The "Actor": Dissecting his words

You may already be aware of Entertainment Weekly interviewing four anonymous Oscar voters: an actor, a director, a marketing specialist, and a costume designer.

https://ew.com/awards/oscars/2023-oscars-secret-ballot-academy-awards-voters-share-juicy-picks/

I know I am not the only one who was frustrated with the actor, but the other written pieces I have seen seem to be more that it happened, without analyzing why.

Here is my take.

I will note starting out that because the interviews are edited -- which makes sense -- there may be wrong impressions, but comparing all four interviewees the actor seems to be the most freely critical, often with longer quotes but still no substance.

He also uses "wokeness" unironically, which is its own strong indicator.

Where he spoke most out of turn was regarding three snubs: Gina Prince-Bythewood and Viola Davis for The Woman King (Best Director and Best Actress, respectively) and Danielle Deadwyler for Till (Best Actress). 

(You may notice a common thread.)

I will not fault the actor for mentioning them, because those were big topics of conversation beyond the interview; it would have been weird not to mention them. However, sometimes you can know things, or you can not know things but be aware that you don't know.

I want to stress that the impression this man gives is one of incredible ego, and very critical of others already. (And he's an actor!) However, the largest amount of disrespect was shown to Black women. That is completely predictable based on everything known about misogynoir and intersectionality... but he does not know.

Here is the convenient thing about privilege: he misses glaringly obvious things, and still thinks he is smart. Privilege lets you think you are better than you are, which, frankly, tends to curb efforts and result in mediocrity.

The Actor on Deadwyler:

She was good. I mean, who wouldn't be good in a part like that? The strong, wronged mother. But you look at the real Mamie Till, she's not wearing all of these incredible gowns and beautifully made-up. I thought it was a confusing message. If they'd really [made a movie about] that woman, who was not used to being in the public eye and wore house dresses, she [wouldn't have] had one incredible outfit after another. The ego behind this pushing her to be a movie star was too blatant for me.

He seems to be under the impression that Mamie Till-Mobley was a housewife, or perhaps a maid. She was working in an office. Not only was it common at the time for professional women to be dressed up, but that was a common strategy of those working for civil rights (though that was about to get much more visible).  

They cover that in the movie, and why the NAACP thought she would be a great asset, so that shouldn't be too shocking, unless he did not watch the movie. I mean, he sounds like he watched it, but he admits to not seeing The Woman King.

I have a funny feeling he didn't see Selma.

The Actor on Davis:

It's like, come on. I think Viola Davis is talented, I didn't see Woman King, but I'm a little tired of Viola Davis and her snotty crying. I'm over all of that. 

I admit I haven't seen everything Viola Davis has done, but I don't think she does it that much. It gets attention, because it is giving up staying "pretty", which has historically been expected of actresses, but which is not how real crying looks. I guess my real issue with it is that I wonder if he has ever actually seen her cry or he heard a reference to it once and that is the impression that he kept.

He got even worse about her:

"When they get in trouble for not giving Viola Davis an award, it's like, no, sweetheart, you didn't deserve it. We voted, and we voted for the five we thought were best," he finishes. "It's not fair for you to start suddenly beating a frying pan and say [they're] ignoring Black people. They're really not, they're making an effort. Maybe there was a time 10 years ago when they were, but they have, of all the high-profile things, been in the forefront of wanting to be inclusive.

It would still be condescending without the "sweetheart", but that does make it more condescending.

Certainly, there hasn't been that much effort toward equity to be that tired of the effort yet, but also, I am not sure that she got that mad.

I admit, I do not follow show business that much, so I could have missed it, but there apparently was an Instagram post that is really pretty tame, and largely a show of solidarity with Gina Prince-Bythewood:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CoYTBIzPXUc/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=28917d42-581c-4d3d-a35d-e681cb9177fd

Where does "banging a frying pan" come from? Are you just interpreting a Black woman not going out of her way to show how okay she is with everything as "angry"? Are there any stereotypes you are not going to embrace?

As it was, finishing that quote is probably his low point:

Viola Davis and the lady director need to sit down, shut up, and relax. 

It is not even necessary to know her name or to have seen the movie to dismiss her.

Dude, I don't really know that you are white (I have my suspicions),  but I do know that you are an ass. You have been coddled too much by your privilege, and you believe your own hype.

I wish you a better understanding. That will probably only come the hard way. I am at peace with this.

I would like to give the movies some individual attention, so next time!

What are you doing?

The last post ended with a question: what are we going to do?

As I have been thinking over some of these topics, I have been thinking that "What are you doing?" is a reasonable question. It's an important question to ask yourself, and it's a reasonable question to ask me.

My hope is that as I answer the question for myself, it may help others in their own planning.

I really don't feel like I do much. I don't do any organizing. The last time I marched was 2017, but not that one. 

I don't do much in the way of volunteering.

I do try and keep up with direct giving. It is not that I am against 501(c)(3) charities; I have a regular payroll deduction to one to take advantage of employer matching. However, I also know that with organized charities there can be a lot of bureaucratic delays and attempts to weed out the undeserving that limit the ability to help. 

When I was trying to get my mother onto Medicaid and myself out of foreclosure, it seemed like every application that I went through needed to be completed three times due to poor instructions or pages being lost after being sent or something. It was an inordinate amount of stress and labor from someone already on the edge. If sometimes someone just says they need money and I send them some through Paypal, that seems better.

While I do periodically give to new or different people, I am also aware that I tend to keep giving to the same people over and over again, mainly because of health problems that incur repeated costs. Because of that, I am keenly aware that what I do is of limited usefulness. Having a better health care system and a more equitable economy would be vastly superior, but what is in my power is $40 via Paypal.

I had calculated how much I thought I could reasonably give, but I keep giving more as more needs pop up. It has become somewhat of an exercise in faith for me. When I got my tax refund, I was feeling good because I would have more to give and still be ahead, but still more needs popped up. After paying my bills I had $10.10 to last for a week, but it did last. 

I am not exactly recommending this, but it feels like my path and I rely on intuition a lot.

Otherwise, I am constantly reading and studying, trying to be better informed. I share that knowledge freely, through the blog and conversations. I am not sure if I really influence anyone beyond my sisters, but there is an influence there.

I have trained for other things. I became a Master Food Preserver about 23 years ago, and spent time teaching canning classes and answering questions at farmers' markets. About 15 years ago I trained for Community Emergency Response, and was ready to be called on, though it never happened.

I try and be aware of others and considerate of them.

I wear the mask. It is true that does more to protect others from me than me from others, which is frustrating, but if for no other reason than to signal to other immune-compromised people that I care about their safety and ability to participate in society, I will keep wearing it.

I used to do more. There were times when I had more money and could be more generous, and there were times when I had more energy. I used to see more people needing encouragement and respond to that more frequently. There are probably people I am missing now, and I hope other people are spotting them.

I used to do a lot of work on making dolls for a local children's hospital, but that program has gone away.

I mention those things because circumstances change, and continue to do so. I have been through three bad unemployment/underemployment times, and two periods of bad burnout. Even as some resources were depleted, others were recovered.

As much as caring for my mother depleted me emotionally and financially, there have been strains from the Trump presidency and the pandemic that have worn down many of us; that is not just me.

With so many people burned out, we are all going to have to be kind to each other and look out for each other. A lot of the best people do not have much to give right now, but don't count yourself out.

My resources are limited, but what I do is consistent with my values. That is important to me.

What I do will also not harm my cause. Even if I cannot help as much as I want, I do not harm. That is important to me.

(Refer back to Dunking.)

Can I do more? Can I do differently? That is something that is worth asking regularly. 

I am starting to think maybe I should try doing some sort of letter writing. Would it be effective? Worth the effort? Do I even have the capacity for that effort? Or would that require dropping something else?

It's worth asking.

Model Minority

I am embarrassed to see that I did not mention one of the key sources for last week's post:

From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoon.

Just to recap how we got here, I started reading about Latasha Harlins last July. It had seemed reasonable to bring her material up with Black Music Month, I guess because her death influenced so many musicians (especially Tupac Shakur).

Of course, I was running late, but I read Troublemaker by John Cho in July also.

In December I saw some artwork commemorating Vincent Chin; that's why I read Paula Yoon's book, which I got to in February.

I am not the first person to make the connection, but it is hard not to have those two deaths and court cases inextricably linked after reading about them. That is why I had to write last week's post. 

There is another factor that has been weighing on me, and I want to try and get to that here, about how these situations happen. My path may be clumsy.

