Lucky White Girl

What's scarier than rampaging zombies?

I live in a little college town in Florida.  Here, we have this local theater company who puts on plays in this historic building downtown.   Currently, in honor of the season, they are putting on a production of Night of the Living Dead.  What could be scarier than rampaging zombies?  We gotta go see it!  And so we did. 

First of all I should admit that this theater is so known for its safe, unchallenging, "fun" plays that I haven't ever been very motivated to go see very many of them.  And on the rare occasions that I do, I always walk away with the same impression: gee, that was mildly amusing and maybe rather cute but not very daring or profound.  But with George Romero's movie as the basis of the script how could they disappoint?

For those unfamiliar with the movie, the original Night of the Living Dead movie was made in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.  Seen within that context, the movie is very daring and provocative.  Fear of something "out there", a great threat to "life as we know it", talk of "containment", and "cures" that are as bad as the disease (the only way to kill zombies is to shoot them in the head and many non-zombies are killed not by zombies but by other humans trying to kill zombies)!  And in the middle of all this is a great power struggle between an older "law and order" white man and a young rebellious black man in which the more sympathetic character of the two is --amazingly enough now remember this was 1968-- the black man.  Wow!

It's one of the greatest films of all time and admittedly it'd be hard for a play to achieve something like the level of ingenuity of the original movie, but the story line is so ripe for biting political commentary updated for the 21st century that you'd have to have your head in the sand to waste it. And wasted it was. The Hippodrome's was a cute version that I really wanted to like --and probably would have if I didn't know how brilliant the Romero movie was-- but it could have been so much more.

The play was fun: the set impressive, the acting superb and the dancing zombies quite freaky-looking.  Ben, the black man, was played by Armando Acevedo, in jeans and a muscle-revealing white tank and to their credit, they did maintain somewhat the social power dynamic of the movie while updating it to 21st century prejudices.  Ben could've been an illegal immigrant or a farmworker.  Mr. Cooper the white man was perfect in his polo shirt and slacks.  I also appreciated it all being adapted to our area with lots of local references (Barbara and Johnny come from Tallahassee and the zombie attack takes place in Gainesville).  But that's about as far as they push the envelope in this one.

Okay you might say, so it was maybe a tad on the bland side but what's wrong with that?  Isn't Halloween supposed to be about having fun?  Sure, but how much fun is it when it's obvious that stuff has been intentionally toned down so as not to offend the funding sources?

Here's an example: At one point in the play a woman in the audience stands up with a microphone and plays a local news anchor reporting on the situation.  In the list of preparations the city has undertaken she tells us that Ted and Linda McGurn, two locally famous wealthy developers, have opened a zombie-free "SafeSpace" downtown.   Now, practically that entire audience would know "SafeSpace" as the name of a one-stop center that the city has been trying for years to open to provide services for the homeless.  The reason it has taken so long is because there are some pretty powerful interests who are aligned against such charitable endeavors in the downtown area.  The biggest and most powerful of those interests are --yes, indeed-- the McGurns!  It was the perfect setup and they just turned and walked away leaving everyone smiling painfully at a lame quip about parking enforcement! 

The McGurns, you see, are one of the largest donors to the Hippodrome State Theater.   Can you spell i-n-f-l-u-e-n-c-e?

Alright, I can understand not wanting to deliberately piss off your largest donors with personal jibes at their heartlessness towards the poor but ignoring the themes of racism, patriotism and militarism that are so present in the movie sunk the rest of the play for me.  There are so many rich parallels to George W's America.  The part, for example, in the story where the other young man trapped in the house is chosen to go out and face the zombies alone.  Romero put that scene in the movie for a reason: He's the young, loyal, good all-American boy going off to fight the good fight.  (hmmm... haven't seen anything like that on the news around here lately, have you?)  They could have played America the Beautiful, for example, during the scene where he's saying goodbye to his girlfriend, throwing red, white and blue lights on them as they embrace for the last time, both knowing they're likely to never see each other again.  Instead, the playwrights here made it a cheezy melodramatic dance scene as if it were a romantic comedy relevant to nothing.

The USA of 1968 and the USA of 2007 have a lot in common.  The climate of fear G.W's America rivals that of Romero's time.  What better way to illustrate that point than with a classic zombie story all about what people will do when faced with an incomprehensible threat of "epic proportions"? 

So you see the first lesson in art patronage: money buys good entertainment but not-so-good art. 

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until they prove otherwise, if you want to be entertained, the Hippodrome is the place to go.  If you want to see real provocative performances, you'll have to look somewhere else.  Because in a country once again so firmly in the grip of paranoia, nothing's scarier than safe zombies. 

Hey Slick! Show us that twisty logic again!

