The lack of transparency, so prevalent in our unapologetic, commercial win-at-any-cost culture, is a bone crosswise in my throat.   It comes up again and again, from the secret “dark money” that decides our elections, to secret national killing policies, to toxic family relations rooted in shameful secrets, and it gets to me every time.   Shameful secrets shamefully kept usually create more shame, lack of trust and other serious ills.  Doubt this at your peril.   

Without transparency we do not have enough information to make informed decisions, our conversations are about what we suspect is the case, rather than what we can actually see and understand.  Without a truthful report of the actual, verifiable facts, all we know are the rumors we suspect are most likely true.  We then act accordingly.

I offer a petty but recent example to stand in for the damnable reflex toward opacity, which is also a reflex toward small-mindedness and obstinate certainty.   The certainty of the lynch mob.

A baseball player, born in Cuba, hits a home run off a top pitcher in the World Series.  The pitcher is of Japanese/Iranian ancestry and grew up in Japan.  The hitter circles the bases, gets back to the dugout, flushed and laughing, and, sitting on the bench makes a ‘racially insensitive gesture’ which instantly becomes national news and results in the player’s five game suspension (longer than the usual suspension if he’d literally charged the mound and tried to punch the pitcher in the face).   

After the game Yu Darvish, the pitcher who gave up the home run (and was knocked out of the big game not long after) and then was victimized again by racism, was surrounded by reporters after the game, under bright lights.  He had just pitched terribly in the biggest game of his career.   The reporters wanted to know how he was feeling about the racist gesture.   Through an interpreter he made an admirable reply, under great pressure:

“Including him and I, nobody’s perfect. Everybody’s different. We’ve just got to learn from it. He made a mistake, and we’ve just got to learn from it. We are all human beings. It’s just learn from it, and we’ve got to move forward.”

Remarkably mature comment, I thought, particularly under the pressure he was under at the moment.  The Cuban player apologized immediately, expressed great respect for Darvish, said he could never get a hit off him, regretted what he had done after the home run.  He released this statement:

I did a search to find a video of the racially insensitive gesture.  I found it immediately.  I had to scroll through the video to find the gesture, two talking heads were clucking at length over how terrible what we are about to see was.   As though they were preparing us for grainy footage of a klansman tying up a terrified child he was about to string up in a tree.   Trigger warning:  please be advised, what you are about to see may really, really hurt. 

Then, I saw it.

The player is on the bench, smiling from ear to ear, excited after his World Series home run.   He appears to be sitting by himself on the bench, there is no other player in the shot.  He turns his head, shakes his ridiculous hair-do, lifts his forefingers to the sides of his eyes, laughs.   The micro-gesture takes a nano-second, literally.   

Luckily, since this happened during an internationally televised sporting event, we have multiple camera angles and slow-motion so we can get a good long look.  Let’s slow it down and show it from the left, look, Bob, both hands.  He used both hands, yeah, you see that left forefinger?  Definitely a two handed racially motivated attack on the Japanese pitcher.  I did see that, Kyle, both hands, yeah, he used two hands, definitely.    The fingers didn’t actually touch the eyes, Bob, but you could see the intent there, clear as day, here, let’s see it from another angle.  Yep, it’s racially insensitive, all right, Oh my Lord, yes it is.

I watched as it was replayed several times in slow motion thinking “what the fuck?”   It was unlikely that Darvish, the intended victim, even saw the gesture, unless he was staring, unblinking, at the Houston bench instead of pitching.  The full mockery was done and over, based on the video which showed the same horrible gesture over and over, in the matter of perhaps three quarters of a second.   Then the mob of reporters investigate, put Darvish on the spot to act like a mensch after the worst outing in a big spot in his distinguished professional career, shelled and out of the game in less than two innings.   The new baseball commissioner later gets big praise for a prompt Solomonic decision:  the racially insensitive player will be suspended for five games, without pay, next season, but will be able to play the remainder of the World Series.   

I sent the video clip to a friend who wrote back, with characteristic slyness:

I was triggered by that gesture, so I’ve been in my safe space. I may come out tomorrow.

I sent the clip to another friend a few hours later.   He emailed me back that the clip was unavailable.  It had apparently been taken down by the copyright holder, or the account terminated by youTube, or both.   See for yourself.

So we are left, without the ability to judge the offensive act itself, with the instructive moral lesson that we do not tolerate racial insensitivity in our great nation.   Which, of course, is true, self-evident, in fact.  America is a land of exceptional equality where race is never a factor in anyone’s behavior.  The proof is our president, if you need proof.   Never a less racist person in that Oval Office, except, arguably, Woodrow Wilson, maybe. 

Seriously, how about we make the author of that racially insensitive gesture do a sincere public service announcement about how hurtful racism is, show it during baseball games.   The lost five games of salary that is part of his punishment, let’s put those tens of thousands of dollars to good use by donating it to an organization that fights racism.   How about something meaningful?  Instead of this pious fucking feel good bullshit.

Those Americans killed earlier this month in Niger, what’s the deal with them?  They are part of the now thousand American force initially placed in Niger as advisors in the War on TERROR by… oh, gosh, Barack Obama.   We never heard about that.   We never heard about the drone strikes in Yemen, until disloyal Americans like Jeremy Scahill investigated and revealed that American, not Yemeni, drones had launched those murderous, if mistaken, strikes.   How many countries are we doing that in?  Top secret, commie.  Campaign donors who give more than $5,000 to a political non-profit are granted anonymity in the exercise of their First Amendment right to political self-expression.  They’ve earned it.   

Well, we have to take our symbolic victories where we can.  Thankfully, that fucking racially insensitive Cuban motherfucker got what was coming to him.

NOTE:

Gurriel will lose $322,581 of his $12 million salary next year, which the Astros will donate to charitable causes. He also will be required to undergo sensitivity training during the offseason.

Darvish said he couldn’t decide whether Gurriel’s suspension was appropriate, but he said that he understood why commissioner Rob Manfred didn’t impose it during the World Series.

Darvish said a Dodgers employee informed him about Gurriel’s gesture, which was caught on television, after Game 3.

“I didn’t think it was going to be this big of a deal,” Darvish said. “But to me I wasn’t that frustrated at that point when I saw it the first time.”

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