Second quarter 2021 blogroll update

Added:

Scotusblog. Dunno why I didn't make this happen long ago.

 

Zeynep Tufekci, at her Substack. Much of it is not paywalled, and she's right up my general alley on battling twosiderism.

Searchlight NM.

From my links list, added back to the blogroll? Washington Babylon. Ken's posting new stuff, including contributions and links from yours truly.

Deleted:

Becoming is Superior to Believing. Photos not good; poetry, if you call it that, no better. And, although I had unchecked the "get notifications of new posts," at some point, either WordPress automatically or the blogmeister by hand-set, overrided that.

NM Political Report. Not gone, but moved to links list with Joe Monahan. Too uncritical on its Michelle Lujan Grisham reporting.

Nope, trees still aren't intelligent let alone woke

Both High Country News and the New York Times have written recently about research on trees as "social creatures" and not just individuals, focusing on the work of Suzanne Simard, with HCN's piece being a review of her memoir.

It's true that it was a bad step for scientists not to see trees as part of social groups and rather, only as individuals, to the degree that was actually the case. Per Jane Goodall and others, we would never view chimpanzees or other primates that way. We would never view ourselves that way. We would never view, say, wolves that way. (That said, before Goodall, chimps weren't viewed the way they are today, so to claim that this is ages-old "plant discrimination" doesn't fly.)

And, surely, at least the possibility of some of this evidence being available for trees and other plants was available before Simard.

Unfortunately, both push the anthropomorphizing gas pedal a bit hard at times. 

Worse than "unfortunately," HCN even ventures toward woke / SJW angles by talking about Simard learning from indigenous wisdom.

Contra Robin Wall Kimmerer, trees don't have a common "language." Not as language is understood for us, and to the degree some primates have been able to learn it from us to a limited (yes) degree.

IMO, even Ferris Jabr at the NYT is overreading Simard's research. And so may be other scientists.

First, on things like carbon dioxide exchange, there is ZERO indication trees are "helping" each other.

Rather, it's mycorrhizal fungi that facilitate the flow of CO2 between tree species, and it's only natural that if two species have different flowering and sapping times, the flow goes one direction in spring and the other in fall.

And, missing from the HCN story, and partly from NYT? What benefit fungi get. And they do. Jabr does, eventually, get into that.

“Where some scientists see a big cooperative collective, I see reciprocal exploitation,” said Toby Kiers, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “Both parties may benefit, but they also constantly struggle to maximize their individual payoff.” Kiers is one of several scientists whose recent studies have found that plants and symbiotic fungi reward and punish each other with what are essentially trade deals and embargoes, and that mycorrhizal networks can increase conflict among plants. In some experiments, fungi have withheld nutrients from stingy plants and strategically diverted phosphorous to resource-poor areas where they can demand high fees from desperate plants.

Oops! Sadly, there's still a bit too much anthropomorphizing language in Jabr's explainer of Kiers et al after the direct quote, but this is better than nothing.

Here's a counterexample. Doctors et al already talk about the human microbiome in our colons, but nobody oohs and aahs over it. Jabr eventually gets to that, but only way at the end, in bad editing.

So, what we have is Simard, who rightly notes that science of her long-ago student ways was rejecting and blocking her to some degree, setting up a potential future where more and more woke forest biologists then reject more traditional evolutionary takes on the role of fungi.

And, this ties in with environmentalism in general.

The woke and New Age types can ooh and aah over big Douglas fir allegedly "talking" to one another, let alone helping one another.

A subterranean fungus that's like roots of grass? Different story.

In short, what we have is the environmental world, just shifting a focus from charismatic megafauna to charismatic megaflora.

To his credit, Jabr does do some degree of call-out of Simard for her use of New Agey language about trees. That said, he then uses words like "socialism," and on the SJW side, the idea that Native Americans were Rousselean noble savages with magical environmental wisdom. (Rousseau actually originally proffered this as a thought experiment which he then rejected and was then framed by his hater, Voltaire; the idea was revived under 19th century Anglo-Saxon racialism.) And, the idea that Indigenous peoples have magic environmental wisdom?

