I had two ESPN+ posts this week, both scouting blogs: one on Clarke Schmidt, Matt Manning, Julio Rodriguez, and other Tigers/Nationals/Mariners/Royals/Blue Jays prospects; and one on Spencer Howard and other Phillies & Orioles prospects. I held a Klawchat on Wednesday.
I’m selling off some of my board games, and once again I’m donating all proceeds to the Food Bank of Delaware. You can see the games I’m selling here; I’m going to continue to add titles over the weekend and next week as I go through my collection. In case you missed it, I also went through all the games I saw and tried at Gen Con 2019 over at Paste.
Also, this was kind of fun – I got a mention in roast magazine’s Daily Coffee News, which used my review of Coffee Roaster to cover the game’s upcoming second edition.
I sent out my free email newsletter again on Friday night, but you can still sign up for free and get more personal writing from me.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: “I see this as part of a larger war against science-based reality.” The New Yorker goes very long on how the return of the measles is a sign of a war against science, and how authorities must combat the dangerous ideas that threaten our species.
- The Washington Post spoke to Caitlan Coleman, who was held by the Taleban for five years with her husband, giving birth to three kids while there. She’s since revealed that her husband brought her into Afghanistan, against her wishes, only to see them kidnapped and held hostage, where he became physically and psychologically abusive.
- Sesame Street is about to begin its 50th season; the New York Times looks at how the show uses music – and celebrity musicians – to teach viewers and create iconic moments. Recently, I introduced my girlfriend’s children to “Me Lost Me Cookie At the Disco;” they introduced me to “Me Want It (But Me Wait).”
- The Guardian looks at how air conditioning is heating the planet as it cools our homes, which in turn requires more energy in a vicious cycle. Oddly absent is a mention of powering it via energy sources that do not contribute to climate change.
- The Guardian‘s Lizzie Cernik looks at why some people cut off all ties to their parents, usually the result of toxic relationships that date back decades.
- Garrett Martin, my editor at Paste, called out Dave Chappelle for his sensitivity and entitlement, as well as his transphobia and derision of the men Michael Jackson molested.
- A deranged man, radicalized by anti-vaxxers preaching hate and violence online, assaulted California Sen. Richard Pan, the doctor who pushed through the state’s essential, life-saving law that ended nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccinations.
- Two Washington Post editorials worth reading: Why a primary challenger to Trump is a good thing, and why white evangelical leaders should be panicking over the demographic demise of their movement. I can’t think of a worse way to market religion than the way the evangelical movement has acted in the last two decades.
- Indonesia is moving its capital to Borneo as Jakarta is sinking into the ground at a faster rate than any other city in the world.
- My friend Eric Longenhagen looked at the most interesting position player-to-pitcher conversion projects in the minors right now, starting with San Diego’s Javier Guerra.
- This story of a few fifth grade boys in Minnesota who took a bullied kid with special needs under their wing is the sweetest thing I saw in this week of terrible news.
- Another story of kindness, although the route there goes right through hate and ignorance, comes from Ferial Pearson, who was targeted for being Muslim and for being queer while speaking to schools in Mullen, Nebraska.
- One Night Ultimate Werewolf fans may be interested in pre-ordering the new expansion containing all bonus roles and tokens from smaller expansion packs released in the last few years.
Long time fan of you and your work and have enjoyed the few small back and forths we’ve had over the years. Love you pro science and reason positions and promotion of reading. Truly gods work! That said, reasonable minds can and often do disagree. Different people find different things funny and are sensitive to different things. But your editor at Paste sure does come across as a classist, racist pot calling Dave Chappelle black with zero self awareness that he’s doing it. Ironically it’s one of the things Dave is criticizing. Seems your editor is pretty unawaredly thin skinned to criticism, too. Everyone has blind spots. Me, you, everyone. Where I think we as a society need to do is have compassion for the blindspots in others as we would hope they’d be compassionate to us for ours and to teach each to reduce those blind spots instead of blaming and fighting people over their blind spots (the toxic cancel culture Dave calls out). As we all hope folks would do for us. But reading his haughty ignorance of his own blind spots while attempting to criticize Dave’s was just as painful for me as watching Dave was for him. I’m sure, like Dave, he’s a great guy who means well and just doesn’t see what he doesn’t see. But maybe he should stop being so classist and racist like Dave should stop being so transphobic before he gets on his high, woke horse to berate the rich, uppity, classless negro. Be the change, dude. If you mimic the behavior you criticize you are no different or better. And if I have to explain to you what was so classist and racist about it, instead, show it to your close black friends and ask them. As Dave has pointed out, whites with too much guilt are just as bad as whites with no guilt. Or is that too true to be funny, also?
