Bathos, bribery, and baryatric surgery

Once again, my reliance on standard broadcast TV for a brief respite from the business of ideas only serves to re-engage my anthropological training.

Damn you, ABC. Paving a virtual interstate to hell with your must-see corporate charity.

What? Charity as entertainment? You know what I'm talking about. All these wishes granted and redemptive renovations of body and home. The newest addition to this cottage industry makes it even more difficult to be cynical, but allow me to try.

In all these shows a few genuinely needy people are showered with more than they need--including stuff they'll soon come to hate. (You think those kids will still dig the monkey-themed bedrooms when they hit 15?)

More objectionably, shows of this kind give many more genuinely needy people the false hope that they can be saved by the loving ministrations of Sears-Roebuck or the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. All they need to do is catch a jaded producer's eye. Send in a tape where they strike just the right balance between proud and pathetic. Show the mother driven to tears by her toddler's emergent realization that they "don't live like other people." That always works.

Worse still, make-over shows give corporations - from the omnipresent Craftsman to a parade of local contractors showing off their skills - free advertising for appearing to perform charitable works, while essentially showing off for potential (full-paying) customers with soft hearts and plump wallets. Would you expect a CEO to pass up advertising s/he could write off on the company's taxes?

But maybe the absolutely most offensive aspect of these shows is how they suck us viewers into an emotionally-correct fantasy. A few big companies do good deeds, a few of our virtuously pathetic fellow citizens are brought up to a standard of living befitting real humans, and yet we feel like crap for having witnessed the whole saccharine thing. Why might that be?

'Cause maybe the ends still don't justify the means? 'Cause that same money invested off-camera, say in Habitat for Humanity, could benefit five or ten times the number of people it does? 'Cause we know we're manipulated, and we know exactly how, and yet we keep watching?

Voting machine...or not

Today I solidified my citizenship in Chicago by doing my civic duty. Wahoo.

Which is an ass-y way of saying I voted in the primary and I'm not sure how to think about it yet.

Being such a transient for so long (six years in this city clinging to a Minnesota license and address, a year of tourist visas spent on the margins of Mexican society, just long enough in LA to be tricked into establishing residency), I've been pretty lackadaisical in my political participation. This is effectively the first time I've voted in the same state I live since--damn--college.

So I feel a mixture of self-satisfaction and unease with this whole primary deal. Tell me if I'm off.

The city made it stupidly easy to vote this year, with more than a week set aside for early birds. Yet neither the Mrs. nor I got our acts together to take advantage. (How can the city forecast record low turnout when it's this damn easy?) So I swung by my precinct site, tucked away in the bowels of a senior services center (and manned by what could've been clients), to cast a ballot.

Supposedly Chicago's are among the physically largest ballots around. Mine didn't quite fit in the voting booth, so there you go. Not only that, but I missed out on the era of punch-card voting; Chicago switched over to optically scanned sheets, with touch-screens close on their heels. Perhaps out of nostalgia, some candidates' signs still exhorted us to "punch #__" which would only cause havoc now.

Speaking of playing havoc with tradition:
On the matter of the County Board, do I vote for a fire-breathing reformer against whom the entire Chicago Democratic machine is arrayed? Or for the choice of Da Mayor (and everyone on the machine's payroll)--who just had a friggin' stroke? Let me think for a moment.

I could rejoice that this was about the only difficult choice on the ballot. However, when you know next to zip about the candidates except that your alderman really likes some of them (especially the ones who are running unopposed--what the hell is that all about? Six lawyers jostling for one appellate court seat and we can't find anyone willing to challenge most of the incumbents?), and this ignorance has passed through the candidates' websites unscathed by any substantial policy statements (office-holder Rahm Emanuel didn't even bother to take his case to the web, the cocky bastard), they're all challenging decisions.

So I voted for George Mason. Go Patriots!

Should I be worried my precinct captain didn't ask to see my ID?

Que viva el Pinguino!

A Uds. les recomiendo irse a la gelatería argentina "El Pingüino" en la calle Lawrence. Hay que probar el gelato de sabayón almendrado, del zabaglione italiano.

Helado y vino: riquísimo.

Desafortunadamente no se vende en vidrio así.

A Yank abroad during the "War on Terror"

Lately I've thought quite frequently about the time I spent living outside the US. Partly this is a function of using myself as a case study in the introductory anthropology courses I've been teaching, demonstrating for my students how at least one anthropologist dealt with culture shock, intercultural communication, and other fun things. But this reconsideration has also been forced on me by recent events that illustrate my country's rocky interaction with the rest of the world.

All cultural anthropologists put in their time living with and studying some social group--the more different the better--meaning we experience the often considerable tension of dependence on a host group whom we nevertheless outrank in influence and even wealth. It was just my luck to undergo this difficult experience in one of the US's most conflicted partners (Mexico) starting immediately after 9/11/01.

Immediately. As in seeing machine-gun-wielding National Guards tromping around O'Hare (though I have to say I was inspected more thoroughly at Juarez Intl as I was returning). As in watching the first bombs fall on Afghanistan as I was lining up contacts.

I returned to Mexico the following summer during the buildup to the attack on Iraq. When I reached the highest-stress period of my research, I passed multiple insomniac nights watching herky-jerky video from "embedded" reporters in Army Humvees blasting across the desert toward Baghdad.

