Yesterday I posted a clip from The Daily Show on my Facebook page. The clip showed Jon Stewart mocking the half-logic of various media figures, mostly from Fox News, first saying the cultural center in Manhattan is no big deal, then flipping and saying it’s a terrible idea because it’s insensitive. The clip was funny in the usual Daily Show way. It’s always nice to see media figures hoisted on their own petard by their own words caught by their own television networks. But the part of the clip that struck me most was the ending. Jon Stewart showed a clip of Charleton Heston defending the right of the NRA to hold their convention in Colorado Springs right after the Columbine High School tragedy. And then Stewart admitted the he’d made fun of Heston for that, and that he, Stewart, was wrong. He pulled the classic Daily Show gag on himself, and it wasn’t just funny (though he did his best to make it so). It also made Stewart’s point better than all the usual clip-a-thons could. But that couldn’t have made it easy. It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong. It’s always hard. It’s easier when it’s about something unimportant. Oddly, I think it’s also easier when one’s error is so patently obvious, so overwhelmingly clear, that you can hardly help it. That’s where I find myself.
I was wrong. Sure, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. Admitting that one is a sinner, or only human, or even a bafoon, is pretty easy when it’s done in the abstract. But I’ve been wrong in a very specific way. I feel compelled to confess.
Last night I read SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I couldn’t put it down. At 4:30am I had to force myself, and when I woke up this morning I went right back to it. I loved Freakonomics, but SuperFreakonomics is better, or at least it affected me more, because the points made in Freakonomics were smaller and safer. I found them fascinating, but even having some of my “conventional wisdom” upended was pretty comfortable. SuperFreakonomics was less so, and all the more powerful for it. The book made me re-examine assumptions I’ve made about the safety of car seats, the danger of Global warming, and even the nature of human altruism. But the point that hit me hardest wasn’t something I didn’t know, but something I’ve actively chosen to forget.
I’ve argued that one of my chief issues with conservatism is that it’s regressive, dependent on a mythic view of the past as a halcyon time when people had “values” and everything was hunky-dory. I’ve pointed out that this is patently, demonstrably false; that we are, in every measurable way, living in the best time to be alive in human history. I’ve reminded people that the news media has no incentive to portray the world as safe, happy, and healthy. That doesn’t bleed, so it doesn’t lead. But, as an avid consumer of media (especially news media), I’ve fallen victim to the very fears I derided in conservatives. Only, because I tend to read liberals less critically than conservatives (I try to read both, but admit that I don’t read them the same way) I acknowledged that the present is a lot better than the past, but bought into the notion lots of people are peddling, on both the right and the left, that even though things are good, they are about to get a lot worse. Terribly worse. Apocalyptically worse.
Now, it’s fine to believe that as a tenant of a religion. You can say that your scripture or your prophet tells you that the end times are coming, and that’s enough. But I wasn’t doing that. I was accepting, and even preaching, that some kind of horrible dystopia was on its way, and that since this horror would come from some human source rather than a super-natural one, I could believe in it based on evidence.
But Dubner and Levitt reminded me that I didn’t find that evidence myself, or even read it from authoritative sources. I read it, largely, from people trying to sell newspapers, or heard it from people trying to glue my eyes to TV stations or even Oscar winning documentaries. But Dubner and Levitt are just trying to sell books too, right? True, but they are selling books with a different message. Their message is that we should look at the numbers, so their incentive is to find examples wherein the data conflicts with conventional wisdom. If the conventional wisdom said that the world is safe and improving, they would find examples that show that the data doesn’t back that up. But that’s not what the conventional wisdom shows, so those contrarian examples aren’t the examples they put on display. It’s not that they are apologists for a particular view of the future. They are advocates for the numbers themselves, and for the economist’s view that we should trust the numbers even when they go against what we believe.
So while I’d dismissed conservative fears of a socialist take-over of the government, or the notion that President Obama is opposed to private gun ownership, or that he’s secretly a Kenyan-born secret Muslim secret Marxist secret Black Supremacist, all because these notions lack any evidence to back them up, I’d bought, hook line and sinker, some liberal friendly notions of the coming dystopia. Foremost among these is the notion that global warming is going to destroy the world, and that gasoline in cars is largely responsible for that global warming. Turns out the latter is demonstrably untrue, and the former is wildly unlikely in the foreseeable future. That’s not to say Global Warming is a myth, or that it isn’t a pressing problem. It’s just not at all the problem I thought it was. It’s far more distant in time, far less extreme in its effects, and far more easy to solve than I ever would have expected. I won’t completely explain all that I learned from the book here (read the book!), but suffice it to say that some very smart scientists (not crazy global warming deniers, but respected environmentalists) have come up with a fix that will cost about 50 million dollars. That sounds like a lot, but compare it to the 300 million that Al Gore’s group is using to try to “raise awareness” about the coming apocalypse, it’s pretty small change.
So, if I was wrong about global warming, what else have I been wrong about. Upon reflection, I realize I’ve been wrong to be so concerned about the fight for gay marriage. Yes, it’s a tragedy that it may take a while for gay marriage to become the law of the land, but if trends hold it’s an inevitability. That’s not much consolation for gay couples who want to get married now, but it does mean I should ratchet down my rhetoric. And what about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The human tolls are awful, and the consequences of the money wasted are only magnified when you think of all the lives that could have been saved with that money if it had been spent here on, say, better computer systems for hospitals to reduce human error, or on HIV medication in Africa. But I need to remember that, even with two wars going on, the rate of death by warfare is at nearly historic lows. In fact, so few people are killing each other in war that it’s realistic to believe that war itself could come to an end in the future, a notion that is still unimaginable for most people, despite the fact that our species got by for most of its history without anything we would call war. (For more on, check this out.)
Does this create for some fundamental shift in my politics? Yes and no. I’m still a “progressive”, a “liberal”,a “leftist”. But I don’t need to be a panicked one, and I need to remind myself that people who disagree with me aren’t woefully misinformed fools wandering headlong over a cliff. They may be right. And they may be wrong, but about things that aren’t nearly the big deal I was trying to make them.
Levitt and Dubner point out a bunch of ridiculous, inefficient government programs to illustrate that often the best of intentions lead to fixes that are worse than the problems they are designed to address. This doesn’t incline me to abandon progressivism. For one thing, I don’t buy the false dichotomy that conservatives all want a smaller government while progressives all want a bigger one. It seems to me there are a lot of conservatives who want the government to criminalize abortion, and, one would assume, enforce that criminalization, which is quite a government intrusion on private lives. Meanwhile, this progressive has always believed that it’s ridiculous that our country spends about as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. If a conservative were to give up on their anti-abortion stance, that still wouldn’t cut nearly as much federal spending out of their vision of a better government as my cuts to defense would cut out of mine. I’m perfectly willing to admit that government is not good at some things, and that many of its solutions are bad ones. I also recognize that the public sector can be just as inefficient in some areas, and with more dangerous consequences when they aren’t accountable to anyone but a small number of shareholders. On a theoretical level, I trust the American people to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else, just like Churchill said. The same cannot be said for private companies. Furthermore, I still believe the history of the United States has been one of slow but inexorable progress away from bigotry and aristocracy toward pluralism and inclusiveness. I also believe that pluralism and inclusiveness are essential ingredients to our standard of living and our financial success, creating more economic benefits than deregulation or tax cuts for the wealthy could ever hope to achieve, because the educated, tolerant middle class drives the economy more than distant haves and have-nots. I believe that standing on the side of slowing change down has, historically, always meant standing up for bigotry, intolerance, or economic inefficiency in the face of technological change. I won’t stand on that side.
Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the time in history when conservatism is correct, when we’ve gone too far and my grandkids will look back and say, “He supported gay marriage? He railed about U.S. torture policy? He thought taxes on the wealthy should go back up to the rates during Reagan or higher, and that a robust social safety net actually produced greater economic growth in the aggregate while diminishing human suffering during economic downturns? That guy was crazy!” Maybe gay marriage will have destroyed the social fabric of American society. Maybe a little more torture will have made us safer. Maybe “Voodoo Economics” will suddenly start to work. Maybe a society needs some people to starve to death or die from lack of basic health care in order to motivate everyone else to work hard. I could be wrong about all those things. Or maybe my grandkids will be living in bubble cities under the ocean due to massive sea level increases because I’m insufficiently alarmed about global warming. I just hope, when they look back, they are willing to make their decisions based on the best possible data, and when confronted with numbers that don’t fit their preconceived notions, they are willing to change their minds.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Best of OWP: Total Eclipse: The Literary Merit of the Burger King Whopper
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project. We were assigned to write an essay, and this was what, er, came out.
Total Eclipse: The Literary Merit of the Burger King Whopper
Walk into any Burger King, and you’ll be drowned in a tsunami of images from the new movie Eclipse, the third part in the Twilight series. To say this is unappetizing is a wild understatement. However, the association with fast food is all too apt. I read Stephanie Meyer’s whole series, and it ran through me much as a Burger King Whopper might.
The series was recommended to me in the highest terms. My students loved it. My colleagues loved it. Like the Whopper, it was ubiquitous, and like Burger King’s advertising, it was pervasive. The marketing barrage was the literary world’s equivalent of a fast food ad campaign. Pundits for the industry were talking about the series as the next Harry Potter, the next savior sent from heaven to stave off the imminent death of reading. “Look at all these kids reading,” they said. “Any reading is good reading,” they said. Imagine a PR ad wherein the Burger King, complete with his creepy, fixed-grin plastic head, came riding through the sky, swinging from the cables carrying giant crates of Whoppers, airlifted and then dropped into the barren fields of some famine stricken African nation. Because all Whoppers is better than no Whoppers, right?
But I bought it. I picked up the first book, tore through it, and enjoyed the pure speed of it. I’d purchased a Whopper, and, sure enough, it had come to the counter still heat-lamp-hot in less than thirty seconds. Twilight recreated that regret I often feel right after buying a burger and forgetting to tell them to hold the mayo. The first portion revolved mostly around romance, which just isn’t my thing, but I recognize that reasonable people can disagree about the virtues of mayonnaise. Sure, I can make a reasonable argument against mayonnaise (it spoils quickly, it can carry salmonella, it looks remarkably like puss) but it’s just a condiment. Short of a localized disease outbreak or contributing to the national obesity epidemic, romance literature poses no social ills either. Twilight was a vampire story, and some measure of whipped up, possibly infectious, puss-filled romance is to be expected in such stories. Still, I like vampires for what their stories can tell us about; the dangers of forbidden love, the curse of immortality, the Faustian bargain of power for soul. It seemed Twilight might have some things to say about these dilemmas re-set in an American high school, with all its issues, and I thought that might be interesting.
Like the Whopper, it tasted pretty good at the time. The second book introduced werewolves, predictably, but then, much about a Whopper is predictable, too. No avocado or pineapple or gruyere cheese hiding between buns made of some strange, organic whole grain. A Whopper is what you expect, and New Moon followed the same path, complete with the vampire pretending to dump the girl in order to protect her from himself. Sometimes you might belch while eating your Whopper, and this kind of schmaltzy melancholy plot twist is the hint of nausea one expects.
By the time the beef is gone and you’re wrapping up that last bite of bun and American cheese in the wax paper, you start to wonder why you bought the Whopper in the first place, and by Eclipse I was realizing the same regret. The werewolves and vampires had fought which was the event I’d come for, and I should have stopped there. But at this point I was invested. The Whopper was mostly in my gullet, though the lack of development of Bella’s character stuck in my throat like a bit of that smooshed, dry bun. I had to swallow the rest and hope for the best.
And I did. I read Breaking Dawn, desperate to know how Meyer would resolve the story (down, damned Whopper, down! Settle!) all the while hating every plot twist. I can spoil the story for you here because, like a Whopper, you’ll forget that it’s an unpleasant experience and revisit the books in a moment of weakness. To summarize, Bella, the protagonist, has been begging to be turned into a vampire by her boyfriend, but he wants to abstain until marriage, so she marries him when she’s just turned 18, she gets knocked-up on the honeymoon, and then she gets super-mom powers that save the day.
At that point the Whopper was mostly only giving me indigestion. I could feel a gurgling in my gut because of what had been done to one of my favorite myths; dangerous creatures of the nights defanged and turned into morose, whining adolescents who can’t walk around in the daylight, not because it would turn them into piles of ash, but because their skin would sparkle in the sun like they rolled around in body glitter. And the werewolves can change at will and aren’t cursed by the full moon! I tried to remind myself that myths, like Whoppers, are made to order each time they’re retold. But I also remembered that one Whopper is often one too many.
As the Whopper proceeded through its journey, the experience got worse. The further I got from that Burger King, the more I regretted my choice to enter in the first place. Sure, the vampire community had a right to be pissed about the way they were depicted in the books, but I became more and more concerned with the messages the books sent to my young female students. I hesitate to even mention the word “diarrhea”. There’s just no mature way to discuss “the runs”. Maturity is expressed in our culture by refraining from discussing diarrhea above all else. But Whoppers can have a stool-softening effect, and Stephanie Meyer’s series was a Whopper that sat under the heat lamp just a little too long. Bella, the protagonist, begins by describing herself as perpetually klutzy, and throughout the series she always requires rescuing. In fact, her first meeting with Edward, her vampire love interest, is the occasion of her first rescue when she walks across a parking lot without paying attention to oncoming traffic. From then on, she’s being saved, and not just from cars, enemy vampires, out of control werewolves, and her boyfriend’s own dangerous passions. More than anything, Bella needs to be saved from herself. For every admirable thing she does, she makes three boneheaded decisions, fails to communicate openly and honestly with the people who care about her and can help her, and stumbles into life-threatening danger because she’s swooning about a boy. But the biggest danger of all, we’re told, is Bella’s own sexual desire. Sex is simultaneously represented by the metaphor of a vampire bite and by sex itself, and Bella wants both. While some might say it’s a kind of progress to depict a girl who wants sex, this is always presented as negative in that it’s life-threatening. If Bella gets her boyfriend too turned on, he’ll kill her. Luckily, she’s rescued from this by his strength of will. She’s found a boyfriend who will say no to a hot girl begging to have sex. This might be a fantasy of a particular kind of religious, conservative girl, but I would bet good money that girl will find a vampire before she finds a human boy with such restraint.
Of course, if abstinence is the real conflict, then marriage is the resolution, and when Bella gets married the danger of her sexual desire disappears. Now sex is the vehicle by which she can find satisfaction, right? Ha! She gets laid once. Once! Then she’s knocked up and… wait for it… her pregnancy is really dangerous. I wonder how Bella will pass through that danger. Oh yeah, she’ll be rescued, once again, by her husband.
And then she’s a mom, and since motherhood is the measure of a woman’s worth, she gets super-powers and saves the day. Yea.
If you aren’t sympathizing with the burning sensation yet, check this out: The boyfriend who keeps saving Bella from herself because he loves her so much is 87 years older than she is. That’s right, girls, if you want to find a nice guy who will protect you from your own sluttiness, make an honest woman out of you, and then give you the baby and super-powers deluxe package, just keep your eye out for the town pedophile.
Now those clever marketing guys in Hollywood know that it’s important to keep the Twilight films dribbling out just slowly enough that you can’t quite get off the toilet before the next wave hits. So here I am, still on the pot, my elbows propped on my knees for so long I’ll have bruises. But I’m over-analyzing the situation, you yell through the door. Why can’t you just enjoy it? I’ll tell you why. In the long run, the Whopper is generally not the pleasurable experience we’re told to expect. And Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series really chaps my hide.
Total Eclipse: The Literary Merit of the Burger King Whopper
Walk into any Burger King, and you’ll be drowned in a tsunami of images from the new movie Eclipse, the third part in the Twilight series. To say this is unappetizing is a wild understatement. However, the association with fast food is all too apt. I read Stephanie Meyer’s whole series, and it ran through me much as a Burger King Whopper might.
The series was recommended to me in the highest terms. My students loved it. My colleagues loved it. Like the Whopper, it was ubiquitous, and like Burger King’s advertising, it was pervasive. The marketing barrage was the literary world’s equivalent of a fast food ad campaign. Pundits for the industry were talking about the series as the next Harry Potter, the next savior sent from heaven to stave off the imminent death of reading. “Look at all these kids reading,” they said. “Any reading is good reading,” they said. Imagine a PR ad wherein the Burger King, complete with his creepy, fixed-grin plastic head, came riding through the sky, swinging from the cables carrying giant crates of Whoppers, airlifted and then dropped into the barren fields of some famine stricken African nation. Because all Whoppers is better than no Whoppers, right?
