Fly for a white guy

From the first notes on Jim’s radiant opener “Another Day,” you’ll wish you were nodding along to it on your cranked-up car speakers on the first hot day in June. Jamie Lidell, everyone’s favorite British white knob-twiddler-turned-soul-singer, absolutely loads on the sunshine in this song, complete with handclaps and ooh-oohs, doing his best Curtis Mayfield impression in his more traditional follow-up to the spastic Multiply. Is it lampoon? Is it reverence? Who cares?

Lessons from prison

In the infamous Stanford prisoner experiment, psychologist Philip Zimbardo took a group of largely white, educated, well-to-do and politically liberal men and put them into a prison role-playing scenario with half acting as prisoners and the other half acting as guards. \nAt first, they played along with the game, kidding and joking, but the situation soon became nightmarish. A prison break was attempted, followed by a guard crackdown. Punishments grew draconian and humiliating, while prisoners broke down in psychotic fits. The experiment only went five days before Zimbardo pulled the plug once “guards” forced “prisoners” into sexually humiliating positions as part of their punishment. \nWhy am I bringing up an inhuman prison in a graduation column? Within us, we contain the potential to commit great evil, like so many passive participants in past atrocities. I mention these atrocities, however, because in cases of such horrifying inhumanity and criminal violence, there is the occasional whistle-blower. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, Zimbardo, who had mostly avoided the experiment since the controversy it caused, returned to his research to discover what makes someone look at a situation like this and say “stop.” \nHis research has thus far uncovered no pre-existing determinant of who stepped up as a hero. No background, belief or personality trait firmly correlated with the heroes who stood up against the authority instead of sitting back and doing nothing. Zimbardo only noted two common traits: deviancy from authority and empathy for one’s fellow human beings.\nAs we move forward through the world, we must note the moral choices placed before us all the time. We believe incorrectly that we are entering “the real world,” when we have been living in the real world since we were born. Every decision we have made and continue to make guides our journey. \nWhen we accept what an authority tells us – that we need not concern ourselves with unjust wars, that we should leave the complicated money stuff up to the experts – we implicitly surrender our ability to make our own judgments. When we see our community of humans as merely more competition to get out of the way, we have given up our ability to perceive our own humanity. The point is not to arrive at a moral choice and always make the right decision, but to recognize that the juncture represents a moral choice at all.\nIf the circumstances were different, would we be abusers or whistle-blowers? Most of us would like to think that we’d blow the whistle, but the prison guards of Zimbardo’s experiment were very much like we are today: bright and likable folks with significant education. What good is “education” if it doesn’t make us better people?\nWe must be ever-vigilant. Upon graduation, we must never stop asking the questions that drive us. As long as a lone voice continues to ask questions, even in the face of extenuating and difficult circumstances, humanity need not descend into inhumanity. May our class and generation be the askers and the seekers we so desperately need.

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What can we do?

The questions we asked were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant and what you would expect to be asked in a presidential debate at this point.” – George Stephanopoulos. \nGeorge Stephanopoulos, respected national political reporter, defended his indefensible April 16 Democratic presidential debate moderating by suggesting that candidates should “expect” almost an hour of trivial and irresponsible hectoring from a political press bent on nabbing “gotcha!” moments.\nIn so doing, Stephanopoulos demonstrates everything wrong with our nation’s journalism and everything we must fix. In the first 45 minutes of the debate, a viewer would have seen nothing about Iraq, health care, the economy, education, infrastructure or international diplomacy – only trite garbage. It is, in fact, the same kind of trite garbage trotted out every election cycle: the Swift Boaters, John Edwards’ haircut, Obama’s bowling, Clinton’s laugh, Bush’s “guy I’d like to have a beer with,” Al Gore’s Internet “invention” and so on.\nI have been writing columns for the IDS since the fall of 2005, and my belief in the importance of my job and that of my colleagues has remained consistently strong. Now at the end of my tenure, however, I have never before been so utterly convinced of the contemporary laziness and irresponsibility of the professional press.\nAfter a week in which it was revealed that a secret meeting of top advisers approved by President Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others detailed exactly which torture techniques the CIA could use on detainees, a LexisNexis search for “Bush AND torture” found 187 results. An otherwise identical search for “Obama AND bitter” revealed 1,000 results. \nLook back at Stephanopoulos’ words. Where are these supposedly “tough,” “fair” and “appropriate” questions for Bush or Rice? Should a candidate answer questions about flag pins, when Bush, Cheney and Rice are still running the White House? Instead of asking difficult questions, ABC News, hardly a lone offender, has shown how easy it is to run election-cycle reporting on the continuous fuel of perceived scandal. The national political press seems to suggest that ABC’s high ratings demonstrate that people actually care about the trivial nonsense rather than real issues. This misses the point entirely. Of course national policy discussions seem boring compared to national blood sport. The debate was even billed as “Obama vs. Clinton,” as if it were a boxing match rather than a political debate. The point of political journalism, however, should be to make important policy discussions accessible and meaningful for the average person.\nIf the “professional” journalists aren’t doing their jobs, it’s time to do ours. The broken press trumpeted the Iraq War and continues to peddle filth, while Americans have lost their trust in the media entirely. While so-called “professionals” may look down on us amateurs, it’s time we took our world into our hands.\nWhat can we do? Learn more, refuse to believe the media swill and build our own opinions. It’s the way to fight back against the condescending, cynical “journalists.” It’s the way we win back our country.

