Archive for May, 2009
The correct answer to intrusive question "What's your nationality?" should be "American"
Dear HillBuzz,
Back in a peach and yellow totally 80s kitchen in Cleveland, my mother helped a much smaller version of me bake hundreds of mini German chocolate cupcakes and slather them with gruesome-looking but entirely delicious roasted coconut and pecan frosting. This was technically my first foray into catering (and I’m sure my football-loving father was just as proud as whenever he’d catch me surreptitiously watching “that girls’ show” Jem or wanting the She-ra doll action figure to complete my Masters of the Universe set), having planned these treats as refreshments for my booth in the school’s 6th grade “Nationality Report” presentation, where students tasked with creating narratives about their “nationality” used poster board and crayolas to inadequately represent the complexities of overseas cultures almost entirely alien to them by reducing centuries of history to badly-drawn castles and truly ugly lederhosen-clad caricatures (and then calling it a day).
Like all things in Catholic school, the nuns meant well when they conceived the inaugural “Nationality Day”, which included not only presentations during the two lunch periods for all students K-8, but a command performance at night for parents to attend (and all were dutifully thrilled, of course, to miss Family Ties, The A-Team, or Magnum PI that evening, in a world where people still didn’t know how to program their VCRs, to come down to the Immaculate Conception School for an amateur trade show on globalism).
Contrary to popular belief, Nuns aren’t any better at predicting disaster than the civilian population (and are probably much worse at prognostication than the average groundhog, horse, or shelter mutt, all of whom can supposedly detect imminent catastrophe using marvelous superpowered sixth senses when anecdote requires). Back when I was in grade school, they still wore the medieval habits and other bride of Christ regalia, and all of them took great pride in not owning TVs, watching movies, reading magazines, listening to the radio, or learning about anything that happened after Vatican II (because, really, what was the point when the school year only had so many days and no one really wanted to talk about Jimmy Carter or his stale peanuts anyway). So, it was no surprise whatsoever, really, that “Nationality Day” bombed so spectacularly with both students and parents – but it remains amazing, to me at least, that what happened on some random day in Cleveland still echoes in my life here in Chicago today.
For whatever reason, my classmate Erika Kuester, who the nuns expected to report on Germany, or possibly Austria, Switzerland, or MAYBE in a real nail-biter, Luxembourg (with a Germanic name like Erika Kuester, after all), set up Old Glory in her Nationality Day booth, tacked a colorful map of all 50 states to her poster board, and sliced up four Baker’s Square apple pies into Dixie-cup portions, prepped for her presentation: “I am an American”.
AMERICAN was her featured nationality, and that’s what she wanted to talk about. America was the nation she wrote her report on. Red, white, and blue were the crayons she used on her poster board. In her heart, she sang My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.
The rest of my sixth grade class was midway through setting up our slipshod displays on Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Ireland, China, Mexico, Germany and Italy, with various foodstuffs and knickknacks assembled (with varying success), none of which gave more than an Epcot Center approximation of any foreign country — but there was Erika, whose parents were actual immigrants from what was then East Germany, declaring herself to be 100% American.
The nuns were apoplectic, of course, in the way normally reserved for music listed on hard-to-read mimeographed sheets that Mrs. Smoley in the school office sent home to parents once a month, informing them of which particular bands the school believed were tools of Satan (that week) and which specific songs could be played backwards with great difficulty to reveal insidious haikus I have never, to this day, been able to ungarble. In Catholic school, as good as our education was (and I remain very grateful for it, and the sacrifices my parents made to send me to private school), critical thinking and old-fashioned moxie were generally lumped in with other tools of the Devil, musical or otherwise. The nuns were sphinxes that asked their questions knowing all the answers, firm in their belief that nothing could or should ever deviate from their well-attended plans. Bells rang like crazy all day keeping everyone on schedule and everything in just the right place. Rulers were used to measure the lengths of girls’ skirts and smack the backs of boys’ hands to maintain ordered consistency.
But, then Erika Kuester unexpectedly became the Norma Ray of the cafeteria set, holding up her I AM AN AMERICAN sign for all to see, unexpectedly rallying many of us to her side.
Because, standing in front of my truly hideous depiction of Schloss Neuschwanstein, cuckoo clocks, and Checkpoint Charlie, I looked at the hundreds of tiny German chocolate cakes spread across my table and realized the one or two times a year I ever ate anything “German”, even if it was “German” only in name like these cakes, it was never as satisfying as a nice plate of piping hot, store-bought, Baker’s Square “American” apple pie.
I’ve been to Europe many times through the years, with many of those vacations to Germany, Austria, Andorra, Liechtenstein, and other random places relatives of mine lived many hundreds and thousands of years ago, back when those places were all called The Holy Roman Empire, Trans-Alpine Gaul, Abracadabracaptovia, or whatever. As a kid, I thought about those places only when nuns told me to, and as a grown man I typically only revisit them when people in Chicago bars come up to me, at random, and ask, “What’s your nationality?”.
This only happens to me in Chicago.
It never happened in Cleveland; it doesn’t happen in New York, Washington, San Francisco, or other cities I like; it never happened on the campaign trail in any of the farflung and obscure places I was sent to canvass for Hillary Clinton or McCain/Palin in 2008. It’s a uniquely Chicago thing, like putting cucumbers and tomatoes on hotdogs and turning “pizza” into a 27-pound angioplasty technician’s job security dream.
“What’s your nationality?”
“What nationality are you?”
“Where are your parents from?”
“Where did your grandparents come from?”
The jarring, out-of-the-blue, yet pointed and laser-focused interrogatory in that unsettled me the first dozen or so times I heard that in Chicago. At first, I didn’t know how to respond, and thought it was a joke. Why on Earth would anyone ask me what my nationality was?
What on Earth did they need that information for?
Were they from the government?
Were they conducting a survey?
If I answered incorrectly, would they not want to speak to me anymore?
Would the next words out of Sargent Schultz’ mouth switch to the imperative with, “PAPERS PLEASE!”.
I have now lived in Chicago for four years, and have probably been asked “What’s your nationality?” by no less than 300 guys, mainly at Sidetrack’s while minding my own business watching videos, nursing Pilsners, and pretending not to evesdrop on the conversations around me for material for columns like these. I went through various stages of response until I found one that’s been universally effective. The experimentation went through stages, just like my door-to-door or telephone spiels during the campaign, where I refined what worked and eliminated responses that failed to get my point across.
