Saddam should haunt us

The ususally insightful John F. Burns had an interesting piece in the Times about Saddam's death, headlined Feared and Pitiless; Fearful and Pitiable.

NOBODY who experienced Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein could imagine, at the height of the terror he imposed on his countrymen, ever pitying him. Pitiless himself, he sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to miserable deaths, in the wars he started against Iran and Kuwait, in the torture chambers of his secret police, or on the gallows that became an industry at Abu Ghraib and other charnel houses across Iraq. Iraqis who were caught in his spider’s web of evil, and survived, tell of countless tortures, of the psychopathic pleasure the former dictator appeared to take from inflicting suffering and death.

Yet there was a moment when I pitied him, and it came back to me after the nine Iraqi appeal judges upheld the death sentence against Saddam last week, setting off the countdown to his execution. As I write this, flying hurriedly back to Baghdad from an interrupted Christmas break, Saddam makes his own trip to the gallows with an indecent haste, without the mercy of family farewells and other spare acts of compassion that lend at least a pretense of civility to executions under law in kinder jurisdictions. From all we know of the preparations, Saddam’s death was to be a miserable and lonely one, as stark and undignified as Iraq’s new rulers can devise.

Many Iraqis, perhaps most, will spare no sympathies for him. However much he may have suffered in the end, they will say, it could never be enough to atone for a long dark night he imposed on his people. Still, there was that moment, on July 1, 2004, when Saddam became, for me, if only briefly, an object of compassion.

He had been brought to a makeshift courtroom in the grounds of a former presidential palace in Baghdad that became, as Camp Victory, the American military headquarters in Iraq. It was the first time he had appeared in public since his capture six months earlier in a coffin-like subterranean bolt-hole near his hometown of Tikrit when he emerged unkempt yet proclaiming himself to American soldiers who hauled him from his hiding place to be “Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq,” and ready to negotiate with his captors.

We know, from accounts given by his Iraqi and American interrogators, that the old Saddam quickly reasserted himself, heaping contempt on the new generation of Iraqi leaders who were taken out to a detention center near Baghdad International Airport the next day to verify for themselves, and for the world, that the man the Americans had seized was indeed their former tormentor.

So when the day arrived for his first court appearance, starting the process that led over the next 30 months to his two trials for crimes against humanity, there seemed little doubt to me which Saddam would show up to face the charges — Saddam the indignant, Saddam the self-proclaimed champion of Iraqi and Pan-Arab nationalism, Saddam the self-anointed figurehead of the insurgency that was already, then, beginning to look like a nightmare for the invaders.

His American captors had flown Saddam and 11 of his top henchmen to Camp Victory by helicopter, and led them hooded and shackled at the waist and ankles to the threshold of the mosque annex that served as a courtroom. Only at the door to the court were the hoods and shackles removed, clattering to the floor a moment or two before the door opened to show Defendant No. 1, Saddam Hussein al-Majid, standing clasped at the elbow between two Iraqi guards.

From 20 feet away on an observer’s bench, seated beside the late Peter Jennings of ABC News and Christiane Amanpour of CNN, I caught my first glimpse of the man who had become in my years of visiting Iraq under his rule, a figure of mythic brutality, a man so feared that the mention of his name would set the hard, unsmiling men assigned to visiting reporters as “minders” to shaking with fear, and on one occasion, in my experience, to abject weeping.

But this was not that Saddam. The man who stepped into the court had the demeanor of a condemned man, his eyes swiveling left, then right, his gait unsteady, his curious, lisping voice raised to a tenor that resonated fear. Quickly, he fixed his gaze on the handful of foreigners in the court, and I had my own moment of anxiety when it came to my mind that he was intent on remembering the faces of the non-Iraqis that were there to witness his humiliation, perhaps to get word through to his lawyers, and then on to the insurgents, that we were to be punished for our intrusion. It was only later, after I learned what he had been told before being taken from his cell to the court, that I understood that our presence meant something else to him entirely, that with foreigners present, he was not going to be summarily hanged or shot.

It's too bad that for the the Iraqi people, the presence of foreigners while Saddam was in power was not only no protection against their being summarily hanged or shot, but actually meant that the shooting and hangings would continue. The U.S. and France, along with the USSR, propped Saddam up.

It's shameful, and not something we should forget.

Mostly awake

Dreamgirls is easily the best movie I've seen this year.

Jennifer Hudson lives up to all the raves she's been getting for her role as Effie White; she's got a great voice and captures her character in her body language and facial expressions as well. As such, she's absolutely believable as someone immensely talented but whose human failings and artistic distaste with compromise are enough to get in the way of some things she wants very badly, especially in light of the people and society around her. You wonder how many artists have lived out that story over the course of human history....

Because Dreamgirls is a complex film, Hudson winds up willing to compromise her integrity for continued material success (in part probably because she's just found out she's pregnant). Her subsequent rejection by the group on those same material grounds, then, is all the more bitter and engenders the highpoint of the film, her rendition of And I Tell You I'm Not Going.

I can't remember the last time I saw an audience interrupt a movie to applaud like they did after that song. There's something pretty touching, incidentally, about watching an audience--in New York City, of all places--moved to clap at a movie screen.

But Beyonce was nearly as memorable in the film; she's luminous throughout as Deena Jones/Diana Ross, someone you literally can't take your eyes off of. But her performance kind of sneaks up on you if that's possible for someone so overtly attractive, growing and changing throughout the film (young Deena has such a different appeal with her winsome smile and yet is equally arresting as the very womanly accomplished Deena) and culminating in her performance of Listen, which also elicited some applause from the audience.

The great thing about Dreamgirls is it's not single-track; it tells a complicated story about a group of different people well, and things aren't always Hollywood neat. Hudson and Beyonce's performances are joined by Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx's as an eclipsed star and a hard-headed businessman. Both are utterly convincing, and both somehow get enough screen time.

The film is in many ways a throwback, not just because it's (unexpectedly) a musical, but also because there are no silly throw-away scenes, played for cheap laughs or tears. Everything matters; the film has an interior logic; people act the way they do to further the story, and because that's how their character would've acted; not because some focus group suggested adding x, y, and z.

There's complexity, there are a few surprises, and above all there's a growing understanding of a greater message as the film unfolds. You're left with a sense for how soul-sucking the music and by extension film industry can be, especially for something that's built on artistic expression and all the attributes that go along with the inherent integrity of great talent.

But you're also left with a story that hints at something deeper about race relations in this country--about something authentic and hard-won being cheapened and ripped off for money so many times that at a certain point, for some people the dream can be reduced to wanting to at least be the ones doing the ripping off.

It's hard to fault Foxx's character in some ways; he wanted to make it in a tough business, and learned to lead with his sharp elbows. You feel bad for Hudson's Effie, who wavers between the self-knowledge that in a just world she'd be out front, and what's presented to her as the economic realities. And you identify with Beyonce, who uses what she's got and what others want to get to a point where she's able to have her eyes opened, and have it mean something.

That still of Beyonce in front of a montage of her own--seemingly real-life--print ads, hair shaped into what may as well be a corporate logo says a lot about the price people are sometimes willing to pay for success as defined by others (at least you hope they feel they're paying a price.)

And the hairstyles, makeup and outfits... wow, the color and sparkles and flow really evoke the 60s and 70s, and give you a feel for how the women and the country really changed. The whole film, visually, is a joy to look at, and sucks you into its world.