Excited to death

Everything hinges on up-to-the-minute excitement these days. The Internet has made the new-and-improved product the forefront of what’s important in our consumer lives. Similarly, the 24-hour news cycle has become even further compressed with breathless coverage of the next new thing. We ride Google Trends and watch fads rise and fall in a week (see: Stuff White People Like blog).\nThis fast-moving culture has led us to roll our eyes at the boring but important forces that govern our world. Tax policy, infrastructure construction, financial regulations: all colossally boring, all colossally important. We ignore such boredom for the sake of shiny excitement at our own peril. Just look at the hiccupping economy and see why the dismal can affect us all.\nTake infrastructure, for instance. The last thing most people want to think about is their sewer system or the integrity of their highway bridges. Then, when everything goes wrong, the finger-pointing begins in earnest, only to vanish once the excitement has moved on. \nRemember when the I-35W highway bridge collapsed in Minnesota? For a week, the media couldn’t stop talking about how the nation’s infrastructure was collapsing. Then, silence. Now, a new bridge is being hastily constructed, while our nation’s bridges continue to squeak by inspections.\nIt’s not just falling bridges. Infrastructure is just one of America’s many structural problems. Our never-ending gridlock grows out of our continued treatment of cars as more important than people. Our urban sprawl grows out of our continued subsidies to aid the construction of ever-growing subdivisions, while ignoring our downtowns. Ignore the glittering construction projects and grand plans of urban renewal; the real image of our civilization is painted in the dull tones of concrete, asphalt and steel by dreary pencil-pushers who decide our futures.\nWho decides the bus routes? Or how many buses there should be? These questions aren’t exactly exciting, but they can mean the difference between a 10-minute trip to school or a 40-minute one. The changes that we notice the least can influence us the most.\nOur world is full of examples of the hip, exciting thing overshadowing the boring but important one. We watch endless clips of Sen. Barack Obama bowling and Sen. Hillary Clinton crying, but a dense, legalese memo from the Justice Department which made all of us torturers has flown under the radar because no one will sit through the 81 pages to read it. All the fist-pumping and flag-waving hubbub in the run-up to the Iraq War prevented members of Congress from even reading the intelligence report that detailed Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons. Our addiction to the Next Big Thing has blinded us to the small, tedious mechanisms that actually govern the lives we lead.\nI know Little 500 week is hardly the best time to bring up the importance of boredom, and I’m hardly innocent of this addiction, being an information junkie and adventure-seeker myself. Still, we can’t let our need for the new and exciting get in the way of the important. So, put down the beer bong, stop watching TMZ and think for a moment about something dull and uninteresting for once. You never know; you just might save the world.

