War

Homocision follow-up

-
0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

You want to talk about homophobia! That’s cool. So do I, especially if it means we don’t have to talk about circumcision, which — really, honestly, wow. People, some perspective here. I was watching Delicatessen the other night — you know, the surreal French horror-comedy about the landlord–cum–deli owner who keeps his meat locker stocked the same way Mrs. Lovett got her mince for pies in Sweeney Todd, my all-time favorite piece of musical theater? So I was watching that, and as the evil proprietor advanced on Granny with his cleaver, I suddenly remembered that at least one of you had called me a butcher, of all things, over the circumcision issue. If I weren’t laughing so hard at the image of my husband, myself, and the sweet, rather distracted gray-bearded mohel in his greasy black hat advancing on our helpless babe with a gleaming cleaver, I might’ve been offended. Another reader suggested that we did it to appease a magical being in the sky. I will have you know, sir, that I don’t believe in an MBITS any more than you believe in my (and my partner’s) ability to make a good decision for our kid. We did it, more or less, for tradition’s sake and to help our son connect with his ancestry, and to keep him from being burdened with the only foreskin at Jew Camp when he gets there. And that’s enough of that. Here are some recent responses to the homophobia columns:

I believe homophobia is rooted in some baser instincts among animals — as you said, we are wired to notice differences. We then perceive (or install) hierarchy as a self-esteem mechanism and — even more primordially — as a method of establishing some basis of feeling superiority as a potential mate. As animals we seek, by instinct, someone to feel we are superior to, so we can enhance our perception of our viability among competitors. The next step is to communicate that notion to potential mates and competitors. From that gesture we create culture in our tribes. Although today we love to believe that (for example) sending an e-mail to a writer proves our sophistication, it has not been that long since we were clubbing one another over the head for food.

Yeah, sorta, maybe. Although I’m convinced that human culture is founded on both our need and our capacity to tell us from them (what do you think circumcision was for, anyway? Isn’t it just a primal version of "shirts versus skins?") for both good and, increasingly, ill, there’s really nothing in it for a male animal who gets all puffed up and furious over the mere existence of another male who presents no threat. What a waste of energy. I’m not quite seeing homophobia as a mating strategy. But that was interesting, so thanks. Next we have:

My theory is that it is all about warfare — does that sound crazy? Let me explain. Long ago, there were probably different peoples at war with each other. One of them needed to demonize the other in some way, as warring parties do. Perhaps one of the cultures was strictly heterosexual and the other not. Thus, the hetero rulers locked onto homosexuality as something to demonize. The winner of the war appears to have been the hetero side, which perhaps explains the heavy homophobia throughout history. A stronger war-related reason might be the necessity of military secrecy. Without the serious taboo, there would be spies literally sucking the military secrets out of people (pun intended). It may also have been a smart political tactic of the rulers. I am going to assume that people who think independently are more likely to deviate from sexual norms. Those independent thinkers are most likely the biggest threat to a controlling, ruling entity. What better way to isolate these troublemakers than with sexual taboos?

Not a chance in hell, but thanks for writing! Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor?

More seriously, there are dozens of theories attempting to explain homophobia (or, more accurately, heterosexism), most of which make more sense than the above but none of which will ever be definitive, because different people hate for different reasons and because some pervasive human beliefs are so old that they have been lost in prehistory. Basically, though, the answer’s going to be a mixture of societal discomfort with sexuality in general (heterosexual intercourse excepted, what with the carrying on of the species thing), sexism, and the need to keep categories neat and distinctions distinct. I don’t think it’s hard to understand where homophobia might come from. It’s why we can’t make it go back there that’s bothering me.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Obama’s new Iraq position

-
0

Barack Obama strongly and eloquently opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, but his careful positions on what to do about it now have been disappointing to some in the antiwar movement who have pushed for a speedy withdrawal and no permanent military bases in the country.

But over the course of this year, his stance for peace has gotten stronger. During his Nov. 14 speech in San Francisco, Obama said, "As president, I will end the war in Iraq. I will bring our troops home. They’ll be home in 16 months. I will close Guantánamo. I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the unfinished fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And I will lead the world against the common threats of the 21st century."

Did he mean a full withdrawal from Iraq, killing current plans for lingering military advisors and a massive, permanent military base? That’s something Obama hasn’t said yet, so we pressed his California communications director, Debbie Mesloh, on the question.

She told us, "Barack Obama will make it clear that the United States will not build or seek permanent military bases in Iraq."

Obama’s moment

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

Barack Obama came to San Francisco with some pretty heavy baggage Nov. 14. His speech at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was swarmed by a diverse crowd of about 7,000, with most of those we interviewed hungry for an answer to the big question: is Obama the one who can take this troubled country in a new direction?

The Illinois senator had just gotten a bump from a cover story in the Atlantic, "Why Obama Matters," which posits that he is the only candidate capable of moving our country past the divisive culture-war paradigms and into a period when fundamental change is possible.

But time is running out for Obama to take the Democratic presidential nomination from front-runner Hillary Clinton, who has locked up moderates and most women. And some progressives, including labor unions, are behind John Edwards. To win the nomination, Obama must find a way to quickly rally the left — including urban voters and the antiwar, social justice, LGBT, and labor movements — into an energized voting block.

And that, some progressives say, means he’s got to stop playing it safe.
obama
Guardian photo by Lane Hartwell

Days before the speech, former California state senator and 1960s radical Tom Hayden sent Obama a letter taking issue with the latter’s comment that Democrats are paralyzed by Vietnam-era fights — and in particular, his response, "That’s just not my framework."

Hayden argued that Obama was squandering his advantage as the sole credible antiwar candidate by running a safe campaign that equally repudiates both political extremes — even though progressives have been far closer to the truth on issues of war, civil rights, economic equity, and the full range of traditional Democratic planks.

Hayden wrote, "The greatest gift you have been given by history is that as the elected tribune of a revived democracy, you could change America’s dismal role in the world. Because of what you so eloquently represent, you could convince the world to give America a new hearing, even a new respect. There are no plazas large enough for the crowds that would listen to your every word, wondering if you are the one the whole world is waiting for. They would not wait for long, of course. But they would passionately want to give you the space to reset the American direction."

Many attendees of Obama’s SF speech shared similar sentiments. "I’m interested in what he’s been saying in his books, but he’s become a kind of politician, so I want to hear what he has to say tonight," Jeremy Umland, 33, a third grade teacher from Oakland, said as he was waiting in line. "I think he had a lot of brave ideas in the past, and I’d like to see him get back to that."

Umland, who is white and gay, stood with his partner, Terrence Marks, 34, who is black. The couple are in the process of adopting a child and wanted to hear Obama call for legalizing gay marriage or for a health care plan that doesn’t involve insurance companies.

"I’d like to see him address it in a way that doesn’t evade this issue," Marks said. "I want to hear him talk not like a politician, but a real person."

Inside, Obama gave voice to many of those same themes.
"Running the same old textbook, by the numbers, Washington campaign just won’t do it…. The triangulation and poll-tested positions because we’re afraid of what Mitt [Romney] or Rudy [Giuliani] will say about us just won’t do it," Obama said, adding, "If we’re going to seize the moment, then we can’t live in fear of losing."

He said we are in "a defining moment in our history," when Americans need to grapple with war, a planet in peril, economic insecurity, and a political system that seems corrupt and incompetent. "We’ve lost faith that our leaders can or will do anything about it," Obama said.

Over and over again, Obama said he is running to deal with the most difficult issues: living wages, universal health care, human rights and dignity, racial harmony, honest foreign diplomacy, and a return to the principles of the New Deal. "I’m running for president of the United States because that is the party that America needs us to be right now.

"I am in this race," he said, "because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now."

Good stuff, but is it too late? "I don’t see it happening, but it’s still possible that Hillary Clinton will slip in Iowa. She’s not invincible," Hayden told us.

In fact, a new ABC–Washington Post poll shows Obama taking the lead over Clinton in Iowa, 30 percent to 26, with Edwards at 22 percent.

"Seeing him through the eyes of my 34-year-old son and his wife, I could see there was a lot of new excitement among the younger generation and that it would be a shame if that just dissipates," Hayden told us. "The thing Obama needs most is what he steers around: he need a new social justice movement similar in strength to what we had in the ’60s."

Donald Fowler, a San Francisco resident and Democratic Party campaign consultant who ran John Kerry’s Michigan campaign in 2004 and Al Gore’s field operation in 2000, said Obama has suffered for trying to communicate detailed positions through an intense media filter.

"You get into the danger of running a government when you should be running a campaign," Fowler told us.

He and Hayden each said that particularly on the Iraq war issue, where Obama is strongest, he should have projected his stance more boldly, something he may now be starting to do.

"My guess is they have decided to be strong, state things clearly, and take back the discussion," Fowler said. Listening to Obama discuss this moment, that assessment seems likely.

"It’s because of these failures that people are listening intently," Obama said. "We have the chance to come together to form a new majority." *

To hear Barack Obama’s speech and read the Atlantic article and Tom Hayden’s letter, visit www.sfbg.com.

An Appeal to Barack Obama

-
0

“The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you’re a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you’re a Tom Hayden Democrat and you’re suspicious of any military action. And that’s just not my framework.” – Sen. Barack Obama.

Barack, I thought Hillary Clinton was known as the Great Triangulator, but you are learning well. The problem with setting up false polarities to position yourself in the “center”, however, is that it’s unproductive both politically and intellectually.

Politically, it is a mistake because there last time I looked there were a whole lot more “Tom Hayden Democrats” voting in the California primary and, I suspect, around the country, than “‘Scoop’ Jackson Democrats.” In fact, they are your greatest potential base, aside from African-American voters, in a multi-candidate primary.

More disturbing is what happens to the mind by setting up these polarities. To take a “centrist” position, one calculates the equal distance between two “extremes.” It doesn’t matter if one “extreme” is closer to the truth. All that matters is achieving the equidistance. This means the presumably “extreme” view is prevented from having a fair hearing, which would require abandoning the imaginary center. And it invites the “extreme” to become more “extreme” in order to pull the candidate’s thinking in a more progressive direction. The process of substantive thinking is corroded by the priority of political positioning.

I have been enthused by the crowds you draw, by the excitement you instill in my son and daughter-in-law, by the seeds of inspiration you plant in our seven-year old [biracial] kid. I love the alternative American narrative you weave on the stump, one in which once-radical social movements ultimately create a better America step by step. I very much respect your senior advisers like David Axelrod, who figured out a way to elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago. You are a truly global figure in this age of globalization.

