Cindy Sheehan and Israel

I heard something odd this morning while helping our SLAC's new students move in. David Duke has endorsed Cindy Sherman's anti-war Crawford, TX protests because of anti-semitic comments Sherman is supposed to have made.

So I did a Google search for "Sheehan" and "Israel," and everything that came up was conservative in nature. The sole "mainstream" journalistic comments, from the Boston Globe and Slate, turn out to be opinion pieces, the Slate pieces by Christopher Hitchens (see also: another of his Slate pieces on the same topic). The comments are supposed to be in an email sent to Nightline. Yet a search of ABCNews.com shows nothing related to the matter. Are these comments real?

Below is an excerpt from Sheehan being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on his CNN show:

"COOPER: You were also quoted as saying, 'My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism.' How responsible do you believe Israel is for the amount of terrorism in the world?

SHEEHAN: I didn't say that.

COOPER: You didn't say that? OK.

SHEEHAN: I didn't -- I didn't say -- I didn't say that my son died for Israel. I've never said that. I saw somebody wrote that and it wasn't my words. Those aren't even words that I would say.

I do believe that the Palestinian issue is a hot issue that needs to be solved and it needs to be more fair and equitable but I never said my son died for Israel.

COOPER: OK, I'm glad I asked you that because, you know, as you know, there's tons of stuff floating around on the Internet on sites of all political persuasions.

SHEEHAN: I know and that's not -- yes.

COOPER: So, I'm glad we had the opportunity to clear that.

SHEEHAN: Yes, and thank you because those are not my words. Those aren't -- that doesn't even sound like me saying that.

COOPER: OK. I'm very glad we got that...

SHEEHAN: And I have read it. I have read it. I'm glad you did too."

What to think?

start of the academic year

No real time to post, but I will say this. I'm getting sick of my complaining (imagine how my only reader Mindy feels), so I'm trying to look on the bright side in my job situation. We helped new students move in today, and it was refreshing and fun (though mildly exhausting) to actually interact with students again. They're all that keeps me in the game.

Library Challenges FBI Request

And this Washington Post piece describes an American Library Association challenge to an FBI Patriot Act request for circulation records at a CT library (with the ACLU's help, of course). Go librarians!

Yesterday Mindy noted the absurdity of labeling the ACLU a left-wing organization, given its name. "Who could oppose civil liberties," she asked. Indeed.

A contemporary minstrel show?

This article from the Washington Post describes white hip hop shows that "ironically" provide opportunities for white people to "act black" in a "safe" (in the words of one interviewee) space. The article is pretty skeptical, though it's a news story, not a review. Take a look and see what you think yourself.

It raises many interesting questions. For example, how might predominately white audiences enjoying black musicians playing jazz (or blues, or R & B, etc.) in predominately white clubs be implicated? How might we all, given the popularity of hip hop and urban black culture in entertainment generally?

bell hooks on Robert Mapplethorpe's Black Book comes to mind:

". . . in some instances Mapplethorpe's images disrupt and challenge conventional ways of seeing. Subversive elements within any image or series of images do not necessarily counter the myriad ways those same images may reinscribe and perpetuate existing structures of racial and/or sexual domination."
-"Feminism Inside: Toward a Black Body Politic" in Black Males: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, Thelma Green, ed. (New York: Whitney Museum of Art, 1994), 136.

She's talking about something different, of course, but the point is resonant, I think. The dangers of irony are really at stake of course, which gives me an opportunity to quote one of my heroes, Linda Hutcheon:

"Irony's transideological politics complicate the theorizing of irony mightily, and part of the reason is irony's edge. The affective responses provoked by 'Into the Heart of Africa' show that viewers (like readers and listeners) are not passive receivers; they are interpreting agents, with the emphasis on agency and, thus, on action. Because of this there were real, material consequences for the intending ironist. I raise this issue of the risks of irony most forcefully here at the end of this study primarily because it is too easy to forget the dangers in the face of the valorization of irony's subversive potential by much feminist, gay and lesbian, postcolonial, and poststructuralist theory and practice. While it is likely the case that '[e]very act of saying is a momentary intersection of the "said" and the "unsaid" (Tyler 1978: 459), the peculiar intersection--in the communicative space set up by both meaning and affect--that makes irony happen is a highly unstable one, sometimes even a dangerous one. . . . Will there ever be another--safe--'age of irony'? Did one ever really exist?"
-Irony's Edge (London: Routledge, 1995), 203-04.

