|
Head:
Author:
Date/Time:
|
The
Kobe Mess
Sam Smith
07.31.03, 1:15 pm |
Some
stray thoughts on the whole Kobe Bryant debacle:
1:
Kobe admitted that he committed adultery with the woman
who’s charging him with rape. I’m betting all my
money that this isn’t the first time Kobe has “wandered
in foreign lands,” if you catch my drift. In fact, if
this woman was among the first 20 or 30 he’s doinked on
the QT I’d be stunned.
A
few years back I was attending a conference at the Marriott
in San Antonio. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby, over near
the bar, waiting for some friends so we can go to dinner.
And I’m looking around, just stunned by all the women.
Must have been a couple dozen of them, decked out to max,
just milling around. I had no idea what was going on,
but it looked like the hotel might be hosting a beauty
pageant or something, and from the looks of things there
was going to be a lot of drop-dead gorgeous finishing
out of the money. Just then this tall guy walks by toward
the door, and the babes formed up a gauntlet for him.
I’m like, damn, that looked like Penny Hardaway (who was
then a member of the Orlando Magic). Then it hit me –
sumbitch, that was Penny Hardaway. Turns out the
Marriott was a short distance from the arena where the
San Antonio Spurs played their home games, and the Magic
were in town. The Marriott was the official visiting team
hotel, and these attractive young ladies were the NBA
equivalent of camp followers. Hanging out, looking good,
hoping to catch a ride on the star train. Umm-hmm. The
act repeated itself the next night when the Utah Jazz
checked in.
So
if you’re Kobe, opportunity is not an issue. And
you’ll play hell convincing me that, after having four
or five years of women throwing themselves at him, a dozen
or two in every port, that his little rendezvous up in
Edwards was the first time he ever availed himself of
the sampler platter. We people are creatures of habit,
and there is no habit known to the species more powerful
than sex.
2:
I believe them both. I think the woman bringing the charges
honestly feels she was raped, and I’m certain that Kobe
doesn’t think he raped anybody. The problem here is that
sex can be confusing, especially in a society as wacked
as ours is on the subject of sexuality. And if you don’t
know this, that can only mean that either you’ve never
been very close to sex, or that you have an almost plant-like
tendency toward reflection. The confusion can be exacerbated
by any number of factors, including things like youth,
alcohol, and religion. If you’re young, Baptist, and drunk,
well, you’re lucky if you come out of an encounter able
to remember your name, but that’s another story. Specifically,
it’s the story of where so many little Baptists come from,
but I digress.
So
who knows what the young woman thought she was getting
into or what she thought she wanted out of the encounter.
There’s been ample evidence in the press lately that she
was going through a tough period in her life, and none
of that likely lent any clarity to the situation when
a handsome, charming superstar athlete invited her up
his room and put the make on her. Kobe, on the other hand,
knew exactly what he wanted out of the encounter,
but probably had no clue in hell what he was dealing with.
He didn’t know she’d attempted suicide. He didn’t know
her boyfriend had dumped her for another girl. He didn’t
know her friend had recently died. And even if he had,
he’d have no way of knowing what this all added up to
in her mind and how that affected her perception of what
it meant that she went to his room. Kobe strikes me as
the sort who’s never had to devote a lot of energy to
figuring women out, and this is a case where a little
experience would have served him well.
Worst
of all, none of this helps us know what happened, really.
We don’t know if she said no, although it seems likely
enough that she did, and if she did, we don’t know if
it was a clear message or part of an incredibly baffling
package of mixed messages or something in between. We
do know that in this society, if a guy hears something
that sounds at least vaguely like “no,” he’d be wise to
assume no by god means no and forget the rest of the messages
he thinks he’s getting, no matter what they sound like.
But – and here comes the part that will piss a lot of
people off – no doesn’t always mean no. No it doesn’t.
And the point is illustrated by all kinds of actual research
on how the genders communicate (to say nothing of anecdotal
evidence). Men are direct communicators, while women are
more negotiational (is that a word?), and this key difference
lies at the bottom of about a zillion miscommunications
between the sexes each day. With respect to a sexual encounter
between a man and woman who don’t know each other very
well, it’s a miracle if there aren’t miscommunications.
A
hypothetical case: suppose a woman says no, but says it
as she’s pulling down her own pants. And suppose you’re
on the jury trying to sort through this muck.
