Greetings all.
I've always been fascinated/slash annoyed by the buzzword "role model." It always puts me in mind of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls for some reason. First you take some "neutral" figure (ie. white and devoid of genetalia) and then dress them up according to the Socially Acceptable likes of the moment. And then you "follow" whatever they may happen to "say." Is this the way it is in your life? Maybe for some. But on a more serious level, this opens onto the entire issue of people we admire for one reason or another, and what we make of our admiration. The problem, needless to say, is that people are (by nature?) horribly flawed.
Marcel Proust, IMHO is the greatest writer who ever lived. He was also a deeply flawed human being. So who do I admire? Well the writer, of course. But even that can't be utilized as a "role model" in that my apartment isn't cork-lined.
Though I do get out of it with increasing rareness.
Anyway, let's get started. What does "Role Model" mean to you? Did you ever have any? If so did it lead to Revealed Truth or Total Disaster?
2. Candide - 1/6/2000 1:23:26 AM
Cellar Door
I had to come to the party.
Role model for me doesn't mean an idol to imitate. It means an example of the possible. When I was a little girl in a small town in New Zealand, nobody's mother had a paid job. At least nobody my mother wanted to know. That was lethal for small girls. I had an unmarried aunt of considerable intellect who was greatly respected in the field of education and by some, as a poet and writer. My mother hated her and she hated my mother. My mother ingrained into me from my earliest days that school-marms were creatures to despise. Since that was the only career apart from nursing even remotely available to me it ended with my running away from home and doing all sorts of things wildly outside the dreams of my innocent parents. It worked out in the end but only after a lot of angst on all sides.
As a performer my idol was the Russian bass, Fyodor Chaliapin, but I couldn't exactly copy him. He was a huge bass and I was a small mezzo-soprano. I just realised by listening to his scratchy old records how fine my craft could be.
3. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 1:37:48 AM
"Couldn't exactly copy," is the beating heart of things, Candide. Should we want to copy at all?
Frank O'Hara was one of the greatest influences on my life. He was the essence of glamour. He worked at the Museum of Modern Art, knew absolutely everyone in the arts, had tons of gorgeous boyfriends, and lived a totally free and easy gay life years before Stonewall was so much as a blip on the horizon. I could never in a million years be Frank O'Hara. But he was -- and still is -- a touchstone for me. If that makes him a "Role Model," than the term has meaning.
But I'm STILL dissatisfied with it. Life is a "role" to be "played" in Genet plays and "The Real World."
Not in the real world.
4. Stumbo - 1/6/2000 1:44:11 AM
"Role Model" means nothing to me, whatsoever.
(BTW, here's an 80-year-old slam on Chaliapin, the man -- though I'm a great admirer of Chaliapin, the singer.)
5. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 1:48:39 AM
Well let me put it to you this way Stumbo: When you were growing up was there any particular person who you greatly admired for one reason or another, and if so, how did you act on that admiration?
6. Candide - 1/6/2000 1:52:55 AM
Cellar Door
I think that we spot an ambience that suits us, personified by an individual. But still it is the ambience itself that really attracts us.
We may very well grow out of the individual or spot their feet of clay, but we are drawn to a path that may lead us to other paths because of something about the vitality of that first individual.
I was influenced by a wonderful intelligent little bloke who left school at fifteen and was made to work in a barber shop and tobacconists. It was never a romantic attachment. What I liked was his total love of the idea of being a painter, and he did become a painter and is now a considerably respected painter who has just had a biographical film made about him. I am so happy for him. He willed himself to become a painter.
And my parents thought he was common and sent me to boarding school, partly to be away from his influence.
His single-minded courage and idealism and impertinent distaste for our home town made him my role model.
7. Candide - 1/6/2000 2:04:28 AM
Stumbo#4
Hoho.
That's not fair. Calculating and unstable could describe almost every performer I've known. I think like many performers he was sincere at the time! And DEEPLY sincere.
His unaccompanied folk songs still reduce me to tears.
There is a story of Chaliapin giving himself a huge clout on the head at a rehearsal. he was dissatisfied with something or other he had done.
8. Stumbo - 1/6/2000 2:05:58 AM
Cellar:
Well, maybe it's just me -- but I've always tended to admire people for qualities I do not, myself, have. Which made it kinda hard for them to be my role models, in any meaningful way.
(There were, of course, people who had qualities similar to mine, and whose careers I expected mine to resemble. But that was just a rational expectation of what would naturally happen, rather than any attempt on my part to go out of my way to fashion my career after theirs.)
9. Stumbo - 1/6/2000 2:21:16 AM
Candide:
"I think like many performers he was sincere at the time!"
And the purpose of that piece is to logically demonstrate the overwhelming likelihood of the opposite. (I realize that my English version might not even be half as convincing as the original, though. Still working on it, albeit very lazily.)
"His unaccompanied folk songs still reduce me to tears."
Same here, to an extent. My favorite non-opera bit by him is his rendition of "Nyne otpuschayeshi" (regardless of how silly that transliteration might look) -- a church hymn, written from the perspective of someone about to die. And his Boris Godunov recordings are of course beyond comparison.
10. Candide - 1/6/2000 2:27:42 AM
Stumbo
I'll have to check that I know which song that is — I think we've got the lot— and of course his Boris is 'Boris'.
The translation seems fine to me. Congratulations.
I just thought that the planned demonstration was a calculated realisation of the earlier spontaneous wish. Whether that wish was politically expedient I don't know. There was ill feeling when he left Russia.
Did you know that he knew Gorky? They both (I think) worked at the same bakery when they were poor and struggling.
11. CalGal - 1/6/2000 2:30:35 AM
I never modelled myself after anyone, and never had any heros as a child. Gore Vidal once said something in passing on the Dick Cavett show that I found extremely useful, but that's as far as it goes.
I have a list of people whose achievements or outlook impress me for some reason: Alexander Hamilton, Ted Williams, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlin, the aforementioned Vidal are a few. But I started building this list well after college, much less highschool.
The two people who had any influence on my career came very early on--a guy named Norm and my ex-husband. No one else had any impact at all.
Any other influence in my life was caused by abuse and I'd really rather have done without it.
I've never understood the concept of role models; I make a very sharp distinction between achievements and someone's value as a human being. I've never felt I could reliably admire someone I didn't know on any other basis than their achievements.
12. PelleNilsson - 1/6/2000 3:25:12 AM
Don't we have several role models for different aspects of life? We had an Ethiopian economist working for us and we were in Jordan together. He had very clear and well-reasoned ideas about professional integrity, conflicts of interest and such. I used to go to him for advice (although I didn't always follow it) when I found myself in some kind of ambiguous position. He is dead now but it still happens that I ask myself: "What would Negash have said about this?". So I guess he is my role model for this particular aspect.
13. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 9:20:21 AM
Everyone's sounding very logical and reasonable about this subject -- in contrast to the Media. The "need" for RM's in constantly -- hectoringly --bandied about. The impression I get among the Meat Puppets is that Utter Anarchy and Chaos will result unless we get ourselves some suitable RM's pronto. It goes without saying that such hectoring grwos from discussions of what bad RM's the Clintons are.No arument there -- even for one who abhors the concept. Yet they haven't been able to come up with anyone else to put in his place.
Except, of course, for Jesus Christ.
Why is this?
14. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:16:28 AM
When I was growing up, I admired sports figures, because, at that time, it was my principal activity and my greatest joy. They were mythic, and you could emulate them passionately. I also admired President Nixon because he was the President, and you were supposed to admire the President. I admired Ford for the same reason. Carter too (actually got to shake his hand at a 4-H function), but I was leaving childhood by the end of Carter, and the hostage thing in Iran was the first time I thought of the president as something less than sacrosanct.
I also watched the 4:00 pm movie every day, without fail, and I greatly admited the Hollywood tough guys like Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, and Clint Eastwood.
15. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:19:21 AM
As for Jesus Christ, Catholic school never really put you in personal touch with Jesus. It was very different than "Jesus as part of your everyday life" of today. While his teachings were hammered into you (a valuable thing), he was unapproachable as a role model because he was so other-worldly, a suffering, bleeding man on a cross or a miracle worker.
16. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 10:20:29 AM
That's very interesting about automatically admiring the President, Niner. That's what produces those great polling figures for Clinton. "He's the President," therefore we're supposed to admire him.
I was constantly being told by television and the educational system to admire Ike, but I found nothing of interest about him. I admired JFK until the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that you could cut my antipathy with a knife.
17. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:26:15 AM
Interesting that, at a certain moment, you can mature into evaluation of the President. For me, it was the hostages in Iran. While it did not engender antipathy for Carter (I actually felt kind of bad for him), his seeming impotence made me lose something. And that was the first moment I ebbed away from "The President is the President and you respect the President." And that was a pretty small step, even then, because I still respected President Carter, I just lost a little faith in him.
I also remember the bitching about him. Of course, there was no bicthing about Nixon or Ford in my good, gray Republican household, so enter that as a factor in my maladjusted sense of role models.
18. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 10:34:01 AM
I can't feature any bitching about Ford -- save for the pardon, but then I'm a Dem. It was a thankless task and he did his duty like a good citizen. Nixon is a Whole Other Ball 'O Wax Entirely. A Negative RM supreme. As the tapes reveal, Nixon didn't even like Nixon.
Awesome -- as the children say nowadays.
19. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 10:37:57 AM
Niner,
Interesting indeed. In my liberal house, Ford's pardon of Nixon had a slightly different, but parallel, effect. Even though my parents railed about Watergate prior to Nixon's re-elction and forced us to watch the Ervin Committee hearings, I didn't have the same anger at Nixon than I did at Ford, as I felt that he was standing in the way of proper punishment for Nixon. After that, I was aware that the President didn't always do the thing I wanted done (as I defined the "right" thing then), and was no longer perfect in my eyes.
20. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:42:10 AM
Dan
In my house, for various reasons, solid GOP credentials being least of them, Nixon was treated unfairly and the pardon was right and proper. Now, I'm between 8 and 12 during these years, so to question this sentiment was never really considered. There were bigger fish to fry, like the Billy Kilmer-Sonny Jurgenson flap.
21. Ronski - 1/6/2000 10:43:08 AM
I thought role models are people you pattern yourself after, not people you admire. I may admire Helen O'Connell's song stylings, but I do not want to be her.
Last night, a caller to Joan Rivers asked, since Rivers didn't believe American blacks should use Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan as role models (which most obviously don't, anyway), exactly whom did Rivers think they should model themselves after.
I didn't hear Joan's answer because I turned the radio off, asking myself, "What do people really need role models for, anyway?"
Really, why do people need to copy someone else? Why can't you follow your own heart, your own instincts, your own conscience, and let that guide you through life?
Bush fils, I've been told, has said he has modeled his life after Jesus.
Excuse me, can you imagine Jesus not meeting with the Log Cabin Republicans because it would upset the pious?
Does George Bush know the first thing about Jesus Christ?
22. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:45:11 AM
Ronski
I think role models are people you admire when you are a child (which means you want to be them), and become people you pattern yourself after beginning in about high school (where you want to be like them because you have reached an age when you know you can't be them). This is an arbitrary distinction, admittedly.
23. JudithAtHome - 1/6/2000 10:48:29 AM
Ronski: No.
24. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:52:33 AM
As for why people need role models, I'm not sure they "need" them and they certainly aren't forced down any throats. But you do admire people and you do, almost naturally, pattern yourself, often in ways difficult to detect, yourself after role models. Even old folks like us.
25. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:54:56 AM
As for Bush, I think the question and Judith's answer are a little harsh. You don't need to know much. The teachings of Jesus are not like deciphering ancient language. I liked Bradley's take on Bush's response, which was generous (he stated he "respected" Bush's answer). Of course, I like Bradley, who is a gentleman.
26. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 10:56:16 AM
Niner #20,
Since we're the same age, it would be interesting to see why I reached this point earlier. Is it the difference in partisan politics between our parents, and the relative success of our partisans? Differences in our peer group (I had been advanced a grade in elementary school, and was with older students)? Lack of success among Philly's sport teams leading me to focus elsewhere? Or random developmental differences (i.e., I was just a nerd)?
27. Ronski - 1/6/2000 10:56:38 AM
I don't disagree with the idea that people are influenced by others, for both good and bad. What bothers me is this notion that the country must have role models or it will go to hell. I think the nation needs more people thinking for themselves.
28. Ronski - 1/6/2000 10:58:27 AM
Niner,
Harsh my butt.
Bush is a guy who has said he supports a law which took a gay couple out of their home and tossed them into jail.
