Ferguson and the problem of the angler fish

In the coming days the consensus seems to be that the grand jury will decide not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing on Mike Brown. Ferguson has fallen out of the news cycle through no malicious intent. The threat of riot porn is gone, and by nature of our quick moving media cycles, it is simply no longer the belle of the ball. What's left is a fewer number of people going in the time they can. Retiree's, sitting with their signs, people with loving families and jobs given time off, and a few hours of yelling from people who can make it before or after a shift. Streamers have mostly left, because without impassioned locals in the face of dispassionate local law enforcement, the viewership is simply not there. If you have been invested, you know very well that it is still going on. You know that something about this feels different, and it's not just the inevitable aftershock when the decision is announce. The people are fed up. This is not another L to take and move on. There may not be a concensus amount protestors in how to go about fighting for what's good and right, but there is a concensus that a line has been crossed. You'll be made aware of it again when the decision is announced. The people of Ferguson and St Louis will make sure of that. Maybe property will be damaged, maybe innocent business will be harmed, and maybe money will be lost. This will be the part to which you pay attention. Society will make sure of that. You will make sure of that.

There will be outrage at these people being violent because our infallible justice system declared a man innocent. Because an officer was just doing his job. What did these business owners ever do to those people? These people just want an excuse to be violent and loot. They are thugs.

You won't just be missing the point, you'll be looking at the wrong thing entirely. You're looking at the light while the angler fish eats you.

When I ask people what they think about Kanye (and, well, I do this a lot), the most common response I get is “I like his music, but I don't like the person.” When I follow up with a why question, I hear comments about the “quality of his person”, his ego, and the ubiquitous reference to his interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. This moment, in people's timeline's and subsequently what's remembered in history, manages to demand more weight than the 2005 post-Katrina. When I bring up the 2005 post-Katrina telethon, most people remember that moment as well. “George Bush doesn't care about black people.” It tends to add more fuel to their Kanye-hating fire. That he would take something that's suppose to be about helping people and make it all about himself. So egotistical. Yes, bringing yourself onto a stage without invite in such a “structured” setting, I can see how someone can come to the conclusion that someone must think they are much bigger than everyone else, the institution, and the moment. So egotistical. But I have to ask them “have you actually watched the video of the telethon?” It's nothing about him. Without seeing the video,and even some people that have, that was most people's one take-away. “George Bush doesn't care about black people.” It's the fire and the looting. The light of the angler fish.

This past April, NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling made some off-color comments to his girlfriend about her interaction with black people in public. It caught fire. The ESPN news cycle and even some non-sports cycles latched on to the headlines, highlighted the overtly racist comments he made: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?" and "You can sleep with them. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games." These comments brought all sorts of outrage and statements of we-won't-have-this-in-our-league and celebrities coming out of the woodwork to condemn this and subsequent action and all the hoopla. Those comments were just fires and looting. Light on an angler fish.

The real substance of the Sterling conversation, the dangerous part that will eat you because you're looking at something else, comes around the 1 minute mark of the recording. That the racism isn't his fault. That it is the culture, it has been and will always be that way. “I am living in a culture, and I have to live within that culture.” The kind of culture where his friends call him to tell him his boo has a black person on her Instagram. Wait what? Why did this get missed? His friends, the powerful and rich-enough-to-own-sports teams, call him because his minority laundry was getting aired out in public. I suppose that does not make for a very interesting headline. Anglers are not pretty fish (as I typed this I google image searched “angler fish” and involuntarily groaned).

If you watch the full Kanye video, instead of waiting for the punch line, listen to what he's saying. Watch his body language. This is a man visibly distraught because he is seeing, possibly for the first time, what a systemic problem racism is. He is watching black people stuck in the city and the wreckage-- stranded because without personal vehicles their only hope was to rely on good Samaritans to get them out, all exacerbated by the wealth gap. He is seeing the worst damage in areas of less desirable real estate-- mostly populated by black people and deep roots of segregation. He is seeing the media bias, things like this. He's seeing there they were never meant to make it out of the system. The involuntary groan of seeing the angler fish's body.

Have you and your friends ever talked about those parts of the events? The real parts?

When St. Louis burns, try to look past the fire and the looting. Don't get distracted by the angler fish's lure and miss the more dangerous, more terrifying part. Find the real substance behind it, and talk about it.