But as the months wear on, I see a problem of the potential being squandered. Hillary Clinton already occupies the political center. John Edwards holds the populist labor/left. And that leaves you with a transcendent vision in search of a constituency.

Your opposition to the Iraq War could have distinguished you, but it became more parsed than pronounced. All the nuance might please the New York Times’ Michael Gordon, who helped get us into this madness in the first place, but the slivers of difference appear too narrow for many voters to notice. Clinton’s plan, such as it is, amounts to six more years of thousands of American troops in Iraq [at least]. Your proposal is to remove combat troops by mid-2010, while leaving thousands of advisers trying to train a dysfunctional Iraqi army, and adding that you might re-invade to stave off ethnic genocide. Lately, you have said the mission of your residual American force would be more limited than the Clinton proposal. You would commit trainers, for example, only if the Iraqi government engages in reconciliation and abandons sectarian policing. You would not embed American trainers in the crossfire of combat. This nuancing avoids the tough and obvious question of what to do with the sectarian Frankenstein monster we have funded, armed and trained in the Baghdad Interior Ministry. The Jones Commission recently proposed “scrapping” the Iraqi police service. Do you agree? The Center for American Progress, directed by Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, is urging that all US troops, including trainers, be redeployed this year. Why do you disagree? Lately you have taken advantage of Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness on Iran to oppose bombing that country without Congressional authorization. But you carefully decline to say whether you would support bombing Iran when and if the time comes.

This caution has a history:

– you were against the war in 2002 because it was a “dumb war”,
but you had to point out that you were not against all wars, without
exactly saying what wars you favored;

– then you visited Iraq for 36 hours and “could only marvel at
the ability of our government to essentially erect entire cities
within hostile territory”;

– then as the quagmire deepened, you cloaked yourself in the
bipartisan mantle of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated
leaving thousands of American troops in Iraq to fight terrorism, train
the Iraqis until they “stand up”, and sundry other tasks of
occupation;

Perhaps your national security advisers are getting to you when it should be the other way around. Their expertise is not in the politics of primaries. If anything, they reject the of populist peace pressure influencing elite national security decisions. The result is a frustration towards all the Democratic candidates for what the Center for American Progress has recently called “strategic drift.” The political result is the danger of returning to John Kerry’s muffled message in 2004. The policy result may be a total security disaster for our country, draining our young soldiers’ blood and everyone’s taxes on the continuing degradation of our national honor in a war which cannot be won.

Just for the record, let me tell you my position on Iraq. I think the only alternative is to begin a global diplomatic peace offensive starting with a commitment to withdraw all our troops as rapidly as possible. That is the only way to engage the world, including the Iraqi factions, in doing something about containing the crises of refugees, reconciliation and reconstruction. It means negotiating with Iran rather than escautf8g to a broader war. If you want to “turn a new page”, it should not be about leaving the Sixties behind. It will be about leaving behind the superpower fantasies of both the neo-conservatives and your humanitarian hawks. And yes, it is to be “suspicious”, as Eisenhower and John Kennedy came to be suspicious, of the advice of any Wise Men or security experts who advocated the military occupation of Iraq. Is that position as extreme as your rhetoric assumes?

Your problem, if I may say so out loud, and with all respect, is that the deepest rationale for your running for president is the one that you dare not mention very much, which is that you are an African-American with the possibility of becoming president. The quiet implication of your centrism is that all races can live beyond the present divisions, in the higher reality above the dualities. You may be right. You see the problems Hillary Clinton encounters every time she implies that she wants to shatter all those glass ceilings and empower a woman, a product of the feminist movement, to be president? Same problem. So here’s my question: how can you say let’s “turn the page” and leave all those Sixties’ quarrels behind us if we dare not talk freely in public places about a black man or a woman being president? Doesn’t that reveal that on some very deep level that we are not yet ready to “turn the page”?

When you think about it, these should be wonderful choices, not forbidden topics. John Edwards can’t be left out either, for his dramatic and, once again, unstated role as yet another reformed white male southerner seeking America’s acceptance, like Carter, Clinton and Gore before him. Or Bill Richardson trying to surface the long-neglected national issues of Latinos. I think these all these underlying narratives, of blacks, women, white southerners and la raza – excuse me, Hispanic-Americans – are far more moving, engaging and electorally-important than the dry details of policy.

What I cannot understand is your apparent attempt to sever, or at least distance yourself, from the Sixties generation, though we remain your single greatest supporting constituency. I can understand, I suppose, your need to define yourself as a American rather than a black American, as if some people need to be reassured over and over. I don’t know if those people will vote for you.

You were ten years old when the Sixties ended, so it is the formative story of your childhood. The polarizations that you want to transcend today began with life-and-death issues that were imposed on us. No one chose to be “extreme” or “militant” as a lifestyle preference. It was an extreme situation that produced us. On one side were armed segregationists, on the other peaceful black youth. On one side were the destroyers of Vietnam, on the other were those who refused to
submit to orders. On the one side were those keeping women in inferior roles, on the other were those demanding an equal rights amendment. On one side were those injecting chemical poisons into our rivers, soils, air and blood streams, on the other were the defenders of the natural world. On one side were the perpetrators of big money politics, on the other were keepers of the plain democratic tradition. Does anyonebelieve those conflicts are behind us?

I can understand, in my old age, someone wanting to dissociate from the extremes to which some of us were driven by the times. That seems to be the ticket to legitimacy in the theater of the media and cultural gatekeepers. I went through a similar process in 1982 when I ran for the legislature, reassuring voters that I wasn’t “the angry young man that I used to be.” I won the election, and then the Republicans objected to my being seated anyway! Holding the idea that the opposites of the Sixties were equally extreme or morally equivalent is to risk denying where you came from and what made your opportunities possible. You surely understand that you are one of the finest descendants of the whole Sixties generation, not some hybrid formed by the clashing opposites of that time. We want to be proud of the role we may have played in all you have become, and not be considered baggage to be discarded on your ascent. You recognize this primal truth when you stand on the bridge in Selma, Alabama, basking in the glory of those who were there when you were three years old. But you can’t have it both ways, revering the Selma march while trying to “turn the page” on the past.

This brings me back to why you want to stand in the presumed center against the “Tom Hayden Democrats.” Are you are equally distant from the “George McGovern Democrats.”, and the “Jesse Jackson Democrats”? How about the “Martin Luther King Democrats”, the “Cesar Chavez Democrats”, the “Gloria Steinem Democrats”? Where does it end?

What about the “Bobby Kennedy Democrats”? I sat listening to you last year at an RFK human rights event in our capital. I was sitting behind Ethel Kennedy and several of her children, all of whom take more progressive stands than anyone currently leading the national Democratic Party. They were applauding you, supporting your candidacy, and trying to persuade me that you were not just another charismatic candidate but the one we have been waiting for.

Will you live up to the standard set by Bobby Kennedy in 1968? He who sat with Cesar Chavez at the breaking of the fast, he who enlisted civil rights and women activists in his crusade, who questioned the Gross National Product as immoral, who dialogued with people like myself about ending the war and poverty? Yes, Bobby appealed to cops and priests and Richard Daley too, but in 1968 he never distanced himself from the dispossessed, the farmworkers, the folksingers, the war resisters, nor the poets of the powerless. He walked among us.

The greatest gift you have been given by history is that as the elected tribune of a revived democracy, you could change America’s dismal role in the world. Because of what you so eloquently represent, you could convince the world to give America a new hearing, even a new respect. There are no plazas large enough for the crowds that would listen to your every word, wondering if you are the one the whole world is waiting for. They would not wait for long, of course. But they would passionately want to give you the space to reset the American direction.

What is the risk, after all? If “think globally, act locally” ever made any sense, this is the time, and you are the prophet. If you want to be mainstream, look to the forgotten mainstream. You don’t even have to leave the Democratic Party. It’s time to renew the best legacy of the Good Neighbor policy of Roosevelt before it dissolved into the Cold War, the Strangelove priesthood, the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala, the sordid Bay of Pigs, the open graves of Vietnam. It’s time to renew the best legacy of the New Deal before it became Neo-Liberalism, and finally achieve the 1948 Democratic vision of national health care.

May you – and Hillary too – live up to the potential, the gift of the past, prepared for you in the dreams not only of our fathers, but of all those generations with hopes of not being forgotten.

Fetus frenzy

-
0

› culture@sfbg.com

If you live in San Francisco and are in possession of a conventional vagina, you are most likely pregnant. And if you’re not pregnant, you’re either anxious to become so or have just pinched out a baby and are looking toward closing the deal on numbers two and three before you hit 40. If none of the above applies, I, a new mother myself, give you permission to ignore that self-righteous pregnant bitch eyeing your Muni seat and openly admit the following: SF was edgier when it was just a bunch of wayward freaks in crotchless ass pants.

Now, thanks to a surge in results-oriented fucking among the white, heterosexual ruling class, this city has become overrun with decaf-latte-sipping, thousand-dollar-stroller-pushing, CFO–Noe Valley–ish, overly together supermoms who will tear you multiple assholes if you even think about stepping near their two-legged petri dish specimens. One might be tempted to label this phenomenon a baby boom. That assumption, however, is incorrect. What we are witnessing in San Francisco — and everywhere else inhabited by Gen Xers with money — is a parent boom.

In the past, parents were simply identified as people who raised children. That era, which lasted roughly 200,000 years, has ended. Parents now practice the rarified art of parenting. Parents who parent must adopt a specific parenting style — one that’s far more complex than a hairstyle and infinitely more expensive. Parenting requires ongoing investment in sleep and breast-feeding consultants, childproofing contractors, European-designed gear, six-week courses, endless manuals and magazines, and, depending on one’s sacred style, couture bedding and nursery decor that can run well over five grand. This is quite a change of direction for Generation X, to which I belong, whose members were blacking out in Cow Hollow bars and smoking out of two-foot Mission District bongs throughout the ’90s. But my generation’s escapist persona — equal parts political indifference, obsessive consumerism, hedonistic self-absorption, and Diff’rent Strokes references — did not abate or even truly evolve when we threw the birth control in the trash. It only found new life, literally.

We, the latchkey slackers who postponed being parents until our ovaries wept, are acutely aware that whatever decisions we make regarding our children are direct reflections of ourselves. It is therefore imperative to properly accessorize one’s child; only by doing so can one ensure the child is a better accessory. The right stroller, carrier, preschool waiting list, parenting philosophy, and even diaper — all denote much more than any sensible person would care to know.

