Black Female Athletes and the Olympics

As preparations continue for what are still called the 2020 Olympics (opening ceremonies are Friday) ramp up, it’s not surprising that there are a handful of Olympics-related stories out there.  Curmie wants to discuss four of them, all of which, coincidentally (or perhaps not) involve black women and rulings by (mostly) old white guys.  Three of the four deal in one way or another with the notion of performance enhancement.

Let’s take them in roughly increasing sympathy for the athletes involved.

Oh, how original: an anthem protest.  Gwen Berry placed third in the US Olympic trials for the hammer throw, then, in an all-too-predictable fit of… whatever… at the awards ceremony she turned away from the flag and ultimately covered her face with a black t-shirt reading “activist athlete,” thereby disrespecting not merely the anthem and the flag, but also, of course, the event winner, DeAnna Price.  Curmie need hardly tell you that there was all manner of posturing going on, mostly by Berry, but also by those who wanted to get their names in print as objectors.

Berry has subsequently claimed playing the anthem was a “set-up” (WHAAAAT?), that she “never said [she hates] America,” and that the third verse of the anthem is racist.  Well, that part is true, which might account for why only one verse is ever played or sung at a sporting event or, indeed, virtually ever.  But the rest of it?  Nonsense.  And the faux surprise that her actions engendered a negative reaction?  Incredible.  Perhaps Curmie’s favorite line: “Y’all are obsessed with me,” Berry’s response to Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who suggested she should be removed from the team.  To be sure, Crenshaw is using the Berry protest to try to make a name for himself, but the only person obsessed with Gwen Berry is Gwen Berry.

She claims she will continue her protest in Tokyo, although the IOC has rules against this sort of behavior.  We can be pretty certain that just as the Star-Spangled Banner wasn’t played for Berry at the trials in Eugene, OR, it won’t be in Tokyo, either.  Price beat Berry by over 24 feet (!), or over 9%.  (The difference between first and third in many events is well under 1%.)  Still, there’s a chance Berry will get on the podium in Tokyo; her best throw this year ranks her fourth in the world, behind #3 by only about 3 feet, 9 inches.  So she may get a chance to lose even more endorsements there.

But the stunt has had its desired effect: far more people have heard of Gwen Berry than of DeAnna Price.

Sha’Carri Richardson in happier times.

Even Stupid Rules are Rules.  Next up: Sha’Carri Richardson was the overwhelming favorite in both senses of the word in the women’s 100 meters coming into the Olympic trials.  She had run easily the best times of any American sprinter, and fans loved her petite size (she’s only 5’1”), her brashness, determination, and eccentricities: the bright orange hair, the false eyelashes, the absurdly long fingernails.  She didn’t disappoint, spotting the competition a meter or more before zooming past them all to win comfortably.

Then, of course, she tested positive for marijuana, which appears on the World Anti-Doping Agency Prohibited List.  This led to a one-month ban from competition imposed by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).  This took her out of the 100 meter competition in the upcoming Tokyo Games, because her win in Eugene was nullified, and US Track and Field rules state that the top three [legal] finishers at the trials constitute the contingent. 

Let’s be clear on a couple of things.  First, her use of the drug was legal in the sense that she could not be arrested for it.

Second, marijuana is far from a performance-enhancing drug; continuing it on the prohibited list is problematic and reactionary, but understandable to the extent that it is illegal in a lot of places, including the majority of US states.  Still, the USADA seems to be better at discovering dope than doping. 

Third, it’s still a violation of the rules of the sport, which are defined internationally.  To her credit, Richardson accepted responsibility for her actions and did not challenge the suspension: “I just want to take responsibility for my actions, I know what I did, I know what I’m supposed to do, I’m allowed not to do and I still made that decision. I’m not making an excuse or looking for any empathy in my case.” 

So far, really, there’s not much of a story, except for the rather unusual fact that a star athlete took responsibility for her own missteps.  Yes, there was some buzz (get it?  buzz?) about whether athletes ought to be suspended over marijuana, and there were, predictably, some loud but isolated and unconvincing accusations of racism from the likes of AOC. 

But what attracts Curmie’s attention is what comes next.  Whereas Richardson’s suspension prevents her from running in the 100 meters in Tokyo, it will expire before the 4x100 relay.  Initially, there was speculation that she might be named to that team, which is chosen by US Track and Field, and need not be linked to performance at the trials.  A couple days after the suspension was announced, we learned that Richardson wasn’t going to be on the relay team, either.  WHAT???  

