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More to the Story of Jackie Robinson West

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Writers Link Circumstances to Conditions on South Side

Ta-Nehisi Coates Wins Polk Award for Reparations Story

Carr Died of Complications From Lung Cancer, Autopsy Says

Bringing the New Yorker Icon Into the 21st Century

Ratings Fall for “NBC Nightly News” After Williams Exit

Studies Show We’re Influenced by Movie “Facts” That Aren’t

We’re Already Having National Conversation on Race

Southern Chinese Lion Dancing for the New Year

“SNL40” Sets Record, but How Many Latinos?

Short Takes

Writers Link Circumstances to Conditions on South Side

The sad story of Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Little League team, stripped of its hard-fought 2014 U.S. championship title, is starting to depart from the pat story line of hard-working young black teammates punished for the deeds of the rule-breaking adults in charge of them.

“The team gave up its championship title Wednesday after Little League Baseball determined that both the team and its district ‘knowingly violated’ league rules by recruiting players who did not live within the team’s geographical boundaries,” as Maxwell Strachan reported last week for the Huffington Post.

Some writers are introducing a context that includes such factors as gentrification and Chicago’s recent school closings that disproportionately affected black children.

“The fact that the adults in charge of JRW felt the need to breach this rule perhaps has something to do with the fact that today’s urban landscape supports baseball about as well as concrete makes proper soil for orchids,” Dave Zirin wrote last week for The Nation.

“A plurality of Major Leaguers is made up of people from either the US suburbs or the baseball factories of the Dominican Republic.

“Many of the few African-American players on Major League rosters actually come from the suburbs. This is because twenty-first-century neoliberal cities have gentrified urban black baseball to death.

“Boys and Girls Clubs have become bistros. Baseball fields are condos and in many cities, Little League is non-existent. The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate. That’s what made JRW such a profound anomaly. In Chicago particularly, which under Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen school closures and brutal cuts to physical education programs, their success made people believe that — with apologies to Tupac — flowers could in fact grow in concrete. . . .”

Columnist Mary Mitchell wrote Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Now that this can of worms has been opened, we can’t ignore what’s inside.

“Frankly, the very idea of a ‘boundary’ is enough to anger blacks who grew up in Chicago.

“Boundaries were set up to protect the status quo and to impede the inroads black people were making in previously all-white neighborhoods.

“Boundaries ensured little white children didn’t have to go to school with little black children. And boundaries were put in place to make sure middle-class whites didn’t have to live next door to poor blacks. . . .”

Mitchell also wrote, “After all, the 2010 U.S. Census showed Chicago had 181,000 fewer African-Americans living in its neighborhoods.

“A lot of those blacks moved to the suburbs because they wanted their children to go to better schools and to live in safer communities.

“Many of these relocated families still belong to the same churches and still support the same programs they did when they lived in Chicago.

“For teams like Jackie Robinson West to stand a chance of winning on a national level, officials must be able to draw from a wider pool.

“Finally, the racial divide in Chicago seemed a thing of the past when the entire city came together to cheer on Jackie Robinson West.

“Now it seems that the divide is bigger than ever. . . “

In the Bleacher Report, George Castle wrote Friday of the national acclaim the team has received, and also saw hypocrisy.

“Little League also enjoyed a larger national profile, with JRW being welcomed enthusiastically by President Obama,” Castle wrote. Little League International chief Stephen Keener, “whose organization spent $18,000 to fly the team and coaches to Washington, D.C., for three days, attended a reception in the Oval Office a couple of weeks after Obama asked to meet the club at a political rally at Chicago State University.

“Little League championship teams normally are not received in the Oval Office itself. But Obama has an interesting backstory with JRW. While first running for the Illinois Senate in 2004, he served as grand marshal of JRW’s then-annual season-kickoff parade on the South Side. Emil Jones, who helped found JRW in 1971, also served as Obama’s political mentor in the Illinois Senate two decades ago.

“The access Obama provided JRW to his inner sanctum could not have reflected more positively on Little League International.

” ‘He opened up a door to his private study,’ Keener said in a recent interview before the controversy broke. ‘Michelle Obama leaned over to me and a member of our board and said, “Oh, boy, not many people get to go in there.’ He took those kids into his private study and showed a photo of himself with Nelson Mandela, and explained the significance of Mandela and what he meant to African-Americans. . . .”

Castle also wrote, “This situation seems headed for even more controversy for the governing body if — and likely when — other leagues’ transgressions are brought to light.

