Citizen Culture Issue #8

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25
50
TOC
TIDBITS
REVERIE
Dream a Little Dream of Chinatown
Jill Dudones
8
Of Paddies & Jihadis
Timothy Lavin
38
10
An Open Letter to the President of the
Islamic Republic of Iran
Michael Serazio
FICTION
13
The Israeli-Palestinian Struggle: Can
South Korea Relate?
Marianna Staroselsky
40
PSYCHOLOGY
46
ON THE FENCE
18
25
My Dinner with Irving:
A Profile of Holocaust Denial
Avi Dov Klein
A Sunny Day in Dachau
David Winstanley
THE F-WORD
30
The Religion of Fashion
John Iton & Joey Lynn Acosta
Mutawwa (Part One)
Pamela K. Taylor
Do Ethnic, Religious, and Cultural
Backgrounds Impact Hostage
Negotiations?
Jack J. Cambria
LOCAL FLAVOR:
SxSW
50
Top of the Heap
Jack De Voss
LOCAL FLAVOR:
6*4*6
54
Austin
Theo Mazumdar
issue #8
REVERIE
36
Dream a Little Dream of Chinatown
Jill Dudones
The CCM INTERVIEW
58
Laura Linney: Hollywood’s Go-To Girl
Dennis Brabham
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76
30
MAGAZINES
64
The View from Below: Esquire Covers
the World Trade Center Rebuilding
Jonathon Scott Feit
POLITICS
72
Propaganda: Posters, Cartoons, and
Politics
Dennis Brabham
PORTFOLIO
76
Where there Once was a Curtain...
Inside Post-Soviet Moldova
Igor Finkel
RELIGION
82
Upanayanam:
Spinning the Sacred Thread
Ramesh Avadhani
LINES AND LISTS
90
Double Bill
Garin Pirnia
93
Much More than Luck
Jeff Sneider
96
Counterculture, Anyone?
Amy O’Loughlin
CONTRIBUTORS
LIEUTENANT JACK CAMBRIA is a 24 year police
veteran who is currently assigned as the Commanding
Officer of the New York Police Department's Hostage
Negotiation Team. He spent 16 years with the
Emergency Services Unit, to which he was reassigned
following the World Trade Center attacks to aid in the
rescue and recovery efforts. He will be completing a
Masters degree in criminal justice from the John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in the Fall of 2006.
AVI KLEIN is a writing fellow at Moment Magazine in
Washington, DC. His work has appeared in the
Washington Monthly, the Washington City Paper, the Skeptical
Inquirer and the American Spectator.
IGOR FINKEL is Vice President for Circulation and
Deputy Publisher of Citizen Culture. After escaping
Soviet Moldova by car and living for nearly a year with
his parents and brother as refugees in Austria and Italy,
Igor and his family immigrated to the Philadelphia as a
refugee from Soviet Union in 1989. In March 2005, he
was invited back to his birthplace, the Transdniestrian
Moldavian Republic, and became the first Western
journalist in 15 years to be granted permission to
research government archives located in Tiraspol.
There he conducted exclusive interviews with President
Igor Smirnov and other political leaders.
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@citizenculture.com
letters
An advance release of one of this issue’s “On the Fence” features—”My Dinner with Irving”
by Avi Dov Klein—drew some heavy criticism and frank excoriation from some powerful
figures of the American religious community. As always, we welcome your feedback as well.
Send an email to [email protected].
Irving loves to inflate numbers of
dollars spent to defeat him, the size of the
judgment against him, and of Germans
killed in Allied bombing raids. He loves to
diminish the numbers of Jewish dead....
See following examples of blufferei
from the article:
There was no 8 million dollar
judgment against him. Cost was about 3
million and he never paid much. I never
pursued him for my costs. Decided that
that would be about money and the trial
was about a principle.
We spent 3 million not 10
[sometimes Irving says 6 million dollars...
you get the analogy]
Irving did not address "a" Judge as
mein Fuhrer. He addressed the judge in
my trial as mein fuhrer.
My personal feelings towards the
man? Nada. Don't waste my time having
any. [IN all due seriousness]. He seems to
me to be a man filled with hubris, with a
giant ego [that's a redundancy] who hates
Jews and minorities, who longs for a WASP
UK, who lies about history with ease [until
he is caught]. I find what he does
reprehensible. I think he is pathetic [the
last chapter of my book is called The Court
Jester]. He was left looking silly by the end
of the trial.
Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D.
Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish
and Holocaust Studies
Emory University, Atlanta, GA
via email
My reaction? He is a loathsome human
being spouting evil nonsense who does not
deserve a profile of his activities. What he
deserves is oblivion, and on the way there,
obloquy.
David Wolpe
Rabbi
Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, CA
via email
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letter from the E-in-C
Editors, writers, and entrepreneurs have
our “rabbis” to inspire us, as American Book
Award-winner and former Time critic Michael
Walsh, one of my mentors (the luckiest among
us have several), calls our personal and
professional predecessors. Still, we’re far from
omniscient and often unsure, as this eighth
issue—themed Faith & Ethnicity—proved. Our
choice of cover stories (with its accompanying
graphics and pull quotes) petrified me.
I was surprised, then flattered, to find
my own confidence bolstered from the highest
echelons of the magazine industry. During our
interview (which begins on page 64), David
Granger, Editor-in-Chief of Esquire, the world’s
most steadfast men’s literary-and-lifestyle
magazine, said that “usefulness and humor…
E
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Citizen Culture
earn the right to tell your big stories.”
But a question pierces the heart of that
happy theory: when have you earned that
right? When is it more than hubris? It took
a compelling body of work before Steven
Spielberg earned the right to produce
Schindler’s List; likewise Yaacov Agam, the
Israeli kinetic sculptor who created the New
Orleans Holocaust Memorial.
We had published only seven issues of
Citizen Culture before the Holocaust landed in
my lap, and I was faced with the dire
responsibility of representing one of recorded
history’s most heinous crimes. The mantle
was a weighty but essential one, because we
are the country’s first magazine for Young
Professionals, and we Young Professionals
have something to shout at the rooftops:
We shall NEVER forget.
Not Congo.
Not Darfur.
Not Germany, nor Poland, nor
Romania, nor Austria, nor Hungary.
Not Israel, or Palestine.
Not Kashmir.
Not Kent State.
Not Kosovo.
Not Kurdistan.
Not New York City.
Not Rwanda.
Not Somalia.
Not the Soviet Union (see page 74)
Not Tienanmen Square.
Not Vietnam.
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***
Recently, a reporter asked me what I
think of the accusation that my generation
believes itself “entitled,” in need of duespaying. I took offense to the comment, which
shows an absolute lack of understanding that
my colleagues and I may be young, but we
have inherited our parents’ scars and, indeed,
surpassed their drive. We have learned, and
we have regretted.
We have applauded a Pope who
apologized, and demanded integrity from our
leaders. Our comics—the Jon Stewarts and Bill
Mahers*—aren’t masters of schtick, but rather,
purveyours of stark political commentary
whose mockery expresses Young Professionals’
exasperation with a decrepit status quo. We
rocked the vote, and will rise again, and again,
with intellectually informed perspectives.
Young Professionals are neither stupid
nor passive—we want both sides now, and are
ever seeking Truth. (It is no coincidence that
the extended anti-smoking ad campaign called
“Truth” has been one of the most successful in
recent years.) Democrats and Republicans and
Libertarians and Greens: the power of the
‘blog is the power to speak and be heard. We
believe in the sanctity of the First Amendment:
“no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise therefore…or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press…or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances.”
We knew that if we were to present a
subject so emotional and significant as the
Holocaust, we would be hypocritical to deny
that there are those who protest its significance,
or indeed, that it happened at all. Which is
not to say I agree. Still, it is the right of the
reader alone to conclude the truth, and Citizen
Culture is—as we’ve said often before—merely
your mouthpiece. Our sole hope can be to
maintain the integrity of our journalistic
backbone, and thus to earn the right to carry
the burden of memorials like the one that
begins on page 25.
Admiringly yours,
Jonathon Scott Feit
Chief Editor & Publisher,
On behalf of Citizen Culture Magazine
* For Bill Maher’s perspectives, see
“Muckraking for Dummies” in issue #5 of
Citizen Culture Magazine at www.citizenculture.com.
Citizen Culture Magazine (ISSN 1553-2747) is dedicated to
publishing the highest quality works by new and talented
Contributors, fostering the free flow of ideas, no matter how
controversial.
The opinions herein expressed are exclusively those of the
atuhors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Feit
Family Ventures Corporation, Citizen Culture Magazine, its
editors, publishers, advertisers, affiliates, agents, suppliers, or
other contributors.
Neither the Feit Family Ventures Corproation nor Citizen
Culture Magazine assumes any responsibility for unsolicited
material of any type. All submitted materials will be treated as
assigned and available for publication. Submission implies the
availability of appropriate copyrights. Material will be subject
to our unrestricted right to edit for content, length, clarity, etc.
Design & content © 2005-2006 by the Feit Family
Ventures Corporation, except as otherwise credited.
No portion of this magazine may be reproduced
without expressed permission from the Publisher.
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TIDBITS
Of Paddies
and Jihadis
Why Hamas is not the IRA—and what
it means for us.
WASHINGTON—As the Feast of
St. Patrick nears, it's high time for
American politicians to toast old
Erin with pints of black beer and
pabulum about their “dedication
to peace” across the Atlantic. Such
merriment, especially the liquid
version, tends to induce outsized
optimism among Washington
types, particularly those named
Kennedy. As Northern Ireland
moves ever closer to true peace
and legitimate democracy, the
temptation will no doubt exist to
equate the now-disarmed and
democratically-engaged IRA with
the very-much-not-disarmed and
recently empowered Hamas.
Aside from their violent
histories, Hamas and the IRA
8
By Timothy Lavin
Citizen Culture
share nearly nothing in common.
That is, of course, a very big aside.
But the differences between the
two groups illustrate both the
promise and the peril of politically
engaged terror.
Before entering politics, the
IRA entered a protracted peace
process. The precondition of this
process was a long-term ceasefire
with a planned outcome—agreed
upon by all sides—of total
decommissioning of illegal arms.
Throughout its history, the IRA
was dedicated to unifying one
nation (a 32-county Ireland) and
freeing themselves of another (the
United Kingdom). However, the
majority of people in Northern
Ireland were not so dedicated,
including nearly all those in power.
Thus the bombings. But
throughout its campaign, the
IRA's violence, however
reprehensible, was intertwined
with a legitimate movement for
Catholic civil rights and a political
party, Sinn Féin, which adhered to
a consistent and achievable
platform. Theirs was the violence
of political agitation. Once they
verifiably denounced that violence,
they gained seats in a devolved
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local parliament—a place where
they could peacefully address their
many legitimate grievances—still
under the auspices of the British
Crown. They were not,
significantly, given the keys to that
particular kingdom.
Hamas, on the other hand, for
all its laudable social programs, is
still a suicidal, radically antiSemitic band of reprobates that
earlier this year met with the
approval of a Palestinian
constituency sick and desperate
after years of official corruption
and radical inefficiency—and
found itself at the helm. This, after
the group has utterly squandered
every opportunity for peace so far
presented. Such is life in a
democracy.
Perhaps a grimmer difference
between the two is leadership. Bill
Clinton's most salient insight about
the Northern Ireland conflict was
that Gerry Adams, the leader of
Sinn Féin, was a man of reason, a
man he could deal with. He gave
Adams a visa and made the
United States a welcome ground
to all parties, far away from the
guns and the balaclavas and the
civic symbols of British
occupation. Is there an equivalent
man of reason in Hamas?
Someone open to dialogue and
negotiation? If there is, he has yet
to show himself. (Or herself, you
ask? Don't kid yourself.)
Even so, a Hamas engaged in
democratic politics is preferable to
a Hamas answerable only to itself.
And the United States has rightly
demanded that it renounce
terrorism and recognize the Israeli
state. Further penalties should
await Hamas's reaction to those
modest demands; rather than
alienating the group at the height
of its power, Condoleezza Rice
would be wise, for the moment, to
keep her friends close and her
enemies closer.
It's pleasant to think that
Hamas, saddled with bureaucratic
concerns about pensions and
education and commerce and all
the rest, would find itself too
accountable to its constituents to
risk much-needed foreign
assistance ($1 billion a year) and
Israeli tax revenue ($55 million a
month) by resorting again to
violence. Followers of the IRA's
political ascent may be reminded
of Martin McGuinness—Sinn
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TIDBITS
Féin's number two and the
quintessential IRA “hard man”—
hunkered over his desk as
education minister, working
earnestly on reforming the
Northern Irish middle school
system.
But will Hamas be moderated
by the demands of running a
state, or intoxicated by its power?
Will it use its newfound legitimacy
to build a great society for its
people, or to destroy that of its
neighbors? Don't trust this to work
out well, for all the reasons the
IRA's political conversion did.
Hamas—a wing of the Muslim
Brotherhood—has never fought
for a Palestinian state. It has
fought to destroy the Jewish one.
Theirs is not a struggle to loose
the chains of a colonial occupier;
it's a jihad to create a worldwide
caliphate. And in that struggle,
lest we forget, infidel civilians will
always make prime targets. Theirs
is not the violence of political
agitation; it's the violence of
nihilism.
10
An Open Letter
to the President of
the Islamic Republic
of Iran
Any time’s a great time for the End Times.
Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad:
I happened to notice in the
newspaper recently that you called
for a ban on Western music. An
excellent idea! Nothing announces
to the world, and your people,
confidence in the marketplace of
ideas quite like a swift (and
thorough!) act of censorship. I
myself have called for a ban from
time to time (unregulated “soft
money” campaign contributions,
pickles on hamburgers, the
continued existence of Maroon 5
on God's green earth), but I lack
the political or religious standing
to make it stick.
However, you may not fully
understand the depth of depravity
and decadence that has taken root
in Western pop culture. Might I
By Michael Serazio
Citizen Culture
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EXECUTIVE TEAM
proffer a few specifications and/or
additions?
Jonathon Scott Feit
Robert Favuzza
Igor Finkel
John Iton
Prince of Persia: The Two
Thrones for the Xbox. Mere
mention of “prince” and
“thrones” seems a touch
antithetical and, shall we say,
outmoded for a progressive, wholly
democratic nation, which Iran
most certainly is.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band. Harmless on the
surface, Mahmoud. But if played
backwards, it spells out the exact
GPS coordinates of your
underground nuclear weapons
cache. Granted, you have to be
doing a lot of LSD and listening
to exiles in the National Council of
Resistance of Iran at the same
time.
Dallas: The Complete First
and Second Seasons. Perhaps
the most egregious example of a
Jewish clan lusty for oil and power.
Admittedly, a few tweaks to the
script here and there over the
years slightly obfuscated the
Chief Editor & Publisher
Chief Marketing Officer
Vice President for Circulation and
Deputy Publisher
Vice President for Events and
Senior Editor for Fashion & Photo
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Michael Pullmann
Kelly Brumleve
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Managing Editor
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Subscribe online @ www.citizenculture.com
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TIDBITS
Ewing's family Hebraic roots. In
the pilot, for example, Larry
Hagman's character was originally
called Schmoikel Rabinowitz.
In all seriousness, you have
been on fire this year, my man.
The zingers do not stop. There
was that whole Holocaust
hullabaloo, which required us to
parse your vexing logic: If 6
million Jews weren't killed by the
Nazis, as you said, why would the
establishment of Israel be a
“continuation of genocide” by the
Europeans, as you also said? You
can't have it both ways. Or can
you, you crafty bastard!
Then you shared sentiments
with Pat Robertson on the ailing
Ariel Sharon—always good
company to be in when it comes
to level-headedness. However,
given that you're also pals with
Hugo Chavez—who supports your
nuclear aims but was recently in
Robertson's rhetorical crosshairs that could get a little awkward if
you all hang out together. (Why do
I also see George Steinbrenner at
that party?)
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Citizen Culture
The question, of course, is
whether this alleged pro-Western
strain among many of your people
is all hype and if, by opting for
extremism, we'll see a
counterrevolution sparked by those
moderates. That's the scenario that
makes us gun-shy Great Satanists
all warm and fuzzy at night: a
regime change without American
hands getting obliquely dirty. And
given your anemic economy and
listless employment levels, it's a
scenario that could play out. After
all, blaming the West and
blacklisting the Black Eyed Peas is
a familiar strategy for the
embattled demagogue whose
domestic distress is not so easily
addressed. In football terms, it's a
reverse misdirection—from a
political playbook that Chavez
himself knows well. But at the end
of the day, censoring culture
doesn't create jobs. It only further
inflames the unemployed who can
no longer get Springer at 10 A.M.
