Beyond the Pearly Gates: God and the Angel Gabriel Consider Michelle Bachmann

Scene: Somewhere beyond the Pearly Gates

Angel Gabriel: Lord, may I ask you something?  Did you send Hurricane Irene to punish New York and all those New England liberals?

God:  Did I what?

Gabriel: Send Hurricane Irene—

God: I can't believe you would ask me that! Why would you think I had anything to do hurricanes?

Gabriel: Well, Michelle Bachmann said you did; and besides, everybody knows that you use the weather to express your displeasure at human behavior.

God: That was when I was young.  Don’t you remember that I made a deal with Noah never to punish them by destroying the earth with water? The rainbow, remember? I made the rainbow the sign of the covenant? [Quoting from memory--]

"12 God added, "Here is the sign of the covenant I am making between myself and you and every living creature with you, for all generations to come: 13 I am putting my rainbow in the cloud - it will be there as a sign of the covenant between myself and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth, and the rainbow is seen in the cloud; 15 I will remember my covenant which is between myself and you and every living creature of any kind; and the water will never again become a flood to destroy all living beings. 16 The rainbow will be in the cloud; so that when I look at it, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of any kind on the earth."  "(Genesis 9: 12-16)

Gabriel: Opps, I guess they forgot what the rainbows mean. But Michelle Bachmann said—

God: WHAT did that woman say this time? (He puts his head in his hands.)

Gabriel: She told a campaign rally in Florida, “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."

God: So she thinks there’s a loophole? That I’m not breaking my promise if I kill them all so long as I use a hurricane to bring the floods?  Why is she dragging me into American affairs?  They are such a quarrelsome bunch. (He frowns.)

Gabriel: I don’t think she knows you made the promise! 

God: But she goes around “quoting” me all the time.  Do people think I actually talk to her?  I haven’t concealed myself in a burning bush to talk with humans for several millennia. I don’t get involved in politics. Besides, Jesus said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  (Luke 20:25) It’s all there in the Bible. Doesn’t she read the Bible?

Gabriel: She says she does. I heard her tell another campaign rally that “I just take the bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I'm not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I'm not a scientist.”

God: (LOL) Ain’t that the truth. You need a brain to be a scientist. Gabe, check our records—make sure I gave her a brain.  There could have been a mistake on the assembly-line.

Gabriel: But Lord, you don’t make mistakes.

God: I don’t but the assembly line isn’t perfect; it gets backed-up now and then. Just check, would you?  Y’know, I think the problem is the microphones at their campaign rallies.  They get up there with those microphones in their hands and LIE! The whoppers I hear them tell!  Why, I—

Gabriel: (Giggling) Excuse me for interrupting, Lord, but did you hear what she said about $2 per gallon gas? She said that when she becomes president, she’ll roll back the price of gas to $2 a gallon!

God: (God is laughing so hard, tears are rolling down his cheeks) $2 per gallon gas!  (He falls off his throne and rolls on the floor.)

God: (Choking with laughter) Not in my lifetime!

Where The Help Is: A Latina Perspective on Hollywood

Much debate has ensued after the release of “The Help,” the new film about black maids and their relationships with their white employers in Mississippi during the 1960s. The setup for the film is that a white college girl comes home from school and interviews the family maids about their lives.  At first they are reluctant but she succeeds in persuading them to speak and gradually draws out others in the town. The Association of Black Women Historians has issued a statement that takes to task many elements of the film. That a movie that seems to be black-positive and portrays positive interactions between blacks and whites has drawn such fire from some in the black community is a mystery to many people. Yet if you dig just below the surface, the justification for this critique becomes clear.

The stories of blacks and Latinos that make it into the movies are usually the ones written by whites about their positive interactions with nonwhite people. African Americans are weary of stories about black maids, nannies, whores and gangbangers. Stories written by African Americans about their own experiences do not necessarily have a kindly white person easing the way. Americans value the white, middle-class perspective in a way that they do not value a black or Latino's own story. In a nutshell, American society prefers to think of itself as kinder and more beneficent than our history shows us to be.

