Remember Winnie the Pooh?
Whenever he tried to remember something, he'd sit there, and tap his noggin, muttering, "think, think think..."
I feel like Winnie the Pooh as I try to remember the last time I rode a bicycle. I think it was up in Michigan, years ago, on a trip to visit my brother and his family. I honestly can't recall.
Obviously, I'm not much of a bike rider. But that doesn't mean Lance Armstrong's stunning announcement last night means nothing to me. The seven-time Tour de France champion has thrown in the towel after fighting for years to preserve his racing record against incessant charges that he used illegal performance enhancing drugs.
Lance, Legacy, Legality, and Legitimacy
No, I'm not a bicycle enthusiast, but like a lot of people, I thought Armstrong was an extraordinary athlete and humanitarian. At least until he divorced his wife, and started cavorting with Cheryl Crow. I lost a lot of respect for him then, probably because his lack of commitment to his family rendered him far more ordinary a person than his bicycling achievements would lead us to believe. He battled back from testicular cancer to not only the winner's circle in bicycle racing, but to illegitimately father - biologically, after testicular cancer - two more kids through his current girlfriend. As remarkable as those feats may be, to me, moral integrity still trumps physical prowess every time. Not that I expect everybody to be perfect, and certainly, Armstrong is no axe murderer. But some bad decisions are worse than others.
Speaking of bad decisions and illegitimacy, Armstrong has been dogged for years by accusations that he's taken performance drugs. Yet no incontrovertible proof has ever surfaced - and stuck - to support those allegations. I've actually felt sorry for Armstrong since it has seemed more out of spite and envy than legitimate evidence that people continue to accuse him of things that, supposedly, his 500-plus urine and blood test results say are not true.
No less than a federal grand jury was convened in 2010 to determine if any criminal charges should be filed against Armstrong, but after two years of work, the grand jury was terminated without revealing any findings.
Almost immediately, however, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) picked up the allegations and began running its own marathon with the allegations, suspicions, and accusations made by journalists around the world, Armstrong's professional peers and competitors, and sports officials. The USADA has a mandate from Congress to serve as our country's anti-doping watchdog for athletes representing us in the Olympics, although it's unclear the extent of its jurisdiction in competitions such as the Tour de France. Armstrong tried to challenge the USADA in court, but his suit was overturned on more of a legal technicality than a firm ruling on the USADA's right of jurisdiction.
Apparently, that setback, after years of fighting similar allegations in both legal courts and the court of public opinion, proved too great a loss for Armstrong's normally competitive spirit.
Now, I'm neither a lawyer nor an expert on doping, but whether Armstrong is guilty or innocent, shouldn't the way the USADA's case against him has played out be disconcerting to us Americans? Several puzzling and disturbing precedents appear to have been set with the way a quasi-government organization was able to ignore the findings - or lack of them - by a federal grand jury and, within a matter of months, torpedo just about all of the championships Armstrong has acquired throughout his career. Then there are nearly 600 drug tests to which Armstrong submitted as a racer over the course of many years that always showed him to be clean. If those drug tests were faulty, how many other cyclists are doping and still - somehow - doctoring their tests so they can pass?
For years, professional sports has been dogged by doping allegations and players who really have doped. Some sports experts say it's all part of the American public's thirst for achievement and athletic theatrics. As long as we fans keep expecting bigger, greater, faster, longer, harder, and more entertaining feats of human performance, athletes will find ways to win our admiration. And more often than not, that includes illegal performance enhancing drugs.
Unfortunately, whenever an athlete accomplishes something extraordinary these days, we immediately wonder about doping, instead of reflexively appreciating what appears to be sheer athleticism. To the extent Armstrong's long slog through the muck of doping allegations has become as much a part of his career as his awards, whether he's guilty or innocent, Armstrong has placed a heavy burden of proof on all other high-achieving athletes.
That itself is an unsettling legacy. The fact that sports fans push for more performance - and then recoil in skepticism when our sports stars deliver - further tarnishes it all.
Who's Hiding the Truth?
From what I've read about Armstrong over the years, he's one driven and determined individual. Almost single-minded in his pursuit of bicycle glory. Many athletes are like that, and with the kind of emotion and commitment such a pursuit demands, it's not surprising to have rumors and innuendo floating around among peers and competitors in baseball, football, basketball, and soccer leagues. And cycling competitions.
Yet isn't it scary that the USADA has been able to overturn one man's globally-renowned career without providing one scrap of evidence to the public? Maybe at some point in the near future, the USADA will put the evidence they say they have on the table for closer inspection by doping experts and Armstrong's legal team. And, as some pundits have already said, maybe Armstrong's stunning deflation - in what has been an otherwise vigorous defense of his record - actually resembles a grim acknowledgement that, yes, he knows about the proof the USADA has been dangling over our summertime like a disguised bomb. He knows the gig is up.
A process for appealing the USADA's actions was available to Armstrong, but curiously, he chose not to pursue it.
Maybe because he figured leaving his fans in the lurch, not knowing the truth, was better for his legacy than risking the truth's revelation?
Maybe he worked out a secret deal with the USADA in which, in exchange for dropping his legal challenges and waiving his right to appeal, they won't reveal the dirt they have on him to another grand jury. He'll likely lose his awards, but he'll also stay out of prison.
Meanwhile, however, I'm not convinced the USADA has served our country well. I'm not convinced the Congress of the United States should have created a body of officials who have the power to levy such a penalty against a citizen without providing proof in a court of law. It's been happening to other athletes in a variety of sports for years, and the public has been mostly unaware of it.
Maybe for the USADA, their gig should be up, too?
Call me a conspiracy theorist or fringe malcontent on this one, but right now, it appears that Armstrong isn't the only one losing out. We're supposed to be a nation of laws, courts, and due process. What's happened to those in this case? Unless this time, Armstrong's deference to the court of public opinion is preferable to him than the laws and courts the rest of us would have faced.
Either way, doesn't it seem like truth is coming out more victim than victor?
Pooh.
_____
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Fatality Caused by Planning Misstep?
A tragic accident occurred today on Broad Street, in Lower Manhattan, near the New York Stock Exchange.
A pickup truck loaded with sand lurched out of control, across a sidewalk, and into two pedestrians, killing one of them, a 70-year-old man, leaning against the wall of a building, eating Chinese food.
Gruesome images of the scene were captured by witnesses on their mobile devices and posted on Gothamist, a New York City community webzine. If you can't stand the sight of blood, you won't want to look.
Thinking It Through
On the one hand, today's death could get chalked up to simply another fatality in a city that has over 100 similar fatalities each year. As one of the country's most walkable cities, as well as home to some of the country's worst drivers, pedestrian deaths are inevitable in the Big Apple.
But what makes this death particularly compelling involves the circumstances for why a pickup truck loaded with sand was being driven perpendicular to the sidewalk in the first place. After all, the truck was not driving along the street, parallel to the sidewalk, like most vehicular traffic does. Nor was it careening through an intersection, and swerving to avoid another vehicle or pedestrian.
No, it was a security vehicle for a Lower Manhattan business development group helping to protect the New York Stock Exchange, sitting just down the block. Several years ago, a group of business organizations in Lower Manhattan had commissioned new security mechanisms for Broad and Wall Streets, in the heart of the city's famous financial district. Older security measures meant to prevent vehicular bombings of the area had been rushed into place following 9/11, but they were aesthetically bulky and menacing.
So what? Well, as many of the older buildings around Wall Street have become technologically obsolete, and undesirable as conventional office buildings, they've been retrofitted as apartments and even private schools for the neighborhood's growing residential population. The man who was killed this afternoon was having his lunch next to a doorway to one of those private schools.
These new residents to the Financial District may not be corporate tenants, but they're still paying through the nose for rents. Plus, with the Stock Exchange being the financial industry's iconic epicenter, business leaders are sensitive about the street's image. It was decided that more permanent security structures were necessary, but they didn't need to be entirely utilitarian in their design.
So an architectural firm came up with a novel turntable solution that included permanent bollards (objects embedded into the street to prevent vehicular traffic) on either side of the main traffic lane, plus a series of smaller obstacles mounted on a turntable set into the pavement. When an authorized vehicle came to the blockade in the street, the turntable would be activated and rotate half-way, so that the smaller obstacles would be moved out of the way of the authorized vehicle. That vehicle cold then maneuver over the turntable and down the street, with the turntable then being rotated back to its secure position.
Not a bad idea, huh? Except, apparently, the turntables have been plagued by mechanical problems. Workers and residents in Lower Manhattan posted today on Gothamist that the turntables usually seem to be stuck in the "open" position. And they report that two silver Honda Ridgeline pickup trucks with sand in their beds have been parked in front of the turntables to block them instead (on this video from the New York Post, you can see a second Honda pickup truck parked perpendicular to the sidewalk). When an authorized vehicle is cleared to enter the security zone, somebody has to move a pickup truck out of the way, let the authorized vehicle pass, and then reverse their pickup truck to park it back in front of the idle turntable.
So much for technological innovation, huh?
Today, it's suspected that the driver of one of the pickup trucks may have suffered a seizure, and with his vehicle already positioned against the pedestrian traffic in front of him, hit two of them.
One, fatally.
The Devil Is Where?
Still, you ask; so what?
What started out as a cool idea of installing turntables didn't turn out so well. They became unreliable. So somebody came up with the idea of obtaining pickup trucks, loading their beds with sand, and using them as blockades whenever the turntables weren't working. Maybe the people who came up with the truck idea never imagined one of their drivers would suffer some sort of medical emergency or otherwise become so distracted that he would accidentally run over pedestrians. But apparently, neither did it strike anybody at those planning meetings as potentially troublesome that aiming motor vehicles directly at unprotected pedestrians wasn't a good idea.
It's not like New York's pedestrians are looking to be side-swiped by pickup trucks as they navigate the city's sidewalks. If you've ever walked Manhattan's sidewalks, you know how cacophonous such an experience can be. So many things competing for your attention; having to allow for a pickup truck driving at you perpendicularly is one of the last things you'd expect.
Maybe the trucks weren't supposed to be parked perpendicular to the sidewalk. Maybe the security drivers were supposed to park their trucks in the middle, between the permanent bollards, and just move back and forth in the street, parallel to the sidewalk. Maybe the procedures simply weren't being followed.
People like me tend to think through these scenarios more than other people think is necessary. I've been criticized more than once for over-analyzing something - and maybe some of you readers are thinking that right now about my essay of this tragedy in Lower Manhattan!
Yet consider all of the planning that went into these security bollards on Broad Street. Those turntables and bollards may be the most noticeable features of this security project, but several other unique ideas were included in the streetscape's overhaul. For example, instead of ordinary asphalt, special cobblestones pave the streets. Wood pavers on Wall Street outline the wall which really used to exist there, and was the street's namesake. Similar outlines of a canal that used to flow where Broad Street is now are installed between the cobblestones, along with other pavestones highlighting historic facts about this, one of the oldest settlements in pre-Colonial America.
All of that engineering, design, and research - foiled by an out-of-control pickup truck. Granted, any number of calamitous things could have happened to this specific pedestrian this afternoon to take his life. Mankind's best planning cannot overrule God's sovereignty.
