Women who live in California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana can thank our government for making it legal for an employer to fire women who don’t wear makeup if that employer decides that makeup is a part of the company uniform. According to a federal appeals court ruling, reports Liz Benston of the Las Vegas Sun, it has been ruled legally possible for a Nevada casino company to “impose makeup requirements on its female bartenders without violating U.S. sex discrimination laws.”

Darlene Jespersen, who had been fired in 2000 from her bartending job at Harrah’s in Reno for “failing to follow a grooming policy for beverage servers,” intends to bring the case to a superior court. Judge Edward Reed of Reno explained that Harrah’s grooming policy “did not constitute sex discrimination because it imposed equal burdens on both sexes.”

In case this ruling is still unclear, writer Anne Newitz spells it out in an article posted on Alternet.org:

“Think this through slowly and carefully, girls: if you live in the 9th Circuit … you could be fired tomorrow if your boss decides your ‘uniform’ for work includes makeup. Supposedly this ruling doesn’t run afoul of discrimination law because it doesn’t impose an ‘unequal burden’ on women … [A] rule for women enforcing face paint is ‘equal’ to a rule forbidding men from wearing it. Now there’s some real smart logic. Presence is the same as absence! War is peace! Yup, it’s the kind of analysis that’s gotten very popular in the United States recently.”

The implications of this logic are priceless. Newitz continues,

“Never again is anyone allowed to give me crap about how women naturally want to adorn themselves with makeup, as if there’s some genetic urge to look fake that’s wended its way here on the sparkly pink path of evolution. This ain’t biology … This is some cosmetics executive getting rich on state-enforced gender norms.”

It’s not about whether women are degraded by wearing makeup, Newitz argues. Rather, the question is “whether women who are forced to wear makeup when men aren’t can be described as experiencing gender equality.” Evidently the 9th Circuit admitted that makeup costs both money and time, only to dismiss this fact as ‘academic.’ Newitz questions:

“But if these costs are so insignificant, why not require Harrah’s to pay to keep its female employees looking as if they’d just had a makeover?

Indeed. Here’s another theoretical question: how much makeup would it take to disguise the intentions of a government which leaves a path of illogic in its wake?

It’s been said in the United States that celebrities shouldn’t be using the limelight to state political opinions. It looks as though the president of Harvard University is expected to submit to the same etiquette. According to James Traub of The New York Times, Harvard University President and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers’ “provocative yodel” at an economics conference held on January 14 has “set off a worldwide avalanche of commentary and condemnation.”

Two op-ed pieces appearing in The New York Times by Olivia Judson and Charles Murray, respectively, are mavericks in the tide of controversy which, while ever-present in our country, Summers has somehow whipped into a frenzy by opening his mouth. Both Judson and Murray suggest that Summers’ comment should be entertained rather than dismissed as “a radical idea backed only by personal anecdotes and a fringe of cranks.” Scientific research in the field of innate male-female differences is one of the hottest around, and it is gaining momentum, according to Murray.

Unfortunately, at least as far as media representation is concerned, whether Summers had the right to  make such a controversial statement overshadows what Murray and Traub intimate is truly at stake: what Murray refers to as a “wholesale denial that certain bodies of scientific knowledge exist.”

In Traub’s article, Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker expressed dismay that Summers’ suggestion, in which he states that “the low representation of women scientists at universities might stem from, among other causes, innate differences between the sexes,” might not be appropriate to academic discourse:

“Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some academic rigor?”

Does anyone need a quick refresher on the filibuster and how it has been used by various political parties in the United States over the last two centuries? A website designed by the People For the American Way takes a look at the history of the filibuster in action, as well as current myths surrounding it, and how its disappearance might affect the American ecosystem.

The first Supreme Court nomination approaches as the Bush administration begins another four-year term. Use of the filibuster by Democrats during Bush’s last term successfully impeded 10 of Bush’s 52 appeals court nominees. As a result, Republicans contend that Democrats are “trampling on the Constitution” with their “abuse” of the filibuster, according to an article last month in The Washington Post by reporters Helen Dewar and Mike Allen. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has suggested he “may resort to an unusual parliamentary maneuver, dubbed the ‘nuclear option,’ to thwart such filibusters.”

