Commentary

Ye Adidas!

Tuesday, October 25, 20220

The Adidas controversy…

Should it have been controversial at all? I mean, “Ye” was not only blatantly anti-semitic – not something new for him – but he outright defied Adidas to part ways with him, doubling down on the anti-semitism. Should be an easy call. Yes, you can point to Adidas’ founding history with its founders having been members of the Nazi party. But who cares? That was August 1949, not August 2022. Every German corporation that was founded in that era had ties to the Nazi party. Many American and other nationality companies had ties to the Nazi Party. Want to get upset about that? Go read IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. This finger-pointing is just an iteration of Godwin’s Law, and irrelevant to the discussion.

So, why not just “part ways” with Ye, call him on his bluff? It should be as simple as “choose a side” to be remembered in history for. And sure, that’s my gut level reaction. Any rational person would do that, right?

And that’s the issue. Adidas took “days” to respond to Ye’s statements with anything more than that they were reviewing their partnership with him. Because Adidas isn’t a person. Adidas doesn’t have a gut reaction. I’d bet that most of the people who’ve been screaming for Adidas to cut ties with Ye immediately are against, say, the Citizens United decision. They’ve probably been railing for years against treating corporations like people.

When it comes down to it, Adidas was facing losing 20% of their gross profits. That’s going to affect a whole lot of people, not just Adidas’ bottom line, which was already on a downward trend. The likelihood is that a large number of people will lose their jobs. Dozens? Hundreds? More? And, despite it being the “right thing” to do, the markets won’t care. Adidas’ 125,000 stockholders are going to take a hit, and probably a huge one. I’m betting that the opening of the stock exchange today is going to see a massive sell off and plunge in price. [It did – a 5% drop at the opening bell, though surprisingly, by end of day it had recovered most of that to close at only 1% down.]

Also, who knows what their contract with Ye involves as penalties for breaking ties with him? It could be even more costly in the short run.

Even if Adidas were a person and not a corporation, who among us would make an immediate ethical decision knowing that it would cost us 20% of our annual income and destroy the income of various friends and family? Ethical or not, I’d bet most of us would want to take a beat and figure things out. We might well know our ultimate decision, but we’d want time to plan how to lessen the impact on ourselves and others.

So Adidas took four or five days to make a decision. No doubt there were a lot of people involved in making it. I’d guess no more than a handful, if any, were not in favor on a gut level of ending their relationship with him. But Adidas is a corporation, not a person, and the board and executives and shareholder groups had to consider not just being on the right side of history in the long run, but the health and survivability of the company in the short run.

I’m glad they did the moral thing in the end. And while on that gut level I wish they’d done it faster, I hope they figured out a responsible approach for themselves, their employees, their contractors, and their investors.

 

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Don’t Say… ?

Tuesday, March 8, 20222

There has been a lot of outcry over the “Don’t Say Gay” bill debated and recently passed by the Florida legislature (HB1557/SB1834). On one side, the claim is that the bill prohibits any school teacher or administrator or third party in a school from ever mentioning anything related to gender identity and/or sexuality. On the other side, the claim is that the bill simply asserts the rights of parents to have a say in what their children learn about those topics. Since the only thing I’ve seen in relation to this has been a lot of social media and news reports, all without any citation, and all with a lot of hand-wringing, I decided to read the bill myself.

Now, not being a lawyer, I can’t delve into what might be possible because of specific wording. Legal scholars and lawyers will no doubt argue the fine points in court cases to come where this new law gets tested. But the bill is basically only three pages, and nothing that comes across as deeply mystifying legalese, so I’m going to give it a stab.

Edit: I’ve been asked to give bullet-points about my conclusions, and you can read on to flesh out the details:

  • This law only applies to public schools
  • This law applies to all grades, not just the GOP touted “it’s only kindergarten through third grade kids”. That’s just one sentence out of the bill, the rest applies to all grades. 
  • This law leaves vulnerable kids, particularly LGBTQIA+ kids, without a safety net for counseling, making it “talk to your parents” or nothing, and obligating school employees to notify parents of anything kids say about their sexuality or identity.
  • By leaving the definition of “age appropriate” vague, this law puts the onus of defining it on state employees whose jobs are beholden to elected officials, while taking those officials off the hook for making what might turn out to be unpopular decisions.
  • Edit: This all didn’t age well, as over the next 10 months, Governor DeSantis, by executive fiat, extended all these restrictions through the rest of elementary school, and then on to secondary school; upped the ante on book-banning in school libraries, while cheering on private forays into public libraries and bookstores as well. And then, another couple of months later, got the legislature to codify it into law. Also added in prohibitions on teachers and school employees “using” pronouns or asking students what theirs are, and prohibited trans students (well, trans people in general) from using public restrooms unless they correspond to their birth gender, regardless of whether they’ve undergone any medical transition procedures, subject to genital examination, DNA testing, and the potential for arrest for using the wrong bathroom.

First, this bill does not apply to all schools. It applies specifically and only to public schools. What a private school chooses to teach and how they interact with parents is not addressed.

