A free society means freedom for the bold and the meek

On the other end of the sexual adventurous spectrum from the Rachel Bussels of the world...there's a discussion going on over at the Class Maledictorian, Crescat, and some other blogs about whether a guy ought to kiss a girl on the first date, assuming he wishes to convey romantic interest.

This discussion brings us back to a book discussed (and dissed) by Molly here on this blog, namely He's Just Not That Into You: "Maybe he's shy" is what female friends tell one another re: guys who are obviously not interested. However, this blog being a fair and balanced source of procrastination, I should add that sometimes a guy really is shy, and his failure to act interested is not due to a lack of interest.

What this all adds up to, though, is that the oh-so-complex rules of heterosexual dating etiquette are, if not obsolete, pretty much up for debate, and quickly evolving. So, while Will and Amber disagree over whether or not a first date means a kiss, Rachel Bussel's straight female friends are doing all sorts of things not covered by Miss Manners. This is how things should be: a free society is one in which bisexual women who are convinced that there are no straight women can happily coexist with straight folks who won't kiss someone till they're good and ready.

"So when I like a new girl and someone says to me, 'Oh, but she's straight,' I never let that faze me."--Rachel Bussel, bisexual wishful thinker

Imagine an article in the downtown, left-wing weekly, the Village Voice, declaring that, deep down, many gay men have at least some curiosity about what sleeping with a woman might be like. Couldn't happen--it's assumed that gay men, by definition, don't want anything to do with women in that way, and that those who've experimented with women but who currently identify as gay did so in the past out of peer pressure. A paper like the Voice would never ask, say Michael Musto, to confess his secret desire for, say, Pamela Anderson.

But the Voice has nevertheless printed a piece in which Rachel Kramer Bussel declares: "deep down, many straight women have at least some curiosity about what sleeping with another woman might be like." And she's not talking about closeted lesbians or bisexuals, either, nor about those women who make out with other women to impress men, but about the many, many straight women who, according to Bussel, are also attracted to women. She wishes. I'm afraid that there are many, many straight women who, like gay men, are just plain uninterested in--bordering on revolted by--the idea of sex with another woman.

But the Voice, ever critical of heterocentric society, is endorsing an argument that suggests that straight women as such do not exist. This may well be the definition of PC absurdity: if the paper accepts that men exist who are 100% gay, why can it not accept that, more often than not, in liberal pockets of the US, a woman who claims to be straight is just that, and her refusal to "admit" to her homosexual urges has a whole lot to do with those urges not being there to begin with.

"Almost every 'straight' girl I know has at least made out with another woman; often they've done more, and most of them are far from ashamed or embarrassed about their same-sex dalliances," writes Bussel. There are certainly social settings where dalliances of all kinds are encouraged, so it's entirely possible that Bussel's friends have all dallied in every way imaginable, and I thus cannot take issue with her here. I take issue, though, with her suggestion that straight women are all just dying to be lesbians.

She claims that "straight women often walk away from their same-sex encounters feeling empowered on several levels." Empowered? Give me a break. Either a woman would walk away from such an encounter and realize that she is gay or bi, or she'd realize, ugh, that's really not her thing.

Bussel--a self-proclaimed bisexual--announcing that all straight women actually like other women is like me saying that Rufus Wainwright, deep down, is looking for a nice girl to settle down with. She writes: "So when I like a new girl and someone says to me, 'Oh, but she's straight,' I never let that faze me."

Using that logic, Rufus is mine.

"Self" magazine meets Jung: America's collective jeans get a bit tighter in the hips

Bush was reelected, Arafat was laid to rest...and somehow we were all missing the real news story, which is that mannequins have bigger asses than they used to.

I suppose the only real news-like tidbit in the piece in the Style section is that women (presumably in the US) now weigh on average 155 pounds, which is apparently more than they (we?) used to, and that this collective weight has been gained mostly in their (our?) collective hips. I've heard of collective unconscious, but collective weight gain, not to mention collective problem areas? "Self" magazine meets Jung, or something...But this is really where statistics start to be problematic. Sure, we all want to know if being against gay marriage was really what won Bush the election...but do we absolutely need to know that not only are the nation's women fatter, but where on women's bodies this excess weight was most likely to be distributed?

WWPD debates the Middle East. (Remember when this blog used to be all about Tasti-d-lite?...)

Jochen has added an interesting and informative comment to my post about French kaffiyeh-wearing:

"On the Palestinian Scarves so popular in Paris, one might say that they became, probably since the 1970s, a general (fashion) symbol for the left, and then even lost their direct political character for many. I doubt that wearing such a scarve is a conscious political statement for most people, though pro-Palestinian sentiments are certainely strong in France.

In defense of France: There were huge solidarity demonstrations in France after fire-bombings against Jewish institutions like schools, assumably committed by Islamic terrorists. It's true, there is a huge anti-Semitism in France, especially among Arabic immigrants, but at the same time, there is a strong tradition of anti-antisemtism as well."