Taint so.

Stuff like this, in addition to things like the Georgia GP dust-up as well as party mismanagement, are why I am an independent leftist, not a Green.

As for High Country News? When writing four months ago about rejecting their dollar-a-month digital subscription offer, I said I had a love-frustration relationship with the magazine. The love continues to fade; the frustration continues to grow.

 

Update: Contra Nautilus, which is about to get deblogrolled, trees don't see, either.

Coronavirus week 60A: Fauci emails takes dissolve into tribalist twosiderism

I didn't include the word "duopoly," because there are Greens I know who go beyond COVID minimalism to be Plandemic types (one claming the US invented it at Fort Detrick), and L/libertarians like Greenwald rejecting public health measures even if not technically COVID minimalists or worse.

That said, the tribalist twosiderism over Anthony Fauci's emails somewhat follows duopoly lines.

Those not pulling a Rip Van Winkle know Fauci's been busted for telling his Platonic Noble Lies in private emails as well as in public. Busted along with him are BuzzFeed and Jason Leopold for fellating him and #BlueAnon for doing the same. Fortunately, the whole cache of emails is online, for people want to read on their own. (LOTS are totally mundane.)

But not all are totally mundane. Regarding the Platonic Noble Lie(s)?

The goods are there:

As I've noted before and elsewhere, by the start of March 2020, if not in late February, people like Zeynep Tufekci were calling out Fauci, or beyond or instead of calling him out by name, insisting that masks really did offer at least some degree of help both ways — protecting others from ourselves AND protecting ourselves from others.

In addition, his last line? In February, 2020, we had NO idea when vaccines might be available, and without them, all that meant was more stringent social distancing when diagnostics said so. AND, Fauci knew that.

Fauci also stands busted for lies, lies by omission and lies by redefinition about his agency and others helping the Wuhan Institute of Virology in "gain of function" research on coronaviruses. This busting also applies to the fellow travelers above.

Finally, as with his original Platonic Noble Lie, and his follow-up Noble Lie on population percentages for herd immunity, on his emails as well, St. Anthony of Fauci is unapologetic. He claims the outrage is all Republican and all anti-science. Tell that to the likes of me and Teynep Tufekci.

Or have your toady, Kristen Andersen, tell them that after his lying on your behalf on viral engineering. Per that piece, Andersen lamely claims that "new evidence" arose between his email to Fauci and one to the Lancet which squashed, for public consumption, the lab leak idea like a bug. Jaime Metzl, who used to work for President Clinton, so not a wingnut, asked, how much new info could arise in four days. (Jaime, also try THIS on size: Times Higher Ed reports that critics claim Lancet, and other journals with the same take, had potential conflicts of interest.) Metzl on the origins of COVID is a must read.

At the same time wingnuts have ignored that, in some cases, lab-leak theories WERE combined with weaponization theories 14-15 months ago. Among them? Trump's own Mike Pompeo-led state department, which claimed, per that link, that WIV was working with the Chinese military.

That said, Jonathan Cook at Counterpunch himself stereotypes and has one foot in the line of being a fellow traveler with wingers on this issue. Not all media of the so-called "mainstream" type totally dismissed the possibility of a lab leak. I personally entertained it in the back of my mind, if but a small segment. I long have thought China lied about COVID fatalities.

Cook also ignores that some of the non-mainstream media who were making lab leak claims, or worse, did so for their own ends. Far-right media wanted to lash China; some even said WIV also had secret labs looking at weaponization; note the link above. "Greenie" sites opposing ANY genetic engineering work also jumped on the bandwagon. That includes some who have linked Nicholas Wade's piece. (Cook also ignores Wade's OWN problematic background — he's a Charles Murray fellow traveler on racialism issues — as part of why more "mainstream" media may not have listened to him.) Wade himself errs when he claims all early lab leak talk focused on accident, not conspiracy. He also semi-strawmans the likes of Kristian Anderson with her two issues with the virus that she said more likely reflected natural origin rather than engineering. I'm not a virologist or any Ph.D. scientist, but I don't think I'm Dunning-Kruger worlding when I claim more scientific expertise than 95 percent of laypersons. And, with that, I don't feel I'm off the mark in saying Wade is semi-strawmanning. I don't think it's quite full strawmanning, but I'm comfortable saying "semi-strawmanning."