Suppose,
because I can just about guarantee you that it’s coming,
or something close enough to it.
3:
Maybe a little communication theory will help.
When
we think of communication, we tend to think of speech.
But communication also passes between us via other modes.
All manner of nonverbal cues communicate – my wife hugs
me and kisses me when I get home from work, and even if
she doesn’t say a word I know this means she’s happy to
see me, right? So what other modes are there? Well, there’s
gesture – anything from flipping somebody off on the obvious
end to tucking your feet under your chair when you’re
hoping to end a conversation and leave the room. There’s
distance – you can tell a lot about people’s relationship
by how close they are to each other. And there’s sexuality
– there’s actually some science behind that old “international
language of love” thing. In the Kobe case, this mode is
hugely important.
Now,
some modes of communication are more reliable than others.
Speech is actually not very reliable at all, because it’s
a conscious act and we frequently choose to deceive or
mislead. It’s easy to lie with words, and I’m guessing
we all enough experience with this phenomenon that I don’t
have to explain it in too much detail. Gesture is more
reliable, because we’re frequently not all that aware
of the signals our body language sends. Women tell me
that a sure sign a woman is interested in a guy is if
she touches her hair. But women don’t set out to play
with their hair when they see a guy they want to talk
to. The fact that’s it’s unconscious means it more accurately
reflects what a person wants. Distance is incredibly reliable
because we are so completely unconscious of it.
Sexuality?
Umm, well, sex is about as reliable as speech. All sorts
of power games play out using sex as a tool, and as noted
above, it’s a medium that’s infested with confusion. How
many lies and how many wagonloads of manipulation have
been communicated through sex in our history? Umm-hmm.
True dat. That means it’s harder for both the “sender”
and the “receiver” in the “communication dyad” to sort
out what’s really going on.
I
don’t expect either prosecution or defense attorneys will
be calling any communication theorists to offer expert
testimony on the reliability of sex as a medium, but it
might be something worth paying attention to as the evidence
presents itself to those of us out here in TV-land.
4:
So, if Kobe has wandered down this path before, I’m willing
to bet that somewhere out there is a girl, listening to
the stories about the alleged victim’s physical injuries,
and nodding her head. Umm-hmm, knows all about that. The
question is, do we hear from this hypothetical girl before
the end of the trial?
5:
On the other side of the bed we have the alleged victim.
So the story is that Kobe invited her up to the room,
she said yes, showed up of her own free will, and engaged
in some “consensual sexual activity.” A little over- or
under-the-sweater action, perhaps, maybe even a stand-up
triple? Ain’t nobody being too specific just yet. Now,
just like I’m betting there’s a history out there on Kobe,
I’m also betting that somewhere up in Eagle County there’s
a high school boy nodding his head, thinking uh-huh, I
know how that went, don’t I? Question is, do we get any
high school boys on the stand testifying to what a tease
the girl was? And if so, what kind of effect does it have
on a jury? If this girl is like the pretty girls at most
high schools in America, there are boys with not-so-fond
memories of her, and you can’t help thinking one or two
of them might be willing to tell his story if the right
incentives came along. Of course, this is just wild fantasizing
on my part, because no high-paid defense lawyer would
ever play that kind of cynical game in a rape trial.
6:
The more money you got, the more justice you can afford.
I remember watching the William Kennedy Smith rape trial,
and I still don’t know whether he was guilty or not. But
I do know this. Had Smith’s lawyer and the DA switched
chairs, he’d be somebody’s bitch in prison right now.
Now, Kobe can afford some lawyering – believe dat.
And when a case goes all high profile and the Big Money
gets involved, history favors the defense. Kick-ass prosecutors
and big-time defenders are different breeds, it seems
like, and all the personality seems to settle on the side
of the largest compensation package. So what you’re going
to have is a prosecution team of Hurlburt, plus some other
Colorado gummit lawyer types with big case experience,
and a defense team composed of smart, brutal, charismatic
vampires, the kinds of people who are so talented and
so convincing that they pull down more in a month than
Hurlburt sees in a year. Add to that Kobe, who looks too
damned pretty to rape anybody, and his sympathetic wife
sitting in the front row, and you have the legal equivalent
of the Lakers vs. last year’s Nuggets. Both teams are
comprised of professionals, but some professionals are
a little better than others.