But I bought it. I picked up the first book, tore through it, and enjoyed the pure speed of it. I’d purchased a Whopper, and, sure enough, it had come to the counter still heat-lamp-hot in less than thirty seconds. Twilight recreated that regret I often feel right after buying a burger and forgetting to tell them to hold the mayo. The first portion revolved mostly around romance, which just isn’t my thing, but I recognize that reasonable people can disagree about the virtues of mayonnaise. Sure, I can make a reasonable argument against mayonnaise (it spoils quickly, it can carry salmonella, it looks remarkably like puss) but it’s just a condiment. Short of a localized disease outbreak or contributing to the national obesity epidemic, romance literature poses no social ills either. Twilight was a vampire story, and some measure of whipped up, possibly infectious, puss-filled romance is to be expected in such stories. Still, I like vampires for what their stories can tell us about; the dangers of forbidden love, the curse of immortality, the Faustian bargain of power for soul. It seemed Twilight might have some things to say about these dilemmas re-set in an American high school, with all its issues, and I thought that might be interesting.
Like the Whopper, it tasted pretty good at the time. The second book introduced werewolves, predictably, but then, much about a Whopper is predictable, too. No avocado or pineapple or gruyere cheese hiding between buns made of some strange, organic whole grain. A Whopper is what you expect, and New Moon followed the same path, complete with the vampire pretending to dump the girl in order to protect her from himself. Sometimes you might belch while eating your Whopper, and this kind of schmaltzy melancholy plot twist is the hint of nausea one expects.
By the time the beef is gone and you’re wrapping up that last bite of bun and American cheese in the wax paper, you start to wonder why you bought the Whopper in the first place, and by Eclipse I was realizing the same regret. The werewolves and vampires had fought which was the event I’d come for, and I should have stopped there. But at this point I was invested. The Whopper was mostly in my gullet, though the lack of development of Bella’s character stuck in my throat like a bit of that smooshed, dry bun. I had to swallow the rest and hope for the best.
And I did. I read Breaking Dawn, desperate to know how Meyer would resolve the story (down, damned Whopper, down! Settle!) all the while hating every plot twist. I can spoil the story for you here because, like a Whopper, you’ll forget that it’s an unpleasant experience and revisit the books in a moment of weakness. To summarize, Bella, the protagonist, has been begging to be turned into a vampire by her boyfriend, but he wants to abstain until marriage, so she marries him when she’s just turned 18, she gets knocked-up on the honeymoon, and then she gets super-mom powers that save the day.
At that point the Whopper was mostly only giving me indigestion. I could feel a gurgling in my gut because of what had been done to one of my favorite myths; dangerous creatures of the nights defanged and turned into morose, whining adolescents who can’t walk around in the daylight, not because it would turn them into piles of ash, but because their skin would sparkle in the sun like they rolled around in body glitter. And the werewolves can change at will and aren’t cursed by the full moon! I tried to remind myself that myths, like Whoppers, are made to order each time they’re retold. But I also remembered that one Whopper is often one too many.
As the Whopper proceeded through its journey, the experience got worse. The further I got from that Burger King, the more I regretted my choice to enter in the first place. Sure, the vampire community had a right to be pissed about the way they were depicted in the books, but I became more and more concerned with the messages the books sent to my young female students. I hesitate to even mention the word “diarrhea”. There’s just no mature way to discuss “the runs”. Maturity is expressed in our culture by refraining from discussing diarrhea above all else. But Whoppers can have a stool-softening effect, and Stephanie Meyer’s series was a Whopper that sat under the heat lamp just a little too long. Bella, the protagonist, begins by describing herself as perpetually klutzy, and throughout the series she always requires rescuing. In fact, her first meeting with Edward, her vampire love interest, is the occasion of her first rescue when she walks across a parking lot without paying attention to oncoming traffic. From then on, she’s being saved, and not just from cars, enemy vampires, out of control werewolves, and her boyfriend’s own dangerous passions. More than anything, Bella needs to be saved from herself. For every admirable thing she does, she makes three boneheaded decisions, fails to communicate openly and honestly with the people who care about her and can help her, and stumbles into life-threatening danger because she’s swooning about a boy. But the biggest danger of all, we’re told, is Bella’s own sexual desire. Sex is simultaneously represented by the metaphor of a vampire bite and by sex itself, and Bella wants both. While some might say it’s a kind of progress to depict a girl who wants sex, this is always presented as negative in that it’s life-threatening. If Bella gets her boyfriend too turned on, he’ll kill her. Luckily, she’s rescued from this by his strength of will. She’s found a boyfriend who will say no to a hot girl begging to have sex. This might be a fantasy of a particular kind of religious, conservative girl, but I would bet good money that girl will find a vampire before she finds a human boy with such restraint.
Of course, if abstinence is the real conflict, then marriage is the resolution, and when Bella gets married the danger of her sexual desire disappears. Now sex is the vehicle by which she can find satisfaction, right? Ha! She gets laid once. Once! Then she’s knocked up and… wait for it… her pregnancy is really dangerous. I wonder how Bella will pass through that danger. Oh yeah, she’ll be rescued, once again, by her husband.
And then she’s a mom, and since motherhood is the measure of a woman’s worth, she gets super-powers and saves the day. Yea.
If you aren’t sympathizing with the burning sensation yet, check this out: The boyfriend who keeps saving Bella from herself because he loves her so much is 87 years older than she is. That’s right, girls, if you want to find a nice guy who will protect you from your own sluttiness, make an honest woman out of you, and then give you the baby and super-powers deluxe package, just keep your eye out for the town pedophile.
Now those clever marketing guys in Hollywood know that it’s important to keep the Twilight films dribbling out just slowly enough that you can’t quite get off the toilet before the next wave hits. So here I am, still on the pot, my elbows propped on my knees for so long I’ll have bruises. But I’m over-analyzing the situation, you yell through the door. Why can’t you just enjoy it? I’ll tell you why. In the long run, the Whopper is generally not the pleasurable experience we’re told to expect. And Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series really chaps my hide.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Best of OWP: "Self-Portrait Across the Street from the Art Museum"
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project. I wrote this one during one of our field trips at Willson Park on the west side of the Oregon State Capitol grounds.
Self-Portrait Across the Street from the Art Museum
I almost fall
Ass-first
Folded up into a broken bench.
Startled smoke from my cigarette
Wraps around my head
Before I can ground the butt under the ball of my foot.
The fountain shouts, “Shush!”
Or maybe “Shame on you!”
I don’t know if it’s talking to me
Or the noisy buses on the street
Or the gaggle of teens juggling
The hacky-sack with their skate shoes
Or the twin turbo prop cutting and clawing sky
Or the politicians in the capital building behind me
Who certainly don’t care what the fountain thinks.
Maybe it’s shushing the strange sculptures
Of dark metal animals
“Animals on Parade”
A beaver, ferrets, two alligators, a pair of frogs sharing stilts.
The parade needs no shushing because it doesn’t speak to me.
At least not as loudly
As the empty gazebo
That needs a paint job
And a purpose
Out of place in time in this park.
As the next cigarette catches fire
And holds it
The gutter-punk kids startle me
Toss a firecracker
Yellow and white sparks darting off
To high pitched popping and a tired, bored “woo.”
I remember an overheard
“Your self-portrait is way off.”
And I know that is possible.
Maybe everyone’s self image is
A decaying gazebo, a self-important fountain
A capital building without a dome
Metal animals in a motionless parade
A discarded firecracker interrupting the arc of a hacky-sack
A ring of fancy flagpoles
Holding up unintelligible fabric limp in no wind.
If so, I’m no exception.
I am Dr. Watson
In the Sherlock Holmes mystery of my self,
Feet buried three cigarettes deep
Falling ass-first
Through a broken park bench.
Self-Portrait Across the Street from the Art Museum
I almost fall
Ass-first
Folded up into a broken bench.
Startled smoke from my cigarette
Wraps around my head
Before I can ground the butt under the ball of my foot.
The fountain shouts, “Shush!”
Or maybe “Shame on you!”
I don’t know if it’s talking to me
Or the noisy buses on the street
Or the gaggle of teens juggling
The hacky-sack with their skate shoes
Or the twin turbo prop cutting and clawing sky
Or the politicians in the capital building behind me
Who certainly don’t care what the fountain thinks.
Maybe it’s shushing the strange sculptures
Of dark metal animals
“Animals on Parade”
A beaver, ferrets, two alligators, a pair of frogs sharing stilts.
The parade needs no shushing because it doesn’t speak to me.
At least not as loudly
As the empty gazebo
That needs a paint job
And a purpose
Out of place in time in this park.
As the next cigarette catches fire
And holds it
The gutter-punk kids startle me
Toss a firecracker
Yellow and white sparks darting off
To high pitched popping and a tired, bored “woo.”
I remember an overheard
“Your self-portrait is way off.”
And I know that is possible.
Maybe everyone’s self image is
A decaying gazebo, a self-important fountain
A capital building without a dome
Metal animals in a motionless parade
A discarded firecracker interrupting the arc of a hacky-sack
A ring of fancy flagpoles
Holding up unintelligible fabric limp in no wind.
If so, I’m no exception.
I am Dr. Watson
In the Sherlock Holmes mystery of my self,
Feet buried three cigarettes deep
Falling ass-first
Through a broken park bench.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Best of OWP: "Grandpa's Ring"
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here, one piece per day. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project.
Grandpa’s Ring
His ring was very thin by the end.
The gold wore down
As he moved around the world
Did amazing things
Lived a life too unbelievably full for fiction.
When he was gone
My mother wanted me to have it.
We put two white-gold bands on either side.
I slid it on my finger on my wedding day
Twisting it over my knuckle.
Talismans skip a generation.
My parents own their objects of power.
I have mine because Mom gave me her father’s.
The ring cannot fit over my knuckle.
My son will not wear it while I am alive.
After I am gone
Will a grandchild carry my grandfather
To far away places
And take me along too?
Grandpa’s Ring
His ring was very thin by the end.
The gold wore down
As he moved around the world
Did amazing things
Lived a life too unbelievably full for fiction.
When he was gone
My mother wanted me to have it.
We put two white-gold bands on either side.
I slid it on my finger on my wedding day
Twisting it over my knuckle.
Talismans skip a generation.
My parents own their objects of power.
I have mine because Mom gave me her father’s.
The ring cannot fit over my knuckle.
My son will not wear it while I am alive.
After I am gone
Will a grandchild carry my grandfather
To far away places
And take me along too?
Best of OWP: Dancing in Pink and Green
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here, one piece per day, but due to a congenital lack of discipline it seems I'm posting them every other day. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project. For your Friday the 13th pleasure, a horrific visual image inspired by the prompt to write about dancing.
Dancing in Pink and Green
Dancing, for me, has so often been about a mixture of feelings, fun and self-consciousness, curiosity and a sense that I am out of place. I remember the sixth grade dance when I attended a school where I was an ethnic minority. My mom bought me the most awful outfit. I can’t remember now if it was pastel green pants, a pink shirt, and a pastel green tie, or the reverse, but she thought it was something out of Miami Vice and would be really cool. So here I was, one of the few white kids, dressed in the worst clothes I’ve ever worn in my life, trying to copy the dances of my peers who knew all these moves I’d never even seen before. That sense of awkwardness is the feeling I associate with being white, more than anything else. When my friends got tired of laughing at me, they made a project of teaching me these dance moves, the kid’n’play, the bone breaker, the butterfly, the pop-n-lock, the kid’n’play 2 (yes, a dance move from a movie sequel), and by the end of the event (I think it happened during the school day, come to think of it) I was having so much fun and felt so included that I can almost forget the discomfort of those first few minutes. At one point, my friend Darius even expressed some admiration for the way I performed some move, and I still remember that to this day, though now I realize he was probably being kind, or perhaps mocking me in a way that was too subtle for me to get. Still, it gave me the confidence to keep going to dances at schools where I was one of the only white kids, and it gave me a sense of freedom to know I could make a fool of myself and never look quite as awkward as I did in those terrible clothes my mom bought.
Dancing in Pink and Green
Dancing, for me, has so often been about a mixture of feelings, fun and self-consciousness, curiosity and a sense that I am out of place. I remember the sixth grade dance when I attended a school where I was an ethnic minority. My mom bought me the most awful outfit. I can’t remember now if it was pastel green pants, a pink shirt, and a pastel green tie, or the reverse, but she thought it was something out of Miami Vice and would be really cool. So here I was, one of the few white kids, dressed in the worst clothes I’ve ever worn in my life, trying to copy the dances of my peers who knew all these moves I’d never even seen before. That sense of awkwardness is the feeling I associate with being white, more than anything else. When my friends got tired of laughing at me, they made a project of teaching me these dance moves, the kid’n’play, the bone breaker, the butterfly, the pop-n-lock, the kid’n’play 2 (yes, a dance move from a movie sequel), and by the end of the event (I think it happened during the school day, come to think of it) I was having so much fun and felt so included that I can almost forget the discomfort of those first few minutes. At one point, my friend Darius even expressed some admiration for the way I performed some move, and I still remember that to this day, though now I realize he was probably being kind, or perhaps mocking me in a way that was too subtle for me to get. Still, it gave me the confidence to keep going to dances at schools where I was one of the only white kids, and it gave me a sense of freedom to know I could make a fool of myself and never look quite as awkward as I did in those terrible clothes my mom bought.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Best of OWP: A Rainy Night in Paris
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here, one piece per day, until I've shared them all. Then I went to a conference in Portland and immediately missed a day. So much for blogging discipline. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project. This piece was a product of a prompt to create a "super-sentence". I've heard them described as "one sentence stories", but mine's more of a one sentence essay. We were provided with some titles to write to, and I chose "A Rainy Night in Paris" since it was the day after Bastille Day.
A Rainy Night in Paris
Last night I learned that, on the day of the storming of the Bastille, Louis the XVI wrote “Rien” in his diary, shorthand for “Nothing happened today”, which we might dismiss as the scribbling of an out-of-touch monarch, but that would be a mistake, because it illustrates the way the things we overlook, some poorly planned act of rebellion on a rainy night in Paris, or flipping-off the wrong person on the freeway, or writing a single strong sentence, can change the course of history.
A Rainy Night in Paris
Last night I learned that, on the day of the storming of the Bastille, Louis the XVI wrote “Rien” in his diary, shorthand for “Nothing happened today”, which we might dismiss as the scribbling of an out-of-touch monarch, but that would be a mistake, because it illustrates the way the things we overlook, some poorly planned act of rebellion on a rainy night in Paris, or flipping-off the wrong person on the freeway, or writing a single strong sentence, can change the course of history.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Best of OWP: I Loved the Noise
I thought I'd post the pieces of my portfolio for the Oregon Writing Project Summer Institute at Willamette University here, one piece per day, until I've shared them all. Some were already posted as I wrote them, and I won't republish them with their minor revisions. I hope someone enjoys these, gets a flavor for just how valuable the Oregon Writing Project was for me, and decides to check out their own local chapter of the National Writing Project.
I Loved the Noise
I loved the belted-out answers
Students abandoning raised hands
The wide grins because their thinking was good
It was good!
And someone finally told them so.
I loved the side conversation
The speed of the cellphones whipped out and hidden again
when I scowled
The kid who wrote down things I said out-of-context
and read the list at the end of the year.
I loved the groans about reading Shakespeare
The laughter about the innuendo
The lust for violence
The heartbreak at all the right places
The gnashing of teeth when we had to close the book for the day.
I loved the writing
And the writing
And the begging for a little more time to write,
The desperation to share
The feigned reluctance to do so
Which, when overcome, melted like wax
Remolded into something obviously rehearsed
Beloved, approved of by all.
But mostly I loved the noise
The energy expressed in an increasing buzz of volume
And the challenge of giving directions
Without making that urge to noise
That will to think out loud
Go away completely.
“But” they said.
“Everyone seemed to be on task
Interested, engaged, invested
But
It was too loud in your class.”
I Loved the Noise
I loved the belted-out answers
Students abandoning raised hands
The wide grins because their thinking was good
It was good!
And someone finally told them so.
I loved the side conversation
The speed of the cellphones whipped out and hidden again
when I scowled
The kid who wrote down things I said out-of-context
and read the list at the end of the year.
I loved the groans about reading Shakespeare
The laughter about the innuendo
The lust for violence
The heartbreak at all the right places
The gnashing of teeth when we had to close the book for the day.
I loved the writing
And the writing
And the begging for a little more time to write,
The desperation to share
The feigned reluctance to do so
Which, when overcome, melted like wax
Remolded into something obviously rehearsed
Beloved, approved of by all.