At first, I asked these people why they needed to know what my nationality was, but that was mainly an invitation for them to exhibit more of their personal brand of stupidity, of which I certainly wanted no trade shows.
“Why do you need to know what my nationality is?”
“Well, I can’t figure out what you are. You have dark hair and dark eyes, but you are pale, so you aren’t Arab, but you aren’t Italian either, so then I thought you might be Hispanic, but you’re drinking a Czech beer and not a Corona, so you can’t be Hispanic, so I don’t know what you are so I asked.”
There are moments in life where I truly wish I was kidding, and this is one of them. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people I’ve met in Chicago who insist on labeling absolutely everyone and everything they encounter in life. They pass judgment with all the frequency and unpleasantness of Oprah on chili day at Harpo Studios wordlessly, but never silently, passing her own “judgment” on chef’s efforts that day (typically in packed elevators, from what I have heard, with men, women, and children clawing at the wood paneled walls, grasping for breathe, green to the gills and unable to even call for help in the wake of Oprah’s chili-induced “judgment”).
It all stinks.
I don’t have the boy next door, apple pie, all-American, Abercrombie look. Growing up, my three fallback Halloween costumes were always Dracula, James Bond, or Superman (and still have the red speedo and tights hanging in the closet in case of costum-related emergencies). I’ve got dark hair and eyes, a fondness for evening wear and/or capes, and generically foreign features that throw back to somewhere between the Roman conquest of Alpine Europe and the eventual merging of all the little post-Holy post-Roman post-Empire kingdoms into the Kaiser’s Germany that didn’t quite exist by the time my direct ancestors were all long gone…and firmly established in the U-S-of-A.
So, asking me what’s my nationality and demanding a Europe-based specific answer is like demanding to know where my great-great-great-great grandfather was baptized, where he went to grade school, what his favorite color was, and how many frogs he saw in the entirety of his life. A lifetime could be wasted trying to discover the answers to all of those questions, but it would be completely pointless and serve positively no purpose today. Why would anyone care?
But, liberals obsessed with labels do care.
Challenging this inane questioning resulted in only more questions, forcing me to spend time talking to people I already didn’t like (because of said nationality obsessions) without a clearly defined exit strategy for the conversation.
I wondered why these people were coming up and talking to me: were they interested in me and wanted to get to know me or ask me out, or did these guys just object to a generically-foreign looking person in their midst whom they couldn’t label effectively?
RAAAAACISTS!
Was the “nationality question” just the second-worst pickup line ever (after, in Boystown, direct and pointed questions about the length of certain parts of the male anatomy (which start with “p” and end in “enis”) that are more frequently asked at Sidetrack’s than you could ever possibly imagine), meant as a way to start a conversation — or was it RAAAAAAACISM! from liberal gay Democrats who go out of their way to shop at Whole Foods for all things foreign and exotic, so essentially that’s what they try to do at Sidetrack’s too, in the men department?
“What’s your nationality?” has a subtext to it, in my experience of, “I have walked over to speak to you because I am the kind of guy who buys acai berry, pomegranate, and dragon fruit whatever because I want people to know how liberal, progressive, and international-thinking I am. Plus, I love and support the rain forest, wherever that is. I have identified you as a potentially exotic and/or foreign person and would like to be seen talking to you because this proves I do not ONLY speak to blonde twinks from Iowa, which comprise most of my friends and the hastily-scribbled on the backs of napkins phone numbers littered under my bed. So, in talking to you and in confirming that you are, in fact, ethnic in some way, I am increasing my liberal cred while showing all of my friends how cool I am for willingly speaking to that dark-haired, possibly Italian or Hispanic or Arab or Jewish or whatever person my liberal arts education taught me to, so rudely, label capricously”.
I’m not a mind-reader (obviously, since I’m not a nun and thus have no magical powers), so I can’t ever know what really went through guys’ heads in the seconds before the asked me “the nationality question”, but the above is my best guess based on repeated anecdotal evidence.
And, as this kept happening, and I kept getting into arguments with these guys over how rude it is to come up and ask someone this question, I eventually just started f***ing with them instead of letting this nonsense bother me.
“What’s your nationality?”
“Oh, I’m Japanese.”
Didn’t expect that one, did they?
“Oh, uh, you don’t look Japanese.”
“Really, I look like all my family in Kyoto. Have you been to Kyoto and do you know everyone there? If you did, you would know everyone there looks just like me. We’re all Japanese, we really think so. Now, you, however, you are clearly Botswanan. Dumella ma. Yes, I believe your family is from Gaborone, clearly. Northwestern Gaborone, to be precise, by the telephone booth. I know this from watching the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I believe you look like someone I saw in a scene in the market place who was holding a toy truck. That could have been your cousin. WAS that your cousin? It was certainly a very nice toy truck, ma”.
The clearly non-Botswanan in front of me wouldn’t know quite what to do, but would ultimately slink away when I’d just go back to watching the video screens, purposefully closing the conversation, wondering whatever happend to that lovely toy truck.
I’ve been Japanese, Icelandic, Andorran, Zanzibarian, black, Native American, Swiss, Romulan, and Trans-Alpine-Gaullic in various run-ins with what I call “The Nationality Police”. After answering their idiocy with whatever I can think of from the World Almanac off the top of my head, I always then asked these guys if they were *fill in the blank*, picking something ridiculous to assume they were nationality-wise. Tall blonde skinny man? Well, he must be from Samoa! Short black man? A viking! Red-headed muscle pup? Camerooooooooooon! Or Djibuti, because, really, who DOESN’T love working some Djibuti into an increasingly awkward conversation with people you never want to talk to again (and we all know there can never be enough Djibuti at Sidetrack’s).
Then, I just got tired of doing all of this after a few months, and instead wanted to find the easiest way to shut the Nationality Police down and clearly indicate that I wanted no further conversation with this person.
I employed a wonderful trick I learned from Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign: whenever she was asked a question she didn’t want to answer, she would just talk about something else entirely. If someone didn’t ask a question, but instead made an awkward or absurd comment, Clinton would just say, “Well, thank you for your opinon,” before moving on to the next person in the audience or the next hand to shake on the rope line.
“What’s your nationality?”
“Oh, I come here all the time on the weekends. I like Showtunes night, but audience request night is cool too. They have great VJs here. Sometimes the Pilsners are skunky, but what can you do with imports? If I drank American beer, I’d never have that problem, so it serves me right.”
“No, I asked what your nationality was. You look Greek to me. My family is Greek, so I thought you were Greek.”