Meanwhile, as I speak, other wingers, like James Freeman at the Wall Street Journal, use the emails to once again push COVID minimalism, as he does in talking about "questionable public-health benefits" from a so-called "shutdown" that no, we didn't actually have.

That said, is a leak plausible? Sure, says former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, by far the straightest shooter of any senior official within the Trump Administration at any time. He cites lab leaks in the US, even as Pro Publica talked last August about coronavirus leaks in North Carolina. And, to square a circle? Shi Zhengli of WIV has connections to that lab, via the controversial Peter Daszak.

THAT said, does Fauci come off as oleaginous (so much richer than plain old "oily" and not the same as "obsequious")? Yes. In spades.

As I told Freeman on Twitter after calling him out as a tribalist twosider, people from me to Zeynep Tufekci have long had problems with Fauci AND long realized the seriousness of COVID.

And, by apparently providing cover for Peter Daszak, to the point of taking a narrow definition of "gain of function," even more than his lies on masks, Fauci has undermined his scientific credibility. (I'm not a virologist, but with modern computer modeling tools, it's probably fairly easy to do gain of function work on how viruses affect other animals, then, working off what's known about how the original virus affects humans, do computer modeling to extrapolate the gain of function of the modified virus in bats or whatever to humans.)

Jason Leopold at ButtFeet played not only right into the twosiderism, but helped confirm for Cook ideas of a semi-conspiracy among the mainstream media, which Freemen then was only two willing to pick up on in the case of ButtFeet's hagiography of Fauci.

And, just as Snopes claimed Fauci's original Platonic lie was "outdated," not false, that is, a lie as it actually was, Leopold is playing right into the hands of wingnuts and wingnut fellow travelers like Glenn Greenwald on this issue, about how the "mainstream media" continues to be biased on this story. (Shit like this was part of why I yanked Snopes off my links list long ago.)

Leopold also contributes to letting the wingers, COVID minimalists of all stripes, etc., quote Fauci against Fauci, too. 

USA Today, as I said in a series of Tweets, has a piece that is somewhat better than ButtFeet, but that's a low bar.

In the last of those Tweets, I also tagged Jay Rosen, and said that much of this smacks of "he said she said" journalism he rightly laments, but with "he said" and "she said" in two different journalism orbits altogether.

Politico now notes wingnut politicians are money-raising off the emails, but also endorses Fauci's telling of his Platonic Noble Lie.

Orac, who I generally find insightful, but have called out before, like over James Randi, and, re this issue, for giving St. Anthony of Fauci a pass on his Platonic Noble Lie on masks, is getting another call-out for saying the lab leak is fast becoming a conspiracy theory. It may be, but when he overstates the degree of certainty of the "natural" side, he's contributing to the problem. I mentioned Gottlieb and Pro Publica in commenting. I also mentioned that he hadn't mentioned the Fauci-Andersen conversation. Orac partially redeems himself by quoting Michael Hiltzik, who notes we still don't know the animal origin of Ebola. On the other hand, we know that West African countries don't have anything like the WIV, either. And, we do have pretty solid ground for knowing China lied about COVID morbidity.

On the other side within the other side, Orac does offer up some goods on Nicholas Wade being less than fully accurate on some things, to say the least. He also wonders why it's in the Bulletin rather than a biotech or biology journal. He does NOT wonder if maybe that's because some "circle the wagons" is going on, per the Lancet 14-15 months ago. He also ignores that the Bulletin runs lots of material on the politicization of science, and has run a LOT of stuff being open to the lab leak theory.

On the third side within his other side, Orac notes Chinese obstructionism but says that "for an authoritarian regime, China appears to have actually cooperated more than you might imagine." That is itself a matter of opinion, and it's also handwaving about just how much obstructionism China actually did. Given internal cover-ups as well as obstructionism, it's risible on Orac's part, really.

On the fourth hand, he's right that the US would likely have done no better.

