DC Council Votes to Recognize Same Sex Marriages Performed in Other States
The Washington, DC Council voted in a 12 to 1 vote yesterday to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states. The council voted unanimously for the measure in a preliminary vote in April. Mayor Adrian Fenty is expected to sign the measure.
Former DC Mayor and Councilmember Marion Barry, who supports same sex domestic partnership and marriage rights, but cast the sole vote against the bill, said after the vote that "All hell is going to break lose….We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this," reported the Washington Post. An emotional debate took place at the council meeting prior to the vote. At one point, Councilmember David Catania, who is openly gay, said "this issue is whether or not our colleagues, on a personal level, view me and Jim Graham as your equals….if we are permitted the same rights and responsibilities and obligations as our colleagues. So this is personal. This is acknowledging our families as much as we acknowledge yours," according to the Washington Post.
Congress has jurisdiction over DC's laws and has 30 days after the measure is signed to reject the measure. In order to block the legislation, a joint resolution against the legislation must be passed by Congress and this resolution must be approved by the president, according to the Washington Times. If Congress does not take action, the measure will become law. In a statement, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said “I do not believe that a serious attempt to overturn the Council bill will be made or would be successful."
Media Resources: Feminist Daily Newswire 4/8/09; Washington Times 5/6/09; Eleanor Holmes Norton Statement 5/5/09; Washington Post 5/6/09
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Same Sex Marriage Bill Passes in Maine Senate
The Maine state House voted yesterday in favor of a bill that would allow same sex couples to marry in the state in a 89 to 58 vote. The state Senate voted in favor of the bill last week in a 20 to 15 vote. The Boston Globe reported that the bill will be voted on once more in both the House and the Senate before being sent to Governor John Baldacci.
According to the Associated Press, it is unclear whether Governor Baldacci will sign the bill if it is passed by the legislature. A recent poll showed 47.3 percent of Maine residents support the same sex marriage bill and that 49.5 percent oppose the legislation, reported the Associated Press.
Thousands gathered for a Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill in April and, according to the Bangor Daily News, the crowd gave a standing ovation to the bill's sponsor, state Senator Dennis Damon.
If the legislation is approved, Maine would be the fifth state to permit same sex marriage in the United States after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont. Similar legislation is currently under consideration in New York and New Hampshire.
Media Resources: Feminist Daily Newswire 5/1/09, 4/30/09; Associated Press 4/22/09, 4/22/09; Bangor Daily News 4/22/09; Boston Globe 5/5/09
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Potential Voting Fraud Concern for Afghan Women
As Afghanistan approaches their August presidential election, the potential for voter fraud that infringes on women's rights is gaining visibility. Women have been registering to vote in suspiciously high levels in regions of the country where women rarely travel. In a press conference, Dr. Sima Samar, chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission explained that "men are just bringing the names of a woman and getting registration cards on their behalf and that is why I can say there is a possibility of fraud," Reuters reported.
Samar further explained "Two issues are of concern for me. First is that the right of the woman to cast her vote will not be given to her, and the second is that it's possible that there will be serious fraud in the election by this method," reported the Associated Press.
Kai Eide, the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, told Reuters that "Of course we are worried about the irregularities [in registration], but...there is still a possibility to correct much of this on polling day....We know that during the last election there was rather serious fraud at that level on polling day and immediately afterwards, and that is what the system we are trying to put in place now is intended to minimize."
Media Resources: Associated Press 5/4/09; Reuters 5/3/09
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
Fabulously Feminist at 75!!!
Gloria Steinem: Still Committing 'Outrageous Acts' at 75
By Joni Evans
Gloria Steinem, renowned feminist, activist, author, Emmy Award-winning writer, lecturer and all-around wOw-worthy woman turned 75 years old recently. This and other world wonders got me thinking about how someone who has played such a major role in the modern women's movement (that rippled to every shore in the world) sees herself and our world right now -- and where she thinks we are headed. Here's what she said ...
wOw: What do you think is the greatest achievement in women's rights in your lifetime?
Steinem: A critical mass of people here and around the world no longer believe that biology should dictate women's lives, so any woman who tries to be fully human is defying God, Freud and nature -- and is crazy. That's huge! It affects everything. That's why there is now a global women's movement, including some men who see that pretending to be superior limits their humanity, too.
Of course, consciousness changes a lot faster than power structures. We lose about six million lives every year just because they were born female -- that's due to infanticide, favoring boys with food and health care, deaths from female genital mutilation, sexual assault, dowry killings, domestic violence and the ideas enshrined in such terms as "crimes of passion" or "honor killings." There are also more enslaved people now than there were in the 1800s -- and sex trafficking plus sweatshops means that they're mostly women and children.
This country is lagging behind just about every modern democracy in family-friendly work policies, national childcare and health care, sex education, contraception, maternal mortality, way behind in women in elected office -- you name it.
But the big victory is that we know our fate can change, and we have more legal tools and local-to-global groups to do it. There are now several living generations of women -- and some men, too -- who realize that the sexual caste system is intertwined with every single thing we have to transform, from class and race and the idea that man should conquer nature to the violence in families that normalizes every other violence.
wOw: Can women who aren't pro-choice be feminists?
Steinem: Absolutely, they can be anti-choice for themselves and do their best to persuade others; they just can't support laws or harassment or clinic bombings that take choice away from other women. Feminists have always gone to the same lengths to protect women from being pressured into abortions they don't want as to keep abortion safe and legal. The point is not what we choose but that we have the power to make a choice.
wOw: It seems that giving life is less valuable than taking it, that mothers are less valued than soldiers -- even that taking a life at creation is more punished than taking a life in war. How did this happen?
Steinem: If you say that half the human race is inferior to the other half, then the inferior half devalues whatever it does. Being a nurse is comparable to, say, being a pharmacist, but nurses earn less because pharmacists are mostly men. I've marched with nurses on picket lines because the men who picked up garbage at the same hospital earned more than nurses did. I just talked to all the Texas librarians. They supervise one of the last public spaces, they democratize knowledge and also technology since libraries offer free access to computers. Right now, they're flooded with job seekers learning computers or doing resumes and job searches -- yet they and their libraries are supposed to get by on a tiny fraction of what's paid to people who just move money around.
This devaluing is especially true of giving birth because controlling female bodies as the most basic means of production -- the means of reproduction -- is the way we got into this male-dominated mess in the first place. We also became the world's biggest source of unpaid or underpaid labor, first for raising and socializing children and then for anything called "women's work."
wOw: Over the years, have you seen men in a different light since your feminist heyday? Feel differently about them? Have things gotten better?
Steinem: Probably because I had a very kindhearted father who raised me when I was little as much as my mother did - because she was often ill - I've always known that men were not distant or controlling by nature; men like that have never felt "like home." But I see them in the public world and other women's lives and the everyday news stories of abuse.