“Recently, Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV interviewed Renee Cannon-Young. She said her son, Jacoby, was recruited to play in southwest suburban Evergreen Park’s Little League, an outfit outside of the district in which they live — a transgression Keener’s staff and Evergreen’s Janes said JRW was guilty of committing.”

“Janes” is Chris Janes, vice president of nearby Evergreen Park Athletic Association, whom JRW beat 45-2 earlier in the season.

” ‘Hypocrisy’ is an accusation being frequently levied at all parties involved. . . .”

Ta-Nehisi Coates Wins Polk Award for Reparations Story

“Ta-Nehisi Coates received the George K. Polk award for commentary for ‘The Case for Reparations,’ an essay in The Atlantic attributing the gap in wealth and opportunity between black and white Americans to a ‘fundamental’ force within American society,” Anemona Hartocollis reported Sunday for the New York Times.

John Darnton, curator of the awards, “said the Polk panel does not give commentary awards every year, but did so in this instance because Mr. Coates ‘drives home his arguments very, very forcefully.’ “

In addition, “Adam Nossiter, Norimitsu Onishi, Ben Solomon, Sheri Fink, Helene Cooper and Daniel Berehulak of The New York Times won the health reporting award, for risking ‘their own health and safety to provide American readers with their earliest and most reliable coverage’ of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa,” the announcement said.

Also, “The award for television reporting went to Marisa Venegas and Solly Granatstein, executive producers, and John Carlos Frey, correspondent, for a joint production by the Investigative Fund, the Weather Channel, Telemundo and Efran Films titled ‘Muriendo por Cruzar (Dying to Cross),’ (video) on the plight of migrants in the Texas desert.

“Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times received the prize for international reporting for her account of how European nations secretly paid millions of dollars to ransom hostages held by the Islamic State, a business model perfected by Al Qaeda. . . .”

“Honored to receive a Polk award,” Coates wrote on Twitter Monday to announce the award, Betsy Rothstein reported Monday for the Daily Caller. “Is it weird to dedicate awards to people? Oh well. This one is so much for @carr2n,” a reference to David Carr, who edited Coates when Carr was editor of the Washington City Paper and Coates was a young writer in 1996. Carr died Thursday at 58.

Carr Died of Complications From Lung Cancer, Autopsy Says

“David Carr, the New York Times media columnist who died unexpectedly Thursday night, had lung cancer, and died of complications from the disease, according to the results of an autopsy released Saturday evening,” Daniel E. Slotnik reported for the New York Times.

“Mr. Carr, 58, was a survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, and described his experiences as a cancer patient in his 2008 memoir, ‘The Night of the Gun.’ . . .”

Slotnik also reported, “Mr. Carr’s memoir, which recounted his drug addiction with unblinking honesty and harrowing detail and made a publishing splash when it was released, had risen to number nine on Amazon’s best-seller list by Saturday afternoon. The New York Post reported that Simon & Schuster, which published the memoir, was printing 10,000 new copies of the book to meet demand.

“A memorial in the Times newsroom at 3 p.m. Friday drew a crowd rivaling that for the annual announcement of the Pulitzer Prize winners. A wake for Mr. Carr is planned for Monday evening; his funeral will be held Tuesday morning.”

Bringing the New Yorker Icon Into the 21st Century

“When the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, asked me months ago to think of ways to celebrate our ninetieth anniversary, I knew at least where to start: with the cover of the very first issue, from February of 1925, by the art editor Rea Irvin,” Françoise Mouly, the current art editor of the New Yorker magazine, wrote Monday.

“That image, of a ‘starchy-looking gent with the beaver hat and the monocle,’ so effectively established the magazine’s tone that it was published, nearly unchanged, every February until 1994.

“Later dubbed Eustace Tilley, the magazine’s presiding dandy has since been parodied, subverted, or deconstructed on most of our anniversary covers. Contributions by our artists — and by readers participating in Eustace Tilley contests — have included comic-strip Tilleys, dog Tilleys, tattooed Tilleys, emoji Tilleys, and twerking Tilleys.

“To celebrate the fact that we’re entering our tenth decade, we turned, as we do every week, to our artists for ideas, and this time we decided to publish more than one.

“We picked nine covers for our ninety years, selecting images that reflect the talent and diversity of our contributors and the range of artistic media they use: oil painting for Kadir Nelson and Anita Kunz; pen and ink with watercolor for Roz Chast, Barry Blitt, and Istvan Banyai; oil pastel for Lorenzo Mattotti; collage for Peter Mendelsund; and digital art for Christoph Niemann. Some of these artists are regulars — this is Barry Blitt’s eighty-eighth New Yorker cover and Lorenzo Mattotti’s thirtieth.

