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Slow White Quarterbacks · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:05
From the On Air across America NEWSROOM, this is your Morning
0:09
News update. President Trump has rejected
0:11
Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven
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days. Iran demanded that the United
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States lift its blockade of Iranian ports, wave oil
0:21
sanctions and observe A ceasefire that included Lebanon.
0:24
Iranian officials say diplomacy remains the only solution.
0:28
No new negotiations have been announced Announced.
0:30
British police are holding five men on suspicion of preparing a
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terrorist act near RAF Fairford, an air base used by American
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bombers during the Iran war. Authorities examined 3 vans and
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evacuated residents from 85 homes.
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Investigators have not publicly established a motive or filed
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charges. the United States and China have identified
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approximately $30 billion in goods from each country for
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possible tariff reductions. The final rates and
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implementation dates remain unsettled.
1:00
The Navy is considering both American and foreign designs for
1:04
its next frigate after canceling the Constellation program.
1:07
In sports, Washington ended the Seahawks 12 game-winning streak
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33 to 31 and the Mariners say Dan Wilson will not return as
1:16
manager after Seattle finished 76 and 86 for the On air across
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American network. I'm Alex Ross.
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Well, good morning, good evening, or good afternoon,
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wherever you are, whatever you do.
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A lot of things happening in the world today, most of them are
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far beyond our control, you might say.
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So perhaps it's time we took a pause and thought about life,
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thought about the laws of gravity, selective outrage over
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other people's political positions, memes, that kind of
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garbage. White paint, slow white
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quarterbacks and of course, sports.
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Don't touch that dial. Just try to hear me out for a
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little while. Text machine 209505565, Dave,
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209-565-3283. e-mail Dave at the Dave bowmanshow.com, a Loqui
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Conizio Stand up. Tell those who oppose liberty.
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Don't tread on me. So I was sitting here minding my
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own business, as I so often do, scrolling through the meeting,
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scrolling through social media, and I came across a post from a
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I'll just Be blank, a conservative organization.
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And I thought to myself, there's no way that this could possibly
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be true. It's said very simply that a
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Columbia professor wins award for a book on white paint.
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Yes, white paint being racist. And I thought there's no way
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that that's true. And so because it's what I do, I
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started digging a little bit. And of course, the accusation
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here was that the Columbia professor wrote this book about
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white paint. The book, by the way, is called
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a Dead White An Argument Against White Paint by Wendy S Walters.
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As it turns out, this is in fact a a real book that has been
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written. However, the post made by the
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college fix with this headline Columbia professor wins award
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for book being white book on white paint being racist is
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problematic on a lot of levels. And this is part of the problem
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that I have with things folks, is that we the selective outrage
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that we have this assumption that we have that.
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OK, someone just posted this. This goes back to the Hillary
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Clinton memes all those years ago about Hillary Clinton said
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this about Michelle Obama. No, she didn't I I get it.
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We don't like that we don't like that person.
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We don't like that idea. We don't like the fact that
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everything has become racist and, and you know, literally
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everything that I don't agree with is racist.
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I, I get it, but it doesn't mean that we should be doing that.
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The fact is that she has not in fact, won an award.
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Wendy S William Walters has not, in fact, won an award for her
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book on white paint being racist.
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In fact, what has happened here is that she has been nominated
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for an award. And yeah, it's a it's a slight
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distinction, I get it. But being nominated is not the
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same thing as winning. She's on what's known as a long
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list for the 2026 National Book Award for Non Fiction.
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The long list? That's like saying, hey, when
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the NFL Hall of Fame thing comes around, right?
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These are the players who are eligible to win.
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And then later we announce the actual finalists.
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And then later after that we announce the actual winners.
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She's on that list of eligible people.
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The finalists will not in fact be announced until October 6th.
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The winner will not be announced until November 18th.
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So she has in fact not won an award.
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So already we have a problem with this this post that she
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didn't win an award. Unless you consider being
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nominated an award and there are some people who do.
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I'm not one of them, but then again I'm a realist.
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Secondly, it says the book on white paint is being racist.
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That has yet to be determined if that is in fact true.