29. JudithAtHome - 1/6/2000 10:59:25 AM
When I was in grade school, I used to go over to my friends house every morning before school because her mom gave us toast and hot chocolate. My mom made me eat oatmeal, cold oatmeal. So maybe this woman was more of what I wished my mom would be. She was a model for Neiman Marcus and was beautiful; she was always fun to be around.
As the years progressed, I got to know her better and she still shone in my eyes. She had 2 children my age and in her 40s, had a third. She was a model for 20 years and then became an antiques dealer, very successfully. She divorced her husband but remained friends with him.
She is completely independent and makes household repairs herself; takes care of her own car; asks no one for help. Though she was once heartbreakingly beautiful, she has aged gracefully without resorting to cosmetic surgery to retain her looks. She is still a lovely woman and through the years, I have wanted to be like her...she nursed her mother and her fiancé through the last stages of fatal illnesses in her home and they died within days of each other. One year later, she did the same for her daughter. She is a strong, caring woman and if not a role model for me, then at least my most admired friend.
30. 109109 - 1/6/2000 10:59:53 AM
Dan
Probably all of the above. Mine was a literate household, politics were discussed all the time, and I had four older, wordy and expressive siblings, some who were giving my parents holy hell on Nixon and Ford. I'm guessing you were more advanced, I defaulted to the statist position, and the Eagles did suck.
31. AceofSpades - 1/6/2000 11:01:04 AM
What bothers me is this notion that the country must have role models or it will go to hell.
Huh?
I think the nation needs more people thinking for themselves.
And I think cancer should stop killing people, all parents should be wise and all children be loved.
32. 109109 - 1/6/2000 11:01:15 AM
Ronski
I am aware of your distaste for Bush, which is well and good. I wouldn't let it color your judgment on all things Bush. take it from someone who defends Gore when, intellectually, it is required. I know it hurts.
33. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:01:23 AM
"I'm sorry, Mary Magdalene, I'd like to talk with you, but if the Pharisees saw us togehter they might throw their support to Barabbas."
34. AceofSpades - 1/6/2000 11:02:21 AM
Bush is a guy who has said he supports a law which took a gay couple out of their home and tossed them into jail.
Johnny One Note. And still not a cite for this proposition.
Ronski now starring in Elliotmania-- Not Elliot, but an amazing simulation.
35. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:05:15 AM
Niner,
There are some things that are truly beyond the pale. Approving of the jailing of homosexuals simply for being homosexual is one of them. It is impossible for me to believe Bush has any character, or brains, take you pick.
36. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 11:05:23 AM
Niner,
Not merely the Iggles sucked, but the Sixers went 9-73 in 72-73, the Phils stank until around 1975, and the Flyers were OK, but little more. Philly hadn't had a team play for the championship since the '67 Warriors of Wilt Chamberlain, Hal Greer and Billy Cunningham, which I was too young to remember.
37. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 11:05:27 AM
I may admire Helen O'Connell's song stylings, but I do not want to be her.
I really can't see why. Every time I think of you I think of Helen O'Connell -- a great song stylist and a fabulous babe.
38. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:06:16 AM
When did you ask for a link, Ace?
Since you have, I'll go look for one.
39. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 11:07:10 AM
Love #33, Ronski. I may use it as a tagline for Table Talk.
40. 109109 - 1/6/2000 11:07:34 AM
Ronski
What can I say? You passionately have declared that you can't discuss him clearly and you believe he is a "bad" man, something that was apparent before your declaration.
Dan
D.C. has always subordinated Presidents to the Redskins.
41. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:07:37 AM
Cellar,
And you know, she was incredibly pretty right up to the end. Remarkable.
42. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:09:01 AM
Niner,
When did I say I can't discuss him? Or not clearly? Either he has said the things he has said, or he hasn't. I'll go look for a link, as I promised Ace.
43. AceofSpades - 1/6/2000 11:09:14 AM
Ronski:
While you're at it, please provide a link about how a law overturning this bete noir of yours has been passed by a majority of Texas lawmakers, or even a majority of Texas Democratic lawmakers, and might become law if only George W. Bush wasn't exercising his non-existant power of veto.
44. 109109 - 1/6/2000 11:10:45 AM
Ronski
My response will be in Politics.
45. AceofSpades - 1/6/2000 11:12:01 AM
Indeed, please continue my half of the argument in politics as well. This shouldn't be in this thread. Which partially accounts for my annoyance at Elliotmania playing His One Song here.
46. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 11:14:04 AM
As opposed to Ace's fave, "The Horst Wessel Song."
47. Ronski - 1/6/2000 11:14:47 AM
See you later in Politics, folks.
48. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 11:17:03 AM
Niner,
I know, and Philly cares more for the Phils and the Iggles than Presidents, too. However, when the Iggles and Phils are routinely well out of playoff contention, a kid isn't looking at Willie Montanez or Roman Gabriel as a role model. I loved the late 70's Phils and the early 80's Sixers, just as I loved the 93 Phils or the early 90's Iggles, but I'm not going to adopt Dr. J or Greg Luzinski as my role model, any more than Pig-Pen Dykstra or Randall Cunningham. I was beyond athletes as role models by the time Philly had great athletes.
49. CalGal - 1/6/2000 12:32:58 PM
Niner,
But you do admire people and you do, almost naturally, pattern yourself, often in ways difficult to detect, yourself after role models.
I would substitute "some people" for "you". Or, if you like, "many people". Your statement is by no means a universal behavior. It certainly doesn't apply to me.
50. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 12:40:35 PM
I'm curious to hear from someone who had an RM of some sort, tried to "follow their example" and discovered that doing so was no walk in the park.
Or maybe it was.
51. Indiana Jones - 1/6/2000 2:39:38 PM
My role model is George Kaztanza.
52. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 2:40:25 PM
IJ,
And how is following in his shoes working for you?
53. Indiana Jones - 1/6/2000 2:44:44 PM
Dan:
Successes include avoiding most real work, remaining master of my domain, and an acute awareness of human suffering.
Prior to George K., I tried to emulate Daffy Duck.
54. PsychProf - 1/6/2000 2:45:40 PM
Bills fan.
55. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 2:49:40 PM
For the better part of my aodlescence I felt like Daffy Duck.
Especially when he uttered my favorite line: "Aha -- Pronoun Trouble!"
56. Dantheman - 1/6/2000 2:51:34 PM
IJ,
You're dethhhh-picable!
57. 109109 - 1/6/2000 5:03:31 PM
Cal
I hear you. I was in colloquy with Ronski on that point.
58. CalGal - 1/6/2000 5:06:58 PM
You were only speaking to Ronski with that "you"? Hmm. I am skeptical.
59. Candide - 1/6/2000 6:58:41 PM
Stumbo#9
My favorite non-opera bit by him is his
rendition of "Nyne otpuschayeshi" (regardless of how silly that
transliteration might look) -- a church hymn, written from the
perspective of someone about to die.
Found it! By Strokin (e) in French spelling. Stern and austere. I can't understand the words but I feel properly shriven. Know it and love it.
60. dusty - 1/6/2000 6:58:55 PM
CalGal
Gore Vidal once said something in passing on the Dick Cavett show that I found extremely useful, but that's as far as it goes.
Can we get the gory details?
61. dusty - 1/6/2000 7:00:01 PM
Do role models have to be the same race? Sex? Sexual orientation?
I take it as given that they do not have to be the same age.
62. Candide - 1/6/2000 7:03:38 PM
Stumbo 9 again'
The melody starts (I'll pretend it's in C minor) G-G-D-F-Eflat-D-C
I suppose you know solfeggio
so-so-re-fa-mi(flat)-re-do
63. joezan - 1/6/2000 8:14:22 PM
I like Jimmy Carter. He "walks the walk", as we thumpers like to say. And, even though his Christian values shine in his many accomplishments (most since he left office, unfortunately), he doesn't hold himself up as some Big Christian Guy - doesn't preach or judge.
As lousy a politician as he was, his legacy will be greater than most presidents of this age, and I believe his peak of greatness and popularity will come after his death.
64. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 8:32:39 PM
Do role models have to be the same race? Sex? Sexual orientation?
I take it as given that they do not have to be the same age.
I don't see why they have to on every score. But it's natural to look towards those with whom you share some affinities. This was especially true for me as a gay person, because I was trying to learn as much about the history as I could. And in my youth that was an extremely difficult process. That's not true anymore, because the history is (at last) being written. And some of it's being written by ME!
Damned kids! They have it so easy today! I used to have to walk for miles in the snow to find a halfway decent gay bar!
Anyway there are plenty of straights I admire: Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Robert Musil, Noam Chimsky and Arthur Freed come immediately to mind.
65. bubbaette - 1/6/2000 8:44:32 PM
As far as role models I might imitate, I suppose the only one I really had as a child was a neighbor of ours. She was a short, plump woman with apple cheeks and gray hair. She had a number of grown children who were moderately successful, but led really interesting lives. She always had guests in her house from various different places. I never heard her say an unkind word about anybody. She is who I wanted to be like as an old woman.
As a writer, I wanted to be Mark Twain. I read his entire works by the time I was a sophomore in highschool and admired his travels, his broad interests and his wry outlook.
Also, probably as an offshoot from works by Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw, as well as my mother's Catholic upbringing, I admired Joan of Arc but couldn't see her as someone I would strive to imitate.
66. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 9:55:08 PM
I don't think you should be burned at the stake either.
67. glendajean - 1/6/2000 11:08:07 PM
There's a statue of Joan of Arc in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park on 16th Street in Washington. The park is on the hill that crests over downtown and Joan is there with her sword raised, except that somebody broke off her sword and she sits there on her horse with her fist raised. When I used to pass that statue walking to work in the morning, I always alternated in thinking that here's the biggest cross dresser in history with what a perfect metaphor for dealing with the government that works below her.
68. wonkers2 - 1/6/2000 11:15:11 PM
What about Alyosha in the Bros. Karamazov or Huck Finn or Augie March for openers?
69. bubbaette - 1/6/2000 11:36:50 PM
I loved Alyosha, but wanting to be like him is like wanting to be Christ, isn't it?
70. wonkers2 - 1/6/2000 11:41:05 PM
You're probably right. I read the book so long ago that I don't remember much more than his name and that I admired him most of all the characters in the book. Perhaps my judgment wasn't so bad as a teenager. I wasn't exactly a candyass.
71. bubbaette - 1/6/2000 11:45:28 PM
"I admired him most of all the characters in the book."
That's not saying too much since his brothers were pretty creepy and his old man was pond scum.
72. Cellar Door - 1/6/2000 11:47:52 PM
Genet adored "The Brothers Karamazov."
73. bubbaette - 1/6/2000 11:51:16 PM
It's always been one of my "desert island" books. I've read it three times over the years and it's always new to me.
74. wonkers2 - 1/6/2000 11:54:58 PM
True, but he wasn't a bad role model, was he? I don't recall the specifics. But getting closer to reality, one of my greatest role models was my favorite uncle, my mother's oldest brother, Carroll Pound, a rancher in Cherry County, Nebraska. He was a truly extraordinary person, and the best possible uncle for a young kid. He taught me to be a good sport whatever life dealt me, the importance of being a good neighbor, to to ride a horse, shoot straight, drink whiskey out of the bottle and keep my hands off the hired girl.
75. bubbaette - 1/7/2000 12:00:24 AM
While he wasn't exactly a role model, one of my mentors and my favorite professor died last week.
I went to his memorial service and there were many of his former students there spanning three decades -- I think that says something good about a person.
76. wonkers2 - 1/7/2000 12:06:14 AM
Yes, I had several inspiring teachers as well--Marguerite Teer a truly inspiring high school English teacher, Henry Alonzo Myers, a professor of American Literature and Bob Livernash, a labor economist. I also admired Alfred Kahn, a bright and charismatic economist, but not in quite the same way as the others who were unusually kind and generous people.
77. joezan - 1/7/2000 12:08:01 AM
Hey - how about that HS teacher out in Colorado(?), who throughout his years of teaching had always jokingly told his students to show up at a certain place for his 50th b-day and bring a buck, as that was when he planned to retire, and he'd need all the money he could get.
So, recently, he did reach the big FIVE-0, and 400 ex-students showed up.
Nice story, I thought.
78. wonkers2 - 1/7/2000 12:10:34 AM
Young people are more capable of being inspired than most adults, it seems to me. That's why teaching is such an important job.
79. Stumbo - 1/7/2000 1:57:02 AM
Candide:
The words: sorta the equivalent of "Free at last, free at last...", except that the freedom in question is that from life. Sounds somewhat pretentious, I know -- but it's from way back when, and who am I to judge how those folks felt about such things, heh.