My response, which I'm posting because it became too long for a comment:

It's certainly possible that kaffiyehs have lost any direct significance in France with respect to the Palestinian cause, which is itself a testament to the enduring trendiness of siding with the Palestinians (rather than with Israel, but also rather than siding a bit with both and seeing peace as the only worthy goal). Even on campuses in the US, siding with the Palestinians suggests a tough but sensitive, left-in-the-sense-of-pro-underdog personality, while anyone who openly expresses pro-Israeli sentiment is accused of either whining about non-existing anti-Semitism or of just going the obvious route because they're Jewish (if they are; if not, they're assumed to be Christian fundamentalist loonies).

But back to France: While the French do, at times, admirably fight anti-Semitism at home, the refusal to acknowledge why so many Jews are not in France but are rather in Israel is really at the root of the problem--if French Jews had all sat around at waited for France to defend them during WWII, they'd been out of luck(not to mention during the Dreyfus Affair...which I know more about than I ever thought I would!) , and the same is frequently the case, but obviously to a much lesser extent, today.

Israel came out of Jews not wanting to rely on the whims of Europe, which might or might not permit them to live in any given country at any given moment, and to form a self-defending state. Theodor Herzl's interest in founding the state of Israel came out of his having covered the Dreyfus Affair and having thus witnessed French (not German, not Russian, etc.) anti-Semitism.

I very much admire the French attempts at having a secular state. France's secularity, in theory, would benefit French Protestants, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, and others, and would--still talking in theory--make France a much more hospitable place for those of different religions, not to mention the non-religious, than is the US. And I am reassured every time I hear about a French leader speaking out against anti-Semitism. But despite the French insistence on defending their own Jews, the country's utter infatuation with the cause of a people whose goal is, more often than not, to eliminate the state that was established precisely as a reaction to French anti-Semitism--that I do find unsettling, to say the least.

Look to the Netherlands

My cousin Caroline Glick, in the Jerusalem Post (registration required, I think) on the murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. Van Gogh had made a movie about the oppression of Muslim women--for more information, see what Andrew Sullivan has to say. Forget France and the foulard--the Netherlands seems to be the current site of significant West vs. East clashes. Something to keep an eye on, at any rate.

One random and completely tangential note: For some reason, Caroline's article is accompanied by a Google-placed ad for "Palestinian singles." Oh Google, you are blind...But I suppose Suha's available these days--wonder if she's got a profile up yet.

Kushner in Khicago

Tony Kushner, author of the acclaimed play-then-HBO miniseries Angels in America visited the Windy City last night, with a rather intellectual conversation for what I'm sure was a somewhat baffled audience in the lovely Winter Garden of the Harold Washington Library. The event was sponsored by Nextbook, which is dedicated to promoting Jewish culture to the public, and the mediator was a professor of Yiddish at Columbia, but Kushner did his best to focus his conversation not just on Judaism but also on how he as an agnostic (!) feels about America and American secularism.

I think his efforts slightly dispelled the nachus that was originally projected his way, but not as much as one might expect, which says a lot for the crowd. There was no small amount of Bush-bashing, I need hardly add.

In any case, Kushner had some interesting comments on his work, on writing, and politics, and he went out of his way to have a conversation with everyone in the bookline. He's a really nice guy.

"Being Jewish taught me how to be gay" he said in response to my question about his comfort making parallels between the Jews as a minority and homosexuals as a minority. And he turned a Marxist corner that I hadn't expected, but should have, talking about how the "oppressed must stand together."

And, he confided later, he tried to get into the U of C, but he got rejected. So there you have it. A brilliant man, with brilliant works that ooze with the play of ideas and politics, and we didn't let him come play in our intellectual sandbox. Shame.

Still, if you have the time, read one of his plays, or better, check out Angels in America on DVD. It is, after all, a gay fantasia!

"He slept and ate little, took no vacations and neither drank nor smoked." Jane Brody wouldn't have had a bone to pick with old Yasir

Judith Miller's Arafat obit makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about the man. Which is fine for most obits, but in this case is nauseating.

"No other individual so embodied the Palestinians' plight: their dispersal, their statelessness, their hunger for a return to a homeland lost to Israel."

This statement makes very little sense in the context of what Miller later implies in her obit, which is that the state of Israel preceded the idea of a Palestinian homeland, meaning that such a homeland could not possibly have been "lost to Israel."

"Mr. Arafat assumed many poses. But the image that endures - and the one he clearly relished - was that of the Arab fighter, the grizzled, scruffy-bearded guerrilla in olive-green military fatigues and his trademark checkered head scarf, carefully folded in the elongated diamond shape of what was once Palestine."

"Grizzled." What an understatement, try "physically revolting, even to Suha." I suppose that makes Michael Phelps or Rufus Wainwright "passable."

