By Popular Demand

A friend suggested that I do a post about the Kanye dustup and race in America. Then another friend said she thought it was an interesting subject too because Kanye has always been outspoken about racial prejudice, which hadn't really occurred to me. So here it goes.

Kanye made himself look like an asshole. If he thought that the award was being given to the white girl because she was white, he didn't represent that opinion very well. In fact, he played into outdated stereotypes of black men as intimidating and uncontrolled...or something.

And I think perhaps Kanye plays into stereotypes of black men, or at least hip hop artists, himself. He's the son of the chair of the English department at a substantial university and he writes blog posts in all caps with terrible grammar (I can't seem to find his actual blog posts). Granted, the blogosphere isn't exactly the most grammatically correct forum, but he pushes the LOL-language to the point of incomprehension. Normally, I wouldn't judge a hip hop artist on their grammar because it seems classist and condescending, but Kanye is known for his clever wordplay and he is obviously educated. Anyway, Lupe Fiasco seems like a good example of being the anti-Kanye in that he addresses racism in a more approachable and understandable way.

I did love "George Bush doesn't care about black people". That was an appropriate event for yelling on national television, and I was incredibly happy that he did it. But stealing a microphone from a 19 year old on national television makes racism worse, not better. I must agree with Obama that he is somewhat of a jackass.

My God.

I have only heard of Robert Moses in the past few years when I realized that cities are actually great places to live, but it really seems like he just drew lines on maps of cities however the fuck he wanted. A Laurelhurst Freeway? Seriously?

It's basically the same design every time. Giant inner ring highway destroying inner city neighborhoods, giant outer ring highway so suburbanites can get to wherever quickly, with several spokes so they can get to work downtown. But it never works.

Clinton on Gay Rights

Undoubtedly he's trying to shift the blame here, but I think sometimes we may overestimate the power that a president has to make dramatic change. Institutions (such as the military) offer a lot of internal resistance.

Wednesday Night Meyousic

Irony and Tragedy (or, The Day that Everything Changed)

I was thinking about my own (usually ironic) way of discussing 9/11, and the title of this post at Gawker made me feel as if others may share my sentiments.

I remember when we were discussing the Holocaust in a class at school, some of my classmates insisted that it was inappropriate to be ironic or humorous about Hitler or the Holocaust because it diminishes or trivializes the deaths of millions of people. I said that it was not being humorous about a tragedy that can trivialize it, but rather a sort strict culture instruction on how to discuss a subject that trivializes it. That is, if the only way that we are allowed to discuss the Holocaust or 9/11 is by public demonstration of grief, then that grief just becomes ritual. In the same way that calling someone Hitler has become a joke, so has the phrase “never forget” when discussing 9/11, because both Hitler comparisons and commemoration of the attacks are so common that they have become banal.

As the Gawker article says, some emotional distance is appropriate in these situations, and irony or humor is a way of maintaining that distance rather than watching the planes hitting the towers 50 times or looking at pictures of Jews in concentration camps.

That’s because those images are the important thing. They’re self-fucking-explanatory, and when we demand that people deliver a visible or audible demonstration of the emotions they are supposed to feel when they are confronted with that tragedy, it just becomes a ritualized demonstration that people do because that’s just what people are supposed to do. It's difficult to return to the rage, horror, sadness, etc. of that day and demanding that everyone recreate those emotions is counterproductive on many levels.

To add another layer of irony, it’s these cultural demands for public grieving that allow politicians to exploit something like 9/11. To add another layer, it’s the politicians who exploit 9/11 who actually caused the tragedy with their empire building and whatnot. It’s never ending unless everyone just shuts up about 9/11 and let’s the tragedy speak for itself.

Maybe I wouldn't feel the need to be ironic about 9/11 if it hadn't been exploited so grotesquely, but I doubt that the exploitation was unique to this event.

The Massachusetts Congressional Delegation

The first video shows pretty well why the Kennedys are still important. The second one shows Barney Frank, a Congressman from Massachusetts, getting properly sassy with a crazy woman. The Athens of America indeed.

Friday Morning Meyousic

Because I feel the need for some culture.

Teaching To the Test

Every school teacher I know, and most people that are informed about public education, are infuriated by the amount that teachers are forced to “teach to the test”. The test is usually a state administered standardized test that students are required to pass in order to be promoted to the next grade level.