I'm not exactly fluent in solfeggio, but your transcription seems accurate, as best I can determine. I'd make a .wav of this thing and post a link to it (so you could verify that that's the one, and others could possibly enjoy it), except that (for various reasons) it's too late to do it tonight, and I'll then be out of town till Monday. I might do it when I get back, either here or in A&M, if I still remember this conversation at that point...
80. Candide - 1/7/2000 2:09:02 AM
Stumbo
Thanks. Free at last eh?
If you don't mind posting the link with the understanding that this a house of technological deadheads who usually can't get such things to sound.
81. Cellar Door - 1/7/2000 11:06:21 AM
Isn't it ironic that we're inspired by people who were kind and generous, only to enter into a world of "hardball" and "bottom lines" where it's "dog eat dog," and the like?
Was all this kindness and generosity a crock?
82. bubbaette - 1/7/2000 11:20:54 AM
I don't think so. When I was working in Washington, I found that there were powerful people who are genuinely nice -- who don't expect you to kowtow to them and can carry on a conversation with lesser mortals without seeming condescending or bored. This seems to me to be an indicator of someone who is comfortable with their position and power, rather than the typical political asshole who thinks that you maintain power through fear.
83. Cellar Door - 1/7/2000 12:54:34 PM
But its the typical political assholes that we see in the Media 24/7.
And often as not, they're decrying the lost idealism of a "simpler time" -- even as they reach for the razor to slit the throats of anyone who would dare oppose them.
84. Schehezarade - 1/7/2000 3:38:41 PM
In my earlier years, the mailman was a role model for me. He was always so patient and loving with us kids. He'd bring treats for us, play catch with us, help us catch frogs, and always listen to our stories. He was a delight to be around and I always looked forward to the mail being delivered. For many, many years, I would always think upon a time when he told me that it was always best to do the right thing even when it was uncomfortable. Plus, he was so kind and so generous with his attention. I could only hope and try to be as nice as he was.
85. PsychProf - 1/7/2000 3:47:02 PM
In the small town where I was hatched, we knew the mailmen by name.
86. Schehezarade - 1/7/2000 3:52:57 PM
His name was Johnny, and he had a little belly, red cheeks, and white hair. A jolly chap.
87. Cellar Door - 1/7/2000 4:32:24 PM
That's lovely.
Now tell me about when you realized there were precious few peoplelike your mailman.
88. Cellar Door - 1/8/2000 12:31:39 AM
Who should Elian Gonzales' RM be?
Dan Burton?
Allan Keyes?
Rudolph Giuliani?
John Rocker?
Regis Philbin?
David Geffen?
Chris Matthews?
Bill Kristol?
Madonna?
89. CalGal - 1/8/2000 12:45:00 AM
Why not his father?
90. EricCartman - 1/8/2000 2:15:00 AM
Well, his official RM will soon be Fidel Castro.
91. Cellar Door - 1/8/2000 10:25:29 AM
No. It will be Ibrahim Ferrer.
92. Cellar Door - 1/9/2000 2:34:12 PM
Well I guess this thread is dead.
It's been semi-fun, folks!
93. theDiva - 1/9/2000 3:07:24 PM
My role model as a wife is my dear friend P.A.R. She and her husband have been married for 32 years, survived alcoholism and clinical depression, the death of two sons, the continuing life-threatening health problems of another child.....she has shown me that you can be madder than hell at your spouse and your love can still survive it, your love can survive any challenge that comes its way if you are willing to rise to the challenge. And, she still grabs her husband's ass in public.
My role model as a member of the church community is our gospel choir leader, Miss Emelda. She gives so much of her time and heart to ministries and good works.....and does it with sass and flair. A very wonderful and formidable lady.
My role model as a singer is Billie Holiday. Now, this should come as a surprise to no-one. Billie and I have one thing in common - we do not have big voices. What she has, and what I try to emulate, is an uncanny ability to infuse each song, each lyric with emotion and meaning, to get inside what the song is about. A naturally intelligent musician, IOW.
My role model as a professional is my former boss, L.Y.A., before her illness caused her such deterioration. She was the epitome of an accomplished woman who pursued her career as a public servant with passion and conviction and principle. Never content to rest on her last achievement, she sought ways to innovate and improve. She held everyone to a high standard, and then raised the bar 50% higher for herself.
Okay, I'm done spilling my guts. Carry on.
94. theDiva - 1/9/2000 3:14:14 PM
shit
95. theDiva - 1/9/2000 3:14:43 PM
The first half of my sermon got lost in the ether. #93 is the second half.
I'll try again.
96. theDiva - 1/9/2000 3:15:07 PM
Here's the beginning of my post. Read this first before you read 93.
I've been thinking about this topic for a couple of days, and if y'all can stand my deathless prose, there are a few things I'd like to say.
I make distinctions between role models, heroes, and people who possess qualities I find to be admirable.
The three are not mutually exclusive.
There are many Moties whom I admire for the strength and courage of their convictions, for example. I'd not call them heroes or role models, though.
A hero is one whose accomplishments and/or qualities I admire, but don't delude myself for a moment into thinking I could attempt same. Ella Fitzgerald, Joe DiMaggio, Jane Austen, Dr. King, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, are heroes.
A role model is one who has qualities I admire and strive to emulate. I have tons of them, one for each aspect of my life and my role in the world.
My foremost role model is Jesus. There wasn't a thing he did whilst on this earth that was not motivated by love of others. He never scorned another human being, never was unkind, lived to serve. The only time he showed anger was when his father's house was disrespected. This example informs my behavior as I walk through this life. I fall painfully, woefully short every single day, but still I keep trying.
Laugh if youse want, but I have on my desk at work a WWJD necklace Gracie won for me at the church festival. Every time I feel myself losing it at work, I look at it and it reminds me of the behavior to which I aspire.
97. theDiva - 1/9/2000 3:15:31 PM
FINALLY!!!!!!!!!
Okay, so anyway.
My role model as a religious woman is Mary Magdalen. She lived a dissolute life and was still able to reform her ways and follow Christ.
My role model as a mother is my own mother. She was and is unfailingly loving, accepting, and kind. When we were kids, she never, for even a minute, stood for any nonsense. A very, very powerful combination, and one which I try to emulate every single day. Sometimes I even manage.
98. bubbaette - 1/9/2000 4:37:13 PM
Nice posts, Diva.
99. KuligintheHooligan - 1/9/2000 4:49:45 PM
While not role models in any classic sense, the three fictional characters I was most attracted to as a kid were
Bugs Bunny
Sherlock Holmes
King Arthur
100. Candide - 1/9/2000 7:32:21 PM
theDiva
What she has, and what I try to emulate, is an
uncanny ability to infuse each song, each lyric with emotion and
meaning, to get inside what the song is about. A naturally intelligent musician, IOW.
Without those qualities it doesn't matter what else singers have. Well done Diva.
101. theDiva - 1/9/2000 9:10:33 PM
aw shucks.
Thanks, guys.
You know, when I was 5 years old, I wanted to marry Bugs Bunny. I even recall a fantasy wherein Bugs and I walked down the aisle.
102. Candide - 1/9/2000 9:16:03 PM
When I was small, I was jealous of the girls who were taking their first communion. My fantasy was to walk towards Hitler in a long white dress (me, not Hitler) with a revolver concealed inside a bunch of flowers and to shoot Hitler and save the world.
Role model?
Joan of Arc?
103. theDiva - 1/9/2000 9:22:29 PM
Can you believe I left out Joan of Arc? She's the saint whose name I took for confirmation!
Good one, Candide. And btw, I know we've not spoken much, but I do want to tell you how much I enjoy your posts. Beautifully written, and always interesting. Thanks.
104. RickNelson - 1/9/2000 10:17:31 PM
Cllr,
I just stumbled into this little thread. I think Diva is doing it right. One can look at different aspects of life for the role models there are.
When a wee lad an organization called Big Brothers gave me the role model I needed. It lasted about four years and was very good.
A pastor was a good one.
My mother tries to be and she really is good.
Poets like WCW, Pinsky, Baraka
Politicians like Paul Wellstone
People who say what they mean to me. People who have time for my reply.
Some moties
105. Candide - 1/9/2000 10:32:30 PM
Diva
Thank you. Likewise.
106. Cellar Door - 1/10/2000 12:51:21 AM
Yes Diva IS doing it right. Thanks for for the CPR, dear.
I would say there are three primary RM's in my life:
1. Emile Zola: The only writer I know who put is mouth where his money was. No author bearing his fame today has his guts.
2. Frank O'Hara: Alan De Botton's "How Proust can Change Your Life" posits a number of "How To's" to be derived from "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu." But he forgets the most important one: "How to Be Gay."
Proust's book is a failed attempt at such a guide. Frank O'Hara, by contrast, succeeded in writing one -- and (like Zola) Living what he wrote
3. This guy.
107. concerned - 1/12/2000 2:03:47 AM
Role models? Ay don' nee no steenkin' role models!
108. Cellar Door - 1/12/2000 10:36:53 AM
Here's connie's role model deluxe.
109. ycmeehan - 1/12/2000 5:38:23 PM
Dr. Laura? I hate the woman. I would like to ask her this question:
Have you spent any time in a kosher slaughter house? Although most people regard the killing of cattle for purposes of nourishment a necessary act, it is generally accepted that they go to their demise as quickly, painlessly and as quietly as possible. Not the Orthodox Jew, however. To satisfy a strange and peculiar need, the animals must be bled to death, bellowing in agony and pain before its meat is deemed edible. If this isn't primitive and deviant behavior, what is it?
Where do you come from, Lady, labeling homosexuality as 'deviant', 'a biological error'?
110. Dantheman - 1/12/2000 5:41:01 PM
ycmeehan,
Actually, kosher killing requires that the animal be knocked over the head from behind first, stunning it so that it is unconscious as it bleeds to death. Not that I disagree with you on Dr. Laura, just correcting your example.
111. ycmeehan - 1/12/2000 6:05:08 PM
Dan,
Have you personally spent any time in a kosher slaughter house? I have. The animals may have been hit over the head but they are not dead and they tend to revive.
I realize that my post was really not on point re-homosexuality. It was really a put-down of that horrid creature who has the nerve to say that she has nothing against homosexuals, it is just that her religion is opposed to it.
112. ycmeehan - 1/12/2000 7:04:05 PM
In September last year, I had a large block class of Fresmen. The first day I gave them my expectations regarding class behavior: no writing on desks, no crumpled papers on the floor, no chewing gum, no food, drinks, etc.
After I had enumerated my rules and checked how well notes had been taken, a handsome, tall boy raised his hand and asked if he could say something. He rose and said: Madame, no sophisticated Freshman would ever act as a middle-school student.
The semester went by and whenever I posed a question to the class, those wishing to answer would rise just as the handsome, tall boy had done the first day of school. His action on that first day had set the pace and established a ritual which was followed from that day forward.
In contrast to my other junior and senior classes, this fresman class was exemplary in respect to housekeeping, maintenance of classroom decorum, and lack of tardiness. The class' final exam is taking place tomorrow. I will miss these students.
For me this was an exemple of the effectiveness of a role model. This particular student was held in such esteem by the group that they accepted his lead in setting the tone in this class for the whole semester.
113. moonflower - 1/12/2000 7:20:16 PM
Love your choices, Cellar Door, though I might add EM Forster for his "What I Believe" essay. I know a 76 year old woman named Leah who, for me, has the kind of great spirit and wit that I would like to have when I'm 76. I can't think of any sports figures for my role models list or actors/actresses. Of presidents, maybe Jimmy Carter for his fab retirement.
114. Cellar Door - 1/12/2000 8:57:11 PM
Bet he was cute too.
115. Candide - 1/12/2000 10:05:29 PM
RickNelson
5110 in International for you with apologies.
116. concerned - 1/12/2000 11:02:31 PM
Re. 108 -
cllrdr -
Since you insist on dragging 'gaiety' into this by the scruff of its little neck, do I think that Ms. Schlesinger has the right approach toward homosexuality, as you appear to be trying to convince people?
Absolutely not.
But maybe *your* beliefs and hers are closer here than *you* admit. Leaving aside the minutiae of precisely *who* believes *what* constitutes 'deviant' behavior, Ms. Schlesinger obviously believes that homosexual behavior can be modified by external social factors. I would imagine you probably do also.
IAC, if she offends you so much, perhaps you could form a focus group:
'GAS' (Gays against Schlesinger). Just a thought.
117. concerned - 1/12/2000 11:03:10 PM
Re. 108 -
cllrdr -
Since you insist on dragging 'gaiety' into this by the scruff of its little neck, do I think that Ms. Schlesinger has the right approach toward homosexuality, as you appear to be trying to convince people?
Absolutely not.
