Does society allow men but not women to have comebacks?

This New York Times article argues that women don't "get comebacks like Tiger Woods" because "society" doesn't "allow . . . women to get high enough to fall." Ann Althouse (my mom) responds:

It seems to me, there's no one to compare to Tiger Woods — the ascent, the crash, the long time in the wilderness, the perfection of the big comeback win. You can't generalize to: Men can do that, women can't. . . .

There are a lot of people who only care about golf to the extent that it's about Tiger. Who else has done that with a sport — made millions of people care about it only because of him (or her)? . . .

Getting that high means beating everybody else. There's no way for the rest of us to "allow" that. Women already enjoy the allowance of playing in separated women's sports. . . .

[The article] really does undercut women by insisting proactively that women be given something no man was given.

This is a pet peeve of mine: gender/race articles that claim men (or white men) "get" to do something or are "allowed" to do something while other people aren't. That kind of framing makes it sound like the writer is boldly announcing a discovery about how society's rules are discriminatory. But the supposed rule isn't real; it was created by the writer, not by society.

Right under the Tiger Woods piece is a New York Times article about Martha Stewart, which says she recently joked at a roast "about surviving the five months she spent in prison beginning in 2004 after being convicted of lying to investigators about a stock trade," and the joke "was a hit." The article goes on to say that she's "still a competitive business woman" and "still expanding her empire." Apparently women are "allowed" to make comebacks.

Why are sports so popular?

This 4-minute voice memo helped me understand why sports are so popular.

I might have put some of his points in a different way. But I think Joel van Vliet has hit on something important here.

Hey, some of these animals are pretty good at skateboarding.

Football and brain damage

I don't generally pay attention to sports news, but this has been a big story this week:

Before he shot himself fatally in the chest Thursday, the former Chicago Bears defensive back Dave Duerson sent family members text messages requesting that his brain tissue be examined for the same damage recently found in other retired players. . . .

As a longtime force in the N.F.L. players union, Duerson, 50, was keenly aware of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to depression, dementia and occasionally suicide among more than a dozen deceased players. He had expressed concern in recent months that he might have had the condition, said one person close to him who spoke on condition of anonymity. . . .

Now, at Duerson’s request, his brain may contribute to knowledge of how — and how many — football players are at risk for C.T.E. Thirteen of the 14 deceased N.F.L. players who have been examined for the disease by the Boston University researchers have been found to have it, although that rate is skewed by the fact that many died in part through acts linked to the disease itself, like suicide, drug abuse or mental breakdown.

There also is a question as to whether the disease derives from a career in pro football or simply from many years of playing football at any level. Last year, C.T.E. was found in the brain of Owen Thomas, a University of Pennsylvania football captain who killed himself in April.

A year ago, Penelope Trunk wrote:

It’s unbelievable to me that everyone continues to watch football when we know that men are getting genuinely, permanently, brain damaged. The game is tantamount to cockfighting, only with people instead of animals.

The NFL has finally admitted the problem, to the extent it is poised to be the largest funding source for research about trauma to the brain. But still, the game encourages brain trauma. And people cheer.

I can understand if it’s like smoking. You’re addicted, you can’t stop. But what about bringing your kids to the game? What about all the people who make the Superbowl a family TV event? Kids who play football in high school are more likely to die from that than drunk driving or guns. And parents encourage their kids to play this sport?

The culture of football amazes to me — the incredible level of denial. So what I'm thinking is that people are delusional. And they know it, but they keep going. They cultivate delusion.

My Occam's Razor theory: society has a straightforward gender-based double standard. If there's a self-destructive behavior that's mostly done by women (anorexia, self-cutting), society feels sorry for these women and wants to help them. When there's a self-destructive behavior that's mostly done by men (football, fist fights, "daredevil" stunts), we accept it, or even cheer it on.

IN THE COMMENTS: My mom throws in some grim irony:

And don't forget the terrible equal pay for equal work problem. All those things you've associated with women are severely underpaid. Aaron Rodgers makes millions, but the self-cutting girl down the street gets literally nothing.

How Facebook could get me to pay for a premium account

Offer an option to filter out all sports-related status updates from my news feed.

Should kids have heroes?

