Today, my only sister Sarai turns twenty-six years old. That might not sound so significant. Except that my sister has sickle cell anemia. It’s a disease that can often claim one’s life before they reach adulthood. Even with our advanced medicine, the average life expectancy of someone with sickle cell anemia is forty-five years. Not to mention the pain involved in having such a body-draining disease.

As much as I love her, the fact is that Sarai probably shouldn’t be here. Between the disease and what we were going through as a family in ’82, it’s hard to believe that Sarai managed to survive in the worst of our worst times. I had just gone through my summer of abuse at the hands of her father, my mother had struggled through picket lines because she didn’t want to lose her job (only to get her hours cut in half anyway), and we were eating as if there was a global famine crisis. By October ’82, with my mother working part-time, I knew we were up crap’s creek without a lifeline. What would come next left me both more cold and adult-like and more in search of escape than I had been.

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I noticed something about my mother. At a time when we all looked starved, my mother looked round. Her stomach and cheeks were telltale signs. So I asked her, my tweener voice cracking all the while.

“Mom, are you pregnant?!?”

“Yeah, Donald, I’m pregnant,” she sighed.

“What! You got to be kidding! You mean you’re still having sex with him?”

“Watch ya mouth, boy!”

“Mom, what are we going to do? You can’t have a baby, not now, not with all these mouths to feed!”

“Donald, what I’m supposed to do?”

“You need to get an abortion, that’s what!”

“I don’t believe in abortion. It’s against God’s will.”

“Well, we can’t feed the kids that are here now, so how can you feed it? Get an abortion Mom, before it’s too late!”

Before my mother could say anything else, I stormed out for yet another store errand for milk, diapers, and all the things I couldn’t eat. I wanted to cut Maurice’s balls off and shove them down his throat. I wanted to shake Mom until her eyes rolled back in her head. Most of all, I wanted to get her to an abortion clinic yesterday.

It was time to do something desperate. We needed money just to eat the most basic of food. We hadn’t done a full wash of our clothes since the beginning of September. Me and Darren both needed a new pair of sneakers about every other month. The ones I had were forming holes on the sides and bottoms.

So I turned to Jimme. Mom was always complaining that he didn’t pay child support anyway. And I knew where he lived now. It was 120 South Tenth, not far from the East 241st Street station in the Bronx, the end of the line on the Subway’s 2 and 5 lines running from Brooklyn and Manhattan. There were a bunch of watering holes nearby, making Jimme pretty easy to find.

Darren would usually come with me on what gradually became our weekly hike from the land of 616 to the near Bronx and the city. Jimme being Jimme, he would grab me by one hand while giving me the money and put his left arm around my shoulder, whispering in my right ear, “Don’ give Darren nothin’,” or “You keep fitty for yo’self an’ give Darren ten.” “You a Collins, don’ be sharin’ nothin’ wit’ them Gills.” I almost always broke with Jimme around this.

Yes, Darren often was a selfish goofball and my 616 family was just a step or two above total chaos. Yet I couldn’t go to eat at a good pizza shop with Jimme and Darren and let my mother and my younger siblings subsist on bread, water and milk. I couldn’t watch them run around in graying underwear and just wash my own clothes. Not as hard as my mother worked, not as long as I lived there. I wanted to help as much as I could and still take care of my needs.

Jimme knew I was helping out at 616 too. So he would say things like “Don’ be givin’ your motha my money. Those ain’t my kids. Dis jus’ for you and Darren.” Or “Don’ give them muthafuckas nothin’,” which would start a brief argument between me and him about the needs of innocent children. Even with that and his drunken ups and downs, Jimme helped save the day for us and me as we plunged into the watery abyss of welfare poverty.

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For some reason my mother didn’t listen to me, giving birth to my only sister, Sarai Adar Washington on the ninth of February ’83, born in the middle of a snowstorm. I refused to visit my mother in the hospital in New Rochelle. I didn’t want Sarai, and was tired of watching my mother make incredibly bad decisions. Maurice tried to force me and Darren to go. Since I refused, it was my job to clean our increasingly sparse space. This would’ve normally been a hard task, but with so little furniture, it was mostly a matter of sweeping up dust and garbage. It was the way I hoped our problems would disappear.

