Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
No need for Goya as court painter when you have HOLA!
The little daughter of Spain's Infanta Elena, Victoria Federica, dressed in Valencia's regional costume for the Fallas.
More Puerto Ricans in the News: Maricarmen Ramirez
Last week's NYTimes Magazine, dedicated to prominent women in the artworld included an article that I described to my fellow members of the Latin American artworld and to my students as "a cross between a telenovela and The Godfather." Maricarmen Ramirez, the powerful curator and scholar of Latin American art, head of the Latin American Art department at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, was featured in the context of the alleged "discovery of Latin American art in the USA." This is someone that I have a lot of respect for and whose articles have been key to my education, her exhibitions have led me to see artists' works in new, enlightening ways.
THE ARTICLE - Note the cliched title "After Frida"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/magazine/23ramirez-t.html?ex=1363838400&en=c6fca3ba1d8d56ae&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
MOVERS & SHAKERS
After Frida
By ARTHUR LUBOW
Published: March 23, 2008
How the curator Mari Carmen Ramírez has helped put Latin America at the center of the international art world.
As I have commented many many many times, close study of the reception of art from Latin America and the Caribbean in this country during the 20th and now 21st century is premised on a series of tropes and binaries that recur each decade. Foremost among these is the notion of "discovery" and "re-discovery" obviously related to our colonial history. Related to this is the financial metaphor of the "boom." What strikes me is the ways in which some of us market ourselves as US-based Native informants and Cultural brokers who take (usually sole) credit for "putting Latin American art on the map" as we compete with fellow curators and scholars in the global artworld market place. This is very very much in evidence in the NYTimes article. On the one hand, sadly Ramirez has fed this dynamic herself by a very combative manner of presenting her extremely useful, and highly intelligent exhibitions, articles and projects as completely unique, while attacking her colleagues. Clearly, some kind of "tipping point" has been reached in order to allow people to go on the record with their grievances against her. What used to be provincial bochinche is now public knowledge.
Aside from the fact that often she insults people, do we want our so-called field to be represented in the mass media in this way? Maybe I'm being too much like Rodney King "Why can't we all get along?" But we are now witnessing a situation where people who should be working together collegially to promote these artists are in some kind of an ego-tripping, capitalist-emulating, neo-Colonial dynamic that apes the worst types of US global corporate culture. The latter of course, are, I believe, all features of our supposed "insertion" or "inclusion" within US museums.
And Lubow's framing of the story as that of Ramirez as someone who "puts Latin American art on the map" is, of course, another clearly problematic colonial metaphor. Journalists reinforce these tropes each and every time they are assigned or propose an article about this geographic construct known as "Latin American art." And this is the way in which the conveniently packaged region has been promoted by dealers, curators, art historians and collectors within the US, as many people have rightly observed ad nauseum.
Lubow (as do many of us in the artworld) also reaffirms another rather tired stereotype - the binary of abstraction versus political figuration. This binary plays into the hands of so-called mainstream US museum curators as well as allows rich right-wing collectors to suppress art with political content. Of course this paves the way for certain Native Informants and Cultural brokers to gain entry into prominent US museums. Paulo Herkenhoff's use of the term "Manifest Destiny" in relation to MoMA was especially apt. And Edward Sullivan's observation that a new canon is being formed in reaction to an older one is also very prescient. He rightly underscores the ways in which such US-driven binaries impair the study and proper understanding of the full intellectual, formal, political complexities of the works of individual artists, of the kinds of modernities that developed in specific areas. And, I would add, it implicitly denies the fact that figuration can be a form of modernity and experimentation, and that form and content are not by nature opposing terms. Such ideas are now commonplace in art historical discourse, yet they seem to be ignored in the so-called Latin American art field as elaborated by some Native Informants and Cultural Brokers.
Finally, a few observations:
Ramirez did her PhD thesis on Mexican Muralism but, like intellectuals tarred as enemies of the people during the Cultural Revolution, she now has to perform the requisite public renunciation of Frida Kahlo, the new bogeyman.
She invokes her Puerto Rican origin repeatedly to claim a marginal status of some kind. Yet in Puerto Rico many criticize her for her renunciation of her earlier interest in Puerto Rican artists. Looking at her history, we see how these artists gradually disappear from her exhibitions or acquisitions in favor of the Southern Cone. And, by the way, Puerto Rico is NOT the last remaining colony in the Caribbean, as a friend who works for the State Department pointed out to me.
The misogynist schadenfreude that pervades much of the artworld is much in evidence as some men attack a powerful woman who expresses herself in forthright ways that, were a man to adopt them, would pass unremarked upon or be a source for congratulation. And of course, to me it is a sad irony to see a female Latina curator using an attack on a Mexican woman artist as a strategy to buttress her position in the male-dominated artworld.
NOTE: SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL DEBATE AND SOME ADDED CLARIFICATIONS FROM PETITE MAOISTE - this story is really tormenting me, you see.
THE ARTICLE - Note the cliched title "After Frida"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/magazine/23ramirez-t.html?ex=1363838400&en=c6fca3ba1d8d56ae&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
MOVERS & SHAKERS
After Frida
By ARTHUR LUBOW
Published: March 23, 2008
How the curator Mari Carmen Ramírez has helped put Latin America at the center of the international art world.
It Wasn't Enough For Them to Ruin Vieques....
It wasn't enough that the US's favorite unknown colony was finally getting air-time "hey, did you know that their primary is the last one, in June," commentators were joking about it on the cable networks and wishing they would get to cover that so they could hit the beach. Meanwhile, the ignorant masses are probably asking themselves "Puerto Rico, why the fuck are they allowed to vote in our primaries?"
And then our Governor gets hit with 19 indictments by the FBI. I am so despondent about the various ramifications of that story that I cannot bring myself to comment on it.
Now they want to fuck up Culebra for the rest of us. General gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair ensued among all of my Boricua friends when we saw the typically racist NYTimes travel profile of Puerto Rico's charming but backwards and (FOR NOW) under-developed outlying island, Culebra. Already they announce a fancy resort is invading the place and quote disgruntled Gringo ex-pats complaining that "their" "discovery" is being ruined. There are all of the cliches regarding the quaintly amusing inconveniences of CP time. "Those Puerto Ricans sure are lazy and unreliable, but WTF? we're on vacation, right?"
RAVEL / ESCAPES
A Tropical Getaway in Puerto Rico That’s Also a Bargain
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: March 28, 2008
Culebra is often bypassed in favor of its better-known neighbors in the Caribbean.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/travel/escapes/28culebra.html?ex=1364443200&en=8597317bc4e85929&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
RAVEL / ESCAPES
A Tropical Getaway in Puerto Rico That’s Also a Bargain
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: March 28, 2008
Culebra is often bypassed in favor of its better-known neighbors in the Caribbean.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/travel/escapes/28culebra.html?ex=1364443200&en=8597317bc4e85929&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Go to these sites
HILLARY CLINTON FARTED UNDER THE COVERS
http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/
http://hillaryclintonisyournewbicycle.com/
http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/
http://hillaryclintonisyournewbicycle.com/
You will laugh out loud.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Hillary Clinton: Delusions of Grandeur?
Pat Oliphant cartoon published in NYTimes Week in Review section 3/23/08This cartoon is hilarious as it makes reference to the recently-released records of Clinton's activities as First Lady. These make it plain that her grandiose claims positing her role as something akin to, or indeed above, a Vice President, going so far as to take credit for major diplomatic or domestic projects, have been demonstrated as false. Also, commentators have pointed out that she did not have a Security Clearance, which means that some of the claims she is making about her involvement are of course, impossible.
Here are links to the NYTimes articles:
Article detailing the inconsistencies in her comments --
Article detailing the inconsistencies in her comments --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/politics/23experience.html?ex=1364011200&en=455d7edd31db533e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Caucus blog comments about the Clinton campaign's attempts at damage-control, and Clinton's statements saying she "misspoke," in this case, about her role in Bosnia. I think lied is the actual term. As a lawyer she might be expected to know this.
Cuban Art The Flavor Du Jour, Replaces Chinese Art As the Emerging Market
Back to one of my recurring themes: the commodification of the authentic exotic. The boom-bust cycles that govern the reception and market for art produced by artists from Latin American countries does not surprise me. Since I have been following for years North American and Europeans drive to romanticize the Cuban Revolution and its corollaries, sexual tourism or fascination with purchasing objects to thwart the US embargo, this article from the WSJ (below) is confirmation of what I believe. Ironically, I brought this up during a discussion following papers discussing the market for Cuban art, the role of the Bienal de la Habana and other exhibitions. The papers addressed the ways in which the foreign fascination with Cuba intersects with the the global culture of exhibitions or how US collectors and curators negotiate access given the US embargo and prohibitions on travel.