Here, according to the New York Times, is the rationale: 

… the coaches had already selected the members of the relay squad and had informed those runners of their placements before Richardson’s positive test became public.

After Richardson’s disqualification, the coaches chose the next six finishers in the 100-meter race and decided it would be unfair to take a slot away from one of those runners and give it to Richardson simply because that would be the only way to get her on the team.

USA Track and Field also published a remarkably disingenuous statement of sympathy on their website: “All USATF athletes are equally aware of and must adhere to the current anti-doping code, and our credibility as the National Governing Body would be lost if rules were only enforced under certain circumstances.

“So while our heartfelt understanding lies with Sha’Carri, we must also maintain fairness for all of the athletes who attempted to realize their dreams by securing a place on the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team.”

But it’s not a question of changing or not enforcing the rules, you stupid fucktards.  It’s about allowing your best athlete, who will have served the full term of her suspension, the opportunity to compete… and to give your team the best, legal, chance of winning.  Basically, either the officials didn’t bother to find out that Richardson would be eligible and lurched ahead, or they knew of her availability and chose intentionally to leave her off the team because, well, who knows?

Was the decision racist?  Highly unlikely: the new #4 (Gabby Thomas), the last “starting” spot, and #6 (Aleia Hobbs), the last team member, are both black.  If you replace one black athlete with another, it may be all manner of stupid, but it’s unlikely to be racist.  Was the decision ill-considered, arrogant, virtue-signaling, and petulant?  Yeah, pretty much.  The good news is that Gwen Berry is less likely to have to hear the Star Spangled Banner after the event. 

Brianna McNeal at the
2019 World Championships

What a Difference a Day Makes.  Item #3: Defending 100 meter hurdle Olympics gold medalist Brianna McNeal lost her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport of a five-year suspension imposed by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for violating anti-doping rules.  What’s curious about this case is that she has never failed a drug test.  What she has done, at least six times over her career, is to miss a drug test.

The first such occasion resulted in a one-year ban for a series of three Whereabouts violations five years ago.  What that means: athletes at her level are required to provide officials with information about their whereabouts so they can be tested, unannounced, for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).  She took, and passed, some eight tests that year, but being unavailable three times triggered the suspension.

The USADA posted a rationale for the testing and the sanction:

Accurate Whereabouts information is crucial for effective out-of-competition testing, which helps deter and detect doping by enabling no-notice sample collection. This is especially important because some prohibited substances have limited detection windows. In an effort to help athletes understand and fulfill their Whereabouts requirements, USADA conducts in-person and online educational sessions with athletes, sends email reminders about filing dates and obligations, maintains online and app-based filing and updating platforms, and gives athletes the option to receive daily and weekly reminders of their provided Whereabouts information.

So… on to January of 2020.  McNeal was looking forward to the 2020 Olympics, which of course at that time were still on schedule.  This was a factor, at least, in her decision to have an abortion on January 10.  She then failed to answer the door or her phone on the 12^th when the drug testers showed up.  This was the second time in a one-year period she had not made herself available for a test; as noted above, it (generally?) takes three to lead to a sanction.  This much is not up for debate.

A couple of weeks later, the AIU asked for an explanation.  McNeal was under no obligation to reply, but she did, referencing a “a surprise medical procedure.”  She claimed to have been heavily sedated and to have spent much of her time over the ensuing several days sleeping.  Ultimately, the AIU didn’t believe her because she was active on social media.  Wait, what?  In the universe Curmie inhabits, it’s possible to post stuff on Facebook in between naps; apparently not in AIU’s world.

But the other incontrovertible fact is that McNeal changed the dates on the medical records associated with the abortion, making it appear that the drug test would have been one day instead of two after the procedure.  Did she really misremember and believe the doctor’s office had erred?  Curmie is skeptical.  Was she experiencing remorse or even guilt in the aftermath of the termination?  This is more plausible.  Of course, ironically, she could have had the child and still participated in the delayed Olympics.  (Even distracted by the suspension and the appeal, she qualified for the US team, pending the decision by the Court of Arbitration.)