Sarai came home a couple of days later, obviously stricken with the disease, as she looked like she was in pain then. I was so mad whenever I was home in Sarai’s first days. Not mad at her. Mad with my mother. Even at part-time, she could’ve seen a doctor about her sickle-cell trait, and screened to see if her idiot husband had the trait also. Even in ’82, even without his participation, through my brothers Maurice and Yiscoc, my mother could’ve learned early on whether both her and my then stepfather Maurice had the sickle cell trait. She long knew that she had it, and I’d known about my trait since I was seven. I’d learn about a year later, in ninth grade Biology with Mr. Graviano, that with two parents, there was a one-in-four-chance with every pregnancy that full-blown sickle cell anemia would be passed to a child. For the first time in my life, I saw my mother as an idiot.

By the middle of the summer of ’83, Sarai was obviously in trouble. She hardly gained any weight, all of her food had to be fortified with iron, and she only had “three strands of hair,”as my mother put it. It was more like a few dozen in three spots on Sarai’s scalp. She always needed help. Sarai even then was in and out of the hospital, in need of the occasional blood transfusion, and at time in excruciating pain.

With all of this, my mother would say to me, “See, that why you shouldn’t wish for an abortion,” as if I was supposed to feel guilty about what I said to her the year before because Sarai was sick. As if I had anything to do with her being here. I just gave my mother a weak smile whenever she’d say something like that.

Despite all of this, I grew to love my sister, if only because there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t her fault that her parents had about as much common sense as a wino on South Fulton Avenue in Mount Vernon on a hot day in August. Sarai wasn’t to blame for her own condition. And me suggesting that my mother get an abortion — it was obviously too late to get one by the time I yelled the idea at my mother — didn’t make Sarai one sickle cell sicker than she already was.

Over the years, Sarai did get better, then worse, then better again. I stopped babying her by the time she was a teenager, but my mother didn’t know how to stop treating her like she was a toddler. By the time of the family intervention in ’02, Sarai was obviously ready to leave 616. She moved to Alabama five years ago, to live with her high school friends and to live a slower life away from my mother and the rest of us. Even though she still has many days with pain, and more in the hospital, Sarai’s living her life her way. I’m happy for her for that. I only hope that someone somewhere finds a cure or at least a way to help people like my sister experience less pain because of this disease. Happy birthday, sister Sarai! I hope that it’s as good as you want it to be.

putz (pŭts) n.
Slang: A fool; an idiot.
Vulgar Slang: A penis.
intr.v.: putzed, putz·ing, putz·es Slang To behave in an idle manner; putter.
[Yiddish pots, penis, fool.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I can’t take full credit for this. My wife coined this phrase more than twelve years ago, as Marv Albert was arrested and put on trial for forcible sodomy of his then mistress of ten years. It was a trial known more for DNA evidence that Albert had bit his girlfriend more than fifteen times in their last encounter, the one that led to his arrest. Albert didn’t serve any jail time, and was fired from NBC for a short time before resuming his duties as the play-by-play voice for NBA games for them and TNT in ’99. As to why Albert was only temporarily hurt by his biting trial, my wife Angelia said, “It’s the putz factor.”

As soon as she said that, I knew she was right, not only about Marv Albert, but about other putzes out there. I recognize that this is a Yiddish word, but it has universal human applications. After all, some of us are better able to get away with public missteps and criminal behavior than others. In our pop culture, so many famous folks screw up, ethically, legally, and otherwise. When accounting for age, gender, race, orientation and money, it often comes down to the putz factor as the difference between a short-term disgrace or permanent ostracism.

This blog space is likely not enough to fully explore “the putz factor” in pop culture. But we can start with a few basic axioms.

1. Hair, or lack thereof, can make or break “the putz factor.”

Not to make too much fun of a serious situation, but most people know that Marv Albert has been wearing a full toupee for at least three decades. His various attempts at wearing ones that didn’t fit his age prior to his sodomy trial in Virginia in ’97 were perfect examples of his putziness. That alone would and did make many of us, unconsciously of course, feel sorry for him as his trial progressed, at least until he pleaded out with an assault charge for the bites on his girlfriend’s back.

Contrast this with the recently ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. His hair is as toupee-ish as Albert’s, but it’s all his hair. And the former governor has seemed vain about it, at least throughout his three months in the national spotlight. He may have many of the characteristics of a putz — including the habit of inserting foot in mouth — but his outwardly narcissistic behavior, combined with all of that hair, puts him several locks past putz. “Schmuck” is more appropriate here.