"Mr. Arafat leaves an ambiguous legacy. He succeeded in creating not only a coherent national movement, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, but also the very consciousness that made it possible. A master of public relations, he made the world aware of Palestine as a distinct entity. And he helped persuade Palestinians, who now number five million to six million, to think of themselves as a people with a right to sovereignty."

"He slept and ate little, took no vacations and neither drank nor smoked." No wonder he was driven to terrorism.

"Many Palestinians compared him to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founder and first leader, seeing Mr. Arafat as an Arab pioneer who struggled to lead his people back to their promised land. Many Israelis, by contrast, regarded him as an archterrorist, an opportunist who endorsed peace merely as a tactic to destroy Israel - 'a beast on two legs,' as the late Israeli leader Menachem Begin once called him."

That's a good one the one hand, on the other hand. The Times won't take any side.

"Over the years, 'old man' became apt. His once-taut stomach gave way with age to paunch despite his frequent walks and the treadmill behind his office. What remained of his hair, almost always hidden by his trademark head scarf, turned gray. The face, with its three-day stubble, became visibly lined, his eyes weary."

It is really a waste of space in an obit to describe the physical aging of the deceased. It's sort of assumed, right?

"That same year, he also began wearing his trademark kaffiyeh, which impressed both Arabs and Westerners when he first traveled to Europe in a Palestinian student delegation."

Those scarves are awfully popular in Paris, even (especially?) among non-Arabs. Can't say I saw too many Jewish star necklaces worn in solidarity by non-Jewish French people. Arafat picked the right place to die.

"Successive Palestinian crackdowns on Hamas and other militants invariably gave way to deals, pledges of forgiveness and rounds of kisses."

Feeling queasy yet?

"The White House's hostility to the Palestinian leader hardened over time as American intelligence officials informed the White House that he was lying about his opposition to violence against Israelis. Officials said Mr. Bush came increasingly to equate Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians with militant Islamic attacks on Americans."

Wonder why Bush might associate the two. I mean, it's not as if Islamic militants ever associate Americans and Israelis, not to mention use "Jew" and "Israeli" interchangeably. And those conspiracy theorists who assume Israel was responsible for 9/11? Yeah, it's got to be Bush who's confused.

"Despite deteriorating political and economic conditions, many Palestinians blamed Israel and not their leader for their plight. For many, until the end, Mr. Arafat remained the symbol of Palestinian aspiration to a state, the only man who could have sold the painful compromises for peace to his people had he chosen to do so."

What can we conclude from this, that Palestinians are out of it? That Arafat was, in fact, the grizzled, admirable man Miller suggests she thinks he was? Who the hell knows. I like the Times, they write awful good over there, but sometimes...

Judith Miller offers this in the way of balance: "Palestinians in many Arab countries, including Syria and Lebanon, were restricted to camps and denied citizenship, while their host governments spoke in heartfelt tones of the Palestinian cause."

Uh, yeah, how about that? That strikes me as huge.

Entre la vie et la mort no more

The bucket has been kicked.

Coq au ugh

I followed the link from Crescat over to this dish, suggested by busty British chef Nigella Lawson. The photo in the Times of "coq au riesling" so resembles vomit (Kate concurs: "It looks like somebody threw up mushrooms") that I fail to see what Will Baude is getting at when he says, "Both [coq au riesling] recipes look good." I suppose that they might, by some stretch of the imagination, taste good, but my inner three-year-old (or is it my familiarity with dining hall cuisine?) prevents me from eating foods with such a striking resemblance to the, err, pre-eaten. Will notes, however, that, "if I had a bottle of Riesling and some chicken sitting around, I doubt I could do anything other than roast the latter while drinking the former." I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of anyone having a chicken "sitting around," but I agree with him that wine and roast chicken, drunk and eaten respectively, are a better bet than the dish suggested by Nigella Lawson, which would, in turn, be only slightly better than roasting the former while drinking the latter.

Possible Chicago sales tax increase

Looks like I'd better hurry up and buy those moon boots.

A higher calling for Bartlett

A discussion of "God: Fact or Fiction?" will be held in the Bartlett dining hall's trophy room. Hope they sort that one out once and for all. (Because if it ever does get resolved, Bartlett, home of the cheddar blend pizza and the vegan mush station, is certainly the place one would imagine such an epiphany would occur.)

Rent, the Movie: It's real irony, Alanis...

Yes, friends, it's true, they're making a movie out of Rent. Whatever's left of Jonathan Larson's soul must be atwitter with rage.

I think every person of my age (late teens, early 20s) much have gone through a period of intense Rent-listening. At least, everyone I know seems to have caught this bug; I myself caught it late, during the last two years of my college career. I still gleefully listen to the soundtrack with my roommates.

Though Rent contains a good message of social justice, I'm in no small measure dismayed at the number of these people who no longer understand Rent's unique context, set in the early-nineties fight against AIDS which was politicized to an extent that few of our age seem to recall. How many of us actually know what ACT-UP is anymore? Or, for that matter, what the high holidays are? -- unlike ACT-UP, at least that institution still exists outside France...