Bored with war

Remember that whole Iraq War? Yeah, it’s still going on.\nEven if you follow the news closely, you might find it hard to believe that we are still in the grips of a never-ending war. A Pew Research Center study found that Americans are no longer aware of the number of Americans dead in Iraq, a trend matched by a steep decline in media coverage. \nThe most common explanation for this lack of awareness is a change of focus to the presidential campaign: The campaign has taken attention away from the story of the Iraq War. Yet shouldn’t the Iraq War be part of the campaign? As the defining foreign policy action by the previous administration, why is a reflection on the war in Iraq all but unmentionable during the campaign?\nJust take a look at the most recent spike in coverage: the five-year anniversary. All the “experts” were trotted out again to talk about the ways in which they were wrong, as if they still had any credibility left. All the “nutjobs” who were right about the injustice and stupidity of the Iraq War are relegated to marginal status. The war in Iraq exists only in a “Colbertian” conception: great idea or greatest idea? \nDespite the fact that foreign policy constitutes the largest portion of the president’s job description, the campaign has focused on process stories and petty trifles, like Sen. Barack Obama’s race, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s gender or Sen. John McCain’s age. The closest the campaign coverage ever gets to actually covering foreign policy involves finger-pointing over “experience,” and who has more.\nMeanwhile, the Iraq War continues unabated, while the situation deteriorates further. In the recent Basra offensive, populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has won major concessions without giving up anything, while we continue to back the crumbling and feckless al-Maliki government. Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s ultimatum quickly turned into a suggestion and eventually into a straight-up bribe, followed by capitulation. That guy is supposed to be our replacement Iraqi leader, but he appears no more legitimate than the militias he fights. The only thing that keeps him in place is the force of our own military, which he uses to achieve his own agendas.\nThe ongoing bleeding hasn’t stopped our presidential candidates from being ignorant about the subject. John “Foreign Policy Expert” McCain was wrong on al-Sadr being a marginal figure and doesn’t even know that it was Maliki who cried “uncle” in the most recent skirmish. Obama and Clinton profess a desire to end the war, but neither knows how to do it.\nOur eyes now glaze over when people talk about the Iraq War; it’s been five years after all. “Can’t we talk about something else?” the media seem to ask.\nNo. No. No. No. No.\nOur nation marched gleefully into a war cheered on by the media and foreign policy establishment, and now we have become bored with the monster we created. This is our war: Our taxes pay for it, and our silence perpetuates it.\nOne hundred thousand Iraqis are dead. So are more than 4,000 American troops. And for what? This is our legacy. We can’t afford to forget it.

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Bush, with more nuts

Many people tend to think of Sen. John McCain as a maverick. Many people think of him as a foreign policy expert. Many people think he sticks to his guns and his principles.\nThey are all wrong.\nIf you remember McCain from the 2000 campaign, you probably remember him as a gutsy centrist who challenged party orthodoxy. But over the last eight years, he has drifted continuously towards the right, selling out any principles he may have had for success in the Republican Party. Let’s see just how far John McCain has fallen on a few issues.\nTAX CUTS: In 2000, McCain stood against Bush’s disastrous tax cuts, which he called too beneficial to the rich without helping the poor. He voted against them twice, believing them an affront to his “conscience.” Too bad McCain 2008 actually wants to extend and expand the Bush tax cuts, which have ballooned our debt and screwed our social services. So much for his conscience. \nIMMIGRATION: In 2007, McCain spoke firmly for the need to combat illegal immigration with a Bush-backed comprehensive plan to reform both border security and a path to citizenship. By early 2008, he had already decided we needed a better border fence first, in order to appease the far-right base.\nTORTURE: McCain has often scored political points for his opposition to torture. After all, he was actually tortured in Vietnam. Yet, he voted against banning waterboarding despite having spoken against it. McCain thinks torture is bad, but he caved in letting the Bush administration decide what “torture” is. Because trusting the Bush administration with human rights always works out.\nIRAQ: Here, perhaps, McCain’s position mostly disagrees with his reputation as a fighter against the Beltway Establishment. Unlike most of this nation, McCain believes the best way forward in Iraq is an indefinite timetable, an endless war budget and a perpetual commitment to an ever-increasing body count. McCain has said publicly he’s OK with staying in Iraq for 100 years. Are you? Yet, for inexplicable reasons, the press still regards McCain as a foreign policy expert, with tons of “experience.” \nBottom line — as we’ve learned over the last eight years, experience does not equal expertise. McCain’s stubborn attachment of his political career to the disgusting, illegal and immoral war in Iraq is a sign of how far he has fallen since the heady days of 2000. Make no mistake: McCain dogmatically believes in this unjust, mutually destructive war and will continue to fight for it if elected president.\nHe has emptied out every moral high ground he may have had over ordinary Republicans. He kissed and made up with radical right-wing cleric Jerry “Agent of Intolerance” Falwell to suck up to the right wing of his party. McCain, the “foreign policy expert,” thought that the war in Iraq would be “easy.” Now, he acknowledges that he knew it would be “long and hard.” \nMcCain’s tragic fall from honorable to deceitful has been sad to see. But his free ride needs to end right now, before this country gets a third Bush administration under the name McCain.

