If the students and teachers in your life seem a little quiet tomorrow, it could be that they’re participating in the Day of Silence, “a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-LGBT bias unacceptable in schools take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT students and their allies.” Founded in 1996 at the University of Virginia, the Day is now co-coordinated by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) and USSA (United States Student Association), who explain it thusly:
For too long, the silencing of LGBT people and their allies has been the norm. Whether it's the lack of LGBT-inclusive material in educational resources, or role assignments based upon our assumed gender, such silence and silencing affects us all in a profound way.Just as profound, however, can be the use of silence as a form of protest. The Day of Silence moves the power of these personal experiences to a community-focused effort. The Day of Silence is a way of turning silence on its head, of reclaiming silence as a tool.
The Day of Silence institutes a visible silence, a silence during which participants protest anti-LGBT discrimination and abuse. Such an effort also allows us to reflect upon how powerful silencing can be, to focus on how we can make our own voices stronger and to begin to stop silencing ourselves.
As of last Friday, students in nearly 4,000 schools in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and DC, had registered their participation. A fact which really speaks for itself.
Well, it can’t be because of Spring, since it’s always warm in LA. Maybe it’s Daylight Savings Time. Whatever the reason, brace yourselves, because Catfight Season is upon us.
Those Desperate Housewives (or, rather, the actors who play them) got the ball rolling at a shoot for the Vanity Fair cover that hits stands tomorrow (Tuesday). After months of the entertainment media spoiling for a hair-pulling clawfest between the new Fab 5, one apparently erupted for real on the set of the shoot:
Vanity Fair's cover proclaims: "You wouldn't believe what it took just to get this photo!" The article acknowledges that the poolside photo-shoot, in which the five women appear in different colored bathing suits, was manned by an ABC representative who was to make sure that certain demands were met including that Teri Hatcher didn't select her wardrobe first or appear in the center of any group photo."Whatever you do," the ABC rep, who wasn't identified by name, said when he arrived on the set, "do not let Teri go to wardrobe first."
Despite the rep's plea, Hatcher was the first "housewife" to visit wardrobe, and she had consulted with the stylist days in advance. At one point, the rep proclaimed: "This is a problem. I'm getting text messages from Eva (Longoria). Everything is not fine."
The struggles continued once the photographer started snapping. Redhead Marcia Cross turned red-hot when she saw Hatcher standing next to her in the center of the shot, according to the article. Cross grabbed her bathrobe and stormed egoff, spewing expletives at the ABC rep.
Hatcher later walked to the other end of the set, where "she got into a tearful, heated conversation on her cell phone."
Evidentely, the "anti-diva" demands were put in place to appease the egos of the four women in the ensemble who didn’t win individual Golden Globes or pull out of group negotiations so she could land a bigger pay raise. But no one happened to mention them to Hatcher, who only learned about them when Cross blew her top.
Don’t expect more from the DH gals? How about no-BS feminist icon Queen Latifah, who recently went to town on Condoleeza Rice’s hair while speaking to NPR’s Ed Gordon:
As long as she keeps that hairstyle, there's always going to be another 'Beauty Shop' movie…I mean, that's the true issue that America has to face. It's not North Korea. It ain't South Korea. It ain't Iran. It ain't Iraq. It's Condoleezza and can she get in my salon and can we really lay a hot comb to that head?
Thanks, Dana. Just when the pundits had shut their yaps about the diplomatic implications of Rice’s knee-high black boots.