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We don't know if that's exaggerated or if it's actually
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what she said. What is she's again, what she
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actually is arguing is that White is a culturally neutral
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default. I don't want to spend a lot of
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time on her thesis. I really don't because
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realistically, her thesis is like most things, it's just it,
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it is nonsense. I mean, I'll grant you that the
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idea that you would even have an idea to write a book like this
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is, is beyond things. But in essence, what her
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argument is, is that white is not culturally neutral.
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There are colors that are attached to countries for
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reasons that, you know, sometimes it's in our own head.
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The Netherlands and the color orange. the United States and
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the colors red, white and blue. We, we have certain images in
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our heads when we have a wedding dress and it's white.
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It symbolizes something. It symbolizes purity.
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Laboratory coats are white and they, they, they, they symbolize
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authority and something called blankness.
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And I'm not sure how she gets to that.
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Sterile hospital rooms are white because it's clean.
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And so the question isn't become whether the color symbols
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actually exist. The question is, are we
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legitimately drawing actual conclusions from that?
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And that's the problem that we have.
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Walter's argument shifts from this aesthetic observation.
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Well, white symbolizes this, or it's clean or whatever, and she
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creates A structural critique from that she dislikes.
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And that's where it all starts. She dislikes white paint.
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I'll be honest with you, I'm not a huge fan of white paint
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either. I it's not my favorite color.
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It's the color of the room here, but not by my choice.
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I didn't paint it. She concludes then that using
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some issues across the the world, including some vandalism
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at a Chapel, some vandalism at a race massacre memorial gallery
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in Tulsa, and the covering of a rainbow crosswalk in in Canada,
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she concludes that white paint participates in the systems
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involving erasure, exclusion, violence, and Dun Dun Dun, the
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masking of power. You know, you can't necessarily
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make this stuff up. I mean, it's she doesn't like
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white paint. There are things I don't, I
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don't like. I don't like broccoli, but I'm
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not willing to create an entire structure that broccoli is
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somehow or another whatever the, the meat of the discussion
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becomes that human beings tend to turn ordinary objects into
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symbols all of the time. We do that.
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I do this. The American flag is a piece of
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cloth, folks. It is a piece of cloth, but it
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has symbolism to it that matters.
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It especially matters to me. It always has it always will.
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But it's our society that has assigned that meeting metal.
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You know, you make a wedding ring.
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I, I have a titanium wedding ring because I, I, I'm not a
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huge fan of gold. I like titanium, and so I have a
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titanium wedding ring. It looks kind of dull Gray.
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And but society assigned that meeting meaning to that ring.
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You have judges that wear robes. We assign meaning to that.
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And somehow or another, she has decided that white paint is
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masking power. She's using white paint as a
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symbolism to cover up implied power.
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Is the paint itself actually carrying the meaning, or do
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people with other intentions decide what it means?
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And that's where I think she falls off the the wagon here.
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She's using what she what I would call unfalsifiable
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methodology. You can't argue with her because
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she just assumes that there's hidden narratives of power
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everywhere. The wedding ring is a is a
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symbol of power. The white paint becomes a symbol
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of power. And if you begin with the
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assumption that hidden power relationships are concealed
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underneath everything, then there's nothing you cannot
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interpret through that framework.
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Her methodology guarantees her result, and that's part of the
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problem here. She's because she assumes that
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white paint, because she assumes that everything is a power play,
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a racist power play. It's you can't interpret
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anything as not being that. Now the problem, the bigger
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problem with this post by the College Fix is you can't
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actually read this book. Not yet anyway.
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Yes, she has been shortlisted as a nominee for the National Book
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Award on non fiction publisher is Simon and Schuster.
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But the book itself has not actually been published yet.
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It's a 352 page argument that we haven't actually read yet.
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We are exclusively examining what the publisher publicly
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claims and what the award recognition signals about modern
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critique. And therein lies part of the
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problem here, doesn't it? We get this outrage because this
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Columbia professor has won an award for a book that says white
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paint is racist. It does it, it's possible, and
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I'm willing to accept that it's possible that maybe there's
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something to her argument. I don't believe that.