On the fifth hand of Orac, that still doesn't excuse Beijing. Nor Fauci. Nor does it answer just how much or how little gain of function research we should be doing in such instances.

On the sixth hand, Orac responded when I posted this link. He went down the road of credentialism, then focused on Gottlieb currently being fellow travelers with the likes of Daily Caller (arguably a logical fallacy, unless Gottlieb does it on other issues), then goes back to credentialism, all while ignoring the Pro Publica piece, the Fauci-Andersen conversation and the substance of what Gottlieb said.

On the seventh hand, he (and fellow travelers at NECSS) have evidenced tribalism and twosiderism before! I forgot about John Horgan calling him out, and them, five years ago, and that I blogged about that. What Orac in his insolence really hated was getting called out by someone at his pay and fame grade, as I see it. (I also wonder how much both Orac and Steve Novella, per that link, disliked Horgan's comments not on skepticism, but on fee-for-service medicine. Orac strikes me as a mainstream neolib Democrat type who at a minimum isn't highly favorable to single-payer national health care.)

On the seventh hand, part two: Per Horgan, and contra Orac, the asshole wasn't Horgan. Besides Orac and Novella, it was first Jamy Ian Swiss. That said, for not having a single word of praise, Orac and Novella are assholes themselves. I might wind up writing something just about Orac at some point!

On the seventh hand, part three: The likes of Orac, though not a lot himself personally (rather, Shermer, Randi, philosophy-hating Barbara Drescher and philosophy-minimalizing mild Daniel Loxton) are part of why I don't call myself a skeptic any more, and haven't for five years, like Massimo — at least not without the word "philosophy" or "philosophical" attached. (I suspect that Orac's probably not big on philosophy, either.)

Enough Orac, before I do write something just about him.

On the other side, and pretending to be on a third side, is Leighton Akira Woodhouse. He talks about "the new clerisy," but goes beyond challenging the St. Anthony of Fauci cult to touting COVID quackery, namely ivermectin, and doing so with a podcast by Intellectual Dark Web guy Bret Weinstein, hosting Pierre Kory, a known COVID quack on this issue. Woodhouse also follows Bari Weiss' Substack and has some ties to Glennwald, making him further suspect in my eyes.

On the BlueAnon side, Nautilus gives Tom Levenson room to gaslight at the end of his piece, by claiming that a "weaponization" story is the only version of the lab-leak hypothesis. That's in the context of a complete last paragraph that's tribalist and twosiderist. I may de-blogroll Nautilus; this is the most problematic of several problematic pieces of the last several months. (Levenson has responded on Twitter saying that any gaslighting isn't on his end.)

And, such it is. I told him back he was guilty of that, along with twosiderism and tribalism in his last paragraph, which deserves a quote.

Until and unless the coverage reaches that level of depth and rigor, then the current reanimation of this particular weaponized origin story is just a distraction from the scandal and tragedy we do know occurred: That through much of 2020, President Trump, his administration, and other Republican officials botched the U.S. response to the pandemic, leading directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who would otherwise be alive.

The gaslighting part is the "weaponization," framing the discussion as if that's been the only version of the leak theory out there. It wasn't so 14 months ago, as Mr. Neoliberal Obamiac, Jon Chait, has noted. The tribalism and twosiderism should be obvious. On the other hand, over the past few years, Nautilus has had several good items that I've blogged about. Anyway, I said goodbye to Levenson in one of the two social media ways that Twitter offers. Hucksterman Central, Disqus, et al continue to fail on that, so I treat every problem as a nail to use their single-tool hammer on.

Or, will Orac and BlueAnon say that WHO's Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, who said in March a lab leak was a possibility, is part of a conspiracy theory or a crank?

Supporting the natural angle? Chinese scientists claim to have found a new strain of coronavirus in bats similar to COVID-19 in humans. Sounds good; will you be letting WHO et al look at this?

So much of this reeks to high heaven. That includes most people who are decrying tribalism are themselves engaging in it.