But more saliently, Rent has always existed on the edge of contradiction, milking its popular success to the profit of whoever ran it, while at the same time condemning capitalism and its ruthless amoralism, epitomized in Reaganism and turn-of-the-century neoliberalism ("When you're living in America/You're what you own"). The theater operators consoled themselves by giving away front-row seats for "cheap" on the day of the show, but there's nothing quite like the irony of sluttily-dressed tween tourists in the Big Apple, reeking of perfume and aglow with glittery clothes, feeling anti-establishment and rebellious for not only seeing the play, but for sticking it to the man by seeing it cheap.

Now, of course, Rent will have sold out not only its message and whatever vestiges of anti-establishmentism it had left, but also excellent musical stylings and staging, as it enters the most mainstream of mediums: film.

lest you think the production is being produced by some great art-house, it's not. It's being produced by Miramax, which has some arthouse creds, yes, but also brought us Chicago. Director Chris Columbus, who made the first two Harry Potter flicks and Home Alone doesn't exactly fall in the genre of an indie film-maker.

At least the cast looks good: Taye Diggs, Rosario Dawson...if nothing else, they're making sure that even if the characters don't want to make money, that the movie will.

What a headline:

"La manifestation antiraciste ne mobilise pas."--Le Figaro.

Read on, if you know French, to hear more about how a protest against racism and anti-Semitism, scheduled for yesterday and to be held in Paris and elsewhere in France, never quite got off the ground. But the headline's all you need, really.

say it ain't so, michael!

Michael Phelps, sex god of the Athens 2004 Olympics, was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated...DWI, says Yahoo! News.

Looks like Phoebe and I will have to find another Adonis to adore. At least Matt Damon keeps out of legal trouble...

Kibbutzcest, Part 1: Seret lo tov [UPDATED]

Molly and I just saw an Israeli film called "No Longer 17." The title of the film suggested a cast filled with strapping 18-year-old Israeli guys, but no such luck. The movie began promisingly enough, telling the story of a kibbutz that decided to kick out all members over 65 in order to save money, and thus save the less than financially sound kibbutz. But the elderly folks were also the ones who founded the kibbutz, not to mention the state of Israel itself, so they do not take well to being told to leave the premises. That all happens in the first minute or so--then comes the disasterous, near-incestuous romantic entanglements of the elderly kibbutzniks, each of whom seems to have had a child out of wedlock who, in turn, produced another out-of-wedlock child, in what appeared to be intervals of 15 years, such that the sexy 50-ish grandmother ought to have been the mother of the sullen 20-year-old, and yet a third woman was supposed to be the child of one and the mother of the other. Everyone had slept with everyone, and my brain does not do logic games well enough to figure out whether any actual incest was involved. (When Reuven was sleeping with Noa, who exactly was Reuven to Noa, given that Noa's mother was something of a kibbutz ho, whose boyfriend, an old man with massive eyebrows, has, in turn, had essentially two wives, the official one being the mother of Reuven's dead wife, whom he, Reuven, may or may not have killed? Confused yet?)

The thing that bothered me most about the movie--aside from the two obvious things, which were that I'd been hoping it would involve hot young Israeli men, and that all the "dialogue" consisted of each character providing a brief plot summary of the movie itself, things like "the kibbutz is kicking off the old people, and I'm not in love with my husband,"--was that the youngest character, a 20 year old girl whose name escapes me at the moment, arrives back in Israel after backbacking across India, and shows up with a hippie boyfriend, who appears briefly when the two accidentally walk in on this girl's grandmother (the aforementioned kibbutz ho) and quickly scramble out. When the girl returns, she's left the boyfriend on the stoop; he is never once mentioned, nor does he once again appear, for the rest of this long, long movie, and one could only guess that he's still, to this day, standing on that stoop. Since he was the closest the movie had to an attractive young man, I was especially sensitive to the illogical disappearance of his character from the film.

Have you ever been up really late and turned on PBS and watched some obscure movie that solved whatever problems with insomnia you may have had? Imagine such a movie, only much more so. This one dirt road on the kibbutz was shown about 500 times, to the point that I was as bored by the route across the kibbutz as I am by my own route to campus, which has been mostly unchanged for almost 3 years.

Since the (implied, never close to graphic) sexual escapades of the elderly kibbutzniks were yawn-enducing and predictable, the only real drama was when the spurned wife (played by a woman I only hope looks better in real life) attempts suicide. Of course her death would be far too interesting a twist, so she lives, leaving the only death scene in the movie to a man who looks about 95 who dies peacefully of old age on the back of a pickup truck.

My final word on the matter before going to sleep: Seret lo tov.

UPDATE

Molly's "Part II" is now up.

Reading material

The Maroon has gotten its act together and is putting stuff online with shocking rapidity. From Friday's issue, here's Molly's piece on anti-Zionism at Columbia, and here's mine about New York anti-Americanism and American anti-New York-ism.