“Well, thank you for your opinion. Now, if you will excuse me, I see my friend across the room. Have a blessed day.”
As I employed this strategy, something became very clear: people almost always said, “Oh, I thought you were *blank* because my family is *blank*”. So, whatever they were, they wanted me to be too. I never once ran into a case of, “You aren’t Arab, is you? I HATES me some Arabs. Is you one? CAUSE I HATES ‘EM”. There were probably pretty people who thought ugly things like that, but they were smart enough not to become Nationality Police and confront me about whatever it was they thought I was, which I wasn’t, that was upsetting them from across the room. But, people who wanted to put a label on me that they in some way applied to themselves always used this as their opener in the bars.
I remain fascinated by that, because everyone in Sidetrack’s wears several labels by being in there: Abercrombie, of course, and Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, but also LGBTQ, Chicagoan, drunkard, friend of Dorothy, and AMERICAN, all to some extent. Why do some guys need to add more labels to people? And all of this, of course, is in addition to the labels they’ll add by asking what someone does for a living (which is one step removed from asking how much money they make), where they live, or, yes, how big certain things are (welcome to Boystown!).
The “nationality question” became the kiss of death for any prospective date. It rounded out the Fatal Five things I know make a guy absolutely wrong for me, actually instantly establishing itself at the top of that heap:
(1) Asked “What’s your nationality?”
(2) Drinks frilly, complicated, high-maintenance drinks
(3) Doesn’t get my jokes
(4) Asked how big my *fill in the blank* is
(5) Asked what I did for a living in the first half hour of talking to me
Guys whose drinks take longer to say than “Pilsner” or “MGD” are not for me. As the bartending skill required to keep them tanked at Sidetrack’s increases, so does the amount of energy they’ll drain from me in a dating situation. If you need a bartending book to take care of one of these guys, they might make great friends, but they are not having breakfast with me in the morning. No thanks, Mr. Sex-on-the-Beach. I don’t need any of your endless crabbing.
Obviously, I am who I am, so I’m also not going to relate well to someone who needs me to explain whatever I’m talking about constantly either. You get me or you don’t; you think I’m funny or you just stare at me blankly. You appreciate my snark, or you go all crazy in comments. But, it’s not a fun date with all that much staring going on, so I’ll pass on Mr. Doesn’t Think I’m Funny.
And, really, there’s just not a single appropriate instance in which someone can or should ask how large a male body part is, unless it’s Lloyd’s of London calling to insure it, so (4) above is an obvious disqualifier. Because you just have to find that part out on your own, if you play your cards right, mister.
Some of you might object to (5) being on the Fatal Five list, because most people do ask this question, but I’ve found that guys I end up liking don’t get around to this cliche until later in the evening, if at all the first day I know them. That means they have other things to talk about, other interests, and have an unconventional way of thinking that I’ve found matches well with me. Hence, any talk of work, money, or status draws a line in the sand in the first 30 minutes of knowing him, after which he can most certainly still be a friend, but won’t be anything more.
I’ll be 33 in June, and wish I’d discovered the Fatal Five 20 years ago and spared myself a lot of Davids in the process (his nationality: Scotch-Irish-Anglo, his favorite drink: Sea Breeze, he never got my jokes and asked how big it is, but didn’t ask about work or money the first night I met him, now that I think about it).
With the concept of the Fatal Five firm in my mind, I realized the Nationality Police were people I really didn’t even want to be friends with, and really didn’t want to talk to, but I did want to start learning more about WHY they found it so important to ask me about my nationality when there are literally trillions of questions people can ask each other, no matter what nationality they are.
What’s your favorite episode of Punky Brewster?
What animal at the zoo are you upset the most about always hiding under rocks or bushes so you can’t ever see it, no matter how many times you go there or what time of day you visit?
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
So many questions, so many opportunities not to talk about people’s nationality.
One night during a Showtunes Sunday, a guy I actually really liked and was enjoying talking to for about 10 minutes pulled out his Nationality Expert credentials and asked me Fatal Five Question Number One, and that time I thought to answer his question with one of my own:
“What’s your nationality?”
“I have a better question for you. Why do you ask someone that? What’s the pathology behind asking someone what his nationality is? Are you a racist? If I answer that question wrong, with a nationality you don’t like, will you not talk to me anymore, or even worse, try to hurt me in some way? Is your pathology racially motivated, and if so, why?”
THAT was a ridiculously effective comeback for creating a Nationality-Police hole in the wall where this guy fled with great haste after muttering “I’m sorry, sorry to offend you, uh, I’m really a good guy…I’m just…sorry, there’s nothing pathologically wrong with me…I’m not a racist…sorry”. Calling a gay liberal Democrat a RAAAAACIST! or implying there is something pathologically wrong with him is MARVELOUSLY effective at getting him to not only leave you alone for the rest of the night (or forever) but also makes him race home to, presumably, call either his therapist or his Grace (straight female sidekick with low self-esteem waiting by the phone to hear about his latest exploits in Boystown, still hoping on some level this is all just a wedding-of-her-dreams-delaying phase). I thank Dr. Utopia’s supporters and his campaign for the race-baiting trick: calling people RAAAAACISTS! who weren’t worked so well for him, I knew it would work for me too, and I just love it.
But, all snark aside, it actually is pretty racist to come up to someone and demand to know what nationality he is. And it is legitimate to wonder whether or not there is a “wrong” answer to that question. Favorite color? Favorite movie? What books are you reading? Do you know where my pants are? All valid, informative, and sometimes necessary questions in Boystown.
But, what’s your nationality? Inappropriate, pedestrian, and cliche. Especially when my answer these days really is “American”.
Last night, I was out with some friends and a dead-ringer for Anderson Cooper came up to me, a 30-something silver fox with Vanderbilt blue eyes and a photo-shoot ready, skin-tight black polo that could have been painted on by what I presume is Annie Leibovitz’s much-harried makeup artist or assistant. We talked for 27 seconds approximately before the “nationality question hit”:
“What’s your nationality?”
“American”.
“No, what’s your family’s nationality?”
“American”.
“What country is your family from?”
“America”.
“No, what’s their, you know, original nationality”.
“American. The greatest nation on Earth. America. That’s my nationality, American. I am an American”.
And man alive, I let those words hang in the air like Erika Kuester’s handmade sign. I AM AN AMERICAN. MY NATIONALITY IS AMERICAN.
