Month: April 2011

Keepin’ it Rural

History / By

Today’s article is the first in a four-part series examining changes in rural America, American politics, and immigration. increase and immigration. Agricultural families typically had a higher birth rate than urban families because children provided valuable labor on the farm from an early age.  At the same time, rural America received its fair share of foreign immigrants.  While stereotypes of 19th and early 20th century immigration often focus on Irish, Italians, and Jews making new homes in American cities, waves of Germans, Scandinavians, Slavs, British, and many others passed right through those cities and continued on to the heartland.

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Pay For Play

Culture / By

Such a sight is shocking when one considers how much money is floating around major college sports, which is a multi-billion dollar industry.  For example, the NCAA vacuumed up nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for television rights to the recent men’s basketball tournament.  Men’s football programs also rake tremendous fortunes.  Yet the workers most integral to generating these ungodly sums of money, the players, are paid no money for their labors. How is this justified?  Some note that the money from big time college sports subsidizes all the other college sports, which operate at a “net loss.” But that kind of logic only betrays the hypocrisy of the situation.  After all, a school is a not-for-profit educational institution, not a business.  You know what else operates at a “net loss?”  Classes.  But of course it’s very tempting to use business terminology when talking about big time college sports, because they are a de facto business.

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Why the New York Times Paywall Will Succeed

Politics / By

When I arrived here in 2001, I was pleasantly surprised to find a really good newspaper in the Sun.  Ten years later, the paper’s a mere skeleton and I no longer bother to read it. So if drastically slashing expenditures diminishes a newspaper’s quality, and almost everyone seems to agree on this, why hasn’t industry been able to flip the equation and raise revenue, particularly via the internet? Beyond the factors already mentioned, I’d like to focus on another one, which also happens to bring us back to The New York Times.

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Duke’s Coach K Adds Idiocy to Insult

Culture / By

team of the early 1990s.  During the film, Rose said that back then as a poor, black kid growing up in Detroit, he felt that the blacks who played for Duke, most of whom were middle class, private school graduates, were Uncle Toms. I understand “Coach K” not wanting to distract his team during the tournament, but the story’s cold at this point.  So why is he flogging a dead horse?  Other than the pettiness of not actually being above it, Krzyzewski was providing cover to former Duke player and current ESPN talking-head Jay Williams, who was also part of the interview.  For Williams, now a professional analyst, waiting this long is inexcusable; having his former coach there to hold his hand through it is just embarrassing.  What a loser.  But since neither of them can let a sleeping dog lie, let me update my own take in light of their recent comments. The “best” part of Krzyzewski’s rant to ESPN is on the unspoken, larger level.  Essentially, what we have here is a very rich, older, white guy lecturing a 38 year old black man (Rose) about race, and not even doing it to his face.  Classic.  While he’s at it, why don’t we just give Krzyzewksi a tall, cool glass of

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