On Thursday, West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran and New York National GuardsmanLieutenantDan Choi (above, photo from Qweerty.com) powerfully concluded a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) rally, featuring comedienne Kathy Griffin, to repeal the abhorrent and failed Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy with direct action: he and Captain Joe Pietrangelo II, who unsuccessfully tried to take his discharge as a result of DADT to the Supreme Court, chained themselves to the White House's gates. According to Qweerty's report, GetEQUAL co-founder Robin McGehee was arrested for helping Choi lock himself to the gates. HRC head Joe Solomonese and Griffin allegedly agreed to accompany Choi to the White House, but neither did. Griffin also supposedly had cameras on the HRC rally premises, for her show, but it's unclear if they captured Choi's protest.
From YouTube user goodboydc (John Aravosis), video of Lt. Dan Choi handcuffing himself to the gates:
“Hello. My name is Lt. Dan Choi. I am being discharged from the US Army because I am gay and dared to say it out loud.
Today, I am here on a mission with Capt. Jim Pietrangelo, and we are asking you all to join us. We’re calling you to action because we are at a turning point — a moment in time where talk is no longer enough, and action is required.
Equality is not going to happen by itself.
You have been told that the President has a plan. But Congressman Barney Frank confirmed to us this week that the President still is not fully committed to repealing Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell this year.
And if we don’t seize this moment it may not happen for a very long time.
Some may tell you that I am one of the lucky ones. I have been welcomed back by my unit with open arms. And it would be easy for me to stay quiet and hope that change will happen.
But what I was taught at West Point and learned in war is — hope is not a strategy. As officers, James and I both find it a dereliction of our moral duty to remain silent while thousands of our brothers and sister are not allowed to serve openly and honestly.
Capt. Pietrangelo was honorably discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2004 and I will be subject to the same shortly. As officers we are here today fighting for those in the ranks, and we need our Commander in Chief to do the same.
Our fight is not here at Freedom Plaza, it is at the White House. We are walking to the White House right now to send the President a message. So…take out your cell phones and your cameras.
Document this moment. Join us as together — we make history.”
Choi and Pietroangelo were also arrested and spent a night in jail, but Choi was not allowed to speak with or telephone his lawyer. He and Pietroangelo were subsequently released after pleading not guilty to failing to obey a lawful order. Their trial will occur at a later date.
Despite pledging to repeal DADT, President Barack Obama has moved at a glacial pace on this and other issues. Leading military figures in his administration, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, have called for allowing out gays and lesbians to serve in the military, but as Choi noted on the day of his arrest, Congressman Barney Frank told him that the President still wasn't fully on board. Why? Why during this past year hasn't he even issued an executive stop-loss order? Would that have been so difficult? Since the implementation of this terrible compromise under Bill Clinton, this policy has done tremendous damage to the lives of LGBTQ servicepeople and, though it's often not articulated fully, our military as well. I refuse to offer excuses for this president, so someone else can do that. I don't doubt that if the House passes the Senate health insurance reform and reconciliation bills this weekend we'll hear that Obama can now dedicate more time to the issue. But between him and Congress, there must be action, and with dispatch. Lesbian, gay and bi soldiers' lives and career, and the effectiveness of the US military, hang in the lurch.
Lt. Dan Choi knows this as well as anyone; despite exemplary service, he is now facing discharge for coming out. President Obama surely must know this, and if he doesn't he needs to grasp it. Quickly.
Today's Primary Election Day in Illinois, and a number of key posts are on the ballot, from the US Senate seat, formerly occupied by President Barack Obama and now by his notorious successor, Roland Burris, to the Governors' seat, whose previous recent occupants include a convicted felon (George Ryan) and a man (Rod Blagojevich) who tried to sell the just-mentioned Senate seat to the highest bidder, was impeached by the state legislature, and will soon appear on a TV reality show, to various municipal and local positions, including one that almost no one outside of the state knows about but which has been a rag of contention for years, the powerful Cook County Board President's office. That seat is currently occupied by Todd Stroger, whose father suffered a massive stroke, thereby handing the gig to his son.
Since I vote in New Jersey, I'm a spectator in all of this, but I have to say that while I was somewhat frustrated with the lackluster options in the New Jersey elections that put Rovian Republican Chris Christie in office, I would feel even more disillusioned if I had to choose from the rogues' and hacks' gallery vying for these various Illinois seats. Let's just take the US Senate seat. On the GOP side, the leader is Mark Kirk, a sometimes moderate (by Midwestern standards), sometimes right-wing Congressman representing Chicago's wealth North Shore. Kirk was outed as gay, via a really sleazy media-leaked rumor, by one of his GOP opponents, a very nasty operator named Andy Martin, who has zero chance of winning. Facing almost no real competition Kirk, who ha moved politically to the right to secure the nomination, will very likely win the GOP nomination, where he'll face young, fairly progressive Democratic projected-winner Alexi Giannoulis, the current State Treasurer. (David Hoffmann, the state Inspector General, a former Federal prosecutor, and a truly progressive candidate with a clean (including anti-Daley) record, probably doesn't have a chance, but if he did, he would make the best Senator out of all the candidates.) Ironically enough, Giannoulis's family mint and former employer, Broadway Bank, is in serious financial trouble as a result of its lending policies over the last 8 years. During Giannoulis's tenure as Chief Loan Officer from 2002 to 2006, Broadway Bank jumped heavily into the subprime lending business and other risky banking activities. While Giannoulis has argued that he wasn't really involved in the problems that now place Broadway Bank on the brink, a review of the record belies this. As Treasurer he's done a decent job, particularly in the midst of the current economic calamities, which have hit Illinois, the nation's 6th most populous state, very hard, but his banking tenure, and his refusal to be explicit about his role in it, are troublesome.
On some of the major issues facing Congress, and in particular the Senate, it's clear where these two will land. Kirk has been reciting the GOP's health care initiatives mantras, which will do little to improve the ongoing health care cost crunch or resolve the longer time economic crisis the country faces, while Giannoulis would be a reliable vote for the current Senate health care/insurance reform bill, down to supporting Obama's flipflopped position on taxing higher cost plans, yet he also would probably support a reconciliation bill that included more progressive reforms like a public option. Kirk seems likely to oppose major banking reform, while Giannoulis, whose family firm would be affected by the legislation, probably would back it. On national security, Kirk appears likely to back any administration initiatives that track closely to Bush's, which is to say, most of them, while Giannoulis could very well be a firm supporter of Obama's on many national security initiatives, but also outspoken on ones that progressives have identified as particularly problematic, such as the delayed closure of Guantánamo, the glacial withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and so on. As to whether Giannoulis can defeat Kirk in the general election will come down to the general economic conditions in the state, how well he can appeal to people in the populous, centrist ring counties around Chicago, how vigorously he deflects criticism of his family bank's fiascos, and how much he delineates himself from the Blago-tainted Democratic cast. Kirk's chances will depend upon how much voters across the state are willing to hold their noses and vote for a Republican, people's sense that he would be willing to work with the Democrats and Obama as opposed to being yet another GOP obstructionist, and how many Chicagoans and Chicagoland suburbanites show up for the general election. The after-effects of the outing and his denial will have little effect at all, because Giannoulis, like Burris, has a strong pro-gay record and wouldn't use Kirk's hypocritical record against him.