All at once, I thought about Erika’s presentation to our grade school; I thought about volunteering all across the country through the years doing various community projects where I was always welcomed with such kindness by Americans; I was suddenly back in rural Iowa stuck in a snow drift campaigning for Hillary Clinton when a bunch of good Americans came out of their ramshackle farmhouse to dig me out of my mess; through 27 states during the campaign, at dozens of rallies and parades, there I was, surrounded by wonderful Americans all across this great nation; I was shaking hands with John McCain, Sarah Palin, Michael Steele and other great Americans on the Republican side of the aisle for the first time in my life; I remembered being in those public schools I visited in Chicago this past week, seeing how much separation and identity and racial politics were emphasized, and I realized how damaging this particular manifestation of liberalism really is; and, last but not least, I found myself sitting at my computer writing up these thoughts, reaching out to all the good Americans who stop by HillBuzz to yet again celebrate all we share in common, no matter how different we might at first seem.
And that is something I celebrate about myself today, and every day going forward. I AM AN AMERICAN. MY NATIONALITY IS AMERICAN. I will continue to give all of my free time to doing whatever I can to help the America I believe in, and to resist the efforts of those who would destroy it.
I don’t care where people came from. I don’t care how much money they have or how fancy their jobs are. I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans anymore. I don’t give a damn if they are black, white, red, yellow, or green (and I sure as Hell won’t write crazy poems about that to read at Inaugurations).
All I care about is if someone is a good American or not. If you are, we can most definitely be friends. You still have to make it passed the Fatal Five to get a date, but if you’re an American, well, hey, we’ve already got something great in common and I want to celebrate it. Looking like Chris Pine or Jake Gyllenhaal will also help you in more ways than you can immediately know.
As a fellow American, the label I will put on you is FRIEND. Keep asking me that nationality crap and you’ll get the other label in my bag, which is JACKASS. And, more likely than not at this point, you’ll also get a fairly long speech about how many different kinds of awesome this country is, and how much it totally kicks Europe’s saurian, sorry ass five times by Sunday, and how much of this RED, WHITE, AND BLUE verve I picked up at McCain/Palin rallies and Hillary Clinton events all around the country.
So, just like precocious Erika so many years ago back in Cleveland, I know exactly who I am. I AM AN AMERICAN. So, you don’t have to ask me that question ever again, and the nuns have to just DEAL WITH IT. I wrote a whole essay about it that is now on the Internets, floating somewhere in those pipes and tubes, where maybe you can share it with the rest of the Nationality Police and we can all save each other a lot of time.
As AMERICANS.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
Saturday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Saturday?
Just what the heck are "emergency cupcakes" and why haven't I heard of them before?
Dear HillBuzz,
Yesterday, I sat in the principal’s office under a cartoonishly-executed tempora painting of several klansmen holding candles against a midnight-blue nightscape, sprayed from above by a giant bottle of “Racist-Off” insect repellant, the product pitch “Spray No to Racism” flourescently scrawled in the sky above.
It’s the second most bizarre painting I’ve ever seen displayed with great care and pride in anyone’s office (the first being, collectively, a series of gorilla paintings a 50-something-year-old woman I know named Madison keeps in her office here in Chicago: gorillas dressed up like Marie Antoinette or Cleopatra, Gorilla George Washington, Gorillas visiting Millennium Park, Gorillas eating various sandwiches without irony, all painted so amateurishly I at first thought actual gorillas made them (which would have been remarkable, for actual gorillas, but then I realized Madison, a Human Resources Director, wasn’t outsourcing her art to great apes but was instead poorly aping said apes’ violent, opposable-thumb-challenged, artistic direction; once I realized these paintings were made by a fully-functioning adult human, the only thing remarkable about them was the every-day-is-April-Fools attitude required to exhibit those monstrosities in an office where other fully-functioning adults come to do business)).
“Spray No to Racism” hovered above me while I waited for the school’s principal to give me a tour of the building and show me which health and nutrition classes I would sit in on that day. If I looked away from the painting, I would start to imagine the little klansmen in their ridiculous getups simpering and muttering all manner of vile curses, as the “Racist-off” melted them into tiny puddles of robes, Margaret Hamilton-meets-Evian-style. If I stared at the painting, I became wholly absorbed by the bizarreness of it, in much the same way gorillas dressed as famous people (as painted by someone clearly out of her mind) captivate me, and not in a good way.
For the rest of the day, all I could think about was racism, and tiny klansmen scurrying into the walls to hide from “Racist-Off” spray, and how much the art in that principal’s office and the rest of the school could be, unintentionally or intentionally, impacting the education the students there received.
And, of course, I also thought of cupcakes.
“Emergency cupcakes” (and “emergency champagne”, too) and a conversation I’d had with my good friend Jessie the other night, where she asked me for some good first-date things to do with a guy she liked but didn’t want to scare off by doing things she typically does, like inviting him over to look through her astonishing stacks of old dog-eared, tear-stained issues of Martha Stewart Weddings (or talk about shoes, and how much she loves shoes, because after the wedding planning stuff, you all know that’s the second-best surefire way to send straight men scurrying for cover, “Racist-off” style).
Because a single, gay man whose longest relationship was with a lying, cheating, Asperger-afflicted, prescription-drug addicted, momma’s boy like my ex David is OBVIOUSLY the best person to solicit winning first-date advice from.
Clearly.
Because THAT always worked so well on Will & Grace, too.
But, I do have to say, “emergency cupcakes” have never failed me before, and I was surprised Jessie had no idea what I was talking about, as I have gotten more guys over to my apartment with this bit than with skywriting or voodoo. Combined.
“Just text that guy you like and tell him you’re having an emergency and need his help. That triggers the He-Man, giant-spider-killing, distressed-damsel-rescuing, testosterone-fueled cowboy that lurks somewhere in even the whimpiest guys. He instantly answers the old Bonnie Tyler “where have all the good men gone and where all the gods…where’s my streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds” call and thinks there’s a big dragon for him to slay, so he’ll ask you what sort of emergency and how he can save the day, and you tell him it’s a cupcake emergency. That’s the particular kind of emergency that involves too many cupcakes in your apartment at that particular moment in time, coinciding with your real and exasperated need for someone meeting his EXACT DESCRIPTION to come over IMMEDIATELY to crisis-manage the situation by eating at least half of those delicious, gourmet cupcakes, procured from any one of the dreamy cupcakeries here in Boystown.”