But mostly I loved the noise
The energy expressed in an increasing buzz of volume
And the challenge of giving directions
Without making that urge to noise
That will to think out loud
Go away completely.
“But” they said.
“Everyone seemed to be on task
Interested, engaged, invested
But
It was too loud in your class.”
Sunday, August 08, 2010
The Party of No, Never, Except Sometimes
In case you missed it this week, the House of Representatives put on a circus of shame, dysfunction, and bombast. The Democrats put forth a bill, called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2009, to pay for the health care of 9/11 first responders. Fearing criticisms that it would increase the deficit, they even put in a mechanism to pay for it, offsetting the cost by closing offshore loopholes for multinational corporations. Since both these should be slam dunks with the American people, they put in on the fast track, preventing anyone from adding amendments to the bill but requiring a two thirds majority to pass it. Some admitted they were afraid of poisoned pill amendments that would prevent them from voting for their own popular legislation. This begs the question: Were they naïve, cynical, or cowardly? Throughout the history of this congress, the Republicans have voted “no” in lock step on almost everything. Therefore, an argument could be made that the Democrats were naïve to think that this bill would be so popular some Republicans would cross the aisle to vote for it. Or maybe they were cynical, believing that they could score a political win by forcing Republicans to cross the aisle or be branded as heartless corporatists who put the tax status of wealthy corporations against the most obviously heroic patriots the country has to offer. Or maybe they were just cowards, so afraid of attack ads pillorying them for voting for or against the bill due to poisoned pill amendments that they couldn’t just bring it to a normal vote and pass it. Considering the Dems in Congress, I’m willing to believe all three about different representatives. They all seem to me to be starry-eyed optimists who keep foolishly expecting bi-partisanship, cynics who talk a good progressive game but keep voting for special interests, or cowards who are so afraid of courting controversy that they can’t even frame issues effectively and continuously cede the language of the debate to the Republicans. Shame be upon them all.
But I think the Republicans in Congress were worse. Some claimed they were voting against it because they were upset by the procedural maneuver that prevented them from putting amendments on the bill. As the bill was pretty straightforward, this is a pathetic excuse. Either they are for providing health care to 9/11 first responders and paying for it by closing a tax loophole on multinational corporations, or they oppose one of those things to such a degree that it outweighs their support for the other. I guess there is a third option. They could oppose both. If they truly support both these portions of the law, there is no need to amend it. It doesn’t need to be qualified to create loopholes in the closing of loopholes, or to have pork added by the party that claims to be for fiscal responsibility. The procedural argument is a canard, a hoax, a falsehood, a lie, a sham, complete and utter bull.
Now, some Republicans had the integrity to voice real concerns. It’s too bad that integrity wasn’t joined to real honor or compassion, because the concerns were shameful in their own ways.
Some were concerned that a fraction of the money might go to first responders who were illegal immigrants. That’s right, they are so hateful towards illegal immigrants that if someone chose to run into the burning World Trade Center to save their fellow human beings, or was willing to wade through the rubble of those two buildings looking for survivors, breathed in the toxic fumes, and is now coping with debilitating health complications as a result, but that person had overstayed their work visa, that was cause enough to prevent all the people who made the same sacrifices from receiving care.
Others stated boldly that closing the tax loophole for multinational corporations constitutes a tax, and they are so religiously anti-tax that they could not support it regardless of where the money would go. Now, you could argue that making a person pay a tax they’d fled is somehow a new tax, but that’s pretty weak. Making that weak argument at the expense of people who ran into burning buildings to save the lives of complete strangers… that’s the kind of principled heartlessness one normally only sees in Mafia movies. Its not personal, 9/11 heroes. It’s just business.
Regardless of their stated reasons, no matter how odious, you have to give the Republicans credit for one thing at least: their unity. 155 Republicans voted against the bill, with only twelve in favor. I guess you could say the Democrats were more unified, since 243 of them voted for it and only four against it, but it was their bill and the notion of caring for the 9/11 first responders is wildly popular. I’ve tried to find some data on just how partisan this Congress is compared to others (someone please post a link if you can find something objective), because I’m always skeptical of such claims. They remind me of claims that certain political races are particularly negative, ignoring the degree of mudslinging that has gone on historically. Sure, people perceive this to be a hyper-partisan Congress. Polling numbers on this are very strange. People claim to want bi-partisanship. But, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, voters find the Republicans to be slightly less partisan, and the number of self-identified Republicans outpaced the number self-identifying as Democrats (though both increased). But here’s what’s weird: 66% of people believe that the partisanship in Washington will increase over the next year. Now, unless those new Republicans all fall in the 13% who think it will become more cooperative, they are telling pollsters that they will vote for the party they find to be more bi-partisan, but that the country will be more partisan. Are they saying they expect their candidates to lose? Has “bi-partisan” simply become a way of saying you like a party, regardless of their voting history? Do they expect Republicans to take one or both houses of Congress and then butt heads against a lot of White House vetoes? That sounds very reasonable, but let’s remember that Americans have historically admired bi-partisanship and voted for gridlock.
Despite public perception, gridlock is not what we’ve achieved so far. As John Dickerson pointed out on the most recent Slate Political Gabfest, history will look back at this partisan Congress and realize how remarkably productive they’ve been. Yes, they’ve failed to produce meaningful energy legislation. Yes, they haven’t even touched immigration reform. But they did pass health care reform, and as much as I think the product was weak to the point of being pathetic, it was still a minor improvement and that’s more than any Congress or President could claim in a half a century. They also passed regulatory reform for Wall Street (again, weak legislation, but it was still a hard fight against a lot of Wall Street pressure), and the Economic Recovery Act (too small according to almost every reputable economist, but as big as they could get once Republicans rediscovered religion on the deficit). All this in the midst of The Great Recession (or the Bush Depression, or the Larry Summers Big Banks Free-for-All, take your pick), two inherited elective wars, and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. They’ve done it by the thinnest of margins, but they’ve pulled off the legislative trifecta that Obama ran on. He’s done what he said he’d do. And, increasingly, people hate him for it, and hate the Congress that made it happen.
Now, maybe people are just simple. Maybe they just want unemployment to stay low and the economy to grow at a fast pace, and as long as it’s humming along they don’t care about anything else. But I have a feeling there’s more to it. Commentators have been debating, since the presidential election, whether or not this is a “center-right” nation, as many on the right kept saying over and over. The left would counter that a center-left politician was elected by popular vote (as well as by the wacky, vestigial electoral college), and that if you measured by certain bell weather issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.) Americans actually favor the left side of the spectrum. The right would counter that on other issues (national defense, tax policy) America is on the right. But when I look at the vote in Congress this last week on the Zadroga Act, I wonder if it’s not more complicated than that. Sure, we could debate which issues are most important, and how many should be considered to sum up the national political preference, but I expect we’d still get the wrong answer, because my theory is that the country shifts, and shifts pretty wildly, depending on who is in power. Here’s why: The Republicans, and Conservatism in general, makes for a better opposition party, but a terrible party in power. The Democrats, as weak-kneed half-Progressives, make a terrible opposition party. They are actually the better party in power, but always fail to meet expectations and do a pathetic job of arguing for themselves, especially in the face of strong opposition. Add to this recipe Americans remarkably short memories, and you create a kind of jello that wobbles back and forth along the political spectrum during each election cycle.
Why are the Dems a better governing party? Let’s look at their accomplishments. In the last century, the wars we won (WWI and WWII, Kosovo) were all started by Democrats. So was Vietnam. Quagmires are losses. Dems 3 and 1. Republicans have one clear victory in Grenada, arguably a tie in Korea, and a seeming win in Kuwait that turned out to be a loss in that it left Saddam Hussein in power and led to another quagmire. That’s Repubs 1-1-1 if you don’t count two quagmires in this century and illegal wars in Chile, Cambodia, El Salvador, Iran, etc. etc. Now, the Repubs may claim the Cold War, but if Reagan’s deficit spending the enemy into bankruptcy gets him credit over Truman then that’s not the kind of victory any fiscal conservative wants on his record.
Now let’s look at domestic programs. The Dems have the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, The Great Society, and Desegregation. Republicans will remind you that desegregation was largely a battle with southern Democrats, and that’s true, but those Dixiecrats left the party and were welcomed with open arms into the Republican party, and I’m sorry to say that racists are like vampires; if you welcome them into your home you get what’s coming to you. Republicans will also remind you that they have Lincoln on their ledger, and that’s true, but he was in every way a Progressive, and is still hated by many conservatives, so, though Dems can’t claim him on their scoreboard, conservatives can’t have their stovepipe hat cake and eat it too. Similarly, Nixon gave us the EPA, though I’m not sure conservatives want credit for that. Teddy Roosevelt gave us the National Parks, but he left the Republican Party to start the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party, which would certainly prevent him from passing the modern litmus test for conservatism. Gingrich and Clinton both should get credit for welfare reform in the nineties, but then they should both get credit for the millions wasted on the Lewinskygate scandal, so that’s something of a wash for both parties. Now, maybe I’m forgetting the wonderful domestic accomplishments of conservatives. Please remind me in the comments section below. But I know I’m being inherently unfair, because conservatism doesn’t measure its success in new programs. Conservatives say “No!” It’s just that Americans like new programs, new services, new benefits. By and large, we want a safety net. In that way, we are center-left, if not outright left as a country.
We just don’t want to pay for programs/services/benefits. In that way we’re center-right if not far right. And this is why the conservative position appeals right up until it doesn’t. William F. Buckley Jr., the father of modern conservatism, most perfectly described what conservatism should be, and what it is whenever the conservatives are out of power. “A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'” I not only love the poetic beauty of this quote, but even as a liberal I can respect the need for this position in our political system. Progressives, no matter how hard they try to be fiscally and morally responsible, can only produce social change through the political system by producing new government services. These cost money, and even if they are fully paid for by cutting in other areas, they do so by cutting out ineffective but unobtrusive services in favor of ones that will more firmly entrench the power of government into the lives of citizens. We do need progressives to keep government relevant, and to force it to meet the needs (and selfish desires) we ask of it. But without conservatives, government will inevitably encroach on our money and our freedom.
This need for balance causes various types of dysfunction. Government doesn’t work when we need change but have conservatives in power. It also doesn’t work when we are changing too much, need someone to cry, “Stop!”, but have progressives in power. But these two scenarios aren’t the reason for America's vacillation between the sides of the political spectrum. If they were, America could remain centrist and the parties would dance around at the middle as the circumstance changed. Unfortunately, our political system doesn’t allow conservatives to remain conservative. Crying, “Stop!” in unison is a great strategy for an opposition party. They remain unified, somewhat ideologically pure, and can present themselves to the electorate as the stronger, more principled party. Progressives, who innately want to get something done, have a very hard time saying no to everything. It’s just not in our make-up. But we can’t agree on what kinds of change we want, so we often find ourselves forming circular firing squads (or, in D.C. parlance, “going off-message”). But the party of “Stop!” can’t remain so once they are in power if they want to hold on to that power. If the Dubya years aren’t enough evidence of that, we can go back further. During the reign of Bush I, that president not only increased taxes (fiscally responsible, but not fiscally conservative), but started an elective war and waffled on NAFTA. Reagan ran up a huge deficit, and only set the top marginal tax rate lower than Obama’s proposed 39.6 during his last 13 months in office. And that was an anomaly for Republican presidents. Low top marginal tax rates are the exception for Republican presidents, not the norm:
Taft: (1909-1913)--income tax began in 1913 at 7% for top rate
Harding: (1921-1923): 56%-73%
Coolidge (1923-1929): 24%-56%
Hoover (1929-1933): 24%-63% (63% after Roosevelt took power)
Eisenhower (1953-1961): 91-92%
Nixon (1969-1974): 70-77%
Ford: (1974-1977): 70%
Reagan (1981-1989): 28%-69.13%
Bush I: (1989-1993): 28%-39.6% (39.6% after Clinton took power)
(source: Tax Policy Center)
Republicans generally exceed Democrats in their appropriations of pork for their districts. And why? Because voters love pork. According to a PEW research poll conducted in July and August of this year, a Rep. who brings lots of pork back to a district gains a greater advantage than considerations like his/her association with Barack Obama or Sarah Palin, his/her support from the Tea Party, or his/her independence from the Republican or Democratic Party. Cry “Stop!” at History all you want, but it won’t get you re-elected. Tell your constituents that you brought home the bacon, and they’re your biggest fans.
In fact, when examining our history since the rise of modern conservatism, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen true conservatism as a ruling philosophy. What, exactly, would “Stop!” look like? Would the government shrink in size and power? That hasn’t happened. Would personal freedoms increase in relation to federal authority? During the Bush II years, the government was simultaneously trying to encroach on people’s right to marry, their right to protest (remember “Free Speech Zones”), their right to habeas corpus, their right to privacy (the “Total Information Awareness” program) and on and on. I know it’s not fair to evaluate conservatism by the government’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina, but if the conservatives could point to a history of limiting the government in areas beyond tax policy, how would that response have been different? If Ron Paul had been president, rather than Dubya, and he’d spent the run up to Katrina abolishing FEMA along with the Department of Education and the IRS, there might have been more resources (no Iraq War or Department of Homeland Security, remember) but would that have translated into an active and effective response by a Paul Administration? Or would they have put that responsibility on states? Or on individuals to take “personal responsibility” and “pull themselves up by the bootstraps”?
Perhaps I’m blind to a similar kind of incongruity on the left. To me, FDR’s administration seems pretty consistently progressive. Johnson’s legacy was betrayed by his own folly in Vietnam, but his Great Society was unarguably progressive. And, as much as I’ve been disappointed by the emphasis in privatization in the latest health care reform, the tepid nature of Wall Street reform, and allocation of TARP funds to “too big to fail” banks rather than a massive investment in high speed rail and renewable energy technologies, I have to admit that the Obama administration has been predictably center-left. How have progressives failed to be truly progressive when in office? Do their failures constitute the same kind of disconnect between their ideology and their outcomes?
If not, this isn’t a simple case of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. The case of the Zadroga Act might illustrates the weakness of the Democratic Party, but it points to something more fundamentally flawed about the Republican Party. It’s a case of a party that grinds the nation to a halt when it’s at its best, but, when it’s rewarded for it by the voters, it drives it into the ground.
But I think the Republicans in Congress were worse. Some claimed they were voting against it because they were upset by the procedural maneuver that prevented them from putting amendments on the bill. As the bill was pretty straightforward, this is a pathetic excuse. Either they are for providing health care to 9/11 first responders and paying for it by closing a tax loophole on multinational corporations, or they oppose one of those things to such a degree that it outweighs their support for the other. I guess there is a third option. They could oppose both. If they truly support both these portions of the law, there is no need to amend it. It doesn’t need to be qualified to create loopholes in the closing of loopholes, or to have pork added by the party that claims to be for fiscal responsibility. The procedural argument is a canard, a hoax, a falsehood, a lie, a sham, complete and utter bull.
Now, some Republicans had the integrity to voice real concerns. It’s too bad that integrity wasn’t joined to real honor or compassion, because the concerns were shameful in their own ways.
Some were concerned that a fraction of the money might go to first responders who were illegal immigrants. That’s right, they are so hateful towards illegal immigrants that if someone chose to run into the burning World Trade Center to save their fellow human beings, or was willing to wade through the rubble of those two buildings looking for survivors, breathed in the toxic fumes, and is now coping with debilitating health complications as a result, but that person had overstayed their work visa, that was cause enough to prevent all the people who made the same sacrifices from receiving care.
Others stated boldly that closing the tax loophole for multinational corporations constitutes a tax, and they are so religiously anti-tax that they could not support it regardless of where the money would go. Now, you could argue that making a person pay a tax they’d fled is somehow a new tax, but that’s pretty weak. Making that weak argument at the expense of people who ran into burning buildings to save the lives of complete strangers… that’s the kind of principled heartlessness one normally only sees in Mafia movies. Its not personal, 9/11 heroes. It’s just business.