The problem is, all this hissing isn’t just annoying and unseemly. It’s also one of the nastier symptoms of misogyny in the modern age, says Leora Tanenbaum, who wrote the book on the subject:
So there is this restrictive gender role that women are living under. We have to struggle to prove we're the thinnest, best dressed, the fittest, and the best mother. But at the same time, my generation of women and young mothers -- the generation of climbing the corporate ladder or dealing with other issues facing women in their young adulthood years -- have grown up with conflicting messages about what it means to be a woman. There's a clash between the old restrictive rules of femininity and the newer feminist common sense.For instance, we have grown up with a message that we're equal to men. And the reality is we do have many liberties our grandmothers could only have dreamed of. At work, my generation has been taught that we can -- and we should -- compete like a man to get ahead. Also: that we don't need a man to get ahead or be complete as a person. We don't even need his money -- we've been taught. In many cases, that is true. So there is this conflict between the old restrictive gender role and the newer feminist message that is expanding women's roles. Because of this clash there are problems. First, we are confused. It's a scramble, because we feel we have to take on everything to be feminine and feminist -- to be lady like and independent -- which is impossible. We can't do everything. On top of that, even though we do have the new feminist common sense, we're expected to conform more or less to the narrow gender role. It's confusing, paralyzing, and it's impossible. That's the foundation for all the competitiveness that we're dealing with.
Think about this: have you ever heard about a male actor storming off the set of a photo shoot because a different guy got to wardrobe first? What do our children learn from these stories – that women are just like that? That the best we can do is scratch hard, draw blood, and come out the least scathed?
And moreover: what stories aren’t being told every time a catfight absorbs ink and airtime? What did Condi do that we didn’t hear about because folks were too busy discussing her hair and wardrobe?
Maybe Mickey D’s hasn’t heard about the Essence-led effort to Take Back The Music, because they’ve just announced a different strategy – they’re buying it:
Rap artists are accustomed to name-checking prestige car, clothing and jewellery brands in their lyrics. But if McDonald's has its way Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and 50 Cent may soon be giving it up for the humble beefburger.The fast-food giant is reported to be launching a campaign that will offer financial incentives to rap artists who mention its Big Mac burger in their lyrics. McDonald's will not pay an upfront fee, but intends to pay the artist between $1 and $5 (53p-£2.68) each time a track is played on the radio. It hopes to have several such songs on the airwaves by the summer.
Not ready to toss your patties yet? Richard Jinman reports in the article (in last Tuesday’s edition of The Guardian) that the clever folks at Maven Strategies who devised the plan have already had success with it for Seagram’s Gin, name-dropping it into five songs last summer.
Didn’t notice? That’s the whole idea. But don’t worry about the insidious effects of this newest form of product placement on populations already struggling with the tenacious ties between poverty and obesity – including kids and young adults who are the major consumers of rap music. McDonalds has total faith in them:
"Our customers are smart," [said a spokesman]. "They know how to make choices that are right for them."
Sure. That’s why you’re spending potentially millions of dollars to stealthvertize to them. Because it will have no impact on their ability to make choices.
And you thought those Burger King ads were creepy.
Following up on Jaclyn's frustration with all-pope, all-the-time headlines, I have to point to Lee Sigel's brilliant critique of the cable news onslaught. Siegel, TV critic for The New Republic, merges the stories about the pope, Terri Schiavo and Ashley Smith into one damning piece:
What is dismaying about the Television News Brain's fixation on the Pope's long dying and his death is not that it exists -- the sacred is so rare that a crisis in the sacred has to be broadcast and commented on. And the general sorrow over the Pope's death is partly a general longing to be embraced by a beautiful mystery. What is so maddeningly dismaying is the way the cynical media's pose of hagiographic respect for the Pope amounts to an ungenerousness to the religion and to the world he leaves behind. To hear these shiny, modern, thoroughly secular talking heads speak about the Pope as though they were all sheep in his flock, as though they did not use contraception, or fornicate freely for pleasure, or enjoy same-sex relationships, or worship Yahweh or Allah or no divinity at all, was dreamlike. Their sudden, staged belief made you want to rub your eyes in disbelief. Once again, as with Ashley Smith story and Terri Schiavo, a story that should have been reported was being treated like an opportunity that had to be exploited.Indeed, someone up there seems sensitive to coherent programming since if poor Terri Schiavo had not died before the Pope fell into his fatal last illness, the News Brain would have exploded in its attempts to cover both stories. The mind boggles at what would have happened if Terri Schiavo had still been alive while the Pope lay dying, and if at that very minute Ashley Smith had been taken hostage. The ensuing commotion would have made the apocalypse look like a class reunion. Instead, the television-news people segued smoothly from one event to the other as if they were all covering the same story. Which in some sense they were: Religion in America, A New Market.
