In a recent episode of Friends, soon-to-be newlyweds Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and Mike (Paul Rudd) briefly flirted with the idea of giving the money that they would spend on a wedding to a children’s hospital. But when their friends balked at the idea of giving up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a big, fancy wedding, they asked for their money back and eventually began planning their big day. There were moments of guilt and anguish regarding the final decision, but ultimately, in typical Friends fashion, the two decided to put themselves before the less fortunate, at least with regard to their wedding.

But other people are finding a way to both help the less fortunate and have the wedding of their dreams simultaneously. And they don’t have to donate their wedding gifts to do so.

Apparently, an increasing number of programs are training homeless or formerly homeless people in the culinary arts so that they can earn money by helping cater weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and other events. As  Danna Harman writes:

Under the auspices of Community Family Life Services, New Course takes homeless people, former inmates, and recovering addicts through a 16-week culinary course. During that time they get a $60-a-week stipend and on-the-job training in a cafeteria (New Course runs the US Tax Courts cafeteria), in a popular downtown restaurant (”3rd and Eats“), and with the catering operation itself.

More than 300 students have graduated from this training program since its launch 12 years ago, and about 80 percent have found jobs in the culinary field. The catering business, which started seven years ago, is earning $200,000 a year and is beginning to make its mark in the competitive and crowded Washington catering field, taking on everything from 500-person weddings to small ”power breakfasts.“

But the skills learned here go beyond the kitchen, says Jeannine Sanford, director of New Course’s classroom training and employment. Students take classes on self-esteem, time management, work ethics, and team building.

”They are learning how to respect themselves and others,“ says Ms. Sanford, ”… and this will stand them in good stead no matter what they do.“

As a prerequisite to joining this program (and also Fresh Start), enrollees must be sober, have stable living conditions, and be ready to make a commitment to helping themselves. About half of each class drops out before the end of the training, unable to meet these demands, says Mr. Doscher.

Laura Nathan-Garner

What’s the best way to rehabilitate juvenile defenders? a. boot camp, b. flogging, c. psychotropic drugs, or d. none of the above?

Workers at a Russian juvenile penal colony (their term, likely borrowed from Kafka) surmise that the answer is d. none of the above — and a dose of Dostoyevsky. Yes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

In the next couple of weeks, young men in the juvenile penal colony will be performing scenes from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead.

Charged for offenses ranging from petty theft to rape and murder, the 20 youths involved in this experiment with literary therapy range from ages 14 to 19. Prior to testing their hand at acting out scenes from Dostoyevsky’s novel, none of them had read any of the Russian scholar’s work. In fact, many were illiterate.

Yet, by pushing a group of young men who are ambivalent about literature, theater and, in many instances, their own lives, director Yevgeny Zimin seeks to reinvigorate troubled youth by enabling them to  act out roles with which they closely can identify. In the process, he hopes, they can regain a sense of their own humanity.

Certain scenes involving violence and alcoholism were edited out of the show, however, in order to prevent the youth from acting out roles that might send them back down the road to crime.

Can literary therapy empower those whom the education system seems to have failed, or does this sort of performance art risk making a spectacle of the lives and acting skills of the young men on the stage? Only time will tell, seeing as these youth haven’t performed before an audience or been set free from the penal colony yet.

But the rule of law seems to be failing in Russia like there’s no tomorrow, so it cannot hurt to try this innovative solution. And given that those in U.S. prisons tend to be treated like animals — regardless of their age — perhaps the U.S. should follow suit.

After all, if crime is punishable because it is considered a violation of others’ humanity (or property), then retributive justice’s attempt to restore humanity by denying humanity seems doomed to fail at achieving its intended goal. Finding a better solution, as the Russians have discovered, demands spicing things up. And as my English teachers taught me, Dostoyevsky tends to do just that.

Laura Nathan-Garner

My mother is a terrorist. Or she would be if she was still teaching public school.

Last week, Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, as ”a terrorist organization“ during a private meeting with governors.

Yes, it seems we are getting to the point where the number of people deemed prospective ”terrorists“ (a.k.a. enemies of the Bush administration) exceeds the number of Americans (since terrorism, we are told, is anti-American).