What are you talking about? I’m not asking flippantly…I’m literally curious where you’re getting racism and blind spots from a pretty straightforward post
I thought that the article on air conditioning was great. It amazes me that roughly 2 million people can live in the Phoenix area. The amount of electricity used to power ac alone has to be astronomical. Add in the water used for growing grass for golf courses and baseball facilities and it has to be an environmental disaster. As the planet continues to warm, there is no way the environment can support that many people.
The post in question is very straightforwardly dripping with white privilege classist and racist tropes. As I mentioned, if you don’t see that, don’t ask me to explain it. Ask your close black friends to explain it. And if you don’t have any black friends close enough to ask that may explain why you don’t see it in the first place. White privilege isn’t just about not getting pulled over by cops or generational wealth accumulation. Cancel culture is the other side of the toxic culture coin from maga but it’s especially problematic when that wolf is trying to dress like a sheep. Pernicious unexamined classism and racism from liberal do gooders is in many ways worse than from virulent racists. As Dave has pointed out many times to the squirming discomfort of liberal do gooders. Again, if you don’t see that, I can’t explain it to you. You’re gonna have to do some work on your blind spots. Just like Dave needs to do some work on his.
Just list one of these supposed tropes….don’t make blacks people do your work for you.
And your assumption that black people are a monoculture and will all provide the same answer feels like one of those tropes you speak of.
I’ll second this. Don’t show up here, call a post racist and classist, and then refuse to back that up with any evidence.
I’m not asking anyone to do any work for me. I’ve done this work. I’m asking you to do the work for yourself the writer is asking Dave to do.
After five years as a producer and director for Tavis Smiley and Ed Gordon at NPR, discussing these issues daily with the Cornel Wests but also the opposing side, I put my work in to expose my blind spots around race and otherism. So just like Keith knows more about baseball than me cuz he’s spent years working at it, unless you’ve put the time into this I’m gonna say I have worked on these issues a lot more than you have and with the top thought leaders in the field while you have not. Doesn’t make me right but it does make me more experienced. As Keith would say, I can’t speak to others prospect lists but I know I’ve put the work in to be very confident in mine.
One thing I learned is that when a commentator focuses on how much money the controversial black man makes and how it’s put him out of touch with the “real” people and how he needs to not be so thin skinned about criticism and how someone of his superior class should be more morally superior and do more of what I think is good and should only say things that are politically acceptable to the groups I care about and shouldn’t make people uncomfortable or force them to ask difficult questions cuz that’s not his place and he clearly doesn’t know it so we need to beat it into him for the greater good of society lest other uppities get the idea they can do it too is using classist and racist tropes regardless of whether they’re also trying to stand up for other minorities. That’s what the writer did so yes, racist and classist BS all the live long day.
Again, I find it just as “appalling” you don’t see that and “need proof” of its existence as the commentator finds Dave’s blind spots about transsexuals appalling. Like my fellow Jews who need proof trump isn’t a white supremacist. If you don’t see it initially maybe it’s cuz all of us have blind spots. But if you don’t see it after it’s been pointed out to you, that’s willful ignorance. I mean, there’s just no way you well meaning white people have blind spots around otherism! It’s just the rich black entertainer who makes jokes about transsexuals! Cancel him!!!!! Seriously, read the liberal white commentary about Do the Right Thing when it came out or about James Baldwin, etc, etc, etc, etc … You’ll find the same pernicious, well meaning, liberal undercurrent racism everywhere. Again, this is a thing Dave hits on constantly and WHY HE QUIT CHAPPELLE SHOW CUZ YOU WELL MEANING WHITES DIDN’T GET THE JOKE WAS ABOUT YOU!!!
So no, I’m not asking anyone to do any work for me. I’m asking you to do the work. It’s your job to work on your blind spots. People can help you by pointing them out, but you need to want your eyes open. No one else can open them for you. If protecting your political party or your editor or your fragile white ego is more important than the inconvenience of that truth you’ll choose to look away cuz you’re human. But then you’re demanding a higher standard of the rich, controversial negro than you are of yourself and that, too, smacks of classism and racism.
I said ask your black friends not cuz every black person thinks alike (revealing that’s where you went) or because I assume you don’t have any black friends close enough to have a conversation that real with (which, again, I do assume and it would be a great explanation for why you don’t see the classism and racism in the commentary) but because they deal with this undercurrent racism on the daily and are better able to help you open your eyes as friends in conversation than I can as a stranger you’re demanding proof from in the comments section.
