Category Archives: Current Affairs

I love these pictures

Current Affairs

Jang Song-thaek

I want to start by saying that I apologize for the picture being so small, a picture this good should be larger – the size of the screen in the Apple Superbowl Ad – but, I guess, North Korean cameras max out at about two mega-pixels. This is a picture of a Jang Song-thaek being dragged to his death, so maybe saying I love this picture, is unseemly, still…I love the identically dressed guys receding all the way back to the horizon, I love the North Korean military hats and the generals with all the ribbons, I love that nobody seems to be moving a muscle. It is like a scene from 1984 or the Apple Ad.

And the picture so fits the crimes, among other things Mr. Jang, who is a despicable human scum Jang and who was worse than a dog, engaged in  acts such as dreaming different dreams and half-heartedly clapping. He also  perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him. It does seem vaguely similar to three strikes and you’re out, only thrice-cursed acts of treachery and you are really out.

12 Years a Slave

Current Affairs, Film

Plantation-2

We saw 12 Years a Slave the other night, finally. I have been avoiding it for a month and a half. I am not so sure that I actually did see it, I know I was in the theater but I may have been too guarded to really let all the movie in. I probably would be useful to see it again. Nevertheless, what did come across was the utter helplessness and almost utter hopelessness of Solomon Northup – stunningly played by Chiwetel Ejiofor – once he was shipped south; the utter helplessness and hopelessness of being a slave in 1841, in the United States. Moreover, the word slave doesn’t approach the horror of the reality; to be owned by another human being, as Frederick Douglas said, for twelve years a thing…classed with mules and horses.

The movie makes it clear that the South – and, in many ways, most of the United States – was a slave society. It wasn’t just that a couple of people owned slaves and, if the slave could escape them, they would be free; everything revolved around slavery (Northup’s father was owned by a white man in Rhode Island). The Constitution was written to protect slavery. As James McPherson points out During forty-nine of the seventy-two years from 1789 to 1861, the presidents of the United States were Southerners–all of them slaveholders. The only presidents to be reelected were slaveholders. Two-thirds of the Speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, and presidents pro tem of the Senate were Southerners. At all times before 1861, a majority of Supreme Court justices were Southerners.

As I thought about the movie the next day, several things bothered me and I began to wonder if the book was real. I have since read that they were not in the book but added to the movie for reasons I don’t understand, taking them out does make the book believable. Frederick Douglas believed it, as did Harriet Beecher Stowe, so who am I to doubt?

What also comes across in the movie is that the slave system was a means of social organization and control that extended way past the plantation. And the plantations! In our national mythology, they are peopled by Thomas Jeffersons and Vivien Leighs along with some happy dark people. In 12 Years a Slave, the closest we get to Jefferson is Mr. Ford – played by Benedict Cumberbatch – and, actually, he is pretty close. Like Jefferson, Ford spouts pieties while worrying how much his slaves are costing him or making for him. For Vivien Leigh we get Mistress Ford who confronts the problem of a Eliza, a black woman, having her children stolen from her, with, Some food and some rest, your children will soon be forgotten. When the Eliza doesn’t stop crying after a couple of days, the problem is solved by selling her.

Think about that for a second, these are human beings who are bought and sold. Ford bought Eliza without her kids because he couldn’t afford the whole package, so, What the hell, just buy the mother. He payed a $1,000 for Solomon – who even has his name taken away – and when Solomon becomes a problem, he is sold because Ford doesn’t want to incur the loss.

Nevertheless, the women are both the biggest heavys – and the biggest victims – in 12 Years a Slave. At first look, it seems like the brutal and insane slave breaker, Mr. Epps, is the worst human being in the movie – a movie filled with despicable human beings – but he is nowhere near as bad as his wife. Her cruelty out of jealousy because her husband is serial rapeing Patsy seems to have no gain except satisfaction in seeing somebody suffer.

Even before I saw this movie, even before I saw Django Unchained, I started having the feeling that a good part of America is ready to face our racist Past and, by extrapolation, our racist present. Not all of it, not everybody, not even everybody I know. I don’t think that makes us post racial as a country. I do think that makes us increasingly able to talk about race and talk about it more objectively.

Obama is part of it, no doubt, but so is the fact that  this NFL season started with nine African-American quarterbacks (in the 80’s or 90’s they would have been diverted to play receiver or cornerback). Lewis Hamilton and Oprah are part of it, but so is Django and Morpheus. Each time we see people of color exell, it moves the public expectation just a little bit. Much of the right expected Obama to lose to Romney because of their expectations – Romney is white and smart and successful and all Obama ever did was go up against an old man – they also thought Congress could outplay him. I think that those are mistakes that are less likely to be made in the future.