Hollywood has created movies about heroic black characters, but more often than not, the primary perspective in these stories is that of a white person. Take the most iconic of these stories, “To Kill A Mockingbird.” The story is primarily of a young white girl, Scout, learning about racism, and of her modest, heroic father, Atticus Finch, and his efforts to stop an injustice against an innocent black man accused of rape. Do you remember his name? Do you remember who played him? I thought not. Tom Robinson was played by Brock Peters, a character actor who went on to have a long and successful career. Atticus Finch was played by the great Gregory Peck; no matter what else he went on to do in his career, his image as the upright Southern lawyer in a white suit is what everyone remembers.

In “Ghosts of Mississippi,” Alec Baldwin plays Bobby DeLaughters, the heroic prosecutor who finally brings the killer of civil rights leader Medgar Evers to account. DeLaughters sacrificed his political aspirations and lost his marriage in his pursuit of justice. DeLaughters, not the dead leader or his wife Myrlie Evers (played by Whoopi Goldberg), was the hero of the film.

“Cry Freedom,” about South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, focused on a white South African journalist (portrayed by Kevin Kline) whose views about Biko changed after they met. Then he sets out to investigate Biko’s torture and killing at the hands of the police. He was forced to flee South Africa when he wrote a book about his findings.

Even in a story like "Something the Lord Made," with rapper Mos Def as the true-life lab technician turned heart surgery pioneer, Vivien Thomas, the black character’s achievements take place within the narrow window society allowed because an arrogant white cardiologist pushed his own prejudice aside a wee bit to make the black character's achievements possible.

Did you ever hear of “Sarafina?” It was one of Whoopi Goldberg's finest roles, but it was in the theaters for perhaps five minutes.  She was central to the story; there was no white facilitator. In that story, the only white characters were the police who tortured her. It did not get much of a white audience because most whites don't want to see--or face--the abuses perpetrated by their own.

The public at large, like you, may go to see a film or a show out of interest in the subject matter or because you want to show your children a broader view of the world; all good motivations, but Hollywood does not trust that ethnically or racially authentic stories will sell.

Consider the story of the black Baltimore Ravens football player Michael Oher in the film “The Blind Side.” I read about him originally in New Times magazine in September 2006, in “The Ballad of Big Mike,” and was so moved by the article that I cut it out and shared with friends; I cannot remember the white woman’s place in the story; it was really focused on Oher’s own trek.  “The Blind Side” was more about a Southern white woman doing something good and noble, and Sandra Bullock’s portrayal of the woman justly won an Academy Award for best performance. I wonder if Hollywood would have made that movie if Oher had been rescued by a middle-class black family, or if the player had told his own story. Would it sell? Or was the image in the ad for the film, showing the massive Oher walking with the small woman’s arm protectively around his shoulders, just too good to pass up?

How many blacks are allowed to be heroes in our society?  A black man becomes President, and the Republicans declare that they will do everything to defeat him; they unite to oppose everything he proposes, even when he takes up their own proposals! But they insist that racism is not their main motivation. Nope, no racism here.

Which black stories get wide coverage? Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry's parodies of black families where grandma is played broadly by a man in drag. To me, Perry's comedies are little better than the old minstrel shows, with blacks shucking and jiving for our entertainment pleasure.

Yet African Americans influence American culture deeply in less
conscious ways. Just as the culture as a whole has absorbed jazz, which has its roots in native African musical forms, young people have absorbed hip-hop, black clothing and hair styles. The impact of black culture goes much deeper than we can imagine.

It is almost painful to talk about how Latinos are portrayed in the cinema and on television. How many Latinas do you see in movies or TV who are not whores, gangbangers, busty bombshells, or maids?  How many Latina professors, doctors, lawyers, or roles as other professionals do you see Latinas play? 