But in terms of revising their plans, no amount of going back to the proverbial drawing board is going to bring back today's victim of the one little part of contingency planning that just wasn't thought-through well.
The next time somebody accuses you - or you want to accuse somebody - of planning something too much, think about today's silver Honda pickup truck.
Would you want to be the guy... eating Chinese food... who was blindsided by it?
_____
A pickup truck loaded with sand lurched out of control, across a sidewalk, and into two pedestrians, killing one of them, a 70-year-old man, leaning against the wall of a building, eating Chinese food.
Gruesome images of the scene were captured by witnesses on their mobile devices and posted on Gothamist, a New York City community webzine. If you can't stand the sight of blood, you won't want to look.
Thinking It Through
On the one hand, today's death could get chalked up to simply another fatality in a city that has over 100 similar fatalities each year. As one of the country's most walkable cities, as well as home to some of the country's worst drivers, pedestrian deaths are inevitable in the Big Apple.
But what makes this death particularly compelling involves the circumstances for why a pickup truck loaded with sand was being driven perpendicular to the sidewalk in the first place. After all, the truck was not driving along the street, parallel to the sidewalk, like most vehicular traffic does. Nor was it careening through an intersection, and swerving to avoid another vehicle or pedestrian.
No, it was a security vehicle for a Lower Manhattan business development group helping to protect the New York Stock Exchange, sitting just down the block. Several years ago, a group of business organizations in Lower Manhattan had commissioned new security mechanisms for Broad and Wall Streets, in the heart of the city's famous financial district. Older security measures meant to prevent vehicular bombings of the area had been rushed into place following 9/11, but they were aesthetically bulky and menacing.
So what? Well, as many of the older buildings around Wall Street have become technologically obsolete, and undesirable as conventional office buildings, they've been retrofitted as apartments and even private schools for the neighborhood's growing residential population. The man who was killed this afternoon was having his lunch next to a doorway to one of those private schools.
These new residents to the Financial District may not be corporate tenants, but they're still paying through the nose for rents. Plus, with the Stock Exchange being the financial industry's iconic epicenter, business leaders are sensitive about the street's image. It was decided that more permanent security structures were necessary, but they didn't need to be entirely utilitarian in their design.
So an architectural firm came up with a novel turntable solution that included permanent bollards (objects embedded into the street to prevent vehicular traffic) on either side of the main traffic lane, plus a series of smaller obstacles mounted on a turntable set into the pavement. When an authorized vehicle came to the blockade in the street, the turntable would be activated and rotate half-way, so that the smaller obstacles would be moved out of the way of the authorized vehicle. That vehicle cold then maneuver over the turntable and down the street, with the turntable then being rotated back to its secure position.
Not a bad idea, huh? Except, apparently, the turntables have been plagued by mechanical problems. Workers and residents in Lower Manhattan posted today on Gothamist that the turntables usually seem to be stuck in the "open" position. And they report that two silver Honda Ridgeline pickup trucks with sand in their beds have been parked in front of the turntables to block them instead (on this video from the New York Post, you can see a second Honda pickup truck parked perpendicular to the sidewalk). When an authorized vehicle is cleared to enter the security zone, somebody has to move a pickup truck out of the way, let the authorized vehicle pass, and then reverse their pickup truck to park it back in front of the idle turntable.
So much for technological innovation, huh?
Today, it's suspected that the driver of one of the pickup trucks may have suffered a seizure, and with his vehicle already positioned against the pedestrian traffic in front of him, hit two of them.
One, fatally.
The Devil Is Where?
Still, you ask; so what?
What started out as a cool idea of installing turntables didn't turn out so well. They became unreliable. So somebody came up with the idea of obtaining pickup trucks, loading their beds with sand, and using them as blockades whenever the turntables weren't working. Maybe the people who came up with the truck idea never imagined one of their drivers would suffer some sort of medical emergency or otherwise become so distracted that he would accidentally run over pedestrians. But apparently, neither did it strike anybody at those planning meetings as potentially troublesome that aiming motor vehicles directly at unprotected pedestrians wasn't a good idea.
It's not like New York's pedestrians are looking to be side-swiped by pickup trucks as they navigate the city's sidewalks. If you've ever walked Manhattan's sidewalks, you know how cacophonous such an experience can be. So many things competing for your attention; having to allow for a pickup truck driving at you perpendicularly is one of the last things you'd expect.
Maybe the trucks weren't supposed to be parked perpendicular to the sidewalk. Maybe the security drivers were supposed to park their trucks in the middle, between the permanent bollards, and just move back and forth in the street, parallel to the sidewalk. Maybe the procedures simply weren't being followed.
People like me tend to think through these scenarios more than other people think is necessary. I've been criticized more than once for over-analyzing something - and maybe some of you readers are thinking that right now about my essay of this tragedy in Lower Manhattan!
Yet consider all of the planning that went into these security bollards on Broad Street. Those turntables and bollards may be the most noticeable features of this security project, but several other unique ideas were included in the streetscape's overhaul. For example, instead of ordinary asphalt, special cobblestones pave the streets. Wood pavers on Wall Street outline the wall which really used to exist there, and was the street's namesake. Similar outlines of a canal that used to flow where Broad Street is now are installed between the cobblestones, along with other pavestones highlighting historic facts about this, one of the oldest settlements in pre-Colonial America.
 |
| Photo by Ryan Gorman |
But in terms of revising their plans, no amount of going back to the proverbial drawing board is going to bring back today's victim of the one little part of contingency planning that just wasn't thought-through well.
The next time somebody accuses you - or you want to accuse somebody - of planning something too much, think about today's silver Honda pickup truck.
Would you want to be the guy... eating Chinese food... who was blindsided by it?
_____
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Gasp! The GOP's Fringe is Showing
Disingenuous.
Not just Todd Akin's comments about rape. But his Republican party's vehement about-face regarding his campaign for one of Missouri's seats in the US Senate.
OK, so what Akin said was more than just politically incorrect. But was it a crime for him to put voice to something some right-wingers believe? The "legitimate" rape urban legend is not new. Akin was simply foolish enough to say it on camera.
How many more dippy theories of the far right can conservative candidates for office commiserate about behind closed doors, but risk sudden political death if they breathe a word of it in public? What about rape insurance, the astoundingly bizarre suggestion espoused by Kansas House Republican Pete DeGraaf which somehow escaped broad public attention?
For the National Republican Senatorial Committee to announce that it's suspending its multi-million-dollar marketing support for Akin's campaign because he won't step down - after being duly elected in a sanctioned primary - smacks of "you let too much out of the bag."
It's little secret that Democrats wanted Akin to win the Republican primary this year. Drudge Report even featured an article today saying liberals donated $1.5 million to Akin's campaign, because they figured he'd be the easiest candidate for incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill to defeat this fall in the general election.
Hmm.
Who's really in trouble here? Not just victims of sex violence who might have hoped for some rational dialog about combating sex crimes. Not even pro-choice advocates, whose message Akin was trying to endorse has gotten lost in all of the hysteria over whether Akin should withdraw from the race.
If Republicans aren't careful, it could be their party that finds itself in trouble. The party left-wingers already gleefully paint as full of out-of-touch WASPS buzzing with half-baked ideas about science. True, the GOP may think they're in a no-win situation here, with Akin adamantly refusing to withdraw (maybe he should), and his wince-inducing comments continuing to dominate the media.
But the GOP should be careful for what it demands of Akin, and how they demand it. Yes, Republican control of the Senate in DC may be jeopardized if the party doesn't win Missouri this November, but what else might they jeopardize by taking this inopportune time to blast fringe opinions within their ranks that they've been content to let fester for years?
Moderate conservatism doesn't look so evil now, does it?
_____
Not just Todd Akin's comments about rape. But his Republican party's vehement about-face regarding his campaign for one of Missouri's seats in the US Senate.
OK, so what Akin said was more than just politically incorrect. But was it a crime for him to put voice to something some right-wingers believe? The "legitimate" rape urban legend is not new. Akin was simply foolish enough to say it on camera.
How many more dippy theories of the far right can conservative candidates for office commiserate about behind closed doors, but risk sudden political death if they breathe a word of it in public? What about rape insurance, the astoundingly bizarre suggestion espoused by Kansas House Republican Pete DeGraaf which somehow escaped broad public attention?
For the National Republican Senatorial Committee to announce that it's suspending its multi-million-dollar marketing support for Akin's campaign because he won't step down - after being duly elected in a sanctioned primary - smacks of "you let too much out of the bag."
It's little secret that Democrats wanted Akin to win the Republican primary this year. Drudge Report even featured an article today saying liberals donated $1.5 million to Akin's campaign, because they figured he'd be the easiest candidate for incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill to defeat this fall in the general election.
Hmm.
Who's really in trouble here? Not just victims of sex violence who might have hoped for some rational dialog about combating sex crimes. Not even pro-choice advocates, whose message Akin was trying to endorse has gotten lost in all of the hysteria over whether Akin should withdraw from the race.
If Republicans aren't careful, it could be their party that finds itself in trouble. The party left-wingers already gleefully paint as full of out-of-touch WASPS buzzing with half-baked ideas about science. True, the GOP may think they're in a no-win situation here, with Akin adamantly refusing to withdraw (maybe he should), and his wince-inducing comments continuing to dominate the media.
But the GOP should be careful for what it demands of Akin, and how they demand it. Yes, Republican control of the Senate in DC may be jeopardized if the party doesn't win Missouri this November, but what else might they jeopardize by taking this inopportune time to blast fringe opinions within their ranks that they've been content to let fester for years?
Moderate conservatism doesn't look so evil now, does it?
_____
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmic Edit
Tell people what they want to hear, and make a lot of money.
How hard is that?
With the passing of Helen Gurley Brown earlier this week at the impressive age of 90, New York's media empire has been waxing poetic on the life and legacy of Cosmopolitan's legendary editor and unabashed crusader for sexual immorality. And as the author of Sex and the Single Girl, published in the early 1960's when she was 40, Gurley Brown certainly deserves credit for helping to launch the sexual revolution.
Even if the book was originally her husband's idea.
Helen "Girlie" Brown
Indeed, contrary to much of the adulation being heaped on her memory, and some of her own curious claims of not needing men, very little of Gurley Brown's celebrated lifestyle came by "chance." Not that she wasn't an honest, caring person, as many people have described her; it's just what she was honest and caring about. Her husband, David, was an editor at Cosmopolitan long before she arrived, and he actually wrote most of the scandalous teasers on the magazine's covers. He would go on to help produce such epic movies as Jaws, Cocoon, and Driving Miss Daisy, along with a few Broadway shows. No one denies that her remarkable marriage, which began in the 1950's and lasted until his death two years ago, was marked as much by its longevity as its economic and professional privilege.
The fact that she - of all people - needed a man to help make her who she turned out to be seems as lost on her admirers as it was to her.
Does it matter that the happy couple had no children?
Their not having children certainly represents not only a major complication her signature book omits, but helps explain her prodigious career, working reputedly until midnight most days. Gurley Brown reveled in modern sexuality's abandonment of childbearing and child rearing, although it's not clear whether the Browns didn't have children by choice or despite trying. And to have heard Gurley Brown tell it, she loved the "trying" part, if you get my drift. After all, before she was married, she was not unknown within the Hollywood scene. She could never quite bring herself to admit sex was what she lived for, but her body of work doesn't leave many other options. One of her most famous quotes was "if you're not a sex object, you're in trouble."
