“So, what was the highlight?”

That’s the question most people have asked since I returned from attending the Inauguration festivities in Washington, D.C.

And my answer surprises even me: It is the road trip home, listening for the first time to Barack Obama reading “Dreams of My Father.”

We’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. Somehow Americans have managed to elect an intellectual to the highest office.

As the self-aware reflections in his first book suggest, though, Obama is much more than an intellectual.  Listening to his narration, as he takes on voices as varied as his high school friend Ray and his Kenyan sisters, aunts and “Granny,” I realize our president could just as easily have been a novelist — not simply a stodgy law professor.

Considering Obama’s intellect and artistry, then, I have cringed each time a TV host or pundit has noted that this Inauguration is particularly historic because America now has its first African American president. The significance of that fact is undeniable, but it is such a limiting lens through which to see this moment.

Obama has so many other unprecedented qualities — which his cultural and political analyses in “Dreams of My Father” reveal. He is progressive in the most radical sense, the president who can truly navigate our 21st-century world because he has spent his life thinking … critically thinking … about … everything.

By this time in my own thought process, I shift my mind again (never has a moment of cognitive dissonance felt so good), and I begin to think about that rest stop in Pennsylvania on the way home. I went into the restroom, and I saw four adolescent boys goofing off, as they are wont to do.

But these boys — all African American — also proudly donned big buttons celebrating Obama. I hope I’m not being overly presumptuous here — but I’ve heard it time and time again — boys like these had been brought to the Inauguration by parents who wanted them to witness the moment first-hand: a black man becoming the most powerful person in the world.

The boys would now know they can be anything they want to be (or so the hope goes — more on that later).

There’s no reason, I realized looking at the boys, that Obama can’t be both the first African American president and the first president to grasp the complex realities of living and leading in the Information Age.

In fact, as a close reading of “Dreams of My Father” makes clear, Obama’s lack of a coherent familial and racial identity is what spurs his thinking.  He is able to approach most political and cultural texts (both spoken and written, informal and formal) as an outsider and coolly dissect their messages.

The passage from the book that most resonates in this regard comes when he walks into his first South Side Chicago barbershop — Smitty’s — soon after arriving in the city to start his career as a community organizer.

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The first daughters have hit the market.

For just $9.99, you can own your own set of “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia” dolls.

“They’re such adorable girls,” Ty Inc. spokeswoman Tania Lundeen said Wednesday of the Obama sisters — Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10. “How can we resist?”

But by the end of the week, Ty Inc. — the company that created Beanie Babies — announced the names were chosen because “they are beautiful names,” not because they resemble the first daughters.

Whatever. Sadly, these dolls lack agency in their own world. Malia doesn’t even have her own camera.

Instead, they “come with a password to an online ‘virtual world’ where real girls can decorate their dolls’ room, change their clothes or go shopping,” reports the Chicago Sun Times.

Michelle Obama is not impressed with the 12-inch pseduo-replicas.

“We believe it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes,” Obama’s press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said in a statement today.

Also this week, Mattel announced it will launch its first complete line of African-American Barbie dolls.

Plus: There’s a new blog on girls as media producers. Mary Celeste Kearney writes that she created Girls Make Media “because I’ve been researching girls’ media production for over a decade now, and wanted to pull together in one place information about girl media producers, as well as programs for and research about girls’ media-making.”

Kearney — an associate professor of radio, television and film, and women and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin — is looking to link to other programs (in and outside of the United States), so let her know if you doing something interesting in this field.

The following is a personal reflection on the meaning of George Carlin by David Masciotra, published in the “impressions” section of PopPolitics magazine:

How does one make a 14-year-old who hates high school excited about language, learning and politics? One way guaranteed to be effective is to make the entire process painfully funny.

At one point I was that kid, awkwardly stumbling through adolescence, bored by conventional classroom tactics, attempting to determine what interested me as a student and what spoke to me as a human being. Somewhere in the midst of that exploration of self-discovery, I was introduced to counter-cultural comedian George Carlin.