But maybe *your* beliefs and hers are closer here than *you* admit. Leaving aside the minutiae of precisely *who* believes *what* constitutes 'deviant' behavior, Ms. Schlesinger obviously believes that homosexual behavior can be modified by external social factors. I would imagine you probably do also.
IAC, if she offends you so much, perhaps you could form a focus group:
'GAS' (Gays against Schlesinger). Just a thought.
118. concerned - 1/12/2000 11:03:57 PM
Oops. Sorry about the repost - my bad.
119. Cellar Door - 1/13/2000 10:05:51 AM
Ms. Schlesinger obviously believes that homosexual behavior can be modified by external social factors. I would imagine you probably do also.
You would imagine wrong. I scarcely need to form any Gays against Schlesinger group. The townspeople have already formed a torchlight parade and are marching on the monster's castle (Paramount studios) even as I post. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)
120. Thoughtful - 1/13/2000 1:34:21 PM
Roll models? Hard, dinner, poppy seed, garlic.....
Ooops! This ain't the house & garden thread.....My apologies.
Role models....I'm trying to think if there were any people I specifically chose to model myself after. I suppose there were some, but it's hard for me to separate them out as I believe everyone I've ever touched has influenced me, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes indifferent. However, I've been fortunate enough to to have had some special people in my life.
I was fortunate enough to know a most incredible woman who led a fabulous life. She's been dead a long time now, but I still think of her. I could never be or do as she did, but she certainly had a big impact on my life. She travelled the world for 13 years after marrying her childhood sweetheart. That was incredible enough. But wherever she went, things would just happen to her. Everyone encouraged her to write in her retirement, but she never did. She insisted no one was interested in her life, and even burned all her mementos before she died. Sigh.
An example of how things would happen to her...
During WWII she was taking a train from somewhere to somewhere. I don't remember where. As often was the case at that time, there were soldiers on the train. Across the aisle, she noticed a man in a uniform struggling with a crossword puzzle. When he was through and it wasn't finished, she asked him if she might try. Being exceptionally bright and a wiz with words she completed the puzzle, and handed the paper back to him, kindly teasing him about his ineptitude. After the military man got off the train, someone else said to her, "Do you know who you were just teasing?" She said, "No." He said, "That was Gen. George Marshall!"
121. Thoughtful - 1/13/2000 1:43:52 PM
Some fictional characters have influenced me -- stories like, "Keys of the Kingdom" helped define the importance of character and self esteem over politics and public image -- reinforced by a real life woman I worked with.
I always wanted to be Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not." I of course wanted to be Nancy Drew at one point, and accepted the fact that I shared some of the least attractive character traits of Scarlett O'Hara.
Still everyone I've known or met, I've been able to learn from -- either how to be or a nugget of advice or sometimes how not to be and what not to do.
But so much of growing up (and though in my 40s I still consider myself growing up) is learning about what I am, defining and redefining who I want that to be, and accepting those parts of myself that I'm never going to change.
I think I'm going back to the other rolls and dumplings now.
122. Cellar Door - 1/13/2000 4:27:19 PM
I always wanted to be Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not."
Me too!
123. joezan - 1/13/2000 11:51:32 PM
I just thought of a guy who would be a perfect role model for just about anybody.
He's an English/Humanities professor at a local college, who's been very involved with the juvies for 3 years now. He started by entering into a sort of partnership with us, whereby he set some of his brightest students the task, as part of their humanities class, of developing activities for the juvy kids which would help determine if there is such a thing as a "Moral Imagination". Our payback was having these great young people come every week for a couple of months to entertain and enlighten our kids. The prof gave me the URL and password for the website where the students posted there thoughts and concluusions, and final papers for the class, and they were all wonderful.
But I think our kids got way more out of it than they did.
This is the 3rd year for the Adventures in the Moral Imagination course, and tonight I got to train this semester's students in some basic juvy stuff. Again, a great group, fully dedicated to doing their teacher proud.
124. joezan - 1/14/2000 12:05:55 AM
But there is so much more to this guy, it's almost scary. Every Sunday night for the past two years, he has come to read - and he is one of the most talented readers I've ever heard - classic short stories and poems to the kids -Conrad, Poe, W. Irving, et al. Sometimes only 2 or 3 kids will sit for an hour of reading, but he is always just as enthusiastic as when there are 20 or 30.
This past summer I went to a West Michigan White Caps baseball game (they're the local Class AA Minor League team). All through the game, there was a 4-piece Dixieland band, which I had seen there before but never close-up, walking around playing songs. At one point they stopped right next to my aisle seat, and, continuing their song, the trumpet player would turn and blow his horn right at me every few seconds, and quickly turn away. After a little while of this, I turned to ask him to stop, and saw that it was my friend the professor!
A few months ago I mentioned to him that we were interested in producing a short informational video as a sort of PR tool for our court and its services, and he informed me that he owns a video production company, and would see what he could do.
Coolest, busiest guy I know. Always knows what he's about.
125. concerned - 1/14/2000 1:13:13 AM
I'll bet I know who Jane Fonda's new role model is. Guy walks on water.
126. Cellar Door - 1/14/2000 10:37:04 AM
That's what the tabs keep saying, connie.
I wouldn't put it past her. She's tried everything else. BOY is she a piece of work. Hands down the biggest phony I've ever met in all my years in Hollywood.
And I DON'T mean that in a "good way."
127. moonflower - 1/14/2000 10:57:47 AM
Yeah, I'd be the Bacall character easy in TO HAVE & HAVE NOT but for alltime fun, it's gotta be Margot Channing in ALL ABOUT EVE. I can't think of any guy film role models. Certainly not Cary Grant--loathe that kind of urbane sophistication. Maybe Monty Clift's smoulder.
128. Ronski - 1/14/2000 11:09:21 AM
Since Dr. Laura has been brought into the discussion, as for her claim that she bears no prejudice against gay people, this is proven untrue by her emotionalism on the subject of homosexuals: I have heard her literally scream into the mike on the subject.
And would she called blind people a mistake of nature? No, only gays.
129. Thoughtful - 1/14/2000 12:16:54 PM
Male role model? I always wanted to be Clint Eastwood -- not the stupid one in some of those awful Billy movies, but the tough, self-confident, incredibly capable and somewhat mysterious one of the spaghetti westerns.
Don't quite know how to place Katherine Hepburn. Though obviously female, she always claimed to have lived her life like a selfish man. Another tough, self-confident, and capable role model.
My old friend who led such an incredible life, worked with Katherine Hepburn's sister and had dinner with the family one night, Katherine included. I think my friend found her to be ungracious and officious.
130. Cellar Door - 1/14/2000 1:18:17 PM
Then she must be Ace's role model.
131. moonflower - 1/15/2000 12:37:13 PM
Well, Hepburn could be a good role model for keepin' on despite whims of Hollywood and public taste. Teachers can be good role models, but since I am one, and I know so many of them, one must be choosy among them. Some are total shits. I published an essay in THE HUMANIST called "The Gay Teacher as Role Model" since the great American public seems scared to death that we might actually be human beings instead of things.
132. Cellar Door - 1/15/2000 7:48:43 PM
What kind of reaction did you get to the essay?
And could we see it?
133. moonflower - 1/16/2000 7:56:25 AM
Hi Cellar Door, Well, not much of a reaction except a couple of notes from teachers who were pleased I wrote it (gay teachers). I'm proud of it in that I think it needs to be said. I am not a "role model"
in spite of my gayness--my gayness helps to make me a good teacher (if I am a good teacher--I can only hope that this is so). How sad that people want to erase what gives the fire. It's the March/April 99 issue if you want to read it.
134. wonkers2 - 1/16/2000 8:57:38 AM
How about Captain Ahab? Fearlesness, tenacity, focus.
135. PelleNilsson - 1/16/2000 10:47:56 AM
Can be said about the whale too.
136. RickNelson - 1/16/2000 2:00:33 PM
How about Mohandas Gandhi, fearlessness, tenacity, focus.
How about Buddha, peace, focus.
How about Jamie Wang of the Asian American Press, here in the Twin Cities. This last week, she wrote about Charlie Weavers disgraceful disassembly of decades of womens victim advocacy. He hasn't succeeded because the women are to strong! Go on gurls!
137. Uzmakk - 1/21/2000 1:51:54 PM
Just curious, moonflower, how does your gayness make you a good teacher?
138. Cellar Door - 1/21/2000 6:56:14 PM
It makes it possible for moonflower to speak honestly to ALL the students.
139. Uzmakk - 1/21/2000 8:08:44 PM
I do not follow you, Cellar.
140. Cellar Door - 1/21/2000 8:15:47 PM
All gay people know what it means to be straight. In fact we often know more about it than straights do. Straights, after all, are born that way. They can't help themseleves. It may be genetic. Or maybe they had clinging fathers and distant mothers. Whatever.
Gays and lesbians, meanwhile, were forced to followthe directions on the label -- even whaen said directions didn't apply to them. Consequently gay teachers know both what it means to be straight AND what it means to be gay. This is a distinct advantage IMH(omo)O.
141. Uzmakk - 1/21/2000 8:38:13 PM
Cellar, that is such mumbo jumbo.
142. Cellar Door - 1/21/2000 9:01:42 PM
No it isn't.
143. ycmeehan - 1/22/2000 6:50:23 AM
Uzmakk, he is saying that heterosexuality is a pathological condition created by and fostered by the pathologies that exist in this society in relationships between men and women. Of course, that is mumbo jumbo too and can be said as well about homosexuality.
Anyway, he may have a point about gay teachers having a distinct advantage in the classroom. I have found that I am distinctly better at teaching boys than I am girls and it may be because I have raised two boys.
Really, Uzmakk, Cellar is as always a riot, a hoot, and a blast as my students would say about a peer who displays a provocative behavior in class.
144. Cellar Door - 1/22/2000 11:58:27 AM
(BLUSH)
145. phillipdavid - 1/22/2000 11:59:31 AM
Honesty -- total, complete, sincere, insightful, heart-felt and heart-grown honesty -- is the premier virtue, imo.
Maybe gayness allows moonflower to express and to reflect back a sort of honesty with students that is really fairly rare in human beings. God knows that many teachers are neurotic messes that play out their particular neurosis unconsciously within the classrooms -they are not often totally honest and insightfully straight with themselves, and therefore not totally honest with the students.
Being that the quality of the relationship created with the students is the key to the quality of education received by the students (imho), I think I can imagine how being gay could foster a level of honesty within the created relationships that students will instinctively respond to.
146. Cellar Door - 1/22/2000 12:03:33 PM
Far be it from me to suggest that this would exist in every instance (imagine, for example, having Roy Cohn as a law professor -- GACK!), but because of the way the culture is structured, gay people are forced to come to grips with themselves in a way that straights aren't. And this can be extremely useful in a profession such as teaching.
The fact that one doesn't have a wife or kiddies to come home to (Melissa Etheridge notwithstanding) makes the long hours that have to be put in easier to accept as well.
147. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 4:38:58 PM
146
Precisely, Cellar, the characteristics that you and others describe are not connected with gayness. Moonflower is gay and is perhaps a good teacher. He then, in the name of Socrates, attributes his teaching skills to his gayness. PD says, maybe he's got a point because he sees a sea of heterosexual incompetence in the classroom. Is this incompetence linked to their sexuality? I mean really folks. And then the link between homosexuality and honesty, thats a good one PD.
"but because of the way the culture is structured, gay people are forced to come to grips with themselves in a way that straights aren't. And this can be extremely useful in a profession such as teaching."
The above means nothing to me, Cellar.
In my experience what makes a teacher a good teacher is his "passion" for the subject matter linked with some very basic communication skills. Honesty be damned, gayness be damned.
148. moonflower - 1/22/2000 4:49:37 PM
Passion for the subject is empty on its own. I know many teachers who are "passionate" about their subjects and couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag. People don't walk into classrooms as if they're not full human beings. Every wedding ring worn by a straight teacher is an advertisement, a statement of privelege.
149. Cellar Door - 1/22/2000 5:00:53 PM
The above means nothing to me, Cellar.
It is my life's work to reveal meaning where you find none.
150. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 5:07:05 PM
I await your revelations, Cellar.
151. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 5:09:32 PM
Please reveal the meaning of #148, moonflower?
152. PelleNilsson - 1/22/2000 5:59:23 PM
I think Cellar is right when he says that gays have to come to terms with themselves in a way heteros don't have to.
153. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 6:13:34 PM
I'm listening. Are we speaking of self-analysis?
154. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 6:18:51 PM
I would say that gays have to inquire about themselves more than heterosexuals do. I have to inquire more about homosexuals than I do about heterosexuals.