Another one was, "good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go everywhere."
Which brings us back to the article I wrote for Crosswalk.com about women and modest attire. Perhaps we wouldn't be having the conversation today about what women wear in church if it wasn't for Helen Gurley Brown. Or at least, without Gurley Brown, women - and men - who defend their questionable wardrobe choices and attitudes towards modesty wouldn't have as much ammunition to blast at people like me. Through her books and her tenure at Cosmopolitan, Gurley Brown's famous contempt for virtue and morality helped to make licentiousness mainstream. Can any woman in the church today deny the effect Gurley Brown plays on their worldview - whether that effect makes them more conscious of their modesty, or ambivalent towards it?
Granted, it's impolite at best and crass at worst to speak ill of the dearly departed. But in this case, considering how she led her life, I'm not sure Gurley Brown would have much grounds to sue me for slander. Her commitment to her doting husband notwithstanding, she participated in a generational shift away from modesty - however misappropriated it had become by double-standards and exaggerated puritanical oppression - that likely contributed to a more materialistic brand of femininity less concerned with propriety than property. Ownership. Rule. Rule not through ethical integrity, but sexual allure.
One of the few things to come by "chance" to Gurley Brown was the timing of her ascendancy into the sexual revolution. Launching her first book just twenty years before 1962, she'd have likely been branded a - well, I can't bring myself to type out the word, but it starts with "s" and rhymes with "nut."
Twenty years later than 1962, and she might have been irrelevant, since if it wasn't for Gurley Brown, considering the mood of the times, somebody else would have written what she did, and maybe even more pervertedly. However, it's not as if some of the noted feminists of her day, such as Betty Friedan, liked what she wrote. They considered her a traitor to the feminine cause, since all she was basically doing was re-packaging the old notion that women are only good for sex, and marketing it to the post-modern age. Bloomberg.com calls it "fishnet feminism," after the provocative style of women's hosiery popular during the 1960's and 1970's.
Mystique Mistake
In 1982, at the top of her game, Gurley Brown penned Having it All, a book about how women can successfully use their physical prowess to attain love, sex, and money. But where is the novelty in that? As long as you base your worldview on the idea that men have all the power and are too stupid or vain to share it unless you can make them feel sexually desirable, how many civilizations throughout the history of the world have featured ambitious women who easily figured that out? To the extent that more ardent feminists held Gurley Brown in disdain for focusing on sex and men, they were correct: women have viable, and even intrinsic, roles to play in our society regardless of their sexuality.
Sadly, Gurley Brown got it "all" wrong: women can't have it all, just as men can't have it all. At least not the "all" many people think they want and need. Only Christ, the Son of God, is our Sufficiency. He is our Peace, our Purpose, and our Promise. And all the other "P" words, including prosperity. And provider.
How hard could it be for a fatherless little girl from backwater Arkansas to grow up with a misguided appreciation for men, sleep around Los Angeles, get put in charge of a failing magazine in New York, and turn it around by making promiscuity sound legitimate?
Over the years, as I've heard about her and read about her, I've always felt sorry for her, even as her peers in the national media were singing her praises. In a way, I also feel sorry for all of the women who've read my article on fashionable modesty, and just don't get it. I feel sorry for the men who love them, too. I really feel sorry for Gurley Brown now that she's gone, since the way she's led so many people in our culture - and our churches - astray is between her and God, Whom she apparently edited out of her life.
Hey - she said it herself: "good girls go to Heaven..." Not a correct statement theologically, since we've all sinned, and fall short of God's glory. But it's telling all the same.
Especially if it was the extent of her relationship with the one Man in our universe Who matters most.
_____
How hard is that?
With the passing of Helen Gurley Brown earlier this week at the impressive age of 90, New York's media empire has been waxing poetic on the life and legacy of Cosmopolitan's legendary editor and unabashed crusader for sexual immorality. And as the author of Sex and the Single Girl, published in the early 1960's when she was 40, Gurley Brown certainly deserves credit for helping to launch the sexual revolution.
Even if the book was originally her husband's idea.
Helen "Girlie" Brown
Indeed, contrary to much of the adulation being heaped on her memory, and some of her own curious claims of not needing men, very little of Gurley Brown's celebrated lifestyle came by "chance." Not that she wasn't an honest, caring person, as many people have described her; it's just what she was honest and caring about. Her husband, David, was an editor at Cosmopolitan long before she arrived, and he actually wrote most of the scandalous teasers on the magazine's covers. He would go on to help produce such epic movies as Jaws, Cocoon, and Driving Miss Daisy, along with a few Broadway shows. No one denies that her remarkable marriage, which began in the 1950's and lasted until his death two years ago, was marked as much by its longevity as its economic and professional privilege.
The fact that she - of all people - needed a man to help make her who she turned out to be seems as lost on her admirers as it was to her.
Does it matter that the happy couple had no children?
Their not having children certainly represents not only a major complication her signature book omits, but helps explain her prodigious career, working reputedly until midnight most days. Gurley Brown reveled in modern sexuality's abandonment of childbearing and child rearing, although it's not clear whether the Browns didn't have children by choice or despite trying. And to have heard Gurley Brown tell it, she loved the "trying" part, if you get my drift. After all, before she was married, she was not unknown within the Hollywood scene. She could never quite bring herself to admit sex was what she lived for, but her body of work doesn't leave many other options. One of her most famous quotes was "if you're not a sex object, you're in trouble."
Another one was, "good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go everywhere."
Which brings us back to the article I wrote for Crosswalk.com about women and modest attire. Perhaps we wouldn't be having the conversation today about what women wear in church if it wasn't for Helen Gurley Brown. Or at least, without Gurley Brown, women - and men - who defend their questionable wardrobe choices and attitudes towards modesty wouldn't have as much ammunition to blast at people like me. Through her books and her tenure at Cosmopolitan, Gurley Brown's famous contempt for virtue and morality helped to make licentiousness mainstream. Can any woman in the church today deny the effect Gurley Brown plays on their worldview - whether that effect makes them more conscious of their modesty, or ambivalent towards it?
Granted, it's impolite at best and crass at worst to speak ill of the dearly departed. But in this case, considering how she led her life, I'm not sure Gurley Brown would have much grounds to sue me for slander. Her commitment to her doting husband notwithstanding, she participated in a generational shift away from modesty - however misappropriated it had become by double-standards and exaggerated puritanical oppression - that likely contributed to a more materialistic brand of femininity less concerned with propriety than property. Ownership. Rule. Rule not through ethical integrity, but sexual allure.
One of the few things to come by "chance" to Gurley Brown was the timing of her ascendancy into the sexual revolution. Launching her first book just twenty years before 1962, she'd have likely been branded a - well, I can't bring myself to type out the word, but it starts with "s" and rhymes with "nut."
Twenty years later than 1962, and she might have been irrelevant, since if it wasn't for Gurley Brown, considering the mood of the times, somebody else would have written what she did, and maybe even more pervertedly. However, it's not as if some of the noted feminists of her day, such as Betty Friedan, liked what she wrote. They considered her a traitor to the feminine cause, since all she was basically doing was re-packaging the old notion that women are only good for sex, and marketing it to the post-modern age. Bloomberg.com calls it "fishnet feminism," after the provocative style of women's hosiery popular during the 1960's and 1970's.
Mystique Mistake
In 1982, at the top of her game, Gurley Brown penned Having it All, a book about how women can successfully use their physical prowess to attain love, sex, and money. But where is the novelty in that? As long as you base your worldview on the idea that men have all the power and are too stupid or vain to share it unless you can make them feel sexually desirable, how many civilizations throughout the history of the world have featured ambitious women who easily figured that out? To the extent that more ardent feminists held Gurley Brown in disdain for focusing on sex and men, they were correct: women have viable, and even intrinsic, roles to play in our society regardless of their sexuality.
Sadly, Gurley Brown got it "all" wrong: women can't have it all, just as men can't have it all. At least not the "all" many people think they want and need. Only Christ, the Son of God, is our Sufficiency. He is our Peace, our Purpose, and our Promise. And all the other "P" words, including prosperity. And provider.
How hard could it be for a fatherless little girl from backwater Arkansas to grow up with a misguided appreciation for men, sleep around Los Angeles, get put in charge of a failing magazine in New York, and turn it around by making promiscuity sound legitimate?
Over the years, as I've heard about her and read about her, I've always felt sorry for her, even as her peers in the national media were singing her praises. In a way, I also feel sorry for all of the women who've read my article on fashionable modesty, and just don't get it. I feel sorry for the men who love them, too. I really feel sorry for Gurley Brown now that she's gone, since the way she's led so many people in our culture - and our churches - astray is between her and God, Whom she apparently edited out of her life.
Hey - she said it herself: "good girls go to Heaven..." Not a correct statement theologically, since we've all sinned, and fall short of God's glory. But it's telling all the same.
Especially if it was the extent of her relationship with the one Man in our universe Who matters most.
_____
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
When Doing Your Job Makes You Heroic
It sounded odd when I first read it on the Washington Post's website.
And then I got an e-mail from the folks at Manhattan Declaration, and their e-mail's topic focused on it as well.
On "him," actually. After all, they're talking about the security guard at the Family Research Council's Washington, DC headquarters who helped subdue a shooter today.
At 10:45 this morning, a man walked into the lobby of the building housing the politically controversial group and shot a security guard in the arm when he tried to impede his progress into the building. According to the Washington Post, despite having just been shot, the guard, along with some bystanders, subdued the gunman until police arrived.
Unconfirmed reports say the suspect was carrying a takeout bag from Chick-fil-A, and that he apologized to the security guard after he shot him, saying something to the effect of the guard not being his intended victim.
Nevertheless, the district's police chief, Cathy Lanier, is quoted by the Post as calling the security guard "a hero, as far as I'm concerned. He did his job."
OK, which is it?
Is the security guard a hero, or was he doing his job? Because doing one's job doesn't necessarily make one a hero, does it?
Vocabulary Malfunction or Pay Grade Deficiency?
Initially, I chalked it up to a police official speaking while her adrenaline was still running, and grateful that nobody was killed. It wasn't like she was holding a scheduled press conference. Nor is she the first person in our vocabulary-challenged society to strip words of their meaning and use them out of context.
But then the Manhattan Declaration sends out an e-mail this afternoon, entitled "Hat Tip to a Hero," parroting DC's police chief:
"Such heroic action warrants a thanks beyond mere words. But, for now, words will suffice. Thank you for your bravery, Leo. And for the part you play in the pursuit of a more free, more faithful nation."
At least we learn that the security guard's first name is Leo. His name hasn't otherwise been widely published. And yes, he likely prevented an even more serious tragedy at the Family Research Council's (FRC) headquarters. I'm sad he got shot, I hope he heals quickly, and trust that he'll be back on the job soon.