One of the speakers mentioned that some artists make reference to these political issues and that some exhibitions benefit from the former, as they attract foreign artworld participants. Thus I asked if part of the marketing carried out by curators, artists and the cultural organs of the government play on this fascination with the forbidden, as they have in China, knowing full well that privileged foreigners will be drawn to the frisson of accessing the inacessible, purchasing the rare, visiting "forbidden" events, that whiff of exclusivity that will be fascinating cocktail party chatter later. Now China is "done." Cuba is "fresh." China is tired, everyone can go there, the market is tapped out, over-priced. Like climbing Mt. Everest or traveling to Bhutan, Cuba is exotic and rare, and, like a poor neighborhood prior to gentrification, an area perfect for speculation and getting in on the ground floor.
from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
The Cuban Art Revolution
Collectors are betting the next hot art hub will be an island most Americans still can't visit. Now, some U.S. art lovers are finding legal ways into Cuba to shop for works -- before the market gets too crowded.
Cuban art embodies a pluralistic mix of Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences and motifs. Wifredo Lam, who died in 1982, is considered Cuba's Picasso, and Cuba's current contemporary art stars include Kcho, Manuel Mendive and the art duo Los Carpinteros. These artists tend to favor found objects like weathered woods and scrap metals. Cuban art has long addressed themes specific to the island, such as isolation and the sea: Rafts, towers and oars are frequent symbols. Lately more of the art has also tried to address global concerns like immigration and the economy. Photographer Juan Pablo Ballester, now living in Spain, hires porn actors to pose in Catalonian police uniforms as a sly political critique.
In Havana, artists must give up to half their sales to the government and must gain approval to travel or show anywhere off the island. A smattering of state-owned commercial galleries across Cuba sell to tourists. Some of Havana's top dealers also show at art fairs in Paris and Germany.
Cuba began trying to differentiate its art market from the Latin American pack as early as the 1980s, with a biennial in Havana that drew curators and collectors from around the world. These exhibitions -- now typically held every two to three years as government funds permit -- have nurtured ties between Cuban artists and galleries worldwide, including in the U.S. In New York, Tomás Sánchez's scenic paintings now sell for up to $700,000, double his asking price five years ago, according to his dealer at Manhattan's Marlborough Gallery.
Works by Cuban artists aren't necessarily less expensive in Havana than in New York or London. With international interest in Cuban art on the rise, Cuban galleries now charge international prices, and many insist on payment in euros.
But collectors who meet and form relationships with artists in Cuba may get a small discount and are likely to get first dibs on the best new work -- before it reaches galleries in Europe or New York. This type of access is particularly valuable for Americans competing with European and Latin American collectors who have been coming and going freely in Cuba for years. Cuban dealers say that Americans now make up more than a third of their buyers; some dealers put the figure as high as 80%. The U.S. government generally does not allow Havana-based artists to visit America.
Travelers hoping to take artwork home from Cuba must bring it to Cuba's Ministry of Culture, along with a small payment and a letter from the artist or gallery attesting that the work isn't stolen or wanted by any Cuban museums. Ministry workers then issue a letter of approval allowing the work to leave. Collectors say Cuban customs officials at the airport invariably ask to see these letters and will confiscate any undocumented artworks; customs officials on the U.S. side rarely ask.
Not everything gets out. Clyde Hensley, a Florida art dealer, says two years ago he tried to bring back a painting by the artist Quiala from eastern Cuba depicting a Chinese rice cooker with wings descending onto a Cuban landscape -- at a time when the Chinese were boosting their investments in Cuba. He was denied a letter of approval. Ultimately, he returned the painting to the artist, who got the necessary approvals from the ministry's branch office in Guantanamo and sent it along with a relative who had permission to visit family in Florida.
Prominent American collectors of Cuban art include software developer Peter Norton, philanthropist Beth Rudin DeWoody, developer Craig Robins and Howard Farber, a Miami collector. Mr. Farber made his fortune as co-owner of the Video Shack chain. In the 1990s, he spent $2 million scouring China and buying up canvases by contemporary artists such as Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi and Cai Guo Qiang for as little as $10,000 apiece. Last October, he auctioned off 45 works at Phillips de Pury for $20 million. British collector Charles Saatchi was among the buyers.
Now, Mr. Farber is buying up to three Cuban works a month, priced anywhere from $7,500 to $140,000. The catalyst, he says, was a "magical" visit he made to Havana seven years ago on a cultural tour led by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He says he sees parallels between the rebellious art made in China following the Tiananmen Square protests and art made during pivotal periods in Cuba's revolutionary history.
Unable to get permission to return to Cuba, Mr. Farber says he has largely relied on email to cultivate a network of artists and dealers in Havana who send him digital images of art for sale. He says the cost to ship one sculpture from Cuba to Miami can top $10,000 because the seller often needs to send the work on a circuitous route that might include stops in Nicaragua and London before reaching him in Florida. Mr. Farber says he has never found a cargo company that would agree to ship a large sculpture directly from Havana to Miami.
Art experts are still divided over Cuba's market potential. Carmen Melian, Sotheby's director of Latin American art, says that the markets for China, India and Russia benefit from the vast population and recent wealth creation in those countries. By contrast, Cuba's wealthy diaspora established itself in Miami decades ago, and its seasoned collectors are just as likely to buy contemporary stars like Richard Prince as Cuban works, Ms. Melian says. Some Cuban-Americans are also reluctant to buy works by artists who stayed in Havana during Castro's tenure, though Miami private dealer Jose Alonso says that if the Cuban art market blossoms, collectors won't worry about Castro ties.
Yoan Capote, a popular 31-year-old artist living in Havana, came of age during what Cubans call the "Special Period" of economic crisis in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Recently, his conceptual sculptures have won attention from dealers in the U.S. and, in 2006, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. For one piece, titled "Nostalgia," he built a brick wall inside a suitcase.
He first met American buyers through a string of museum-led tours during a spell in the late 1990s when the U.S. travel restrictions were loosened, a trend that ended sharply after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Now, he says, Americans are beginning to trickle into his studio again, and he and his peers are "preparing now for a time when Cuba will change."
For him, that means strengthening ties with the local, government-owned Galeria Habana, which until recently he overlooked in favor of his New York and European dealers when selling major works. His local dealer Luis Miret last month found an American buyer who paid about $44,000 for "The Island," a seascape he made by weaving together thousands of bloodied fishhooks. He says the city's two other top galleries are also positioning themselves to handle an influx of high-end visitors.
"Maybe we'll lose our exoticism," he adds, "but I think we can develop another kind of attraction."
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com5
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120613745916555929.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120516076522024319.html
(2) http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-cubamap0803.html
(3) http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20080321/pod-wsjwknd/pod-wsjwknd.mp3
(4) http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20080321/pod-wsjwknd/pod-wsjwknd.mp3
(5) mailto:kelly.crow@wsj.com
from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
The Cuban Art Revolution
Collectors are betting the next hot art hub will be an island most Americans still can't visit. Now, some U.S. art lovers are finding legal ways into Cuba to shop for works -- before the market gets too crowded.
By KELLY CROW
March 22, 2008; Page W1
John Crago, an agricultural exporter from Colorado, took a business trip to Cuba last spring. He came back with 60 paintings, from island landscapes to abstract works, rolled up in his carry-on luggage.
With art from Asia and Russia in demand, some in the art world are betting on Cuba to be the next hot corner of the market. Prices for Cuban art are climbing at galleries and auction houses, and major museums are adding to their Cuban collections. In May, Sotheby's broke the auction record for a Cuban work when it sold Mario Carreño's modernist painting "Danza Afro-Cubana" for $2.6 million, triple its high estimate.
Now, with a new Cuban president in power and some hope emerging for looser travel and trade restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba, American collectors and art investors are moving quickly to tap into the market. Some are getting into Cuba by setting up humanitarian missions and scouting art while they're there. Others are ordering works from Cuba based on email images and having them shipped.
The collectors are taking advantage of a little-known exception to the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba: It is legal for Americans to buy Cuban art. Unlike cigars or rum, which are considered commercial products, the U.S. government classifies Cuban artworks as cultural assets, and Americans can bring them into the U.S.
Getting into Cuba to buy the art is a trickier proposition. The U.S. trade embargo, in place since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 communist revolution, has severely limited visits to the island by American art buyers. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control says it gives out only about 30 travel licenses a year to Americans who ask to travel to Cuba to scout for "informational materials" like art. Typically they are curators or art dealers.
Other collectors are taking advantage of legal loopholes to get into Cuba to shop for art. The Treasury Department, for instance, gives out travel licenses to Americans who pledge to do humanitarian, scholarly or religious work in Cuba.
Percy Steinhart, a Palm Beach, Fla., maker of luxury tuxedo slippers, created a one-man foundation a few years ago, securing a humanitarian license to deliver gym clothes and dress shoes to disabled Cuban children. But he also used the trip to visit the studio of Kcho, one of Cuba's most popular artists, and paid $3,000 for a pair of the artist's drawings, including one showing people using stilts shaped like oars to wade into the sea.
Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, a New York collector, helped form a charitable group called the Cuban Artists Fund in 1998, which allows him to visit Cuba about once a year. He buys several works per trip. "It's the forbidden fruit," he says.
Mr. Crago, who takes licensed agricultural trips to Cuba, has bought 130 works of art, paying anywhere from about $300 for a dreamy landscape by a lesser-known artist such as Danya Diaz to $30,000 for a modernist abstract painting by Aguedo Alonso, a Cuban art star.
A spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department says such moves may "seem contrary to the spirit of the rules" but are nevertheless legal.
Even those who gain illegal access to Cuba by flying first to Canada or Caribbean islands and then booking a flight to Havana using a Cuban or Mexican airline -- a practice that can carry a fine of $15,000 to $65,000 -- can legally buy artworks once there, says Michael Krinsky, a New York lawyer who specializes in art and embargo law.
March 22, 2008; Page W1
John Crago, an agricultural exporter from Colorado, took a business trip to Cuba last spring. He came back with 60 paintings, from island landscapes to abstract works, rolled up in his carry-on luggage.
With art from Asia and Russia in demand, some in the art world are betting on Cuba to be the next hot corner of the market. Prices for Cuban art are climbing at galleries and auction houses, and major museums are adding to their Cuban collections. In May, Sotheby's broke the auction record for a Cuban work when it sold Mario Carreño's modernist painting "Danza Afro-Cubana" for $2.6 million, triple its high estimate.
Now, with a new Cuban president in power and some hope emerging for looser travel and trade restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba, American collectors and art investors are moving quickly to tap into the market. Some are getting into Cuba by setting up humanitarian missions and scouting art while they're there. Others are ordering works from Cuba based on email images and having them shipped.
The collectors are taking advantage of a little-known exception to the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba: It is legal for Americans to buy Cuban art. Unlike cigars or rum, which are considered commercial products, the U.S. government classifies Cuban artworks as cultural assets, and Americans can bring them into the U.S.
Getting into Cuba to buy the art is a trickier proposition. The U.S. trade embargo, in place since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 communist revolution, has severely limited visits to the island by American art buyers. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control says it gives out only about 30 travel licenses a year to Americans who ask to travel to Cuba to scout for "informational materials" like art. Typically they are curators or art dealers.
Other collectors are taking advantage of legal loopholes to get into Cuba to shop for art. The Treasury Department, for instance, gives out travel licenses to Americans who pledge to do humanitarian, scholarly or religious work in Cuba.
Percy Steinhart, a Palm Beach, Fla., maker of luxury tuxedo slippers, created a one-man foundation a few years ago, securing a humanitarian license to deliver gym clothes and dress shoes to disabled Cuban children. But he also used the trip to visit the studio of Kcho, one of Cuba's most popular artists, and paid $3,000 for a pair of the artist's drawings, including one showing people using stilts shaped like oars to wade into the sea.
Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, a New York collector, helped form a charitable group called the Cuban Artists Fund in 1998, which allows him to visit Cuba about once a year. He buys several works per trip. "It's the forbidden fruit," he says.
Mr. Crago, who takes licensed agricultural trips to Cuba, has bought 130 works of art, paying anywhere from about $300 for a dreamy landscape by a lesser-known artist such as Danya Diaz to $30,000 for a modernist abstract painting by Aguedo Alonso, a Cuban art star.
A spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department says such moves may "seem contrary to the spirit of the rules" but are nevertheless legal.
Even those who gain illegal access to Cuba by flying first to Canada or Caribbean islands and then booking a flight to Havana using a Cuban or Mexican airline -- a practice that can carry a fine of $15,000 to $65,000 -- can legally buy artworks once there, says Michael Krinsky, a New York lawyer who specializes in art and embargo law.
Some American collectors think that Cuba may be the next trendy art hub with prices already rising. Market watchers expect American demand for Cuban art to surge if travel or trade restrictions are loosened through diplomatic talks between Cuba's new president, Raul Castro, and the next U.S. president. The likelihood of that scenario could depend on who is elected to the U.S. presidency in November. Last month at a debate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said that if elected, he would meet Mr. Castro "without preconditions," though he would first seek "preparations," including progress in Cuba on human rights. Sen. Hillary Clinton said at the debate that she would push for reform in Cuba but only meet with Mr. Castro if there were evidence of changes there. Republican Sen. John McCain has consistently said that he wouldn't hold diplomatic talks with Mr. Castro.
Cuban art embodies a pluralistic mix of Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences and motifs. Wifredo Lam, who died in 1982, is considered Cuba's Picasso, and Cuba's current contemporary art stars include Kcho, Manuel Mendive and the art duo Los Carpinteros. These artists tend to favor found objects like weathered woods and scrap metals. Cuban art has long addressed themes specific to the island, such as isolation and the sea: Rafts, towers and oars are frequent symbols. Lately more of the art has also tried to address global concerns like immigration and the economy. Photographer Juan Pablo Ballester, now living in Spain, hires porn actors to pose in Catalonian police uniforms as a sly political critique.
In Havana, artists must give up to half their sales to the government and must gain approval to travel or show anywhere off the island. A smattering of state-owned commercial galleries across Cuba sell to tourists. Some of Havana's top dealers also show at art fairs in Paris and Germany.
Cuba began trying to differentiate its art market from the Latin American pack as early as the 1980s, with a biennial in Havana that drew curators and collectors from around the world. These exhibitions -- now typically held every two to three years as government funds permit -- have nurtured ties between Cuban artists and galleries worldwide, including in the U.S. In New York, Tomás Sánchez's scenic paintings now sell for up to $700,000, double his asking price five years ago, according to his dealer at Manhattan's Marlborough Gallery.
Works by Cuban artists aren't necessarily less expensive in Havana than in New York or London. With international interest in Cuban art on the rise, Cuban galleries now charge international prices, and many insist on payment in euros.
But collectors who meet and form relationships with artists in Cuba may get a small discount and are likely to get first dibs on the best new work -- before it reaches galleries in Europe or New York. This type of access is particularly valuable for Americans competing with European and Latin American collectors who have been coming and going freely in Cuba for years. Cuban dealers say that Americans now make up more than a third of their buyers; some dealers put the figure as high as 80%. The U.S. government generally does not allow Havana-based artists to visit America.
Travelers hoping to take artwork home from Cuba must bring it to Cuba's Ministry of Culture, along with a small payment and a letter from the artist or gallery attesting that the work isn't stolen or wanted by any Cuban museums. Ministry workers then issue a letter of approval allowing the work to leave. Collectors say Cuban customs officials at the airport invariably ask to see these letters and will confiscate any undocumented artworks; customs officials on the U.S. side rarely ask.
Not everything gets out. Clyde Hensley, a Florida art dealer, says two years ago he tried to bring back a painting by the artist Quiala from eastern Cuba depicting a Chinese rice cooker with wings descending onto a Cuban landscape -- at a time when the Chinese were boosting their investments in Cuba. He was denied a letter of approval. Ultimately, he returned the painting to the artist, who got the necessary approvals from the ministry's branch office in Guantanamo and sent it along with a relative who had permission to visit family in Florida.
Prominent American collectors of Cuban art include software developer Peter Norton, philanthropist Beth Rudin DeWoody, developer Craig Robins and Howard Farber, a Miami collector. Mr. Farber made his fortune as co-owner of the Video Shack chain. In the 1990s, he spent $2 million scouring China and buying up canvases by contemporary artists such as Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi and Cai Guo Qiang for as little as $10,000 apiece. Last October, he auctioned off 45 works at Phillips de Pury for $20 million. British collector Charles Saatchi was among the buyers.
Now, Mr. Farber is buying up to three Cuban works a month, priced anywhere from $7,500 to $140,000. The catalyst, he says, was a "magical" visit he made to Havana seven years ago on a cultural tour led by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He says he sees parallels between the rebellious art made in China following the Tiananmen Square protests and art made during pivotal periods in Cuba's revolutionary history.
Unable to get permission to return to Cuba, Mr. Farber says he has largely relied on email to cultivate a network of artists and dealers in Havana who send him digital images of art for sale. He says the cost to ship one sculpture from Cuba to Miami can top $10,000 because the seller often needs to send the work on a circuitous route that might include stops in Nicaragua and London before reaching him in Florida. Mr. Farber says he has never found a cargo company that would agree to ship a large sculpture directly from Havana to Miami.
Art experts are still divided over Cuba's market potential. Carmen Melian, Sotheby's director of Latin American art, says that the markets for China, India and Russia benefit from the vast population and recent wealth creation in those countries. By contrast, Cuba's wealthy diaspora established itself in Miami decades ago, and its seasoned collectors are just as likely to buy contemporary stars like Richard Prince as Cuban works, Ms. Melian says. Some Cuban-Americans are also reluctant to buy works by artists who stayed in Havana during Castro's tenure, though Miami private dealer Jose Alonso says that if the Cuban art market blossoms, collectors won't worry about Castro ties.
