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(04/24/08 1:37am)
Green is the new blue and red.\nI did a double take when I saw a commercial featuring Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Pat Robertson relaxing together on a couch on a beach. Recently, I paused for a similar commercial featuring Nancy Pelosi, the current Democratic Speaker of the House, and former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, smiling together on a couch in front of Capitol Hill.\nThese political and religious figures are often seen as polarized representatives of extreme left-wing liberals and extreme right-wing conservatives. What are they doing enjoying a peaceful conversation on a love seat?\nSharpton and Robertson acknowledge that they “strongly disagree” on many issues, but they both recognize the need to care for the Earth. Similarly, Pelosi and Gingrich claim they do not always see eye-to-eye, but they “agree our country must take action to address climate change.” \nThe Alliance for Climate Protection and the We campaign produced this remarkable ad campaign called “Unlikely Alliances” to address the fact that “climate change is still largely seen through partisan filters, and advocates of action too often must fight entrenched ideology and cultural stereotypes.” Their aim is to break through “partisan gridlock” and invite “Americans of all political stripes” to recognize climate change as a “moral imperative instead of a political issue.” \nTo this end, the campaign includes print advertisements that stress climate change is “going to take all of us, working together.” A second print ad represents a green map of the earth where the continents are constructed out of word clusters such as “Blue and White Collar Workers;” “Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus;” “Farmers, Ranchers, City Slickers;” and “Red States, Blue States.” Accompanying this visual depiction of far-reaching alliances and political bridges is the tagline: “You can’t solve the climate crisis alone. But if we all work together, we can.” \nThe Unlikely Alliances campaign is particularly powerful in the context of an election year. Our political discussions frequently feature political pundits, bloggers, reporters and candidates constructing messages that drive divisive wedges between us rather than building alliances.\nMany of our current debates center on “moral imperatives” that have morphed into ugly political divides – quality education, for example, or health care for all citizens. This environmental advocacy effort offers an excellent counter-model for political action and a strong reminder for all citizens to engage in serious alliance work rather than uncritically accepting divisive messages from political poles, polls and pols.\nWe’re all part of one tremendous “unlikely alliance,” connected by shared communities with a common future and common fate. We certainly have a moral imperative to ensure our shared planet is healthy.\nBut let’s also recognize this campaign as a model for other social and political decision-making. It asks us to avoid self-centered decisions based on personal interest and to consider instead everyone in our unlikely alliances of shared communities.\nWith commitment and practice, it might actually be easy being green – and less politically divisive – or at least easier than we often admit.
(04/10/08 12:05am)
I’m a proud uncle of seven adorable nieces and nephews. Luckily, I see two of them regularly. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen four of them in more than 12 years. I’ve never met one.\nAfter I came out, my oldest sister and her husband called my sexuality a “cancer on society.” They decided that the rest of my family and I were dangerous, insidious influences that must be kept away from their five children in order to protect them against the “evil” life I lead. That’s a story for another column.\nToday, I tell a Tale of Two Nephews. The one I’ve never met and the one whose birth I had the honor of witnessing. The son of my estranged sister and the son of my close sister. A nephew taught to fear the world and a nephew taught to embrace it. One being shielded and “protected” from a loving family and one who is free to revel in the love of his grandparents and uncles.\nMy family receives sporadic reports on the boy I’ve never met and his siblings. The last letter simply stated that he was growing up to be “100 percent boy.” Based on the other updates we receive, it sounds like “100 percent boy” means he enjoys playing in the dirt and he likes baseball, football, trucks and girls.\nOn the other hand, I see my other nephew every chance I get and I receive frequent updates between visits. I recently received a batch of pictures of the boy I’ve known since the second he was born. One picture stood in stark contrast to my other nephew. In one photo he wore his sister’s pink Disney Princess shirt featuring Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The front of the shirt reads: “100% Princess.”\nMy “100 percent boy” nephew has learned that his masculinity is linked to rigid rules that constantly restrict who he’s allowed to be. These narrow boundaries will likely cause him anxiety and distress if anyone presumes he’s anything less than 100 percent “man.” Heaven forbid he develops an interest in baking or dancing, much less another boy.\nMy nephew with the “100% Princess” shirt is learning that there is not a definitively right way to be a man. His possible identities have not been severely constricted. He’s not as heavily persuaded by the illusion that being a boy means he must abide by a pre-existing set of rules and expectations, nor will he be prone to reject others because they don’t fit a narrow mold.\n“100 percent boy” conveys a limited understanding of the way our culture has constructed gender identity and expressions, and it betrays an underlying fear of how tenuous and unstable those constructions can be. “100% Princess” is a warm embrace of human freedom, love and acceptance.\nI feel sad for the nephew I’ve never met – and anyone else who holds so firmly to such confining and rigid illusions of identity.\nWe’d all do better to be 100 percent accepting and affirming, no matter how our social identities take shape.
(04/03/08 4:17am)
The mission of the International Olympic Committee is “to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace.” Unfortunately, this Olympic year, the IOC has a long way to go before it can stand proudly with a gold medal for serving humanity. With the Beijing Summer Olympics approaching, world leaders and Olympic officials remain silent on reported human rights abuses in China.\nWhat’s the matter with China? A U.S. State Department report calls China an authoritarian nation that denies its citizens basic human rights and freedoms. It tortures prisoners with electric shocks, beatings and other abuses. It severely restricts and harasses journalists and foreign aid workers. China has forcibly removed residents from their homes in order to prepare for the Olympics. China is under global scrutiny for violently squashing protests in Tibet.\nBut apparently the consensus among world powers is that human rights take a backseat to economics. China has thrown its economic weight around to dissuade governments and corporate sponsors from criticizing the Games. A public relations executive explained, “(Corporations have) already invested a lot of money and resources and they wish the Games will just proceed smoothly.”\nPresident Bush said he looks forward to attending the Games. France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner explained that, although it is “very nice to talk about human rights,” there are economic decisions that must be made “at the expense of human rights,” especially when dealing with “countries as important as China.” And Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao argues that “the Games should not be politicized.”\nHowever, it’s the mission of the Olympics to politicize sports – a mission the IOC has failed. The Fundamental Principles of the IOC call on the Olympics to “create a way of life based on ... respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and promote “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” A primary goal of the Olympics is to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world” through sport, yet the IOC and participating nations stand nearly silent as violence and human rights abuses unfold in the Olympics host nation.\nIOC President Jacques Rogge said he doesn’t want to take action that “penalize(s) innocent athletes,” but what about the innocent citizens penalized by human rights violations? The Olympic mission demands that he take an interest in the people of China, too. Unlike Kouchner’s twisted view, there should never be decisions made at the expense of human rights. Turning a blind eye to problems in China for the sake of the temporary economic boosts grossly violates the spirit of sports and the Olympic mission.\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who urged President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies, gets it right: “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”\nThe IOC and world leaders (particularly Bush) need to end their silence soon or risk an Olympics with nothing but tarnished gold.