Still, however, isn't there something trite and hollow about these accolades? Granted, the security guard was brave to continue a confrontation with his own shooter, but does that in and of itself make him a hero? As a security guard, his job was to protect the building and its occupants. But is a plumber a hero for fixing a leaky pipe? Shucks, is a president a hero for balancing a budget? When you do the job you're supposed to do, is that heroic?
It's at this point where the discrepancy should seem obvious: Security guards probably only earn a little less than police officers - who themselves are not handsomely paid, yet in this case, they are defending the health and welfare of an entire building full of people in the nation's capital. Either the pay for security guards is woefully low when compared to their scope of work, especially considering that this isn't the first security guard to be shot in the line of duty in DC. Or the scope of work is significantly higher than their pay grade.
Higher, at least, if your scope of work includes scenarios where you're the main line of defense in front of a gunman in your employer's lobby. Technically, wouldn't a hero have been somebody like a mail clerk tackling the shooter who had just wounded the guard? Tackling a shooter is not in most mail clerks' job description.
It's not even like this event is setting a precedent. Remember in 2009, the security guard who was shot and killed while on the job at DC's Holocaust Memorial Museum? The shooter was an elderly white supremacist who died before being brought to trial.
And speaking of lobbies, it's not like the FRC is some lobbyist for corn subsidies, or tire manufacturers, or some other docile group that hardly riles murderous intentions. This is the same high-profile organization that advocates - oftentimes in sloppy and embarrassing ways - against homosexuality and abortion. Considering how politically volatile these issues are, wouldn't you think security guards in the FRC's headquarters should probably be para-military specialists with Kevlar strapped to every extremity?
I'm not joking here - I'm totally serious. If a security guard's job is to provide security, and people say you're a hero if you get shot: is that really in the guard's job description? "Oh, yeah; we're only gonna pay you $45K a year, and you might just get shot, but if you do, we'll call you a hero and call it even. OK?"
Assigning Worth to Jobs
Not that anybody at the FRC would say that. It's not even what they thought when they set up their security plans. How many employers expect their employees to get shot at? But that's my point: we see these security guards all the time. We joke about them, calling them "rent-a-cops." At airports, and in banks, courthouses, and building lobbies: people who may or may not be physically capable of providing much genuine security still playing a security charade. I'm not knocking security guards, but I am trying to show how what our society thinks security guards are worth and what some of them actually end up doing for us don't jive.
In free market economics, each employee is supposed to be paid relative to their value to their employer. As demonstrated today, the career of a security guard is one of those careers that is an aberration to free market economics. What if this gunman had made it past this security guard? Would the guard have been excused if, when the suspect had pulled a gun, he stepped back and said, "hey, I'm not paid enough to take a bullet for anybody. I'm just here as window dressing, to give the appearance of security."
Does the fact that this guard didn't say that, and that he prevented the gunman from getting into the building, suddenly make executives at the FRC wonder if maybe those folks patrolling the lobby downstairs might be underpaid?
Maybe this guard, who we think is named Leo, really is a hero, because according to his pay grade, he shouldn't have had to put his own life on the line.
But since he's now proven that's part of his job, don't you think he deserves a nice raise?
_____
Update: Turns out, the security official who got shot was not in uniform, and likely not technically a security "guard," but a member of the building's management staff. For an update, please click here.
And then I got an e-mail from the folks at Manhattan Declaration, and their e-mail's topic focused on it as well.
On "him," actually. After all, they're talking about the security guard at the Family Research Council's Washington, DC headquarters who helped subdue a shooter today.
At 10:45 this morning, a man walked into the lobby of the building housing the politically controversial group and shot a security guard in the arm when he tried to impede his progress into the building. According to the Washington Post, despite having just been shot, the guard, along with some bystanders, subdued the gunman until police arrived.
Unconfirmed reports say the suspect was carrying a takeout bag from Chick-fil-A, and that he apologized to the security guard after he shot him, saying something to the effect of the guard not being his intended victim.
Nevertheless, the district's police chief, Cathy Lanier, is quoted by the Post as calling the security guard "a hero, as far as I'm concerned. He did his job."
OK, which is it?
Is the security guard a hero, or was he doing his job? Because doing one's job doesn't necessarily make one a hero, does it?
Vocabulary Malfunction or Pay Grade Deficiency?
Initially, I chalked it up to a police official speaking while her adrenaline was still running, and grateful that nobody was killed. It wasn't like she was holding a scheduled press conference. Nor is she the first person in our vocabulary-challenged society to strip words of their meaning and use them out of context.
But then the Manhattan Declaration sends out an e-mail this afternoon, entitled "Hat Tip to a Hero," parroting DC's police chief:
"Such heroic action warrants a thanks beyond mere words. But, for now, words will suffice. Thank you for your bravery, Leo. And for the part you play in the pursuit of a more free, more faithful nation."
At least we learn that the security guard's first name is Leo. His name hasn't otherwise been widely published. And yes, he likely prevented an even more serious tragedy at the Family Research Council's (FRC) headquarters. I'm sad he got shot, I hope he heals quickly, and trust that he'll be back on the job soon.
Still, however, isn't there something trite and hollow about these accolades? Granted, the security guard was brave to continue a confrontation with his own shooter, but does that in and of itself make him a hero? As a security guard, his job was to protect the building and its occupants. But is a plumber a hero for fixing a leaky pipe? Shucks, is a president a hero for balancing a budget? When you do the job you're supposed to do, is that heroic?
It's at this point where the discrepancy should seem obvious: Security guards probably only earn a little less than police officers - who themselves are not handsomely paid, yet in this case, they are defending the health and welfare of an entire building full of people in the nation's capital. Either the pay for security guards is woefully low when compared to their scope of work, especially considering that this isn't the first security guard to be shot in the line of duty in DC. Or the scope of work is significantly higher than their pay grade.
Higher, at least, if your scope of work includes scenarios where you're the main line of defense in front of a gunman in your employer's lobby. Technically, wouldn't a hero have been somebody like a mail clerk tackling the shooter who had just wounded the guard? Tackling a shooter is not in most mail clerks' job description.
It's not even like this event is setting a precedent. Remember in 2009, the security guard who was shot and killed while on the job at DC's Holocaust Memorial Museum? The shooter was an elderly white supremacist who died before being brought to trial.
And speaking of lobbies, it's not like the FRC is some lobbyist for corn subsidies, or tire manufacturers, or some other docile group that hardly riles murderous intentions. This is the same high-profile organization that advocates - oftentimes in sloppy and embarrassing ways - against homosexuality and abortion. Considering how politically volatile these issues are, wouldn't you think security guards in the FRC's headquarters should probably be para-military specialists with Kevlar strapped to every extremity?
I'm not joking here - I'm totally serious. If a security guard's job is to provide security, and people say you're a hero if you get shot: is that really in the guard's job description? "Oh, yeah; we're only gonna pay you $45K a year, and you might just get shot, but if you do, we'll call you a hero and call it even. OK?"
Assigning Worth to Jobs
Not that anybody at the FRC would say that. It's not even what they thought when they set up their security plans. How many employers expect their employees to get shot at? But that's my point: we see these security guards all the time. We joke about them, calling them "rent-a-cops." At airports, and in banks, courthouses, and building lobbies: people who may or may not be physically capable of providing much genuine security still playing a security charade. I'm not knocking security guards, but I am trying to show how what our society thinks security guards are worth and what some of them actually end up doing for us don't jive.
In free market economics, each employee is supposed to be paid relative to their value to their employer. As demonstrated today, the career of a security guard is one of those careers that is an aberration to free market economics. What if this gunman had made it past this security guard? Would the guard have been excused if, when the suspect had pulled a gun, he stepped back and said, "hey, I'm not paid enough to take a bullet for anybody. I'm just here as window dressing, to give the appearance of security."
Does the fact that this guard didn't say that, and that he prevented the gunman from getting into the building, suddenly make executives at the FRC wonder if maybe those folks patrolling the lobby downstairs might be underpaid?
Maybe this guard, who we think is named Leo, really is a hero, because according to his pay grade, he shouldn't have had to put his own life on the line.
But since he's now proven that's part of his job, don't you think he deserves a nice raise?
_____
Update: Turns out, the security official who got shot was not in uniform, and likely not technically a security "guard," but a member of the building's management staff. For an update, please click here.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Maybe Taxpayers Can Save Art From Itself
Should taxpayers help fund the arts?
I used to think so, since in our increasingly casual society, the rigors and disciplines of art appreciation have gone into free-fall. Despite the fact that cultural events help broaden the mind and speak to extraordinary beauty and creativity, pop culture teaches that if it isn't loud, obnoxious, transient, titillating, or easily-understood, it's not worth the money. If the general public doesn't want to shell out the bucks to fund culture, is that a good enough reason to let the arts die?
Where a community's taxpayers choose to put their money says a lot about their aspirations, their values, and their understanding of how humanity works. Leverage a surcharge on sales taxes to fund football stadiums for millionaires to play in, and you see one scenario of a community's values. Take a fraction of taxpayer funds to underwrite a modestly successful symphony, and you see one scenario of another community's values. If your community has the will and resources to do both with tax dollars, there's yet another scenario of that community's values.
If taxpayers individually don't care about the arts, maybe collectively, they can still keep them around for those who do.
Taxpayers as Arts Patrons
But over the past few years, America's cultural scene - particularly in classical music - has been slowly shrinking past the break-even level in many cities across the country. Sure, classical music has been cursed with declining popularity for decades, but in many of the communities that had been able to cobble together a budget for their orchestra, philharmonic, or symphony, economic fortunes have waned, along with populations. And one by one, classical music organizations have been closing up shop.
Inevitably, before the last encore, arts patrons have tried to rally their communities for one last push to increase municipal arts funding. But those communities have either decided the money isn't there even if they wanted to divert it to the arts, or they just didn't have the political will. It's hard to argue for something that the vast majority of taxpayers don't want.
Which is one of the reasons I've changed my mind about taxpayer funding for the arts. Yes, I still believe a thriving cultural scene provides an attractive resource that helps sell the community as a place with a high quality of life. All the things arts boosters say about the arts still ring true: corporate relocations tend to go where the arts are present; and our burgeoning "creative class" tends to cluster in places where the arts are well-funded. The arts also provide a wide range of eclectic jobs that don't pay much, but help fill in some of the nooks and crannies of a city's skills set.
If we're going to get serious about our government budgets, however, and reform tax codes to benefit our economy, few sacred cows should remain. Therefore, even though I'm a strong supporter of the arts in general and classical music in particular, I've come to the realization that I cannot expect my fellow taxpayers to help foot the bill for something they simply don't want. Even if they don't recognize the inherent value in the arts.
When my city, Arlington, Texas, voted to raise the sales tax to help fund part of the new Dallas Cowboys' stadium here in town, I grudgingly voted in support of the proposal. Not because I enjoy football, or because I looked forward to having a bunch of drunken louts trying to plow through our city streets after games trying to find their way home. I simply couldn't avoid the economic benefit such a facility would bring to our community. Some people groused that billionaires like the Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, had no business asking taxpayers to fund his enterprise, which is 100% true, but if Arlington didn't cough up the sales tax receipts, some other city would have. That funding scam is bigger than us Arlington voters.