The rationale for equating teachers with terrorists goes something like this: Bush hails himself as a staunch advocate of education reform a la his (sparsely funded) No Child Left Behind legislation, but many of the 2.7 million members of the NEA have vocalized their opposition to the law, which penalizes schools and teachers if, for instance, test scores don’t improve in the course of a year … hence the teachers must be anti-American/terrorists.

Is Bush the only one immune from the ”terrorism“ label (along with Joseph McCarthy’s ghost)? Has Senator Joseph McCarthy come back from the dead to play puppeteer for the Bush administration?  

Previously, Paige has compared opponents of Bush’s education law to segregationist Southerners who stood in schoolhouse doors to prevent black students from attending desegregated schools. But is that what teachers opposing Bush’s law are doing?

Keep in mind that the teachers voicing their opposition probably aren’t the ones in wealthier suburban schools (since those teachers probably don’t fear losing funding given that achievement rates tend to remain above average). No, the teachers that Paige is demonizing are those who are most intimately impacted by No Child Left Behind. They are the ones who know how difficult it can be to raise test scores, to get parents involved, to get students to attend school and do their homework on a daily basis even though many have to work full-time to support their families. And they also know that Bush’s intiative doesn’t provide the funding necessary to meet the goals put forth by the law. But these teachers, whom have a much better sense of the barriers to education reform than representatives in Washington, D.C., are treated as the new enemy of the state because — gasp! — they aren’t afraid to voice their opinions.

Is it possible that the state has become the enemy of the education system as it siphons off money from teachers’ salaries and education programs to support national security? Or is this poorly funded education initiative merely a means of securing the nation against the latest enemy — teachers — along with the naive belief that the government is actually doing something about the public education crisis?

Laura Nathan-Garner

Recently, when I was reading an article in the most recent issue of Kitchen Sink on guys who pretend to be gay to get women to warm up to them or to get free drinks and non-sexual gifts from men who are actually gay, I rolled my eyes a bit, thinking how opportunistic it is to use the marginality of others strategically to get what one wants (and apparently couldn’t get in spite of one’s privileged position as a heterosexual male). But now straight guys are feigning queerness in a way that potentially disrupts one of the most masculine institutions — the military.

Appartently, dozens of Italian men, typically known for their homophobic, machismo demeanor, are pretending to be gay to get out of mandatory military service. Taking advantage of the mandate’s exemption for gays, men are visiting doctors in droves to get someone to document that they feel uncomfortable being around other men in such close quarters, that they feel living circumstances might undermine their professional interest and focus on their military responsibilities, etc. And they appear to be succeeding.

But in the process of evading their responsibilities to the institutions of ”manliness“ and the military, are these men undercutting an oppressive culture of heteromasculinity? Or are they simply taking advantage of the suffering of other men (i.e., men who are forbidden from serving in the military based on their sexual orientation) for their own benefit, thereby preserving the privilege associated with heteromasculinity?

Laura Nathan-Garner

Irony:
A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things

It was a sunny spring day in 1999. Driving down Route 9 outside Amherst, I saw a Buddhist monk — bald head, flowing robes and all — standing in a strip mall parking lot, talking on a cell phone. Unfortunately, he disappeared from my rearview mirror before I could feel out my camera in the back seat. Trying to communicate the rib-tickling irony to my friends later, I lamented the missed opportunity. But those were the Clinton years. Irony was a Buddhist on a cell phone. It was safe to laugh.  

How many times must we point out that “compassionate conservatism” is an ironic name for Bush’s policies before we stop laughing and start crying? We know it’s ironic. So is the “Healthy Forest Initiative,” “No Child Left Behind,” “Operation Enduring Freedom,” “Defense of Marriage Act,” and almost everything else the president says and does. (For the record, it’s not just Bush. Ultra-rich presidential candidates urging an equitable distribution of wealth can stumble into it, too).

Irony consists in the vast gulf between how we talk about the world and how it actually is. As 21st-century Americans, we navigate that widening gulf every minute, every day. It’s our dominating existential reality. But we don’t have to like it.