An editorial available on the PFAW website argues the merits of the key role the filibuster process plays in the legislative process. It explains,

Popular arguments against the use of the filibuster claim that in the past, senators have exploited its use. A United States Senate website notes these arguments, as well as the ends toward which filibusters have been implemented.

“Many Americans are familiar with the hours-long filibuster of Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor.”

What if the use of nuclear weapons were protested based upon the potential that the wrong people might exploit their use? What if such protests were effective?

Activists interested in signing a petition to save the filibuster can find it on the PFAW website.

The last line in a letter written by the activist group Ladies of Liberty reads, “Remember: Dissent is Patriotic.” Their message is timely. On Thursday, President Bush will be re-inaugurated. The rage which inspired activism after Bush claimed the presidency in 2000 appears to have subsided into a lethargic response of depression and denial, as The Stranger’s Amy Jenniges reports:

“For lefties who became political activists for the first time in their lives last year, the realization that their hard work didn’t turn Bush out of office has translated into feelings of grief, frustration, depression, apathy, and denial — but not anger. Anger can inspire people to protest. Depression and denial lead people to hibernate, drink, and check out of politics.”

With many freedoms at stake, the Ladies of Liberty are one of several protest groups who will march in counter-inaugural rallies this Thursday, January 20th. The Ladies have organized a peaceful protest in the form of a funeral procession and will be accompanied by a New Orleans-style jazz band in mourning for “the multiple blows to the American people dealt by the Bush Administration (and the prospect of four more years of the same), as well as [in celebration for] the possibilities of rebirth and regeneration.” The blows the Ladies cite include those to the areas of women’s rights, gay rights, reproductive rights, social security, the democratic process, environmental conditions, free speech, principles of inclusion, economic equality and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment.

Some American citizens view Bush’s majority win in 2004 as a justification for silence, although they oppose his administration. Still others envision his victory as a last-ditch effort on the part of conservative America to protest the increasing speed of life in the 21st century by grasping at any straw which might slow the process down. Groups like the Ladies of Liberty voice the belief that multiple perspectives are not only rooted in American culture, they must be nurtured and provided with plenty of sunlight.

“Now the trumpet summons us again,” said John F. Kennedy in his 1961 Inauguration Speech, “not as a call to bear arms, not as a call to battle, but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.”

Susan Estrich offers one more perspective on the proposed amendment to the Constitution which would permit foreign-born American citizens the opportunity to be President of the United States. In her piece, “Immigrant President? Why Not?,” she notes that valid reasons to support such a change do exist.

“Who could oppose a constitutional amendment that allows every American child to grow up dreaming of becoming president? Why should that dream be limited to those who happened to be born in this country, excluding the growing number of Americans who were born in other countries and are Americans by choice? Are they less loyal because of the place of their birth? Of course not.”

Meanwhile, she cites “only two” reasons to oppose such a change. One of the reasons she argues against the amendment “commutes between Brentwood and Sacramento.”

There is a strong possibility that Arnold Schwarzenegger will succeed in altering the Constitution. Estrich is not the only person to think so. Nor is she the only person who would prefer the Constitution remain unaltered.

Estrich brings up one loophole which might act in favor of a Constitutional amendment: Democratic principles.

“The problem, as my friend blogger Mickey Kaus puts it, is that most Democrats are just too principled to act in such a strategic but unprincipled way when it comes to the Constitution. And unless they do, the amendment wins.”

It’s an interesting dilemma. How might Democrats oppose an amendment which would, at least in theory, remove one more obstacle from the path which leads toward cultural equality?

Democrats who find they cannot oppose such an amendment would do well to remember another European with money and pull: George Soros.

For anyone who may have wondered, last week’s tsunami proves beyond a doubt that humanity has yet to conquer the natural world. In fact, in his piece, “How Nature Changes History,” Donald G. McNeil, Jr. recalls several instances in which natural catastrophes have changed the course of history.