Through that whole year I experienced occasional anti-US flashes--some protests against hemispheric trade, pro-Osama grafitti on the UNAM campus, attacks on KFC and McDonalds--and frequent joking demands from acquaintances to explain my country's actions. (My standard response to anything political was a bashful admission that "When the president speaks, I get a headache."

Only twice was I called out as a gringo, both times by kids in small towns. Rather than cause me any consternation, those reminders of my pasty whiteness only heightened the intriguing surreality of my situation. That surreality is what bubbles to the surface most readily whenever I think about my year in Mexico, though it is the hardest to convey.

Heteroglossolalia 5

A brief thought apropos of scientism, creationism, and American society:

"...although [scientists] may have measures for enforcing orthodoxy upon the scientific community, for example by effectively ostracizing the 'heretic,' even this conformity may be achieved at the price of exacerbating the problem of heresy in society at large."

Colin Campbell. 1972. "Cults, the Cultic Milieu, and Secularization" p.133

Brokeback Molehill

You probably took note of some strategic grumblings in the lead-up to the Oscars, grumblings about the suspicious similarities of the nominee films--not least that they were ever-farther from the highest-grossing films of the past year.

Hollywood is so out of touch with its audience, this "culture war" argument went, that it's trying to force all sorts of (queer) crap on us against our principles and preferences, perhaps even (horrors!) against the invisible hand of the market.

George Clooney played on this accusation in his acceptance speech. Proudly aligning himself with the progressive elements in American cinema, he agreed they are out of step but only because they are drumming the rest of us into step to march toward a more just society.

Now, there's a good bit of mystification on each side of this debate. The most egregious and misleading mystification is this unitary idea of "Hollywood." Having lived in proximity to this industry for a couple years, I can tell you one thing: about the only thing all of the players agree on is making a living by attempting to entertain us.

Considering another accusation lobbed at this mythically unified Hollywood - that financial considerations increasingly outweigh artistic ones - what business sense is there in pushing message-movies that the market won't bear? The only person willing to do this is Jeff Skoll, the eBay exec who bankrolled "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck"--because he can afford the financial hit, and because apparently some people will pay to see them. Yet another shock: there is no unitary audience for the products of a non-unified Hollywood.

The Oscar ceremony is film people rewarding each other for the quality of their craft, not for the amount of their earnings. We might consider box office receipts as the audience rewarding film people for entertaining us, though I'd urge caution with such a logical leap. But until the lists of critical and commercial favorites overlap, no ideologue taking the position of us consumers can honestly claim we are force-fed anything. You are not allowed to make that argument in my presence as long the second Deuce Bigelow movie made any amount of money.

Now, as to the issue of Hollywood collusion in preparing us for alien contact...

In Memoriam: Kirby Puckett

I'm well aware that some potentially weightier personages have deceased in the same few recent days who may also deserve eulogies. Furthermore I admit that I have no standing as a sports fan to honestly convey what he meant to baseball. But I'm a proud and dutiful Minnesotan, and on those grounds alone I am obliged (and fully qualified) to address Kirby Puckett's passing.

I can still recall vividly the magic of both '87 and '91 World Series, how they swept up even those in the state who normally cared nothing for local teams. And I remember, from the vantage point of grad school well away from home, appraising the unfairness of a career ended by glaucoma, and a legacy tarnished by self-inflicted legal problems.

Nonetheless, as a representative of a state of sports also-rans and never-quites and as a symbol uniting many Minnesotans, I am proud Kirby called my state home, if only for those dozen or so seasons.

Congratulate me

Today's post, more form than substance, is number 49. Hard to believe I've had that much to say over the past six months.

This is about as much of a milestone as turning 32, which is what else I have going on today. Couldn't quite allow a candle planted in my celebratory pizza, though.

Rhodenticutachusetts

Evidence is rolling in from all sides that this country is in worsening financial shape. Having just sent in the family taxes (married filing jointly for the first time), I'm all full of brilliant ideas for saving money. If we're seriously looking to protect the national bottom line, I have a suggestion:

Fewer states.

Let's start the belt-tightening by merging a few of those little funny-shaped ones in the upper right-hand corner. The savings on administrative costs alone would make it worthwhile.

And if that's still not enough, we can open the bidding to foreign companies to operate a few states. Maybe one or two of the big square ones well inland. Nothing we'd miss if they went belly-up.

Disquieting the minds of the people

At the confluence of Damen, Lincoln, and Irving Park in Chicago's North Center community, the Lincoln Restaurant squats in kitschy repose, welcoming seekers of unself-conscious American cuisine and Lincolniana. Yet every Saturday evening it lights up as the host of an unusual and - in my view - badly needed institution: the College of Complexes. (As in "Stop that or you'll give me a complex!")

The College is an unaffiliated forum for free thought and learned showmanship put on by and for talented amateurs (in the best sense of being driven by love rather than money), yours for an incredibly low $3 cover.

CoC is among the last remnants of a vibrant tradition of radical orators and agitators who set up their soapboxes in Washington Square ("Bughouse Square" to the cognoscenti) and set about persuading and/or pissing off fellow citizens. The whole point is to encourage critical examination of the status quo. Recent CoC topics have included hemp politics, humane capitalism, and God-free ethical systems, just to give you an idea.

When last I checked, there were openings for speakers in July. C'mon, autodidacts! It's a free dinner and all the jeering you can tolerate.