This post is a bit of a vent, but if you want a case study of Liberal cognitive dissonance, read Joan Walsh’s piece on Barry Bonds. Walsh is the editor of Salon, and when it comes to women’s and race issues she’s about as knee-jerk predictable as they come. She’s aware of her biases, but that awareness doesn’t seem to give her any perspective or or ability to adjust for her blind spots. If I complain all the time about Republican cognitive dissonance, Walsh is an example of the liberal kind, and it’s just as irritating, even if not as harmful.
I say not as harmful because Liberal cognitive dissonance usually pertains to cultural issues regarding race and sexual inequality, which have less impact in shaping power arrangements in the political and economic spheres. Conservative cognitive dissonance enables the kinds of fiascoes and constitutional outrages perpetrated by the current administration. I am not saying that race and sexual equality issues are unimportant or that they have no connection to the economic and political spheres, but that the long-term resolution of such issues will occur in the cultural sphere because they are attitudinal. You can’t (and shouldn’t try to) legislate attitude changes; they evolve from generation to generation. All you can do in the political economic spheres is insure that everyone’s rights are fostered and protected.
And since sports has been one cultural arena in which there has been enormous progress in changing racial attitudes, when someone like Walsh starts blaming race for Barry Bond’s having been singled for the condemnation he is receiving, it makes you want to scream. It’s so formulaic, so cliche, and in this case so far off base it’s facetious. If Walsh want to feel sorry for someone affected by this steroid scandal, she should direct her pity toward all those players who stayed straight and saw their spot on a major league roster taken by juiced players with less natural ability.
To those who challenge Walsh’s argument by saying that Bond’s was not singled out because he’s black but because he was a surly jerk or a cheater, Walsh retorts by saying that there are lots of white surly jerks and cheaters in baseball–why aren’t they being singled out? What about Jeff Kent? How come nobody makes a big deal about Kent, she asks. Kent’s knuckle-dragging stupidity is well-known, but here’s the difference: Kent’s surliness or other white players steroid use never put them in contention to break and hold the two most hallowed records in baseball. Bonds was singled out because he now holds the record for both. Does Walsh really believe that if Kent or someone as unlikable as Pete Rose, if either was known to be a steroid user, won either of those titles, he would be treated any differently than Bonds is being treated now?
Bonds deserves all the negative attention he has received, and jailtime if his perjury indictment results in a conviction, not because he’s an African American and not because he’s an unlikeable jerk, but because he is a cheater and perjurer, and as such the undeserving holder of the two most important records in baseball. And the second of those records was taken from one of the greatest and classiest African Americans in sports.
It’s pretty simple. Bonds singled himself out by taking something he doesn’t deserve.
Leave a Reply