And so it goes down the line. The country and state are in sad shape, and many of today's leading candidates appear to offer little in the way of viable solutions for the nation's or state's problems. There are Green Party candidates running in a lot of these races, and if I could vote here, some of them would get my vote, but I also don't think hardly any of them have a realistic chance to win in the upcoming general election. One candidate has stood out for me: Democrat S. Raja Krishnamoorthi (above right, Huffingtonpost.com) a former Obama campaign employee and current candidate for the Illinois Comptroller position. One of his ad taglines is "Another candidate with a funny name," and his commercials and posters emphasize "RAJA," with the aim of getting people outside Chicagoland to vote for him (he grew up in Peoria, about as middle-American as exists). Based on his background and record, he appears to be one of the best options Illinois voters will have today.
###
Returning to the publishing tip, one of the most noteworthy issues this week has been the battle between mega-retailer Amazon, the largest online bookseller in the country and proprietor of the Kindle e-reader, and Macmillan (part of the McGraw-Hill conglomerate, I believe), over a pricing dispute. To summarize, Macmillan objected to Amazon's loss-leader pricing of e-books at $9.99, and wanted to sell e-books for more, by moving from a wholeseller model to an agency model. The fact that Apple just debuted its iPad, which represents direct competition to the Kindle, and agreed with the country's five largest publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster) to sell e-books at a higher $12.99-$14.99 price point, threatened Amazon's power and buttressed Macmillan's complaint, since the publisher would be undercutting themselves by selling books at differing prices on a similar platform. Amazon responded in brutal fashion by severing all purchasing access Macmillan's books, not only removing buy buttons from Macmillan's print books on the Amazon website, but also also cutting Kindle owners' and user's access to Macmillan's texts. Just like that.
Quoting the Publisher's Lunch site (I don't have login access, but h/t to Lisa M.):
Among the books subject to the greatest potential short-term effect of Amazon's buy-button removal is Andrew Young's just-released THE POLITICIAN, which curiously still ranks at No. 9 on Amazon's bestseller list (and has been between No. 4 and No. 6 today at Barnes and Noble.com). Hilary Mantel's WOLF HALL was at 69 on Amazon last night, falling steadily today and now at No. 128. Atul Gawande's THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO: How to Get Things Right was at 34 last night on Amazon, now at No. 66,--and has risen from 112 up to 86 at BN.com in the same time period. (These numbers change slightly every hour we've been checking them.)
Amazon has now relented, but larger issues remain. What is an equitable price for e-books, which do not require much of the cost of hardcopy books; there's no physical printing or storage or shipping involved, so should they be priced as anywhere near as high as trade paperbacks? How much power and control should any retailer or hardware company like Amazon have over publishers, and should a retailer which is also a hardware maker also be allowed such overwhelming control the means of distribution? Yet on the other hand, if a bookseller is offering a deal that's more financially beneficial to readers, should a publisher be able to trump that? How should we think and talk about the publishing and distribution systems in light of these dramatic technological changes? Should the sellers be making the extra profit off these works, as the agency model suggests, or shouldn't that be going to authors, who are responsible for the works themselves--i.e., the content? And, even more basically, what is an e-book, really?
###
This morning I was given to mull over the deep and historic mistrust many Black Americans, including my own parents and many friends of mine, have had with the medical profession, the government and affiliated private institutions after I read this New York Times story about poor, Black tobacco farmer Henrietta Lacks, who died from aggressive cervical cancer back in the early 1950s. Denise Grady's article discusses a new book, by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010), which explores what Johns Hopkins Hospital did with her cancerous tissue--her body--after her death, how the ubiquitous HeLa cells developed from that tissue have enabled an array of medical discoveries, and even enriched some of the researchers and corporations using it, though not a dime nor, for years any recognition or thanks went to the Lacks family, which was devastated by the loss of this then young mother and wife. Moreover, this all happened without Mrs. Lacks' or her family's consent, or even knowledge.
The racial, class, and educational gulfs between the Lackses and the doctors and researches enabled this, paralleling other Black Americans' experience with the US medical system. According to the article, hoever, Skloot points out similar situations are still occurring half a century, despite beefed up informed consent laws. Courts have tended to side with the scientists as opposed to patients and the family of the deceased, provoking a new movement for "tissue rights" and greater ethical inquiry into who owns removed bodily tissue even in the face of legally binding agreements, and what happens and who benefits, and at what cost, when that tissue--after surgery or death--represents not just a vital element in invaluable, life-saving research, but a valuable commodity as well.
Not humorous at all, but a positive sign: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen spoke out strongly today on behalf of repealing the odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that has led to the discharges of thousands of valuable military personnel. Unfortunately, we do not need another year of "study." Ask the UK, Israel, and other countries for pointers, and take lessons. Just get it done, and swiftly!
Delivered, but not sealed or signed--yet, and the US Senate's version of the historic yet problematic health care "reform" bill, that is. With 58 Democratic votes and the those of the two independents who caucus with them, the Democrats passed the severely gutted, lobbyist-shaped, and insurance industry-and-Big Pharma-friendly health care "reform" legislation. Now it heads to conference, where some contentious issues must be ironed out before it can be revoted up by both houses and then sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law. Despite his aloofness from the turbulent Congressional debates, he's said he'll now get involved. I'll believe it when he does it.
Senate Democratic leaders announcing the passage of the legislation
The Senate bill
has no government-run health insurance (i.e. public) option.
has no Medicare buy-in for people under the current age of eligibility. (A recent Quinnipiac polled showed 56-38% support for the public option and 64-30% support for Medicare expansion.)
still includes the very mandate that President Obama campaigned against, and does not "cover" 30 million new people, but forces them to buy insurance under penalty of fine.
has weaker subsidies than those in the House bill.
includes a problematic excise tax.
does not include safe drug reimportation, though the president campaigned on this.
bars undocumented immigrants from buying insurance on the available exchanges, out of racism and spite.
includes anti-abortion provisions.
does not cover all Americans citizens.
does not really kick in for 4 years, by which time the GOP could repeal most of it or even the whole thing.
did not emerge from the "transparent," televised (on CSPAN) negotations the president promised, and instead has lobbyists' wishes and demands all over it, making it, sad to say, liable to critiques and attacks from the right-wing, who offered no substantive reform proposals of their own.
Most problematically, it not only doesn't dramatically "bend" the cost curve, but it fails to ensure 1) affordable insurance for ALL Americans, and 2) cut the excessive US spending on health care, which results of from industry profits, waste and inefficiency, a fee-for-treatment approach, and many other sources.
In case anyone has forgotten the USA health care costs per person exceed other industrialized countries by a wide margin.
Total health care spending per person, in 2007: USA: $7290 Switzerland: $4417 France: $3601 United Kingdom: $2992 Average of OECD developed nations: $2964 Italy: $2686 Japan: $2581
In part this results from our reliance on a for-profit health care system, and despite his campaign promises, the President is doing little to change this. The huge disparity in costs is one of the main reasons progressives--labeled as "insane," the "Internet left fringe," "the left of the left," "on hallucinogens," etc.--by the President's spokespeople and media commentators and pundits--were pushing for either a universal single-payer program or a robust public health insurance option. This cost disparity, and the rising cost curve, are unsustainable without serious damage to the US economy and Americans' well-being.