Regardless of their stated reasons, no matter how odious, you have to give the Republicans credit for one thing at least: their unity. 155 Republicans voted against the bill, with only twelve in favor. I guess you could say the Democrats were more unified, since 243 of them voted for it and only four against it, but it was their bill and the notion of caring for the 9/11 first responders is wildly popular. I’ve tried to find some data on just how partisan this Congress is compared to others (someone please post a link if you can find something objective), because I’m always skeptical of such claims. They remind me of claims that certain political races are particularly negative, ignoring the degree of mudslinging that has gone on historically. Sure, people perceive this to be a hyper-partisan Congress. Polling numbers on this are very strange. People claim to want bi-partisanship. But, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, voters find the Republicans to be slightly less partisan, and the number of self-identified Republicans outpaced the number self-identifying as Democrats (though both increased). But here’s what’s weird: 66% of people believe that the partisanship in Washington will increase over the next year. Now, unless those new Republicans all fall in the 13% who think it will become more cooperative, they are telling pollsters that they will vote for the party they find to be more bi-partisan, but that the country will be more partisan. Are they saying they expect their candidates to lose? Has “bi-partisan” simply become a way of saying you like a party, regardless of their voting history? Do they expect Republicans to take one or both houses of Congress and then butt heads against a lot of White House vetoes? That sounds very reasonable, but let’s remember that Americans have historically admired bi-partisanship and voted for gridlock.
Despite public perception, gridlock is not what we’ve achieved so far. As John Dickerson pointed out on the most recent Slate Political Gabfest, history will look back at this partisan Congress and realize how remarkably productive they’ve been. Yes, they’ve failed to produce meaningful energy legislation. Yes, they haven’t even touched immigration reform. But they did pass health care reform, and as much as I think the product was weak to the point of being pathetic, it was still a minor improvement and that’s more than any Congress or President could claim in a half a century. They also passed regulatory reform for Wall Street (again, weak legislation, but it was still a hard fight against a lot of Wall Street pressure), and the Economic Recovery Act (too small according to almost every reputable economist, but as big as they could get once Republicans rediscovered religion on the deficit). All this in the midst of The Great Recession (or the Bush Depression, or the Larry Summers Big Banks Free-for-All, take your pick), two inherited elective wars, and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. They’ve done it by the thinnest of margins, but they’ve pulled off the legislative trifecta that Obama ran on. He’s done what he said he’d do. And, increasingly, people hate him for it, and hate the Congress that made it happen.
Now, maybe people are just simple. Maybe they just want unemployment to stay low and the economy to grow at a fast pace, and as long as it’s humming along they don’t care about anything else. But I have a feeling there’s more to it. Commentators have been debating, since the presidential election, whether or not this is a “center-right” nation, as many on the right kept saying over and over. The left would counter that a center-left politician was elected by popular vote (as well as by the wacky, vestigial electoral college), and that if you measured by certain bell weather issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.) Americans actually favor the left side of the spectrum. The right would counter that on other issues (national defense, tax policy) America is on the right. But when I look at the vote in Congress this last week on the Zadroga Act, I wonder if it’s not more complicated than that. Sure, we could debate which issues are most important, and how many should be considered to sum up the national political preference, but I expect we’d still get the wrong answer, because my theory is that the country shifts, and shifts pretty wildly, depending on who is in power. Here’s why: The Republicans, and Conservatism in general, makes for a better opposition party, but a terrible party in power. The Democrats, as weak-kneed half-Progressives, make a terrible opposition party. They are actually the better party in power, but always fail to meet expectations and do a pathetic job of arguing for themselves, especially in the face of strong opposition. Add to this recipe Americans remarkably short memories, and you create a kind of jello that wobbles back and forth along the political spectrum during each election cycle.
Why are the Dems a better governing party? Let’s look at their accomplishments. In the last century, the wars we won (WWI and WWII, Kosovo) were all started by Democrats. So was Vietnam. Quagmires are losses. Dems 3 and 1. Republicans have one clear victory in Grenada, arguably a tie in Korea, and a seeming win in Kuwait that turned out to be a loss in that it left Saddam Hussein in power and led to another quagmire. That’s Repubs 1-1-1 if you don’t count two quagmires in this century and illegal wars in Chile, Cambodia, El Salvador, Iran, etc. etc. Now, the Repubs may claim the Cold War, but if Reagan’s deficit spending the enemy into bankruptcy gets him credit over Truman then that’s not the kind of victory any fiscal conservative wants on his record.
Now let’s look at domestic programs. The Dems have the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, The Great Society, and Desegregation. Republicans will remind you that desegregation was largely a battle with southern Democrats, and that’s true, but those Dixiecrats left the party and were welcomed with open arms into the Republican party, and I’m sorry to say that racists are like vampires; if you welcome them into your home you get what’s coming to you. Republicans will also remind you that they have Lincoln on their ledger, and that’s true, but he was in every way a Progressive, and is still hated by many conservatives, so, though Dems can’t claim him on their scoreboard, conservatives can’t have their stovepipe hat cake and eat it too. Similarly, Nixon gave us the EPA, though I’m not sure conservatives want credit for that. Teddy Roosevelt gave us the National Parks, but he left the Republican Party to start the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party, which would certainly prevent him from passing the modern litmus test for conservatism. Gingrich and Clinton both should get credit for welfare reform in the nineties, but then they should both get credit for the millions wasted on the Lewinskygate scandal, so that’s something of a wash for both parties. Now, maybe I’m forgetting the wonderful domestic accomplishments of conservatives. Please remind me in the comments section below. But I know I’m being inherently unfair, because conservatism doesn’t measure its success in new programs. Conservatives say “No!” It’s just that Americans like new programs, new services, new benefits. By and large, we want a safety net. In that way, we are center-left, if not outright left as a country.
We just don’t want to pay for programs/services/benefits. In that way we’re center-right if not far right. And this is why the conservative position appeals right up until it doesn’t. William F. Buckley Jr., the father of modern conservatism, most perfectly described what conservatism should be, and what it is whenever the conservatives are out of power. “A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'” I not only love the poetic beauty of this quote, but even as a liberal I can respect the need for this position in our political system. Progressives, no matter how hard they try to be fiscally and morally responsible, can only produce social change through the political system by producing new government services. These cost money, and even if they are fully paid for by cutting in other areas, they do so by cutting out ineffective but unobtrusive services in favor of ones that will more firmly entrench the power of government into the lives of citizens. We do need progressives to keep government relevant, and to force it to meet the needs (and selfish desires) we ask of it. But without conservatives, government will inevitably encroach on our money and our freedom.
This need for balance causes various types of dysfunction. Government doesn’t work when we need change but have conservatives in power. It also doesn’t work when we are changing too much, need someone to cry, “Stop!”, but have progressives in power. But these two scenarios aren’t the reason for America's vacillation between the sides of the political spectrum. If they were, America could remain centrist and the parties would dance around at the middle as the circumstance changed. Unfortunately, our political system doesn’t allow conservatives to remain conservative. Crying, “Stop!” in unison is a great strategy for an opposition party. They remain unified, somewhat ideologically pure, and can present themselves to the electorate as the stronger, more principled party. Progressives, who innately want to get something done, have a very hard time saying no to everything. It’s just not in our make-up. But we can’t agree on what kinds of change we want, so we often find ourselves forming circular firing squads (or, in D.C. parlance, “going off-message”). But the party of “Stop!” can’t remain so once they are in power if they want to hold on to that power. If the Dubya years aren’t enough evidence of that, we can go back further. During the reign of Bush I, that president not only increased taxes (fiscally responsible, but not fiscally conservative), but started an elective war and waffled on NAFTA. Reagan ran up a huge deficit, and only set the top marginal tax rate lower than Obama’s proposed 39.6 during his last 13 months in office. And that was an anomaly for Republican presidents. Low top marginal tax rates are the exception for Republican presidents, not the norm:
Taft: (1909-1913)--income tax began in 1913 at 7% for top rate
Harding: (1921-1923): 56%-73%
Coolidge (1923-1929): 24%-56%
Hoover (1929-1933): 24%-63% (63% after Roosevelt took power)
Eisenhower (1953-1961): 91-92%
Nixon (1969-1974): 70-77%
Ford: (1974-1977): 70%
Reagan (1981-1989): 28%-69.13%
Bush I: (1989-1993): 28%-39.6% (39.6% after Clinton took power)
(source: Tax Policy Center)
Republicans generally exceed Democrats in their appropriations of pork for their districts. And why? Because voters love pork. According to a PEW research poll conducted in July and August of this year, a Rep. who brings lots of pork back to a district gains a greater advantage than considerations like his/her association with Barack Obama or Sarah Palin, his/her support from the Tea Party, or his/her independence from the Republican or Democratic Party. Cry “Stop!” at History all you want, but it won’t get you re-elected. Tell your constituents that you brought home the bacon, and they’re your biggest fans.
In fact, when examining our history since the rise of modern conservatism, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen true conservatism as a ruling philosophy. What, exactly, would “Stop!” look like? Would the government shrink in size and power? That hasn’t happened. Would personal freedoms increase in relation to federal authority? During the Bush II years, the government was simultaneously trying to encroach on people’s right to marry, their right to protest (remember “Free Speech Zones”), their right to habeas corpus, their right to privacy (the “Total Information Awareness” program) and on and on. I know it’s not fair to evaluate conservatism by the government’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina, but if the conservatives could point to a history of limiting the government in areas beyond tax policy, how would that response have been different? If Ron Paul had been president, rather than Dubya, and he’d spent the run up to Katrina abolishing FEMA along with the Department of Education and the IRS, there might have been more resources (no Iraq War or Department of Homeland Security, remember) but would that have translated into an active and effective response by a Paul Administration? Or would they have put that responsibility on states? Or on individuals to take “personal responsibility” and “pull themselves up by the bootstraps”?
Perhaps I’m blind to a similar kind of incongruity on the left. To me, FDR’s administration seems pretty consistently progressive. Johnson’s legacy was betrayed by his own folly in Vietnam, but his Great Society was unarguably progressive. And, as much as I’ve been disappointed by the emphasis in privatization in the latest health care reform, the tepid nature of Wall Street reform, and allocation of TARP funds to “too big to fail” banks rather than a massive investment in high speed rail and renewable energy technologies, I have to admit that the Obama administration has been predictably center-left. How have progressives failed to be truly progressive when in office? Do their failures constitute the same kind of disconnect between their ideology and their outcomes?
If not, this isn’t a simple case of power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. The case of the Zadroga Act might illustrates the weakness of the Democratic Party, but it points to something more fundamentally flawed about the Republican Party. It’s a case of a party that grinds the nation to a halt when it’s at its best, but, when it’s rewarded for it by the voters, it drives it into the ground.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Can the Shirley Sherrod fiasco start a real dialogue about white privilege?
An old college friend blogging at edgeofthepacific, suggested we start a dialogue wherein we choose a topic and exchange posts. We decided to start with the Shirley Sherrod fiasco. We don’t have much in the way of disagreement on this one. A lot of people came off poorly in this mess. In fact, only Sherrod herself came out of it looking good, and she was the one who suffered most in the debacle. I don’t think any other heads will roll at the White House or Fox News; that would be an ironic reaction to prevent future premature firings. However, in the midst of the circular firing squad of blame, I worry we’re decontextualizing the event, or contextualizing it poorly. Some of the coverage has gone back as far as the killing of Sherrod’s father by a white farmer, framing her initial reaction to the farmer she mentioned in her speech, and some has covered her husband’s role in the civil rights movement, placing her, generationally, in that historical context. Both those parts of the history are important, and one wishes someone like Breitbart or anyone in Vilsak’s USDA had bothered to type her last name into a simple Google search. But I’m worried that we’ve missed the most important context for this circus; a real discussion about white privilege.
My background gives me a somewhat unique perspective on white privilege. Thanks to magnet schools, I attended schools wherein I was an ethnic minority (an predominately Mexican American junior high in Sand Diego and predominantly African American high school in Cincinnati), but lived in predominantly white neighborhoods. Not only did I learn a lot about Mexican Americans and African Americans, but I also learned a lot about Whites. One thing I learned was that very few Whites think of themselves as racists, and a great many take pride in being “color-blind”. What those white folks don’t realize is that so-called “color-blindness” is a mild form of racism.
Racism certainly has degrees, from the gas chamber to the white hood to the exclusive country club to the awkward conversation, and the notion of “color-blindness” is among the mildest types, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely innocent. In a way, it’s insidious. The white person who buys the line can pat him or herself on the back, point to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and then turn around and point the finger at anyone who brings up race or racism and say, “See? They’re the racist.”
This is the context for the circumstances that led up to the Shirley Sherrod debacle. The NAACP demanded that the Tea Party reject racism within its ranks. This was done in a ham-fisted way, and offended a lot of people in the Tea Party who not only aren’t racist, but take great pride in not being racist (often to a degree that is, in fact, racist). One of the main problems with the NAACP’s statement is that it was directed at a group without leadership. Hell, they barely have a platform. How can a group that can’t articulate what policies they want to have put in place beyond sound bites the fit on placards go about systematically rooting individuals from their midst? It’s not like they have a membership test and those who check the “I agree with Glenn Beck that Obama is only interested in Health Care because it’s a form of reparations for slavery” box will be refused a membership card. The Tea Party can’t kick people out, but the Republican Party can, and the NAACP miscalculated by trying to remain non-partisan rather than asking Republican candidates to refuse to take money from Tea Party sub-organizations that espouse racist beliefs, inflame racial hatred, or tolerate racist rhetoric. As Frank Rich wrote this last week, “The Tea Party Express fronted by Williams is an indisputable Republican subsidiary. It was created by prominent G.O.P. political consultants in California and raises money for G.O.P. candidates, including Sharron Angle, Harry Reid’s Senate opponent in Nevada. But Republican leaders, presiding over a Congressional delegation with no blacks and a party that nearly mirrors it, remain in hiding whenever racial controversies break out under their tent. ‘I am not interested in getting into that debate,’ said Mitch McConnell last week.” The NAACP could have called those folks out. Instead, it went after a movement without a spokesperson. That was dumb.
Andrew Breitbart’s response was to pull a variation on the playground turn-around. “I’m not a racist. You’re a racist!” So he tried to paint the NAACP as racist using Shirley Sherrod. He has not backed down from this, even now, claiming that the crowd’s reaction to Sherrod’s speech implicates them as racists. I say that’s bull, but watch the whole thing for yourself and be the judge. You’ll be doing more homework than Breitbart did.
But why would Breitbart have calculated that this line of reasoning would play in the first place? After all, it’s inherently illogical. If I’m standing in the middle of the street and a police officer runs over and sites me for jaywalking, I can’t defend myself by saying, “I am not because you’re doing it too.” This line of reasoning didn’t counter the claims of racism within the Tea Party at all. Those have been challenged, but because there have been racist signs at rallies and reliable accounts of racist behavior, the reasonable defense would really be about the nature of the Tea Party movement and the lack of control of its fringe elements. That’s a bit nuanced for our sound-bite age, especially for a movement not known to be fans of nuance. It’s easier to play to a preconception, let’s call it the “He who smelt it dealt it” model, which dictates that the first person to bring up race or identify racism is the real racist. Unfortunately, that model is patently false, and it’s also racist.
It’s wrong because racism does exist. I could defend this claim with a hundred anecdotal examples I’ve seen with my own eyes, with statistics, links to racist organizations currently operating in the United States. But I won’t, because if someone believes there’s no real racism in this country, they’re a lost cause. Ditto for the people who believe that, thanks to “reverse-racism”, Whites have it worse off. That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. called “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”, and he was right to say it’s the most dangerous thing in the world. My friend at edgeofthepacific writes that the NAACP should be abolished because it’s been so ineffectual recently. I would argue that there’s still plenty of work for them to do, but agree that they need to refocus their energy and devise better, less reactive strategies if they don’t want to be overtaken by more effective groups like colorofchange.org
One dialogue the NAACP could actively engage is the “he who smelt it dealt it model”. This model is not only wrong, it’s also racist, because it’s rooted in an ignorance about white privilege. I’ve heard this expressed a number of ways, but they can generally be distilled to claims of “color-blindness”. Here’s the thing, though; racial color-blindness is a luxury only Whites can afford. Martin Luther King’s dream of a world where people are judged by the content of the character rather than the color of their skin is a goal, but ignoring racism is not the means to get there.
Years ago, I was in a multi-culturalism class taught by a Mexican American woman, and we were discussing race. One of the white teachers tried to explain that she refused to see the teacher’s skin color or heritage, and that’s why she didn’t think of herself as a racist. “But what is my heritage is important to me?” the teacher asked. “What if I like the color of my skin?” The white teacher was shocked. She’d never considered the fact that her color-blindness was dismissive and even hurtful. How could she have grown up without considering the importance of a cultural identity to someone from a minority group? Easy. She was white, lived in an almost entirely white world, and therefore could afford to ignore issues of race and racism if she felt like it. Racial minorities don’t have that luxury.