Thank God for Jennifer Lopez--she is beautiful, elegant, smart, accomplished, and she is doing something besides a stereotypical role. She has played a wider variety of roles than most Latina actresses, such as in “Out of Sight,” where she played a U.S. Marshal in pursuit of George Clooney as a bank robber; “Angel Eyes,” where she played a police officer; or “The Wedding Planner ,“ where she played the eponymous role. None of these characters have a Latino name or any hint of Latino culture. Is her acceptability to the general American audience somehow better if she is laundered of her Latina identity? When she turns up in a Latino role, aside from the tragic “Selena,” she is playing—SURPRISE!—a hotel maid in “Maid in Manhattan.”   I am proud that J-Lo is Latina and I am reminded of earlier Latina actresses who “could pass” and were forced to give their names in pursuit of stardom, like Rita Hayworth, née Margarita Carmen Cansino, whose father was of Jewish-Spanish background and her mother of Irish-English descent. Thankfully Carmen Miranda and Rita Moreno weren’t stripped of their identities to star in the movies.

I know that other Latinas share my extreme weariness with the trash that most Latinas play in the movies; on television, we’re virtually invisible. Then there’s George Lopez, but he’s the subject for another kind of rant.


[published on MyLatinoVoice 08/30/2011   http://www.mylatinovoice.com/film/67-movie-news/2987-where-the-help-is-a-latina-perspective-on-hollywood.html]

A Historian Sees "Nabucco" for the First Time

Being a historian and loving opera can be very challenging. After going to the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport to see Nabucco, simulcast live from Taormina, Sicily, I have come to the conclusion that even though I love Giuseppe Verdi best, logic wasn't his strong suit. Ah, well; one can’t be good at everything.

Nabucco, has a very convoluted plot; not as weird as Il Trovatore but strange nevertheless. It is very peculiar watching an opera about Jews (as compared with the Egyptians and Ethiopians in Aida, for instance, or Turandot's Chinese ice maiden-princess). Periodically, the chorus would sing about killing the Jews: “Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!” Honestly, I never thought of that phrase as a chorus’s refrain. I didn't know the plot in advance so I was sitting there wondering if a wide-scale massacre was about to take place; Nabucco was the star, after all. About halfway through, I realized that I had no clue what was going on--and I was wide awake. I even had an ice coffee at the beginning of the opera. 

Then it turns out that the Assyrian princess, Fenena, daughter of Nabucco, (the true-life Babylonian King Nabucodonosor, or as we call him in English, Nebuchadnezzar) who has been taken hostage by the Jews, is in love with the Jew, Ismaele, nephew of the High Priest Zaccharia. Ismaele was the Judean ambassador, to the Assyrians in Babylon. Assyrians in Babylon?  Yes, Babylon conquered Assyria but the events with the Jews were ten years apart. I started getting a headache at this point. 

Wait a minute. Jews had diplomatic relations with their enemies? The ones who conquered them and then moved them en masse to Babylon where they languished in exile? THEN it turns out that her sister, Abigaille, is also in love with the Jewish ambassador. She will spare his people if he stays with her. (I found myself wondering if Abigail Adams knew the origin of her name.)

Nabucco tells her that she, Abigaille, isn't really his daughter, a princess, but is actually a slave. She then grabs the document proving this and tears it to pieces. In the meantime, Fenena converts to Judaism. What?  Nabucco condemns the Hebrews to death, spurred by the jealous Abigalle.  Then Nabucco has a nervous breakdown. I did, too.  Abigaille seizes power while he is, er, indisposed.  Later, he recovers his powers completely and declares himself for the Jewish God. What???  Who's writing this stuff?  The author of Star Trek? It has a happy ending. The Jews are saved and the evil Abigaille dies.  It was a very weird death scene. ("I'm melting!! Melting!!")

I'm not making this up. I'll spare you the rest of it. Suffice it to say that sometimes it's better just to close your eyes and listen to the music. The most memorable aria from the opera is:
 "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves," Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate / "Fly, thought, on golden wings." It is one of the rare arias that the Met permits an encore of. They did an encore here as well. Gorgeous.