Let me go back to The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots by Brenda E. Stevenson. 

Both Stevenson and Yoon tried to be fair to all of the subjects, which I know is right but sometimes I just wanted to condemn them. 

I did feel early sympathy for Soon Ja Du. Working in the store was stressful for her. I am willing to believe that she felt pressure and that she was at times truly afraid.

I also do not think that it is a coincidence that in both documented times when she pulled out her gun, it was at teenage girls.

That is anger, but also lashing out a target that is safe. 

You do get angry about perpetual fear, but how much of that fear is based in reality?

The store had been robbed; that is true. Because it was in a Black neighborhood, the majority of the robbers were probably Black. In a white neighborhood, the robbers are probably going to be white.

The difference is that perception, where all Black people are perceived to be the same, and more easily seen as thugs and criminals. That does not happen by accident. Please understand that the people who are making the propaganda don't love the people who buy it.

It can be safer to attack a teenage girl than a grown man, but also it is safer to attack one who is Black. Systemic racism will discount her innocence and right to life. That makes it easier for a judge to find the lethal "reaction" reasonable, but it also makes the judge letting off the murderers of as Asian-American man easier.

I think that Soon Ja Du believed the model minority myth. Her people were hard-working and smart and good, not like the Black people that made up their customer base. There may have been some satisfaction in it, but based on the stress and anger and fear, it wasn't making her life better. Of course, she got to keep her life, and Latasha didn't.

In a different city a few years earlier, it could have been her husband murdered by disaffected white people, and his killers be the ones let off.

In Troublemaker -- the work of fiction -- Jordan is trying to move through Los Angeles at the time of the riots to get a gun to the store where his father is boarding up the windows. That leads to some trouble, but the title refers to the reputation he already has, for not being good at school... not being perfect, the way he is supposed to be. The expectations he was not meeting were a source of anger and frustration and parental conflict. The character is fictional, but the feelings are not.

One thing I had not expected, but that made sense, was the importance of Claudia Kishi (The Baby-Sitters Club) to Asian-American girls. That was not just for some representation, but also for representation that could be loud and artistic and struggle with math.

The boxes aren't always fatal, but they are never good.

And sometimes they do kill.

Related:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8apn/claudia-kishi-coolest-kid-in-the-baby-sitters-club-netflix-documentary

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/actor-john-cho-channels-childhood-self-debut-novel-troublemaker-rcna20930

Related, from me:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/vincent.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/04/not-justice.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/03/black-history-month-latasha-harlins.html

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: 1994 - 2011

When Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed in 2011, I remember it being a big deal, with people finding it to be a good step forward.

I did not disagree with that, but I had remembered its passage being a step forward also; I don't remember that being mentioned much.

Let me back up. When it actually went into effect I was on my mission, and I don't think I heard anything about it. What I remember was the discussions that were leading up to it. I remember it so clearly because one of the people I knew at college was interviewed on the local news.

Michael and I were not particularly close, but we were friendly. He was interviewed and he wanted to watch the segment, so we went to watch it in Shelly's room -- she had a TV -- and then we talked.

This is assuming I am remembering the details correctly, which all these years later is questionable. I think he was in the Navy, and he left, or at least didn't re-enlist, because he was gay. After being out for a while, he wasn't necessarily interested in going back, but it would have made a difference to him before.

I don't know how the station found him to interview him. I remember very clearly a different person with the same name writing into the student newspaper very irritated because now everyone was thinking he was gay. If you saw the story, they looked nothing alike, but people...

I am pretty sure he was graduated by the time I got back to school (most people I knew were), so I have not seen him since. I still remember that footage of him walking across campus, and being in the dorm room together talking... those images are vivid.

There were gay students at my high school, but I did not know they were. The Oregon Citizens Alliance was actively campaigning against "special" rights for gay people while we were there, and there were plenty of reasons to keep closeted.

College was the first place where I was finding people who were out and proud. Getting to know them was its own education. There wasn't any recruiting. It would feel condescending to say that they were just people, humans... of course they were, but much of what I had seen before had painted them as these horrible perverts.

No. That's not how it worked.

Here's another memory. I got on Facebook in late 2008. Reconnecting with many of the guys from school, they were frequently teasing each other about being gay: lots of Brokeback Mountain jokes. That gradually faded away. I remember mentioning it to one of them when I saw him in person. I think he said something to the effect of having to grow up sometime, except it was not just that. Believe me, he has the potential to still be very immature. However, at one point it became real to him that there are gay people with real feelings, and using their identity for cheap jokes is gross.

It seemed we had successfully moved from a world that would support domestic partnerships if they were not allowed to call it marriage and where you could be a gay soldier as long as you didn't talk about it to a world where gay couples could get married in any state, individuals could serve in the military openly, and straight men could relate to each other in ways other than humorous homophobia.

I wanted to write about this because I think it illustrates how well public opinion and legislation can work together. Before Don't Ask Don't Tell, there were gay rights activists focusing on unfair military dismissals. There were Pride events and demonstrations. There was the AIDS quilt. There was determination against the counter-programming.

I understand why people rail against incrementalism, but it is easier to make continued progress in the right direction than to have to keep fighting the destruction that gets wreaked so quickly and deliberately.

It had looked like we were past all that, but then you get transgender rights being targeted and "Don't say gay" and book banning and even young people who are gay getting mad about leather at Pride and the use of the word "queer".

Dominator culture doesn't let up, and so we can't let up either, regardless of whether or not we are the target. For one thing, they will keep narrowing definitions, because there always need to be more people to oppress.

But, also we should just care about each other. 

In many ways, the children of my generation are better, being supportive and inclusive and a lot of them have great support from their parents. 

It is not an excuse to get lax. Some of the worst people in the world are working very hard. 

What will we do?

Not justice

I did not post last Friday. This was not for a lack of material, but kind of too much material (but also work being busier and the tiredness growing).

So this post may not be a good one, but I want to write about some of the issues with the trials of the killers of Latasha Harlins and Vincent Chin. There were significant differences, and similarities.

In the case of Vincent Chin, there was an increasing sloughing off of responsibility.

The officers who showed up to on the scene did not treat Ronald Ebens like they had just seen him beat someone to death with a baseball bat. They were off-duty, but still, that's a really violent crime and they caught at least the end of it.

That preferential treatment may be why he was treated kind of lightly at the station, where things kept being easier than they should have been.

That is not necessarily why the prosecutors were not in court on the day that Ebens was convicted. That was not even that abnormal, but someone should have objected to the 2nd Degree Murder charge being dropped down to manslaughter. Even if the DA's office would have wanted a plea bargain, in theory they would not want a brutal killing to result in no jail time; only probation and a fine.

There was no plea bargain in the case of Soon Ja Du; the jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and then Judge Karlin suspended the prison sentence, again opting for just probation and a fine.

I think Judge Kaufman has the most apt quote, regarding Ebens' sentencing:

"These weren't the kind of men you send to jail... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal."

Meaning men who would pick a fight in a strip club, hunt down the person later, and then one would hold the victim while the other beat him in the head with a baseball bat. Because they had jobs (well, the one was laid off, but he used to have a job). 

He never said that it was because they were white, and he was appalled by that insinuation, but what part of their previous lives made murdering okay?

For Judge Karlin, perhaps she was kind of impressive in her understatement:

"Did Mrs. Du react inappropriately? Absolutely. But was that reaction understandable? I think that it was." 

Thanks for acknowledging that shooting a 15 year old in the back of the head is inappropriate.

Karlin later complained about political correctness, so we know where she stands.

(Remember that "political correctness" comes from an effort to use more specific, respectful language where we can understand things better, which might help you understand how you are influenced subconsciously. https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/03/waking.html)

There is some discomfort for me in writing this, because the carceral state does more harm than good. I apparently am not truly a prison abolitionist, though, because we do not have something in place for cases like this. I would absolutely rather prevent the murders than punish the murderers, but we are really not there yet.

(I don't think it is a coincidence that one well-known prison abolitionist has chosen an abuser over his victims.)

 I'm not against the concept of double jeopardy, either, because I totally believe in court abuses, but when a case is so blatantly unjust, where is the remedy?

Well, civil cases. 

As it is, there were two civil cases against Ebens. He lost the first one, and then appealed and won. There were two main factors in the later victory. In the second trial the defense exploited differences in the prosecutor's speech to claim that she was coaching the witnesses. Her attempts to make sure everything was right was able to be turned against her.