Five years ago, the President was impeached while his approval rating was around 70 percent. Maybe it wasn’t ha-ha irony, but at least in those days I didn’t feel like the sky could fall at any minute.

After a while, I get no real pleasure pointing out that so many hard-working people who vote for George W. Bush are likely to suffer under his inequitable economic policies. When Bill O’Reilly calls himself the “ombudsman for America,” I might be laughing and rolling my eyes, but inside, I’m weeping like a little girl.

For a chilling look at how irony is just plain not funny anymore, check out George Bush’s Meet the Press interview:

Tim Russert:  Mr. President, the Director of the CIA said that his briefings had qualifiers and caveats, but when you spoke to the country, you said, “there is no doubt.” … You said, quote, “The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. Saddam Hussein is a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.” You gave the clear sense that this was an immediate threat that must be dealt with.

President Bush:  I think, if I might remind you that in my language I called it a grave and gathering threat, but I don’t want to get into “word contests.” But what I do want to share with you is my sentiment at the time.

In 2000, Bush campaigned as the anti-Clinton, the only candidate who could bring integrity back to the White House. Bubba was always getting into word contests. But you could be sure that George W. would never argue over the definition of  “is.” Thank goodness for that.  

If we believe him when he says he doesn’t want to get into word contests, that he wants to be a leader and a uniter, what are we to conclude when he says,

I’m not going to change, see? I’m not trying to accommodate —  I won’t change my philosophy or my point of view. I believe I owe it to the American people to say what I’m going to do and do it, and to speak as clearly as I can, try to articulate as best I can why I make decisions I make…

I want to lead this great country to work with others to change the world in positive ways, particularly as we fight the war on terror, and we got changing times here in America, too.

Well, you can believe one thing, at least. We got changing times here in America. It used to be funny when the President was a joke.

henrypb

On Valentines Day, Chicago musician Chris Saathoff was the victim of a hit-and-run after leaving The Empty Bottle, a club on Chicago’s Northwest side. About 26 hours after Chris, and about a half mile to the north, a man in his 50s was killed. Across town, a woman, age 44, was killed by a vehicle in the parking lot. One local listserv dubbed the sequence of pedestrian killings St. Valentine’s Massacre 2004.” The deaths have helped to rally local pedestrian advocates who are planning a protest/memorial styled after the widely popular bicycle ride, Critical Mass, and similar pedestrian protests in California. I plan to attend the memorial because I believe pedestrian rights are the bedrock to mobility and absolutely essential to a healthy community. Some laugh at the idea of pedestrian rights. How could something so mundane need to be defended? But it is its banality that is its strength. If any group needs to be radicalized, it is pedestrians.  

625 Illinois Compiled Statues 5/11-1002. Pedestrians’ right-of-way at crosswalks. (a) … the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk…

Here’s a description of the pedestrian protest in California from the Menlo Park Almanac, Feb. 11, 2004:

Tempers flared Friday on Santa Cruz Avenue near the Menlo Commons retirement community as angry drivers clashed with a group of protesting pedestrians exercising their right to cross the street — and re-cross it at what they said was a decent interval.

From about 11 a.m. Friday, February 6, until sometime after 1 p.m., about 30 friends and relatives met to commemorate the one-month anniversary of the death of Atefeh “Amy” Bijan, a 75-year-old Menlo Commons resident who, on January 9, was struck by a car and killed in the crosswalk midway between the intersections of Alameda de las Pulgas and Sand Hill Road.

Benjamin Helphand

For a humorous and enlightening take on how people of color have been portrayed on television, check out VH1’s TV’s Illest Minority Moments Presented by Ego Trip.

Based on the Big Book of Racism from the creators of the hip-hop zine Ego Trip, the show pokes fun at and lambastes the racial and ethnic stereotypes that have made their way into America’s living rooms.

Some highlights include:

•Danny Partridge becoming an honorary member of an “Afro-American club”

•Marlo Thomas playing a Chinese girl on an episode of Bonanza

•Pondering who Uncle Ben would rather do the nasty with, Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth?