Behold What Oil Money Can Buy
According to its city's slogan, the west begins just to the west of Arlington in Fort Worth, that fabled cattle and oil town. "Fut Wuth," or "Far Warth" as the natives say it in either their southern drawl or western brogue, has evolved from a raucous, brothel-strewn cowboy drinkin' town - whose downtown used to be called "Hell's half acre" - into a sophisticated sprawl of glassy office towers, wide boulevards, genteel neighborhoods, and some of the world's best art and architecture. Most of the city's modern transformation has been paid for by generations of beef, oil, leatherwear, aviation, and even technology money. The Amon Carter, Sid Richardson, Science and History, Kimbel, and Modern Art museums are known around the world. Casa Manana attracts famous entertainers from New York and Hollywood. Downtown's angelic Bass Hall hosts a decent symphony, even if it's not as famous as Dallas', just 30 minutes down the freeway. Eminent classical pianist Van Cliburn retired to Fort Worth, where his quadrennial piano competition is considered the most elite of its kind on the planet. Indeed, few cities of any size can boast a similar cultural pedigree.
Recent budget talks have the city gutting its percentage of funding to Fort Worth's prized cultural scene, however, and some arts patrons have gotten all up in arms. Fort Worth has been cutting its spending on the arts for years, but with this new reduction, they might as well not be giving anything.
And maybe that's just as well.
If you don't live around these parts, you might not realize that most of our cultural icons are named as legacies for prominent Fort Worth families, such as the Carters, Richardsons, Kimbels, Basses, and so forth. Plenty of heirs to these names exist with their family fortunes and then some. I doubt that many of these people would welcome their family's name falling into disrepute, were their artistic endeavors to go underfunded. It was self-aggrandizement that got these facilities built, and it will likely be self-aggrandizement that will keep their budgets afloat. Isn't that part of how capitalism works? Especially the tax write-off part every April 15?
The symphony, of course, is a little different, since such ventures employ a considerable number of people, and playing to a half-empty concert hall is far more discouraging - and harder to hide - than having half-empty galleries in a museum. It's been commented by many classical musicians that here in north Texas, we have an extraordinarily rare number of symphonies and orchestras - up to five, depending on your artistic standards. I certainly don't wish ill of any of them, but just as we have a number orchestras, we also are blessed in north Texas by many wealthy people who should be able to afford to step into the funding breach were tax dollars removed from the equation.
Not that I'm heaping all the responsibility for saving the arts on the backs of the wealthy, even though, "to whom much is given, much is required." I'm well aware that money can't buy good taste, or an appreciation for beautiful music and good art. So expecting the rich to bail out the arts might enable some woefully unqualified people to begin dictating artistic goals just because they're signing the checks.
How would that help anything?
At some point, then, more middle-and lower-income people need to be brought back into the art-appreciation fold. More people buying more tickets will be one of the most sustainable and efficient ways to fund the arts, right? But how do we do that? Many arts organizations are already bending over backwards trying to attract more patrons of any economic level.
Is Pleasing the Public Bad for Art?
One solution I'd respectfully suggest is that we get back to the basics regarding what art is. And this is the second reason I support the withdrawal of public funds from the arts. Maybe a certain amount of good old American consumer economics is in order to help save our cultural jewels. For example, some of the classical music I've heard at our local symphony halls really isn't all that interesting, and I say that as a person who likes classical music. If I don't care for it, how much do you think average music consumers would pay to hear it?
Probably not anything, right? So how much of a cultural shell might our tax dollars be disguising?
I realize that within the arts community, playing pieces of music that aren't necessary popular increases the professional credibility of musicians and orchestras. But how much ego should you let get in the way of communicating timeless music to audiences? I recall attending a pipe organ competition at Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center, and the music on the program was so awful, we audience members were literally being forced out of the concert hall in droves. The next day, organizers of the competition dismissively defended their program as obviously too avant garde for Dallas - which, considering their attitude, said more about them than us. If making a pipe organ shriek and blast like a malfunctioning ship's horn is considered good art, then you're the one with the problem, buddy. Not those of us expecting to hear beautiful music.
Just as classical music that's considered "modern" is one thing, so is modern art. Maybe I've already told you about another installation at the Modern Art museum that consisted of a white fluorescent light bulb.
Yup.
That's it - a fluorescent light bulb, turned on, and bolted at an angle on the wall. Shoot fire - if that's art, let's go to Home Depot - you'll go nuts!
If you weren't nuts already, that is: thinking a light bulb mounted on a wall suffices as art.
While I can see the statement the artist is attempting to make, it's hardly worth the price of a $7 ticket, is it? I mean, can you imagine Home Depot charging you money just to look at their inventory? It's this kind of - frankly - stupid claim of artistic integrity that has contributed to the general public's dismissive attitude about art. Granted, just as many people have a hard time appreciating Monet, so the general public's apathy is not entirely modern art's fault. Some people just don't know what they see, which is what some of you artsy types may be thinking about me and my rant about light bulbs.
Will getting back to genuinely artistic art be the cure-all for all of the budget woes in our cultural districts? Probably not entirely, no. But does expecting taxpayers to continue helping out with the bills make any more sense than some of this stuff we're supposed to call artwork? If tax dollars are removed from arts funding, how much will arts organizations be forced to return to the beauty most of us know can be found in more mainstream expressions of art? After all, is art many people can appreciate necessarily worse than art most of us think is ugly? To the extent that the general public disregards the arts, how much have they been pushed from the scene by arts snobs who still expect funding from the very people at which they sneer?
You might be surprised to hear me admit that despite some ludicrous examples, there are several genuinely clever and compelling pieces of art in Fort Worth's Modern. So I visit from time to time, checking out what have become something like old friends. On one of my visits, however, while walking through a gallery lined with ghastly paint dribbles evocative of Jackson Pollock in miniature, I overheard two ladies, perplexed, conversing with a young docent.
"Who decides this stuff is art?" one of the ladies asked with complete sincerity.
It took the docent so long to come up with some sort of reply, I was already in the next gallery before the reply came.
But I felt like stopping and saying, "the people gullible enough to pay for it."
_____
I used to think so, since in our increasingly casual society, the rigors and disciplines of art appreciation have gone into free-fall. Despite the fact that cultural events help broaden the mind and speak to extraordinary beauty and creativity, pop culture teaches that if it isn't loud, obnoxious, transient, titillating, or easily-understood, it's not worth the money. If the general public doesn't want to shell out the bucks to fund culture, is that a good enough reason to let the arts die?
Where a community's taxpayers choose to put their money says a lot about their aspirations, their values, and their understanding of how humanity works. Leverage a surcharge on sales taxes to fund football stadiums for millionaires to play in, and you see one scenario of a community's values. Take a fraction of taxpayer funds to underwrite a modestly successful symphony, and you see one scenario of another community's values. If your community has the will and resources to do both with tax dollars, there's yet another scenario of that community's values.
If taxpayers individually don't care about the arts, maybe collectively, they can still keep them around for those who do.
Taxpayers as Arts Patrons
But over the past few years, America's cultural scene - particularly in classical music - has been slowly shrinking past the break-even level in many cities across the country. Sure, classical music has been cursed with declining popularity for decades, but in many of the communities that had been able to cobble together a budget for their orchestra, philharmonic, or symphony, economic fortunes have waned, along with populations. And one by one, classical music organizations have been closing up shop.
Inevitably, before the last encore, arts patrons have tried to rally their communities for one last push to increase municipal arts funding. But those communities have either decided the money isn't there even if they wanted to divert it to the arts, or they just didn't have the political will. It's hard to argue for something that the vast majority of taxpayers don't want.
Which is one of the reasons I've changed my mind about taxpayer funding for the arts. Yes, I still believe a thriving cultural scene provides an attractive resource that helps sell the community as a place with a high quality of life. All the things arts boosters say about the arts still ring true: corporate relocations tend to go where the arts are present; and our burgeoning "creative class" tends to cluster in places where the arts are well-funded. The arts also provide a wide range of eclectic jobs that don't pay much, but help fill in some of the nooks and crannies of a city's skills set.
If we're going to get serious about our government budgets, however, and reform tax codes to benefit our economy, few sacred cows should remain. Therefore, even though I'm a strong supporter of the arts in general and classical music in particular, I've come to the realization that I cannot expect my fellow taxpayers to help foot the bill for something they simply don't want. Even if they don't recognize the inherent value in the arts.
When my city, Arlington, Texas, voted to raise the sales tax to help fund part of the new Dallas Cowboys' stadium here in town, I grudgingly voted in support of the proposal. Not because I enjoy football, or because I looked forward to having a bunch of drunken louts trying to plow through our city streets after games trying to find their way home. I simply couldn't avoid the economic benefit such a facility would bring to our community. Some people groused that billionaires like the Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, had no business asking taxpayers to fund his enterprise, which is 100% true, but if Arlington didn't cough up the sales tax receipts, some other city would have. That funding scam is bigger than us Arlington voters.
Behold What Oil Money Can Buy
According to its city's slogan, the west begins just to the west of Arlington in Fort Worth, that fabled cattle and oil town. "Fut Wuth," or "Far Warth" as the natives say it in either their southern drawl or western brogue, has evolved from a raucous, brothel-strewn cowboy drinkin' town - whose downtown used to be called "Hell's half acre" - into a sophisticated sprawl of glassy office towers, wide boulevards, genteel neighborhoods, and some of the world's best art and architecture. Most of the city's modern transformation has been paid for by generations of beef, oil, leatherwear, aviation, and even technology money. The Amon Carter, Sid Richardson, Science and History, Kimbel, and Modern Art museums are known around the world. Casa Manana attracts famous entertainers from New York and Hollywood. Downtown's angelic Bass Hall hosts a decent symphony, even if it's not as famous as Dallas', just 30 minutes down the freeway. Eminent classical pianist Van Cliburn retired to Fort Worth, where his quadrennial piano competition is considered the most elite of its kind on the planet. Indeed, few cities of any size can boast a similar cultural pedigree.
Recent budget talks have the city gutting its percentage of funding to Fort Worth's prized cultural scene, however, and some arts patrons have gotten all up in arms. Fort Worth has been cutting its spending on the arts for years, but with this new reduction, they might as well not be giving anything.
And maybe that's just as well.
If you don't live around these parts, you might not realize that most of our cultural icons are named as legacies for prominent Fort Worth families, such as the Carters, Richardsons, Kimbels, Basses, and so forth. Plenty of heirs to these names exist with their family fortunes and then some. I doubt that many of these people would welcome their family's name falling into disrepute, were their artistic endeavors to go underfunded. It was self-aggrandizement that got these facilities built, and it will likely be self-aggrandizement that will keep their budgets afloat. Isn't that part of how capitalism works? Especially the tax write-off part every April 15?
The symphony, of course, is a little different, since such ventures employ a considerable number of people, and playing to a half-empty concert hall is far more discouraging - and harder to hide - than having half-empty galleries in a museum. It's been commented by many classical musicians that here in north Texas, we have an extraordinarily rare number of symphonies and orchestras - up to five, depending on your artistic standards. I certainly don't wish ill of any of them, but just as we have a number orchestras, we also are blessed in north Texas by many wealthy people who should be able to afford to step into the funding breach were tax dollars removed from the equation.