And it’s the “tampering” with unnecessary documentation that’s the problem.  McNeal’s lawyer argued, apparently accurately, that:

The AIU has not accused Brianna McNeal of ever using any banned substances, has not accused Brianna McNeal of evading doping control; and has not accused Brianna McNeal of tampering with any urine sample or blood sample.  Had she ignored the AIU’s request that she explain the circumstances of that missed test, there would have been no consequences.

Of course, faking evidence is not a good thing, and the argument that the appropriate thing to do if you thought the doctor’s office erred would be to call them up and resolve the issue, not to just alter the document.  On the other hand, a five-year suspension for a 29 year old athlete, effectively ending her career, because she said a procedure that happened on one day actually happened a day earlier: that seems a bit extreme.

Would the decision have been different, as McNeal has suggested, if she were white or European?  Curmie thinks it’s more likely that the agencies involved are sexist rather than racist, but McNeal’s allegations aren’t completely outrageous.  What’s certain is that the attempts to simultaneously maintain the integrity of the sport and keep innocent athletes eligible will never result in perfect justice.

Alice Dearing models the offending object.

The Saga of Soul Caps.  Finally, there’s this item that actually stems from the UK, but obviously affects black female swimmers of all nationalities.  The UK-based company Soul Cap, according to their website, specializes in “haircare for the volume-blessed.”  They make swim caps primarily to satisfy the needs of the BAME community (that’s the UK equivalent of BIPOC: Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic).  Last year, they partnered with British swimmer Alice Dearing, who recently was named the first black woman to represent the UK in swimming events at the Olympics, to promote their product.

They seek to accommodate the thicker, curlier hair of black swimmers, and to provide a better fit, thereby protecting the hair from chlorine.  But FINA (the Fédération Internationale de Natation), the sport’s governing body, outlawed the cap because it doesn’t “fit the natural form of the head” and to their “best knowledge the athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require … caps of such size and configuration.”

Seriously?  As to point #1: who cares, given the fact that the increased size of the cap actually increases drag, thereby putting the athlete at a comparative disadvantage.  If an athlete chooses to wear the “soul cap,” why not?  If she gains a competitive advantage, sure.  But this, if anything, is the opposite.  As to point #2: black athletes have historically tended to gravitate towards other sports, so the fact that there was not a lot of call for such a minor accommodation can hardly be grounds for maintaining the status quo merely for its own sake.  And, of course, there have been several black women who not only competed but won medals at the Olympics: Enith Brigitha of the Netherlands, and Americans Lia Neal and Simone Manuel.  Manuel will be in Tokyo, defending her 2016 gold medals in the 100m freestyle and the 4x100 medley.

Dearing points to “decades of cultural and institutional racism which has sadly seeped into the swimming community and swimming in general for quite some time.” Usually Curmie raises a skeptical eyebrow at such claims.  In this instance, however, he sighs and nods.  International swimming can must do better.

After great international hoopla, FINA announced it would “review”its decision.  That was a fortnight ago.  Still no final decision that Curmie can uncover, and the opening ceremonies are less than a week away.

Black [Somethings] Matter

Regular readers of this blog will know that Curmie loves putting two or more stories together, finding a common theme.  This time, it’s the apparently sacred, not-to-be-trifled-with words, “Black Lives Matter.”  Curmie has already weighed in on that phrase and both its connotative and denotative meanings.  The short version is that whereas black lives unquestionably matter (and there are some areas of life in America in which this concept has not always been made manifest), the Black Lives Matter movement is not above criticism.

Curmie has often observed, both in this blog and in his classroom, that the ability to laugh at oneself is a signal of strength in a system.  We can trace this phenomenon back at least as far as Athenian Old Comedy two and a half millennia ago.  The best recent example came in the aftermath to 9/11.  That event shook us all.  (It may have affected me in a variation on survivor’s guilt: my brother-in-law was scheduled for a meeting high in one of the Twin Towers that morning; it was called off shortly before the attack.)  For a few days, the country reeled, and everything was solemn reportage.  We knew we as a nation were emerging from the metaphorical if not the literal wreckage when David Letterman went back on the air in New York; we knew we were really going to be OK when he started telling jokes about President Bush.

Curmie, of course, is very much fond of humor in general and wordplay in particular; that, along with “Black Lives Matter,” is the subject of this essay.