“Others are newcomers. Each brings Eustace Tilley squarely into the twenty-first century, and proves that art is as alive on the cover of the magazine today as it was in 1925.”

Ratings Fall for “NBC Nightly News” After Williams Exit

“While the media continues to autopsy Brian Williams’ career — new questions about claims he flew into Baghdad with Seal Team 6, was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the Berlin Wall came down, etc — viewers have been weighing in on NBC’’ suspension of Williams,” Lisa de Moraes reported Friday for Deadline Hollywood.

“They don’t like it.

“NBC Nightly News took a double-digit tumble in its first broadcast with Brian Williams name officially stripped from the broadcast, a.k.a Wednesday, according to fast affiliate time period stats issued by Nielsen. . . .”

Studies Show We’re Influenced by Movie “Facts” That Aren’t

“This year’s Oscar nominees for best picture include four films based on true stories: ‘American Sniper’ (about the sharpshooter Chris Kyle), ‘The Imitation Game’ (about the British mathematician Alan Turing), ‘Selma’ (about the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965) and ‘The Theory of Everything’ (about the physicist Stephen Hawking),” Jeffrey M. Zacks, a professor of psychology and radiology at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote for the SundayReview section of the New York Times.

“Each film has been criticized for factual inaccuracy. Doesn’t ‘Selma’ ignore Lyndon B. Johnson’s dedication to black voting rights? Doesn’t ‘The Imitation Game’ misrepresent the nature of Turing’s work, just as ‘The Theory of Everything’ does Mr. Hawking’s? Doesn’t ‘American Sniper’ sanitize the military conflicts it purports to depict?

“You might think: Does it really matter? Can’t we keep the film world separate from the real world?

“Unfortunately, the answer is no. Studies show that if you watch a film — even one concerning historical events about which you are informed — your beliefs may be reshaped by ‘facts’ that are not factual.

“In one study, published in the journal Psychological Science in 2009, a team of researchers had college students read historical essays and then watch clips from historical movies containing information that was inaccurate and inconsistent with the essays. Despite being warned that the movies might contain factual distortions, the students produced about a third of the fake facts from the movies on a subsequent test. . . .”

Southern Chinese Lion Dancing for the New Year

“Southern Chinese lion dancing comes from an ancient tale,” Andrew Boryga wrote Friday for the New York Times “Lens” blog. “Terrorized by a mythical monster, a horde of villagers descended from the mountains and huddled under an enormous monster of their own in an attempt to repel the beast. Year after year, to the accompaniment of firecracker bursts and drums, the ritual is repeated as protection against evil spirits. At least that’s one version.

” ‘Everyone tells it differently,’ said Jason Lam.

“For him, lion dancing was an easy transition from martial arts, and from middle school to college. He was a regular practitioner of the quick-footed routine performed under heavy and intricate costumes. Like most lion dancers, he took to the stage during anniversaries, birthdays, store openings and parades for celebrations like the Chinese New Year, Feb. 19 this year.

“While studying at the International Center of Photography last year, Mr. Lam decided to step outside the lion costume to view the tradition he said serves as a hinge between his Asian ancestry and American upbringing. . . .”

“SNL40” Sets Record, but How Many Latinos?

“It’s hard to capture people’s attention for three-and-a-half hours (four if you include the red carpet), but Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary Special did just that, and it easily broke two Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings records,” Adam Flomenbaum reported Monday for LostRemote.

However, Félix Sánchez, chairman and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, noted Sunday on the Latino Rebels blog that “SNL has never hired a Latina cast member, yet they have brown-faced actors to play Latinas in skits. Only two Latinos have ever been cast on the show: Horatio Sanz and Fred Armisen, and the show’s recent Latino-themed skits have only highlighted the problems.” On Twitter, some guessed how long it would be before a Latino appeared.

In a scripted portion of the show, Ellen Cleghorne, one of only a handful of black female SNL alums, asked Jerry Seinfeld, “So, how many black women were on the Seinfeld show?” Seinfeld replied, “Good point, Ellen, we did not do all we could to cure society’s ills, you are correct. Uh, mea culpa. [He turns away.] Other questions?,” Ross Miller reported Monday for theverge.com.

Short Takes

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