It's more of a feminist heyday now because I see more men who are real partners, real parents to their children and real allies to women. When I talk to groups of men, what they most want to talk about is how much they missed having real fathers. If we can help men become the fathers they wished they had, we'll have a revolution!
Of course, I also see the tragedies caused by men who feel their masculinity and sense of self depend on controlling and abusing and even eliminating women -- like the radio executive here last month who beheaded his wife when she asked him for a divorce, or the gangs of men who rape and eviscerate women in Bosnia or the Congo. This cult of masculinity doesn't seem to depend on age, but on how males were raised.
But I would say in general that women and men are more able to be friends, to be honest with each other, to see each other as individuals, not categories. We've gained a global network of self-respecting women, and we've gained a smaller network of men who lead groups against male violence, who empathize with their wives and daughters, who realize there's no such thing as democracy without feminism, and who see that the prison of masculinity is killing them, too. Olaf Palme, who was chief of state in Sweden, said that it's up to governments to humanize gender roles because they are the cause of most violence on earth.
wOw: What do you think are the most pressing issues to address over the next ten years?
Steinem: I don't want to pick out just one issue or area; we're strongest when each woman joins women who share her experience, and they work on whatever needs changing in their own lives.
If we take the problem that afflicts the biggest number of women in this country, it's the double-role problem. We've learned that women can do what men can do, but we haven't yet learned that men can do what women do. What's most discouraging about this is that many women are still accepting it instead of getting angry. More women probably protest unequal pay than protest unequal parenthood -- or even the lack of flexible work patterns and childcare that are routine in many other countries. It's obvious that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it, yet the media coverage of work/family issues almost never even mentions men or the government.
Men as nurturers are important not just to free up women, but for children. If they grow up being cared for only or mostly by women, they believe that men can't be as loving and nurturing as women are - which is a libel on men - and they just replicate the gender roles that limit everybody.
In the world at large, and for young and poor women plus women in the U.S. military, reproductive freedom -- and the lack of it -- affects the biggest number of women. I hope that within a decade, every statement of human rights will include reproductive freedom right along with freedom of speech. Reproductive freedom just means the right to own our own bodies, to have or not to have children, in safety and without government interference. Whether a woman has children or not is the biggest single determinant of whether she's educated or not, poor or not, and healthy or not, yet we've been suppressing sex education in schools and reproductive choices in health care. Some examples are so bizarre, you couldn't make them up. For example, many health plans pay for Viagra but not for birth control. Also one-in-three women in our military in Iraq say they've been sexually assaulted by their own comrades, yet their health care won't provide abortions.
wOw: Your famous "This is what 40/50/60 looks like - we've been lying so long, who would know?" has served generations of women (and Oprah said of you last year, "This is what 74 can be!"). How does 75 look and feel to you?
Steinem: The good news is I don't feel much different from my younger self - actually, better than I did before my late 30s when the women's movement came along to rescue me from trying to be somebody else. I'm working at what I love, I'm on the road as much as ever, I have as much energy and I have a chosen family of friends. Once in a while, when I'm doing something very ordinary, a feeling of well-being comes over me and I realize I'm happy.
The bad news is that all this makes me feel immortal - and causes me to plan poorly! I hear about something that happened 20 or 25 years ago, it seems like yesterday, and then I realize that even if I'm very lucky, this is all the time I have left. Even if I make it to 100 as I plan to do, it won't be long before I'll have to leave everything I love. I'm trying to use this to help me use time better. It's not so much about aging now as about mortality.
The odd thing is that I knew this long ago. A stranger just sent me an e-mail with a quote of mine under her sign-off: "Life is time, and time is all there is." I wrote that in my 30s, but then I went right on thinking I was immortal for the next 40 years. The distance between knowing and understanding, between head and heart, must be the longest distance on earth.
wOw: Are you as happy/healthy/strong/wise? What regimen do you keep -- if any -- for your spectacular beauty?
Steinem: I'm happy, healthy and strong, but I don't know about wise. Every day I discover how little I know; it's just that I also discover that other people don't know as much as I thought. I also have to tell you that words like "spectacular beauty" never entered my life until I was a feminist. I think I was just a surprise, as if people were saying, "If a woman could get a man, why would she want equal pay?"
Now, I look in the mirror, I see all kinds of age changes, and I think, "Well, I expected that, but not THAT!" Beginning at around 50, I started to realize that our bodies lose what they need to support someone else, and keep what they need to support us. How smart is that!? It's interesting to watch my body do something that it knows how to do but I don't.
I'm not health conscious by the standards of vegan joggers, but I'm more conscious than I used to be. I was the classic Midwesterner who grew up on cheeseburgers, malteds and candy bars. I didn't do sports or know female people who did sports -- except maybe Ladies' Night Bowling -- and I thought exercise was for athletes. The only thing I did was dance because I loved it and I thought it might get me out of Toledo and into show business. I'm still hooked on sugar and I still don't do sports, but I'm a vegetarian because I had a brush with breast cancer more than 20 years ago and I learned the dangers of hormones and chemicals in animal fat.
Which reminds me: Why are there so many races for the cure and for testing, but not for prevention? It's because there's no profit in prevention. People who profit from creating carcinogens get angry when you point out the most obvious causes of cancer among people with no family history of it.
Anyway, I try to exercise two or three times a week when I'm not on the road, and I love walking in New York. I'm lucky to have low blood pressure, a lot of endurance, and an Olympic ability to sleep on planes.
When reporters started to ask at about 50 if I would have a facelift, I used to say maybe after 70. Well, here I am and I still wouldn't. I'd like to say it's because I can't imagine Georgia O'Keeffe or Eleanor Roosevelt or Rosa Parks with a facelift, but the truth is I'm afraid I'd become like the guy with a bad toupee; when you're talking to him, you can't think of anything else.
wOw: Your marriage was tragically cut short by your husband's unexpected death. But, blessedly, you had a wonderful union, even if only for a short time. What makes for a good marriage? And is the institution evolving for better or worse?
Steinem: We were more surprised than anyone else when we got married - I was 66 and he was 59 - but we loved each other and wanted to be together, and the women's movement had spent 30 years equalizing the marriage laws, so why not? Of course, "husband and wife" still sounded like roles, not people, so we referred to each other as "the friend I married." We got married legally in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. It turned out to be very important two years later when he became very ill with primary brain lymphoma and there were medical permissions and almost a year of huge expense that wouldn't otherwise have been covered by my insurance. It made me realize even more deeply that marriage has to be an institution open to everyone.
I think the rock-bottom requirement for any good partnership is that you want what's best for the other person. Then come such things as shared humor and sensuousness, loving to do the little stuff together, and respecting each other's work and purpose in life.