Second, and probably where much of the debate comes from, is the introductory paragraph, which is a litany of more than a dozen assertions about what the purpose of the bill is. Most of it relates to parental notification and involvement in school approaches to the well-being, both physical and mental, of students.

The basic assertion is that the school and its personnel are not to undertake any actions in the realm of a student’s well-being without either prior involvement of the parents in the decision, or if something happens in the moment, without notifying the parents. In the midst of the litany is a reference to not encouraging classroom discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity in “primary grade levels”. But let’s get into the actual bill, since the preamble doesn’t contain any details of anything enforceable.

The first section of the actual bill requires that a school adopt clear policies for notifying a parent if their child seeks help, or a teacher notices an issue, around their physical, mental, well-being. It requires that the school recommend the child talk to their parent first, and that the parent give permission for the school to be involved in the process. It carves out a clear exception for cases of suspected child abuse that might involve a parent.

But, the troubling part of this is, as someone who began to “come out” as gay during high school, and had friends who did as well, being able to talk to a teacher or counselor about it because of fear of parental reaction, was really important. Had they been prohibited from talking to me about it, I’m not sure where I’d have sought out support. Well, I actually do – since most of the counseling I got ended up being from my rabbi, who was open about having a conversation and not talking to my parents about it, though he did encourage me to do so.

In the same vein, the second section prohibits the school from requiring students to fill out questionnaires or participate in activities that might lead them to openly discuss issues of their physical, mental, or emotional well-being in the school, as opposed to talking to their parents about them (same exception in regard to potential child abuse cases).

Again, the same issue arises… since some of these sorts of issues (at this point, nothing’s been mentioned in the meat of the bill about sexual orientation or gender identity, but we are headed that way) are ones that many kids have reasonable concerns about talking to their parents about. Taking away the option for counseling and support without parental notification or permission leaves vulnerable kids even more at risk for not getting support.

Section three is clearly the one where the “Don’t Say Gay” moniker comes from. But honestly, to me, this is the least troubling part of the bill. The first two sections, as I noted, are where I see a real issue. The only thing that this section prohibits is “classroom instruction” by teachers, administrators, or third parties about sexual orientation or gender identity, for students who are in kindergarten through third grade. From fourth grade on, there’s no prohibition, though there’s an oddly phrased sentence about such classes being age appropriate, not defined, which obviously could be subject to a variety of interpretations. The big issue here is it leaves that definition in the hands of the department of education, which could well make up all sorts of reasons for not teaching about these topics to various grade levels, depending on political pressures from state officials.

While it’s possible that a six year-old could have questions or concerns that might be addressed in counseling (back to the first section), I have to agree that kids of that age don’t need to have those conversations in class. The bill doesn’t prohibit a teacher or administrator from answering questions about such topics, it prohibits making it a part of the curriculum. Could the term “classroom instruction” be misused to castigate a teacher for their approach to answering questions? I suppose, but I imagine that’s in the arena of fine points that will end up in a courtroom.

Section four is pretty innocuous, and probably no different from what every department of education law includes – that any support services offered by school personnel must adhere to guidelines established by the school system and the state’s department of education. Obviously, those guidelines could be altered to be something horrific, but that’s not part of this bill.

Section five requires that the school notify parents at the beginning of the school year what sorts of health services and counseling the school makes available to both students and their parents. Pretty standard.

Section six requires that the schools notify and receive permission from a parent before administering either physical or mental health questionnaires to their kids.

Section seven basically just establishes the details of what parental notification and permission involves, and parental remedies if a school violates any of the above rules.

In sum, my biggest concern revolves around the lack of access to outside support for vulnerable kids that is built into the first two sections of this bill, now law, that goes into effect this July.

I understand the impetus that many, if not most parents, have to be involved in the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their kids, and to not have an “outsider” having those conversations. At the same time, they might want to take a momentary step back, and think about their own childhood and teen years, and whether there were issues that they really needed to talk to someone other than their parents about.

Prohibiting any sort of counseling or conversation with a student in this arena on the part of school personnel without parental involvement is short-sighted, and is more likely to create more serious well-being issues for kids. Obviously there need to be some lines that aren’t to be crossed, but the way those two sections of the bill are worded aren’t where the line ought to be. And including vaguely worded phrases like “age appropriate” or “developmentally appropriate” in the law, with the definition of those left to a group of employees of the state, beholden to the governor and/or legislature for their employment, is a slippery slope to nowhere good.

[The bill can be found here: Senate/House bill

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Action Dragons!

Thursday, October 22, 20200

An article in the latest issue of Blackbelt magazine laid out the 20 best martial arts films of all time. The article is one worth paying attention to, as the opinion maker is Dr. Craig D. Reid, who is the author of the canonical books when it comes to martial arts films, the various “Ultimate Guide to Martial Arts Films of…” series. He’s probably seen and written about more films of the genre than anyone out there. And for the magazine, he’s written a new “20 best” list three times now, roughly seven to eight years apart – 2005, 2012, 2020. Interestingly, few films have remained the same between the lists, which might indicate that films have just gotten better with time, except that, for example, the current list features quite a few films from the 1970s and 1980s, that didn’t appear on earlier lists.