(No, Hutcheon's not revolutionary here, but so what.)

What's smoother than being smooth?

Apparently for me, the answer is "lumpy."

I had been exchanging smart-ass email comments with Mindy about a brightly colored email (to the faculty listserv) advertising a possible package deal for our SLAC's "center for the arts" three evenings of country music, complete with highly pixellated, really quite terrifying pictures of the three singers. After we received the first message, I forwarded it to Mindy, she responded, etc.

Then the original message (a brightly colored email [to the faculty listserv] advertising a possible package deal for our SLAC's "center for the arts" three evenings of country music, complete with highly pixellated, really quite terrifying pictures of the three singers) was sent again. And instead of forwarding the message to Mindy, I clicked on "reply" and made a snide comment wondering whether "she" (the originator of the message) was going to send it every hour or something. Needless to say, this comment was meant for Mindy. Well, "reply" went to the message's original sender, and then she called to "explain" why the message had been resent (read: to chastize me for my comment, the telling off ever so dripping in Southern nicety and charm of course).

My defense: "I didn't mean to send it to you." Now that's smoother than smooth, if you ask me. At least I didn't reply to the whole listserv (as I feared I had briefly done).

U of Cincinnati Pres. stands up to head men's BB coach Huggins

This article from ESPN.com is suprisingly friendly to the idea that maybe academicians are running the show at colleges and universities after all. If only that were the case at the SLAC (small liberal arts college) where we are--the craze for athletics at our Div. III school (no athletic scholarships) seems to know no bounds. According to one college statistic, 40% of the new incoming first-year students will participate in a "varsity" sport (i.e., non-club sport?).

All and good, right? The spirit of amateur sports, right? No, the athletic dept. has more weight than any academic one regarding the calling of meetings, etc. Sports gets you excused from courses, but courses don't get you excused from sports. Hmmm.

Say, what's the biggest department at our SLAC? History? English? Anthro./Soc.? Econ.? No: it's football. 9 coaches, 75-90 students. Hmmm.

bizarre photographic images involving death

I recently came across a reference to this site, which may be of interest to someone out there.

full-frontal nudity

Tempting title, huh? Really, though, this post deals with a bit of a quandry I'm facing as I plan a fall international film series. Three of the best ideas I've had so far--Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand (Head-On), Lukas Moodysson's Tillsammans (Together), and Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) all have moments of full-frontal nudity. Granted, in Atanarjuat it's minimal and easy to dismiss as crucial to the plot. In Tillsammans, it's not sexualized (OK, one part maybe), but it's impossible to miss. And in Gegen die Wand, it's only in the context of sex (though the sex at least is key to the plot). What to do, what to do, what to do? It is part of the learning process about international film to recognize that few cultures have as weird a relationship to nudity as we do in America, but will it be too much to handle?

How does this quandry square with my plan to show Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé, which deals with female circumcision, as the fourth film?

What to do, what to do, what to do? (And I need to decide very, very soon.)

horrible but real Holocaust comments recently heard--not overheard--just heard out in the open in conversation

Comment One:
On Elie Wiesel's appearance: "He looks so good for his age. Almost like Holocaust survivors gained something by almost starving to death." OK . . . we're talking about the ones who didn't commit suicide or die from disease soon after liberation, right . . . . Sounds a little to me like this quotation from the Protocol of the Wannsee Conference:

"In the course of the final solution and under approriate direction, the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in a suitable manner. In large labor columns and separated by sexes, Jews capable of working will be dispatched to these regions to build roads, and in the process a large number of them will undoubtedly drop out by way of natural attrition.
"Those who ultimately should possibly get by will have to be given suitable treatment because they unquestionably represent the most resistant segments and therefore constitute a natural elite that, if allowed to go free, would turn into a germ cell of renewed Jewish revival. (Witness the experience of history.)" (p. 7-8)

The quote in the original German from the Protokoll der Wannsee-Konferenz:

"Unter entsprechender Leitung sollen nun im Zuge der Endlösung die Juden in geeigneter Weise im Osten zum Arbeitseinsatz kommen. In großen Arbeitskolonnen, unter Trennung der Geschlechter, werden die arbeitsfähigen Juden straßenbauend in diese Gebiete geführt, wobei zweifellos ein Großteil durch natürliche Verminderung ausfallen wird.
"Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand wird, da es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsfähigsten Teil handelt, entsprechend behandelt werden müssen, da dieser, eine natürliche Auslese darstellend, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufbaues anzusprechen ist. (Siehe die Erfahrung der Geschichte.)" (S. 7-8)

(If you don't know about this Conference, which established the formal policy of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage), check out this article from the Holocaust Encyclopedia of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or the history of the "Third Reich" on the site of the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz in Berlin.)

Comment Two:
A description of attempts to help pay off debts incurred from a college Holocaust exhibit by specifically targeting Jewish alumni for donations. So Jews today should pay off the debts from the Holocaust (exhibit)? Kind of like making the Jewish victims of Kristallnacht pay for the damage they themselves incurred? (See this article from the Holocaust Encyclopedia or this special online exhibit of the USHMM for more information on Kristallnacht.

Or am I just being too sensitive?

professorial garb

Last week when I read James Lang's piece on correct dress for the college professor, I found his statements--which, granted, he distanced himself from--regarding the way snappy dressers run an authoritarian classroom and sloppy ones a loose, open, discussion-oriented classroom to be too self serving. A sloppy dresser himself, he argued that it was appropriate to the way he runs his class:

"I will confess that I wonder about the motivations of the sharp dressers. I wonder whether they use sharp dressing as a means to establish their authority with students: 'Within these pointy shoes are contained the wisdom of the ages. The pointy shoes make me the boss.'

"I'm tempted, too, to equate sharp dressing with teaching style. According to reports from his students, the sharpest-dressed faculty member I ever knew--expensive suits hanging off a sculpted body--presented his views forcefully in his humanities classes, in lecture form, and expected students to repeat those views back to him on papers and exams."

As a snappy dresser myself--one who conforms to Lang's description ("Male sharp dressers wear ties to class every day. The ties match the shirts, and the shirts are sometimes in bright, bold colors. They wear brown and black shoes; sometimes those shoes are shiny. The most extreme wear suits--not khaki pants and a blue sports coat--but actual suits, in which the pants and the coat have been cut from the same material.")--I had to object. I run one of the most open and interactive classrooms I know of, I encourage my students to call me by my first name, I regularly clown around, make a fool of myself, and lean back on a desk (if I'm not actually sitting in one). Yet I wear a coat and tie most days (Tuesdays I teach only elementary language, so I allow a "dress casual" approach, and Thursdays I don't teach, so I don't even bother to shave), my shoes match appropriately (and hey, James Lang, your belt should match your shoes, too, by the way), my shirts are ironed (but never "in bright, bold colors"--I'll leave those for survivors of the disco floor along with rolled-up-sleeve 80s blazers and parachute pants), my ties vary greatly (while ever tasteful), and I even wear my real suit sometimes (though never for teaching with a tie--it took forever to find the right shirt to go with it that we could actually afford).

Why do I do this? Partially because I like to dress up once and a while. It's not uncomfortable if your clothes fit correctly (in fact, nothing I own fits me as well as my suit) and, as I always say, straight men only have so many ways to accessorize--ties really liven up your wardrobe. I mean, granted, my dress shoes are less comfortable than my Birkenstocks, but my Birks are less comfortable than bare feet, and most clothes are less comfortable than boxers and a t-shirt. Come on! Grow up and professionalize already. The point is that I mostly dress up for me. I don't really care what other professors wear themselves; I don't (really) care what the students think; I dress for me. I act professionally and I want to be treated professionally, so I dress the part.

Yet it wasn't always like that. In high school I learned how to wear a coat and tie for debate. It definitely dignified the activity and certainly granted increased credibility and authority with minimal effort and regardless of one's reasoning or argumentative tenacity. When I later became a TA (at 24), I thought I looked young for my age and so dressed nicely (my "dress casual"). It seemed natural, then, to take it up a notch when I started teaching full-time. (The goatee I tried for 18 months when I started as a TA did NOT make a return appearance, however.)