So does an honest idea of marriage. Margaret Mead always pointed out that marriage worked better in the 19th century because we only lived to be 50. The problem now is that we're made to blame ourselves if it doesn't last for a lifetime that's about 30 years longer. David and I married late. Other people marry early, raise children together and then go amicably off to another stage of life. Who says that living longer or having different stages in our lives is a failure?
Yes, the institution of marriage is getting better because it's more equal, freely chosen, no longer the only way to have sex or get out of your parents' house. It's become a "want to" rather than a "have to." Even its words are changing from the old, bad ones like "marriage trap," "ball and chain," "my husband lets me ..." and so on.
wOw: You wrote an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times in January 2008 before the primary elections saying that you thought Sen. Obama was seen as unifying his race while Sen. Clinton was seen as divisive by her sex (playing the gender card, etc.). You felt the gender barrier was not taken as seriously as the race barrier. Upon reflection, do you think it was Secretary Clinton's sex that lost out to Obama's race?
Steinem: I think race and sex are intertwined and can only be uprooted together. For one thing, most people in the world are affected by both, and for another, racism needs some degree of visible difference to keep going in the long run, and the female body has to be controlled as the means of production in order to maintain that difference. That's why it's not practical to be a feminist without also being anti-racist, and it's not practical to fight racism without also being a feminist.
I also wrote about supporting both Clinton and Obama for a year, then when I had to decide who to vote for in the primary, I supported Clinton. She had far more experience, especially with the ultra-right wing, but I also made clear that I would be happy to work for Obama. What made me the craziest about the election was that sex and race were being ranked instead of linked - even though Obama and Clinton were almost identical on issues.
I never thought Hillary Clinton could win, which made it all the more important to support her - not because I believed that sexism is more serious than racism. I didn't think she could win for the same reason that over the years when asked when we would have a woman president, I've always said that several varieties of men would come first. It's because sexism is more pervasive. Females are half of every group, and most of us of every race have experienced female authority when we were children, so we think it's not appropriate to adulthood. Some people feel regressed to childhood when they see a powerful woman - which is another reason why men should play an equal role in raising children, and why women should be equally in authority outside the home.
I think that Clinton and Obama are not the end but the beginning. Together, they showed us the talent we've been missing for 200 years by choosing our national leadership from such a tiny talent pool - only about six percent of the population, which is what's left after eliminating Americans by sex, race and class. They symbolize the richness of future leadership.
wOw: President Obama reversed the "global gag rule" that withheld U.S. foreign aid from any group that referred women for abortions, even if it used its own funds to do so. What new legislation do you wish Obama would put forth next?
Steinem: There's plenty just waiting to restore the damage done by eight years of Bush marching in lockstep with the anti-woman right wing. For instance, there are seven bills gathered together under the heading, "Prevention First." They include REAL, which stands for Respectful Education About Life; a bill that would restore sex education to schools. Under Bush, federally funded sex education was the only subject in which knowledge was valued by its absence. Our tax dollars were used fraudulently to support abstinence-only education that increased all the problems it was supposed to diminish, from unwanted teenage pregnancy and STDs to abortions and an increased number of abused children. These seven bills also include treating prescription contraception like any other prescription, making emergency contraception available at hospitals for rape survivors -- and much more.
We also need to include reproductive health in any upcoming health-care legislation -- from contraception and safe abortion to prenatal care -- and not just exclude parts of our bodies.
It isn't part of national discussion yet, but there's also an opportunity to change tax policy so that caregiving has an attributed value - whether it's raising children or caring for elderly parents or AIDS patients, whether by women or by men - and this value becomes tax deductible if we pay taxes, and tax refundable if we're too poor to pay taxes. It's in the national interest to reward doing this work at home where it's less expensive and usually better done, and we would finally be making visible a third of the productive work in the country.
There are a lot of things that don't need legislation, just looking at the way policy already affects the female half of the country - and vice versa. For instance, a lack of childcare doubly burdens young girls who have to become substitute parents for their younger siblings. Hospital emergency rooms are bearing an impossible burden, and half of the women who need them have been hurt by an intimate partner.
wOw: What is your new book about? Of the four books you have written, which remains the most meaningful to you?
Steinem: I'm writing an on-the-road book about being an itinerant feminist organizer for almost 40 years. It's been the least visible part of my life, but the biggest and most important part of my time. As Gandhi always said, you have to go where people are. People still need to be in a room together with all five senses; that 's why we have reflector cells in our brains -- they allow empathy. Mass media and the Internet are great, but you wouldn't expect babies to bond with their parents over the Internet, and adults have a hard time doing that, too. In the abolitionist and suffragist era, there were many traveling organizers, and I'm hoping to tempt a few readers into this wandering life. Going on the road is right up there with life-threatening emergencies, meditation and truly mutual sex as a way of being fully alive in the present.
Choosing a favorite book is like choosing a favorite child. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions is still the most translated and used in courses. As a writer, I'm glad it's still relevant, but as an activist, I wish it weren't. Revolution From Within is deeper and gets more this-changed-my-life responses. The most unusual one lately was from a young man who had a paragraph from Revolution From Within tattooed on one side of his chest, and sent me a photograph. I was shocked! When I asked a young woman in my office what she thought, she said, "I would have chosen a different font." I guess you could say that's a generational difference!
wOw: Men continue to dominate decision-making roles in corporations, government and the media. Do you see any strong strides in these three areas?
Steinem: Women in corporations are like an immigrant group. We have a hard time making it up through someone else's hierarchy, so we're more likely to start our own businesses, in the way that Irish and Italians and Jews had to do. Yes, it's important to keep pressing inside corporations, but by itself, it's not enough.
Politics gives us the best chance of choosing our own leaders, not just having them picked for us. Our voting power was how we got Bella Abzug and Patsy Mink and Shirley Chisholm and Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee and Hillary Clinton; all very different from those who were hired; say, Carly Fiorina and Condoleezza Rice.
In media, we now have a large group of women with expertise and a track record, but on camera, they still have to be younger and better looking than their male counterparts. Off camera, they still occupy only about six percent of the "clout" positions; that is, the jobs where programming and news decisions are made.
This last dilemma is why we started the Women's Media Center. It monitors the media, as we did during the election, it trains women experts to be on-camera authorities, and it covers stories that are otherwise invisible. You can go to womensmediacenter.com with your coffee in the morning.
wOw: Are you still friendly with any of the "groundbreakers" -- Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer -- or know what they are up to?
Steinem: I only once met Germaine Greer, but I sometimes see Susan or Kate Millett. I often see and work with Robin Morgan, Alice Walker, Wilma Mankiller, Dolores Huerta, Marilyn French, Esther Broner, Suzanne Braun Levine, Letty Pogrebin, Marie Wilson, Ellie Smeal, Marlo Thomas. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Holly Near, Johnnetta Cole, Marysa Navarro - and a lot more. I can't imagine any bigger reward than their friendship, smarts, humor, knowing they'll be there no matter what, and the "Aha!" of understanding because we're always discovering something new.
wOw: In your wonderful book, Outrageous Acts, you advocate that we should do something outrageous every day. Your quote: "Once I began to listen to my own authentic voice -- or at least to realize I had one -- I discovered a new answer to my earlier rhetorical question: How much more rebellious could I get?The answer was: a lot." Are you still doing outrageous acts? What did you do on your birthday?