So what happened to the ones he thought were better back then than he does now? Of course, it may simply be an intent not to repeat recommendations, totally understandable, and no one ever takes the word “best” in those lists as gospel. I decided, given that we still have plenty of downtime in Argentina’s quarantine, which continues, seven months plus in, to watch my way through his lists (at the moment just the 2012 and 2020 lists, as I haven’t found the 2005 list online anywhere). In no particular order (well, actually the order I was able to find copies of the films to watch). Spoilers ahead….

I’m immediately off on a tangent, as one of the recommended films in 2019 was the new “remake” of Enter the Fat Dragon, which came out this year. Before getting to that, I decided to jump back to the original, which came out in 1978 and starred Sammo Hung, now one of the preeminent directors of martial arts films. The film was produced as a parody of the Bruce Lee film Way of the Dragon, albeit the title is a play on another Lee film, Enter the Dragon. In this film, 26-year old Hung plays a young man who has grown up on a pig farm, who idolizes and tries to emulate Bruce Lee, at least in fighting, if not spirit, whose father decides to send him to “the city” to work for his uncle and get some exposure to the outside world. Now, first off, Hung isn’t fat. He may be a little chubby, stocky, in the midsection, but really, he’s pretty much solid muscle, and he moves faster and more agilely than a whole of slim and trim martial artists out there. As one would expect from the farm boy goes to the big city trope, he gets himself into constant trouble because he doesn’t understand the ins and outs of urban life, and his first reaction to virtually anything amiss is to start a fight. In general, he wins, time after time, mostly against young street thugs, but at the cost of some level of damage, destruction, and dismay to things and people around him. By the end, after a culminating fight scene taking on three experts in different fighting styles, and only sort of barely being the hero of the day, he decides he’s had enough of the big city and heads back to the pig farm. I had seen this film before, years ago (the English subtitled version didn’t come out until 1999, and an English dubbed version wasn’t released until 2019, though both used the original 35mm cut transferred to DVD – the dubbed version was done by a German company, initially into German, and there are a few points where they forgot to re-dub English over German, but not enough to make it hard to follow). Biggest negative for me was probably the stereotyping of a Japanese and a Black character, both played by Chinese actors made up in ridiculous looking “costume” for lack of a better term. Then again, it was intended as a parody of the wave of Bruce Lee style “Bruceploitation” films of the 70s, so that may have been intentionally overdone as a spoof.

Now, it turns out that watching the 1978 version while, not a waste of time, really has nothing to do with the 2019 Enter the Fat Dragon, starring Donnie Yen, one of my favorite martial arts actors. There’s literally nothing about them other than the title that’s the same. Yen, who’s in damned good shape for someone who was 55 years old at the time of the filming, is trim, muscled, and in “fighting shape”. He plays a Hong Kong police sergeant who can never quite seem to get things right – if there’s any similarity to the original film it’s that while he’s great at tracking down and capturing the bad guys, he always leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. After one particularly egregious offense, his supervisor relegates him to desk duty in the evidence locker; and his girlfriend, a local TV star, dumps him. In a depression, over seven months of deskbound monotony, he slowly eats himself to an extra 60-70 pounds of fat. For inexplicable reasons, he’s pulled from the evidence room to handle a prisoner transport to Tokyo, where he quickly becomes embroiled in travails as it turns out that, and here’s where some solid racism comes in, all Japanese, and particularly Japanese police, are corrupt, untrustworthy, lying, scheming human beings, as opposed, of course, to the noble Chinese like him, who must now, while on foreign soil, destroy an entire yakusa operation and bring down the corrupt police department, single-handedly. It’s kind of off-putting, as is the way he reunites with his estranged girlfriend, suddenly, in Tokyo, where she just happens to suddenly be hanging out with said yakusa. As a story, I can’t say that this one wowed me, but damn, Yen has some moves. Even in the fat suit that apparently took hours to get him into, he still manages to don some upscale apparel, and leaps, jumps, punches, kicks, handles various classic Chinese weapons, some solid hardcore parkour, and more, with three really great fight scenes – one on the streets, one in the Tsukiji fish market, and one on the catwalks of the Tokyo Tower. The film is worth watching just for those.

In a switch up from the high minded view of the Chinese vs others of the two previous films, Jet Li’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate casts the Chinese as the bad guys this time. The brutish Tartars, which whom he allies himself, turn out to be the good guys. In particular, court officials from the notorious “East Bureau” and “West Bureau”, as well as various courtiers to the Emperor, who, himself, does not make an appearance. Jet Li plays a sort of vengeful Robin Hood-ish character… well, no, not exactly, as he’s not out robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, but simply hunting down the corrupt and rich officials and killing them. That’s, more or less, the plot. There’s some vague romance background as well, never fully realized, there’s some treasure, but it’s more a backdrop and never comes to anything. It’s really just about Li’s character, Zhao Huai’an, tracking down and killing these folk. He particularly despises eunuchs and makes sure to subject them to overly grisly deaths when possible. There are, in line with the movie’s title, a lot of flying swords. And knives. And other things. Seemingly endless flying weapons, including one antagonist who has the ability to turn his sword into boomeranging shards of blade. And sometimes those who wield them fly too. Zhao faces off against his biggest enemy in a final fight literally connected by a chain, while whirling around in a tornado, including a moment when they land on a flying bit of a building and continue the flight on “firmer footing” as the flooring spins madly in the clouds. The fight scenes are cool in a science fiction-y way, with great choreography, albeit ridiculously unbelievable. It’s fun, pure escapism, and a tad bloodthirsty.

