Born to lose and destined to fail

Born to lose and destined to fail February 23, 2023

• For political news from Florida we turn to the sports pages of a Pittsburgh newspaper: “Florida school district pulls children’s book about Roberto Clemente off shelves.”

A large Florida school district has pulled an illustrated children’s biography of Pittsburgh Pirates legend Roberto Clemente off its shelves to determine whether it is “developmentally appropriate for student use.” …

… Also removed was “Roberto Clemente: The Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates,” a 2005 book by Dormont’s Jonah Winter.

The 32-page book references racism Clemente sometimes endured.

“As a right-fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, (Clemente) fought tough opponents — and even tougher racism — but with his unreal catches and swift feet, he earned his nickname, ‘The Great One,’ ” a blurb for the book reads.

… “I make mention of the racism that Clemente encountered as a younger player,” Winter said. “I guess they banned it because they think it might make some white children uncomfortable. These are very strange times that we live in.”

Clemente spent his entire career with the Pirates and thus had 17 seasons of spring training in Florida, the same state where the story of his life is now deemed inappropriate for schoolchildren.

For the first seven years of his career, Roberto Clemente was not permitted to stay in the same hotel as most of the Pirates, nor to eat at restaurants in Florida with his white teammates. Even after he’d won batting titles and established himself as the leader and heart and soul of the team Clemente still had to start every season in segregation in the Jim Crow Florida that its current governor doesn’t want anyone to remember or to read about.

See earlier: “Spring training in black and white” and “‘‘The Soreno has politely said No’.”

The Smithsonian offers its annual list of “Ten Dazzling Celestial Events to See in 2023.” The first item has already flown by (literally), but here’s hoping it won’t be cloudy out for all of the rest of these.

The dance between Jupiter and Venus next week comes just in time for driving-pallets-of-mulch-around-a-dark-parking-lot season, so that’ll be nice. Conjunctions are pretty.

• The impressive thing about The Onion is their ability to outrace reality, even if just barely. Here, for example, is America’s Finest News Source in a post published on Monday: “Evangelical Leaders Announce J.K. Rowling Finally Bigoted Enough That It’s Okay For Kids To Read About Witchcraft.”

And here, just three days later, is the Southern-Gothic-Presbyterian World magazine, “Are evangelical leaders as courageous as J.K. Rowling?

World accompanies its piece with a photo of Rowling from the same event — same dress, same backdrop — as the photo in The Onion’s piece. The tone of the two pieces is also indistinguishable.

•  Here’s the key bit from Katie Walsh’s Los Angeles Times review of the Calvary Chapel Jesus Revolution movie:

Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story. Give Lonnie Frisbee’s Wikipedia page a quick scan to see just how much material the filmmakers excised from his fascinating, troubled life.

It’s not easy to make Lonnie Frisbee’s life seem dull, but the auteurs of “faith-based” white evangelical cinema may be up to that task. Contrast that Wikipedia entry with Greg Laurie’s RNS movie-hyping op-ed on “The long strange trip of Lonnie Frisbee” and you’ll get a sense of how this film dodge’s the full story and the full person.

• Speaking of utopian religious movements … Naum at AZspot recently linked back to this 2013 piece from the Awl by Jacob Mikanowski, “Our Radical Future: Cults, Utopias and Rebellions of the 1890s.”

Yes, that piece is now 10 years old, but the apocalyptic is always timeless, and it’s a fascinating read.

• The title for this post comes from Social Distortion’s “Ball and Chain,” which has something of a Rescue-Mission revival vibe to it.

One could argue that “Ball and Chain” is, formally, a prayer — perhaps even a kind of “Sinner’s Prayer.” It might be addressed directly to God, or it might be a plea for the intercession of St. Johnny of Arkansas.

Anyway, I’m noting that here mainly as a reminder to myself that I need to further explore one big difference between the  revivalism of Skid Row Rescue Missions and the 21st-century form of worship-centered revival experiences — the former had a clarity about what it was that needed repenting from which the latter seems to lack.

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