David A. Passaro’s first ex-wife says he used to hit her when he got drunk. His second wife filed court papers saying that he was “verbally abusive and threatening.” Passaro, a CIA operative, stands accused of beating an Afghan man named Abdul Wali to death while Wali was in custody.
Charles Graner’s ex-wife filed for three protection orders against him over five years. In the last one, she stated that he had dragged her out of bed by her hair and pulled her down the hallway. Then he banged her head into the floor while her children sat in their bedrooms. Army Spec. Charles Graner now faces charges of inmate abuse and misconduct for his behavior as a guard in Abu Ghraib.
In 2002, four military wives at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were murdered by their husbands in a span of six weeks. Three of the perpetrators had recently returned from active duty in Afghanistan.
Violence against women is an epidemic in the military, and not just behind the front lines. To date, more than 100 incidents of sexual assault have been reported by service women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The statistics and stories flood the Internet, and finally — thanks to the prominent scandal at the Air Force Academy — the Department of Defense is beginning to take its problem seriously. Re-entry counseling is now required for all military personnel returning from active duty, and all military branches are rewriting their domestic violence and sexual assault protocols.
Is that enough? The cases of David Passaro and Charles Graner beg the question: Does the military make its servicemen and women controlling and violent, or does its system attract individuals with a tendency towards aggressive, unchecked behavior? Probably both.
Changing response protocols to sexual assault or incidents of domestic violence and providing support groups isn’t going to change the military culture that both breeds and accentuates abusive characteristics in its members. Men and women will still return to civilian life carrying violence and trauma with them. We will still send “bad boys” to the army, hoping it will straighten them out. The need then, is to change the way the military teaches its recruits to think about violence and its use.
In short, we need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.
A feminist infiltrated army sounds eerily close to Dennis Kucinich’s “Department of Peace,” and about as farfetched. The military doctrine is ancient. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would look like if turned on its head. Doing so would mean not only radicalizing military training, but also the ways we use our army, since teaching men and women to think about violence is probably not conducive to operating as a smooth-running, terrorist-killing machine.
But then, neither is raping the woman standing next to you in line for the latrine.
Many of us go to a lot of effort to make sure we get the recommended five fresh fruits and vegetables a day in our diets. Now that french fries have been classified as a fresh vegetable, it should be even easier to do this.
Yes, you read that correctly. A Texas judge ruled last week that those freshly battered grease sticks, typically full of sodium and cholesterol, qualify as fresh vegetables. Kind of like carrots.
Judge Schell, from the town of Beaumont, made the ruling during a hearing concerning the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. The department’s proposal to list batter-coated fries as fresh was being challenged by a Dallas-area food distributor, Fleming Companies. The company is facing bankruptcy and the law requires creditors who sold fresh fruits and vegetables to be paid in full, while other creditors can receive partial payment.
“It’s unfathomable to me that, when Congress passed this law in 1930 and used the term ‘fresh vegetable,’ they ever could have conceived that large food-processing companies could have convinced USDA that a frozen battered french fry fell into that definition,” said Tim Elliott, Mr Fleming’s lawyer.
But the department said that the battered french fry classification applies only to rules of commerce, not nutrition. It did not consider an order of fries the same as an apple when it came to the school lunch test.
John Webster, a spokesman for the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, said: “The vegetables we are talking about encouraging the consumption of are dark green vegetables like broccoli and orange and yellow vegetables like squash.”
Webster can talk about encouraging the consumption of broccoli and squash all he wants. But given the dearth of money spent promoting healthy diets and the fact that the USDA isn’t saying ‘Yes, we called french fries fresh vegetables in this one instance, but they’re not healthy for you,’ does he seriously think the USDA has helped the obesity epidemic by classifying french fries as a fresh vegetable? After all, french fries are one of those things that restaurants really give more than one serving of. So now, not only can you get multiple servings of fresh vegetables under the guise of one, but you can increase your cholesterol and maybe even your weight while you’re at it …
And by the way, when did “fresh” become synonymous with “fried?” I’ve heard the phrase “fresh baked” (generally in reference to bread or cookies), but “fresh fried?!” Maybe it’s time for me to get an updated version of Webster’s Dictionary — or time for the courts to focus on the civil liberties that are beng stripped away in the name of the war on terrorism …
I feel as if I am coming out of a long, long dream. My recent Ph.D. examinations strained me physically, mentally, and spiritually … It’s not that it was so difficult, for one could just learn the materials and repeat the accepted knowledge/traditions in a manner that would please the committee. It was more my frustration that there seems to be something wrong in the course of our society and I’m trying to see if there are other ways to learn, communicate and share knowledge. In particular, what can be learned from the past, what is healthy or dangerous in our present, and how can we encourage imaginative thinking about the future? As the coastal people of my homeland of San Diego know, it is draining and dangerous to swim against the currents of any ocean (be it physical or mental). I am a poor vessel for these serious meditations — I’ve spent my whole life being more of the trickster/jokester, making fun, taking apart rather than constructing, living in “the moment” … why have I changed?
