On my way into the grocery store earlier tonight, and as I’m walking in smoking my ridicously expensive cigarette, out of the corner of my eye, I catch this Hispanic man talking on his cell phone in Spanish. I work in a call center with lots of Hispanic customers near the Mexico-Texas border, so at this point, I’m used to Spanish, and I don’t think twice about it.

I grab a shopping cart and start pushing my way around. As I look at my list on a Wendy’s napkin written in purple highlighter — living the true college experience — I found myself debating whether or not to buy Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea. Not convinced I’ve made the right decision after I’ve wandered for about five minutes, staring at my notated napkin, I fought myself over types of pasta. Grocery shopping by yourself really should be illegal because you look like you’re crazy as you argue with yourself over what type of insert-random-food-here that you’re going to buy. When you’re talking out loud about it, people tend to stay away from your aisle, in case you go postal and pull out an AK47.

At the end of the aisle is the Hispanic man I saw earlier talking on his cell phone outside. His head is down on the grocery store Zamboni looking as if he was going to cry. As I weighed the two types of pasta in my hand, I weighed the ethical dilemma in my head. When confronted with that situation, is it better to confront it head-on? Or is it better to walk away?

As I walked through the grocery store, I could not help but thinking to myself that I affirm the values and the importance of each person in society. On the other hand, I didn’t know the man. I had never seen him before in my life, and I probably wouldn’t ever see him again (minus the four more times I saw him in the grocery store). When we say we affirm the hand of friendship to all individuals in society, does that mean to just the ones we know, and if we don’t double-check someone isn’t crying, are we hypocrites or realists?

Are the potential tears of that one unnamed person more important than our public embarassment — especially if you’re not sure if they speak English? People call in to our call center who we have to translate for, and I didn’t have a Spanish-speaking person at hand. I guess I could have called Michael, but what a weird phone call. “Michael, honey, translate for me; I’m not sure if this random person is okay.”

Thinking about it as I paced through the walls of Cheerios on one side and peanut butter on the other, I eventually decided that he was just tired. It was after ten o’clock, and he was working. I justified my lack of connection with $60 of groceries, still uncertain of whether I made the right decision.

Brett Currier

Before all the holiday blockbuster and Oscar-bait movies get to a theater near you, I wanted to do a little politicking myself with a self-induced caucus on the best fictional president in film or television.  I decided to conduct my own very unscientific poll with a very biased pool of one person — myself.  I limited the possible candidates to those films or television shows after 1960, and I came up with certain criteria based on what Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmo would use to help make up their minds.  I graded each on a scale of one to ten with one being bad and ten being excellent on the following criteria: character, intelligence and ability, charisma, family life, trust and honesty, experience, decision-making, political skills, and leadership. I added up the scores from all the categories with the result being what I call their Q rating.  

The group consisted of 16 candidates from 11 films and three television shows.  They must have all been fictional characters (no biopics), and they had to be either the lead or a very major supporting role.  After exhausting study and analysis, here are the results of the best Hollywood presidents, according to me.

The top president is James Marshall from the action blockbuster Air Force One portrayed by Harrison Ford.  His Q rating was 77 out of a possible 90.  Marshall scored high in all categories by showing his ability to not only thwart a group of terrorists threatening to kill his family but by being a president that we’d all want on our side — and women tell me he’s not bad to look at either.  Next is a tie.  First in line is Andrew Shepherd, the widowed head of state played by Michael Douglas, who becomes smitten with Annette Bening’s lobbyist from Rob Riener’s romantic comedy The American President.  Shepherd was able to gain a 72 Q rating by being tops in most categories save for political skill.  Dating a lobbyist trying to persuade your administration to change opinion on key legislation isn’t the smartest of career moves but, again, he’s not bad to look at.  Also gaining a 72 Q rating is a president from another blockbuster — Tom Whitmore (Bill Pullman), the jet-flying, alien-busting president from the action sci-fi film Independence Day.  Whitmore’s only bad marks come in the family life category because he’s too busy saving the world to worry about his wife, though he does give a good pep talk.  We then go back to the 1960s and to Henry Fonda in the film Fail Safe where he’s simply referred to as The President.  Fail Safe is a Cold War thriller directed by Sidney Lumet reflecting all the fears of nuclear annihilation brought upon by the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Fonda’s president is cool, collected, and able to make hard decisions that will affect the entire world.  If he wasn’t willing to let his family die in a nuclear blast just to save the world, he may have gotten more than a 69 rating.  