What trips us out, though, like
I said, is this apocalyptic hot streak
of yours. If we understand
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correctly your fervor for the
apparently imminent Mahdi-the
12th Imam who will rule at the
end times-then, well, you'd
probably fit in just fine with
millions of Left Behind readers
who are in similar rapture in the
United States.
Except for the fact that those
folks haven't denied the Holocaust,
don't usually call for the state of
Israel to be “wiped off the map,”
and didn't recently break the seals
on uranium enrichment facilities,
putting themselves perilously close
to concocting nuclear weaponry.
Since Israel's already got theirs,
that puts us back in a world gone
MAD, well after the Cold War
warmed up. Well, Mahmoud, if
only banning music was that
harmless.
The Israeli-Palestinian
Struggle: Can South
Korea Relate?
JERUSALEM DOES NOT LACK for
diversity. The streets are filled with
Semites of every imaginable color,
culture and creed, and the city is
host to a constant flow of tourists
and new immigrants. Yet
somehow, the evening of Monday,
August 8th brought an unlikely
sight to Hillel Street, as the
pedestrians found themselves
drawn to the vibrant extravaganza
of the Korean festival.
In traditional Korean
costumes, a mock wedding parade
marched down the street, joyously
banging on ceremonial drums.
The exotic colors and attire alone
were enough to cause passersby to
stop and stare in awe. The face
paint was a touching tribute to the
festival's message. With a Korean
flag painted on one cheek and an
Israeli flag painted on the other,
the Korean performers' smiling
By Marianna Staroselsky
CCm
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TIDBITS
A Korean dance festival
faces preached peace to the
Jerusalem public.
“I would like more people like
them to exist in the world, who
wish peace for Israel,” said Oleg
Boyarsky, a young Russian Israeli
proudly displaying a Korean flag
on his left cheek. Oleg was so
pleased with the event that he
returned the next day. “They
came to this country on their own
14
Citizen Culture
money, gave us tea, danced for us.
It's a heartfelt gesture. You can tell
that they're doing this from their
soul, that they're here because they
want to be.”
One especially touching
gesture came from the brightlyclad of Sung-Sook Kim, a twentysix year-old student of Second
Temple Literature at Hebrew
University, and the talented
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presenter of the Festival. Kim gave
a moving speech in Hebrew to the
Israeli audience expressing her
wishes for a peaceful, happy
Jerusalem. The Israeli public was
clearly touched, especially when
Kim ended her speech by singing
Shalom Aleinu, the famous
Hebrew prayer song meaning,
“Peace will come upon us.”
Kim was born in Seoul, South
Korea, as were most of the 2,700
Korean performers and
participants. She came to Israel in
1999, and her family followed 3
years later. “I had wanted to do
something completely different
than what my friends were doing.
After high school most people go
to university, they study, they look
for work, etc. Israel is connected to
my faith. I was raised in a
believing Christian family.” Yet
despite being the birthplace of
Christianity, the Holy Land is as
distant from the minds of many
Koreans as from their bodies.
“Many Koreans are Christian,
together with Catholics about
forty-five percent. In recent history
there are many believers, but we
don't know about Israel as it is
spoken about in the Bible.”
Not only do these Korean
Christians wish to find a
connection to Israel, but they seek
recognition from Israelis as well.
“And it's also up to you, Israel, to
recognize us. We're allowing you to
know us, through this kind of
event. We think we are in a
comparable situation. There are
always conflicts. We [North and
South Korea] are in essence one
nation, but the Palestinians and
Israelis are separate.” The
difference, Kim declares, is that
the Korean problem is political,
whereas the Israeli one is religious.
And yet, for the Koreans, both
Palestine and Israel hold Christian
significance.
On August 10th, the Koreans
marched to Palestinian Bethlehem
carrying a banner that read, “We
love Palestine.” The Protestant
Koreans, assuming ethnic
immunity to the racial issues
involved in performing for both
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs,
were able to pay homage to two of
the most significant cities in
Christendom.
And was the message of peace
successful? Did the Koreans
achieve their goal? “They were
CCm
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TIDBITS
smiling … I don't know how much
they received and how much they
understood,” says Kim. She
describes the Palestinian audience
as cheerful but less connected to
the performers. None of the
performers, including Kim, spoke
Arabic; instead the
commencement speech was
delivered in English. “The event at
Hillel Street was more connected
to people personally.” Kim
describes the Bethlehem festival as
lacking the friendly, chatter-filled
atmosphere of the Hillel Street
event, which included children's
games, Korean language and Tae
Kwon Do lessons, and tea stands
full of free samplers.
But Kim remains determined
to continue the events. “It
strengthens their faith,” she
exlplains. Even if the IsraeliPalestinian conflict has no visible
end in sight, the Koreans will still
proclaim their message to all who
would hear it. The fact that the
lands of milk and honey hold so
much value for a third party, and
one that proclaims no wish to
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Citizen Culture
stamp its name on the earth, but
only to pay homage to its sacred
soil, is an eye-opener. Could
Christians act as a calming force
here? Doubtful, but the attempt is
touching and even the dimmest
hope counts for something.
Author's Postscript: In light of
recent developments in the Israeli and
Palestinian world, the inspired hope
which permeates my writing seems very
much out of place. This article was
written in late August of 2005, and the
Korean Festival even at the time appeared
unbelievably optimistic. But though the
current Israeli sentiment carries little
optimism, I believe that it is even more
important now to keep events such as this
one in mind. Israel and Palestine should
remember that there is a common ground
between them—even when it's perceived
through the lens of something as unlikely
as Christianity—-and that it is worth
preserving.
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My Dinner wit
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on the fence
th Irving
A Profile of Holocaust Denial
THE BASEMENT BANQUET ROOM AT THE
Rhodeside Grill in Courthouse, Virginia is
usually reserved for youth soccer award
ceremonies and the overflow from Super Bowl
Sunday. Widescreen televisions and NCAA
tournament brackets loom from walls sticky
withfrom beer and promotional stickers. A
well-stocked bar curves away from the dance
floor to make room for a bay of dinner tables
in front of the stage. It is the last place one
would expect to find David Irving, the world’s
most infamous Holocaust denier, and eightyfour of his most devoted followers.
It is not easy to attend an Irving event.
Promotion for his Real History book tour is
mostly handled through local radical right-wing
groups like the Council of Conservative
Citizens and the American Immigration
Control Council. Journalists are not usually
By Avi Dov Klein
CCm
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allowed, and Jews are at a further
disadvantage. “I am a believer in the First
Amendment,” he wrote, “but many Jews are
not.” He was south of the Mason-Dixon line
when he opened my email. When I emailed
him to ask for an invitation, he replied, “You
books, posters, and Great Composers of the
Third Reich DVDs. Since the $8 million
judgment against him in his ill-advised libel
suit against Deborah Lipstadt, author of
Denying the Holocaust, the book signings are
As a child I was attracted to Hitler because I
worshipped generals and armies of all
nations equally.
are pushing your luck, “ he replied, “but if you
can give us guarantees we will be happy to see
you at the dinner.” “I am a believer in the First
Amendment,” he wrote, “but many Jews are
not.”
Irving’s table was set in a cramped space
near the bathroom, his back to the stage and
his left profile to the approaching guests. A
massive figure with the an affected martial air
befitting a claimed descendant of Scottish hero
Robert the Bruce, he more resembled a
struggling conventioneer as he habitually
rearranged and straightened his display of
20
Citizen Culture
his primary source of income. His, he says, is
“a gypsy-like existence.”
Irving’s eighty-four guests milled about
slowly. Many carried copies of the tightly
circulated David Irving’s Action Report, a
periodic newsletter that recounts his day-to-day
activities and racial grievances, which are often
one and the samechronicles his fight for what
he calls “Real History.” (“January 12, 2004:
Rotten night: the room faces into a major
highway, is next to a noisy rattling lift; and
drunken happy-go-lucky Blacks talk outside
until late.”) Aside from one particularly voluble
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on the fence
young man sitting at the American
Immigration Control Council table who spoke
with the air of a Congressional staffer, few
were younger than fifty, and even fewer were
women. Most were grandfatherly war buffs, the
sort found in most families. More more Naziphilic than anti-Semitic, ; one imagines them
crying during the opening scene of Saving
Private Ryan, but for the wrong reasons.
Others conducted a seemingly illicit side
trade. At the bar a young man with an
unimpressive goatee showed off a cheap
folding pocketknife decorated with a swastika
and framed with the words “Blot” and “Ehre”
— blood and honor — in classic Nazi gothic
script. This was his Hitler Youth model, he
said, but others, including the “Death’s Head”
model, were available on his website,
www.ssregalia.com. When aAsked his business
by a former Pat Buchanan senior staffer whose
short build and mustache recalled Bob Barr to
no small degree, the unnamed salesman
described himself as “an SS importer.”
“Don’t worry,” replied the former staffer,
without missing a beat. “You’re among friends
here.” [Editor’s note: Mr. Irving, in
correspondence with CCM, has denied
knowledge of this, and stated that his letters of
invitation forbid “such relics and insignia.”
Dinner was served late, and quickly. Pork
was the overwhelming favoriteentree of choice.
Smokers congregated in the back in deference
to Irving’s allergies. The rest sat at covered
tables making small talk while a. The multiethnic staff cleared the plates, seemingly
oblivious to the meeting’s purpose.
Irving took the stage to enthusiastic
applause. His gait is plodding, like an
inquisitive rhinoceros’s. When he speaks, he
plants his feet a foot and half back from the
microphone, his defined chin jutting forward,
his hands knotted at his waist to control any
impulse to flail or claw the air.
“They spent ten million dollars trying to
gag me, and failed,” opened Irving to loud
applause. With the lawsuit over — the one he
had started, remember —-”I can finally speak
my mind.” Wearily, he began to recite his
greatest hits. Some of his most infamous
statements have taken on a life of their own,
particularly in cyberspace. For many of the
guests who had seen him quoted repeatedly in
chat rooms and hate websites saying, “More
women died at Chappaquiddick than in the
gas chambers at Auschwitz that they show the
tourists,” the event was an opportunity akin to
seeing Lynrd Skynrd play Freebird live.
If the audience twittered when Irving
repeated his Ted Kennedy reference, and
fluttered when he ad-libbed a Monica
Lewinsky related jibe, they positively swooned
when he began to recite a lullaby rhyme he
once wrote for his four year-old daughter
Jessica. Irving built up slowly to the climax.
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Nervous giggles and glances shot about the
room as it became clear he was going to revisit
one of the most crucial events in his lawsuit
against Lipstadt. According to diaries read out
in court, whenever Irving would roll his
daughter past “mixed breed” children, he sang
a special song, which he then now recited in a
singsong voice for the audience as well:
I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
Here he paused for effect and stared the
audience in the eye.
I have no plans to marry
An Ape or Rastafarian
Unfortunately he swallowed the punch
line, either from exhaustion or giddiness, and it
went unheard by everyone who hadn’t
anticipated it. For the benefit of those who
hadn’t caught it, he repeated it.
And the room burst into uproarious
laughter.
When I was about seven, years old my
parents bought me a book of paintings of
important historical figures. My favorite
showed a mustachioed man in a camel camelcolored jacket, his black hair slicing
deliberately across his forehead. Facing the
reader, he salutes saluted hundreds of
uniformed men, who reciprocated a thousandfold. It was so inspiring that I immediately
resolved to dress up as this great hero and
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Citizen Culture
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on the fence
parade around the neighborhood. I certainly
didn’t anticipate the neighbor’s’ abject horror
when I proudly explained my new hairdo as a
Hitler costume, and that yes, it was my poor
suffering mother who had provided the
pomade.
Something about being a Nazi, or, rather,
playing at being a Nazi, excites Holocaust
deniers. As a child I was attracted to Hitler
because I worshipped generals and armies of
all nations equally. It wasn’t bad taste; I simply
didn’t know any better. But David Irving and
his readers are old enough to know better and
too old to be playing dress dress-up. Like all of
us, they wish the Holocaust never happened,
but they also agree with Ernst Zundel, another
infamous Holocaust denier and Irving ally, that
the Holocaust “bar[s] so many thinkers from
re-looking at the options that National
Socialism German style offers,” which to their
minds would not abide immigration, estate
taxes or the Warren Court. When they deny
the Holocaust, they also manufacture the
confined intellectual condition in which they
can study or enjoy Nazi Germany with the
same respectably wistful curiosity as an
Anglophile might Victorian England.
Though the politics of National Socialism
are a major attraction, Irving’s meetings also
reinforce a feeling of belonging and identity.
This is not to say his readers are so low-class
they would actually wear a Nazi uniform in
public. (It would be ad hominem and unfair to
compare them in any way to the British royal
family.) But revisionist movements invariably
foster a group identity in which the sheer
notoriety of the cause becomes its dominant
raison d’etre. As the line between earnest
inquiry and personal development becomes
confused, readers sometimes over-identify with
the subject matter and lose themselves,
physically and intellectually, in the text.
Projection, such as when the overeager “UFOologist” begins to see flying saucers himself, is a
common enough symptom.
Irving once addressed a judge as “mein
Füuhrer” and didn’t even notice the mistake.
But what should we make of the man I met at
the bar who tried to sell me a replica Hitler
Youth pocketknife and laughingly, but
nervously, described himself as “an SS
importer?” Is he a tasteless boob or pathetic
Scaramouche? What about the former senior
staffer for Pat Buchanan who told the knife
salesman, “Don’t worry, you’re among friends
here”? And what would a one do with a Hitler
Youth replica knife, anyways? Too flimsy for
personal defense, too offensive for public
display, one would have to unsheathe it
privately, like a forbidden pornographic
treasuretreasured pornographic film. A similar
ritual obtainspertains, I imagine, for to the
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Something about
being a Nazi, or
rather, playing at
being a Nazi,
excites Holocaust
deniers.
poster of Hitler Irving offereds free with each
purchase. Irving’s exaggerated cloak-anddagger with me before the event only served to
emphasize how important conspiracy, or the
illusion of it, was to these otherwise ordinary
men.
A week after the Irving event I received an
unusual email from a man in Sydney: “So far
despite millions (billions rather) of dollars
Zionist were unable to prove BEYOND ANY
DOUBT that “Holocaust” took place.” How, I
wondered, had this man found my email
address? Was there such a thing in this cruel
world as Holocaust denial spam? Thankfully,
no. In fact, Irving had posted on his website
my email address and photograph. The
24
Citizen Culture
caption, “Invited stranger Avi Dov Klein
seizes the opportunity to interrogate the
guests,” bordered on the hysterical. In the
meantime Irving refused to answer questions
about his finances or political beliefs: “I am
not paranoid — but I do not believe in
assisting those whose intention is to smear
me!”
Despite all the Sturm und Drang, Irving
is no longer much of a threat. In truth, he
isn’t much of anything anymore. Only one
percent of Americans believe it is possible that
the Holocaust didn’t happen, which very
roughly means that there are seventy-six
thousand Holocaust deniers in the Washington
Metro area, according to a 1994 Roper poll.
(This 1994 Roper poll corrected an earlier,
heavily publicized but tragically flawed, poll
that found a twenty-two percent denial rate.)
And the event I attended was one of his larger,
and considering his notoriety and the Virginia
location, it was not an impressive turnout.
Most encouraging of all are the demographics.
Considering the advanced age of most of
Irving’s readers, Holocaust denial in the
United States might very well die out soon,
literally.
Judaism has a hell, doesn’t it?
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on the fence
A SUNNY DAY
IN
DACHAU
Text and Photographs
By David Winstanley
A WARM SUN SMILES DOWN ON DACHAU. Puffy,
gentle clouds hang in the air as if painted.
Birds chirp and sing to each other from poplar
trees. Green and lush, tall and strong, these
trees frame the enclosing wire fences.
Gravel crunches and pops beneath my
boots. I walk, finding myself with head down,
bag heavy on shoulder, literally (realizing the
cliché) lost in thought.
The foundations of the long-destroyed
dormitory buildings line the path like
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tombstones in a pebbled cemetery. The sun's
gentle song upon the earth rises an octave or
two, the temperature soaring as sunlight eases
through the scattered, motionless sky. The
chatter of birds is lost in the oncoming
murmur of voices. This sub-audible rumble
grows, peaking to a high-pitched tussle then
spreading out into the flat verbal clatter of the
school groups. Platoons of teenagers wander
freely, wearing garish colored backpacks and
brightly hued shirts. I cannot help but intercept
their communications.
A pretty girl shrieks and holds out the front
of her white sweatshirt. She pulls it far away
from her body. “A bird pooped on me,” she
whines, and her friend takes a picture. She
zooms in on the green brown stains on her
friend's shirt and hands. Laughing, she looks at
her digital camera's readout screen and they
giggle. The pooped-on girl continues,
“Eeeeeww! Gross! It smells so bad!” and I walk
away.