“Death and devastation have deflected the course of nations,” he reports. “If the past is any guide, the response to the shock of Dec. 26 will loom larger in history than the wave itself.”

Is this catastrophe the result of global warming? How much of global warming is due to human negligence? Although the immediate repercussions of this worldwide disaster have pushed these questions into the background, eventually they will be addressed.

Dr. Brian M. Fagan, an archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, alludes to the potential implications of this disaster by recalling three instances in history in which civilization changed after similar watery catastrophes.

Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, contends that the potential for religious repercussions is as serious an issue as that of a looming environmental threat. He expects the present devastation will act as “a wacko magnet of enormous proportions with new cults founded” in the rural areas which were hit hardest. He recalls the 1883 eruption of the island of Krakatoa, which has been immortalized in the children’s book, The Twenty-One Balloons. “There was a sense that the old gods had failed [believers],” Mr. Saffo is cited as saying.

Saffo anticipates that a fundamentalist response to such a loss in faith might be severe. “The Indonesian government’s response ‘has to be swift, effective and free of corruption or it will be a gift to the fundamentalists,’ [Saffo] said. The American war on terror … might fare better by outspending Islamic charities in Indonesia than by ‘pouring money into the sand’ in Iraq.”

However nations worldwide choose to respond to the disaster, the interdependence of humanity and nature cannot be negated. Both thought as well as a diversity of response, reflected by the diversity of the nations who are responding in record numbers, may prove to be the most effective solution.

“The European Dreamers,” an article published in The Economist print edition on December 16, 2004, inflates a bubble of idealism about the current perception of the European Union as seen through the eyes of the West, then seems to pop it in the end. Whatever the leanings of the article, there are enough opinions to go around, even for the Westerner with the choosiest tastes.

The old stand-by contention that Europe is a washed-up enterprise gains support from Europe’s current low birth rate and the aversion to immigrants, yet it fails to squash a growing trend of optimism about the future of the E.U. “One explanation for this new strand of opinion doubtless lies in the grim realities of modern publishing,” the article suggests. In other words, volatility sells as well as yellow journalism.

T. R. Reid, author of The United States of Europe, offers a la dolce vita-inspired perspective of Europe, which is understandably attractive to the generation of overworked Americans who flocked to see Under The Tuscan Sun. He offers several recent situations in which the United States has been forced to subscribe to European demands, though The Economist questions whether these illustrate European supremacy or just a process of globalization.

When contrasted with the opposing perspective, which is explained by Jeremy Rifkin, author of The European Dream, is it any wonder that an increasing number of readers prefer optimism? Mr. Rifkin notes that it is not uncommon for “realists” to argue that “…the sad truth is that without a massive increase in non-EU immigration in the next several decades, Europe is likely to wither and die.”

It’s all in how you look at it. The Economist enjoys a distinctive European view:

“Awareness of the depth of the political and economic challenges that lie ahead accounts for the fact that many European officials are more inclined to troubled pessimism than to Rifkinesque optimism. This European willingness to be self-critical is, as it happens, a genuine strength. Unfortunately, there is a lot to be self-critical about.”

Filmmaker Michael Moore has shown that Americans are no strangers to self-criticism either. So toward which side of the idealism question does The Economist tend? Is The Economist intimating in this article that Americans are more practiced in visualizing an ideal world? And if so, does strengthening that ability increase the likeliness of actualizing those ideals?

Reporter Alessandra Rizzo of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that on January 10, 2005, a law will take effect banning smoking in bars and restaurants in Italy. As expected, smokers and establishment owners are staging fierce protests.

Although smoking will be permissible in separate smoking areas which have a ventilation system and continuous floor-to-ceiling walls, Director General of Confcommercio Edi Sommariva reports that most establishment owners have complained that the costs of creating such a smoking area are too much to be worthwhile (roughly 300 Euro per square meter). As a result, an expected 90 percent of restaurants will prevent smoking. Confcommercio represents the interests of bar and restaurant owners in Italy. They plan to go to court if the law takes effect as anticipated.