THE BABY GAP


Oh, wait. I forgot to mention the babies: it appears there are many of them. Commercial sidewalks in Noe Valley, Cole Valley, Hayes Valley, and beyond buzz with kitten-eyed freshies sucking the rubberized life out of pacifiers, frazzled mommies in yoga pants and camel toes pushing behemoth, double-wide prams, nannies chatting on cell phones while small barbarians stick organic Cheerios up their noses. Top preschools are waitlisted for several years. Babysitters are harder to find than a pimple on a newborn’s butt. Is it good for San Francisco’s soul that kiddie boutiques outnumber bondage shops and Polk Street glory holes? It’s an epidemic, cry my nonparent friends, some of whom have been accosted by pompous moms and dads for accidentally bumping into strollers or smoking on the street. Ever think of denying an All-Important Holy Mother with Child your seat on the 1 California? Want to be knifed by a stay-at-home mom from precious Laurel Heights?

Funny thing is, the evidence of a baby boom is largely anecdotal. Statistics paint a very different picture. A disturbing March 2006 report by Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, "Families Struggle to Stay: Why Families Are Leaving San Francisco and What Can Be Done," reveals that we have the lowest child population of any American city. And of San Francisco’s 100,000 children, most reside in the city’s poorest districts — including traditionally working-class neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly chic. Coleman Advocates also estimates that 39,000 families with children are in need of affordable housing.

"The issue is not if there is a baby boom trend in San Francisco," Coleman Advocates’ Ingrid Gonzales e-mailed me. "The real issue is whether these [lower-income] families stay or are eventually pushed out of San Francisco because of a lack of affordable family housing or access to a quality public school education. Stats show that families leave when their children reach kindergarten age. Coleman Advocates and our families say that this is not OK — families should have a right to stay in the city they call home."

Somehow I doubt the parents buying the $1,890 Cabine infant dresser at Giggle on Chestnut Street are too worried about making rent. In fact, a May article in the New York Times reports that San Francisco is second only to Manhattan in toddlers born to wealthy white families, defined as those that pull in an average of $150,763 per year. And consider this Coleman Advocates finding: there was a 45 percent drop in the number of black families with children in San Francisco from 1990 to 2000, while around the same time 90 percent of the people moving into the city did not have children and — surprise, surprise — were mostly rich and white. This development pretty much paralleled the period of the dot-com boom. At the risk of making light of an alarming situation, is it safe to posit that the dot-com bust inspired semiemployed white professionals to buy a lot of lube?

CLASH OF THE CODDLERS


So what creates this illusion of a baby boom? Probably an uptick in showy, hyperactive parenting. Weekends at Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park provide insight into the phenomenon. There parents can be found earnestly — one might even say aggressively — parenting. They really put their all into it ("it" being what our parents haphazardly did with us) as they push their bewildered offspring in swings, making sure to "Wheee!" with more enthusiasm than a redneck at a NASCAR rally — an apt metaphor, because this brand of parenting is a competitive sport. "How old is she? Is she standing on her own? Can she walk yet? Does she speak French, and can she crap in the can?" someone always wants to know, hungrily eyeing your baby as if she were a delicious wild Alaskan king salmon fillet.

But blessed be, developmental superiority is not the only way to make other parents feel like shit. Fleets of luxury Dutch strollers are parked around the playground’s grassy knolls, each exceeding my share of rent by $300. I’ve seen nannies pull toys from Coach and Louis Vuitton diaper bags, kids scale the jungle gym dressed in Little Marc coats, white babies in $40 organic cotton T-shirts emblazoned with a grossly ironic image of a black woman’s face.

This excess of money breeds paranoia. Even on the warmest days, Caitlin-Courtney-Penelope-Emily-Aurelia-Shiloh-Mackenzie can be observed crawling in the playground’s cool sand, fully dressed in the very best of Zutano’s and Petit Bateau’s wide-brim hats, thick socks and booties, long-sleeve shirts, and pants in order to prevent the wretched elements, formerly known as blue sky and sunshine, from attacking the child’s not-so-invisible bubble. And rest assured, many of the playground’s nannies — almost entirely middle-aged mothers and grandmothers of color — have been fingerprinted and subjected to invasive criminal background checks. Long gone are the days when parents hired any ol’ teenage stoner to watch their kids.

LAVISH AND LACK


I feel embarrassed to be here, I often think. Because I know I’m part of the problem. I didn’t come to San Francisco for the money — I was born here and spent most of my childhood in that new epicenter of ultraparenting, Noe Valley — and I don’t have a nursery, a full-size kitchen, or even a hallway in my shared one-bedroom Sunset apartment. (This is not a "poor me" moment; my lifestyle is a choice.) But I did spend $300 on a labor and newborn preparation course, during which I suffered video after video of goopy babies cannonballing forth from untamed bush. I paid a woman $200 to teach me how to breast-feed and another $50 to join a local e-mail list through which upper-crust women seek help in finding dinner party entertainment for hire and live-in au pairs. I can cite Halle Berry’s prenatal test results but no statistics from the war in Iraq. I have secretly chuckled at ugly babies. I have wanted to know if your baby can stand alone yet and why she’s so much smaller than mine. I’ve purchased nearly 20 books on pregnancy, breast-feeding, natural birth, cosleeping, infant health, starting solids, potty training, how to stay hot, and how to fix my gut.

Pediatric records indicate I was not reared by wild dogs, yet I can’t figure out how to assume the most primal of all roles — motherhood — without hitting the ATM.

In her 2007 manifesto against the $20 billion baby-to-toddler industry and the disastrous effects it has on our children, Buy, Buy Baby (Houghton Mifflin) author Susan Gregory Thomas credits Gen X’s overspending and unhealthy micromanaging to the way in which we, the products of broken homes and TVs as babysitters, were raised: "The commercialization and neglect of young people results not only in fears of abandonment and bank-breaking shopping habits in adulthood to fill the void but also in a deep, neurotic sense of attachment to, and protection of, one’s own children and home."

Gregory Thomas’s assessment strikes me as painfully true and spurs the question: what kind of people will our babies become? Will they, as older children and adults, invariably expect and demand the best, no matter the appropriateness of the circumstance? Will they be terrified of public schools and public transportation and — worse — people with a different color skin? How will they ever travel abroad, and will they condescend to people who have less? Surely the parents who buy their baby the $1,700 Moderne crib intend only to give their child the finest they can offer. Every child is worthy of that grand intention. Yet, as my friend and mother-mentor Billee Sharp pointed out, the more extravagant the gifts, the harder the parents must work to provide them, resulting in less time spent with their kids. Lavishness, in this sense, becomes empty compensation for a shortage of available love.

IT TAKES AN INTERNET?


Being a new parent is much harder than it seems. If we’re overcompensating, it’s largely because we don’t know what else to do. If it takes a village to raise a child, what happens when all you have is DSL? During my pregnancy and the first three months of my daughter’s life, my husband and I lived in relative isolation in Brooklyn, away from family and a network of close friends that could offer knowledge and day-to-day help. The books, the classes, and the breast-feeding consultant filled the gaps that real support would have provided. (I certainly had two boobs but no idea where to put them: In the baby’s mouth? Are you serious?) In the absence of genuine community, we follow the only guidelines available to us and do the best we can manage. While nothing is less appealing to me than having to be someone’s friend simply because we both piss our pants when we sneeze, artificially constructed social networks like mommy groups, daddy groups, play groups, and Yahoo e-mail groups fulfill a real need for disconnected urbanites whose families typically reside thousands of miles away.

Learning to be a parent without geographic and strong emotional links to our families, then, becomes a complicated process of untangling the skein of too much information. From the moment a woman discovers she is pregnant, she and her partner are encouraged to believe they are totally, utterly retarded when it comes to being parents. The reality-TV experts, the how-to books, the product-driven Web sites and magazines cater to a deep, unrelenting distrust of ourselves, and they have the tragic effect of obliterating whatever parenting intuition and knowledge that we, as living creatures, already have in our DNA.

My path to reclaiming motherhood began with an injured wrist. Everything I had read warned that I would roll over my child and kill her if we slept together in one bed. To prevent this tragedy, my husband and I bought a sleigh bed attachment for our bed that kept me at least a foot away from my child. Each night that I listened to her breathe without being able hold her brought an agony so intense that I became profoundly depressed. I was desperate to pull her close to my body, like every mammal mother does, like our ancestors did long before they stopped growing pubic hair on their backs. In my longing to be nearer to my child, I contorted my left wrist under my head as I slept, perhaps to stop my murderous hands from accidentally touching the person I love most. With my wrist in a splint and steroid shots in my hand, I sobbed to my mother over the phone, "I can sleep with my cats, but why not with my own child?"

The night I brought my daughter into bed marked the beginning of my departure from the fear-and-product-based mommy mainstream. Within weeks a friend turned me on to the instinctive-parenting ideas put forth in Jean Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept (Addison Wesley, 1986), a fascinating book that details the author’s travels to Venezuela, where she studied the parenting methods of the indigenous Yequana Indians, who, remarkably, have never considered shopping for child-rearing clues on Babycenter.com. Admittedly, my and my husband’s current touchy-feely, indigenous-inspired style is a little fringe lunatic, and, as Gregory Thomas might suggest, it’s probably no coincidence that we both come from broken homes. But life-changing insights that require no investment in stylish baby gear are available to us. We only have to be willing to look.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE


One of the most affecting messages I have received about the depth of real parental love came to me in the form of a damp newspaper abandoned on the subway in New York City. Elizabeth Fitzsimons’s essay "My First Lesson in Motherhood," published in the New York Times Modern Love section this Mother’s Day, chronicles the journalist’s trip to China, where she and her husband picked up their adopted infant daughter, who, it turned out, had debilitating health defects. Fitzsimons was warned that her daughter might have Down’s syndrome, might never walk, and will likely be tethered to a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. "I knew this was my test," Fitzsimons writes, "my life’s worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head ‘No’ before [the doctors] finished explaining. We didn’t want another baby, I told them. We wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. ‘She’s our daughter,’ I said. ‘We love her.’ "

Fitzsimons’s fierce, truly unconditional love for a child she did not create becomes even more striking when contextualized in these fertility and pregnancy-obsessed times. We all want our children to be healthy, to outlive us, to be content, and to exist in a safe, peaceful world. These desires are pretty basic. Clearly, though, there’s a worrisome glitch in the parent boom trend: it has nothing to do with the well-being of children who are biologically not ours. This newfound love for babies is entirely insular, concerned only with one’s genetic family, one’s own perfect, beautiful, well-fed, well-dressed child. Look inside a pregnancy or parenting magazine and you will find that most lack any semblance of social perspective as they offer tired takes on recycled, useless information: "How to lose the baby weight in three days!" "Ten tips for getting back the magic in the bed!"