Item #1:

This is either a foul on Joakim Maehle (#5 in red)
or a flop by Raheem Sterling (#10 in white).

The Euro 2020 (still called that, despite the pandemic-necessitated delay) semi-final match this week between England and Denmark was de facto decided by a questionable foul call, resulting in a penalty kick for the home side, England. Raheem Sterling, one of England’s leading goal-scoring threats, went down “in the box” after some very slight contact with a Danish defender. Was it a foul? Maybe.

Watching the replay, I thought that it would be impossible to overturn the call, but it would also have been impossible to overturn a no-call.  BBC announcer Gary Lineker, who in his playing career earned 80 caps and scored 48 goals for England in international competition, saw it the same way I did.  There is perhaps a reason he has the extremely impressive record of never receiving even a yellow card in any type of game.  (Hey, if you can’t believe Wikipedia, who can you trust?)

What the video review did not do, contrary to the article linked below, was “confirm” the call. It didn’t overturn the call; there’s a difference. Plus, of course, there’s one of those unwritten laws that referees don’t call penalty kicks late in a game unless there’s absolutely no question.  So much for that idea…

Anyway, there’s a standing joke in Ireland that when it comes to international sporting events, an Irishman’s favorite team, of course, is Ireland. His second favorite team is whoever is playing England. So it’s not surprising that Bernard O’Byrne, the CEO of Ireland’s basketball program, viewed the episode, shall we say, through green-colored glasses. And Sterling is black, so when the BBC posted on Facebook about the English victory, O’Byrne responded “BLACK DIVES MATTER!!!”

Curmie thinks it’s a pretty clever line, especially since the call was so marginal.  Moreover, Sterling has something of a reputation for, well, diving.  Needless to say, there was predictable outrage from humor-deficient Woke Folk, and consequent groveling from O’Byrne and his employer.  Sigh.

This situation seems to Curmie to be a rather impressive tempest in a demi-tasse cup, but at least we are talking about an episode in which the race of an actual human being becomes at least indirectly the subject of a gag. 

Not so with Item #2.

It will probably not surprise you, Gentle Reader, that Curmie has an appreciation for, shall we say, offbeat humor.  He came across the cartoon you see to the right here in a Facebook post on a humor site… it seems to have been taken down now, for reasons less than entirely clear.  Anyway, someone suggested that it’s racist (!) because, you know: black ink, white out… obviously the cartoon is about race.  WTAF?

But, as they say on the late-night infomercials: Wait, there’s more!  Someone commented “Black Lines Matter,” and there was a Disturbance in the Force.  Again, good line, yes?  And to say there’s anything offensive about the quip is to deny even the possibility of literally anything humorous having the slightest connection to current events.  Count Curmie out of that mindset.

None of the foregoing should be taken to suggest that all proponents of Black Lives Matter are humorless sloganeers.  (“Not all [fillintheblanks]…”)  Nor is this a defense of the deliberately offensive, or even of tastelessness (Curmie would defend the latter, but that’s an issue for another day).  But just as it would benefit us all if the nation were to more fully uphold the notion of “liberty and justice for all” promised by its rhetoric, it would also be a boon if some of the more hair-triggered of the SJWs and BLMers paused for a breath, a thought, and perhaps even a smile before opening the spout of righteous indignation.

Sexy Onions and Freedom of Expression

Is this story even worthy of mention?  Not in isolation, probably, although Curmie did post it to the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page.  But taken in context… maybe.

Veteran readers of this blog, and especially of the Facebook page, will know that links to this blog were blocked on Facebook for nearly a year, sometimes with the message that the page violated their rules about spamming (needless to say, Curmie doesn’t engage in spamming), sometimes with just a blithe and unhelpful message about violation of their precious “community standards.”

Curmie wrote about his frustration with the situation in a post last July.  What’s really troubling is that there is no way to appeal an idiotic edict generated by whatever ill-conceived algorithm has taken the place of sense in the world of BigTech.  And now, just as mysteriously, Curmie can post links to this blog again.  Don’t ask why.  Curmie doesn’t know, and if Facebook does, they won’t say.

All of this, of course, both feeds into and complicates the narrative.  That Facebook and Twitter are, to repeat the title of Curmie’s previous rant, censorious asshats, is tautological.  But are they the partisan authoritarians some of Curmie’s right-leaning friends suggest, or are they just fucking stupid?  They’re certainly the latter, as demonstrated below. 