This came up again just this week in a conversation in the classes I’m currently taking. One teacher pointed us to this research, which shows that when whites attempt to display colorblindness they actually come off worse in interracial interaction, as their self-editing can be misinterpreted (or perhaps correctly interpreted) as insensitivity or outright disregard. In my experience (and I know this is only anecdotal evidence) ethnic minorities are far more comfortable bringing up race in interracial conversation, both mine and their own. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to theorize that this difference can be explained by the fact that minorities have to come into contact with whites more often than whites have to come into contact with minorities. One of the teachers in the room was flabbergasted by this research. “So what are we supposed to do?” she asked. “Just walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hi. I notice you’re Black.’?” That’s white privilege. She wasn’t racist, and she wasn’t trying to be rude. She just didn’t know how to navigate an interracial conversation about the topic of race so she preferred to avoid the topic. And she can do that. Because she’s white.
I worry that this Shirley Sherrod fiasco will blow over, caught up in the next turn of the twenty-four hour news tornado (though it may get some legs from this or this), and we’ll miss an opportunity to have a real discussion about white privilege. Chalk that up to the growing list of opportunities for real dialogue that this administration has missed in its efforts to be non-partisan (a real dialogue about the costs of war, a real dialogue about the dangers of oil dependence, a real dialogue about class disparity and tax policy, etc., etc.). That’s a shame, because ignoring the topic of race doesn’t make racism go away.
My background gives me a somewhat unique perspective on white privilege. Thanks to magnet schools, I attended schools wherein I was an ethnic minority (an predominately Mexican American junior high in Sand Diego and predominantly African American high school in Cincinnati), but lived in predominantly white neighborhoods. Not only did I learn a lot about Mexican Americans and African Americans, but I also learned a lot about Whites. One thing I learned was that very few Whites think of themselves as racists, and a great many take pride in being “color-blind”. What those white folks don’t realize is that so-called “color-blindness” is a mild form of racism.
Racism certainly has degrees, from the gas chamber to the white hood to the exclusive country club to the awkward conversation, and the notion of “color-blindness” is among the mildest types, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely innocent. In a way, it’s insidious. The white person who buys the line can pat him or herself on the back, point to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and then turn around and point the finger at anyone who brings up race or racism and say, “See? They’re the racist.”
This is the context for the circumstances that led up to the Shirley Sherrod debacle. The NAACP demanded that the Tea Party reject racism within its ranks. This was done in a ham-fisted way, and offended a lot of people in the Tea Party who not only aren’t racist, but take great pride in not being racist (often to a degree that is, in fact, racist). One of the main problems with the NAACP’s statement is that it was directed at a group without leadership. Hell, they barely have a platform. How can a group that can’t articulate what policies they want to have put in place beyond sound bites the fit on placards go about systematically rooting individuals from their midst? It’s not like they have a membership test and those who check the “I agree with Glenn Beck that Obama is only interested in Health Care because it’s a form of reparations for slavery” box will be refused a membership card. The Tea Party can’t kick people out, but the Republican Party can, and the NAACP miscalculated by trying to remain non-partisan rather than asking Republican candidates to refuse to take money from Tea Party sub-organizations that espouse racist beliefs, inflame racial hatred, or tolerate racist rhetoric. As Frank Rich wrote this last week, “The Tea Party Express fronted by Williams is an indisputable Republican subsidiary. It was created by prominent G.O.P. political consultants in California and raises money for G.O.P. candidates, including Sharron Angle, Harry Reid’s Senate opponent in Nevada. But Republican leaders, presiding over a Congressional delegation with no blacks and a party that nearly mirrors it, remain in hiding whenever racial controversies break out under their tent. ‘I am not interested in getting into that debate,’ said Mitch McConnell last week.” The NAACP could have called those folks out. Instead, it went after a movement without a spokesperson. That was dumb.
Andrew Breitbart’s response was to pull a variation on the playground turn-around. “I’m not a racist. You’re a racist!” So he tried to paint the NAACP as racist using Shirley Sherrod. He has not backed down from this, even now, claiming that the crowd’s reaction to Sherrod’s speech implicates them as racists. I say that’s bull, but watch the whole thing for yourself and be the judge. You’ll be doing more homework than Breitbart did.
But why would Breitbart have calculated that this line of reasoning would play in the first place? After all, it’s inherently illogical. If I’m standing in the middle of the street and a police officer runs over and sites me for jaywalking, I can’t defend myself by saying, “I am not because you’re doing it too.” This line of reasoning didn’t counter the claims of racism within the Tea Party at all. Those have been challenged, but because there have been racist signs at rallies and reliable accounts of racist behavior, the reasonable defense would really be about the nature of the Tea Party movement and the lack of control of its fringe elements. That’s a bit nuanced for our sound-bite age, especially for a movement not known to be fans of nuance. It’s easier to play to a preconception, let’s call it the “He who smelt it dealt it” model, which dictates that the first person to bring up race or identify racism is the real racist. Unfortunately, that model is patently false, and it’s also racist.
It’s wrong because racism does exist. I could defend this claim with a hundred anecdotal examples I’ve seen with my own eyes, with statistics, links to racist organizations currently operating in the United States. But I won’t, because if someone believes there’s no real racism in this country, they’re a lost cause. Ditto for the people who believe that, thanks to “reverse-racism”, Whites have it worse off. That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. called “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”, and he was right to say it’s the most dangerous thing in the world. My friend at edgeofthepacific writes that the NAACP should be abolished because it’s been so ineffectual recently. I would argue that there’s still plenty of work for them to do, but agree that they need to refocus their energy and devise better, less reactive strategies if they don’t want to be overtaken by more effective groups like colorofchange.org
One dialogue the NAACP could actively engage is the “he who smelt it dealt it model”. This model is not only wrong, it’s also racist, because it’s rooted in an ignorance about white privilege. I’ve heard this expressed a number of ways, but they can generally be distilled to claims of “color-blindness”. Here’s the thing, though; racial color-blindness is a luxury only Whites can afford. Martin Luther King’s dream of a world where people are judged by the content of the character rather than the color of their skin is a goal, but ignoring racism is not the means to get there.
Years ago, I was in a multi-culturalism class taught by a Mexican American woman, and we were discussing race. One of the white teachers tried to explain that she refused to see the teacher’s skin color or heritage, and that’s why she didn’t think of herself as a racist. “But what is my heritage is important to me?” the teacher asked. “What if I like the color of my skin?” The white teacher was shocked. She’d never considered the fact that her color-blindness was dismissive and even hurtful. How could she have grown up without considering the importance of a cultural identity to someone from a minority group? Easy. She was white, lived in an almost entirely white world, and therefore could afford to ignore issues of race and racism if she felt like it. Racial minorities don’t have that luxury.
This came up again just this week in a conversation in the classes I’m currently taking. One teacher pointed us to this research, which shows that when whites attempt to display colorblindness they actually come off worse in interracial interaction, as their self-editing can be misinterpreted (or perhaps correctly interpreted) as insensitivity or outright disregard. In my experience (and I know this is only anecdotal evidence) ethnic minorities are far more comfortable bringing up race in interracial conversation, both mine and their own. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to theorize that this difference can be explained by the fact that minorities have to come into contact with whites more often than whites have to come into contact with minorities. One of the teachers in the room was flabbergasted by this research. “So what are we supposed to do?” she asked. “Just walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hi. I notice you’re Black.’?” That’s white privilege. She wasn’t racist, and she wasn’t trying to be rude. She just didn’t know how to navigate an interracial conversation about the topic of race so she preferred to avoid the topic. And she can do that. Because she’s white.
I worry that this Shirley Sherrod fiasco will blow over, caught up in the next turn of the twenty-four hour news tornado (though it may get some legs from this or this), and we’ll miss an opportunity to have a real discussion about white privilege. Chalk that up to the growing list of opportunities for real dialogue that this administration has missed in its efforts to be non-partisan (a real dialogue about the costs of war, a real dialogue about the dangers of oil dependence, a real dialogue about class disparity and tax policy, etc., etc.). That’s a shame, because ignoring the topic of race doesn’t make racism go away.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
From the OWP: The Better Teacher
Here's a little piece I wrote today at the Oregon Writing Project. Now I just need to figure out how to track down this former teacher to share it with her.
The Better Teacher
Mrs. Green was a better teacher than I’ll ever be. Only a few years from retirement, she’d watched Withrow High School change from the segregated, all white, highest quality school in Cincinnati Public, to the low-income, all-black school of middling quality, to its current renaissance as the IB magnet serving the now upper-middle class black neighborhood and the few white kids being bussed in by parents who’d white-flighted out a generation before. She commanded the room with utmost authority but always made us all feel valued. A lot of this power came from her ability to recognize our individual needs. Some students needed, more than anything, to break free from the use of double negatives. Others needed to expand their vocabularies with the lists she gave us each Monday and the tests each Friday. I needed a dose of humility.
Mrs. Green could have broken me down. She could have told me, in front of everyone, that I wasn’t as great as I thought I was, that I wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, that I ought to get over myself. I can imagine her remonstrance mimicked in the halls by students who, despite my best efforts to despise them, were right to look askance at the weirdo white kid in the trench coat with the spikes in the epaulets, hiding in his earphones and a paperback novel from the library. He was a freak, angry and scared and full of himself. Mrs. Green could see all of that. She was able to look beyond the arrogance that manifested most fully in her class, where I felt most comfortable with my abilities, and see the kid who was terrified of everything else.
One day she asked me to stay after class. I don’t think I’d been acting out that day. Maybe I’d rolled my eyes one time too many, maybe answered too many questions. More likely, I’d checked out, complete with the slouch that advertised my withdrawal. I don’t remember students “oooo”ing when she asked me to wait, which inclines me to believe she did it in a careful, subtle way.
“Ben,” she said, “I can’t teach you how to be a better writer. You’re already a better writer than I am. But I know some people who can.” And she marched me down to the library and explained how our class would work for the rest of the school year. It was the fall, so this seemed like an eternity. Her plan was simple. Every few days she’d assign me another book to read. When I finished, I had to write her a paper on each one. She knew I could tear through them in a couple days. She didn’t know that I was not, and still am not, a fast reader, and that I kept up this pace by reading on the bus (an hour long ride each way), at home where I hid from the comfortable, overly-perfect suburban life I hated, and yes, in my other classes, where the subjects didn’t come as easily. What she did know was that I would chafe at the idea that the writers she exposed me to were better than me. I would fight back. She wanted me to fight back, to criticize their work, to argue that I could do a better job. I think she had this plan from the beginning.
When I told her I didn’t like a book, she had me read another by the same author. I didn’t like The Scarlet Letter. “Six pages and six years pass with no dialogue,” I whined.
“You didn’t like it? Read The House of the Seven Gables.”
I didn’t like the first book she gave me by Thomas Hardy. So she made me read Far From the Maddening Crowd. I read Turgenev. I read Camus. The more I criticized, the more I read, and now I see that she subtly directed my criticisms, not only pushing me to look deeper but also guiding me to examine the skills she wanted me to work on. Hardy and Hawthorne didn’t make me a better writer. Mrs. Green did. But she never said so.
I don’t think I could tell a student they are a better writer than I am, so I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good a teacher as Mrs. Green. But I can admit that she taught me more than writing. She taught me about teaching.
The Better Teacher
Mrs. Green was a better teacher than I’ll ever be. Only a few years from retirement, she’d watched Withrow High School change from the segregated, all white, highest quality school in Cincinnati Public, to the low-income, all-black school of middling quality, to its current renaissance as the IB magnet serving the now upper-middle class black neighborhood and the few white kids being bussed in by parents who’d white-flighted out a generation before. She commanded the room with utmost authority but always made us all feel valued. A lot of this power came from her ability to recognize our individual needs. Some students needed, more than anything, to break free from the use of double negatives. Others needed to expand their vocabularies with the lists she gave us each Monday and the tests each Friday. I needed a dose of humility.
Mrs. Green could have broken me down. She could have told me, in front of everyone, that I wasn’t as great as I thought I was, that I wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, that I ought to get over myself. I can imagine her remonstrance mimicked in the halls by students who, despite my best efforts to despise them, were right to look askance at the weirdo white kid in the trench coat with the spikes in the epaulets, hiding in his earphones and a paperback novel from the library. He was a freak, angry and scared and full of himself. Mrs. Green could see all of that. She was able to look beyond the arrogance that manifested most fully in her class, where I felt most comfortable with my abilities, and see the kid who was terrified of everything else.
One day she asked me to stay after class. I don’t think I’d been acting out that day. Maybe I’d rolled my eyes one time too many, maybe answered too many questions. More likely, I’d checked out, complete with the slouch that advertised my withdrawal. I don’t remember students “oooo”ing when she asked me to wait, which inclines me to believe she did it in a careful, subtle way.
“Ben,” she said, “I can’t teach you how to be a better writer. You’re already a better writer than I am. But I know some people who can.” And she marched me down to the library and explained how our class would work for the rest of the school year. It was the fall, so this seemed like an eternity. Her plan was simple. Every few days she’d assign me another book to read. When I finished, I had to write her a paper on each one. She knew I could tear through them in a couple days. She didn’t know that I was not, and still am not, a fast reader, and that I kept up this pace by reading on the bus (an hour long ride each way), at home where I hid from the comfortable, overly-perfect suburban life I hated, and yes, in my other classes, where the subjects didn’t come as easily. What she did know was that I would chafe at the idea that the writers she exposed me to were better than me. I would fight back. She wanted me to fight back, to criticize their work, to argue that I could do a better job. I think she had this plan from the beginning.
When I told her I didn’t like a book, she had me read another by the same author. I didn’t like The Scarlet Letter. “Six pages and six years pass with no dialogue,” I whined.
“You didn’t like it? Read The House of the Seven Gables.”
I didn’t like the first book she gave me by Thomas Hardy. So she made me read Far From the Maddening Crowd. I read Turgenev. I read Camus. The more I criticized, the more I read, and now I see that she subtly directed my criticisms, not only pushing me to look deeper but also guiding me to examine the skills she wanted me to work on. Hardy and Hawthorne didn’t make me a better writer. Mrs. Green did. But she never said so.
I don’t think I could tell a student they are a better writer than I am, so I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good a teacher as Mrs. Green. But I can admit that she taught me more than writing. She taught me about teaching.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
New Poem: The Prodigy
Here's a new one about (and by) Noah.
The Prodigy
“Hey Dad!” he says
“I call this one ‘Headless Dragon’!”
He aims the squirt gun into the air
Waving it back and forth.
I see it.
The decapitated beast
Serpentine neck
Coiling through the sky
Flailing back and forth
Defeated and enraged
One last lashing
Until it fades.
And I know my son is a poet.
I am proud.
The Prodigy
“Hey Dad!” he says
“I call this one ‘Headless Dragon’!”
He aims the squirt gun into the air
Waving it back and forth.
I see it.
The decapitated beast
Serpentine neck
Coiling through the sky
Flailing back and forth
Defeated and enraged
One last lashing
Until it fades.
And I know my son is a poet.
I am proud.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
New Poem from OWP about Noah: "Keeping the Fire"
Today, at the Oregon Writing Project, we were asked to read "The Lightkeeper" by Carloyn Forché and write about who keeps the light on for us. I wrote this poem about my son.
Keeping the Fire
We’re the good guys.
We’re keeping the fire.
The man and the boy used this sacred mantra
To carry them down McCarthy’s Road
And when I put down the book
I hugged Noah fiercely
Then waited till he slept
Kissed his forehead
And thanked him.
He once needed me
To change his diapers
To keep him warm
To feed him
To sing, sometimes for hours, until he slept
To wake in the middle of the night to make sure his chest rose and fell
But I always needed him more.
I will always need him more.
He makes me keep the fire.
Keeping the Fire
We’re the good guys.
We’re keeping the fire.
The man and the boy used this sacred mantra
To carry them down McCarthy’s Road
And when I put down the book
I hugged Noah fiercely
Then waited till he slept
Kissed his forehead
And thanked him.
He once needed me
To change his diapers
To keep him warm
To feed him
To sing, sometimes for hours, until he slept
To wake in the middle of the night to make sure his chest rose and fell
But I always needed him more.
I will always need him more.
He makes me keep the fire.
Monday, July 19, 2010
New Poem: "Strange Defense"
This is a product of a guys-only camping trip my friend Paul invited me to. Paul is the friend in the poem who tried to stick up for me. The antagonist was very drunk when this incident took place. I know that's no excuse, but in vino veritas. I was equally compromised when I wrote this, but I'm pretty satisfied with it the next day, at least enough to post it.
Strange Defense
Don't jew me, the guy says.