The Senate's bill does include some worthwhile measures. It does bar the denial of health care based on pre-existing conditions, for children and for adults. It pushes Pharma to cover the doughnut hole. It includes funding for community health centers, which could provide more comprehensive and preventive health care services. It will allow more people--single adults--to buy into the Medicaid program. It also extends funding for Medicaid and Medicare, while streamlining the latter. In the event of a catastrophic illness it provides federal reinsurance to private companies that provide insurance for their employees. It funds training and education programs for non-physician healthcare professionals. So it's not totally worthless. But in terms of providing universal, affordable, high-quality care, and, to use the neoliberals' favorite concept, "choice," it falls--from what I can tell, FAR--short.
Nevertheless, one of the most credible critics of the legislation and the process by which it wound its way from rhetoric to near-law, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, argues in its favor. As he writes:
And for all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement. It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone. And it establishes the principle — even if it falls somewhat short in practice — that all Americans are entitled to essential health care.
Many people deserve credit for this moment. What really made it possible was the remarkable emergence of universal health care as a core principle during the Democratic primaries of 2007-2008 — an emergence that, in turn, owed a lot to progressive activism. (For what it’s worth, the reform that’s being passed is closer to Hillary Clinton’s plan than to President Obama’s). This made health reform a must-win for the next president. And it’s actually happening.
So progressives shouldn’t stop complaining, but they should congratulate themselves on what is, in the end, a big win for them — and for America.
Jonathan Chait, after a revisionist account of the 2000 election, agrees. So I guess it's a go--but also a strong reminder that for better legislation in the future, progressives will have to be relentless and, when necessary, willing to let the President and Congress know they do not have us in the pocket. No matter what Rahm Emanuel says.
===
One of my Twigente, Keraflo, posted this link to Cenk Uygur's Huffington Post articleon moving President Obama (and the Congress) to the left. I agree with everything he's saying. Silence abets the status quo, which is what the majority opposed last year. Yet if we uncritically support the Obama administartion, criticizing only its right-wing opponents while not calling the president and the Congress when they fall far short of "change we can believe it" and not grow cynical, which strengthens those already in power.
===
Rod 2.0has been upon the grave situationfacing LGBTQ people in Uganda, where a viciously homophobic Anti-Homosexuality Bill is making its way through that country's parliament. In his most recent post on the subject, he notes that Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni (at right, silobreaker.com), has decided not to intervene directly to stop legislation that would harshly penalize people suspected of being LGBTQ, despite having given assurances that he would do so to US authorities. Museveni is now saying he will try to convince his party, which has a parliamentary majority, not to support it. The original legislative proposals went so far as proposing capital penalties--death--for LGBTQ acts. In this post, Rod links to an article suggesting that the opposition party, the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), will oppose the legislation. This is unlikely to stop the bill's passage, but will register that it, and the toxic homophobia promoted by senior figures in Uganda's government, do not have tacit, universal support.
I'm glad that the last two holdouts in the Democratic caucus, Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D-AR), have decided to vote with the rest of their caucus and allow the debate on the combined health care bill Harry Reid (D-NV) debuted earlier this week to proceed. Recalcitrants like these two, as well as Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have repeatedly dispelled the illusion of party cohesion that the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Senate Campaign Committee love to sell; while the Senate Democrats have helped to pass some important, mostly small-bore legislation since taking power in 2006, they continue to slog along as if the GOP were still in control, failing again and again to show real leadership on any of the major issues that face the country. Instead, what the public sees is a glacially moving body, full of right-wing ranters and moderate milquetoasts, taking a scattered and often seemingly ineffective approach to everything. Above all, the needs of Congress's corporate masters come first.
Perhaps it has often, if not always, been this way, but the close-but-unfinished health care reform effort, the ongoing wars and related national security issues, and the economic crisis all throw into high relief how ineffective the United States' upper house continues to be. That said, it increasingly looks like the Democrats will pass a health care reform bill that, while not perfect, will be better than earlier indications suggested. Though the single-payer option is going, the final bill probably will have a public insurance plan; it probably will allow people to opt out of terrible current plans instead of being locked into them; it probably will provide adequate subsidies for a sizable portion of working- and lower-middle families; and it will stop insurance companies from some of their worst practices, such as dropping people because of "pre-existing" conditions, jacking up rates when people get sick, and turning the entire process of dealing with the health care system into a free-for-all lottery. The Senate bill, like the House bills, also includes horrendous anti-immigrant and anti-reproductive rights provisions, and it does not adequately address the for-profit nature of the system, which means that US consumers spend anywhere from twice to three times as much per capita per year as our industrialized peers, and it doesn't have enough in it to drive down insurance costs or drug prices, another baleful aspect of the current American healthcare landscape.
As the bill undergoes continual weakening and diminishment, it makes me wonder whether the Democrats, despite getting so far, will be able to pass it, either by majority with or without a single Republican vote, or by reconciliation, thereby taking a page from the GOP, and if they do so and President Obama in the end signs it, whether it will anything more than a mostly hollow victory. Continual public pressure on the Congress seems to be the only way ensure even minimal fidelity to the people's business, so you know what we all must do:
Urge everyone you know to do so to. Now is a very perilous period for the health care reform bill, and anything progressive.
===
Things are really grim economically across the US and much of the world; this isn't news. I see and feel it in varying ways, and often have to force myself not to dwell on how it's affecting so many people I know well, as well as those I don't. Then I read an article like the ones below and I start to feel more than a little worried; things are much, much worse than they seem, and yet the people running the government, corporate heads, the mainstream media all seem so blasé, indifferent, or incapable to getting their acts together.
Despite all the grim indicators--including the 123 banks that have failed so far this year--believe the country will turn around, but given the approach of those leading the government and many corporate leaders, it's going to be a painful process, and there's no guarantee that we won't be even worse off if the main perpetrators--their enablers remain in power--behind the mess we're in somehow inveigle their way back to full power using false-populism, lies, propaganda, and anything else that works.
One issue I've thought about a lot is the Congress's inability to reform the financial industries or sector. One key issue is the "too-big-too-fail" problem. As I've mentioned before on this blog, my first post-undergrad job was in banking, when commercial and investment banks were forbidden by law from merging or sharing certain key functions, when banks could not operate across state lines, and when certain other regulatory controls dating from the period of the New Deal were still strongly in place. Even with those safeguards, in October 1987, one month after I began my very brief banking career, stock markets across the world witnessed their biggest crashes in decades. This was also during a period when the US dollar was comparatively weak, and the country was struggling with the deficits that had built up during the previous 8 years of massive tax cuts, defense spending binges, rising deregulation, and gross underinvestment in public and private infrastructure. The US had seen two recessions under Reagan, I believe, and would see an even worse one in a few years under HW Bush. And yet a little over a decade later, in the late 1990s, after the economic upswing, financial policymakers led by Robert Rubin and Larry Summers would do everything they could to gut what remained of the New Deal safeguards, working hand-in-glove with people like Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) to repeal the Glass-Steagall Acts of 1932 and 1933, which had maintained one of the last walls prevent a return to 1920s-style laissez-faire capitalism. Many of these policymakers and their adepts are in place today; we have a libertarian Republican as Fed Chair. We have a neoliberal centrist from the Rubin school, who made disastrous bets at his previous job, coordinating economic policy for the administration. We have a lackey for longtime financial megagambler Goldman Sachs as Treasury Secretary. The already big banks are considerably bigger, and several will be handing out more in bonuses--record bonuses--this year than some states' budget deficits. How it all will shake out, I don't know. But as the Alternet piece suggests, things are pretty grave and could get ugly. Very, very ugly. I hope and pray they won't.
