A Response to Gregg Doyel

On April 22, 2008, CBS Sportline ran a pair of columns that discussed Danica Patrick’s first Indy Racing League Victory. As is too often the case with media representations of difference of opinion (see CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire, ESPN’s “Fact or Fiction” segments, etc.), only two opinions were offered and these opinions were offered in very black-or-white fashion, with each side asserting the correctness of its point of view as unqualified truth and no recognition of the nuances of perspective that could exist. In this case, the two positions were, basically: (1) Patrick’s victory was an important step for women and was reason to celebrate and (2) Patrick’s victory should not be considered a significant step for women and was not a reason to celebrate. Mike Freeman took the first position and Gregg Doyel took the second position.

Some of my thoughts on Patrick’s victory have been expressed on this website and it’s a topic in which I’m interested, so I read both columns while eating lunch one day just after the columns were posted. While I disagreed with Gregg Doyel’s overall assessment of Patrick’s victory and how starkly he claimed its insignificance, I thought that Doyel had some important points to consider and I chalked some of the difficulty I had with his overall opinion up to the limitations of the format of the debate, which, as I mentioned above, I find rather flawed to begin with. Recognizing that, I likely would have reflected on the article, but I wouldn’t have responded too strongly in protest to the article. However, I was troubled by Doyel’s use of the term “sexism.” Sexism (like racism, classism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination on the basis of identity like these) is a system that perpetuates oppression of a certain group of people right down to the very structure of society. It’s not simply a matter of characterizing some things or individuals as sexist or racist and others as not based on how they represent gender and race. Rather, one has to recognize that representations, practices, and life itself within a culture or society have inequities based on these identities built into them. I tend to become particularly frustrated when I see terms like “sexist” and “racist” thrown out in ways that clearly don’t account for their structural basis. For instance, when people claim things like “Spike Lee is racist” because of statements he makes about white culture or depictions of race in his films, I typically want to find these people and lecture them on what racism is. They can still disagree with Lee’s statements or representations or find them limiting or perhaps even stereotyped if they wish, but that’s different than racism. So, when I felt that Doyel used sexism in an overly offhanded way in this column to discuss the significance of Patrick’s victory, I felt my surge of protest.

In response, I clicked on the link to “Tell Gregg your opinion!” and submitted a comment, along with my name and email address. In my comment, I said, “I'd like to invite you to attend my gender and communication class the next time I teach it. You need to learn what the term ‘sexism’ means before you go throwing it around recklessly and inaccurately, as you have in the Danica Patrick column.” On April 24, Doyel responded by posting my comment along with his response along with other comment/response pairs under the title “Hate Mail: Back from break and feelin' buff with Buffy.” His public response to my comment: “I'll let you lecture me on sexism if you'll let me lecture you on how to leave the sweater-vested cocoon of academia and compete with real people at a real job in the real world.”

On one level, I want to take Doyel’s comment personally and argue back from the position of offense with which I personally take his statement. First of all, I hate sweaters and have almost never worn one. Secondly, I have done very well in jobs in business and industry and honestly could quite readily have had a good (and, actually, probably less stressful, while also more lucrative) career outside academia. I think I’ve shown full well that I can “compete with real people at a real job in the real world” and I take severe issue with the implication that my choice to teach and conduct academic research somehow lacks legitimacy. However, Doyel doesn’t even know me and so, while I think there is a personal level to his comments, to a large extent I don’t think they are meant to be personal.

That, then, takes me to a second level at which I want to respond to Doyel’s comment—the broader discourses that it reflects and implies. By lecturing me on why I should “leave” academia, particularly since he knows nothing personal about me or the things that I specifically do in my career, Doyel has basically suggested that all careers in academia and, thus, academia itself lack legitimacy. So, then, are we to get rid of colleges and universities? Are we to say education ends at high school and formalized training beyond that is useless? Should we never again voice concern about graduation rates or academic performances of college athletes, since the people teaching them shouldn’t even be there in the first place? These are the kinds of questions that the stark generality of Doyel’s comment implies. I suppose they might be legitimately asked, but only if we’re prepared to undergo serious examination and reconstruction of our educational systems in this country in order to improve those systems.

Additionally, hasn’t Doyel’s comment already basically left academics in a Catch-22 that gives Doyel reason to make fun of them no matter what they do? On the one hand, if an academic tries to engage the “real world” more fully (say, by contributing to message boards or emailing a columnist on a website), a reaction like Doyel’s dismisses the academic’s point of view simply because the person is an academic. So, the academic’s perspectives and insights are, by virtue of simply coming from an academic, immediately rejected. The academic, then, is not allowed to contribute the “real world,” leaving her or him only the academic world within which to work. At this point, then, that academic world can be mocked for being out of touch and disengaged from the real world. The academic is thus dismissed no matter what he or she does and is left no path to legitimacy. Of course, he or she could, as Doyel’s lecture would explain, leave academia. But, then, that solves nothing in terms of connecting academia and “the real world”; it simply moves one more person from one camp to the other. This, then, takes us back to the questions about the general legitimacy of academia, which, again, means being prepared for some serious work to make the system better.

