Comments on: The sweet science

By: Michael Serazio

Michael Serazio — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 19:29:14 +0000

randomly googling the kid boxer and i stumbled across some of the takes here. pretty interesting (i was the writer on it). you can probably guess that i sort of naturally agree with roger’s thoughts—the hook of the kid’s situation is what lured me into covering him rather than political conclusions beforehand. actually, in truth, i just wanted to write about a story about boxing. if this kid does turn out as good as he’s supposed to be, he’s going to make a hell of lot more dough than an alt-weekly writer could ever aspire to, so it’s hard to feel sorry for him in that regard. even so, it’s hard to not feel sorry for the meatpacking plant cleaning crew type work that immigrants often wind up doing (in the middle of reading fast food nation right now). as for liberal bias, absolutely it’s there. for what it’s worth, though, we did a pro-life activist feature last fall that was apparently too sympathetic for some of our readers’ tendancies (one wrote in dropping the “fair and balanced” stigma on us). i figure as long as we’re pissing off the left and the right, equally, that’s the best alternative one could hope for. mike

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 08:30:22 +0000

score on the Bhagwati article coming up … I’ve always been rather a fan. His Lectures on Trade got me through a pretty nasty term.

By: roger

roger — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 03:55:58 +0000

Have to disagree. Anybody who does profiles knows you have to have a hook. The boxer without a country is a pretty good hook. It doesn’t really imply that we have to abolish requirements for the Olympics and revise our geopolitics so we are all one nation—it simply gets our sympathy for the boxer, who will hopefully attract more people that way. Granted, the overlap between boxing fans and readers of Alternative presses might be small, but I don’t think the hook is as wheedling as you seem to, nor do I think that Flores comes off badly. There are much worse ways to pump athletes. The one criticism I’d make is that he didn’t go far enough in the direction you criticize. Why not tabloid the guy up, make his situation seem like something inflicted on him by the cruel Feds? Make him an underdog in a larger boxing match with the INS, or whatever they call themselves nowadays. That, I think, would sell more to boxing fans, and more copy. The art of journalism, in this case, is not equivalent to judicious analysis. This ain’t forecasting employment in lower Ruritanian—its a male sob story.

By: JX

JX — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:49:33 +0000

At the very least, this example of antiglobollocks shows some intellectual diversity on the part of CT’s bloggers though Daniel’s point scheme only accounts for proglobollocks. I, however, would like to see the globollocks point score Daniel would award this: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15BHAG.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors (I say this as a proglobalist and a fan of Bhagwati’s, a self-described social democrat who supports globalization. He was also one of Paul Krugman’s most influential teachers.)

By: theCoach

theCoach — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:07:48 +0000

What are the odds that if the son or daughter of a famous boxer became an economist that there would be a headline that was some derivative of “The Dismally Sweet Science”. I am suprised that it is not used in this example actually.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:05:21 +0000

“A pugilist caught in the gears of globalisation” sounds more like antiglobollocks to me, but otherwise dead on.