Do you remember hearing about the controversial remarks by John Tanner, the Department of Justice's Chief of Voting about how voter id laws disenfrancise white people more than people of color?  According to his logic, it's because the disparities in health care in this country mean that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first".  "So," he says, "anything that 'disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities".  He concludes that therefore white people are being more disenfrancised by voter id laws than are people of color.

Hmmm... stop.  Rewind.  Lemme see that move again, Slick!   You lost me there...

Mr. Tanner was trying to use a sound argument:  Namely, that white people tend to live longer than people of color because of the disparities in a white supremacist society means that white people tend to have better access to health care and such than do people of color.  (It's all about economics! says the Marxist)

but wait!  That's only half the story.  There's a sleight of hand trick here:

It's true that structural racism affects people's life spans but people aren't automatically disenfranchised by virtue of their being elderly.  They're disenfranchised by virtue of their being poor and elderly.  Poor people are less likely to have IDs and to have the documents such as birth certificates needed in order to get those IDs.  Why?  Because of racism.  People of color are more likely to be poor for exactly the same reason they're more likely to lack access to health care; because racism has very real economic consequences.   And anyway voter disenfranchisement is not something the Department of Justice should be condoning!

I applaud you for recognizing the disparities in our system, Mr. Tanner, but wow, what a way to shed some murk on the subject!

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Captialism

Milton Friedman, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, was a big believer in the power of crises (of the economic sort) to induce a generalized state of shock in a population.  A crisis makes people vulnerable and desperate and thereby opens them up to ideas and changes that might not be in their best interests --such as the restructuring of their economy to a format more beneficial to Western industrialized super powers (e.g. us!). 

"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change" he said. 

Friedman was talking about economic crises but natural disasters can do the same thing: terrorize a population, make them desperate and open the doors of opportunity for the economic restructuring of a society.  Naomi Klein explains it all in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism.

When [a] crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, [Friedman] was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo".

Some examples:

After the 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende, 50,000 people were tortured, 80,000 imprisoned, unknown numbers of folks were disappeared and the income of the wealthy rose 83%.

The 1989 crackdown in China killed hundreds, jailed thousands and ushered in a new era of sweatshops and free market capitalism.

And right here at home in the US of A, after Katrina:

"Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed [in an editorial he wrote three months after the disaster], "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

[pause to shudder...before Klein explains]:

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Privatize.  Privatize everything, everywhere until the whole world is run by the dictates of the profit margin.   And if people don't want to give up things like public education and national safety nets such as social security and medicare, well, that's where the shock doctrine comes in.  It's brutal but that's exactly the nature of global capitalism. 

But there is hope, she says.  "The best way to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why". Click the screen below to watch a short video based on the book.   

smirk :->

Ecuador approves US military base in their country on one condition.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Bellencourt

Vernon Bellencourt, longtime leader of the American Indian Movement "respected by many, hated by some, but ... never ignored" (his famous quote describing the organization) died a few days ago.  He was 75.

Story in the Washington Post.
A Lifetime of Protest (from the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis-St.Paul)

Lucky White Obama Girl!

Welcome to LWG's very first post on the 2008 Presidential election.  Let's get right to the point.  I have been stand-offish on elections for the past, oh, say dozen years or so, because I believed that no real change comes out of them. 

It was merely a question of appearances, I thought.  Do you like the iron fist of U.S. imperialism with or without the velvet glove?  When Clinton was in office we protested the regular, low-scale bombing of Iraq, the crippling economic sanctions that caused Sadaam little difficulty but was devastating to the most vulnerable members of the Iraqi population (the children, the elderly and the infirm).  Clinton brought us NAFTA, maquilladoras on the border, and a David v. Goliath war on Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo (read "liberate access to an important oil pipeline in the area and secure US regional interests). 

The one glimmer of hope I felt was in promoting third party politics and so I campaigned for Ralph Nader in 2000, not because I thought he stood a snowball's chance in D.C. but because we wanted him to get 5% (I think it was) of the vote.  (I'm fuzzy on it now but I think that him getting that percentage of the vote nationally would've somehow enabled greater recognition for third party candidates in the future.)  I'm sure I don't have to tell you that we didn't cost Gore the election in 2000 because GORE WON THE ELECTION IN 2000!  We were naive to think that in the United States of America elections cannot be stolen.

We would've voted Shrub out of office in 2004 if it had not been for the events of that day in September 2001.  I knew that very day that we were entering a very heavy period of U.S. history and the only thing to do was to survive until the clouds lifted.  I cast my vote for Kerry merely as a formality.

This time, however, things are different.  I believe that way off in the distance, the clouds really are lifting again.  There's no doubt in my mind that the next President will be a Democrat and there's no hiding the fact that it fills me with excitement to be able to say that he or she will finally break the long-outdated tradition that dictates that U.S. Presidents must be male and must be white.  The only question is which one will it be?