The highest TV president on the list is Jed Bartlett of The West Wing, played by the politically active Martin Sheen, with a 68 Q rating.  President Bartlett brought intelligence and consciousness to his presidency and a heartfelt desire to lead the American people through challenging times.  If he hadn’t lied about his medical problems, he would have scored a lot higher.  Next, we have another sci-fi president in Tom Beck, the first African-American chief played by the Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman.  In the film Deep Impact, Freeman’s president has to play the tough father figure to a world that is certainly going to be hit by a giant comet.  What Beck lacks is charisma, but if push comes to shove, I wouldn’t mind having him in the oval office whenever a large object is heading our way.  We go back to television for our next president, the greenest member on the list and the first female, Mackenzie Allen, played by another Academy Award-winner, Geena Davis.  In Commander In Chief, you have a vice-president who assumes the presidency after her boss dies off.  She has to battle public opinion and a ruthless speaker of the house, played to the hilt by Donald Sutherland.  In the Allen White House, you have a husband who assumes a greater role than most first ladies have before him and three kids all facing the hardships of growing up with a mom who could drop a bomb whenever she pleases.  Allen still has some proving to do, experience to gain, and political moves to master but, given time, she could move up in the polls and raise her 61 rating.  We change networks for our next president, David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) from the first couple seasons of the show 24.  After facing not only a threat on his life and an actual assassination attempt, he had to deal with a back-stabbing evil wife turned ex-wife who would do anything to get her man back.  Being able to help keep America safe and Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) alive is a lot for any president to handle.  I’m sure his advice would be to get rid of a crazy wife before running for president.  Q Rating, 58.  

Finally, one of my favorite presidents isn’t really a president — he just plays one on the movie screen.  In Dave, Kevin Kline plays Dave Kovich, an everyman who happens to look like the president and assumes those duties when the real president falls into a deep coma after a sexual dalliance with an assistant.  Dave’s president wins the hearts of the people, balances the budget, and falls for the real first lady.  The only problem is he’s really just an owner of an employment agency and can’t really be president.  If only it were that easy.  Dave only gets a 58 but deserves more.  Perhaps in a sequel where Dave can move from city council to the presidency of the United States, he’ll be able to move up on the list legitimately.

Here are the rest of the presidents and their ratings.  No time for explanations, but since they’re the worst of the lot, who cares?  Matt Douglas (James Garner) and Russell Kramer (Jack Lemon) from My Fellow Americans, 57 and 54, respectively; John Travolta’s Jack Stanton from Primary Colors, a 49 rating; Mars Attacks’ James Dale gets a 47 as played by Jack Nicholson; a 42 is awarded to Peter Sellers’ Markin Muffly in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove; and the two most vile presidents on the list, each getting a 34 and 42, respectively, are Gene Hackman’s Alan Richmond in Absolute Power and Dan Aykroyd’s William Haney from My Fellow Americans, each putting themselves way ahead of the American people.

The fortunate thing is that all of these films and television shows are first-rate and deserve to be viewed many times over.  I’d also like to hear your opinion on the best Hollywood president.  I’ll tally up your votes in an upcoming column — no hanging chads, please.

Rich Burlingham

With almost one in every seven Americans repudiating religious affiliations, it’s no surprise that Americans are creating their own religions, and in droves; Universism is one such faith.

“Universism seeks to solve a problem that has riddled mankind throughout history: the endless string of people who claim that they know the Truth and the Way…to dispel the illusion of certainty that divides humanity into warring camps,” is how the religion’s 28-year-old founder describes its aim.  With no definite dogma — uncertainty is one of the religion’s core tenets — it’s difficult verging on the impossible to identify what, precisely, identifies Universism or many of its similarly fragmented offshoots as a religion.  

When I visited the Church of Fools last year, I was warned that the “Church of Fools is currently not suitable for children.” Undaunted by the “often colorful and occasionally offensive,” language that apparently litters the church, I knocked on its virtual door only to be told: “Sorry, but Church of Fools is closed at the moment.”

