Nearer My God To Thee

While Donald Trump was yesterday holding forth on Hurricane Florence in a manner that might make even a fourth-grader cringe (“They haven't seen anything like what's coming at us in 25, 30 years, maybe ever. It's tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water," Trump said in the Oval Office), the grandfather of crazed evangelicals everywhere was offering reassurances to his flock.

In a remarkable act of hubris, old pastor Pat Robertson suggested that he will save all good white Virginian Christians and the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia from impending doom:

“I don’t want that thing to come in,” Robertson said. “I don’t want it to hurt Regent, I don’t wait it to hurt CBN, I don’t want it to tear up the beautiful campus, I don’t want it to tear these trees down, I don’t want to see any damage, I don’t want a bunch of glass flowing, and I don’t want [damage] all over this area that is counting on us to pray for them.”

Robertson then commanded Florence, in the name of Jesus, to change its path away from land and to spin off into the Atlantic ocean.

We declare in the name of the Lord that you shall go no farther, you shall do no damage in this area,” he said. “We declare a shield of protection all over Tidewater and we declare a shield of protection over those innocent people in the path of this hurricane. In Jesus’ holy name, be out to sea!”

Unless you are gifted with a cast-iron constitution, I don't suggest you watch the full 3:25 minutes of the good pastor's exhortation:

This Says It All

The Kaepernick Effect

I recently wrote a post entitled, The Vindication of Colin Kaepernick, in which I opined on the decision by Nike to use the former NFLer for a new advertising campaign. I subsequently received a request by an American website entitled Writer Beat to use the piece. The commentary it received from readers there says a great deal about how polarizing a figure the former football player is. You can read that commentary here.

It is to state the obvious that some Americans are far more interested in observing the outward forms of patriotism than they are in practising true love of country and the principles it purports to represent. Otherwise, the widespread intolerance expressed toward someone engaging in a protest against discrimination and police mistreatment of Black people by genuflecting during the anthem can only be reduced to the most obvious conclusion: Kaepernick is simply an excuse for racist rants.

The good news, however, is that despite the outrage and the burning of Nike shoes, Nike is seeing a definite increase in sales of their products:

After an initial dip immediately after the news broke, Nike’s NKE, +1.10% online sales actually grew 31% from the Sunday of Labor Day weekend through Tuesday, as compared with a 17% gain recorded for the same period of 2017, according to San Francisco–based Edison Trends.

Those in a particular consumer bracket seem to explain this boost in sales:

People in that bracket are generally successful in their careers and personal lives, are typically single with robust social lives, and like to spend money on entertainment and travel, as well as online streaming services.

“Racial equality is a top concern for this audience, along with causes like clean-water access and gun control,” [4C Chief Marketing Officer] Goldman said.

Sentiment toward Kaepernick actually improved by 40% this week, he said.

“You can be darn sure that Nike has done its research and knows what will move its product and who this campaign will resonate with,” said Goldman. “They are the ones [Nike has] decided will be its future customers, so, if others are getting upset, [Nike has] planned for that, and it doesn’t care.”

In other words younger, more educated and socially engaged people are the target for this campaign, although it is hard to see how anyone could resist the allure of this recently-released commercial:

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoIt pic.twitter.com/x5TnU7Z51i

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) September 5, 2018

It would be naive to think that Nike is motivated by altruism in taking the bold step it has, and there will always be those who fight vigorously against progress. Nonetheless, if some inspiration and reduced barriers are the result, isn't it all to the good?

Truth In Parody

Last year, the Parody Project produced a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump and his acolytes through a song entitled Confounds the Science. If you haven't yet seen it, please click on the link. The following is a sequel to that effort, a sobering meditation on the mad heedlessness of our ways:

France Has The Right Idea

I am a member of an increasingly endangered and probably peculiarly-regarded minority. I do not have a smartphone. While I am an avid user of the Internet via my laptop and generic tablet, the thought of constant connectivity has never appealed to me. I value the kind of focussed solitude that promotes true connectivity with the world around me far too much.