One hundred fifty years after the Civil War, forty five years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood proudly on the winner’s platform in Mexico City, it is about time.

Disney Princesses and the right of the insulted to decide if it is an insult

Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized

Princesses-

I am not an expert on Disney princesses, I don’t think that I have seen any of the princesses in a movie except for Cinderella (front row, second from the left). I am pretty sure that the redhead, second from the left in the top row, was originally a Pixar princess from Brave, and the princess on the far right might be Pocahontas. It is my understanding that at least some of the princesses – Cinderella and Snow White (where is she?) for sure – came from old  European fairy tales.

The European fairy tales, in turn, came from earlier folk tales that were rooted in the deep humus of the collective European past. According to Robert Bly, those classic fairy tales lay out stages of initiation into adulthood which we’ve entirely forgotten, that our ancestors apparently knew a lot about. However, the new Disney Princesses, and the fairy tales they are in, are not rooted in a deep wisdom, they are made to sell dolls or amusement park rides. Additionally, they do damage to susceptible little girls by setting an impossible standard of what a woman should look like (a Barbiesque caricature of European homogeny).

As a protest to this, an English artist, David Trumble, Disneyfied a group of women who he considered real feminist heroes. As I understand it, he thought that, by showing how the Disney treatment trivialized these very real, heroic, women, it showed how Disney trivialized all women by their depiction of Princesses. I drew this picture because I wanted to analyze how unnecessary it is to collapse a heroine into one specific mold, to give them all the same sparkly fashion, the same tiny figures, and the  same homogenized plastic smile.

David Trum Princesses

Artist-Turns-Female-Role-Models-Into-Disney-Princesses-600x450

But a funny thing happened, not everybody thought the Disneyifacation of real women was bad. Some women liked it, at Feminist Disney, one woman said Of course it’d be nice if there was more diversity (they have one less WOC than the actual disney princess lineup!), less western-centric, more modern women, and women who are not cis hetero, as well as disabled and/or fat women. But I thought it was a cool take. I am here for Princess Malala Yousafzai. One woman started complaining and then, sort of, turned around.  In an article in Women You Should Know, Marijayne Renny said, Sadly, (my daughter) was immediately drawn to the sparkly dresses, but on the flip side it made her ask questions about these women and she was genuinely excited to know each and every one of their back stories. 

I first ran into the Princesses in an article in Atlantic, Why Shouldn’t Gloria Steinem Be a Disney Princess?, whose title, more or less, is self explanatory. Disney Princesses are not something that I think about very much, but, when I do, they do seem somewhat pedophilic what with the big eyes and all. But I am not a woman and either is the artist who made these satirical images and that is the problem.

A couple of years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a blog post on the backhanded apology to an insult that is actually a new insult, Oh, I’m sorry if you feel insulted by the way I said what I said, I didn’t mean to insult you. The assumption here is that the  person feeling insulted is wrong because the insulter didn’t mean to be insulting and that, somehow, that makes the insult non-op. Coates argued, and I agree, that the insulted party should have the right to feel insulted. I think that the reverse is the case here, it seems that Trumble felt women should be insulted when alot of them were not.

His drawings, designed to show how insulting Disney is, turned out to not say that to many women who don’t necessarily  regard Disney as insulting. Answering that, Trumble said, I feel like good satire shouldn’t be understood by everybody. Some people were angry at me because they thought I was reducing the women, which was obviously the point. But if it gets children interested in these real women and what they do, is it so bad? Leaving aside that I agree that good satire should be close enough to the truth that some people don’t see it as satire and it is is great if these cartoons end up making children, especially little girls, want to know the back stories of these remarkable women, a man shouldn’t be deciding if the original Princesses are objectionable.

As a postscript to this, there are now drawings and cups of the Princesses available at søciety6 for only $15.oo. They seem to me that they would make a good gift, but what do I know?

Princesses Cups--2

 

Mixed feeling on the Roma Blond Angel

Current Affairs, Psychological Musings

greek-roma-coupleIn case you missed it, a couple of days ago the police in Greece, while raiding a Roma neighborhood of  Farsala, found a blond girl they say didn’t fit. On one hand, it seems the police just swept up Maria because she didn’t look like her parents, on the other hand, the state asserts that Maria’s parents claim they have 14 children, six who are less than ten months apart which would make them suspicious. Of something, somehow. When I first saw the story, my immediate reaction was that it was just another case of prejudice against the Roma.  Historically, next to Jews, the Roma are Europe’s favorite scapegoats. They are the classic outsiders, after all.