(03/27/08 12:18am)
Five years. 4,000 American bodies. $500 billion.\nThe United States’ terrorizing war recently passed these grim milestones. One day, one life and $1 are more than I would’ve wagered and lost on this mission. The numbers become even more appalling if we add in the estimated 80,000 to 150,000 Iraqi lives lost.\nAfter the 4,000th American died, Bush tried to reassure the families and friends of slain soldiers that their loved ones “were not lost in vain.” He arrogantly believes that we will gratefully praise his agenda and think, “Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.”\nSorry, Mr. President. War doesn’t work that way. War destroys and destabilizes. War devalues human life. War breeds resentment and animosity. War demolishes hope for building the bonds and political trust that would otherwise lead to peaceful relations. War will never lay the foundation for peace.\nWhile I don’t respect Bush’s war agenda, I do feel for the troops who suffer most directly from this war. Maybe the voices of the dead will provide some perspective on the war. Taking their perspectives to heart honors their lives far more than empty justifications for their death. The New York Times recently published e-mails and blog entries from fallen troops whose messages attest to the gloomy and ghastly outcomes of war. The letters are unedited in order to retain the soldiers’ voices. Imagine the mental burden of writing a goodbye “death letter” to your loved one on the outside chance that this time you won’t return from the atrocity of war. Specialist Daniel Gomez wrote, “If you’re reading this, then something has happen to me and I am sorry. I promised you I would come back to you, but I guess it was a promise I could not keep.”\nStaff Sgt. Juan Campos told his wife, “You never think that anything is or can happen to you, at first you feel invincible, but then little by little things start to wear on you.” \nNo one is immune or numb to the effects of war. Daily encounters with death and dehumanization invariably take their toll.\nSgt. Ryan Wood described a “feeling of total abandonment by a government and a country you used to love because politics are fighting this war......and its a losing battle....and we’re the ones ultimently paying the price.” And that the price is more than dollars or bodies. War assesses a psychological tax on troops and Iraqi citizens who live with the daily presence of death, injury and chaos. It is also an indirect tax on areas that would strengthen our nation such as education, healthcare and infrastructure when $500 billion is funneled toward deadly instruments of war rather than services of peace, life and creation.\nThese voices show how each grim milestone represents a far greater toll on our troops, our country and the world.\nWe cannot bear to pass one more milestone on this costly pathway, a war that destroys hope for peace.
(03/20/08 2:33am)
I have no doubt: Sen. Barack Obama needs to be the next president of the United States. He embodies a crucial reversal of the divisive, polarizing politics that most politicians have employed in the last few decades.\nThe current evidence of Obama’s ability to address the needs of all Americans surfaced when he delivered a major speech on race and politics in America. The speech came after a recent spate of race-related controversies that, in Obama’s words, “reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.”\nObama primarily responded to recent short excerpts from a “fiery sermon” by his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright that contained racially-charged and supposedly anti-American sentiments. But Obama refused to let this controversy set back his campaign. Instead, he beautifully turned it around into a profound moment on the inescapable and deeply-rooted impact of race in our lives.\nObama acknowledged the anger, frustrations and fears that people of color feel about the effects of more than two centuries of laws, policies and practices that established a racial hierarchy we haven’t overcome. Quoting William Faulkner, Obama said, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We have yet to fix problems of segregated, inferior education. Current generations face the effects of legalized discrimination over property ownership, loans, jobs and union memberships, which prevented black families from amassing wealth. And Obama acknowledged the often overlooked psychological costs of “shame and frustration” that come from not being able to provide for one’s family because of circumstances beyond one’s control.\nBut Obama also helps us see that America’s social and racial problems are not merely black issues. He acknowledges that many “working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.” They are “anxious about their futures” as jobs ship overseas and unemployment rises. He recognizes the feeling of resentment that, in a globally competitive market, someone else’s dreams seem to come at the expense of white Americans.\nObama knows we cannot simply wish away or condemn the anger and resentment from every racial perspective because those feelings “have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.” Instead we must confront directly and discuss openly all the fears, anxieties and resentments that all Americans experience, problems where the complexity of race is unavoidably interwoven.\nObama’s hopeful, unifying message must not be dismissed or ignored. More than any other candidate, I’m convinced he has the perspective, knowledge and ability to pull Americans out of their “respective corners” in order to “come together and solve challenges” that affect every person in this country. A victory for Obama would decisively reject the divisive politics of political pundits and talk show hosts, culture war politicians and others who want to slice-and-dice the country into warring factions.\nNo candidate will solve every problem, but Obama will undoubtedly move us toward a “more perfect union.”