Continue reading “Remembering George Carlin.”

Adults don’t get it.

As I look at all the hullaballoo over the new “The Golden Compass” movie (based on the first novel in Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy “His Dark Materials“), I am reminded of the Ursula Le Guin pro-fantasy manifesto: “Why Are Americans So Afraid of Dragons?”

In that 1974 essay, Le Guin indicts a general cultural conservatism that sees the freedom and imagination inherent in fantasy literature as a threat, even as American children’s appetite for it seems to be insatiable.

That conservatism apparently still holds some sway today, even if it didn’t mind co-opting C.S. Lewis’ Narnia as a straightforward Christian allegory (which, I’ve argued before, distorts that wonderfully complex world). Conservative Christian groups of many colors are calling for a boycott of the newest potential fantasy juggernaut.

The best response I’ve read so far comes from an unexpected source: a Catholic theologian. Donna Freitas writes in the Boston Globe:

These books are deeply theological, and deeply Christian in their theology. The universe of “His Dark Materials” is permeated by a God in love with creation, who watches out for the meekest of all beings — the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. It is a God who yearns to be loved through our respect for the body, the earth, and through our lives in the here and now. This is a rejection of the more classical notion of a detached, transcendent God, but I am a Catholic theologian, and reading this fantasy trilogy enhanced my sense of the divine, of virtue, of the soul, of my faith in God.

The book’s concept of God, in fact, is what makes Pullman’s work so threatening. His trilogy is not filled with attacks on Christianity, but with attacks on authorities who claim access to one true interpretation of a religion. Pullman’s work is filled with the feminist and liberation strands of Catholic theology that have sustained my own faith, and which threaten the power structure of the church. Pullman’s work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox.

When someone like Freitas so clearly exposes the true motives behind all the fear-mongering, it makes our job easy.

“The Kite Runner” is easy to love.

It’s a story written in elegantly simple prose that simultaneously humanizes and complicates a people and a region that, amazingly, Americans never — since their attention got quickly diverted to another place, another set of conflicts — had a chance to get to know, even if only in that shallow love-the-people-you-invade/hate-their-leaders kind of way that the American media likes to play it.

But the English teacher in me always thought it would make even a better movie than a book. Without giving away too much, let’s just say that there are story arcs aplenty — and there’s even an American angle to the whole thing.

When I saw the trailer in the theater recently, I was impressed. And from all accounts, the filmmakers have seen this as a labor of love, rather than a commercial bonanza — going so far as to make the film in Dari, an Afghan language.

So it’s incredibly sad to see those same filmmakers be forced to delay the release of the film because of fears that it could endanger the lives of Afghan child actors.

David Halbfinger of the New York Times has the amazing story — that still has a chance for a happy ending. In the meantime, as Halbfinger writer, the situation raises excellent questions concerning “the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.”

We’ve posted a new article in our online magazine: “Virtual Victories: Hezbollah’s “Special Force 2” by Allen McDuffee.

The article discusses the controversial new video game, which recreates — from Hezbollah’s perspective — last year’s July War between Israel and the Lebanese Shia militia group. It also compares Hezbollah’s efforts to the U.S. Army’s efforts to market itself through the “America’s Army” online game and commercial efforts such as “Full Spectrum Warrior.”

Read the full article here.

The last few weeks for sports fans have been particularly difficult ones. The stories of corruption are so overwhelming that it is a wonder that anyone can keep their focus on sport.

The biggest headlines and the shrillest comment in the United States have been elicited by the Michael Vick dog-fighting story. The allegations of mistreatment, abuse and killing of dogs have unleashed an outcry against Vick. There are demands that he not be allowed to appear on the football field again. Sponsors have pulled endorsements from Vick, and the National Football League and Atlanta Falcons have told him to stay away until the legal issues are resolved.