But the truth is that while middle-class women squabble about whether to breast-feed or bottle-feed, 39,000 families with children in this city are in dire need of affordable homes. For every day we bicker over stay-at-home moms versus mothers who work full-time, four children in this country will die from abuse or neglect, and eight more will be killed at the hand of someone operating a gun, according to Children’s Defense Fund statistics.

The self-centeredness of Gen X parents manifests as blindness to these sad realities, and here I indict myself again. Why do I only act on behalf of my child when I have the means to do something that could help other, less fortunate children? Maybe the answer is too painful to consider. Maybe I’d rather shop for a new sling instead. *

All about Bob

-
0

› cheryl@sfbg.com

It’s not that I’m anti–Bob Dylan. I’ve just never been a fan in particular. I’m too young or too fond of metal or too shallow or some combination of the three. But I found I’m Not There — Todd Haynes’s sorta biopic of the icon — entirely fascinating. By now you’ve heard the pitch: six actors (Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw) play facets of Dylan without actually playing Dylan, though Bale and Blanchett come dangerously close. The movie begins with the death of this nebulous character, identifiable only by his distinctive mop of dark curls, and a somber narrator informing us, "Even the ghost was more than one person." And I’m Not There is nearly more than one movie, with different film stocks, casts, tones, and styles deftly stitched together by Dylan’s music (performed, appropriately enough, by an array of artists).

Perhaps you didn’t realize that one of Dylan’s personae is an African American boy (Franklin) obsessed with boxcars, guitars, and Woody Guthrie. Strangers are drawn to this nostalgic little soul, including a kindly woman who feeds him before sternly advising him to "live your own time." This sweet tale, filmed in warm hues with touches of magical realism, is a more abstract reading of Dylan — unlike the story of Jack Rollins (Bale), which is told documentary-style and features Julianne Moore as a Joan Baez clone reminiscing about Jack’s impact on the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene. He was a visionary, using traditional folk stylings to comment on contemporary concerns. His life becomes intertwined with the showbiz fate of Robbie Clark (Ledger), a James Dean–ish young actor whose starring role in a Jack Rollins biopic catapults him to stardom.

After a freewheeling courtship — with montage-spun happiness undermined by televisions constantly broadcasting the Vietnam War — Robbie marries Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who later leaves him when fame and ego turn him into something of an asshole. But aside from big-head syndrome, Robbie’s worst offense is saying that women can’t be poets. The sins of Jude (Cate Blanchett) are far dirtier, and it’s no coincidence that Jude’s saga — a black-and-white British tour from hell, with snooty reporters and drug-enhanced moments of surreality — is I’m Not There‘s most magnetic segment.

Sexy androgyne Blanchett’s probably got her next Supporting Actress win sewn up with this one, or she should. Her performance is the heart of the movie — snarling, weary, uncanny, and able to make David Cross’s hairy cameo as Allen Ginsberg seem totally logical. Don’t Look Back would be the most obvious frame of reference here, but Haynes is less interested in Dylan’s performances or fans than his inner conflicts. It’s hard to sing about the oppressed when you are rich, famous, and beloved. It’s hard to keep your head on your shoulders when everyone views you as the voice of a generation. It’s hard to be patient when the Man (Bruce Greenwood — OK, his character has a name, but he’s the Man nonetheless) digs into your past, unable to beat you in a war of words but smugly proud of finding dirt that cracks your cooler-than-thou armor. Whoa, you mean his name isn’t really Bob Dylan?

Less compelling are a pair of shorter segments — Whishaw as Arthur (as in Rimbaud), who pops up occasionally to drop science via actual Dylan quotes, and Gere as Billy the Kid, a retired outlaw in hiding whose Halloween-obsessed hometown appears art-directed by Tim Burton. As in other chapters, there are surely nuances that sailed past me but that Dylan obsessives will seize on. Thankfully not represented are Dylan’s less-interesting years — the Victoria’s Secret pitchman era, for example.

As a rock doc–slash–biopic, I’m Not There is proof that the best rendering of a legend isn’t necessarily done with straight, tidy lines. I may not have been a huge Dylan fan before I’m Not There, but I was a Haynes fan. With this, his most ambitious work to date, the director’s affection for re-creating the past finds its match in his innovative dissection of a complex artist’s soul. *

I’M NOT THERE

Opens Wed/21 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

www.imnotthere-movie.com“>www.imnotthere-movie.com”>www.sfbg.com

www.imnotthere-movie.com

Robert Wyatt – love, sadness, love!

-
0

robertwyatt.jpg

By Todd Lavoie

The saddest music in the world? I still haven’t finished watching the 2003 Guy Maddin film of the same name – wherein legless beer-company baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) hosts a contest to find the single most sob-inducing melody in the world – but if such a match were to be held, I’d reckon Robert Wyatt would leave his competition sweating. He’s been practicing quite a bit: the recently released Comicopera (Domino) carries enough emotional heft to even send the bitter, joyless Lady Helen herself whimpering underneath her platinum wig.

Lest I give the wrong idea, Comicopera – as sweeping and ambitious as it is in its depictions of the human experience in the era of the so-called War on Terror (copyright 2001, Bush/Cheney Mafia) – offers much more than just sadness and loss. Any such meaningful analysis of life in the 21st century would be seriously limiting itself by failing to consider the rest of the emotional spectrum, and so Wyatt has injected the album with a considerable amount of whimsy and wide-eyed wonder at how heart-stoppingly beautiful the world can be. It’s a quality he’s brought to his recordings ever since his 1971 solo debut, The End of an Ear (Sony Import) – and even before then as the drummer and occasional vocalist for jazz-art-prog fusionists Soft Machine and Matching Mole – but it’s perhaps on his latest that these juxtapositions are best-articulated. Comicopera is a laugh, a cry, a wince, a raised fist, and awestruck sigh all at once. I’m not sure how many other albums this year can say the same about themselves.

But back to that “saddest music in the world” tag: the first thing you’re bound to be hit by on a Robert Wyatt record is his voice. It’s the sound of a disappointed angel, perhaps – still capable of shining a bright light upon all that is worthy of wonderment, but tempered by a sense of world-weariness and frustration with how we mortals never seem to get it right for too long before messing it up all over again. His frail tenor frequently cracks and wavers around the notes, and can be quite devastating. And the falsetto? Even the most jaded of hearts would have a rough time fighting off the ache induced by a Wyatt falsetto. Exhibit A: “Shipbuilding,” a moving Elvis Costello-penned lament. As much as I adore Elvis – and his version which came out afterwards was mighty fine as well – I’ve always been partial to Wyatt’s interpretation, which became a small hit in Britain. Here’s a performance from BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test:

Barry Bonds: Is this justice?

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so the U.S. Justice Department of George W. Bush, the Justice Department of Ashcroft, Gonzalez, and Mukasey, the Justice Department of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and rendition, the Justice Department that condones torture and cannot condemn waterboarding, the Justice Department that helps facilitate and “legalize” Bush lying us into a preemptive war and then lying us into staying, a Justice Department that refuses to prosecute any private contractors for their crimes against Iraqis and shows no interest in prosecuting the Blackwater security guards who killed l7 Iraqis in the September shooting spree, the Justice Department that fires a batch of U.S. attorneys for political reasons and then contemptuously defies Congressional subpoenas investigating the scandal, the Justice Department that makes a mockery of truth, justice, and the American way, this Justice Department after waiting four long years charged baseball’s homerun champion on five felony charges, four for perjury and one for obstruction of justice, for testifying before a federal grand jury that he never used steroids.

What kind of justice is that? B3

Click here to read:
Busted by a Broken System:
The Indictment of Barry Bonds
By Dave Zirin

Obama rocks SF

-
0

obama-new.jpg
Guardian photo by Lane Hartwell
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s speech last night in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium looked more like a rock concert than political rally, with a crowd of about 7,000 snaking through San Francisco for almost a mile and taking several hours just to get inside, past the metal detectors and large contingent of Secret Service agents. “I am fired up!” he told the enthusiastic crowd when he finally appeared on stage at 9 p.m., about two hours late.
Many attendees I interviewed before the speech were eager for Obama to take a bold stand — to come out and finally support gay marriage, socialized medicine, fundamental political reform, or leaving Iraq completely rather than having massive permanent U.S. military base there — and he didn’t go there, sticking to a fairly safe platform.
But his rhetoric was still inspiring and he captured the potentially epic nature of this race: “What’s next for America? We are at a defining moment in our history. The nation is at war. The planet is in peril.” And he took a couple of veiled swipes at frontrunner Hillary Clinton — “When I’m the Democratic nominee, my Republican opponent will not be able to say I voted for the Iraq War because I didn’t.” — and the timidity of his party: “The triangulation and poll-tested positions, because we’re afraid of what Mitt or Rudy will say about us, just won’t do it…If we’re going to seize the moment then we can’t live in fear of losing.”

Click below to listen to Obama’s full speech of about 30 minutes:


Part 2

The messengers

-
0

By Sara Schieron

Michael Peña and Andrew Garfield give the illusion of a long association. Funny enough, they never appear together in Robert Redford’s new war drama Lions for Lambs, and yet they get along well enough to finish each other’s sentences. Perhaps we can credit this familiarity with their shared experience working with actor and director Redford, whom they imply, helped them smooth out their respective anxieties. And who wouldn’t be anxious? They’re working with the freakin’ Sundance Kid. Anxious is exactly the right mindset.

Lions for Lambs is split into three storylines in three locales: one takes place in a California university, another in Washington D.C., and the third in Afghanistan. Revolving around the plight of two soldiers (played by Derek Luke and Peña), the story in California (starring Redford and Garfield) relates to the soldier’s decision to enlist, while the story in DC (starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise) explains the tragic strategy these two soldiers are en route to execute.

redford.jpg
Lions for Lambs director and star “Bob” Redford.

Ultimately, Lions is a message film about America at war, and it’s rare in that no other message films are filling the role of direct criticism. The Kingdom was an action movie with a comment about retribution, The Situation was a suspense film with an observation about truth in war, and In the Valley of Elah was a family drama with a massive overstatement about the nation in peril. Lions, on the other hand, is a straight up message film. But Garfield and Peña would explain it a little differently.

British by birth, Garfield made waves in Toronto with his film debut, Boy A, but before that he had a run playing lead character Billy in a theatrical adaptation of Kes, a lesser-known gem in the oeuvre of the great Ken Loach. Peña, in contrast, is far more seasoned than you’d expect such a young actor to be. He’s worked alongside many American bigwigs, appearing in Crash, World Trade Center, Shooter, and Babel. Both actors toured with the film to answer questions at a myriad of pre-screenings with Q&A devised by Redford to get the word out. Our conversation about acting, conviction and working with Redford follows.