I come to the gas chamber and the
crematorium. I enter the building aware that
this was a place of disposal and murder. But
the gas chamber here was not the murder
factory that Auschwitz was. It never had the
capacity or ability to handle demand on that
scale.
I stand in the Shower Room and look
through the door opposite. I see a
lone girl, maybe seventeen years
old, tall with long, fine legs in
tight blue jeans. Her long blonde
hair is wavy. She is quite lovely
and probably popular. She sucks
on the straw of a jumbo-sized
box of juice. It could be her
boyfriend's nipple by the look in
her eye. Her thoughts appear to
be elsewhere. I move on.
Children pause in the
Incinerator Room. Two boys talk
together, giggling and smiling at a
private joke. They could be
standing in their school cafeteria.
I wander away, until my feet feel
HOW COULD THEY
LIVE KNOWING THE
CAPABILITIES
OF SUCH A
CIVILIZATION?
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Citizen Culture
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on the fence
the crunch of the gravel. I look at the fences,
the ditch, the canal, and the guard tower.
Behind me are the churches and
memorials built in the 1960s. Catholic,
Protestant, Jewish, Russian Orthodox. I look
quickly at their Modernist shapes and then
walk again down the center aisle of the
barracks' foundations. An aisle in the church of
dead things. I walk towards the main camp
building, with its cinema and exhibitions, and
gift shop. An altar at the end of the aisle.
I walk to the waiting area by the cinema
entrance door. Girls are trying to hoist
themselves up onto the wall. They laugh as
they flash their bellies; shirts and jeans separate
as they stretch their torsos. A girl flicks her eyes
to see if a boy has noticed.
I see two German girls on a step. They are
sharing a green iPod, an earpiece each, passing
time as if on a playground at lunchtime.
I walk past an American man in his late
forties. He is short, with a white moustache,
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and he says, “We scored the touchdown in the
last forty seconds of the game, so we won.” A
lady asks him, “Who was it that you played?”
and he replies, San Diego, Santa Fe, Sacramento,
Seattle. I tune out his response. I cannot hear it
and I don't want to know.
Chubby boys in shorts amble past,
shuffling in the gravel. A bell tolls in the
distance. Scattered pockets of applause strike
up, thanking a tour guide. Left and right, it
echoes sporadically.
Another group walks past, a man and two
women. All three are healthy, well-fed, safe and
free. One woman is saying, “…until you do
you have no way of knowing how strong you
are.” Whatever she is talking about, I am
happy she's realized it, but strength is relative.
Strength to come here? This is not needed. Strength
to see it is not needed.
Out of one of the few remaining
dormitory buildings come a group of
European teenagers. Some are quiet, some
chat as normal. A boy looks me in the eye, and
I fashion his expression into one that has a
faint sheen, a tint of guilt perhaps. But maybe
it is a sense of realization, an understanding of
history. Complicity is not to be sought or
apportioned. It can only be imagined.
The summer of 2005 was the sixtieth
anniversary of the Liberation of Dachau by
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on the fence
Allied troops. They were young, not-soinnocent farm boys and city kids in tanks and
trucks. Some were barely out of high school.
They found Dachau and the people in it.
The journalist Martha Gellhorn was here
too. She spoke with soldiers, prisoners and
victims of vile experimentation. She wrote of
her experiences so the world could learn about
the function and practices of Dachau. It was
the first time the modern world had seen such
specific barbarity. The Allied troops tried to
understand it, and deal with it. Unprepared,
they saw Dachau with their own eyes and the
force of that reality was a smack in the face on
behalf of the naive remainder of humanity.
The liberators who saw Dachau, those
who released the dying and the starving from
the squalid camp and dispelled the threat of
death, knew little of what to expect here. They
could not help but smell the decay and
degradation. Did Gellhorn anticipate such
sights and horrors? Did the soldiers feel inured
to such atrocities? Were these facts too awful to
comprehend? How could they live knowing the
capabilities of such a civilization?
Eventually, the facts and stories of the
concentration camps and the Holocaust, the
political persecutions and racial subjugation
would be taught in school history classes. Over
time, the true scale has been diluted and the
significance of a single place has eroded, but
Dachau existed, and it still epitomizes the
misery of a violent age.
My thoughts are interrupted when a
teenage girl suddenly asks of me, “Why did
they burn all the buildings here?” and I hear
myself reply, “Wouldn't you have done the
same?”
Later, I stand outside the documentary
cinema as people emerge. The light dims as
the sun slides demurely behind the clouds. It's
June, but it keeps turning cold. I pick up my
bag and camera and walk towards the main
gate.
As I pass through from the inside to the
outside I read the solid ironwork motto that
speaks the cruel irony of the camps. It reads
Arbeit macht frei. People flow through the gate,
some stopping to take a photo of the words.
They will take the sarcastic duplicity of the
phrase away with them.
The visitors exit the camp. They trudge
back along beige gravel paths to their cars and
coaches, to their lives far away from the past.
The camp at Dachau remains behind them,
grey and lifeless under the wide blue dome of
the sky. The clouds drift overhead once more,
and the birds still sing in the trees.
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Photos and Styling by John Iton
Makeup by Joey Lynn Acosta
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the word
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In order from 2nd overleaf:
Dresses available at
www.eDressMe.com
Madonna and Bambino:
Silk Scarf Print Dress
by Nicole Miller.
Stigmata:
Silk Evening Dress by
BCBG Max Azria
Buddhist temple:
Beaded Evening Gown
by Faviana
Muslim prayers:
Flamenco Halter Gown
by Celo
Shiva:
Beaded Evening Gown
by Sue Wong
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R
E
V
E
R
I
E
CHINATOWN IS MY HOME. ON SUNDAY, TUESDAY AND THURSDAY
NIGHTS, THE SMELL OF FORTUNE COOKIES BAKING FILLS THE AIR,
LINGERING ON MY BALCONY AND PERMEATING THE SCREENS OF MY
WINDOWS.
ON OFF DAYS, HAINANESE CHICKEN RICE FLOATS SOUTH
DOWN WENTWORTH FROM THE MALAYSIAN RESTAURANT. NEITHER OF
THESE SCENTS PROVES CHINESE IN ORIGIN, AND NOR IS THAT OF THE
FRESH BASIL AND OREGANO I’M CHOPPING TO MAKE CALABRESE
POTATO SALAD.
But I am less likely to pass as the typical
Chinatown inhabitant than the Malaysian chef
or the South Asian fortune cookie factory
worker.
Each morning on my way to work, I
pass the neighborhood elders doing Tai Chi
and then a navy van with two Polish men
selling black market cabbage, onions, garlic,
celery and a fruit of the day. They unload the
produce directly onto the sidewalk, celery
leaves touching the sidewalk cement, which
without a doubt has been violated by
neighborhood dogs, cigarette butts and rats.
They have no regard for the Chinese who buy
their produce. Prices are noted gruffly with the
universal hand-number system. Just before 10
a.m., the Polish men return to their Polish
neighborhood at Archer and Pulaski or any of
36
By Jill Dudones
Citizen Culture
the many other Eastern European
neighborhoods on the north side of Chicago.
But I am already home, although many
Chinese neighbors eye me in confused or
sometimes resentful stares as I get out of my
car and walk up to my building. My
Volkswagen parked among a sea of Toyotas:
“She doesn’t belong here.”
But I do. Four blocks away from where I
live is the building in which my grandfather
and his family lived when they left Sicily
decades ago. Two great grandparents, their ten
children, and eventually their children’s
children in that old brick building. A little to
the north was where my grandmother and her
parents migrated to, but is now 90/94 highway.
Within Chinatown was, and in some places still
is, a thriving Sicilian and Calabrese (a southern
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dream a little dream of c hinatown
province in Italy) community, but most
Chicagoans have no idea it exists.
And why should they? Chicago is one of
the nation’s most segregated cities and
everyone knows that Italians live on Taylor
Street, North Harlem and Cicero, not
Chinatown. Ethnic groups have no reason or
desire to mix with each other, at least that is
the stereotype. And so Little Calabria remains
a secret.
People who visit Chicago rave about the
cuisine and its ethnic diversity. Ethiopian,
Cuban, Dutch, Filipino, Italian, Jewish,
Moroccan, Persian, Polish, Columbian,
Mexican, Japanese—the takeout menu list can
extend as long at the Great Wall. But try
having three of these different cuisines in one
day and besides indigestion, you’ll also have to
fuel up the gas tank again. That’s because all
of these different cuisines, with the exception
of the trendy hotspots, are in intricately
segregated neighborhoods that may border
each other, but never cohesively intercept each
other.
However, ours is an example of an
intercepted, intersected neighborhood. My
Italian mother married my Lithuanian father. I
am a violation of these segregated
neighborhoods and therefore don’t belong in
one, along with the rest regular “white”
Chicagoans. But I’ve never felt like a regular
Chicagoan—my family is a mishmash of
customs, values and traditions.
I remain a yuppie on the cusp of
gentrifying Chinatown. Perhaps the glares and
stares are warranted. My building, at the very
center of Chinatown, is flooded with Patels,
Smiths, Lapinskis, Giovanottis, Santos’, Chins,
Fosters—a melting pot of urban professionals,
who represent a world outside of what should
be inside Chinatown. We live here because it is
close to the lake, downtown and two major
universities, not because we need to live close
to others who speak our language, share our
customs, traditions, religions and imported
foods. We don’t belong here, and should our
friends find out what a great place this is to
live, we’ll together wipe out the culture of
Chinatown altogether.
It could happen, and has to Little Italy
on Taylor Street, the African-American
community on Maxwell Street, a Mexican
community in Logan Square and Pilsen—the
list goes on. Urbanization is wiping Chicago
clear of its strong ethnic roots. In fact, a study
by the Migration Policy Institute has shown
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that in Chicago, a new trend among
immigrants is already occurring,
suburbanization. New immigrants are making
the suburbs their homes now more than ever,
finding more support from the community and
civil programs than in the city. The rising costs
for city housing due to more than a decadelong trend of urbanization may also be a key
factor. The city is on the verge of becoming as
bland and soulless as a mini-mall with a
In a recent project with my husband to
create a family tree, I studied the areas in Italy
from where my family had lived, and I asked
questions regarding my Lithuanian family. It
turns out that the area in Calabria from where
my grandmother migrated was once heavily
populated by Turks to the east and Greeks to
the west. In fact, one hundred miles from her
village is a town, the only town in the world,
where Ancient Greek is still spoken. On my
What would happen if the segregated ethnic
neighborhoods did more than grudgingly purchase
celery from each other and united to battle the
common enemy, the young urban professional?
Panera, Best Buy, Anne Taylor Loft and
Starbucks—the kind you can find in any
American city, the kind that makes you forget
where you are because you could be anywhere.
But what would happen if the
segregated ethnic neighborhoods did more
than grudgingly purchase celery from each
other and united to battle the common enemy,
the young urban professional? What would
happen if they decided to live with each other
instead of next to each other? If my great
grandmother could make a cannoli shell out of
a wanton wrapper, perhaps anything is
possible.
38
Citizen Culture
Sicilian side, men and women share a common
disease that is only found among sub-Saharan
Africans. I was told that my grandfather was
not Lithuanian, but in fact Russian, and that
his father had simply escaped Russia to
Lithuania, thusly showing origin of country as
Lithuania at Ellis Island. This begins to blur
the definitive line of the origins of my genes.
I’m quite sure the line blurs even more,
and yet at the same time becomes clearer. The
Genographic Project sponsored by National
Geographic and IBM, is a study being conducted
to find the origin of DNA and how it
populated the planet, including migratory
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patterns. Anyone can contribute samples of
DNA and in return, find out the origins of the
DNA. Some participants have been surprised
to find that their DNA origin extended much
further than just two generations back. For
instance, an Irish-American man could find
that his DNA is derivative of a small tribe in
Africa or India.
I’ve decided to take the test and am still
waiting for my results. In the meantime, I’m
beginning to realize that it doesn’t matter.
Maybe I’ll find that my DNA can be traced
back to China, that I do belong here in
Chinatown officially, and that I am not a
yuppie invading the culture of a tightly knit
ethnic group. Maybe some of my Chinese
neighbors have DNA linked to Italy or Russia.
It doesn’t really matter and perhaps a wonton
wrapper is the same thing as a cannoli shell…
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FICTION
M u t a w w a
*
( P a r t
6TH OF SHAWAL, 1444 (MARCH 29, 2023)
Amjad Al-Azizi broke into a smile as he walked
into his office. Sitting in front of his desk was
his old high school chum, Waleed As-Sabry.
Waleed stood and they embraced, clapping
each other on the back, trading kisses on the
cheek.
Amjad might not have recognized his
friend except for the thin scar that cleft
Waleed's eyebrow and a portion of his
forehead. It must have been twenty-five years
since they had last seen each other. He had
gained at least fifty pounds and was wearing
western clothes—tan slacks, white shirt, brown
moccasins. His hair and beard were shot
through with speckles of grey.
“Look at you, Amjad,” Waleed said,
“Chief Officer of the Riyadh Mutawwa.
District Head for the Committee for the
40
By Pamela K. Taylor
Citizen Culture
O n e )
Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
You've certainly come up in the world.”
Amjad grinned, smoothing his white
cotton thobe and adjusting his red-and-whitechecked kaffiya scarf. “What about you? Worldfamous scientist!”
“I don't know about world-famous…”
“Nobel prize for your work in
neurology. If that's not world-famous,
I don't know what is.”
Waleed shrugged. “And how many Nobel
winners can you name?”
Amjad's paused a minute. “Ibadi!” he said
at last. “That Irani woman. ”
“See what I mean?” Waleed said.
“Tea?” Amjad asked, ringing his assistant
to bring refreshments. In a few minutes, the
*In Arabic, "one who causes obedience." Also the popular
name of Saudi Arabia's Committee to Prevent Vice and
Promote Virtue.
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boy arrived with a tray of cups and saucers, a
teapot, milk, sugar and pastries. He set the tray
on Amjad's desk, and left without a word.
“He doesn't look old enough to be
working,” Waleed said.
“Who, Shafeeq?” Amjad grinned again.
“He's fresh off the boat. Bangladeshi. Nice boy,
really. Very quiet. Never gives me any
problems.”
“Amazing how the older you get, the
younger they look. I wonder if we looked that
young to our bosses, our teachers.”
“We probably did.” Amjad shook his head,
gazing fondly at his friend, and sighed heavily.
“Brings back old memories.”
Waleed chuckled and shook his head too.
“Remember Khaled Maktari?”
“How could I forget Maktari?” Amjad
asked. “He changed the course of my life in
one afternoon.”
“Mine too,” Waleed said.
***
They had been teenagers when Maktari
burst onto the scene. A revivalist,
intense, with burning black eyes,
thick black hair that fell to his
shoulders, and a long, wispy, black
beard, Maktari had become
wildly popular almost
overnight.
Amjad and Waleed skipped
their classes one spring day
near the end of their senior
year and took a bus to the King Faisal Mosque
in downtown Riyadh to hear him give the
Friday sermon. The mosque was beautiful, with
its high dome, arched windows and elegant
calligraphy carved into the walls, but the boys
barely noticed their surroundings.
Maktari wore a heavy robe and turban,
both white as the walls of the mosque. He
paced back and forth in front of the pulpit,
radiating power and purpose.
“The trouble,” he bellowed, eyes ranging
over the assemblage, “is not that you don't care.
You want to please Allah! You are committed
to pleasing Allah. You are scared—scared of
Allah's Wrath, scared of His Hellfire. What you
lack is discipline.”
He pointed at a man in the front row.
“Every morning you wake up and vow, ‘I will
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fiction
not miss my prayers today.’” He turned to the
man's neighbor. “Every evening, you promise,
‘Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow, I won't
forget.’” He moved down the line, pointing to
man after man. “And what happens? You
forget. You delay. Things get in the way—your
boss, your children, your wife, your parents.
You hear the call to prayer and you think, ‘I'll
get to it soon.’ And then it slips your mind. You
want to do what's right, you just need
discipline.”
Maktari stopped in front of Amjad and
Waleed, and his voice dropped. Where it had
been thunderous, it was now intimate, though
still loud enough to carry to the far corners of
the mosque. His finger stabbed towards the
boys; his eyes burrowed into their souls.
“Allah knows your heart. He knows you
want to follow His Way. And He loves you for
that desire. Ask Him, and He will help you
fulfill His Commandment. Throw yourself on
His Mercy, and He will pour righteousness into
your soul. Beg Him for discipline, so that your
body will carry out what your heart desires,
and He will fill your brain with His Order.”
Amjad felt tears streaming down his face.
He was good. He did want to serve God. And
God knew. God cared. He would provide. For
a long time, Amjad sat, feeling at once exposed
and cocooned, while he absorbed the certainty
that God would provide, if only he asked.
