More Props to Gregg Doyel

With the Kentucky Derby fast approaching, I want to reiterate my sentiments about horse racing (which I expressed a year ago). Honestly, though, I don't think I could have put it better than Gregg Doyel did today.

Flaming Lip Service to Democracy

While leafing through my university's student newspaper this morning, I came across this story from the Associated Press about Oklahoma's adoption of the song "Do You Realize?" by the Flaming Lips as the official state rock song. The gist of the story is that the song earned the most votes in an online contest, but then enough Oklahoma legislators voted against making it the official state rock song to keep it from being declared as such. Reasons cited included being upset about use of foul language by band members and being offended by bandmember Michael Ivins once wearing a red tee-shirt with a yellow hammer-and-sickle symbol (a symbol that denotes the Communist Party) on it.

I was especially struck by the statement by Republican Representative Corey Holland, who said, "The great thing about this country is he has the right to make whatever statement he wants to make. I have the right to be offended by that.” The problem here is exactly the problem with so many politicians, especially on the conservative side, who offer us rhetorical constructions of equality without recognizing the relations of power that are involved in the things that they are discussing. Here, Holland suggests that he and Ivins are on equal terms in public discourse--that Ivins' right to express himself with the tee-shirt and Holland's right to be offended by it are on equal footing. On the one hand, in a situation free of hierarchies of power, I might agree with Holland. These are both legitimate forms of expression and personal opinion. However, this situation is not free of hierarchies of power. Namely, as a state representative, Holland had the power to vote against adoption of the Flaming Lips' song as the state rock song and, thus, join those who kept the song from being declared the state song. In the process, Holland and others like him could assert their right to be offended over the right of the Flaming Lips to express themselves, which is exactly how censorship and marginalization develop and proceed. In this instance, Holland has a certain form of power that makes his statement, at best, misleading, and, more likely, dishonest.

This is indicative of a larger problem that exists with much discussion of rights, opportunities, and equality in the United States. In the name of these kinds of idealistic, oversimplified maxims about equality of rights and opportunities, our public discourse so often neglects the power relations that make things unequal and that privilege some perspectives over others. Until we become much more willing to talk about these issues of power and be self-reflexive in our discussion of these issues, I'm afraid we'll keep spinning our wheels, not really addressing issues and not really pursuing a better democracy. And I'll keep reading stories like this and feeling incensed at the state of public discourse in the United States like I was this morning.

Fortunately, this story has what, from my perspective at least, is a happy ending: The governor of Oklahoma signed an executive order declaring the song the official rock song of the state. This is, of course, a solution that does not divorce itself from the issues of power that I have been discussing, as in this case the governor asserted his power over that of the legislature. The difference between me and Holland--a difference that I think makes a world of difference--is that I'll acknowledge that that issue of power is involved and that, even while I am glad for the governor's decision, I acknowledge that the process by which the song was adopted remains a reflection of a system that continues to need work if it is to approximate a fuller democracy.

Remembering Bea Arthur

As I’m sure many of you know already, Bea Arthur passed away at the age of 86 on Friday, April 25. She’s most known for her leading roles in Maude and The Golden Girls, but there are two clips that stand out to me in remembering Arthur. First is her contribution to Comedy Central’s roast of Pamela Anderson in 2005, which can be seen here. In this clip, Arthur has me laughing silly. I think it demonstrates just how good Arthur was at comedic performance. Second is her skit on the Star Wars Holiday Special back in 1978, which can be seen here. The entire venture of that holiday special reeks with goofiness. Arthur’s performance, including her bit alongside Harvey Korman, who passed away last year, fits right in.

I think the acting world has lost a great one.

Happy Earth Day with Kenny Loggins

So, Happy Earth Day, everyone! To commemorate it, I'm wearing my I Love Recycling shirt and I've been listening to my favorite "green" song all day: Kenny Loggins' "Conviction of the Heart." Here's a YouTube video that someone made that uses the original, along with pictures to celebrate Earth Day. Additionally, here, one of my favorites--Richard Marx--teams up with Loggins live to perform the song. Finally, here is a video in which someone has set scenes from The Lord of the Rings films to the song--a fitting combination given the anti-Industrialist themes of the series.