155. Cellar Door - 1/22/2000 6:22:15 PM
Whereas I'm forced to do double duty. It is DEMANDED of me that I not only know everything about a form of sexual/romantic expression that is utterly alien to me, but that I kowtow to its multifarious laws. This is where Isherwood's felicitous phrase "the Heterosexual Dicatorship" comes from.
But I think we've wandered a tad off topic.
156. Uzmakk - 1/22/2000 6:25:45 PM
Yes, Cellar, but the thread was languishing and this is much more interesting.
157. ycmeehan - 1/23/2000 8:57:22 AM
Cellar,
Are you saying that the relationship between two male homosexuals is not a romantic expression? Are you saying it is an expression of lust or male bonding?
Uzmakk,
For purposes of discussion on topic, I would like to advance a possibility about what is apparently a tendency to produce an increasing percentage of gay men. Some will say that the tendency was always present in every society but less observable than it is today.
Let us assume that this trend continues until the male population is overwhelmingly gay. My question is: How such a society would differ from the present and would it be better or worse for children to have gay role models?
158. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 1:34:50 PM
ycmeehan:
It is not as though such a society never existed. We do have the Greeks for an example, yes? I think Cellar is a Corinthian.
159. sakonige - 1/23/2000 1:57:09 PM
In the matrilineal societies of pre-Columbian America, children had maternal uncles as role models, some of whom were not heterosexual. Family life in matrilineal societies differed drastically from ours, so that homosexuality of parents and role models must not have been as significant. I’ve wondered what it would have been like to be raised by my uncle instead of my father.
160. RickNelson - 1/23/2000 2:04:03 PM
Music has a role and perhaps has its own way of being a model. Songs Robert Smith pours out in Disintegration and the same can be said of Paul Westerberg in Don't Tell a Soul, etc... give an essence. The essence I wont presume to explain, it is a feeling really. Exhuberance for the melodies, fearless exploration of personal intensity.
Well, it's something like that. Just thought of this at this moment. Not spending any time on it. Music releases endorphines, right? SO, that's cool.
Whatever this is worth, gotta love music.
Read today,
Lucy Liu plays the accordian and likes the way it breathes with her. Maybe playing is a better high than listening. But, I've no ground for comparison.
161. moonflower - 1/23/2000 2:04:28 PM
Children have gay role models--often closeted ones. I'm more for open gay role models. People who don't have to lie to be "allowed" to be
a role model. To have this, though, cultures will have to change, have to confront the gay-hating that attempts (often successfully, often through murder) to keep people silenced. I still know of gay teachers who wear wedding rings to throw people off the scent. This kind of madness has to stop.
162. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 2:10:10 PM
Would not wearing a wedding ring be openly gay enough for you, moonflower? I don't wear a wedding ring.
163. sakonige - 1/23/2000 2:10:46 PM
Alexander the Great was a gay role model. He is still considered one of the greatest military strategists of all time.
164. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 2:23:31 PM
Let the madness stop, moonflower. Let the gay teachers remove those wedding rings. I doubt anyone would notice.
165. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 2:34:21 PM
You know, Azure, I wonder how coercive Greek homosexuality was at the time of Alexander.
166. sakonige - 1/23/2000 3:02:29 PM
Uzmakk,
I don't understand what you mean by coercive homosexuality, but it doesn't seem to me that Alexander made his own preferences. He was in love with one man who was his constant companion until he died of malaria. I watched an interesting video biography of Alexander the Great a few weekends ago and was very impressed by his brief life. It struck me as unfair that he is not usually presented as a gay hero.
167. sakonige - 1/23/2000 3:04:15 PM
urk, rather, it seems to me Alexander did make his own preferences.
I see I've grown too dependent on the ability to edit after posting online.
168. PelleNilsson - 1/23/2000 3:19:02 PM
sakonige
Have you read Mary Renault's historical novels about Alexander? The Persian Boy is the best.
169. PelleNilsson - 1/23/2000 3:21:20 PM
A quote from the old Greeks, I don't know its origins, made its way to the surface.
Women are for breeding sons; boys are for enjoyment.
170. sakonige - 1/23/2000 3:34:00 PM
PelleNilsson,
Thanks you, I haven't heard of those novels before.
I guess it must have been horrible to be a woman in most of the old world including the societies thought of as the most exemplary of our own western ideals. I've wondered why the Greeks had some female dieties when they had such low regard for women.
171. Candide - 1/23/2000 3:35:18 PM
PelleNilsson
And men are for kicking in the ass. (American refinement- we say arse in Australia.)
172. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 3:35:19 PM
I mean that the society was culturally homosexual, and whereas we have a bunch of whining homosexuals now, the whiners then would have been heterosexuals. Boys were taken from their mummies to be educated by honest and openly gay fellows who were probably excellent teachers.
173. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 3:37:24 PM
Pelle:
Did you get my email?
174. sakonige - 1/23/2000 3:43:36 PM
Uzmakk,
It sounds to me like the society despised women and femininity in general. That isn't exactly the same thing as homosexuality in our context.
175. PelleNilsson - 1/23/2000 3:53:55 PM
Uzmakk
I got the mail but I cannot open the file 'cause I have no graphics software that recognises .MAX files.
I have broken my promise to you re Mote publishing. But soon, real soon.
176. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 3:54:20 PM
Not exactly . But then again not necessarily so different.
177. sakonige - 1/23/2000 5:02:47 PM
Uzmakk,
Not all homosexuals in our society glorify male characteristics to the extent of denegrating females. Some homosexuals are females themselves. There is no reason to assume that a society which is tolerant of homosexuals will tend to be anti-female.
178. MsIvoryTower - 1/23/2000 5:37:09 PM
But Uzmakk is correct, the Athenian Greeks were culturally more homosexual then heterosexual. And they were actively hostile to women assuming any significant role in their society. Aristotle was particularly disparaging of Sparta precisely because the women were independent, typically ran the agricultural economy, and, in fact, most of the trade. He thought a city-state that required males to focus soley on military life and left the rest of society to women to run, mainly, was inferior to other greek city-states, including Athens.
179. MsIvoryTower - 1/23/2000 5:44:26 PM
Btw, the Ancient Greeks, mostly from Athens, are role models for many things. However, family life and the freedom of women aren't among them.
180. MsIvoryTower - 1/23/2000 5:45:47 PM
perhaps I should have said "the political, social and economic rights of women" instead of the freedom of women. More accurate.
181. Uzmakk - 1/23/2000 6:21:38 PM
And let us grant that women ran the agricultural economy in Sparta and had some "freedom?", "importance?", the relationship between the sexes remains of interest. Spartan men had wives, for breeding purposes, but they lived in all male military units from a young age. The word pod appeals to me for some reason. When it came time for a man to service his wife for the future of Sparta her hair was cut and she was dressed like a man. The soldier performed his distasteful duty on this male facsimile and returned to his pod.
182. MsIvoryTower - 1/23/2000 6:30:44 PM
Uzmakk
Well, we don't know the variations in personal attachments between husbands and wives in Sparta very well. The adult male was heavily controlled, his focus was meant to be on the state. There is some suggestion that men did try to have more contact with their wives, in some cases, because we know there was punishment for men who did see their spouses more than was allowed (social norms within the military barracks being the most obvious first place of sanctioning).
I'm also not sure that the women didn't dress like men just to be able to make clandestine meetings with their husbands easier.
In any case, it's clear that Spartian women were far more physically in control of their world than the women in cities influenced by the Athenian model of femaleness.
183. MsIvoryTower - 1/23/2000 6:36:14 PM
And now that I think of it, how would women "dress like men" when most men went with little or no clothing in Sparta? I mean, it'd be difficult wouldn't it?
184. sakonige - 1/23/2000 8:22:08 PM
It's interesting that ancient Greek societies were disdainful of powerful women, but Egyptians were not as much. It's also ironic that the last Egyptian pharaoh was a Greek woman.
185. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 6:32:23 AM
183MsIt:
I expect that it was more of a symbolic thing than an actual attempt to physically disguise a woman as a man. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Spartan men wore cute little baby blue thongs and that the women wore cute little pink silk boxers. It would simply be a matter of modifying the woman with a thong and a haircut.
186. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 10:47:35 AM
It's Brandon Teena Goes to Greece!
187. Ronski - 1/24/2000 11:26:35 AM
Re: an earlier post in this thread, there is no evidence to suggest there are any more homosexuals in society today than at any other time nor any fewer gay people.
188. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 12:23:41 PM
True. But that doesn't stop the bean-counters.
What always amuses me about the RR is how anxious they are to shave the mythical 10% down to 2 or 3, while at the same time pumping up the presumed threat of the "gay agenda."
It's like claiming that the Popeil slicer and dicer will completely eliminate kitchen knives.
189. Ronski - 1/24/2000 1:17:24 PM
And eliminate the people using them, too.
190. PsychProf - 1/24/2000 1:31:20 PM
Is it the assumption here...that sexual orientation is determined by "role models"?
191. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 3:04:07 PM
Who is Brandon Teena, Cellar?
192. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 4:10:42 PM
Brandon Teena was the cross-dessing girl who was raoed and murdered a few years ago in "the heartland." A wonderful documentary was made about her called "The Brandon Teena Story," and a wonderful dramatic film,"Boys Don't Cry," whose star -- Hillary Swank -- is winning evry acting honor that isn't nailed down, this year. She got the Golden Globe last night.
Is it the assumption here...that sexual orientation is determined by "role models"?
I don't know about here (ie. this thread) but among the Morality Pimps the assumption is thatopen" gays and lesbians will encourage "waverers" to crossover to the same-sex side.
Getrude Himmelfarb (to name but one) has been screaming about this a lot lately, as have the writers for "Commentary," "First Things," and other fascist screeds.
193. PsychProf - 1/24/2000 4:13:22 PM
Cellar...I guesss I was wondering why such discussion was placed in this thread.
194. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 4:14:56 PM
Believe it or not, I wasn't the onde who started it.
195. PsychProf - 1/24/2000 4:17:45 PM
But you are our role model for this stuff.
196. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 4:35:09 PM
(Blush)
197. Ronski - 1/24/2000 4:52:06 PM
Himmelfarb's notion about preventing "waverers" (a shaky concept to begin with) from going over to what her ilk sees as the dark side translates into this:
In order to prevent a few people from suffering as homosexuals, we must make homosexuals suffer.
The idea's resemblance to concepts associated with witch-burning and the Inquisition is striking.
198. PelleNilsson - 1/24/2000 4:54:34 PM
Yes.
199. SpenceMirrlees - 1/24/2000 4:55:45 PM
It stemmed from the claim that since gay people must understand their identity in a way heteros don't, they can make especially good role models as teachers. Which may certainly be true, but on the other hand, one must acknowledge that the very same cultural practices that force any special self-assessment in gay people may make it harder for some students to identify with them, and that can stand in the way of role model status. Which effect dominates must be hard to ascertain a priori.
200. SpenceMirrlees - 1/24/2000 4:56:42 PM
didn't see those last two. 199 is to 193.
201. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 5:55:23 PM
197How interesting, Ronski.
202. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 6:29:48 PM
You know, within a couple of days I hope to have talked a friend into entering our continuing little session here. Her name is Imagina Dear, a very reasonable woman from the mid-West.
203. moonflower - 1/24/2000 7:06:46 PM
Does being a role model for students mean they "identify" with the teacher? In that case, let's have coaches teach everything or film stars for that matter. I don't need my students to "identify" with me. If some straight kids are all scared off by an openly gay teacher, then they need to deal with it.
204. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 7:19:09 PM
on the other hand, one must acknowledge that the very same cultural practices that force any special self-assessment in gay people may make it harder for some students to identify with them, and that can stand in the way of role model status.
But surely you'd agree that self-assessment is something EVERYONE must go through, no? Just because you can't "identify" with someone whose life is not like your own doesn't mean you can't learn from them.
205. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 7:40:29 PM
203 Moonflower:
If I may paraphrase #203. "If the kids are uncomfortable, fuck them."
206. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 7:43:35 PM
Openly gay, openly gay, openly gay. What does that mean, Moonflower? I try to be unsexual except when I am trying to be sexual I think.
207. Uzmakk - 1/24/2000 7:44:45 PM
How old are the children that you force your sexuality on?
208. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 8:10:03 PM
Openly gay, openly gay, openly gay. What does that mean?
It means you're not lying and hiding.
209. Cellar Door - 1/24/2000 8:10:43 PM
It means you're not Kevin Spacey.
210. SpenceMirrlees - 1/24/2000 9:32:59 PM
Message # 203
Hopefully you don't teach logic. If a role model (or a teacher for that matter) must be someone kids can identify with, that doesn't mean anyone they can identify with is, should be, or can be a role model.