Not that I'm heaping all the responsibility for saving the arts on the backs of the wealthy, even though, "to whom much is given, much is required." I'm well aware that money can't buy good taste, or an appreciation for beautiful music and good art. So expecting the rich to bail out the arts might enable some woefully unqualified people to begin dictating artistic goals just because they're signing the checks.
How would that help anything?
At some point, then, more middle-and lower-income people need to be brought back into the art-appreciation fold. More people buying more tickets will be one of the most sustainable and efficient ways to fund the arts, right? But how do we do that? Many arts organizations are already bending over backwards trying to attract more patrons of any economic level.
Is Pleasing the Public Bad for Art?
One solution I'd respectfully suggest is that we get back to the basics regarding what art is. And this is the second reason I support the withdrawal of public funds from the arts. Maybe a certain amount of good old American consumer economics is in order to help save our cultural jewels. For example, some of the classical music I've heard at our local symphony halls really isn't all that interesting, and I say that as a person who likes classical music. If I don't care for it, how much do you think average music consumers would pay to hear it?
Probably not anything, right? So how much of a cultural shell might our tax dollars be disguising?
I realize that within the arts community, playing pieces of music that aren't necessary popular increases the professional credibility of musicians and orchestras. But how much ego should you let get in the way of communicating timeless music to audiences? I recall attending a pipe organ competition at Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center, and the music on the program was so awful, we audience members were literally being forced out of the concert hall in droves. The next day, organizers of the competition dismissively defended their program as obviously too avant garde for Dallas - which, considering their attitude, said more about them than us. If making a pipe organ shriek and blast like a malfunctioning ship's horn is considered good art, then you're the one with the problem, buddy. Not those of us expecting to hear beautiful music.
Just as classical music that's considered "modern" is one thing, so is modern art. Maybe I've already told you about another installation at the Modern Art museum that consisted of a white fluorescent light bulb.
Yup.
That's it - a fluorescent light bulb, turned on, and bolted at an angle on the wall. Shoot fire - if that's art, let's go to Home Depot - you'll go nuts!
If you weren't nuts already, that is: thinking a light bulb mounted on a wall suffices as art.
While I can see the statement the artist is attempting to make, it's hardly worth the price of a $7 ticket, is it? I mean, can you imagine Home Depot charging you money just to look at their inventory? It's this kind of - frankly - stupid claim of artistic integrity that has contributed to the general public's dismissive attitude about art. Granted, just as many people have a hard time appreciating Monet, so the general public's apathy is not entirely modern art's fault. Some people just don't know what they see, which is what some of you artsy types may be thinking about me and my rant about light bulbs.
Will getting back to genuinely artistic art be the cure-all for all of the budget woes in our cultural districts? Probably not entirely, no. But does expecting taxpayers to continue helping out with the bills make any more sense than some of this stuff we're supposed to call artwork? If tax dollars are removed from arts funding, how much will arts organizations be forced to return to the beauty most of us know can be found in more mainstream expressions of art? After all, is art many people can appreciate necessarily worse than art most of us think is ugly? To the extent that the general public disregards the arts, how much have they been pushed from the scene by arts snobs who still expect funding from the very people at which they sneer?
You might be surprised to hear me admit that despite some ludicrous examples, there are several genuinely clever and compelling pieces of art in Fort Worth's Modern. So I visit from time to time, checking out what have become something like old friends. On one of my visits, however, while walking through a gallery lined with ghastly paint dribbles evocative of Jackson Pollock in miniature, I overheard two ladies, perplexed, conversing with a young docent.
"Who decides this stuff is art?" one of the ladies asked with complete sincerity.
It took the docent so long to come up with some sort of reply, I was already in the next gallery before the reply came.
But I felt like stopping and saying, "the people gullible enough to pay for it."
_____
Friday, August 10, 2012
Barton, Jefferson, and Lies - But Whose?
At last!
David Barton, creator of the "Christian" parachurch ministry, WallBuilders, and a hero of right-wing revisionist history fans, has been caught in the act.
His recent book on Thomas Jefferson has been found to be fraudulent.
I haven't mentioned Barton by name on my blog until just now, because even though I've doubted him for years, he claims to be a born-again Christian, so part of me wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Barton is the guy from right here in north Texas who's been touring the country as a teacher of right-wing propaganda about how "Christian" America's Founding Fathers were, and supposedly uncovering new evidence about how America is a "Christian" nation.
Virtually all of his books and speeches have elicited cat-calls and guffaws from professional historians and history professors, virtually all of whom have been unable to corroborate anything Barton has said. Yet many evangelicals and right-wingers have been eating his stuff up, because many of us have a poor grasp of history ourselves, and we desperately want to believe good things about our beloved country. It's also become quite popular for conservatives to dismiss anything with which we don't agree as liberal revisionism. Instead of simply disagreeing with academia's elite who tend to be left-wingers, how much better to twist the past into something that supports our side. It's not like anybody's still alive from the Revolutionary War to prove us wrong.
Wrapping Our Flag Around His Cross
If right-wingers simply wanted to spite liberal academics, perhaps little harm would have been done by right-wing revisionism. The problem came when conservatives tried to wrap the American flag around the cross of Christ, and issued platitudes about the sanctity of America's history. Many people of faith have become hardened skeptics of public education, so even though the "facts" people like Barton claimed to be digging up seemed contrary to what we'd all learned in public school, it became fashionable to simply whitewash criticism of Barton and his cohorts as the product of an evil education system.
Not to say that public schools these days haven't gone off the accuracy rails themselves. Indeed, some school districts, particularly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, seem more intent on brainwashing future generations of learners with new social theories instead of teaching basic readin', writin', and 'rithmatic skills. But how much worse is it to flat-out lie about something, than to merely shroud the academic process in an overtly socialistic ideology?
Judging by our falling place among international education scores, and our struggling academic standards, it's not like our kids these days are learning much of anything in school anyway.
I hadn't paid much attention to Barton's latest book, a goofy treatise attempting to prove Thomas Jefferson was in fact an orthodox, evangelical Christian. The book was entitled The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, but some professors at the far more credible Grove City College in Pennsylvania smelled a rat. After some scholarly research of their own, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter petitioned Barton's publisher, Thomas Nelson, with proof of Barton's egregious inaccuracies and outright fallacies regarding the life of America's third president.
And Thomas Nelson pulled the book, cancelled its contract with Barton, and will not be publishing any more of his works.
A while ago, I'd read an article about Grove City College's attempts at refuting Barton, but I guess I didn't realize that a book contract with such a powerhouse Christian publisher was on the line. Grove City is a conservative, evangelical institution of considerable repute, even though few evangelicals probably know much about it. As a Christian liberal arts school, it's carved out a niche as, perhaps surprisingly, an unapologetically pro-patriotism community advocating for many of the flag-wrapped-around-the-cross ideologies people like Barton espouse. Indeed, some of the things I've read about them have made me as uneasy as the stuff Barton as written about the United States.
It's this similarity in mission, apparently, upon which Barton has seized as his personal defense. On his website, Barton attacks professors Throckmorton and Coulter as being jealous of his success in getting his book on Jefferson published, after they unsuccessfully shopped their own Jefferson manuscript to publishers. Barton accuses the professors of hostility towards him, and basically brushes off their concerns as nothing more than the academic elitism for which lesser-educated writers such as himself have already belittled degreed, tenured college professors.
If Barton truly understood the rigors of academia, he would understand how embarrassing this rant on his website is for him. He tries to pick apart certain aspects of the professors' arguments with the naivete of many Tea Partiers, who have no clue about politics in general, or historical cultural norms during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
And speaking of Tea Partiers, one of Barton's long-time supporters has been none other than Glen Beck, somebody who I genuinely worry about, because of his twisted sense of reality and historicity. While it's surprising that Barton would lash out so towards kindred spirits at Grove City who are simply trying to hold him accountable to the grand theory of American theocracy, it's no surprise whatsoever that Barton and Beck have gotten along so well together. Barton even sits on the board of Beck's non-profit charity, Mercury One.
Cease, Desist, and Trust
In the end, despite all of Barton's bluster, the dust he kicks up on his website that he hopes obscures his weak defense has merely settled on a major decision by a major publishing house with more on the line that just Barton's shaky reputation. For Thomas Nelson to put the kibosh on a book after it's been released is a major step that they did not take lightly. Or without proof.
Regular readers of my blog will recall that I'm not a fan of Thomas Nelson, because I think they typically put profit before principle. Which, were my opinion of them to hold any merit, further proves their action against Barton is not insignificant.
What Barton doesn't seem to understand about historical investigation is - and, being a graduate of Oral Roberts University, his cluelessness may be understandable - that you can't just throw a bunch of old newspapers and manuscripts on a table, pick apart sentences, and put together your own collage of what those scraps of information depict. For historical research to be valid, it needs to be like science: your results need to be replicated by more than one person.*
Another fact apparently lost on Barton involves the quality of newspapers in Jefferson's day. Newspapers as a reliable source of fact-based journalism were still an evolving invention back then, and generally full more of gossip and hearsay than even our media today. Personal correspondence, too requires researchers today to understand what the letter writer was trying to communicate to the recipient in that time and place, not just what the words in the letter say. Perhaps most significantly, Barton seems to always commit the cardinal sin among researchers: he approaches his projects with an end result already in mind, and he seeks to manipulate all of the proofs he thinks apply into a framework that supports the end result he's already envisioned.*
Not that I'm an ugly, unpatriotic American who believes the birth of our nation took place more to pacify economic greed than spiritual freedom. I do think economics played a far greater role than many right-wingers want to believe, especially since freedom was so far down on the Founding Fathers' list of goals, slaves and women couldn't vote. To the extent, however, that there was a broad recognition among many early Americans that the Bible served as a reliable guide for social formation and the establishment of civil governance, we should not be ashamed to remind our fellow citizens today of the type of country the crafters of our republic intended us to be. Frankly, were Washington, Adams, and even Jefferson to come back and plop onto Pennsylvania Avenue this very moment, I think they'd be appalled at the mess we've made of their grand experiment.
But to base our legitimate arguments for change on severely flawed guesstimates on the spiritual condition of our Founding Fathers only marginalizes the virtue of our cause. That's why what Barton and his ilk have been doing these past few years has been so damaging to the credibility of evangelicalism, and has inhibited any genuine opportunities for real change.
Instead of trying to protect his tattered reputation, Barton needs to fade into the woodwork, at least for a while, and allow the rightful message of righteous society-building to begin to heal.
After all, if this is not about him, or Jefferson, or Throckmorton, or Coulter; but it's about God, won't what people believed 230 years ago be less important than how we honor God today as Americans?
Who is lying about Thomas Jefferson?
To be painstakingly correct, it's Dabney Carr, a close friend of Jefferson's; Jefferson's wife and their two daughters; and his son-in-law, Governor Thomas Mann Randolph.
OK, sorry: it was kind of a trick question.
You see, Jefferson's body lies in Monticello's private family cemetery, and his family lies about him. Testaments to a mortality we should all keep in mind. And my point is this: even if Jefferson was as righteous as Billy Graham, why bother basing a sociopolitical revival in the United States on a mere mortal?
Especially when we're supposed to be trusting in God.