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I, based on what I've seen and read of her work, I, I think
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she's, I, I, I think she's seeing these hidden power
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structures everywhere and she's using white paint as symbolism
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to, to cover that up. But the problem is we encounter
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these viral claims like the college fix has posted here and
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we have one of two paths. We can take that and share it
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immediately. And by the way, that has been
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shared hundreds of thousands of times and destroy the nuance of
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the post. We, we, we don't even
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acknowledge the reality that this is fake news.
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And because we have already dismissed it as fake news, we
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can't even have the debate. We can't even have the
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discussion. We can't even argue with her
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because we've already decided that she's crazy and we don't
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want that. Or we could take the path where
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we actually investigate the source material.
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It's, you know, let's look at what she actually says and then
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test it, test the ideas. It's no longer than fake news
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and we generate the discussion that we actually need to have.
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And this, of course, is the the bigger problem.
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We don't want to seem to want to do that, do we?
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It's one of the arguments that I have all the time, people.
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Yes, her speech is bad. Yes, what she says, at least on
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the surface of it, is crazy. I get that.
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I agree with you, I, but again, she did not win an award and we
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don't know that she said that white paint is racist.
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What we do know she's claiming is that it's a mask for a power
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underlying power structure and that by covering stuff with
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white paint, you could possibly be being racist.
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But we don't know that that's what she's actually said yet.
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But even if we did know that, what's the argument here?
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What, what is our response to that?
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Is our response to that to simply, I don't know, make her
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shut up to spread fake news, whatever.
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Or is our argument then maybe to step back a little bit and say
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to ourselves that the cure for a fallacious argument is a better
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argument, not the suppression of ideas?
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How many times do I have to say this?
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Folks, the best solution to bad speech is good speech.
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But maybe we ought to wait until the book actually comes out and
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see if she actually wins an award before we go down that
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road. It's just a thought.
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Welcome back to Zaidan. So yesterday, of course, is
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Sunday. It's Football day and yes, I'm
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one of those people that spends 9 hours watching football from
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from the time it starts at 10:00 AM Pacific till the time it gets
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done around 9 PMI. So that's 12 hours, right?
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I can't add I have red zone because my attention span is.
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So I I keep debating whether I should get Sunday ticket again.
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I had it for years, but then I got rid of it and the reason I
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got rid of it was games like yesterday afternoon where they
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have, we only have four games on a Sunday afternoon and they're
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terrible games. They're just I'm not paying
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money to watch Cincinnati versus Jacksonville.
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I'm just not doing that. Who didn't play each other
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yesterday? The the actual Bengals Steelers
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game was pretty good. The Jacksonville game, on the
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other hand, has caused much heartache.
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Much heartache. In case you missed it, Trevor
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Lawrence is the quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars was
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behind. He was leading his team to a
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great victory. I mean, they were far ahead and
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he was rushing towards the end zone and suddenly at the 1 yard
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line, he just stopped that. That's what he got.
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He just stops and kneels down at the 1 yard line.
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He deliberately kneeled at the 1 yard line instead of scoring.
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And on the next play, his half back, a guy by the name of
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Bashoul Tooten got the ball and scored.
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Jacksonville won the game 35 to 6, which is great.
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I, I, I'm not a New England fan, and so yay, I yay.
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But there were questions about why he did this.
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If you were inside of two minutes, you'd go, OK, that
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makes sense. You're just trying to run the
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clock off. But there was still close to 9
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minutes left in the game. This was not a clock management
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issue, at least not in the traditional sense.
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But after the game, during the interviews, they asked him why
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did you do that? Because that's weird.
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And he said, and I quote, I am trying to help support the
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Bashoul Tooten fantasy people out there.
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UN quote, look, I do not like fantasy football.
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Yes, I've played it. I'll be I'll brag about myself a
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little bit here. I'm pretty good at it.
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I hate it. It changes the basic
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relationship between the fan and the team.
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And this is what I tell people all the time.
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When I found myself rooting for a player to score a touchdown
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against my beloved Broncos that would have cost the Broncos the
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game but would have won my fantasy game, I had to take a
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step back and realize this is not what I want to be a part of.