===
I recently participated in some heavy backchannel lamenting about the collapse of the Washington Blade, one of the nation's premier LGBTQ newspapers which had just celebrated its 40th birthday; its sibling newspaper, The Southern Voice in Atlanta, and of its parent company, Window Media, the owner of several other LGBTQ-focused newspapers and periodicials in the country.
The culprit, from what I can tell, is the current dismal economic environment. Several publications in New York and other cities have also fallen by the wayside over the last year. I agree with the argument that with the ongoing development of the Internet and new online media have come a range of new means for disseminating news, conducting investigations, and fostering advocacy and knowledge production around LGBTQ issues, but I also think we shouldn't underestimate the value and necessity of traditional news organizations, including the much smaller but once vital issues and identity-oriented ones, like the Blade. It and newspapers like it have played and continue to play an important role especially during a period when some certainties about how far the society has shifted on LGBTQ and other issues are being called into question. At her David R. Kessler lecture several weeks ago, Sarah Schulman noted, among her many wise points, that "we are dismantling" many of our longstanding institutions--or we are allowing them to be dismantled--at the very moment that we may need them more than ever. Perhaps these vivid manifestations of ongoing struggles remind us that we aren't yet in the post-everything (post-gay, post-race, etc.) worlds that have been proclaimed for quite some time.
Some articles suggest that the Blade may resume publication under different auspices, perhaps as an employee-owned paper or as a not-for-profit, the latter being a model I'm surprised isn't discussed even more as journalism in general takes hit after hit.
===
A friend, translator, scholar and librarian Herbert R., recently sent word of the passing of one of the Dominican Republic's important poets, Blas Jiménez (at left), on November 13. One of the most stalwart expositors and champions of the DR's African heritage--90% of Dominicans have African ancestry, a higher percentage than almost every other country in the Americas except Haiti, Jamaica, and the predominantly Black Caribbean islands--Jiménez had a rich and varied career, as an award-winning journalist; essayist; professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra; TV producer and host of Página Abierta, radio producer and host of La Mañana en Antena; as Secretary General of the DR's national commission for the United Nations Organization for Education, Culture and Communication (UNESCO). For over a decade he worked at the International Education Resource Center, where he developed courses on Afro-Dominican and Caribbean culture and literature.
Amidst all of this great work, he was also and perhaps best known as a poet, and especially as a "poeta de negritud." His works include the volumes Aqui... Otro Español (Here...Another Spanish), Caribe Africano en Despertar (African Caribbean Waking Up), Exigencias de un Cimarrón (Exigiences of a Maroon), and El Nativo (The Native). With highly regarded scholars Silvio Torres-Saillant and Ramona Hernández, he co-edited the book Desde la Orilla: hacia una nacionalidad sin desalojos (From the Edge: Towards a Nationality Without Evictions). His death, as this very brief note makes clear, is a major loss for Dominican, Caribbean, and African Diasporic literature and culture.
It's been a week since I dropped in here, and every J's Theater reader knows the political business that's occurred since then, so I won't rage. But the results in Maine, which stripped away equal rights and ended Maine's brief experiment with same-sex, i.e., equal marriage, were very disappointing, even though the pre-election polling showed a close contest, and the Roman Catholic Church, among others, poured a great deal of money and energy into overturning the new law. As the chart below (straight from Matthew Yglesias/Think Progress) shows, marriage equality will eventually be part of the American landscape, but it may still be a ways off for most of the country.
(Click on table to enlarge)
˚˚˚
On Saturday, the House of Representatives made history by passing a Health Care Reform bill by a 220-215 margin. Only one Republican, Anh Joseph Cao (R-LA), who represents convicted Democrat Bill Jefferson's former New Orleans-area district, voted for the bill, while 39 Democrats, most Conservadems, a few ultraprogressives (Dennis Kucinich) voted against it. The historic legislation, ushered through by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her leadership team, does include some great touches, such as removing the tax penalty for same-sex domestic partners on the same plan and a considerably weakened public option. It also will go a long way towards covering the majority of the 40+ million who do not have and cannot afford health care insurance. But doesn't allow for a single-payer system, and includes extremist anti-abortion language that could conceivably be used by insurance companies to deny coverage to women who have miscarriages. It also does little to address one of the major problems of US health care, which is we spend more than twice, and in some cases three times what nearly every other industrialized nation does on health care. That is to say, it does little to remove the profit incentive from health care insurance, or to help drive down the cost of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, or hospital care. President Barack Obama removed himself from the discussion several weeks back, and seems concerned only with having something to sign, as opposed to the best bill possible. Or perhaps it's Rahm Emanuel whose conservative pragmatism is guiding the White House's approach. It's hard to know, because the White House sends out so many conflicting signals and operates in such a frustrating passive-aggressive manner it's hard to know what the President and his administration really stand for. Such are vicissitudes of 11 months of Obamatude. Well, we did get Sonia Sotomayor, didn't we?
Now the bill heads to the graveyard of the popular will, the US Senate. Republicans are mostly united against anything approximating reform. The Democrats probably have 50 votes, now that Al Franken is finally seated and Teddy Kennedy's replacement, Paul Kirk, also is present, but the main issue is a cloture vote, and it's unclear whether nominal Democrats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln, or tantrum-throwing neocons like Joe Lieberman, will sustain a filibuster and prevent anything viable from coming to the floor. The Democrats have one of the wettest noodles leading them, if one can use the term, Harry Reid, who seems incapable of exerting any real power whatsoever. Dick Durbin of Illinois, second in command, seems to do little more than whine and beg, to little effect. It's beyond pathetic. In fact, Reid has even spoken recently of not getting anything to the floor before the end of the year! Meanwhile, the GOP, which is now witnessing its lowest level of voter identification in decades, makes threats, commands the media, and continues to draw stricter and stricter lines, all to the end of gumming up the legislative process and destroying our Hamlettian head of government and state. I'll say this: if the Democrats fail to push through a Senate bill, and if they leave in Bart Stupak's toxic anti-abortion amendment, they very well may have their "Waterloo," even if the President hangs on to middling popularity by the skin under his nails. They appear to want to fail, and they're doing nothing to prevent it. Meanwhile, as has been repeatedly noted, 45,000 people die each year from lack of health care insurance or inadequate coverage, and as someone who dealt with the health care industry extensively last year, I can say that the US's system is seriously screwed up and needs help, immediately.