_____
* These also serve as reasons for why the theory of Evolution is dubious at best.
David Barton, creator of the "Christian" parachurch ministry, WallBuilders, and a hero of right-wing revisionist history fans, has been caught in the act.
His recent book on Thomas Jefferson has been found to be fraudulent.
I haven't mentioned Barton by name on my blog until just now, because even though I've doubted him for years, he claims to be a born-again Christian, so part of me wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Barton is the guy from right here in north Texas who's been touring the country as a teacher of right-wing propaganda about how "Christian" America's Founding Fathers were, and supposedly uncovering new evidence about how America is a "Christian" nation.
Virtually all of his books and speeches have elicited cat-calls and guffaws from professional historians and history professors, virtually all of whom have been unable to corroborate anything Barton has said. Yet many evangelicals and right-wingers have been eating his stuff up, because many of us have a poor grasp of history ourselves, and we desperately want to believe good things about our beloved country. It's also become quite popular for conservatives to dismiss anything with which we don't agree as liberal revisionism. Instead of simply disagreeing with academia's elite who tend to be left-wingers, how much better to twist the past into something that supports our side. It's not like anybody's still alive from the Revolutionary War to prove us wrong.
Wrapping Our Flag Around His Cross
If right-wingers simply wanted to spite liberal academics, perhaps little harm would have been done by right-wing revisionism. The problem came when conservatives tried to wrap the American flag around the cross of Christ, and issued platitudes about the sanctity of America's history. Many people of faith have become hardened skeptics of public education, so even though the "facts" people like Barton claimed to be digging up seemed contrary to what we'd all learned in public school, it became fashionable to simply whitewash criticism of Barton and his cohorts as the product of an evil education system.
Not to say that public schools these days haven't gone off the accuracy rails themselves. Indeed, some school districts, particularly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, seem more intent on brainwashing future generations of learners with new social theories instead of teaching basic readin', writin', and 'rithmatic skills. But how much worse is it to flat-out lie about something, than to merely shroud the academic process in an overtly socialistic ideology?
Judging by our falling place among international education scores, and our struggling academic standards, it's not like our kids these days are learning much of anything in school anyway.
I hadn't paid much attention to Barton's latest book, a goofy treatise attempting to prove Thomas Jefferson was in fact an orthodox, evangelical Christian. The book was entitled The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, but some professors at the far more credible Grove City College in Pennsylvania smelled a rat. After some scholarly research of their own, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter petitioned Barton's publisher, Thomas Nelson, with proof of Barton's egregious inaccuracies and outright fallacies regarding the life of America's third president.
And Thomas Nelson pulled the book, cancelled its contract with Barton, and will not be publishing any more of his works.
A while ago, I'd read an article about Grove City College's attempts at refuting Barton, but I guess I didn't realize that a book contract with such a powerhouse Christian publisher was on the line. Grove City is a conservative, evangelical institution of considerable repute, even though few evangelicals probably know much about it. As a Christian liberal arts school, it's carved out a niche as, perhaps surprisingly, an unapologetically pro-patriotism community advocating for many of the flag-wrapped-around-the-cross ideologies people like Barton espouse. Indeed, some of the things I've read about them have made me as uneasy as the stuff Barton as written about the United States.
It's this similarity in mission, apparently, upon which Barton has seized as his personal defense. On his website, Barton attacks professors Throckmorton and Coulter as being jealous of his success in getting his book on Jefferson published, after they unsuccessfully shopped their own Jefferson manuscript to publishers. Barton accuses the professors of hostility towards him, and basically brushes off their concerns as nothing more than the academic elitism for which lesser-educated writers such as himself have already belittled degreed, tenured college professors.
If Barton truly understood the rigors of academia, he would understand how embarrassing this rant on his website is for him. He tries to pick apart certain aspects of the professors' arguments with the naivete of many Tea Partiers, who have no clue about politics in general, or historical cultural norms during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
And speaking of Tea Partiers, one of Barton's long-time supporters has been none other than Glen Beck, somebody who I genuinely worry about, because of his twisted sense of reality and historicity. While it's surprising that Barton would lash out so towards kindred spirits at Grove City who are simply trying to hold him accountable to the grand theory of American theocracy, it's no surprise whatsoever that Barton and Beck have gotten along so well together. Barton even sits on the board of Beck's non-profit charity, Mercury One.
Cease, Desist, and Trust
In the end, despite all of Barton's bluster, the dust he kicks up on his website that he hopes obscures his weak defense has merely settled on a major decision by a major publishing house with more on the line that just Barton's shaky reputation. For Thomas Nelson to put the kibosh on a book after it's been released is a major step that they did not take lightly. Or without proof.
Regular readers of my blog will recall that I'm not a fan of Thomas Nelson, because I think they typically put profit before principle. Which, were my opinion of them to hold any merit, further proves their action against Barton is not insignificant.
What Barton doesn't seem to understand about historical investigation is - and, being a graduate of Oral Roberts University, his cluelessness may be understandable - that you can't just throw a bunch of old newspapers and manuscripts on a table, pick apart sentences, and put together your own collage of what those scraps of information depict. For historical research to be valid, it needs to be like science: your results need to be replicated by more than one person.*
Another fact apparently lost on Barton involves the quality of newspapers in Jefferson's day. Newspapers as a reliable source of fact-based journalism were still an evolving invention back then, and generally full more of gossip and hearsay than even our media today. Personal correspondence, too requires researchers today to understand what the letter writer was trying to communicate to the recipient in that time and place, not just what the words in the letter say. Perhaps most significantly, Barton seems to always commit the cardinal sin among researchers: he approaches his projects with an end result already in mind, and he seeks to manipulate all of the proofs he thinks apply into a framework that supports the end result he's already envisioned.*
Not that I'm an ugly, unpatriotic American who believes the birth of our nation took place more to pacify economic greed than spiritual freedom. I do think economics played a far greater role than many right-wingers want to believe, especially since freedom was so far down on the Founding Fathers' list of goals, slaves and women couldn't vote. To the extent, however, that there was a broad recognition among many early Americans that the Bible served as a reliable guide for social formation and the establishment of civil governance, we should not be ashamed to remind our fellow citizens today of the type of country the crafters of our republic intended us to be. Frankly, were Washington, Adams, and even Jefferson to come back and plop onto Pennsylvania Avenue this very moment, I think they'd be appalled at the mess we've made of their grand experiment.
But to base our legitimate arguments for change on severely flawed guesstimates on the spiritual condition of our Founding Fathers only marginalizes the virtue of our cause. That's why what Barton and his ilk have been doing these past few years has been so damaging to the credibility of evangelicalism, and has inhibited any genuine opportunities for real change.
Instead of trying to protect his tattered reputation, Barton needs to fade into the woodwork, at least for a while, and allow the rightful message of righteous society-building to begin to heal.
After all, if this is not about him, or Jefferson, or Throckmorton, or Coulter; but it's about God, won't what people believed 230 years ago be less important than how we honor God today as Americans?
Who is lying about Thomas Jefferson?
To be painstakingly correct, it's Dabney Carr, a close friend of Jefferson's; Jefferson's wife and their two daughters; and his son-in-law, Governor Thomas Mann Randolph.
OK, sorry: it was kind of a trick question.
You see, Jefferson's body lies in Monticello's private family cemetery, and his family lies about him. Testaments to a mortality we should all keep in mind. And my point is this: even if Jefferson was as righteous as Billy Graham, why bother basing a sociopolitical revival in the United States on a mere mortal?
Especially when we're supposed to be trusting in God.
_____
* These also serve as reasons for why the theory of Evolution is dubious at best.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Good Parents are Key School Supply
I guess summer's over.
On the calendar, it's only August 6, but here in Texas, it's already time to purchase school supplies.
Three-hole-punched paper. Blank paper, lined paper, and construction paper. Markers and highlighters in various colors. Glue sticks, colored pencils, tape, index cards, staplers, protractors, pocket folders, binders, facial tissue, watercolor sets, large erasers, hand sanitizer and hand wipes, blunt-point and sharp-point scissors, and spiral notebooks. Phew!
At all of our local drug stores (they're on virtually every corner now, along with every brand of bank you can imagine), huge bins line the aisles, with lists of supplies our school district expects each student to have on the first day of classes later this month. I hear that some schools around Atlanta, Georgia, are going back this week. So those parents were buying all this stuff last month.
It's enough to make me sigh with incredulity, and I'm not even a parent!
It's Not the Little Schoolhouse That's Red, But Its Budget
During the Dark Ages, when we went back to school in upstate New York - always on the Wednesday after Labor Day - my brother and I each had a brand-new bookbag (that we hardly ever used again the rest of the year), and inside were a couple of pens and pencils, maybe a spiral notebook, a box of Crayolas... and not much else.
Funny thing about public school back then: the school district provided almost everything. Graph paper, writing paper, Elmer's glue, rubber glue, scissors that could barely cut anything... sure, I guess we could have brought our own if we wanted to, but why bother? Part of class time involved politely distributing supplies at the beginning of a specific project, and being responsible for neatly putting away all of our supplies when we were done.
Oh, yeah - politeness and responsibility are two of the things we don't teach anymore, aren't they?
Not that I'm confused about why the cost for all of these school supplies has shifted from school districts to parents (and even teachers - most of whom buy some of this stuff out of their own money). Technically, taxpayers of some sort have always been responsible for stocking schools with the educational supplies they need, but in these days of budget crunches and low-tax initiatives, one way school districts make ends meet is by making parents purchase supplies for their family's little learners themselves.
Even though school districts could buy in bulk and save money in the long run. But taxpayers don't usually think that far ahead.
And it's not like some school districts - particularly urban ones - expect all parents to go out and purchase this stuff, either. In Dallas, the mayor's office ostensibly "hosts" a back-to-school festival where thousands of low-income kids get their supplies for free. Supplies donated by local businesses and charities. The school district makes a day of it, offering free health screenings, immunizations, and even haircuts for the kiddos.
Budgets Only a Small Part of the Blame
Yet without fail, EVERY BLESSED YEAR, hundreds of students are turned away at their local schools because they don't have their immunizations current. It's beyond amazing - and absurd - when the news crews annually trot out to Dallas County's health department building on Stemmons Freeway and videotape the line of kids with their parents, everybody saying they had no idea school was going to start so soon. Some of them are actually angry, like somehow all this is somebody else's fault. Does this happen where you live? Because, here in north Texas, it paints an exceedingly grim picture of the competency not only of many of our students, but their parents.
Indeed, truancy is another big problem, particularly in the Dallas school district. But whose fault is that? A few days after our local news stations stop reporting from the parking lot of the county's health department, they will - without fail - chronicle the Saturday morning visits of the Dallas mayor and superintendent of schools to homes of students who haven't yet bothered showing up for even one day of school. Actually, this publicity stunt has spread to other local cities, too, but Dallas has the most to lose with truancy, since it's the largest district in the area.
I realize some people insist that homeschooling should be far more prominent than it is. But let's face it: not every parent is cut out to be a teacher for the kind of subjects kids need to master these days.