The second story involves the allegations that an NBA referee was betting on NBA games, perhaps including ones that he was officiating, and that he might have been manipulating the “point spread” or the “over/under.” In addition NBA security seems to have been oblivious to the problem, only learning about it when the FBI contacted them. Clearly the integrity of the game and the credibility of Commissioner David Stern are at stake.

The third story comes from France, where once again the Tour de France has been laced with positive drug tests and doping charges. This came despite a much-ballyhooed effort to keep the event drug-free this year. By the end of the event the field had lost many of its best-known riders.

The fourth story is that of Barry Bonds as he is now only one home run from tying Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Bonds is operating under a heavy cloud of suspicion from the Balco case, and many fans are booing him heavily as he approaches the record. What should be a time for joy has turned into a time of controversy and ill will.

In the face of all this bad news, it is logical to ask if there might be some sort of irreparable damage to sport? Could this even kill sport?

The answer to these questions is “no.”

Could it kill a particular sport, or some category of that sport? In that case, the answer is “yes.” Individual sports or events, such as the Tour de France or professional basketball, football, or baseball could suffer irreparable damage. The damage could even be fatal.

But to kill sport is impossible.

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The National Media Education Conference, sponsored by the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA), took place this week in St. Louis. While this might sound like yet another conference of like-minded academics theorizing and socializing — and therefore something that has little relevance to the real world or your life — people in-the-know know better.

The president of the MacArthur Foundation, Jonathan Fanton, spoke with urgency recently about the importance of media literacy in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed. Inspired by Henry Jenkins and his work on “participatory culture” — in which Jenkins sees a younger generation learning a great deal from their interactions in the digital world — Fanton offers a wake-up call:

We, in the sunset of the old information culture, are not understanding this new media literacy soon enough. Those who have no opportunity or desire to be part of these revolutionary digital communities may be deprived of vital virtual skills that will prepare them for full participation in the real world of tomorrow.

In this new media age, the ability to negotiate and evaluate information online, to recognize manipulation and propaganda, and to assimilate ethical values is becoming as basic to education as reading and writing. Those truly left behind in the evolving digital culture will be those children who fail to bridge this participation gap.

Our challenge is to harness these educational forces, opening our classrooms to the learning in which children now engage largely outside of school. We may find that the best way to institutionalize and encourage this new media literacy is to understand and harness what our young digital culture seems to be doing pretty well on its own.

Fanton’s point is reinforced by recent studies about the power of online gaming.

Whether the focus is gaming, television, or any other form of visual or digital media, though, the concept of media literacy allows us to recognize the great potential of these new forms of communication and connection while taking a critical look at how they can both empower and disempower us.

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Sexploitation: 70 percent of the viewers for “Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Model” on CW are female. The percentages are pretty much the same for reality shows of the same ilk like “The Ultimate Cowboy Ugly Search” and “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team” on CMT. Is this surprising? According to Erin White of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it should be, considering that most of these shows “feature scantily-clad females in what many would say are situations that degrade women and turn back the clock on generations of feminist work.” Even the CMT executives she interviewed thought the viewers of their shows, which clearly employ a “male gaze,” would at least be “pretty evenly split.”

To me, however, any surprise at those percentages only reflects a naivete about the way in which corporate capitalism constructs desires and needs. The real question is how many of the female viewers, despite their dismissive statements that the shows are just “guilty pleasures,” are looking at the women — and themselves — through male eyes.

I Think This Might Be Overdone: Not that we need another article about how men — can you believe it?!? — actually like to cook. But Pervaiz Shallwan of the AP reveals a series of noteworthy ways in which the marketing of cooking to men has significantly changed. The Food Network reports that although they from the beginning aimed their programming at women, “men quickly tuned in and now account for half of all viewers.” Men’s Health magazine reports that while the recipe section used to be the least read (and they sometimes actually left it out), now it’s the most popular section — and they now devote over a quarter of the magazine to food and nutrition. The editors and publishers of Food and Wine and Cooks Illustrated, as well as Rachael Ray, have all also recognized a growing male audience. Even Maxim — do they have no shame? — is launching a line of salsa and barbecue sauces.

