Here we go again. Some so-called "educators" in Gulfport, Miss., just gave those north of the Mason and Dixon more ammunition for poking fun at the South. When a Jewish student at a Gulfport high school wore his Star of David pin (given to him by his grandmother), school officials ordered him to remove it immediately, because, they said, it was a gang symbol. The boy and his father protested and appealed the school's ruling.
When the local school board voted on the issue, members rubber-stamped the school's decision forbidding the boy to wear his pin. One board member, who has mercifully remained anonymous, declared, "We don't know anything about the Jewish faith." Did the honorable representatives somehow miss out on the news that we are a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society?
After the Star of David dust-up hit the national media and in the face of an ACLU backed lawsuit, the school board wisely relented, but not before the damage had been done and the South's reputation for insularity and cultivated ignorance had been further burnished.
Though Jews may be a tiny minority in some parts of the South, the fact is that in the early 18th century, more Jews settled in the South, especially around Charleston and Savannah, than anywhere else in the country. So much for getting to know your neighbor. Obviously, the Mississippi educators in question don't know their flags, either, because otherwise, at least they'd have recognized the Star of David as the "gang symbol" on the Israeli flag. I guess they don't watch the Olympics there in Gulfport.
The argument can be made that the crucifix is also used as a symbol by gangs. Wanna bet whether the good educators of Gulfport would ban their students from wearing the sign of the Christian faith?
Since I grew up in the South, I feel I have a right to criticize a culture I know only too well. Like the boy in Gulfport, I belonged to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. And though I was reared a Baptist, I was aware that I was somehow different, because my father was not only Jewish by birth, he was also a (gasp) Yankee. I'm not sure which offense was worse in our small textile and tobacco town. The few Catholics in town, I might add, were also considered to indulge in strange religious practices and were not to be trusted.
I know now that in the 1960s when three new suburban developments mushroomed in our town, all had covenants barring Jews as residents. And I was an adult before I understood why my father, despite my constant nagging, was so adamant about not joining the local country club, which had the only decent swimming pool in town.
After white supremacist Buford Farrow shot up the North Valley Community Jewish Center near Los Angeles and said it was a message to "get the Jews," I had a strong urge to "get a tattoo," something I would never before have dreamed of and which I have warned my sons to do "over my dead body." All of a sudden, I wanted a Star of David etched somewhere on my anatomy. I was reminded of a story I read in the news about a small town where Jews were being harassed during the holiday season. Any home with a menorah (a seven-branched candlestick) in the window was targeted, so all the non-Jewish neighbors bought menorahs and put them in their windows. Now that's the kind of reaction we ought to have to a Buford Farrow or any other of his donut-brained brethren. If one is persecuted because he or she is different, we are all persecuted.
As a religious symbol, the Star of David, or Magen David, didn't become attached to Judaism until the 17th century, when the Jewish community in Prague adopted it as their symbol. By the 19th century, it had been almost universally adopted by Jews.
During Hitler's tyranny over Europe, each person living under Nazi rule had to furnish a certificate of "Aryan" descent. If there were Jews among your progenitors, then you were classified a Jew, regardless of your religious persuasion. When the Nazis forced Jews to identify themselves publicly and wear the Star of David on their clothing, many Jews crafted their Star of David patches with lavish materials - to indicate their pride in being Jewish.
The thought is not lost on me that had I and my children been living in a Nazi-occupied country in Europe before and during World War II, we would have been wearing the Magen David and we, along with millions of others, might not have survived. I think of the Star of David as a symbol of both unimaginable suffering and great resilience, and because of my ancestry, I would be proud to wear it.
So, I would say to the educators of Gulfport, Miss., "educate" yourselves. It isn't enough simply to tolerate your neighbor. In the case of Buford Farrow and thousands of other white supremacists spewing their hate rhetoric, we've seen that the price of ignorance can be astronomical.
As I sit at my desk munching a sandwich while checking my voice mail while typing on my computer, I begin to wonder. When did time become such a commodity that I have to squeeze the last jot out of every nanosecond? I recall the man in the car in front of me as I drove to work this morning; he was driving while smoking while talking on his cell phone. These are three discrete activities that one could argue should be pursued separately. How can anyone enjoy a smoke while talking on the phone while driving? How could I even remember what I ate for lunch when I was gulping it down while engaged in two other tasks at the same time? And how can those people - you've seen them - in fancy restaurants savor their foie gras while closing a business deal on their cell phones at their linen draped tables? And what are the consequences to a culture so obsessed with doing more faster?
At the workplace, we could argue that multitasking makes us more productive. If that's the case, then why are we more productive for longer and longer hours? We've all read the statistics that the percentage of Americans who are working more than 50 or 60 hours a week has risen steadily over the past decade, right along with the tools that enable us to pursue multiple tasks at once. There's a disconnect here. Devices that were supposed to make us more efficient haven't really saved time; they've only raised the bar on what we're expected to do in a given amount of time. The trap was set, and we waltzed right into it.