Yoan Capote, a popular 31-year-old artist living in Havana, came of age during what Cubans call the "Special Period" of economic crisis in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Recently, his conceptual sculptures have won attention from dealers in the U.S. and, in 2006, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. For one piece, titled "Nostalgia," he built a brick wall inside a suitcase.
He first met American buyers through a string of museum-led tours during a spell in the late 1990s when the U.S. travel restrictions were loosened, a trend that ended sharply after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Now, he says, Americans are beginning to trickle into his studio again, and he and his peers are "preparing now for a time when Cuba will change."
For him, that means strengthening ties with the local, government-owned Galeria Habana, which until recently he overlooked in favor of his New York and European dealers when selling major works. His local dealer Luis Miret last month found an American buyer who paid about $44,000 for "The Island," a seascape he made by weaving together thousands of bloodied fishhooks. He says the city's two other top galleries are also positioning themselves to handle an influx of high-end visitors.
"Maybe we'll lose our exoticism," he adds, "but I think we can develop another kind of attraction."
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com5
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120613745916555929.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120516076522024319.html
(2) http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-cubamap0803.html
(3) http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20080321/pod-wsjwknd/pod-wsjwknd.mp3
(4) http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20080321/pod-wsjwknd/pod-wsjwknd.mp3
(5) mailto:kelly.crow@wsj.com
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
things I love right now: El Ñame
THIS IS FROM THE SATIRICAL AND VERY UN-PC PUERTO RICAN BLOG El Ñame: http://elname.com/2007/07/upr-produce-los-mejores-huelguistas.html
UPR Produce Los Mejores Huelguistas Profesionales
Escrito por El Rata
RÍO PIEDRAS, PUERTO RICO - La Universidad de Puerto Rico, siempre a la vanguardia de la educación en la Isla, se ha elevado a la posición número uno entre todas las universidades a nivel de los Estados Unidos en la preparación de huelguistas profesionales, según un estudio realizado a nivel nacional. Éste asegura que los graduados del programa de Huelgas y Brazos Caídos de la UPR son los más cotizados en toda la nación americana, y de los más altos del mundo entero.
En el seminario "Cómo Usar Tu Pandero Como Instrumento Justiciero", los estudiantes aprenden todo sobre cómo amenizar y musicalizar una línea de piquete
El programa de Huelgas y Brazos Caídos de la UPR se instituyó hace menos de diez años por el Profesor Ramón Emeterio Campos, catedrático del Recinto de Río Piedras, quien tuvo la visión de implementar un programa de estudio para "afinar las técnicas y la ejecutoria de las huelgas y protestas de brazos caídos". Inspirándose en el "reguero de bambalanes y masquejode" con los que naturalmente goza el Departamento de Humanidades de la UPR, el Profesor Campos decidió canalizar estas tendencias huelguísticas para producir un nuevo campo de profesionales.
"Yo también en mis años de mocedad era un huelguista aficionado", confesó el Profesor Campos; "Como ven, aquí en la UPR tenemos una rica historia huelguística que se remonta a cuando las fotos eran en blanco y negro"
"Hacer una huelga efectiva no es simplemente dejar de trabajar", aseguró el Profesor Campos. "Es aparecerse frente al trabajo dispuestos a joder y a caldear ánimos; es preparar carteloncitos con frases irreverentes pero jocosas; es inventarse una plenita que rime y que se tripee a la administración. Eso, mi hermano, no lo hace cualquier hijo de vecino: eso es algo que sólo nuestros estudiantes saben brindar, y es por eso que no es poco usual que organizaciones laborales privadas (incluso fuera de la Isla) contraten los servicios de nuestros graduados... si alguien quiere joder el parto, van directamente a las personas a quienes le sale del alma".
"¡Miren qué ánimo de joder tienen nuestros estudiantes!" exclamó con orgullo el Profesor Campos; "¿Tú crees que uno solo de ellos sabe por qué carajo está protestando? No, porque un huelguista profesional no puede preocuparse por pequeñeces como 'convicción' o 'propósito': un huelguista profesional protesta y ya"
Por ejemplo, en una huelga de la Asociación de Cocineros de Buffets Chinos de Nueva York, se estima que el 75% de los que comparecieron para protestar eran puertorriqueños, lo que causó gran confusión entre los patronos y miembros de la prensa. Entre pancartas de "Chinito Quelel Coblal Má" y gritos enérgicos de "Cocinelo Unido Jamá Selán Vencido", la huelga fue un rotundo éxito, en gran parte gracias a la inventiva y grado de profesionalismo brindado por los huelguistas boricuas.
Aqui vemos cómo en esta huelga de cocineros chinos está el puertorro que hace orilla: gracias a eso, chinito comelle el culo al patlón.
Los graduados del programa también fueron indispensables en la protesta de brazos caídos llevada a cabo por la Hermandad Mexicana de Mucamas y Conserjes Hoteleros en San Francisco, donde de nuevo más de la mitad de los protestantes eran puertorriqueños: esta vez, sin embargo, nadie se percató porque los patronos no podían distinguir entre mexicanos y boricuas, y porque a nadie le estuvo raro ver a "un chorro de hispanos tirados por ahí sin hacer nada". Sin embargo, con tal de dejar de escuchar canciones de protesta a ritmo de ranchera, los patronos capitularon y concedieron todas las peticiones de los protestantes.
Incluso en esta huelga de trabajadores mexicanos vemos cómo está el boricua tocando los palitos con su cartelón, esta vez al enloquecedor ritmo de ranchera
"Estoy muy orgulloso de ser un huelguista profesional", aseguró Zoilo Muriente, un recién graduado del programa. "Me tripea que lo mismo que solía hacer sólo por joder la pita cuando no quería ir a clase, o cuando había algún examen para el cual no había estudiado, es ahora con lo que me gano el billete. ¿Quién dijo que ser un mandulete no me iba a llevar a ningún la'o?", preguntó con una sonrisa carifresca.
Tags en Blogalaxia: El Ñame Huelguistas Profesionales Jodedera De Parto Chinito Decil No Al Atlopello Patlonal
UPR Produce Los Mejores Huelguistas Profesionales
Escrito por El Rata
RÍO PIEDRAS, PUERTO RICO - La Universidad de Puerto Rico, siempre a la vanguardia de la educación en la Isla, se ha elevado a la posición número uno entre todas las universidades a nivel de los Estados Unidos en la preparación de huelguistas profesionales, según un estudio realizado a nivel nacional. Éste asegura que los graduados del programa de Huelgas y Brazos Caídos de la UPR son los más cotizados en toda la nación americana, y de los más altos del mundo entero.
En el seminario "Cómo Usar Tu Pandero Como Instrumento Justiciero", los estudiantes aprenden todo sobre cómo amenizar y musicalizar una línea de piquete
El programa de Huelgas y Brazos Caídos de la UPR se instituyó hace menos de diez años por el Profesor Ramón Emeterio Campos, catedrático del Recinto de Río Piedras, quien tuvo la visión de implementar un programa de estudio para "afinar las técnicas y la ejecutoria de las huelgas y protestas de brazos caídos". Inspirándose en el "reguero de bambalanes y masquejode" con los que naturalmente goza el Departamento de Humanidades de la UPR, el Profesor Campos decidió canalizar estas tendencias huelguísticas para producir un nuevo campo de profesionales.
"Yo también en mis años de mocedad era un huelguista aficionado", confesó el Profesor Campos; "Como ven, aquí en la UPR tenemos una rica historia huelguística que se remonta a cuando las fotos eran en blanco y negro"
"Hacer una huelga efectiva no es simplemente dejar de trabajar", aseguró el Profesor Campos. "Es aparecerse frente al trabajo dispuestos a joder y a caldear ánimos; es preparar carteloncitos con frases irreverentes pero jocosas; es inventarse una plenita que rime y que se tripee a la administración. Eso, mi hermano, no lo hace cualquier hijo de vecino: eso es algo que sólo nuestros estudiantes saben brindar, y es por eso que no es poco usual que organizaciones laborales privadas (incluso fuera de la Isla) contraten los servicios de nuestros graduados... si alguien quiere joder el parto, van directamente a las personas a quienes le sale del alma".
"¡Miren qué ánimo de joder tienen nuestros estudiantes!" exclamó con orgullo el Profesor Campos; "¿Tú crees que uno solo de ellos sabe por qué carajo está protestando? No, porque un huelguista profesional no puede preocuparse por pequeñeces como 'convicción' o 'propósito': un huelguista profesional protesta y ya"
Por ejemplo, en una huelga de la Asociación de Cocineros de Buffets Chinos de Nueva York, se estima que el 75% de los que comparecieron para protestar eran puertorriqueños, lo que causó gran confusión entre los patronos y miembros de la prensa. Entre pancartas de "Chinito Quelel Coblal Má" y gritos enérgicos de "Cocinelo Unido Jamá Selán Vencido", la huelga fue un rotundo éxito, en gran parte gracias a la inventiva y grado de profesionalismo brindado por los huelguistas boricuas.