***
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Citizen Culture
No more missed prayers,
no more self-recrimination,
no fear of Allah's wrath;
Waleed's device was the
answer to all his prayers,
to the prayers of every
devout Muslim.
Waleed set his cup on the desk, jarring Amjad
out of his reverie. He leaned forward, eyes
locked onto Amjad's, his voice barely a
whisper. “I've solved the discipline problem.”
“What?”
Waleed held out his fist, and opened it
slowly to reveal a tiny computer chip.
“What's that?” Amjad asked.
“It's the answer to the discipline problem.”
He paused and then asked, “Do you know
what my field of study is?”
“Neurosciences. Brain stuff.”
“Neural implants and brain prosthetics, to
be precise. One the one hand, thoughtcontrolled prostheses—replacement arms or
legs that the patient moves the same way he
moves natural limbs, only the electric signals
from his brain are collected and communicated
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to the prosthesis by tiny electrode-transmitters
rather than nerves. On the other, brain
implants that use automated micro-electrodetransmitter relays to bypass damaged portions
of brain—the vagus, the occipital nerve, the
hippocampus—in order to maintain normal
function.”
Waleed nodded towards the device in his
palm.
“This,” he said with dramatic flair, “is a
fusion of the two, the culmination of thirty
years of work.”
“But what is it?”
“A computer chip. It sits on your skull, just
behind your ear, transmitting signals to microelectrodes placed strategically on the cortex,
and voila, you never miss prayer ever again.”
“What!” Amjad said again, feeling
foolishly at a loss for words. “Why? How?”
“Really, it's not very complicated. At the
proper times, the chip sends a command to the
appropriate electrodes, which emit electric
impulses to stimulate certain nerves. First the
ones that raise your hands, then the ones that
cross them over your chest, make you bow,
prostrate, and so on, until the prayers are
complete.”
“But how does the chip know the right
times?”
“It's been programmed with the algorithms
to generate global prayer schedules, like the
ones you can get off the Internet, and it has a
miniaturized GPS system; it knows where you
are at all times, so you're always on the right
schedule.”
“But what if you're driving a car? Or
asleep?”
“One of the electrodes stimulates the
auditory nerves. Fifteen minutes before prayer
begins, you'll hear a chime—one that no
amount of noise can ever drown out. It gives
you time to pull over, get out of bed, get off
the bus, get out of the shower, wind up
whatever you are doing, and find a good place
to pray. There's a second chime at five minutes,
and a third one at fifteen seconds, just to help
you keep track.”
“You've thought of everything, haven't
you?”
Waleed smiled. “You don't win a Nobel
prize for doing slipshod work. If nothing else,
I've learned to be meticulous.”
Amjad stared at the chip in Waleed's hand.
It was so small.
“Just think, Amjad, you'd never miss
prayers again. Ever.”
“That's incredible,” Amjad said. He was
genuinely astounded. He wasn't sure he would
like giving up control of his body, even for a
few minutes a day…but to never miss prayers
again? Even he, head of the Riyadh Mutawwa,
missed prayers from time to time—slept
through them, or put them off until he
suddenly realized it was too late. Even though
he was completely convinced Allah would
punish him for every prayer he missed, even
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fiction
though he believed absolutely in the worldly
benefits of salaat, still he missed one now and
again. Waleed's device certainly was attractive.
But putting something into your brain…
“I know,” Waleed interrupted his thoughts.
“You're thinking, 'Would I really risk brain
surgery for this?'”
“That's just what I was thinking.”
“That's the best part, it's relatively noninvasive. Yes, the electrodes are seeded
throughout the cortex, but we don't have to
open the skull or anything like that, we can go
through the existing orifices. Kind of like a
laparoscopy. We use tiny cameras and
miniaturized implements. It's an outpatient
procedure. Even better, the chip sits on the
surface of the skull. After a couple months you
can't even see the scar where it was implanted.
And, if something malfunctions, or if we come
up with a better model, it's a simple matter to
replace the chip.”
“And what happens if there is a
malfunction?”
“Well, first of all, it would be exceedingly
rare; our prostheses have a failure rate of
under .03%. But if there were a malfunction, it
would just stop working. I've got safety
programming that stops it from, say, sending to
all the electrodes at the same time, creating a
seizure, and it's got limiters that prevent it from
firing for more than fifteen minutes at a
stretch, so even if it started sending erroneous
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Citizen Culture
signals, the effects wouldn't last long, and you
could go to a doctor to have it repaired.”
Amjad pursed his lips. “You couldn't just
turn it off ?”
“That would defeat the whole purpose. If
you could turn it off, you would whenever
prayer wasn't exactly convenient.”
Amjad slapped the side of his head. “Of
course.”
“The thing is, because the chip sits just
under the skin, it is easy enough to remove that
almost anyone with general medical training
can take it out. Change your mind, arthritis in
your knees makes it impossible to do the
motions of salaat, we just remove the chip. The
electrodes can remain in without harming
anything.”
Amjad's brow furrowed.
“What about Eid? How can you program
in Eid when we don't even know what the date
will be until the moon is sighted?”
Waleed laughed. “You can still pray on
your own. Whenever you want. It's not like the
chip blocks prayers at other times.”
Amjad joined in with Waleed's laughter.
“Yeah, of course.”
“And, naturally, it doesn't say the prayers
for you, or make your heart feel God's
presence. You still recite the surahs yourself, and
choose which one you're going to recite. That's
the best part—as long as you are reciting, the
chip receives audio input and doesn't move to
the next step in the program.
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You can choose a long surah or a short one.”
Amjad leaned back in his chair.
“This is brilliant, but why are you bringing
it to me?”
Waleed blinked.
“I thought the Mutawwa would be
interested in…in supporting this.
NeuroDynamics doesn't particularly care if
people fulfill their duty to perform salaat or not.
Surely you see the potential?”
Amjad nodded slowly. See the potential?
You'd have to be blind not to! No more missed
prayers, no more self-recrimination, no fear of
Allah's wrath; Waleed's device was the answer
to all his prayers, to the prayers of every
devout Muslim.
“Yes,” Amjad said, excitement growing in
his chest. “I think the Mutawwa would be
interested. In fact, I can imagine a whole lot of
people would be interested. I mean, it's the sort
of thing you dream about!”
Waleed swallowed, evidently holding back
strong emotions.
“What I need is someone to back me. To
promote my cause with the proper officials. To
help me get funding for a lab, and a
production facility.”
Amjad let out a gust of pent-up breath.
“The first person to talk to is the national head
of the Mutawwa. If we can sell him on it…
well, he's a member of the royal family. Not
particularly close to the King, but he's got good
relations with some of the more conservative
sheikhs, and wields a surprising amount of
influence. I'll ask Shafeeq to make an
appointment for us.”
“Thank you, Amjad, thank you. May God
bless you.”
“And you too,” Amjad answered.
An odd look crossed Waleed's face.
“Amjad, do you have a prayer room here?”
“Of course! You're in the headquarters of
the Mutawwa.” Then something dawned on
him, and Amjad glanced at the clock. It would
be time for afternoon prayers in fifteen
minutes.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You've got one
them, don't you.”
Waleed smiled.
“There had to be at least one human
trial.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Three years.” Waleed's smile widened,
and a beatific look crossed his face. “I haven't
missed a prayer in three years.”
Religion:
Often stranger than fiction.
“Mutawwa (Part Two)”
coming in Issue #9 of
Citizen Culture
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psychology
Do Ethnic,
Religious,
and Cultural Backgrounds
Impact Hostage Negotiations?
HOSTAGE OR CRISIS NEGOTIATORS are law
enforcement officers who attempt to resolve
high-crisis situations with their words, while
simultaneously attempting to avoid a police
tactical intervention. They must remain calm
under emotionally demanding circumstances
and maintain self-control. The negotiator is
expected to set his or her emotions aside,
uphold a non-judgmental approach, and do so,
in most instances, in an amicable fashion. They
must bring a lifetime of experience to the table
in order to manage potentially volatile
situations and be the calming voice of reason
46
By Jack J. Cambria
Citizen Culture
in the most unreasonable and chaotic of
situations. Hostage teams mandate that their
negotiators are mature, stable individuals who
can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.
They do this knowing that the stakes are high,
understanding that if their negotiation attempt
fails, lives could very well be lost.
Burdened with this awesome task, police
agencies place special emphasis in the selection
and training of the hostage/crisis negotiator.
Proper or improper candidate selection can
impact either positively or negatively on future
assignments. The negotiator must possess
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emotional maturity, good listening,
interviewing and communication skills,
credibility, coping abilities, and commitment to
the negotiating strategy.
Although the negotiator is not usually
visible to the hostage-taker, whenever possible,
selection of negotiators should reflect the
ethnic origin of the local population. Resources
should include languages spoken in the
surrounding communities and access to both
male and female negotiators. These resources
may prove helpful in resolving conflict, but the
matching of personality-types is the most
crucial criterion when dealing with someone in
crisis. The strategy of trying to pair the right
set of negotiator-hostage-taker through ethnic
or religious background, gender, social culture
or sub-culture dynamics may have its place in
theoretical concepts, but in practice, the main
concerns are the two individuals involved
(negotiator and hostage-taker) and the rapport
developed between them, regardless of
individual background.
Frequently, the person in crisis has had
some traumatic event occur recently in their
life, possibly within the last 24 to 48 hours, and
unable to cope, acts out to a degree that
requires police intervention. During this early
stage of the crisis, emotions are high,
rationality is low, and the incident quickly
becomes unpredictable and out of control. By
the time the hostage team arrives, the incident
is already well underway. The negotiator must
now enter the incident without knowing how it
began, which can be like entering into the
middle of a movie. The negotiator must ask,
“How did we get to this point of the crisis,” and
“Why are we here right now?” Although the
reasons for a crisis are as numerous as the
crises themselves, there is usually a common
bond between them. Crisis situations are all
emotionally driven, and when arousal is
intense, survival is threatened. The subject is
not particularly focused on the ethnic,
religious, gender or cultural background of the
negotiator. What they are concerned with is
their own personal safety and a venue in which
their needs can be addressed and where
options can be explored to work out a solution
to their problems.
In one particular case, the negotiator and
hostage-taker both came from adjoining towns
in Guyana; one from Georgetown and the
other from Rosignol. Regardless of their 30year age difference, the two quickly developed
a rapport and began discussing politics,
customs and families they both knew in
Guyana. But the negotiator was ineffective in
resolving the hostage-taker's personal crisis.
There were profound emotional issues and
despair deep within the hostage-taker that were
beyond the negotiator's scope. In fact, this was
the third time in a six-year period that the
hostage-taker had taken his wife hostage, this
time using a gun. This final incident lasted 28
hours, utilizing 12 negotiators of different
ethnic, religious and gender backgrounds
throughout the negotiation process. The end
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psychology
result was that the hostage was rescued by the
hostage team, and sadly, the hostage-taker took
his own life.
To further develop rapport between
negotiator and hostage-taker, the New York
City Police Department's (NYPD) Hostage
Negotiation Team (HNT) insists that the
negotiator applicant be at the minimum rank
hostage-taker now has someone to talk with,
who can perhaps understand their pain.
Hostage or Crisis Negotiation Teams are
an integral component of law-enforcement
agencies' planned response to critical incidents.
They are most effective when used in
association with a strong tactical presence.
Mandatory and regular training proves vital to
Crisis situations are all emotionally driven,
and when arousal is intense, survival is threatened.
of detective, assigned to a Detective Bureau
command, and have at least twelve years of
policing experience before being considered.
Applicants meeting these criteria usually
possess extensive experience in various field
assignments from which to draw, and, by
default, finds him or herself in the desired age
group (at a minimum of thirty-four years old).
This age group usually ensures that an
applicant has experienced the emotions of love
and being disappointed or hurt in love, has
known success, and perhaps most importantly,
has known failure. All are vital attributes that
can be utilized when dealing with someone in
crisis, enabling the negotiator to say to the
subject, “I know about that and I can talk to you
about it.” As a result, the process of deescalating the crisis can begin, because the
48
Citizen Culture
sustaining a negotiating team's proficiency.
Modern law enforcement agencies rely on
properly trained, equipped, and staffed hostage
negotiation teams in resolving life-threatening
incidents. Although ethnicity, religion and
gender are factors in cultivating rapport,
ultimately it is the personal interaction and
connection that is formed between the
negotiator and hostage-taker that has proven
most effective.
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local flavor: SxSW
Top of
the Heap
SXSW Music Festival and Conference Has Become the
Undisputed Event of the Musical Year.
Here's All You Need to Know About SXSW 2006.
A MOMENTOUS EVENT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR
around Saint Patrick's Day—and no, I'm not
talking about the incident where one of your
co-workers downs eight green beers and then
hits on you all night at the after-work party. I'm
speaking about the South By Southwest Music
Festival, or SXSW as it's more commonly
known (if you're über hip, you just say “South
By”). The music festival is part of a threepronged operation—preceding the music
showcase are the film and interactive
50
By Jack De Voss
Citizen Culture
technology conferences, festivals and trade
shows—but let's be real: Charlize Theron's
presence at this year's film festival
notwithstanding, it's the five-day music
extravaganza that has people buzzing,
worldwide. SXSW is held every year, midMarch, in the scenic town of Austin, Texas,
home to not only the reigning college football
national champs University of Texas, but a
bridge with over 30,000 bats living under it
and an unofficial town motto of “Keep Austin
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Weird.” I myself am a veteran of four SXSW
festivals and have actually been arrested for
messing with Texas while there, so watch
yourself down in the Lone Star State.
Since 1987, the SXSW Music Festival has
turned the state capitol of Texas into the
premier place to see the best that the world of
music has to offer. Rock, jazz, country, blues,
indie-rock, techno, reggae, hip hop,
electronica, and just about every other style of
music can be heard each night at over fifty
venues, most located on the venerable party
strip 6th street, and within steps of each other.
SXSW 2006 will feature fourteen hundred
bands from well over thirty countries—
unrivaled throughout the world.
After the late nineties decline of stadium
tours and festivals like Lollapalooza, SXSW,
which was once just a place for industry
insiders to check out new music, is becoming
more and more of an event for John Q.
Concert-Lover to circle on his calendar. Why?
Well, word has spread that if you want to catch
“the next big thing,” you are almost assured
that they'll be playing at SXSW. And it's all
almost too good to be true. The bands are
everywhere, the weather in central Texas in
mid-March is divine, the town is
accommodating (police close off 6th Street to
traffic so festival-goers can take over a milelong stretch without fear), the locals are
friendly, and the venues are superb. And those
300,000 bats are still pretty dormant from the
winter.
With SXSW steadily growing each year,
hotels in Austin usually sell out by Christmas,
so if you're thinking of going this year, you
may want to bring a tent. Music badges are the
all-access Holy Grail and run over five
hundred dollars. Wristbands, which will get
you into all the venues to see the bands—but
place you second in pecking order to badgeholders—also run steep price-wise (between
$150 and $200, depending when you
purchase); but when you factor in the amount
of bands you will get to see over five days, the
cost hurts less. Besides, there are no hotel
rooms, so that's one less expense to worry
about.
The festival is still largely for music
industry types to network and broker, so there
will be lots of people flashing credentials to
skip in line ahead of you, and plenty of celebs
wandering about. Plus, you will be sure to see
The King of 6th Street, a Bootsy Collins-esque
T he w or d is out: if
you want to catch
“the next big thing,”
you ar e almost
assur ed that they'r e
pla ying at SXSW.
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local flavor: SxSW
bass player in a glitter suit that is just about the
best thing ever, and “Beatle Bob,” a guy who
looks like Paul McCartney and seems to be at
every single show. Get your name on the list for
one of the many magazine, record label or
media parties, and you may find yourself still
in Austin come next March.
Some other SXSW 2006 highlights
include:
Neil Young, who is the keynote speaker at
this year's music conference. Young will be
speaking, along with Academy Award winner
Jonathan Demme, about the film Neil
Young/Heart Of Gold, directed by Demme. The
film will be shown on March 16. There will
also be a screening of a new film about the
Beastie Boys, Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That!,
which captures a 2004 concert, as filmed by 50
fans, in New York's Madison Square Garden.
The Beasties will make a question-and-answer
appearance at the Austin Convention Hall on
March 15.
Morrissey, the one and only Pope of Mope.
The former Smiths front man and celebrated
celibate will not only be performing on March
16, but he will also give a rare interview. Rolling
52
Citizen Culture
Echo & The Bunnymen:
young enough at heart to play hide and seek
New Kids in the Park:
SXSW could be Arctic Monkeys' American break-out.
Stone will conduct the interview and the BBC
will present the concert later the same day.