(03/06/08 1:54am)
This season on “American Idol,” the men will perform hits from the 1980s while giving nude lap dances to guys in the audience.\nWait. That’s my dream version of American Idol. But if it becomes reality it appears that one contestant already has a leg-up on his competition.\nThe Associated Press reported that American Idol contestant David Hernandez worked at Dick’s Cabaret, an Arizona strip club, for three years where he appeared fully nude and performed lap dances for the “mostly male” clientele. (Translation: it was a gay strip club.)\nAccording to the club owner, Hernandez “had the look and the type that people like, so he made pretty good money.” That’s good. In case the “Idol” producers boot him from the show, he’ll have a lucrative fall-back.\nHernandez left this personal factoid out of the “Things you’d be surprised to know about me” confessional segment during last week’s episode. Maybe he didn’t want to let America in on his little secret. Or maybe he knew the gay men in the audience wouldn’t be all that surprised. Most likely he was trying to hide a part of his identity he knew others would attack and condemn.\nLast season also featured a sex controversy when racy photos of “American Idol” screecher Antonella Barba surfaced on the Internet. Her scandal blew over and she remained in the competition. But in 2003 Frenchie Davis was disqualified from “Idol” when her pictures surfaced on an adult Web site.\nIt’s troubling that Hernandez, Barba and Davis all felt pressure to be secretive about their past ventures for fear of being discovered, punished and publicly shamed. Odds are they would have been much better off simply being upfront about their various expressions of sexuality from the start. But I won’t fault them. Other social pressures forced them into a sexual closet where they had to hide.\nThese repressive social forces are evident in the “scandal” that ensued upon discovery of Davis’s and Barba’s photos and now in the developing brouhaha over Hernandez’s gay strip club resume. (Sadly, I won’t be surprised if producers punish Hernandez and dismiss him from the show even before this column prints). Our culture has become increasingly sexualized in many ways, yet there are still strict rules and norms about supposedly acceptable expressions of sexuality. Stripping and public photos and any overt expression of homosexuality clearly violate the rules of sexual repression.\nBut there is nothing inherently shameful or wrong about expressing sexuality. It’s a natural part of humanity that we’ve all been wired to express in many wonderful (and quite honestly, fun) ways.\nI hope Hernandez survives the so-called controversy of natural expressions of human sexuality. If he does, I’d love to see him flaunt that sexuality to his advantage in an upcoming episode. My song recommendations: Madonna’s “Human Nature” or the Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons.” \nEven better: Tune in for Showtunes theme night. He could perform the show-stopping finale from “The Full Monty.”\nHe’d get my vote.
(02/28/08 3:42am)
Barack Obama’s speech-making ability garners as much attention as the candidate himself. He’s a masterful speaker who knows how to work a crowd, sell a message and evoke some fierce emotional and intellectual reactions.\nObama’s rhetoric rocketed to national glory at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His eloquent message of hope and unity in a divided Red and Blue America brought tears to my eyes. I was touched and inspired. I thought, “How soon can Barack run for president?!”\nFour years later, he’s neck-and-neck for the Democratic Presidential nomination, and I’m still captivated by his eloquence and persuasiveness in stump speeches, victory speeches and press appearances. But today, his fancy talk receives more negative than positive media attention in the thick of this presidential race.\nHis detractors want voters to believe he’s a quick-talking salesman, using words to manipulate and distract us. He’s labeled as all talk and no action. His words sound pretty, but they lead us away from real change. The Clinton campaign recently attacked Obama for running only on the strength of rhetoric and hollow promises. Sen. John McCain has vowed to keep Americans from being “deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change.”\nObama has also met charges of unoriginality and plagiarism because he has borrowed phrases from great speakers such as Martin Luther King Jr. Sen. Hillary Clinton lashed out at Obama in a recent debate: “If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words ... Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.” \nBut before Clinton speaks of originality, she needs a history lesson. Her attacks on Obama and his rhetoric are not original either. The criticism of Obama’s powerful and persuasive speech-making today traces back more than 2,500 years when thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle attacked the Sophists, teachers of rhetoric who instructed Greeks how to use language to persuade and convince in political arenas.\nThe skepticism of Obama’s rhetoric and the attacks on his language are as ill-founded today as they were in ancient Greece. Political change comes from language that first affects our hearts and minds.\nObama masterfully weaves borrowed and original ideas together in order to create new ways of thinking. His words help voters see the world from new perspectives and embrace new attitudes. His speeches invent new ways of confronting the world that lead to new ways to identify with one another and bridge differences, which in turn create new possibilities for and pathways to action. Obama’s rhetoric isn’t empty. It’s the very force that creates the attitudes, beliefs and conditions for change.\nMocking his critics with a deliberate grammatical error, Obama told a crowd in Ohio, “I make no apologies for being able to talk good.” Nor should he. His awareness of the power and possibilities of communication gives him an advantage that will hopefully land him in the White House.
(02/21/08 2:51am)
"I’m sorry” isn’t an easy thing to say, particularly when it’s decades overdue.\nThis month, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd historically and boldly apologized for a “great stain” on Australia’s “soul”: its treatment of Aboriginal people. He apologized for the “indignity and degradation,” the “pain, suffering and hurt” and “profound grief” that unjust government laws and policies inflicted on Aborigines, particularly the “Stolen Generations.” For decades the government removed indigenous children from their families, claiming it was “protecting” them, and placed them in harsh living conditions with poor education and frequent abuse.\nOnly a few nations have apologized for past atrocities and injustices. Canada apologized to its native people in 1998 for deprivation and mistreatment that led in part to unemployment, poverty and poor health conditions. South Africa apologized for apartheid in 1992 followed by years of public accountability through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.\nUnfortunately, the U.S. isn’t scrambling to follow these commendable examples.\nTo its credit, our government has offered a few apologies. It has demonstrated regret for the “grave injustice” of the “evacuation, relocation and internment” of Japanese Americans during World War II. It has recognized the “deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” And it has acknowledged the evils of the Tuskegee medical experiments, where poor black men were prevented from receiving medical treatment for syphilis without their knowledge or consent.\nThese public acknowledgments of injustice and inhumanity were important, but do you notice any glaring omissions? This country enacted laws and policies that forcibly removed native people from their land and exterminated them. The government upheld slavery and segregation for many years and passed laws that explicitly prevented black people from acquiring land, homes, education and other fundamental civil rights. Yet we refuse to utter a sincere “I’m sorry” for these glaring injustices whose effects live on today. And that’s a pity.\nA government apology is a largely symbolic gesture, yet it forces citizens to acknowledge the things we would prefer not to remember but must not forget. It makes us reflect on shameful times when we failed to uphold our ideals so that we can learn from the past, make amends and ensure we don’t repeat our mistakes. We’ll never learn anything if we turn our heads in silence.\nMost of us are several generations removed from slavery, segregation and native genocide. But we are guilty of living in a world shaped by those events, acting as if they are irrelevant today, and attempting to detach ourselves from the contemporary effects of those events. A public apology forces us to look directly at our past and confront its role in our present.\nMost of us are generally well-intentioned, compassionate people. We don’t like to acknowledge wrongdoing. We don’t want to confront our direct or indirect role in injustice. But in order to live up to its greatness, our country – all of us – must own up to those moments in which our brightness turned dark.\nI’m sorry it’s taking so long.