Aqui vemos cómo en esta huelga de cocineros chinos está el puertorro que hace orilla: gracias a eso, chinito comelle el culo al patlón.
Los graduados del programa también fueron indispensables en la protesta de brazos caídos llevada a cabo por la Hermandad Mexicana de Mucamas y Conserjes Hoteleros en San Francisco, donde de nuevo más de la mitad de los protestantes eran puertorriqueños: esta vez, sin embargo, nadie se percató porque los patronos no podían distinguir entre mexicanos y boricuas, y porque a nadie le estuvo raro ver a "un chorro de hispanos tirados por ahí sin hacer nada". Sin embargo, con tal de dejar de escuchar canciones de protesta a ritmo de ranchera, los patronos capitularon y concedieron todas las peticiones de los protestantes.
Incluso en esta huelga de trabajadores mexicanos vemos cómo está el boricua tocando los palitos con su cartelón, esta vez al enloquecedor ritmo de ranchera
"Estoy muy orgulloso de ser un huelguista profesional", aseguró Zoilo Muriente, un recién graduado del programa. "Me tripea que lo mismo que solía hacer sólo por joder la pita cuando no quería ir a clase, o cuando había algún examen para el cual no había estudiado, es ahora con lo que me gano el billete. ¿Quién dijo que ser un mandulete no me iba a llevar a ningún la'o?", preguntó con una sonrisa carifresca.
Tags en Blogalaxia: El Ñame Huelguistas Profesionales Jodedera De Parto Chinito Decil No Al Atlopello Patlonal
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
"It's Just Like Judging a Beautiful Girl"
One of my friends (and my life coach) who works in let's say the creative, media realm, shared this jewel today, an article about Camel Beauty Pageants. I am a HUGE fan of Pageantry, and it does extend to Dog and Cat Shows but this is a new realm altogether. Priceless!
By Katherine Zoepf
The New York Times
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — "It's just like judging a beautiful girl," said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh. "You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck — maybe 39 or 40 inches."
As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia's largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.
The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.
Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia. They have become so popular in recent years that a respected Saudi cleric recently issued a decree against them, saying that they encouraged pride.
The death in January of Mashoufan — a male camel who earned celebrity status after winning first prize in a number of pageants and was said to be worth more than $4.5 million — was widely reported, and his owner received condolences from around the country.
Camel breeding is a multimillion-dollar industry in Saudi Arabia, and late winter is an especially popular time for wealthy Saudi camel owners to arrange parties in the desert to spend time with their favorite camels.
Ali bin Talal al-Johany, a former minister of telecommunications, owns a herd of 124 camels and keeps a large framed photograph of his prized bull, Musfer, in his home. He explained that because Saudi Arabia has developed so quickly, camels had a great deal of symbolism for older Saudis and owning them was a pleasurable way to feel connected with the past.
At the market, thousands of camels of every description are for sale. In addition to pure white camels, there are woolly black camels and oatmeal-colored camels, even camels of the color that, in a winter coat, is called "camel-colored."
In one enclosure, camels marked for slaughter with splashes of hot-pink spray paint on their sides, exactly one year old and ready for eating, bellow mournfully as they are hobbled and forced to kneel in the back of a pickup.
Last August, the timeless routines of the souq al-jamal were shattered when camels began dying in droves, until as many as 5,000 died under unexplained circumstances. Madr, the camel breeder, lost seven, all apparently healthy young animals.
An investigation revealed the camels had been poisoned by fodder contaminated with an antibiotic called salinomycin, often added to chicken feed but poisonous to camels. A mill had tried to double production of camel fodder by using a factory line normally devoted to chicken feed.
Last month, King Abdullah ordered payments of 20,000 riyals, about $5,330 for every camel that died from eating the contaminated feed.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia's largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.
The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.
Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia. They have become so popular in recent years that a respected Saudi cleric recently issued a decree against them, saying that they encouraged pride.
The death in January of Mashoufan — a male camel who earned celebrity status after winning first prize in a number of pageants and was said to be worth more than $4.5 million — was widely reported, and his owner received condolences from around the country.
Camel breeding is a multimillion-dollar industry in Saudi Arabia, and late winter is an especially popular time for wealthy Saudi camel owners to arrange parties in the desert to spend time with their favorite camels.
Ali bin Talal al-Johany, a former minister of telecommunications, owns a herd of 124 camels and keeps a large framed photograph of his prized bull, Musfer, in his home. He explained that because Saudi Arabia has developed so quickly, camels had a great deal of symbolism for older Saudis and owning them was a pleasurable way to feel connected with the past.
At the market, thousands of camels of every description are for sale. In addition to pure white camels, there are woolly black camels and oatmeal-colored camels, even camels of the color that, in a winter coat, is called "camel-colored."
In one enclosure, camels marked for slaughter with splashes of hot-pink spray paint on their sides, exactly one year old and ready for eating, bellow mournfully as they are hobbled and forced to kneel in the back of a pickup.
Last August, the timeless routines of the souq al-jamal were shattered when camels began dying in droves, until as many as 5,000 died under unexplained circumstances. Madr, the camel breeder, lost seven, all apparently healthy young animals.
An investigation revealed the camels had been poisoned by fodder contaminated with an antibiotic called salinomycin, often added to chicken feed but poisonous to camels. A mill had tried to double production of camel fodder by using a factory line normally devoted to chicken feed.
Last month, King Abdullah ordered payments of 20,000 riyals, about $5,330 for every camel that died from eating the contaminated feed.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
Obama's speech on race, gender, class and politics in the USA
I am really impressed and moved by this speech, by Obama's frankness and willingness to go beyond politically correct platitudes, self-censorship, superficial strategies to put complex and traumatic issues unresolved in this country aside, and by his personal revelations. I am impressed by his desire to show empathy even to those who would disparage and attempt to humiliate him.
The comment about his grandmother's fear of black men she passes on the street particularly struck me as someone who has lived in a multiracial society and has faced the contradictions of my own family's complex relations to the legacy of slavery, class divisions and racial mixture in Puerto Rico. Self-hatred, denial, ancestors that owned slaves, racism that is persistent despite our own family's mixed racial make-up. Some of his comments regarding shame and anger also lead me to reflect about the situation in Spain and in other countries that have similarly faced a civil war whose legacy of injustice persists to this day. The psychological toll that many experience knowing that in Spain and abroad people live with impunity while those unjustly prosecuted or killed remain in obscurity, and to know that people still defend the dictatorship.
Yet Obama takes the high road while refusing to be silent, and does not succumb to cynicism, hoping for understanding and reconciliation, and ultimately, justice.
The following is a transcript of Sen. Barack Obama's speech, as provided by Obama's campaign.
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.
What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part -- through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk -- to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign -- to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.
I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners -- an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.
I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts -- that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African-Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough."
We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action, that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.
On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation -- that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.
Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.
Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Rev. Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, "Dreams From My Father," I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note -- hope! -- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.
"Those stories -- of survival, and freedom, and hope -- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish -- and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety -- the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.
The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Rev. Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.
But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination -- where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments -- meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families -- a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods -- parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement -- all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.
What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.
That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and, increasingly, young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.
That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.
That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.
They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze -- a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.
But it also means binding our particular grievances -- for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs -- to the larger aspirations of all Americans, the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives -- by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American -- and yes, conservative -- notion of self-help found frequent expression in Rev. Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country -- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
But what we know -- what we have seen -- is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope -- the audacity to hope -- for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds -- by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.
It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st Century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.
This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for president if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today -- a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents, too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.
What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part -- through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk -- to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign -- to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.
I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners -- an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.
I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts -- that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African-Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough."
We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action, that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.
On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation -- that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.
Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.
Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Rev. Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, "Dreams From My Father," I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note -- hope! -- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.
"Those stories -- of survival, and freedom, and hope -- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish -- and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety -- the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.
The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Rev. Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.
But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination -- where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments -- meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families -- a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods -- parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement -- all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.
What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.
That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and, increasingly, young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.
That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.
That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.
They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze -- a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.
But it also means binding our particular grievances -- for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs -- to the larger aspirations of all Americans, the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives -- by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American -- and yes, conservative -- notion of self-help found frequent expression in Rev. Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country -- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
But what we know -- what we have seen -- is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope -- the audacity to hope -- for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds -- by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.
It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st Century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.
This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for president if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today -- a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents, too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Lyrics Say it All
But here we see the joys of globalization:
Raphael the Spanish singing sensation, in the Franco years using the prevailing cursi aesthetics of repression to camp it up in the most queer way possible! And a more recent interpretation is below.