•Figuring out Big Bird’s race

And who would have thought that Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) and Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) aren’t quite the all-American white girls they were made out to be?

Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast, Kelis, Talib Kweli, actor Anthony Anderson, cartoonist Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks), writers Angela Nissel (Broke Diaries, Scrubs), Judy McCreary, Eric Nakamura (Giant Robot magazine), Jeff Yang (Once Upon a Time in China), director John Singleton (Boyz N The Hood, Baby Boy) and comic Joey Medina (Latin Kings of Comedy) are among the talking heads in the show.

TV’s Illest Minority Moments airs tonight at 7 p.m., Thursday at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Saturday at 12 a.m. (all times EST) this week.

chinoloco

Nicholas Kristof’s editorial in today’s New York Times tackles, with intelligence and nuance, the issue of American double standards regarding Israel.  

Kristof asks: “This week’s hearings at the International Court of Justice on Israel’s ’security fence‘ raise again one of the most sensitive questions for America: are we engaging in double standards in the Middle East?”

I agree with Kristof’s reply to his own question: The answer is a resounding yes.  

As Kristof notes, there is more to the issue than a facile acknowledgement that America has one set of standards for its friends and one for its foes — such an observation is more a statement of fact than an astute critique of U.S. foreign policy. Israel, a country that violates U.N. resolutions, can rely on American support and bucket loads of money. Iraq, another country that defied U.N. resolutions, was invaded by American forces.  

Kristof rightly insists, however, that we must examine the type and nature of the violations that these countries commit. Kristof argues that America is clearly guilty of double standards regarding Israel, just as the nations that criticize America as a bullying pro-Zionist machine have their own sets of double standards. Ultimately, mutual hypocrisy proves and accomplishes nothing, and Kristof believes that America must more forcefully condemn the wall that Israel is currently constructing on Palestinian land.    

I want to add additional emphasis to Kristof’s article and posit that it is imperative that the U.S. speak out now against the Israeli wall in order to restore some of its credibility in the international community and Islamic world. America is currently an occupying force in Iraq, and America must not underestimate the incredible resentment this occupation has inspired. Nations in the Middle East have a long and bitter memory of unjust and illegitimate rulers, and this list includes not only the likes of Saddam Hussein but also the colonialist occupying forces. America may be seen as the unwelcome successor to the previous French and British forces that occupied the region. Just as the Israeli wall is further problematizing the politics of the region, the American silence on the issue further delegitimizes the United States in the eyes of the world.  

Mimi Hanaoka

In a splendid tidbit that highlights the disparate Islams that exist throughout the world, today’s installation of the BBC Online’s photojournalism series illustrates the quotidian life of Sulayman Ag-Mohamed, a Tuareg nomad in northern Mali. This piece is visually stunning and highlights the diversity of Islamic life and practice that exists within the Islamic world.

Tuareg men wear indigo clothing, and against the backdrop of their desert environment, their blue robes are striking, as is the fact that Tuareg men also wear, from about the age of twenty, a blue turban that covers the face. Women and girls are proudly and culturally appropriately unveiled. In another inversion of popularly accepted norms, Sulayman Ag-Mohamed’s wife was selected by his brother.  

In addition to being an educational and beautiful morsel — the piece consists of a mere seven photos and short pieces of commentary — this item is timely. In an era when the Bush administration can rightly be accused of treating political Islam as the monolithic and evil heir to international communism, bringing attention to this diversity in the Islamic world should disabuse the world of such a feeble understanding of Islam. Contrary to what some policy makers may imagine, Tehran is not the only, or even dominant, type of Muslim society. The shocking blue robes of the Tuareg men are a fascinating counterpoint to the black robes of the mullahs in Iran.  

This informative piece of photojournalism should chip away at the myth of a monolithic Islam and instead underscore the richness of the disparate Islams that exist throughout the world.  

Mimi Hanaoka

Oil and the staggering greed it inspires has led to war profiteering in Iraq by the likes of Halliburton, and oil has now added a less sinister but certainly interesting new dimension to the events in the Middle East: Japan has signed a deal with Iran to develop the oil field in Azadegan.