As I've said before, if Fauci had any ethics, he'd resign. But, I more and more question just how much or how little ethics he has. I don't question how much of a bureaucrat he is. Nor how much, within being a bureaucrat, he exemplifies Lord Acton's famous dictum. I also don't think his resignation would satisfy conspiracy theorists, while I think it would make the BlueAnon second side even more tribalist itself.

Remember that in the early days of the pandemic, N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo as heroic, hardworking, etc. Eventually, he fell from his #BlueAnon perch after it was realized he'd screwed the pooch on cracking and packing nursing homes — not to mention his attempts to screw other pooches. Yet, somehow, folks like Levenson manage to overlook that. They "manage" to tout the likes of Rebekah Jones, despite her promoting both misinformation and conspiracy theory to frame that misinformation.

The Roundup on the end of the Lege and a Dem punking

House Dems punked the GOP, Strangeabbott and Goeb; are they prepared to do that in special sessions? Will Abbott channel his inner Rick Perry? Remember, the FAA is now under a Dem president, so he won't get the same help Tom DeLay and Perry did way back when.

With that, let's dig in.

Lege, voting

The final voting non-rights bill is ugly. Beyond what everybody else has pointed out, it targets COVID-related disability claims on voting by mail. And, it allows partisan poll watchers to move around voting precincts more. Intimidation, anybody? Recipe for fights inside polling places?

And, as of now, it's also dead, as House Dems left the floor to block a quorum. You KNOW this will be in a special session call, but, will we also have a flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico like 15 years ago?

The Texas Civil Rights Project presents the ugly highlights of the new voter suppression law.

Strangeabbott then officially entered titty-baby territory, saying he would veto the bill for Legislature funding. Can't House Dems say then that they can't attend a special session? Speaker Phelan has said he thinks it's unconstitutional.

Lege, other

Chris Tomlinson has a great piece on how the Lege's usual lipstick on a pig applies to its doing nothing of substance to prevent another Big Freeze Abbott Blackout. "Lawmakers are socializing the industry's losses."

Reform Austin condemns the lack of action on fixing the power grid.

Beyond a largely bipartisan conspiracy here, House Dems' chubbing of some of Danny Goeb's Texas Senate favorites, as noted in an Observer roundup, had him talking "special session," with Strangeabbott very publicly responding that "only I get to say the who/what and when" of that baby. That said, Abbott caved in 2017. Well, we'll see how this plays out.

Robert Rivard has had it with this legislative session and the bizarre priorities of our state leaders. 

Grits for Breakfast is even harsher towards the Republicans in Austin.

Jessica Montoya Coggins offers some advise about abortion access now that SB8 has passed.

Non-Lege

SocraticGadfly took some shots at the New Agey fluff and other platitudes in local high school graduation guest speaker and val-sal addresses.

One of Sun Myung Moon's sons, head of a nuttier-than-dad offshoot of the Moonies and a gun nut as part of the package, is coming to Texas, and not far from Waco. David Koresh, anybody?

Baseball MAY come to Austin-San Antone ... in about a decade, if then, sounds right.

Forty years ago, Mexia's Juneteenth radically changed.

The national QAnon convention in Dallas will probably wind up resulting in more movement splintering. Oh, and Dallas' pre-Nov. 22, 1963, motto, claiming it was too proud to hate or whatever? Maybe true of actual city government, but of large swaths of the Metromess? Not true then, not true today.

Off the Kuff continues his analysis of State Senate districts in the last three Presidential elections.

On a much-needed lighter note, The Great God Pan Is Dead introduces you to Houston's notorious "Darth Vader House", which is now on sale for the low, low price of $4.3 million.

Metromess

I-345 could be gone sooner rather than later.

Jim Schutze remains AWOL at D Mag's Frontburner, even on race-related issues that would have captured him at the Dallas Observer.

SMU confirms DA John Creuzot that in many places in Dallas County, Blacks were being overarrested for pot.

National

Supposedly, the Biden Admin and Congressional Dems are looking at backdoor ways to expand the Obamacare-related Medicaid expansion to resisters like Tex-ass.

Did Jamie Dimon, owner of Dear Leader's $500K checking account, get help in gray-noising his mike during testimony to Congress?