Steinem: I had a great dinner with friends in a Lower East Side restaurant. My only regret is that I didn't tape the stories they told, from one who had gone to a Buddhist retreat in the Himalayas but found she could only meditate on sexual fantasies, to another who identified with his favorite age of 59 and then never changed it.
I'm thinking of having a tattoo for my birthday. I like the art nouveau-looking ones that I see on women's backs just below their jeans -- it's rebelliously known as a tramp stamp -- but if it hurts, I won't do it. My real birthday present to myself is going back to Zambia to live with elephants for a few days.
Right on!!!
Kenyan women to sex-starve men -- for politics
Women's activist groups in Kenya have called for a seven-day sex ban on the country's men in an attempt to shock the political class into overcoming bitter feuds and working together.
"This is a national boycott to show that the women of this country have resolved to push for reforms," Rukia Subow of Maendeleo ya Wanawake of the G10 umbrella of Kenyan women's organisations said late Wednesday.
The activists argued that the country's egocentric male leaders should have no time for matters of the flesh when the east African nation is ensnared in economic and political trouble.
The grouping even said it would pay prostitutes to join the strike.
"We want an urgent solution to the political problems facing this country," Subow said, urging the wives of quarreling coalition partners President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to support the movement.
The premier's wife, Ida Odinga, said she supported the strike body and soul.
"This should not be seen as a punishment to men, it is a measure that is aimed at drawing their attention to the real issues," she told AFP.
Patricia Nyaudi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers, argued the initiative was more than just a media stunt and was aimed at promoting a stronger sense of sacrifice.
"Let people not end up trivialising this issue. It is a serious one and needs attention. The idea is to deny ourselves what we consider essential for the good of our country," she said.
Raila accused Kibaki of stealing the December 2007 presidential election, prompting protests that spiralled into a cycle of tribal violence and killed around 1,500 people.
The two rivals were pressured into a power-sharing deal by an international mediation but lingering tensions, petty disputes and individual appetites have crippled the coalition government and fueled wide popular discontent.
© 2009 AFP
Women's activist groups in Kenya have called for a seven-day sex ban on the country's men in an attempt to shock the political class into overcoming bitter feuds and working together.
"This is a national boycott to show that the women of this country have resolved to push for reforms," Rukia Subow of Maendeleo ya Wanawake of the G10 umbrella of Kenyan women's organisations said late Wednesday.
The activists argued that the country's egocentric male leaders should have no time for matters of the flesh when the east African nation is ensnared in economic and political trouble.
The grouping even said it would pay prostitutes to join the strike.
"We want an urgent solution to the political problems facing this country," Subow said, urging the wives of quarreling coalition partners President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to support the movement.
The premier's wife, Ida Odinga, said she supported the strike body and soul.
"This should not be seen as a punishment to men, it is a measure that is aimed at drawing their attention to the real issues," she told AFP.
Patricia Nyaudi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers, argued the initiative was more than just a media stunt and was aimed at promoting a stronger sense of sacrifice.
"Let people not end up trivialising this issue. It is a serious one and needs attention. The idea is to deny ourselves what we consider essential for the good of our country," she said.
Raila accused Kibaki of stealing the December 2007 presidential election, prompting protests that spiralled into a cycle of tribal violence and killed around 1,500 people.
The two rivals were pressured into a power-sharing deal by an international mediation but lingering tensions, petty disputes and individual appetites have crippled the coalition government and fueled wide popular discontent.
© 2009 AFP
Good Bye to My Fave Golden Girl
Right on, Bea
Elizabeth Schulte looks back at the life of actress Beatrice Arthur and her most famous role--as the "women's libber" Maude.
April 30, 2009
Bea Arthur as the title character in Maude
WHEN YOU hear five-foot-nine, 47-year-old woman with a deep, husky voice, one of the last things most people think of today is a prime-time television star. But go back to 1972, when the women's liberation movement was in full swing, and the choice was obvious.
The sitcom Maude, which ran from a 1972 to 1978, starred Beatrice Arthur as the liberal feminist head of her Westchester, N.Y., household. Bea Arthur died on April 25 at the age of 86 of lung cancer. Arthur's depiction of Maude--oftentimes abrasive, sometimes sensitive and always funny--made a mark forever on television comedy history.
Before television, Arthur had a long career on the stage in musical theater. In 1947, Arthur moved to New York City to study theater at New School for Social Research. Her classmates included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Tony Curtis.
In 1954, she got a part in the off-Broadway premier of the English version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera, alongside Lotte Lenya. With her big voice and big stage presence, she dominated in later roles as Vera Charles in Mame and Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.
She said in an interview several years ago that she always dreamed of playing the big female leads, of being the actress "wearing the white dress," but it never happened for her on the stage. Arthur said that something actress and movie magazine beauty Tallulah Bankhead said to her stuck with her: "It's all about bone structure."
Despite what Bankhead said, Arthur's imposing presence and bass-baritone voice didn't stop her from becoming an unforgettable comedic talent and stage presences. As late as 2002, she returned to Broadway to star in show that incorporated stories and songs about her life and career.
Arthur managed to span several decades of television era, from the George Gobel Show in the 1950s to The Golden Girls--the only sitcom where all the lead characters were all older women (and they all have sex lives) in the 1980s. In her later years, she made several cameos, including the voice of the "Femputer" that ruled the giant Amazonian women on an episode of the animated TV comedy Futurama.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT MORE than anything else, Bea Arthur will be remembered for her role in Maude. In 1972, television writer Norman Lear called with an offer for Arthur to take on the part of Maude Findlay, the "women's libber" cousin of Edith Bunker on All in the Family. Liberal to a fault, Maude was supposed to be the antithesis of Edith's husband Archie.
Maude's theme song gives you the picture:
Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn't care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.
Isadora was the first bra burner
And you're glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.
And then there's Maude...
That old compromisin', enterprisin', anything but tranquilizing,
Right on Maude.
Like the characters on All in the Family, Maude was an exaggeration of the idea of the middle-class liberal. She was loud and opinionated, but at the same time, Maude wasn't always completely sure what doing the right thing meant.
Oftentimes, Lear was poking fun at this middle-class person with a conscience whose guilt sometimes got in the way of her common sense. For instance, in one episode, Maude insists on her new Black maid walking through the front door, because of the way it will look to the neighbors--even though the woman really wants to go through the back door, since it's easier for her to do her work.