The Church of Fools is one of the newest ventures into what can loosely be defined as religion. The online church claims to be the United Kingdom’s first 3-D, Web-based church, and its target audience is the religiously marginalized. The church began as three-month “experiment” in 2004, and during that time it drew a virtual congregation of up to 10,000 visitors a day. The pious may choose a character, sing, pray, and jubilantly exclaim Hallelujah!”

Absent any sense of accountability, the aptly named Church of Fools and the vaguely named creed of Universism (with an online congregation of 8,000 strong) are certainly creating potential breeding grounds for demagoguery and charlatanism in the anonymous and amorphous space of new religion.

Mimi Hanaoka

With Thanksgiving, Channukah, and Christmas looming, we’re about to embark on about five weeks of rampant overconsumption. Seeing the families displaced by Katrina, now forced to find homes of their own since FEMA has decided to cut them off early, as well as suffering and hunger across the globe, I have mixed feelings about the holidays. Don’t get me wrong — this is my favorite time of year. But it also makes me incredibly cognizant of the ridiculous amount that we consume — whether it’s on our Thanksgiving dinners, luxurious vacations,  our lavish gift wishlists, or, as one story in today’s New York Times reveals, spending $27,000 on Dolce & Gabbana dresses for our daughters to wear to their Bat Mitzvah parties, while forgetting about the (far) less fortunate — in the face of others’ suffering.

So I’ve done a little research and discovered some ways to celebrate the season by giving more socially conscious gifts. For example, Network for Good, a website that accepts online donations for thousands of different charities, sells non-traditional gift baskets. That is, a pre-selected handful of organizations geared toward a specific area, such as education, animals, health, families in need, children, and hurricane recovery, that the gift giver’s donation gets divided up among. Not a bad idea for all of those hard-to-shop-for teachers an animal lovers (amongst others). Sure, it’s not a gift that the person you’re making the donation in honor of can use, per se, but let’s be honest: Most of us have a lot of “stuff,” plenty of which gets used once or twice, if ever. Why not give a gift that both you and the person you’re shopping for can feel good about — while making the season a little less difficut for someone else?

Of course, if you’re indecisive or don’t know which charities the person you’re shopping for would like to support, JustGive.org offers Charity Gift Certificates, which allow the recipient to select which charity or charities he or she wants to support.

Of course, these ideas don’t just have to be limited to the December holidays. There are people in need year-round. As I was pleasantly surprised to discover from my research, JustGive.org has a wedding registry, where the soon-to-be-wed and soon-to-be-committed can select charities that they’d like their friends and family to donate to in honor of their special day. This isn’t just a good idea for the couple that already has a lot of stuff. It’s also a good idea for any couple because, as the Jewish tradition of the groom breaking a glass at the wedding reminds us, even while the couple experiences great joy, there are plenty of others whose pain and sadness we cannot forget.

There are, of course, dozens of other ways you can give. But I’m guessing that none of those (or these) will appear on most wishlists this year. Why not change that? Go ahead, give a little …

Laura Nathan-Garner

“…this was a politically motivated decision that came down from the highest levels at the FDA.”

The Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday revealing that the FDA’s decision to reject sale of emergency contraception over the counter was “highly unusual.” The decision involved top agency officials in addition to ignoring the recommendations of an independent scientific panel and agency staff.

llouison

Regardless of whether you tastefully call it an “Afrikaner community” or more realistically describe it as a racist enclave, Orania’s radio station has been silenced.   

Lydia de Souza, senior manager of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), described the unlicensed broadcasters as bandits, and while she stated that “Our monitors were of the view that it was a racist-based station and very right-wing,” Icasa insists that they shut down the station because Orania lacked a broadcasting license.    

While the ostensible reason that the 600 or so residents of Orania flocked to the small town was to escape the violence and crime that plague South Africa, it is doubtful that security was the motivating factor for their migration to Orania, and the legacy of apartheid is alive and well in the town; the grandson of Henrik Vorwoerd, who designed the program of apartheid, currently lives in Orania.  

In one of the most insultingly timed events in recent memory, Orania leased its own whites-only currency last year, two days after the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid.

In a baffling defense of the notion of white supremacy, Eleanor Lombard, a town spokesman, declared: “South African society is like a fruit salad — if I am allowed to be whatever I am — a banana, an apple or whatever — I can add to the flavour…If I am all squashed up, I cannot contribute.”

Mimi Hanaoka