What you’ve done, quite deliberately, is stimulated several different areas of the male brain all at once, going all the way back to his childhood, where all little boys on some level want to play hero (and never grow out of that), and most have wonderful memories of cupcakes baking in kitchens, if not at home then at least at grandma’s house or school or somewhere (and the smell of treats baking is much, much, MUCH more powerful magic than any of those expensive perfumes, lotions, creams and other nonsense women slather themselves with, making them smell like flowers soaked in alcohol and chemicals instead of something that would actually trigger positive sensory memories in men). You also differentiate yourself from other people he’s dated, who call him to fix broken pipes, deal with emotional crises, take care of a sick dog, or whatever other typical emergencies guys are summoned to handle for girlfriends who speed dial them for these sorts of reasons.
A “cupcake emergency” is a welcome emergency, and it’s kooky enough to get that smile on his face as you coax him out of his place and over to yours, all suited up and ready for adventure with someone unlike anyone else he’s dated before.
But, the downside to having cupcakes lying around your house, or champagne sitting in your fridge (awaiting catastrophes of its own), is that you are tempted to have these sorts of emergencies more often than you should. The emergency champagne, for instance, is very easy to abuse, as it’s also very effective in dealing with almost any other sort of real or imagined crisis in your life. Bad day at work? Break out the “emergency champagne”! Hate the finalists on American Idol this season? Thank Hera for “emergency champagne”! Drank too much last night and feel like Hades this morning? ”Emergency champagne” for breakfast, to the rescue!
So, in concept, emergency cupcakes and emergency champagne are good things, meant to serve noble purposes (or, at the very least, be on hand should you ever have a chance to get Chris Pine out of his Star Fleet uniform and over to your place, in that or any other order, because Chris Pine and his baby blues are the new Jake Gyllenhaal rocking my world). But, if you are always looking for emergencies to drink champagne and eat cupcakes, then you’ll ultimately end up the love child Liza Minnelli and Oprah mercifully never had.
You will find emergencies everywhere, because you predispose yourself to look for them around every corner.
The same is true for the anti-racist verve at the school whose principal was so fond of that “Racist-Off” painting, because it really set the tone that racism was absolutely everywhere, likc cockroaches, throughout the whole day. Every student, every teacher, every visitor passing through that principal’s office had to remain forever vigilent and on the lookout for RAAAAAAACISM!
And that “Racist-Off” painting wasn’t the only piece of art encouraing this: the rest of this almost 100% Hispanic school was decorated exclusively with Mexican and Central/South American art, with only photos of famous Hispanic people up on the walls and only prints of artwork by Hispanic artists. The one exception to this was a mural (FABULOUSLY done) of famous Native Americans like Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Pocahontas, and Sacajawea…with a picture of Ghandhi nearby, which still puzzles us (because it could be a weird play on the word “Indian”, or it could just be an inadvertant coincidence because Ghandhi was being recognized for his pacifism and nonviolence completely separate from the Native American place of honor).
When I saw the Ghandhi/Crazy Horse proximity, I immediately realized this is one of those opportunities crazy people use to start PC-trouble (I call these particular trolls bogomilskys, after the most vile PC-policeman in Seattle, the man who waged war on Christmas back in 2005). People who wake up each day determined to find something to complain about will indeed succeed. Someone conditioned to look for RAAAAACISM! around every corner will spend their whole lives convincingly impersonating Al Sharpton, James Clyburne, Eric Holder, and Jesse Jackson. I’m truly surprised one of these bogomilskys hasn’t complained to the principal that, “I find it offensive you have a portrait of Indian peace activist Ghandhi, my personal hero who I know nothing about, really, except that he is not only my idol, but Bono’s as well, too close to a mural depicting Native Americans because I find “Indian” to be a pejorative used to subjugate and malign Native Americans and First Nation members, and so I am scarred and deeply troubled because seeing an actual Indian, from India, too near the Native American mural makes me think everyone in this building needs sensitivity training.”
Though we can imagine bogomilskys going on for days and days in that vein, the reason something like that wouldn’t happen at a 100% (or close to it) Hispanic school is because Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and other minority groups can never, in this realm of PC-logic, be racist. Only white people can be racist, so anything hanging up in a Hispanic or black school has to, by nature, be 100% politically correct because white people didn’t put it there (so there is no problem with it).
The portraits of Che Gueverra hanging on the walls are a very interesting choice (where “interesting” can be a synonym for anything you like). I also remind you those same portraits hung in Dr. Utopia’s campaign offices in California, Texas, Nevada, and other largely Hispanic areas. Not being Hispanic, I don’t know why, culturally, Gueverra is hung on the walls but Delores Huerta isn’t featured up there (who would not only be a positive role model, but would also be a WOMAN featured prominently in a school where I saw about 30 rooms, none of which had a single woman honored with a painting, portrait, or bulletin-board feature). These are all questions for another time, that people with much, much more experience in this than I do could maybe shed some light on.
And it was fascinating to get a glimpse into how history was being taught in this school. Speaking purely anecdotally, with no information about what’s in the lesson plans or history books in these classrooms, and just talking about what I personally saw on the bulletin boards and other classroom displays, it seems Victimhood is what these children are exposed to constantly every day. One of the classrooms had a big display on the evils of colonialism and all the damage that did to Afro-Caribbean peoples. That same room had another map asking who were REALLY the first people in North America, and who REALLY discovered “the New World” (interestingly, no mention was made of Vikings and their suspected settlements in present day New York or New England, but there was a big mention of the theory that Chinese voyagers reached North America before Columbus — who, incidentally, was only mentioned in passing with a line like “Columbus didn’t really discover America, so who really did?”).
It’s just fascinating to walk around in alternate reality like these classrooms and see what I learned in school, and what I have continued to learn as an inquisitive adult, twisted and reshaped to fit into the desired victimhood molds prescribed by whomever is in charge of the public school curriculum. It’s definitely people like William Ayers behind this sort of thing: rich, white liberals who took over the education system with an “America’s bad!” mindset some time ago. Not being a teacher, and not having a background in childhood education, I have no idea how any of this impacts people’s lives as they get older. But, I don’t see how mulitculturalism, if it’s indeed as great as liberals always say, doesn’t apply at a 100% Hispanic or 100% black school. Where is the multiculturalism in the art and curriculum of segregation and victimhood?