Of course, all of this says more about the entrenched biases of the cooking and marketing industries than the men themselves — who never seem to have a problem dominating the kitchen in places they actually pay good money (only 20 percent of professional chefs are women, Shallwan also notes).

That Darn Media: From the latest poll numbers, Hillary seems to be successfuly walking the line between the center right and the left (she’s leading among both self-described “liberal democrats” as well as “moderate/conservative democrats”). She also probably considers it a victory to have conservatives like Brent Bozell giving her favorable coverage for her “courage” in taking on Hollywood.

Bozell actually makes several valid points about both Clinton’s strategic, and somewhat hypocritical, stance against an immoral media culture. Unfortunately, what he (and many others whom Clinton is trying to appease) see as “media literacy” is actually just a cover for the promotion of a very specific moral agenda. What would really be courageous would be for a candidate to start talking about media literacy from an educational rather than a moral standpoint — as a tool of empowerment rather than censorship.

That Darn Spanish Media: Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that Latinos — if they really want to succeed in America — must tune out Spanish-language newspapers, TV and radio. What’s interesting here — besides Schwarzenegger’s myopic sense that what worked from him coming from Austria will work for everyone — is that the criticism of his remarks seems somewhat tepid. It appears that English-only advocates have staked out a place of legitimacy on the cultural battlefield.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the battle, the complicated relationship between language, power and cultural heritage gets lost — and the simplicity of the “all or nothing” strategy too often wins the day.

Just Let Jack Bauer Try to Defuse This One: The Pentagon once seriously contemplated an Air Force proposal in 1994 that called for a “gay bomb” — “a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.” We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Thanks to the Berkeley’s Sunshine Project for uncovering this gem (see their scanned copy [pdf] of the original proposal). And thanks to Raw Story for original link.

As a high school English teacher, I am speaking from the frontlines of what can only be classified as a war against plagiarism. Teachers at this very moment are putting suspicious phrases from their students’ papers into Google — and more often than you’d like to believe, they are finding a match.

From a teacher’s perspective, this is the dark side of the information revolution. It is now much easier for students to cut and paste lines and whole passages into their “own” essays, as quality sources are only a click away. What is much more disturbing, though, than these acts of plagiarism (which, after all, are only new in form, not substance) is that the ease of it actually makes many students believe that it’s not really wrong.

In this context, I have taken great interest in the debate sparked by Jonathan Lethem’s ingenious article — “The Ecstasy of Influence” — in the April issue of Harper’s magazine. Lethem ultimately defends plagiarism — or at least many forms of it — on the grounds that it is often performed for the public good.

Bob Thompson of the Washington Post nicely summarizes Lethem’s main point:

Listen to Jonathan Lethem hold forth long enough and you’ll come to understand that he sees the question of literary borrowing as part of a larger dialogue between private property and “the commons.” He thinks that artists who take an absolutist position on copyright are complicit in “what is essentially an attack on the public good” — the privatization of things “that should belong to everyone.”

He’s talking about copyright-obsessed corporations like Disney, which Lethem likens to a creative roach motel (”cultural debts flow in, but they don’t flow out”). He’s talking about environmentally essential wetlands paved for private profit. He’s talking about private fortunes exempted from estate taxes because they were supposedly amassed independently of the social fabric surrounding them

What Lethem doesn’t reveal until the end of the Harper’s article is that he has himself plagiarized his entire argument. He concludes the article by revealing the sources of all of his best lines.

After giving props to Lethem for that brilliant manuever, however, I can’t help but feel that his perspective shows a slight naivete. Ultimately, he doesn’t recognize the key role of academic honesty in the educational process. It’s one thing for a creative artist to make something new out of something old, but it’s another thing for someone still learning how to articulate her or his thoughts in writing — to construct an original voice — to avoid the learning process by using the words of someone else.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of what Lethem calls “good plagiarism” — something which the Creative Commons, among others, does a great job of promoting.