My friend points a thumb in my direction
Jew at the table, it says.
Oh, no, I mean like the Jews back in Jesus times.
I see.
He's not an anti-Semite
'Cause he only hates the Jews
Responsible for killing Christ.
I'm not cheap.
They were.
What a relief.
Strange Defense
Don't jew me, the guy says.
My friend points a thumb in my direction
Jew at the table, it says.
Oh, no, I mean like the Jews back in Jesus times.
I see.
He's not an anti-Semite
'Cause he only hates the Jews
Responsible for killing Christ.
I'm not cheap.
They were.
What a relief.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Assignment for OWP: Artist's Statement
Today we went to the art museum on the Willamette University campus. Our assignment was to read an "Artist's Statement" on a plaque on the wall, then find a painting and write a fictional variation by a different artist. Here's mine. I should say that I not only made up much of the biographical information about the painter, but also shifted the date of the painting itself from 1949 back to 1944.
Artist’s Statement
Based on “Driftage” by William Givler
Five years into my position as the dean of the Museum Art School in Portland, I suppose I was getting something of an itch. I’d been teaching there since ’31, so, after 13 years, academia had not only lost some of its luster, but it had begun to rub some of the sheen off of my love for art itself. This bled into my personal life, or perhaps my failing marriage soured my attitude towards work, but by the summer of ’44 I needed a break. Plus, the war was going on. It seemed like the world was going to hell on every level.
A friend let me borrow his beach house that summer, and I set up my easel, prepared my paints, then found myself taking long walks on the beach by day and having one scotch more than I should each evening. I’d listen to swing music and think about how those happy sounds reached the ears of former students of mine stationed in England or Hawaii, or in the bellies of steel leviathans swimming through the Pacific toward Japanese artillery nests. The happier the song, the more bitter the static sounded, like the hissing and popping of great distance, and the whispers of the hollow nature of words about love.
One day I started to paint a pleasant sunset, and I could hear the tinny voices and forced rhymes of love songs in every crashing wave in the painting. Out of frustration, I splattered dark brown-gray paint over the sun, then swirled the thick spots into a giant piece of driftwood on the beach. The soft pink clouds became bloodstained harbingers of a coming storm. I added my wife in the foreground, her back to me, hair whipping in the wind. Exceeding the impressionism of the rest of the painting, her hand looks particularly unfinished. That’s because I stopped there, stepped back, and looked at what I’d done. Not only had I eclipsed the sun, but I’d filled the world with horror. I wanted to reach into the painting, to take my wife’s hand, to finish it with my own.
The painting itself went on to win awards, to find fancy homes for itself, first in galleries, then in private collections, then museums. But it did me a greater service. The painting sent me home from the beach, back to the job I’d forgotten I enjoyed, back to the art I’d committed to, back to the wife I love.
And I left the scotch behind to warm my friend’s cold beach house. I didn’t need it anymore.
Artist’s Statement
Based on “Driftage” by William Givler
Five years into my position as the dean of the Museum Art School in Portland, I suppose I was getting something of an itch. I’d been teaching there since ’31, so, after 13 years, academia had not only lost some of its luster, but it had begun to rub some of the sheen off of my love for art itself. This bled into my personal life, or perhaps my failing marriage soured my attitude towards work, but by the summer of ’44 I needed a break. Plus, the war was going on. It seemed like the world was going to hell on every level.
A friend let me borrow his beach house that summer, and I set up my easel, prepared my paints, then found myself taking long walks on the beach by day and having one scotch more than I should each evening. I’d listen to swing music and think about how those happy sounds reached the ears of former students of mine stationed in England or Hawaii, or in the bellies of steel leviathans swimming through the Pacific toward Japanese artillery nests. The happier the song, the more bitter the static sounded, like the hissing and popping of great distance, and the whispers of the hollow nature of words about love.
One day I started to paint a pleasant sunset, and I could hear the tinny voices and forced rhymes of love songs in every crashing wave in the painting. Out of frustration, I splattered dark brown-gray paint over the sun, then swirled the thick spots into a giant piece of driftwood on the beach. The soft pink clouds became bloodstained harbingers of a coming storm. I added my wife in the foreground, her back to me, hair whipping in the wind. Exceeding the impressionism of the rest of the painting, her hand looks particularly unfinished. That’s because I stopped there, stepped back, and looked at what I’d done. Not only had I eclipsed the sun, but I’d filled the world with horror. I wanted to reach into the painting, to take my wife’s hand, to finish it with my own.
The painting itself went on to win awards, to find fancy homes for itself, first in galleries, then in private collections, then museums. But it did me a greater service. The painting sent me home from the beach, back to the job I’d forgotten I enjoyed, back to the art I’d committed to, back to the wife I love.
And I left the scotch behind to warm my friend’s cold beach house. I didn’t need it anymore.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
From OWP: "The Gift"
As a part of our classes for the Oregon Writing Project, we model lessons for one another which we can perform in our own classes for our students during the year. Today (yesterday, technically), one of our excellent lessons, by Teri Daniels, focused on writing memoirs. This piece really surprised me. Teri had us write a list of some formative events during our lives, and thanks to her instruction I avoided some that seemed more important, but were cliches or lacked surprise or conflict. I'm glad she guided me to this one. I had no idea it would have any emotional resonance for me at all, but when I shared it I found I was almost crying in front of these people I've known for four days.
This is dedicated to my mom, as it was written on her birthday.
The Gift
Home movies make legends of seemingly innocuous events. Seeing myself on tape warps the memory, so that I remember myself from the outside as much as from the inside. On the screen, the restaurant’s dark lighting makes my skin look even more pale. I’m opening my birthday gifts, so my head is turned down, my dark hair obscuring my face. I pull the items out of the box one by one. My mother, who is behind the camera, is so excited she can barely contain herself. I part the tissue paper and pull out the first item, a travel journal.
“Okay?” I say.
Then I pull out a small, round piece of fabric. I unfold it. It’s black, circular, and about as big as my hand. It’s slightly domed. Since I’m not a practicing Jew, it takes me a second to recognize a Yarmulke. I still don’t get it.
“Keep going,” Mom says. “There’s something else.”
I pull out a small, thin, blue book. I still don’t get it. I open it and see my own picture. Now the camera is watching me look into a book at myself.
Then I put it all together. On the camera, my head pops up. My mom nearly screams. My dad’s laugh starts out low, then gets higher as he shifts from his joy at the gift to amusement at my response.
Only, this part I can remember without the camera. The shock of the moment, of realizing I’ll be going with my dad on the tour he’s leading to Israel and Greece, fires up a highway in my 33-year-old brain that was paved so deeply in that eleven-year-old’s that it has weathered all the traffic in between.
“I get to go?” I look at Dad. Then Mom. Only she’s holding the camera, so on the screen I’m looking right out and all my wonder is visible, even in the dim light.
“You’re going with me,” Dad says.
I have no idea the trip will change my life, will alter the way I see the world, the way I associate previously compartmentalized pieces of information. Jerusalem will do that; link family and ancestors, war and faith, God and dusty stones, history and emotion. But I haven’t been there yet. I’m eleven, and I just know I’m special. I’m lucky. I’m going.
This is dedicated to my mom, as it was written on her birthday.
The Gift
Home movies make legends of seemingly innocuous events. Seeing myself on tape warps the memory, so that I remember myself from the outside as much as from the inside. On the screen, the restaurant’s dark lighting makes my skin look even more pale. I’m opening my birthday gifts, so my head is turned down, my dark hair obscuring my face. I pull the items out of the box one by one. My mother, who is behind the camera, is so excited she can barely contain herself. I part the tissue paper and pull out the first item, a travel journal.
“Okay?” I say.
Then I pull out a small, round piece of fabric. I unfold it. It’s black, circular, and about as big as my hand. It’s slightly domed. Since I’m not a practicing Jew, it takes me a second to recognize a Yarmulke. I still don’t get it.
“Keep going,” Mom says. “There’s something else.”
I pull out a small, thin, blue book. I still don’t get it. I open it and see my own picture. Now the camera is watching me look into a book at myself.
Then I put it all together. On the camera, my head pops up. My mom nearly screams. My dad’s laugh starts out low, then gets higher as he shifts from his joy at the gift to amusement at my response.
Only, this part I can remember without the camera. The shock of the moment, of realizing I’ll be going with my dad on the tour he’s leading to Israel and Greece, fires up a highway in my 33-year-old brain that was paved so deeply in that eleven-year-old’s that it has weathered all the traffic in between.
“I get to go?” I look at Dad. Then Mom. Only she’s holding the camera, so on the screen I’m looking right out and all my wonder is visible, even in the dim light.
“You’re going with me,” Dad says.
I have no idea the trip will change my life, will alter the way I see the world, the way I associate previously compartmentalized pieces of information. Jerusalem will do that; link family and ancestors, war and faith, God and dusty stones, history and emotion. But I haven’t been there yet. I’m eleven, and I just know I’m special. I’m lucky. I’m going.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Case of Wall Street Journal Vs. To Kill a Mockinbird
The next case before the court; Wall Street Journal vs. To Kill a Mockingbird.
In this piece in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Allen Barra takes on the pressing journalistic task of attacking a 50 year old book. Critiquing literature considered to be sacrosanct isn't so much the job of journalists as it is of undergrad lit. majors, but let's put that aside and take the piece on its merits. The thrust of Barra's critique is that the book is juvenile because the points it makes are obvious. "There is no ambiguity in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad." In contrast, Barra praises books which contain "...some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained. One hundred years from now, critics will still be arguing about the real nature of the relationship between Tom and Huck, or why Gatsby gazed at that green light at the end of the dock across the harbor."
I teach Mockingbird, and will continue doing so despite Barra's dismissal. For one thing, I teach the book to 9th graders. Not to insult the intelligence of my students, but they are learning to read literature, and what a more experienced reader calls "moral ambiguity", a younger reader often calls "confusing". It's wonderful when a class can really get into a rip-roaring debate about why Gatzby fixated on the green light, what it symbolized, and how their interpretations changed their reading experience, but contemporary students lose interest not just in the story they are reading when faced with such ambiguities, but may also lose interest in reading literature all together. Books like "Mockingbird" give them a foundational positive reading experience which they can fall back on when they want to dismiss all literature as a waste of time; it produces a fond memory of a book they understood and enjoyed. Moreover, the book is not easy. In the first chapter, Lee uses words like "taciturn". Students may not wrestle with moral ambiguity in the book, but they do have to struggle with comprehension, so that when they understand the text they feel they've earned something, and that confidence follows them into more intellectually demanding books.
Clearly Barra isn't a teacher, and doesn't make claims about when the book might be developmentally appropriate. Instead, one gets the sense that he finds the book so lacking in value that it should be shelved all together. First of all, good luck with that. Does he think public schools can afford to buy more books? I'm sure he would dismiss that concern as more "bloodless liberal humanism [which] is sadly dated". In education, we call that reality.
But his critique is fundamentally flawed. The notion that the injustices presented in the book are too obvious ignores the way literature often works. Symbols are often obvious, but gain their power from the fact that they represent signified which can be incredibly complex. When this is done poorly, it's reductive. It can make the reader feel like solutions are simple because the symbols are transparent. But Mockingbird does nothing of the kind. When we recognize the injustice done to Tom Robinson, this does not immediately translate into justice for him. When we recognize Atticus' virtue, this does not provide him with success or happiness. This incongruity produces complex questions just as challenging and far more relevant than Gatsby's green light. Why, when we know something is unjust, can't we simply make it right? Why does virtue not produce success? Why doesn't goodness necessarily lead to happiness? If the morals of the story are easy enough for ninth graders, I would challenge any adult of any age, any level of education, or any position with any newspaper of any reputation, to provide answers to these questions that aren't replete with ambiguity.
Beyond this literary analysis question, I doubt Barra's central assumption that the ideas he dismisses as overly obvious are so straightforward to all readers. Perhaps he's unaware of some facts:
Our country, over the last decade, has repeatedly taken innocent people from their homes here in the U.S. and abroad, prevented them from having legitimate trials wherein they could prove that innocence, tortured them (using the same techniques we deemed to be torture when prosecuting those who did the same things to our solders during WWII), and in a few cases killing them. If lynching is bad, a kangaroo court producing a ridiculous verdict is bad, Tom Robinson getting shot while ostensibly escaping from jail is bad, and we all find these to be so obvious, why do we allow the terror policies of our government to remain?
During the last election some students at George Fox University (where, full disclosure, I received my Masters-in-Teaching) hung an effigy of Barack Obama from a tree. If it's obvious that lynching is bad, why didn't they know better?
In the state of California, in the next few days or weeks, a judge may allow the voters of that state to strip legally married individuals of the social contract conferred in their marriage licenses because of the voters' prejudice against them. If it's so obvious that Tom Robinson is an innocent victim of racism, and if we should teach superior literature which contains more moral ambiguity, wouldn't we assume that adults possess the skills necessary to abstract from one straight forward symbol to a similar instance of injustice?
I will concede to my dated, liberal humanist beliefs, but they aren't bloodless. In fact, it gets my blood pumping pretty fast when anyone implies that we don't need to keep on hearing lessons we've still failed to grasp.
In this piece in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Allen Barra takes on the pressing journalistic task of attacking a 50 year old book. Critiquing literature considered to be sacrosanct isn't so much the job of journalists as it is of undergrad lit. majors, but let's put that aside and take the piece on its merits. The thrust of Barra's critique is that the book is juvenile because the points it makes are obvious. "There is no ambiguity in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'; at the end of the book, we know exactly what we knew at the beginning: that Atticus Finch is a good man, that Tom Robinson was an innocent victim of racism, and that lynching is bad." In contrast, Barra praises books which contain "...some quality of moral ambiguity, some potentially controversial element that keeps the book from being easily grasped or explained. One hundred years from now, critics will still be arguing about the real nature of the relationship between Tom and Huck, or why Gatsby gazed at that green light at the end of the dock across the harbor."
I teach Mockingbird, and will continue doing so despite Barra's dismissal. For one thing, I teach the book to 9th graders. Not to insult the intelligence of my students, but they are learning to read literature, and what a more experienced reader calls "moral ambiguity", a younger reader often calls "confusing". It's wonderful when a class can really get into a rip-roaring debate about why Gatzby fixated on the green light, what it symbolized, and how their interpretations changed their reading experience, but contemporary students lose interest not just in the story they are reading when faced with such ambiguities, but may also lose interest in reading literature all together. Books like "Mockingbird" give them a foundational positive reading experience which they can fall back on when they want to dismiss all literature as a waste of time; it produces a fond memory of a book they understood and enjoyed. Moreover, the book is not easy. In the first chapter, Lee uses words like "taciturn". Students may not wrestle with moral ambiguity in the book, but they do have to struggle with comprehension, so that when they understand the text they feel they've earned something, and that confidence follows them into more intellectually demanding books.
Clearly Barra isn't a teacher, and doesn't make claims about when the book might be developmentally appropriate. Instead, one gets the sense that he finds the book so lacking in value that it should be shelved all together. First of all, good luck with that. Does he think public schools can afford to buy more books? I'm sure he would dismiss that concern as more "bloodless liberal humanism [which] is sadly dated". In education, we call that reality.
But his critique is fundamentally flawed. The notion that the injustices presented in the book are too obvious ignores the way literature often works. Symbols are often obvious, but gain their power from the fact that they represent signified which can be incredibly complex. When this is done poorly, it's reductive. It can make the reader feel like solutions are simple because the symbols are transparent. But Mockingbird does nothing of the kind. When we recognize the injustice done to Tom Robinson, this does not immediately translate into justice for him. When we recognize Atticus' virtue, this does not provide him with success or happiness. This incongruity produces complex questions just as challenging and far more relevant than Gatsby's green light. Why, when we know something is unjust, can't we simply make it right? Why does virtue not produce success? Why doesn't goodness necessarily lead to happiness? If the morals of the story are easy enough for ninth graders, I would challenge any adult of any age, any level of education, or any position with any newspaper of any reputation, to provide answers to these questions that aren't replete with ambiguity.
Beyond this literary analysis question, I doubt Barra's central assumption that the ideas he dismisses as overly obvious are so straightforward to all readers. Perhaps he's unaware of some facts:
Our country, over the last decade, has repeatedly taken innocent people from their homes here in the U.S. and abroad, prevented them from having legitimate trials wherein they could prove that innocence, tortured them (using the same techniques we deemed to be torture when prosecuting those who did the same things to our solders during WWII), and in a few cases killing them. If lynching is bad, a kangaroo court producing a ridiculous verdict is bad, Tom Robinson getting shot while ostensibly escaping from jail is bad, and we all find these to be so obvious, why do we allow the terror policies of our government to remain?
