If he were still alive, Sigmund Freud might have been a Jeremy Lin fan. At the very least, he would have recognized what was going on when an ESPN.com writer used the headline “Chink in their armor” to describe the Knicks’ first loss since Lin took over as point guard. “A suppression of a previous intention to say something,” Freud wrote, “is the indispensable condition for the occurrence of a slip of the tongue.” ESPN offered an apology and fired the headline writer. But the slip of the tongue, one among a list of many other awkward and revealing moments that have accompanied ... Read More
The Picture for Men: Superhero or Slacker
August 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
At the end of the fourth season of the critically loved and chronically underwatched Friday Night Lights, the former football star Tim Riggins martyrs himself for the sake of his brother and newborn nephew. For much of the season, he and his brother Billy have been stripping down stolen cars and making the type of fast cash they cannot make legitimately. Tim wants the quick cash to fund his desire to buy a bit of sun-drenched Texas countryside, and Billy needs it for his new duties as a father. As the season finale starts, the brothers are talking to a lawyer and working through their ... Read More
Outsourcing an American Education
May 22, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
There is a bill currently making its way through the Indian parliament — The Foreign Educational Institutions Bill — that would open up for universities in the West, particularly in the U.S., a massive English-speaking market. Massive is the key word. We're talking hundreds of thousands of Indian students reaching college age who are interested in an education that would allow them to better participate in a globalizing economy. At first glance, the passage of the bill, which is being pushed ahead by Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, benefits ... Read More
(Eastern) Religion Is the Last Refuge
February 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Tiger Woods just returned from nearly three months of radio silence and read a 15-minute statement that was carried live by all the major television networks. This in itself is astounding. Woods is not, after all, a publicly elected figure. In turn, he apologized for his actions, got angry at the paparazzi for hounding his family, said he was in therapy, made clear that there has never been domestic violence in and around the Woods mansion, and intoned, to the chagrin of the PGA, that his return to golf may be later rather than sooner. It was, all in all, a solid piece of American public ... Read More
Jung and Polanski
October 2, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Do great artists live by a different moral code than the rest of us? Do their profound achievements make their personal failings forgivable? These twin questions have regularly resurfaced over the past few months, most recently with the arrest of film director Roman Polanski. They also provided an undercurrent to the saturation coverage of Michael Jackson, following the pop star's sudden death this summer. And they improbably arose in Los Angeles, when a member of county board of supervisors belatedly discovered Richard Wagner was an anti-Semite and asked the Los Angeles Opera to ... Read More