Maude was like no other woman on television until that time--she was divorced (four times), she was outspoken, she was brash and she was pushing 50. And while her character may not have always been right, Maude grappled with themes and issues in ways that are unheard-of today.
Maude dealt with racism, sexual equality, divorce, menopause, mental illness, alcoholism--the list goes on. In one episode, Maude points out the hypocrisy of drug laws, where poor people get arrested for a tiny bit of marijuana while middle-class people pop handfuls of prescription drugs with their cocktails.
"We tackled everything except hemorrhoids," Bea Arthur said in a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television. And while not everyone will agree with everything it said, the show embraced the debates and discussions of the time--managing to be irreverent, but also take things seriously. The war in Vietnam, the women's movement, the Black Power movement--they were all topics.
Reflecting the political climate of 1970s, Maude usually took the right side, and Maude usually won. Whether it was words of warning to her husband, Walter--"God will get you for that, Walter"--or a jab at her Republican neighbor's support for Richard Nixon, Maude usually won the fight.
The best controversial episodes, however, were those about Maude's unplanned pregnancy and decision to seek an abortion. Not only had no other TV show ever talked about abortion before, no show has talked about it in the same way since.
The two-part episode was broadcast in November 1972, just two months after abortion became legal in New York state. It was not until January 1973 that the Supreme Court made their ruling on Roe v. Wade, making women's right to abortion the law of the land.
Two CBS affiliates canceled the episodes, called "Maude's Dilemma," and 32 affiliates were pressured not to rerun the segments in the summer of 1973 by abortion opponents. But some 65 million people tuned into the second airing of the program.
The episodes are available online and well worth watching. It's immensely liberating to see people in a sitcom talk frankly about a woman's right to control her own body. And while there are also any number of vasectomy and morning sickness jokes to go around, these episodes are dead serious.
As Maude's grown daughter Carol (played by Adrienne Barbeau) assures her:
Mother, we are free, we finally have the right to decide what we can do with our own bodies...You're just scared, and it's as simple as going to the dentist...Listen to me, it's a simple operation now. But when you were growing up, it was illegal, and it was dangerous, and it was sinister, and you've never gotten over that...it's not your fault, when you were young, abortion was a dirty word. It's not anymore. You think about that.
Maude responds by embracing her daughter.
The resolution Maude eventually reaches with her husband is just as satisfying. Over a game of gin in bed, Walter admits that he never wanted to have children and has always felt guilty about feeling that way (another conversation that never happens between a couple on TV.) When it's clear that Maude has decided on the abortion, Walter says:
For you, Maude, for me, in the privacy of our own lives, you are doing the right thing.
Here's to hoping a new generation of struggles will shake things up and bring us the kind of television that reflects actual people's concerns and hopes. That's reality TV that I can't wait for.
From Socialist Worker
Elizabeth Schulte looks back at the life of actress Beatrice Arthur and her most famous role--as the "women's libber" Maude.
April 30, 2009
Bea Arthur as the title character in Maude
WHEN YOU hear five-foot-nine, 47-year-old woman with a deep, husky voice, one of the last things most people think of today is a prime-time television star. But go back to 1972, when the women's liberation movement was in full swing, and the choice was obvious.
The sitcom Maude, which ran from a 1972 to 1978, starred Beatrice Arthur as the liberal feminist head of her Westchester, N.Y., household. Bea Arthur died on April 25 at the age of 86 of lung cancer. Arthur's depiction of Maude--oftentimes abrasive, sometimes sensitive and always funny--made a mark forever on television comedy history.
Before television, Arthur had a long career on the stage in musical theater. In 1947, Arthur moved to New York City to study theater at New School for Social Research. Her classmates included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Tony Curtis.
In 1954, she got a part in the off-Broadway premier of the English version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Three Penny Opera, alongside Lotte Lenya. With her big voice and big stage presence, she dominated in later roles as Vera Charles in Mame and Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.
She said in an interview several years ago that she always dreamed of playing the big female leads, of being the actress "wearing the white dress," but it never happened for her on the stage. Arthur said that something actress and movie magazine beauty Tallulah Bankhead said to her stuck with her: "It's all about bone structure."
Despite what Bankhead said, Arthur's imposing presence and bass-baritone voice didn't stop her from becoming an unforgettable comedic talent and stage presences. As late as 2002, she returned to Broadway to star in show that incorporated stories and songs about her life and career.
Arthur managed to span several decades of television era, from the George Gobel Show in the 1950s to The Golden Girls--the only sitcom where all the lead characters were all older women (and they all have sex lives) in the 1980s. In her later years, she made several cameos, including the voice of the "Femputer" that ruled the giant Amazonian women on an episode of the animated TV comedy Futurama.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT MORE than anything else, Bea Arthur will be remembered for her role in Maude. In 1972, television writer Norman Lear called with an offer for Arthur to take on the part of Maude Findlay, the "women's libber" cousin of Edith Bunker on All in the Family. Liberal to a fault, Maude was supposed to be the antithesis of Edith's husband Archie.
Maude's theme song gives you the picture:
Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn't care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.
Isadora was the first bra burner
And you're glad she showed up. (Oh yeah)
And when the country was falling apart
Betsy Ross got it all sewed up.
And then there's Maude...
That old compromisin', enterprisin', anything but tranquilizing,
Right on Maude.
Like the characters on All in the Family, Maude was an exaggeration of the idea of the middle-class liberal. She was loud and opinionated, but at the same time, Maude wasn't always completely sure what doing the right thing meant.
Oftentimes, Lear was poking fun at this middle-class person with a conscience whose guilt sometimes got in the way of her common sense. For instance, in one episode, Maude insists on her new Black maid walking through the front door, because of the way it will look to the neighbors--even though the woman really wants to go through the back door, since it's easier for her to do her work.
Maude was like no other woman on television until that time--she was divorced (four times), she was outspoken, she was brash and she was pushing 50. And while her character may not have always been right, Maude grappled with themes and issues in ways that are unheard-of today.
Maude dealt with racism, sexual equality, divorce, menopause, mental illness, alcoholism--the list goes on. In one episode, Maude points out the hypocrisy of drug laws, where poor people get arrested for a tiny bit of marijuana while middle-class people pop handfuls of prescription drugs with their cocktails.
"We tackled everything except hemorrhoids," Bea Arthur said in a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television. And while not everyone will agree with everything it said, the show embraced the debates and discussions of the time--managing to be irreverent, but also take things seriously. The war in Vietnam, the women's movement, the Black Power movement--they were all topics.
Reflecting the political climate of 1970s, Maude usually took the right side, and Maude usually won. Whether it was words of warning to her husband, Walter--"God will get you for that, Walter"--or a jab at her Republican neighbor's support for Richard Nixon, Maude usually won the fight.
The best controversial episodes, however, were those about Maude's unplanned pregnancy and decision to seek an abortion. Not only had no other TV show ever talked about abortion before, no show has talked about it in the same way since.