Showdown: Undergrads vs. grad students [UPDATED]

By the time most college students at Chicago reach their third or fourth years, they've had classes (if not other things) with grad students. And, from what I've heard from various sources, and have confirmed with my own observations, undergrads at Chicago seem more like the school's grad students, or like grad students in general, than is the case at other universities, sharing cross-listed classes and eccentricities, not to mention a tendency to wear far too much tweed. So my friend and fellow 4th year Kate and I were shocked--shocked!--when we overheard a man telling the woman he was sitting with at a cafe this afternoon that U of C undergrads (presumably in comparison to U of C grad students) are incapable of reading and writing English.

("Like, hi!" I said quietly to Kate, twirling a strand of my hair. We then returned to our homework.)

It was later confirmed that this man was, as suspected, a grad student: as he was leaving, I told Kate how one of our friends, the previous evening, had drunkenly told me that grad students are bad news and are not to be socialized with. "That's terrible advice!" cried the man in the bakery, who'd apparently been eavesdropping on us just as we'd been eavesdropping on him.

UPDATE

Veritable grad student Daniel Moore has responded, in defense of both U of C undergrads and grad students in general.

City College, from Irvings Howe and Kristol to Jewish studies

I would consider myself a traitor to my own blog if I didn't discuss this article about the surge in interest in Jewish studies among gentiles, which apparently, as I suspected, extends beyond a certain blonde Irishwoman:

"[One non-Jewish student's] exploration typifies a striking trend at City College and in Jewish studies nationally - its appeal to gentiles. Of the 250 students enrolled in Jewish studies classes at City College, 26 of them majoring and 160 minoring in the field, some 95 percent are not Jewish."

The article attributes the sudden interest in Jewish studies among gentiles in part to a desire to know how Jews "made it," which is a little unsettling, but not that unsettling, I don't know. Interest also apparently arises from curiousity about the roots of Christianity, as well as from a desire to gain a perspective on Jews other than one gained through hearing anti-Semitic slurs. How nice. Well, hope it works.

"The recent fascination of gentiles with Jewish studies, then, arrived as a pleasant, and wholly unexpected, shock. Nowhere does this phenomenon carry greater historical resonance than at City College, an institution deeply intertwined with the history of American Jewry. In the decades before World War II, when many elite universities held quotas on Jewish students, City became known as "the poor man's Harvard," the launching pad for intellectuals like Irving Howe and Irving Kristol. By the 1980's, with Jews now flocking to the colleges that formerly had barred them and City College a predominantly nonwhite school, it suffered national notoriety for the anti-Semitic diatribes of Leonard Jeffries, a tenured professor of black studies. The success of Professor Mittelman's program represents a third wave, part of the overall resurgence of City College. While the Jewish studies courses do attract a few Jews, most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union, they overwhelmingly draw those self-described explorers like Shivani Subryan."

I'd have to say that part of what first interested me about Irving Howe and Irving Kristol is that my own grandfather went to City College about the same time that they did. (No, for the record, my grandfather was not responsible for neoconservatism, nor, for that matter, for democratic socialism.) My interest only increased after seeing "Arguing the World" and interning at Dissent magazine, which was co-founded by Howe. City College must have been a pretty intense place, sort of like what Stuyvesant would be if people weren't flipping out all the time about having enough extracurriculars to get into a top college.

I wonder if City College, aside from teaching its diverse student body about the history of the Jews in general, teaches much about the history of the school itself. Such a course could be taught under Jewish studies, I suppose, but also under American or NYC history.

The "American religion" is what allows gay marriage bans

I've always said that there's no real non-religious argument against gay marriage, while there are obvious non-religious arguments against murder, and even abortion. I brought this up with some Republican relatives, and they said that a non-religious argument against gay marriage does exist...and then failed to provide anything too substantial.

Now, Amber writes: "Could one argue that same-sex marriage bans based on religious, traditional views of marriage (as opposed to some measurable social harm) might violate O'Connor's endorsement test and thus the First Amendment? Defining marriage to be only what conservative sects of some religions say it is seems to convey "a message that religion is 'favored,' 'preferred,' or 'promoted' over other beliefs." Allegheny County v. ACLU."

It's always nice when something I've always felt is clarified in legal jargon. This makes perfect sense: If gay marriage is only wrong on the basis of there being religious objections to it, then laws preventing gay marriage have to be unconstitutional.

The problem, though, is that gay marriage is not wrong according to a specific religion but according to the generic American Christianity, the one that puts "God" on our money and into every last political speech, by Democrats and Republicans alike. I'd love it if generic American Christianity (a dubious entity as a religion, but nevertheless a politically useful one when it comes to manipulating potential voters...) were treated as any other, more specific, more real religion and were kept separate from state, but America seems to have decided, across the political spectrum, that generic American Christianity is the state, and that separation of church and state refers only to keeping any one smaller religion from either being banned or gaining too much influence.

