Monday, September 22, 2008

EDIAL, 9.22.08

The tourney ends, and thus, we remember another tradition.

-Ready for Obama Jewish Semiotics #44757345? Turns out Michelle has a rabbi in the family, a cousin who trained in a sect, but was then vetted and accepted by the white Jew establishment. Here's the full story about RABBI CAPERS C. FUNNYE, JR. I'd been preparing a taxonomy of Black Jews, including some sort of authenticity index, but didn't feel like getting in a fight over the Lemba. So suffice it to say that, even if the Ethiopia thing is not quite literal, this guy's not hanging in Times Square or part of a certain hilarious Miami cult.



-More Barry: In a Times piece on Obama, the teacher, the following passage explains, well, everything about everyone:

Obama’s rootedness in the real world shaped every aspect of his teaching. He laced his lectures with basketball analogies. When a student observed the death of Jam Master Jay of the hip-hop group Run-DMC by wearing the group’s trademark tracksuit to the racism seminar, Obama acknowledged the gesture with a nod and a smile. (“I can assure you, that would not have been a common response among the faculty at the University of Chicago,” Joshua Pemstein told me.

-Ladies and gentlemen, Joshua Pemstein today

-Although the first sentence of this New York Times article about football players wearing wristbands around their biceps actually mentions basketball, the author fails to mention the man who most likely started this trend--NBA strongman Ben Wallace. Ironically, Stern cited the NFL as a model when he outlawed wearing wristbands on the biceps a couple years ago.



Possibly the first footage of Dr. J as a pro (at all?), from one of those fabled NBA/ABA exhibitions, no less. Erving enters off the bench and while he's not exactly dominant, there's that sense that he—and a lot of the ABA players, in fact—have seen things that the likes of Oscar and Wilt just haven't. Not saying they're better, even though they go on a run in this clip. But this isn't sloppy street vs. button-down expertise, it's the great unknown pushing up on the powers that be.

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