And I also recognize that the very concept of “originality” is being redefined in the 21st century. “AhhWoo,” a commenter on the Washington Post article, makes a very valid point: “I’m surprised this article managed to get by without a nod in the direction of YouTube and the mash-up. It seems like to a large extent, Gen Y is defined by its liberal ‘plagiarism’ of popular culture. If there’s a generation gap, it’s that.”

I just believe that my students need to learn about the line between dishonesty and creative adaptation before they cross it. And they need to practice constructing their own voice — which is ultimately the most difficult part about writing and creativity, in general.

They may never write “one true sentence” (which was famously Hemingway’s only goal) — a sentence that comes purely from their own mind. That’s probably impossible — and maybe, to accept Lethem’s premise somewhat, not that desireable in the end. But understanding, through the attempt, that they themselves have something — however mashed-up — to add to the cultural conversation is essential.

Every day in every way my admiration for the National Collegiate Athletic Association soars to new heights. Who could not but admire the latest blow delivered by this august organization on the behalf of the purity of intercollegiate athletics?

The NCAA Management Council has recommended that the NCAA place a ban on all electronically transmitted correspondence, including text messages, between coaches and recruits. This policy position, should it be given final approval, is breathtaking in its scope and significance. One day it will be considered by sport historians as the turning point in the struggle to contain corruption in intercollegiate athletics even though it exempts faxes and e-mails from the edict.

Florida head coach Urban Meyer, who is credited with perfecting, if not actually initiating, text messaging to unprotected high school football players, is yet to comment on this new roadblock facing his ongoing effort to repeat as BCS champion. One can only imagine how much this action will be deplored by Pope Urban of Gainesville. As to the alternative use of e-mails and faxes, they seem a poor alternative, as they are so 20th century, and Urban is so 21st century.

The earliest this ban actually could go into effect is August of 2007. Enterprising high tech coaches have another three to four months to text away. One can only imagine the urgency with which they will be mass texting in every direction. One can only imagine how many high school, middle school, and red-shirt pre-schoolers will be permanently scarred in this interim period of free-fire texting.

It is good to know the NCAA is alert to the sort of abuse emanating from the new technologies. It is also reassuring that the NCAA is not just a reactive organization, but also proactive: Discouraging evil and encouraging good.

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The Virginia Tech tragedy is obviously re-prioritizing the need for gun control in the American consciousness. Interestingly, what isn’t being heard is a discussion of popular culture and how it might be the source of the shooter’s rage.

In the wake of the shootings at Columbine — as this research from University of California-Santa Barbara students Joaquin Navarro and Karyn Riddle reveals — the media was much more likely to demonize popular culture than the guns themselves:

Paradoxically, the news media were more critical of violent media’s role in the Columbine killings than was the public. While only 4% of the public felt controlling media violence was the single most important factor to prevent future school shootings, the news media honed in on this one causal factor.

Interestingly, though, in a 2000 Gallup poll that Navarro and Riddle also cite, more people identified “popular culture” (26%) than “the availability of guns” (21%) as “the primary reason for gun violence in America.”

Having said all that, the Gallup organization, in their analysis of decades of polling data on gun control, comes to this conclusion:

Although it is unclear to what degree more rigid gun control laws might have prevented the Virginia Tech tragedy, Gallup’s data suggest that the public is, in general, open to the idea of stricter laws governing the sale of firearms and more rigorous enforcement of gun control laws.

These contradictory and — let’s just call it what it is — illogical responses from the media and the public to questions about guns, violence and popular culture reflect the “gun culture” in America that so many outsiders just can’t comprehend. It takes someone like John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia — a conservative who took radical action on gun control after Australia’s own Port Arthur Massacre — to indict American gun culture as part of the problem. And it takes the Australian press to try to hold Bush accountable.

I certainly believe that popular culture has the power to influence both ideas and behavior. That’s one way to express the premise of PopPolitics, in fact. But the use of popular culture in relationship to incidents of gun violence always seems like a distraction to me.