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Gogol Bordello, a band from the Big Apple
that mixes hardcore punk rock with, well,
Gypsy music. The band incorporates
accordion, fiddle, electric guitar, and dub with
cabaret and punk rock energy. Their sound is
raucous, sweaty, recklessly vibrant, and their
live show will knock you on the floor twice.
Lead singer Eugene Hutz also recently
appeared in the Elijah Wood movie Everything
Is Illuminated. Gogol Bordello performs on
March 16 at Emo's Main Room.
Arctic Monkeys, which are actually a band
and not some strange new Austin City Zoo
attraction. Arctic Monkeys have already scored
two #1 singles in the U.K. and hold the
achievement of fastest selling debut album in
UK chart history. SXSW 2006 will be their
coming out party here in the U.S. Catch the
Monkeys on March 17 at La Zona Rosa.
Robert Pollard, who is considered by many
to be one of the most prolific songwriters in
music history. As a matter of fact, while you
were reading that sentence, Pollard wrote two
whole albums worth of material. Better known
for his days as the lead singer of indie-rock
legends Guided By Voices, Pollard has just
released his first solo record; check for his next
one in stores early next week. Pollard plays
Antone's on March 18.
Echo & The Bunnymen, who contrary to
popular opinion, never broke up. Formed in
Liverpool in 1978, Echo & The Bunnymen are
some of the trailblazers of the New Wave
movement, and produced some of the best
music ever to come out of the Eighties—not
just the opening song in the movie Donnie
Darko and a cover of “People Are Strange” in
The Lost Boys. Rumor has always been that
Echo is the name of the drum machine the
band uses, but this may be only partly true; by
the second record, the band had replaced the
drum machine with an actual person-but kept
their name. Echo & The Bunnymen play Town
Lake Stage at Auditorium Shores on March
16.
That's just a small taste of what's in store
at this year's festival. There are about 1,394
more bands to mention, and I truly would love
to, I really would, but you see I have to go shop
for a tent. I forgot to book a hotel room.
Interactive: March 10-14
Film: March 10-18
Music: March 15-19
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local flavor: cheat sheet
6 * 4 Austin
6
*
AUSTIN, OUR 3RD LOCAL FLAVOR CITY,
HAS SEEN THE SPOTLIGHT A LOT IN 2006.
In January the city's own University of Texas
Longhorns won its first College Football National
Championship since 1970, and in March, Austin
plays host to the annual SXSW film, technology
and music bash—which has become the biggest
and baddest musical event of them all (see our
coverage, page 50). But those who have spent time
down in the beautiful Texas Hill Country know
there's a hell of a lot more to Austin than the
University or SXSW and the city's fabled slogan
“Live Music Capital of the World.”
Austin is a partier's party city—with notorious 6th
Street serving as the cornerstone. With three
hundred sunny days each year it's a haven for
outdoors enthusiasts. A progressive vibe separates
Austin from the red swath of greater Texas. And
it's also one of the friendliest, most laid-back spots
on Earth (go away, San Diego).
By Theo Mazumdar
54
Citizen Culture
If there's one knock against Austin it's that it's
growing a little too fast; too many people have
caught on. Population is nearing three quarters of
a million. But even that growth has its advantagesAustin is at the top of any list of best cities for
singles.
Whether it's to sample some of the best BBQ
around, to hike/bike/swim yourself silly, to sit
outside in March and sip on a giant margherita, or
to party until the morn and follow it up with some
delicious Tex-Mex, head on down to Austin. Let
the 6*4*6 be your cheat sheet; it's tried and true.
And don't forget: Relax, baby. It's Austin.
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Shelter (Splurge)
Shelter (Conserve)
1 * The Driskill 604 Brazos
2 * The Mansion at Judge’s Hill
1 * Austin Folk House 506 W. 22nd
2 * Carrington’s Bluff Bed & Breakfast
1900 Rio Grande
3 * Omni Austin Hotel Downtown
700 San Jacinto Blvd.
4 * Lake Austin Spa Resort
1705 S. Quinlan Park Road
5 * Four Seasons Hotel Austin
98 San Jacinto Blvd.
6 * Hotel San Jose 1306 S. Congress Ave.
1900 David St.
3 * Brook House Bed & Breakfast
609 W. 33rd
4 * The Heart of Texas Motel
1200 S. Congress Ave.
5 * Austin Motel 1220 S. Congress Ave.
6 * Best Western 7928 Gessner Dr.
Bars
1 * Emo’s 603 Red River
2 * Club de Ville 900 Red River
3 * The Ginger Man 304 W. 4th St.
4 * The Ritz 320 E. 6th St.
5 * Sholz Garden 1607 San Jacinto Blvd.
6 * Light Bar 408 Congress Ave.
BBQ
1 * The Salt Lick 18001 FM 1826, Driffwood, TX
2 * Sam’s Bar-B-Cue 2000 E. 12th St
3 * Kreuz Market 619 N. Colorado St., Lockhart, TX
4 * Ruby’ss 512 W. 29th St.
5 * Stubb’s Bar-B-Q 801 Red River St
6 * Iron Works BBQ 100 Red River St
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local flavor: cheat sheet
Cheap Eats
1 * Hut’s Hamburgers 807 W. 6th St.
2 * Mike’s Pub 108 E. 7th St.
3 * Crown & Anchor Pub 2911 San Jacinto Blvd.
4 * Hoover’s Cooking 2002 Manor Rd.
5 * Hyde’s Park Bar & Grill 4206 Duval St.
6 * Central Market 4001 N. Lamar Blvd.
All-Nighter
1 * Kerbey Lane Cafe
3704Kerbey Lane
2606 Guadalupe
2700 S. Lamar
12602 Research Blvd.
2 * Magnolia Cafe
2304 Lake Austin Blvd.
1920 S. Congress Ave.
3 * Star Seeds Cafe 3101 N. Interstate 35
4 * Mojo’s Daily Grind 2714 Guadalupe
5 * Katz’s Deli & Bar 618 W. 6th St.
6 * Ken’s Donuts & Pastries
2820 Guadalupe
Lives
1 * Antone’s 213 W. 5th St.
2 * Cedar Street Courtyard 208 W. 4th St
3 * La Zona Rosa 612 W. 4th St.
4 * Saxon Pub 1320 S. Lamar Blvd.
5 * Cactus Cafe 24th St. & Guadalupe
Texas Union Building, University of Texas
6 * Broken Spoke 3201 S. Lamar Blvd.
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Joe
1 * Little City 916 Congress Ave.; 2604 Guadalupe
2 * Mozart’s 3825 Lake Austin Blvd.
3 * Spider House 2908 Fruth
4 * Progress Coffee 500 San Marcos
5 * Halcyon 218 W. 4th St.
6 * Azul 1808 E. Cesar Chavez
Adventure
1 * Barton Springs 2201 Barton Springs Rd.
2 * Town Lake Hike & Bike Trail
920 W. Riverside Dr.
3 * Zilker Park 2100 Barton Springs Rd.
4 * Mount Bonnell 3800 Mount Bonnell Dr.
5 * Enchanted Rock
16710 RR 965, Fredericksburg, TX
6 * Hamilton Pool
24300 Hamilton Pool Rd. Dripping Springs, TX
Kicks
1 * Joy of Austin 3105 S. Internstate 35
2 * Dreamers DVD 11218 N. Lamar at Braker
3 * Sugar’s Uptown Cabaret
404 Highland Mall Blvd.
4 * The Yellow Rose 6528 North Lamar
5 * The Landing Strip 745 S. Bastrop Hwy.
6 * Expose Gentlemen’s Adult
Entertainment 3615 S. Congress Ave.
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Hol l yw ood ’s
Go-To Gir l
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The CCM Interview: Laura Linney
To describe Laura Linney as “ubiquitous” is something of an understatement, when even before her recent
Golden Globe nomination for The Squid and the Whale, she stole scenes in films as varied as The Exorcism of Emily
Rose and Love Actually, not to mention a turn toward the exhibitionist in Kinsey, for which she received an Oscar
nomination. Linney sat with Dennis Brabham to reflect on a thoughtful career that shows no signs of slowing.
Someone in the media once called you a stealth celebrity.
You seem to be able to keep your private life, private.
I know. Isn’t that fun? I love that. I don’t have
an agenda; I just do what I do. I’m extremely
happy with the work I’ve been able to do and
how I’ve been able to live my life in
conjunction with that.
However, when you got the Emmy and Oscar
nominations within six months of each other that
must’ve changed things a little.
There are little shifts when those things
happen. There have been two years in a row
when I’ve been nominated for all three (Emmy,
Oscar, Tony), and won the Emmys, so that
does do something. It doesn’t change my life.
Does it shift things a bit? Yeah it does.
Most of your roles have been juicy character pieces, but
you let loose and did a good comedy turn on several
episodes of the sitcom Frasier.
Thank you. That was fun. It was a great
opportunity. I’m trying to do much as I
possibly can to learn about different stuff. I’ve
tried to narrate documentaries, voiceover stuff
audio books, radio plays, theater because it’s all
just so interesting and there are different skills
that you need. The sitcom is something I knew
absolutely nothing about and I have no idea
where my life is going to go and what my
needs will be as the years roll by and I thought
I need to learn about this and why not do it
with the best people in the business? I’d be a
fool not to take the opportunity to do it. And I
went and did one and loved it and then they
asked to come back and finish out the season
with them, which I was really honored to do
and it was a kick and a half… so interesting.
Do you consider yourself a bit of a workaholic?
I have worked an awful lot in the last few years.
I made four movies this past year. And I’m
trying to slow down. I have just had seven
weeks off. You get tired of traveling, and
missing people’s birthdays, weddings and
funerals, and you can get isolated and that’s
not fun. As wonderful as the work is, there’s no
time to absorb; you go from project to project
to project and you don’t even have time to let
that experience sit with you and to learn from
it and digest it. When you’re going from one
very intense thing to the next and you’re shut
By Dennis Brabham
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the CCM interview
in rooms on soundstages, time is very
odd…and you’re not sleeping in your own bed
and you’re not turning out the light that
belongs to you. It does weird things and you
can fight it as much as you can, but time goes.
It’s gotten better that the parts are
getting better and the work has gotten better. I
think the last two or three years I’ve had one
fantastic job after the next and I am very
aware of that. And I’ve loved the people, I’ve
loved the work, and then on another hand it
has gotten more complicated. You get tired.
Poor me (laughs). There’s nothing worse
than a complaining successful actress. I mean
for God’s sake, it sounds pathetic. Life is very,
very good.
Was there one film in your career that really made you
feel as if things were coming together?
No, and it’s really funny because people will
point to certain things…like You Can Count on
Me, Tales of the City, Primal Fear, The Truman
Show…people will point to Sight Unseen which is
a play I did in New York. People point to very
different things. I think for me it’s just been
about a layering of work. There are certainly
parts where I’ve felt walls come down and I
feel like I’ve taken a giant leap forward. I’ve
certainly had that and that’s a good feeling.
What would be something that would surprise people
about your high profile male co-stars like Richard Gere,
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Liam Neeson et al.?
To realize they’re movie stars for a reason and
they work really hard. I think there’s a
misconception that—and there are actors who
do this—they’re charming handsome and
charismatic so they just walk through the part,
but that’s not the case. They work hard.
You just completed several starring roles, yet there are a
lot of actresses who complain about not being able to
find good meaty parts for women. Do you think it’s
because they don’t look in the right place or do you think
the pendulum is shifting and there are more roles out
there?
Some of the people aren’t looking in the right
places. I think if you want a good part that’s
going to pay you an enormous amount of
money and bring you fame, no, there are not a
lot of those parts. If you want to work, there
are a lot of places to go. I’ve been very lucky
and I know that. I think there are parts out
there, but it depends really on what you want.
A lot of the independent films that I’m
in, take a very long time to get made. Jindabyne
(a film slated for 2006 release) was a movie I
committed to for two years before it went. The
Squid and The Whale was over four years. Kinsey
was three to four years, so a lot of the
independent movies will come to you because
you believe in the filmmaker and you believe in
the script, you think it’s worthy, and you think
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L.A.’s a one thing town. Regardless of who
you are, you’re going to feel bad about
yourself. So you’ve got to go in and get out
and reevaluate your perspective.
it would be a great experience so you attach
yourself to the project. And then it takes a very
long time to get the financing together. So then
when they come along with the financing, we
can go, you have to be ready to go. There are a
few that I hope will get made eventually and
maybe if my current films do well, they will.
There are movies that come to you, you
read them and you want to do them and you
know you’re going to have to wait for a while
and you hope they get made. They always
work out the way they’re supposed to. With the
right cast. I’ve been connected to so many
independent projects where a lead had to drop
out and everyone is distraught. Then someone
who’s even better and more right for it will
come along. You have to have faith. I’m not a
religious person, but I do have faith in certain
things.
You said in reference to the movie Exorcism of Emily
Rose that making a film of that nature was concern
because we’re living in dangerous times. Why is that?
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the CCM interview
Religion is powerful stuff and while the
primary focus of religion is to unite people, it
can also really divide people and it can be
abused and it can be disrespectful. And I had
concerns about that. That it would be a movie
that would be respectful to both sides and that
wouldn’t give any answers whatsoever. That for
every claim made on one side, there’d be a
counter on the other, so that the movie gave
absolutely no answers.
worthy, fun and a challenge, then, sure.
So you could see yourself in virtually any genre?
Sure. Take The Exorcist, one of the best movies
ever. Ellen Burstyn is brilliant in that movie.
Horror movies can be stupid. Or they can be
terrific. They’re tricky; they’re not easy to pull
off.
An easy question: seen any good movies lately?
I spoke with one director who said the only difference
between independent film and mainstream is the budget
is bigger. Do you think that’s the case?
No. There are many more differences. The
scripts…most scripts, particularly in the
commercial world are written to be greenlit.
They’re not written to be acted. Most
independent films are written to be acted, as
opposed to convincing someone to give you the
money to make the money. You’re starting
from a completely different place.
Conversely if there was some part in a big budget movie
like the next Spider Man, and they were going to pay
you a ton of money for two weeks work, would you do
it?
Of course I would, if it was a good part, with
some great villain, where I could have things
growing out of my body. If there’s something
to actually act I don’t care what it’s in—if it’s
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If you have not seen Inherit The Wind lately,
watch Inherit The Wind. Oh God, it’s wonderful!
Wonderful character-driven courtroom drama
and Spencer Tracy is a genius. And they let
him act. That’s the most refreshing thing about
films like that and To Kill a Mockingbird—they
let the actors act. They keep the camera on.
Any of your recent films have that quality?
I probably won’t know that for another five
years. I’ll watch a movie once just so I can talk
about it, but I don’t like to watch myself. It
makes me uncomfortable. I’m really eager to
see everyone else’s work and excited to see the
cinematographer’s work and the more I learn
about film the more I’m seeing different stuff,
but I can’t divorce myself from it, so I can’t see
it for what it truly is. I’ll put it away for a few
years, and then I’ll take a look at it—I have to
forget a lot of stuff before I can see what it is
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really is.
What’s your take on Los Angeles compared to the East
Coast?
I started things here on the East Coast, but I
like LA. I have a lot of friends who are there. I
couldn’t live there full time, but I enjoy it when
I go. You have to be very strict with yourself
when you go there; it’s a one thing town and
the thing I find most difficult is that regardless
of who you are, you’re going to feel bad about
yourself, it’s going to make you feel bad about
yourself and that’s hard. So you’ve got to go in
[do your work] and get out and reevaluate
your perspective, remember who you really are
and then you go back in. I don’t want to live
[in L.A.] full time.
Does being nominated for an Oscar give you a high?
It’s really nice. It’s a really nice thing. Oscar
nominations can be extremely important and
then they can mean nothing at all. I’m really
proud of my nominations and I can’t even
believe that I can say that, that I’ve been
nominated. You just have these moments
of…wow! And particularly because they’re for
two films (Kinsey and You Can Count on Me) that
I’m extremely proud of.
Then does it bother you when you go to the Oscars
ceremony and all they talk about is the dress you wear?
It’s not fun, and it sorts of shifts focus a bit
from what its really about and you have to
choose what its about for you. You can be very
easily distracted by all of that stuff and you
have to just check in with yourself constantly
and know why you’re there and what you want
to take from it and what you won’t participate
in and try to enjoy it as much as you can. It’s
overwhelming and it’s a barrage, a tidal wave
of stuff to deal with. A lot of weird pressures.
Do you find directors who were actors tend to let the
actors tell the story more?
Yeah, and sometimes writers too. Like Ken
Lonergan (writer/director of You Can Count on
Me) who had never made a movie in his life,
who’d never been on a movie set, had an
instinctive understanding of how to translate
his material from one medium to the next.
You were talking before about how some directors let the
camera linger and let the actors act. Are there any
directors who you think get it?