2. Dress does make the putz.

This is somewhat easy one. For many, the most obvious putz in the pop culture glow over the past thirty years would be film icon Woody Allen. Besides some of his films, the most controversial issue he’s faced was his relationship with and marriage to his former girlfriend’s (Mia Farrow) adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, in the ’90s. While he was never legally Previn’s stepfather, their relationship certainly raised many moral and ethical eyebrows. To be sure, Allen has been the recipient of significant venom as a result of this entangled relationship. But, he’s a putz, and he acts and dresses the part of one every day. Allen hasn’t suffered any long-term damage to his glorious reputation as a film maker, and still makes regular appearances to Knicks games at MSG, often with his wife. All without a single boo or hiss.

At the other end of the spectrum is former Senator John Edwards. That he looks a decade younger than his age, wears well-tailored suits, and is on record for spending $400 for a haircut all make him the anti-putz. All of which made it almost impossible for the press and public to feel sorry for Edwards when it came to light that he had a one-time relationship with a media consultant at the start of the ’08 presidential campaign cycle in the fall of ’06. That this came out after his wife had battled cancer was bad enough. That this was revealed just as now President Barack Obama was making his pick for VP — and that Edwards’ wife had known about the affair for well over a year — ruled out any possibility that “the putz factor” would save him. Edwards isn’t a putz, but he’s a lot of other things, none of them good.

3. One’s occupation can often negate “the putz factor.”

There are certain positions in the work force that lend themselves to the term “putz.” A car salesman, an accountant, a professor (including myself, sort of). There are some occupations, though, where someone’s hair, dress, or affect, putzy or not, doesn’t matter one iota. What fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps is going through right now is a good example of this. It really shouldn’t be a big deal, him toking up and all. If one’s reputation is built on a sense of good values, hard work, and athletic excellence, then drawing in weed smoke through a bong is a putzy move. But, Phelps has more gold medals than Mark Spitz and Jesse Owens combined. Though Phelps may have all of the characteristics of a putz, his out-of-this-world achievements in swimming make it much harder for him to be treated as one in the public eye.

4. Mean-spiritedness, no matter the person, cancels out the putz factor.

This is a simple but seldom followed point by folks in the public limelight. One’s mean-spirited personality, once unleashed in public, can’t be overlooked or excused. It completely contradicts the entire notion of being a putz, a fool that is unknowingly so. As Michael Douglas’ character says in The American President about a rival, “Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it!” Like the character played by Richard Dreyfuss, many in the public eye and in pop culture are simply too calloused to be putzes.

Take former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. This is a man who built his entire political career as a prosecutor throwing white-collar criminals in jail and attempting to throw away the key. A man who verbally bludgeoned his rivals on his way to Albany in ’06. Only to get caught up in his own hypocrisy as part of a federal investigation of a DC madam and a interstate prostitution ring. Or take former Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who was forced to resign from his seat in ’07 because of his arrest for “homosexual lewd conduct” in the men’s bathroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. While not as eloquently mean-spirited as Spitzer, his actions should give us more than enough pause to ever declare him a putz. Craig, obviously in the closet based on reports since he left the US Senate, had supported a Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban gay marriage in ’06, and voted against extending the federal definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation in ’02. If Spitzer and Craig are putzes, then so is Michael Vick.

5. Can a male of color or women regardless of race be a putz?

Speaking of Vick, up until now all of the examples I’ve used have been of White males. Can “the putz factor” be an inclusive tag? That depends. It doesn’t really work for Vick, who, while seemingly not as mean-spirited as Spitzer or Craig, certainly helped finance and participate in maiming and killing dogs on his properties. Plus, Michael Vick’s previous occupation was NFL starting quarterback, rarely a putz job even when occupied by Eli or Peyton Manning. Even once forgiven in pop culture, Vick will never likely have his earlier money, reputation or integrity, not through professional sports, anyway.

There are males of color who could qualify as a putz. Certainly actor Clarence Gilyard, Jr.’s character Theo from the movie Die Hard could be a possible candidate. Between the nerdy glasses and dress, not to mention his occupation as a computer geek, the character’s putziness might have helped in if he had gone on trial for attempted robbery, terrorism, and murder. Somehow, though, I seriously doubt it.

The closest thing we’ve seen in recent years to “the putz factor” for males of color is NBA star Kobe Bryant’s arrest and aborted trial for allegedly raping a White woman in ’03. Though Bryant was vilified in the media and his endorsements came to a screeching halt in ’03 and ’04, by ’06, Bryant’s career and pop culture status had all but recovered. It was Bryant’s reputation as a nerd, polyglot and his immature affect as someone too foolish to “get it” that made him a borderline putz, and therefore, less vulnerable to a long-term downfall in the public eye.