Redevelopment blues

-
0

James Baldwin said it most eloquently and publicly: "Urban renewal … means Negro removal" — during a 1963 TV interview on meeting a boy displaced by the Fillmore-area redevelopment projects of the ’50s and ’60s. Wondering what happened to the Fillmore’s vibrant jazz, blues, and R&B clubs — which once drew musical giants like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and fostered local neophytes like Etta James and Chet Baker? Look to the two phases of the Western Addition Project, which swept over at least 30 blocks and affected more than 17,000 residents from 1953 to 1967.

Long before the bulldozers arrived, the Fillmore was renowned as one of the most diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco, a magnet for Japanese and Filipino immigrants. A few African American families had been living in the neighborhood prior to the 1906 earthquake, and when World War II brought the removal and internment of the Fillmore’s Japanese and Japanese American residents, the African American population exploded as workers moved from the South to the West Coast to work in the shipyards. Their arrival led to the blossoming of black-owned businesses and the Fillmore music scene. Hollywood stars could be spotted in back rooms, experimental filmmaker Harry Smith painted murals on the walls of Bop City, and marquee names such as Lionel Hampton would jam with local talents like Jerome Richardson and Vernon Alley and take them on the road.

Yet after the war, despite the early protests of community leaders, the Fillmore was slated for redevelopment — one of many "modernization" projects spurred by US redevelopment agencies created in the late ’40s that inevitably pinpointed neighborhoods populated by the poor and people of color. The two-lane Geary Avenue was transformed into a six-lane thoroughfare to speed commuters toward the Financial District, thousands were forced to move, and by 1967, when the Western Addition Community Organization managed to win a lawsuit against the city to stop demolition, only two venues had survived: the third incarnation of Jack’s Tavern, currently the Boom Boom Room, and the Majestic Ballroom, now the Fillmore.

More than 5,000 displaced people were left with "certificates of preference" promising dislocated residents and business owners spots when they returned, which few did. Instead, many moved away and lost contact with the Redevelopment Agency, chalking up their losses to false promises; still others have fought to have their certificates honored, such as Leola King, the owner of jazz-era nightspot the Blue Mirror (see "A Half-Century of Lies," 3/21/07).

King lives just down the street from the Fillmore Heritage Center, which houses Yoshi’s, the Jazz Heritage Center, and 1300 on Fillmore. It’s the final piece of the puzzle and fills the last remaining lot left by the redevelopment begun in 1953 — more than 50 years after the fact.

As the devastated dirt lots have remained barren for decades, the Fillmore has become more associated with crime and shattered dreams than the hot sounds and wild times of the 1940s and ’50s. When the Fillmore Center, with its Safeway, was finally built in the late ’80s, the community hoped for an economic renaissance which never quite arrived, old-timer Reggie Pettus of the New Chicago Barber Shop recalls. Jazz — in all its permutations — continues. And the oft-cited villain of the piece, the Redevelopment Agency, has attempted to redress its wrongs, producing booklets about the Fillmore’s musical heritage to spur developers to build in the neighborhood renamed the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District.

"The signs here always cracked me down because there’s nothing left to preserve!" says Elizabeth Pepin, coauthor of Harlem of the West (Chronicle, 2006), who initially learned about the neighborhood at the behest of Bill Graham as the Fillmore theater’s day manager in the late ’80s. "It’s all been bulldozed down. It shouldn’t be called ‘preservation district.’ It should be called ‘resurrection district.’<0x2009>"

All that’s left are memories and photos, which she and coauthor Lewis Watts gathered for their book and curated for 1300 on Fillmore’s walls. Pepin has done her share of work for the agency and the neighborhood, helping to fill the empty storefronts with posters of the area’s musical history, and is all too familiar with its fumbles. "The Redevelopment Agency just can’t get out of its own way — a disaster over and over again. Even the best intentions — for example, they hired me to do these names." She points to the monikers of local musicians like John Handy on the bricks of the sidewalk, running perpendicular to pedestrian traffic. "Why did they turn them this way? You put them the other way so people can read them as they’re walking, and then they’re so small nobody notices them!"

Still, she has her hopes, like everyone else who loves the Fillmore: "I want it so badly to succeed." The arrivals of Yoshi’s and 1300 on Fillmore are exciting, she agrees, though she wonders whether the old scene can truly be re-created. "One, when jazz was here in the ’40s and ’50s, it was superaffordable. Two, it was the music of the day, the rap music of the day, and all the people went out and danced," she explains. "It does worry me that everyone is pinning their hopes on this one corner to bring back everything else."

"Oddly enough, the Fillmore jazz district is probably more well-known in Europe among jazz collectors than in our own backyard," says Guardian contributor and cohost of KUSF’s Friday Night Session Tomas Palermo. He believes the area’s jazz history should be included as part of the core curriculum at SF public high schools, and he urges Yoshi’s San Francisco and other "jacket-and-tie" jazz outlets to "open up to new sounds," citing London’s Jazz Cafe, which books everyone from Roy Ayers to 4hero. He agrees with other watchers: the last parcel of land razed by the redevelopment wrecking crews shouldn’t become yet another exclusive club for the moneyed elite who roll down Fillmore from Pacific Heights and across the bridges. It has to be accessible to the community and the creatives who once made it what it was and what it could be, taking it even further from what Pettus once described as "Fillmo — no mo’." "Now," Pettus says, taking a break from cutting heads, "it’s ‘Fillmore — maybe!’"

Feinstein: easy on torture, tough on bay spill response

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so the front page head on Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle blared: ‘FEINSTEIN SLAMS SPILL RESPONSE.”
The subhead added: “This…should have never happened.”

Well, this was an easy one of course for Feinstein, pictured by the Chronicle wagging her finger in a characteristic pose of self-righteousness after a briefing on Treasure Island. She could denounce the locals, call for an investigation, and then scurry back to the safety of Washington. If she really wanted to get at the heart of theproblem and show some political courage, she could lead the way in doing what our editorial demanded: “push for legislation that would allow the Coast Guard to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

She could push for modernizing safety regulations that would allow the Coast Guard’s Vehicle Traffic Service to order preventative action when a ship is heading toward a bridge or a disaster. She could urge Congress to mandate that the owners of ships passing through U.S. coastal waters be fully identified, be accountable for their actions, and post an accident bond to insure they don’t escape liability for disasters.
(What if the ship had so damaged the Bay Bridge that it collapsed with cars on it? The Chronicle reported that the Cosco Busan is a Chinese vessel owned by either a company in Cyprus or one in Hong Kong and managed by a separate Hong Kong outfit. It will take years to get to the bottom of who should pay for the mess. Meanwhile, the public pays and the crab-fishing industry is severely damaged if not ruined for this year.)

She could urge the federal government to seize the ship, impound the cargo, and make clear that nothing is going anywhere until the ownership is identified and the bill is settled. She could urge all of this for national security reasons, since it is conceivable that a terrorist could seize ships laden with oil or explosives and wreak havoc in major harbors.

If her past is any guide, Feinstein is not about to go up against the powerful shipping interests and do anything much beyond an easy call for investigation and a Chronicle headline or two.

After all, when the chips were down on Mukasey for U.S. Attorney General, Feinstein helped subvert San Francisco values in a most egregious way. She announced her early critical support for Mukasey, abandoned Democrats opposing the nomination, led the charge for his Senate confirmation, and voted in effect for torture and to give the job of the nation’s top law enforcement officer in the United States of America to an attorney who would not take a public position against torture.

This was a snapshot of Feinstein’s shameful record: she is tough on bay spill response, easy on torture. And she’s been late and weak and undependable on Bush and the war. B3

RIP Cotton Hill, beloved TV curmudgeon and WWII vet

-
2

cotton hill.jpg
A meeting of the minds: Hank Hill, from left, Jimmy Carter, and Cotton Hill

By Erik Morse

On Sunday night, Nov. 11, FOX’s King of the Hill committed the ultimate cartoon sin when it saw the demise of cranky septuagenarian and war hero Cotton Lyndal Hill. A cruel gambit by the animators made all the worse as it was committed on Veteran’s Day, Cotton’s death illustrates a rare moment when an animated series has transgressed “Wile E. Coyote” immortality and confronted the loss of a central character. The following obit was released on the television show’s official Web site shortly before the episode’s debut:

“Cotton Hill, age unknown, World War II veteran, died Sunday in a Texas VA hospital. Hill suffered from several injuries ranging from four rusty bullets lodged in his heart from his military service, a broken hip and torn ligaments in his ankle-knees, to an infection in his esophagus and severe burns caused by a freak shrimp accident that occurred earlier this week at Tokyaki’s Japanese restaurant. Hill leaves behind sons Hank Hill and G.H. (short for “Good Hank”); daughter-in-law Peggy Hill; grandson Bobby Hill; ex-wife Tilly; second wife Didi; first love and former Japanese lover Michiko; an illegitimate Japanese son, Junichiro; and nephew Dusty Hill (of band ZZ Top).”

Texas redneck patrician, misogynist, gun lover, American hero, and war amputee, Cotton proved to be one of the most controversial and loveable television characters since the inimitable Archie Bunker. Representing the best and worst qualities of the “Greatest Generation” – its narrowmindedness, prejudices, simplicities as well as its patriotism, courage, and fraternity – Hill was a surrogate grandfather to many of us who had lost our own so many years ago. As a Texan and an obsessive viewer of the series from the beginning, I was startled by the news – Sundays have now lost a bit more of their juvenile innocence.

Seeing Stars

-
0

stars sml.bmp

By Todd Lavoie

Breaking up, breaking down, pulling yourself together, and plunging back into the dating scene to start all over again – sound familiar? Most of us have trod down that road before – the avenue leading us through the entire tumultuous cycle of doomed romance. Oh, the drama! While there certainly are stops along the journey that can be a real hoot – the thrill of discovery, the razzle-dazzle of courtship – later on, many of the landscapes can turn rather damn ugly for a while before things start looking up again.

Eventually, with a bit of persistence, the road will loop right back to the beginning, up with the pretty scenery which lured you within in the first place. Canadian popsters Stars are the audio-tour equivalent of this trek, but here’s the thing: these guides tend to skip right on through the picture-postcard stuff in favor of focusing on what lay farther down the road. The tussles, the tugs-of-war, the tongue-lashings, and then ultimately the breaking up and breaking down and moving on – that’s their turf, their area of authority. So how the hell do they make all of that strain and strife so appealing, so breathtakingly rip-roaring? How do they convince so many hopeful romantics to hop on such a bumpy ride? Get your answers this Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 13 and 14, when Stars storm the Bimbo’s stage and explain it all.