So “teaching to the test” has become a code-word for bad educational policy, but is it? Stephen Brill has an article in the New Yorker describing the difficulty in removing a horrible teacher from the classroom in the NYC public school system. Teachers are paid based solely on seniority, and most are tenured after three years, so there is little economic incentive for them to continue to teach well. The city is prohibited from using test scores in their consideration of offering tenure to teachers, which effectively prohibits any consideration of teacher quality in the decision to offer a teacher life long employment.

Most teachers do continue to teach well, and they always will because they became teachers in order to do so. But some won’t. And, as Brill notes, teacher quality is more important than any other factor in determining a student’s progress. So the question becomes: How do we decide who the bad teachers are if we don’t like the use of standardized testing? The advantage of standardized testing lies in the name itself: it’s standardized. A program in which teachers are evaluated in their own classroom by an independent observer could conceivably accomplish the same purpose, but the ratings would not be standardized. That is, the personal disposition of the observers would allow a large amount of variation between assessments.

Most public school teachers work very hard for not very much money. But in a school system like New York, where tenured teachers who have twenty five years seniority are getting paid well over a hundred thousand dollars a year, there has to be some sort of accountability mechanism. Standardized testing may the imperfect but functional choice.

Freedom Isn't Free

Good thing we have these brave men protecting it for us. But really, it’s probably because carrying an assault rifle makes your penis twice as big. I really doubt that these losers are the ones that the Secret Service or whomever has to worry about. It’s the guys who don’t strut around who might actually pull the trigger.

Mediterranean Spinach and Orzo Salad and Zucchini Latkes

I think I’m going through a Greek phase. Or maybe it’s not just a phase; maybe I have always liked Greek/Mediterranean food and I’m just finally learning how to make my favorite things. Anyway, I ate falafel every day for at least two weeks recently, and I ate basic Greek salads even longer. Now I’ve been making this orzo salad for several days, and I just bought more sundried tomatoes so I could keep eating it. It might be good with olives if you’re one of those people that, you know, like olives. I’m not one of those people.

The latkes aren’t Greek, but they’re just something I’ve wanted to make for a while. They are really good with a little bit of sour cream. The first time I made them, I didn’t think the mixture was eggy enough and decided to add another one. Don’t do that. They turned out more like overcooked eggs with some potato and zucchini mixed in.

I got the salad recipe from my mother, who saw it in a Costco magazine. The recipe is one of those that tell me which brand of spinach to buy. That makes me laugh. The zucchini latkes are from the best food blogger on all of the internets.

Mediterranean Spinach and Orzo Salad
1 cup orzo pasta
½ cup sundried tomatoes
½ diced cucumber
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 oz feta cheese

Red Wine Vinaigrette
1 clove of a shallot or 1 clove garlic, chopped
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ cup rw vinegar
3/4 cup olive oil
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard if you want it to be a little creamier
Fresh oregano or thyme if you have it

For the vinaigrette, mix it all up in a bowl and leave it to sit while you make the salad. Boil the orzo to the liking of its manufacturer, and then let it cool before adding it to the salad. Mother says it’s good to let the orzo soak in a little bit of dressing beforehand but I’m not so sure. That sounds like a recipe for soggy orzo to me. Anyway, you know how to assemble a salad. Do it with the ingredients mentioned above.



Zucchini Latkes

Recipe here. I used flour instead of matzo meal because I have never purchased matzo meal and had never really considered it before. If you have matzo meal, maybe you should consider using that, but flour was just fine.

What to do if your teacher is a war criminal?

I suppose some of my former high school classmates will be facing this question at Texas Tech. Most laughably, he will be teaching a “leadership” class for minority and underrepresented students. Presumably, he will tell them to sell their soul so that the rich, white Republicans can win more elections.

To be fair, his war criminal status is as yet to be determined. Go Red Raiders!

Being Well Endowed.

I’m talking about colleges, of course. A while back I wrote a short post about the inferior endowment problems at Reed (the innuendo just keeps on giving). Now an economist/blogger named Felix Salmon raises an interesting question: Why don’t colleges spend their endowments during rough times to avoid the admissions and service cuts that they are currently enduring?

It seems like colleges are beholden to the same growth principle that drives publicly traded companies that says that simply sustaining the current level of profitability is not enough. The result must be an exponential increase or else that result is a failure. I just don’t get it.