How fortunate that the first book I picked up to read for “fun” after these examinations was James Welch’s novel Fools Crow (Penguin: 1986). It has a beautifully realized moral universe that helps one to rethink our current way of life. The writing is lyrical and it realizes the key elements of any great novel, bringing a sense of dramatic development of “identity” (Fools Crow, Fast Horse, Red Paint), “place” (territorial politics of Montana Territory in 1870), and “community” (the Lone Eaters, a Blackfeet tribe struggling to survive in a changing world). This book is beautiful in the sense that it quite literally took my breath away at the thought of the possibility of a different “way” of life. I was moved by the rituals and practices that fused individual desires/needs with collective knowledge/history and how it helped to fuse their individual lives into the collective group in a meaningful way. I cared deeply about these people and wanted to know more …
Watching CNN interview the sister and son of Paul Johnson, the American being held hostage in Saudi Arabia, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was watching a somewhat trashy talk show.
Sure, there were no fistfights or arguments over whose boyfriend he really was. But there was something about the way that CNN orchestrated the interview that unnerved me. The “exclusive interview” aired, first of all, just after President Bush gave a speech to U.S. troops in the United States, Afghanistan, and Iraq about the virility of the United States military, about the freedom they are delivering to the rest of the world. Sure, Bush warned that he knows there will be more car bombings, more small-scale acts of violence waged by opponents of democracy and the United States. But God will bless America.
Take a commercial break and cut into a story about those opponents of democracy. And while you’re at it, throw in a crying child to move Americans, to tug at their hearts and remind ‘em that we don’t deserve this.
I’m really not trying to be callous here. Watching Johnson’s sister and son — and then grandson — was heart-wrenching, though I was moved not merely by their pain, but also by the pain of watching the interaction between the family and CNN. For all practical purposes, for the media, for the American people, this interview wasn’t about the Johnsons. Rather, it was an attempt to say, “Hey, see we’re not callous, freedom-hating folks like the terrorists. We’re freedom-promotin’ folks who just want our freedom back.”
The fact that CNN promoted the story by calling it an “exclusive interview” was, of course, a muscle-flexing exercise. That is, by default, CNN was the expert source on the hostage crisis, that the Johnsons had only agreed to speak with CNN, that the interview couldn’t easily be re-circulated by just anyone the way Al Queada circulated the images of Johnson being held hostage.
Then upon seeing Johnson’s sister and son sitting across from the CNN anchorwoman, you can’t help but notice the apparent class discrepancy. While the former are dressed very casually, the latter is dressed to the nines, never showing any sort of emotion, aside from the somber tone of voice, which seems to have been adopted for the purpose of making us feel like she cares. But let’s just say she won’t be winning an Oscar anytime in the near future.
To compensate for this, the few questions she asks are touchy emotional questions about their family — and by extension, the American family, we the people. She asks about Johnson’s dying mother. How much does she know? Does she know there’s a deadline on her son’s life?
She asks about the grandson, whom Johnson has never met and is supposed to meet this Christmas. The son, not surprisingly, starts to cry. I’m pretty sure I would, too (but then again, I don’t think I’d ever go on CNN if I was in his shoes; but that’s easier to say as an outsider). Though we don’t yet know it, the three-year-old grandson has been at the studio with his mother all along. About the time that he starts to cry, the anchorwoman says, “Hey, your son is here, why don’t you bring him out so his grandfather can see him.” Whether his grandfather can actually see his crying grandson — or son, daughter-in-law, and sister, for that matter — is questionable at best since his fate, it seems, is up to the whims of the hostage-takers. But we see the family, we see their pain, and that’s what matters.