Anyway, as per the thread title, I was talking about the gay teacher as role model, not the gay person as teacher. In that capacity it is important that people, the students in this case, be able to identify with you. Yes, students who have a problem with it need to deal with it, and the fact is that many won't. That is the very same thing that makes a gay person go through the same self assessment that you are claiming heteros don't go through. You can't have the one without the other.
Message # 204
I would agree with both sentences. And...?
211. moonflower - 1/25/2000 9:01:45 AM
Right this minute there are gay kids who are considering killing themselves because they are scared of who they are, being found out,
self-hating, and all the other benefits our culture gives to gay young people. Sometimes if they know someone at school who they can trust and is also gay, a teacher perhaps, it can make a big difference. The silence is rarely golden.
212. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 11:50:17 AM
Silence=Death.
213. ChristiPeters - 1/25/2000 12:09:24 PM
"Right this minute there are gay kids who are considering killing themselves because they are scared of who they are, being found out"
Right this minute there are straight kids who are considering killing themselves because they are living with abusive parents, are lonely outcasts, are being harrassed by a bully, think they are and will always be unloved, are suffering sexual abuse, have been date-raped, ....
Sometimes if they know someone at school who they can trust, a teacher perhaps, it can make a big difference.
The silence is rarely golden.
(NOT taking away from your point, just on-topic adding to it)
214. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 1:07:04 PM
Well let's not turn this into a "My victims are worthier than your victims," bit. ALL teenagers need love and guidance. And it takes a lot more than a "Role Model" to provide it.
215. SpenceMirrlees - 1/25/2000 3:22:56 PM
Message # 211
Of course. That's the one side.
Look, earlier you claimed that homosexuality per se can make one a better role model. My point is only that such an a priori claim is difficult to establish, because being a role model is not independent of the role modelee.
216. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 4:25:02 PM
I was being provocative Spencer.
217. SpenceMirrlees - 1/25/2000 4:28:31 PM
well do you believe that or don't you?
218. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 4:34:31 PM
I think it's arguable that being gay can be advantageous in certain professions -- teaching among them.
219. Uzmakk - 1/25/2000 4:43:42 PM
Advantageous for whom, cellar. And please make the case that it is, in fact, gayness that enhances a teacher's abilities.
220. SpenceMirrlees - 1/25/2000 4:47:15 PM
well, that's damn near content-free, isn't it? But it did provoke.
Teaching is the art of telling little lies anyway, in my humble opinion.
221. ChristiPeters - 1/25/2000 4:48:31 PM
Cellar Door - I assume your #214 was not aimed at my #213 as that's not what I meant or what I was doing.
222. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 4:50:06 PM
It's advantageous for gay students. It shows them that they can at least become a schoolteacher. And it's advantageous of straight students in that the teacher can widen said student's frame of socio-cultural reference.
Of course what I'm talking about is GOOD gay teacher. Bad ones are a recipe for disaster -- just like bad straights.
223. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 4:50:51 PM
And I would also say that I believe that gays possess the necessary objectivity to teach students about life.
224. Uzmakk - 1/25/2000 4:54:16 PM
223Cellar:
Please expand.
225. Uzmakk - 1/25/2000 4:57:04 PM
I should say-- please expand, the statement seems baseless to me.
226. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 5:01:00 PM
If you're gay you're taught from moment one what it means to be straight. Then you have to go out all by yourself and find out what it means to be gay.
227. Uzmakk - 1/25/2000 5:09:27 PM
Yes, well, I'm sure you're right. 226 ie. How 226 relates to your previous statements is unclear to me.
228. Cellar Door - 1/25/2000 5:13:21 PM
Cause everybody blathers about "objectivity" all the time. personally, I don't believe in it. But because gays are required to do double duty, there's a distinct possibility that they've got what it takes to be "objective" about the whole process.
229. Uzmakk - 1/25/2000 5:17:54 PM
Your are quite right, cellar. Life, as we live it, does seem terribly subjective, and perhaps to view it objectively is not to see it.
230. moonflower - 1/26/2000 11:40:25 AM
In English, closeting does pose problems for some teachers. I know people who won't teach Whitman's CALAMUS poems because they're too "controversial" (i.e. gay). They can teach Forster's HOWARDS END but not MAURICE. This kind of fear continues to keep gay writers invisible and keeps students ignorant. One wonders if it is really "teaching" or just lying by omission again.
231. Cellar Door - 1/26/2000 11:43:05 AM
Lying by omission is the most serious threat to education going. And I'm not just talking about gay issues. Far from it, in fact. Teaching history is very, very VERY hard. Pretending you have all the information, and know all the answers, makes it even harder.
232. Jenerator - 1/26/2000 1:23:20 PM
Cellar,
If you're ANYTHING you're taught from moment one what it means to be SOMETHING ELSE. Then you have to go out all by yourself and find out what it means to be YOURSELF.
All of us have to deal with conflict, instruction, expectations, demands, societal pressures and norms, and our own consciences. I don't think gays have greater insight, just different.
233. Jenerator - 1/26/2000 1:23:44 PM
just different insight.
234. Cellar Door - 1/26/2000 2:42:25 PM
If you're ANYTHING you're taught from moment one what it means to be SOMETHING ELSE.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
235. Jenerator - 1/26/2000 2:47:34 PM
In other words, all of us are taught ways that may be contradictory to our nature.
236. Cellar Door - 1/26/2000 2:51:33 PM
And are we all similarly penalized for said "contradictions"? I think not. Your statement is far too general. Get down to cases.
237. Uzmakk - 1/27/2000 7:14:12 PM
No doubt about it cellar, you have a particularly difficult contradiction to come to terms with.
238. arkymalarky - 1/27/2000 7:41:39 PM
If a role model is someone whose handling of themselves is something others want to emulate, Cellardoor is a perfect example of one to me. He's a 52 (?) year old man who's dealt with race and homosexuality barriers, and a stroke and the AIDS epidemic taking many of his friends, and he has not only persevered, he has triumphed. I absolutely love his unflappability in Politics and his ability to move forward without regard to what anyone might think. I wish I had that kind of courage and confidence, but I don't. I have learned that expecting him to be mad or lose it over someone else's opinion is a waste of time. He's more unflappable than almost anyone here.
Excuse the fan letter of sorts, y'all, but I've been thinking about it for a while.
239. Cellar Door - 1/27/2000 8:00:33 PM
(BLUSH)
And next month I'll be 53!
240. RickNelson - 1/28/2000 8:22:24 AM
cool!
241. moonflower - 1/28/2000 9:31:19 AM
I join the Cellardoor appreciation society, too. I do not think that gays are necessarily "more" insightful regarding identity questions. Some are. I see no contradiction in people attempting to live honestly. Laws are in place to keep the lying going (dontaskdon'ttell). And I totally agree that "lying by ommision" is a particularly vicious kind of lying. It is insulting to teach writers like Whitman, Forster, Rich, etc. without confronting questions they raise regarding sexual identity. It would be better not to teach them than to teach them as if this is not so. And not to teach them in an English program would be pretty sad.
242. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 9:34:58 AM
I don't know about that, moonflower. The writers that you mention do bring up questions of sexual identity. Not questions about my sexual identity, but their sexual identity and yours. But even among the great it is quite possible to discount aspects of a persons work or personality. We are speaking here of great men, great writers, men that cause us to think. Take the example of I.Newton. He discovered the law of gravity. He also held many erroneous beliefs. We take from Newton what is valuable: the law of gravity, not a belief in alchemy.
When I read Whitman I will grant you that I sense greatness and I also that he causes me to question my sexual identity. Upon questioning, I find that my sexual identity is perfectly good, and that Whitman's seems misdirected. Whitman gives me an insight into homosexuality. This I will grant. I don't link his greatness to his homosexuality however.
I don't think that it is terribly important that my children confront Whitman's sexuality in their formative years.
243. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 9:40:44 AM
This just came into my mind -- how about young children's common distaste for sexuality of any kind?
244. Cellar Door - 1/29/2000 10:47:23 AM
Whitman caused you to question your sexual identity? I find that odd. I've never read anything that caused me to question mine.
Upon questioning, I find that my sexual identity is perfectly good, and that Whitman's seems misdirected.
I don;t understand this statement at all. By the simple fact of making bis sexual identity apparent Whitman causes you to question your own, find it "perfectly good<" and THEN declare his is "misdirected"? This utterly mistifies me.
Whitman gives me an insight into homosexuality. This I will grant. I don't link his greatness to his homosexuality however.
Who would? That's indeed ANOTHER step in dealing with a writer like Whitman. Again, the simple declaration of one's sexuality assumes monumental proportions. Why?
245. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 2:23:33 PM
To question, my darling cellar.. 'tis the same as, I wonder what t'would be like to be a sparrow. To question, to wonder,to think about, to change ones perspective in the mind. A unique capability I hope not exclusive to heterosexuals with a bit of imagination.
Why is sexuality important? Why is sexuality of monumental importance? Why has humanity attached trinkets and bells to sexuality throughout recorded history? Golly, cellar, how foolish of me for thinking along those lines.
246. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 2:25:27 PM
Cellar:
I believe you are being deliberately obtuse.
247. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 2:27:40 PM
I would respond to your post line by line, but I want you to think harder first.
248. Cellar Door - 1/29/2000 3:04:03 PM
I'm not being obtuse at all. Sexuality is importantin context.
Whitman's sexuality is worth talking about. So is Proust's, Gide's, Tennessee Williams' and A.E. Houseman's. But not in the same way. There are a millionstores in the Naked City. There's no reason theycan't be told in full.
What's your problem?
249. Cellar Door - 1/29/2000 3:05:33 PM
Actually I like the type "millionstores." We're so all-consumer-consuming these days. Amazon.hom, as it were.
250. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 4:44:58 PM
Cellar:
You have moved on to an area in which I have no expertise. I really don't know whether the sexuality of Whitman, Proust, Gide and Houseman is worth talking about. You seem to be very interested in that type of thing, and I much less so. I do have a problem though, with the million stories of the million stores in the Naked City all to be told in full. Who do we tell these stories to? Do we work them into our nursery rhymes? Actually, cellar, it seems that what I am concerned with is balance and degree.
251. Uzmakk - 1/29/2000 4:53:11 PM
You know, so much is a question of balance, cellar.
252. Cellar Door - 1/29/2000 6:00:28 PM
I'm concerned with balance and degree as well. And since we've been subject to a history of absolutely silence of a sort leaving you wondering about Whitman, Proust and Gide (and how did Houseman get into this? He certainly wouldn't have wanted to be included. . . .despite the record) it would seem that that balance you speak of is badly in need of redressing.
253. ycmeehan - 1/29/2000 6:28:27 PM
Uzmakk,
Wy is sexuality important? Why is it of monumental importance?
Well, I will tell you. Sexuality is the expression of love between two people who share their deepest thoughts, their hopes and their dreams. It is the attainment of shared bliss when two people can understand feelings for which there are no words. Call me simple or sentimental but if it is not that, I want no part of it.
By the way, I pliagerized the above directly from a Valentine card my husband just could not wait to give me because he said that I always maintained that sexuality was exactly that or should be.
254. moonflower - 1/30/2000 7:54:06 AM
Sexuality is definitely worth discussing in terms of writers if it is crucial to understanding their work, and in Whitman's case and T. Williams (well, so many), it clearly is. How else could one teach Whitman's CALAMUS poems--by pretending they're not celebrations of sexuality, particularly gay sexuality? But what many teachers routinely do is teach "When Lilacs Last in Dooryards Bloomed," a great poem, but Whitman wrote more than poems about Abe Lincoln, and it is no service to Whitman or students to delete (i.e. erase) CALAMUS and the many other references that he makes to sexuality.
255. RickNelson - 1/30/2000 8:31:32 AM
Man! I've typed about two pages and just can't post it. Deleted it in fact.
see here's page 3 already.
Well, the idea encroaching me is about experience with propositions I refused. The experiences were not bad, but they are perplexing. One led to a friendship, a good freindship. I miss that man in fact. I would be friends with him today if he had'nt dropped off the face of the planet. That damned group KMFDM had some influence upon his desire to drop out of life in 1990 and he did. What a waste. Oh, he surfaced in a Texazzz jail, called me and said he was arrested for peeing on the Alamo. I just laughed with him. He was out soon and then reappeared in Chicago. Then he disappeared for good, six years ago. I wonder if AIDS had anything to do with it. I hope not.
The reality of my question is about perception from gays to whom they perceive as possible partners. Then approaching them to find out they are hetero. Yet in my case not offended in either direction. So, what is the question. This area of life is just confusing. I don't know what to say or ask. I'm hetero for sure.