Probably more importantly, Ebens did not testify at the second civil trial. In the first one, his testimony consisted of only remembering things that spoke in his favor, but he was not able to remember anything that might have worked against him. The first jury did not find that convincing. He did not have to testify against himself, so in the second trial he did not and came off better.

Mainly, it all makes me think of a different quote:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

This neglects intersectionality -- one of the killers is a brown woman -- but as long as there are people whom it is okay for you to abuse and bully and threaten and kill, then maybe you can put up with those who are allowed to abuse you.

It's not good for anyone, but there are those whom it hurts more. 

That is not exactly what the other aspect is, but it relates, so that will be the other post.

Related:

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pocharaponneammanee/benjamin-brennan-fraternity-hazing-coma

Concerted effort

For examples of dunking not being helpful, one is playing out in real time with Kentucky governor Andy Beshear. A Democrat, he has tried very hard to do good things but is hamstrung by a obstructive state legislator entrenched in place via gerrymandering. He does frequently refer to prayers, and that is what is being jumped on in tweets in the aftermath of a recent shooting. 

Certainly there are frequent meaningless references to thoughts and prayers, but that is not what is happening here, and that is not something the tweeters care to check. I assume they feel smart and righteous, and also that it will do nothing other than give them that ego boost.

In terms of effecting change, there are a few examples that come to mind, but I want to start with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

One of the things that made it effective was that there were clear goals. The rules about Black passengers having to ride in the back of the bus did not only mean people standing, even when there were seats available, or when they had been on longer. It also meant that sometimes people would pay their fare, then as they had to walk outside of the bus to the back door, sometime the bus would drive away. The rules gave the drivers an easy and tempting way to abuse power. 

That allowed for an easy goal of ending the busing segregation laws, with the added goal of the hiring of Black drivers. That would not only add some jobs to the community but also increase the odds of finding a friendly and respectful driver. Reasonable goals, but not something that those in power would have an interest in, if for no other reason than that those in power do not like change to the status quo.

How do you resolve that? Economic pressure is a great way to affect those in power. Suddenly excuses about not being able to make changes because it would be bad for business are coming up against significant business losses that are actual, not imagined. 

That pressure needed to be maintained for long enough (a little over a year), and there are people who depended on the bus for transportation. 

Organizing is more than choosing an action and advertising about it; it is making it possible. In this case, that meant organizing carpools. It got taxi drivers driving for bus fare, which is a personal sacrifice. It involved some people walking, perhaps uncomfortable distances. It involved fundraising, like the cooking efforts of Georgia Gilmore.

Those efforts combined people being willing to sacrifice, but also not ignoring the efforts that others had to make. That comes from community and caring. 

Protest efforts may start with anger, but that is a limited fuel.

Stirring up emotional responses matters too. 

I remember talking to a family friend about some of the demonstrations in the 60s. Younger then, anything that happened before I was born seemed a long time ago, but she remembered seeing those those fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, and being shocked.

White people up North and out West had their own prejudices, but there was a viciousness that they saw there that they could not have imagined. 

It was a strategy at the time that demonstrators would be well-dressed and use passive resistance; they knew the power of those images would help them. The influence of public opinion made it easier for politicians to pass bills that protected civil rights.

It was a lot of work. It is not just the marching and the telephone trees and cooking and car pooling, but also putting all of that together and being in for the long haul and working with people who annoy you. That all goes into it.

And as much as you can influence public opinion and get new laws passed and old ones struck down, there is always another force trying to ruin it.

This will be continued.

Dunking

This post is primarily inspired by two recent occurrences, and the delight they caused liberal/progressive/leftist people: Bethany Mandel not being able to define "woke" when asked (despite having written a whole book on it) and John Steward "demolishing" Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm over gun control:

https://www.thewrap.com/jon-stewart-gun-rights-oklahoma-senator-clip/

What I want to stress most is that no one is demolished.

Senator Dahm is doubling down and asking for a rematch on Joe Rogan.

Bethany Mandel says she was humiliated, but her article about that is self-serving, blames an anxiety that her family was going to be criticized, and still never defines "woke" (though she admits it is a reasonable question, which is big of her).

https://www.newsweek.com/define-woke-bethany-mandel-conservative-book-1788538

Conservatives are tweeting their own definitions of the word, which lie and deflect.

In Mandel's defense, answering honestly -- especially to a Black woman -- could have been awkward. If you're going to accept the interview, you should have a strategy for that.

(And this is where it's good that I wrote about "woke" last week, because now I can link to it and move on: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/03/waking.html) 

My take is that these dunkings do more harm than good.

I understand that sense of glee that we are smarter than them, but you should not need any additional proof. 

Plus, a lot of it is more about calculated evil than a lack of comprehension. It is hard to tell with some, I admit. Some are probably more manipulated than manipulative, but this is still not the way to reach them.

Instead, it reinforces their sense of being besieged by evil liberals, it gives their lies a platform, and breeds a culture where a (false) sense of domination is prioritized over actual good.

(Speaking of giving a platform, I am not including Lesley Stahl and Marjorie Taylor Green in this because it doesn't seem like there was even a dunk.)

This is not about conservatives' hurt feelings; this is about progressives' shriveled hearts.

I know there are a lot of different words that can be used, and I am willing to have that discussion. 

In this case, I lean towards "progressive" because that seems to be be the chosen self-identifier for many of those who focus more on scoring points against their rivals than working toward legislation or grass roots organizing or mutual aid or something that will help somebody.

In fact, that inner need to dominate is the kind of thing that results in some people resorting to guns for a final assertion of their dominance, where they will die but they will take others with them.

This does not accomplish anything good, and there is so much good to be done. We need to be feeding people, registering voters, making health care -- including mental health -- care available. There is so much work to be done.

The dopamine rush from feeling better-informed than someone who could not care less is a hollow substitute.

I know there are some who argue that these victories are important for shifting the conversation, and that will bring change.

I have doubts, but that will go into another post.

I did not like "Inside"

I do not appreciate all of these streaming channels with exclusive content where you need to be subscribed to have access to certain materials. There are a few different ones where I have a list that I will get to eventually, and only temporarily.

There was a Netflix list, but due to an evident promotion of transphobic content, gouging new subscription rules, and some other concerns, I was avoiding it. Then it was the only place to watch A Love Song for Latasha, which I felt I had to see before blogging about the other related content, and here I am again. 

I am going to try and catch up over the next two months, but I really need to watch The People versus Billi Holiday for something else, and that's on Hulu.

In the process of catching up, I finally watched Inside: Bo Burnham, about which I'd heard very good things.

I did not like it. People whom I really like and admire love it. I didn't.

I have to admit he is incredibly talented. Just thinking about the filming conditions and constrictions and what he was able to produce, and the visual quality and the musical quality... yes, I can imagine him doing very well at brand consulting. 

I think a big part of my issue with it was an age difference. It is not just that he was fretting about turning 30 while I am relieved to be past those specific pressures of youth, but also some perspective, perhaps.

He kept striking at his awareness of where he was with his white privilege and his knowledge of structural racism, and being kind of vicious with himself about it. That doesn't actually help anyone. 

Being aware of your own shortcomings is a great reason to highlight other voices with more experience and knowledge. Granted, that doesn't necessarily make for good comedy, but I am not sure that his approach did either.

I assume that for the people who responded strongly to it, they had felt some of the same pressures of isolation and the personal shortcomings; seeing someone be that open about their weaknesses was powerful. 

I believe my issue with it was the self-absorption, which he seemed to loathe without overcoming.

This reminded me of one of the parts of literature that has annoyed me most, from Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

“The night was filled with horror, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves.  What a welcome sight a leper must have been!”

Seeing horrible things and feeling really bad while you keep on walking is nothing like Christ; he stopped and helped. You would not have his abilities, but who knows where life might lead once you get over yourself?

Watching the special, I was most impressed with the opening number, started having some concerns early -- especially during "Face Time With My Mom (Tonight)" -- and then he really lost me on "White Woman's Instagram".

There is a casual contempt for people (probably just coincidentally women (though it might not hurt to do a misogyny check) in the song itself. Where he completely lost me was the middle of the song when it carries that contempt to the grief of someone who lost her mother, and probably lost her relatively young, based on the things that happened over the ten years. 

That is a real pain. Maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea to post on Instagram about it. Maybe the way some people post feels kind of staged; lots of people present their best selves on social media, though they do that in other social contexts as well. It's not like no one criticizes the people who display all of their messiness. Nonetheless, grief is a real thing, it hits on anniversaries, and if something is on your mind it's pretty normal to post about it.