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Up in smoke

Sen. Barack Obama smoked pot. President George W. Bush has essentially admitted to it. So have Sen. John Kerry and former President Bill Clinton. Political leanings don’t make any difference: arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards both tried pot. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg tried it and “enjoyed it.”\nFor none of these men did cannabis use become an obstacle on their paths to success. Yet for hundreds of thousands of Americans arrested for marijuana possession every year, a puff has become a path to handcuffs. What separates them from the approximately 97 million Americans, probably including plenty of prominent politicians, scientists, artists and businessmen, who have tried marijuana in their lifetimes? The mere act of getting caught.\nCan we please end this charade? Marijuana is certainly the drug we treat most casually, yet it has become the biggest front of America’s War on Drugs. Despite the fact that we now shrug off its use among our leaders, we continue to condemn those unfortunate and unlucky enough to get caught.\nAnd that’s just how we treat the incarcerated pothead in America – “unfortunate” – as if the circumstances dictated the treatment of cannabis users and not our own hypocritical policies. We gleefully consume news about the latest big pot bust and celebrate smokers like Willie Nelson at the same time, indulging in both sides of the story without thinking about the human consequences. We must realize that the victims of the drug war have filled our prisons because of our “tough on drugs” laws, not because of “unfortunate” circumstances.\nWhen our politicians admit their own marijuana use so readily, they often back off, saying that they don’t want to be a bad influence. President Bush went so far as to refuse to answer questions on the subject because “I don’t want any kid doing what I tried to do 30 years ago.” That’s honorable, but perhaps the litany of admissions from politicians of pot use should serve as a guide instead of as a policy that more accurately reflects reality. If any of these politicians had a conviction for felony pot possession that they would receive in the state of Indiana, they could find themselves having trouble voting in some states, let alone running for office. \nAlmost every single one of the pot-smoking politicians I cited has said that they don’t support decriminalization of marijuana. Even Obama, who once told a crowd that he believed pot should be legal, has since changed his mind. As I stated earlier, the only thing separating these role models of American leadership from ex-felons is a roll of the dice. \nI don’t care if these politicians don’t support marijuana decriminalization. That’s fine. They can hold whatever positions they want. But when they stand on the bully pulpit and exploit drug users by promising to be tough on drugs with further crackdowns, they should ask themselves whether the world would be a better place if they had been busted. My guess is that their answers would be “No.”

The Dolly Lama

Everyone knows Dolly Parton – for her hair, her fashion, her rags-to-riches story and, of course, her breasts.

Standing on the shoulders of Giants

WEEKEND reporter Peter Chen chatted with John Linnell of They Might Be Giants before the band rocked the Bluebird on Feb. 28.

