The Olympics vs. The Orange-Hued Conman

        
I have a confession to make: I love sports. I love watching them, and I love trying to play them. Much of this love stems from my love for for following rules--few disciplines have such specific, rigid, and closely-monitored rules as sports do--and for watching elite athletes perform and even create something new within those strict rules. Perhaps more importantly here, though, I love watching sports because they are true (discounting rare exceptions and conspiracy theories). I can watch an entire baseball game or track race and not wonder if something was cut or changed for time or effect or deception. Katie Ledecky really finished a swimming race five seconds ahead of her nearest competitor on Sunday, breaking her own world record. Odell Beckham Jr. truly made that uncatchable catch in his rookie NFL season. The amazing things athletes do are visible and measurable and hard to fake.

The Olympics, therefore, are like my quadrennial birthday. I could watch nearly every event, even ones whose rules I am baffled by, like rugby and wrestling. The wins (and sometimes losses) can bring tears to my eyes even though I have no personal connection to any of the athletes and usually don't relate to their stories. I am awed by the combination of natural talent and sustained effort to improve that these athletes exhibit. I'm sure I'm not alone in this--why else would NBC and its affiliates run almost non-stop television coverage for two weeks? It's all a refreshing break from election news and other world crises (if problematic that we can ignore crises to watch someone pole vault).

News outlets, too, have suggested that The Olympics are a break for the Presidential candidates themselves from the spotlight, a way for them to rest and regroup before the big election push. Donald Trump, especially, seems to need a break after his last two weeks of attacking dead war heroes' parents, citing film footage that didn't exist, and throwing babies out of his rallies, among other headline gaffs. However, he continues to attempt attacks on Clinton, this time with the dubious claim that "many people are saying" that an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed because of her hacked emails. #manypeoplearesaying is now trending on Twitter, but this type of phrase has been a hallmark of Trump's campaign; he makes outlandish claims that can't be supported by fact and then places the onus of their truth vaguely on others. In this way he can say anything he wants without owning or verifying it, and if it is racist or false, he can blame it on others, whether they are specific others or vague, unnameable ones.

Rather than a welcome break from campaigning, The Olympics, I posit, will mostly highlight the  contrast that an unskilled, untruthful Trump makes with world-class athletes who are the pinnacle of skill and whose very skills are displayed, mostly unedited, to the world. Hillary Clinton certainly is not the pinnacle of truth herself, but one might well argue that she is close to a political pinnacle due mainly to her diligence and hard work. My guess is that the U.S. will return to the Presidential candidates from Rio with less tolerance for shoddy, fake antics.

Professionalism and Fraudulence

I recently learned of a television show, now in its second season on the Food Network, in which four contestants attempt to "con" celebrity chef judges into believing they are professional chefs. Its title, Cooks vs. Cons, was what first captured my attention, and is essentially all that continues to hold it, as there is very little difference between this show and any other cooking contest otherwise. Certainly the alliteration is likely the main reason for this choice of titles, but in the idea that non-professional cooks are automatically somehow "cons" (short for con-artists and not convicts in this case, thought the ambiguity is also notable), the show succumbs to the trend begun in the second half of the nineteenth century to turn skills and livelihoods into professions by increasingly requiring formal schooling and exams for entrance into a variety of fields. While some outcomes of professionalization have undoubtedly been positive (I'd like my doctor to have a measurable set of skills, for example), in many cases the trend has excluded already marginalized groups such as women, racial minorities, and the poor from entrance into fields now requiring expensive schooling and/or extensive leisure time. What also happens is an effective monetizing of skills--one must acquire set knowledge and skills through legitimate (paid for) channels in order to be considered a "professional" in a given field.

This television show, then, pits four people against one another, two of whom are professional chefs, and two who are not professional chefs, asking the judges to choose the best chef, who then reveals that she is either a "pro" or a "con" and wins $10k if she is a professional cook, and $15k if she is a "con." The idea is neither particularly new nor particularly complex, but the name of the show and the money involved speak volumes. Although the amateur cooks are not expected to win the contest (a chef knows another chef when he tastes her food, after all), the amateurs are rewarded monetarily for "tricking" the judges into believing that they are professionals; the additional money signals both that the odds are against the "con" and that he or she can potentially use it toward becoming a "real" chef. The nomenclature "con" gives the viewer trouble deciding whom to root for--should we cheer on natural talent and untutored success, or condemn the amateur because she has carried out a successful confidence trick, gone around the system that creates legitimate "professionals," and led us to believe a lie? It seems that the problem is all the more fuzzy because we are dealing with cooking here, a skill that a large percentage of the population has to some degree, and one some might argue doesn't necessarily require any professional training.  Ultimately only the celebrity chef judges have anything to lose, because a vote for the "con" works to de-legitimize their training in the suggestion that a barber might be just as good a cook as a culinary schooled chef, or else that the celebrity chef might not be the best judge of fine cuisine.