And the choreography is sublime in all 3 cases. Thanks again to my fierce boricua correspondent for her cultural contributions.
Here are the Piaf lyrics:
La Foule - INA / Pathê Actualités
La Foule
Musique: Charles Dumont
Je revois la ville en fête et en délire
Suffoquant sous le soleil et sous la joie
Et j'entends dans la musique les cris, les rires
Qui éclatent et rebondissent autour de moi
Et perdue parmi ces gens qui me bousculent
Étourdie, désemparée, je reste là
Quand soudain, je me retourne, il se recule,
Et la foule vient me jeter entre ses bras...
Emportés par la foule qui nous traîne
Nous entraîne
Écrasés l'un contre l'autre
Nous ne formons qu'un seul corps
Et le flot sans effort
Nous pousse, enchaînés l'un et l'autre
Et nous laisse tous deux
Épanouis, enivrés et heureux.
Entraînés par la foule qui s'élance
Et qui danse
Une folle farandole
Nos deux mains restent soudées
Et parfois soulevés
Nos deux corps enlacés s'envolent
Et retombent tous deux
Épanouis, enivrés et heureux...
Et la joie éclaboussée par son sourire
Me transperce et rejaillit au fond de moi
Mais soudain je pousse un cri parmi les rires
Quand la foule vient l'arracher d'entre mes bras...
Emportés par la foule qui nous traîne
Nous entraîne
Nous éloigne l'un de l'autre
Je lutte et je me débats
Mais le son de sa voix
S'étouffe dans les rires des autres
Et je crie de douleur, de fureur et de rage
Et je pleure...
Entraînée par la foule qui s'élance
Et qui danse
Une folle farandole
Je suis emportée au loin
Et je crispe mes poings, maudissant la foule qui me vole
L'homme qu'elle m'avait donné
Et que je n'ai jamais retrouvé...
Eavesdropping in NY and Madrid my two favorite cities
Everyone should bookmark these two sites:
NEW YORK http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
MADRID http://recienoido.com/
NEW YORK http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
MADRID http://recienoido.com/
Friday, March 14, 2008
Best NY POST Idea Ever
I have to give props to AM NY, but the NY POST my favorite venue for tasteless and stupid quotes, invited their readers to contribute their suggestions for Spitzer-related headlines. If you want to laugh out loud, copy the link below to your browser:http://blogs.nypost.com/mb3/archives/2008/03/write_your_own.html
Some of my favorites:
SPITZER PULLS OUT
IS SHE A SWALLOWER OR A SPITZER?
and drumroll please!!
SPITZER SEX TAPE RELEASED
Hooker says: Don't quit your day job!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Creepy Gnome Terrorises Argentina!!!
From THE SUN a UK tabloid
I would like to send a shout out to my loyal reader and poster NARCISO ESPEJO for sharing this gem, and love the fact that it isn't just the Boricuas who seem to believe extraterrestrials populate their country:
By VIRGINIA WHEELER
Published: 11 Mar 2008
A TOWN in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night.
The midget - which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk - was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.
Teenager Jose Alvarez - who filmed the gnome - yesterday told national newspaper El Tribuno that they caught the creature while larking about in their hometown of General Guemes, in the province of Salta, Argentina.
He said: “We were chatting about our last fishing trip. It was one in the morning.
“I began to film a bit with my mobile phone while the others were chatting and joking.
"Suddenly we heard something - a weird noise as if someone was throwing stones.
"We looked to one side and saw that the grass was moving. To begin with we thought it was a dog but when we saw this gnome-like figure begin to emerge we were really afraid."
Jose added that other locals had come forward to say they had spotted the gnome.
He said: “This is no joke. We are still afraid to go out - just like everyone else in the neighbourhood now.
"One of my friends was so scared after seeing that thing that we had to take him to the hospital.”
If you want to see the awesome video, here is the link:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/video/article307898.ece?channel=Sun+Exclusive&clipID=1347_SUN6787
Teenager Jose Alvarez - who filmed the gnome - yesterday told national newspaper El Tribuno that they caught the creature while larking about in their hometown of General Guemes, in the province of Salta, Argentina.
He said: “We were chatting about our last fishing trip. It was one in the morning.
“I began to film a bit with my mobile phone while the others were chatting and joking.
"Suddenly we heard something - a weird noise as if someone was throwing stones.
"We looked to one side and saw that the grass was moving. To begin with we thought it was a dog but when we saw this gnome-like figure begin to emerge we were really afraid."
Jose added that other locals had come forward to say they had spotted the gnome.
He said: “This is no joke. We are still afraid to go out - just like everyone else in the neighbourhood now.
"One of my friends was so scared after seeing that thing that we had to take him to the hospital.”
If you want to see the awesome video, here is the link:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/video/article307898.ece?channel=Sun+Exclusive&clipID=1347_SUN6787
No comment
Well, just one teeny one, I could not wait to see what the POST's punsters would do with this, and as usual they did not disappoint. This one reads like a refrain from a saucy Salt n'Pepa or Missy Elliott song, right?
A Boy Named Sue
I think those of you who read this blog are well aware of my fascination, indeed, obsession with unusual names. Perhaps this is because of my bi-cultural background, we know that Spanish Catholic names, which were supposed to be approved by the Church in order for a child to be baptized, came from the Bible. But many others were related to Counter-Reformation Catholicism and the bizarre catalogue of saints beloved in Spanish-speaking countries. So my grandmother was called Dolores and her sister Remedios and her other sister Encarna - Pain, Remedy, and Incarnation. Then we have the Puerto Rican and indeed Latin American love of composite names drawn from foreign monikers (see the post "A Culture of Naming" among others), corporate entities or misspelled celebrities' or place names.
Now living in New York I have the joy of learning yet more unusual (to me) and creative names but nothing compares to those listed below - until the next Miss Puerto Rico or Miss Venezuela pageant, that is. This reminds me of something that I learned at the memorial service for Robert Rosenblum. Robert is one of my role models (in his art historical breadth, historical approach, complete open-mindedness even to things regarded as campy, kitsch, schlock, love of popular culture, and incredibly joyful enthusiasm for everything, including teaching). Apparently, he used to play an amusing parlor game with other luminaries in the field (well, amusing to those of us 3% of the US population that are Art History nerds) which entailed inventing drag queen names for famous artists, so Blanchette Mondrian. Don't try this at home!!! Some of my best friends and I had, without knowing this, created self-styled drag names for ourselves. Among my aliases is of course Petite Maoiste, another is a nice hybrid of Yiddish and urban names: LaSchanda, and there are many more.
The New York Times
March 11, 2008
FINDINGS
A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names
By J. MARION TIERNEY
During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used “A Boy Named Sue” to present two hypotheses:
1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult.
2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed.
I immediately welcomed the Boy Named Sue paradigm, although I realized that I might be biased by my middle name (Marion). Cash and his ambiguously named male collaborator, the lyricist Shel Silverstein, could offer only anecdotal evidence against decades of research suggesting that children with weird names were destined for places like San Quentin.
Studies showed that children with odd names got worse grades and were less popular than other classmates in elementary school. In college they were more likely to flunk out or become “psychoneurotic.” Prospective bosses spurned their résumés. They were overrepresented among emotionally disturbed children and psychiatric patients.
Some of these mental problems might have been genetic — what kind of parent picks a name like Golden Rule or Mary Mee? — but it was still bad news.
Today, though, the case for Mr. Cash’s theory looks much stronger, and I say this even after learning about Emma Royd and Post Office in a new book, “Bad Baby Names,” by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback.
By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).
The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.
“They were very proud of their names, almost overly proud,” Mr. Sherrod said. “We asked if that was a reaction to getting pummeled when they were little, but they said they didn’t get that much ribbing. They did get a little tired of hearing the same jokes, but they liked having an unusual name because it made them stand out.”
Not too much ribbing? That surprised me, because I had vivid memories of playground serenades to my middle name: “Marion . . . Madam Librarian!” (My tormentors didn’t care that the “Music Man” librarian spelled her name with an “a.”) But after I looked at experiments in the post-Sue era by revisionists like Kenneth Steele and Wayne Hensley, it seemed names weren’t so important after all.
When people were asked to rate the physical attractiveness and character of someone in a photograph, it didn’t matter much if that someone was assigned an “undesirable” name. Once people could see a face, they rated an Oswald, Myron, Harriet or Hazel about the same as a face with a “desirable” name like David, Gregory, Jennifer or Christine.
Other researchers found that children with unusual names were more likely to have poorer and less educated parents, handicaps that explained their problems in school. Martin Ford and other psychologists reported, after controlling for race and ethnicity, that children with unusual names did as well as others in school. The economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt reached a similar conclusion after controlling for socioeconomic variables in a study of black children with distinctive names.
“Names only have a significant influence when that is the only thing you know about the person,” said Dr. Ford, a developmental psychologist at George Mason University. “Add a picture, and the impact of the name recedes. Add information about personality, motivation and ability, and the impact of the name shrinks to minimal significance.”