Rizzo notes that restaurant owners are equally concerned about their relations with their customers. “We are being asked to become informers, but we don’t want to give up our relations with our customers,” Rizzo quotes Sommariva in her article Monday.

A national Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, ran an editorial on the front page, which protested that reporting violations is “the job of the state and of its public officials. A bartender and a restaurateur are not guards.”

Claudio Ferrari, a 27-year-old archaeologist, reflects the feelings of a significant part of the Italian population:

“The law is exaggerated, and it’s based on a terrorist approach I don’t agree with. I don’t share the idea that it’s up to the state to educate citizens. A little common sense is all it takes.”

The bookish stereotype of linguists just got a little sexier. In today’s article in The Los Angeles Times, Sebastian Rotella draws attention to the power of the word by profiling the work being done by linguists employed by anti-terrorism agencies.

The focus on world relations with the Middle East has made bilingual, bicultural Arabic-speaking investigators and translators the hottest thing since sliced bread. The risks Rotella lists give linguists the romantic glow that the Indiana Jones trilogy lent to the study of archaeology.

Ideally, translators and interpreters are teamed with detectives; the precision and subtleties involved in the nuances of culture and language mean that this job requires a high level of human sensitivity which computers can’t match. The French interpreter Rotella interviewed for his article, whom he refers to as “Wadad,” believes the best linguists are bilingual and bicultural from childhood:

“Otherwise, you might understand the words but not the meaning … You have to understand the dialect, [the] mentality, [the] history. If you don’t know the two civilizations, it’s very difficult. A North African might constantly mention Allah in his conversations. But that’s common. It doesn’t mean he’s a religious extremist … There are Arabists in France who are brilliant intellectuals and know a lot, but I think there are things that escape them. I think if Arabic is not your mother tongue, if you don’t read the Koran from the perspective of a devout Muslim and try to see it with the mind-set of the time when it was written, you miss things. The academics try to make everything fit into their theories.”

What do Bono and the film Saving Private Ryan have to do with the war in Iraq? The New York Times reporter Frank Rich draws some connections between the censorship of pop culture and the way our media is representing President Bush’s White Elephant.

Three Sundays ago, in his article, “Bono’s New Casualty: ‘Private Ryan’,” Rich reported that this Veteran’s Day, 66 ABC affiliates “revolted against their own network and refused to broadcast ‘Saving Private Ryan.’” Though Spielberg’s film had been previously aired on Veteran’s Day in 2001 and 2002 “without incident, and despite the protests of family-values groups,” the repercussions of NBC’s public chastisement by the Federal Communications Commission left its mark upon this holiday season’s entertainment.

What has changed in the last year? What is it that led so many affiliates to exercise self-censorship when ABC had already given them the go-ahead to broadcast Saving Private Ryan? According to Rich, it wasn’t fear of terrorism or low ratings that drove them to censor Spielberg’s WWII tribute, but rather “fear that their own government would punish them for exercising freedom of speech.” Rich writes:

“What makes the ‘Ryan’ case both chilling and a harbinger of what’s to come is that it isn’t about Janet Jackson and sex but about the presentation of war at a time when we are fighting one.”

Rich notes that some of the companies who exercised self-censorship in refusing to broadcast Ryan are also owners of major American newspapers:

“[It] leaves you wondering what other kind of self-censorship will be practiced next. If these media outlets are afraid to show a graphic Hollywood treatment of a 60-year-old war starring the beloved Tom Hanks because the feds might fine them, toy with their licenses or deny them permission to expand their empires, might they defensively soften their news divisions’ efforts to present the graphic truth of an ongoing war?”

I never thought I’d be promoting the presentation of war on television. Then again, I never thought I’d live to see the day when our rights to know the facts are threatened. It’s possible the only thing worse than showing the violence of war is to live in a society where such violence is swept under the carpet.

It looks as though Europe is beginning to play a “forceful and distinctive role” in global politics. If so, how will it affect the foreign policy of the United States? In his International Herald Tribune article, “Europa: EU diplomacy, the way it’s supposed to happen,” Richard Bernstein draws attention to recent political events in which the European Union has braved the footlights.