To repeat the perplexity is to ask why I was approached. Since only I can probably answer that, and I think I can, I deleted a lot of what I would say here. So, did I waste this post? Well, I'm a fair, relatively open man. I don't bite but, I wont be bit. That's the way it is and I don't know what to do with it.
256. Uzmakk - 1/30/2000 9:34:27 AM
253ycmeehan:
I must certainly disagree with you on this point. Sexuality, it would seem to me, has to do with what arouses one sexually. Sexuality tends toward the irrational, a simple stimulus response reaction. Now, the stimulus can be quite complex, it does not need to be crass or pornographic. We attach love to the sexuality because to do so seems "good" --the trinkets and bells I spoke of earlier. I must confess, yc, that the idea that your post was taken from a Hallmark card entered my mind before I read your confession.
Actually, sometimes you can just forget the stimulus, one's body just decides to dump a bunch of testosterone into the system and one experiences the madness.
257. Uzmakk - 1/30/2000 9:38:11 AM
Here are the words of an honest man--
"I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself...The more I frequent myself and know myself, the more my deformity astonishes me, and the less I understand myself." --- Montaigne
258. ycmeehan - 1/30/2000 10:20:19 AM
Uzmakk, # 256
You have made an excellent description of lust and it is certainly a powerful drive as exemplified by the Clinton/Lewinsky episode.
Maybe our differences are as simply as this: What comes first, the lust or the love?
My attitude about sexuality may be very well have been formed by my cultural heritage. On the other hand, it may very well have been warped by my long tenure in the United States.
259. phillipdavid - 1/30/2000 11:03:15 AM
I like yc's hallmark version.
"What comes first, the lust or the love?"
For me, I only lust for the woman I am in love with.
But during the short periods when I haven't been in love, I've been prone to lust after almost anything that catches my attention.
260. Cellar Door - 1/30/2000 11:41:32 AM
The reality of my question is about perception from gays to whom they perceive as possible partners. Then approaching them to find out they are hetero. Yet in my case not offended in either direction. So, what is the question. This area of life is just confusing. I don't know what to say or ask. I'm hetero for sure.
You're just talking about Standard Operational Life Experience, Rick. There was this guy you knew once, and you lost track of him. He was/is gay, and you're straight. Some sort of dialogue was going on between you that got lost in the shuffle, and you have some measure of regret about that. Perfectly reasonable. The fact that you're willing and able to talk about this at all is a relatively new phenomenon in this culture, with it's overweaning desire to segregate different people and different experiences.
Now back to the chicken or the egg.
261. moonflower - 1/30/2000 10:27:24 PM
Not speaking as a teacher now, but as a poet. Whitman is a role model for me as a poet--and became a stronger role model when I read him as
a gay or bi writer. I needed to find great writers who could open the door for me. Obviously I'll never be in their league, but I appreciate their courage, their honesty. Sadly, teachers did not lead me to their "unsafe" work. Friends did. Teachers far too often gave me sanitized views of writers. Anything to keep school boards and parents happy--and ignorant.
262. Cellar Door - 1/31/2000 12:20:11 AM
Remember that scene in "Maurice" where they're reading Plato's Symposium and the professor tells them to skip a page and "ignore the unnatural practices of the Greeks"?
263. moonflower - 1/31/2000 9:24:35 AM
I enjoyed MAURICE very much--and THE LIFE TO COME stories too. How I wish that even ONE teacher would have had the guts to really teach these writers instead of conveniently leaving out information AND TEXTS that I needed. I don't think high school is too soon for a novel like MAURICE, though a teacher would have to be brave to face the tornadic winds of homophobia that would most likely confront him/her for bringing such a work into a classroom.
264. Uzmakk - 1/31/2000 10:33:39 AM
You know, gents, I am going to be listening to Paradise Lost in the shop pretty soon. I think I will also get the title Who Killed Homer. The little blurb for it says something like "the Greeks have had such an effect on civilization if we forget these people, and who they were we cannot know who we are." Ofcourse, one can take the view that it was a good thing for civilization and for women that the homosexual armies of Macedonia were defeated by the Romans. I recall a recent throw away comment made by Jexster: He was for gays in the military as long as there could be purely gay battalions so that some real fun could be had. chuckle 265. Cellar Door - 1/31/2000 11:07:27 AM And after the Greeks came the Romans -- and we all know how straight and butch they were, don't we? Get real. 266. Uzmakk - 1/31/2000 3:59:06 PM 267. Uzmakk - 1/31/2000 4:01:37 PM That's
chuckle We don't need no Amazon battalions, said Jex. I wonder what would have caused a bunch of women to form a warrior
tribe. Likely a reaction to the unnatural sexual practices of Greek society , the resulting status of women as breeding stock, and the enforcement of the above by a strong state.
Perhaps the defeat of the Greeks was as fortunate an occurance for Western civilization, women in particular, as the eventual defeat of the Mongols.
268. Cellar Door - 1/31/2000 4:11:27 PM
Yes.
269. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 10:43:56 AM
CONGRATULATIONS: BY READING THIS POST YOU HAVE JUST CONTRACTED HIV
(This message was brought to you by the Dan Savage For God Committee)
270. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 3:09:11 PM
Is that the openly gay reporter who smeared some of his bodily fluids all over the immediate environment of Gary Bauer?
271. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 3:22:52 PM
272. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 3:53:58 PM
Yes sir, Cellar, you're my kind of honest homosexual.
273. Ronski - 2/1/2000 3:57:30 PM
Uzmakk,
What is your definition of a dishonest homosexual?
274. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 3:58:27 PM
Thanks. I do the best that I can. I'm only one queer.
275. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:00:04 PM
One who would say the Mr. Savage was not his role model.
276. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 4:01:27 PM
Uh Oh.
277. Ronski - 2/1/2000 4:01:53 PM
Savage certainly isn't my role model, and being half-Thermian, I can't dissemble.
278. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 4:02:36 PM
Right on cue.
279. Ronski - 2/1/2000 4:03:46 PM
Cellar,
I wouldn't disappoint you.
280. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:07:48 PM
O.K.
I keep seeing allusions to some Dan Savage sneezing controversy. I gather he wrote a column glibly stating that he would have been happy if a bunch of Republicans he had met caught his flu. Is that the extent of the controversy? Are people really seriously irritated with him for speaking in jest, about spreading the flu?
281. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 4:18:13 PM
Yes.
It was in "Salon." He infiltrated Gary Bauer's campaign in Iowa, and claimed he tried to give him the flu by licking pens and doorknobs. You cannot believe the number of people who took this seriously -- Ace among them.
282. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:20:35 PM
Cellar,
Sounds silly to get worked up over a joke. Did any real life pundits or politicos actually raise a stink?
283. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 4:21:28 PM
Yes. Check today's New York Post.
284. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:22:48 PM
Thanks for the info.
285. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:41:53 PM
Anyway, he certainly is a weaselly looking little fuck.
286. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:42:13 PM
I read the post article -- oh brother.
287. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:44:50 PM
And that's quite a sense of humor he's got.
288. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 4:45:03 PM
Weaselly to you, Hot to me.
289. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:48:32 PM
Well his joke may or may not have been funny, depending on whether or not you believe he actually attempted to give anyone the flu. Personally, I think he was just joking. At any rate, to start talking about assault charges and voter fraud is silly histrionics -- imo.
290. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:49:39 PM
There's no accounting for taste, cellar.
291. Ronski - 2/1/2000 4:51:29 PM
The Post columnist, Rod Dreher, holds the space made infamous by the deranged Ray Kerrison, who, when he wasn't at the track (he originally had a column on the ponies), spent most of his time bashing gays with flights of illogic.
It is a sign of progress that Dreher calls Savage a "disgrace to gay activism," suggesting that somehow he cares.
He also calls him a disgrace to journalism, which is a concept harder to grasp.
292. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:51:55 PM
Tabouli:
Isn't that like calling a fat person a big fat slob and then telling them that it was just a joke. yess, quite the sense of humor.
293. Ronski - 2/1/2000 4:52:58 PM
Uzmakk,
So you saw Dame Edna's show in New York?
294. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 4:55:01 PM
No, Ronski.
295. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 4:59:16 PM
Uzmaak,
Your analogy is goofy. Savage's joke, is more like saying "Stop calling me a godforesaken sinner you outrageous dink." Why should Savage be polite towards these people, or refrain from a little tit for tat, given some of the venom Bauer appears to enjoy directing towards gays and lesbians.
296. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 5:09:13 PM
For god sakes, the flu is no laughing matter you moron. Every winter it comes around and trys to kill alot of us. This weasel makes a joke of spreading it. People believed him. Why not? He looks like a weasel. The anology was fat analogy was crap, but I am going back to read it again and defend it anyway.
297. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 5:11:32 PM
I have decided that the anology is apt. It is an immediate slap in the face.
298. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 5:12:10 PM
It is a shock.
299. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 5:16:20 PM
Uzmakk,
I tend to be a bit of a wimp when it comes to confrontation, and usually get all weepy when people call me a moron, so I doubt that I will pursue this debate much further. If Savage just joked about spreading the flu then it is just a joke. If he actually attempted to spread the flu, then that is a pretty shitty thing to do. Hey, I had the nastiest flu of my life before Christmas and wouldn't wish it upon anybody . . . unless, of course, they spent their time spreading nonsense about the way I live, then, perhaps, I might say, "Fuck it. I hope that weasel suffers the way I am right now." However, I doubt Savage actually licked door knobs to try and give anybody the flu.
I'll check in later to see if you develop your analogy further. Cheers.
300. Uzmakk - 2/1/2000 5:39:14 PM
Don't worry about the Moron remark, Jones. I am actually in a rather exuberant mood right now and I meant nothing by it. Who knows if Savage Weasel made a remark concerning lhow nice it would be to give these stiff asses the flu,or, whether he said something about licking door knobs. It doesn't really matter if he actually did it. It matters that people believe that he did it because of what he said. He looks like the kind of guy who would go around licking door knobs.
301. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:18:12 PM
You mean there's an actual physical type?
Tell me Uz -- does Ollie North look like a drug-runner? Cause that's what he did, you know.
Of course connie would jump right in here and say that Clinton looks exactly like a rapist.
302. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:20:34 PM
Does River look like a drug addict?
303. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:22:20 PM
Does Randy look like he's dying of AIDS?
304. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:24:27 PM
Does this woman look like a lesbian?
305. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:27:13 PM
Does this look like a reliable journalist?
306. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 7:28:47 PM
Is this the face of Modern American Motherhood?
307. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 7:44:34 PM
"It matters that people believe that he did it because of what he said."
I suppose. Of course, it also matters that people reading him interpret and respond to his work with a degree of realism and perspective.
308. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 7:55:35 PM
Cellar,
Your link to Shilts made me think of the movie Zero Patience, by John Greyson (who I know you admire). I am just curious, what do you think Shilts' take on that movie would be now.
309. Cellar Door - 2/1/2000 8:03:30 PM
He'd be REALLY pissed. John scores him on the entire Patient Zero myth by attacking the ideology of "origins" from every possible angle. He does this, of course, as a matter for Canadian Pride, in that Gaetan Dugas was from Quebec.
The Real Randy story is pretty grim. He was into a lot of stuff that he later took up self-righteous arms against.
Maybe Saul Bellow will cover similar territory in his new book. But I doubt it.
310. TabouliJones - 2/1/2000 8:53:30 PM
Cellar,
I remember seeing Shilts in an interview shortly after he went public that he was H.I.V. positive. He said that he suspected that he had H.I.V. for a long time before actually getting tested. I think he also said that he didn't want to confirm his health status because he thought that it would compromise his objectivity -- especially given his status as the most prominent gay reporter throughout the eighties. He also seemed very conflicted about the whole 70s San Francisco scene and his participation therein. In a way, it seems like he suffered a severe identity crisis in his later years, which is unfortunate.
311. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 6:47:24 AM
301 Cellar:
A person with a narrow face and big teeth might be said to look horsey. Chief Wigham on the Simpson's looks piggish. Savage looks like a weasel. Put it however you choose, cellar -- an openly gay weasel, or an openly weaselly gay. I see weasel, I hear gay, I get gay weasel.
As I understand it half the members of the press are weasels, Savage just happens to look like one.
312. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 6:57:39 AM
Btw, Lily Tomlin looks like both a dyke and a horse. I find your dependence on Hollywood figures amusing. I have very little interest in them.
313. RickNelson - 2/2/2000 8:22:04 AM
Hmmm... I've run out of time this morning but, I think Savage's joke is as Uzmakk mentioned about the "fat" joke.