˚˚˚
Friday I joined hundreds of thousands (a million?) people who crammed into the narrow streets of lower Manhattan to cheer on the New York Yankees, who won their 27th World Series. Responding to an online query, I predicted that the Yankees would win--against the St. Louis Cardinals, who were out after the first round of the playoffs. The Yankees had everything they needed, on the mound and in the field, including some production from the pulchritudinous but perplexing and scandal-plagued Alex Rodriguez for a change. Last year's champions, the Philadelphia Phillies, just could not crack Andy Pettitte or Mariano Rivera, or keep Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter off the bases. With the Cardinals out, I followed--and watched, sometimes with C--most of the Yankees' games, and thought they'd pull off a 4-1 series in Philly, but the return to and victory in the Bronx only made the victory sweeter.
The parade was, in my experience, one of those rare times, like last November on Michigan Avenue and in Grant Park in Chicago, when vast throngs of people gather together and, because they're united in a common cause, they behave very well. Just a few days before, I'd told C about a near altercation I witnessed on the 5 train, in which a wacko ranted on about everything nearly bursting his rage-swollen head in support of another nut who ran his bicycle wheel over one woman's foot and into another's leg. On Friday, however, and I don't think it was just the presence of enough New York police officers to form a human bridge to Weehawken, people were acting quite kindly towards each other. I saw this again and again as people were polite when pressing through the dense crowds, and on the subway, there were more "Excuse mes" and "Pardon mes" than I've heard over the last 7 months. One unfortunate thought I had amidst all the good cheer, however, was there might be more people in that narrow corner of Manhattan (and in the tunnels beneath and on the other side of the Hudson trying to get there) than voted last Tuesday. (Michael Bloomberg only won by about 50,000 votes, and only 1.1 million of 4 million or so eligible voters cast ballots; I've so far spoken to at least one who didn't.)
Photos and video below:
At the parade (it looks like I was far away, but not really--not!) The confetti being dumped from the cornices--it turned out that some of the celebratory paper included people's vital records and bank documents. Oops! New York's finest penning people in like cattle On a very crowded train--and the young woman in the middle of the photo was diligently reading and speaking her Hebrew text...only in New York! Among the many, the proud, the Yankees boosters
˚˚˚ Speaking of baseball, Chicago, blackness, racism, the not-so-proud, and so much more, I'll just present the photos. Ughhh and arrrgghhh. Sad and tragic doesn't barely scratch the surface.
On Thursday, playwright, novelist and activist Sarah Schulman will deliver the 18th Annual David R. Kessler Lecture. Her talk is entitled "Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences."
The event takes place at the CUNY Grad Center, at 34th St. and 5th Avenue, in Manhattan, in the Proshansky Auditorium. It runs from 6:30 to 8:30.
If you're in New York, don't miss it.
˚˚˚
The iPhone drawing continues. I'm addicted. I don't think I've drawn--or thumbed/index-fingered?--this much from life in many years. My new approach is to do as quick a sketch as possible, then fill in the details later. I've also been experimenting with different drawing styles, though I seem to be locked into train portraits these days.
I haven't yet figured out all the intricacies of the very popular Brushes program and have instead been using Autodesk Sketchbook for most of these portraits, which now total 23, or about 1 per day, though some days I do 2-3 in one shot. I do want to learn how to use the layers function in the former app, because I love Jorge Colombo's images.
Now if only AT&T would provide service anywhere near equal to the performance of my iPhone's apps, I'd consider the device essentially miraculous. Man on light rail train Woman on PATH PATH conductor Man on light rail Man on PATH
The weeks are whipping past. Last Sunday at this time I was returning from the amazing Fire & Ink III: Cotillion conference in Austin. I would try to recapitulate it, but I imagine my sentences would continually dissolve into a river of superlatives, which would only be appropriate because it really was a superlative experience. The conference brought together a great number of black LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly creative people, from all over the USA and world (Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America) for three days of conversations and discussions, presentations, and performances. The conference site lists presenters, but there were many more people who came just to see and listen and learn and teach. To be there. I want to thank the organizers once again for the wonderful job they did, from selecting the site itself--the Austin Hilton was great--to how well they organized and scheduled everything, to their patience, friendliness, helpfulness, resourcefulness, and kindness--and for the general ambience they established.
When I was describing the conference before it was held I kept suggesting that it was primarily literary, while its origins and thrust remained literary--and by this I mean literature in all its dimensions--there were filmmakers (and screenings), performers and a large performance (theory) contingent, and social scientists also in the room, expanding the conversation beyond the book and page. What underpinned a great deal of the weekend, and what I found so invigorating, in addition to seeing so many people I hadn't seen in a while and meeting many new ones, was the vibrantly activist tone, but activism in and through the arts, activism in a variety of modes, not just the most commonly understood ones. A review of the panel titles and workshops makes this clear; there was little of the aroma of the cloister I sometimes feel in academe, but instead a deep sense of continuum with the wider world. The stakes for what people have and are doing were quite clear, and we recognized this, even if others often don't.
I was unable to attend the first Fire & Ink conference, so it was particularly and personally important to me to be part of this one. So many strands of my own experience, and not just as a writer and teacher, came together here. There were echoes of the 1980s and 1990s (OutWrite and Black Nations Queer Nations), the various Black Writers Conferences at Medgar Evers College (they included the famous statement by black LGBTQ writers protesting that conference's treatment of LGBTQ writers, books and issues), the biennial National Black Arts Festivals in Atlanta, and the annual Celebrations of Black Writing in Philadelphia, my pre-academe years in the literary world, and my stint, over the last 15 or so years, teaching writing. At the conference were writers whose work I'd been reading for years but had never met, people whom I knew when I published my first stories and poetry, and writers whose work I was learning about for the first time. In much the same way that I felt about the Adfempo conference, I wish I could spend a lot more time, not just a fleeting weekend, with these folks.
My official presentations included a workshop on translating LGBTQ writers, which I made by racing from the airport, and which drew a small and interested group of people. I also organized two panels; the first was on Dialoguing Across the Diaspora, which included Tisa Bryant showing a wonderful clip with interviews on black LGBTQ arts and activism in the UK; Yoruba Richen screening a snippet of a film she worked on about the Sisterhood of the Good Death in Cachoeira, Brazil, and remarks about candomblé and an expansive view of art and activism; and Colin Robinson, who explored some of the ways Trinidadian Calypso has addressed and negotiated same-sexual desire. The other panel I organized focused on publishing today and the new technologies, and each of the panelists, Reggie Harris, Lisa C. Moore, and Steven Fullwood, offered cogent thoughts about the topic, while connecting it to their own work (Reggie as an author, librarian, event programmer, and sage, Lisa as an editor and publisher, and Steven as an author, publisher, librarian, and archivist, all three activists). As with Adfempo, I wish it would have been possible to catch all the concurrent panels, though I did attend many others, including ones on libraries and archiving, scholarship and archives, and the sources of writers' work.