The makers of digital equipment are only too happy to accommodate our need to do more faster. My local cell phone company just sent me an ad for its new "digital advisor." Oh, joy - now I can have wireless, voice mail, paging and e-mail in one portable phone. I could even sleep with it and e-mail my therapist with up-to- the-minute reports on my latest dreams. And some auto manufacturers are touting their 2000 models as offices on wheels. Their newest offerings will be equipped with Internet connections and e-mail. I can hear it now: "Sorry officer, I was just day-trading when that car ahead of me stopped abruptly."
I'm annoyed when I talk with my best friend in New York, and I hear her clicking away on the keyboard as I'm spilling my guts about the latest tragedy in my life. She can't possibly be focusing on me while she's e-mailing a colleague, can she? I always know when I've rambled on too long, because those tell-tale taps start a background beat to my monologue. It's time to wrap it up. Attention spans, even among friends, aren't what they used to be.
In our push, push, spend and get society, how can anyone think deeply about anything or do much more than skate over the surface of life, bombarded as we are with images, predigested bits of information and demands that we do more in less time? Sometimes I fear that I will have multitasked myself into old age without ever noticing how I got there.
I think there's a connection between the wacked-out pace at which we live and the growing popularity of Buddhism or other forms of religious practice that involve meditation. We are hungry for something that no amount of success or new high-tech gadgets will satisfy. Why else would 40,000 people turn out in New York's Central Park this summer to see the Dalai Lama (Richard Gere's presence notwithstanding)? The practice of meditation - emptying the mind and doing nothing - is the antithesis of multitasking, and for that reason, it probably scares the bejeezus out of many of us.
Whenever I get too caught up in the frantic walking, talking, chewing-gum-while-rubbing-my stomach world of multitasking, I mentally retreat to my garden and my six-year-old friend Ian who lives across the street. Ian has lots of time on his hands, and sometimes I think he watches out his window and waits for me to materialize, because he usually pipes a "hi Mirinda; can I come over to your house?" as soon as I set foot on my lawn. Ian, who fortunately hasn't yet bought into the adult concept of time as commodity, likes to help me in the garden.
While we pull weeds or trim bushes, Ian is fully engaged with the world he's inhabiting at the moment. He doesn't miss the smallest butterfly or the first new blossom. He's an aficionado of spiders, a Sherlock Holmes of bug habits.
"Mirinda, look at that King Bee over there on those flowers," he trills. Or, "Mirinda, what are those little brown things inside that dried-up flower? Are they eggs?"
Ian is my guru, reminding me that life isn't about how many activities I can cram into a specified period, but about living in the moment, absorbed in a single enterprise - like observing caterpillars.
September 22, 1999 - by Mirinda J. Kossoff
The Observer article quoted one defensive SUV owner as saying, "I don't think they're gas guzzlers any more than any other vehicle."
Ah, denial is a marvelous thing. Consider this: A Chevy Suburban and Ford Expedition get 17 miles per gallon on the highway; a Toyota Camry gets 42.
But gas guzzling is a minor issue compared to what SUVs are doing to our air quality. Federal regulations allow SUVs and minivans to belch out three to four times more polluting emissions than the typical passenger car - because the Suburban and its clunky kin are categorized as light trucks, which traditionally have been exempt from stricter clean-air standards.
Profiting handsomely from the SUV fad, automakers squeezed through a federal loophole created to protect vehicles used in farming and construction. The exemptions were never intended to cover the hundreds of thousands of on-road vehicles that now dominate our urban landscape.
Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner told Congress this summer that the SUV craze has quashed a decade of progress in cleaning up our air.
I know I'm treading on some of my nearest and dearest when I cast aspersions on their choice in transportation. Two of my three siblings own big toasters. A recent conversation with my brother went like this: "Geez," I said, "I was just thinking how much I'd like to own one of those adorable little Fords I saw in Switzerland this summer. It's a shame Ford doesn't produce these mini-models for the U.S. market."
My brother replied, "You should buy bigger. Just think what could happen if your car were hit by an Explorer or some other SUV; you'd be road kill."
While I appreciated my brother's concern for my safety, I had some problems with his logic - that I'd have to buy an expensive brute purely for self-defense.
But my brother's in good company. No less an opiner than the venerable Dennis Rogers, long-time columnist for the News and Observer, in a December 1997 column rode to the defense of gas-thirsty behemoths and took aim at the likes of me and my sedan. I'm paraphrasing, but essentially he said: "so what if your little putt-putt gets squashed like a bug on the windshield by my big, hunching SUV. Quit whining and get one of your own."
Well thanks for the advice, Dennis, but do let the scales fall from your eyes. You've been suckered by the automaker ad-meisters into believing that you're the Marlboro man, rolling along vast stretches of the American wilderness in the 20th century's finest improvement on the horse. Ford, Chevy and GM have hoodwinked you into believing that the American Dream means bigger and better and that you are the rugged individualist for whom this special product was designed.
If you need proof, just look at a recent Ford ad picturing an Explorer facing down a buffalo on the prairie with the tag line, "Ford Explorer: The most evolved species out there." Pity the poor buffalo, supplanted on his own turf by something even less elegant looking.