I like Hilliary.  I've always liked her.  As a high school kid, I bought her book, "It takes a village" (much, I'm sure, to the dismay of my southern Republican family).  I believed her smart, sincere and powerful.  Do I hold Bill's record against her?  No.  No woman like Hillary is ever merely a shadow of her husband.  To imply so, is insulting, not to mention grossly inaccurate.

That's not to say, however, that the political dynasty the Clintons have built together --mostly for the benefit of him, now for the benefit of her-- is not a deeply entrenched power structure within Washington.  And that right there makes me less inclined towards her.  All those debts she must've accumulated by now, all those interests, all that power!  A dynasty is a dynasty even if it looks pretty on the outside.  And this country was never meant to be run by dueling dynasties*. 

No, Hillary is not her husband. But Barack, on the other hand, is not a Clinton.  Now that that massive political machine that the Clintons have built is revealing just how massive and powerful it is, I have decided that if there is a shred of idealism left in this cynical old heart of mine, it is inclined towards the Senator from Illinois.  The multi-ethnic man that is the face of the real "America", the people's America, not the ruling elite.

Here is a video of Alice Walker, who, like me, is endorsing Barack Obama:

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*well, okay that's debatable, but the point is it shouldn't be!

Paul Krugman on Universal Health Care

One of my favorite columnists is being interviewed today on the Diane Rehm Show.  Paul Krugman on race, class and universal health care: "I think we have the best chance now of getting universal health care than we have since Harry Truman."

Check it out if you get a chance.  He's a good man with a lot of good old fashioned common sense.  Also, he's got a new book out, The Conscience of a Liberal (buy it here at Powell's) which will probably be on my bookshelf before too long and if you don't buy the book or check out the interview, at least give a look at his blog, here.

My new city!

The Capital of Culture.

Speaking of "over-educated white itinerants"...

Technology and feminism: progress or regression?

I just had to sigh over this story in the NY Times today.  I didn't even know there was demand for things like this!  Women getting plastic surgery just because they'd had a baby???!  You've got to be kidding!  I was blissfully unaware.  At least the author of the article seems to have a good head on her shoulders.  She explains the history of the situation with a subtle tone of refreshing indignation:

In 1970, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the seminal guide to women’s health, described the cosmetic changes that can happen during and after pregnancy simply as phenomena. But now narrowing beauty norms are recasting the transformations of motherhood as stigma.

These unforgiving standards are the offspring of pop culture and technology, a union that treats biological changes as if they were as optional as hair color. Gossip magazines excoriate celebrity moms who don’t immediately lose their “baby weight.” Even Cookie, a luxury parenting magazine, recently ran an article that described postpregnancy breasts as “the ultimate indignity” and promoted implant surgery; a photo of droopy water-filled balloons accompanied the article.

And hits the nail right on the head with this:

Many women struggle with the impact of aging and pregnancy on their bodies. But the marketing of the “mommy makeover” seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.

It made me think of the impact of technology on beauty standards.  I mean wouldn't you have thought that things were getting better since the feminist revolution began?  That first we got the right to vote and dismissed silly notions such as women being feeble-minded and then we got around to challenging sex roles and gender stereotypes.  But despite all that is it really true that the one area we have been unable to change in our society is impossible beauty standards? 

In Gainesville, probably half the women --including me most of the time-- don't shave their body hair.  It has ceased to become anything particularly revolutionary; it just seems normal to me.  Of course there will be a little tuft of hair under the arms ---that's just natural.  In fact, here if you do shave, you might feel a little naked in some crowds and there might be a certain amount of social pressure to go au naturel. 

Most places, however, aren't like Gainesville.  I shaved in order to go to my job interview in DC for example, and I shaved when I was in Miami and in sometimes when I was in Latin America so I understand that for most women in North America to be considered beautiful and attractive necessarily means having the smooth hairless body of a prepubescent girl.  But I didn't realize just how much technology can push the envelope.  If a post-pregnancy body is a deformity, what's next?  Can we shrink our bones so that we are the exact hieght of the average twelve year old?

How ironic.  Mature women wanting to look like 12 year olds and 12 year olds wanting to look like mature women!  And our society sees absolutely no contradiction in that at all!  Amazing.  Simply amazing.

Learning DC, snapshot

Me: [looking at map] Hey there's the Naval Observatory!  I wonder what that is?
Chris: For navel gazing, of course! [snicker]

Domincan Republic on strike

Workers in the Dominican Republic are on a 24 hour strike today and they have the backing of 2 of the 3 leading presidential candidates.  Organized by the Alternative Social Forum, a conglomeration of various unions and human rights groups, the protesters are demanding major changes in the government's economic policies.  This is the second national strike to come during the current President's tenure.  The first took place last July when the protesters succeeded in shutting down much of the capital.

While expected to be peaceful, "the Police said it will deploy the needed agents in the streets and test its recently-acquired water cannons".  Always good to have a bunch of protesters around for target practice.