Notes on Confusing the Issues
Reminder: CNN Viewers Need to Stop Being CNN Viewers
Okay, the general backstory is a superstition we refer to as the "CNN test". The principle behind it is that, for whatever reason, if you have any internet service at all, you should be able to connect to CNN.com. It's the weirdest thing; I learned it almost fifteen years ago, and it still seems to work. No, really, whatever the problem is, while you're backspinning gray or whatever the other wait symbols are, for every other website on the planet, you can launch a new window or tab and test your internet connection by going to CNN.com. Effing strangest thing. I have no idea why this works, but it works on multiple service providers, and will remain among my standard testing protocols until it stops working.
I had to run it this morning. (
Hint: The
Comcast service "upgrade" going on in my area really
is a fraud. Since "upgrading", we have significantly slower access times, significantly more broken connections, and significantly greater and more frequent darktime with no internet or phone service.)
At any rate, that's how I saw what I saw.
So, go back to the topic post, please, and read the headline attached in the image. If you want, even read through the article detail again.
Because while I was at CNN.com, I noticed Don Lemon in the corner video box, and the chyron read, "Hawks owner accused of racist emails". And all I can say is that there better be something more to the story, some new development, and therein lies the point. You would think if new accusations against Levenson emerged, it would be all over the CNN website, which it isn't. And it's not showing in Google News results, so what's the buzz, Don?
So while
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar himself is making excuses for Levenson, and inherently arguing that Levenson has no right to diagnose racism, what everybody else is talking about is that Levenson might have made the right move by getting out before the sky falls.
Michael Lee of
The Washington Post opens his latest article this way:
Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson may have removed himself from a dysfunctional situation by announcing on Sunday that he would sell his controlling interest in the franchise following the discovery of a two-year-old racially-insensitive email, but the saga is far from over. The attention has now shifted to General Manager Danny Ferry, whose reading of an inflammatory comment about Luol Deng during a free agency conference call last June ignited the current firestorm that caused Levenson to remove himself from the franchise.
The backstory there is that co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. wanted to fire General Manager Danny Ferry, who allegedly went racist in a conference call—
Gearon detailed the phone call in which Ferry made an inappropriate remark about Deng and wrote that it was “far worse” than the racially-charged comments that led to a lifetime ban for former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
“They were not from a private conversation — they were in a business environment on a business matter in front of a dozen or more people,” Gearon wrote. “If Ferry would make such a slur in a semi-public forum, we can only imagine what he has said in smaller groups or to individuals.”
According to multiple published reports, Ferry read aloud insensitive background information compiled by a source outside by Hawks organization on Deng, a two-time all-star from South Sudan. That comment under scrutiny read, “He's a good guy overall. But he is not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way.”
Gearon's version differed some from previously recorded accounts. “With respect to one potential free agent, a highly-regarded African-American player and humanitarian, Ferry talked about the player's good points, and then on to describe his negatives, stating that 'he has a little African in him. Not in a bad way, but he's like a guy who would have a nice store out front but sell you counterfeit stuff out the back.'” Ferry completed his comments by describing the player (and through implication, all persons of African descent) as a two-faced liar and cheat.”
It was apparently in the resulting internal investigation that the 2012 email exchange emerged, prompting Levenson to decide it was time to get the hell out of town.
Meanwhile, for Abdul-Jabbar, a legend of NBA performance, this is pure business:
The only problem is that Atlanta Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson is no Donald Sterling. Nor is his email racist. In fact, his worst crime is misguided white guilt.
I read Levenson's email. Here's what I concluded: Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats. In the email, addressed to Hawks president Danny Ferry, Levenson wonders whether (according to his observations) the emphasis on hip-hop and gospel music and the fact that the cheerleaders are black, the bars are filled with 90% blacks, kiss cams focus on black fans and time-out contestants are always black has an effect on keeping away white fans.
Seems reasonable to ask those questions. If his arena was filled mostly with whites and he wanted to attract blacks, wouldn't he be asking how they could de-emphasize white culture and bias toward white contestants and cheerleaders? Don't you think every corporation in America that is trying to attract a more diverse customer base is discussing how to feature more blacks or Asians or Latinos in their TV ads?