Fair and Foul in Remembering Integration

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the date on which Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, thereby breaking the race barrier in major league baseball that had existed since the 1880s. Over the years since the event occurred, particularly after the first decade or so after it happened, the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947 has tended to be celebrated by Major League Baseball and many others as a unquestionably progressive act. That kind of portrayal of the integration of major league baseball as a unilaterally progressive event stems from a number of sources and types of arguments. While I do not think that Jules Tygiel means to make so broad a claim, his argument in Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and his Legacy that the integration of major league baseball significantly affected the Civil Rights Movement certainly helps fuel that kind of celebration. Meanwhile, such broad claims are offered by the likes of David Horowitz, who has used the integration of major league baseball as an excuse to argue that a free market system always does the right thing in the end.

The problem with Horowitz’s view and with the celebration of integration as so unilaterally progressive is that the way that major league baseball integrated is not without significant elements of exclusion and marginalization. While this critique is part of my own work, both in my dissertation a few years ago and as part of my argument in a forthcoming article in Journal of Communication Studies, my arguments owe debt for their framing to other works in which various elements of the critique can be found, including, among other places, in passing in Harry Edwards’ The Revolt of the Black Athlete and more fully in William C. Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete and in Brad Snyder’s Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball. As one part of the critique goes, the integration of major league baseball consolidated control of professional baseball into white hands. At the time that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, the Negro Leagues, which offered black ballplayers the opportunity to play, also offered black men and women very viable business opportunities in the forms of the professional baseball teams that they owned and ran. Within fifteen years of the integration of major league baseball, the Negro Leagues were defunct and, to this day, major league baseball remains largely a white-owned enterprise, with one Latino owner (Arte Moreno/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim), one team owned by an American subsidiary of a Japanese company (Nintendo of America/Seattle Mariners), and no African American owners. In other words, while integration did allow for black ballplayers to play major league baseball, it did so at the expense of black ownership and management of teams. It could have been done differently. For instance, Major League Baseball could have invited some of the Negro League teams to join the National League and the American League as new teams. After all, within that same fifteen years after integration that saw the evaporation of the Negro Leagues, both the National League and the American League added new teams as Major League Baseball expanded. By expanding in a way to include black ownership, integration could have been done on at least a little more equitable of a basis. In this manner, integration of the major leagues echoed other types of integration. The same kind of consolidation under white control occurred within media organizations, like newspapers. It also happened in education after the famous Brown v. Board of Education case overturned segregation. The result? In the newspapers industry, while a few black journalists got jobs, many black reporters, editors and managers were now without work and owners of black newspapers saw their businesses go under. In education, black students now went to school with white students, but integration took place in white schools, leaving black schools to close and black teachers, administrators, and staff members jobless, despite years of experience and educational background. To this day, these inequities remain far from being overcome. The same holds for Major League Baseball.

So, while there certainly may be positives associated with the 1947 integration of Major League Baseball, it is not the unilaterally progressive event that it tends to be characterized as having been. Rather, it was a step toward a particular path toward democracy—a step in one direction among a number of choices for direction and a step that needs to be followed by other steps that work toward further progress. For years, Major League Baseball has used April 15 to pat itself on the back, celebrating the event of integration and suggesting how this shows the usefulness and importance of Major League Baseball to United States society. Today, though, as I looked at how the 1947 integration was being characterized on Major League Baseball’s official website, I was happy to see what I think is improvement along these lines. The attention was focused much more on the person of Robinson and the struggle that he endured as the one who integrated the major leagues. This included recognition of various programs that have been developed to work toward equality and progress involving issues of race. Perhaps Major League Baseball is listening to some of the voices who have been offering critiques of how integration has been remembered. I’d like to hope so and it is nice to see what appears to be a more progressive take on the ways to remember integration. Still, it does continue to be situated in a form of paternalism, as giving scholarships and developing programs continue a kind of noblesse oblige tradition, whereby those in power offer some opportunities to the less-empowered—i.e., “give back to the community”—yet do so in ways that reinforce their own standing as the empowered, that attempt not to disrupt the status quo too much and, thus, that don’t really do a lot in terms of altering the deeper structural inequities of society. Major League Baseball is taking up the “there’s-still-a-long-way-to-go” kind of message, yet it must recognize that its own structures do continue to be part of the problem. While certainly just a step and not a cure-all, I think that making significant moves to ensure African American ownership of at least a couple of teams in the near future would be a step in the right direction along those lines. The likes of Horowitz would cry “foul” at this as the kind of affirmative action type of policy that he and other conservatives rail against, associating it with concepts like “reverse racism” and suggesting that it is “special treatment” of minorities that takes us away from really treating people as equals. I’d argue that it’s only “fair” to compensate for the special treatment that white-owned teams received in 1947 when the major leagues integrated, as well as the special treatment in 1961, 1962, 1969, 1977, 1993, and 1998, when white owners received newly created expansion teams.