Lando, soccer's reckoning, coming of age, and why I will likely cry tonight.

Tonight is Landon Donovan's last game for the US Men's National Soccer team. I hated writing that sentence just now. I wanted him to have a chance to say goodbye, and Jurgen Klinsmann gave it to him. Tonight is it.

I'll admit that the love I now have for Lando does not come from rooting for him on principle over long stretches of time. Watching him doesn't bring me joy the same way a Cesc Fabregas or Per Mertesacker or even a twilight Theirry Henry does. At points I even disliked him and spoke poorly of him. The simple fact is I've never known US Soccer without Lando. In a weird way the mere presence of the man over time has somehow seeped into this novelty and nostalgia hardened heart of mine and established an attachment that will likely bring me to tears tonight.

Personally I was never a great player; my skills were unspectacular and my concept of the way the game worked was mediocre at best. I was just a player with passion and heart that never stopped; a work horse. I would never become much more than that but they could never take away that I loved this game more than my more talented teammates did. Loved the game to the point where I played on teams that lost by 6 every week and never stopped being pissed at goals. Loved the game to the point where when I wrecked my car the only thing I wanted to do was make it to a 4 hour practice. So it hurt when I didn't make varsity my junior year, and it was hard not to even try out my senior year. Club soccer was over, my career was done. How can you possibly fill a void like that? Well. You don't.

Instead, you watch.

I grew up in an era where soccer was the bastard child of American past times. I am still haunted by volleyball-esque Mitre balls, Alexi Lalas' goatee, and having channel 124 as your only access to quality soccer. Being one of few people you knew to wake up at 7am solely to scour the ad-ridden depths of foreign internet for a livestream, hoping to find one where you can make out the numbers on the backs, takes it's toll. I had a complex; an elitist, patronizing, holier-than-thou inferiority complex. I desperately wanted my sport, the sport held so highly in my heart, to be relevant. I wanted to be able to talk to my friends or strangers about it. Formations and false nines, transfers and youth products, the likes. So when our US talisman, LD, wasn't making it up to scratch, thereby justifying my colleagues dismissal of soccer? I blamed him. I was tired of my passion being slandered. If our national team was only better, if our captain, our best player, our icon was only better, my zeal for the sport would be justified. Not advancing past the group stage in 2006, being displaced at his own club by Beckham, the only other name soccer name Americans seemed to know, a failed stint at Bayern, LD was unfairly confirming everything people said about it never being an American sport. I needed so much more from him. I needed a hero from him. Then it came.

Go, go, USA. THAT goal.

Just like that he was no longer a name said in oft condescending tones. He became a household name that people believed in. People were willing to write about, talk about, argue on how overrated or underrated he is or isn't.

He gave us a moment heroes do. He gave us a moment to remember. Can you remember anything else from the game before or the game after? He made soccer relevant. He made me relevant. All the validation I never got as a player or a fan sprung up from the ground like he had hit oil that day in South Africa.

I would argue that if it had been anyone else on that squad, even Dempsey, it would not have had the galvanizing effect it did. Videos of “USA” chants went viral. I got goosebumps. The prodigal son, our failed hope, the name people knew and felt disappointed by, gave us a glimpse that soccer CAN be an American thing. The fallout? His loans to Everton became massive, not taking an offseason became heroic, his success in the MLS became meaningful. Would the US have followed Gomez, Findley or Edu the same way? Since, soccer has only become more accessible. ESPN showed EPL matches and NBC outbid them later down the road. Vancouver, Portland, Montreal, NYC, Orlando, and Atlanta each got teams. Fanatics are on the fringes of mainstream. I know there is more to all of this than change a single goal. Entertainment is globalized, money  is being invested, money is being made, other sports declining, etc etc ad infintum. 

But I've never known US Soccer without Lando. He is the face, the hope, the disappointment, and the rise of our beloved sport to my generation of fans and players. He is inexorably tied with full field suicides after school, with tinkering for endless hours on FIFA in Tay's living room, with getting Capri Suns and orange slices after games, with how awful shin guards make your bag smell, with the elation after your first goal, with the frustrations of getting walloped, with the chills after his goal. Hearts don't care that heroes don't last forever and that talismans don't actually do anything. Talismans are symbols, centerpieces, reminders of a time when you saw sports as sacred and not complex means of entertainment. Heroes are going to be cried for missed when they are gone.