Which is not to say Dreamgirls doesn't have some important shortcomings. As the Times' critic, A.O. Scott, observes in
Three-Part Heartbreak in Motown:

But the problem with “Dreamgirls” — and it is not a small one — lies in those songs, which are not just musically and lyrically pedestrian, but historically and idiomatically disastrous. This is a musical, after all, about music, about an especially vibrant and mutable strain of rhythm and blues that proclaimed itself, boastfully but not inaccurately, to be “the sound of young America.”

Curtis is modeled — loosely enough to escape litigation — on Berry Gordy Jr., who turned Motown from a regional record label into a powerhouse. (The Dreams are a parallel-universe version of the Supremes.) The story of Curtis’s Rainbow Records is a familiar and potent tale of Faustian show-business ambition, as his climb to the top involves betraying and hurting the people closest to him. But without the right soundtrack, only half the story is being told. The performances are gratifyingly spirited, but what this movie most obviously lacks is soul.

The great Motown songwriters — Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the trio of geniuses known to posterity as Holland-Dozier-Holland — turned out great pop songs by the dozen, cutting bolts of blues, gospel and rock ’n’ roll into clean, trim, shiny garments. It is vain to imagine that Mr. Krieger and Mr. Eyen, who died in 1991, could replicate the Motown sound in all its variety, but as it is, the film barely acknowledges its existence.

There's gotta be a back story as to why Smokey Robinson et al didn't do the music for the movie; it could be something as simple as a rights issue. Or maybe the film's producer, David Geffen et al, didn't think they needed to pay for the real thing.

They were almost right; Hudson and Beyonce carry the film, and their performances alone make you forget most of the other stuff. But Dreamgirls, I think, could've been something timeless, something kids could watch in schools, something film students could write papers on.

Maybe part of it not rising to the canon level is because of the times we live in, where Hollywood's idea of relevence is limited to making raving films about the war in Iraq.

A bigger part of the problem may be the inspiration for the story, essentially the Supremes. Great films, unless driven by an inventive plot or a stylistic director, need to tap into and illuminate larger-than-life things like war and social change. The Supremes didn't grow into the civil rights movement the way Marvin Gaye did; and the film scants the broader issues of feminism--heck, self-discovery--a bit too much maybe, reducing conflicts between Foxx/Murphy and the girls down to personality.

Too bad Scott doesn't take the next step and note also that the movie was based on a musical written by a white guy to appeal to Broadway's white patrons; the film itself was produced by the uber-white Geffen.

For Pete Travers, what there is in there about race is apparently quite enough; Travers, in hisRolling Stone review, calls director Billy Condon:

[t]he white guy with the brass to direct a tale of black artists who break faith with race, family and R&B to swim in the mainstream. ...

Dreamgirls is hunting bigger game than biopic exploitation. Even more onscreen than it was onstage, Dreamgirls is a story of its time. Condon lets the civil-rights movement slip into frame with headlines, news clips and a startling scene in which Effie confronts a riot in the streets with stunned silence. But Condon never stops the hurtling motion of his film to preach. ...

Krieger's music has taken hits from critics for not being Motown enough. Duh. It's a Broadway score, channeling its force and feeling through a Broadway idiom. Condon follows suit, dedicating the movie to Michael Bennett, who died of AIDS in 1987, borrowing bits of Bennett's original staging and even using the show's Playbill in the final credits.

Ah, yes--'preach', along with its cousin 'politically correct', those tagwords white males love to play, oblivious as ever.

Thank you, Billy, for directing this tale of black folk, and for letting the civil rights movement 'slip' into the film no less. And thank you, Hollywood, for putting on screen this Motown film--as properly scrubbed first by the Great White Way, of course.

Sheesh... not that Travers or Scott will see it, but the movie's story of the Dreamettes stripped of their soul in a bid for 'cross-over' appeal applies a bit to itself as well--it's a story about black music told by white folk, who however well-meaning and talented (if nothing else we should thank Geffen for, according to wikipedia, putting Hudson in the film over Fantasia Barrino) aren't likely to fight for an 'authentic' soundtrack.

Or, frankly know or care very much about Motown's intertwining role with the likes of Martin Luther King and angry black people in the streets, aside from a few cameos. The film doesn't even put its searing images of the riots in Detroit into the context of Jim Crow, lynchings, MLK's assassination and poverty. You're left feeling as if Beyonce and Foxx luckily escaped a self-destructive city for the literal golden white warmth of California, leaving Effie and her tired tirades behind.

But, listening to the Supremes as I write this, I'm reminded that art doesn't always have to be great or grand or, dare I say it, even express truth to be appreciable.

Where Did Our Love Go, Stop in the Name of Love, Reflections, and of course You Can't Hurry Love.... It may not Bach or even Dylan, but a catchy beat, pleasant voices and smooth (if at times illogical) lyrics have its place.

As long, of course, as it's recognized for what it is.

Uncredited Dreamgirls photos of Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, and Beyonce/Foxx found in various places online.

Scott, incidentally, overreaches as movie critics are wont to do and writes:

The dramatic and musical peak of “Dreamgirls” — the showstopper, the main reason to see the movie — comes around midpoint, when Jennifer Hudson, playing Effie White, sings “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” That song has been this musical’s calling card since the first Broadway production 25 years ago, but to see Ms. Hudson tear into it on screen nonetheless brings the goose-bumped thrill of witnessing something new, even historic. A former Disney cruise-ship entertainer with a physique to match her robust voice, Ms. Hudson was notoriously dismissed from “American Idol.” This sad instance of pop-cultural philistinism is echoed on the cover of the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, which omits her in favor of her better-known, thinner “Dreamgirls” co-stars Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé Knowles.

It's funny how often film critics are glib about things they know nothing about, in the process making themselves look unnecessarily foolish and often undermining the very point they think they're making.

Hudson wasn't 'notoriously' dismissed from AI--unless by notorious Scott means that she, like a number of other contestants over the years on the show, had a bad week, and didn't get enough people voting for her that week despite having a better voice than people who moved on.

Heck, in some ways the entire premise of AI is built on seeing if it's the look or the voice that wins out; some weeks and years the 'wrong' one wins, although Simon Cowell would argue in that case the music industry itself is all wrong.

Besides which, Scott makes it seem like Hudson sang on AI like she sang in Dreamgirls but the dumb AI audience wasn't able to look beyond her size. Hudson's really developed her talent the last few years, as Cowell predicted she would, and her scene in Dreamgirls wasn't quite the one-take that AI is.

Sheesh, I watched that episode (like I have every other AI episode of the past few years); and she wasn't my favorite that night either. Was she last on my list? No; of course not; but that's not how AI's voting process works.

The then-undiscovered Hudson had a lot of fans on AI (I'll bet Scott had no idea she existed until Dreamgirls), just not enough. There's a good discussion of this here. It's too bad Scott didn't read it before writing--you'd think someone devoted to covering pop culture would have a better sense of when he was so off.

Unfinished business

Imagine if at the end of the Civil War Jefferson Davis, instead of honoring Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, had slipped away with some of his Confederates to--well, let's say Hawaii.

Davis takes over Hawaii, killing off a bunchof Hawaiians in the process, and sets himself and his ilk up as an absolute dictatorship. Oh, and he also took with him all the treasure and artwork he could get his hands on--the original copies of the Declaration of Indepedence, the Constitution, Gilbert Stuart's portraits of George Washington, Paul Revere's silver... and the contents of Fort Knox.