Fuzzy Math

Given the importance of “tradition” to the Masters golf tournament, I’ll borrow that word to note that I have been making a tradition of not watching the Masters since the 2003 publicity surrounding Martha Burk’s letter to Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson asking Johnson to admit a woman to the golf club and Johnson’s subsequent public refusal to do so. As I mentioned a year ago at this time, I struck upon a new idea for how I’d like this to be handled. So, once again, I’m hoping (I’m sure in vain) for someone from this year’s tournament to donate all or part of his winnings to the National Organization for Women. In the meantime, I watched the tournament for the first time in 7 years and my attention was caught by something involving similar issues as my tradition not to watch …

On ESPN’s broadcast of the Masters much was made of former champion Fuzzy Zoeller’s last round at the championship on Friday. Former champions are invited to continue to play in the tournament in perpetuity, though many stop playing in the championship once they feel they are no longer able to post respectable scores. This year, both Zoeller and Gary Player announced that that time had come. For Player, this meant he played in an all-time record 52 Masters tournaments. For Zoeller, this meant 31. Though both shot well better than most everyday golfers would shoot, neither was close to making the cut for the weekend and, thus, with the conclusion of play on Friday, the Masters playing days for each had come to a close.

In the case of Zoeller, much of his greatest fame as a golfer came in conjunction with the Masters golf tournament … for better and for worse. On the positive side, he remains to this day the last player to have won the tournament is his very first appearance (and the only person to do so other than the first two champions of the tournament). On the negative side, Zoeller is very much still remembered for racially insensitive remarks made after Tiger Woods won his first Masters tournament in 1997. The former point about Zoeller’s career was mentioned quite readily in interviews with Zoeller and coverage of the event during his last round of competition in the tournament. The latter point about his career, I suppose predictably, was not. To an extent, I know why Zoeller’s 1997 comments were not discussed. Often, at times when people’s milestones are marked, those commemorating these people emphasize the positives of their lives. Additionally, there is always the practical aspect of getting through the interview with Zoeller, since he might not do or continue with the interview if he was asked about the 1997 comments (though this interview in Golf Digest did bring it up, even though it was in a way that allowed it to be framed as having nothing to do with race). Yet, I think neither of these reasons is an appropriate excuse. Zoeller’s comments in 1997 do not alone define him and he does deserve the opportunity to make up for them, but that’s exactly the point. Making up for these comments would involve active and ongoing recognition of them. I don’t know that the “he’s put it behind him” kind of idea was explicitly at work in ESPN’s coverage of Zoeller, but the coverage rang in a manner that is very reminiscent of that sentiment. Just as athletes and other public figures who have been involved in activities that are deemed inappropriate are often said to have “gotten past it” or “put it behind them,” so to are comments involving racism and sexism handled in this way. The problem here is that real reflection on any kind of inappropriate behavior means continual acknowledgement of the potential to do it again and vigilance to help ensure that one does not do so again. This works personally (e.g., I recall what I did and my potential ability to do it again so that I do not personally misbehave again) as well as structurally (e.g., I acknowledge how specific behaviors perpetuate racism, sexism, exclusion, etc.). Zoeller’s retirement from competition could have been used to draw attention to the continual need to be vigilant of the many ways racism works in society. Instead, it’s as if racism does not even exist—i.e., we’ve “gotten past it.”