From the newspaper reports, it seems the police were in the area looking for drugs and weapons when they spotted the girl who looked different, and confiscated her. I have a problem with the police going to minority communities looking for drugs anyway, and an even bigger problem with the authorities confiscating kids without real cause. Sure, they will probably find drugs in the community just like they would probably find them with a random drug bust anywhere.

As I type that, a little inside voice is screaming Yea, but there is a better chance of finding drugs in a Roma neighborhood. Then I remembered a story an acquaintance told me. She loves plants and lives in Atherton so she thought she would try growing pot. She figured she would be able to get a better grade for less money, less risk, and more fun. It turned out that it wasn’t as easy as she thought. Cannabis is a dioecious plant, meaning that male and female flowers are on different plants and the idea is to keep the males away from the females so then females continue to grow flowers rather than seeds. In Atherton, so many people are growing pot that the male pollen is everywhere and it was very difficult to keep the females isolated. According to Forbes, Atherton is the most expensive place to live in the United States and you can be sure that nobody is making random drug searches there.

Meanwhile, back in Greece, they had no real cause, they just took Maria away from her parents and decided to find a cause later. In a turn around, they say they have a kidnapped child but nobody from whom she kidnapped but they still charged the parents with abduction. Now. the parents, it seems, will have to prove that she wasn’t kidnapped. She doesn’t look like her parents but they don’t claim that they are the biological parents, they claim that a woman from Bulgaria asked them to take Maria because that mother couldn’t take care of her. Now they are trying to prove that they didn’t commit a crime that may not have even been committed (on the bright side, a Roma kid who was taken from her parents, has been reunited after DNA tests showed they were related).

Here is the thing, though, when I read that Maria’ parents are illiterate, and had registered their family in several towns, collecting about $3,420 a month in child welfare subsidies; when I read that they have 14 children, six who are less than ten months apart: I started to think, Well, yeah, they are gypsies after all, and gypsies are known for abducting children and trafficking in them. I started to buy into the whole gypsy abductor scenario. It scares me how easily I can slip into the same stereotyping that I blame the police for.

And it scares me almost as much how easily I can stereotype the police for doing the wrong thing.

 

The esteemed military and Bradley – scratch that – Chelsea Manning

Americana, Current Affairs

Boise-1511

While we were in Idaho, admiring the Boise River, Richard Taylor emailed me an article – and article might not be the right word here – from the Pew Research Religion and Public life Project that was titled Public Esteem for Military Still High. The article started with Americans continue to hold the military in high regard, with more than three-quarters of U.S. adults (78%) saying that members of the armed services contribute “a lot” to society’s well-being.

I am astonished that Americans hold the military in such high esteem. Maybe I should say that I am astonished that Americans hold the military in higher esteem than teachers or doctors. I am astonished that twice as many think the military contributes  a lot to society’s well being as feel that way about clergy. My first though was, Obviously, none of the them have been in the military. From my very limited direct experience of three years in the Regular Army – RA, all the way – and my obsessive reading about the same, I feel safe saying  that the only people who are in the military are people who see no other way out of where they are and people with a sort of idealized patriotism.

Some of the people who joined to get out of where they were, do so and move on, some do so and stay. Some of the patriots – for lack of a better word – get disillusioned and get out, some get disillusioned and stay. The military has always been a, slightly to considerably, distorted vision of America writ small (depending on the size of the war or peacetime force).

That writ small part is important, because the resultant inbreeding adds to the distortion. There are some very smart people in the military and even more stupid people, there are some people who contribute a lot to society’s well being and more who don’t contribute much of anything. There are a huge number of people who respect their fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and a much smaller, but large, number who rape them. With near impunity, apparently.  Last year, there were about 19,000 sexual assaults in the military and only 96 went to court-martial.

db130822And then there is Chelsea Manning. In an idealized world, I like to think he would be treated as a whistle blower and the criminals he exposed would be prosecuted. In the real world, however, exposing your bosses almost always results in the whistle blower getting the punishment, especially in the military and when classified documents are involved. Bradley could have been executed, he could have been locked up for life in the ADX Florence supermax in Colorado. Instead he got a judge that tossed out the Aiding the Enemy charge. He got 35 years with the possibility of parole after twelve years with 4.5 already served. He got the military at its best.

Maybe that is why Americans hold the military in such high esteem, at its best it is very, very good.