All of these things are surely implied by Doyel’s statement, though, like taking his comment personally, I doubt Doyel meant such a thorough indictment of academia. Maybe he did mean that, but, in that case, is he prepared to address in an adequate manner the questions and decisions that correspond with that indictment? Additionally, is he ready, as part of that, to defend and explain his own connections to academic settings, including his own college attendance as well as the significant degree to which his own career, when he has written on sports like college football and college basketball, has depended on academic institutions? I don’t think Doyel meant the comment (at least primarily) along those lines. Rather, I think Doyel is working most explicitly on a third level—the same kind of editorializing that I have already railed against on this blog. Doyel’s “Hate mail” columns are full of these kinds of insulting responses to readers’ comments. Additionally, many of his editorial pieces are full of similar kinds of sarcastic, insulting, and dismissing comments, aimed at his subjects. In the end, I don’t have to illustrate how Doyel ends up coming across as a Class-A asshole in the columns; just read readers’ responses on discussion boards to some of Doyel’s columns and you’ll see that plenty of readers recognize this. It appears that that “asshole” persona is the persona that Doyel seeks to project. It’s similar to the kinds of personas that others, like Jim Rome in sports talk and like Bill O’Reilly in news talk, work to maintain and use as the basis for their shows. It’s bound in the cult of personality and thrives off being controversial, shocking, and overly dramatic for the sake of controversy, shock, and drama. And, while it can be done effectively to convey some social commentary, rarely does that happen (perhaps Don Imus 35 years ago, but not recently, achieved some of this; John Stewart and Stephen Colbert might be contemporary embodiments of it being done well) and, instead, it ends up coming across as mean, inconsiderate, and, downright ignorant. When the likes of Jim Rome encourage others to call in with their takes, it then takes on even greater significance, since it becomes about more than simply this individual. At that point, this kind of inconsiderate banter is being promoted as the way that meaningful dialogue should occur. I think that Doyel does the same kind of thing with his “Hate Mail” columns. They encourage strong reaction in the forms of mean, sarcastic comments from readers and then reinforce that by Doyel himself adding his own similarly styled responses to the respondents. I’m sure that CBS Sportsline encourages Doyel to maintain this persona, like media outlets did with Don Imus until he said something that made them scared for their pocketbooks, and like tons of other media institutions do when they encourage outrageous behavior and then fire individuals for being too outrageous.

So, in the end, I hold CBS Sportsline at least as responsible for what’s encouraged by Doyel’s columns as I do Doyel himself. And perhaps this will translate into not reading their site any longer. My fantasy baseball league is run through CBS Sportsline and we have been considering moving it to another site for other reasons; perhaps this helps put me over the top to support using some other website. The thing is, though, most other media outlets have and encourage these same kinds of practices and personalities. So, what then is left for me to do?

In answer to that question, I come back to continuing to press on in articulating my positions. Had I realized that Doyel would put my comment and his response out publicly like this, perhaps I would not have written it. In hindsight, though, I’m glad I did. The process of reflection on what’s happened has, I think, helped me learn even more about my own contributions to discourses and about how to continue to work toward building the kinds of public forums of discussion that I want. To quote the kids from South Park, “I learned something today.” So, I suppose, Gregg, you got your wish. While you didn’t technically “lecture” me, I’ve learned something by having to reflect upon your comment. Now it’s your turn: Unlike the title of your column, my comment to you was not “hate” mail. There was a spirit of frustration, disgust, and protest in what I sent, but by no means was it “hate.” The invitation was meant in earnest and in a spirit of working together. Indeed, I think you are a reasonably smart person, but I wish you’d use that more effectively and appropriately. You want to write in a sarcastic style? Go right ahead, but do a better job of making it more intelligent and less dismissive. Relying on tired old stereotypes of academics as out of touch just makes you look much stupider than I think you are. Seek to develop more nuanced, more insightful, and more thoughtful comments that show you’re using the intelligence that you have and that don’t make you out to be some witless asshole who is just out to insult everyone. Be more self-reflexive about the subjectivity of your positions—i.e., acknowledge the limitations of your own comments and opinions, as well as the growth that you and your positions go through when you reflect on what others have to say. You can do that and still be witty and sarcastic. Push yourself to be more effective at this. I can tell you that at least one person (i.e., me) will notice.

Because of commitments to teaching other courses, I won’t be teaching the Gender and Communication course this fall; however, perhaps my comments above can stand in place of that as my “lecture.” In the meantime, for the next time I teach that course, the invitation, in all earnestness, stands. You would be welcome to join our discussion (since, while there are moments when I “lecture” to explain a concept, theory, or idea, for the most part I run that class as in-class discussion). Indeed, having you in for a class or two sure seems like it would allow you to help achieve your goal of making sure I’m connected to the “real world.”