Pretend, if you can, that the nascent reunited America doesn't go after Davis. And that he then contacts the Russians, who set up some military bases on Hawaii and put his 'Republic of America' under their protection.

What you'd have is how the Chinese see Taiwan.

And it's what lurks beneath the surface of the Times' piece on the reopening of Taiwan's National Palace Museum, Rare Glimpses of China’s Long-Hidden Treasures. Keith Bradsher, who doesn't really 'get' China despite being the Times' Hong Kong bureau, writes:

After four years of renovations that closed two-thirds of the building, the museum housing the world’s most famous collection of Chinese art is reopening this winter and holding a three-month exhibition of its rarest works.

The National Palace Museum, home to the best of the 1,000-year-old art collection of China’s emperors, is often compared to leading Western institutions like the Louvre, the Prado and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But while this museum’s holdings are magnificent, the institution has been known for being a highly politicized place where priceless porcelain sat in poorly lit display cases and where invaluable paintings were kept in a damp manmade cave for fear of Communist attack from mainland China.

That has now changed. Heroic statues of Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan’s former leader, and of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, have been banished. New lighting, air-conditioning, climate-controlled storage vaults and other features rival the newest museums in the West. Even the wall labels attached to the artwork are now written in clear and specific Chinese, English and Japanese.

And after many years of hiding its most valuable and most fragile artworks — those from the Northern and Southern Sung dynasties that ruled China from 960 to 1279 — the museum has brought them out for a “Grand View” exhibition that opened on Christmas. Four of the best known Northern Sung dynasty paintings — one of them on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York — are being shown together for the first time, along with other rare paintings, scrolls and some of the world’s earliest printed books.

The museum did seem to me to be less a showcase and more a holding pen; not surprising since the Nationalists threw it up, as they did everything else in Taiwan, with the idea that it was all temporary anyway, until they returned in triumph to Beijing.

Bradsher misses his chance to tease out the museum as metaphor for Taiwan (Chinese/English/Japanese, hello!)--a country of gleaming new construction trying to put its history in the best light, thinking that way it can join the ranks of the develped world as a 'normal' country.

It ain't gonna happen; Taiwan, I think, will soon exist only as a historical artifact. It's inevitable--the billion and a half people in the world's most powerful country after the U.S. are all dedicated to 'reuniting' Taiwan with the mainland. The Taiwanese are split, and as China's power, economy and prestige grow, the faction that favors rejoining big brother is only going to grow.

And Taiwan has no Castro, no overriding near-mythic figure who can guide his people and outmanuever the 800-lb gorilla perpetually growling just offshore. If anything, the clamminess that is Taiwanese politics guarantees anti-Castros, selfish figures willing to trade long-term national well-being for short-term political gains.

Besides which, China's leaders are the heirs of a civilization that's been around for more than 4,000 years; regaining control of a province that's gone wayward for a few decades is no big thing.

Whether parochial Americans like it or not--at some point, you'd think they'd stop seeing the Chinese as locusts.

The “Grand View” this winter may also represent the last chance for visitors from the United States and elsewhere to see the best of China’s art without having to push through throngs of mainland Chinese tourists. Taiwan is negotiating with Beijing officials to allow mainland tourists to start visiting here this spring.

Yo, Bradsher, at which point do you plan to stop describing Chinese people using variants of 'hordes'?

Besides which, it is their artwork we're talking about--not only should Americans wait in line to see it, but soon I don't think the Chinese are gonna let us push past them for anything.

Photo of a jadeite cabbage from the Ch’ing dynasty by Chao-Yang Chan for the Times. (Shows you how important food is to the Chinese).

NYC by light

Check out these enhanced photos on Flickr by Arnold Pouteu of New York City by night; I recommend the slideshow, at 2.1 seconds each.

They're quite good; as someone who's regularly exposed to the works of a great photographer, I'd say his balance is a little off, too much sky/water to city ratio sometimes for my taste. But that may be deliberate.

Like other HDR photos, the luminescence of the scene grabs you... what a beautiful city, how great is it that so many wonderful photographers live here....

Ironically, NYC's interesting contrast of dark and light is being literally washed out--the Times had an interesting article, Tilting at Lampposts, about one woman's fight against light pollution.

Photos by Arnold Pouteu via Flickr.

Rendering Caesar

You read about the fall of Rome, and you wonder what it's like when an empire dies.

How shattering is the crash when an unimaginable colossus finally falls to the ground? What's it like to live a day-to-day life, even as you and everyone around you is in a free-fall from grace?

Well, no need to hit the books, or buy the video games to find out. We can all look out our windows and witness the fall of an empire--although, unlike many, I'd argue it's not America.

How can it be when the truly important things that made this country great are in ascendancy all over the world? There are now more democracies than there ever have been in human history; some version of capitalism has triumphed everywhere; and the adults of tomorrow are all gorging on whatever version of American pop culture strikes their fancy, in many cases hypocritically picking and choosing cafeteria-style from our dizzying array of 'whatever makes you happy' music/television/movie/books/arts/etc.

It's not America, but we do live amongst this dying empire--and as any student of history or business or sports know, as those who are used to being the rulers feel power slipping out of their grasp, they resist. Sometimes bloodily.

Gone are the days of easy generosity, of largess, of turning the other cheek, of complacency born from a lack of fear. The self-ease of a worldview free from serious worry, from true rivals, from gnawing self-doubt crumbles away and is replaced by the same cutthroat, dog-eat-dog zero sum game that everyone else in the world lives by.

Not quite gone is power, the ability to bend others (even if temporarily) to your will; to bully, to intimidate, to snarl, to cheat, to try every trick in the book to prop up the edifice.

The interesting thing is these acts, coming from the hegemon, are always initially seen by everyone else as unworthy of a 'great champion'. People are surprised and a little incredulous when Michael Jordan starts lobbying for calls, when GM pushes for import quotas, when Britain asks its colonies to pay for 'protection'. We're so used to thinking of the alpha dog as the protype, in some ways brainwashed to see its patterns as the norm.

This is when people are often bitterly disappointed to learn that the champ wasn't so noble by nature... but rather was just lazy or disinterested enough that when the streets ran with gold, there was no need for their true nature to stir.

That incredulousness soon turns to fear, though, as the 800 lb. lion comes down among you and starts fighting for its survival; heck, for a while all the roaring and bloodshed might even be enough to make people believe the beast is still king.

But time tells all; and over time, as the challengers realize the champ's definitely got feet of clay, the downward spiral escalates. Pretty soon, the ex-champ's in the gutter with everyone else, vicious and ignoble.

Sometimes, of course, the ex-champ learns on its own things the truly nobel virtues of sharing and compromise. And even the values of diversity... skills that had previously been unnecessary and thus alien.

Usually, though, these things have to be taught.

Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights

Tina Kelly in the Times: Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew’s complaint, administrators have said they have taken “corrective action” against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

“I think he’s an excellent teacher,” said the school principal, Al Somma. “As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past.”

Staci Snider, the president of the local teacher’s union, said Mr. Paszkiewicz (pronounced pass-KEV-ich) had been assigned a lawyer from the union, the New Jersey Education Association. Two calls to Mr. Paszkiewicz at school and one to his home were not returned.

In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.

Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew is “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.