Clint Eastwood. Clint gets it. Peter Weir does.
Bill Condon does. Of the recent films I’ve shot
I can’t comment on because I haven’t seen
what they’ll be brave enough to leave in and
what they’ll cut out. The European directors
tend to get it.
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magazines
The Battle for
“Larry Silverstein Place”
Inside Esquire Magazine’s Exclusive
In-Depth Coverage of the
World Trade Center Rebuilding
The Insiders Look (L to R):
Esquire’s editor-in-chief, David Granger; staff writer Scott Raab; Executive Editor Mark Warren
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Mark, what possessed you—as Executive Editor—to
take on such a massive serialization? (Scott and David
make clear that this project was your idea.) You’re
essentially putting a book into a magazine, without
excerpting—I’m sure a book will come out of it.
Warren: Basically, and there certainly can be
more [than is printed in the magazine] in a
book, because for every piece, Scott does three
or four times as much reporting. We just
decided that whatever happens Downtown is
an epic American story, and somebody ought
to do it, and it ought to be us.
But why Esquire?
Warren: Because we know something about
long-form narrative nonfiction. The sixteen
acres Downtown [in what used to be the World
Trade Center] is some of the most contested
real estate on earth. What happened down
there—everything about it—what happened to
it on September 11th [2001], the fact that it’s
in New York City, the fact that real estate in
New York City is precious, the fact that
anytime anyone aspires to do something great
there are always people shooting at them. And
everyone, given the symbolic nature of that
ground—what was there, what happened
there, and what has resulted since September
11th in the world—just means that that space,
and what happens there, there’s a great tension
to it.
And that’s not even regarding the fact
that just building something great, in and of
itself, without the political significance, is just
inherently interesting. How it happens; the
mechanics of it. Physically how one prepares
and manipulates the earth to build a
mammoth structure is just interesting. It’s a
great, great story.
[Before our questions begin, Mark takes a call from
Scott, speaking on developments in the political
wrangling over the World Trade Center site. The oneside of the conversation we could hear:]
“This just today?…Jesus…Well, it only
heightens, it only increases the power of the
story, I think. It’s damn interesting. What
funny, it’s almost laughable: what’s $500
million to a guy who pays $12 million a month
By Jonathon Scott Feit
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magazines
in rent, anyway? …It’s so weird. It’s just a
public relations battle, right?”
You say that “anytime you have a good idea in New
York, people get shot at.” Who’s been shooting at
you—what’s been the negative response to your
coverage? Who has said, “Why Esquire”—why a
men’s magazine, even though you are a classic brand?
Warren: What I was talking about is not so
much the obstacles that we have faced, but the
obstacles when one presumes to do something
really big and ambitious in New York,
especially on that sixteen acres.
Raab:
The only thing directly that I
can tie to that is that some of the people
involved in the effort of rebuilding, you know,
the Times should really be doing something like
this. I haven’t run into anyone who’s said
“How dare you” or “Why Esquire?” And so far
I haven’t heard anything along the lines of
“This is a very sensitive subject, that therefore
you need to approach it in a different way.”
It’s funny, ‘cause in live in North Jersey
close enough to the city, my concern would be
that people here are not paying attention
anymore and perhaps would not think that
[the World Trade Center rebuilding] would
merit this kind of project. What else would
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Citizen Culture
you expect but that it would lead to all kinds of
politics and delay and, you know, a shrug of
the shoulders. That kind of negativity, but I
haven’t heard that either.
Warren: Our focus from the very beginning
was that we were interested in and mindful of
the politics of all this. That just what Scott
and I were just talking about (on the phone):
the politics are reaching a fever pitch right
now. Knife fights over the ownership of what’s
going on down there. Not so much Freedom
Tower, but everything else that’s happening at
the site.
So we’re going to be mindful of that,
but that wasn’t going to be our primary focus.
Our primary focus was everything to do with
the building of this massive structure, this one
signature structure. What’s going on under the
ground, what’s going on to prepare the ground,
and just how you build one of these bastards,
especially when there are all these other
pressures brought to bear on you.
Has something happened that’s particularly
newsworthy, that we can announce before your next
segment comes out?
Raab:
This week [the 1st week of
February], any pretense of amity or amity or
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“I love Larry Silverstein as a character; I
admire certain qualities about him and all
that. But to me, you can't look at anyone
involved in all this and say, ‘There's the
knight coming to the rescue of the World
Trade Center rebuilding.’ At this point,
everyone is trying to make everyone else
look as venal as possible.” ~ Scott Raab
cooperation, any pretense—the last shred of
any public appearance of cooperation or
productive negotiation has dropped away
completely now. Mayor Bloomberg has
essentially called out Larry Silverstein as a
profiteer who’s doomed to failure if he doesn’t
give us his rights as a leaseholder. But doomed
to failure only in the sense that he’ll default on
building out the entire site and walk away with
half a billion dollars. Up until this point,
there’s at least been the sense that people are
staking out positions with some eye to working
things through, where now it seems like the
showdown at high noon politically.
Speaking to the logistics behind this, can you give me
some idea of what it takes internally, in terms of phone
calls, in terms of politicking on your own part to sit
down and open up to you in any kind of frank way,
without having their spin doctors in the room. Or did
they have spin doctors in the room, and attorneys, saying
what you can and can’t write?
Raab:
It’s never reached that level, but
partly because, on the one hand with City
Hall, they’ve just stonewalled. The Port
Authority [of New York and New Jersey] too.
They at best have played along with requests
for interviews by saying “We’ll get back to
you.” As far as City Hall and the Port
Authority go, there really is no “there” in
terms of cooperation. They just absolutely
refuse to sit down and talk. They’re not
interested—and this is true, to a large degree,
for the newspapers as well…but you have a
couple reporters, one for the New York Times,
this great reporter named David Dunlap, who I
believe gets sporadic access to the Port
Authority. The Port Authority doesn’t even
want anyone visiting the site. The Port
Authority doesn’t even address requests for
interviews, even when it’s conveyed through the
Silverstein people—their tenant and business
partner.
At City Hall, I’ve requested—I’ve sent
weeks’ [worth]—from a woman named
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Jennifer Falk, a contact person at City Hall,
trying to arrange a sit-down not with the
Mayor himself, but with his deputy Dan
Doctoroff, his economic development guy.
Nothing, nada. This was post-Olympics; it was
pre-and post election. I’ve always been
accommodating, not confrontational about it,
but it’s consistently been a case of there
[being] no upside for the Port Authority or for
City Hall to sit down with me or really to give
anyone ongoing access. So most of what I’ve
been able to glean is either deeply sourced—
not people who are speaking freely, and who
aren’t necessarily privy to what’s going on
today—or people on the Silverstein side who
don’t use me as a conduit.
The best reporter—I’m not sure what
his contacts are at Silverstein but he’s
consistently calling it straight, but also making
it clear that he’s pro-Silverstein in this
particular affair. He’s a guy at the New York
Post, Steve Cuozzo—another guy with whom
I’ve never spoken but who does a great job of
parsing all this very directly.
They don’t see a benefit to speaking with Esquire? Or
there’s no upside to stonewalling you?
Raab:
I think they figure either we’ll go
away or there’s nothing for them to gain by
68
speaking to us, because after all, there are no
heroes in this. I love Larry Silverstein as a
character; I admire certain qualities about him
and all that. But to me, you can’t look at
anyone involved in all this and say, “There’s
the knight coming to the rescue of the World
Trade Center rebuilding.” At this point,
everyone is trying to make everyone else look
as venal as possible.
Warren: It must also be said that, not so
much the Port Authority but the City doesn’t
actually have any power greater than public
relations and public relations assaults in the last
couple of days because Larry Silverstein owns
the lease on the place. Until it’s wrested from
his cold, dead hands, it’s his to rebuild. And I
guess that actually might happen!
Larry Silverstein is in his seventies, right? Is there any
concern about legacy, or wanting to get this done while
he’s still alive to see it? You would think that it’s so
much of a nightmare anyway that everyone would want
to work together. I mean, it’s called “The Freedom
Tower.” It’s not called “Larry Silverstein Place,” or
the “New York City…anything.” I’d imagine that for
a magazine of your size, it’s probably an odd thing to
not get access.
Warren: We’ve been telling the story instead
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through the people who have actually been
doing something, which is Silverstein and
David Childs, his designer, and there have been
dynamic tensions—in the second installment of
the series—between them, even. That’s been
our interest: who are the prime
movers down there. The Port
Authority: sort of the phantom
agency. And the City, which
really has no direct authority and
is therefore kind of feckless. So
we’ve been actually focusing on,
who the hell is actually going to
do this? They’re the right focus
for our series.
Raab:
In broad terms,
there are two levels—in terms of
getting it shaped up for a
magazine feature, and in looking
at it in a more global sense. This
includes the idea of legacy or
access. On one level, and the
most important one for us but
sometimes the hardest, is to be
consistent, partly because you get
sucked up into the nature of the
political process and its impact on
the building process.
But on the basic, most
importantly level is: on these sixteen acres, at
this point in American history, how the hell are
you going to build a super-tall skyscraper?
Literally, how are you going to build it, over a
working railroad, seventy feet below grade with
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the Hudson River a couple hundred feet away.
That stuff—not just in terms of the design and
the architecture, but in terms of the building
and testing the bedrock—I’ve come to see is
inherently fascinating, and the people who do
it are great characters.
What are your feelings when you walk down to this
place? It sounded more like poetry than prose insofar as
you cover such a broad swath of emotions that it’s up to
the reader to come away with a mournful feeling or a
hopeful feeling, or shock and dismay or empathy at the
politics. What do you feel about your responsibility and
editorial role?
Raab:
I think it’s a lot more
organic…There’s a shared passion and vision
and in this case, it’s a tough balance—and I’m
not talking about between writer and editor,
Mark and me.
I mean between the kind of cynicism—
I can’t think of a better word—that comes
along with looking at a story and realizing,
number one, the decisions that are going to be
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made, the negotiations that are taking place
about every subject from what material will
surround that huge concrete base to whose
going to build out Buildings 3 and 4. These
are battles being played behind closed doors
and the people that are going to make these
decisions that are going to impact all of our
lives, and our children and grandchildren.
We’re basically powerless to understand all the
nuances of—much less effect—the outcome.
That can take away from the poignancy or the
beauty or the hope that out of what happened
on September 11th, something meaningful in a
positive sense, something that really does
represent the best of the American spirit, that
that will emerge.
I think for Mark, but certainly for me,
it’s kind of like, “Wow, these politics, this is
fascinating!” The battles that are being
waged—we may not be privy to all the details,
we may not be able to affect the outcome, or
raise a cry or any of that. But it’s still
interesting as hell being a part of the narrative
structure of any one feature about this, and
can you do that and balance internally and on
the page—because I don’t think you can have
one without the other.
Can I come to terms emotionally; can I
maintain some of that sense of “Boy, this is a
very privileged spot on earth and I—and we,
as a magazine—are in a very privileged
position because we do get time down there,
and time with some of the players and a lot of
time with a few of the players. Can we
balance both?
In other words, can we talk about it in
terms of the—again, venal—the horrible
politics of it, the small-mindedness of it, the
scheming end of it? Can that coexist in the
world and on the page with, “Wow, this is a
hallowed spot; this is really a great thing that
working people—people who know things
about engineering, who know about drilling
core samples from bedrock, who know things
about putting steel together—
I’m not comfortable with the herovillain thing, but you’re reducing everyone to a
character anyway that you’re using, but can
you still maintain some semblance of passion
and hope. And I’m not saying it’s easy, but of
course: it’s a wonderful story.
I don’t think of myself as naïve, but I’m
not cynical about it in large, and I’m really
blessed to work with an editor who isn’t cynical
either and who keeps talking about the
privilege of doing the story and the importance
of keeping the focus on the immediacy of
what’s happening on the ground, not just
what’s happening in the offices on the higher
floors of certain buildings.
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PROPAGANDA:
Po s t e r s , C a r t o o n s and Po l i t i c s
LIKE MILLIONS, I AM SHOCKED BY THE ONGOING VIOLENCE PROTESTING THE
DANISH CARTOONS DEPICTING THE PROPHET MOHAMMED.
As of this writing, dozens of people
have been killed in Africa, Asia and the Middle
East, including at least twenty-four in Nigeria,
eleven in Libya, and ten in Afghanistan.
Embassies have been attacked and mosques
burned. eleven journalists in five countries will
likely be prosecuted for reprinting the
cartoons. Warnings have been issued for
Danish travelers to avoid Indonesia. Millions
have taken to the streets—violently or
peacefully—from London to Islamabad to
display their anger. Most incredible is the fact
that millions of people across national borders
and language barriers have all had the same
reaction; they are unified in their outrage.
How have mere drawings inflamed millions of
people in disparate places and caused them to
band together?
An exhibition on propaganda art
currently at Florida International University’s
Wolfsonian museum in Miami is an
appropriate backdrop for answering this
question. The exhibition, Revolutionary Tides:
The Art of the Political Poster, 1914 – 1989,
began at The Cantor Art Center at Stanford
University last autumn, and runs until July 30,
2006 in Miami at the Wolfsonian. Featured are
political posters and sculptures from multiple
Eastern and Western countries from the First
World War through the Cold War and up to the
fall of the Berlin Wall. The exhibition tracks
the development of a common visual lexicon
for casting the masses as global political
agents.
Over 100 works from the poster
collections of the Hoover Institution at
Stanford and The Wolfsonian, including rare
Iranian posters from the 1970s and posters in
divergent styles by John Heartfield and
Norman Rockwell, comprise the exhibition.
Organized into three main groupings
(“Figures,” “Numbers,” and “Symbols”), the
exhibition tracks more than a politics-based
visual language. The “Figures” portion
focuses on the graphic elements of the artwork,
whereas the “Numbers” segment looks at how
quantity is integral to political power during
the 20th century. “Symbols” brings together
the first two sections and elaborates further; it
investigates the dialogues between images of
the masses and related icons that represent the
group or political party.
By Molly Klais
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politics
The tradition of political posters and
street protests, developed over hundreds of
years and honed during the 20th century, helps
explain why Muslims have reacted so strongly
to the Danish cartoons: the cartoons have been
interpreted like propaganda posters. The
images are clear, words are kept to only the
most essential, and political issues are stripped
of their complexities. They use bold, attention
attracting colors and clear lines so that with
even a slight glance the viewer notices and
understands the message.
In the case of the Danish cartoons, the artists
have manipulated the symbol of the prophet
Mohammed, so dear to Muslims worldwide.
In the most-discussed cartoon, Mohammed
sports a bomb-shaped turban complete with
burning fuse. As with many of the posters in
the Wolfsonian exhibition, the message is clear
with or without text.
For instance, one American poster from
1942 depicts an anonymous “everyman” bent
over with back exposed. Above him, a large
hand holds a red branding iron shaped like a
swastika, surrounded by yellow flames. Two
words are printed in black block letters:
“Prevent This.” The simple image easily
conveys the message and the clear wording
drives it home. The Danish cartoons are just
as simple in their imagery, and even more
simply produced. They are, philologically,
propaganda. It is doubtful that the Danish
cartoonists and newspaper editors intended
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this; instead, national and local leaders have
appropriated the images and used them to
catalyze national and local groups far outside
the borders of Denmark.
The cartoons play on widely held biases
and fears. They speak to an existing niche of
prejudice hidden within what has turned out to
be the far-reaching multitudes in Africa, Asia,
and Europe. Truth and justice are of secondary
concern, because the images’ shock factor
precludes further thought for many of the
outraged. As Michael Kimmelman of the New
York Times pointed out, the Abu Ghraib
photographs did not provoke such widespread
street protests, and they documented
horrifically real torture. Those photographs
show mistreatment of living people with faces,
bodies, and families, not a physically
intangible prophet. Perhaps since the Abu
Ghraib photographs themselves increased
tensions amongst Muslims to the point where
the Danish cartoons sparked an explosive
release. Or perhaps the totemic power of such
a holy figure as Muhammed prevailed.
Totems, the central devotional symbols
of a culture, play an integral role in
propaganda. During war and social turmoil,
their role in mobilizing the public, suppressing
dissonance, and furnishing comfort increases
substantially. In such difficult times, people
are more susceptible to being affected—
positively or negatively—by familiar images.
Perhaps that is why the American military is
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CARTOONS PLAY ON WIDELY HELD
BIASES AND FEARS. THEY SPEAK TO
AN EXISTING NICHE OF PREJUDICE.
against photographing the flag-draped coffins
of deceased soldiers. The government
recognizes the power of such images, the
likelihood that they would greatly affect
numerous people and unite them in anger.