If you don’t think you’re blind to anything here, you can be like the Jewish trump defenders. That’s up to you. But if you think there might be something for you to learn here you can ask them what they got out if it (again, if you actually have black friends close enough to get this real with) cuz it just might be very different than what you did.
For instance, when I sent it to my black friend who was the senior producer for Tavis and has a closet full of Pulitzer, Peabody, NABJ, Associated Press, etc awards, his takeaway was, and I quote directly except for the *s, “The writer is who the meta joke of the special targets. That’s extremely uncomfortable for him. So he dresses up PC talking points as cover for the underlying message: shut the f**k up you rich n***er or I’m canceling your ass.”
None of this is the “proof” you’re looking for. It’s two people’s opinions. Maybe we’re just as bad and wrong and out of touch as Dave is and you have no blind spots around this and you have no work to do. But maybe it is there, in plain sight, and you didn’t see it like the Jews who don’t see they’re supporting Trump’s naziism and do you can’t acknowledge it cuz then you’d have to do the work instead of wearing your well meaning white person bullet proof vest. It’s up to you what you want to see and believe. Just stop putting it on me or Dave or anyone but yourself. That’s what unaware white people do and now that you’ve been ‘splained you can’t claim ignorance as a defense.
And Klaw, I love you and will keep following and supporting you but you posted that drivel. I expect more from you. Again, your super white board game writer/editor thinks he’s being woke and you support his position enough to have linked to it and violated journalistic standards by calling them Michael Jackson’s victims and not accusers (it doesn’t matter if you believe them or not, due process is the most important thing in a democracy). The black Pulitzer Prize winner thinks your board game journalist friend is being a low key racist. You get to choose your truth and what proof you want to believe but consider your sources and why you needed that “proof” from the black perspective and not from your white friend. I’m NOT calling you a racist but I am saying there may be a learning opportunity for you here as each and every one of us has learning opportunities daily.
And to be clear, I don’t think the writer or either of you two gentlemen is a classist or a racist or a bad guy (I don’t know you, Mike, but I think quite the opposite of Klaw whom I hold in high esteem). I think the writer is well meaning but unaware. And we know where good intentions lead. Did any journalists of color look at it before it was published? Id be shocked. I’m not saying one had to and obviously not every journalist of color will have the same opinion on it that my friend had and I share. it just seems to have a blind spot that comes off as a white pot calling the kettle Black with tired tropes in the same way the writer criticized the Black kettle for calling LGBTQ folks alphabet people. Neither is cool. But one is trying to shock you into thinking critically and one isn’t doing enough critical thinking about its white privilege. The fact that well meaning white folks missed the white privilege part isn’t shocking but it is instructive if the white folks want it to be. Or I’m just wrong and everything is hunky Dory.
Ps – please excuse my many typos. Hopefully they don’t detract from the substance.
Chappelle claims that he is being persecuted but it still one of the most successful people in his profession. Pointing out that hypocrisy is not racism. Please seek help.
Mike, you’re a real intellectual heavyweight. When you’ve lost on substance, a non sequitur is always a good way out.
Keith, you demanded evidence that the post you shared of your friend’s was classist and racist. I gave you that evidence. White Mike, who clearly doesn’t have any black friends, thinks I need help but the five additional black friends I showed it to all see white privilege and racist tropes. I expect you to hold yourself to the same standards you demanded of me. Don’t go posting white privileged, racist, classist tropes and then go silent when you’re called out on them. Especially when you violated journalistic standards in the post to side with whites accusing a dead black man of sexual impropriety (even if we all believe the accusers). The white privilege optics on that one are pretty cringey even without the attached tropes of your white friend. You don’t have to agree with me, again reasonable minds can disagree, but you’re the one that put that crap out there and you’re the one that demanded proof it was crap. Now that you have your proof, be an adult and engage in the debate you fostered through your post and your demand for proof. Avoiding that proof and leaving that racist and classist post up with no response looks like more of the white privilege I’m calling you and your editor out on. It’s the move I’d expect from a MAGAt or a dim wit like Mike. I do not believe that’s who you are so I’m inviting you to please prove it just like you asked me to. Thanks.
It’s not a non sequitur. You are posting lengthy screeds in the middle of the night defending Michael Jackson, who was only mentioned in passing in the article and is universally known to be a prolific abuser. I am legitimately worried for you and hope you are able to find peace.
Never mind. I apologize. You owe me no explanation. It’s your party and you can post what you want to. If you don’t want to answer for it, that’s up to you. I need no explanation, I know what I see. Just please be a little more aware of what you’re not aware of next time and consider maybe there’s some validity to the criticism. Keep up the good work you do.