It’s a reminder that despite the stoicism of the CNN reporters, we still have feelings, that we’re not a nation of cold hearts despite the torture that wreaked havoc in the name of freedom at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and lord knows where else. It’s a reminder that makes us feel a little better, a little more human, and downright American. But the fact that this spectacle, this snapshot of America, is so carefully orchestrated by CNN makes me wonder why the drama, the choreography, the muscle-flexing is necessary in the first place. Are such spectacles a means of rediscovering our hearts, or is the repetition of the carefully choreographed spectacles what ultimately numbs our hearts, leaves us feeling helpless, callous, indifferent? Maybe it’s time that these dramas make us angry rather than sad, motivating us to act, to demand change, rather than falling into a state of depression, a state of grievance and sorrow about our world.
What would it feel like to live in a nation where each citizen is as comfortable exercising the responsibility to vote as we are our right to watch reality tv?
Is there any place in the world where voting works the way we dream it ought?
Sunday’s election in the European Union may have served more to manifest what appears to be the current apathy of its citizens than their choices regarding the content of the proposed European constitution. In his article today, Thomas Fuller suggests several possible reasons behind a 44.6 percent turnout, a number arguably disappointing.
In my opinion, in this case at least, a bottom line exists. These people were not locked inside the closet and tied to a chair, their life under threat should they go to the polls. All Sunday’s turnout shows for certain is that non-voters acted as though voting were less important than going to see the latest Harry Potter film this weekend.
In this respect, the European Union is not so different from the United States. Thomas Patterson, author of The Vanishing Voter, writes that voting in our country fell to a 39 percent turnout in the 2002 November election, with a low of 18 percent in the congressional primaries. Patterson notes that studies show the voting rate among those at the bottom of the income ladder is only half that of those at the top. Correspondingly, low-income voters were recorded as 30 percent more likely than higher-income groups to feel that the results of the election would have little or no impact on their lives.
How do we get people to exercise their civic responsibility of making their political needs known to the government? Is voting outdated?
Will creating controversy do the trick?
It’s possible the prospect of losing our civil right to vote will make it more desirable. Ina Howard and Greg Palast suggest the advent of computer voting in this November’s election is likely to result in a leap backward in the civil rights movement. The “Help America Vote Act,” which Congress passed in 2002, requires all 50 states to computerize voting files by the November 2004 election. “Suspect” voters will be easy to purge from these voting lists, according to law, by our 50 secretaries of state.
According to Howard and Palast, prior to the 2000 presidential election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris succeeded in removing 57,700 voters from Florida’s vote registries. The reason given for their removal was supposed status as felons and ex-cons. Closer investigation by Palast revealed that the voters removed from the registries shared two characteristics. Not only was “virtually every voter” wrongly accused of felony, many were also registered as African American.
As we learned from The X-Files, the truth is “out there.” The truth in Palast’s discovery may be a shocking revelation of our time. Will it motivate people to vote?
We’re extremely fortunate to live in a society where information runs rampant. Unfortunately, all that information may make people feel overwhelmed. It’s entirely possible non-voters are as overwhelmed by information overload as they appear to be apathetic. If that’s the case, how can we get non-voters to vote?
Perhaps it is radical and simplistic to suggest that we offer voters a little incentive. But it’s also true that, in this country at least, offering “two for one” or “a dollar off your next purchase” goes a long way. What if voters could redeem ballot stubs for five free songs burned off the Internet or a free tank of gas? Would more people vote if a ballot stub could be exchanged for a free lottery ticket and a chance to win 100 million dollars?
Thomas Patterson’s examination of the decrease in our voting population offers several workable solutions. The media networks could do their part by broadcasting the televised debates at prime-time. Campaigns could be shortened to pre-1972 status; Patterson found that long campaigns “tax voters’ attention”. Polling hours could be extended, election day could be made a national holiday, and voter registration could be made automatic. Last but not least, our schools could better prepare, educate, and register our young people for their first election upon graduation.