As a longtime member of one of those oh-so-sickening “happy loving couples” Joe Jackson sneered about all those years ago from his new wave bachelor pad, maybe I’m no longer an expert on the peaks and troughs of the dating scene – if I ever possessed that sort of wisdom, I gave it up long ago when I met my match. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been single in the city, and yet a spin of a Stars album can send me back to those days quicker than anything, and – here’s a bonus – without resorting to banal chick-flick-isms and the like. Honestly, why does so much so-called “sensitive” art (and maybe I’m being generous here by calling it “art” in the first place) sacrifice intelligence in the process? Me, I’d much rather dip my ears into something a bit more substantial. And that’s the draw of these Montrealers: we’re talking about clever, heartfelt, literate indie-pop here, hurtling from their five fiery souls with such urgency and conviction that even little old domestics like yours truly can pump their fists along to the “love is war” manifestos without feeling the slightest bit out of place. If you’ve ever loved – or, hell, tried to love, even – than any of their four albums will surely speak to some wounded corner of your heart, given the chance. Best of all, you’ll feel better afterwards – a good ‘n deep scrubbing of the insides ain’t ever a bad thing. Whose heart couldn’t benefit from a metaphorical enema now and again?

Water trumps Bush

-
0

What does it take to override a wartime Republican president’s veto? Water, apparently.

sealevel.jpg

Thirty five years ago, facing a rising tide of discontent over polluted water, Congress overrode d Nixon’s veto of the October 15, 1972 Clean Water Act. As a result, municipalities were able to apply for federal funds to help build and improve their local sewage treatment plants, and water got cleaner, as a result.

Yesterday, facing a mounting tide of discontent over global warming and rising sea level are real, Congress (unable to end the war or provide health care for kids,) united to reject Bush’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act.

bush_tile.jpg

As a result, 900 water projects will receive federal funds, including restoration in the Florida Everglades and the replacement on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers of locks that farm groups say are crucial for shipping grain.

Here in California, the Act authorizes $1.3 billion for 54 projects, including $106 million to strengthen the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees—a shoring-up project that has profound implications for San Francisco Bay.

resignation.gif

As Will Travis of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission told me this week, one of the central questions now facing this region is, ‘How do we build around a Bay that we know is going to get bigger, but we don’t yet know by how much?

“It’s a bit like seismic safety,” Travis said, noted that the 8-year plan that BCDC is proposing is just a proposal.

“It’s the beginning of a long conversation,” Travis explained. ” What’s not in that proposal yet is how the federal agencies and the business sector and the research facilities and laboratories fit in.”

Travis also admitted that this conversation could be “a struggle.”

“The first reaction of most people when they realize that sea level is rising and that we have a lot of extensive development on low lying areas around the Bay is, ‘Run for the hills!’”

“And that’s a reasonable course, until you realize the implications in an estuary that is the most urbanized in the United States,” added Travis, who believes that what’s needed is “a more nuanced approach.”

Part of that approach, suggests Travis, may involve some counter intuitive steps.

“In some places, we may see the encouragement of more development along the waterfront so we can use the economic engine to protect that development—and the low-lying areas behind it. That’s where it’s going to get interesting.”

As a harbinger of what’s to come, consider the battle that is breaking out over 1,400 acres that Cargill owns in Redwood City. Save the Bay and other environmental groups are urging Cargill to abandon plan to build homes on those acres, while Cargill is committed to developing those lands, and Redwood City is trying to decide what to do.
Fun, huh?

Goldie winner — Theater: foolsFURY

-
0

One of the first things to strike you about a foolsFURY production is its sheer kinetic energy and rigorous physical vocabulary. Hovering somewhere between modern dance and mime, or maybe the fashion runway and the circus, the movement of the actors onstage suggests tightly coiled regimentation and an unpredictable, acrobatic freedom. Bodies rewrite the most seemingly inconsequential gestures as larger than life or in an altogether different register, so that you might suddenly see and wonder at them.

But the next thing to strike you will surely be the words. From its first outing nearly a decade ago to recent San Francisco and New York runs of artistic director Ben Yalom’s translation and staging of The Devil on All Sides (French playwright Fabrice Melquiot’s magic-realist rumination on Yugoslavia’s civil war) and the remounting in September of its exquisite version of the Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw (directed by company member Rod Hipskind), foolsFURY remains wedded to deep, often darkly comical, and alluring texts steeped in the mysterious potency of words.

The physical athleticism and stylization onstage — grounded in a unique, evolving synthesis of techniques from Tadashi Suzuki and Viewpoints to commedia dell’arte and Jerzy Grotowski — are, of course, inseparable from the company’s approach to such texts, whether they’re Martin Crimp’s silky and sinister ellipses (Attempts on Her Life), Don DeLillo’s gloomy, incantatory wisecracking (Valparaiso), Kirk Wood Bromley’s neo-Shakespearean, post-American rag (Midnight Brainwash Revival), or even Shakespeare himself (in one inimitable take on Twelfth Night that went solely by its telling subtitle, What You Will). This pairing of soaring physicality and textual depth has been a driving force behind the success of the small but restlessly active, ambitious company (which has also become a vital teaching center in the theater community) since its noteworthy debut in 1998.

Together with other choice elements — including the sensitive use of music, sound, and scenic design — foolsFURY’s heightened theatrical language is, at its best, a surprise and a challenge to audiences, inspiring and even requiring them to develop new ways of receiving a performance. Yalom concedes that it has taken some time to achieve all of this, including a stable group of like-minded, technically practiced actors. He claims he wasn’t thinking beyond a single play when he almost inadvertently founded the company. "I had no idea what it meant to be a professional theater director or artistic director," he recalls. "I was working with a couple of companies, trying to get them to hire me to direct a play — specifically The Possibilities, the Howard Barker play. After a while I started to get to know the scene, and it became pretty evident that that wasn’t going to happen. So I decided I was going to produce it myself."

Novice though he was, he had long been thinking about what makes theater different and vital, a train of thought the company members have since taken up together. "After spending a lot of time experimenting, we started to find certain aesthetic forms that were interesting. But to me it really comes down to the larger question ‘What should be the role of this art form in our contemporary culture?’ Because, frankly, if it doesn’t have a specific value and something that is unique about it, then, much as I love doing it, it would be irrelevant. I don’t think that’s the case [with foolsFURY], though it’s taken me a long time to figure out how and why."

And the name? "I made it up," says Yalom. "It really fit the Barker piece, and I think to a certain extent it fits [the company]. What underlies a lot of our sensibility is a collision of things that are uncomfortable and things that are funny because they’re uncomfortable. We’ve done a couple of shows that would be categorized as comedies. The far greater amount of work has been things that have been funny but funny because they are challenging and thought provoking and, certainly sometimes, very upsetting. The Barker was a perfect example of that: the ‘fool’ and the ‘fury’ just sort of crammed together."

Goldie winner — Visual art: Michael Arcega

-
0

Make your way through the twists and turnarounds of Michael Arcega’s visual puns and titular wordplay — exhibit one: El Conquistadork, the 2004 Spanish galleon constructed of Manila folders that he launched in Tomales Bay, a point in the historic trade route between Mexico and the Philippines — and you’ll find yourself connecting the dots to the Manila, Philippines, native’s first artistic incarnation: an elementary school graffiti artist who once went by the tag Design.

"Then I switched it to Sen, then I got turned in and dwindled," Arcega says, recalling his eventual bust at Upland High School in Southern California. Yet school still rules the San Francisco Art Institute graduate’s world. The 34-year-old is currently hiding out in his Stanford studio, buried in first-year course work for an MFA. One can only wonder what the teenage Arcega would have made of the immaculate grounds of the so-called Farm — he remembers thinking when he first made the move from Eagle Rock High in Los Angeles to Upland, "Oh my god, the walls are so clean here!" — though today the artist clearly channels his subversive, pranking tendencies into pointed works executed with a meticulous hand and a puckish wink. Informed by ’90s multiculturalism but intent on moving forward, Arcega’s pieces, primarily sculptures and installations, upend language and probe the hybrids formed by cultural colonizers and the colonized.

Arcega’s exhibition at the de Young Museum, "Homing Pidgin," part of the "Collection Connections" series in which local artists make new art that reinterprets the museum’s objects, seems tailored for the San Francisco resident. He riffs off the Oceanic Art collection with the acuity and seemingly personal perspective found in such previous pieces as Terrorice, in which he conflates the United States’ "aid" supplies of arms and food with the construction of a rice AK-47 and grenade. Lingering in that zone where ha-ha morphs into aha, Arcega’s massive wooden Spork wittily spears the cultural-culinary invasions of fast food and the popular carved or painted salad utensils that populate souvenir shops in the Philippines while referencing the fact that most tribal cultures ate with their hands before the arrival of European explorers. The museum’s clubs, used in war and in ceremonial dances, are made over by Arcega, reenvisioned as intricate warships and barges topping ax handles and dance clubs — one even emits pulsing disco lights — perched on table legs. The artist also revisits mystery meats of the past — and explodes them — with Spam/Maps: Oceania, which replicates every teeny Pacific atoll using the canned luncheon meat and US occupation–era military ration whose name is an anagram of maps.

It’s powerful stuff from a punny guy. "He can move seamlessly between media, with the highest level of creative skill, to create pieces that disseminate his point of view in both political and historical terms," Arcega’s gallerist Heather Marx pinpoints via e-mail. "His brilliant use of humor subtly challenges the traditional notions of art practice, thus veiling the weightiness of his messages."

Arcega has certainly traveled far from the moment he first glimpsed and then imitated the graf art in the basement of his elementary school. He’s since leapfrogged from illustration to painting, sculpture, performance, and installation before, as he says, "discovering text as a medium. Now I just pick from an arsenal of past explorations." But right now the rigors of the academy call. "I wanted to put things on hold while I was at school so I could play without consequence," he says happily. "It’s stepping back to leap forward."

www.arcega.us

www.heathermarxgallery.com

Public safety, back on track

-
0

OPINION About a year and a half ago, James was dealing drugs on a street corner in San Francisco. He wasn’t a hardened repeat offender, just a young man with little education and few prospects. He got arrested and soon faced adult felony drug charges for the first time.

California law sets the punishment for selling narcotics at up to three years in state prison. But we know that 7 out of every 10 people we send to California prisons will commit a new crime within three years of being released — the worst recidivism rate in the nation. If James ended up in state prison, there was a 70 percent chance that he would go straight back in a few years after his release, and we would actually be less safe, not more, for our trouble.

