something about "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton

George Plimpton was an American journalist and writer. Paper Lion describes his experience in 1963 joining the training camp of the Detroit Lions, a National Football League team. Plimpton, 36 years old at the time and not an athlete, tried out to be the team's third-string quarterback. Paper Lion expands on a two-part piece Plimpton wrote for Sports Illustrated in September 1964.

The book, published in 1966, is a widely read example of Plimpton's "participatory journalism." It followed up on a similar project, Out of My League, in which Plimpton participated in an American professional baseball all-star exhibition game. These books attempt to ask, How would the average man do in competition with professional athletes?

What comes off to me, though, is one guy who, for reasons probably having a lot to do with class, spends a lot of time among people he cannot relate to. And the prose is a language time capsule.

Overall, Paper Lion was fine. But I think the book would have worked just as well at half the length.

Note: Plimpton is the tall guy in the photo. Paper Lion was made into a movie, released in 1968 as a sports comedy, starring Alan Alda as Plimpton. Have not seen it.

something about "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil," by Hannah Arendt

Adolf Eichmann played a leading role in the deportation of Jews from Germany and a significant role in the logistical implementation of the Nazis' "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." After Israel's Mossad captured Eichmann in 1960 in Buenos Aires, the state of Israel tried him in Jerusalem for collaborating in the persecution of the Jewish civilian population. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962.

Hannah Arendt, a political theorist, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. Her writing was revised and enlarged for a book published in 1964. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt draws out insights big and small as she dissects the trial and shares historical research. It is a fascinating blend of reporting, insightful meditation, and history.

The book's title captures the theme that emerged from the trial, according to Arendt. Eichmann came off as fairly average: an obedient, law-abiding, rule-following joiner, with no trace of mental illness and no real hatred for Jews. But he could not think for himself. Furthermore, he had no career plan and came to his position in the regime almost by accident; and, there, he found he had a knack for logistical planning. And when the regime's plan to expel the Jews changed into a plan to exterminate them, Eichmann accepted the change and the given rationale that doing so was the most humane option.

Arendt closes the last chapter by describing how Eichmann, after walking readily to his execution, offered a clichéd string of last words. This was wholly in character for him. "It was as though in those last moments he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."

Arendt is reluctant to call the whole episode a show trial, but aspects seem to beg the description in Arendt's telling. Eichmann, who played an important role in the most horrific event of the century, stood in for the whole German Reich, and the execution was largely an act of vengeance.

For various reasons, including her descriptions of how some Jews helped implement Nazi policies against fellow Jews, Arendt came under heavy criticism after the book's publication. She addressed the criticism in a postscript added in a subsequent edition. She ends the postscript by stating that the trial did fulfill "the demands of justice."

Notes:

• Hannah Arendt is a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
• Favorite sentence: "So Eichmann's opportunities for feeling like Pontius Pilate were many, and as the months and the years went by, he lost the need to feel anything at all." 
• I suspect Arendt cleverly sought to satisfy her most vicious critic with the cliché about "the demands of justice." 

 

about Megyn Kelly's cold, hard stare

Megyn Kelly and NBC faced a lot of criticism last week ahead of their decision to air a piece on controversial conspiracist Alex Jones during Kelly's new Sunday night show. Why give Jones a platform for his odious views? The guy claims the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged or faked to undermine private gun ownership rights.

But after the interview aired, media critics grudgingly formed a consensus that the segment was a success. The Washington Post piece "Facing Alex Jones, NBC's Megyn Kelly manages to avoid a worst-case outcome" is typical:

Rather than let Jones run away with it, "Sunday Night" let him show himself to be an impertinent, ill-informed, foulmouthed, possibly deranged egomaniac with a forehead constantly beaded in sweat. It showed viewers how Infowars grew and sustains itself by peddling right-wing merchandise and Jones-endorsed dietary supplements. It looked briefly back at Jones's early days as just another cable-access kook in Austin, and revealed the flimsy, almost nonexistent definition of "research" (articles he and his staff find online) that sets the Infowars agenda.

... Good night and good luck, in a "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly" kind of world, has been replaced with the cold, hard stare. Which, as it happens, remains Kelly's surest and perhaps only journalistic asset.

This piece withholds journalistic credit from Kelly, arguing that Alex Jones revealed himself to be a sweaty, crackpot buffoon. The Post just gives Kelly credit for her icy stare. She deserves more. Jones counterattacked with accusations of media liberal bias. But Kelly refused to engage on Jones's terms. A lot of other journalists would have been baited. By remaining on the offensive, Kelly allowed her righteous narrative to prevail. And Jones, as the Post points out, looked crazy--with a lot of help from Kelly.