So banning gay marriage on the basis of generic American Christianity (as opposed to banning it on the basis of, say, Catholicism) may well be, or at least feel, unconstitutional, but it's absolutely consistent with the way things are done in this country, with the strange way in which separation of church and state has come to be interpreted.

A very special issue of the Maroon

Huh, it turns out that I do control the media, after all, and with more than a little help from my friends. I picked up a copy of the Maroon today and was reminded that Molly and I both have op-eds in it, and both of our bios direct readers to this blog, which, as many of you may have noticed, bears the same name as my Maroon column.

So, welcome to all new readers who came here via paper copies of the Maroon (there are no bios in the online edition, and the latest issue has yet to go online). And, for those readers who came to the blog first, check out the latest Maroon--Molly dicusses anti-Zionism at Columbia, and I come out as an "anti-anti-American New Yorker," to quote from the headline the folks at the paper gave my article.

Arafat: Not quite dead

Palestinian envoy to France Leila Shahid was quoted in the Times as saying that "Yasir Arafat, in his state of health and at his age, is at a critical juncture between life and death."

Leaving aside the implications of Arafat's death*, once that happens...what exactly is this mystical state between life and death currently occupied by the Palestinian leader, who is, as Le Monde would have it, "entre la vie et la mort" ?

"Il y a été admis pour une "anomalie sanguine", reports Le Monde, which, though it just means he had blood abnormalities, sounds to Anglophone ears as though something larger and more mysterious were amiss.

Something about Arafat's hospitalization happening in France and being described in French gives it a surreal feeling, as if Arafat were a demi-god of some sort, hovering between life and death, and not just an old demi-terrorist leader on his way out. Is this the result of quirks of the French language, of the French obsession with siding with the Palestinians, or of both?

* "La disparition de Yasser Arafat risque de produire en Israël des résultats contrastés." No, really?

Now that the election is over, Salon.com is slightly less annoying

This comic, "Did You Know? Ashlee Simpson" is totally worth watching the ad to access. "Did you know? Much of Ashlee's image is carefuly manufactered. She's actually a 42-year old Filipino man!"

Uncomfortable Oberlin Republicans?

Volokh conspirator Orin Kerr has posted a letter written by the president of Oberlin to its students, thanking them for their political activity, in which she wrote, "Many of you, I know, are deeply unhappy with the results of the 2004 presidential election. I sure know that I am. But political and social change often takes a much longer time to bring about than we think it should. Any group of people who can accomplish what you managed to bring off yesterday will certainly be able to make a real difference in this nation. Keep up the fight."

Kerr responds: "I think it's great that college students are playing an active role in politics, and it's commendable for a college president to congratulate students for their efforts. Plus, Oberlin has an established reputation as a liberal institution, so it's a fair bet that most of the e-mail's recipients appreciate the kind words after a tough loss. Still, might you not feel just a bit uncomfortable receiving this message if you are an Oberlin student who voted for Bush?"

At Chicago, no such letter was sent out, but it's definitely assumed, by fellow students and faculty alike, that just about everyone is disappointed that Bush was re-elected. While I do see his point, unlike Kerr, I'm not so sure that a Bush supporter ought to take offense at the Oberlin president's letter. It helps to figure out: why is student disappointment about the election outcome assumed?

1) Many students are actually disappointed, are genuinely upset, and make that known.
2) The disappointed ones probably feel more comfortable speaking up than do the Bush supporters. The day after the elections, there were a whole lot more people still in Kerry paraphernalia than in Bush gear, although I know plenty of people walking around the U of C are Bush supporters. So the disappointed are visible, while the Bush voters on campus, with few exceptions, are not.
3) Young people are supposed to be liberal, and people of the Oberlin president's generation see a few activist types milling about, see more than a few Kerry buttons, and don't even consider the possibility that today's college students aren't the same as the ones who, like the Oberlin president, graduated from a liberal college in 1969.
4) In the case of Oberlin, by choosing such a school, one signs on to a certain set of liberal values, and attending a place like Oberlin as a conservative is a bit like attending a religiously affiliated college as a student of a different religion. You might like certain things about the place, but you have to get used to the fact that you differ from the mainstream in some fundamental ways, and thus can't really take offense at things like the college president's letter. At Chicago, this is not the case, and I'm not expecting a letter from President Randel, consoling the student body, any time soon, nor am I hoping to receive one.

Election Thoughts: scones and buffalo wings

It sure sounds like fun across that Atlantic, at British blogger Oliver Kamm's house:

I can only say that the small corner of liberal Britain that is the Kamm household is as unflappable and cheery as ever.

Mmm...I bet they eat scones. You can actually things that look like this in the supermarkets over there. I really miss London!

On a far more trivial level, I can only imagine what Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky and a clutch of British Tory grandees must be feeling now. And it makes me feel very good indeed.