During the last election some students at George Fox University (where, full disclosure, I received my Masters-in-Teaching) hung an effigy of Barack Obama from a tree. If it's obvious that lynching is bad, why didn't they know better?
In the state of California, in the next few days or weeks, a judge may allow the voters of that state to strip legally married individuals of the social contract conferred in their marriage licenses because of the voters' prejudice against them. If it's so obvious that Tom Robinson is an innocent victim of racism, and if we should teach superior literature which contains more moral ambiguity, wouldn't we assume that adults possess the skills necessary to abstract from one straight forward symbol to a similar instance of injustice?
I will concede to my dated, liberal humanist beliefs, but they aren't bloodless. In fact, it gets my blood pumping pretty fast when anyone implies that we don't need to keep on hearing lessons we've still failed to grasp.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: What Color Are You? Poem
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. I'm pretty pleased with this one. Today's prompt:
Assignment #12
What color are you? Write a poem using similes and metaphors to compare you to colors.
What Color Am I?
“The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”
-Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
There is a small bookshop in my town,
Where tall shelves, eight feet high
Stand shoulder to shoulder, leaning over thin aisles
And each is nine months and two weeks pregnant with books.
Used, tattered, their spines lined from over-reading
Pages dog-eared, dust jackets missing,
Cardboard peeking through the corners of the covers
Or paperbacks, bent by back pockets
Their artwork lined and faded.
In this shop a book is hiding.
From some Paleozoic era before glossy jackets
It’s covered in fabric.
Most was once bright red, now sickly pink
But the spine was gray, is gray, shall be gray.
The pages were once white, now yellowed.
Outside, I am the colors of that book
Pale pink and yellowed-white and gray
But inside, in the darkness of the closed cover
I am monsters and romance and heroes and tragedy
Or a biography of a forgotten poet,
Or do-it-yourself carpentry projects,
Or a collection of essays on semiotics and post-modernism.
Perhaps there are full color photographs.
A cover does not know the colors of its pages
And when I think I am black and white
Symbols ordered into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters
I fear
A rainbow of Greek and Sanskrit
Straining to describe colors that have not been named.
Assignment #12
What color are you? Write a poem using similes and metaphors to compare you to colors.
What Color Am I?
“The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”
-Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
There is a small bookshop in my town,
Where tall shelves, eight feet high
Stand shoulder to shoulder, leaning over thin aisles
And each is nine months and two weeks pregnant with books.
Used, tattered, their spines lined from over-reading
Pages dog-eared, dust jackets missing,
Cardboard peeking through the corners of the covers
Or paperbacks, bent by back pockets
Their artwork lined and faded.
In this shop a book is hiding.
From some Paleozoic era before glossy jackets
It’s covered in fabric.
Most was once bright red, now sickly pink
But the spine was gray, is gray, shall be gray.
The pages were once white, now yellowed.
Outside, I am the colors of that book
Pale pink and yellowed-white and gray
But inside, in the darkness of the closed cover
I am monsters and romance and heroes and tragedy
Or a biography of a forgotten poet,
Or do-it-yourself carpentry projects,
Or a collection of essays on semiotics and post-modernism.
Perhaps there are full color photographs.
A cover does not know the colors of its pages
And when I think I am black and white
Symbols ordered into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters
I fear
A rainbow of Greek and Sanskrit
Straining to describe colors that have not been named.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Michelle Kerr's "The Right Way To Assess Teachers' Performance"
A shout-out to a fellow pink-slip recipient!
Having written a bit about my support for teacher's unions here, I was intrigued to find that I agreed so much with this piece in the Washington Post by a teacher who declares herself to be "not a union fan". She lays out four plainly reasonable conditions by which teachers could be assessed using student test scores (something I argued against here). Moreover, she acknowledges that, "I suspect that my conditions will go nowhere, precisely because they are reasonable." She's right about that, too, unfortunately. Her conditions are:
(1) Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
(2) Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
(3) Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
(4) That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.
She explains all these well, though I think the first three, at least, don't need much explanation. After reading her piece, I wonder why she doesn't like the unions, and I have to suspect that it has something to do with issues unrelated to teacher assessment, because I'm inclined to believe that the unions would be far more amenable to the use of student test scores in assessment if these conditions were met. In fact, if these conditions were set down in black and white language and enforced consistently, I would go so far as to say that unions would accept somewhat aggressive merit pay systems. Speaking only for myself, I would love to see critics of unions try to call the unions' bluff by implementing these reasonable policies. These reformers would also need to pony up the money to hire the teachers needed to teach all the remedial classes her third concession would require. They would also have to guarantee that teachers not be prevented from implementing the second by threats of dinging them in their annual reviews for kicking out disruptive students. If union-bashers would make these concessions, and unions still refused to allow student data to drive the assessment of teachers, I might side with Miss Kerr in her "not a union fan" position. But I think that's just about as likely as the possibility that these reasonable concessions will be implemented.
Having written a bit about my support for teacher's unions here, I was intrigued to find that I agreed so much with this piece in the Washington Post by a teacher who declares herself to be "not a union fan". She lays out four plainly reasonable conditions by which teachers could be assessed using student test scores (something I argued against here). Moreover, she acknowledges that, "I suspect that my conditions will go nowhere, precisely because they are reasonable." She's right about that, too, unfortunately. Her conditions are:
(1) Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.
(2) Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.
(3) Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.
(4) That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.
She explains all these well, though I think the first three, at least, don't need much explanation. After reading her piece, I wonder why she doesn't like the unions, and I have to suspect that it has something to do with issues unrelated to teacher assessment, because I'm inclined to believe that the unions would be far more amenable to the use of student test scores in assessment if these conditions were met. In fact, if these conditions were set down in black and white language and enforced consistently, I would go so far as to say that unions would accept somewhat aggressive merit pay systems. Speaking only for myself, I would love to see critics of unions try to call the unions' bluff by implementing these reasonable policies. These reformers would also need to pony up the money to hire the teachers needed to teach all the remedial classes her third concession would require. They would also have to guarantee that teachers not be prevented from implementing the second by threats of dinging them in their annual reviews for kicking out disruptive students. If union-bashers would make these concessions, and unions still refused to allow student data to drive the assessment of teachers, I might side with Miss Kerr in her "not a union fan" position. But I think that's just about as likely as the possibility that these reasonable concessions will be implemented.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: Brainstorm about Nicknames
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. Today's prompt:
Brainstorm- a list of all the nicknames you’ve ever had, thinking back to childhood, camp, sports and family get-togethers. Try for a baker’s dozen or so and word process the list. Any patterns revealed? Focus on a particular nickname that you loved or hated. When you say it, where does it carry you?
Ben
Benjamin Douglas Gorman (when in trouble)
Benji
Ben Kenobi
Benedict Arnold
Gorman
Ninjaben
Moby-Wan
Pelón
I’m not sure if it’s something intrinsic to my name, or to my personality, but based on the list of nicknames I can remember, it seems I don’t earn many. The story of how I shot down “Benji” as a young child has become a legend in my family; though I don’t remember the incident I have heard it recounted many times. Some older person in my mother’s congregation in a small town in Michigan called me Benji during the coffee hour one Sunday morning, and I spun on the person and shouted “Benji’s for dogs!” The nickname wasn’t used again, and I guess I decided this strategy might work for other things, because the next time I was served re-fried beans (which I hate) I shouted, “Beans are for dogs!” and wasn’t forced to eat them again. Missing from the story is the fact that my parents must have laid down the law about these outbursts at some point after that. Otherwise, I’d be going around yelling that my pet-peeves are “for dogs” and wondering why that doesn’t make them go away.
Ben Kenobi and Benedict Arnold were attempts at insults when I was in the early years of elementary school. Of course, no one really knew who Benedict Arnold was, and as a Star Wars geek I probably wasn’t properly offended by the Ben Kenobi reference, so they didn’t stick.
My favorite of the bunch was coined by my wife. Back in college, my now-wife, then-girlfriend Paige would often come over and hang out in my dorm room, where a group would gather to watch TV, eat Ramen noodles, and even occasionally do homework. I have a tendency to hover. Rather than simply sitting down, I pace when on the phone, and sometimes I prefer to stand behind the couch to watch TV. I also move quietly, especially when barefoot. Once, while watching TV, Paige looked up and found me standing behind her, watching over her shoulder. I startled her pretty badly, and she shouted that I was like a “Ninjaben”. That stuck, and she still calls me that sometimes out of nowhere.
The next on the list was an attempt at an insult which failed marvelously. While walking across the courtyard at Newberg High School, where I worked as an Ed. Assistant before becoming a teacher, a student I didn’t know shouted it at me. I think it was an attempt to make fun of me for being bald by associating me with the singer Moby, but I was instantly reminded of the kids in first grade trying to get a rise out of me by calling me Ben Kenobi, and my face lit up with delight. The student didn’t know that my first name was Ben (even the students in our classes rarely know we have first names) so his joke was more clever than he could imagine. I beamed at him and told him I liked that one, and he looked crushed. After that I used it as a password for my email for a while.
To some extent, the same thing happened with Pelón. My Spanish speakers called me that, first sheepishly, waiting to see if I’d be offended. I had to ask around to find out that it means “baldy” and is slightly derogatory, but I like the sound of it. Unlike “baldy”, the strong emphasis on the accented last syllable makes it sound like a particularly powerful title, like the nickname people might be forced to use for a mustachioed South American dictator to express feigned affection. I loved introducing myself as Pelón on parent-teacher conference nights; the parents would be shocked that their kids called me that, and when I told them that I didn’t mind it immediately made them more comfortable with me, since, despite the sound to my gringo ears, it made me less of an authority figure. After introducing myself as “Mr. Gorman, the one your kids call Pelón,” to a room full of parents, most were instantly on my side, though a few did come up to me and tell me I should not let them call me that, as it isn’t respectful enough. I’d then tell them that their particular child didn’t actually use that nickname for me, as he or she had obviously been raised better, and those parents would like me, too.
I heard my full name a lot, as a kid, when I’d misbehave. Apparently that didn’t work, because, in college, my then-girlfriend (now-wife) would use it the same way when I’d cross the line and say something tactless in public. As I do that a lot, my friends heard it all the time. One friend, Phil, confided in me that I was the only person in the whole school whose middle name he knew, for precisely that reason.
Ultimately, I suppose that makes my full name the nickname that suits me best. Ninjaben might sound cooler, Pelón might be useful, and Moby-Wan might be the most clever, but I have to concede that my full name is the one most often demanded by my words and actions. So when I inevitably cross the line and make some crass joke, feel free to scowl and hiss, “Benjamin Douglas Gorman!”
But don’t call me Benji. Benji is for dogs.
Brainstorm- a list of all the nicknames you’ve ever had, thinking back to childhood, camp, sports and family get-togethers. Try for a baker’s dozen or so and word process the list. Any patterns revealed? Focus on a particular nickname that you loved or hated. When you say it, where does it carry you?
Ben
Benjamin Douglas Gorman (when in trouble)
Benji
Ben Kenobi
Benedict Arnold
Gorman
Ninjaben
Moby-Wan
Pelón
I’m not sure if it’s something intrinsic to my name, or to my personality, but based on the list of nicknames I can remember, it seems I don’t earn many. The story of how I shot down “Benji” as a young child has become a legend in my family; though I don’t remember the incident I have heard it recounted many times. Some older person in my mother’s congregation in a small town in Michigan called me Benji during the coffee hour one Sunday morning, and I spun on the person and shouted “Benji’s for dogs!” The nickname wasn’t used again, and I guess I decided this strategy might work for other things, because the next time I was served re-fried beans (which I hate) I shouted, “Beans are for dogs!” and wasn’t forced to eat them again. Missing from the story is the fact that my parents must have laid down the law about these outbursts at some point after that. Otherwise, I’d be going around yelling that my pet-peeves are “for dogs” and wondering why that doesn’t make them go away.
Ben Kenobi and Benedict Arnold were attempts at insults when I was in the early years of elementary school. Of course, no one really knew who Benedict Arnold was, and as a Star Wars geek I probably wasn’t properly offended by the Ben Kenobi reference, so they didn’t stick.
My favorite of the bunch was coined by my wife. Back in college, my now-wife, then-girlfriend Paige would often come over and hang out in my dorm room, where a group would gather to watch TV, eat Ramen noodles, and even occasionally do homework. I have a tendency to hover. Rather than simply sitting down, I pace when on the phone, and sometimes I prefer to stand behind the couch to watch TV. I also move quietly, especially when barefoot. Once, while watching TV, Paige looked up and found me standing behind her, watching over her shoulder. I startled her pretty badly, and she shouted that I was like a “Ninjaben”. That stuck, and she still calls me that sometimes out of nowhere.
The next on the list was an attempt at an insult which failed marvelously. While walking across the courtyard at Newberg High School, where I worked as an Ed. Assistant before becoming a teacher, a student I didn’t know shouted it at me. I think it was an attempt to make fun of me for being bald by associating me with the singer Moby, but I was instantly reminded of the kids in first grade trying to get a rise out of me by calling me Ben Kenobi, and my face lit up with delight. The student didn’t know that my first name was Ben (even the students in our classes rarely know we have first names) so his joke was more clever than he could imagine. I beamed at him and told him I liked that one, and he looked crushed. After that I used it as a password for my email for a while.
To some extent, the same thing happened with Pelón. My Spanish speakers called me that, first sheepishly, waiting to see if I’d be offended. I had to ask around to find out that it means “baldy” and is slightly derogatory, but I like the sound of it. Unlike “baldy”, the strong emphasis on the accented last syllable makes it sound like a particularly powerful title, like the nickname people might be forced to use for a mustachioed South American dictator to express feigned affection. I loved introducing myself as Pelón on parent-teacher conference nights; the parents would be shocked that their kids called me that, and when I told them that I didn’t mind it immediately made them more comfortable with me, since, despite the sound to my gringo ears, it made me less of an authority figure. After introducing myself as “Mr. Gorman, the one your kids call Pelón,” to a room full of parents, most were instantly on my side, though a few did come up to me and tell me I should not let them call me that, as it isn’t respectful enough. I’d then tell them that their particular child didn’t actually use that nickname for me, as he or she had obviously been raised better, and those parents would like me, too.
I heard my full name a lot, as a kid, when I’d misbehave. Apparently that didn’t work, because, in college, my then-girlfriend (now-wife) would use it the same way when I’d cross the line and say something tactless in public. As I do that a lot, my friends heard it all the time. One friend, Phil, confided in me that I was the only person in the whole school whose middle name he knew, for precisely that reason.
Ultimately, I suppose that makes my full name the nickname that suits me best. Ninjaben might sound cooler, Pelón might be useful, and Moby-Wan might be the most clever, but I have to concede that my full name is the one most often demanded by my words and actions. So when I inevitably cross the line and make some crass joke, feel free to scowl and hiss, “Benjamin Douglas Gorman!”
But don’t call me Benji. Benji is for dogs.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: Song
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. Today's prompt:
Song: Choose a song that has your name in it and tell the story of how it was written for you, or make up a song with your name in it.
(With apologies to Layli, Neil, Teri, Mariko, Jim, and Mari who have the misfortune to happen to be in the class for which this is written.)
How Do You Write a Song About Benjamin?
(Sung to the tune of (How Do You Solve a Problem Like) "Maria" from The Sound of Music)
The emphasis is on the first,
It has syllables three.
Try to find it in lyrics on Google,
And you will quickly see
No one writes songs about Benjamin.
I guess it will have to be me.
I have a feeling this will come out badly!
It doesn’t sound like English.
We don’t mix our “n” and “j”.
Try to think of some examples
You’ll ponder it all day
Shoe-horning it into a chorus?
I don’t think there’s a way.
I have a feeling this will come out badly!
I’m not trying to be cynical.
My detachment is clinical… oh!
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
The name doesn’t fit in any rhyme.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
And who would think that it was worth the time?
Many a name you know would fit in better.
Many a name could fit into a song.
Try Layli or Neil or Teri
Mariko or Jim or Mari
But Benjamin will always come out wrong.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
This Sound of Music rip-off is so long!
And the man with such a name?
He is not the one to blame.
Nor are his parents who thought for the best
But their son takes on this job
And comes off like a snob
He’s a show-off, and a braggart, and a pest.
He knows what folks will think
It makes him want to drink
When he thinks of the way this song will bore us.
But he likes this prompt a day
His wife says, “No F---ing way.”