As for women, no, there aren’t any good examples of women as putzes. Not that women can’t be unknowingly foolish, dress weirdly or wear bad wigs in public. Examples of that include Cher, Joan Rivers, Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim and Aretha Franklin. But the term putz, based on the the definition above, is a gender-specific term, and as such, women can’t be putzes. And, women can do one thing in our double-standard pop culture that men can’t when they get into trouble. They can always cry.

This semester, I’m teaching World History I (from Genesis 1:1 to 1500 CE or AD 🙂 ), something I haven’t taught since grad school at Carnegie Mellon. Except that the Carnegie Mellon version was from Plato to NATO, or from “men becoming farmers because they discovered beer” to Western Europe becoming masters of the university — what I derisively called “World Stereotypes.” The judgement of the powers that are at University of Maryland University College for this standard course was such that we didn’t order Peter Stearns’ textbook (the standardbearer for this subject for nearly three decades). Instead, we have a nice textbook titled Traditions & Encounters.

It really is a nice textbook. It’s also a bit too politically correct. “Traditions” sounds pretty benign, except that many traditions end up so because they’re rammed down people’s throats by those in power. Particularly religious or economic or ethnic ones. And “encounters”? I guess that’s a good word to describe things like the consolidation of China into an empire under Qin Shi Huang Di by 221 BCE, or Caesar’s conquest of Gaul (modern-day France) by 50 BCE. Or not. I’m usually a fan of being politically correct, when the task is to speak plainly or eloquently without insulting other people or spinning the truth about others’ lives and experiences. Traditions & Encounters is too PC, even for a progressive like me.

Speaking of traditions and encounters, the Steelers — my second-favorite football team and my wife’s first, of course — are Super Bowl champions again! I should be happy, but I’m not. Maybe it’s because of the way the Steelers won. Not likely. This time last year, I was celebrating the Giants sticking it to the Patriots on a last-minute touchdown after the throw of all throws and the catch of all catches. Or maybe it was because I’ve seen Ben take the Steelers down field for a game-winning score twenty times in his young career already. No, don’t think so. Or I felt bad for the Cardinals because if it weren’t for all of their penalties and the Harrison 100-yard run-back of a Warner interception for a touchdown, the Cardinals would’ve won, and I would’ve felt some pain in Steeler Nation today.

It’s none of those. By rooting for the Steelers and watching them win at the last minute, I found myself rooting for a frontrunner, a team that most people expected to win. As much as I love the Steelers, I do feel bad for the Cardinals, a team that hasn’t won anything since my mother was a year old and Truman was president. I feel bad for Warner and Fitzgerald and Boldin and James and others, if only because an underdog coming so close to winning to only lose is heartbreaking. Sure, they’ll make their millions, but making money is hardly the same as leaving a mark on your career or profession. That’s a real sense of accomplishment, of immortality, even of happiness.

By rooting for the Steelers, I broke one of my all-time cardinal traditions (no pun intended there). I always, always, always cheer for the underdog, openly or in my heart, even if it sometimes means that the team I grew up with or have adopted loses. Just like I don’t like any team to lose the Super Bowl 55-10, I don’t like seeing an underdog give their all only to fall short at the end. Maybe that’s because I see myself in underdog teams or in the midst of underdog circumstances. I don’t enjoy it as much when a great team wins a championship. It’s like cheering on Bill Gates to break the $100-billion net-worth mark — $83 billion is still more than millions of us will make in a lifetime.

The Steelers did nothing wrong. They deserved to win, and the way they did it is something to celebrate. I’m glad that they have their sixth trophy and ring for the other thumb. Still, there’s this part of me that is a little sad today, knowing that few outside of Arizona care about this group of underdogs. Sadder even to know that most people don’t care about any underdogs, regardless of what they face and who they are. It’s a shame, really, to think that any of us with any underdog leanings at all slug it out in this world every day, all while being told that whatever we’re attempting to achieve is nearly impossible or might well not be worth the effort. We far too easily cheer for the folks on top, as if life is a script that we should all follow, that the tradition of the frontrunner winning is something to cherish.

It is easier, I think, to do so, to go with the flow of traditional fanship. To expect that things will only work out for folks in the most advantaged positions in life. That money or beauty or power is more worth admiring than someone with none of those advantages, metaphorically, as in sports, or in our real lives. So while I remain a Steeler fan, I still love the underdog. Here’s my a shoutout to the Cardinals, a symbol of my lingering hope that underdogs everywhere can break tradition and encounter success in their lives and efforts.