He cites occasions of television history, comparing Levenson's comments to "when the original
Law & Order first launched, there was a cast shake-up that added more women, reportedly in an effort to attract more female viewers". But here's the problem with that business consideration:
The decision to add more women did not reflect some "rape fear", or some-such resulting from the fact of masculine culture. And then there is the bit about how MTV television shows "can't get through an emotional scene without a pop song coming in to sing to the viewer what they should be feeling, because that's what the demographic wants". And, of course, he points out tailored advertising "to create ads to appeal specifically to women, blacks and Latinos", adding, "That's busines."
Except those ads don't rely on assuaging sexist fears that all men are rapists, or whatever; many Americans would condemn such fears as "feminazi". The problem with Levenson's email—at least, as Mr. Levenson himself seems to see it—is that his response honored white fans' racism.
So here's the thing: Levenson will land on his feet. He's not quitting some entry-level admin services job. Indeed, he will likely profit from the sale; despite the Hawks' low value (27th of 30 in the league),
its $425m value is over twice what the ownership paid to acquire the team.
Meanwhile, it's easy enough to see a proverbial shitstorm coming if any of the witnesses to the alleged Ferry comments decides to come forward. And Levenson, a founder of United Communications Group, may, by some measures, have simply committed a major business error;
Justin Moyer of the
Washington Post published yesterday under the headline, "How Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson underestimated black purchasing power". And if that is true, and Levenson's business error was in part the result of honoring white fans' racism? Well, we can argue over whether that is the case, but if any aspect of that is in
his mind? Yes, that error, simply on a business level, would suggest to an executive of his prowess that perhaps something has gone awry.
And in business terms, Levenson is "getting out front of the story", a formulation I've never liked, but in this case makes sense. If he sees the excremental hurricane coming as a result of Ferry's comments and the subsequent investigation, and he's sitting here looking at his own email that opens with blacks scaring whites, and if we accept as arguable Moyer's contention that, "the e-mail isn't just inflammatory. It doesn't make economic sense", then it might occur to us to wonder how long a good businessman is going to stick around while rumors of an Apocalypse swirl.
So he's trying to stay ahead of the story. He perceives wrongness in what he wrote; he perceives the vectors by which those words will damage both the team and himself if they emerge under the spectre of the Ferry issue; the course is clear—self-report, get out, and thereby set an example for what needs to happen in order to clean up racism in the NBA. As Moyer explained:
Black people are not scaring white people away from anything in Atlanta — the city's black population is decreasing. Atlanta was 54 percent black and 34 percent white in 2010, as compared with 62 percent black and 33 percent white in 2000. In a decade, the city Ebony once called “the Black Mecca of the South” has declined by 12 percent.
Whether those African Americans who remain in Atlanta will support an underperforming, unprofitable basketball team is a more complicated question. But what is clear: Black dollars mean black power.
“With a current buying power of $1 trillion that is forecasted to reach $1.3 trillion by the year 2017, the importance of connecting with African-American consumers is more important than ever,” Nielsen reported last year. In addition: “Currently 43 million strong, African-American consumers have unique behaviors from the total market. For example, they're more aggressive consumers of media and they shop more frequently.”
Atlanta's identification with the black middle class makes Levenson's claims all the more mystifying. Though African Americans households lost more than half of their net worth in the Great Recession, NPR said Atlanta was “virtually synonymous with the black middle class” in 2011. Though it said that African American median income was much lower than that of whites, the Root pointed out in 2010 that Atlanta has “the largest concentration of black millionaires in the country.”
(Boldface accent added)
Could it be, for instance, that Levenson's concerns that "we can't get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs", were wrongly founded in the question of blacks scaring whites? Perhaps it's just that, well, the Atlanta Hawks just suck? Certes, they are hardly the worst in the league, and they managed to run 24-17 at home last season, but they're a middling team with comparatively low net value; they placed eigth (of fifteen) in their conference last season, which also translates to eighteenth (of thirty) in the league.