Someday, I want to go to see the opera in August, in the ampitheater in Taormina, in Sicily.What a beautiful place; it takes your breath away. Halfway through the opera, the moon came up, and you could see lights outlining the Sicilian coast. It was spectacular. http://www.villaducale.com/taormina-events-2011.html

Starting anew

I stopped writing the blog last year; I was having shoulder troubles that culminated in surgery, a sick leave during the fall semester, and a long and painful recovery over the winter and spring. I'm over all of that now so I thought I'd start it up again.

Classes start for me on September 7, now only two and a half weeks away. Who knows where the time goes?!

Enjoy what's left of August; as they say, for teachers, August is one long Sunday night.

Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall

It was the first day of classes at the University of Rhode Island, where I teach.  One young man, his eyes rather rheumy, approaches me to sign a form acknowledging that he will be away for two classes due to soccer team away-games. I keep myself from exclaiming, “My God, you stink of alcohol!” As he walks out of the classroom, I feel like fanning the fumes away.  The first day of classes!  A Wednesday!

I am not much of a drinker; most people think I am a teetotaler. I’m not, but a beer or a single glass of wine can hold me for a whole evening. I don’t mind the taste of alcohol, I just cannot stand the side effects of getting drunk. I have seen too many people embarrass themselves by getting sloppy-drunk; or hitting on somebody  because their inhibitions are down; or getting sick on somebody’s lawn. I have taken car keys away from friends, and have driven more people than I care to remember home after a party. I detest all of that and would never allow myself to behave in that fashion, and I stay away from people who do.

The idea of showing up for class (or work) plastered simply disgusts me. I immediately wrote him an e-mail:  “I don't know if you were aware of how strongly your breath reeked of alcohol, but it did. Before I became an academic, I worked on the street with homeless people, many of whom were alcoholics; thus, it is a familiar smell to me. It is inappropriate to come to class drunk or nursing a hangover. This is a serious class. If you cannot BE serious, please drop it.”

I mentioned it to my colleagues. “Boy, you’re hard,” said one.  Maybe I am, but I find such behavior completely unacceptable.

Then I mentioned it to my daughter, who is now 30 years old. She said, “I’d bet most of your students were drinking heavily over Labor Day weekend.” But why? “First time away from home; first weekend away from being home with parents all summer; time to party.”

Oh my God. It suddenly occurs to me that some of the confrontations I’ve had with unruly students could have been alcohol-fueled. I never realized it. Last fall, I had one student who missed every single Friday class of a Monday-Wednesday-Friday class; he had a string of excuses and learned the hard way that I may believe the first few but after a while, I catch on. Then I start getting mad.

Why would anyone spend $13,000 for tuition and fees per year, plus housing and living expenses, to flush it all down the toilet with the dregs of last night’s wine?  Then again, why would anyone blow thousands of dollars up their noses with cocaine? I don’t understand. I suppose that in some cases, parents are paying the bills, but everyone in this economy is staggering under the weight of tuition, the high prices of books, and other expenses associated with going to college. I read about students graduating with unbearable burdens of debt.  They know how much it is costing their parents or will ultimately cost them—how can they treat their education so carelessly?

When I was a college student, I worked 30 hours a week, juggling three jobs to make ends meet. I lived at home but my family did not have the money for my college education; I either paid for it myself or I would have had to give it up. My education was too precious to throw away.

The first week of classes, Rock, the frat boy who had led my orientation group, saw me in the library studying. He came over to tease me. "Everybody’s like this the first couple of weeks; you’ll get over it.” I remember having that prickly reaction I get when I want to fight with someone and I hold my tongue. “You’ll see,” I said to myself.

Rock was a junior and very active in campus organizations. It was a small school and his reputation got around: Mr. Party-time. I’ve often wondered what happened to him. It’s been many years since I was an undergraduate and I didn’t understand it then either, but at least drinking was confined to the weekend—Friday and Saturday. It didn’t begin on Thursday night, as it does now, apparently. My colleagues report that they have students who come to school on Monday hung over from having drunk away the entire weekend. This leaves me speechless.