She thinks he’s crazy. Oh no! Not the chorus!
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
The name doesn’t fit in any rhyme.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
And who would think that it was worth the time?
Many a name you know would fit in better.
Many a name could fit into a song.
Try Layli or Neil or Teri
Mariko or Jim or Mari
But Benjamin will always come out wrong.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
This Sound of Music rip-off is so long!
Song: Choose a song that has your name in it and tell the story of how it was written for you, or make up a song with your name in it.
(With apologies to Layli, Neil, Teri, Mariko, Jim, and Mari who have the misfortune to happen to be in the class for which this is written.)
How Do You Write a Song About Benjamin?
(Sung to the tune of (How Do You Solve a Problem Like) "Maria" from The Sound of Music)
The emphasis is on the first,
It has syllables three.
Try to find it in lyrics on Google,
And you will quickly see
No one writes songs about Benjamin.
I guess it will have to be me.
I have a feeling this will come out badly!
It doesn’t sound like English.
We don’t mix our “n” and “j”.
Try to think of some examples
You’ll ponder it all day
Shoe-horning it into a chorus?
I don’t think there’s a way.
I have a feeling this will come out badly!
I’m not trying to be cynical.
My detachment is clinical… oh!
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
The name doesn’t fit in any rhyme.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
And who would think that it was worth the time?
Many a name you know would fit in better.
Many a name could fit into a song.
Try Layli or Neil or Teri
Mariko or Jim or Mari
But Benjamin will always come out wrong.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
This Sound of Music rip-off is so long!
And the man with such a name?
He is not the one to blame.
Nor are his parents who thought for the best
But their son takes on this job
And comes off like a snob
He’s a show-off, and a braggart, and a pest.
He knows what folks will think
It makes him want to drink
When he thinks of the way this song will bore us.
But he likes this prompt a day
His wife says, “No F---ing way.”
She thinks he’s crazy. Oh no! Not the chorus!
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
The name doesn’t fit in any rhyme.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
And who would think that it was worth the time?
Many a name you know would fit in better.
Many a name could fit into a song.
Try Layli or Neil or Teri
Mariko or Jim or Mari
But Benjamin will always come out wrong.
How do you write a song about Benjamin?
This Sound of Music rip-off is so long!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: One Sentence Story
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. Today's prompt:
One Sentence Story: Write a one sentence story that describes who you are. Include some alliteration with your name.
In a blundered attempt to brighten the bored expressions on the faces of his bucolic students, Ben bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as he bloviated about the benefits of the best British books.
One Sentence Story: Write a one sentence story that describes who you are. Include some alliteration with your name.
In a blundered attempt to brighten the bored expressions on the faces of his bucolic students, Ben bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as he bloviated about the benefits of the best British books.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: "I am the one who..." poem
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. This one is a bit long, but I like the way it coalesces. Let me know what you think! Today's Prompt: I am the one who…: make a list that portrays the details of your likes and dislikes, idiosyncrasies and crotchets, beginning each line with “I am the one who…”
I Am the One Who Is Trying to Be Better About That
I am the guy who considers Ritz crackers and Tillamook extra sharp cheddar cheese a meal.
I am the guy who sometimes forgets to eat for two days straight.
I am the guy who drinks too much Mountain Dew and has the triglyceride count to prove it.
I am the guy who hasn’t heard a clever or original bald joke in a long time.
I am the guy who doesn’t like the way he looks, but is too lazy to work out.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the son who wishes my family lived closer. But not too close.
I am the husband who buys a new song and listens to it over and over until my wife hates it.
I am the husband who says he will do the dishes, forgets, and then says, “I was going to do those.”
I am the father who Noah is allowed to punch in the chest but not the face or the crotch.
I am the father who gave Noah that awesome Mohawk haircut when he was into reciting Mr. T quotes.
I am the father who cuts Noah’s hair, and always wants to cut it a little shorter around the ears.
I am the father who has cut Noah’s ear with the clippers. Twice.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the teacher who likes to be in front of his students more than behind his desk.
I am the teacher who likes books better than movies, but watches more movies for sheer expedience.
I am the teacher who keeps a jar of creamy peanut butter in my desk and eats a spoonful during third period to keep my energy level up.
I am the teacher who, on bad days, wonders if I should have gone to law school.
I am the teacher who shaves less and less frequently as the school year goes on.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the guy who actively wishes ill for douche-bags like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
I am the guy who does not romanticize ages past when men beat their wives, whites lynched blacks, gays were considered mentally ill, and books had to be written by hand or typed on typewriters.
I am the guy who used to be religious and is now a reluctant agnostic who misses the certainty.
I am the guy who often can’t understand the Red State point of view.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the writer who tries to set aside at least one night a week to write until dawn.
I am the writer who smokes a pipe because I’m an addict and I enjoy it, not because I’m professorial, contemplative, or cerebral.
I am the writer who overwrites. Who has to add just one more idea. Which should be edited out. But isn’t.
I am the writer who posts political rants online and delude myself that somebody out there gives a rat’s ass what I think.
I am the writer who powerfully, passionately, solemnly, resolutely hates the overuse of adverbs. Especially in dialogue attribution, I might add laconically, ungrammatically, and unnecessarily.
I am the writer who writes novels but gives up on each one after only a handful of rejected query letters.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the guy who does not handle embarrassment well.
I am the guy who stopped feeling guilty about watching good TV shows.
I am the guy who is embarrassed to admit how much I love singing karaoke.
I am the guy who is still self conscious about the length of my pants because kids made fun of me for wearing “highwaters” one day more than twenty years ago.
I am the guy who is always wearing two clashing shades of black.
I am the guy who assumes strangers are laughing at me.
I am the guy who still imagines what my NBA career will be like, despite the fact that I’m too short, too slow, can’t jump high, can’t shoot the ball well, almost never play, and am now getting near retirement age.
I am the guy who wishes he lived in New York City, and wishes he could afford to.
I am the guy who is never happy where I am.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I Am the One Who Is Trying to Be Better About That
I am the guy who considers Ritz crackers and Tillamook extra sharp cheddar cheese a meal.
I am the guy who sometimes forgets to eat for two days straight.
I am the guy who drinks too much Mountain Dew and has the triglyceride count to prove it.
I am the guy who hasn’t heard a clever or original bald joke in a long time.
I am the guy who doesn’t like the way he looks, but is too lazy to work out.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the son who wishes my family lived closer. But not too close.
I am the husband who buys a new song and listens to it over and over until my wife hates it.
I am the husband who says he will do the dishes, forgets, and then says, “I was going to do those.”
I am the father who Noah is allowed to punch in the chest but not the face or the crotch.
I am the father who gave Noah that awesome Mohawk haircut when he was into reciting Mr. T quotes.
I am the father who cuts Noah’s hair, and always wants to cut it a little shorter around the ears.
I am the father who has cut Noah’s ear with the clippers. Twice.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the teacher who likes to be in front of his students more than behind his desk.
I am the teacher who likes books better than movies, but watches more movies for sheer expedience.
I am the teacher who keeps a jar of creamy peanut butter in my desk and eats a spoonful during third period to keep my energy level up.
I am the teacher who, on bad days, wonders if I should have gone to law school.
I am the teacher who shaves less and less frequently as the school year goes on.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the guy who actively wishes ill for douche-bags like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.
I am the guy who does not romanticize ages past when men beat their wives, whites lynched blacks, gays were considered mentally ill, and books had to be written by hand or typed on typewriters.
I am the guy who used to be religious and is now a reluctant agnostic who misses the certainty.
I am the guy who often can’t understand the Red State point of view.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the writer who tries to set aside at least one night a week to write until dawn.
I am the writer who smokes a pipe because I’m an addict and I enjoy it, not because I’m professorial, contemplative, or cerebral.
I am the writer who overwrites. Who has to add just one more idea. Which should be edited out. But isn’t.
I am the writer who posts political rants online and delude myself that somebody out there gives a rat’s ass what I think.
I am the writer who powerfully, passionately, solemnly, resolutely hates the overuse of adverbs. Especially in dialogue attribution, I might add laconically, ungrammatically, and unnecessarily.
I am the writer who writes novels but gives up on each one after only a handful of rejected query letters.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
I am the guy who does not handle embarrassment well.
I am the guy who stopped feeling guilty about watching good TV shows.
I am the guy who is embarrassed to admit how much I love singing karaoke.
I am the guy who is still self conscious about the length of my pants because kids made fun of me for wearing “highwaters” one day more than twenty years ago.
I am the guy who is always wearing two clashing shades of black.
I am the guy who assumes strangers are laughing at me.
I am the guy who still imagines what my NBA career will be like, despite the fact that I’m too short, too slow, can’t jump high, can’t shoot the ball well, almost never play, and am now getting near retirement age.
I am the guy who wishes he lived in New York City, and wishes he could afford to.
I am the guy who is never happy where I am.
I am the one who’s trying to be better about that.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Oregon Writing Project: Fabulous Autobiography
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. Today's Prompt: "Fabulous Autobiography: create a one paragraph autobiography of the life you could dream of living if you weren’t so busy living this life. Be imaginative and tell your untrue autobiography." I couldn't quite stick to the one paragraph limit (Surprise!). Let me know what you think:
…and, strange as it may sound, at that moment I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” He’d said that to a group of striking garbage men. In a way, that was precisely my vocation. It caused me to reflect on the life I might have lived, had I made other choices. What if I’d married my girlfriend in college, Paige, the one with the quick wit and the large brown eyes? Might we have had a child together? Would he have had her eyes, or mine? And what job might I have had? Would I, perhaps, have taken a job as a high school English teacher, and in that position taught that very quote to students somewhere, as a way to motivate them to focus on their work in the classroom and their own occupations in the future?
I shook my head. Clearly, though she looked to all the world like a woman who was merely sleeping, the creature before me was tricking me, using her powers to encourage my mind wander from my present task so she could buy precious minutes until sunset. No, the trash had to be taken out.
I carefully set the point of the wooden stake in its place on her chest. She didn’t stir as it dimpled her skin. Then I raised the mallet and struck it. The stake pierced the soft flesh, then the cartilage and bone of her sternum, then the un-beating heart. She thrashed and tried to rise up, but I held onto the stake and pushed her down. Leaning her head back, she screamed. The sound echoed off the walls of the mausoleum, bouncing through the door, across the graveyard of the small Coptic church, and up between the high crags of Eastern Anatolia, where the Pontus and Taurus mountain ranges meet. The haunting, inhuman sound reverberated off the mountains, and persisted longer than any human’s could.
“Oh, shut up,” I said, more irritated than frightened, since I’d heard that sound a hundred times before. I raised the machete to finish the job. The first cut sank all the way through her neck and stuck in the base of the coffin below, but, as is often the case when I slice a tomato in my kitchen back in London, some bit of flesh held on, and this was enough to keep her alive, allowing the nearly severed head to continue screaming. I pried the machete free, raised it again, and finished the day’s work, watching her body dissolve into dust in a matter of seconds.
As I climbed out of the mausoleum, I thought of her last gambit, her desperate attempt to hold on to her half-life, and I admit I doubted the dignity of my chosen profession.
…and, strange as it may sound, at that moment I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” He’d said that to a group of striking garbage men. In a way, that was precisely my vocation. It caused me to reflect on the life I might have lived, had I made other choices. What if I’d married my girlfriend in college, Paige, the one with the quick wit and the large brown eyes? Might we have had a child together? Would he have had her eyes, or mine? And what job might I have had? Would I, perhaps, have taken a job as a high school English teacher, and in that position taught that very quote to students somewhere, as a way to motivate them to focus on their work in the classroom and their own occupations in the future?
I shook my head. Clearly, though she looked to all the world like a woman who was merely sleeping, the creature before me was tricking me, using her powers to encourage my mind wander from my present task so she could buy precious minutes until sunset. No, the trash had to be taken out.
I carefully set the point of the wooden stake in its place on her chest. She didn’t stir as it dimpled her skin. Then I raised the mallet and struck it. The stake pierced the soft flesh, then the cartilage and bone of her sternum, then the un-beating heart. She thrashed and tried to rise up, but I held onto the stake and pushed her down. Leaning her head back, she screamed. The sound echoed off the walls of the mausoleum, bouncing through the door, across the graveyard of the small Coptic church, and up between the high crags of Eastern Anatolia, where the Pontus and Taurus mountain ranges meet. The haunting, inhuman sound reverberated off the mountains, and persisted longer than any human’s could.
“Oh, shut up,” I said, more irritated than frightened, since I’d heard that sound a hundred times before. I raised the machete to finish the job. The first cut sank all the way through her neck and stuck in the base of the coffin below, but, as is often the case when I slice a tomato in my kitchen back in London, some bit of flesh held on, and this was enough to keep her alive, allowing the nearly severed head to continue screaming. I pried the machete free, raised it again, and finished the day’s work, watching her body dissolve into dust in a matter of seconds.
As I climbed out of the mausoleum, I thought of her last gambit, her desperate attempt to hold on to her half-life, and I admit I doubted the dignity of my chosen profession.
The Oregon Writing Project: Acrostic Poem
As I do my homework to prepare for the Summer Institute of the Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University, I thought I'd post my attempts here. Our first assignments all relate to our names. Here's my first whack at an acrostic poem:
The Sound more than the History
Beginning with Hebrew
Even though I’m not Jewish
Never bothered me.
Jealous of that tradition, really.
Ancestors did wander in the desert
Millennia ago.
I feel I missed out on something
Not being counted among the Chosen.
Descending from Scotland, too.
Our ancestors wore kilts.
Undeniably ostentatious.
Guess I have to admit to some of that.
Listing my middle name here
Advertises some deep-seated need to show off,
-----though not confident enough to wear
Skirts.
Got here from Ireland, as well.*
Over the Atlantic with my other ancestors, the blood
Running together: ancestors traveling from
-----Poland, Romania, England, Germany, Portugal...*
Makes one think
About all the struggles and sacrifices,
-----scrambling and scratching and surviving.
Name should sound a lot stronger, but…
-----I’ve grown to fit the sound more than the history.
(Note on 6/14/10
*#1 This line read, "Got here from Ireland, too." Switched to "as well" because I just noticed I had "too" twice.
*#2 This line was edited after my Uncle Doug, for whom I received my middle name, wrote to inform me that the original line was inaccurate. It read: "Running together: Hungarian, Polish, German, English, Portuguese..." It turns out that, though some relatives came from Poland, they were not ethnically Polish, but Ashkenazi Jews. Similarly, the Hungarians referenced were not Hungarian, but also Ashkenazi Jews. Only it turns out they probably didn't live in Hungary, but in Romania. Hence the new line. Frankly, I think the line is a bit clunkier now. Before the blood ran together and made one think. I like that. Now the blood runs together (need to use the "r" after all) but it's the ancestors traveling which makes one think. Ironic that I'm sacrificing a bit of the sound of the poem to get the history correct, considering the poem's last line.)
The Sound more than the History
Beginning with Hebrew
Even though I’m not Jewish
Never bothered me.
Jealous of that tradition, really.
Ancestors did wander in the desert
Millennia ago.
I feel I missed out on something
Not being counted among the Chosen.
Descending from Scotland, too.
Our ancestors wore kilts.
Undeniably ostentatious.
Guess I have to admit to some of that.
Listing my middle name here
Advertises some deep-seated need to show off,
-----though not confident enough to wear
Skirts.
Got here from Ireland, as well.*
Over the Atlantic with my other ancestors, the blood
Running together: ancestors traveling from
-----Poland, Romania, England, Germany, Portugal...*
Makes one think
About all the struggles and sacrifices,
-----scrambling and scratching and surviving.
Name should sound a lot stronger, but…
-----I’ve grown to fit the sound more than the history.
(Note on 6/14/10
*#1 This line read, "Got here from Ireland, too." Switched to "as well" because I just noticed I had "too" twice.
*#2 This line was edited after my Uncle Doug, for whom I received my middle name, wrote to inform me that the original line was inaccurate. It read: "Running together: Hungarian, Polish, German, English, Portuguese..." It turns out that, though some relatives came from Poland, they were not ethnically Polish, but Ashkenazi Jews. Similarly, the Hungarians referenced were not Hungarian, but also Ashkenazi Jews. Only it turns out they probably didn't live in Hungary, but in Romania. Hence the new line. Frankly, I think the line is a bit clunkier now. Before the blood ran together and made one think. I like that. Now the blood runs together (need to use the "r" after all) but it's the ancestors traveling which makes one think. Ironic that I'm sacrificing a bit of the sound of the poem to get the history correct, considering the poem's last line.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