Cellar,
I don't think Savage's picture on your site does him justice if he's hot. Personality and body are things you may know, that picture shows a bit of Laurel of Hardy days to me. Cute, but, if he jokes of spreading the flu, I would be pissed at my friend and tell him so. That's not my kind of funnybone.
Maybe Uzmakk hasn't known of your Hollywood book?
When you mentioned to me a ways back that the segregation and chance to speak of these issues together is newer in society. That is an interesting topic.
314. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 10:33:42 AM
Hollywood is my beat, Uzmakk.
I think he also said that he didn't want to confirm his health status because he thought that it would compromise his objectivity -- especially given his status as the most prominent gay reporter throughout the eighties.
Yeah. And he got that "objective" and "prominent" status by critizing other gays for "promoting" the "promiscuity" that in point of fact ruled his life.
315. Ronski - 2/2/2000 10:42:04 AM
Cellar,
Are you saying that Shilts blamed his promiscuity on others?
That would figure.
Btw, I hear it's Barry Diller's birthday.
Did you send a card?
316. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 11:06:48 AM
You don't need to send a card to the man who owns the card factory.
Hmmmm -- how old is Barry these days?
317. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 11:37:21 AM
I know its your beat, Cellar. The fact remains.
318. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 11:54:28 AM
Hollywood is exactly like the Beltway, Uz. The only difference is the people are prettier.
319. Dantheman - 2/2/2000 11:58:08 AM
Cellar,
And they have less effect on our lives.
320. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 12:04:33 PM
I disagree. Hollywood contextualizes life. The stars are endowed with the ability to live out our dreams.Or rather what the Powers That Be claim to be our dreams.
More important, they're supposed to be (wait for it) Role Models
None are, of course -- and that's part of the story I cover in various ways.
The stars are like money. They're figures of ideological exchange. They are this culture's measure of the value of human life.
321. Dantheman - 2/2/2000 12:12:32 PM
Cellar,
Hollywood contextualizes life? Really? Since nearly all Hollywood stories I have read (and admittedly, they are few and grow fewer by the year) deal with who is sleeping with whom or who is whose kid or how we are supposed to idolize them because they are so beautiful, I find it provides absolutely no context for my life, and am continually surprised that supposedly intelligent people care one whit about Hollywood celebrities.
322. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 12:51:43 PM
"Who is sleeping with Who" is a small part of it, Dan. Hollywood stars are supposed to be "real people" who despite their millions are "just like us." They have families -- trotted out for cheery, dutiful photo ops, despite the fact that they loathe and despise one another. Stars who have difficulty giving birth are afforded massive magazine spreads about their "struggle." If they adopt, they become Living Saints in the media's eye. Intelligent people may not care one whit, but the Star Treatment affects the Media air on every level. If you know how the game is played in Hollywood, then you'll have no trouble comprehending what's really going on in this inane farce called "Election 2000."
323. Dantheman - 2/2/2000 12:57:05 PM
Cellar,
Phooey. Hollywood celebrities are "just like us", except they can buy their way out of every problem (but prefer using just their famous name) and they expect total strangers to know all about them and care about every little thing they do. In other words, they are a breed apart, but we are constantly being reminded that they are really superior to us.
324. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 1:20:53 PM
The media air has always fascinated me, Cellar. Please tell me more.
325. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 5:30:52 PM
"They have families -- trotted out for cheery, dutiful photo ops, despite the fact that they loathe and despise one another."
Quite so, Cellar. We have absolutely nothing to learn from Hollywood stars. They are incapable of doing the good things that ordinary people do. Their psyches tend toward the infantile, and, as Dantheman has said, they have the money to buy their way out of every problem.
326. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 5:32:01 PM
And to have them pronounce on morality of any kind is a real chuckle.
327. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 5:33:17 PM
I pass wind in the general direction of Hollywood.
328. Uzmakk - 2/2/2000 5:34:14 PM
I pass it through the media air .
329. moonflower - 2/2/2000 7:33:24 PM
I agree, cellardoor, but why stop at Hollywood? It's the cult/ure of celebrity--including these silly sports & music "stars" where one sees on the TV these "interviews" as if making a new movie, hitting a home run, or putting out a new video is somehow this wonderful thing. People must want it or it wouldn't happen. Sadly, role model seems to mean cash model. There's no changing it--short of revolution, I guess, spiritual revolution.
330. TabouliJones - 2/2/2000 8:20:49 PM
Personally, I don't see anything all that wrong with enjoying books about movie stars, sports stars, and other sundry celebrities. People have a hunger for narrative, which means people are drawn to stories about the faces they see in the media. In the end, it all depends on the depth of the treatment; on whether the book is a puff piece or something more substantial. It seems somehow snooty -- even cynical -- to dismiss the whole genre of celebrity writing (etc.) as something which pollutes the mind of the hoi polloi.
331. Cellar Door - 2/2/2000 10:48:39 PM
It's not a question of outright dismissal. Things should simply be kept in perspective.
Often that's hard to do. We're talking about privileged people, who have options most of us can barely dream of. They are NOT like you and I. They don't put their pants on one leg at a time. They're lowered into them.
332. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 6:28:01 AM
330 Tabouli:
Have you seen the Wrestlemania Newsweek. Narrative with stars, shown very graphically in the Pelle Nilsson Samizdat style. Dirty mechanical typewriter with cut-out countenences for names. People do need a story to follow and I certainly do believe that it is possible to pollute the mind of the hoi poloi. Parents bringing their small children to see mock lynchings, etc. etc. Call me snooty, call me cynical, call me concious.
331Cellar: I agree with every word.
333. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 6:43:52 AM
I suppose I should put this in politics but it seems to fit here--
14Feb The Nation
After giveing a brief account of the stated religious beliefs of the candiates for president we come to Bill Bradley--Orignally Bradley cited privacy as his reason for not talking about religion, but apparently worked something up because he thought that this stance would loose him votes. Bradley sees himself anchored "in nature, in God's grace, and in humanity's potential to grow." He believes "too many people are trapped in a hedonism exacerbated by wealth; and even the poorest, most desperate parts of our country are in a grip of the pleasure/money syndrome."
And who are the role models? Who are the characters in the narrative that people seem to crave? For many unfortunate souls they are the people who have to be lowered into their pants.
334. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 7:05:29 AM
Have you ever noticed that SUVs resemble Nike sneakers?
335. RickNelson - 2/3/2000 7:40:23 AM
Subliminal, subliminal, subliminal...
We now control all that you think and hear, give in to the master, give in.
Well, I don't think Balls and Wood has much for me. Never gave the place enough notice to say much of anything. I like the movies though. Consume them just fine, u bet-chiah'.
So far the new King and I has gotten my notice. The roles are sending a message. Asian man to white woman is ok, except yah have to be a king, and a king with many consorts and children galore. Aside from that context, it's more about that in my very humble opinion, than it is about a remake of the original musical. It didn't even go there, didn't try, didn't need to. Chow and Jody are pretty cool, their preformances weren't to bad. Jody was just a tiny bit off, but, Chow had it goin' on!
So their roles in my very humble opinion are models of interracial relations, by asian man and white woman.
336. Cellar Door - 2/3/2000 10:31:08 AM
Bradley most certainly belongs in this discussion, Uz. Not only because we're constantly told that sports figures are RM's, but because of the clear RM pitch in his "too many people are trapped in a hedonism exacerbated by wealth; and even the poorest, most desperate parts of our country are in a grip of the pleasure/money syndrome," remark.
That's an interesting statement, as it's both "reasonable" and completely uncalled for at the same time.
Hedonism is not the issue -- it's Power.
Scoring the hedonism of others avoids dealing with the real questions at hand for anyone running for office -- Why should we vote for you, and what concrete steps will you take towards the common good once elected?
337. TabouliJones - 2/3/2000 10:59:44 AM
Uzmakk,
Well, I wasn't talking about Wrestlemania Weekly. I was responding to your seeming contempt for the genre of celebrity writing as a whole. Note, I said it all depends on the treatment. The issue is on whether the book (or article) at issue is a puff piece or something more substantial; on whether or not the work amounts to good scholarly biography. I hazard that one could get just as much out of a decent biography on the craziness of Andy Dick as one might get out of the very good biography I read last year on the life of Mark Rothko. You seemed to be implying that nothing interesting or worthy could be written about celebrities, and I was simply disputing that impression (however correct or incorrect I may have been in interpreting your statements).
338. moonflower - 2/3/2000 11:15:25 AM
Cellar Door--again, you're so right. And why bring "hedonism" into it anyway. These political role models (Gore, Bradley) sure want gay money, hands fully extended, but when push comes to shove you can bet they will wither away utterly. As for the role models (ugh) like McCain and Bush Jr., the hate rhetoric they keep in place will surely keep the money rolling in.
339. TabouliJones - 2/3/2000 11:31:48 AM
Reading Bradley's remarks out of context they do strike me as rather annoying. It is almost like he is asserting some sort of false consciousness in the mind of the electorate, and I always get my back up when people suggest that they have some sort of sage-like perspective that people ought to tap into for their own good.
340. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 11:53:08 AM
Cellar:
A good politician never speaks in concrete steps .
341. Cellar Door - 2/3/2000 12:01:59 PM
That's why I don't want a good politician. I want a President.
342. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 12:07:14 PM
Ah yes, the famous Politician's Paradox.
343. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 12:09:58 PM
Also known as the People's Paradox or the Presidential Paradox.
344. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 2:05:29 PM
337Tabouli:
I have nothing against celebrity stories. They ain't gonna hurt me. When I was at the dentist's office I read a good one on The Artist Formerly Known as Prince's new house. He has it hung with all sorts of far out symbols. Shit!! He beat me to it.
345. moonflower - 2/3/2000 2:33:24 PM
As much as I loathe the cult/ure of celebrity, I must admit that I read the National Enquirer in the check-out line. I know it's madness, but I read it anyway. I'm not sure it's any worse than Time or Newsweek.
346. Cellar Door - 2/3/2000 4:12:06 PM
You know what? It's NOT!
347. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 4:19:58 PM
336 Cellar:
I don't know, maybe the issue is hedonism and power.
348. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 4:22:50 PM
339 Tabouli:
sage-like perspective=identifying a problem
349. Uzmakk - 2/3/2000 4:23:15 PM
?
350. Cellar Door - 2/3/2000 7:25:59 PM
Just power. J. Edgar Hoover was no hedonist. Neither was Nixon, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Pinochet.
Roy Cohn is the exception that proves the rule.
351. Uzmakk - 2/4/2000 6:55:28 AM
But, Cellar, you keep looking at the big guys, you keep looking at the "stars". Bradley is talking about what is wrong in my immediate environment. No doubt political big shots have an effect on that environment, a big effect if they happen to be directing their attention toward me, but often they are not. However, there is something wrong with the psyche of my fellow citizens when people shoot one another over parking spaces or running shoes. It is this type of thing he is talking about and I think he is correct. This gets into ethics, religion, self-regulation.
352. RickNelson - 2/4/2000 7:27:30 AM
I mentioned months ago that I've been holding off opinion of Jesse Ventura. Well it's time.
He's a slug toward human issues. He is setting an example of what a neanderthal can do once given the microphone and national attention. But, it's what he's doing here at home that needs immediate attention and loud protest.
He has an appointee, Charlie Weaver who, with the tactless help of Sarah Slaughterhauf have summarily dismantled 3+ decades of womens advocacy in Minnesota. The womens advisory boards/advocacy boards he dismantled about a month ago have been reinstated, but, at what cost and at what power level. The roles that had once been are reorganizing and probably have an steep uphill battle ahead. Especially with Charlie Weaver and Sarah Slaughterhauf running amok. The disarray they are creating is having deep impact upon state workers within the womens movement. That just trickles immediately down to the womens shelters and so on. This is a very serious problem when one considers the decades of progress that has been shot in the face.
Role model, shmo model, Jesse will be with the underbelly slug-slime models of history in my book.
Now he attacks PBS and the arts. I think, without having read it, that his interview in Playboy points to his ideas wrt the arts. What a shmo.
So, he gave all Minnesotans a tax rebate near $1,000 on avg. last year and promises a similar rebate this year from $36mil. surplus. Well, I just don't know. Do I need/want the money? Sure, but, what has changed to have this surplus avail. for rebate? The 'why?' is looming big this time around. Being fed shut-up money? I don't know, human nature gets in this part. What is up with all this?!
353. moonflower - 2/4/2000 9:26:53 AM
Ventura is the cult of celebrity in the governor's office. But politicians are now interchangeable w/movie stars. Now on one of the tabloids I see "Hilary's Big Secret." Who could care less,