The former?  Well, links to this blog were shut down, and whereas Curmie may not be a traditional liberal, it would be difficult to describe him as a right-winger.  And over a dozen of Curmie’s friends have been put in Facebook jail for posting leftie content.  Did they deserve it?  A couple of them, perhaps.  But Curmie can’t imagine some of them posting anything that would be deemed problematic by anyone with an operative brain.

Moreover, a lot of the problem seems to stem from unreasonable demands placed on social media corporations: they seem to be held liable for anything they allow to remain on their sites, but also get into trouble for restricting access.  This dilemma doesn’t make them blameless, of course.  For one thing, they can’t seem to maintain a consistent set of rules.  When Curmie wrote the post linked above, politicians running for office could lie in Facebook posts all they wanted, but the rest of us got dinged if some idiot fact-checker decided that a literally true statement didn’t provide enough context.

Then they got rid of that idea and started limiting all political content.  Then they brought it back.  Now, lest their site be used to disseminate falsehoods (e.g., about COVID) they’ve taken to asking users “Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?”  This neat little merger of Orwell, Kafka, and the Stasi is intended, they tell us, to prevent the spread of extremism.  On this Independence Day, do we really need a reminder that John Hancock was an extremist?  Or that he was only one of the multitude of great figures in world history to whom that term could be applied?

It’s also reasonable to flag a particular post with a warning that there is factually incorrect information there.  But such designations should not lead to taking the post down unless it is libelous or incites violence.  Calling the President names doesn’t qualify.  Saying the last election was “stolen” doesn’t, either, despite the dearth of evidence to support such a claim.  Nor do wildly exaggerated claims that no rational person would believe… or jokes that aren’t supposed to be taken seriously.

Are the BigTech companies imposing political homogeneity?  Maybe.  Are their motives pure, even if their actions are flawed?  Maybe.  Are the people running the process card-carrying morons?  Yes.  Of course, being dumber than the proverbial sack of hair does not necessarily preclude also being partisan.  As one of Curmie’s students is fond of saying, ¿Por qué no los dos?

But on to the actual subject of this post, a subject about which Curmie believes we can all agree.  It isn’t a new story, but it only recently appeared on Curmie’s horizon, and it encapsulates what is wrong with all the multitudinous attempts to squelch freedom of expression by the very people who purport to be cultivating it.

Last fall, the Gaze Seed Company in St. John’s, Newfoundland sought to buy an ad on Facebook, promoting their Walla Walla onions.  Curiously enough, the company included a photograph of what the grown onions would look like.  The photo was deemed “overtly sexualized” by, presumably, a remarkably prudish algorithm.  You can see the evidence here.

Gentle Reader, if you find anything remotely suggestive in what you see here, Curmie would suggest the only career path available to you is high school administration, where you can get over-stimulated by the sight of teenaged girls’ shoulders or collarbones.

The situation was ultimately resolved, and the ad ran.  But that’s because Facebook represents the quintessence of capitalist amorality.  If you or I, Gentle Reader, post a meme the maladroit algorithm doesn’t like, it’s gone, and your account is imperiled.  But if you’re paying them for an ad, well, yeah, of course they’ll have a real human take a look.  They’re still morons.

The desire to control false or otherwise disruptive content is understandable up to a point, but we’re well past the point of idiocy.  BigTech’s censorious asshattery would be problematic enough if the decisions were made by someone smarter than moose scat.  Curmie doesn’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.

The Tuna That Wasn't... But Probably Was

There’s a big brouhaha afoot about whether Subway’s tuna sandwiches actually contain… you know… tuna.

A lawsuit in California got all this started, and then the New York Times got into the act, and then, well, there are claims and counter-claims, virtually all of which are predictable: the plaintiffs say X, and the company spokesperson says not-X.

Curmie is not a fan of either Subway or tuna sandwiches, at least those not made from a small can of Starkist or Chicken of the Sea.  If he’s ever eaten a Subway tuna sandwich, it was probably 20+ years ago.  So it’s not like there’s a lot riding on the outcome of this kerfuffle from a personal perspective.  I could cheerfully live out the rest of my days without Subway or tuna sandwiches, let alone both at once.