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I want my team to win. If I'm a Broncos fan and Broncos
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win 13 to 10, or more precisely 30 to 26 because the defense
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dominates and the quarterback throws for 117 yards, I'm I'm,
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I'm great. But fantasy football changes the
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incentives. I might need the Broncos to win,
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but I also might what what if I had Matt Stafford as my fantasy
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quarterback? I might also need him to throw 3
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touchdowns. I might also have needed not
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Puka Nukua because he was out to to get 100 yards.
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Suddenly I'm rooting for players instead of teams.
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And I scoreboard says one thing, but my fantasy application was
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saying another. What does that do to my fandom?
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If we take Trevor Lawrence at his word and.
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We can see that the comment was kind of light hearted.
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I I get the joke folks. I get the stop sending me the
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e-mail saying Kitty, I get the joke 20 years ago.
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If he does that, it probably produces a football discussion.
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Why didn't he score? OK, maybe he was thinking this,
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maybe he was the, I don't know. But today in today's NFL, in
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today's football and sports world, instead of saying you did
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it for fantasy team purposes, which is a joke and I get it,
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the immediate reaction across the board is what did that do to
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fantasy points and to prop bets. Remember last year when the
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Broncos beat the Raiders, but the Raiders kicked the the
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Broncos were ahead by 7. The Raiders kicked a field goal
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on the last play. They get called a timeout to
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kick the field goal. Why?
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Because they covered the spread and everybody went bananas.
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What does this kind of stuff it? Sure, it adds up to your fantasy
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points, but what does it do to prop betting?
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Lawrence, by doing this, surrenders his own potential
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touchdown. Tooting gets 1 instead, and that
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affects fantasy scoring, but we we get that.
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But it also potentially involved bets involving individual
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touchdown scores on Calci and DraftKings and wherever else the
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actual game was already decided. It didn't matter, but thousands
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of other little bets were still being decided.
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Prop bets. They call these things parlays,
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and none of those things exist on the field.
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When we added gambling to sports, it monetized sports in
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ways that we can't even touch anymore.
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Every little event can have financial significance.
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The coin toss. There are people who bet on the
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coin toss. Who scores a touchdown, How many
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receiving yards, how many completions, how many first
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downs? It's something called an anytime
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touchdown, a quarterback's rushing yards, something so
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completely irrelevant in the overall scheme of things to a
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Jacksonville win, which by the way, they won 35 to 6, all of a
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sudden becomes extremely relevant to somebody's money.
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And that changes the atmosphere surrounding sports.
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And when Trevor Lawrence kneels down, the immediate thought
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isn't, oh, he's trying to kill the clock.
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He's try, and Once Upon a time we would have said, oh, this is
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sportsmanship, he's not trying, he's just trying not to run up
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the score. But now we're conditioned to
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wonder, what was the bet on that?
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A receiver drops an easy pass, bad hands or something else?
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A basketball player misses 2 free throws with five seconds
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left. We've seen that happen.
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Was it a bad night or something else?
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Baseball pitcher suddenly can't find the strike zone.
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Remember the back at the beginning of the season we had
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that pitcher that was was suspended for funky pitching
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that seemed to make money for his friends on bets.
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Quarterback kneeling at the 1 yard yard line instead of
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scoring with 9 minutes to go in the game. 8 minutes to go in the
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game. That's not clock management.
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Is he giving his running back a touchdown?
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A fancy? Are we going to find out that
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Trevor Lawrence had a bet on Tootin scoring touchdowns?
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We've created an environment which the question naturally now
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occurs. It's Look, people increasingly
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talk about sports differently now than they did years ago.
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Instead of saying I'm a Chiefs fan or I'm a Broncos fan or I'm
24:41
a Jacksonville fan, now we say I've got my homes or I've got
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I've got Knicks or I've got Lawrence.
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I've got the over, I've got the Rover and over on this game I
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need 12 more yards from him. I need one more touchdown.
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I've got three legs of my parley.
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None of those statements necessarily tells you which team
25:02
the person wants to win. Doesn't tell you who he's for or
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she. That's extraordinary when you
25:07
think about it. I mean, look at college, college
25:12
football now. Jeez, is John Metier really that
25:16
bad for Oklahoma? Is it possible or is there
25:19
something else involved? Traditionally, sports has always
25:24
been my team against your team. Fantasy turned players into
25:29
individual statistical assets instead of actual play games.