So do you hate that these women have an outlet? Do you hate that the outlet is shallow? Are you assuming that the person's Instagram tells you a lot about that person?

I know shallow and superficial people exist, and some people try and be deep and are actually kind of silly... they are still people. They still have feelings. They still have value.

Do you think skewering your mother and women who like pumpkin spice lattes is going to overcome white supremacy?

Or does it just make your own self-loathing feel a little more manageable? At least I recognize my privilege!

One more thought: one of the other people who loved the special and thought it was great tweeted that Burnham was like Douglas Adams. That was more about his storytelling, but that reminded me of how much I expected to like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and how much I did not. I didn't like it because I sensed a contempt for people in it.

Maybe we deserve it sometimes, but it doesn't help anyone. 

On a personal level, I hate that. It makes it impossible for me to enjoy the content, regardless of other considerations of quality.

Bo Burnham is young and talented and I believe he means well; he will probably get better.

(There might be something to dwelling on if there are some common denominators between these authors and creators that have issues with self-absorption and contempt of others.)

Either way, before I let Netflix go again, I should re-watch Nanette and Douglas, which I adored the last time around. 

Of course, Hannah Gadsby is closer to my age., but that might be just a coincidence.

Waking

Exciting sneak preview for next week: I am going to reference Bethany Mandel not being able to define "woke". 

It's not even a major point, but what I realized is that if I did that today, I would be tempted to go on a tangent, especially because I have had some thoughts on the use of the word. 

I believe the point I want to make next week will go better if I get this out of the way. That is called knowing myself, including knowing my tendency to take a roundabout path to a conclusion, believing that it can clarify the logic.

Let me start with "political correctness".

What I most associate with this specific term is displeasure when people started objecting to the R-word. Yes, I remember people complaining about other racist and sexist jokes not being received as funny as political correctness, but mostly I remember it with ableism. 

It may stick with me because I remember that the mocking associated with that word seemed to mimic cerebral palsy, but the word itself when used properly was referring to delayed cognitive ability. If you were a terrible person, not having one catch-all word that you could use to insult and marginalize a large and diverse group of people might be inconvenient, but it's not the sort of complaint that I sympathize with.

"Politically correct" was the key insult for a long time, the justification being that it stifles free discussion, and we all know how important freedom of speech is. I agree, but if you can't communicate effectively without showing respect to other groups -- especially when that relates specifically to marginalized groups where there might be a history of oppression that needs to be dealt with openly -- that is a "you" problem.

Shortly after getting on Twitter, I became aware of a new insult: "social justice warrior".

I personally would not have found that to be an insult, but something aspirational. However, that's how it was being used, with the idea being that any sentiments in favor of social justice were insincere desires for prestige and acceptance.

Here is another potential "you" problem: if you don't care about justice or fairness and are too cynical and self-absorbed to even begin to feel such things. You can insult people that way, but that says more about you.

Which brings us to "woke".

It is not something I have ever called myself, largely because it seemed easy to rate yourself too highly. Sure, I know stuff... and then discover more things that you did not know.

What I do remember from that time period was finding things that once known, could not be unknown. Those common expressions have a racist background. These practices are inherently unfair; while these other practices would not be inherently unfair except for the structure they are interacting with.

It can be an uncomfortable process. One day you have a basic idea that racism is bad but there are a lot of things that don't seem to be racism, and then you realize they are. It's not just neighborhoods and inherited wealth and policing trends; those are all important, but they are obviously important. You know that and are frustrated, but it seems like all you can control is your vote.

But let's say in your circle of acquaintance you have people who changed the name of "Hillsboro" to "Hillsburrito" (because so many Mexicans live there) or Canada's Vancouver to "Hongcouver", with a bit of a fake Chinese accent (because so many people from East Asia buy property there)... that's just being cute, right? 

You go from being shocked at how many expressions that are "cute" or "funny" have racist roots, and then it stops being shocking because you see how it was practically inevitable. 

You used to not notice, then it makes you cringe, and then you need to say something.

Maybe they will be embarrassed or irritated, or maybe they will cast you as an enemy of freedom of speech.

If we are being intellectually honest, it should not be such a hard concept for anyone to understand. Plato was working toward a different point, but I think we can find a clear correlation to the concept described in the allegory of the cave. There may be another, stronger correlation...

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”  -- James Baldwin

You can work up a fair amount of rage without being Black. 

I don't say that to center myself, but to acknowledge that there is a price to be paid for becoming aware. You get angry. There is no ignorant bliss, but ideally you work toward making things better. You have more empathy, and more of an eye for injustice. Maybe you see a police interaction and you start recording.

And you correct people on their racist language.

Because we should know. We should know how we got here. We should know how it affects people. We should let go of those illusions.

If what you want is the right to keep on being ignorant and oppressive without having to think about it, that's a you problem, making it a very legitimate question whether struggles to define the word are actually about trying to not sound horrible.

I have no obligation to support someone's ego in ignorance. Wanting that could be something worthy of mocking, but the mocking doesn't really help. 

That's what I was going to write about today, but next week should work better, now that I have rambled enough about "woke".

Motown and Stax Records: Daily Songs

I had probably started thinking about focusing on Motown for the daily songs before I went to the Oregon Historical Society; that started after reading Rhythm Ride: A Road Trip Through the Motown Sound by Andrea Davis Pinkney.

It was at the exhibit that I started thinking about including Stax Records.

https://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2023/01/pdx-motown-sound-of-young-america-at.html

As I started looking at their respective hits, it seemed like it would be possible to go year by year with a hit from each, at least through the 60s. Stax went bankrupt in 1974. Obviously Motown lasted longer.

Looking at their hits, there are some very iconic, important songs in music history coming from both companies. 

Reading a little bit more about the production of "Green Onions", there was some reference to that being more of a "Stax" sound. It might be fair to say that Stax was a bit funkier. Maybe Motown was more focused on gaining the crossover audience. (Is that why Petey Greene hated Berry Gordy so much?)

I still can't deny the positive impact. 

After a few years you start seeing hits that could have easily been produced by Motown coming from Atlantic and other labels; would they have signed those artists without the success of Motown and Stax?

It is fairly well known that MTV was not playing Black artists until they wanted Michael Jackson, and CBS made that access contingent upon giving access to other artists. Would CBS have been in that position without Motown?

If Motown stayed strong longer than Stax, you see a real slowing down in the 80s, with a bit of a resurgence in the 90s that owes a lot to Michael Bivins.

If Motown had given us nothing but Stevie Wonder, and Stax had given us nothing by "Green Onions", I would still call it good artistically. (Realistically, financially that would probably not have been enough.)

As it is, they gave us much more. A sampling of songs to back that up follows.

First, on a personal note, this was also an important list for me as I realized I had no way to post the daily songs while I was on vacation. I didn't want to give up any songs, and I couldn't let it go into February because I had big February plans.

So, there is a big gap, then the list resumed in March. I decided to add more songs, bringing the total to 40. Changes in the original sequence are noted, as are the year of the hit and the label.

Daily Songs

1/1 “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes (1961 Motown)
1/2“Last Night” by The Mar-Keys (1961 Stax)
1/3 “Do You Love Me” by The Contours (1962 Motown)
1/4 “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the M.G.'s (1962 Stax)
1/5 “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas (1963 Motown)
1/6 “Walking the Dog” by Rufus Thomas (1963 Stax)
1/7 “My Guy” by Mary Wells (1964 Motown)
1/8 “I've Got No Time To Lose” by Carla Thomas (1964 Stax)
1/9 “I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” by Four Tops (1965 Motown)
1/10 “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett (1965 Stax)
1/11 “You Can't Hurry Love” by the Supremes (1966 Motown)
1/12 “Hold On! I'm Comin'” by Sam & Dave (1966 Stax)
1/13 “Knock On Wood” by Eddie Floyd (1966 Stax)
1/14 “I Was Made To Love Her” by Stevie Wonder (1967 Motown)
1/15 “Born Under A Bad Sign” by Albert King (1967 Stax)
1/16 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye (1968 Motown)
1/17 “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding (1968 Stax)
1/18 “What a Man” by Linda Lyndell (1968 Stax)
1/19 “Private Number” by Judy Clay and William Bell (1968 Stax)
1/20 “I Can't Get Next To You” by The Temptations (1969 Motown)
~ vacation ~
1/28 “The Sweeter He Is” by The Soul Children (1969 Stax)
1/29 “War” by Edwin Starr (1970 Motown)
1/30 “I Just Want to Celebrate” by Rare Earth (1971 Motown)
1/31 “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight (1971 Stax)
~ February, Black History Month ~
3/6 “Theme from Shaft” by Isaac Hayes (1971 Stax)
3/7 “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone” by The Temptations (1972 Motown)
3/8 “I'll Take You There” by the Staple Singers (1972 Stax)
3/9 “Touch Me in the Morning” by Diana Ross (1973 Motown)
3/10 “Help Yourself” by The Undisputed Truth (1974 Motown)
3/11 “Old Fashioned Love” by The Commodores (1975 Motown)
3/12 “Don't Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston (1976 Motown)
~ added ~
3/13 “Down To Love Town” by The Originals (1977 Motown)
3/14 “It's My Turn” by Diana Ross (1980 Motown)
3/15 “Let It Whip” by Dazz Band (1982 Motown)
3/16 “You Are” by Lionel Richie (1983 Motown)
3/17 “Go Home” by Stevie Wonder (1985 Motown)
3/18 “Rub You the Right Way” by Johnny Gill (1990 Motown)
3/19 “Motownphilly” by Boyz II Men (1991 Motown)
3/20 “Iesha” by Another Bad Creation (1991 Motown)
3/21 “Back At One” by Brian McKnight (1999 Motown)