Anyway, let’s take this from the beginning.  In the January Washington Post article that started any national interest in this case, reporter Tim Carman writes that:

The star ingredient, according to the lawsuit, is “made from anything but tuna.” Based on independent lab tests of “multiple samples” taken from Subway locations in California, the “tuna” is “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna,” according to the complaint. Shalini Dogra, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, declined to say exactly what ingredients the lab tests revealed….  “We found that the ingredients were not tuna and not fish,” the attorney said in an email to The Washington Post.

Subway wasn’t about to let those claims go unrefuted.  Part of spokeswoman Maggie Truax’s statement:

These baseless accusations threaten to damage our franchisees, small business owners who work tirelessly to uphold the high standards that Subway sets for all of its products, including its tuna. Given the facts, the lawsuit constitutes a reckless and improper attack on Subway’s brand and goodwill, and on the livelihood of its California franchisees. Indeed, there is no basis in law or fact for the plaintiffs’ claims, which are frivolous and are being pursued without adequate investigation.

Unfortunately, this lawsuit is part of a trend in which the named plaintiffs’ attorneys have been targeting the food industry in an effort to make a name for themselves in that space. Subway will vigorously defend itself against these and any other baseless efforts to mischaracterize and tarnish the high-quality products that Subway and its franchisees provide to their customers, in California and around the world, and intends to fight these claims through all available avenues if they are not immediately dismissed.

Well, OK, then.

Several months later, the New York Times got into the act.  They sent reporter Julia Carmel to do a little investigation.  She bought “more than sixty inches worth of Subway tuna sandwiches.  [She] removed and froze the tuna meat, then shipped it across the country to a commercial food testing lab.”  The spokesman for the lab in question “agreed to test the tuna but asked that the lab not be named…, as he did not want to jeopardize any opportunities to work directly with America’s largest sandwich chain.”

The results: 

No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA…. Therefore, we cannot identify the species…. There’s two conclusions.  One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.

That seems rather damning… but is it?  First off, Carmel notes that the plaintiffs were backing off at least some of their claim: no longer was the complaint that the stuff of those sandwiches wasn’t fish at all, but rather that it wasn’t “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna,” as advertised on the company’s sourcing website. 

This is interesting in that this revelation cuts both ways.  One the one hand, it suggests that the initial claim, and the attending publicity, was fraudulent.  On the other hand, it also could be taken to mean that although they couldn’t prove the initial claim, they can prove this one.

The lab’s explanation also needs to be teased out.  Carmel writes, “Once tuna has been cooked, its DNA becomes denatured — meaning that the fish’s characteristic properties have likely been destroyed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify.”  And tuna is indeed cooked, twice (!) before making it to a Subway franchise. 

Moreover, when Inside Edition tried the same experiment (other than gathering their samples from New York instead of LA), the results were uniformly positive for tuna.  A couple of things stand out here.  First, the lab in question was identified, unlike the one the Times used.  Inside Edition used Applied Food Technologies in Florida.  LeeAnn Applewhite, AFT’s CEO, confirmed that the tuna sandwiches her firm tested were, in fact, tuna.

And now Curmie is even more confused.  Let’s see: the company that says what the country’s largest sandwich chain would want them to say is willing to be identified; the one that supports (sort of) the lawsuit isn’t.  Curmie hastens to add that it would take considerably more evidence to assert that either of these labs are doing anything untoward, but the coincidence does make a skeptic raise an eyebrow at the very least.

Moreover, does the fact that AFT can confirm the presence of tuna in the tuna mean that the absence in the tests conducted by whatever labs the plaintiffs in the lawsuit really does show that there was no tuna in the “tuna” they tested?  Or did they use different tests?  Or did Subway have an “oh, shit, they’re on to us; we’d better start putting tuna in the tuna” moment?  Curmie did well in high school biology, but that was a half century ago, and somehow I suspect the answers to these questions might require some actual expertise, not just the ability to score well on the Regents exam.  (Curmie wonders if those things even exist any more in New York State.)