I mentioned the role of performance at this conference, and it included a night of performances. We got to see a portion of Sharon Bridgeforth's play, Delta Dandy, which she is currently continuing to shape as a visitor this quarter (year, I hope) at the university; my colleague E. Patrick Johnson's performance based on his book Sweet Tea: Stories of Black Gay Men in the South, and during the piece he announced that he had been able to resume contact with one of the legendary figures in the book, the 90-year-old from New Orleans, Princess Vivian; and Daniel Alexander Jones's conjuration, as Jomama Jones, with her Sweet Peaches. The conference also included three conversations, under the title "Dash" and curated by artist Torkwase Dyson, that featured 3 pairs of writers and artists in conversation about links and reciprocal influences. The 3 were Tisa and Wura-Natasha Ogunji; Ronaldo V. Wilson and Carl Pope; and Nalo Hopkinson and M. Asli Dukan. Carl and Ronaldo also showed a short video made the night before, featuring Ronaldo at his most limber and liminal, and Dukan screened a clip from her film about Black female vampires that had me and others jonesing for some Grace Jones in Vamp--the full version, though.
All in all, as I tweeted, it was an amazing gathering. One of the videographers, Q, got me on tape rhapsodizing incomprehensibly about the proceedings, so I hope that doesn't appear in the final Fire & Ink Video, but I subscribe to my statements that the three days were soul-raising and that by Sunday, I felt like I and others had grown a set of special F&IIII wings and could take flight. Photos:
Lisa C. Moore and Steven Fullwood, two of the Fire & Ink III board members and conference organizers, before the performances Poet Shelagh Patterson Fire & Ink board member, conference organizer, poet, librarian, programmer, and longtime friend and correspondent Reggie Harris Tisa and Wura during their conversation at the "Dash" panel Samiya Bashir, introducing Nikky Finney Walking to the event, past the Texas Capitol Building (my friend cartoonist and writer Victor Hodge is the near silhouette) In the main hallway, Austin Hilton
***
Congratulations to all this year's National Book Award nominees, and an especial congratulations to this year's poetry nominees! They are:
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press) Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin) Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press) Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)
Like last year's list, this one is really exciting; all five collections are very strong, four of the poets are known for pushing formal conventions, and, on a personal level, Carl and I were in the Dark Room Writers Collective together in the late 1980s, Lyrae and I were in the same Cave Canem group in 1999, and were there together also in 2001, and Keith was one of my favorite colleagues back in 2001-2002. Bravo to all of them, and I would not want to be one of the judges, because all are outstanding poets and most deserving of this year's award.
(H/t Reggie H.)
***
Last night, I had the honor of reading with Keith at the Segue Reading Series, at the Bowery Poetry Club, in New York. Every time I've read there, I have been with excellent company; the last time, I think, I read with the one and only Julie Patton. I read a sliver from the opening chapter of one of the books I've been working on, while Keith read from his nominated volume and several others, including his translations of Baudelaire's Paris Spleen. Our readings eventually be on Penn Sound's website, so when that occurs, I'll post it on here. My thanks to E. Tracy Grinnell and Laura Sims for inviting me, pairing me with Keith, and bringing people out!
I should add that before the reading, I got to meet a J's Theater reader, Joyce Russell (I hope I remembered your name correctly!), a Canadian poet who'd read with a group of other Canadian poets at the Bowery Poetry Club before the Segue Reading, and who was chatting with Djola Branner, one of the performers at Fire & Ink and a founder and former member of the groundbreaking Pomo Afro Homos troupe of the late 1980s and 1990s. (I still have my tattered PAH t-shirt and refuse to throw it out.) I'm sorry I missed Joyce and the other poets who read before us, but thank you for reading the blog, and maybe we'll get to read together one of these days down the road.
***
I haven't been listening to as much music as I sometimes do, especially during the winter--I blame Twitter!--when I'm in the car more, but here's my most recent fave playlist, stretched across 5-6 actual playlists on my iPhone (I have not used my iPod in over a year now).
Bebel Gilberto, "Bring Back the Love" (Brazilian Girls Extended Mix) The Black Eyed Peas, "Meet Me Halfway" Chrisette Michele featuring Ne-Yo, "What You Do" Common, "What A World" Franz Ferdinand, "What She Came For" (Drums of Death Remix) Janet Jackson, "Make Me" Jay-Z feat. Rihanna, "Run This Town" Massive Attack, "Splitting The Atom" Michael Daugherty, "Sunset Strip" Miti Miti, "En Los Noventa" Os Mutantes, "A Minha Menina" Portishead, "Glory Box" Q-Tip feat. Norah Jones, "Life Is Better"
A while back I believed I'd mentioned that I'd heard there'd be a march in Washington for Marriage Equality this fall. One of my former students, sailor and author Miriam (of the bread recipes, who also introduced me to "fan fic"!), asked that I post a more definitive link to the event, Equality Across America, which is set to take place on October 10-11. I don't think I'll be able to attend, because I'll be returning from a black LGBTQ lit conference in Austin, but everyone who supports true and real equality should attend if they can.
As you also may know, earlier this week Congressman Jerrold Nadler proposed repealing the abominable Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). If this is an issue that matters to you, please do call or email your Congressperson to urge her or him to consider cosponsoring and supporting this bill (along with the public option, investigations into the Bush-Cheney torture regime, repeal of the Patriot Act and Big Oil subsidies, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anything else you believe is pertinent).
+++
The right-wing and mainstream corporate media's (MCM) hyperventilating reactions to President Jimmy Carter's statement that racism underlines a great deal of the conservative outrage towards President Barack Obama and his policies do not surprise me at all. Any thoughtful or considered discussion of race, let alone racism, in the wider media always dissipates like iron steam. What frustrates me, however, is the MCM's continual conflation of "race" with "racism," and their focus on the former, rather than the latter. The MCM cannot seem to untangle the two, willfully I often think, because speaking about the former allows them a way out of addressing the pervasiveness of the latter. Speaking about the latter might also force them to register several premises, which include that those in the MCM also belong to certain races and have experiences shaped by this fact, and that in regular social and political discourse, some people are raced and some are not, and that doing so often occurs through the prism of racism. What's I also find frustrating is the way that the MCM reduces every issue to numbing simplicity, especially when "race" is broached, and in doing so attempts to attribute it to a single cause, as if truly complex economic, political and social phenomena were as easily diagnosed as the mumps.
Bob Somerby, for many years now, and Glenn Greenwald and others more recently have been pointing out that the right wing, with tremendous MCM help, fomented extreme hatred against our last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. (One could go further back, of course; shortly before Kennedy's assassination, "Wanted" posters went up in parts of Dallas.) Almost immediately upon Clinton's election, the nutcases, often funded by extremely wealthy individual and corporate interests, some of the same ones behind the Teabaggers, did everything they could to ruin Clinton's presidency, often in conjunction with the Republican opposition. If anyone thinks it's possible to minimize the craziness Clinton faced, culminating the multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, aided eagerly by The New York Times, and for which both President Clinton and Hillary Clinton were exonerated, just recall the ultimate GOP-led act, the attempted impeachment in 1998. I can vividly remember when the uproar among Democrats from that insane spectacle seemed so great as to ever prevent anyone from the GOP ever winning the presidency again, and yet a year later, the GOP and MCM (reporters and columnists at the NY Times and Washington Post, figures from NBC, Fox, etc.) began their "War on Gore," and we ended up with the Supreme Court coup that installed the disaster known as George W. Bush on us.