The two-part episode was broadcast in November 1972, just two months after abortion became legal in New York state. It was not until January 1973 that the Supreme Court made their ruling on Roe v. Wade, making women's right to abortion the law of the land.
Two CBS affiliates canceled the episodes, called "Maude's Dilemma," and 32 affiliates were pressured not to rerun the segments in the summer of 1973 by abortion opponents. But some 65 million people tuned into the second airing of the program.
The episodes are available online and well worth watching. It's immensely liberating to see people in a sitcom talk frankly about a woman's right to control her own body. And while there are also any number of vasectomy and morning sickness jokes to go around, these episodes are dead serious.
As Maude's grown daughter Carol (played by Adrienne Barbeau) assures her:
Mother, we are free, we finally have the right to decide what we can do with our own bodies...You're just scared, and it's as simple as going to the dentist...Listen to me, it's a simple operation now. But when you were growing up, it was illegal, and it was dangerous, and it was sinister, and you've never gotten over that...it's not your fault, when you were young, abortion was a dirty word. It's not anymore. You think about that.
Maude responds by embracing her daughter.
The resolution Maude eventually reaches with her husband is just as satisfying. Over a game of gin in bed, Walter admits that he never wanted to have children and has always felt guilty about feeling that way (another conversation that never happens between a couple on TV.) When it's clear that Maude has decided on the abortion, Walter says:
For you, Maude, for me, in the privacy of our own lives, you are doing the right thing.
Here's to hoping a new generation of struggles will shake things up and bring us the kind of television that reflects actual people's concerns and hopes. That's reality TV that I can't wait for.
From Socialist Worker
Monday, February 9, 2009
Fabulously Feminist News
UN Human Rights Council Urges Saudi Arabia to Give Women Rights
At a meeting late last week, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council urged Saudi Arabia to actively work to end pervasive human rights violations in the country, particularly those against women and children. According to Reuters, Britain, Switzerland, Canada, and Israel spoke against Saudi Arabia's current practices. Israel's delegation reportedly accused Saudi Arabia of "severe discrimination against women and minorities, corporal punishment, torture, forced labor, and the sexual exploitation of children."
Women's rights in Saudi Arabia are currently limited on a number of fronts including marriage rights, freedom to travel, property ownership, education, and work. According to Human Rights Watch, although some human rights laws have been introduced in Saudi Arabia, little implementation or enforcement of these laws has occurred.
Prior to the UN Human Rights Council review, Human Rights Watch's Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson, said that "The international community should ensure that its review of Saudi Arabia does not just produce more promises, leaving the Saudi people empty-handed….The Saudi reply to inquiries about rights violations or legal developments is typically total silence."
*************************************************
Defense of Marriage Act Questioned by Judge's Ruling
Last week a federal judge in the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the gay spouse of a federal employee is entitled to the same spousal health benefits that any heterosexual spouse would receive. Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled that the denial of spousal benefits "cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or…to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state,' reported the Los Angeles Times. This ruling is in direct contradiction to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which states that the federal government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriage.
According to MSNBC, in July 2008, Tony Sears had been denied health benefits after he married Brad Levenson, a deputy federal public defender for the 9th Circuit Court. Levenson appealed to the 9th Circuit's Standing Committee on Federal Public Defenders, chaired by Judge Reinhardt.
In a separate case last month, the 9th Circuit's chief justice, Alex Kozinski, also granted same-sex benefits to the same-sex spouse of 9th Circuit lawyer Karen Golinski. Kozinski considered the Federal Employee Health Benefits Act "vague" about the use of benefits for non-family members and thus ruled that Golinski's spouse should be covered.
Both cases were considered internal employee grievances and have no legal merit outside of the court’s executive office, but the rulings seriously question the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Sears and Levenson told the Los Angeles Times that they see this as "a step along the road to equality."
**************************************************
Senator Boxer to Chair Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Global Women's Issues
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues. This is the first time in history where women's issues will be a specific focus of a foreign relations subcommittee.
During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing, Senator Boxer presented photographs of women who had been burned in acid attacks and injured in gender-based violence worldwide. In reaction to the pictures, Senator Clinton promised to persuade leaders and governments internationally "that we cannot have a free, prosperous, peaceful progressive world if women are treated in such a discriminatory and violent way," according to the New York Times.
In a press release Senator Boxer said, "I am very grateful to our new Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry, for allowing me to focus part of my efforts on the worldwide status of women….This new subcommittee assignment offers a tremendous opportunity to shine the light of day on a very overlooked issue. Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress and with Secretary Clinton to stamp out violence against women in the world."
***From Our Friends at the Feminist Majority Foundation
At a meeting late last week, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council urged Saudi Arabia to actively work to end pervasive human rights violations in the country, particularly those against women and children. According to Reuters, Britain, Switzerland, Canada, and Israel spoke against Saudi Arabia's current practices. Israel's delegation reportedly accused Saudi Arabia of "severe discrimination against women and minorities, corporal punishment, torture, forced labor, and the sexual exploitation of children."
Women's rights in Saudi Arabia are currently limited on a number of fronts including marriage rights, freedom to travel, property ownership, education, and work. According to Human Rights Watch, although some human rights laws have been introduced in Saudi Arabia, little implementation or enforcement of these laws has occurred.
Prior to the UN Human Rights Council review, Human Rights Watch's Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson, said that "The international community should ensure that its review of Saudi Arabia does not just produce more promises, leaving the Saudi people empty-handed….The Saudi reply to inquiries about rights violations or legal developments is typically total silence."
*************************************************
Defense of Marriage Act Questioned by Judge's Ruling
Last week a federal judge in the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the gay spouse of a federal employee is entitled to the same spousal health benefits that any heterosexual spouse would receive. Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled that the denial of spousal benefits "cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or…to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state,' reported the Los Angeles Times. This ruling is in direct contradiction to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which states that the federal government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriage.
According to MSNBC, in July 2008, Tony Sears had been denied health benefits after he married Brad Levenson, a deputy federal public defender for the 9th Circuit Court. Levenson appealed to the 9th Circuit's Standing Committee on Federal Public Defenders, chaired by Judge Reinhardt.
In a separate case last month, the 9th Circuit's chief justice, Alex Kozinski, also granted same-sex benefits to the same-sex spouse of 9th Circuit lawyer Karen Golinski. Kozinski considered the Federal Employee Health Benefits Act "vague" about the use of benefits for non-family members and thus ruled that Golinski's spouse should be covered.
Both cases were considered internal employee grievances and have no legal merit outside of the court’s executive office, but the rulings seriously question the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Sears and Levenson told the Los Angeles Times that they see this as "a step along the road to equality."
**************************************************
Senator Boxer to Chair Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Global Women's Issues
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues. This is the first time in history where women's issues will be a specific focus of a foreign relations subcommittee.