I have a good friend named Joaquin who is Mexican-American and grew up outside Dallas, Texas. He only spoke Spanish at home, because his mother never felt the need to learn English, as her mother never learned a single word of it. Joaquin’s father is American-born and is some kind of businessman, but Joaquin’s mother has never worked, and doesn’t often leave the house. When she does, she goes to other Spanish-speakers’ homes, or to Spanish-mass at church, or to the Spanish-speaking Mexican grocery store. So, she lives in this Little Mexico world she’s created for herself.
That’s actually VERY similar to Polish immigrant families I know, who pretend they are in Little Warsaw when at home: only going to Polish internet sites, only watching old VHS tapes of Polish shows on TV, paying hundreds of dollars to get Polish movies flown in on DVD so they never watch American movies, eating only Polish food and never going out to restaurants or trying anything new (“Why would we go to restaurants when there is food here? Polish food is best!).
What’s interesting is that the children of people like these Polish families wouldn’t find themselves in a public school that pretended it was Little Poland. Those kids would become part of the larger American culture, and would not be segregated all day in classrooms with giant photos of Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa exclusively. They would be exposed to everything, in mainstreamed schools. Will they do better in school and in life as a result? I’m not an education expert, so you tell me.
But, Joaquin has a lot of trouble socially because he missed out on American culture for all those years he lived at home and went to a Spanish-dominated school. Because he didn’t watch anything but Spanish TV and didn’t have exposure to things his mainstreamed age peers had, Joaquin doesn’t get pop culture, literary, or historical references in common usage. He’s forever saying, “What’s that? I’ve never heard of that.” He sits there, clueless, while other people are laughing and sharing jokes, because he didn’t get the broad education that mainstreamed kids get.
What’s truly tragic about all of this is that people back in Mexico treat Joaquin the same way. He’s not Mexican, because he also doesn’t get Mexican cultural ques either. He’s a smart and very nice guy, but he’s clueless a lot of the time because his parents kept him in a limbo between two worlds, so now at 30 he’s not either, really.
It really feels like the 100% Hispanic and 100% black schools in Chicago are creating generations of people who, like Joaquin, seem like they are also destined to not fit in with age peers who were mainstreamed. If I was a bogomilsky, I would see hidden racism in that: by separating these kids and constantly reinforcing what makes them different, educators are ensuring these kids grow up to be adults who never get any of the jokes, who have a hard time joining their age peers in friendships at work, have difficulty using those friendships to network and get ahead, and are doomed to be socially awkward and separate for their whole lives. I’ve personally set up more opportunities for Joaquin to network than I can count, and he rarely shows up for any of them, but if he does he just stands there alone or sometimes gravitates towards other Spanish-speakers in the room, where they all speak in Spanish together, and miss the point of networking to make new professional contacts. ”I don’t have anything to say to the other people because I don’t know what they are talking about,” is what Joaquin usually says when I tell him he missed the chance to meet the president of this or that group or business, because he was talking to other people he already knew from back in Texas.
Joaquin hates his job working in a medical office that deals exclusively with Hispanic patients in a Hispanic part of town, but doesn’t take any steps towards a different career because he’s uncomfortable anywhere that’s not segregated along the racial and cultural lines that have always been emphasized for him his whole life.
I just imagine this happening to so many more Joaquins in the future, even if the school they are in now is beautiful and the teachers are as wonderful as the ones at the schools I toured this week. I just don’t see any good that comes from constantly emphasizing separateness and not giving these kids the chance to share the same experiences and knowledge as their mainstream peers. If the majority of students learn history one way in school, but black and Hispanic kids are taught a history for victimhood every day, doesn’t anyone else see there’s going to be conflict guaranteed in the future since not only will blacks and Hispanics butt heads with white peers over this learned victimhood, but they will also resent each other too — as blacks taught they were the main victims will have to compete for that martyrdom with the Hispanic kids who were taught THEY were the real victims, and kids who went through 13 years or more of this race-based victimhood indoctrination will not only be unable to relate to the mainstreamed kids at large, but will also resent the other racially segregated subgroups out there.
This is why I was also against the proposed LGBTQ High School here in Chicago as well. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea, because having a school where LGBTQ youth could feel at home, be accepted, and learn about LGBTQ culture SOUNDS fantastic. I wish I had that growing up in Catholic School, being taught in religion class first that being gay was a sin and gay people were bad, to later in the late 80s seeing the switch to “being gay is not a sin, but doing anything gay sexually is a sin”, to whatever it is they are teaching now (long after I stopped listening to this nonsense). A separate LGBTQ school is not the answer anymore than separate black and Hispanic schools are the answer; instead, ALL schools should depict LGBTQ culture positively and not single kids out as different and teach them that throughout their lives they have to hang out exclusively with other different kids, just like them, and never be part of the mainstream culture.
As fabulous as HillBuzz High would be, it would be as counterproductive as the way Joaquin was raised, creating a smart guy who is forever self-limited by the separateness he grew up with.
So, this is what I thought about when I left the principal’s office at the end of the day, turning in my visitor’s pass, and passing under that “Racism-off” painting again before leaving that public school and heading home. I also thought about the emergency cupcakes and the dating advice for Jessie and realize what an outsider’s perspective a gay man always has in this country. I can observe and research various things and issues in the school system, but at the end of the day, my opinion will always be discounted because it’s assumed I will never have kids, so I won’t be a parent, and thus I won’t ever have to weigh in on any of this “for real”. That outsider status is even more obvious in the relationship advice for Jessie and other straight female friends, because not only will I never really understand their situations, but they never listen to me anyway (and, despite being told repeatedly to stop obsessing over and talking about shoes to straight men, they just keep on making that same mistake instead of whipping out the emergency cupcakes).
I can see the outsider stuff is what’s driving the art and curriculum in these public schools, but the way it’s handled would be like me spending all my time never leaving Boystown, watching only LOGO or HERE! on TV, listening to nonstop Madonna, eating only at Stella’s or Nookie’s gay-friendly diners, and hanging out only at Sidetrack while reading Advocate and Genre exclusively. There’s a whole wide world out there apart from Sidetrack’s Showtunes night. If I went to HillBuzz High would I know that? If ALL I saw all day was LGBTQ and the lens I learned history through was also 100% LGBTQ, what kind of person would I be and what sort of a life would I lead?
I really don’t have an answer for that, and it kind of makes my head hurt a little, to be honest.
Time for the emergency champagne, I guess. That always makes everything better.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? May 15th 2009
800am – 200pm: Being awesome.
200pm: Swearing in ceremony for Ivan Daalder, US Permanent Representative to NATO.
230pm – 600pm: Being awesome some more.