7:
When it’s over, we’re still not going to know for sure
what happened. And Kobe’s still not going to know for
sure what the inside of a prison looks like. Unless there’s
evidence and a scenario we don’t know about yet, and considering
how little we actually know....
:comments?
|
Head:
Author:
Date/Time:
|
CNN,
Laziness, and Bad Science Reporting
Debby Levinson
07.31.03, 4:04 pm |
Fundamentally, I agree with
you that reporters are woefully under-equipped to deal
with hard science stories, or even fluffy science stories
like this one. SARS, as you point out, is an outstanding
example of this. The media caused such hysteria over SARS
that even a friend of mine expressed concern over a trip
to Toronto Todd and I have planned for this summer; this
friend is known for his highly critical, analytical nature,
and seemed deeply ashamed later when I presented him with
the actual statistics on SARS. He acknowledged that he'd
let media hype make him think that people all over the
city were dropping dead of this disease, when in fact
Toronto has millions of citizens, only a couple hundred
of whom had SARS or SARS-like symptoms, and only a tiny
percentage of them died.
I think, though, that an additional problem lies in CNN's
journalistic standards. Their writing is uniformly mediocre,
and their story choice tends towards the sensational at
times. This is clearly one of those times. It's a slow
news day, a reporter is pitched what seems like a softball
science story that (literally) has some sexiness about
it, and everyone is so busy thinking about how many hits
this story will generate for cnn.com that no one considers
for half a moment that yes, interviewing 18-24-year-olds
about the best qualities in a life partner is moronic.
You see, if editors stopped to think about that, they'd
realize there was no story here, and then the "science"
reporters would be reduced to adding another update graf
to the giant Chilean sea blob story saying, "Yup,
we still have no clue what this thing is." (And the
giant Chilean sea blob, even if it is just a pile of whale
blubber, is much more compelling science.)
Even if we dismiss the CNN problem as yet another example
of their journalistic laziness, though, we still have
the problem of newspaper science reporters not understanding
their topics. Now, I've known some science reporters,
because I worked at MIT, and I was also chairman of the
student newspaper there. Science is hard. Science
is broad. Science is not easily grasped. Every cub reporter
can write a story about a robbery, or a shooting, or even
a political speech. Ask that same reporter to write about
the new robot snail developed at MIT, or the solving of
Fermat's last theorem, and you'll get 10 incomprehensible
column-inches. You need reporters who find this kind of
thing interesting and are willing to devote the time and
energy into getting an accurate story.
More importantly, you need reporters who aren't scared
of math and science. I would argue that if a student can
write, a few solid math, biology, chemistry, and physics
courses will do more to make him a better science reporter
than anything else. On top of that, you want to add a
statistics course and maybe even a philosophy course that
covers critical thinking. What do you want to bet that
90% of all journalism programs don't require any of these
courses, or require, say, just basic algebra?
Of course, now I'm just going to get all pissed off about
the level of scientific illiteracy in this country. Given
that we still have parts of the country that believe evolution
is just a theory, and that it should be taught side-by-side
(if at all) with creationism, I could keep going on this
rant for quite some time. Time to actually get some work
done this morning, I suppose.
:comments?
|
Head:
Author:
Date/Time:
|
Why
Don't Journalists Understand Science?
Sam Smith
07.02.03, 7:30 pm |
Friends have lately had to endure my ranting about how
pathetic and irresponsible the media is when it comes
to reporting on things scientific and statistical. The
issue that has most commonly set me off lately has been
the way the US press has turned SARS into the Black Death,
damned near annihilating the Ontario economy in the process.
Fact
is, if you go to Toronto, SARS does pose a threat to your
health. If, while there, you fight your way past
security, break into a respiratory quarantine, and French-kiss
an elderly patient who suffers from the disease. If you're
just walking the streets, you have a better chance being
run down by a taxicab than you do of contracting SARS.
The
problem is that the average reporter knows diddley about
science and even less about statistics, but he or she
knows all about the value of splashy headlines.
And most citizens know about as much as the reporters.
In the US, at least, we don't do a very good job teaching
about research and research methods, so periodically a
new study will be released with some guarded, preliminary
findings, and some halfwit cub reporter will jump it like
it's the last chopper out of Saigon (a reference said
cub reporter won't understand, by the way). Next thing
you know, all of America is obsessed with what is essentially
fiction.
