Did Geraldine Ferraro really say that?
Geraldine Ferraro, once the first woman vice-presidential nominee, is providing grist for the Obama camp, now clamoring for her head. But the comments she made to the Torrance (CA) Daily Breeze are similar, if not identical, to those she made at a Livonia event last Thursday.
The Daily Breeze incited controversy with this Ferraro comment: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." But in Livonia, that line was part of a larger riff about her own status as the first female vice-presidential nominee. If she hadn't been a woman, she said, she wouldn't have been nominated.
If you listened to her comments in context, they compared her (failed) candidacy to his (ascendant)one. She said it. She meant it. Her candor, in the heat of a dead-heat campaign, provided the Obama campaign with a rejoinder to last week's Hillary "monster" quote. But it also shows how plucking a single line out of a newspaper is unlikely to explain the rest of the story.
Alvin's Gay Agenda
The holiday movies are toying with cultural stereotypes as if they were Wii controllers. I'm not sure how Focus On the Family has missed the deeply subversive message of Alvin and the Chipmunks, the PG-rated retro-romp that's being advertised as a heart-warming, amusing family picture. Oh, it's that all right, if you're not paying attention to the subtext agenda: The two main human characters are each single men, long-time rivals: One a greedy record producer, the other Dave Seville, the mild-mannered composer who discovers the singing chipmunks and revives his career. In the end, the movie's all about a very contemporary cross-species definition of "family." Isn't that the kind of thing that might make constitution-amending literalists scream: "Aaalvin"????
Juno, the quirky film about a winsome, witty 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant, is a bona fide bullseye for Right to Life: A literate and hip movie that makes the screaming protester outside the abortion clinic more appealing than the sorry clientele within. "Your baby has fingernails," is the cry that unexpectedly resonates. But that's how this movie gathers power -- cleverly turning the conventions of pregnancy politics inside out, then casting them off. Everyone -- dad, mom, the uptight would-be adoptive mom, and Juno herself -- turn out to be eccentric AND redeemable.
Art Lessons for the Upper Classes
The Saturday night gala for the all-new Detroit Institute of Arts is sold out. No, really sold out. One suburban would-be gala goer didn't realize how much she wanted to go until the $200 tickets sold out. As the buzz grew, so did her desire. "I decided to spring for the $600 tickets but was told those are all gone." All that remains, she was told, are special tickets for $2,500. "We can't do that. We're just the working rich," she sighs.
In Swedish,
I'm fascinated by the way former Gov. John Engler was perpetually called "tough," and Granholm is inevitably assailed for lacking that quality. Today, Republican Party chair Saul Anuzis derides the governor for using "blackmail," forcing Republicans to swallow tax increase poison, preferable to the certain (political) death they might face if they allowed a shut-down.
It seemed to me she was playing the game of politics and actually won -- if you can call forcing a tax hike a political victory. And calling her stance "blackmail" -- a crime associated with cowardice --works as a put-down, because it converts an act of tough-mindedness into something weak and unsavory.
But toughness has newfound currency, so much so that a Christian Science Monitor piece calls it a political "coin of the realm."
"In a recent Pew Research Center poll, Democrats overwhelmingly associated Clinton with the word "tough;" she beat Obama on that quality 67 percent to 14 percent. On most other qualities tested "energetic," "down-to-earth," "even-tempered," "optimistic," "honest," and "friendly" Obama came out on top." Even though Obama is perceived as more energetic, optimistic, friendly and honest, tough-gal Hillary is ahead..
Engler's toughness was admirable or infuriating, but nobody ever called the guy a wimp.
Britney and Babes in Freefall
I cannot believe that Britney Spears is not only alive but a live commodity. "She's been getting by on just being a babe," one man recently explained to me. Naw. Didn't Britney part company with babedom long ago? -- say, after two pregnancies, being a bad mommy, the rehabs, the baldness, the grotesque fashion choices. Cute she isn't.
Britney's media allure isn't about being a hottie or a pop singer or even a substance abuser anymore. The babe in freefall is America's most intriguing person, whether Britney, Lindsay, Nicole or Anna Nicole. Isn't it strange that, in an age when women are succeeding at never before seen levels, the femme fatale turned fatality is the culture's current obsession?
>Honey, I shrunk the fish...
Twice in the last month, in Detroit area restaurants, I've been told that the special fresh fish of the day was perch. Which sounded local and tasty. And in each instance, the server added that the delicious fresh perch was flown in from "South Africa." When I think "fresh", I'm not thinking about South Africa and Lake Victoria as a likely source for lake perch. Wouldn't Lake Huron be closer and tastier?
I didn't order the perch. But I was assured that the perch isn't tired and jet-lagged from its flight out of water because it was "Cryovaced." Frozen? The server nodded.
But fish can't be fresh and frozen, can it? I investigated the Cryovac website and discovered that the brand name applies to a variety of products, including a plastic bag that enables fresh fish producers to vacuum-seal ten pounds of fish at a time under pressure, then heat shrink the bag, then brine, and -- finally --chill to "between 34 degrees and 36 degrees Fahrenheit."