Of course, two other ideas need to be factored in.  First, even if what got served as tuna wasn’t actually tuna, the chances are good that Subway is the victim rather than the perpetrator: that the deception comes from the cannery, not the distributor.  Carmel is quoted in a follow-up piece entitled “Inside Our Subway Tuna Sandwich Test” that “Everyone I talked to said that if it’s anyone’s fault, it isn’t Subway’s.”  Carmel’s story also quotes Peter Horn, the director of the Ending Illegal Fishing Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, that “it would be difficult to place blame on Subway.”  Tuna is cheap enough to begin with, so the savings wouldn’t be worth the risk to reputation, even in the most amoral of scenaria.   

Finally, there’s the suggestion that perhaps yes, it’s tuna, but not of the best quality.  Well, duh.  I don’t know how to break this to you, Gentle Reader, but Subway does not qualify as fine dining.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse went out to dinner a couple of nights ago (the first time we’d done so post-COVID, as it happens).  We went to a place that calls itself an “ale-house and bistro.”  Curmie had a cheeseburger.  It was considerably better than what one could buy at one of the fast-food joints that line our city’s major north-south thoroughfare.  It also cost twice as much as one of those places would charge.  Curmie attracts a pretty intelligent readership, so he’s betting you already considered the distinct possibility that these two concepts might be linked, perhaps even causally.

Of course, if there is a misrepresentation, even if Subway isn’t directly responsible, it’s reasonable to wonder just how rigorous they are at overseeing the integrity of their products.  Conversely, the plaintiffs may have simply have hired a couple of shyster lawyers looking for a juicy settlement, truth be damned.  Or both.  Certainly it’s difficult to feel too much sympathy for either side.

Curmie’s best guess: it’s tuna.  Will he be eating a Subway tuna sub any time in the near future?  No.  But he wouldn’t have been doing so, anyway.

The Saga of Jesus's Wife

This is old news, but new to Curmie.  Grand claims get more press than their refutation does; I missed the latter. 

 

I start this post by acknowledging that the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education upon which it based was written by Ariel Sabar, who’s currently hyping the paperback release of his now four-year-old book on the subject.  But it seems well sourced, and if even a substantial minority of his claims are true, then there’s a significant problem here: enough so that the article’s title, “A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions,” seems apt. [Note: the article is likely behind a paywall, so I’ll quote rather more extensively than usual.] 

This is not Curmie’s area of expertise, to say the least, but he does remember the headlines from a few years back suggesting that a newly discovered Coptic papyrus fragment had been found in which, to quote that article’s title, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’” [This article is also probably behind a paywall; Curmie accessed it through JSTOR.]  The article’s author, Karen L. King of the Harvard Divinity School, made quite a name for herself with this alleged discovery.  Indeed, those two words were weaponized by those wishing to overthrow/reform/whatever the doctrine excluding women from high positions in the Church hierarchy.

Problem is, it appears to be all bullshit, and even Dr. King pretty much admitted as much in 2016, although neither she nor the Harvard Theological Review, which published her article, seem the slightest bit interested in retracting the essay or even attaching a note of warning to the prospective reader.  Let’s face it, the vast majority of readers in 2021 will access the work as Curmie did,  online.  Retracting the article or attaching a disclaimer would not be terribly difficult, technologically.  Indeed, Brill Publishers retracted a similar essay (a chapter in a book) under similar circumstances.

But the problem is that the article should almost certainly never have been published to begin with. And as far as Curmie can tell, literally everyone associated with the publication screwed up: not merely exercising bad professional judgment, but also acting unprofessionally and unethically.

First off, it appears that Dr. King was duped.  She’s supposed to be an expert and, well, didn’t live up to the billing.  But the wheels don’t really fall off the wagon until this Harvard prof submitted her article to a journal published by her colleagues.  Surely everyone knew of her project, and knew that the article in question was written by the holder of the oldest endowed chair in the country. 

Here’s where it all goes wrong.  Most academic journals work on a “double-blind” vetting system.  That is, the author of the paper doesn’t know who is advising the editors on the article’s publishability, and the reviewers don’t know who wrote it.  This procedure is designed to make the process as fair as possible: reviewers aren’t advocating for their friends or denigrating their rivals; authors cannot retaliate against negative reviews if they don’t know who wrote them.

So the article is sent out to three authorities in the general field.  Two of the three believe the papyrus to be a fake.  The third, an “acclaimed papyrologist named Roger Bagnall,” it turns out, had “helped King draft the paper the journal was asking him to review.” 

