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Close, but no Cigar: The humanity of four-legged creatures (and the inhumanity of two-legged ones)

Am I the only one who is seriously disturbed by the rumblings that came out of the recent meetings between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his 32 bosses, uh, owners of the league’s teams?

Apparently, the league is considering the assignment of disciplinary actions to an outside committee, even though Goodell says his primary responsibility is to safeguard the integrity of the game. So wouldn’t the safeguarding of the game’s integrity require taking responsibility for disciplining miscreants? (An aside: This is a misuse of the word “integrity.” Goodell really means the game’s honesty. All integrity means is wholeness. The league could be wholly good or wholly bad. Either way it would still have integrity.)

English lessons aside, the real problem here is the absence of leadership. NBA commissioner Adam Silver had no trouble getting rid of former Los Angeles Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling after his racist remarks. So why should Goodell have trouble executing the new personal conduct policy the league is going to come up with? ...

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Serbian sun: The rise of Novak Djokovic

“The Sporting Statesman: Novak Djokovic and the Rise of Serbia” – Chris Bowers’ flawed though still admirable new biography  – attempts what few sports bios do, to place its subject in a geopolitical context. But then, few athletes require that context the way Nole does.

Djokovic (pronounced “JOCK oh vic,” not “JOKE oh vic”) is first, last and always a son – and sun – of Serbia, which took a huge public relations hit during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s that resulted in and from the dismantling of Yugoslavia, even though we now know there was enough blame to go around. The oldest of three boys born to a modest, traditionally patriarchal family of Belgrade restaurateurs, Nole (No lay) was also a child of those wars – an experience that has, according to Bowers’ book (John Blake Publishing Ltd.), turned him into something of an oxymoron, a tough pacifist, fighting for embattled children through his work with UNICEF, clothing sponsor Uniqlo and his own Novak Djokovic Foundation, administered by his bride, Jelena Ristic.

“We were always told that once we go out of the country, there will be a lot of stereotypes attached to us because we come from Serbia,” Nole says in this “independent biography.”  (Translation: Djokovic, who plans on writing a memoir some day, limited Bowers’ access to his circle.) “We are the ambassadors of our families and our country, and we need to always show the best in us. So I carry this responsibility with big respect and honour, and I hope that I am managing to portray my country in the best possible light.”

Though Bowers – who is described as having contributed the first English-language biography of Roger Federer – does a thorough job of tracing the history that led to the Balkan Wars, you get the sense that even a history buff such as myself will skim those alternating chapters to concentrate on the more personal story of the Djokovic family, which reads like a cross between Dickens and Dostoevsky. ...

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Carry on, Cleo: New exhibit considers the Egyptian queen’s ancestors

Thanks to Hollywood (on one end of the spectrum of ludicrousness) and historical revisionism (on the other), there are many misconceptions about Cleopatra.

She was a sex kitten unfurling herself before Julius Caesar, a beautiful siren setting Marc Antony on a collision course with Rome. She was milky white. She was black.

She was nothing of the kind but rather something more complex and far more interesting – a striking if not beautiful, intelligent , commanding woman who managed to attract two of the most powerful men of her time as she balanced two very different cultures. That she could not hold a third culture in the equation was part of her undoing.

Like many great and tragic figures – the sculptor Isamu Noguchi comes to mind but we might also want to throw President Barack Obama into the mix – Cleopatra was part of two worlds. And when you’re part of two worlds, you often end up belonging to neither. She was the last of the Ptolemies, who were in turn the last pharaohs and are the subject of a new exhibit, “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt,” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through Jan. 4. ...

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Men – the fairer sex?

Boy, nothing gets women piqued faster than telling them that men are the better-looking sex.

I had this conversation with two female friends recently, one of whom skeptically said to me, “Do you really believe that?”

Yes, I do, though perhaps not in the way they might think. Of course, the average woman – with her makeup and her Spanx – might be more gussied up than the average guy. But what I mean is that aesthetically, the best-looking man is better-looking than the best-looking woman, that I would take the Apollo Belvedere over the Venus de Milo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Blame it on hormones. Male hormones give them bigger, hotter, lusher, more dangerous looks that read easily across a crowded room. Consider Colin Kaepernick, photographed by Bruce Weber on the cover of the new V Man magazine. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a nose like a toucan, closely cropped hair and lots of tattoos, which displease some of the fashion police.

And yet – wow – those eyes, like Cognac in firelight; those long, thick lashes; that cut jawline (to go with that cut body). Ladies, ladies,  do you think a woman could carry those off? ...

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Phelps gets help

Michael Phelps has entered an alcohol treatment program, this as USA Swimming has suspended him from the sport until March. (He has a Nov. 19 court date for his recent, second DUI arrest.) So he won’t be taking part in the short-course world championships in Doha, Qatar Dec. 3-7 with Ryan Lochte and company. (Maybe he wouldn’t have swum short course anyway.)  In any event, no Phelpte for a while.

It’s all terribly sad, particularly as Phelps has been doing his usual superb Phelpsian job on the aquatic comeback trail. And you don’t want to take away something that gives a person purpose.

But sometimes in life you have to put your career on hold to get your house in order.

It is a humbling experience to ask for assistance. ...

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Jim Harbaugh – Gone guy?

Who needs the Bard when we have the San Francisco 49ers? Talk about your drama.

From quarterback Colin “I’m not the baby daddy” Kaepernick to defensive end Ray McDonald, arrested but not yet charged with the abuse of his pregnant fiancée, the stories are endless if not always entertaining.

The latest narrative centers on teensy-bit-excitable Coach Jim Harbaugh, who may or may not be steering the team next year, even if the Niners win the Super Bowl. Harbaugh has already been to the dance, so to speak, where he and his miners lost to the Baltimore Ravens, who are coached by his brother, John. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

So Harbaugh, Jim, is pretty good at what he does. But there are rumors, and here you can take your pick: He’s too hyper, contorting his face on the sidelines like something out of “Chicken Run”; he treats the guys in the locker room like the college kids he once coached at Stanford; he did wrong by then-Niner QB Alex Smith by secretly courting Peyton Manning when he was a free agent. (Ultimately, Smith would go to the Kansas City Chiefs after losing his starting job to a concussion and Kaepernick,)

Enter SF CEO Jed York, who only fanned flames by tweeting that the team is trying to win a Super Bowl, not a personality or popularity contest. Translation: “Yeah, Harbaugh’s a jerk, but he’s our talented jerk.” ...

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