But even if a bad name doesn’t doom a child, why would any parent christen an infant Ogre? Mr. Sherrod found several of them, along with children named Ghoul, Gorgon, Medusa, Hades, Lucifer and every deadly sin except Gluttony (his favorite was Wrath Gordon).
You can sort of understand parents’ affection for the sound of Chimera Griffin, but Monster Moor and Goblin Fester? Or Cheese Ceaser and Leper Priest? What provokes current celebrities to name their children Sage Moonblood Stallone and Speck Wildhorse Mellencamp?
“Today it’s all about individuality,” Mr. Sherrod said. “In the past, there was more of a sense of humor, probably because fathers had more say in the names.” He said the waning influence of fathers might explain why there are no longer so many names like Nice Deal, Butcher Baker, Lotta Beers and Good Bye, although some dads still try.
“I can’t tell you,” Mr. Sherrod said, “how often I’ve heard guys who wanted their kid to be able to say truthfully, ‘Danger is my middle name.’ But their wives absolutely refused.”
Is it possible — I’m trying to be kind to these humor-challenged fathers — that they think Danger would be a character-building experience? Could there be anything to the paternal rationale offered in Johnny Cash’s song, the one that stopped Sue from killing his father: “I knew you’d have to get tough or die, and it’s the name that helped to make you strong”?
I sought an answer from Cleveland Kent Evans — not because he might have gotten into fights defending Cleveland, but because he’s a psychologist and past president of the American Names Society. Dr. Evans, a professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska, said there is evidence for the character-building theory from psychologists like Richard Zweigenhaft, but it doesn’t work exactly as Sue’s father imagined it.
“Researchers have studied men with cross-gender names like Leslie,” Dr. Evans explained. “They haven’t found anything negative — no psychological or social problems — or any correlations with either masculinity or effeminacy. But they have found one major positive factor: a better sense of self-control. It’s not that you fight more, but that you learn how to let stuff roll off your back.”
After hearing that, I began to reconsider my own name. Although I’d never shared Sue’s Oedipal impulse — I realized my father couldn’t have anticipated “Music Man” — I’d never appreciated those playground serenades, either. But maybe they served some purpose after all. So today, to celebrate the Boy Named Sue paradigm shift, I’m using my middle name in my byline for the first time.
Also for the last time. As Sue realized when it came time to name his own son, you can take a theory only so far.
The New York Times
March 11, 2008
FINDINGS
A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names
By J. MARION TIERNEY
During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. He used “A Boy Named Sue” to present two hypotheses:
1. A child with an awful name might grow up to be a relatively normal adult.
2. The parent who inflicted the name does not deserve to be executed.
I immediately welcomed the Boy Named Sue paradigm, although I realized that I might be biased by my middle name (Marion). Cash and his ambiguously named male collaborator, the lyricist Shel Silverstein, could offer only anecdotal evidence against decades of research suggesting that children with weird names were destined for places like San Quentin.
Studies showed that children with odd names got worse grades and were less popular than other classmates in elementary school. In college they were more likely to flunk out or become “psychoneurotic.” Prospective bosses spurned their résumés. They were overrepresented among emotionally disturbed children and psychiatric patients.
Some of these mental problems might have been genetic — what kind of parent picks a name like Golden Rule or Mary Mee? — but it was still bad news.
Today, though, the case for Mr. Cash’s theory looks much stronger, and I say this even after learning about Emma Royd and Post Office in a new book, “Bad Baby Names,” by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback.
By scouring census records from 1790 to 1930, Mr. Sherrod and Mr. Rayback discovered Garage Empty, Hysteria Johnson, King Arthur, Infinity Hubbard, Please Cope, Major Slaughter, Helen Troy, several Satans and a host of colleagues to the famed Ima Hogg (including Ima Pigg, Ima Muskrat, Ima Nut and Ima Hooker).
The authors also interviewed adults today who had survived names like Candy Stohr, Cash Guy, Mary Christmas, River Jordan and Rasp Berry. All of them, even Happy Day, seemed untraumatized.
“They were very proud of their names, almost overly proud,” Mr. Sherrod said. “We asked if that was a reaction to getting pummeled when they were little, but they said they didn’t get that much ribbing. They did get a little tired of hearing the same jokes, but they liked having an unusual name because it made them stand out.”
Not too much ribbing? That surprised me, because I had vivid memories of playground serenades to my middle name: “Marion . . . Madam Librarian!” (My tormentors didn’t care that the “Music Man” librarian spelled her name with an “a.”) But after I looked at experiments in the post-Sue era by revisionists like Kenneth Steele and Wayne Hensley, it seemed names weren’t so important after all.
When people were asked to rate the physical attractiveness and character of someone in a photograph, it didn’t matter much if that someone was assigned an “undesirable” name. Once people could see a face, they rated an Oswald, Myron, Harriet or Hazel about the same as a face with a “desirable” name like David, Gregory, Jennifer or Christine.
Other researchers found that children with unusual names were more likely to have poorer and less educated parents, handicaps that explained their problems in school. Martin Ford and other psychologists reported, after controlling for race and ethnicity, that children with unusual names did as well as others in school. The economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt reached a similar conclusion after controlling for socioeconomic variables in a study of black children with distinctive names.
“Names only have a significant influence when that is the only thing you know about the person,” said Dr. Ford, a developmental psychologist at George Mason University. “Add a picture, and the impact of the name recedes. Add information about personality, motivation and ability, and the impact of the name shrinks to minimal significance.”
But even if a bad name doesn’t doom a child, why would any parent christen an infant Ogre? Mr. Sherrod found several of them, along with children named Ghoul, Gorgon, Medusa, Hades, Lucifer and every deadly sin except Gluttony (his favorite was Wrath Gordon).
You can sort of understand parents’ affection for the sound of Chimera Griffin, but Monster Moor and Goblin Fester? Or Cheese Ceaser and Leper Priest? What provokes current celebrities to name their children Sage Moonblood Stallone and Speck Wildhorse Mellencamp?
“Today it’s all about individuality,” Mr. Sherrod said. “In the past, there was more of a sense of humor, probably because fathers had more say in the names.” He said the waning influence of fathers might explain why there are no longer so many names like Nice Deal, Butcher Baker, Lotta Beers and Good Bye, although some dads still try.
“I can’t tell you,” Mr. Sherrod said, “how often I’ve heard guys who wanted their kid to be able to say truthfully, ‘Danger is my middle name.’ But their wives absolutely refused.”
Is it possible — I’m trying to be kind to these humor-challenged fathers — that they think Danger would be a character-building experience? Could there be anything to the paternal rationale offered in Johnny Cash’s song, the one that stopped Sue from killing his father: “I knew you’d have to get tough or die, and it’s the name that helped to make you strong”?
I sought an answer from Cleveland Kent Evans — not because he might have gotten into fights defending Cleveland, but because he’s a psychologist and past president of the American Names Society. Dr. Evans, a professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska, said there is evidence for the character-building theory from psychologists like Richard Zweigenhaft, but it doesn’t work exactly as Sue’s father imagined it.
“Researchers have studied men with cross-gender names like Leslie,” Dr. Evans explained. “They haven’t found anything negative — no psychological or social problems — or any correlations with either masculinity or effeminacy. But they have found one major positive factor: a better sense of self-control. It’s not that you fight more, but that you learn how to let stuff roll off your back.”
After hearing that, I began to reconsider my own name. Although I’d never shared Sue’s Oedipal impulse — I realized my father couldn’t have anticipated “Music Man” — I’d never appreciated those playground serenades, either. But maybe they served some purpose after all. So today, to celebrate the Boy Named Sue paradigm shift, I’m using my middle name in my byline for the first time.
Also for the last time. As Sue realized when it came time to name his own son, you can take a theory only so far.
Monday, March 10, 2008
El Niño Prodigio
And do NOT miss the webpage of El Niño Prodigio
http://mundoespiritual.com/home.html
Feliz Dia, Walter!
I feel terrible!!!! I missed Walter's birthday yesterday.
Happy Birthday, Walter. Te deseo paz, felicidad y mucho mucho mucho AMORRRRRRRR!!!!
Here is Walter's fabulous website:
http://www.walterclub.com/
Here is Walter's fabulous website:
http://www.walterclub.com/
Sunday, March 9, 2008
PSOE WINS SPANISH ELECTIONS!!!!!!!!
