Setshot lurches back to life to point out the only Democratic primary coverage I need to read: a New York Times piece on Barack Obama's love of pick-up basketball:
From John F. Kennedy's sailing to Bill Clinton's golf mulligans to John Kerry's windsurfing, sports has been used, correctly or incorrectly, as a personality decoder for presidents and presidential aspirants. So, armchair psychologists and fans of athletic metaphors, take note: Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, the version of the game with unspoken rules, no referee and lots of elbows. He has been playing since adolescence, on cracked-asphalt playgrounds and at exclusive health clubs, developing a quick offensive style, a left-handed jump shot and relationships that have extended into the political arena.
Screw the details of health care plans and national security strategies-- this is the kind of in-depth political coverage I want to see. Hey, it's as good a bad reason to vote for a candidate as any.
Setshot also follows up with a post about what his game says about Obama as a person, based on an anecdote in the Times piece about his brother-in-law playing him one-on-one to judge whether Obama was right for his sister. Even aside from the general correctness of the proposition that the way you play sports says a lot about your personality (the nicest guy I knew in college once called pass interference on himself in a touch football game), I think this idea has potential. We should forget about the horrible staged "debates" this time out, and instead evaluate the candidates for President though a series of televised one-on-one basketball games.
In fact, I'll go one step further: I will publicly endorse any candidate who will come to Union's campus and play me one-on-one in basketball (game to fifteen, make-it-take-it). You'll not only get access to my dozens of readers, but you'll get a chance to crack the critical out-of-shape academic hoopster demographic.
This is, I will note, pretty much the only chance any Republican has at getting a positive mention on ScienceBlogs, so Sam Brownback, get to work on that jump shot...
Obligatory disclaimers: This offer applies to serious major-party candidates only-- I'm not endorsing anyone from the Natural Law party, no matter how much game they have. If you're not invited to nationally televised debates, I don't want to hear from you. The endorsement is good for the primary campaign only, and would take the form of one or more blog posts extolling the virtues of the winning candidate. In the astronomically unlikely event that more than one candidate were to take me up on this offer, the winner of the endorsement would be chosen based on the points scored by the candidates.
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I will publicly endorse any candidate who will come to Union's campus and play me one-on-one in basketball (game to fifteen, make-it-take-it).
Come on, I want to know if these guys can play defense, so drop the make-it-take-it thing. Here in the Midwest, you have to play D after every possession.
But it doesn't seem that you are requiring them to beat you? All they have to do is play you, right?
All they have to do is come to Schenectady and play. Win or lose, they get the coveted status of Official Primary Candidate of Uncertain Principles.
Is it the first one to come and play? What if McCain AND Obama want to come????
I guess everyone's treading verrrrry carefully around the whole black man playing basketball thing, huh?
MKK
I guess everyone's treading verrrrry carefully around the whole black man playing basketball thing, huh?
Nobody's ever going to mistake me for a black man playing basketball... Oh, wait, you meant Obama, right?
I waffled a bit about whether to say anything about that aspect, and opted to leave it out. It's pretty much a no-win situation for him-- if he admits to really liking basketball, then he's falling into a stereotype, but if it's really a big part of his personality, and he tries to avoid talking about it, then he'd be catering to prejudice. Not to mention the fact that people have already floated the argument that he doesn't really count as African-American on account of actually being from Africa.
In the end, if he really does enjoy basketball, then he might as well put this story out there. It's the sort of humanizing puff piece that seems to drive elections these days, and if it's true, then that's great. The sort of racist goobers who are likely to find a negative connotation in a black man liking to play basketball aren't likely to vote for him anyway.
very good progekt.