(02/07/08 3:29am)
American democracy is an illusion. Before this country continues to force-feed democracy to the far corners of the earth, we’d do well to evaluate our own sketchy democratic process.\nEspecially troubling is the inclusion of “superdelegates” who vote for the Democratic party’s presidential nominee. Political leaders, totalling 842 in all, including Democratic governors, members of Congress, former presidents Clinton and Carter and Democratic National Committee members get a strongly-weighted vote that could help swing the eventual nomination toward Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In other words, it is possible that the people’s choice could be trumped by those already in power.\nFor example, even though Clinton finished in third place after the first Iowa caucuses, she was still in first place for the nomination with 69 more delegates than Obama, thanks largely to the superdelegates backing her.\nThe Democratic Party created superdelegates in order to ensure some power and control over the nomination process. Democrats wanted to guarantee that the American people would not select a nominee who was too radical, too out of sync with the people already in power. In other words, all this talk of “change” that Clinton and Obama deliver becomes questionable when we know the powerful party elites work to nominate someone who will best maintain the status quo.\nWe’re told that all voices are equal in our political process. But the superdelegates suggest that some are more “equal” than others.\nThis week’s Super Tuesday is also a super farce. For that matter, the primary elections as a whole slap the democratic process in the face. Why do the good folks of Iowa and New Hampshire get to set the tone for the entire race for the presidential nomination? (“Tradition” is not an acceptable answer.) By the time people of Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska and Oregon vote in May, the nominee will likely be determined. In essence, those states don’t get to vote. \nCitizens in only six states had the option to vote for John Edwards. The votes in those six states forced a strong candidate out of the race before the other 44 states got to weigh in. Edwards’ own constituents in North Carolina won’t get to cast a ballot for him.\nA more democratic primary election process would set one day for national primaries so that some states don’t control the nomination process.\nImagine if we elected a president that way? Wait, we do. But instead of discarding the opinion of an entire state, we just ignore the votes of a large percentage of each state. The Electoral College system erases the red votes from the blue states and the blue votes from the red states. No state is 100 percent Democratic or Republican, but our final tallies treat them that way.\n“Go vote!” we say. “It’s your civic duty!” But don’t be upset when we don’t really count your vote.
(12/06/07 3:59am)
If we want to gauge current attitudes about gender and sexuality we need only to look in our junk e-mail folders.\nMy Gmail filtered 678 spam e-mails in the last 30 days, and over half promote increased penis size and improved sexual performance. Some subject lines keep the message simple: “Enlarge your penis up to four inches.” Most find fancier attention getters: “Add more male meat to your package!”\nBut the vast majority of the subject lines both reveal and construct sexist and heterosexist cultural attitudes.\nMany messages concoct a demeaning belief that women only need a big penis for ultimate happiness – from the simple and straightforward “Satisfy any woman” to the more creative forms: “All sweet flowers succumb to big rods” or “Don’t you know that girls yearn for big schlongs?” These messages degrade women as sex-crazed creatures with ravenous appetites for penises.\nThe sexist attitudes continue: “Cutest girls will go horny and wild when you pull out your new big python” and “As your dick gets larger, no woman will say ‘no.’” As if women have a mystical sixth-sense about penis size. Add a few inches and suddenly male crotches have a gravitational pull that women cannot escape? Shockingly, I’ve never witnessed this phenomenon.\nThese ads also cultivate heterosexist mindsets. Only straight relationships exist in the world of penis-size spam; the ads wipe gays and lesbians from existence. We’re left to assume that lesbians fall in line with all other penis-loving women, while gay men fade to irrelevance since penises only satisfy women. Unfortunately, the exclusion of gay men seems like a tremendous marketing oversight. A little market research with most gay men (and straight women) might suggest that 4 more inches on most guys would harm your sex life more than help it. I for one would probably turn and run away.\nThese ads damage male identity as well because they directly equate penis size to “true” manliness, masculinity, importance and self-worth. “True masculinity is impossible without a substantial volume of male meat.” “Large and in charge.” We’re left to believe that men are worthless unless they achieve imaginary, unattainable penis standards.\nThe messages breed permanent self-delusion and dissatisfaction, as they adopt belittling, mocking tones that create fears of marginal worth: “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped being a loser with a tiny penis?” Other e-mails promise unreachable immortality – “If you treat your filly as a goddess, why not become a God in her bedroom?”\nThe spam filter regularly keeps these attitudes out of my inbox. If only we could find a social filter with the same function. These messages reveal cultural attitudes that aren’t as conveniently deleted. Instead, these social attitudes circulate and get reconstructed throughout pop culture: in music, movies, sports, even everyday conversation. We’d do well to identify, resist and revise these beliefs that severely limit and restrict our full sexuality and gender expression. And our humanity.\nAs long as these (hetero)sexist mindsets spam our world, none of us will ever measure up.