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Two Thousand Seven Hundred and Eleven Leaves

Saturday, January 4, 20200

The Talmud. You might have heard of it, you might not. I grew up knowing that it existed, but within the Reform and Conservative Jewish traditions, it’s not something we spend a lot of time studying. We more or less stick with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. If you’d have asked me, even a couple of days ago, what the Talmud is, I’d have said it was a collection of laws and commentary on the Torah. Turns out, that’s only partially right. It’s a collection of laws and commentary on Jewish life, back in the day, though it derives its essence from the Torah. I imagine it as a somewhat dry reading, but then, when one (or at least I) casually thinks about reading the Bible, that same thought comes to mind, though the reality is anything but – having read through it many a time in my life.

It looks daunting. It is daunting. You can see how it’s sort of divided into sections. If I understand it correctly, in the center is the heading, that part is obvious. It’s immediately followed below by the Mishnah, which is a written down version of the halakah, rabbinic law, as it was codified in the early 3rd century CE. Huh, I always assumed the Talmud was far older than that – that’s surprise number one, what’s known as the Babylonian Talmud, which is sort of the official one (I gather there’s an earlier one called the Jerusalem Talmud) came together in the 4th century. You can see that the style of writing changes about halfway down, and then lopes off into an L, that’s the Gemara, which is the rabbinical analysis on the Mishnah it follows, and is written in Aramaic. The inverted L to the upper right of this is Rashi, who was a medieval French rabbi who wrote, I gather, the single most authoritative and complete commentary on the entire Talmud and Torah. The L to the left and below is the Tosafot, commentary by rabbis and sages from roughly the 12th and 13th centuries. Some pages have another L outside of that one with more, and, I guess, lesser rabbinical commentaries, which would be placed below those margin notes on the left. Those margin notes are cross references to other texts for “further reading”. The margin notes to the right are – if at the top, further cross references, but ones that were added centuries later, and if down towards the bottom, “glosses”, or “short comments” by later rabbis who felt they had to get their two cents in – sometimes, apparently, useful, sometimes, cryptic. Did I mention, daunting?

I had vaguely heard about Daf Yomi, which means, loosely, “a page a day”. It’s a sort of loose knit, world wide community of people, some of them avid scholars, many, however, not, who undertake to read (and gain some understanding) one page of the 2711 double paged leaves (the photo above is just one side of “a page”) of the entire Talmud. Every day, without exception. It takes around seven and a half years. I’ve heard various estimates – some people spend 10-15 minutes a day doing it, some spend an hour. Given that most who undertake this are not ancient language scholars, and the Talmud is written in a combination of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, most – probably all – people who head down this rabbit hole read the Talmud in one translation or another in their native tongue.

When it popped up as a conversation on one of my favorite podcasts, Unorthodox, sponsored by Tablet Magazine, I thought… why not? I mean, I could have as easily asked, why? One of the podcasts members, Liel Leibovitz, was diving in, and setting up a new podcast, where he would, five times a week, take 5-10 minutes to discuss the day’s (or two days’ at a time in two cases a week, I assumed one was because of not wanting to record a podcast episode on the Sabbath, I’m not sure what the other one is) tract. At the least, I could commit to listening to a 5-10 minute podcast, and see how it goes. He also recommended following along on the webpage or phone app called Sefaria, which provides a lightly annotated version of the Talmud in English. I downloaded it and took a look, and it looks to be about 10 minutes of reading, maybe less, each day. So, at least at the start, I’ll give that a shot, listen to his podcast – and hey, 15-20 minutes a day, I can do that… right? We shall see. [I later added in the short emailed commentary from MyJewishLearning which you can subscribe to.]

I’m not going to do a daily post on this, as I don’t feel like filling this blog up with 2711 mini posts. So I’ll create a page with a sort of Twitter, or slightly longer, comment on what I thought of the day’s venture (link below).

I guess (assuming this goes well), I’ll divide this up the way the Talmud is divided – it’s in six sedarim – “orders”, or “books”, each divided into masekhot – tractates of varying number (but 63 in total), and each of those is divided into chapters that cover, if I am getting this, a particular overarching topic (525 in total), and each chapter is then divided into the different pages, each one featuring one or more mishnah (remember, the rabbinic law or Torah bit that’s being discussed, and 4,198 of them in total split up on those 2,711 pages). So, away we go….