We are each capable of contributing to the solution. Wouldn’t it be great if we could each just manage to drag ourselves over to the polls on election day? But in case some people need extra help, we can offer a hand to our neighbors on our own, or through organizations we create or to which we belong: our nonprofits, our unions, our religious institutions, our universities.
Patterson is refreshing in that not only does he analyze the problem, he offers tangible solutions. His point is valid. Encouraging citizens to vote may seem like an insurmountable challenge, but we need to recognize the alternative. It would be more difficult still to maintain a democratic system if the majority of the people our government represents has been struck dumb.
While American audiences sit in front of their TVs, captivated by the recent fad of metrosexuality — which I doubt has made any serious inroads into productive dialogue and understanding — with shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Boy Meets Boy,” Bollywood lesbians are faring less well.
Karan Razdan’s latest film, “Girlfriend,” has been condemned both by conservatives and by women’s organizations. The plotline of “Girlfriend” is that possessiveness and envy tear apart a lesbian couple when one of the women swaps her Sapphic indulgences for a boyfriend. The snubbed lesbian, jealous and possessive, becomes psychotic.
IndiaFM.com reports that members of the right-wing Shiv Sena group, incensed by what they perceive to be a film that runs counter to Indian culture, set the Sajjan cinema in Varanasi on fire when it screened “Girlfriend”, while the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena wing of the Shiv Sena party also protested and disrupted a matinee screening of the movie in Bombay.
Right-wing Shiv Sena activists have denounced the movie as “regressive,” while women’s groups have condemned the film as “highly regressive” on the basis that it panders to heterosexual male titillation while incorporating “all the negative popular myths about lesbians.” According to women’s groups, “Girlfriend” is nothing more than a “pornographic and stereotypical portrayal” of a lesbian couple.
I suspect that some critics may quarrel with director Karan Razdan’s claim that his film addresses the issue of a woman who has chosen to become a lesbian as a result of her circumstances. Radzan’s I-refuse-to-take-a-clear-stance-about-my-own-film comment was that “whether my film generates good or bad publicity, my intention is to start a discussion about this subject, and create an awareness in society.” Radzan’s movie is certainly provocative, in so far as it has sparked anger and arson, but it seems, just as certainly, that it is socially unproductive for all parties involved.
Boarding schools, those clannish institutions that are sometimes regarded with suspicion — since they may be either bastions of privilege or halfway houses for the wayward teen — have captured a new market: two-year-olds.
Although boarding kindergartens have existed in China for decades — the Weihai Kindergarten, one of the most prestigious boarding kindergartens in Shanghai, China, was founded in 1951 — they are becoming less unusual and more highly sought after.
At the Li Mai School, a boarding school located in the farmland outside Beijing, students as young as two years old board on campus from Monday until Friday, at which point some of them are collected by their parents and are whisked home.
Shang Shangu, the principal of a boarding kindergarten in Shangai, explained that part of the appeal of the boarding kindergartens is that they offer their students academic and personal advantages that are unavailable to their peers at day schools; these two-year-olds are developing a competitive edge over the broader educated population. Speaking about her students, Shang Shangu stated that “in order for them to be able to compete, we need to help them build up their self-respect and self-confidence.” Self-respect and self-confidence make a marketable individual.
Boarding kindergartens are, at least partially, a function of the developing Chinese social and market economy, and they speak to an underlying anxiety. The Chosun Ilbo reports that 17 percent of all 18- to 22-year-olds in China were admitted to colleges and universities last year. For the new middle class, the competition for higher education is stiff and, with most couples having only one child, a family’s ambitions may come to rest on one little pair of shoulders.
Such a hysterical desire for a competitive edge is not unique to China, nor is it limited to the anxieties of an emerging middle class; Japan is notorious for its cram schools, or juku, where students take private classes to supplement their public or private school education, just as the privileged New Yorker is famous for purchasing numerous tutors for his or her child. Education has always brought with it social advantage, but what is interesting about the boarding kindergarten phenomenon is the ferocity of the drive for a competitive edge at such a young age.
At a time of rapid globalization and attendant social change, these boarding kindergartens should highlight — without any particular judgment — the very concrete social consequences of broader economic and political transformation.
Thanks to the Bush administration’s censorship of images of coffins returning from Iraq and the media’s tendency to treat victims of Iraqi casualties as statistics — or names, at best — our relationship to the war in Iraq has generally been a story of mass destruction rather than a complicated mosaic of individual tales woven into one.