(11/29/07 1:54am)
Straight guys are so gay.\nSports are stereotypically associated with straight males, even though we know plenty of sports enthusiasts and athletes who break that stereotype. It’s astounding how many people (both gay and straight) seem genuinely surprised when I “come out” as a wild college football, basketball, tennis and baseball fan – as if a gay guy couldn’t possibly enjoy competitive athletics.\nBut the supposedly “straight” world of sports is a little more flamboyant than we often admit. From “tight ends” to the “long ball” to “pitchers” and “catchers,” it’s easy to queer sports.\nIn isolation, all the penetration metaphors we apply to sports and sexual intercourse – drilling, nailing, pounding, plowing – aren’t necessarily queer. But in the context of men bumping up against each other they take on new meaning.\nA quarterback drills his tight end. On the next play, he nails his receiver down the field with a long one. The running back finds the hole and penetrates the defenders. A few plays later the quarterback is sacked, pounded from behind by a defensive back. In basketball, the point guard penetrates the lane and takes it to the hole. In baseball, the hitter drills it through the gap in left field.\nPhil Jackson, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, gets it. After a recent loss, Jackson said, “We call this a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ game because there’s so much penetration and kick-outs.” Unfortunately, he assigned a negative connotation to the penetration, and he was reprimanded by the league for his implicitly disparaging comments. Next time, a winning coach should celebrate all the man-on-man penetration his team achieved.\nPenetration metaphors aside, the butt-slapping, hand-checking, grabbing, groping and contortionist crotch-in-face dog piles on the court and the field make me raise a questioning eyebrow. It’s as if sport gives men an outlet to enjoy one another’s touch. Society is so homophobic that these poor men can only experience and take pleasure in physical closeness (even in a nonsexual way) under the guise of competitive athletics.\nThere’s also the drag queen in the middle of the field that no one wants to acknowledge: the “Cinderella” team. How perfectly gender-bending and queer. We celebrate an unexpectedly successful feel-good team through association with a stepdaughter who magically transforms into a beautiful princess and falls in love with a sexy prince. Never mind that a less romantic rags-to-riches story such as Oliver Twist might provide a better metaphor; the male sports world prefers the sequins, glitter and ball gowns of Cinderella.\nIn the end, it doesn’t matter how queer men’s sports appear. The point is that the supposedly solid line marking a boundary between two poles of sexuality is woollier than we treat it. Many straight men waste a significant amount of psychological energy guarding this socially constructed, imaginary boundary as they foolishly attempt to prove that they belong definitively on the so-called “normal” side of the wall.\nFace it, fellas, we can’t help but be a little queer. Relax and go watch men play with balls.
(11/15/07 5:00am)
LOS ANGELES -- Jerry Seinfeld turned more honey into money as his animated comedy "Bee Movie" buzzed to the top of the box office in its second weekend.\nThe DreamWorks-Paramount flick, which had debuted at No. 2 behind Universal's "American Gangster" the previous weekend, packed in family crowds to pull in $26 million, raising its total to $72.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.\n"American Gangster," starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, was a strong No. 2 with $24.3 million in sales, lifting its total to $80.7 million.\n"We don't often see a movie start out in the No. 2 position then move up to No. 1," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "It just shows how strong the word of mouth is on this movie and that families are really enjoying it."\nAdult audiences had put "American Gangster" ahead on Friday, but weekend matinee crowds lifted "Bee Movie" to the top spot. "Bee Movie" is positioned well for Thanksgiving next week, when children will be out of school.\n"This is terrific playing time for this movie," said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks.\nTwo of Hollywood's biggest cultural icons — Santa Claus and Tom Cruise — had to settle for also-ran debuts.\nThe Warner Bros. family comedy "Fred Claus," with Vince Vaughn as the black-sheep brother of Santa (Paul Giamatti), opened at No. 3 with $19.2 million, on par with last November's $19.5 million debut of Tim Allen's holiday tale "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause."\nCruise's "Lions for Lambs," co-starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in a drama interlocking three stories in the war on terror, premiered at No. 4 with $6.7 million. The movie directed by Redford was the first release by the rejuvenated MGM banner United Artists since Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner took it over last year.\nCosting a modest $35 million to produce, "Lions for Lambs" was aimed at an older, thinking-person's audience compared to the crowds that turn out for Cruise's action movies. Just over two-thirds of the audience was 35 or older, according to MGM.\n"Older audiences don't necessarily come out the first weekend, so we're looking to get a very solid run all the way through the Thanksgiving holiday," said Clark Woods, MGM head of distribution.\nSummit Entertainment's "P2," starring Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols in a thriller about a woman trapped in a parking garage and terrorized by the attendant on Christmas Eve, opened at No. 8 with $2.2 million.\nJoel and Ethan Coen's crime tale "No Country for Old Men" got off to a great start in limited release, taking in $1.2 million in just 28 theaters for an average of $42,929 a cinema.\nBy comparison, "Fred Claus" averaged $5,336 in 3,603 theaters and "Lions for Lambs" did $3,029 in 2,215 cinemas.\n"No Country for Old Men," a Miramax release, is one of the year's most acclaimed films, starring Tommy Lee Jones as a weary Texas sheriff, Javier Bardem as a ruthless killer and Josh Brolin as a man on the run after making off with $2 million from a drug deal gone violently wrong.