Let
me give you a good, and very recent, example. CNN.com
yesterday ran a story headlined, "Scientists:
Opposites don't attract." The lead is fairly
straightforward: "The theory that opposites attract
is a myth, say a group of U.S. scientists who have found
men and women are more likely to choose partners who are
similar – or they believe are similar – to themselves."
So far so good. The article explains that "both sexes
are most likely to attract individuals who look like them
and have the same wealth, social status and share the
same outlook towards family and fidelity."
Now,
having done my share of reading on the subject, I was
immediately skeptical (if you haven't read Nancy
Etcoff's Survival of the Prettiest, I recommend
it as a hellaciously well-researched examination of the
subject). But hey, I read on. Maybe there's something
new and useful here.
As
it turns out, the CNN story is brutally flawed. Now, I
can't speak to the accuracy of the actual study, having
not seen it, but the (anonymous) reporter telling us about
it doesn't know the first damned thing about how to evaluate
research.
Let's
examine. A few paragraphs down we get this:
"...marriage
between equivalent people has the best chance of success,
say the scientists from Cornell University in New York."
And
then:
"Between
similar matches there was less chance of breaking apart
and therefore more stability to bring up children."
Okay.
Maybe. As the esteemed Dr. Stewart Hoover, a former prof
of mine at the U of Colorado, was fond of saying, this
is a testable hypothesis.
So
where did this particular train jump the tracks? Well,
reporters are notoriously clueless when it comes to understanding
methodology. Fortunately, the writer of the story was
kind enough to accidentally demonstrate his/her idiocy.
Check this:
"The
results were based on questionnaires by 978 students
aged between 18 and 24. Respondents were asked to rank
the importance they placed on 10 attributes in a long-term
partner."
Errrm,
excuse me? You're going to make claims about "the
best chance of success" and "less chance of
breaking apart" on a survey administered to students
who are 24 at the oldest?!!
Again,
the study may be far better than the reporter inadvertently
makes it look. For example, if the claim is that similarities
dictate who will get together in the first place (and
that seems to be part of what is being examined here),
then this study may be on the mark (although they're probably
not telling us anything we haven't seen evidence of before
– I was studying personal attraction research that said
much the same thing as an undergrad in 1983). (I should
also point out that I have serious reservations about
this particular breed of "social science," but
for the moment I'll play along for the sake of argument.)
Or
maybe there were separate samples, and the "stay
together" claim is based on surveys of older, more
established subjects. Don't know, not from this reportage.
But as presented, I'm being asked to believe that we've
substantially contributed to our understanding of the
success and longevity of human relationships based on
a questionnaire filled out by mostly undergrads. Trust
me on this – I know undergrads. I used to be one. They're
the last place I'd go for valid information on putting
together a lasting relationship.
Hell,
even if they are experts on the subject, the best
they can do is tell you what goes into staying together
for what, three years?
In
the end, I'm left with a story that makes patently ludicrous
claims, and does so in a way that the Science editors
at CNN should be ashamed of. Whoever produced this story
has no business being a reporter, let alone a science
reporter, and the editor who let it slip past him or her
– onto the home page of CNN.com, ferchrissakes
– needs to be shipped back to the Fashion desk posthaste,
preferably at the Fargo bureau.
Our
culture finds itself in an odd place re: science and technology.
On the one hand, we're daily producing volumes of advanced
knowledge that scientists a mere generation ago couldn't
have imagined. It hurts my simple country boy head to
ponder some of the things we now know and some of the
challenges our researchers are now addressing. The tech
curve is damned near vertical at the moment.
But
the laity (that's means common folk, for any CNN science
reporters who may be reading this blog) seem less and
less capable of understanding any of it. In the
case of high-end theoretical research, that's forgivable.
But when it comes to the reporting and comprehension of
basic research like the story here, there is simply no
excuse.
While
there's plenty of blame for our public school system,
the fact that the country's Journalism schools are cranking
out graduates who lack even the most rudimentary ability
to evaluate research reports is nothing short of scandalous.
Our
colleges and universities offer plenty of research methods
courses, and it's high time a semester or two became a
prerequisite for a Journalism degree.
:comments?