This may be due to the increasing solidarity of the European Union, as its constitution nears adoption. Perhaps EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana’s ability to improv with the best of them has something to do with it. And then any media archive will show that, while Europe may have taken a supporting role in the past, where leadership of political actions is concerned, its think tanks and diplomatic relations have been hardworking members of the repertory.

Bernstein credits Solana for having taken the “clearest practical initiative” by “pointing both to a penalty and a possible way out for Ukraine” this Wednesday. Solana succeeded in obtaining a formal request for the EU to conduct a political mediation in Ukraine, after warning Moscow and Kiev the Ukrainian election results would remain unacknowledged by the 25 members of the EU should the request be denied.

John Palmer, the political director of the European Policy Centre, notes that the diversity of cultures, languages, and opinions among EU members seems to stimulate the EU’s motivation to reach a common understanding about which issues take priority and how to address them.

“You might think that because of the split in Europe over Iraq, the attempt to create common defense and foreign policies has been aborted. But that is not the view here. In fact, it’s partly because of the split that a serious effort is under way to find collective solutions.”

The United States might do well to observe the behavior of its eastward neighbor over the next four years; the publicized divisions along our nation’s racial, class, and political lines are proving as unnecessarily paralyzing and hazardous to the United States as harmful gossip hurts any earnest actor.

In two weeks, production is scheduled to start on a remake of the 1949 film, All the King’s Men. Chris Rose’s article in The Times-Picayune gives a background on the original film and novel which support his contention that the remake has a good chance of meeting, if not surpassing, its predecessors. The budget is high. The cast is A-list. That’s why it’s ironic that the studio behind such a big-budget movie about a politician nicknamed “Robin Hood”  is in danger of becoming the Wal-Mart of the film industry.

Most studio movies hire union craftspeople. These unions are supposed to protect their members by drawing up work contracts with the studios. Unions negotiate the rates of pay, contributions to pension and welfare, and working rules for travel to and from the locations where films are shot. The language of these contracts is typical of any legal contract: its terms are complicated, almost illegible. Loopholes are inevitable, and where they exist, it’s up to the people in power to refrain from exploiting them. One such loophole exists in the union contract negotiated for the upcoming remake of All The King’s Men.

The discovery of this loophole has led to a decision made by Sony Pictures not to trigger a union agreement which pays for the healthcare and pension plans of union employees. In simple terms, this agreement dictates that a studio which produces a film outside of Los Angeles, in a different state, may avoid paying a residual payment to the West Coast union’s pension and welfare fund. To avoid this payment, the studio cannot hire more than one person from Los Angeles.

All the King’s Men is being shot on location in Louisiana. Despite the fact that several union workers from Los Angeles were requested to work on the film, Sony denied them the right to work because it would have required Sony to pay a small percentage of residual profits gleaned in the markets outside the United States to the union’s pension and healthcare plan.  

As freelance workers, union employees depend on their unions for healthcare coverage and retirement.  The money keeping the union’s pension and healthcare plan afloat comes directly from the contributions like those Sony is avoiding; without these residual profits, the pension and healthcare plan will disappear.

It seems odd that this loophole is being exploited on a project like All The King’s Men, considering that more than 99 percent of union films result in contributions made to union pension and healthcare plans. The loophole isn’t new; maybe union employees have been fortunate that 99 percent of the time, studio heads look the other way and pay these contributions.

After all, the film is about Huey Long, a man whose belief in spreading wealth among the common people earned him the reputation of a modern-day Robin Hood:

“[Huey Long] wanted the government to confiscate the wealth of the nation’s rich and privileged. He called his program Share Our Wealth. It called upon the federal government to guarantee every family in the nation an annual income of $5,000, so they could have the necessities of life, including a home, a job, a radio and an automobile … Everyone over age 60 would receive an old-age pension.”

It would seem the time is right for a remake about a man with these ideals. It’s unfortunate that the producers haven’t learned the moral of the story they’re telling.