So instead of business as usual, we decided to try something new. We sent him to Back on Track, a program established by a reentry initiative created by my office in partnership with Goodwill Industries, other community service providers, and the business sector. After a year and half, Back on Track had put this former offender into the workforce and gotten him off the street.

Since we launched the initiative, more than 100 former offenders have successfully completed Back on Track. In the process, we’ve learned a lot about public safety and how to change the broken policies of the past that have crowded our prisons and jails without making us safer.

For decades, beginning with the war on drugs, there were only two brands of law enforcement: tough and soft. For decades we’ve chosen to get tough, but it’s mostly been tough on us: we’ve filled our state prisons to the breaking point with low-level offenders — mostly drug offenders.

Isn’t there a smarter way to keep us safe?

Through Back on Track we’re initiating a new brand of law enforcement. Low-level drug offenders are referred to Back on Track, where they face swift sanctions for making bad choices and clear incentives for making good ones. The participants receive the basic opportunities for living crime-free that most of us take for granted: concrete job training and employment; union-based preapprenticeships in the building trades; college enrollment and help navigating financial aid; tutoring, money management, and banking instruction; child care, anger management, and parenting support. That’s the carrot, but there’s a stick too. Drug sellers must plead guilty to enter the program, and if they are rearrested or terminated from the program, they go straight to jail — no excuses.

Fewer than 10 percent of Back on Track graduates reoffend — and the program costs only $5,000 per participant, compared to $35,000 per year to house them in jail.

In October we held a graduation ceremony for Back on Track, one of four we’ve hosted since we launched the initiative. James was among the 13 young men and women who graduated. Today all 13 have full-time jobs or are working while they go to school. None have reoffended. More than 100 people currently in the program are following in their footsteps. Every day they’re teaching us that even a modest investment in people, coupled with accountability and clear guidance, can keep our community safe.

Kamala D. Harris

Kamala D. Harris is San Francisco’s district attorney.

Dead town

-
0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Every reporter assigned to the Castro on Halloween knew right away that the story was, in fact, the nonstory.

There were no outlaws. No shootings or stabbings as in the past. There weren’t even many of the scumbag bridge-and-tunnelers police feared most. The mayor’s plan worked: two decades of fun in the Castro on Halloween died in 2007.

"People are leaving in droves," one man said into his cell phone around 10:30 p.m. "We can’t drink."

By that point the San Francisco Police Department could count the total arrests on one hand. A few people were cuffed for public intoxication. One man had outstanding warrants. Another jaywalked. Department spokesperson Sgt. Neville Gittens — not someone reporters know as typically cheerful — was in a startlingly good mood.

"There aren’t enough people out here to urinate or defecate anywhere," Gittens told the Guardian that night while standing near a cordoned command and control center the city had planted at 18th and Collingwood streets. "You can see the streets. They’re pretty empty. They’re pretty quiet, and we’re very thankful for that. What we set out to accomplish as far as discouraging this party, so far it seems like it’s working."

The Mayor’s Office, in fact, called the night "an incredible success." Nathan Ballard, the mayor’s press spokesperson, added, "We are pleased with the way Halloween turned out this year. [Police] Chief [Heather] Fong did an excellent job of keeping the peace, and Sup. [Bevan] Dufty deserves praise for showing real leadership and representing the interests of his district."

But that success came at a cost — the Castro on Halloween night was under the tight control of a massive contingent of police. Barricades blocked the streets. Cops kept revelers (and anyone else who happened by) from setting so much as a toe off the sidewalk.

While the crowd totaled just a fraction of what has appeared in years past, Gittens said well over 500 law enforcement personnel were assigned to the area, including officers from the probation department, the BART Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle, an institution that hardly embodies unbridled countercultural fun — deemed the law enforcement preparations "almost militaristic."

The tab for all of that police presence — and for the lost tax revenue from bars and restaurants and the hit to the tourist industry — will almost certainly run into millions of dollars.

At times members of the media even appeared to outnumber partygoers. When an ambulance and two vans from the Sheriff’s Department began backing into an alley between Market and Castro, a camera operator and a reporter rushed to the scene. It was nothing, it turned out. Just a woman splayed out drunk next to a Dumpster.

SMALL BUSINESSES UNHAPPY


The last-minute announcement of the shutdown of the BART station at 16th and Mission streets, Gittens said, probably did the trick more than anything else. But that decision enraged some business owners, who told us they were worried that fewer transit riders would threaten revenue during what is usually a profitable holiday.

"Small business is the heartbeat of San Francisco, and the Mission district itself endures enough difficulties on a regular basis," Jean Feilmoser, president of the Mission Merchants Association, wrote in a community e-mail Oct. 30. "To cut off the arm that feeds the economic engine on one of the busiest nights of the year is cruel and unusual punishment."

The dramatic transit shutdown earned harsh criticism from two local officials, BART board member Tom Radulovich and District 6’s Sup. Chris Daly.

"Transit riders have been unfairly singled out in the city’s War on Halloween, and BART’s proposed closure is an insult to the community [that]
relies on 16th Street Mission Station," the two wrote in an Oct. 30 letter condemning the move. "People and businesses that depend on BART and Muni will have their mobility compromised by this campaign to suppress the Halloween celebration in the Castro."

Alix Rosenthal, who lost a board challenge to Castro district Sup. Bevan Dufty in 2006, was appalled by how little the public knew about the Halloween plans in advance. Rosenthal helped found Citizens for Halloween, a group that argued revelers would show up despite city hall’s insistence that the event be cancelled this year.

"I think it was really great they were able to keep the Castro safe," Rosenthal said. "But at what cost? The cost of fun. The cost of Halloween. The cost of transit riders. The cost of merchants."

Several businesses — including sex shops, bars, and restaurants — relented to pressure from the city and closed early. Officers clad in riot helmets and zip cuffs filled the entryways, seeming to overshadow civilians and bored-looking TV reporters.

The Edge bar at 4149 18th St., Osaki Sushi around the corner, the Posh Bagel, Chinese Dim Sum, the Sausage Factory, and even Twin Peaks, a bar that stands at the northeast entryway of the Castro and normally serves as a sort of de facto welcoming committee for the neighborhood, were shuttered. The restaurant A Bon Port at 476 Castro stood dark with a chalkboard sign in the window: "Out cruising," it read hopefully.

San Francisco Badlands, one of many Castro bars owned by area entrepreneur Les Natali, closed at 10 p.m., and two perturbed-looking private security guards in orange vests informed loiterers that they weren’t allowed in any longer. Harvey’s (on the southwest corner of 18th and Castro streets) remained open, but there were few people inside.

THE EAST BAY CROWD


The folks who braved the police and the lack of transit tried to liven things up. Just south of the Castro Muni station, two friends protested with signs reading, "Don’t tell us what to do — we’ll come if we want to." One of them, Erik Proctor, splits his time between the East Bay and San Francisco and said residents who move to the neighborhood should expect rambunctious annual celebrations.

"Partly why I’m out here is because last year they said people from the East Bay were the problem," Proctor said. "I represent the East Bay also. I come over here to have a good time. I don’t come over here to cause problems."

With the crowd under control, the cops had plenty of time to chat about their paychecks. "Are you on OT?" one officer standing south of 18th Street casually asked another.

"I think so," he responded.

"Well, that’s good."

A handful of costumed celebrants graced filled the sidewalks, but there was still plenty of breathing room, and traffic moved swiftly and easily along Castro Street, which was lined with steel barricades. One step into the street would elicit a hand on the chest and a hasty warning from a police officer: "Back on the sidewalk."

A handful of men went near-commando in little more than elastic thongs, but few people were shocked, and most of the costumes were far from scandalous. One woman dressed as a bag of groceries from Trader Joe’s.

Among the people most directly impacted were foreign tourists — the very folks the city spends money to attract every year. Activists walking through the Castro and interviewing people found visitors from 19 countries who had come to see the legendary celebration. Most walked away disappointed; they won’t be back next year.

THE BACKLASH


At least one business that stayed open felt a bit of official pressure. Koch Salgut, who owns Ararat on 18th Street, didn’t close early, even though he was repeatedly asked to do so.

"I kept it open because I was against" the shutdown, he told us later. "All the merchants rely on the business."

To his surprise, he got a visit that night from the San Francisco Fire Department. The inspectors told him he didn’t have permits for the candles on his tables.

"This is the second business I’ve had. I never heard there was a regulation against candles," Salgut told us. "The Fire Department gave me a little hard time. It wasn’t threatening, but it was an ugly situation."

Salgut has no doubt what was going on: "They were trying to give me a hard time because I was open, I didn’t close."

Calls to the SFFD seeking comment were not returned by press time.

John Lewis, a bartender at Moby Dick on 18th Street, wasn’t working Halloween night, but he lives in the neighborhood — and when we talked to him Nov. 1, he told us he wasn’t at all happy about what went down. The city had promised to fix the problem, he told us — not shut down the entire event. He complained that local bars were asked to close early and then reminded that they could be cited for exceeding occupancy regulations, for public displays of drunkenness, and for open containers on the street. Halloween has traditionally been the one time of year when the city doesn’t strictly enforce those rules.

Dufty has taken credit for shutting down the party and keeping the city’s plans for security under seal, but he admitted Oct. 31 to the Chron‘s gossip hounds, Matier and Ross, that next year’s event could look different. It’ll be on a Friday.

Police Commission president Theresa Sparks said she’s been told the event cost the city half what it did last year, including overtime for law enforcement, but she still hadn’t received dollar figures when we reached her Nov. 1. She had been skeptical that the crowds could be contained, considering that the city’s scheme was simply to announce that there would be no party. "But I think it was extremely well coordinated…. It went off better than expected." But she still believes planning should have begun far sooner. Police Chief Fong will give the commission a report about Halloween on Nov. 7.

So is the answer to shut down the Castro every year? No, Sparks said, but Halloween has to be made into "a citywide celebration, not just a neighborhood celebration."

Steven T. Jones and Sara Knight contributed to this story.

Feinstein’s torture cave-in

-
0

EDITORIAL Sen. John McCain — the right-wing Republican who is the only member of Congress to have been subjected to torture — has the right line on the technique that has the unfortunately innocent-sounding name of waterboarding. It’s not a complicated issue, McCain says; it’s "a horrible torture technique." McCain asks, "How can we condone this sort of stuff?"

Well, the George W. Bush administration’s candidate for attorney general seems to disagree — and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is backing him up. Michael Mukasey hedged and ducked when the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him if he thought tying someone to a board and pouring water over them to simulate drowning was an acceptable and legal practice. He insisted in testimony that he didn’t have access to the specific details of what is being done to prisoners and said that "hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."