But war can — and perhaps should — be a very personal experience, not only for those who are fighting or whose family members are fighting, but also for those whose name, whose freedom, war is being fought in. (And yes, it would be a mistake to say that the war in Iraq was only being fought in the name of the Iraqi people when we’re continuously told that Operation Iraqi Freedom makes the world a “safer place for democracy.”)
How do we represent our personal relationships to and opinions of the war, then, when the media falls short and is incapable of providing a forum for personal reflection about the war? Sure, the personal essay piece occasionally makes it into a publication, or some expert gets interviewed on Larry King Live about the war because s/he is an expert. And songwriters, of course, weave their war sentiments into the lyrics of their songs.
But while these stories, these modes of representation, can be quite poignant, I find that these stories rarely stay on my mind for long, generally getting pushed out by the next story on the news. That might be changing, though. Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times just published a series of poems about the relationships of individuals to the war written by people across the country. Reading these prosaic stories, the wheels in my mind can’t help but spin. I can’t help but feel the same way that I feel when I read a work of fiction and want to keep reading, or in many instances, do nothing but think about what I’m reading (or what I’ve read). Why these stories and this particular mode of representation strike a chord with me moreso than other tales of war, I don’t know. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the brevity of the pieces leaves details out. Thanks to silences, omissions, a dearth of details that news reports would never permit, these poems invite — even demand — further thought and imagination.
Here are but a few examples of poems submitted to Kristof:
Alexander Nemser of New Haven, Connecticut, wrote about the death of a pilot:
His mother sent him pictures of his truck, A pickup, hubcaps polished every time He stopped to fill the tank, as clear as mirrors; The dog, who’d lost an eye last spring; his town, Apollo, Pennsylvania, near the falls On Roaring Run; the watch his uncle won From playing cards; his empty chair at dinner, Audacious as the space left by a tooth. We traded rifles, scripted final letters And promised their delivery home. At night, We planned escapes to Istanbul to join The dervishes. Eleven miles from Baghdad, I stood, dumb as a cow, and watched two choppers Collide like fists and spin across the sky.
David Keppel of Bloomington, Indiana, responded to the torture at Abu Ghraib:
Did I hold a dog To your terrified nakedness Or perch you on a box, Your outstretched arms wired To the current of fear? . . . Tell me what I have done, I beg you, as you begged me, Tell me what I can do To make you forget That my people never remember.
James Yeck of Boulder, Colorado, focused on those left behind:
A tiny piece of metal hangs upon a frame, That has “father” written below the name. The tiny piece of metal hangs in glory there, Never left to tarnish by neglecting care. The tiny piece of metal brings fame to the home, Glory for its man who crossed the ocean’s foam. Politicians send praises into the peaceful air; Others smile now who once would only stare. People from all around come especially to see The tiny piece of metal, a symbol of the free. A country’s grateful token to the bravest of its land . . . Proud of their famous town the village people say, “Do you know what this means?” with pride most every day, To the little boy whose father went to war. “Yes,” softly he replies, “I have no daddy any more.”
After reading these poems, you, like me, may want to do nothing but reflect on the meaning of the poems. But if you don’t, it only goes to show how differently each of us is affected by stories and different representations of war. A war, after all, has thousands of faces, and no matter what anyone else says, war is about people first and foremost, regardless of whether it’s fought in the name of “resources,” “weapons of mass destruction,” or “securing the world for democracy.”
Forget solemnity. Forget silence. If it were up to me, I’d honor Ray Charles with a good old New Orleans Jazz Funeral.
I never met Ray Charles. But I got the chance to step into his Los Angeles recording studio a year ago, thanks to a collaboration between Taylor Hackford and The Man himself.
We wrapped up production on Taylor’s feature film about Ray’s life on a glorious June morning. As the camera panned across walls… covered with every imaginable award I was struck by the ordinary appearance of the studio. If I hadn’t known better, I might have assumed this room had housed an insurance office, with clerks making minimum wage, dreaming of weekends off and backyard football parties. How could such ordinary walls have anything to do with the musical miracle we knew as Ray Charles? It’s a tribute to Ray that I forgot, for a time, that for him sound and feel were more important than sight.