On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”

While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.

If it weren't for the audio recordings, who'd have believed LaClair? There's more in the rest of the article; it's pretty incredible Paszkiewicz thinks himself fit to teach in a public school.

It's shameful that the school and town are supporting this bully. I wonder how many students in how many other schools--lacking someone with the courage of LaClair and his family--are suffering from the likes of Paszkiewicz in these waning days of our 'Christian' country.

How many other people who are 'Christians' by default, because it was easier than not being Christian, are now acting out their un-Christian, un-tutored natures? How many of them are now huddled in their holes, snarling at everyone and everything they define as 'them,' forsaking the warmth of God's puzzling and ever-changing world for the hobgoblin claustrophobia of their own making?

It's a hole that, on top of everything else, is shrinking steadily by the day. Just check out the numbers , in this case from Religious Tolerance.org. People who identify as Christians make up about 32% of the world; and it's dropping. Muslims make up 19%; and it's growing.

How can any religion as tied to the victorious West be losing ground in this day and age? It's ridiculous--I mean, here's a faith that has all the advantages of being affiliated with the most successful society on earth today. And yet, Christianity is losing ground to its fellow desert religion, a set of beliefs whose most famous adherent is probably Osama bin Laden!

You might argue it's because people are inherently wicked, or ignorant. In which case, what percentage of Christianity's growth through the 20th century was on the backs of the ignorant/wicked? The choices of the masses have to count for something, otherwise why would God care enough to send his only son etc.?

Besides which, it's not just the dusky Third World that's trending less Christian. It's also Americans; the benchmark American Religious Identification Survey shows Christians are now 76.5% of the U.S. population, down 10% in the last 10 years.

So I can see how despite, as Jon Stewart likes to point out, an unbroken record of 43 presidents in a row, some Christians in America are panicking. Aargh, Christmas under siege! Oh my gosh, religious bigotry everywhere--no, not what Jews in America have had to put up with for generations, and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus et al for decade, this is something worse. It's directed at US!

Heck, especially if you believe you were born to rule, the shock of discovering maybe it's not in the natural order of things that your views dominate can be great. Who, after all, wants to be among equals--even first among equals--when not too long ago it was your way or the highway.

It's like a middle-aged man waking up to the notion one day that he's not immortal, that this, too, shall pass. So you act out--have a crisis, maybe take it out on your wife and kids.

Except in this case, thanks to sheer numbers and a wonderful little thing called the lawsuit (helped along by media coverage), the wife's not having any of it, and the kids are grown.

Heck, the other humans in the world are not simply here as a blank canvas for non-Christian Christians to work out their issues, to travel or not travel the path of self-discovery upon our backs. Any more than the people in the World Trade Center existed so that non-Muslim Muslims could get the attention of the rest of the world.

There undoubtedly are people in this world of ours who are going to hell. I just think it unlikely that God has delegated those decisions to any human, let alone a punk middle-aged bigot.

Photo of Colisium taken by Gerald Oskoboiny, International Man of Mystery.

A better family

What are we like? The Times' Sam Roberts takes a look at what the Census Bureau's 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States tells us about ourselves.

The article's chock full of interesting conclusions about what we eat, what we do, and how we spend our leisure time. Unfortunately, at least one of the article's central observations is dead wrong:

“The large master trend here is that over the last hundred years, technology has privatized our leisure time,” said Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard and author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”

“The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”

Huh? The entire trend of the Internet in recent years is toward social networking and exchange sites. Heck, that's all blogs are about!

Putnam is nuts if he thinks society is getting more isolated--the bucolic days he harkens back to were noteworthy for the fact that people of different races and classes never mixed. Thus, even if there was more face-to-face exchange, it was the choir talking to the choir--incest, if you well.

In addition, much of that 'exchange' was involuntary--people in small towns often hate being there but have (or feel like they have) no choice. Under those circumstances, killing time on Saturday night at the local bar was unlikely to lead to the kind of personal growth Putnam's looking for.

Whereas now...

Adolescents and adults now spend, on average, more than 64 days a year watching television, 41 days listening to the radio and a little over a week using the Internet. Among adults, 97 million Internet users sought news online last year, 92 million bought a product, 91 million made a travel reservation, 16 million used a social or professional networking site and 13 million created a blog.

“The demand for information and entertainment seems almost insatiable,” said James P. Rutherfurd, executive vice president of Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the media investment firm whose research the Census Bureau cited.

Mr. Rutherfurd said time spent with such media increased to 3,543 hours last year from 3,340 hours in 2000, and is projected to rise to 3,620 hours in 2010. The time spent within each category varied, with less on broadcast television (down to 679 hours in 2005 from 793 hours in 2000) and on reading in general, and more using the Internet (up to 183 hours from 104 hours) and on cable and satellite television.

Anyone who decries how kids today are dumber or more withdrawn than than used to be is grinding an ax.

It's like people saying schools are worse today than they used to be--I always feel like adding, you mean back in the day when they were segregated? Maybe it's just me, but I think the value of a bunch of white kids knowing Greek or Latin isn't quite worth as much to them as living in a society where large numbers of people aren't beaten in the streets. I know from a societal point of view which world is better.

Kids today know waaaay more about the rest of the world for the simple reason that the Internet gives them access. Some kid in the 60s had no way of interacting with his/her counterparts in Europe or Asia, except for finding a pen pal (which was limited to periodic contact with one person).

In addition, kids today write way more than they used to, and read way more than before. That's all MySpace is; it lets everyone express themselves, not just the artistic or the driven.

The result isn't always genius... but it's better than whatever a bunch of white guys huddled down at the local bowling alley is likely to produce. Putnam et al need to take an honest look at life in 2006 for what it really is, rather than looking at it as if they were stuck in the 60s.

Uncredited photo of Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker found in various places online.

TamenTube

The Associated Press put together their list of the top 10 YouTube videos of 2006. I've seen all but two; it's a pretty decent list, can't really disagree with what's on there.

And reminds me that I haven't yet blogged my favorite YouTube discovery of the year--the Back Dorm Boys. Here's the Wikipedia entry on them:

Back Dorm Boys (Traditional Chinese: 後舍男生; Simplified Chinese: 后舍男生) refer to a Chinese male duo who gained fame for their lip sync videos to songs by the Backstreet Boys and other pop stars. They are also referred to as "Back Dormitory Boys", "Chinese Backstreet Boys", "Dormitory Boys", and "Two Chinese Boys". Their videos, captured on a low quality Web cam in their college dorm room, have been viewed by Internet users within China and around the world. Many of their videos can be seen on YouTube. The two, Wei Wei (Traditional Chinese: 韋煒; Simplified Chinese: 韦炜) and Huang Yi Xin (Traditional Chinese: 黃藝馨; Simplified Chinese: 黄艺馨), were sculpture majors at the Guangzhou Arts Institute (Traditional Chinese: 廣州美術學院; Simplified Chinese: 广州美术学院). They graduated from that university in June of 2006.

They're definitely the funniest thing I've ever seen on YouTube; out of their 12 videos, I particularly like these:

Dadada, Trio

The choreography is hilarious; and has an amazing high degree of difficulty (all in one take, no less). Their moves are somehow very apt; anyone can lip synch, not very many can capture the essence of the song in such telling and funny ways.