Evanston, Illinois, is actually trying reparations to Black Americans. The story gives an overview of Evanston's racial history and some of the things that led to this decision.

Global

Israeli Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin is trying to delay the not-yet-officially inevitable end of political life for Bibi.

COVID, week 60: Vaccination progress, Budweiser, Fauci

More than 60 percent of adult America is at least on the road to vaccination, with at least one dose of a multi-shot vaccine, or better. And, the vaccine hesitant percentage has dropped a bit. But, the resisters and the "no way" crowd are about unchanged. This is one of a set of takeaways from new public health research on the issue by Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF also finds that "bumps" (and not necessarily straight cash payments, but things like rides to shot clinics) may help speed vaccinations. 

Globally? Zeynep Tufekci warns that the new "Indian variant," B.1.617.2, could be far more a game-changer than the British B.1.1.7 one was, especially if vaccination campaigns don't speed up.

Facebook will no longer ban Wuhan Institute of Virology lab-leak theory posts. Nieman Lab wonders about how this will play out, especially with Q types. And, despite "breathlessness" in a Wall Street Journal story prying the theory back open, Dave Leonhardt at the Old Gray Lady notes its a realistic possibility. He also notes, per Nieman, that this is NOT to say it was deliberately engineered. 

Zeynep worries this might fuel that, or, at a minimum, this will just ramp up partisan war over the issue. But, as is her wont on avoiding twosiderism, that's couched in a larger post about the failures of fact-check sites.

Sharyl Attkisson is threatening to sue Dr. Peter Hotez. She'll lose, of course, should she follow through, which she almost certainly won't, even he he rightly doesn't cave.. But, A., it's disgusting in general, and B., a reminder that any states, and the federal government, not having anti-SLAPP statutes need them.

 ==

 Updates

1. Fauci's been busted for telling his Platonic Noble Lies in private emails as well as in public. Busted along with him are BuzzFeed and Jason Leopold for fellating him and #BlueAnon for doing the same.

1A. Fauci also stands busted for lies, lies by omission and lies by redefinition about his agency and others helping the Wuhan Institute of Virology in "gain of function" research on coronaviruses. This busting also applies to the fellow travelers above.

That said, Jonathan Cook, at that link, himself stereotypes. Not all media of the so-called "mainstream" type totally dismissed the possibility of a lab leak. I personally entertained it in the back of my mind, if but a small segment. I long have thought China lied about COVID fatalities.

Cook also ignores that some of the non-mainstream media who were making lab leak claims, or worse, did so for their own ends. Far-right media wanted to lash China; some even said WIV also had secret labs looking at weaponization. "Greenie" sites opposing ANY genetic engineering work also jumped on the bandwagon. That includes some who have linked Nicholas Wade's piece. (Cook also ignores Wade's OWN problematic background — he's a Charles Murray fellow traveler on racialism issues — as part of why more "mainstream" media may not have listened to him.) Wade himself errs when he claims all early lab leak talk focused on accident, not conspiracy. He also semi-strawmans the likes of Kristian Anderson.

2. Budweiser says "free beer" if Merika is at 70 percent by the Fourth of July. Do MAGAts, nutter types within the Greenie world, more unhinged Libertarians etc. among COVID minimalists, conspiracy theorists etc. stand by their unhingedness or do they, per Mike Shannon, eye a frosty cold mug of Bud?

Quick thought hot take on Naomi Osaka

I won't say I have zero sympathy for Naomi Osaka's decision to withdraw from the French Open (hold on to that link from Red Satan) but I don't have a lot.

That's in part being a member of the media, who has at the local level, seen in person politicos and businessmen trying to stiff the media, and seeing those same folks — AND athletes and other entertainers — pull the same nationally and globally.

In general, and definitely with Osaka in person, it all boils down to communication, or apparent lack thereof on her part, AND her willing choices made in all of this.

First, let us remember that she won the Australian Open. I don't remember her expressing that much angst during or after matches in Melbourne, or after the whole open were done, about being interviewed. She did admit to being "funny" and "nervous" in the interview after winning the final there. See below.