Escrutado
99,2%
2008 2004
Escaños Votos % vot. Escaños Votos % vot
PSOE 169 10.985.748 43,66 164 11.026.163 42,59
PP 154 10.089.284 40,10 148 9.763.144 37,71
CiU 10 768.734 3,06 10 835.471 3,23
EAJ-PNV 6 303.246 1,21 7 420.980 1,63
IU 2 957.611 3,81 5 1.284.081 4,96
ERC 3 294.077 1,17 8 652.196 2,52
CC-PNC 2 156.719 0,62 3 235.221 0,91
BNG 2 207.269 0,82 2 208.688 0,81
UPyD 1 302.423 1,20 - - -
Na-Bai 1 62.073 0,25 1 61.045 0,24
Participación
2008 75,3%
2004 75,6%
2000 68,7%
Nulos: 0,64% En blanco: 1,12%
Elecciones Andalucía
Escaños - PSOE: 56; PP: 47; IULV-CA 6 (Escr. 93,5%)
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/PSOE/revalida/victoria/PP/fuerte/elpepuesp/20080309elpepunac_13/Tes
The New York Times
INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE
Socialists Win Spanish Election, Retaining Power
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: March 9, 2008
The victory gives Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero a second four-year mandate to pursue his agenda of sweeping social liberalization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/world/europe/09cnd-spain.html?ex=1362801600&en=cd10e41167cb00d6&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
OVNI in Santurce?!
Again, I have to give a shout-out to my (for now) fabulous facebook friend down on the Island, who seems to have a truly staggering knowledge about all things camp and Boricua, for sharing this gem:
Saturday, March 8, 2008
The Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennials are landmarks in my memories of being a nerd obsessed with art in NY. I will confess up front that I am now becoming one of those annoying old persons that reminisces about how much better things were back in the day, or so I must seem to my graduate and especially undergraduate students. And what I am about to start kvetching about will be pretty predictable when I say that my favorite Biennial ever was the one known as "the political biennial."
I also can reminisce about the days when the lines were all the way to Park Avenue, people got falling down drunk or smoked joints in the garden during the openings, and much more! This year, the biggest news was the enterprising food vendors who parked along 75th Street selling slices of pizza and desserts! From Satyricon-like excess to country-fair type refreshments? Is this symptomatic of the corporate, Disneyfied, mall-like NY we now live in?
I went to the opening because a former student has a good job at a museum (academics don't count in the hipsterati scene, unless they work at the SFAI with Hou Hanru, probably) and she put me on the list. This allowed me to participate in one of my favorite sports: giving out fashion citations. The looks were by and large generic hispterati all black, corporate attire (indicative of the main constituency administering and purchasing art today), youth emulating the worst 1980s fashion that I rocked in High School and College (see my posts labeled Fashion Citation for description of 1980s Fashion Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome), and myriad bad tattoos, ironic mullets, men clad in what looked to be faux Monty Python Knights of the Round Table garb, a woman wearing an abject green croched hat that looked like a Jackie O pillbox designed by Mike Kelly, and one of the Curators, Shamim Momin, in a very Loni Anderson in WKRP in Cincinnati clinging strapless number that didn't at all contain her her cleavage.
The woman who won my grand prize for BEST outfit was a petite blonde with a bob, round 1930s intellectual glasses (very Trotsky, sigh), a Chinoiserie jacket and a Philip Treacy feathered headdress which was very homage to my Idol, Isabella Blow. That made up for the festival of tacky outfits. A note on demographics: there were many many pregnant women (including one who looked about 9 months pregnant and was, inexplicably, rocking pseudo Christian Laboutin 6-inch high stilettos and a red satin babydoll mini dress), and bald men (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Before I begin to bitch, let me mention that I have to return to see the videos carefully because there were way too many crowds. A future post (for the 3 of you who actually might be reading this) will discuss the second venue.
Eduardo Sarabia's "The Gift," (pictured isn't the work in the Biennial, but it gives an idea of the elements in the piece) was the work I liked best (again, given that I have yet to give the videos and the other venue their due) and I hated most of what I saw. Sarabia's installation looked like a down-at-the-heels bodega meets curio shop. I read it as a pun on the "enormous vogue for things Mexican" in the 1930s-1940s, the unequal relationships between post-NAFTA Mexicans living in Mexico or as immigrants in this country versus the purchasing power of US Americans and their role as tourists. The installation presents a series of at first glance typical Mexican items such as pottery, and food stuffs familiar to (some) of us in the US -the latter represented by cardboard boxes labeled "Maizena" for example. To make the meta references to globalization, tourism, commerce both quotidian and artworld-related, a little give-away artist book labeled "Order Catalogue" listed each of the objects with the prices (in the 1-10 thousands range). In this way, a parallel was drawn between the price-driven nature of the contemporary art market, art as commodity first and foremost, and the politics surrounding trade and immigration. Even more meta-ironic is the fact that the funder was JUMEX. The objects were tweaked so that for example the patterns on the ceramic urns were, instead of abstracted floral arabesques or Chinoiserie type decorations, images of naked women, guns etc. so murders of women on the border, drug trafficking or La Migra might come to mind. And at the same time, other objects - sculptures of a woman, reminded the artsy viewer of Jeff Koons' sculptures of his then wife Cicciolina, and the cardboard boxes labeled with typically Mexican products reminded one of Mike Bidlo's Brillo boxes. Perhaps the references to 1980s early 1990s artists wasn't accidental either, since in the 1980s and early 1990s there was a "boom" in the market for the work of the so-called Neo-Mexican artists, who included many references to Mexican crafts, indigenous customs, and daily life in their work.
And since I mention Bidlo, his boxes were a kind of leitmotif in the show, I have no idea why but there were cardboard boxes everywhere, most labeled with product names.
Daniel Joseph Martinez "Divine Violence" 2007. I was very excited to see this artist since I treasure my little badge (it says, appropriately, "EVER WANTING") from the piece he did for the political biennial "I CAN'T IMAGINE EVER WANTING TO BE WHITE." One walked into a room that resembled a mausoleum or group of cemetery niches. Each gold-flecked plaque bore the name of a group that uses violence as part of its strategy to attain political goals. These included Los Macheteros, Puerto Rican Nationalists, and the nationalist terrorists fighting for an independent Basque Country, ETA. Since I am a pacifist, who believes all nationalism is fascist and racist, I was struck by the ambivalence of the piece. Was Martinez suggesting that the era of such groups was over? That their work leads to death? That they are heroes that should be memorialized?
Daniel Joseph Martinez "Divine Violence" 2007. I was very excited to see this artist since I treasure my little badge (it says, appropriately, "EVER WANTING") from the piece he did for the political biennial "I CAN'T IMAGINE EVER WANTING TO BE WHITE." One walked into a room that resembled a mausoleum or group of cemetery niches. Each gold-flecked plaque bore the name of a group that uses violence as part of its strategy to attain political goals. These included Los Macheteros, Puerto Rican Nationalists, and the nationalist terrorists fighting for an independent Basque Country, ETA. Since I am a pacifist, who believes all nationalism is fascist and racist, I was struck by the ambivalence of the piece. Was Martinez suggesting that the era of such groups was over? That their work leads to death? That they are heroes that should be memorialized? 
Rodney McMillan "Untitled" 2007. McMillan's work led my fabulous friend, a curator at a major museum who is just as catty as I am, to continue playing our game of "what if this was a question in our Orals?" because there were so many art historical references being made by these artists. It was rather an ordeal, frankly, to try to recognize them all. The repetitiveness of some references, such as the Bidlo, made it somewhat less exhausting. Here, I think everyone can see Kusama, Oldenberg, Louise Bourgeois. 
Heather Rowe "Screen (for the rooms behind)" 2007. Rowe's work suggested a mass cultural reference that also proliferated in the Biennial - the HGTV/TLC/"Flip This House" aesthetic. This is fitting given the artists' demographic and the particularly New York obsession with real estate. Several works looked like a home under construction. Another perhaps related aesthetic had to do with installations that looked like, well, trash. This recycling aesthetic is also found in the New Museum show "Un-Monumental," as many reviewers have commented. 
Carol Bove "The Night Sky Over New York, October 21, 2007." Returning to the art historical references, my friend and I gasped when we saw the above work by Bove, because it looks exactly like the "Penetrables" by the late Jesus Rafael Soto (created in the 1960s and until 1997). It in fact resembles one that is in the collection of the MFA Houston, and below is an image from the Museo Soto in Venezuela. 
However, the Bove is meant to be walked around, while the Soto, and this is its greatness, is meant to be walked into and through, as you see below. This comparison raises an issue often discussed by art historians looking at modernities and the fraught issue of "delayed" reception of Modernist styles that are regarded as models to be emulated. Often the work of, say, Picasso, is first encountered as a magazine photo, for example. So many aspects of the Picasso's proposal are not evident to the artist who will be inspired by his work.
Phoebe Washburn's installation "While Enhancing...." 2007 reminded me very much of Luis Benedit's 1973 work "Phytotron" (1972-1973) which created a hydroponic environment for plants and was shown at MoMA as a Project in 1973 and in a new version at "Inverted Utopias" at MFAH Houston. Edward Leffingwell described this and other early 1970s works by Benedit as "harbinger for environmental art" ("Latin American Modern," Art in America, Oct. 2004).
This is it, for now. In summary, I hated it.
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