Link to my Daf Yomi commentary

 

 

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Books (Reviews), Commentary

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Coloring Inside the Lines

Friday, December 6, 20190

There are, apparently, great decisions being made, behind the scenes in corporate boardrooms. We’re not talking about whether to maximize shareholder profits over social good, or hiding the latest instance of embezzlement or child labor use. We’re talking about The Color Of The Year. Now, I’ve seen, year after year, when Pantone announces their color and all my design-soaked friends go into a frenzy. Apparently all of them have clients who redecorate, repaint, or are reborn once a year in the official Pantone color, so as not to be left behind. The Joneses and all that. This year, I gather, many are feeling a trifle miffed, as Pantone has selected as its 2020 CotY…

… Classic Blue. This, I gather is “uninspired”. Yet, no doubt, they will still rush to slather paint across walls or trimmings in this venerable color. But, who is to say that Pantone is the be all and end all of color choice? Every paint company out there chooses their own – and one, this year, Valspar, has offered up a palette of a dozen colors, refusing to commit to just one, so we’re going to discard them on the waste heap of poor choices.

Staying in the blue realm…

…Porter Paints, or, I gather it’s more commonly referred to as “PPG”, has chosen Chinese Porcelain as a more greyish shade of blue. And…

…the well known Sherwin Williams has headed full tilt into the darker ranges with Naval.

But what if you aren’t feeling blue? Perhaps something leaning green. Starting with the very earth-toned…

…Back to Nature from Behr, which to me looks more khaki or tan than green, but apparently just shades into the verdant world. Or something light and springy…

…like Tranquil Dawn from Dulux, or…

…Dunn Edwards’ Minty Fresh. But perhaps, as I might, you prefer something with a bit more oomph…

…I quite like the Dark Seafoam Green from Toptal, and I appreciate that they haven’t gone all silly in the head with naming it. I mean, much as I like this darker shade…

…the apparently newly introduced Adeline from Graham & Brown – Adeline???? Really? Who named this and do they still have their job? Then again, I do like the color. Perhaps as a window “treatment”?

But, this is all very blue and green, and I’m sure there are those who want to go to the other side of the color palette, and not to despair, two companies have gone all rosy glow on us this year…

…coming in with First Light from Benjamin Moore, and…

…the sort of skin-toned pink of Romance from HGTV Home, which is a division of Sherwin Williams, up above, contemplating their naval….

So many choices. So important. I almost want to bring back the meme of the 2019 Pantone color of Impeach (not a real thing)…

…but since I predict that’s gonna turn out to be a disaster, maybe not.

 

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You Can Keep Your $3 Bill

Friday, October 18, 20193

I’m not Queer. I’m Gay. Clinically, I suppose Homosexual. But, I’m not Queer.

I was recently chastised for not “being woke” and “accepting my Queer identity”. Well, sorry, but I don’t have one of those. “If you’re Gay, you’re Queer, you just haven’t accepted it yet” was the response. Well, no, if they were the same thing, if it wasn’t a separate identity tag, we wouldn’t need both a G and a Q in that ridiculous alphabet soup of 2SLGBTQIA+. We’d pick one and stick with it. We’d come up with one term to encompass us all, and we could have one letter. Maybe a superfluous letter like C. I don’t know what it would stand for, but it would be far easier.

Sidebar: When I first moved to NYC in 1982, I was fairly active politically in gay politics, and I became a volunteer at what was then NGTF, the National Gay Task Force. I became part of the “inner circle” of people who met at least once a week, usually twice – I was one of the two people who setup, ran, and trained the staff for the “crisis hotline” that we started around that time. And, I was part of the debate that went on for many long hours in 1985 over whether or not to change the name to NGLTF, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. I came down on the side of no. Not because I didn’t understand the argument from the lesbians who proposed it, but because I felt that it was a slippery slope to ending up with, as I put it above, a ridiculous alphabet soup, as one group after another came forward to demand an addition to the name. Those of us in that group ended up being the minority, and the executive board passed and changed the name. We were assured that it would “never happen”. Thankfully, somewhere along the line, as it did actually happen, the board decided against ending up with the N2SGLBTQIA+TF and the organization became simply known as The Task Force. I think it kind of loses something there, but maybe that’s just me.

See, I’m from a generation where the word queer was an epithet, something that got said to you while you were being slammed up against a locker in the hallway. It was used just as often as fag, the other major slur thrown out as a fist smashed into your jaw. It was, perhaps, a trifle more polite among genteel society, who might never tell a fag joke, but held nothing back when telling a queer one. Sort of the equivalent of sambo, spook, or spade for Black people in place of nigger (I’m going to use a few terms in this post that I would never normally use, because I want them to make a point – I hope never to use them again).

And perhaps that’s why it was “chosen” as one to create a political/social identity. “Reclaiming the word” from the haters, much as some in the Black community reclaimed the word nigger, though at times modifying into nigga, perhaps to show some sort of difference, or evolution, or perhaps it’s just an Ebonic shift [Edit: John McWhorter, one of my favorite linguists, has a whole section of one of his podcasts devoted to the difference, I stand corrected.]. The problem is, as it is for many Black people hearing that word, that queer to me still brings up all those old associations of hate. I’m not interested in putting in the work on my psyche to shift my view and make it a positive thing, burying the past. It’s no surprise that while this movement started in the 1980s, the word queer has primarily been adopted by younger generations, ones for whom the word already has begun to lose its sharp edge while they were growing up. Someone throws it at them and they can proudly claim it for themselves.

