I love sports. Black, white, Asian or whatever, all of us can be fans and all of us can root for our team. Sports goes beyond language and beyond culture. Only through sport could I understand how a Ghanian, a Frenchman, and an Brazilian all feel. Victory, defeat, frustration at those pesky officials, sport is universal.

This week’s P.O.V. showed how sport can also allow you to explore culture and uniqueness. Kokoyakyu shows the intense world of high school baseball in Japan, where over 4200 teams vie for 49 spots at Koshien. Through baseball, we see the traditions of an entire culture as we follow two teams, a public high school and a vaunted private academy as they try to get to Koshien.

P.O.V. usually only airs shortened versions of documentaries and this is one that I’m looking forward to watching all of. I wish American baseball games were like this. It resembles a raucous high school football game more than anything else.

You can watch the trailer at the link to the movie above. PBS has a ton of great resources and extras at the P.O.V. site for Kokoyakyu, and, as always, Wikipedia is a great place to start.

We’ve had some interesting comments over the past few weeks. First, Kim’s post about Best Buy drew some comments from Best Buy employees explaining the personal shopping assistant program there. In case you shared some concerns about the program or are simply curious, you can check out their comments.

We also had someone from the film comment on my post about the documentary The Fire Next Time. This commenter is one of the local citizens who was in the documentary who I even quoted in my review. He’s passionate, that’s for sure, but I stand by my original commentary.

If I missed anything else that was interesting, let me know.

This past week’s P.O.V. was another one worth taking a look at. The Self-Made Man focuses on the decision of one man to kill himself rather than face a set of potentially serious (though not necessarily terminal) health issues. It’s likely to be controversial regardless of how you feel about assisted suicide or those related issues because this case and the man are unique.

Most unusual about this entire movie is that Bob Stern, the man who kills himself, explains his decision himself, on camera. Fond of making homemade TV pilots and video messages, he decided to explain to his daughters why he is contemplating ending his life via videotape. If, in case, he actually decided to do it, he wanted them to know why. Susan Stern, the director and his daughter, uses the footage brilliantly with interviews with her mother and brother (who were there and who tried to talk him out of it) and other friends who knew him. By the end of the hour, you get a real sense of who this man is and why it made sense to him to end his life.

My difficulty with the discussion is that the alternative to killing himself was to face surgery to repair a aneurysm on his aorta and a potentially aggressive case of prostate cancer. They didn’t really know how bad the prostate cancer was. That’s where I struggle with this… was it really the same as someone facing terminal cancer, knowing that they had a limited time left? Where is that line, if it even exists?

That is, at the core, what this film is about. It’s a documentary, no doubt, but one that uses the story of Bob Stern to ask whether a man who built himself up from humble beginnings, a self-made man in any sense of the word, could also have a self-made death. Like most good documentaries, this one raises more questions than it answers. There are some good questions, too.

I’m turning into a big fan of the POV documentary series on PBS. This week’s documentary was The Fire Next Time, a documentary about the unrest in the Flathead Valley in Montana. It’s a story about the conflicts between citizens over land use, militias, and development in this growing valley. The film focuses on the threat of violence against citizens and conservation activists. One of the primary antagonists in the movie is John Stokes, a Washington resident who moved to Montana and bought an AM radio station. His schtick is the same as the Limbaughs of the world, except that he “jokes” about using violence to resolve their disagreements. One of his statements on camera, no less:

A recall is nothing more than another form of exercising a right. You know, we can’t assassinate in this country. We have to do it with an ink pen. [Laughing]

That’s right off of the closed captioning.

You might not be completely sure he’s joking, except that his facial expressions indicate disappointment over the illegality of assassination. That and well, the movie opens with a little background about the domestic terrorist group called Project Seven. The group plotted an elaborate scheme to kill government officials and police officers. Nice town…

Another interesting segment was about a unity meeting citizens organized to condemn some of the divisiveness going through the community. Among the testimonials shown during the movie was this fun statement by the local state senator:

Just because I like smaller government , less taxes, and individual liberty, doesn’t mean that I’m against colored people or gays or, or whatever. I’ve got — or Jews.

That’s Jerry O’Neill (R), Montana State Senator. Ah, you can feel the diversity oozing from the crowd. My favorite comes from citizen J.B. Stone:

All of my ancestors were Polish. They were also treated to violent acts, myself included in the 1960s by black people.

There’s not a black person in the entire movie, by the way. There were some Hispanic citizens in the film (one? two?), so I think that this is the primary minority group in town, but it’s hard to say.

Back to John Stokes. Another of his statements on camera:

The Third Reich was born out of the environmental community. I don’t make it up, it’s there.

He refers to the conservationists as “Green Nazis” and uses phrases like “all out war” and “eradicate” when talking about what their response should be. Like most far right wing radio talk show hosts, he uses God and country to divide people, claiming that conservationists (environmentalists to Stone) are “destroying America” and are “commies” who get their money from “Ted Turner.”