Don't Lie, Black Eyed Peas

Their outfits are ridiculously funny--and you've never seen guys vamp so convincingly before. A lot of the BBD charm is their Mutt & Jeff aspects, which really come out here. And the ending--my gosh....


Fairytale, Guang Liang (Malaysian singer)

This is in many ways their masterwork. I recommend watching it after the others, to get the full effect. I imagine thousands of people watched the first minute, wondered what all the fuss over a couple of poor saps was, and left clueless. The second half of the video shows them practicing for Superstar, by S.H.E.

You can see all of their videos via their 'English language' website; which, oddly fittingly, is run by imposters.

I am entirely serious when I say the Back Dorm Boys have done as much to change the image of China among the gweilos as anyone, with only Yao Ming and the student-in-front-of-the-tank as peers. They're strong, self-confident, and totally in charge. And, of course, funny as hell.

They're also a great example of the mostly-young revolution now underway in the world's most populous land, one that fully feels a part of the world, and that is eager to engage, learn from, teach and work with both its neighbors and the West (in that order), whether from within or without China.

Yo Yo Ma and Ha Jin are one aspect of this wave; Tan Dun, Chen Kaige and the seemingly thousands of Chinese who are taking over the modern art world are another. It's only a matter of time before a Chinese Bill Gates or Tiger Woods or Madonna joins them on the world stage. Heck, maybe it's already happened, and we in the West simply aren't yet aware of it--a sinking feeling that we won't want to get used to if this indeed turns into the Chinese century.

In any case, we better hope that this creative side of a China-with-a-sense-of-humor is what emerges--because otherwise, we're gonna be dealing with Bus Uncle.

On a related note, Rosie O'Donnell is a complete idiot. She doesn't get it; her 'apology' for chingchongate only underscores how clueless she is, right down to the chinese/japanese/any asian/whatever part, I do accents all the time (uh... ching chong isn't an accent, Rosie; it's like mocking african americans by making jungle noises) and the 'two Asian girls in the audience think it's funny, so it's okay' ending.

Not to mention I doubt she's been hearing from "Asians" on this--it's your fellow Americans, dearie. Many of whom are part of an interesting discussion on Gothamist Rosie could profit from. Complete with this Stephen Biko quote: "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked."

Name by any other name

Through a random mention in an article about how some poor Tunisians are still living in the Star Wars set George Lucas, I came across a song that's apparently huge in the Arab world, Aicha.

It turns out there are a bunch of versions of this very interesting song (it's a woman's name, in Arabic); here are two notable ones.

Khaled version

From Wikipedia: "Khaled Hadj Brahim is an Algerian raï singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Oran. He was born on 29 February 1960 in Sidi-El-Houri, Algeria. He began recording in his early teens under the name Cheb Khaled (Arabic for "Young Khaled") and has become probably the most internationally famous Algerian singer. His popularity has earned him the unofficial title "King of Raï"."

This is apparently the original song. It's pretty good--there's a plaintive, timeless quality to Khaled's voice. The beat and especially the chorus is hynotic. You feel that he comes from a culture that's thousands of years old; a desert world, hints of Lawrence of Arabia and Dune. The video, of course, is totally bizarre.

Here are his lyrics, translated from the French:
As if I did not exist,
she passed me by,
Without a glance,
Queen of Saba. I said:
" Aïcha, take: all is for you."
Here the pearls, jewels,
Therefore gold around your neck,
the quite ripe fruits with the honey taste,
My life, Aïcha, if you like me.
I will go where your breath carries out us
In the ebony and ivory countries.
I will erase your tears, your sorrows.
Nothing is too beautiful for so beautiful.

Oooh! Aïcha, Aïcha, listen to me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, please do not go.
Aïcha, Aïcha, look at me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, answer me.

I will say the words of the poems.
I will play the musics of the sky.
I will take the rays of the sun to light your eyes of queen.

Oooh! Aïcha, Aïcha, listen to me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, please do not go.

It said: " Guard your treasures.
Me, I want better than all that,
Of the strong bars,
the bars even out of gold.
I want the same rights as you
And of the respect for each day.
Me, I want only love."
Aaaah! As if I did not exist,
she passed me by,
Without a glance, Queen of Sheba. I said:
" Aïcha, take: all is for you."

Aïcha, Aïcha, listen to me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, listen to me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, please do not go.
Aïcha, Aïcha, look at me.
Aïcha, Aïcha, answer me.
Lalala... lalala...


Outlandish version

From Wikipedia: "Outlandish is a Danish hip-hop group based in Denmark. Formed in 1997, they consist of Isam Bachiri (born in Denmark and of Moroccan background), Waqas Ali Qadri (born in Denmark and of Pakistani background), and Lenny Martinez (from Honduras). All three members are religious, with Isam and Waqas being devout Muslims, and Lenny being Catholic. The band members lived in Brøndby Strand."

Wow, they sound so interesting--and what a great name for a band. Their beautiful video, done in English, centers around a Muslim woman wearing the hijab, who teaches school to mostly blonde-haired/blue-eyes (in Denmark I assume). It intercuts scene of the group walking around; the video has a slow lyricism to it, with stark colors--lots of whites and blacks.

They might be my new favorite group; there's a depth and authenticity to the video and their story and their voices that is really what music at its best is all about. Music, photos and blogs, spread via the Web--like it or not, that's what the young of today are using to find each other and bypass the historic hatreds. Of which, were it not for their parents, they'd be ignorant of anyway--kids naturally gravitate toward each other, often as a huddle against the world adults are always trying to pull them into

Their lyrics:
All of ya'll radios out there
This song goes out to you
Yeah, Aicha, for my sister, yo

[Verse1]
So sweet, so beautiful
Everyday like a queen on her throne
Don't nobody knows how she feels
Aicha, Lady one day it'll be real

She moves, she moves like a breeze
I swear I can't get her out my dreams
To have her shining right here by my side
I'd sacrifice all the tears in my eyes

[Chorus]
Aicha Aicha - passing me by (there she goes again)
Aicha Aicha - my my my (is it really real man)
Aicha Aicha - smile for me now (i don't know i don't know)
Aicha Aicha - in my life

[Verse2]
She holds her child to her heart
Makes her feel like she is blessed from above
Falls asleep underneath her sweet tears
Her lullaby fades away with his fears(make it real)

[1/2Chorus]

[Bridge]
She needs somebody to lean on
Someone body, mind & soul
To take her hand, to take her world
And show her the time of her life, so true
Throw the pain away for good
No more contemplating boo
No more contemplating boo-o o

[Verse3]
Lord knows the way she feels
Everyday in his name she begins
To have her shining right here by my side
I'd sacrifice all the tears in my eyes
Aicha Aicha - écoutez-moi (lets do this)

[Chorus]

Gotham of their eyes

Following on the heels of The Brick Testament, a Gothamist post points me to more unlikely lego creations.

Sean Kenney (Lego model maker) has a bunchof NYC icons in miniature at The "Brick" Apple, from skyscrapers (the Empire State Building, Chrysler, WTC, UN) to taxis to water towers. The best creation, in my opinion, is Greenwich Village--it's quite the bustling few blocks, complete with parking meters.

New York Miniland, a section of Brickland, seems to have more of a focus on building big versions of many of the classic skyscrapers. There are just photos here, no real personal information.

The original Gothamist post focused on what seems like an amazing recreation of NYC someone did in Sim City. Unfortunately the site seems to have crashed (hope that's not an omen for Wall Street!)