Go, Hillary, Go!
Who is Sharron Angle, and can she defeat Harry Reid?
This is very encouraging news, and a great chance for the second-worst member of the United States Senate to get sent packing.
Mom (and grandmom!) Sharron Angle formed an exploratory committee to rid the Senate of Harry Reid. Here’s a chance to start reading up on her and learning more about her accomplishments. Frankly, a pile of Legos assembled by master Lego-builder Gary McIntire into any vaguely humanoid form would make a better Senator than Harry Reid (who thinks tourists coming to Washington smell, is obsessed with flying trains from the future, and who helped waste One Trillion Dollars of our national treasure on pocketsful of nonsense).
Today’s the first day we’ve heard of Angle, a 4-term Assemblywoman who, by nature of how terrible Reid truly is, HAS TO BE BETTER than the Senator Nevada has got.
The fact that even on the most cursory level of research Angle seems like a decent and professional person gives us great hope that the people of Nevada will wake up and fire Reid next year.
It truly does feel, as of this moment, that there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE both Pelosi and Reid will be removed from leadership positions in Congress SOONER rather than LATER. No Republican has emerged to take Pelosi down in San Francisco, but we hear rumors of some good Democrats with DEEP POCKETS who might mount successful challenges to Pelosi in the 2010 primary. It’s going to take someone who is willing to literally go door-to-door in the 15 blocks that make up Pelosi’s district and spend every waking day leading up to that primary building a personal rapport with people to knock Pelosi out. The Speaker has been VERY VERY lucky in that her challengers are typically crazy people like Cindy Sheehan. One of the great problems in our democracy is that too many races involve a terrible incumbent and an opposition candidate who is some species of fringe loon. Sometimes, that works to our advantage, which we must acknowledge, like in the 5th Congressional Special Election where Mike Quigley (D), a very good and decent man, defeated radical loon Rosana Pulido (you truly have no idea how moonbat crazy this person is…really). But, it boggles the mind why either party would let crazies win primaries…there should be a veto power reserved by the party to keep this from happening.
Because this is one of the main reasons Pelosi has stayed in Congress for so long.
All of this increasingly looks like it will be moot, however, because there’s a definite vibe that she’ll lose her place as Speaker long before she’ll be kicked out of Congress. It would be wonderful if the same kind of shakeup happened with Reid, too, in advance of his (we hope) electoral defeat at the hands of someone like Sharron Angle.
Is anyone here from Nevada who knows Angle? We’d love to learn more about her — can you help?
Friday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Friday?
It really feels like Nancy Pelosi is finished as Speaker. She just keeps digging herself deeper and deeper into a mess we don’t see her recovering from. Pelosi was an absolute fool to back Dr. Utopia over Hillary Clinton — the Clintons are loyal people, who never, EVER turn on anyone who is good to them (especially HRC, to her own detriment). Dr. Utopia has no loyalty to anyone, least of all Pelosi. She is becoming an albatross around his administration’s neck and, unlike last year with Bush as president, Pelosi is now drawing fire in a Democrat’s presidency and she will soon be dealt with by the White House.
What REALLY sealed the deal was Pelosi claiming the CIA lies and misleads Congress all the time.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
The Speaker of the House just claimed the CIA lies to Congress “all the time”. Doesn’t that make you think of at least the following:
(1) Why on Earth does Congress let them get away with that if it is true?
(2) Where are the Congressional investigations into these lies?
(3) Why does Congress fund the CIA if all it does is lie?
(4) Where is Congress’ accountability for funding this lie-machine?
Attacking the CIA is probably the stupidest thing Pelosi has ever done, in a career spanning immense reservoirs of stupid.
Joe Lieberman’s even getting in on this, as retribution most likely for all the vile things Pelosi has personally said about him, or tried to do to him, through the years:
By the end of the summer, it’s going to be Speaker of the House Hoyer. If we’re lucky, Pelosi will also resign from Congress, but that’s doubtful. And we agree with many other commentators out there that envision Majority Leader Jane Harmon as well. With Pelosi gone, all that will be left will be to get rid of Harry Reid in the 2010 Senate race.
We still think Reid will win re-election because Nevada voters have proved to be THAT stupid by electing him so many times, but this IS the age of Hope and Change, so we can only dream.
UPDATE: This is totally random, but we’re wondering if anyone with medical experience is reading this who could maybe help us research something. One of our friends is having a weird problem with her left hand. For about 3 months or so now, she’s had a weird numb tingle in her left hand, it runs from the fleshy edge of the middle of her palm all the way up through her pinky finger, which tingles when touched, the way your legs do when they fall asleep. When she raises her left arm for any length of time, not just the hand but the whole arm feels tingly, weird, and uncomfortable. The right hand/arm does not have this problem, and she’s never had this kind of thing before. Also, she didn’t injure the hand in anyway that she can recall and doesn’t do anything strenuous with it. Has anyone ever encountered anything like this before? It’s not painful, so she’s not raced off to the doctor (unemployed with no insurance right now), but would like some direction in researching what is going on. Anyone who can help?
Senator Roland Burris also calls for Ann Claire Williams to be nominated to the Supreme Court
Today on the Senate floor, Senator Roland Burris became the latest person to indirectly call for Ann Claire Williams to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court. He didn’t name her specifically, but everyone knows who he was talking about. There seems to be a real and concerted effort by high-ranking Democrats to NOT use Williams’ name specifically in public, even though people behind the scenes here in Chicago feel, like we do, that she will be the nominee.
Like we said before, all of this feels like the MSM’s insistence that Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty would be McCain’s VP pick, while we felt it would be Palin. The MSM also insisted there was no way HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy wouldn’t get her way and have her chance to play Senator, while we felt the smart money was on Kirsten Gillibrand. And now, the MSM is pushing crass, vulgar, and belligerent Judge Sotomayer and others with serious question marks in judgment like Judges Wood and Kagan (even tossing Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano into the mix), when a thoroughly-vetted, impeccably-qualified, and completely noncontroversial choice for the Court is right there in front of everyone in Ann Claire Williams.
Senator Roland Burris is a good man. Many of you out there have been buying into the MSM’s nonsense — there is a deliberate effort here in Chicago by Obots to attack this lifelong public servant because two of Dr. Utopia’s biggest supporters in Illinois want to take Burris’s Senate seat (state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, scion of the mob bank Broadway Bank) and current Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (who has dreamt of being Governor for years, but realizes that’s not an option in 2010 now that Pat Quinn is in Springfield, so now she wants to be a Senator and thinks Dr. Utopia owes her because she was one of the instructors at his crazy indoctrination camp he ran in Illinois in the summer of 2008 (aka, the summer we stopped supporting Lisa Madigan)).