During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing, Senator Boxer presented photographs of women who had been burned in acid attacks and injured in gender-based violence worldwide. In reaction to the pictures, Senator Clinton promised to persuade leaders and governments internationally "that we cannot have a free, prosperous, peaceful progressive world if women are treated in such a discriminatory and violent way," according to the New York Times.
In a press release Senator Boxer said, "I am very grateful to our new Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry, for allowing me to focus part of my efforts on the worldwide status of women….This new subcommittee assignment offers a tremendous opportunity to shine the light of day on a very overlooked issue. Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress and with Secretary Clinton to stamp out violence against women in the world."
***From Our Friends at the Feminist Majority Foundation
From our Friends at Amnesty International
Armed groups and government forces continue to abuse women and children in North Kivu
Armed groups are still recruiting child soldiers to fight in the ongoing conflict in the province of North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Those child soldiers who attempt to escape have been killed or tortured, sometimes in front of other children, to discourage further escapes. Children who are taken captive by the DRC army on suspicion of being armed group fighters, have faced ill-treatment and torture in military detention.
There is also continuing physical and sexual abuse of women and children in the conflict, according to the new Amnesty International report, North Kivu: No end to the war against women and children.
The report is based on research and eye witness testimony collected by an Amnesty International fact-finding mission in North Kivu in February and March 2008. It says that members of armed groups and government security forces continue to rape and sexually abuse women and girls and, in a smaller number of cases, men and boys. Infant children and elderly women are among the victims, many of whom have suffered gang rape or have been raped more than once.
These abuses are happening despite government and armed group commitments to immediately end these atrocities in a 23 January 2008 "Act of Engagement".
According to the Amnesty International report, of the former child soldiers who had been reunited with their families in North Kivu through a national demobilization programme, as many as half may since have been re-recruited by armed groups.
Beaten to death
One former child soldier told Amnesty International how two youths were beaten to death in front of him and other child recruits "as a lesson to all of us not to try to escape":
"[The boys] were brought out of a pit in the ground and presented to us during a training session. [An armed group senior commander] then gave the order to beat them. Two soldiers and a captain pushed them down into the mud. When they tired of kicking them?they beat them with wooden sticks. The punishment lasted 90 minutes, until they died."
Rape has been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been abducted and held as sexual slaves. In many cases, sexual abuse and rape appear to be ethnically motivated and/or aimed at terrorizing and demoralizing communities suspected of supporting enemy groups.
One 16-year-old rape survivor described how she had been abducted by two junior army officers and held captive in an army camp in North Kivu for several days before she was released. In the camp, she was raped nightly by one of the officers.
"The other officers and soldiers in the camp didn't seem to care or be willing to take responsibility", she told Amnesty International. She now suffers flashbacks and persistent headaches.
In its report, Amnesty International issued comprehensive recommendations to the armed groups, DRC government and the international community aimed at stopping human rights abuses. The recommendations include a call on armed groups to immediately release all children associated with their forces, and measures to end to the horror of sexual violence.
Background to the conflict
Despite a peace accord signed in January 2008, armed conflict has persisted in North Kivu. The fighting involves the regular Congolese army (FARDC) and the CNDP armed group under the command of a renegade general Laurent Nkuna, as well as a number of local mayi-mayi militia and the Rwandan FDLR armed group. Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced by renewed fighting in North Kivu since 28 August 2008, adding to more than 1 million people displaced by earlier violence in the region.
Armed groups are still recruiting child soldiers to fight in the ongoing conflict in the province of North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Those child soldiers who attempt to escape have been killed or tortured, sometimes in front of other children, to discourage further escapes. Children who are taken captive by the DRC army on suspicion of being armed group fighters, have faced ill-treatment and torture in military detention.
There is also continuing physical and sexual abuse of women and children in the conflict, according to the new Amnesty International report, North Kivu: No end to the war against women and children.
The report is based on research and eye witness testimony collected by an Amnesty International fact-finding mission in North Kivu in February and March 2008. It says that members of armed groups and government security forces continue to rape and sexually abuse women and girls and, in a smaller number of cases, men and boys. Infant children and elderly women are among the victims, many of whom have suffered gang rape or have been raped more than once.
These abuses are happening despite government and armed group commitments to immediately end these atrocities in a 23 January 2008 "Act of Engagement".
According to the Amnesty International report, of the former child soldiers who had been reunited with their families in North Kivu through a national demobilization programme, as many as half may since have been re-recruited by armed groups.
Beaten to death
One former child soldier told Amnesty International how two youths were beaten to death in front of him and other child recruits "as a lesson to all of us not to try to escape":
"[The boys] were brought out of a pit in the ground and presented to us during a training session. [An armed group senior commander] then gave the order to beat them. Two soldiers and a captain pushed them down into the mud. When they tired of kicking them?they beat them with wooden sticks. The punishment lasted 90 minutes, until they died."
Rape has been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been abducted and held as sexual slaves. In many cases, sexual abuse and rape appear to be ethnically motivated and/or aimed at terrorizing and demoralizing communities suspected of supporting enemy groups.
One 16-year-old rape survivor described how she had been abducted by two junior army officers and held captive in an army camp in North Kivu for several days before she was released. In the camp, she was raped nightly by one of the officers.
"The other officers and soldiers in the camp didn't seem to care or be willing to take responsibility", she told Amnesty International. She now suffers flashbacks and persistent headaches.
In its report, Amnesty International issued comprehensive recommendations to the armed groups, DRC government and the international community aimed at stopping human rights abuses. The recommendations include a call on armed groups to immediately release all children associated with their forces, and measures to end to the horror of sexual violence.
Background to the conflict
Despite a peace accord signed in January 2008, armed conflict has persisted in North Kivu. The fighting involves the regular Congolese army (FARDC) and the CNDP armed group under the command of a renegade general Laurent Nkuna, as well as a number of local mayi-mayi militia and the Rwandan FDLR armed group. Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced by renewed fighting in North Kivu since 28 August 2008, adding to more than 1 million people displaced by earlier violence in the region.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Another Gem by Our Freind Mr. Billet....
This may be the make or break year for American Idol. With its eighth season underway, the producers are scrambling for anything they think might inject some fresh blood into the show and pull it out of its three-year slump in viewership. With the economy in crisis and music industry CEOs starting to feel the pinch, the prospect of losing one of their biggest cash-cows is horrifying indeed (at least for them), and they are clearly desperate for anything that can help them bridge the ever-widening gap between profitability and substance.
Look closely enough, and the contradictions have always been there. On one hand, American Idol puts on display the fact that there lies an immense sea of talent and creativity in the masses of ordinary working people. It's precisely why millions of folks tune into the show every week hoping to see a little bit of themselves becoming a star. On the other hand, it's obvious that the AI producers would have no idea what to do with most of the talent out there.