Zoeller’s final round could also have been used to draw attention to sexism and issues of gender as well. Much was made of the fact that Zoeller’s daughter, Gretchen, caddied for him during the tournament and, thus, Fuzzy was able to share the experience with her. Yet, to this day, August National continues to lack female members. So, Gretchen Zoeller was allowed on the grounds as his caddie and could play the course as his guest, since he’s a member by virtue of having once won the tournament, but she has yet to have the opportunity to join. Of course, Augusta National’s defense has for the past six years been that they do not have a rule against female membership; they simply have not yet had the right opportunity to admit a female member. So, they might (and I’m sure some would) argue that there’s nothing necessarily keeping Gretchen from joining the club. … Well, of course, nothing but the same old informal blocks that have continued to keep women out for decades and for the past six years despite public attention to the lack of female membership … the same old informal blocks that create the glass ceiling phenomenon and keep women (and racial and ethnic minorities) from getting opportunities in not just sports, but organizations, groups, and events across the board. It, then, stood as a rather (at best) awkward and (more to the point) patronizing and paternalistic sight to see a woman working in service to a man at an institution that denies membership to women. Again, though, this awkwardness and paternalism remained unaddressed in the coverage of the tournament. In this case, it’s as if sexism does not exist. After all, as the narrative went, Gretchen got to enjoy being her father’s caddie and share in his experience.

Fuzzy was applauded as he walked off the course and he was celebrated as a Masters champion by ESPN as they covered the tournament, but here’s an idea that might have been worthy of even more applause and celebration: Especially since he’s going out anyway (and, thus, does not have so much to lose), why not use this as an opportunity to draw attention to issues of discrimination by asking Augusta National to offer membership to his daughter? Her physical presence as caddie already potentially serves to draw attention to the fact that women can do what men do on the golf course, so there’s no good reason to exclude them. Why not, then, at the end of the round, during your interview, note what Gretchen did as caddie, state what this illustrates about women’s abilities to play and manage rounds of golf, and ask Augusta National to offer Gretchen membership? While race and gender are not the same and do not work the same way, the attention to discrimination that such a gesture could bring would certainly do a lot to atone for the offensive comments Fuzzy offered 12 years ago. Fuzzy could even have addressed that, saying something to the effect of how, as one who has been guilty of reinforcing prejudice before, he has learned the value of diversity and respect for others and he’d like to see this addressed further by the admission of women as members of Augusta National. Then, we’ve got coverage of it, it can easily be discussed in an interview with Fuzzy, and he can leave a little more positive of a legacy for himself.

Of course, none of this happened and coverage of the event continued the long tradition of keeping the United States from productively talking about issues of gender and race. For a country that claims so often to be aligned with freedom and equality, that tradition just doesn’t add up.

The BYOUty of It All

Maybe blogging is serving as therapy for me as I cope with last night men's college basketball proceedings. Though, truth be told, I was prepared for UNC to beat MSU and I'm not THAT upset. MSU had quite a successful season and losing in the final game to a UNC team that was clearly on a mission from this time last year isn't anything to feel bad about. Or maybe I'm blogging because a set of papers is sitting in a folder on my computer waiting to be grading in the same sort of way that that little stack of money follows people around on Geico commercials. I'm not sure how to explain why I'm already blogging again, but here goes ...

It seems like one of the greatest beauties of YouTube is the ability to find and rewatch all kinds of things that you haven't been able to see in years or even decades.

I mean, I've drifted down memory lane watching plenty of late-1980s videos, especially this one, this one, and this one recently. I even found this video, which I hadn't seen since its run on Dial MTV in 1988 and then subsequent fade from existence anywhere I might find it.

I also recently found an Arrow shirt commercial that I remember seeing once in 1987, really liking, and never seeing again ... until a few weeks ago when it dawned me to search for it on YouTube.

And who can forget the best performance ever to appear on American Idol (at least in my opinion)?

Today, this video is making me feel quite a bit better.

Gregg Doyel Update #3: Thanks, Gregg

I was working on my Master’s degree at Michigan State University when the Mateen Cleaves-Morris Peterson “Flintstones” teams that went on to win a national championship were developing. They won the championship two years after I left East Lansing. My last spring there was their first trip to the “Sweet Sixteen” round of the NCAA tournament, where they lost to, coincidentally enough, North Carolina. Since my time at MSU, the Spartans have become my favorite big-conference men’s college basketball team. (They’re second overall to Bowling Green, of course.)