I mention this history because while I am--as are, I'm sure, quite a few people around the US--quite aware that racism and white supremacy are always in operation in this society, I do believe that attributing the current derangements of the right solely or even primarily to racism denies this prior history, which was still firmly in place when Clinton left office. Racism, while a major source, is still only one of many behind the behavior on display at the town hall rallies, the recent Teabagger rally in Washington, and above all, on the right-wing/corporate propaganda headquarters-channel, Fox News. Had Hillary Clinton won, we wouldn't be seeing the same sort of direct racist and racialist animus (the Curious George T-shirts, the "birther" push, the signs of Obama as a witch doctor, etc.), though racism would be in the mix, as it was during the Clinton years (remember the obsessive push to end welfare, even though corporate welfare reached insane heights under Bush, and affirmative action, which, studies in the late 1990s showed, primarily benefited white women?). With a President Hillary in office, we probably would be seing even more and outlandish displays of sexism and misogyny, and not just from the right, but from the MCM, whose members (Chris Matthews is notorious) have long been among the worst offenders. But attacks on undocumented immigrants and "producerist" arguments, prettified by the likes of David Brooks, wouldn't be unthinkable.
Let me be clear: my aim is not to minimize the particular foci of some of the worst attacks on Obama, but to note that we had the militias, the anti-government nuts, the millenialists, and so on in full force from 1992-2000, alongside a GOP Congressional caucus that took political and personal destruction of the sitting president and complete repeal of the New Deal legacy as its organizing principle. Newt Gingrich did not simply want to stop Clinton's presidency in its tracks, he wanted to shred Clinton personally. Think of some of the most outspoken figures on the right during the impeachment drama and the revelation of Clinton's affair. When their efforts failed repeatedly, this led, as we now see, to even more thuggish tactics, such as installing a president and Congress, by hook or crook (or voting machine) who could just dynamite the government entirely. According to a recent Census report, according to almost every economic indicator the vast majority of Americans finished the 8 years of Bush's presidency worse off than before. The wealthiest .1 percent and many corporate interests--or at least the people running them, if not the shareholders--were the economic losers.
To quote The Atlantic on this topic:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.
The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.
I'm hardly saying anything that most J's Theater readers don't already know, but I mention this record, all but buried by the MCM (tell me, when have you seen any of the major "liberal" or "progressive" MCM reporters or columnists discuss this record at any length, to inform the majority of people out there what's going on) to say that one of the great sources of the rage on display at last weekend's rally, is ignorance, which the MCM have only helped to deepen rather than dispel.
The reasons behind this are numerous, but one central one is that corporate interests (just like our Congress, which willingly works hand in glove with them) benefit by keeping people as misinformed as possible. There is also, as this telling clip of CNBC's scandal-plagued anchor Maria Bartiromodemonstrates, the fact of media personalities' own gross ignorance (again, cf. Chris Matthews). But rather than go on, I'll post the clip below, which has been making its rounds on the Net. It illustrates perhaps more powerfully than anything I might say here what I'm talking about. Please watch it till the end, because it shows, for a rare change, a reporter breaking the supposedly objective, journalistic frame and politely stating and clarifying facts for some of these people. Unfortunately, this happens so very rarely that it's hard not to be cynical. Whatever the source of the MCM's ongoing silence, it's a major problem and will continue to be for the rest of Obama's (or any Democrat's) terms. What's even more unfortunate is that I don't get the sense that he or many in his team, like many in Congress, have any clue or, worse, care at all about this. The results, however, could be something worse than the Bush administration. Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, and any number of other very dangerous characters are lurking out there, and with a heavily corporated-funded campaign with pseudo-populist aspects, we'd all be in very serious trouble. 2001-2008 might end up looking like the Coolidge years.
(Please watch to the end to see the reporter challenge the protesters' ignorance.)
+++
On the sports tip, the New York Jets have started the NFL season 2-0, defeating their nemeses, the New England Patriots 16-9 today, preventing a comeback by the media darling Tom Brady. The Big Green have a sharp new coach, Rex Ryan, and one of the most talented young quarterbacks in the league, rookie Mark Sanchez (at right, Nick Laham/Getty Images) of USC. The Jets don't have the toughest schedule this season, so they could conceivably go 12-4 or 13-3. That is, if they can keep playing like they are now, or even improve. Then the playoffs will be more than a mirage.
The Saint Louis Rams, however, are 0-2, losing 9-7 to a shaky Washington squad, and look no better than their 2-14 predecessors of last season. In fact, they look worse. 10 years ago they were known as the league's highest scoring teams, with iffy defense. Now they have middling defense and no scoring capability at all. Their quarterback is sacked at will, they cannot convert drives into runs, and they make countless mistakes game after game. I am starting to think the new ownership may be trying to once again ship a team out of St. Louis towards more financially beneficial (southern California?) climes. Looking at their schedule, they face both pushover and tough teams (though no AFC East teams, nor the Giants or Eagles, thankfully), but they still could conceivably go 0-16. They do meet the Detroit Lions at midseason, so a 1-15 outcome isn't impossible.
In the MLB, the Yankees have the best record in the AL, at 95-55. Perennial All Star Derek Jeter has broken Lou Gehrig's team hit record, CC Sabathia (at right, AP) is powering his way to a Cy Young Award at 18-7, and the team overall, like the finely tuned machine it has been for long stretches over its history, is humming along under manager Joe Girardi. The other top teams in the AL are the Boston Red Sox, who lead the Wild Card race (again), the Detroit Tigers, and the mouthful but ever talented Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Yankees and the Angels are the teams to beat, but the Red Sox are always dangerous.
In the NL, the Saint Louis Cardinals are again atop the NL West, though they don't have the league's best record. That honor goes to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Cardinals do, however, have the league's best pitching--two starters, Adam Wainwright (18-8, 2.59 ERA), and Chris Carpenter (16-4, 2.43 ERA), are leading contenders for the NL Cy Young--and its best overall hitter in Albert Pujols (47 home runs, 119 runs scored, 127 runs batted in, .328 average), a latter day Stan Musial. He and the pitching have kept the team afloat; the last week the Cardinals have staggered more than swaggered. The Dodgers, however, have more balance across their lineup, and could be dangerous in the playoffs. The other top teams are the East leaders, the Philadelphia Phillies, last year's World Series champions, who look powerful enough to go all the way, and the current Wild Card leading Colorado Rockies, who always have a strong home-field advantage and great batters. I'm rooting for the Cardinals, but this quartet is a toss-up.
The Cardinals vs. the Yankees (which last occurred in 1964, with the Cardinals winning four games to three) would be my preferred World Series matchup. Will it happen? Let's see.
It's the old routine: arrive at the airport, check my flight status (which I now do on my phone and crosscheck against the departures boards), see that it's on time, get to the gate, then learn the flight's delayed...oh well. Thankfully I'm not trying to make an evening meeting or class. Instead, as I've posted elsewhere (Facebook, Twitter), I learned this Monday morning as we were about to return from Provincetown that my grandmother had passed away, at age 88. I'm thus headed back to the midwest for the funeral and family-related issues. One irony is that my grandmother took me on my first airplane trip, to Washington, DC, to visit my aunt and cousins who were living there, 40 years ago, back in 1969. In recent years, waiting in airports or other transportation hubs appears to be my fate, so let me offer my thanks to the ubiquity of wireless technology, making such posts as this one possible (though I always carry more books with me than I can possibly read), and take a pointer from my late grandmother, who was always full of good thoughts and optimistic to the very end, whether faced with sitting on the tarmac, or far worse.