Until last year, we had a dry campus. Our former president, Robert L. Carothers, had gone to great lengths to curb the students’ drinking. I didn’t agree with him about many things but in this regard we were in perfect accord.  When the new president took over, he immediately lifted the ban on alcohol on campus. I only wish he had to be in the classroom with the professors when they’re dealing with drunk or hung over students. One cannot force students to stop or to realize the great harm they are doing to their education, to themselves, and to their livers, but from now on, when one of these alcoholics-in-training complain about the price of their textbooks, I am going to ask them how much they spent on booze last weekend. I bet it was more than on my class textbooks.


This appeared on MyLatinoVoice the week of September 20, 2010

The Dangers of a Mosque Near Ground Zero

In our country, there is racial and ethnic prejudice that bubbles just beneath the surface, showing its ugly head on occasion. There is also real, palpable race hatred in this country, and we must face that reality. We cannot ignore the very real dangers to the Cordoba congregation and their building, of locating an Islamic center near Ground Zero.

It is such a complex situation! On one hand, I agree that our First Amendment freedom of religion is an inalienable right. On the other hand, I wonder why they would want to build a mosque in that particular place when it is so dangerous. Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, the head of the Cordoba House project, claims that the project will foster better relations between Islam and the West. Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement is more confrontational: "The time for a center like this has come because Islam is an American religion," she says.

Survivors and relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks regard it as an affront and a way for Islam to trumpet its victory over American culture. I even read a letter from an Iranian-American, herself a Muslim, who believes that it is wrong to build it the Cordoba Center in that location.
While the Muslims have the right under our Constitution to build there, I regard it as an instance of whacking a hornets’ nest with a stick. I have no doubt that the center will become a target for violent backlash. They will spend a good part of their budget painting over the racial slurs that will be graffittied on the building. Its members will be at risk going and coming.

Our country has a violent history: synagogues are regularly desecrated. When I lived in Sunland, a suburb of Los Angeles, the doors to our synagogue were firebombed. They had been spray-painted with racial slurs many times. After we moved to the East coast, the Northridge Valley Jewish Community Center where my daughter had been in an after-school program, was attacked by Buford O. Furrow Jr., a self-professed white supremacist, who sprayed the center with bullets injuring an elderly receptionist and several children, and killing a Filipino mail carrier.

For many years, African American churches were targeted for destruction, sometimes with people in them, and not just during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Even as late as the George W. Bush administration, the burning of black churches was a regular occurrence. As recently as November 2008, a church being built for a black congregation in Springfield, Massachusetts, was destroyed by arson.
Considering that we are still at war in two Arab countries and that relations with Islam are very rocky, it seems to me that the wiser course would be to build someplace that would not draw the wrath of the bigots and race haters.

Sad to say, the publicity around the Cordoba Center will very likely draw hatred towards other Islamic institutions around the country. While I am glad that both New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor David Patterson have done the right thing by being supportive of the Cordoba Center and that the building commission has cleared the way for them to build, I fear for the congregation. The law is on the side of the Muslims; the government is making all the appropriate moves but if I were a Muslim, I would stay away from it because the haters are the wild cards.

Do not underestimate the haters. Sometimes they are organized, sometimes they are singular, but too many of them have guns and malevolent intent. Remember Timothy McVeigh: his fury was so deep, he bombed a government office and killed hundreds of people including babies in the child care center. He was a lone wolf—a very dangerous lone wolf.

So what is the answer? Should we live in fear? Should we curb our plans so as not to draw the haters? I know many will disagree with me, but I counsel waiting. Time heals all wounds. We must be realistic: the haters are out there and many of them have guns. I am sorry to say that I doubt that the building can be built without incident. And if they manage to raise the building, it will be a sitting duck. Listen to me: go build somewhere else.

Published by MyLatinoVoice, August 23, 2010.
This column drew a lot of disagreement. To read the comments,go to
http://www.mylatinovoice.com/politics-and-us/24-politics/2080-the-dangers-of-a-mosque-near-ground-zero.html

Immigration: Waiting For Obama To Pull Rabbit Out Of Hat

In November 2008, we elected a young, visionary president who we believed was going to fix everything, but he encountered a few problems. His predecessor did not tell him how bad things really were. He did not know that the greed-mongers on Wall Street were running wild. He could not have known that the economy was almost in ruins and the actual costs of the war were higher than we had been told.