Last season saw the show constantly criticized for being out of touch. Critics grew tired of the same old formula. They took to task the monotonous, stale litany of celebrity guests, each of which only seemed to cement AI's disconnect from current popular tastes (Dolly Parton and ZZ Top? Really?). That America's best-known judges predicted the barely pubescent David Archuleta's deep-fried Disney voice would beat out David Cook--even as the latter's impressive stage presence would gain him the victory by over 12 million votes--further confirms how out of it the show has indeed become.
And so, recent years have seen the show try to "shake things up." First, they allowed contestants to play their own instruments. Then they allowed original material to be sung during auditions. Now they've upped the team of three judges--Simon, Paula and Randy--to four by adding record producer Kara DioGuardi. It's a bit strange to think that DioGuardi, one of the most established figures in the record industry and daughter of former Republican Congressman John DioGuardi, might somehow be more relatable to middle America.
DioGuardi is certainly in good company. Watching Cowell, Jackson and Abdul stretching to bring in people with "originality" is quickly becoming the most entertaining part of the show. That's because no matter how much AI attempts to widen the pool, it still ends up shoving all the contestants into the narrowest of funnels. One has to give show creator Nigel Lythgoe credit; he certainly realizes that every groundbreaking musical act has come from among the masses. What he's completely missed is that none of them--from Billie Holiday to the Beatles to Grand Master Flash--made their name by dumbing themselves down or fitting into a "type."
Despite the show's stabs at genuine populism, its very existence as part of an increasingly out-of-touch music industry means that American Idol will never truly be able to fill the gap between top-down and bottom up. In fact, one could even argue that AI represents not an attempt at opening the gates, but tightening the industry's grip around music itself.
Think about it: other than Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson none of the crowned "Idols" have had a visible recording career lasting more than a few years. Though some have gone on to successful theatre and movie gigs, most have faded from the public view rather quickly. Given that most record companies keep close tabs over artists' first two or three albums, American Idol has definitely given the industry a renewed sense of control over some of their biggest stars.
Veteran rock critic and historian Dave Marsh framed the dynamic quite well in a recent interview:
"You go on American Idol and what's your run? Your run is 18 months to three years... you ain't getting to the third album, you're certainly not getting to the fourth! By the third album the curve is down and they [the record company] are gonna go work on somebody new--which is a new phenomenon... Why is that? The record companies figured out something that is very basic to their economics, which is that if you're going to build a career like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen who makes more than fifty or a hundred albums... [you're going to start] really getting paid for them... So the record companies, I think, made probably a fairly conscious decision at the highest levels not to have long-term stars anymore because it's too expensive."
This is, in essence, what American Idol is. It is a machine built for churning out quick, ready-made stars who can be discarded at will after all the money has been squeezed out. Though the show may drape itself in some vaguely democratic American dream, it's really run by the same short-sighted bottom line as any mortgage company or shadow banker.
Perhaps this is why the ratings for Idol's season premiere have declined for the third year in a row. It's hard to revel in the success of "one of your own" when so many others are losing their homes, jobs and any basic sense of certainty in their lives. And therein lies the crux. Tapping into the massive amounts of talent and creativity among folks out there would require a lot more than a contest. It ultimately means doing away with the system that pits us against one another in the first place.
This article first appeared on SleptOn.com.
Look closely enough, and the contradictions have always been there. On one hand, American Idol puts on display the fact that there lies an immense sea of talent and creativity in the masses of ordinary working people. It's precisely why millions of folks tune into the show every week hoping to see a little bit of themselves becoming a star. On the other hand, it's obvious that the AI producers would have no idea what to do with most of the talent out there.
Last season saw the show constantly criticized for being out of touch. Critics grew tired of the same old formula. They took to task the monotonous, stale litany of celebrity guests, each of which only seemed to cement AI's disconnect from current popular tastes (Dolly Parton and ZZ Top? Really?). That America's best-known judges predicted the barely pubescent David Archuleta's deep-fried Disney voice would beat out David Cook--even as the latter's impressive stage presence would gain him the victory by over 12 million votes--further confirms how out of it the show has indeed become.
And so, recent years have seen the show try to "shake things up." First, they allowed contestants to play their own instruments. Then they allowed original material to be sung during auditions. Now they've upped the team of three judges--Simon, Paula and Randy--to four by adding record producer Kara DioGuardi. It's a bit strange to think that DioGuardi, one of the most established figures in the record industry and daughter of former Republican Congressman John DioGuardi, might somehow be more relatable to middle America.
DioGuardi is certainly in good company. Watching Cowell, Jackson and Abdul stretching to bring in people with "originality" is quickly becoming the most entertaining part of the show. That's because no matter how much AI attempts to widen the pool, it still ends up shoving all the contestants into the narrowest of funnels. One has to give show creator Nigel Lythgoe credit; he certainly realizes that every groundbreaking musical act has come from among the masses. What he's completely missed is that none of them--from Billie Holiday to the Beatles to Grand Master Flash--made their name by dumbing themselves down or fitting into a "type."
Despite the show's stabs at genuine populism, its very existence as part of an increasingly out-of-touch music industry means that American Idol will never truly be able to fill the gap between top-down and bottom up. In fact, one could even argue that AI represents not an attempt at opening the gates, but tightening the industry's grip around music itself.
Think about it: other than Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson none of the crowned "Idols" have had a visible recording career lasting more than a few years. Though some have gone on to successful theatre and movie gigs, most have faded from the public view rather quickly. Given that most record companies keep close tabs over artists' first two or three albums, American Idol has definitely given the industry a renewed sense of control over some of their biggest stars.
Veteran rock critic and historian Dave Marsh framed the dynamic quite well in a recent interview:
"You go on American Idol and what's your run? Your run is 18 months to three years... you ain't getting to the third album, you're certainly not getting to the fourth! By the third album the curve is down and they [the record company] are gonna go work on somebody new--which is a new phenomenon... Why is that? The record companies figured out something that is very basic to their economics, which is that if you're going to build a career like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen who makes more than fifty or a hundred albums... [you're going to start] really getting paid for them... So the record companies, I think, made probably a fairly conscious decision at the highest levels not to have long-term stars anymore because it's too expensive."
This is, in essence, what American Idol is. It is a machine built for churning out quick, ready-made stars who can be discarded at will after all the money has been squeezed out. Though the show may drape itself in some vaguely democratic American dream, it's really run by the same short-sighted bottom line as any mortgage company or shadow banker.
Perhaps this is why the ratings for Idol's season premiere have declined for the third year in a row. It's hard to revel in the success of "one of your own" when so many others are losing their homes, jobs and any basic sense of certainty in their lives. And therein lies the crux. Tapping into the massive amounts of talent and creativity among folks out there would require a lot more than a contest. It ultimately means doing away with the system that pits us against one another in the first place.
This article first appeared on SleptOn.com.
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