But for me – hey, let me adopt the vernacular of the day – it’s a trigger word. You get to have yours, you want me to be woke enough to accept that there are words that trigger you? Fine, you better woke up yourself and accept that your word choice is one for me. I’m not going to demand that you don’t use it, I am going to demand that you accept that it’s not the word for me, and that no matter how many times you say it proudly, I’m going to cringe, and find it offensive. And while I understand your desire for me to use it when I refer to you, it’s a word that I simply won’t use – I’ll do my best not to offend you by using a word that’s not your preference, but I’m not going to use a word that for me, retains its derogatory meaning.

But, even more so, in this presidential campaigning season, I’m finding it offensive from those who are not a member of either the Queer or Gay or Lesbian or… you get the idea… communities. Elizabeth Warren, who is not my “cup of tea”, I often agree with her on what the problems are, but rarely on what the solutions are, is the worst offender. She stands up in front of crowds and bursts out with how happy she is to be in front of her “Queer brothers and sisters” or some such. Not 2SLGBTQIA+, or any variation of, or speaking those out in their individual words. No, she just lumps us all as one big Queer Community. And it grates on my nerves every time. I mean, even Mayor Pete doesn’t do that, and he at least would have some claim to be a part of the generally identified group.

Now, let’s try a thought experiment. Or two. Let’s go to a Trump rally. Remember when Trump said that he was “a real friend of the gays”? Imagine that he said “I’m a real friend of the queers”. Imagine that he stood in front of a group of Black voters and said, “I’m a real friend of the niggas”. Or the Jewish community and said, “I’m a real friend of the kikes”. Etc., etc. But okay, I get it, Donald Trump is way and below “not my cup of tea” for many of us. So let’s go back to Warren, or one of the other Democratic candidates who has, on occasion, thrown out the word queer (though as best I can think of, she’s the only one who has used it on its own, a couple of others have either used the acronym or spelled it out with gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans…). Imagine Warren standing in front of a group of “ethnic” voters of appropriate stripe and saying, “I’m so happy to be in front of a proud group of my nigga/kike/spic/wop/towelhead/nip/chink brothers and sisters”?

I’m guessing you can get that that wouldn’t go over well with a whole lot of them. And you know what, “queer” doesn’t go over well with a whole lot of us.

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The E Files #4

Monday, September 2, 20190

Jeez, it’s been almost two years since I’ve posed anything on this blog. Then again, it was originally designed just as a place to archive my published work, and I haven’t been writing for any magazines or newspapers over the last couple of years, so no surprise there. But, just to toss a little fun into the world…there’s always more email stupidity to share….

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“We are on our honeymoon. My new wife is a bit of an artist and has an eye for design. She will not eat from plates that do not fit her personal tastes, nor food that is on the plate in a design that she doesn’t find suitable. Before we book, would you please send photos of the plates and the dishes you’ll be serving and she’ll provide the feedback necessary to have them meet her standards. Looking forward to enjoying our experience with you.”

“I’m sorry, we have no space available for you the dates you’re asking about.” [And jeez man, good luck in that marriage, you’re gonna need it.]

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“I didn’t really care for last night’s meal. Starting from the fact that I hate Peruvian food and don’t really like Italian, and I was hoping your place, since those are your specialty, would change my mind, but you didn’t. As such, your restaurant and you as a chef are a failure in my mind. Perhaps you should contact another chef to come in and show you how to cook those cuisines in a way that would make it so someone like me would find them palatable. I mean, it’s just an amateur’s opinion, but you asked for feedback.”

I don’t even have a response to this one. I just filed it away in the appropriate place.

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We have a standard procedure for after someone requests a reservation and we accept it – we send them a detailed reservation confirmation and also a separate link for paying their deposit. If we haven’t heard back from them after 3-4 days, we send an email just confirming that they got both, as sometimes things get caught up in spam filters, or simply lost in the shuffle of day to day email inundations. If we still haven’t heard from them after 7-8 days, we send them a polite cancellation notice. Amazingly, I would say 8 out of 10 times, we get a response to the cancellation within an hour or two, apologizing and re-asking for the reservation, that things got lost in the shuffle of life, which we almost always do. 1 out of 10, we never hear from again. The last 1 out of 10 go something like this one….

“I don’t know how you run a business being so pushy and rude as to simply cancel someone’s reservation that they asked for. I’m a busy person, and it was on my list to get back to you, but I just hadn’t gotten to it. I expect you to immediately restore my reservation or if not, provide compensation.”

“First off, while I understand that people like you are busy, so are we, and we waited a full week before cancelling, it’s not like we only waited a day or two. All we would have needed would have been a quick email saying that you’d get to it shortly and you were still planning on keeping the reservation. But we’d be happy to put your reservation back on the books, though at this point, as the date you wanted is coming up this weekend, we’d have to have your deposit today or tomorrow.”