In a long conversation about Tiger Woods, Robert Wright subscribes to Tiger's spin that one of his great failings was to let down kids who had viewed him as their hero. But my mom, Ann Althouse, sees this as a good thing. Here's the clip, with my partial transcript below:

Wright: Do you agree that this kind of really matters, in the sense that there's all these kids who are at an impressionable age, he was God . . . Do you agree that this kind of matters in terms of affecting the future behavior patterns of these kids who are worshiping him?

Althouse: . . . Maybe a good lesson is: don't have heroes. Don't look at these people — these are just men; they're not gods. Maybe it's a little humility . . .

Wright: So you think it's good? . . .

Althouse: Yeah, yeah.

Wright: This is good for America's kids, to see that their heroes have feet of clay, so that they don't make the mistake of deifying other heroes?

Althouse: Hey, life is not a bed of roses — learn it now, kids! No, I think kids should have values. And maybe they should be taught religious values or secular ethical values. But the idea that, oh, here is an icon, you should worship him — I don't think that is good. I don't think those are good values. I think this idea of having heroes is not a good value.

Wright goes on to argue that it's futile to criticize "this idea of having heroes," because the idea is hard-wired into human beings, especially children. But I agree with my mom. I can't remember ever having a "hero" when I was a kid, or at any other time. And if I did, it was a ridiculous idea, not a concept that I'd insist remain untarnished for the kids of the present and future.

The clip below is their whole conversation on Tiger Woods. I don't generally follow sports, golf, Tiger Woods, etc., but Tiger Woods has turned out to be a very rich topic: in addition to heroism, they talk about race, Buddhism, addiction therapy, sex . . .



UPDATE: The same section I excerpted is now featured in the New York Times.

How to tell if you're listening to a smart person

I had never thought of this ad hoc intelligence test -- Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics blog says:

As a writer, I enjoy listening to people speak and, when they’re in the middle of a particularly interesting sentence, I try to imagine how I’d like to see it finished.

Usually I am disappointed. But with some select people, the payoff is far greater than I could have imagined. They have something to say that’s remarkably insightful or unexpected or even just articulate in a way that takes your breath away.

I could do without the overstated "takes your breath away" rhetoric, but aside from that, it seems like a useful test, though there's an obvious risk of becoming overly judgmental.

Dubner gives 3 examples: President Obama, classical pianist Glenn Gould, and some sports guy who wrote a book about some other sports guy. Click the above link if you're interested in the specific explanations.

Dubner adds:

In each case, the subject spoke with what I can only characterize as total intelligence — a lot of mental horsepower, to be sure, but also nuance, precision, conceptual and practical elements combined in the same sentence, and psychological astuteness.

I guess, therefore, that if I were asked to define what it means to be “smart” in this day and age, those are the characteristics I’d list. I know a lot of super-brainy people who don’t express themselves well; I know a lot of psychologically astute people who haven’t a whiff of organization or precision about them; I know a lot of articulate people who can’t see the big picture. But if I were friends with either Obama, [that sports guy], or Gould, I’d have to say that they were the smartest people I know. (Sadly, I’m not.)

I don't understand why he focuses on "President Obama's first press conference" (the prime-time address in early February where he pitched the economic stimulus plan). I'm fine with Dubner using Obama as an example of a smart person. But as for that specific press conference, I agree with this review — it was unusually long-winded and meandering. ("Obama seemed like he was channeling a particularly loquacious combination of Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and the ghost of Hubert Humphrey. . . . Obama radiated the sense of a leader who has digested too many economic briefings and memorized too many talking points in preparation for his primetime rendezvous with the public.")

It's also weird that he starts out equating intelligence with finishing your sentence with unexpected insight, but he never gives any example of a sentence by any of those 3 people (or anyone else) that ended unexpectedly. So I was disappointed with how he finished his blog post.

As for Dubner's analysis of what makes someone intelligent — "nuance," "precision," "conceptual"/"practical," and "psychologically astute" — I'm not sure. Someone who had all those qualities in their conversation would probably be interesting to listen to. But do they add up to "intelligence"? Maybe they add up to "how to sound intelligent."

UPDATE: My dad has a good intelligence test:

whether a person, if asked to explain himself, is capable of doing so in different, clearer terms than he used the first time.

Unfortunately, it's all too common to see people trying to project intelligence through precisely the opposite approach: persistently explaining things in obfuscatory terms. I keep coming back to this passage from an essay by John Kenneth Galbraith (previously blogged):

Complexity and obscurity have professional value—they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.