Two stories

I may have told one of these stories before, but I know I haven't told the other one.

Here is the good story. A few years ago I was talking to a woman whose daughter had gone through a period of being shut out by her friends in high school. It came up when I was working on the Long Reading list. We were talking about books and what I had been reading recently; she was very interested because it sounded familiar.

One thing I will always remember is that by then the friends were all reconciled, but you could tell the mother was not quite thrilled with that or trusting of them. I have seen this with other mothers, and it makes a lot of sense. You can hope everyone grows into a kinder adult, but we know that is not guaranteed.

The other thing I remember is being very impressed with how the adults handled it. The mother found out her teen was being bulled by former friends and spoke to the school. I don't remember if it was the principal or guidance counselor, but they asked the daughter what she wanted. She wanted to change her lunch period, because that is where the bullying was happening. She needed some space, and they gave it to her.

It sounds so simple and logical, but this is where we fail a lot. 

Maybe we are afraid they will ask for something we can't give. They might, but then we could always offer a counterproposal. If we want to help someone, at least hearing what they think they need seems like a good start.

Unless we don't want to help too much.

I worry that sometimes we don't. Maybe it feels like the appropriate thing to let those who can wield physical or social power use it and abuse it, because that's the way it's always been.

The most common response to bullying is to tell the bullied person to ignore it and they will get tired of it. That is a lie. We all know it's a lie.

Here is the bad story.

Way back in my early days of Twitter use, in addition to following a lot of musicians I liked, I also followed their family members and girlfriends. A lot of other fans followed them too, and it kind of seemed rude not to.

With one of my favorite bands, I actually interacted with two of the girlfriends a bit. 

One of my good qualities is a good memory, and thoughtfulness. If I see that you are interested in a certain topic or learn your favorite animal or something like that, I will let you know about pertinent things: I think you would like this book or this tour or this recipe. Stuff like that. Nothing big.

One day, one of the girlfriends sent me a private message thanking me for how sweet I had always been. I was so touched.

I didn't know it was goodbye.

Not all of the fans were nice. That was something I did kind of know, but it wasn't something I generally saw a lot, or even thought to check.

She deleted her profile, and eventually he did too. 

Going off of Twitter isn't exactly a tragedy, but why should you be harassed off of it because of whom you date? It's not like that leaves an opening that any of the bullies are going to get to fill.

Except that there are people who like it.

Internet trolls get increased self-esteem from their trolling. I would say that's a personality flaw, and that there are lots of ways to feel good about yourself that are better for you and everyone else, but there are those who would disagree.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-just-enjoy-hurting-others-they-also-feel-good-about-themselves/

(That is not a particularly new article, but it came up again recently, I believe due to discussion on Twitter moderation changes.)

A big limitation on how much good we can do may be a lack of interest.

There is reasonable disagreement on whether the best thing to do with trolls is block or mute or report or ignore or engage. 

If they are being a troll and loving it, there is probably not much you can do to improve them, but I do remember long ago someone that was trolling, along with others, and reaching out. While that was initially not appreciated, a point was made that I believe helped.

Perhaps there are times when it can feel good to be a jerk, or at least okay, but we aren't irredeemable yet. Certainly, it makes sense to think about what we do and what we enjoy and what the consequences might be for ourselves and others.

I will get back to that.

 

Related posts (two posts about that last incident, if you want it):

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/04/harassing-your-idols.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/04/teachable-moments.html

Black History Month: Latasha Harlins

One thought that really bugged me as I was researching songs for Black History Month was that Kanye West has always been a narcissist.

The thought came because as I was looking up songs about Emmett Till 

I ended up using "Bakai" by John Coltrane. There were at least two other options, one that I felt missed the point, and one by an artist I can hardly stand (guess away). One search results that was not up for consideration was "Through the Wire" by West. After an accident -- that was bad -- he makes a reference to how his girl would feel with him looking like Till. (He also brings up Biggie Smalls in this song.)

It was just remarkably shallow and self-absorbed, and not even the worst time he made the comparison, but I saw it as being a pattern of West only ever really being about West.

I was struck by the contrast between him and Tupac Shakur and how deeply Shakur was affected by the death of Latasha Harlins.

I was a freshman in college at the time of her death, and I do not remember hearing anything about it in Eugene. We heard about the riots of course, but that seemed to be solely related to all four officers being acquitted in the Rodney King beating.

Her name started coming up as a footnote as I started reading more, and I wanted to learn more.

My main source of information was The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots by Brenda E. Stevenson.

That books spends time on Latasha herself, her killer, Soon Ja Du, and the judge who sentenced Du to ten years but then suspended the sentence, Joyce Karlin. 

It also gives more background; from the book another case that contributed to the outrage was an animal cruelty case where there was a harsh sentence, seemingly illustrating that dogs were valued more than Black children.

The book was good, but I wanted more, so I have also viewed two short films:

The Dope Years: The Story of Latasha Harlins (2019), directed by Allison Waite

A Love Song for Latasha (2019), directed by Sophia Nahli Allison

I also read Troublemaker by John Cho, with the riots seen through the eyes of a Korean-American teenager.

And I listened to nine songs that at least referenced her, but seven of them were by Tupac.

(See "In music" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Latasha_Harlins)

There's really a whole journey in there. I ended up using "Keep Ya Head Up", but a case could have been made for "Thugz Mansion", where he seems to have made some peace with something that had deeply hurt him.

Now, there is a lot I could say about justice, but I think to do that best I will need to bring in a second (and earlier) contested murder. I do want to say something about grief, and I suppose about trauma.

I don't know if there was initially some connection between the two short films, but what I can say is that Love Song seems to focus more on family, and Dope Years on friends, especially one who met Latasha when Latasha probably saved her life. (Some boys were pushing her under in the pool, and Latasha pulled her out. I don't think they were trying to kill her, but things can go wrong really fast, which may be harder to forget when reading about Latasha's death.)

Latasha and her friend were planning on being lawyers, but also opening up businesses so that there were things to do and places to go. She believes those dreams would have come true for sure if Latasha was still alive.

You don't know; kids will go through many stages of what to be when they grow up, and that is still true in early teens. However, the other thing that stays with me is that they mention Du had drawn a gun on someone before. Latasha was warned about it, but she brushed it off. She said that the storekeeper was always like that, so you just need to go in and get out fast. That is probably why she had the money in her hand when she approached the register.

So, part of that idea of owning businesses was to create places where you didn't need to rush and be accused and have that danger, and part of living with that danger is a lack of other options.

It literally never occurred to me, in all of my growing up and adult years, that someone working at a store might shoot me. That is one aspect of my privilege.

But also, I can't help but think about what it is like when you have to live with that danger and contempt, Then, despite all the precautions, Latasha died anyway. The one who looked out for you and for her young siblings and the one who had the big dream and made you believe in them died anyway.

Maybe that kills the dreams more effectively than anything else.

Related links:

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/kanye-west-lil-wayne-emmett-till-lyrics.html/ 

https://andscape.com/features/tupac-shakur-latasha-harlins-songs/ 

Tolerance

One important reason to care about allegations of abuse is that not only are they usually true, but they are usually repeated.

This may be most obvious in the cases of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, but it is not limited to them.