Also see John Paul II Superstar in Salon.
Richard Rodriguez takes on the pope as performer: "He played the pope
for the age of television, and fully one-half of the people alive on
the Earth remember no other in the role. Cardinals and diplomats as
stage supernumeraries; the planet his audience. He seemed never without
an intuition of the camera. Kissing the tarmacs of airports!"
At the gym on Saturday, I got stuck in front of a bank of TVs. My choices? MTV’s Cribs, golf, and Pope, Pope, Pope. (Gee, guess who the networks think has the time to watch the tube on a Saturday afternoon.) I’ll tell you one thing, it did make me sweat.
Is anyone else getting sick here in this echo chamber? While the death of a Pope deserves some news attention (as opposed to, say, Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube or Michael Jackson’s trial), once again it seems that in TVNewsLand, nothing else happened in the entire world except some tragic spectacle far, far away.
For example, did you know that on Friday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had to issue an emergency rule ordering pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions?
Or that on Saturday, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Saturday rejected the U.N.’s directive to send those accused of war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for trial, saying the Sudanese justice system was good enough to try any Sudanese?
And did you notice how fast that WMD intelligence report story got buried?
Oh, and did anyone in all of those hours of vigils and retrospectives dare to mention that maybe the Pope wasn’t such a peach after all?
History will judge the Pope harshly. His opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV has contributed to millions of people dying an agonising, needless death. Millions of children in developing countries are orphans; having lost their parents to Aids because of the Pope's anti-condom dogma.Pope John Paul II waged a ceaseless war against the human rights of women and gay people; opposing the right of women to control their own fertility; blocking women's equality in the church; and endorsing state-sponsored discrimination against lesbians and gay men
So, what’s news by you? We’re sure not going to hear about in on CNN…
If you missed it last night, this week's South Park episode was beyond brilliant. It was legendary -- not to mention extraordinarily timely. In the words of Andrew Leonard of Salon:
In 22 minutes, Trey Parker and Matt Stone manage to hammer politicians, the media, religious hypocrisy and every other aspect of the madness that is the Schiavo case. How they were able to put this together so quickly is astounding.Well, you still catch the episode -- Friday, April 1, at 12:00pm (EST) and Sunday, April 3, at 11:30pm (EST). Enjoy!
In honor of April 1, AlterNet provides us with a profile of “the anarchic daddy of all media hoaxers,” Joey Skaggs. In an age where fake news is perpetrated daily by sitting Presidents, pundits on the dole and internet pornographers with press credentials, it’s important to take a moment to check in with the professionals.
The creator of “fish condos” (which started as a prank but ended up selling for a pretty penny to yuppies) has some great advice for aspiring prankster-activists:
"When I create a false reality, I always try to create a plausible structure to help convince people," Skaggs once explained in an interview with McSweeney's. "Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical. I want people to be amused or amazed but fooled. I want them to say, "Unbelievable!" but believe it. Satire and believability are irresistible to the news media. Sensationalism gets them every time..."Sometimes it's simply a matter of being topical and outrageous. "Other times you can use a calendar to predict the kinds of stories the media is looking for," explains Skaggs. "Celebrations of anniversaries of disasters, such as nuclear power plant meltdowns or political assassinations, provide opportunities, as do holidays. And then there are the ubiquitous animal or pet stories. There's one every day.
"If I'm successful in fooling a wire service, I don't really have to do anything else to promote the story," he adds. "Because the media will feed off of itself. They all assume the original author did his or her homework!"
The article also highlights the hysterical and inspiring work of Skaggs’ modern-day heirs, including the Yes Men, the Newsbreakers and good ol’ Michael Moore. Which begs the question – is the world of FAKE news also a white-boys-only club? Or are they once again the only folks whose work gets covered? Here at PopPolitics we could only come up with the Daily Show’s Samantha Bee, and comedian Dave Chapelle, who are both funny and biting satirists, but neither of whom do the same kind of culture-jamming activist hoaxes Skaggs or his “named” heirs. Who else are we – and AlterNet – missing out on, and how can we make sure that more of us get in on the action? Discuss…