Second, let us note that if she DID have any such problems that she kept private, she's had nearly 3 1/2 months to communicate with the folks at Roland Garros. 

She chose not to. 

Instead, just days before the start of action, she dropped a bombshell social media statement with a blanket "no interviews." Note that she wouldn't give any interviews about that statement, either.

The folks in Paris said they reached out to her and got crickets, acting on behalf of all four Grand Slams. It was only after that reach-out was snubbed that a further warning was issued saying fines could escalate and that even a disqualification was possible. Given all the above, for Red Satan's author to call this surprising is laughable, naive or worse. The statement within that link says these are normal escalating enforcement provisions within normal Code of Conduct regulations.

Her personal withdrawal statement was also? Posted on her social media. No interview afterward. No returning of questions by the Associated Press.

She DID claim, hypocritically in my opinion, that she NOW wanted to talk with the Grand Slam organizations. Maybe this was because they'd fully indicated that a conversation, not a set of social media posts, needed to happen, that it would happen as a conversation, and not on unilateral terms.

That's probably part of what she didn't imagine a few days ago.

As for other aspects of her withdrawal statement?

First, introversion is not a mental health issue, and it's insulting of her to call it one. It's also sad if she really believes that about introversion in herself. 

And (see links below) her desire to market herself as a brand? Introversion is not shyness.

And now, to tennis as a business.

The Roland Garros statement notes contractual obligations. That's the bottom line. This is a business, and a big one.

Though, as of 2019, not as big as Osaka's endorsement money.

Someone on Twitter suggested the tradeoff of "no interviews, fewer endorsements." Sounds great in practice, but how do you enforce it in reality? In the US, it would run afoul of the First Amendment, especially on individual sports with no team owners to enforce discipline.

Next, to tie that back to her statement? I'm sure Osaka has done marketing interviews related to some of her endorsements, like this big one for Levi's.

Next, to the sports media she first complained about, but pulled in her horns on her withdrawal statement.

Yes, there's inane questions there. Anybody who's watch the full press day at the Super Bowl knows that, too.

But, there's real questions, too. Like at the PGA, to go to golf, asking Brooks Koepka after Round 4, if anybody did, if he's thought that he's lost some of his "majors aura."

OR, with the interview after the Aussie final, Osaka being asked about different court surfaces for upcoming Grand Slams and other events.

Yes, that interview was long, but normally, before the quarters level at a Slam, press availability time is 5-5 minutes, no more.

Could this be further shortened at the quarters, semis, and finals? Yes? Beyond inanity, does sports media have its version of Jim Acosta? Yes. Plenty of them.

Again, though, Osaka has had 3 1/2 months to raise this. And chose not to.

 

When she actually starts talking with the Slams, she needs to include an on-the-record explanation of why the wait. 

==

Update: Per CJR, some people are saying that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, she's owed a reasonable accommodation. 

Well, there's several things to unpack here.

The French clay of Roland Garros ain't in America, first. Neither is the grass of the All England Tennis Club nor the composite surface of Melbourne, Australia.

Second, even in the US, what would a reasonable accommodation be?

 

Third, what is the line between responsibility and obligation, Jon Allsop asks in that piece. He tangentially touches on business aspects but not too directly.

==

Update, June 7: Osaka has a funny way of wanting to talk to the Grand Slams. She's withdrawn from a "Wimbledon tune-up" tourney in Berlin and her appearance at Wimbledon is doubtful.

Update, June 13: Roland Garros makes clear how they reached out to Osaka, repeatedly, and heard nothing (and apparently continue to hear nothing, per the update above).

Few friendly thoughts on the REAL #BackTheBlue for Memorial Day

Today being the official original date and tomorrow the Monday holiday version, here we go:

First, let's remember that Memorial Day was started to honor not just war dead, not just Civil War dead but UNION Civil War dead. The BLUE not the Gray. Back the Blue.

Second, within that, let's remember that some of the first celebrations were to salute Black Civil War dead.

Third, given four years of resurgent open racism in America, fueled in part by neo-Confederates, let's also remember ongoing Lost Cause lies.

That's all.