Until it comes back, check out the classic recreation of NYC, the Panorama at the Queens Museum of Art.

Photo of Greenwich Village from Sean Kenney's site.

Echo chamber

Watching Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2006. They list nine at the opening:

Anna Wintour--maybe
Jay-Z--sure
Andre Agassi--yes
Sacha Baron Cohen--yes
Joel Osteen--sure
Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt--yes
John Ramsey--uh, no
Patrick Dempsey--uh, no
Terri Irwin--maybe

She starts with Andre Agassi, who I think is great. I've always liked him; but he's absolutely transcended sports as he's grown--Walters notes his foundation has raised over $60 million dollars for underprivileged kids. Steffi Graf, looking a bit like Sarah Jessica Parker, joins the interview; she's one of my favorites too. They just have a great air to them; the chemistry is there, and they both seem like good people.

Next, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. A co-worker and I were just talking today about how much we like them (for movie stars)--they're both smart, and have a sense of depth to them. It's easy to make fun of her especially, given her past. But, as Walters says, theirs is a tale of two people who had everything but weren't happy, and did something about it. In an odd ending to the piece, Walters refers to their 'multiracial brood'. Uh, ok.

Then, Joel Osteen. Who I've always disliked. He runs the largest church in America--Houston's Lakewood church, now housed in the arena where the Houston Astros used to play. He looks a bit like a toothy Tim Allen, there's an element of the slick to him; and you can see him trying to impose his personality on people. Walters sums up his philosophy as no sin, no suffering, no sacrifice. He prays for money for his congregation--raises, bonuses, promotions (Jesus: A fair boss for an unfair time). Three words to describe himself? Happy, compassionate, and integrity (not exactly parallel construction)--to which Barbara adds 'smiling.' I'd add ugh.

Jay-Z, who I know little about, except for what I read in the Times. Walters calls him 'Jayzee', one word. Funny, he looks kindof nerdy. And seems quite thoughtful and intelligent. Hmm, he's apparently involved with Beyonce. Walters says although you'd never know it--sure enough, he refuses to gush about her, except she's a great person. She seems cool too; another neat celebrity couple. The secret to his success? Truth, he says.

Next, Walters says they honor the crocodile hunter, Stephen Irwin, by picking her widow (they only allow living people to be fascinating). Okay.... She's an American, seems very determined, tough. Very odd--she talks in emotional terms about him, but in pat phrases, almost everything she says is a platitude. It seems like they're entire life was a show. She thought of him as invincible, as long as they were together. I mean, she seems nice and it's a sad story--but ultimately this is a stuntman who died. She's not fascinating, what's fascinating is our interest in things like this.

Anna Wintour. Who just seems tough, and determined, and someone who knows exactly what she wants. It feels like she and Babs travel in the same circles, there's an odd dynamic to their interview. She's apparently had her hair in the same style since 15. Has an odd accent (she's from--Philadelphia?!) Walters asks her if the mood of the country affects fashion--she says yes; fashion has been militant lately, there was a real sense that the women on the runway are going into battle, but post-election there's optimism, a sense that there'll be a withdrawal from Iraq, which is translating into more fun designs. Sheesh, nothing like hearing about politics from fashionistas.

Next, Sacha Baron Cohen. Whose Borat character I thought was hilarious in the tv shows, horrible in the movie theater. She doesn't get an interview with him--Cohen's apparently not talking anymore. No loss, he's grown quickly irritating. Heck, who didn't cheer when 'Borat' got punched in the street.

John Ramsey, dad of JonBenet. Ridiculous choice; her breathless demeanor makes it seem like Walters is their PR shill. Hmm... watching it, I'm more sympathetic--his first wife had cancer, their daughter died in a car accident. He even says at one point he started feeling sorry for John Mark Karr, because he was being convicted in the media, like they were.

Next, Patrick Dempsey, who I guess is on (ABC's) Grey's Anatomy. Apparently, he's dreamy. And, it seems a big part of the appeal of the show is his hair (good thing he's married to a hairstylist)? Uh, okay. This is a total waste of time, he seems like a typically self-centered Hollywoodite who probably thinks playing a surgeon is as important as being one.

Who's the most fascinating person going to be? My guess is a politician. Donald Rumsfeld, if she plays it straight. Barack Obama if she really is a product of her environment. Nancy Pelosi, if she goes nuts. Or, Mark Foley if the ABC brass have their way.

And it's indeed Nancy Pelosi, which I think is more wishful--or, premature--than actual. Wow, I didn't know she had 5 kids in 4 years, essentially a stay-at-home mom until her youngest was in high school. That's pretty cool. She says she wants to root out corruption in Washingon--maybe it'll take a woman to clean up the house, she says.

I guess we'll see. As for my own lists, I agree with Agassi, Cohen and Bradgelina, would add Rumsfeld and my list of ideal dinner party guests, and--because hey, maybe 2006's most fascinating people should include non-Americans! I'd throw in the following:

-Muhammad Yunus
-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (famous/infamous; fascinating/infascinating?)
-Zinedine Zidane
-Soon-to-be UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
-Segolene Royal

Now that'd make one heck of a dinner party!

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy photo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie outside Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennyslvania via the AP.

Amadeus, rocked

As reported in Red Herring:

Sometimes a great idea can be just a little too good. When the International Mozart Foundation placed the vast works of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart online Monday, its organizers had no idea how swiftly the news would travel.

The response was immediate and immense. Just hours after the news became public, as of 1 a.m. Tuesday local time for Salzburg, Austria, the site where the composer’s works were placed appeared to have crashed.

Within the first two hours of the announcement, the foundation’s site received 45,000 hits, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. The report said that Ulrich Leisinger, program director for the International Mozart Foundation was surprised by the response.

45,000 hits isn't a lot, actually--for example, every time you visit this page it counts as about 60 hits, about 60 .jpg files are called up--but that's just how many they were able to measure, so who knows how slow the site was running before it crashed altogether.

I wonder how many of those people were actually interested in looking at musical scores, which are not something you can read off the bat, versus how many came thinking they could hear all of his works.

In any case--how many hits will Britney Spears garner 250 years after her birth?

Uncredited image of Mozart found in various places online.

Arenas stone

Do you have a friend who doesn't understand basketball?

Or, perhaps someone who has no interest in sports, and doesn't get why you're always telling them the sports page is a microcasm of the rest of the paper? (For those of you who still doubt this, check out this Deadspin post about Robert Gates, aka ranger65, New Defense Secretary A Closet Online Football Chatterer).

Or, are you someone who wants to know what kids today are up to when the rest of us have our backs turned?

Or, maybe you just wanna see something I can only describe as unexpectedly brilliant.

Check out this analysis of basketball styles, from the folks at freedarkco.com.

Not yo mama's shirt

There's a funny post on Deadspin about a shirt being developed by University of Sydney researchers that would keep score for you....

The shirt's lights would light up when you score, or fouled; and would not only register statistics, but could also display your heartbeat.

Why? The students' page says:

TeamAwear is a next-generation basketball jersey which allows players to 'wear their performance' in order to enhance the awareness of information during game-play for all stakeholders, including: athletes, coaches, referees, and spectators.

Uh, okay.... From the point of view of the athlete 'stakeholder', wouldn't it make more sense if your stats were kept by the jersey of the guy you're guarding?