I found this article interesting:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/10/everyone-who-has-publicly-accused-bill-murray-of-misconduct

In the past, I remember that sometimes when people were tweeting about Bill Murray -- generally praise for how funny he was or some of the cool things he did -- I would see a lone voice here and there mentioning that he abused his wife.

It was such an aberration I assumed it was from long ago, perhaps in the '80s or '90s; it was only in reading this article that I saw the date 2009.

However, at some point it seemed to gain traction, and that's when I heard about Lucy Liu and Seth Green. Then you find out about Geena Davis, and it's like, "What an ass!" It feels like a new revelation, but it goes back years.

If I do a keyword search I can find posts from two days ago mad that Al Franken had to resign for one "prank". In fact, there were nine accusers, and they can't all be written off as "pranks".

I want to point out three factors that play a role, and I am going to use Franken to illustrate.

1. Legacy

We have a long history of allowing all kinds of abuse along a hierarchy that we haven't really stopped doing it yet, even if you can get more people to admit that it's not good. Habit is strong and it will not be overcome without conscious effort.

In 2019, Franken said "Two years ago, I would have sworn that I’d never done anything to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but it's clear that I must have been doing something. As I've said before, I feel terrible that anyone came away from an interaction with me feeling bad."

https://web.archive.org/web/20190930220642/https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/another-woman-says-al-franken-groped-her.html

I suspect that has more to do with a historical acceptance of treating women as less.

2. Lack of confidence

In that hierarchy there is a built in deference to power (which will come up a lot), and one of the ways it manifests is this fear of losing a "genius"; that if we stopped supporting them we would lose wonderful music or movies or political genius. It is important to know that is a crock. In fact, there are talented, capable people all over, and with more nurturing we could have even more.

The people who are mad about Franken's resignation -- which was a choice he made to avoid dealing with the ethics committee (with pressure from Chuck Schumer to avoid censure) -- are mad because we couldn't afford to lose his leadership. They still think that even though Franken's successor Tina Smith is generally acknowledged as having performed well. They can't point to anything that was lost by losing him, but they are sure that it was bad.

Given that, it is not surprising at all that there is more blame for Kristen Gillibrand than for Schumer.

3. Love

We may also feel affection for a predator. Other people could produce the art we respond to, but they are the ones who have already done so. Perhaps we feel compassion. Certainly there are people who have faced their own hurt and may turn that others (though you cannot always assume that).

Franken himself has referred to regrets and depression, and I am sure that is sincere, while still noting that his regrets are about the effect on him, only paying the merest lip service to actually having been harmful to anyone. 

But I won't knock compassion, and I don't have to. Just as the answer to lies is truth, the solution to harm is healing. We can want that for the perpetrators of the harm, we just need to prioritize the healing of those harmed.

The answer to all of that is going to be compassion, but it has to be informed compassion that disperses rather than consolidating power.

Yes, there will be more.

Black History Month 2023: Daily Songs

As I was thinking about an area of musical focus for this Black History month, I started thinking about historical songs. I decided to focus on that. 

I know of songs that exist but I did not use, but I also know there are songs out there that I don't know about. There are certainly songs that that have not been written yet.

There is always the questions of whether to focus specifically on African American history or not. I did want there to be more than slavery and civil rights, so I started with some songs about Africa before 1619. 

That only included three songs at the start, but I ended up including some South African history as well.

Part of that is my love for Stevie Wonder, and thinking about his Apartheid song, and some other songs I am fond of. It became more than that, because while prejudice was an issue before, Apartheid did not become an official policy until 1948, not long after World War II.

That was interesting to me, because so frequently after a war where Black people served, we see an increase in prejudice and attempts to codify that racism. Then the two struggles became entwined for me. It was a nice surprise to find a rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" celebrating Nelson Mandela.

There is a chronological order to the songs. "Apartheid (It's Wrong)" comes right after "The Tuskegee Airmen Suite", rather than later when awareness was growing in the States.

(Also, there are a lot of songs about the military.)

I think the music is important. Artists United Against Apartheid was my first introduction to Apartheid. Even then, I didn't really grasp that Sun City was specifically a luxury resort, and I did not recognize so many people in the song then (DJ Kool Herc!), but it told me there was something and then I was primed to learn more.

These songs matter, and the events matter. It is not a coincidence that the death of Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott are both situated in 1955. 

There are links to articles with the 28 songs for the month. Sometimes they surprised me; as I was looking for one about the Tuskegee Airmen, I found a recent obituary. It is not so far past.

Because there is so much not covered and so much work left to do, I wanted to end with something showing hope. "We Shall Overcome" was an obvious choice, and presented by an HBCU choir was also an obvious choice. 

I had also thought about James Brown for celebrating Black pride, and then there were feelings about the Super Bowl, so I threw in five extra songs for March, but no articles.

The upcoming songs will be getting back to Motown, but that will be a different post. There is a topic in this song list that needs its own post.

Then I have an idea I love for Black Music Month in June, though I am not sure if I can pull it off.

Songs:

2/1 “Mama Africa” by Angélique Kidjo
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-africa-cradle-humankind.html

2/2 “I Might Have Been Queen” by Tina Turner
https://blog.rhinoafrica.com/2018/03/27/9-ancient-african-kingdoms/

2/3 “Medieval West Africa” by Griot B
https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/timeline/africa_before.htm

2/4 “Slave Song” by Sade
https://aaregistry.org/story/chattel-slavery-in-america-a-definition/

2/5 “Ship Ahoy” by The O'Jays
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/atlantic-slave-trade-history-animated-interactive.html

2/6 “Toussant L'Ouverture” by Santana
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-haitian-revolution-and-the-hole-in-french-high-school-history

2/7 “The Ballad of Nat Turner” by Lonnie Glass
https://web.archive.org/web/20100829172548/http://www.americanheritage.com/people/articles/web/20051111-nat-turner-slavery-rebellion-virginia-civil-war-thomas-r-gray-abolitionist.shtml

2/8 “Heaven's Door” by Alice Smith
https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/06/harriet-tubman-conductor-on-the-underground-railroad/

2/9 “Charging Fort Wagner” from Glory by James Horner
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/06/01/restoration-boston-shaw-memorial

2/10 “Buffalo Soldiers” by Bob Marley
https://www.wtxl.com/news/local-news/jack-hadley-black-history-museum-to-host-9th-annual-buffalo-soldiers-heritage-festival

2/11 “Jim Crow Blues” by Lead Belly
https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow

2/12 “Marcus Garvey” by Burning Spear
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm

2/13 “Harlem Hellfighter” by Tom Morello
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-hundred-years-ago-harlem-hellfighters-bravely-led-us-wwi-180968977/

2/14 “Harlem” by Duke Ellington
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/02/23/hurston-hughes-harlem-renaissance

2/15 “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday
https://www.biography.com/news/billie-holiday-strange-fruit

2/16 “Tuskegee Airmen Suite” by Richard Kaufman and London Symphony Orchestra
https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/harold-brown-1924-2023-u-s-air-force-officer-tuskegee-airman/

2/17 “Apartheid (It's Wrong)” by Stevie Wonder
https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid

2/18 “Bakai” by John Coltrane
https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/aug/28

2/19 “Rosa Parks” by Outkast
https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/rosa-parks-beyond-the-bus-boycott-a-life-of-activism

2/20 “Mississippi Goddam” by Nina Simone
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/the-story-behind-nina-simones-protest-song-mississippi-goddam/16651/#

2/21 “Biko” by Peter Gabriel
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/steve-biko-the-black-consciousness-movement-steve-biko-foundation/GQWBgt1iWh4A8A?hl=en

2/22 “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/stevie-wonder/happy-birthday

2/23 “I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City” by Artists United Against Apartheid
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/little-steven-sun-city-protest-song/

2/24 “By the Time I Get to Arizona” by Public Enemy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham

2/25 “Keep Ya Head Up” by Tupac
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-17/latasha-harlins-memorial-playground-black-lives-matter-south-los-angeles

2/26 “Yes We Can” by will.i.am
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/yes-we-can-a-speech-by-barak-obama-2008

2/27 “I Can't Breathe” by H.E.R.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/us/george-floyd-trnd/index.html

2/28 “We Shall Overcome” by Morehouse College
https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/story-behind-the-song/the-story-behind-the-song/we-shall-overcome/

3/1 “Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud” by James Brown
3/2 “Black Man” by Stevie Wonder
3/3 “Don't Touch My Hair” by Solange feat. Sampha
3/4 “Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika” by the Khayelitsha United Mambaza Choir
3/5 “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Sheryl Lee Ralph
 

What we accept

Ultimately my solution for all abuse is going to be caring about the truth. It resolves false accusations as well as real abuse, and is a good overall part of caring about people and the world in general.