With that in mind, I’m quite ecstatic that the Spartans are in the national championship game tonight. I think it will be tough to win, as North Carolina is a great team, but I’m excited and hopeful nonetheless. So, I’m quite ready to bask in the glow of praise for the team. However, I’m not willing to do so at the sake of decency, which brings me to Gregg Doyel …

A little less than a year ago, I critiqued CBS Sportsline’s Gregg Doyel for his take on Danica Patrick’s first win as an Indy Car driver. This led to a summer exchange between Gregg and I that I was thankful for and that I reported on here, here, and here on this blog. Well … in the spirit of goodwill, it’s only appropriate to give Gregg some props when I think he’s got something right. (This isn’t to say that he hasn’t had anything else right over the last year. Far from it. Rather, it is to say that this is the first chance I’ve had to note it and write about it.) In a column that Gregg posted this weekend, he argues that all of the stories about how the Michigan State University men’s basketball team is bringing relief to the economic woes of Detroit are not only untrue, but “insulting to true suffering.” While I hope he’s wrong about the outcome of the game (though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have good points about the MSU-UNC matchup), I have to agree very much with his analysis of the “fairy tale” about MSU alleviating Detroit’s pain.

As I see it, this “fairy tale” is nothing much more than two things: (1) a way for media covering the event to spin a dramatic story that doesn’t have to be realistic as long as it’s dramatic and emotional, which is something that the United States media love to do (and something that television in general strives on) and (2) an attempt by sports media (as well as other media that isn’t directly covering sport, but is invested with the sports industry in one of a number of ways) to offer justification for the importance of sport, even if the justification is not wholly appropriate or correct. In the specific case of Michigan State University supposedly bringing relief to Detroit, it comes across as awfully smug and patronizing for sportscasters and sportswriters, who are doing okay even in the current economy, to be making these kinds of claims about those who are not so well off. Frankly, it’s sickening to hear over and over again and, so, I’m thankful to Gregg Doyel (who, it should be noted, writes for the website of the same media outlet that broadcasts the game tonight) for pointing this out.

If I Don't Listen to the Talk of the Town ...

I think I’ll start this post with a nice little ditty by Go West.

Now on to the topic at hand …

I generally like the work of Rob Neyer. He seems fairly progressive in his viewpoints. After all, I was applauding his take on Alex Rodriguez and performance-enhancing drugs a few weeks ago. He even gave money to Dennis Kucinich back in 2004. However, I found one of his latest blog posts to be rather un-progressive. In it, he concludes the following about Eri Yoshida, a 17-year-old Japanese knuckleballer who just made her professional debut: “You have to admire her dream and her persistence and her skills (or skill). But you can't play if you don't have the requisite physical tools, too.” This is based on her height and weight of 5’0” and 114 pounds (and, presumably, her gender may have something to do with this as well, even if Neyer isn’t consciously recognizing it). The problem here is that it’s indicative of how sports and athletes are viewed in general. Often, this is represented as a matter of people simply not having the body types or physical characteristics to engage in a sport, at least at its highest levels. For instance, during the Olympics last summer, NBC ran a story about how Michael Phelps’ swimming success could be attributed to a number of physical characteristics that he possesses. (Nope, the ability to relax by smoking pot wasn’t one of them …) That story reflected the sense that most of us wouldn’t be able to do what Phelps does, even if we tried. A similar sentiment is at work in Neyer’s take on Yoshida. He’s already dismissing her based on her physical characteristics, no matter how much she tries.

As James L. Cherney points out in an essay worth reading in the edited volume Case Studies in Sport Communication, one of the problematic aspects of sport is that bodies that are deemed “normal” for sporting activities, especially on their highest levels, are actually usually “abnormal” bodies in that they are not typical of the populations from which they come. Cherney’s analysis focuses on how disability then becomes defined problematically, particularly when applied to athletes such as Casey Martin. Applied beyond how “disability” is defined, Cherney’s analysis offers a useful perspective for understanding the inequities that are already set up in what are and are not deemed appropriate bodies types for sports, while his analysis also offers a useful perspective for understanding how the rules of sports serve to privilege certain body types over others.