And then of course I started teaching full time without my Ph.D. and as a Visiting faculty member. And also as a late replacement for a sudden retiree at that. Did I feel I needed the little extra authority the coat and tie afforded? Yes. Do I still feel that way? No. Will I still put on one of my favorite ties on Sept. 5 for the first day of classes? Yes. Will I wear my favorite jacket and one of those favorite (green) ties to defend? Yes. Will I wear my suit to MLA interviews? Yes, and I'll wear one of my lucky (i.e., Carolina blue) ties to the interviews I really want to ace.

At any rant--I mean rate--the problems I had with Lang's piece pale with the more serious concerns raised in this response by Pamela Johnston. She addresses one of the many continuing double standards in academia regarding women. Ch-ch-check it out.

I'm Lou Reed

You're Lou Reed.
God, you are cool, can I touch you so the magic will rub off?
You are perceptive, witty, and badass. You wear cool shades, even at night, and probably wear black more than most people. You don't give a fuck what other people think, but you are also very sensitive in the way that you pick up on things that others don't. Sometimes you come off as an asshole, but that's what makes you cool. You are a poet, and you embody New York City. You will still be hip when you are old, and artists love you.

Which rad old school 70's glam icon are you? (with pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
I saw this on another blog and decided I had to try to be as cool as she was. Bingo. So it's an idealized, rarely public version of my self. Isn't the fragmentary nature of said self pretty much the theme of this whole blog?

Bork and the Republicans Call for End to Gay Rights

From The Washington Post, 15 August 2005, "Conservatives Rally for Justices":

"Rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork warned that the high court has defined homosexuality as 'a constitutional right . . . and once homosexuality is defined as a constitutional right, there is nothing the states can do about it, nothing the people can do about it.'"

And still Republicans try to play events like this ("Justice Sunday II") as mainstream? Bork actually implies to "the 2,200 mostly white people in Two Rivers Baptist Church" that homosexuality should be unconstitutional? Huh? Given that the majority of Americans don't see gay marriage as an issue that electrifies them, a statement like Bork's seems pretty extremist. According to a mid-July, 2005 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll (scroll to very bottom of page for details), 53% of Americans support civil unions, 36% support gay marriage.

It's just a matter of time before the state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage get knocked down as unconstitutional. (I hope.)

Ph.D. comic strip

Check out this comic strip!

Bush and the Families of Those Killed in Iraq

From a New York Times article, "Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's Loss Becomes a Problem for the President," 8 August 2005:

"As the mother of an Army specialist who was killed at age 24 in the Sadr City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004, Ms. Sheehan's story is certainly compelling. She is also articulate, aggressive in delivering her message and has information that most White House reporters have not heard before: how Mr. Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Mr. Bush holds regularly as he travels the country, but generally portrays them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the grief of the families. In Ms. Sheehan's telling, though, Mr. Bush did not know her son's name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Mr. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as 'Mom' throughout the meeting.
By Ms. Sheehan's account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.
'I said, "Trust me, you don't want to go there,'"' Ms. Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. 'He said, "You're right, I don't." I said, "Well, thanks for putting me there."'"

The "Egobrowser"

This is another weird opportunity to read things not about me.

Barbecue or Meth?

This article describes how Georgia officials are attempting to deal with the meth problem in rural Georgia--by apparently targeting Indian-American merchants who speak only limited English. The article ("Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation," NY Times, 4 August 2005) includes the following: "Many states, including Georgia, have recently enacted laws restricting the sale of common cold medicines like Sudafed, and nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter."

So even setting aside the questions of cultural and linguistic issues in these cases, and those tied to using merchants as extensions of law enforcement (while selling basically legal products--I'm certainly not advocating the elimination of gun merchants being forced to participate in doing background checks on potential customers, nor do I want cigarettes or alcohol available to underage kids), the issue remains: how can you restrict the sale of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and cat litter? When I buy charcoal, I buy a very big bag (but maybe Kingsford is OK, since it's not cheap), and when I buy cat litter, I buy 3 bags at a time, since I buy the kind the cats like from an unusual store where I buy nothing but that (that's suspicious, isn't it?) Luckily, I've stopped buying coffee filters. Phew.

How to explain the process of writing a dissertation

I came across this great analogy for writing a dissertation in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

I'm climbing Mt. Doom right now . . . .