25:34
Sports books have turned individual performances now into
25:38
into financial instruments, and the game becomes increasingly a
25:41
platform on which all the secondary competitions are
25:45
seemingly more important than the actual game.
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And the bigger problem, of course, is that the leagues,
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baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, invited all of
25:59
this in professional sports, spent generations treating
26:04
gambling as a threat to competitive integrity.
26:06
How many of you know that? Joe Namath, Joe Broadway, Joe
26:10
Namath was once told, sell your nightclub where the gangsters,
26:15
the gambling gangsters hang out or we're going to throw you out
26:18
of football. And he retired from football for
26:21
a day, and then he decided to sell the club because he liked
26:24
playing football. Paul Horning, the great, the
26:26
golden, whatever. He was the Golden Boy from Notre
26:28
Dame back in the 60s, suspended for gambling.
26:33
Pete Rose. I don't want to get into a Pete
26:36
Rose argument because I know how Bill will react to that.
26:38
Pete Rose violated the rule. He bet on not on baseball.
26:41
He bet on his own team, the Black Sox.
26:45
You know, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Build it, they'll come.
26:50
Gambling isn't just lurking outside the stadium.
26:53
It's not a bunch of people at the office pool betting 5 bucks
26:56
on a game. Now it's advertising, it's
27:00
betting lines, it's fantasy analysis, it's gambling
27:03
discussions. And that, by the way, fantasy
27:06
sports has become big money because you pay to be in these
27:09
leagues now and you win big prizes.
27:13
The leagues still prohibit players and other personnel from
27:16
various forms of betting, but the fan is sudden is at the same
27:21
time surrounded by all these invitations to wager and watch
27:24
what happens on the field. And then Trevor Lawrence goes
27:27
down at the 1 yard line. How many people lost money on
27:34
that? Look, Trevor Lawrence didn't
27:38
invent this problem. He didn't.
27:40
He didn't 'cause this. He made a strange decision in a
27:44
blowout game. And then he made a joke.
27:46
It was funny. I, I, I laughed.
27:51
But that's precisely why this is such a useful illustration.
27:55
The fantasy implications were so obvious that the quarterback
27:58
himself immediately understood that joke.
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He got it. Fantasy football and gambling
28:03
aren't peripheral to the NFL viewing experience anymore.
28:06
They're woven into the language. Every pre game show has, you
28:10
know, fantasy stats. Every break they have fantasy
28:13
stats. The question isn't whether
28:16
Trevor Lawrence corrupted football by kneeling at the 1.
28:19
He didn't. The question is, what happened
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to football that kneeling at the 1 yard line immediately produces
28:26
a conversation about somebody else's fantasy roster or betting
28:30
tip betting slip. Who are you rooting for?
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This is why I I dislike fantasy football.
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I won't say I hate it because I don't hate it per SE, but but
28:45
I'm getting to the point where I just, I don't want to hear it.
28:49
I don't want to watch my Broncos.
28:51
That game last night was fantastic.
28:52
I would have hated to watch that game playing fantasy football
28:56
and knowing that somebody like me would have had Matt Stafford.
28:58
I like Matt Stafford. I always have.
29:03
I'm hoping if I'm watching that game and hoping that he gets
29:06
another 37 yards, the Broncos might lose that game.
29:10
I don't want a meaningless, meaningless fourth quarter
29:13
touchdown to matter more to somebody than who actually wins
29:15
the game. And I especially don't want to
29:18
watch a player make an unusual decision and have the first
29:21
question that we're all asking is how much money was there on
29:25
that? Sports only works if we believe
29:29
that the competition itself is the point and that it's real.
29:33
I want to root for my team, not a spreadsheet, not a parlay.
29:38
My team is across the board. Take the time right now tell the
29:44
people that matter in your life you love them very much.
29:46
You'd miss them if they weren't there.
29:47
So don't pass up those opportunities.
29:49
You don't want to have that regret plausibly live.
29:52
I'm Dave Bum and we'll be back tomorrow with Dave Does History.
29:56
We continue on as we talk about Washington and the inoculations.