I will spend some more time on that. 

For now, there is that problem of apathy: I'm not reading all that, I don't even know who this is, this does not affect me.

As is my custom, I am going to go about it in a roundabout way.

James Dewees is not a predator, but Jimmy Urine is.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mindless-self-indulgence-jimmy-urine-sexual-assault-1209677/

James Dewees played with My Chemical Romance. Their singer Gerard Way is married to Lindsey Way, bass player in Mindless Self Indulgence, which is fronted by Jimmy Urine. Urine's wife Chantal Claret is good friends with Lindsey. MSI and MCR have toured together, but also MSI toured with Claret's earlier band, which is how they met.

Full disclosure: I sponsored the MSI Kickstarter, and have reviewed MSI, Chantal Claret, and a solo album of Urine's. 

When I saw there were accusations I read them and found them credible.

The first thing I remembered was an MSI member reminiscing about how Jimmy made a beeline for Chantal when their tour together was starting out, making sure to introduce the bands which he did not usually do. It sounded like a cute story then, but it occurred to me to check the age difference.

Jimmy Urine is 13 years older than Chantal Claret. He was 12 years older than the 15 year old at the center of the sexual assault case.

They were also both adults when they got married, but it looks different now.

The other thing that came to mind was another friend of Jimmy Urine's, James Gunn. 

(James appears to have been a very popular name from 1966 through 1976.)

Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy when old offensive tweets were dug up making jokes about molestation and pedophilia.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/20/17596452/guardians-of-the-galaxy-marvel-james-gunn-fired-pedophile-tweets-mike-cernovich 

At the time I remember reading about a "To Catch a Predator" party that Gunn threw. Urine and Claret attended. 

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/james-gunn%E2%80%99s-how-to-catch-a-predator-party.1464580/  

Just to be clear, I still do not have any reason to believe that Gunn was being anything other than "provocative". It reminded me of things I had heard about "Tarts and Vicars" parties or "bad taste" parties.

As I was thinking about the assault, I wondered how Urine's friends and band members felt about this. Did they have any idea that his "jokes" were real? Did they feel differently about it?

Maybe they didn't think about it that much. It's not that long ago that dating a high school girl was coded in movies as kind of a loser but sympathetic. There are Pineapple Express (2008), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). In 1993 I think Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused is supposed to be cooler than them, but I am not sure.

Here's the thing; in 2004 it came out that former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt had abused a teenage girl. They called it an affair initially, of course. Not only did people push back on that, but they started talking about the victim and the effect it had on her life, and it was damaging to her. It is bad for development. It is trauma. 

It is still touted by skeevy old guys to get them young before they're ruined, developing minds of their own and self-respect and things like that.

Now my feelings are just more being fed up that anyone finds humor in making fun of terrible situations. 

It may be worth nothing that the people who dug through James Gunn's old tweet were pretty awful people, but the fuel never should have been there in the first place. 

Children really do get molested and abused. There is no humor in that.

I think it takes a remarkable amount of privilege to be able to dress up as exploited people for fun. There have to be better ways of using that privilege.

It is surprisingly easy to get to the point where nothing moves you anymore.

That is a good reason to care as well.

Hispanic Heritage Reading: Final thoughts for 2022

(ETA: I posted as 2023, but 2023's month hasn't happened yet. Remember, I was catching up.)

This is to give some more attention to the books that did not necessarily fit into any of the previous posts.

Best for young readers:

A Box Full of Kittens by Sonia Manzano
Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice by Marlene Targ Brill

Manzano, whom you may know better as Maria from Sesame Street, wrote a picture book, so when I say young readers... younger for this than for the Delores Huerta book, which is probably good for tweens and middle schoolers.

I can recommend either of them.

For people with complicated families:

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Violence Girl by Alice Bag

Among other characters, Caramelo starts with "the horrible grandmother". As much as you initially feel that the title is mean, you cannot deny its justice as you continue to read. Then there is a reversal and you learn how she became as she was. All along there is a dialogue between the author and the departed grandmother about how she is being portrayed.

Although it is fiction, there are events at least inspired by Cisneros' own life, even if some of them were only things that seemed to be happening at the time.

Bag's story is more straightforward, with less fiction, but still with people who hurt each other; they also love each other and have good times together. In addition, you do see how violence inspires other violence, and you get an interesting look into the beginning punk scene in Los Angeles.

If you want more music history...

Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music by Leila Cobo

I found this one fascinating. I know I will want to return to it eventually for all that there is about different musical styles, how they came together, and what happened when the songs they inspired were released.

I will also definitely want to get back to...

What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché

Sometimes there are books that cover so much information -- often things that I partially remember -- that I know that there is much more. That was true with Decoding Despacito, but music history is lighter than the history of El Salvador and US involvement in that. I  have a note to later check out two movies, some historical figures, and Forché's poetry.

More tracing the connections:

Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War edited by George Mariscal
Silver, Sword, & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Maria Arana

Arana's book is probably the more discouraging of the two, but it is not hopeless. 

It is also more ambitious, weaving together different elements that have influenced the area over time. For example, for "silver" there is the use of it in pre-Columbian times, the European demand for silver and the impact of the new silver supply there, and the mine workers today.

I had mentioned Aztlán way back when writing about the songs, because of a poem in there that compares California Chicanos and Tejanos, if you will, and their musical tastes.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/12/hispanic-heritage-month-2022-songs.html

There are contrasts between those cultures -- perhaps not as much as there would be between Nuyoricans and Cuban expats in Miami, but still significant.

That was interesting food for thought, but it was not the primary contrast, which was between the movement for peace and the recognition of the immorality of war, and also the long tradition of military service among Latinx families.

This was a good background for some of the other reading. The heavy enlistment of Mexican-American soldiers did not stop the white enlisted men from going after Mexican zoot suiters.

It also reminds me of Ken Burns trying hard to get a racially balanced four part series on WWII, but he really needed a fifth part.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2007-09-25-0709240238-story.html

The book is a collection of many disparate voices, even if seemingly from one culture, in a time that was culturally significant for the country. Some of those pieces may not be as well-written or as easy to relate to, but recognizing that variety is important.

If you are really into oratory:

The Words of Cesar Chavez by Richard J Jensen

This was not what I expected, though it was right in the title.

Yes, there is some biographical information on Chavez which is very interesting. Yes, you get to read quite a bit of his speeches and the contexts. And yes, there are also long passages evaluating the rhetorical methods and Chavez's performance as a "rhetor". 

The focus on that is not even wrong; Chavez was a remarkable speaker and would not have studied rhetoric at the level at which he used it, but it is kind of a niche interest. There are probably biographies out there that would have made me happier.

I think the real problem is that I don't care for literary fiction:

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

Roxane Gay read and praised this book before it was published, so I had been waiting to read it a long time. 

It is good, but it is also a lot of people making bad choices, and fictional. In a great over-simplification of things, l like what I read to be real or happy, but why would you choose to wallow in despair? (Except that sometimes the material requires it, but there are reasons I mainly read non-fiction now, and when I do read fiction it tends to be YA.)

It felt a lot like I felt about The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez, way back in 2019.

Coming up...

In theory, around September 15th I will start again, and it can include the rest of those movies from that one list, and the four books I added after I started this round of reading, and the authors listed by Sandra Cisneros in A House of My Own, and material in my El Salvador note from What You Have Heard is True. For whether I start on time, and how much of it will I get to and how long it will take me... 

and yet, I feel good about the journey.

Why didn't it matter?

For a quick recap, two years ago I blogged about allegations against musician James Dewees. 

The allegations were on an Instagram page that claimed to be from multiple people. After reading through every post, I found the the accusations were that he preyed on vulnerable women so he could get money from them and live with them, not what "predator" generally brings to mind. There were other issues, and those were the things I posted about in the original blog.

After receiving two angry but anonymous messages, I later went back to check the Instagram page and it had been deleted.

It changed nothing. Shortly after the allegations first came out, Dewees was fired from his two main bands. That never changed. 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/06/james-dewees-is-not-predator.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/02/james-dewees-is-not-predator-part-2.html

It does bother me for James Dewees himself, but it also seems to reflect bigger issues. That's why I am still writing about this.

So, why didn't it matter?

I think there are a few different factors.

One is simply a matter of power.  

That certainly refers to the amount of fans James Dewees has, but it also refers to my not having a large audience. 