As a tiny but energy-hungry island nation, Japan relies heavily on imports; oil — eighty-eight percent of which it imports from the Middle East — supplies half of the nation’s energy. After three years of negotiations, Japan has won access to the estimated twenty-six billion barrels of oil in Azadegan.  

Richard Boucher, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, stated that he was “disappointed,” by the deal that Japan has brokered with Iran.

Boucher may be rightfully suspicious of Iran, particularly in light of Iran’s recent admission that it purchased nuclear equipment from black market dealers. Iran insists it is using such devices for peaceful purposes, which may or may not be true. Only last year, Iran admitted that it had been concealing its nuclear activities for years. However, a deal of this magnitude certainly adds an intriguing new facet to the world-wide scramble for oil. America, distrustful of Tehran and thirsty for oil, must confront the fact that a newly militarized Japan is now an important and very visible player in the region.  

Mimi Hanaoka

While it seems silly that the media loves to focus on whether prospective First Ladies are liabilities or assets to their husbands campaigns, what should we make of all of the hoopla over Mary Cheney’s participation in her father’s re-election campaign? Openly gay, Mary Cheney has stood by her Vice President father and actively participated in the promotion of the Bush/Cheney ticket. Given that the Bush administration has vocalized its support of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, members of the queer community can hardly begin to fathom how Cheney’s daughter is able to reconcile her sexual orientation with her ardent promotion of the Radical Right’s agenda.

In fact, just recently, some concerned citizens launched www.DearMary.com, a site dedicated to urging Mary Cheney to convince her father to oppose the amendment and to focus her loyalties on the interests of the queer community.

Mary’s predicament is not one that most of us would want to find ourselves in for one reason or another, but it does raise some important questions: Does one’s first loyalty belong to his or her family or to the demands of identity politics? Is it even possible to make such a simple delineation, particularly when one’s family and upbringing constitutes part of one’s identity? And is it possible that neither Cheney’s family nor the queer community which wants to claim her as its spokesperson can actually lay claim to Mary’s identity since both oppose aspects of her identity and thus potentially preclude genuine self-actualization?

Laura Nathan-Garner

Call me crazy, but I really don’t understand the media’s obsession with the spouses of presidential candidates. (Maybe I should just say the ”wives“ of presidential candidates. After all, the husbands of presidential candidates don’t make it into the spotlight since female candidates rarely remain on the ballot past February).

Prior to Dean’s withdrawal from the Democratic race, we heard all about how his wife was a liability since she wasn’t on the campaign trail with him. Today, The New York Times features an article which questions whether John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is an asset or a liability to his run for the White House.

Sure, I suppose every intimate detail of a candidate’s life, ranging from Botox to extramarital affairs to the quality of his wife’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, is subject to scrutiny in determining whether he is fit to run the country. At the risk of being incredibly blunt and dismissive, who really cares? Or rather, why does the media try to make voters base their decisions on relatively trivial, personal issues?

I suppose that these types of stories keep The National Enquirer in business and give people something to talk about. But beyond that, such superficial details have little to no impact on one’s ability to lead a country.

On a related note, I wonder if the media’s portrayal of the wives of presidential candidates as caretakers, homemakers, party planners, entertainers — everything but policymakers —  reinforces the idea that women are expected to be wives first and foremost. I guess that by definition, that is what the title ”First Lady“ means.

But I wonder whether this tendency to focus on a presidential candidate’s spouse and children (remember those painful Saturday Night Live skits about Chelsea Clinton during the early 1990s?) reinforces the notion of the ”trophy wife,“ thereby making it that much more difficult for us to imagine a woman in the White House — as president. Maybe it’s time to start questioning the media’s tendency to question whether presidential candidates and their wives are indeed ”model Americans“ and worry a little more about what they will do for the country — and whether they can create a sense of belonging both in the White House and throughout the nation for a larger spectrum of people. Just some food for thought …  kind of like the chocolate chip cookie contest that dominated the 1992 presidential election.

Laura Nathan-Garner