In the Revolutionary Tides exhibition
catalogue, curator Jeffrey T. Schnapp questions
whether “the age of the political poster [has]
passed with the rise of media that no longer
require mass assemblies in city streets and
public squares.” The cartoon episode has
proven that to be far from the truth. Images
can be disseminated at rapid rates via the
Internet and cell phones; such technologies
have fueled street protests against the cartoons.
The (now former) Italian ambassador to Syria
made T-shirts featuring the cartoons. He even
wore one on television, spreading the offensive
images to an even larger audience. And people
died because of it. In today’s world, with so
many surfaces on which to place images, the
political poster is far from outdated.
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portfolio
Where there Once was a
Curtain. . . Inside Post-Soviet Moldova
Text and Photographs
By Igor Finkel
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Left: Old Soviet symbols are seen almost everywhere in the republic. This giant hammer and
sickle is located at the entrance of one of Transdniestria's largest manufacturing plants,
Electromash, in Tiraspol, the capitol of Pridnjestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika, also known as
PMR or Transdniestria.
Above: The Transdniestrian government building in Tiraspol. Unlike in many former Soviet
Republics the statue of Lenin is still standing tall and proud in PMR.
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Top left: War Memorial and Eternal Flame in Bendery, the only Transdniestran town on the
right, western bank of the river Nistru (Dniestr), which separates Moldova and PMR.
Bottom left: An employee of Electromash is doing his best to pose for a photograph at work.
Above: Not many people in Transdniestria can afford a car. Some commute the old fashion
way.
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portfolio
Top right: A view of the Noul Neamt Monastery in Chitcani from its bell tower. After the
collapse of the Soviet Union the gates of religious freedom were flung open and the people of
PMR restored old monasteries and churches, which were previously shut down by the
Communists.y.
Bottom right: The artist with Igor N. Smirnov, President of PMR, passionately discussing the
tensions between Moldova and Transdniestria during a meeting with Yakov Tsysin, one of the
original Transdniestrian separatists. President Smirnov assumed the office of President of the
Republic on 1 December 1991, a month before the official collapse of the Soviet Union.
Transdniestria has held three presidential elections since 1991, the results of which have not been
recognized by any country, other than itself.
Above: Transdniestrian “babushkas” waiting for a bus near one of the street markets in
Tiraspol. Sharing recipes and rumors, perfect end to a cold March dayway.
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Spinning The Sacred Thread
SOON AFTER MY MARRIAGE ENDED, my aged
mother suggested that I undergo the
upanayanam, the sacred thread ceremony. I
was speechless. Even the raggedy knowledge I
had of Hinduism is clear on the subject—the
upanayanam should be performed between the
ages of nine and thirteen and in no case later
than sixteen years. I was thirty-five and
divorced.
“We'll keep it private,” she said. “Just close
relatives.”
A picture popped up in my mind—cousins,
uncles and aunts, crowding about me during
the ceremony, whispering amongst themselves.
"Well, he has finally come back to his senses
after all these years out of our community."
(My ex was a Roman Catholic.)
Mother pressed on. “Just remember, unless
you wear the sacred thread, you won't be
allowed to perform the final rites in the event
of my, or your father's death. One of your
brothers-in-law would have to light the pyre.” I
didn't like it at all, the possibility of such a
deprivation, a brother-in-law taking my place
and reciting all the mantras for the ascension
of my parent's soul to His domain.
Father didn't say anything. Perhaps he
didn't care, or thought it all meaningless. He
was a journalist. Yes, he did perform the
obligatory poojas during festivals like Rama
Navami and Gokulashtami, but it was Mother
who exhibited strong religious habits—
attending discourses on Bhagavad Gita in
temple courtyards, watching godly shows on
TV and fasting on Fridays for our family's well
being.
After procrastinating for a month, I said I
would undergo the ceremony at home; only my
sisters and their husbands and children were to
be invited, no one else. Mother agreed. The
upanayanam was conducted on a nippy Sunday
morning. An old priest rattled off the verses as
if he were late for more important assignments.
Father sat through it all stoically; Mother
By Ramesh Avadhani
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A view of the mass upanayanam ceremony.
beamed with pride my sisters and their
husbands wore solemn expressions. And, I
confess, I felt just as Mother predicted—a
wholesome satisfaction; I had finally become a
pure Brahmin. I got to light my father's pyre
when he died two years back.
Some questions, though, remained at the
back of my mind. I had gone through the
upanayanam, but how much did I really
understand it? What did the sacred thread
symbolize? What was the essence of all the
rituals in Sanskrit?
Then I received an invitation from a friend
of my father, Mr Shivashankar Shastry, to
attend a mass upanayanam. His son was one of
the eight boys undertaking the ceremony.
The venue was the Badaganadu Sangha, a
society well known for its social welfare
activities in Bangalore. Shastry stood near the
gates, receiving guests. He was clad in a silk
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dhoti and a kurta, both in cream color.
His dark face glowed with the pride of
one who has organized a momentous
occasion. I commented on it.
“Yes, this is a happy day for me,” he
said, with a broad smile. “My son was
initially reluctant, but I convinced him.”
“Nowadays, the young seem to have
lost interest in such ceremonies, haven't
they?” I said.
He shrugged. “Actually, it depends
on the elders. I believe in keeping alive
our tradition. So, naturally I would do
everything in my power to pass it on to my
children. Some people attribute the waning of
our traditional practices to modern lifestyles,
the impact of TV, the lure of Western culture
and so on. It's the way of the world, people say.
What can you do about it?”
“So, you don't agree?”
“Perhaps we can't live in isolation and keep
our culture pure, especially in these days of
electronic communications. But, even if you
indulge in aspects of other cultures, is it
difficult to set aside some time for our own
time-honored practices? Our ancients
formulated them after a lot of thought; how
can you dismiss them as irrelevant? What do
you lose in a few minutes of prayer and
meditation? On the contrary, you benefit a lot.
You can view life with a calmer perspective.
You will make fewer mistakes, less harm to
yourself.”
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“Don't you think elders are less
respected these days, which is why perhaps
the young are veering away on paths they
think more right, more lucrative?”
“My point is, if elders at home follow
such practices, there is a good chance that
youngsters would be influenced. Don't
forget, all sons have a secret desire to
imitate the father, to even better him. So,
the example has to be there to spark
emulation.”
“Where is your son? I want to talk to
him,” I said.
“Avinash is getting ready. You can sit with
us and watch the ceremony. If you have
questions, he would be happy to answer them.”
We looked at the huge pandal put up in the
quadrangle. The cloth tent, open on all four
sides, had an attractive design in red, yellow
and green. Beneath, parents attired in crisp
silks prepared their pooja items—fruits, silver,
pictures of Gods, incense, coconuts, mango
leaves, camphor, betel leaves and other things.
Two men swept the ground. Another man was
setting bricks in small squares, for the sacred
fire. Priests moved about, gesticulating. Their
heads were half shaven and their foreheads
marked by three horizontal lines in chalk - the
announcement of the Brahmin.
Shastry glanced at his watch. “The
ceremony will start in half an hour. Have some
coffee. The kitchen is at the right.”
Avinash (center) watches as his parents
propitiate the sacred fire. The priest recites
Vedic verses.
After coffee, I met Gopalkrishna, of the
Badaganadu Society. A sales officer in a
government establishment, he works for the
Society on a voluntary basis. “The word
upanayanam means 'taking near,'" he told me.
"In ancient times, the father took the boy near
the guru for knowledge of the Vedas. Even
today the Vedas are the gateway to the
knowledge of the Absolute, the way to come
near His feet. So, the ceremony signals the
commencement of Brahmacharya, or
studentship.”
“And only Brahmins can undergo this?” I
asked.
“No. No. Even Khastriyas and Vaishyas
can, but not the Sudras. Unless the
upanayanam is done, the boy is considered to
be a Sudra, the lowest of the four classes. This
ceremony brings about the boy's second birth,
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'dvija,' the spiritual birth. He receives
his community's sanction to study the
sacred texts. But nowadays very few go
in that direction. What people
generally draw from the ceremony is
that the boy is formally given the
privileges of his caste. He is treated
with respect during auspicious
occasions. He has the approval to take
over as the head of the family in case
his father dies. He is authorized to seek
help from relatives in times of crises.
He can perform poojas. And he gets to
perform the final rites when his parents die.”
He went on to explain the preliminary
steps of the upanayanam. “A muhurta, or
auspicious hour, is selected during a particular
season. For a Brahmin the upanayanam is
performed in spring, for a Kshatriya in the
summer, and for a Vaishya in the autumn.
That is the general rule, but it is not rigidly
followed.”
On the morning of the ceremony, the boy
traditionally has a bath and, garbed only in a
loincloth, taken to the priest. The priest
accepts him as a disciple by offering him
another cloth to cover his upper body. The
priest then ties a girdle around the boy's waist.
This is to protect his loincloth, his chastity.
I went to meet Avinash to see if he was so
dressed. He was clad in a full-length silk dhoti
instead of the loincloth. However, he had a silk
sheet, the angostram, draped over his torso.
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Brahmopadesam.
The father secretly recites the powerful and sacred
Gayatri mantra to his son.
Round his neck hung two gold chains, shining
in the morning light. Lean and dark with large
eyes, his smooth face still showed the down of
raw youth on either cheek. He squatted crosslegged in front of the square of bricks that was
now filled with earth. His father was seated to
his left, his mother to the right. Cousins and
aunts huddled behind. Alongside were the
seven other families with their vatus, boys
undergoing the ceremony. A quick glance
confirmed that Avinash, at fourteen, was the
youngest vatu. The others were easily between
twenty and thirty. Just as Gopalkrishna
lamented, they submitted to the ceremony only
a few days before their marriage.
I asked Avinash what he thought would be
the main benefit from this ceremony.
“I will be able to concentrate better on my
studies,” he said.
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Did he have any reservations in
undergoing this ceremony?
“No.”
Surely, he had many friends who wore the
sacred thread?
“A few.”
What else did he think he could benefit
from the upanayanam?
“It will give me proper guidance. To walk
on the correct path.”
Would he perform the daily rituals of
prayers?
“Yes. My father does the
sandhyavandanam. So I too will do it—the
worship of the sun, the reciting of the sacred
Gayatri mantra.”
Just then the priest arrived, a young lean
man in a cotton dhoti and a sheet of white
cloth over his shoulders. He looked simple and
serious, the man of learning. He leafed
through a tattered volume, stopped at a page
and started reciting Vedic verses. He blessed
the fireplace with turmeric and vermilion
powders and sprinkled holy water on all the
articles brought by the parents. He dipped a
few mango leaves in the holy water and
sprinkled it on all of us as a symbolic
purification. Finally, he bade the father join
him in preparing the sacred fire by placing
twigs in the square of bricks and lighting the
wood with lit camphor. As the flames grew,
smoke issued forth, and we tried not to cough
or cry. The priest continued reciting from his
book without blinking or coughing. He then
delved in his little bag and brought out the
sacred thread.
Tradition dictates that the priest makes the
thread during the course of the ceremony.
Nowadays, however, the thread is made in
advance. As we watched, the priest handed the
thread to Shastry to place it over Avinash's
head. Then reciting mantras, the priest
signaled for the thread to be eased down so
that it hung across Avinash's chest from his left
shoulder. All of us blessed the boy by throwing
turmeric-coated rice on him.
What exactly is the sacred thread? It
comprises nine strands fashioned into three
long threads, each folded thrice over and
knotted. Each knot symbolizes respect to an
honorable ancestor. The length of the thread is
said to be ninety-six times the breadth of four
fingers of a man, which in turn equals his
height. Each finger represents one of the four
states of consciousness a man experiences:
waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and the
transcendental. The thread also represents the
three foremost qualities permeating the
universe: passion, representing Brahma the
Creator; reality, representing Vishnu the
Protector; and darkness, representing Shiva the
Destroyer. The three folds in each thread also
serve as a reminder to the boy of his three
everlasting debts—to the gods, to the gurus,
and to his forefathers.
Depending on the activity, the ancient
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texts prescribe that the thread be worn
differently. During an auspicious occasion like
a religious festival or a marriage, the thread is
worn in the normal manner--across the chest
from the left shoulder. For the funeral rites, the
thread is reversed—across the chest from the
right shoulder. During physical activity, the
thread should hang down from the neck like a
garland. When bathing or defecating, the
thread is to be looped securely around the left
ear.
The ceremony continued. The priest
recited mantras and asked Avinash to repeat
them after him. While doing so, Avinash
imitated the priest—touching the region of his
heart to symbolize harmony and sympathy
with all life; touching his ears, mouth and eyes,
to promise that hereafter he would listen, speak
and observe carefully and distinguish right
from wrong; touching the top of his head to
symbolize he would embrace good thoughts.
Avinash then stood upon a small slab of stone
to signify that he would imbibe its firmness. He
was then given a spoonful of curds, which he
ate after paying it obeisance. It signified that
hereafter he would keep his mind clear and
ingest what he was taught. Avinash was then
bid to revere the holy fire by circumambulating
it thrice. Next, he was taken outside the tent to
gaze up at the sun through a small aperture
formed by criss-crossing his fingers. This part
demonstrated that his quest for knowledge
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Citizen Culture
should be like the light of the sun, allpervading and ever bright.
The climax of the ceremony was the
recitation one of the holiest of passages from
the Hindu scriptures—the Gayatri Mantra.
Literally, Gayatri means "that which protects the
one who chants." When chanted regularly and
with intense devotion, the sacred mantra helps
the chanter to realize his true self, the atman,
the knowledge of the Supreme Truth, called
the Brahman. The priest bid the father and the
son to cover their heads with a cloth and
repeat the mantra after him. This secretive
cloaking is to prevent unfit people from
overhearing the mantra. This part of the
ceremony is actually called Brahmopadesham, or
Brahma's counsel. It is only after learning the
mantra that the boy is accepted as dvija.
At this point, the priest asked Shastry to
put questions to Avinash. The boy had to
answer them all unvaryingly, as prescribed by
the sacred texts.
“Are you a brahmachari now?” asked the
father.
“Bhaadam,” replied the son. The word is
Sanskrit for “Yes.”
“Will you perform the sandhyavandanam
and all other ceremonies regularly?”
“Bhaadam.”
“Will you perform your prescribed duties
towards your parents?”
“Bhaadam.”
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“Will you respect your mother forever?”
“Bhaadam.”
“Will you even resort to begging to take
care of us in our old age?”
“Bhaadam.”
“Will you see that you don't sleep, at least
during the day, in the pursuit of all these
activities?”
“Bhaadam.”
“Will you concentrate on acquiring
wisdom and not fall prey to wrong activities?”
“Bhaadam.”
The ceremony concluded with the
pradakshina, the philosophy of begging.
Avinash was asked to live on the charity of
society, and later repay this debt by giving alms
to other students when he became a
householder. Avinash symbolically begged by
spreading out a piece of cloth. His refrain was
“bhavati bhiksham dehi”—"Whichever honorable
person is present, please give alms." We lined
up to give him handfuls of rice and blessed
him by applying the red tilak on his forehead.
The philosophy of begging holds that one
needs to imbibe humility and quell the ego, to
view all humanity, nay all life, as equal in His
eyes.
I bid farewell to Avinash and his parents. I
would like to think that my participation
brought them added joy, the way Shastry held
on to my hands even as I told him that I was
late for another appointment. As I came away
Shastry watches as his wife shares the
symbolic “last meal” with Avinash before his
“departure” on a life as a Brahmacharya.
from the venue, I couldn't help but wonder:
how strange, even ironic, it was that everything
seemed to be happening in reverse gear in my
own life—upanayanam at age thirty-five, after a
divorce, and this interest in traditional beliefs
and practices at age forty-five. Surely, there's a
message (or two) there somewhere.
Interactivity:
Get the most out of your
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CCM
ALBUM PICKS
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Show Your Bones
Interscope/Polydor
March 28
Karen O, the charismatic lead singer of
&
lines
Double Bill
Stars and The Elected join forces in Chicago
for a Rockin' Show.
New York's Yeah Yeah Yeahs, channels
Chrisse Hynde, Debbie Harry, and Joan Jett
into her bluesy, erratic vocals; while
drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick
Zinner lay down heavy punk sounds with
enough flair to make Lou Reed smile. The
band's 2003 major label debut, Fever To Tell,
was one of the best records to come out in
recent memory. The word on the street is
true: sophomore album Show Your Bones does
indeed deviate from the sound of Fever To
Tell, but the result is an even stronger and
more mature effort. This band is just
beginning to flex their muscle. Standouts
include "Gold Lion", "Cheated Hearts" and
"Warrior."