“See, that’s what I mean by pushy and rude. I’ll get to it when I get to it. You can wait. Your timetable means nothing to me.”

“Well, with apologies then, I’m not going to put the reservation back on the books, I have my business to run. Let me turn this around for you [I knew from his reservation request that he was an attorney.]… As a lawyer, if someone called you up and said they had a court date in two weeks, and wanted to hire you to represent them, I’m going to assume that you’d ask them for a retainer of some sort. And if after three or four days you hadn’t heard from them again, you might try to reach them to see if they still wanted you to represent them. And if you still hadn’t heard from them after more than a week, with the court date just a few days away, you’d probably take them off your planned calendar. And if they then called you again a couple of days later and demanded that you still represent them, and “maybe” they’d pay you or maybe not, you probably wouldn’t take their case. Would that be about right?”

“My time is valuable and can’t be wasted on people like that. I have a real job. You’re just a cook with a home business, it’s not the same thing. Your little hobby has no value to society.”

“My time is just as valuable to me as yours is to you, my “hobby” is how I earn a living, and, historically, a whole lot of people have said much the same thing about lawyers and their value to society. Have a nice time in Buenos Aires.” [Isn’t that a nice way of saying “Fuck you!”?]

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The setup: On our online reservation form, we have a statement above it that says “other than for private events, we don’t offer vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free options at our communal table dinners, nor onion/garlic/chili free – we use a fair amount of all three of those”, and in the form itself, “Any food allergies or dietary restrictions?” Guest makes a reservation for 3 people, roughly a month ahead of time, indicates “N/A” in answer to the question on the form. The day of the reservation, I receive an email…

“Just confirming that we’ll be there tonight, with bell’s on, and that you have a vegan option available for us?”

“I appreciate you confirming, on that we’re all set, however, we don’t offer a vegan option, and you had indicated that you had no dietary restrictions that we needed to consider. I’m afraid we don’t have a vegan menu – everyone eats the same thing, and the menu is already in progress.”

“We don’t consider being vegan to be a restriction, and by law you’re required to provide us with vegan menu items. We expect you to do so.”

“First off, no, we’re not required by law to do anything of the sort, certainly not here in Buenos Aires, and I somehow doubt that it’s true wherever you live either. Second, we did ask, and your response to our question was “N/A”. While I appreciate the philosophical point of view about whether being vegan is restrictive or not, it’s an obvious question on a reservation form for our menu planning purposes. Sorry, but we have no vegan option, something that we also stated upfront.”

“Restriction is obviously a trigger word, and you know that, being queer and all. I would think you’d be more sensitive about things like this and not be so anti-vegan. Since you’re refusing to let us come to dinner, send us back our money right away, and I think you owe us reparations for oppressing our lifestyle.”

“One, not refusing to serve you dinner, just not serving you a vegan dinner, you’re welcome to come, there just won’t really be anything for you to eat. Two, not anti-vegan, just don’t offer it as a menu option at our communal dinners. Three, being gay has nothing to do with being vegan (and, since we’re on the topic, I find “queer” to be an offensive trigger word). Four, if you don’t come, your deposit is non-refundable, as you agreed to upfront. Let me know if you plan to come.”

“We’re obviously not coming and we’ll be contacting our credit card company to get the money back. You obviously aren’t woke if you find words like queer and fag offensive you should own them with pride. You haven’t heard the last from us.”

Other than an attempt to get the deposit reversed, which the credit card company sided with us, we haven’t heard from them again. Funny how this whole trigger and woke thing only applies to the labels applied to yourself, not the ones you apply to other people.

 

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Flag Waiving

Monday, September 25, 20170

I’ve had an itch. There has been so much stuff going on in the world of politics, economics, and everything else, over the last few years – or maybe it’s just become more important to me – that I want to have my say. And hey, I already have this platform, and while this site may have been primarily a mix of published articles and critiques of restaurants and books, why not critique other stuff?

I know, I know. “You’re a chef, stfu about politics, stay in the kitchen and cook.” Yeah, well, you’re an office worker, a landscaper, a police officer, a hairdresser… so stay in your cubicle, garden, squad car, or salon, and stfu yourself. As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, we all have one (except for the rare individual with imperforate anus or a similar medical condition, but we’re not going there… oops).

So, I’m going to pick topics that strike me as interesting, or get me riled up, or whatever it may be, and write a brief commentary on them. Plus, maybe it will breathe some life into this blog. Maybe I’ll even get a comment (nasty ones with all sorts of curse words or insults will most likely be simply deleted, unless I can find a way to make your life hell by using it in some fashion). So, onto the show….

You might have guessed from the title, this is going to be about the whole flag, Pledge of Allegiance, taking a knee controversy.