Ray was older and wiser than his years,” Quincy Jones has said. “He was one of my gurus. He taught me how to arrange, how to voice horns and reeds. He was this amazing spirit — strong, brilliant, and completely open-minded. At a time when you were either in this camp or that camp, either a bebopper or a bluesman or whatever, Ray was in every camp. ‘It’s all music, man,’ he’d say. ‘We can play it all.’ And we did.”
Given the opportunity to talk about Ray, people first mention his genius and his open-mindedness. His impact on the face of music is so strong that it’s impossible to imagine what music today would be like without his voice and work. Though he began as a Nat King Cole stylist, he decided early on in his career to let his natural style lead the direction of his music:
For Ray, music came first. No obstacle could come between him and the music. True to character, in an interview with VH1, he didn’t lament the days of segregation, he praised music instead: “The only thing I can say about that time in my life is thank God for music. If music hadn’t been there to help me through all of this, I wouldn’t have made it.”
In conversations about him, the obstacles Ray overcame are rarely mentioned. He had three points against him, as far as identity and culture are concerned: extreme poverty, blindness, and blackness in the segregated South where he grew up. Ray Charles transcended them all. Maybe his legacy, in addition to his music, shows us that it’s not which identity or which culture we begin with that determines our future. Rather, these elements are only tools we are given to forge something brilliant in the world that will elevate our own life and the lives of others.
In his piece, “A Meeting with the Man,” Dave Alvin provides a little consolation for those of us who never met him, as he recalls his own brush with Brother Ray:
“I rode in a freight elevator once with Ray Charles. …Awestruck, I stood staring at Ray, who was smiling and softly humming a melody to himself. I tried to think of something original to say, but what could I possibly tell him that he’d never heard before? ‘Gee, Mister Charles, I’m your biggest fan!’ or ‘Hey, Brother Ray, what’s shakin’ baby?’ I don’t think so…
“Did Ray Charles really need some stranger in an elevator telling him how much of a revolutionary he’s been in a country so musically, culturally, and racially segregated? Or how his music represents everything many of us believe America is ideally supposed to be: open-minded, compassionate, independent, adventurous — willing to explore the new without discarding what was good in the old. I just kept my mouth shut and listened to Ray’s humming.”
A genius has left us. And, as Samirah Evans put it so well on her Bluesy Blues Show this afternoon on WWOZ, how fortunate we are that he left us so much of his music and his inimitable voice. That extraordinary gift of music he gave the world is powerful enough to turn our remembrances of Ray into a celebration of life.
When I first visited Graceland back in the spring of ’94 it was one of those tourists’ treks that became pilgrimage. A friend and I were camping in the Great Smoky Mountains when a fear of flash flooding cut our trip short. Defeated by the elements, we began to traverse Tennessee, sticking to the back-roads and narrating the journey with truck-stop compilations. By the time we rode into Memphis, I was humming “It’s now or never,” and in the words of the singer Paul Simon, I started to believe that “we all will be received in Graceland.”
The gaudy mansion more than delivered. My favorite rooms were the Jungle room (Priscilla’s too) and the TV room, which has something like nine old sets mounted to the walls. The joy of the Graceland experience, however, cannot be reduced to bad interior design. The thrill was not in the house itself, but rather the experience of the house — the goofy guide telling canned jokes, waiting cramped in Elvis’ hallway for the previous tour to move on, the camaraderie with the other pilgrims.
When I returned to the mansion in 2002, Graceland had transformed. The millennial visitor did not get to commune with his comrades or ask questions of a guide. All this had been removed and replaced with the audio tour. Included in the price of admission, each tourist was equipped with earphones and a little digital player that narrated details of the house and Elvis’ life.
The new tour was a solitary adventure, each visitor in control of his or her own pace. In the midst of this solo tour, I tried an experiment; I took off my earphones. The result was an eerie silence, like lifting your head and looking around a room during silent prayers. These people didn’t look like pilgrims; they looked like bored middle-schoolers.
In my 1994 pilgrimage to Graceland, the narrative emerged in the experience of the place. By 2002, that narrative, though arguably more accurate and exhaustive, was locked in an audio textbook and teacher wouldn’t let us pass notes.