And could it be, similarly speaking, that there are few fathers and sons at the games might be a combination of a middling-at-best team and the constantly rising costs of attending professional sports events?
Therein lies a business analysis concern that could easily prey on Levenson's mind. If his market analysis for the team missed the mark because he gave over to a racist argument instead of an actual financial argument, then, yes, it is easy to see how he construes his own racism in the occasion, as well as why others might view it that way, too.
Like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said:
That's business.
In the end, what Levenson gets out of this, even more than a relatively thin profit on the share sale, is his reputation:
"Yeah, I fucked up, and I see that, and this is really the only thing I can do, now." He's setting a pretty good example for the rest of the owners, despite having set a poor example for anyone else. And it's true, such outcomes, for the simple fact of their appearance of justice, do end up constituting a good example.
In other words, here we have a guy doing exactly what he's supposed to do in a situation like this.
Honestly, if we consider the offense in its context, he could have covered his ass in that email quite easily. Excerpted from the original:
Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba's urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.
My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.
(qtd. in Moyer)
That second paragraph is a mess. A less racist form:
We might wonder if the black crowd somehow scared the whites; this is Atlanta, after all. But there was nothing threatening going on in the arena; I never felt uncomfortable, but it's also arguable that Southern whites, generally speaking, really don't like being a minority. On fan sites I would read the oddball stories about how dangerous it is around Phillips, but in our nine years I'm hard-pressed to recall a mugging or even pickpocketing. Those stories seem racist garbage to the point that saying the arena is in the wrong place seems some sort of code for there being too many blacks at the games. The question remains: What do we do about this?
Part of the problem is that while Levenson seems aware of the racism, he also sort of buys into it insofar as this very, very successful businessman decided to posit a "theory" that actually ignored the financial numbers.
And if that's what he's seeing, that he traded his business acumen for a convenient theory badly expressed, we might suggest there really isn't any question about why he's getting out. He fucked up; he fucked up in a really ugly, stupid way; and it won't matter a whit that he fucked up in a really stupid way if this comes out as merely another brick in the foundation of a much larger issue of racism within the organization.
And with all of this on the table, Don Lemon and CNN are sitting there pitching the idea that Levenson has been "accused" of a racist email?
Okay, who is this accuser?
Bruce Levenson? For the Hawks owner to be "accused" of racist emails suggests a conflict between an accuser and an alleged violator. In this case, the alleged violator is also the accuser. A better chyron, for the sake of actually being accurate, would be, "Hawks owner confesses racist email".
But, no. This weird and nuanced tale, packing an inherent spectacular punch, just isn't enough for CNN.
Analogously, I need to learn scripting for GIMP, because I tend to run the same several adjustments to photos I use for blogging. In CNN's case, the
"Script-Fu" would appear to include an exponential sensationalizer. That is to say, given a story that will offer myriad opportunities for compelling, nuanced reporting, CNN decides to mash and reshape it, in order to make it less nuanced and more spectacular.
I might disagree with the esteemed Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, but at least he is expressing his feelings. And that's sort of the point of commentary. And that's an entirely different concept from an alleged news organization like CNN going out of its way to tank its reporting.
____________________
Notes:
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem. "Bruce Levenson Isn't a Racist; He's a Businessman". Time. September 8, 2014. Time.com. September 9, 2014. http://time.com/3296175/bruce-levenson-atlanta-hawks-racist-email-kareem-abdul-jabbar/
Lee, Mike. "Hawks co-owner wanted Danny Ferry dismissed over Luol Deng comments". The Washington Post. September 9, 2014. WashongtonPost.com. September 9, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...anny-ferry-dismissed-over-luol-deng-comments/
"Atlanta Hawks". Forbes. 2014. Forbes.com. September 9, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/teams/atlanta-hawks/
Moyer, Justin. "How Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson underestimated black purchasing power". The Washington Post. September 8, 2014. WashingtonPost.com. September 9, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...venson-underestimated-black-purchasing-power/
GNU Image Manipulation Project. "Using Script-Fu Scripts". (n.d.). Docs.Gimp.org. September 9, 2014. http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-concepts-script-fu.html
