Karl writes in Dogs in Ice Cream Parlors:
If a Mexican chihuahua beat a black lab Gary Sheffield would go ballistic!
Out running errands Tuesday afternoon. Driving from Point A to Point B and listening to the radio, I heard DP say that Joe Morgan would be on and that they’d discuss Gary Sheffield’s comments on African Americans and Latino players in baseball. “Uh oh,” I thought. Not because I don’t like Morgan; I’ve liked him ever since the days of The Big Red Machine and think he’s a very good analyst. I was worried that the topic would bring forth all the usual gang of race card-playing nutcases. But they didn’t show up. Maybe Phil the Showkiller was too busy tidying up the studio for Jessica Alba’s visit to answer the phone or to check the inbox for emails from the audience. Morgan, as usual, was reasoned in his tone and intelligent in his answers to DP’s questions.
Jessica Alba was, I think, pretty darn credible as an actress on a sports show. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about regarding the Golden State Warriors. A little slow in picking her Fantastic Four of NBA players — even after DP spotted her Golden State’s Baron Davis — but that is a tough question to answer. I can’t find fault with her choices, but would Kobe and Shaq be able to coexist? Given their incendiary relationship they might go up in flames like the Human Torch. I thought it was cute the way DP and Phil carried on over Alba. I can’t believe that DP didn’t go a little dressier than a polo shirt, but at least he didn’t wear his Bill Belichick hoodie:
Dark Angel only lasted a couple of seasons, but being very pretty certainly didn’t hurt Alba’s career trajectory.
The Tuesday show’s focus on Alba reminded me of Lady Be Good, an article on Barbara Stanwyck by Anthony Lane:
Film theory has dwelled, with justice, on what is called the objectifying male gaze—that is, the power of the camera to ogle and depersonalize, and to encourage the viewer to follow suit—without always remembering that, at Hollywood’s height, there were plenty of people who could take that gaze like a punch and throw it right back. Stanwyck, by her own account, had practiced the response long before she stared into a lens: she recalled meeting the playwright Willard Mack in New York and regarding him “with impudent assurance, just to keep from turning around and running away.” Master your own fear, in other words, and you end up frightening others.
(Stanwyck was one fierce woman in Double Indemnity and she was pretty darn good in The Big Valley.)
Celebrities, female and male, court the objectifying gaze, some more than others. I get the feeling that many celebrities lack Stanwyck’s “impudent assurance”and simply bow to the camera and surrender to the gaze. Perhaps with modern cosmetic surgery and such they know they can forestall natural processes (i.e., ageing) and hold that gaze for quite some time. But stars eventually fade and the public is very fickle. Celebrities, like athletes, have a short shelf-life. What is it like to know that your physical appearance or physical prowess is all that most people see and that after 5-10 years you will be forgotten and someone else taken your place?
But those are celebrities and as such are. to a certain extent, “fair game” for The Gaze. Still, the Stalking of Alex Rodriguez is a bit much. Any journalist who uses the phrase “the public’s right to know” in this case should be beaten about the head. Allison Stokke is a completely different case. I saw this in the Washington Post: Teen Tests Internet’s Lewd Track Record –
California High Schooler Allison Stokke, 18, Becomes a Victim Of Unwanted Attention After Photo Is Posted on a Sports Blog:
… she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke’s picture and leered.
It made me a bit ill. I feel sorry for her and her family. It’s enough for a parent to wish for unattractive children.