The perch from Lake Victoria is not, strictly speaking, frozen but neither is it decaying, rotten warm Lake Erie perch that your uncle caught two days ago. This fancy Cryovac-ed perch is so nearly frozen that it is still, miraculously, fresh. But it would be even fresher if your uncle caught it this morning and sauteed it lightly, in butter, tonight. Now I wonder why a restaurant would serve fish from South Africa that can be so easily caught locally. I've love to hear an answer.
And the Oscar Goes to...
If you thought my Aug. 30 column about Kwame Kilpatrick was too fawning -- and some readers did -- I need to say that the mayor's genius on the stand was largely a result of the failure of the plaintiff's counsel. Gary Brown's lawyer, Michael Stefani, allowed Kilpatrick the freedom to tell his own story. And Kilpatrick used every opening to his own advantage.
"Why should anyone fail to believe Kilpatrick's "feminist" testimony?" Al Kopacke of Garden City wrote me. Well, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that Kilpatrick's respect and admiration for women is as pristine as he suggested. But the mayor helped his own case in a masterful and convincing manner. Stefani should have boxed Kilpatrick in with tight questioning. Instead, he enabled the witness. And the mayor filled the room.
So you think that's sweet corn in the fields
Heading off on vacation last week, I had an ambitious reading plan that included three books: Michael Pollan's tome on food in the modern era, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Michael Chabon's "Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel", and -- to break the chain of books by guys named Michael -- a new book by Gerald "Gerry" Volgenau, "Shipwreck Hunter," which tells the tale of a Great Lakes diver and his misadventures. Alas, I only made it through "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which points out that virtually all of the corn growing in cornfields is used commercially -- for corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, corn feed for cows and chickens, and to formulate additives like xanthan gum, caramel color, dextrin, corn starch, maltodextrin. Yum.
It turns out that we're the corniest eaters in history, largely because the government subsidizes farmers to plant corn, not carrots or broccoli. A University of California biologist analyzed the contents of a McDonald's lunch with a mass spectrometer that enabled the scientist "to calculate how much of the carbon in it originally came from a corn plant."
In corn rank: sodas were 100 percent corn, the milk shake was 78 percent corn; chicken nuggets (56 percent), French fries (23 percent) corn. I'm still not sure whether we're more corn than, say, the Chinese "are" rice, and if that's necessarily a bad thing.
On Rabbi Sherwin Wine
On Sunday, sitting in traffic at the Blue Water Bridge, I was -- literally -- talking about Sherwin Wine when a news bulletin announced that he was dead, at 79. I had attended several lectures he had given recently and, until that moment, imagined we would one day sit down and talk about his efforts to carve out a Jewish belief system while keeping out the God part.
In those last lectures, he was speaking for history, consciously so, as if he knew he might soon be gone. He talked about his personal journey to creating Jewish humanism -- a religion that would be so ethical he wouldn't be forced to acknowledge supernatural beliefs he didn't hold. He was a modern man, who believed in the scientific method, and could not believe that religious seers from 3,000 years ago were the real authorities on big questions.
His range of knowledge, his memory, and his sheer command of facts were extraordinary. He would speak on modern Indian politics one day, on Islam the next, and then give a talk on contemporary American politics. Each lecture would be authoritative and delivered without notes.
Once perceived and widely denounced as a heretic, who horrified the local Jewish community when he founded the Birmingham Temple in 1963, he gradually won recognition as a visionary. His integrity would not allow him to be a conventional Jew: He wanted to believe the words he said, and faced head-on the difficulty of literally believing the Old Testament. It wasn't possible for him. He didn't want to "reform" what he saw as untruth, to "change the words," as he put it. He wrote new words.
Rabbi is the Hebrew word for teacher. And even those who were horrified by his views in 1963 eventually understood that he was a great example of that. His keen mind and thoughtful approaches attracted followers, young and old, who could always find new things to learn from him.
Comments: My name is Joseph SebagI happen to be the president of the Jewish community in ESSAOUIRA,I also have a gallery where i sell books bric a brac among other things, on Saturday the 21st of July Rabbi Sherwin Wine with his friend Richard McMains visited me, purchased some books on Morocco,spoke briefly about Michigan and his hometown,Detroit. I did not know how influential Rabbi Wine until his tragic death which shook the entire city of Essaouira the driver of the taxi died in the accident, left two children, God bless.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Column Under Skin
Efforts to amuse and write about smoking simultaneously proved trickier than I'd hoped when I wrote today's (Sept. 26) column. Smokers thought I was a liberal weenie; anti-smokers that I was a Neanderthal with little comprehension of the evils of cigarette smoke. "I just finished reading your column regarding Michigan's "time-honored custom" of allowing smoking in workplaces, restaurants & bars. You cannot be serious!," writes Joanne. (Confidential note to Joanne: Your college-age daughter should not have to choose between smoke and a job. That's why I support broader legislation to eliminate smoking. But I'd also like to see a law written that could actually get through the Legislature.)
Let me clarify: I am serious that there's a custom, not that I'm in favor of perpetuating it forever. As an ex-smoker, I feel some twinge of compassion for addicted smokers who try, try, try but cannot quit. So my Solomon-like solution, partly tongue in cheek, is to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and office -- everywhere but in the red-lights and blare of the casinos. This preserves some tax revenue from smokers, eliminates opposition from panicked casino operators, and -- brilliantly -- leaves room for a non-smoking casino with healthy employees