No one can deny that blocking a potential shooter’s access to guns is the easiest way to prevent gun violence. Just look at the statistics on gun deaths and see how they correlate to the strictness of gun laws in the respective countries. And it is clear that more guns in the hand of the public — in particular, in the home (pdf) — does not prevent crime or increase safety but makes domestic violence (pdf), accidental death, suicide and general crime exponentially more likely.

So, while a close analysis of the role popular culture must always be part of the discussion, it can’t be yet another excuse for lack of action.

“Help Save the Youth of America,” an early Billy Bragg song, begins with a young Englishman’s lament about his counterparts overseas:

Help save the youth of America
Help save them from themselves
Help save the sun-tanned surfer boys
And the Californian girls

A nation with their freezers full
Are dancing in their seats
While outside another nation
Is sleeping in the streets

This just goes to show that progressives — just as much as conservatives — have participated in the stereotyping of American youth. Whether its dangerous apathy or dangerous libidos, their self-serving nature always signals some type of apocalypse.

Well, the signs have been exaggerated, I guess — at least for college students. The statistics that come out of a new national study from Tufts University speak for themselves:

Half of the college students and 40 percent of the non-college students could name their respective members of Congress. Nearly two-thirds of college students and more than half of the non-college students could name at least one of their two U.S. senators. In contrast, only about 15 percent of the young people knew the name of the most recent winner of “American Idol” and about 10 percent knew the winner of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Approximately 79 percent of college students and more than 73 percent of non-college students said they had voted in the November 2006 elections, but only 10 to 12 percent of respondents reported ever voting in “American Idol” and significantly fewer had voted in “Dancing with the Stars.”

And the very tools that are supposed to be the bane of this present generation of youth have become the avenues for activism:

Facebook was a popular channel for advocacy activity. On average, both college and noncollege students belonged to almost four Facebook advocacy groups …. Facebook tends to be used more for advocacy of Democratic political candidates and liberal or Democratic causes than for Republican candidates or conservative or Republican causes. While about one in four young people read blogs on political issues, many fewer said they read candidates’ blogs.

More than 61 percent of college students had participated in online political discussions or visited a politically oriented website and more than 48 percent of non-college students had done so.

At least one old guy never gave up hope. Norman Lear, ground-breaking writer and producer of “Archie Bunker” and other revolutionary TV sitcoms, actually sees the promise, rather than the doom, in the proliferation of social networking on the web. He has partnered with seemingly every big online entity out there in his Declare Yourself project that intends to register every 18 year-old to vote by the 2008 election.

Who are we to resist America Ferrara of “Ugly Betty” fame? She and Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes” are the project’s spokespeople.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Make Me Dance Around the Question: Watch the Democratic candidates squirm when asked, in light of Gen. Peter Pace’s comments, if they too believe that “homosexuality is immoral.”

When are the Democrats going to realize that backbone is a turn-on for voters? Even if they might disagree with you on a specific position, nothing shows character like having real values.

My Cousin Pookie: Speaking of Obama’s awareness of audience, he said the following during his recent Selma sermon: “If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching SportsCenter and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics.”

Wondering who Pookie is? Jonathan TiLove of the HNIC report has the complex, nuanced answer:

In their interviews and e-mails, Pookie emerges as a stock character of the black popular imagination, a name that has come to personify the kind of layabout kin who, if endearing, is also a source of some embarrassment and consternation to his more successful relations. And, it turns out, in his use of Pookie, Obama reveals something about himself …. In dropping Pookie’s name, Obama is signaling to those who question his blackness — because his mother was white and his father an African without slave ancestry — that he is not an outsider to black life.

Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, claims, “It’s a way of Obama getting purchase on that brand of black self-critique and establishing … his bonafides as a black figure willing to be critical of his own.”

Mark McPhail, an expert on rhetoric at Miami University of Ohio, see it somewhat differently: “This is the type of appeal that reveals Obama’s willingness to play on the worst type of stereotypes.”