Realistically, I could also have tried harder; posting twice in two years is not a super-focused effort. 

I don't believe more effort would have paid off. Maybe if those efforts were toward building my audience first, but I don't know.

Some of that is also the means. I mentioned the "I'm not reading all that" response... blogs don't seem that popular right now. Maybe if it were picked up by a popular podcast, that would work. 

I am not the ideal person to make that happen. I don't have the patience to listen to podcasts, let alone produce them or network with them.

We here get into an area where the question becomes what one's responsibility is.

I have very little interest in building my brand or my fan base, but I do have an interest in promoting justice and fairness and seeing people do well. Do I have to change how I do  things to be effective?

While we can certainly argue that popularity should not act as protection, and that justice should not require fame, we can also see examples indicating that maybe that is how it works.

That matters, because the other thing that I think is a real issue is apathy about what happens. Do we care enough about what is right? Do we care when it does not directly affect us?

Next week, more examples, and more questions.

Hispanic Heritage Reading: Clemente

Let me start with some background. 

One of my high school jobs was at K-mart, and one of the areas I worked was tidying the toy aisle. It faced rougher treatment than, say, cleaning products.

Those toys included baseball action figures, and that was where I first saw Roberto Clemente. 

I don't remember the series, but Willie Mays was another one. I think Clemente stuck out because I had never heard of him before, but also because his photo was so engaging.

I don't merely mean that he was handsome, though he was. There was this openness and strength coming through. He apparently had that effect on people in person, but it doesn't always come through in a photo.

Later on I learned that he had died while on a flight taking humanitarian supplies. 

I would not have been opposed to learning more about him, but I guess what got him into this round of reading was a Jeopardy! category on graphic novels that were biographies. I had read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, but not even heard of the four others. I have read all of them now. 

The most graphically lush was Mike Allred's Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns, & Moonage Daydreams.

It's opposite was The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi, starkly black and white.

The two made a good pairing for such different lives treated so differently, but similar in excellence. 

(Plus there are scenes where Bowie sees a gremlin on a plane wing, clearly referencing The Twilight Zone as well as Bowie's  discomfort with flying, but in the other book Serling looks out at a plane wing and there is no gremlin, even though you are thinking of the gremlin.)

Houdini: The Handcuff King wasn't that good, and seemed to speculate more than was necessary.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago was okay, but I felt like there was a lot missing. That is when I decided to read Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss.

Having now covered which books related to Roberto Clemente and why, here are three thoughts:

One small part of the comic was Roberto being irritated with The Lone Ranger and Tonto's name meaning "fool" or "stupid" in Spanish. 

Here's the irritating thing; I read it in July 2021, and I don't remember what they called him in the Spanish comics. There was something else. Maybe Toro?

It resonates more now, after watching Machuca, because they had been building an analogy of the friendship between Gonzalo and Pedro, using the popular comic, with the question being asked of whether an white person and an Indian can truly be friends.

That was the first time in the movie that I really thought about the color difference. Gonzalo was lighter-skinned and it saved him from being relocated with the rest of the shantytown.

Not seeing color is good, right?

Let's move to the next thought.

Clemente did have a lot of pride in his origins. As a Black Puerto Rican, he faced language and color barriers in the States that he did not experience at home; that was a hardship.

There were some issues in Pittsburgh, but it was worst during spring training in Florida, which had more entrenched segregation back then. That meant that there were bars and restaurants that his white teammates could go into that he couldn't. There were times when he could not ride with them, and he could not stay at the same hotels as them.

This would be frustrating anyway, but it stands out because there was a former teammate who was asked about Clemente and said that Clemente never tried that hard to get to know them. The teammate did not seem to reflect on how much of that social time was held in places where their Black teammates could not enter. 

He didn't have to notice, and he didn't; that is one reason why not seeing color -- even if true -- is not ideal.

Finally, there is the matter of Clemente's death. 

It wasn't what I thought. I had this image of a plane having issues mid-flight and just disappearing, no remains being found. 

In fact it was an overloaded, under-maintained plane that had issues right on takeoff, but it was near the ocean, and did go into the shark-infested waters. There were some traces found, but not much of the people inside.

The relief was for Nicaraguans affected by an earthquake. While it was destructive enough to create many problems, those were worsened by the government at the time. A previous shipment had only gotten through because Clemente's name was invoked, and that was why he felt the need to go personally.

Clemente had always felt he would die young, and often that it might be in a plane, and he'd even had a presentiment that something bad was going to happen at New Year's. Those would all be reasons not to go.

He was also someone who believed strongly that if you weren't helping others you were wasting your life. Perhaps all of those feelings reconciled him to the risk, even if he was not expecting that flight to crash.

And yet, there is still so much else that contributed to the death. 

If President Somoza had not been holding up supplies, and exploiting the situation. Or if he were not a baseball fan, and Clemente's name wouldn't have made the difference...

If they had not needed another plane, and been offered one on short notice...

If that plane had not been under-maintained, and overloaded and unbalanced by people who should have known better as the professionals but did not care...

If those many attempts to revoke the plane owner's license had worked, so he wasn't even around offering his services to people who did not know how irresponsible he was...

And the owner died too, and the pilot whom he hired at the last minute, possibly ill-advisedly, so it's not that they were trying to be that incompetent, but it still happened.

Which I guess is to add that you may not realize how important the little corner that you oversee is. The corrupt president of a suffering country may know that he has real responsibility, though not think too much about the impact, but the aviation official who writes up a ticket, and the owner who fights it and the judge who allows the dismissal, the pilot who is tired and is trained, but maybe not thoroughly...

It all adds up.

James Dewees is not a predator, part 2

For this current round of writing, I kept thinking that it would end up revisiting this post. I was having a hard time getting started, until I realized I had the order wrong.

Here is the first part, from June 2021:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/06/james-dewees-is-not-predator.html

In summary, there was an Instagram page that accused musician James Dewees of being a predator, and about the time that came out he was fired from two band, which seemed pretty damning. 

I read those posts and found a lot of holes, but the biggest one was that even though the word "predator" was used, predatory behavior was not demonstrated. The premise was that he was using women for money, but it didn't really hold up. 

Obviously there is a lot more detail in my blog post, but what is missing is what happened after.

The next day, there was an anonymous comment on my blog, saying they knew it was hard but I just needed to accept that he hurt people.

I have to approve blog comments before they are published. If there had been contact information I would have engaged, and if there had been anything new that seemed relevant, I would have published it, even if I immediately posted a reply questioning it. As it was, if repeating accusations with no backup was enough, I would never have blogged about it in the first place. I deleted.

The next day there was a similar, angrier comment about how dared I call myself a feminist. It was still anonymous and without any substantiation, so I deleted again. 

I remember from those comments feeling sure that it was her, that there had never been a "they" (which I already felt pretty sure about), and that my analysis was correct. I did wonder if there would be any new posts on the Instagram. I think it was a few days later that I checked.

The entire page was gone.

Did I do that? I don't know. Maybe.

(Near the end I included what things were easy to document, and that it seemed like material harm could be demonstrated pretty easily, so that may have had an effect.)

Did it matter? Not really.

I mean, James wasn't suddenly back in bands, and as recently as December there was a post with someone asking about James and someone calling him a pedophile, even though that was never among the original accusations.

At the time, I did do some searches, and I did post a link to the blog in response to one tweet about the accusations. I got this response:

"I'm not reading all that, but I'm happy for you, or sorry that happened."

That was actually the first time I saw that one, but I have seen it many times since. It is a proud declaration of unwillingness to engage, except not responding at all would be more effective non-engagement.

It was more annoying because the person who posted it was not the one who asked; not saying anything would have been fine.

On a different level, it was worse than annoying, because it was so wrong. 

Someone lied and damaged someone else's life, and not only did people not care about that, what they remembered was worse than the original lies.

I believe what I did was right -- even without it mattering -- but I also at times feel bad about it. The false ones are such a low percentage of accusations in general... is that even a good focus area?

Except, that is the one where I might actually have something to contribute. 

In addition, I can't believe that the price of standing up for the wrongfully accused is harming others who have been abused. It certainly doesn't have to be.

A big part of that will be listening to accusations. That is important for the victimized, but that listening is also what allows the false accusations to unravel.

It seems obvious, but then we break into teams, where we like this person, or hate this person, or have unacknowledged bias against this person.

There is a lot to unravel, and I am going to spend some time on that.

Otherwise, the one thing I did differently before posting this was that I took the Word document that had all of the screenshots and quotes and saved it as a PDF, just in case anyone is ever interested.