Mike Hale’s recent New York Times article, “A Concert You Could Read Like a Book,” on the introduction of digital playbills to the New York Philharmonic, makes a similar complaint, albeit in regards to a different medium. “The Concert Companion was entertaining,” he concedes, “but I was there to listen, not to read, and after a while it was just a hand-held distraction from the pure, focused experience that a meaningful concert — or play or movie or exhibit — needs to be.”
I think “pure, focused experience” is a bit of an exaggeration. Don’t we all enjoy browsing a playbill before a performance or during intermission? The new technology is not a distraction from some pristine audience experience. Rather it’s a distraction from other distractions— free association, memory, milling about. What we loose then, through this type of technology-mediated over programming, is unstructured time and space, a cognitive free swim. In the end, the more museums and performance spaces transform themselves, albeit through good intentions, into lap swim, the more diligent we’ll have to become at seeking out unstructured places were we can all join in the performance.
The success of Morgan Spurlock’s film Super Size Me has undoubtedly scared McDonald’s executives. Even before the film was released nationwide (but following its success at the Sundance Film Festival), the fast food chain announced it was phasing out Super-Size options by the end of the year, except for special promotions. But McDonald’s newest move to prove that the corporation is “health-conscious” is just laughable.
McDonald’s is in the process of making videos, which feature Ronald McDonald and his McDonald’s friends running around and playing. The videos will be sold at your local video store — unless of course it’s a really local — i.e. non-corporate — store.
I imagine these videos to be similar to, say, Barney or whatever the most hip PBS children’s show is today. Will these shows actually teach kids to run around and be more active? I kind of doubt it. After all, the time that kids spend sitting down watching these videos will be time that they could otherwise use to do active things.
Moreover, one of the most unsettling moments in Super Size Me was when Spurlock went into a classroom and showed students pictures of Ronald McDonald, Jesus, and a few other famous people. As a rule, the kids only knew who Ronald McDonald was.
So these videos will remind kids of who this Ronald McDonald guy is, probably inspiring them to want to take a trip to McDonald’s. And they’ll allow kids to have some quiet time in front of the TV. (Granted, I know that kids rarely sit still, but television shows seem to have an amazing way of mesmerizing them).
Call me crazy, but this doesn’t seem like the brightest marketing strategy for a corporation that is trying to reform its image and make itself appear more health-conscious …
After Ronald Reagan died over the weekend, children who were too young to remember his presidency were seen placing flowers at makeshift memorials for him. Perhaps it is callous to wonder how people can become so saddened over a man they never knew personally. Certainly, the images we’re seeing (Nancy with her head on the flag-draped coffin, Reagan as a young actor in a bathing suit looking toned and tan) have their own emotional effect. But I’m a bit more interested in the words and the ideas.
Put aside for a moment the discomfort of speaking ill of the dead, and read two of the most anti-Reagan postings. These two pieces, from two authors and investigative journalists, Greg Palast and Christopher Hitchens, break from the tone of admiration many have felt they needed to use in writing about our former president. (Reagan-lovers, beware, these are not your usual eulogies.)
Policy wonks have turned to one of the most puzzling aspects of Reagan’s presidency: what has come to be called Reaganomics. Whether this ill-defined term actually translated into sound economic policy is being put aside to instead praise Reagan’s ability to inspire confidence. The importance of the policy’s end result should not be underestimated, for it is credited with introducing to the world the idea of a freer market. But, even now, the actual merits of the policy remain murky. Here’s the routine: Put aside the details. Let us consider the legacy.
The Economist writes that, again and again, Reagan wrote in his diaries, “I have a gut feeling.” The quote speaks to his appeal, to his ability to transmit a feeling of assurance without explaining the intricacies. Perhaps this is why so many praise him as a leader. Perhaps this is why people who only saw him on television will make a pilgrimage this week to his closed-casket services at both ends of the country. Skip the details, add some lovely photos, and you’re surprisingly close to the formula for a leader who will inspire confidence and admiration.
We use cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the site. Cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser, as they are essential for the working of the site’s basic functionality. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this site. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent, and you have the option to opt out of using them.
Necessary cookies are essential for the basic functionality and security features of this website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that are not necessary for the website to function and are used to collect user personal data via analytics or other embedded content are termed non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to using these cookies.