We’re getting tired of seeing constant attacks on Burris here in Chicago from people we know are under the White House’s thrall and are doing Rahm Emanuel’s bidding. Just like with Gillibrand, Palin, Hillary Clinton, Williams, and other people we like who we feel don’t get the respect they deserve, we need to start getting the word out on what a good man Senator Roland Burris is, what a remarkable life he has led, and just how much he has personally done for the people of Illinois.
Trust us: if you get to know this man, you can’t help but walk away a supporter. Especially if you’re sick of watching the media attack other people you know are good and hard-working, the way the MSM always does in service to their false idol.
Something truly bizarre we saw today and yesterday
We’ll do a full essay on this in the next few days for sure, but have been too busy yesterday and today to pull it together — but it’s too interesting and bizarre to not at least tell you about briefly. We’ve been working on a research project involving health clinics and public school health education here in Chicago and got to spend the better part of the last two days visiting various schools on the Southside and in the Pilsen neighborhood: schools that are either 85% or more black or 85% or more Hispanic. It’s an interesting project, which we can’t really talk about, but we CAN talk about some of the other interesting things we noticed in these Chicago public schools.
For starters, the teachers and staff are absolutely INCREDIBLE. Wow. These people are just great. Really, we can’t say enough about them — firm, in control, INTENSELY PROFESSIONAL, razer-sharp, AMAZING. The school facilities were also incredible, the students were very well-behaved, polite, and all seemed very, very smart. And these were all schools in poorer neighborhoods, where all the kids qualify for free lunch (which is part of what we were researching). So, we have to note this positive because people often put big city public schools down, but we have to tell you that they are certainly doing a LOT of good in Chicago’s school system….and everyone involved deserves kudos for that.
But we just have to note some of the stranger things we did see, as observers, because the people who work in the schools probably have no idea these would be bizarre to outsiders like us.
For starters, everything from the art on the walls to the posters and other educational tools used in the schools are very much race-based. At the majority black school, there was lots of African art, pictures of Malcom X, and more murals of the current president on every flat surface (including in bathroom stalls at one school) than even we expected (and we knew there would be a lot). There wasn’t a white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or any other face to be found in any of these educational materials or decoration. And that’s interesting. We are not passing any judgment on that — just pointing out what we noticed anecdotally. It certainly is worthy of thought and discussion.
Especially since the same thing happened at the Hispanic schools: Che Guevera, Cesar Chavez, local famous Hispanics in Chicago like Danny Solis, etc. were all featured on the bulletin boards, with lots of Aztec, Mayan, Mexican, and other Latin and Central American art everywhere…but not a white, black, or Asian face to be found on anything. Interestingly, there WERE photos of Ghandhi and Crazy Horse in two of the schools…so Indians and Native Americans were featured, but not anyone else who wasn’t Hispanic.
Both of the schools really emphasized the separateness of the students there…to the point where it seemed, to us, to go beyond celebrating heritage and enter an alternate universe where no other cultures exist except for the one they are narrowly focusing on, at the deliberate exclusion of others.
At public schools that are majority white (let alone mixed in any way), it would be unacceptable to not have a mix of historical figures on the walls and various kinds of multicultural art. So, diversity in these situations always seems to be including as few white people and as little European-American influence in art or other media as possible.
Does this help students at these schools learn better, to be in segregated and radically separate environments deliberately focused on race? What happens when these students enter the larger “real world”? Will things be easier or harder for them once they have to interact in environments that are not 100% black or 100% Hispanic?
These are interesting questions. Not at all the point in the research field trips, but something we’re going to process and give our opinions on.
If you’ve had similar experiences, we’d love to hear them too. But we were just so surpised by how incongruously the caliber of the teachers, the quality of the schools, and the potential in those great students were all combined with school settings that seemed to exist in little bubbles where the most important thing in the day seemed to be race…in what’s supposed to be a Golden Age of post-racial America.
Art Institute in Chicago's new modern wing has FREE ADMISSION this weekend: May 16 & 17
The new modern wing of the Art Institute here in Chicago opens officially this weekend. Target is sponsoring FREE ADMISSION, so please be sure to head over and take advantage of this if you are anywhere NEAR Chicago.
We have a real problem with the Art Institute.
Last year, they started enforcing admission policy, and prices that are too high for most families to take advantage of. Up until last year, the Art Institute was “pay what you can”, and had a suggested admission of $15 — but, just like the Met in New York City, you could pay whatever you could. Tourists gave the full $15 usually, but local residents could give $1 if that’s all that they could afford. It was ideal for people who worked downtown and had an hour to kill on lunch break: you could pay a quarter and go see a small slice of the museum for 20 minutes, then head outside and grab a little snack before going back to work. It was GLORIOUS.
But, $15 admission makes those excursions during lunch impossible for most people, and that’s a real shame.
ESPECIALLY since the land the Art Institute occupies is Grant Park, and the Burnham plan of “forever free and clear” usage of that land for public benefit was a perfect fit for the “pay what you can afford” spirit of the old admission policy. A family of 4 should not drop $60 to enter the fabulous marble temple built on land taken from open public usage to build the Art Institute. Yes, there are “free” days for the museum, in the dead of winter or other days that most families just can’t decide on the spur of the moment to all go see some art.
What was beautiful about the old policy was that a family doing well could pay more, and a family struggling could pay a dollar for four people if that’s all they had and could then spend the whole day marveling at all those treasures. Who knows how many future artists or creative types of all stripes were inspired by that accessibility — now lost to far too many.
So, we implore you to ALWAYS attend any free performances, admissions, or whatever whenever you can. The more attendance these events get, the more institutions are encouraged to have them…and the more people who really need them get to have them.
We’re looking forward to taking advantage of Target’s generosity Saturday and Sunday, and also enjoying the new bridge from Lurie Garden in Millennium Park up to the Art Institute’s steel and glass treasure box of a modern wing.
We hope you can enjoy this wonderful opportunity too — or seek out something similar in your area.
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? May 14th, 2009
1100am – Meeting with Valdis Zatlers, President of the Republic of Latvia
230pm – Meeting with Y.B. Datuk Anifah bin Haji Aman, Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs
Remainder of the day: being awesome
Go, Hillary, Go!