Personally, I grew up with the Pledge of Allegiance. We recited it daily, standing at attention, hand over the heart, and with gusto. It’s ingrained into me. I see people asking questions on Facebook and Twitter about whether the folk who are so riled up about the whole take-a-knee thing are standing and reciting the pledge when they’re at home watching the game. First off, there’s no requirement to do that, there’s a whole protocol for being in the presence of the flag and all that, but you know what, while I don’t stand at attention, I usually find that I’ve pretty much automatically put my hand over my heart and quietly recited the pledge to myself along with the folk on the screen. It’s so automatic I’d have to truly put a conscious effort into not doing it.

I spent a lot of my earlier years in one form or another of public service. Be it in the Boy Scouts, on into being an Explorer Scout with the Ann Arbor Police Department. Be it in Army ROTC for a year and half until being asked to resign because we were back in the days before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Be it participating in the Michigan State Police summer programs. Be it as an EMT and later a paramedic for the ambulance services in Washtenaw County. Volunteer for the Red Cross, teaching CPR and First Aid. I was interviewed (several times) by the CIA (yes, that one, not the Culinary one) when I was working on my doctorate in psychology, for a profiler position, until I told them I was gay, at which time they offered me a job in the secretarial pool.

One of the things that was always present, and it’s been said more eloquently by many veterans, including some who disagree with the take-a-knee stance, was that part of what we were there to protect was people’s right to dissent, people’s right to free speech, people’s right to protest. That’s part of what America is all about.

And I understand the urge, the need, to protest. I’m not black, never have been, never will be. But I am gay, and I am Jewish, and I have had my share of prejudice to deal with. Setting aside being asked to leave the Army and the CIA, I’ve been fired from two jobs for it. In the restaurant business of all places. Going back to my days as a paramedic, I was stripped of being a supervisor because of it. And actually, before that, I’d worked as a security guard on University of Michigan’s campus, and I was stripped of being a supervisor there for being gay too. I’ve been physically attacked for it at least a dozen times that I can think of. I was refused admittance to Yom Kippur services at a synagogue of which I’d been a member for years, when the board of the synagogue took it into their heads to root out the homosexuals. And when it comes to verbal abuse, both for being gay and for being Jewish, I can’t remotely begin to count the number of incidents I’ve been through in my life.

And so, I’ve participated, mostly in my younger years, in protests and rallies and organizations and what-have-you that were in favor of gay rights, or against antisemitism. I don’t do so much of that anymore because I’m simply tired of having life being about a constant battle. I just don’t have the energy to invest in it, I want my energy invested in things that are positive, and creative, and yeah, I know that may be a cop out, but so be it.

So here’s the thing. I viscerally don’t like what Colin Kaepernick did that launched this whole movement. It’s automatic. I’m one of those people who when someone doesn’t stand during the Pledge, or doesn’t put their hand over their heart, nudges them to do so. But I wouldn’t force them to. I wouldn’t call them names. I wouldn’t demand they be punished. Because I recognize that regardless of my personal feelings about it, they have the right to theirs. I recognize that he, and the other players who have now taken a stand, or a knee, beside him, aren’t “disrespecting the flag”, anymore than any other person who chooses not to recite the Pledge is. They’re not “expressing a political opinion”.

They’re calling attention to the fact that after decades of supposed progress in integration and equal treatment, we just aren’t there yet. Be it in opportunities, compensation, inclusion, oppression, violence, or hey, even joke-telling, it just ain’t equal. As a friend posted earlier today on Facebook, “Thinking NFL players are ‘protesting the flag’ is like thinking Rosa Parks was protesting public transportation.”

I know this from my particular circle in the world, when here we are in 2017 and I have friends and acquaintances, many of them who claim to be bastions of tolerance and liberalism, who think nothing of telling fag jokes, or making comments about Henry’s and my relationship that they’d never make to a straight couple, or making assumptions about our relationship based on our age and cultural/racial differences (the latter brings up a whole other can of worms that has allowed me to see some disturbing racism in friends whom I never wouldathunkit of) or thinking it’s okay to comment on their imagination about what my (or other gay people’s) sex life is all about, or imploring me to “understand” why someone, at random, or an employer, or whomever, has a reaction to my being gay (usually justified by some sort of religious context).

To sum it up, while I personally will probably always stand and recite the Pledge, and the flag is something that holds a place in my heart, that’s emotional. As a thinking person, and as someone who believes in democracy, I will also always respect the right of any of my fellow citizens to not to do so. I may not like it, but I get it. And that’s the key point I want to make. It doesn’t actually matter why Kaepernick, or anyone else, chooses not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Even if there were no racism, no oppression, even if it was all, as the saying goes, rainbows and unicorns, for people of color, it’s irrelevant. We live in a democracy and they don’t have to stand or pledge. That’s their right.

And yes, sure, an individual team owner could choose to fire them for it, legally – First Amendment rights don’t apply to employment situations (unless your employer is the government). And I’d support the right of that employer to do so, even if I don’t think they should, morally – the issues are too important in this day and age. And you know what, it’s a minute at the beginning of a football game. Stand, pledge your heart out, let the players (and spectators) who choose not to, have their moment too, and then get on with the game. And then after the game, let’s get to work on the issues they’re protesting so that one day, hopefully soon, no one feels the need to take a knee.

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