The Real Black Youth: Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago professor, is the author of the Black Youth Project, which interviewed 15 to 25 year-old African American women and men about their attitudes and actions. Their “Topic Area Primers,” which provide very accessible and well-organized results of their research, should be required reading for anyone who strives for accurate image of possibly the most stereotyped demographic in America.

NPR’s News and Notes has held repeated conversations with her and other academics about the state of black youth. The latest installment on the role of sex in their lives is what triggered my interest.

Free Love: A University of Alberta study found that one third of Canadian boys are heavy users of pornography:

Ninety percent of males and 70 percent of females reported accessing sexually explicit media content at least once. More than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos “too many times to count,” compared to eight percent of the girls surveyed.

The great majority of the students surveyed use the Internet as their main conduit to the pornography.

Conservatives have latched onto the study as proof of our collective moral decline. Sonya Thompson, the author the study, however, has a more relevant question: “What kinds of expectations will these young people have going into their first sexual relationships? It may be setting up a big disconnect between boys and girls and may be normalizing risky sex practices.”

Between the Thought and the Act: From Scientific American: “People who play car racing video games may be more prone to drive recklessly and get into accidents, according to a study that adds to evidence that video games can influence the behavior of some players.”

Which brings us to the age-old question of the power of media in altering behavior, particularly of youth. Jonathan Turley, writing in the Washington Post, considers himself a “weapons-tolerant parent” who is not concerned about his sons playing with toy guns. Citing a few disparate psychologists — but mainly ruminating — Turley believes their games model “notions of courage and sacrifice,” work out “more basic emotions in more basic ways,” and, in the words of child psychologist Penny Holland, make sense of the world through “timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.”

Oh, for a world so simple.

Leonard Moore, the director of African and African American Studies at LSU and an expert on the intersections of race and sport, makes some provocative points about representations of black men on TV in an interview with Brendan O’Keefe of The Ithacan after he delivered a speech entitled “ESPN and the Miseducation of Black Males”:

I believe that ESPN has contributed to the culture of anti-intellectualism in the African-American community. ESPN has six stations. It’s 24-hour, non-stop sports. And so, I really believe ESPN is the reason why there are so many African-American males who believe they can make it to the field, who believe that athletics is their only way out. We have nothing to counter that. White kids who watch ESPN are OK because they can go to these other stations and watch white attorneys, white engineers, white judges. But black folk, we have nothing to counter that. I believe ESPN is a one-way freight train. I believe we will keep losing sharp young men to athletics because that’s all they see.

O’Keefe then asks, “Besides ESPN, what is the biggest issue facing the black athlete today?”:

It’s really understanding that they can do something other than play. The problem is they don’t see any models of that. Popular culture doesn’t have a show about a black professor, doesn’t have a show about a black business owner. They think sports, and that’s it. The thing we’re trying to do is let them know, hey, sports is basically temporary employment for five years at best. They can do some other things. But when that’s all our society shows and that’s all our society tells us, that this is your purpose right here to run this ball or whatever it is, then thatâ??s what it comes down to.

A worthwhile reminder as we anticipate the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — which has never really been the celebration of the student-athlete it should be.

Need confirmation? Check this year’s installment from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport of “Keeping Score When It Counts” (pdf), their annual study of graduation rates among the tournament-bound teams. It puts Moore’s comments in context:

Like 2006, there is substantial good news for the tournament teams when we examine the Graduation Success Rates. The Academic Progress Rates, although still inconclusive, also are somewhat optimistic. The lingering bad news is the continuing disparity in the academic success between African-American and white men’s basketball student-athletes …. 95 percent (57 schools) graduated 50 percent or more of their white basketball student-athletes, but only 54 percent (34 schools) graduated 50 percent or more of their African-American basketball student-athletes creating a 41 percentage point gap

It should be noted, though, that the graduation rate of African American male basketball players has risen significantly over the years, and their total graduation rate (51 percent) is better than the graduation rate for African American male students in general (36 percent).

I suspect, though, that has as much to do with the individual attention they receive as with the transformative power of the basketball spotlight.