In terms of improving the quality of education, I'm less convinced that rating teachers and paying them based on a uniform set of criteria makes sense as I am intrigued by the basic premise of school choice. What's wrong with letting parents choose the school they want their kids to attend? Haven't school districts become local monopolies? Is uprooting one's family and moving one's household a practical way to give taxpayers the right to have a say over their kids' schooling?
Meanwhile, through all of these issues, what's the key element running through them? Parents, right?
Some great citizens have come out of some bad school districts. Yet, considering that the same bad school was supposedly educating the same groups of kids in the same bad ways, what was the difference between the kids who journey on to college and being productive contributors to society, and the ones who become a drain on society? Almost 100% of the time, it was the students' parents, correct? Parents who expected their kids to expend effort, even if they lived in a ghetto or wherever. Parents who cared enough to ask questions about homework, to dialog with teachers about their child's progress, and to enact discipline when it came down to going out with school friends or staying home to study.
Yet, what do we have these days? Last week, when the mayor of Dallas hosted the district's annual back-to-school fair, it was broadcast on an African-American radio station as a party with live remote coverage. Interviews with some of the participants! All this free stuff! Come get what's yours! Look cool for the first day of school!
When America's conservatives get all worked up about public education, don't contentious big-picture issues like teacher testing and school vouchers only distract from something that's a lot less politically popular to discuss? It's easy for all of us to get caught up in the theories and policies and partisan posturing over the state of our public schools. But why is there always a line outside of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department every day for a week after the beginning of the fall semester? It's not a matter of costs - almost all of those shots can be gotten for free. Is giving away free supplies the best way to help disadvantaged families? If the mayor's office charged parents fifty cents or so per item, would it help parents remind their kids to keep track of those supplies so they're not lost or damaged?
Or would parents be irate at having to pay anything?
Why Johnny Can't Read
Yes, we should help low-income kids get an education. In theory, at least, it benefits us all in our society. But kids are kids because they're kids - they need parents to remind them, encourage them, keep them on time, make sure they get to bed on time, make sure they have their shots. Haven't we gone on long enough in our society to realize that all this free stuff we're ostensibly giving to kids is only relieving parents of even a modicum of responsibility?
OK: so taxpayers say they don't want the bulk discount of having a school district buy all of their supplies. I wonder, though, the extent to which those parents who've paid out the wazoo for those supplies keep a better handle on their kids' education than the parents who party down at the mayor's fair and get all the stuff for free? I'm not saying that poor parents don't deserve free stuff because they're poor. But doesn't making them have to pay something help to serve as a reminder that the education of their kids isn't, ultimately, the responsibility of the school district? It's the responsibility of the child, of course. And who's responsible for the child?
The child's parents. Which kinda means that, yeah, the kid is responsible for learning, but its parents are responsible for making sure their child learns.
So, what's my point? Regular readers of my essays will know that I almost never harp on parenting issues, but this is one of those times where I can't help it. Instead of worrying so much about the theories of why Johnny Can't Read, I believe both conservatives and liberals need to sit down and ask parents: "How often to you read to Johnny?"
"How often do you go down to Johnny's school to talk with his teachers?"
"How often do you sit still while Johnny reads to you?"
"How much are you willing to sacrifice so Johnny can read?"
No, I'm not a parent. That's the main reason I don't usually talk about parenting stuff. But one of the reasons I'm not a parent is because I know what being a parent means.
If you need public assistance from time to time, there's no shame in that. However, I have a feeling society will be much more willing to help you out if you know what being a parent means, too. If poverty alone was a good excuse to be uneducated, many members of my family would have had a good excuse to be illiterate.
But it's not, they didn't, and they haven't been.
Well, one of my ancestors was. My Mom still has the deed my great-great-great grandfather, Samuel Jordan, signed - for some property in the deep woods of rural Maine - with an "X."
Only a few members of my extended family have ever been truly wealthy - at least, financially. But just about all of us have valued education. Maybe because it's been understood that the more you put into something like education, the more you get out of it.
Class dismissed.
_____
On the calendar, it's only August 6, but here in Texas, it's already time to purchase school supplies.
Three-hole-punched paper. Blank paper, lined paper, and construction paper. Markers and highlighters in various colors. Glue sticks, colored pencils, tape, index cards, staplers, protractors, pocket folders, binders, facial tissue, watercolor sets, large erasers, hand sanitizer and hand wipes, blunt-point and sharp-point scissors, and spiral notebooks. Phew!
At all of our local drug stores (they're on virtually every corner now, along with every brand of bank you can imagine), huge bins line the aisles, with lists of supplies our school district expects each student to have on the first day of classes later this month. I hear that some schools around Atlanta, Georgia, are going back this week. So those parents were buying all this stuff last month.
It's enough to make me sigh with incredulity, and I'm not even a parent!
It's Not the Little Schoolhouse That's Red, But Its Budget
During the Dark Ages, when we went back to school in upstate New York - always on the Wednesday after Labor Day - my brother and I each had a brand-new bookbag (that we hardly ever used again the rest of the year), and inside were a couple of pens and pencils, maybe a spiral notebook, a box of Crayolas... and not much else.
Funny thing about public school back then: the school district provided almost everything. Graph paper, writing paper, Elmer's glue, rubber glue, scissors that could barely cut anything... sure, I guess we could have brought our own if we wanted to, but why bother? Part of class time involved politely distributing supplies at the beginning of a specific project, and being responsible for neatly putting away all of our supplies when we were done.
Oh, yeah - politeness and responsibility are two of the things we don't teach anymore, aren't they?
Not that I'm confused about why the cost for all of these school supplies has shifted from school districts to parents (and even teachers - most of whom buy some of this stuff out of their own money). Technically, taxpayers of some sort have always been responsible for stocking schools with the educational supplies they need, but in these days of budget crunches and low-tax initiatives, one way school districts make ends meet is by making parents purchase supplies for their family's little learners themselves.
Even though school districts could buy in bulk and save money in the long run. But taxpayers don't usually think that far ahead.
And it's not like some school districts - particularly urban ones - expect all parents to go out and purchase this stuff, either. In Dallas, the mayor's office ostensibly "hosts" a back-to-school festival where thousands of low-income kids get their supplies for free. Supplies donated by local businesses and charities. The school district makes a day of it, offering free health screenings, immunizations, and even haircuts for the kiddos.
Budgets Only a Small Part of the Blame
Yet without fail, EVERY BLESSED YEAR, hundreds of students are turned away at their local schools because they don't have their immunizations current. It's beyond amazing - and absurd - when the news crews annually trot out to Dallas County's health department building on Stemmons Freeway and videotape the line of kids with their parents, everybody saying they had no idea school was going to start so soon. Some of them are actually angry, like somehow all this is somebody else's fault. Does this happen where you live? Because, here in north Texas, it paints an exceedingly grim picture of the competency not only of many of our students, but their parents.
Indeed, truancy is another big problem, particularly in the Dallas school district. But whose fault is that? A few days after our local news stations stop reporting from the parking lot of the county's health department, they will - without fail - chronicle the Saturday morning visits of the Dallas mayor and superintendent of schools to homes of students who haven't yet bothered showing up for even one day of school. Actually, this publicity stunt has spread to other local cities, too, but Dallas has the most to lose with truancy, since it's the largest district in the area.
I realize some people insist that homeschooling should be far more prominent than it is. But let's face it: not every parent is cut out to be a teacher for the kind of subjects kids need to master these days.
In terms of improving the quality of education, I'm less convinced that rating teachers and paying them based on a uniform set of criteria makes sense as I am intrigued by the basic premise of school choice. What's wrong with letting parents choose the school they want their kids to attend? Haven't school districts become local monopolies? Is uprooting one's family and moving one's household a practical way to give taxpayers the right to have a say over their kids' schooling?
Meanwhile, through all of these issues, what's the key element running through them? Parents, right?
Some great citizens have come out of some bad school districts. Yet, considering that the same bad school was supposedly educating the same groups of kids in the same bad ways, what was the difference between the kids who journey on to college and being productive contributors to society, and the ones who become a drain on society? Almost 100% of the time, it was the students' parents, correct? Parents who expected their kids to expend effort, even if they lived in a ghetto or wherever. Parents who cared enough to ask questions about homework, to dialog with teachers about their child's progress, and to enact discipline when it came down to going out with school friends or staying home to study.
Yet, what do we have these days? Last week, when the mayor of Dallas hosted the district's annual back-to-school fair, it was broadcast on an African-American radio station as a party with live remote coverage. Interviews with some of the participants! All this free stuff! Come get what's yours! Look cool for the first day of school!
When America's conservatives get all worked up about public education, don't contentious big-picture issues like teacher testing and school vouchers only distract from something that's a lot less politically popular to discuss? It's easy for all of us to get caught up in the theories and policies and partisan posturing over the state of our public schools. But why is there always a line outside of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department every day for a week after the beginning of the fall semester? It's not a matter of costs - almost all of those shots can be gotten for free. Is giving away free supplies the best way to help disadvantaged families? If the mayor's office charged parents fifty cents or so per item, would it help parents remind their kids to keep track of those supplies so they're not lost or damaged?
Or would parents be irate at having to pay anything?
Why Johnny Can't Read
Yes, we should help low-income kids get an education. In theory, at least, it benefits us all in our society. But kids are kids because they're kids - they need parents to remind them, encourage them, keep them on time, make sure they get to bed on time, make sure they have their shots. Haven't we gone on long enough in our society to realize that all this free stuff we're ostensibly giving to kids is only relieving parents of even a modicum of responsibility?
OK: so taxpayers say they don't want the bulk discount of having a school district buy all of their supplies. I wonder, though, the extent to which those parents who've paid out the wazoo for those supplies keep a better handle on their kids' education than the parents who party down at the mayor's fair and get all the stuff for free? I'm not saying that poor parents don't deserve free stuff because they're poor. But doesn't making them have to pay something help to serve as a reminder that the education of their kids isn't, ultimately, the responsibility of the school district? It's the responsibility of the child, of course. And who's responsible for the child?
The child's parents. Which kinda means that, yeah, the kid is responsible for learning, but its parents are responsible for making sure their child learns.
So, what's my point? Regular readers of my essays will know that I almost never harp on parenting issues, but this is one of those times where I can't help it. Instead of worrying so much about the theories of why Johnny Can't Read, I believe both conservatives and liberals need to sit down and ask parents: "How often to you read to Johnny?"
"How often do you go down to Johnny's school to talk with his teachers?"
"How often do you sit still while Johnny reads to you?"
"How much are you willing to sacrifice so Johnny can read?"
No, I'm not a parent. That's the main reason I don't usually talk about parenting stuff. But one of the reasons I'm not a parent is because I know what being a parent means.
If you need public assistance from time to time, there's no shame in that. However, I have a feeling society will be much more willing to help you out if you know what being a parent means, too. If poverty alone was a good excuse to be uneducated, many members of my family would have had a good excuse to be illiterate.
But it's not, they didn't, and they haven't been.
Well, one of my ancestors was. My Mom still has the deed my great-great-great grandfather, Samuel Jordan, signed - for some property in the deep woods of rural Maine - with an "X."
Only a few members of my extended family have ever been truly wealthy - at least, financially. But just about all of us have valued education. Maybe because it's been understood that the more you put into something like education, the more you get out of it.
Class dismissed.
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