David Brooks Smackdown Watch: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Twitter
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
David Brooks:
The Jeremy Lin Problem: Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports…. The sports hero tries to perform great deeds in order to win glory and fame…. [T]here’s no use denying — though many do deny it — that this ethos violates the religious ethos on many levels. The religious ethos is about redemption, self-abnegation and surrender to God…
(5) Ta-Nehisi Coates (tanehisi) on Twitter:
@TheAlexKnapp I'm not even clear that--removing Lin--the argument stands. A great many fields could be said to conflict with religion. In reply to Alex Knapp
@TheAlexKnapp Again, though. Without Lin you have a piece that just doesn't say much. This isn't new.
Vinson Cunningham Paul of Tarsus was obsessed with analogy between Xtians and Greek Olympians, the idea that life of faith is a battle, a contest. @tanehisi
@TheAlexKnapp And it certainly isn't "the biggest anomaly." If you understand that then the question becomes "Why write this now?"
@TheAlexKnapp That's the problem. There's nothing anomalous about Jeremy Lin being a religious athlete. It's actually quite normal.
@TheAlexKnapp But that's not what anomalous means.
@tsayguy The problem is then you just have a rather broad piece about 'Sports" which says "Humans need oxygen" or some such.
If you start your Jeremy Lin piece making a sweeping statement about millions (or billions) of people, just stop. Ask somebody.
Also. It's OK for writers to ask questions instead making broad declarations.
Way too many trip-wires. Don't start with the Dougie. Learn the Electric Slide first
I think if you weren't writing about sports before, you shouldn't start with Lin. It will be really hard to not say something regrettable.
@vcunningham If you think any of those things about pro athletes and religion you probably don't know much about pro athletics.
@vcunningham The definition of "anomalous" is "Deviating from what is standard, normal, or expected."
@NPRinskeep Dungy's religiosity is quite a story. Part of his coaching, the culture of the team. And Dungy's a notoriously "gentle" guy.
@NPRinskeep I just wish he'd written that column five years ago about Tony Dungy.
One word, @tanehisi, in re: D.Brooks: religion not "anomaly" in sports, but rest of column provocative: contradiction btwn faith & act
@mltaylor13pt1 @tanehisi I can't wait for his column on why Rick Santorum is such an outlier in politics, because of his vocal religiousness
@vcunningham A religious person in pro athletics is no more anomalous than a religious person in the military.
@vcunningham I don't think "anomalous" means what you think. I think you mean "conflicted" or some such.
@EyalPress @tanehisi Don't forget Trent Dilfer who won a Super Bowl w/the Ravens. He also missed RGIII's Heisman acceptance speech
@tanehisi he's in DC.....does he not know about Joe Gibbs? Or Darrell Green?
@felixgilman @vcunningham Yes exactly. But then he'd be open to obvious, and disturbing, "Why now?" question.
@tanehisi @vcunningham FWIW I think problem here is that Brooks is misusing "anomaly" when really all he means is "thing" or "column hook"
@vcunningham Again. It doesn't much matter. Either it's true that he is an "anomaly" or it isn't.
@tanehisi You're forgetting the devout Mormon Steve Young, a big 'God is Not Great' fan...
davesgonechina @tanehisi I think you're forgetting that Christopher Hitchens led the Green Bay Packers to five championships in seven years.
@tanehisi Mike Singletary is an ordained minister. In fact, I think he was back when he played for the Bears.
Joe DeMartino @tanehisi "All credit for this win goes to the scientific method, secular humanism, and Richard Dawkins" #davidbrooksfantasysports
@AmyAlex63 @professorkim They got the Wizards, Redskins and Nationals. He should know.
@EyalPress @tanehisi Don't forget Ali- once Cassius Clay, converted to Islam, Tyson.
@ChiaLynn But that doesn't make it true or right. He's way off.
@tanehisi It's almost like Brooks knows nothing about sports and is just trying to use a cultural phenomenon to make some empty statement
@tanehisi has he not seen prayer circles, @DwyaneWade huge tithes, ad, and a new church?
@vcunningham "But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports."
@vcunningham Dude he literally called it the "biggest anomaly." Those are his actual words.
Yoni Appelbaum @tanehisi What kills me is that basketball was invented to inculcate Christian virtue, brought to China by missionaries. Does he not know?
Since when was pro sports filled with Dawkins-quoting, Hitchens-thumbing secularists?
You know what would make Jeremy Lin an anomaly? If he were atheist.
@tanehisi Not to go there, but I'll go there: I've never seen a black man pray in football, but Asian dudes RUN THE SHOW in the NBA, right?!
@EyalPress It's ridiculous. It's really skirts the line of "factual error."
@tanehisi I saw that column. Yeah, no religious people in professional sports: Kurt Warner, Evander Holyfield, Tebow, all arch secularists!
That is exactly backwards. Religiosity might be the least anomalous thing about #linsanity.
He didn't just claim Lin was an anomaly for being religious. He said it was the "biggest anomaly."
@wesleyhill That's not what he said. He literally wrote that Lin was an "anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports."
@tanehisi they said the same thing about tebow. Imget the feeling black religious people have no real value to white conservatives.
Sorry. Had a ginger ale this morning. Bad idea. “@eliasisquith: @tanehisi You're so much feistier than you used to be!”
Like, is Tony Dungy invisible??? Dude is the first black coach to win a Super Bowl!
Right WTF?? “@shackle52: @tanehisi Obviously Brooks thinks little of men like Tony Dungy and others”
Go back to telling us how immoral we are. I'll take black pathology over this any day.
Worst thing about #linsanity is a bunch of Ivy dudes who know nothing about sports now having an excuse to write about it.
Pro football is a hotbed of religiosity. What is he talking about? Reggie White was LITERALLY an ordained minister.
The first person these cats thank is God. Pro Athletes routinely point at the sky. Deion Sanders baptized Emmitt Smith.
Did David Brooks just claim Lin is an anomaly because "he's a religious person in professional sports?" Are there no black people in sports?
As one observer put it in email:
Sports are carefully designed so that skill and hard work matter a lot and so do luck and chance and fortune. It is designed--to make it interesting to spectators--as an arena in which the players are not masters of their fate. And that recognition is as much a religious ethos as is the "redemption, self-abnegation, and surrender to God" that Brooks claims is the only religious ethos. I don't think David Brooks has participated in or watched many sports, or talked to many athletes.
Come to think of it, it looks as though Brooks hasn't spent much time talking to God-fearers either…