We acknowledge that, as Feinstein wrote in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece Nov. 3, Mukasey is probably the best nominee that Bush is going to put forward. He’s probably better than Alberto Gonzalez. And if the Senate turns him down, Bush will simply fill the nation’s top law enforcement post with an acting AG who won’t need congressional confirmation, won’t do much to solve the paralyzing morale problems in the Justice Department, and will likely be more blindly loyal to the president than Mukasey.

But the Bush administration is winding to a close, and the damage that’s been done to the Justice Department won’t be repaired until a new president takes office. The administration’s treatment of prisoners is not only a huge problem but also symbolic of everything wrong about the way Bush and his allies view foreign policy, the Constitution, and congressional oversight. So the Senate ought to be willing to take a stand on this one and simply say that any nominee for attorney general who isn’t willing to be clear about opposing torture won’t be confirmed.

Feinstein has been awfully friendly to Bush of late; after riding Air Force One to Southern California to view the fire damage, she practically gushed about what a good person the president is. That’s not what the people who elected her expect.

Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern. Feinstein has not only voted poorly on the war but also refused to block some of Bush’s worst judicial nominees. If she can’t stand up to this administration, she shouldn’t be on the Judiciary Committee. She’s going to be around for another five years, and there’s no procedure to recall a United States senator, but her constituents can let her know, loudly, that her latest cave-in is unacceptable. There’s an e-mail link on her Web site, Feinstein.senate.gov; the message doesn’t have to be long or complex. "I vote against torture" will do just fine. *

Will & Willie are back!

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

durst_brown_wells.jpg

Will and Willie are back!
“Keeping it Real” with Will Durst and Willie Brown is now in podcast form at WillandWillie.com. Hear it at the link below.

Clear Channel Communications, the media megaconglomerate with l0 lousy radio stations in the Bay Area, made a terrible decision back in September 2006 when it killed the “Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie” early morning radio show on its 960 a.m. Quake station.

The show, created by the talented radio producer Paul “The Lobster” Wells, featured Comedian Will Durst and former mayor Willie Brown playing themselves and taking on the issues of the day in the spirit and style of the old Herb Caen columns in the old San Francisco Chronicle. They were fun to listen to, brought on guests that nobody else would touch (Peter Phillips from Project Censored, Noam Chomsky, Marie Harrison from the Hunters Point power plant opposition, etc.), sketched out issues the mainstream media ignored, and provided witty conversation and “Bursts of Durst” every week day morning from 7 to l0 p.m.

I was even encouraged to come on the program and blast away at PG&E, its illegal private power utility, and other Guardian issues. Willie promptly suggested on the air that the program stage a debate with PG&E and me. Fine, I said, but they have never agreed to a debate with me since the Guardian started its public power campaign in l969 and I doubted if they ever would. Willie claimed surprise and said he would work on it. Nothing of course happened.

But this was the kind of fun the program encouraged and I, and many others around town, enjoyed going on the show and making points and arguments we could make on no other local show and certainly not in the San Francisco Chronicle and probably not even in Caen’s column (even he was wimpy on PG&E).

Clear Channel just killed the show outright, with no warning, no real explanation, and no real appreciation for what the show had accomplished in a short period of time. And it left the city without a voice or venue on this Progressive station, just as “San Francisco values” became a national phrase and the war and Bush rhetoric heated up, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi ascended to the speakership. Instead, we got all kinds of Quake talent with the sensibility of other places (Al Franken from Minnesota and Stephanie Miller from Los Angeles) and none from San Francisco. (Newsman John Scott does his best, on “The Progressive News Hour” from 4 to 6 p.m., but it isn’t the same.)

The good news is that Will and Willie are back, with producer Paul Wells, in podcast form. Their inaugural episode is the first gathering of Will, Willie, and Paul since the cancellation. They are in good form discussing the San Francisco election and Mayor Newsom running without real progressive opposition and the problem with parking downtown and and and. Their next episode will take on the upcoming Presidential election and other national events.

Cheer them on! Hear them by visiting the following link HERE and going to the Will&Willie podcast. Log in and give them feedback. B3

Anti-war movement is back

-
0

05-protest1.web.jpg
Guardian photo by Neil Motteram
Apparently, most people aren’t buying the inevitability of the endless Iraq War or the defeatist fatalism expressed by the major political parties and the mainstream media, if Saturday’s massive anti-war march in San Francisco was any indicator. Tens of thousands sent the clear message that we need a new Iraq strategy, one that ends the provocative occupation by American troops as soon as possible. The ANSWER Coalition, which sponsored the event, is trying to marshal the anti-war forces moving toward the next major event in March, when there are calls for a general strike.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (10/30/07)

-
0

For a breakdown of the positions that relevant politicians are taking on the war in Iraq, visit the slate.com link below. 36 U.S. soldiers were killed this month, which means at least one U.S. soldier was killed for every day that passed. Click here to view.

Casualties in Iraq

U.S. military:

3 U.S. soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb, bringing the total of U.S> soldiers killed this month to 36, according to Reuters.

4,113: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

128 : Died of self-inflicted wounds, according to http://www.icasualties.org/.

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to: www.cnn.com

To view a breakdown of U.S. military casualties by state of residence, click here.

Iraqi civilians:

654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a Johns Hopkins University study.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

75,971– 82,776: Killed since 1/03

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

For a list of recent events that have resulted in Iraqi casualties, visit :
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/recent/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

29 Iraqi policemen were killed by a suicide bomber yesterday, according to the New York Times.

30,000?: Killed since 2003

Source: http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

200 journalists have been killed since the start of the war in March 2003 through August 2007, according to Reporters Without Borders.


Refugees:

Read a first hand account of how Iraqis are being treated when attempting to enter Jordan for a vacation.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

2.2 million: Iraqis displaced internally

2 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Incessant violence across much of Iraq’s central and southern regions has forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

28,171: Wounded from 3/19/03 to 8/31/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (10/30/07): So far, $464 billion for the U.S., $58 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

For more information on what the war is costing the United States, visit the American Service Friends Committee website here.

A shot from the Sahel

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Many moons ago, when I moved as a child to Africa, my mother, my sister, and I resided in the Sahel. To be precise: we lived in Bamako, the vibrant capital city of Mali — not to be confused with the medieval empire of the same name. To reside there as a Western black was strange; our Americanness placed us in the novel position of being regarded as de facto aristos, somewhere between such elevated classes as wealthy, regal descendents of the Keita clan and the dispossessed, which included Imazighen exiles. To see beautiful but abject so-called Tuareg women and girls begging in the dusty streets of Bamako from the windows of our funereal Lincoln Town Car — the incongruity of them huddled at roadsides and traffic stops in their indigo or floral clothes, their grace surpassed only by the Wolof women to the northwest in Senegal — was a mind-blowing experience that has stayed with me in the decades since.

The complexities of centuries of intraracial warfare and political mayhem derived from poisonous North African colonial legacies were largely beyond my eight-year-old mind’s grasp. As Madame l’Ambassadeur, my late mother was the one to travel up-country and beyond, nearer the heart of the Sahara, and she worked tirelessly to have any impact on the volatile situation in the country. I was restricted by the quotidian business of school and play, but my far-roving mind began a lifelong romance with Mali’s two most fabled folk of the Western Sudan, the Dogon and the Imazighen. The star-walking Dogon were remote and mysterious at the Bandiagara escarpment, but the grave injustices being done to the proud, rebel Imazighen were plain to see in Bamako rush-hour traffic.

When I listen to the music of Africa’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band, Tinariwen (translated from Tamasheq, "the deserts"), from L’Adrar des Iforas, this baggage comes with me, weighted with shame at not following in the career footsteps of my selfless Africanist mother and fear that people of the West will never truly comprehend the vital importance of the many Africas to their own humanity. With or without Tinariwen’s great Amassakoul and current Aman Iman (both World Village; 2004, 2007) on my iPod as I ride the Manhattan subway, when I see disenfranchised people begging down the aisle I am always jolted back to the visceral yet illusory sensation of extending my thin, childish arm through the steel of the Lincoln to help a reddish-brown-skinned Amazigh girl in elegant rags, no different than me in that she was the child of parents who wanted to be free.

Whereas my parents’ generation of young black revolutionaries sought to forge strong pan-Africanist links all the way from DC to Dar es Salaam, and their cult-nat elements experimented in folk, soul, rock, and funk genres to express the hopes and fears of the 1960s era of deliverance from Jim Crow, there in Bamako, as a child at the turn of the ’80s, I was witnessing at a remove the rise of radical culture spawned by Kel Tamasheq ishumaren (unemployed) forced to abandon traditional nomadic ways by poverty and drought. These black folks’ rebel music, tishoumaren, has found its apotheosis in Tinariwen since the group first emerged from a Libyan military camp in 1985, moving from guns to guitars in the process of wresting messages of uplift from chaos. They weave a sound web linking traditional instrumentation (like the tehardant, or lute), Maghrebi music (think Nass el Ghiwane), James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and even rap ("Arawan" on Amassakoul) — superbad, indeed.

The droning, hallucinatory blues of the Blue Men of the Ténéré may have increasingly wowed exogamous audiences since the acclaim Tinariwen’s Kel Tamasheq musicians received from jamming with Robert Plant at the 2003 Festival in the Desert, but there lies a deep source of crisis beneath the band’s international success. Recorded in Bamako, Aman Iman‘s "Soixante Trois" captures guitarist-singer Ibrahim ag Alhabib recalling the brutally suppressed 1963 Imazighen rebellion against the government of newly independent Mali. Tinariwen’s spare sound brings great joy on purely aesthetic grounds, the masterful harnessing of rolling electricity and overlapping ululation indelibly making a mark on the diasporic continuum stretching from Mali’s Ali Farka Touré to Mississippi’s Otha Turner and back again.

Yet it must never be forgotten that the mysteries of Al Baraka, the hardships of desert life and the hardcore realities of war, inform these songs, and such has been the lot of the aboriginal peoples of Tamazgha from the time of Roman and Islamic imperial incursions onto the North African sands up through current attempts to further disenfranchise the Imazighen in order to appropriate their oil-rich ancestral lands. Aman Iman‘s very title — meaning "water is life" — refers not merely to the primal law of the desert but also to the very real, enduring crisis afflicting the region’s ecology and society. As you rightly enjoy Tinariwen on tour, please remember and act on the fact that for the headliners, the fight continues on every front. *

TINARIWEN

Sun/4, 7 p.m., $20–$55

Palace of Fine Arts theatre

3301 Lyon, SF

1-866-920-JAZZ

www.sfjazz.org

1...939495...117Page 94 of 117

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org