riz Ahmed), the soft-spoken son of a Pakistani cab driver. Naz’s night begins like so many stories about millennials coming-of-age over the course of an evening out in the Big Apple. He breaks the rules, taking his father’s taxi without permission, meets a mysterious seductress (Sofia Black D’Elia) and even swallows some pills (probably Molly). The night culminates with Naz having sex with the hot girl.

But the night is never “fun.” There is no soundtrack of plucky indie music that swells at just the right moment. Instead, Naz awakes to find the girl dead, stabbed to death in a grizzly scene out of a Saw movie.

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The Impossible Task Of Defending Messi

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June 29, 2016
Politics, Soccer, Sports
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For the third consecutive summer, the Argentina national team made it to the final of a major international competition, only to lose by another impossibly thin margin. The greatest player in the world missed his penalty, and the Skip Bayless proxies on social media went to task, questioning the player’s and his team’s toughness as well as their lack of the clutch gene, that peculiar strand of DNA which allows select Homo sapiens the ability to complete tasks in children’s playground games under artificially important circumstances.

In the immediate aftermath of that loss, a 0-0 defeat to Chile in the Copa América Final at MetLife Stadium last Sunday chock-full of deplorable officiating, Lionel Messi announced his retirement from international football, only 29 years old and still in the midst of a white-hot prime. Whether the retirement ends up being permanent is likely in the hands of the Argentine Football Association, which has taken a number of crucial missteps while ostensibly advocating for one of its greatest generations of players. Even insofar as Messi is to blame for a single penalty miss, Messi is still not to blame, and he is still the greatest outfield player ever to knock a ball around a pitch. If that ends up being his last work in the light blue and white stripes, however, a hole nevertheless remains.

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