Thanks to Kamm for reminding me that no matter how much the choices that we made in the voting booth divide the people of this country, I think it's just about as much as our love-hate relationship with celebrities unites us ( I think this hold true for England too, they are much worse about these things than us). What I mean to say is: Jessica Simpson (we all know she's a Republican) v. Hillary in 2008?

Call me Latoya Jackson

I recently wrote a mid-term paper predicting that Bush would get about 25% of the Jewish vote.
National Exit polls showed Bush gaining no ground in the Jewish vote from 2000. But by now, these exit polls are hardly taken seriously. CNN calculates that Bush got 24% of the vote, Kerry 76%. That's about a 5-6% gain for Bush from 2004.

Before anybody goes crazy, saying stuff like "Bush panders to the Jews with Israel" and such, I think it's important to remember that Bush did not set any Jewish voting records. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan received votes in the middle and upper 30s. Also, as The Forward points out the only segment of the Jewish population that had more than one out of four Jews voting for Bush was the Orthodox population whose main interest in voting for Bush isn't because of his foriegn policy but because of general conservative domestic policies that allow religious schools and charities to recieve goverment funding. I would add that Soviet-American Jews probably had a majority voting for Bush, but most of that community is located in New York, where it would hardly make a difference.

So I think there will be a growing shift in Jewish support for the Republican party but that's only because Orthodox families have frighteningly large families(Orthodox Jews have up to three times as many children as non-Orthodox Jews). The paradox is that although Orthodox Jews view themselves as being outside the mainstream, they are actually extremely involved in politics, in as much as they can further what they see as best for their own communities.

Israeli Film Festival comes to Chicago

With these movies, playing at these times.

Let's see what happens

Inspired by the NY Times, for a change, I'm going to do some posting about film stuff(mostly Scandinavian movies and some early Jon Stewart films) over at Splendor In The Masses. I promise it won't be as pretentious as it sounds.

"A big-boned, cherubic blonde--a goy!"

So there's this woman, she's not Jewish, but she's into Yiddish. Not a big deal, right? Apparently it's a huge deal. The NYT can't get enough of this woman and her shocking shiksosity:

"Caraid O'Brien must rank among Yiddish culture's most ardent and least likely champions. An actress, playwright and translator, she is 29, Irish and Roman Catholic, a big-boned, cherubic blonde - a goy! - with a bachelor's degree in Yiddish literature who speaks English with a hint of lilting brogue and Yiddish with disarming fluency."

"'Everyone is interested in the idea of this strapping Irish girl with Yiddish coming out of her mouth,' Ms. O'Brien said with a smile."

Yeah, it's sooo interesting, isn't it, that someone might study a language and heritage not her own. I mean, I like to freak people out by speaking French--I am not remotely French, and yet I speak the language (or try to) and study French literature. Is what's fascinating that Yiddish is not a popular language for anyone to study, or that this particular woman happens to be large and blonde? Would there even be a story about her in the Times if she were small, dark-haired, and Irish or large, blonde, and Jewish?

It's good to be safe, and it's good to be able to marry whomever you'd like; why not both?

Bush won. This will not do wonders for America's P.R., and it has angered close to half of the country itself. Would a Kerry presidency have been disastrous for our national security? Would the U.S. have turned into a warmer-weather Canada? We'll never know, at least not in the next 4 years. On the bright side--which is where every American might as well look right now--at least we're dealing with a known quantity, one that has failed in many ways but one that, at various points, did seem to know what it was doing...

But here's the real problem. How exactly have 11 states voted to approve constitutional amendments banning gay marriage? As I've said before, there is absolutely no argument, other than one based on certain interpretations of certain religions, against gay marriage. Why is the concept of spreading freedom both abroad and at home so hard to implement?

No Palm Trees In Ohio

Well, it seems Kerry's called Bush to concede so it's really over. Ohio really isn't the new Florida. The provisional ballot isn't the new chad. Regularly scheduled TV will be regular. It's sort of a boring conclusion, actually.

ugh

"Election day just became election month." James Pinkerton, at about 2:00 am, Nov. 3.

College students boring, don't want to have sex

Spencer Willing at the CNN "Campus Vibe Blog" says of the UPenn students, "They may have made history today. They may have registered and voted in unprecedented numbers. But now they have papers to write."

It turns out that even for those who don't have papers to write, there isn't much going on. a votergasm" party, for example, is scheduled to start shortly in the Quad, one of Penn's largest dorm complexes (for the uninitiated, these are meet-ups encouraged by the web site votergasm.com, whose participants have ostensibly taken the "votergasm pledge" either to have sex with voters or to deny sex to non-voters). Though this get together most recently seemed to consist solely of a few guys playing poker in front of a television in one of the dorm lounges, a scene not entirely out of the ordinary.

Are we there yet?

Well, who's it gonna be?

I was downtown reporting on the celebration for Obama, and I decided that, by the time the 6 bus got back to Hyde Park and I got upstairs, there'd be a president-elect. No such luck.

Bin Laden [heart] IKEA?

"Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? ..." -Bin Laden from the recently released video.