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Culture shock

When a school massacre takes place like the one at Northern Illinois University, it’s easy to jump to conclusions. The 24-hour media machine groans into action with endless hypotheses, fake sincerity and poorly-masked glee over a “big story.” Then, after the fact, the event slides into the backs of our minds, and we invent whatever explanations we can for something we view as “unexplainable.” \nAs a result, our views of school shootings are constantly skewed by misconceptions. Deeper introspection rarely occurs when it comes to school violence, so that when these events occur, we throw up our hands in shock and accept the wild accusations of television talking heads. “How could this have happened?” we wonder. The whole frenzy of sensationalism and emotional outpouring surrounding school shootings seems totally disproportionate to their rate of occurrence. Is our repeated shock at such events just an outgrowth of other traumas?\nAs a result of the media marketing of these homicides, a meme is inevitably built, and spontaneous theories are hung on it like a Christmas tree. It happened because we don’t have enough guns. No, it happened because we have too many guns! Video games! Anti-depressants! Living in the Midwest made Stephen Kazmierczak do it!\nPundits who provide “analysis” seem to throw all caution (and data) to the wind, crusading instead for an agenda that bears only tangential significance. Can we build a rational public policy if our only context is shock and disbelief?\nSchool shootings and violence are a historical presence in America; the only thing that has changed is the coverage. The hysteria surrounding school homicides such as those at NIU is not proportional to the amount of societal violence. In 2005, 4,329 18- to 24-year-olds died in homicides, and those violent crime deaths peaked in the early-mid ‘90s, yet not all of them received massive media attention. Furthermore, the number of school assaults and other violence has dropped by nearly one-half in the past decade. When using only media-marketed murders to build our perceptions, we’ll always find our responses lacking.\nThis isn’t to say that we don’t need more thought on youth violence in American culture. Compared to other developed nations, we have outrageous under-25 homicide rates. But the bulk of these shootings are not the kinds of killings we see at NIU, and any attempt to use the loose data points of “mass school shootings” will give us a terrible picture of why young people commit and are victims of violence in this country.\nThese skewed perceptions lead to all sorts of failed policies, from hysteria over students’ violent drawings to metal detectors that fail to deter killers. \nJust as we cannot simply write off these massacres as “unexplainable,” we also cannot accept blind, irresponsible schemes as acceptable explanations. Unless we look at the whole of youth violence and its origins, we will find ourselves perpetually in a state of shock, unwilling and unable to affect any change in youth homicide rates.

Radio heads

Minutes before show time this Saturday, Feb. 16, at the IU Auditorium, Tim Russell and Sue Scott might not know their lines, awaiting last-minute changes from the baritone-voiced mastermind Garrison Keillor, but that won't stop them from pulling it off. \nTheir long-lived radio variety show "A Prairie Home Companion" retains its off-the-cuff style after more than 30 years on the air. Keillor rewrites the script until the last minute, despite the high expectations of the show's four million listeners and national following. \nVeteran voice actors Russell and Scott, who play many of the characters on "Prairie Home," see no reason to hurry. \n"It's still the best gig in show business," Scott said. \nFor those unfamiliar with the show, "A Prairie Home Companion" is a weekly live-radio variety show with a grab bag of serials, comedy, skits and musical acts ranging from Bonnie Raitt to Wilco. Although the appeal of a radio variety show seems limited, the audience of "Prairie Home" has continued to grow. Russell credits the success to the show's commitment to wide-ranging humor, which tackles everything from cutting-edge political satire to cell-phone etiquette. \n"Humor knows no generational bounds," Russell said. \nThe unfailing family-style politeness of "Prairie Home" doesn't keep it from mouthing off, however. The show's humor, no matter how clean, retains a hint of sass and irreverence. \nIn many ways, the show concerns characters out of place in the modern era: cowboys dealing with citrus aftershaves and private eyes finding missing poodles. The holdover of a radio variety show in the modern world doesn't bother the two vets, though. If anything, modern technology invigorates their craft and encourages a new audience. \n"The iPod is reminiscent of the old radio, with sound and music at all times," Scott said. "It encourages the radio listener's imagination." \nHow does an aspiring talent get into radio? Neither Russell nor Scott found their jobs through conventional means. Russell, though he took a detour to law school, settled on a career in show business doing celebrity impressions, while Scott, coming up in stage acting, put in her time at improv acts such as Second City in Chicago. \nStill, these experiences served them well on the show, as on-air performances often are cold reads and ad libs, with a fair number of lines cut on the fly. Drawing on a vast number of cultural touchstones, they never fail to put on a show. \nThe two cover a variety of characters, from Al Gore to the tongue-in-cheek superhero "Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian." It gets to the point that they have a hard time finding their original voices, with Russell describing himself as "a chameleon." Considering the number of skits in the two-hour-long program, Russell and Scott must play dozens of roles, all while simply standing in front of a microphone and a live audience.\nReading a script doesn't make the job any easier, though. For the "Prairie Home" trademark deadpan humor to work, Russell and Scott must work with Keillor to create realistic reactions to silly situations. The challenge for voice actors, Scott said, is "to sound like we're not reading." \nDespite Russell's insistence that the show is "a little hipper than it was 20 years ago," both actors seem to recognize the roots "Prairie Home" has in Midwestern stoicism. Scott, a Midwest transplant from Tucson, Arizona, sees the appeal of the show's Midwestern simplicity nationwide, as audiences from coast to coast appreciate the show's ethic that no one is that wonderful or horrible.