(11/15/07 4:02am)
The “n-word” has experienced a turbulent year. New York City banned the word in February, and in July the NAACP held a public burial for the word complete with coffin and headstone in a Detroit cemetery. Now the word has been exiled from the nation’s second-largest city.\nLast Friday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution that symbolically banned the “n-word.” The nonbinding resolution calls on residents to stop using the slur “and to encourage all others whom they may encounter in their daily routine to cease from using the word as well.”\nIn order to ensure thorough enforcement, perhaps they should also encourage schools and libraries to burn all copies of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and encourage all teens to smash every hip-hop and rap album that includes any variant of the word. Good luck, Los Angeles.\nCity Councilman Bernard Parks proposed the measure partly because of recent situations carrying racial overtones and in order to bring attention to the anniversary of the Michael Richards incident. “We should celebrate that as an opportunity to bring attention to it,” Parks said.\nHowever, it’s counter-intuitive to abolish a word in order to call attention to a horrible encounter with it. Far from eliminating the effect of the-word-that-must-not-be-named, bans and fear of the word give it more power and control over us. Simply pretending the word does not exist will not destroy its power.\nThe Los Angeles City Council also called attention to the “trauma and violence” that the “n-word” produces. Councilmember Jan Perry said she was traumatized after hearing the “toxic” word directed at her many years ago. “It affected me so much psychologically that to this day, I remember the name and the place of the person who used that word,” Perry said. “Even 25, 30 years later, I still remember it like it happened Thursday.”\nUnfortunately, a symbolic ban won’t erase the trauma of past experiences. Nor will it abolish the word or prevent trauma from other words. Unless the Los Angeles City Council approves more resolutions, plenty of other inflammatory words are still fair game: “coon,” “spearchucker,” “tar baby,” not to mention “spic,” “gook,” “chink,” “kike” or “faggot.” We all know them, and city council resolutions won’t produce collective amnesia. For that matter, if we seriously wish to prevent painful experiences that cause psychological trauma, we ought to ban the word “stupid.” Plenty of parents and teachers hiss that destructive name at children each day and it arguably degrades and does as much psychological damage as any racial epithet could.\nI whole-heartedly agree the word “nigger” – among others – is destructive and damaging, but bans and moratoriums won’t eliminate its effect in our society. On the contrary, they might prevent educated conversations about the history and context of these words because they scare us away from serious dialogues about race and create paralyzing fear about saying the wrong thing, especially for white folks.\nLos Angeles has merely applied an ineffective “banned”-aid to a deep social wound that requires much more serious, careful treatment.
(11/15/07 4:02am)
The “n-word” has experienced a turbulent year. New York City banned the word in February, and in July the NAACP held a public burial for the word complete with coffin and headstone in a Detroit cemetery. Now the word has been exiled from the nation’s second-largest city.\nLast Friday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution that symbolically banned the “n-word.” The nonbinding resolution calls on residents to stop using the slur “and to encourage all others whom they may encounter in their daily routine to cease from using the word as well.”\nIn order to ensure thorough enforcement, perhaps they should also encourage schools and libraries to burn all copies of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and encourage all teens to smash every hip-hop and rap album that includes any variant of the word. Good luck, Los Angeles.\nCity Councilman Bernard Parks proposed the measure partly because of recent situations carrying racial overtones and in order to bring attention to the anniversary of the Michael Richards incident. “We should celebrate that as an opportunity to bring attention to it,” Parks said.\nHowever, it’s counter-intuitive to abolish a word in order to call attention to a horrible encounter with it. Far from eliminating the effect of the-word-that-must-not-be-named, bans and fear of the word give it more power and control over us. Simply pretending the word does not exist will not destroy its power.\nThe Los Angeles City Council also called attention to the “trauma and violence” that the “n-word” produces. Councilmember Jan Perry said she was traumatized after hearing the “toxic” word directed at her many years ago. “It affected me so much psychologically that to this day, I remember the name and the place of the person who used that word,” Perry said. “Even 25, 30 years later, I still remember it like it happened Thursday.”\nUnfortunately, a symbolic ban won’t erase the trauma of past experiences. Nor will it abolish the word or prevent trauma from other words. Unless the Los Angeles City Council approves more resolutions, plenty of other inflammatory words are still fair game: “coon,” “spearchucker,” “tar baby,” not to mention “spic,” “gook,” “chink,” “kike” or “faggot.” We all know them, and city council resolutions won’t produce collective amnesia. For that matter, if we seriously wish to prevent painful experiences that cause psychological trauma, we ought to ban the word “stupid.” Plenty of parents and teachers hiss that destructive name at children each day and it arguably degrades and does as much psychological damage as any racial epithet could.\nI whole-heartedly agree the word “nigger” – among others – is destructive and damaging, but bans and moratoriums won’t eliminate its effect in our society. On the contrary, they might prevent educated conversations about the history and context of these words because they scare us away from serious dialogues about race and create paralyzing fear about saying the wrong thing, especially for white folks.\nLos Angeles has merely applied an ineffective “banned”-aid to a deep social wound that requires much more serious, careful treatment.
(11/08/07 12:39am)
Each year after Halloween, controversy erupts over some poor fool’s limited judgment and social consciousness in selecting a racially-charged costume. Consider some recent unfortunate Halloween costume tricks:\nSix football players from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., sparked campus-wide controversy and discussion after putting on blackface and body paint in order to portray African tribesmen.\nAt the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four white kids donned blackface to portray the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie “Cool Runnings.”\nAt a Halloween party and government fundraiser in Washington, D.C., hosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a guest sported a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and makeup to darken his skin.\nI’m sure these folks thought they were oh-so-clever, original and harmless. That is evident in their reactions to criticism of their costumes. The typical dismissals go something like this: “We didn’t mean to offend anyone,” “It was just a costume” and “This costume isn’t racist, so don’t make such a big deal about it.”\nThe peculiar thing is that most of us would agree it’s a bad idea to dress up in a white sheet, pointy white hood and carry a noose for Halloween. It would also be ill-advised to don a Hitler-esque mustache and parade around wearing swastikas. Why? Because we know these performances will undoubtedly invoke horrible historical baggage.\nToo bad we have such an anemic understanding of the history of race. These blackface folks could’ve used a history lesson before applying their makeup.\nIn the early 1800s, slaves gathered in the evenings to sing, laugh and dance – a way to stay sane and survive in the face of oppressive conditions. Slave owners used to mimic these “plantation shows” by rubbing burnt cork on their faces and mocking their “property” in order to further ridicule and dehumanize their slaves.\nWhen slavery ended, these popular blackface minstrel shows continued, and white folks continued to use the performances to perpetuate destructive, damaging and degrading caricatures of blacks as bumbling, lazy, foolish, over-sexualized buffoons. These racist images carried into the mid-1900s through the popular radio and television show “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The caricatures also appeared in places such as the popular Merrie Melodies cartoons, thereby indoctrinating children with these dehumanizing messages.\nLike it or not, this baggage comes along with blackface. When white people decide to darken their skin and play black, they have to accept the racist ideologies linked to that performance – no matter how much they protest that they “didn’t mean to offend anyone.” The fact that so many white folks don’t know this history and seem surprised when blackface creates controversy is a sad comment on how little we know about the history of racism and its lingering presence in U.S. culture.\nWhite folks have the freedom to put on any costume they like, as long as they’re prepared to take responsibility for their ignorance and accept the reactions. But we cannot dismiss and erase history when it’s convenient for our entertainment.\nThat’s the scariest Halloween trick I can imagine.