90
BEFORE OPENING ACT THE ELECTED or
headliner Stars played even one note of their
sold out show at Chicago's renowned Metro,
my night was off to a fortuitous start. In a
neighborhood restaurant before the concert, I
found a laminated all-access pass for Stars that
someone had left behind. Now, if only the
show could live up to its billing. Los Angeles
based The Elected opened the night with their
70s inspired sunny pop music, with lead singer
(and Rilo Kiley guitarist) Blake Sennett belting
out “Do Me Good” with soulful gusto. The
band drew mainly from its new release Sun,
By Garin Pirnia
Citizen Culture
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&
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lists
Sun, Sun; they soon went on to play “The Bank
and Trust” and an electrifying rendition of
“Not Going Home,” which Sennett dedicated
to Stars—it was the bands last night playing
together. “Fireflies in a Steel Mill” sounded
robust, and Sennett and band mates jammed
classic rock-style to end their set with a bang.
Between sets I tried out my pass. I
ventured into a green room area that contained
nothing more than several couches. This was
no raucous party—or even a place of high
energy—everyone seemed very friendly, almost
too “normal;” the personable Sennett and I
discussed the ridiculously cold Chicago winter
night, and right before Stars headed for the
stage, lead singer Torquil Campbell mentioned
that they are the only band to hit the stage five
minutes early. Scintillating stuff. The four band
members—Campbell, Amy Milan, Chris
Seligman and Evan Cranley (who also plays in
Broken Social Scene)—joined a violinist,
drummer and another guitarist on stage and
opened with the light “Theme from Stars,” a
track from an earlier EP. Their next song, “Set
LL Cool J
Todd Smith
Def Jam
March 21
Don't be fooled playa. LL Cool J may be
pushing 40 years old, but he is still one of
the big reasons hip-hop and rap enjoy the
popularity that they do today. Forget the
Hollywood resume, but don't forget that LL
gave Def Jam Records their first bona fide
hit. In between the acting and ventures like
helping to create the fashion line FUBU, L's
put out some pretty great music. His 11th
studio album features collaborations with
Pharell Williams, Juelz Sanana, Teairra
Mari, Ginuwine, Mary J. Blige, 112, Mary
Mary Mary, Ryan Toby, Freeway, and some
chick named Jennifer Lopez. Standouts
include "Control Myself", "Best Dress" and
"What You Want."
Morrissey
Ringleader Of The Tormentors
Sanctuary/Attack
April 4
Morrissey's publicist recently described his
new album as "the most full-on rock record
Morrissey's ever done. It's a balls-to-the-wall
rock record, not a slow one like the last
one." Excuse me, I laugh myself into tears
every time I read that. It seems hiring a
former Pearl Jam drummer has allowed the
Pope of Mope to express the inner hard
rocker hiding under that pompadour all
these years. Actually, the album is a lot
edgier than some of the Mozfather's
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previous efforts, it's just that the subject
matter hasn't changed at all. Morrissey is
still singing about the same things he sang
about 15 years ago. Thank goodness he has
those beautiful pipes and that gorgeous
command of language to fall back on .
Standouts include "You Have Killed Me,"
"The Youngest Was The Most Loved" and
"Dear God Please Help Me.”
The Flaming Lips
At War With The Mystics
Warner Brothers
April 4
The Flaming Lips have always been
Alternative pioneers, and if you've never
seen them perform live, you really need to
get your priorities in order. Their live show
can at times feature complex lighting
displays, puppets, and even people in
animal mascot suits. Oh, and their music is
really good too. Largely ignored in the
1990s, the Lips have enjoyed recent success,
scoring songs on soundtracks to movies like
Yourself on Fire,” from their third album
(which bears the same excellent name), was
much more upbeat and allowed the show to
ascend. The set alternated between placid and
melodic pop songs and louder fare drawn from
all three of their albums. In Stars, every
member was adept, as usual, at their
instruments. Midway through the performance,
they dedicated a cover of “Hungry Heart” to
the Elected. Later on, they played one of their
saddest songs, “Your Ex-Lover is Dead,” with
Milan's cherubic voice adding emotional
intensity. On the last song before the encore,
The Elected joined Stars on stage to say
goodbye. Stars returned for two more songs,
including the infectious “Elevator Love Song”
and “Calendar Girl.” On the latter, Campbell's
voice soared on the lyric “I'm alive” and the
attentive, indie-yuppie crowd screamed in
corresponding excitement. One of the few
noticeable absences from Stars' twenty-song set
was the magnificent “Look Up.” Stars is a
band that sounds better live, especially with two
equally talented vocalists on display. I'm not
sure that the concert lived up to my pre-show
excitement, and the backstage treatment was
anything but. Still, I haven't stopped listening
to “Calendar Girl” and some of the other Stars
tracks-and that means that I'll be there next
time they swing through Chicago, front and
center.
Austin Powers and Wedding Crashers, and even
landing a Coca-Cola commercial. At War
With The Mystics is a lot more guitar-
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Chicago, IL
Feb. 17th, 2006
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&
lines
lists Much More Than Luck
oriented than their last record, Yoshimi Battles
The Pink Robots, which really started to put
the band in the mainstream. Regardless,
An All-Star Cast Delivers Bite to
This Crime Thriller
The Flaming Lips are masters of all things
sonic-and always worth checking out.
Standouts include "The Yeah Yeah Yeah
Song", "Mr. Ambulance Driver" and "The
THERE AREN'T MANY SURETIES about Lucky
Number Slevin, but one is that it is terribly titled.
Another is that the film is one slick piece of
entertainment. Josh Hartnett stars as Slevin,
the sarcastic slacker at the center of director
Paul McGuigan's mistaken-identity crime film.
Shortly after being mugged, Slevin is abducted
from his friend Nick's apartment by a pair of
inept henchmen who work for a local crime
lord named The Boss. The Boss (Morgan
Freeman) informs 'Nick' that he has three days
to pay back $96,000 dollars, and that he'll have
to murder the gay son of The Boss's arch
nemesis The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) if he can't
pay off his debt in time. Ironically, both of the
warring gangsters rule their crime syndicates
from the safe confines of their penthouse
apartments across the street from one another.
Stanley Tucci and Lucy Liu costar; Tucci as a
cop who wants to catch Slevin and Liu as a
coroner who catches Slevin's eye.
From the opening beats of J. Ralph's
moody score during its visually dynamic
opening title sequence, Lucky Number Slevin
proves itself as a stylish, worthy entry in the
crime genre. McGuigan and screenwriter Jason
Smilovic waste no time, piling up four bodies in
the first five minutes as the film catches us up
on its significant back-story, which concerns a
W.A.N.D."
Jack De Voss
CCM
FILM PICKS
Brick's Emilie de Ravin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
share some face-time.
Brick
Focus Features
March 31
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a force to be
reckoned with. See last year's
underappreciated Mysterious Skin if you don't
believe us. This nifty film noir from firsttime director Rian Johnson stars Levitt as a
By Jeff Sneider
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high school student investigating a peer's
murder. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at
Sundance, this is one mystery not to miss.
V For Vendetta
Warner Bros.
March 17
The Wachowski Brothers are back…sort of.
The eccentric directing duo are credited
with only writing and producing this
adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel,
leaving the responsibility of yelling “Cut!”
to long-time first assistant director James
McTeigue. Originally scheduled for release
last November, the controversial story
follows V (Hugo Weaving), a political
terrorist who dares to question his own
fascist government, and Edie (Natalie
Portman), a woman he recruits to help him.
The actress famously shaved her head for
the role, and her commitment pays off.
Antiheroes have never been so heroic.
Failure to Launch
Paramount
March 10
A romantic comedy is all about the
characters and fortunately, Matthew
McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker are
as likable as it gets. The attractive pair
couldn't be more perfectly cast as a slacker
who still lives at home with his parents and
the woman who has to lure him out of the
house. Surprisingly, the film suffered its own
failure to launch when it was yanked from
an original Valentine's Day-ish release date.
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hot racing tip that winds up getting one man
and his family killed. Aside from that initial
setup, the only thing that's clear in this darkly
comic piece of film noir is that nothing is what
it seems. That much is established in an early
scene where a mysterious wheelchair-bound
gentleman named Smith (Bruce Willis) explains
the Kansas City Shuffle to an anonymous
young man at an airport.
Smilovic's tricky screenplay holds many
aces up its sleeve, and the dialogue snaps and
pops with clever one-liners. You'll understand
by the end why catchy snippets of dialogue like
the "Shmu" and the "Tall Knock" are lines that
successful attracted an ensemble cast of Oscarwinners and A-listers; Smilovic's witty writing
allows the experienced cast to really bite into
their roles. McGuigan and cinematographer
Peter Sova take advantage of the screenplay's
time-bending narrative, and the film's constant
flashbacks are effectively gritty. During the last
third of the film things really kick into high
gear, and the mood grows palpably darker.
Willis' supporting role suits him just fine
and allows him the chance to retain his
character's air of mystery and dry sense of
humor. Freeman and Kingsley are equally
mesmerizing in their scenery-chewing roles as
rival gangsters, each rife with their own set of
idiosyncrasies. Surprisingly however, it's
Hartnett who holds the film together. Never
entirely above suspicion, Slevin is the ultimate
wiseass. He plays the straight man so straight
and holds his cards so close to his chest that his
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disaffected slacker charm makes us
underestimate him. Although the story contains
some minor plot holes and is a little too
predictable at times, it genuinely had me on
more than one occasion. The filmmakers'
biggest flaw is insisting on the romance subplot
between Slevin and Liu's character, who are
little more than strangers. Their relationship
interrupts the narrative action, even if it's hard
to keep such a beautiful actress off screen.
Unfortunately, there's no room for her in the
story.
Lucky Number Slevin is a sharp thriller that
takes advantage of a top-notch cast, an aboveaverage connect-the-dots plot, and comic relief
interspersed between brief but brutal scenes of
violence. It's an accessible genre picture that
has all of the elements audiences expect and
enjoy, with a few surprises mixed in, courtesy of
Smilovic's smart script. The Weinstein
Company may well have its first bonafide hit
on its hands, because Lucky Number Slevin is a
sure bet for a fun time at the movies.
Presley Chweneyagae as thug with a heart Tsotsi.
Tsotsi
Miramax
February 24
Stories about criminals and their redemption
are nothing new, but writer/director Gavin
Hood's gritty adaptation of acclaimed South
African writer Athol Fugard's novel is
powerful stuff. Talented newcomer Presley
Chweneyagae stars as “Tsotsi” (a slang term
meaning black urban criminal), a thug
whose life changes when he steals a car—
and quickly finds a baby in the back seat.
The South African “Kwaito” soundtrack
and “Tsotsi-Taal” street language lends
authenticity to the film, and the visceral
ghetto setting of the Johannesburg township
Soweto is top notch. Official nomination in
the Academy Awards Foreign Language
Film Category.
Lucky Number Slevin
The Weinstein Company
March 31
The Hills Have Eyes
Fox Searchlight
March 10
Fresh off the acclaimed gore-fest High
Tension, director Alexander Aja dares to step
into the big shoes left behind by Wes
Craven. The master's 1977 original found an
unfortunate family getting stuck in the
middle of a desert occupied by cannibalistic
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mutants, and horror fans will be pleased to
know that the story has been faithfully
updated. It's yet another remake, but this
one, featuring “Lost” star Emile de Ravin,
packs a punch.
Thank You For Smoking
Fox Searchlight
March 17
This satire of the cigarette industry stars
Aaron Eckhart as a talking head who gets
paid to make up excuses for why his
company kills hundreds of thousands each
year. The film was a hit at Sundance and costars Mario Bello and Anchorman's David
Koechner as alcohol and tobacco reps, as
well as Rob Lowe and Katie Holmes. Firsttime director Jason Reitman has assembled
an impressive cast for this adaptation of
Christopher Buckley's best-selling novel.
Jeff Sneider with Theo
Mazumdar
Eat the
Document
Dana Spiotta
Scribner
96
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lists Counterculture,
Anyone?
Dana Spiotta's New Novel Traces the Lives of
Intertwined Political Activists Across Decades
EAT THE DOCUMENT BEGINS ON September 15,
1972, as twenty-two-year-old Mary Whittaker
sits alone in a motel room, gazing absently at
the TV. Mary is freshly showered. She has just
dyed her mousy-colored hair to blond. She's
trying to settle on a new name for herself.
Mary chooses “Caroline,” sealing the
transformation from her old life as a suburban
subversive activist to her new life as a fugitive
living underground in “smeary obscurity” and
“isolation.”
Caroline wonders about the fate of Bobby
DeSoto, her boyfriend and fellow subverter.
After their violent demonstration against
corporate America and its tacit manufacture of
noxious gases for military use in Vietnam,
Bobby went underground, too. “I'll get in
touch. I'll find you... when and if things [cool]
down,” Caroline remembers Bobby saying
before they separated.
Flash forward twenty-six years. It's 1998.
Fifteen-year-old Jason—a judicious aficionado
of 1960s and 1970s rock-and-rollis in his
bedroom listening to the Beach Boys' Smile. His
door is open. His mother stands in the
doorway, smiling. She is not mindful of Jason;
instead, she's pausing to listen to the music of
her generation. Jason's mother is Caroline, and
By Amy O’Loughlin
Citizen Culture
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they live in the suburbs of Seattle. Caroline has
never heard from Bobby.
Fifty-year-old Nash Davis is a loner who
exists “off the grid”—no telephone, bank
account, or health insurance. He manages
Prairie Fire Books, an eclectic emporium which
carries fringe texts that advocate “resisting
American hegemony... and embracing rebellion
and nonconformity of any stripe.” Hangers-on
at this Seattle bookstore include middletwenties “misfits,” “scragglers,” and pseudoprotestors who organize into “collectives and
fronts and miniarmies.” The Kill the Street
Puppets Project, an “antipuppet guerilla
theater group,” is one such collective; the
Brand and Logo Devaluation Front is another.
Nash allows them to hold meetings at Prairie
Fire, even though he finds most of the
participants smug, entitled, and arbitrary.
However, there is Miranda Diaz. She doesn't
quite fit in with the hard-edged, “vapor-thin”
girls who frequent Prairie Fire. She has trouble
concealing her true-heart optimism that the
world can be a better place if people tried
harder. Nash picks up on Miranda's vibe. He
likes what he senses.
Author Dana Spiotta (Lightening Field, 2001)
produces an effective atmosphere of
counterculture resistance, “agitprop,” and
attitudinized activism in this multifaceted and
far-reaching novel. Her chapters move skillfully
back and forth from decade to decade and
character to character. Spiotta crafts a
pervasive tension that keeps you second-
guessing these characters and entices you to
wonder if, how, or when they all might cross
paths. And that's what works best in Eat the
Document: Spiotta's finely constructed chapters
build one upon the other, and as they reveal
more and more about these constrained
characters they race you toward a rousing
conclusion. Other bright spots include Spiotta's
commanding narrative of Caroline's twentyeight years underground and Jason's authentic
first-person voice.
The central problem with Eat the Document
is that it's often overly dialectical. While the
characters', especially the Prairie Fire gang's,
espousals and refutations are provocative and
smart—Spiotta comprehends antiestablishment
alternative culture and she details its doctrines,
dress, expressions, and thinking with mastery—
eventually their exchanges get wearisome.
These worldview polemics do not blemish the
novel's insight or worth, but they do distract.
Instead of concentrating on their significance,
you rush through them, eager to return to
Spiotta's precise and graceful rendering of
despair, loneliness, adaptation, and what it
costs to live life “forever at the margins.”
The novel's title derives from Bob Dylan's
1972 documentary film Eat the Document, which
chronicles his 1966 European tour, when he
transformed himself from an acoustic folk
singer to a rock-and-roll musician. Spiotta's
choice is apt; self-alteration and identity are at
the heart of this flawed but gratifying,
distinctive novel.
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WHAT’S
NEXT
Careers & Education
The FIRST-EVER Magazine
Concept Competition FINALISTS
After searching all over the country
for the “Next Big Publishing Thing,”
these teams came out on top. Now
you be the judge.
EXCLUSIVE NEW FICTION
Muta wwa (par t two):
Can technology keep you
faithful? Should it?
PHOTO & ART CREDITS
Cover: istockphoto; TOC: Austin: courtesy of Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau; p.6: John Iton/CCM;
p.14: Jocelyn Lin/istockphoto; p. 18-24: Courtesy of David Irving/FocalPoint; p. 41: Samantha
Grandy/istockphoto; p. 46: Alvaro Arroyo/istockphoto; p. 50: Dan Herron; p. 54-57: istockphoto; p. 58: Anthony
Brennan; p. 61: Jesse Hamilton, courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films & Sony Pictures Releasing International; p.
64-68: John Iton/CCM; p. 69-70: Courtesy, Esquire magazine; p. 72: All images courtesy The Mitchell Wolfson,
Jr. Collection at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida; p. 82-89: Courtesy of
Ramesh Avadhani; p. 98: istockphoto (2).
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