###
Shortly after I'd posted my Michael Jackson note, I realized that in my class this past winter, we or I might have--I use the past conditional because, truthfully, I only hazily recall the reference, which might have been a blip in a conversation but was definitely not part of the syllabus--broached him in relation to one of the course's topics, "transhumanism/posthumanism." I think the reference arose based on his successive physical and aesthetic transformations. We did look specifically at a figure like Stelarc, but we also touched upon both self-proclaimed artists like Orlan, and non-artists who could be discussed as such, like Jocelyn Wildenstein. Now that I think about Jackson, I realize that I probably could have developed a complete little module about him in relation to the larger topic, as the surgeries, his own narratives about exceeding or surpassing the human, the use of various analog and digital technologies, and so on, would place him well within aesthetic discussions that range from the earliest examples of this notion (the use of early sound technologies, say, or prostheses) to transgenesis, advanced and digitized prosthesis, and so on. Of course I'm hardly the only one who's thought of him in this way, but the idea of the transhuman makes me wonder about what it might mean in a larger sense to think of Michael Jackson in relation to transhumanism and the posthuman? How does that check the impulse to critique in psychological and moral about his skin-lightening and feature-thinning regime, his approach to parenting, his sometimes technologically advanced sleeping arrangements? Is it possible to talk about this approach to his life--as opposed, say, to his art--without shutting down or off other avenues (think negative capability)? Was he the first great black transhumanist/posthumanist artist, or would others (Sun Ra, for example) qualify? R. Sirius, in his provocative h+ article, suggests that Jackson is someone whose example should be avoided, but he also goes on to make an array of points about how to relate Jackson to a conceptual program in which he's usually not overtly linked. What do you think?
Of course there is also the possibility to consider Jackson's strangeness--which Rev. Al Sharpton, in his eulogy, deflected back onto Jackson's critics and questioners, somewhat unfairly I think, given how strange Jackson truly was and is (he was!)--in relation to conceptual art itself. One of the first things I suggested to my class was that we might think of our sitting in that classroom as a conceptual art project and could legitimately claim our performances and experiences as such if we--or someone else--properly framed it as such. They grasped this pretty quickly, but held it lightly, because of course they had to do lots of reading, participate in class conversations, and write papers, and unlike participants in a conceptual project, they couldn't just walk out and not expect some direct effect on their grade. (Though I also always take to heart Gertrude Stein's [in]famous response to a test in William James's class, so....) But what if we think about Michael Jackson's life, in all its rich strangeness, as a conceptual project, endlessly unfolding (still, after his death--remember he is posthuman), one that he might have been aware of, perhaps not in the ways that conceptual practices have been developed since George Brecht, Allen Kaprow, and others in the late 1950s, but more broadly in light of such proto-conceptual theorists and practioners, people who did argue for and in several cases transform their lives into works or art, or at least break down the barrier between them to a striking degree, like Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Claude Cahun, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage, and situate some of the at-times disturbing aspects--Wacko Jacko!--in light of this constellatory perspective? We can start, say, with that chimpanzee....
A third perspective I thought of, particularly after reading a gossipy piece in one of the British tabloids--The Sun? The Mirror?--which purported to out Jackson (he had several gay male longterm boyfriends/lovers, etc.), was of Jackson as a queer icon. I'm thinking of queerness in its array of meanings, in regard to issues of orientation, identity, sexuality, gender--and I know I wasn't the only person who thought that Jackson had remade himself at various points into Diana Ross (as Dorothy, with that fro), then, at least facially, into the young Elizabeth Taylor, and then, as one of the late 1990s mugshots appeared to suggest, and perhaps not purposefully, into something on the order of Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest, among others--family, another way of reading that "strange" that Sharpton evoked, or "funny," as people might say, meaning in relation to normalized social categories more generally, "queer" might be another way of thinking about him and how he moved through the world. More than anything, his ways of living challenged all sorts of norms of American and African American middle-class respectability, which led to considerable criticism (no, we didn't always love him, well, not all of us, no matter what people are saying now.) I'm also thinking of the arguments advanced a few years ago by scholars like Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam, and, in a different way, by José Estéban Muñoz and Tim Dean, regarding queer antisocialities and approaches to hetero and increasingly homonormativities. If we expand the notions of the queer family (as my mother said to me tonight about Joe Jackson, "those are not his biological grandchildren!"), wouldn't his creative and ever-shifting family unit, as well as the paternity of and his behavior with his 3 children be less grist for some of the tut-tutting that has occurred? (Then there's the gaggle of children he had living with and visiting him at Neverland and elsewhere, though I am not, however, talking about the pedophilic allegations.) What about his (re-)conceptualizations of home, which sometimes ranged to the highly inventive? And on and on. One thought I had was, would thinking about Michael through a queer lens be yet another step towards normalizing away the queerness that made MJ often so compelling, iconic and singular? How far should the normalizing power of queerly reorienting one's perspective go, for him or anyone else?
###
Last night Rachel Maddow had Pat Buchanan on her MSNBC show. As I noted a day ago, in response to Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination Buchanan has been particularly toxic. Last night he didn't disappoint, spewing rhetoric that would not have been out of place at a Klan rally. Across the web I've seen a good deal of praise for Maddow's response, and I do agree that she held her own under the circumstances. Yet the fact that this very smart woman wasn't able to marshal even a few general historical facts to counter Buchanan's assertion that "this country was built up by white people" dismayed me. I mean, come on. Whether we're talking about Buchanan's native city (Washington, DC), the city in which MSNBC is headquartered (New York), or great swathes of this country, but people of every ethnicity have "built" this country, in the physical, economic, political, and social senses. At the very least, she could have just blurted out, what about the enslaved people or the black folks and the native americans and been on solid ground. Yet she didn't counter this assertion directly, at least not at first. It was a crazy assertion, and probably as blatantly white supremacist as I've heard Buchanan utter, though he did vomit out a kleaglish stream during the segment (see for yourself below), much of it right-wing myths and canards that have been dispelled a while ago. Maddow found her voice soon enough, and challenged Buchanan on various grounds, while also politely suggesting that he perhaps didn't "mean" what he was saying, an ironic gesture I know since nyone watching, as well as both Maddow and Buchanan themselves, knew exactly what he was saying. Perhaps she was letting him know, in the nicest manner possible, that he wouldn't be coming back on her show. Some people across the net have said that they want him to hang around as the public face of the GOP, but with Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Gingrich, Giuliani, Romney, Fox News, and the unending string of hypocritical adulterers on the scene, I seriously think we can do without Buchanan. He and his sister Bay can go fulminate, or bay, at their racial demons somewhere far, far away from any TV cameras. Seriously.
A friend, translator, scholar and librarian 
On the sports tip, the 
In the MLB, the 
Shortly after I'd posted my