Barack Obama is eloquent and very, very smart, but guess what? He isn’t Superman. Heck, he’s not even Spiderman. Eighteen months into his administration, he has stacked up an impressive list of accomplishments, but we still have over 9% unemployment. The GOP does everything it can to block anything he does, then they cry foul when anyone points out THEIR guy was the one who made a mess of things. Immigration was one of Obama’s stated priorities but you would not know it if you looked at what he has been doing. Then again, keeping our economy from slipping into a greater depression, the long and difficult struggle to get universal health care passed, and trying to cope with the disaster in the Gulf were not on his original list of things to do.

It is seems cold to counsel patience to the unemployed, the people who are losing their houses and businesses, or to immigrants who live in fear of being discovered and deported, but he can’t do everything at once and in the case of immigration, part of the problem is that the Republicans are so divided. You may be surprised to learn that the GOP talks out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to immigration.

Have you ever thought about why George W. Bush was so keen to pass immigration reform, or why it went nowhere even though he was able to pass huge tax cuts for the rich and start two wars?

Without question, the GOP is the party of the rich and of the business interests. Proudly, it is the incarnation of capitalism. I know I will sound like a “commie-pinko” when I say this but capitalism depends on cheap labor and on the exploitation of the poor, and that is one of the main reasons we will never have immigration reform if we wait for the GOP to act.

Think about the clothes we wear. Look at the labels: where were they made? If they were made in China, Thailand, Mexico, or most any other country outside of ours, you can be sure that the workers who made them are barely making a living wage, and they are not getting paid what United States union workers would get.

Why have so many American businesses have gone off-shore? Because they can get cheap labor and pay few or no taxes. Then we go to Walmart or K-Mart or Target and pay a few dollars for a commodity that, if made in this country, would cost at least twice as much.

One of the main sanctions in any serious immigration bill would punish employers for hiring undocumented workers. In other words, passing such a sanction would poke a finger in the eyes of GOP contributors; businessmen who depend on cheap labor to produce what they sell to Americans. But that’s only half of the problem.

There is a faction of the GOP comprised, in part, of the Tea Party Patriots who follow the nativist traditions of the most conservative parts of the Party. Because of the negative connotations of the term “nativists,” they prefer to call themselves “patriots.” They place the interests of the established population over those who are new to country. Typically, they are bitterly opposed to immigrants, especially those who are here illegally. They are determined to block any immigration reform that would allow the undocumented workers to remain here. They would rather spend millions to round up and deport 12 million undocumented workers and their children than allow them to be normalized, even though this approach makes no sense and spends even more money than they lose in allowing them to stay. They claim that undocumented workers take jobs that otherwise would go to real Americans and use public services and medical resources while paying no taxes. Meanwhile, the defenders of undocumented workers point out that they are doing the jobs that Americans will not do. The arguments are familiar and irresolvable.

If you put the two parts of the GOP together the result is inertia and it explains why John McCain, former presidential candidate and a long-time Senator from Arizona, is straddling the fence. On one hand, he is the self-proclaimed maverick who has taken pride, in the past, on working with Democratic senators on legislation. On the other hand, he is a Republican with deep ties to business interests in his state. Still, on yet another hand, he represents Arizona, now ground zero for the anti-immigration ferment. Once, he worked for immigration reform, now he is not so sure because the Tea Party Patriots are on his right flank, dogging his steps. How will he satisfy the competing interests in his party? How will he hang on to his seat as he fails to satisfy anybody?

President Obama said last week that the only way that there can be immigration reform is with bipartisan cooperation. I hope somebody tells him that so long as the Republicans are bitterly divided, and funded by business interests, there will be no bipartisanship on this issue. The Democratic Party will have to go it alone.

*Photo courtesy of the Seattle Weekly
Published on MyLatinoVoice
http://mylatinovoice.com/politics-and-us/24-politics/2019-immigration-waiting-for-obama-to-pull-rabbit-out-of-hat.html