by liberal japonicus
Seems like a good time to toss out a fresh sheet of paper, even if it is the same topic. We've been running thru the questions in the category 'Terrorism or not', I know that labels can obstruct and enhance understanding and the reason those labels can do that is that they can't be controlled with reasoned discussion (just as the word disinterested) But this totally unrelated piece about Tommy Lasorda's passing (via LGM) shows the kind of cultural shift that is occuring
https://defector.com/tommy-lasorda-was-the-showman-who-couldnt-turn-it-off/
He was also richly flawed in that grew-up-too-many-years-ago way. He was often a bully when he could get away with it, to players on his team, umpires, medioids, and even supervisors, and only occasionally used his charm to reel them back. His behavior toward his son, who was gay, was unconscionable; Tom Jr., who died in 1991, died of AIDS, which his father denied aggressively to anyone who asked, including author Peter Richmond. Their relationship was tortured during his son’s life, and he was combative to anyone who wanted to broach the subject. He was, in short, a louder version of many fathers in America in the ’60s and ’70s, though he and the rest of the family was at his son’s bedside at the end. He loved his son and hated the position in which he believed his son had put him in the world in which he worked.
It also hints at the end game we are looking at, provided things don't get burned to the ground
Lasorda could not have survived in the game as it currently exists. He would not have been hired as a scout, let alone a manager. He was in every way what baseball is renouncing as it becomes less nationally resonant and more adamantly scientific. He could not muscle today’s players the way he did his own; by comparison, Tony La Russa is going to emerge as Generation Z with the personality-enriched Chicago White Sox. Even his silhouette is considered unacceptable in the new baseball, where “selling the game” means doing exactly none of the things Lasorda did to sell the game, and undoing them with a 180-degree level of inflexibility. He would not be permitted to be the things that made him remembered.
And the problem we have in referencing his career is that his methods of doing his job, which were more than sufficient for him to succeed at his job for more than two decades don’t translate to the new baseball, or in the new terms of civil discourse. Tommy Lasorda was the last over-the-top manager-actor, and until baseball can loosen the grip on the humorless spreadsheets with feet who operate the game now, he will be the last.
It's not that I think the world is getting more scientific, but that notion that the new discourse is filled 'humorless' and totally inflexible is often what is cited as the problem. Certainly, there is a zero tolerance for a lot of things, as this assistant coach is finding out
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-malone-fired-stacey-abrams-university-of-tennessee-chattanooga/
I'm sure some would just love to parse his tweet and say it is just fat-shaming and would I like it if someone else got fired because they called Rush Limbaugh a diseased tub of lard.
The urge to call what happened terrorism and the people who did it terrorists is a desire to place those people outside of civilized society. It is the Romans drawing a border at the Danube and saying everyone who lived on the other side was a barbarian. But one also has to remember that the Romans employed the barbarians as their foot soldiers. So I appreciate that people want to call them terrorists in order to place them outside our society. And naming things has consequences. But if it were as simple as labelling things correctly, one would think we wouldn't be in this mess.
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