(11/08/07 12:39am)
Each year after Halloween, controversy erupts over some poor fool’s limited judgment and social consciousness in selecting a racially-charged costume. Consider some recent unfortunate Halloween costume tricks:\nSix football players from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., sparked campus-wide controversy and discussion after putting on blackface and body paint in order to portray African tribesmen.\nAt the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four white kids donned blackface to portray the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie “Cool Runnings.”\nAt a Halloween party and government fundraiser in Washington, D.C., hosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a guest sported a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and makeup to darken his skin.\nI’m sure these folks thought they were oh-so-clever, original and harmless. That is evident in their reactions to criticism of their costumes. The typical dismissals go something like this: “We didn’t mean to offend anyone,” “It was just a costume” and “This costume isn’t racist, so don’t make such a big deal about it.”\nThe peculiar thing is that most of us would agree it’s a bad idea to dress up in a white sheet, pointy white hood and carry a noose for Halloween. It would also be ill-advised to don a Hitler-esque mustache and parade around wearing swastikas. Why? Because we know these performances will undoubtedly invoke horrible historical baggage.\nToo bad we have such an anemic understanding of the history of race. These blackface folks could’ve used a history lesson before applying their makeup.\nIn the early 1800s, slaves gathered in the evenings to sing, laugh and dance – a way to stay sane and survive in the face of oppressive conditions. Slave owners used to mimic these “plantation shows” by rubbing burnt cork on their faces and mocking their “property” in order to further ridicule and dehumanize their slaves.\nWhen slavery ended, these popular blackface minstrel shows continued, and white folks continued to use the performances to perpetuate destructive, damaging and degrading caricatures of blacks as bumbling, lazy, foolish, over-sexualized buffoons. These racist images carried into the mid-1900s through the popular radio and television show “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The caricatures also appeared in places such as the popular Merrie Melodies cartoons, thereby indoctrinating children with these dehumanizing messages.\nLike it or not, this baggage comes along with blackface. When white people decide to darken their skin and play black, they have to accept the racist ideologies linked to that performance – no matter how much they protest that they “didn’t mean to offend anyone.” The fact that so many white folks don’t know this history and seem surprised when blackface creates controversy is a sad comment on how little we know about the history of racism and its lingering presence in U.S. culture.\nWhite folks have the freedom to put on any costume they like, as long as they’re prepared to take responsibility for their ignorance and accept the reactions. But we cannot dismiss and erase history when it’s convenient for our entertainment.\nThat’s the scariest Halloween trick I can imagine.
(10/31/07 11:24pm)
When the largest lawyer’s organization questions the justness of the justice system, we’ve got a problem.\nOn Monday, the American Bar Association called for a nationwide freeze on executions. A three-year review of capital punishment in eight states, including Indiana, revealed serious problems in the justice system that compromise fairness and accuracy in cases involving the death penalty. The study examined 12 factors, including collection and preservation of DNA evidence, interrogation procedures, crime lab conditions, jury selection and instruction, availability and quality of defense services and racial disparities in capital punishment.\nStephon Hanlon, the chair of the ABA committee that conducted the review said, “After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed.” With regards to capital punishment, he described our justice system as “rife with irregularity.”\nThe flaws and irregularities include misidentification by eyewitnesses and under-funded crime labs that don’t require accreditation. DNA evidence is occasionally mishandled or discarded. Most states in the review failed to provide written jury instructions or thorough explanation of sentencing options and guidelines. And all states in the study demonstrated significant racial disparities in capital punishment sentences while little, if anything, was being done to investigate or correct the gross disparities.\nUnfortunately, the ABA refuses to take a position on capital punishment, calling only for a freeze on executions while states review their capital punishment procedures. If the evidence of serious flaws in capital punishment isn’t enough to stop executions, then we have a serious moral crisis on our hands. We can’t simply sit back and be cool with the real possibility that a few innocent folks will be murdered by the state. That should throw up some blood-red ethical flags for all of us.\nThe state of Indiana has documented 91 executions since 1897, 19 since the death penalty was restored in Indiana in 1977. Some of those “executions” include mob lynching of blacks accused of sexual misconduct (which probably means a black man looked at a white woman the wrong way). I wonder how many other racially motivated lynchings don’t appear in the record books, even though justice was supposedly being served to innocent people.\nFor me, a moratorium doesn’t go far enough. Even with a hypothetically flawless system, the death penalty amounts to government-sanctioned slaying. It’s not justice but an animalistic impulse for revenge driven by a lynch-mob mentality. Tit-for-tat, murder-for-murder takes us further away from justice and puts us all on par with the mentality of those we seek to punish. This pure vindictiveness and ultimate revenge dehumanizes all of us.\nWe’ve cleaned up the messiness of mob-mentality justice, lynching and the public spectacle of bodies hanging from trees. Instead we have a biased justice system, supposedly “civilized” lethal injections and a secluded death row where those marked for payback are out-of-sight, out-of-mind.\nBut don’t be fooled by the new packaging – it’s the same murderous game that devalues human life. We need to stop playing.