OK, enough making fun of this nutjob. The core of the film covers the progression of these disagreements from neighborly disagreements to vandalism and violence. In that light, this movie is eye opening. To see people who otherwise are so similar get to the point where they’re loosening lug nuts on cars and slashing tires was shocking to me. I couldn’t believe the level of disagreement between these people.

Often times I think, perhaps incorrectly, that differences have to have something tangible to build off of. Race, religion, ethnicity, something, you know? These folks are all white, from similar ethnic backgrounds, of the same religion, and are otherwise similar in many ways. The biggest difference seems to be class and wealth. In fact, that was the differentiator I noticed most. The folks on the environmentalist side seem to be at least slightly wealthier. And the land use battle, of course, is a battle of which industries survive and which ones perish and with them, the jobs.

I can’t decide if the hate is more a part of the story than the land use and development issues that are the actual fault lines. The Stokes nutjob is portrayed as the guy fanning the flames of hate. From his bashing of Holocaust victims (claiming they didn’t defend their people, for example, and didn’t stand up for their fellow Jews) to constant calls to violence and broadcasting the home addresses of prominent opponents, John Stokes is at least enabling much of the violence.

The power of talk radio is front and center here, and I think it’s as important as anything else. The actual violence that these people are dealing with from the petty vandalism to the crazy stuff like sabotaging cars has roots in this divisive speech by folks like Stokes. He uses the typical tricks of right wing propaganda radio like Limbaugh or Hannity or others… there are liberals and good people and everyone that disagrees with the host is a liberal (how evil!), a communist, and a destroyer of all things American. Even the conservative Republican county commissioner is a liberal communist. Ah, irrationality.

If you get a chance, watch this one. It’s pretty good and it’s got some very powerful segments.

Following up on my earlier post about Street Fight, I’ve found some more information taking a stance on the other side of the Booker/James debate. While some of the rhetoric doesn’t appeal to me, in fact turns me off to their point, I offer the links up here as something to take a look at.

• The Campaign For Black Republicans
• Fruit of the Poisoned Tree: The Hard Rights Plan to Capture Newark NJ

The bottom line for these commentators is that Booker has appeared at the Manhattan Institute, a very conservative think tank. Booker also supports vouchers which has raised the ire of the NJ Education Association among others. Some claim that his plan doesn’t encourage privatization, but you should read the articles and see what you think. I’m not sure I’ve put together enough information about this to get a clear picture (I sure don’t have one yet).

I still stand by my original point which is that even if the politics of a candidate don’t really line up with yours, you should vote for him if the candidate you might otherwise vote for shows the kind of disdain Bush or Sharpe James shows for our system of democracy and equality. It would be unfortunate if Booker implemented a damaging voucher system but in a few years, you can vote him out and undo the damage. Undoing the damage to our political discourse and process is far tougher to fix and thus is the far greater problem.

Thanks to Jersey Perspective for the pointers.

Heidi and I just watched the documentary Street Fight which covers the 2002 election for mayor of Newark between 16-year incumbent Sharpe James and young council member Cory Booker. We saw the film on P.O.V., PBS’s point-of-view documentary series (highly recommended by the way). The movie is narrated and directed by Marshall Curry.

I have grown up believing in the rule of law and, more importantly, the dominance of the rule of law over the rule of power. I follow the rules because I think it’s right. More importantly, I think it’s the American way. All of our ideas about the American dream or about fair play are all built around the idea that we are all equal before the law and other Americans. Clearly, I’ve grown up and become a bit less naive and perhaps even a bit cynical in the years since grade school, but I still believe that we should and do strive for this ideal every day.

Modern American politics makes it hard to believe this stuff, though. Street Fight goes through another modern example of power triumphing over the rule of law. Shot primarily from the perspective of the Booker campaign, the documentary shows numerous examples of outright lying by the incumbent, lying specifically targeted at hot-button issues for Newark residents. For the primarily African-American and Christian communities, James supporters claimed that the African-American Booker was white, supported by Jews and Republicans, and was a member of the KKK. James himself was quoted in major publications as saying these very things. The mayor threatened businesses that supported Booker, closing down clubs and halls holding Booker events or having police and city workers remove Booker signs while ignoring the James signs.

That’s not the America I believe in.

It seems to be modern American politics, though. Sharpe James feels comfortable about walking up to a TV camera and lying straight into it. George Bush feels comfortable walking up to a podium and lying right into it. Whether it’s about how much money his opponent is raising or whether he’s working to reduce budget deficits, both of their crimes and the damage they cause is the same. They are lies intended to muddy the debate. These lies make it easier for the next guy to lie and the next guy to ignore it. It makes the press complacent when the few reporters who stand up and report this stuff are treated like pariahs or, worse, ignored.

I know that American politics haven’t been perfect, and I know my history well enough to know of the louts and the corruption that have plagued all the major parties at some point. I just don’t want to accept it. I hope the citizens of Newark feel that way in 2006. No matter how much you like the politics of a candidate, if he walks all over our democracy he doesn’t deserve your vote.

You can always vote the new guy out, you know.

You can read what other blogs are saying about Street Fight, too.