Good grief it took me a long time to finish this book. Had to renew it at the local library three times. My students are to blame for that. Yesterday, finally, I eschewed football and dusted off the last 90 pages.
Truly excellent. Radden Keefe pulls off an amazing feat. He takes complicated topics including pharmacology, corporate maleficence, the law, and philanthropy among others and makes all of them imminently understandable for someone of my intellect. Deserves a Pulitzer.
As a writer, he reminds me of a savvy, veteran quarterback who “takes what the defense gives him”. When it comes to word choice, he always checks down, always choosing the simpler word and phrase in the interest of clarity. I found myself rereading some sentences twice not to better understand them, but to marvel at the cogent prose.
In terms of the content, I find the “Sackler family-Mexican drug cartel” analogy convincing. Spoiler alert that you already know if you read the news, the Sacklers largely get away with their crimes against humanity. Well worth the read anyways. Just don’t dawdle like me.
Next in the queue.
Justice would be if Ahmaud Arbery could go for a run tomorrow, and afterwards, enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
The real heavyweight battle is Carlsen v Nepo. Game 1 is scheduled for Friday, and the best-of-14-game contest could stretch over the next three weeks.
From Slate:
“Even without overt discussion of race over 10 days of testimony, the overwhelming whiteness (and maleness) of the defendants has been on full display. Consider the defense’s main argument: that the defendants acted in self-defense. It hinges on the jury’s understanding of a series of perceived threats, threats that surfaced only after the defendants attempted to arrest Arbery for trespassing. “I knew that he was on me, I knew that I was losing this. I knew that he was overpowering me,” Travis McMichael said. ‘If he would’ve got the shotgun from me, then it was a life-or-death situation. And I’m gonna have to stop him from doing this, so I shot.’
On the surface, his comments seem race-neutral. But his testimony highlights a commonly used defense of perpetrators of violence against unarmed Black people: fear. Never mind that McMichael and his father ran Arbery down with their truck. Never mind they were the only ones armed. Never mind that Arbery was outnumbered three to one. Never mind that he had been running for miles before the altercation. Never mind that the defendants went looking for a confrontation. Never mind all that. It was McMichael who found himself in a life-or-death situation that required him to make a swift, irrevocable action—despite his testifying that he had been trained in deescalation tactics.”
Emphasis mine. I’ve watched a fair amount of the trial. If I was a juror, I wouldn’t need to deliberate. I can’t begin to wrap my head around the possibility that McMichael is acquitted.
Some once derided the place I teach at, Pacific Lutheran University, or “PLU”, as “People Like Us”. I’m happy to report PLU is doing a much better job recruiting diverse students who look a lot more like their Pierce County peers. Which makes teaching about writing and multiculturalism a whole lot more fun because the students regularly enlighten one another with their very different life experiences.
Case in point. The other day we were discussing the concept of “social infrastructure” or the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact. Specifically, public libraries. The question was where would we be without them. To which Lizveth said, “I have four siblings and we have one computer and no printer. Whenever I had to print something in high school, I headed straight to the library.”
Lizveth, the first in her family to attend college, is one of my top students. Her future is bright. The beauty of her story was how she told it. Wonderfully matter-of-factly. The subtext, “There’s way more to me than my family’s economic struggles.”
It’s hard to understate the importance of Lizveth’s abbreviated story. Especially for middle and upper middle class students who have few frames of reference for thinking about their relative privilege.
In 23 words she taught everyone more about economic privilege than I have all semester. If they were truly listening.
And it ain’t even close. Bernhard Langer. His PGA Champion’s Tour success is the most underreported sports story en todo el mundo tambien.
In this day and age of unregulated social media algorithms that inflame our most negative instincts, how cool is it that one online community is making a concerted effort to do a hell of a lot better.
It doesn’t even matter that LinkedIn couldn’t detect the self-deprecating nature of my recent “Liberals Are Hypocrites” post. Their algorithm probably stopped at the offensive title and didn’t proceed to the body of the post that read, “Like me.” Or maybe it did scan those two words, but wasn’t able to detect my intended meaning.
It’s all good LinkedIn, I wholeheartedly applaud your efforts even if I was wrongly caught up in your decency dragnet.
LinkedIn’s Learning Center does a great job explaining their ground rules. Here’s a taste:
Hey Zuckerberg, Dorsey, et al., here’s a fourth “Be”. Be like LinkedIn.