That could make for some great trash-talking.... Yo, X-mas Tree, where my presents at? Yo shirt lit up like yo mama on New Year's...

Plus, otherwise--as Deadspin notes--you'd always be craning your neck and stuff...

We are still obsessed with the statistical notion, however. If they put this in the NBA, it would be endlessly amusing to watch players stare at their jersey to see how much more they need to score to reach their performance bonuses. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to see Ricky Davis constantly trying to see the side of his jersey"?

Photo of TeamAware from student's webpage.

Tinted

The latest Times book review section takes a look at photographer Pete Turner's The Color of Jazz, which collects some of the notable album covers that use his photos.

Turner, who learned his craft in the military, apparently is known both for his striking images and the tints he gives them. His photos are great; you wonder a bit what's real and what's not, but somehow they work.

Pete Turner photos Giraffe, Ibiza Women, and Sand Dune in Namibia via Photo District News.

Fant-tastic

Two takes on the fantasy sports craze, of which I'm a card-carrying member. Some might say champion.

The Sports Gal (wife of ESPN.com columnist extradordinaire Bill Simmons

You already know about the traffic in L.A., but now that it's Xmas season, even parking has become impossible. Fortunately I happen to be married to a guy with the self-proclaimed "parking gene." (Apparently this runs in the family because his dad thinks he has it, too.) Every so often, Bill stumbles upon the perfect spot -- like last week, when I made him stop at Pinkberry (the greatest frozen yogurt shop ever) and he found a space right in front, then spent the next 30 seconds congratulating himself. He was so pleased. It's too bad they can't have the League of Dorks for finding parking spaces, I'm sure he'd be in three leagues and calling his buddy Hench every time he found a good space so they could calculate the standings. But this parking luck is what he calls the "parking gene."

Fantasy craze produces awkward moments for players, ESPN.com's Greg Garber

He swivels in the power chair, furiously working his iMac mouse and keyboard, wrapped in a cocoon of mahogany and football memorabilia.

Click! Click! Click!

Here in the comfort and safety of his stately home office, set in an upscale development outside Indianapolis, Cato June is not merely a linebacker for the Colts. He is the powerful owner, shrewd general manager and X/O-savvy head coach of an NFL fantasy football team called Juneimus D Great -- a name modestly modeled on the emperors of Rome.

On this late November day, June is not smiling. He bears the stern countenance of someone whose team is scuffling around .500 with the season winding down. At this moment, desperately seeking some receiving help -- Tap! Tap! Tap! Click! -- June is Everyfan.

An estimated 15 million to 20 million Americans play fantasy football. June is proud to be one of them. Admittedly, it makes for some awkward moments. You see, his fantasy quarterback is the Patriots' Tom Brady.

"Playing New England, I can't be happy with him throwing a TD pass, but in the back of my mind, I'm like, 'Yeah, I just got six points in my fantasy league,'" June says, laughing.

In fact, when the Colts played the Patriots on Nov. 5, June's moral compass moved him to sit Brady in his fantasy league. In the real game, however, he was rewarded with two interceptions of the former Super Bowl MVP. June isn't sure which accomplishment was better.

Milk, cookies and thou

Even in a country of 300 million, pretty much everyone knows that C is for Cookie.

One of my closest friends used to say during our college days that instead of spending all our time arguing about the things that separate us, humans should remember that we have waaaay more in common with each other than differences. Like we all have two hands, two eyes, two feet....

I used to respond with well yeah, since everyone has those things in common we just take it as a given and thus the remaining .1% of difference becomes the 100% field and we go from there.

But it's still worth mentioning that what divides us is really just .1%; by and large the human experience is communal. We all spend most of our days eating and sleeping and working and talking within close proximity of each other if not always with each other. What's different are matters of degree, not kind.

And in pop culture, it's funny how much of our shaping childhood human experiences derive from furry puppets (with an assist from animated figures). Sesame Street, The Electric Company, The Muppet Show, Mister Roger's Neighborhood, Schoolhouse Rock--snippets of amazingly vivid memories set to the soundtrack of our youth, all brought back by the MOYT.

Below are some of my favorites. Warning: You will have these tunes stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

C is for Cookie (Sesame Street)

Somewhere in a (healthier) parallel universe millions of kids revere a Carrot Monster.

Grover the Waiter: Big Hamburger (Sesame Street)

Do they show this in waiter school?!

Orange sings 'Carmen' (Sesame Street)

I remember this one! I wonder how many opera singers were first inspired by Orange.

Yip Yips meet the telephone (Sesame Street)

If this doesn't make you laugh out loud, you're not human.

No Left Turn (Sesame Street)

Funnily, I remember the lines no left turn/no right turn/what, do I do? as being more central to the song. I guess that's a common thing of childhood, what you see as the crux of something often turns out to be just in passing.

Billy, Lick a Lolly (Electric Company)

It's fun just watching them dance in this one. I loved the Electric Company, and like everyone else am puzzled as to why it isn't as ubiquitous as Sesame Street.

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (Schoolhouse Rock)

I'm surprised there aren't more kids named 'Lolly.'

Only a Bill (Schoolhouse Rock)

[insert joke about George Bush here]

Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla (Schoolhouse Rock)

It's got an amazingly catchy melody.

Interplanetary Janet

Another incredibly catchy melody; it's amazing how talented these children's songwriters were.

Watching these again, I'm also struck at how much they teach. Both overtly and subtly. There was an interesting NYTimes magazine piece this weekend, What It Takes to Make a Student, where the appopriately-named Paul Tough took a look at how some charters schools are succeeding in educating poor, minority students (actually just black and Hispanic, Asian American didn't make a single appearance in the long piece; which is typical since they'd have upset all of Tough's pat conclusions).

It seems obvious to me that what matters is making sure kids first have values conducive to learning; and then you apply lots of hard work in the classroom, good teachers and teaching methods, and the appropriate curriculumn. All underscored--if possible--by supportive parents. Spending money on anything else is at best just feel-good pablum, at worst corruption.

The article means well, but is just a lot of twaddle about driven white people trying to rescue these poor benighted children by teaching them the things their parents failed to, the same things that middle-class white parents are presumed to pass on to their offspring.

The key paragraphs in the article are these:

There had, in fact, been evidence for a long time that poor children fell behind rich and middle-class children early, and stayed behind. But researchers had been unable to isolate the reasons for the divergence. Did rich parents have better genes? Did they value education more? Was it that rich parents bought more books and educational toys for their children? Was it because they were more likely to stay married than poor parents? Or was it that rich children ate more nutritious food? Moved less often? Watched less TV? Got more sleep? Without being able to identify the important factors and eliminate the irrelevant ones, there was no way even to begin to find a strategy to shrink the gap.

Researchers began peering deep into American homes, studying up close the interactions between parents and children. The first scholars to emerge with a specific culprit in hand were Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, child psychologists at the University of Kansas, who in 1995 published the results of an intensive research project on language acquisition. Ten years earlier, they recruited 42 families with newborn children in Kansas City, and for the following three years they visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents. The researchers then transcribed each encounter and analyzed each child’s language development and each parent’s communication style. They found, first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.

When Hart and Risley then addressed the question of just what caused those variations, the answer they arrived at was startling. By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child’s home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child’s vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child. That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 “utterances” — anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy — to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour.