Sweden? It seems sort of random. After thinking long and hard, the only conclusion I can come to is that Bin Laden can't get enough of Ikea's cheap coffee tables(probably more so since IKEA founder, Ingvar Kamprad, was an Nazi sympathizer). It's a common fact that IKEA futons are a great addition to any cave dwelling. They are easily portable (great for running away from armies, angry people, etc.) and save space because they can often fold up into a couch (perfect for entertaining international guests). Conveniently for Bin Laden, Ikea also has several locations in the Middle East: Saudia Arabia, Dubai, and the always convenient, Kuwait. Interestingly (and obnoxiously so, I believe), the IKEA Israel, in Netanya, is closed on Shabbat.

WWPD Election Coverage

I'm watching the election from A-11 in the Reg (it exists!) and the TVs just froze so it seemed about time to chime in with my thoughts on the election so far:

1) Dan Rather should not be allowed on CBS anymore, let alone to say things like "I can't say how important it is that we remind viewers that the absentee ballots haven't been counted yet so we don't have enough information yet." Oh, now he cares about getting things right?

2) Tucker Carlson is an oasis of hotness in the desert of dowdiness that is TV election coverage.

3) Watching Keyes get crushed by Obama it occured to me that they should add an amendment to the constitution or something, right near the part that says you have to be born in the U.S. to run for president it should read: "No person who has ever hosted a cable TV show is allowed to run for any political position." I mean, I liked Alan Keyes, the talk show host who really told us what he thought. I felt a little less excited about Alan Keyes, the candidate, who really told us what he thought. (This aricle might remind people about the Keyes we used to know and love.)

Life, liberty, and non-stop reality TV for all...

Of all the things I'm looking forward to about November 3, the end of P. Diddy's Vote of Die campaign has to be on the top of my list.

P. Diddy's campaign was no more than another one of those advertising campaigns like yellow nike wristbands and got milk? that operate under the premise of "hey, that huge coperation wants to do the 'good' thing!" when in fact they are just selling more sneakers, dairy products, and bad music than ever (also, I guess, boring candidates, since P. Diddy's Citizens of Change campaign was not non partisan). I generally don't mind brilliant marketing campaigns but it bothers me when P. Diddy would interrupt my Real World/Road Rules Battles of The Sexes 2 reruns to bring me "a very special message" from a very fake looking oval office set. Today, New Yorkers of all stripes, MTV viewers and non-MTV viewers are getting a taste of the P.Diddy "Vote and Be Obnoxious About It" campaign as he and his entrouge clog an already crowded New York polling station.

"Is there a greater risk in Bush's radicalism or Kerry's conservatism?"--Andrew Sullivan

Last week I wrote, re: Hitchens' kind words for Bush and Sullivan's for Kerry, "In a world where the liberals argue convincingly for Bush and the conservatives do the same for Kerry, is it any wonder there are undecideds?" Seems Andrew Sullivan sees this, too:

"The question we face in this election is therefore a truly befuddling one: In a world in crisis, is there a greater risk in Bush's radicalism or Kerry's conservatism? And what do right and left mean anymore, anyway?"

Are there extensions offered on voting, like if you can't decide who to pick because there's still more background reading you need to do?

College: Seemingly teeming with overweight anti-Semites

Adam Weissman's response to my Maroon article on the Duke anti-Semite is here. Ariel Beery thanks Molly for making note of...more anti-Semitism, this time at Columbia, here and here. And, on a more serious note, Alex Bellefleur has responded to my post on the Freshman 15.

Slurpee Research

"Is there a difference between American Slurpees and Canadian Slurpees? Yes! According to 7-Eleven, the Canadian product is heavier and wetter, the difference being that the American product is injected with air and is therefore drier. This is why you can feel that itch in the back of the throat when you drink it--that's the air bubbles. The American stores have been using Cornelius equipment where as in Canada we have been using Taylor for years . Although both machines perform for their specific markets, they do create different products." - Nini, Canadian Slurpee Scholar

That is really amazing. I guess things really are different in that country up North: their slurpees are more wet. But seriously, this really changes how I think about things. Canadian readers of WWPD - any thoughts on why you guys like them wetter and heavier while we like our itchy and dry? I can't help but feel that Canada is getting the better deal here.

Phoebe, I think the arrival of the diet Pepsi slurpee is sort of a mixed blessing (why couldn't it have been diet Coke?!). This guy says it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.

What Do the Reg A-Level and 7-11 Have in Common?

They are both open all night long. The Reg could really use a slurpee machine, though.

At what point do you determine that the all nighter you just spent was pretty unsuccessful?

Last time it was when I slept in ex-libris (uh, before I knew they had these) and I was wearing flip flops and I woke up face to face with a vending machine and also, my feet were freezing.

Tonight it was when I started to wonder, "hey, what does Martin Peretz look like?" and image searched him on google.

It sort of makes me wonder about the quality of the paper I just finished.