I realize the issue is already a week and a half old but it's rare that my New Yorker reading is even this timely; I'm usually three or four issues behind. This is my own fault, because unlike with other magazines I subscribe to I like to read as much of it in one sitting as I can, and that's rare. In other words, I have conditioned myself to limit my reading of it, which is why I don't have a stack of Time Outs (whose editorial content, listings aside, I can consume in about the time it takes to cook pasta) on my nightstand.
At the same time, I could train myself out of that limitation to read in any spare moment that comes along, which is what Malcolm Gladwell argued in his talk on Saturday American society has done to drinking. In the program Gladwell was listed as speaking on Michael Vick, the topic of his article that week, but he announced up top that he wanted to speak about an unpublished article on social customs and alcohol incorporating Italian immigrant food diaries and why this beer ad is the most realistic on the airwaves.
Gladwell is a very animated speaker without being obviously polished. I imagine he is very much in demand for corporate gigs, but he talked about this story-to-be with the excitement of your friend who just visited this amazing city or saw this crazy documentary and is just burbling up with the freshness of the world. He didn't actually burble, but he was in that neighborhood of enthusiasm over a piece he had been working on for at least a few months (after reading a book about addiction, he said in the Q&A).
I mock Gladwell for things like the last chapter of OUTLIERS (I'll spoil it in the comments if you want? It's super lame) but his job is to read books, talk to people and think about things, and that is an enviable job. So okay, maybe the Malcolm Powder got in my eyes a little bit, in the strictly professional sense. It was time to test my vision by getting around to the Vick piece, which visits scientists who study brain damage in current and former NFL players and leaps from there to the cruelty of dog-fighting and the damage it inflicts on dogs. Oh yes, he went there. I'm not saying Johnny Quarterback With A Full Ride is thinking clearly about the mental-health challenges that result from getting a lot of concussions in his career, but to suggest athletes who make short-term decisions influenced by a head-turning amount of money are no better than trained animals -- well, I've thought he was off base before, but I've never found his conclusions offensive before.
I still think Gladwell is right more often than he's wrong, and in the space of 24 hours I hit both those extremes. I still can't give him an unqualified endorsement, and I'll have to wait until the full article he based his talk on to come out to see if it's still convincing, but I recommend you see him if you can. (Would be really nice if his website, his speaker bureau or his publisher's site would provide a list of those opportunities. Time to work on my think-piece about blogging and the failure of the last mile!)
2 comments:
I think you are wrong about the gladwell piece. He notes that marines and doctors are selected for the same characteristics of self-sacrificing loyalty as football players. he does not condemn the players as dogs. he condemns the institutional powers of football as being similarly cruel to owners that fight their dogs. which is admittedly a long leap of analogy.
He definitely goes in that direction at the end, which makes sense to me and is more useful than telling would-be players to take their ball and go home. But if you're making half that analogy, you have to be conscious of the other half; he may not be condemning the players as dogs but he's comparing them to dogs all the same.
I would very much like to see what a current NFL player would say about the article. I did a little Googling but couldn't find any responses like that.
Post a Comment