Ford's latest contribution to the "more is better and excess is best" sweepstakes is its new Excursion, stretching almost 19 feet in length and weighing nearly four tons, besting the previous hulk title-holder, the eight-passenger Chevy Suburban. Never mind that Ford's new mega-SUV won't fit into a standard 18-foot-long parking space or that it costs upwards of $42,000. Ford obviously believes the motto, "if you build it, they will come and buy it."
I don't know about you, Dennis, but I haven't noticed many SUVs here in the Triangle humping over snow-covered fields or splattering through swift-running streams. Rather than sporting mud-flecked flanks, the SUVs I see are clean and shiny as waxed apples, and there's usually one lone person luxuriating in that roomy interior. Far from their mythical status as rugged range rovers, SUVs are just suburban status symbols stuck in traffic.
But maybe you'll need your SUV for navigating the speed bumps at the local shopping mall. And off-road driving? That means taking the exit to Cary Towne Center or Crabtree Valley Mall.
My advice to you, Dennis: If you want to take your sweetie and the grandkids home on the range with a one-size-fits-all SUV, rent one for the week.
As predictable as hurricanes in August, another ART controversy has brewed itself into a fury, this time in New York where Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is pitting Himself against the Brooklyn Museum. The museum's new show, "Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection" has offended the mayor's sensibilities, and he's threatening to pull the plug on the museum's $7 million subsidy from the city's coffers. "This is sick stuff," hizzoner said to the New York Times, echoing, in 20th-century parlance, the sentiments of Emperor Louis Napoleon. Remarking upon Manet's 1863 painting, "Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" (loosely translated: luncheon under the trees in the buff), Napoleon called it "an offense against modesty." One century's "sick stuff" may well be the next's art.
The chief target of the mayor's righteous indignation, as well as that of the Catholic Church, is Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, a 1996 painting of a black Madonna with a dollop of elephant dung on one breast and surrounded by floating genitalia. Peter Schjeldahl, an art reviewer for The New Yorker, described the painting as quite beautiful. He said: "Ofili's lightening-rod canvas is gorgeous, sweet and respectful of its subject, rendering her as a sternly hieratic African personage in petal-like blue robes. Much of the painting's surface shimmers ecstatically with glitter in yellow resin. Tiny collaged cutouts of bare bottoms from porn magazines evoke putti, and allude to the element of fertility in Mary's symbology, which Ofili did not invent." Ofili, whose parents were born in Lagos, Nigeria, and who, by the way, is Catholic himself, uses elephant dung in all his paintings as a reference to his attachment to his African roots and ancestral folklore. Does his version of Mary constitute religious disrespect? Or is it one artist's personal vision of a deity? Who gets to define what the Holy Virgin Mary looks like?
The Nazis called modern art Jewish and bolshevik and placed work by artists such as Chagall beside pictures created by the insane. I, for one, don't want some elected official, be it Rudolph Giuliani or our own Sen. Jesse Helms, telling me which art is acceptable and which is offensive.
Did Giuliani and John Cardinal O'Connor, another vocal opponent of the Brooklyn Museum's show, stop and consider other possible interpretations of Ofili's work? I doubt it. Politicians are not known for their subtlety and nuanced interpretations of the world, and certain clerics believe they have a lock on Truth.
I don't want to argue whether public monies should be used to fund art that many taxpayers would consider offensive. And I don't want to defend so-called artists who get by on shock value alone. What I do want to say is that the significance of art lies in its ability to challenge our assumptions about the world and the nature of reality. Art makes us think and feel, look at something in a new way, react. Art is what separates us as a species from the rest of the animals on the planet. Beyond these qualities, I can't define specifically what art is, any more than Mayor Giuliani can. But I know what art is not: Art is not the pretty picture that matches the colors in the sofa. And it's not always inoffensive or easy on the eye.
As we've seen from the Brooklyn Museum dustup, art creates controversy, and that's as it should be. The response to controversial subject matter shouldn't be to repress it. Today's fat and prosperous Americans basking in a rosy economy rarely get their knickers in a twist about anything. Complacency, not, as Emerson quipped, "a foolish consistency," is the hobgoblin of little minds. I say hurrah to any artist who can stir the body politic.
Writer Lee Siegel took an unpopular stance in the October issue of Harper's, defending Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, when most major critics panned it. Siegel's words apply not only to America's taste in cinema, which is dismal, but also to its relationship to other art forms: "Everything in our society, so saturated with economic imperatives, tells us not to surrender our interests even for a moment, tells us that the only forms of cultural expression we can trust are those that give us instant gratification, useful information or a reflected image of ourselves, so we are flooded with the kind of art that deprecates attentiveness, tells us about the issues of the day, and corresponds to our own personalities..." If Siegel is right, and I think he is, then good museum exhibits should be presenting us something more challenging than what passes for popular art today.
In the end, the Brooklyn Museum may have to thank Giuliani for giving the new exhibit the best publicity no money could buy. Now, block-long lines of curious museum-goers are queuing up to see what all the fuss is about. Hopefully, their reactions won't be as uninformed as Giuliani's.