I therefore applaud the bold step that France has taken: it has banned phones from all state middle schools.

“I thought I would be freaked out, but it has been fine,” said one 13-year-old girl, who got an iPhone when she was 11. “I left my phone in my bag all day and I was surprised to find it didn’t bother me. Normally I’d be on Snapchat and Instagram. But my friends are here at school so it’s pretty easy to just talk instead.”

To prepare for the ban, Claude Debussy middle school in Paris started with Monday bans on phones. And one of the results I suspect they hoped for, increased social interaction, emerged early in the ban, according to principal Eric Lathière.

“About four or five weeks into our phone-free Monday experiment, we saw children bringing packs of cards into school to play in break time...We hadn’t seen cards at school for years. Children brought books in to read and pupils stood around chatting far more than they had before.”

The logic for the ban is compelling:

The French education minister has called the ban a detox law for the 21st century, saying teenagers should have the right to disconnect. Children’s phones were already banned in classrooms – except for teaching purposes – but under the new law they are banned everywhere inside the gates, including playgrounds and canteens. The French senate expanded this to allow high schools to ban phones if they choose, but few, if any, are expected to do so. Many suggest 18-year-old pupils with the right to vote can make their own decision on phones.

I doubt that the political will for such a ban exists in Canada. For example, going completely in the opposite direction is the Toronto District School Board which last week restored access to Netflix, Instagram and Snapchat. The blocking of access to those services had nothing to do with educational principles but was prompted by the high amount of bandwidth such services require.

The board's egregious vacuum of leadership is perhaps best reflected in this statement by board spokesperson Ryan Bird:

“We leave the decision up to individual schools and individual teachers to put in place guidelines that work best for them.”

It is heartening to know that at least in France, that kind of buck-passing has yielded to educational integrity that puts the real needs of students first.

A Verbal Tap Dance

Talk, as they say, is cheap. Watch the following clip to see Environment Minister Catherine McKenna further debase its value by her non-answer regarding the now-stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the threat West Coast oil tanker traffic poses:

The Vindication Of Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick is someone I admire. As previously noted in this blog, the former NFL player, whose decision to protest police brutality against blacks by taking a knee during the American national anthem, has paid dearly for his integrity. But vindication has finally arrived, vindication sure to end Donald Trump into new paroxysms of outrage:

Last week, an arbitrator ruled that Colin Kaepernick’s collusion grievance against the NFL can go forward. This week, Nike unveiled a new ad campaign starring the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who rose to prominence in 2016 when he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence against black Americans.

Given that Nike is the official uniform supplier for the NFL, this move is not without risk, but one the company believes is worth taking. And the backlash has already started. Take a look at the Twitter hashtag #JustBurnIt or #BoycottNike for some examples:

FVCK U NIKE THIS IS FOR SUPPORTING A MAN THAT DISRESPECTS OUR MEN IN BLUE #JustDolt #JustBurnIt



Ripping my Nike Air Max to own the libs #BoycottNike


Bloomberg News reports:

Nike shares slipped as much as 3.9 percent to $79 as of 9:31 a.m. Tuesday in New York -- the biggest intraday slide in five months.

They had climbed 31 percent this year through Friday’s close.

The fallout was no surprise but Nike may be betting that the upside of a Kaepernick endorsement is worth angering conservative Americans and supporters of President Donald Trump.

To its credit, this is not the first time Nike has waded into controversial waters:

Just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration last year, the company launched a high-profile “Equality” campaign featuring LeBron James and Serena Williams. The campaign’s ambassadors included Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Muslim American fencer who wears a hijab when competing, and transgender triathlete Chris Mosier.

Now, all of this, of course, is about market share, but it is nonetheless refreshing to see a company taking a calculated risk while so many in Trump's America seem so keen on hewing to a very conservative, even reactionary, line.

And of course, for students of human nature, the reactions to this campaign constitute a fascinating Rorschach test, yet another conduit into the tortured and fractured American psyche.

Not to mention another dog whistle for the increasingly beleaguered Trump to blow.