Back to Neyer, then, how progressive is the progressive here? Perhaps sports will never completely be void of inequities based on physical characteristics of bodies (it’s possible that it’s inherent once we establish rules for how the games are played), but what good is it to further denigrate efforts that might potentially challenge or address those inequities? If Ishida has found a way to play baseball at a high level with her physical characteristics (and I intentionally do not say “despite” them here, because that’s not the sentiment I intend, as it would further reinforce the inequity, I think), shouldn’t we be much more supportive and certainly not so dismissive? Otherwise, we’re basically establishing a rather non-progressive, anti-democratic system of privilege based on birthright.

Fortunately, judging by the comments that readers have posted in conjunction with this piece by Neyer, many folks are calling Neyer out on similar kinds of grounds. To echo one of the themes of these readers, what has happened to the intelligent writing that many of us have come to associate with Neyer? I think at least part of the answer may be the way that he’s blogging, which very well may make this a consequence of the ESPN opinion-producing machinery (which, then, of course, makes it one more manifestation of how the “free market” of capitalism isn’t the freedom-of-opportunity place that so many people claim it to be). Neyer’s blog with several entries a day do appear to become a bit reactionary at times, sacrificing quality for quantity, perhaps. This may be part of the dilemma that blogging faces as a medium, but I’d like to think it’s a dilemma that can be addressed and overcome. I’d like to think that we can post several times a day and maintain quality even as we increase quantity. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking and maybe it’s wishful thinking for me to have my take on Ishida as well. Maybe I’m being too hard on Rob. I mean, inevitably, don’t we all have times when our performance just isn’t the best?

Hmmm … seems I’ve hit on the theme of another pair of recent posts from Neyer’s blog, one of which discusses evaluation of performance of umpires and the second of which involves Neyer defending his progressiveness when it was called into question by reader based on the first post. Along these lines, Jurgen Habermas has argued for an “ideal” public sphere of civil discourse based in rational argumentation, in which all claims are up for discussion and, thus, must withstand the judgment of rationality in order to hold up. Similar ideas have been evoked more popularly recently by Al Gore, who even writes about the potential of the Internet as a medium that might provide more equitable spaces for discussion. Having read a reasonable enough number of Neyer’s columns, I get the feeling (and maybe I’m wrong) that he’s not in opposition to these kinds of views of discourse and argumentation. They do, I think, suffer at times from the limitations of their modernist philosophical bent (see, for instance, John Durham Peters’ critique of Gore in the book Speaking into the Air), but I think there is something of use in positing a kind of space for discourse like this. (One of the problems, I think, is the use of rationality as the only basis for evaluating arguments. That’s not to say it can’t be a part of the criteria, but that it’s not appropriate to make it the only part.) As I understand this kind of space for discourse, if I do make an argument that does not hold up, I accept it as such, recognize my error, and add that to my storehouse of knowledge for future arguments so that I might do better next time. I am certainly not dismissed from the circle for making a bad argument. I get the feeling that’s at least part of what Neyer is saying about umpires. We’re not going to fire or otherwise discipline folks for every little mistake, but we might remedy consistent problems in performance by this kind of monitoring. I mean, Neyer does have at least some understanding of such surveillance, since his work for his job—i.e., writing pieces that appear online—is open for public judgment where folks like me can call him out when we think he’s wrong.

That all sounds well and good in an idealistic world devoid of power relations. The problem is that we do live within power relations that do affect what happens. So, while, in the modernistic dream, we are able to discuss everything and observe everything openly and honestly, one of the reasons that people can’t be open and honest in our society is because many times their ideas or some aspects of their lives or personhoods might be held against them as the basis to discipline them, at the very least by excluding them from or marginalizing them within conversations and, even more dramatically, by imprisoning them or imposing other actions against their lives, their liberties, and their pursuits of happiness, to adapt a particularly prominent phrase associated with democracy. I think I’m pretty much all for working toward that more ideal space for discourse, as long as we bear in mind the politics of these power relations and we negotiate them accordingly so that individuals and groups are not unfairly excluded, marginalized, and/or disciplined. (Hmmm … I suppose this is the perfect time for one more reading recommendation, this time for one of my favorite books ever: Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.) I think part of that project is advocating not only an ideal space of discourse, but also an ideal space of thought and action as well. And, thus, we’re back to Ishida. If we dismiss the opportunity and possibility in what she is doing from the get-go, then how, I ask you, have we helped any of this?