What’s more, the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class. The most basic difference was in the number of “discouragements” a child heard — prohibitions and words of disapproval — compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval. By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well. As conversation moved beyond simple instructions, it blossomed into discussions of the past and future, of feelings, of abstractions, of the way one thing causes another — all of which stimulated intellectual development.

Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life. Hearing fewer words, and a lot of prohibitions and discouragements, had a negative effect on I.Q.; hearing lots of words, and more affirmations and complex sentences, had a positive effect on I.Q. The professional parents were giving their children an advantage with every word they spoke, and the advantage just kept building up.

These findings have been out there for years; it's why every time I see a ridiculous parent on the subway, I want to hand them a card that tells them no matter how badly off they think they are, just talk to your kids without anger or cursing and things will be okay.

It's funny how the Times doesn't pick up on the other key part of this research, which is all the bells and whistles harried well-off parents shove at their kids are not only ineffective, but are not as effective as what a lot of good poor and minority parents give their kids for free. Although at a cost.

What the article doesn't mention is middle class and rich parents, who really have no excuse, often are the ones who actually fail to spend this quality time with their kids because they're too busy getting ahead in their careers or doing things like turning Halloween into an adult holiday.

It's the well-off families who schedule themselves into oblivion, who out of selfishness outsource to nannies and babysitters and therapists their parental duties. Where's the scolding New York Times magazine piece on that?

I guess it's just so much more natural for the journalists at the times and their ilk to associate poor parenting with poverty. When in reality, poor families often have no choice--they live in smaller homes, and have less leisure time options, so by default parents spend lots of time with their kids.

Often that time is toxic; but at least it's time, and changing their attitude may be easier than getting suburbanites to change their schedules.

Sure, well-off kids score better on tests--they're not hungry on test days, and are shielded from the other dysfunctions that come with poverty. But compare white American kids to foreign kids at similar socio-economic levels, and you'll see nobody should be holding up these suburban test scores as the gold standard.

Maybe everyone just needs to watch more PBS, less MTV. I mean, if parents can't be there for their kids, they might be surprised at how good of a job Cookie Monster can do.

Jimmy (and) Deen

If I could only watch one tv channel, I might very well pick the Food Network. Even though or maybe because I don't really cook I love watching Good Eats, Iron Chef (the Japanese original is waaay better than the American wanna-be) Ham on the Street, The Hungry Detective, Unwrapped, Emeril Lagasse and of course Rachel Ray.

Granted, the channel's usually on in the background, and every host save one is white (some extremely so--it's got to be part of a deliberate demographic decision). But the network's done a good job of putting together a mix of easy-to-experience programming.

One person I've never liked much is Paula Deen--she's always struck me as a little too much Southern hokey. And her sons, now with their own show, are just spoiled good-old-boys.

But I like Paula now, after watching her with Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. Yup, the ex-president of the United States was on her show, cooking and making easy small talk.

She was appropriately respectful--even if she oddly called him Mr. Jimmy--yet obviously was having a ball with her fellow Georgian. They finished the show holding hands, eating a meal on the Carters' couch, as she delivered an emotional tribute, calling him the greatest humanitarian in the world today.

As for President Carter... what a great guy. He seemed totally at ease rolling out dough for biscuits; seems to know his way around the kitchen. But then again, he's always been a down-to-earth, hands-on person, sometimes to his detriment (i.e., his personal involvement in who was scheduled to play when on the White House tennis court; for a fascinating look at this anecdote and Carter's personality, see Match Point to the Media).

Like his nemesis Ronald Reagan, Carter is definitely a much more complicated and thus interesting guy than the caricature most people carry around of him. He was not only deeply religious--in an absolutely appropriate way--but also, as reflected in his days as a Navy nuclear submarine commander, a steely, stubborn man who stuck by his principles and expected others to hold themselves to similarly high, professional standards.

In some ways he was let down by the less-exceptional people around him, in particular the foreign leaders whom he trusted to care about their people's interests as much as he did.

As for his legacy with the American people, it's too bad he didn't take a page from Bill Moyers, his fellow Southern liberal Baptist, and learn the supreme importance of image and communication in politics. Americans want a president who seems presidential. Carter, post-Watergate, purposefully tried to strip the office of its pomp and hauteur, but in the process lost his bully pulpit and made himself seem a mere technocrat.

Oh well; history will remember him more kindly than many of us do, he may well have been the most decent man to hold the job since Abraham Lincoln.

And heck, not too many other countries where you can turn on the tube and see your ex-supremeo leader wearing an apron, with flour on his hands.






Photos of Jimmy Carter from PBS' American Experience's telling photo album.

Feeding the soul

Spent part of a day at the Met this past weekend. Running through my mind the whole time was what makes a great work of art great--is it really something innate, or does so much depend on context?

Based on my few hours at least, true artistic genius of the past does indeed stand out--if for no other reason because our aesthetic sense has been calibrated by these works. So Picassos, Van Goghs catch your eye, even their less familiar works.

But the merely wonderful is less universal; your mood when you see it, your personal preferences, what it's hung with--all that and more govern whether you zip past it, or stop and give it a second look.

Here's some of what caught my eye that day--although looking at photos of these works online is altogether a different experience than wandering through a crowded exhibit in person, through the thicket of languages and speeds of viewing.

All but the last two works are from the Cezanne to Picasso show (which actually was a retrospective of the career of Ambroise Vollard).




Fishing in Spring isn't as vibrant or thick as what you think of as classic Van Gogh, but I liked the colors and its quietness. By contrast, Woman Rocking a Cradle has a bit more of the popping colors and starkness; I liked this one because of the eyes, the shades of green, and--for some reason--the outlined shapes.


The starkness and composition of Emile Bernard's Breton Landscape appeals to me--but also the back story. The painting's wall tag said it was returned by its first owner, who owned a hotel, because his guests threw bread at it. I guess it was too alien for them.


Picasso is like Shakespeare--you might not always think you'll like it in theory, but you should never pass up a chance to experience one of their works for yourself. And what would fall flat in the hands of a lesser artist always works with their touch.

What is it about The Old Guitarist that I like? The color, first; the shape of the body, the contrast between the guitar and the man, the angle of the head, the feeling you get of a moment always frozen.


The moment I saw Ivan Bilibin's works, I thought wow. The Met had illustrations he did for a version of the classic Russian children's book, Vasilia the Beautiful. Apparently Russians all know his work; they have a feeling of darkness and foreboding that's probably pretty similar in spirit to the original Grimm fairy tales; but also a shining kind of beauty that serves as a visual representation of the way kids hear fairy tales. His work felt very Russian to me, a classic style with a touch of depression.

In addition to the works above, I also liked learning in this show about Julien Tanguy, who apparently ran an arts supply store and met a lot of the impressionists when they were young and poor. He gave supplies for free in exchange for their works--now that'd make a great movie!


I liked this mantel mosaic clock best of all the items from Louis Comfort Tiffany's Long Island home in the Met's exhibit. The Nicole Bengiveno photo above, from the New York Times review's slideshow, unfortunately barely captures the work's luminescence. The clocks themselves tell you day of the week, hour/minute, and month. At night the soft green and purple mosaics were lit from behind.

Finally, Portrait of a Boy blew me away. In look and feel, it could've been made anytime in the last few centuries.

But actually it was made in Egypt--about 2,000 years ago! Absolutely astonishing; it was essentially made out of wax, in a process now referred to as encaustic.

All images via the Met website or found uncredited online unless otherwise noted.