(10/24/07 11:13pm)
Maybe racism is in white people’s genes.\nGeneticist and Nobel laureate James Watson of the famous DNA double-helix duo Watson and Francis Crick made waves worldwide, but not for his genetic genius. In an interview with London’s Sunday Times on Oct. 14, Watson explained that black people are not as intelligent as white people.\nWatson told the Times “there are many people of color who are very talented” but he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.” Perhaps attempting to sweeten his remarks, Watson said he hoped everyone was equal; unfortunately, he explained, “People who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”\nWatson has been suspended from a longtime post as Chancellor at a prestigious research laboratory. His British book tour and appearance at the London Science Museum were cancelled because the museum believed that his comments had “gone beyond the point of acceptable debate.”\nHow many high-profile eruptions of racism does it take before we’re willing to acknowledge we have a problem? More specifically, how much racial rancor caused by white people will it take before white people realize that race and racism is our problem more than anyone else’s?\nMichael Richards and Don Imus made racist remarks and after briefly dogging them, the conversation became an indictment of the black community for using the word “nigger” and for demeaning portrayals of black women in music videos. These men’s mistakes were opportunities to take stock of white attitudes that remain hidden by the masks of polite civil society, but white people largely refused self-reflection and made it a black problem instead.\nIn Jena, La., white students hung nooses from a tree where black students sat the previous day; a white school board dismissed it as a prank. A school fight then broke out among six black students and a white student, and the white District Attorney brought second-degree murder charges against the black students and planned to try them as adults. An all-white jury took only three hours to convict the first black student. Despite obvious racial unrest and injustice, white people aren’t eager to use Jena as a case for self-reflection about how racism is white people’s problem.\nDon’t look to Watson to model this self-reflection. He was “mortified” by his comments and explained, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.” Watson acts baffled at how these words came from his mouth, as if an alien ventriloquist spoke through him. Like all white people, he has the privilege to dismiss and deny his racism.\nInstead, we’d all do better to acknowledge these racist beliefs and use these incidents to take stock of our problem. Until white people finally own and challenge the racial problems we created and keep alive, we’ll keep getting hit in the face with these ugly reminders of our complicity in this collective problem.
(10/18/07 12:31am)
Generally speaking, it’s not wise to repeat bad ideas. Yet President Bush is pushing for Congress to renew his 2001 “No Child Left Behind” law that created universal standards and tests to measure student proficiency in reading and math.\nUnder the law, schools that fall below the government-mandated standards are dubbed failures. These schools must take corrective measures such as firing teachers and principals or closing schools completely. However, so many schools are failing that it would be impossible to close, overhaul or re-staff them all.\nMore than 1,000 of California’s 9,500 schools are “chronic failures”; in Florida, more than 441 schools should be shut down; and in Maryland, 49 schools in Baltimore alone are below standards. But last year 87 percent of persistently failing schools avoided significant changes. There are simply too many “failures” to fix.\nFrom my perspective, neither the schools nor students and teachers have failed. The law has failed because it doesn’t account for or address issues like socio-economic status and racism. We do not live in a bubble where every child’s learning environment is identical; instead, we are arguably as far from educational equity as we were in the 1950s under legal segregation.\nThe impact of race and income on educational success is so severe that author Jonathan Kozol describes “America’s educational apartheid.” Kozol encountered a black student at a low-income public school in Harlem who expressed her fear that “if people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had died or simply left for somewhere else … I think they’d be relieved.”\nWith that kind of despair it’s no wonder students in poor, segregated schools aren’t motivated to crack the code of standardized testing. When you feel that the world doesn’t care about you, when you’re worried about financial woes and survival, why would you care about reading comprehension exams?\nA Latina mother in Los Angeles whose son attends a school in a low-income area where only 22 percent of students passed the standardized exams questioned the motives of No Child Left Behind: “Maybe the system is not designed for people like us,” she said.\nNot for “people like us?” Talk about an understatement. The system is not designed for people like her, in large part because the system was designed by people like me: middle-to-upper–class white folks (mainly men) with the arrogance to assume that what works for them works for everyone and with the narrowness to think that real problems of class and race are easily overcome by learning to pass a test.\nPeople like me have the privilege to disregard the lives of the “chronic failures” who don’t learn in ways we mistakenly believe are universal. Therefore, people like me make ill-informed decisions about other people’s lives and education. \nMy hope is that we soon do away with policies for the over-privileged and instead focus on the deeply rooted inequalities that we ignore.
(09/20/07 4:00am)
It's hard to deny the power of a cheerleader chant -- at least it is when you're listening to The Go! Team. Indeed, as samples and instruments blast joyously around the chants in "Doing It Right" from GT's second album, Proof Of Youth, it makes you wonder why few (if any) acts employed this trick in the years between Toni Basil's "Mickey" and the present.\nThen again, as Proof progresses, this question is gradually answered: Cheerleaders, at least for GT, have diminishing returns. One track of cheerleader-esque vocals equals "woo-hoo!" But seven out of 11 tracks on an album? Uh … not so much. And given cheerleaders' prominence in their 2004 debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, the gimmick starts to wear thin, which brings us to the general problem with Proof: It feels rehashed. \nTLS was so singular and brilliant, its follow-up was virtually doomed to be disappointing. When you come out of left field with a sound that's like a cross between '80s hip-hop, '70s TV soundtracks and the local high school pom-pom squad, what do you do next? For Proof, The Team clearly decided to please the crowd by loading the album with songs like TLS' first single, "Ladyflash." The clearest evidence of this rests in "Fake ID" and GT's collaboration with Chuck D, "Flashlight Fight" -- both of which start off into promising new directions, only to have elements from "Ladyflash" (chants, runs, big swells) intrude like Miss Piggy in a "Muppet Show" duet.\nBut while it doesn't get high points for originality, this is hardly the worst direction that Proof could have gone -- after all, it's much more fun than if GT had tried to prove their status as "serious artistes." You'll want to get TLS first, but if your booty still needs shakin' -- give Proof a call.