Quoting here from Sabar’s article:

Bagnall warned the journal that he was far too involved in King’s article to peer-review it — and that he was no expert in extracanonical Christian texts. “I wouldn’t want there to be any illusion that I’m in any way an outsider in the way that referees typically are,” he had emailed the editors. But the journal sent his anonymized praise to King as if it had come from a traditional referee. Without Bagnall, the article would have lacked a single positive review. His opinion allowed King to claim that “in the course of the normal external review process” at least one referee had “accepted the [papyrus] fragment.”

OK.  So Bagnall pretends to uphold professional standards without actually doing so: the only ethical response is “I cannot be an objective reviewer of this material.”  Period.  The end.  But no, he sings the article’s praises while issuing a caveat, which the journal editors blithely ignore.  After the fact, he’s engaging in serious butt-covering (“It’s not the way I would wish to run a journal.”), but he’s a weasel, too.  As usual, Curmie intends no offense to actual representatives of the genus Mustela.

Be it noted, too, as Sabar notes in an earlier article, that all this is happening in the wake of the success of The Da Vinci Code (book and movie) and its suggestion that Jesus had married Mary Magdalen, but also after the Vatican had declared the fragment an “inept forgery.”  To clarify: King made a major announcement about the scrap of papyrus before submitting her article to the journal; the Vatican (and a host of other sources) registered their disbelief in the fragment’s authenticity in response to that well-orchestrated event.

And there were reasons for those suspicions, including “an odd typographical error that appears in both the Jesus’s-wife fragment and an edition of the Gospel of Thomas that was posted online in 2002, suggesting an easily available source for a modern forger’s cut-and-paste job.”

Leo Depuydt, an Egyptologist at Brown University, declared that “As a forgery, it is bad to the point of being farcical or fobbish. . . . I don’t buy the argument that this is sophisticated. I think it could be done in an afternoon by an undergraduate student.”  This quotation, by the way, comes from an article in the Boston Globe headlined “No evidence of modern forgery in ancient text mentioning ‘Jesus’ wife.’”  Wait… What???

No one looks good in this, but one supposes the possibility that even a scholar with an international reputation could have been guilty of nothing worse that overzealousness in pursuit of evidence that would buttress her feminist theology.  She subsequently claimed that, in Sabar’s words, “she had suspected from the start that the papyrus was forged, but pressed ahead, ignoring red flags, recruiting conflicted scientists, and withholding important facts, photos, and paperwork.”

Any vestigial reputation for integrity she might have had was utterly destroyed by the attempt to authenticate the papyrus: the two scientists enlisted for the effort, neither of whom had specific expertise, were a childhood friend of King’s (who ushered at her wedding) and Bagnall’s brother-in-law.  Really.

The whole business gets worse.  Sabar, again:

The journal, it turned out, had never peer-reviewed the scientists’ reports — to check, for instance, whether the studies had been properly carried out, meaningful tests of forgery. News media, for their part, were effectively barred from doing their own checks: Harvard Divinity School gave reporters exclusives on King’s article on the condition they contact no scientists or scholars other than those King had cited in her paper.  

Well, that they not contact other sources before the publication date of the article—not quite the same thing.

Anyway, the most likely scenario is that the fragment was owned, and likely forged, by one Walter Fritz, erstwhile internet pornographer and Stasi Museum director (!).  Seriously, if Dan Brown wrote this stuff, he’d be laughed at.

Meanwhile, King asserts that although the fragment is almost certainly a fake, that her article should not carry indication that its conclusions are very much called into question: “I don’t see anything to retract…. I have always thought of scholarship as a conversation. So you put out your best thoughts, and then people … bring in new ideas or evidence. You go on.”  Erm… no.

It’s one thing to change your mind about what the appropriate conclusion to be drawn from the available evidence might be.  It’s reasonable that new information changes a scholar’s perspective.  But to base an entire argument on almost certainly flawed if not outright deceitful materials: this is not to engage in conversation.  This is not ignorance of other evidence; this is, plain and simple, duplicitous behavior.  “Moving on” can happen only after an acknowledgment of the truth, and such a moment cannot occur without retracting the article or at least putting a marker on it to attest to the likelihood of erroneous information.

Dr. King should demand it; the Harvard Theological Review should do so with or without her blessing.

Don’t hold your breath, Gentle Reader.