April 2003 Metropole - Metropole Magazines

The World’s First Online Consumer Magazine
Editor in Chief
ANTHONY SAPIENZA
Tea, Sympathy, and Rational Advice
TAMI HAMALIAN
Fiction Editor
DANIEL QUINN
Consiglieri
DOMINICK CANCILLA
Capo Regime
ROBERT McCAMMON
Art Team
BLACKDOG PRODUCTIONS
Advertising
MICHAEL HARTMAN
ANTHONY SAPIENZA
STAN CHACE
Publicist
SKYE WENTWORTH
Exhibitions Editor
SIMON BANKS
Staff Writers
DEBORAH MARKUS
JACK OWENS
FAT LARRY
FRANKIE FROG EYES
BRYN LEIGH
SIMON BANKS
Drawings Metropole Artwork, © 2003 Chris Roberts and FILMCITY
“Blood of a Mole” © 2003 Zdravka Evtimova, first appeared in nthposition.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
DYNAMIC-TENSION ®, CHARLES ATLAS ®, ATLAS ®, THE INSULT THAT MADE
A MAN OUT OF MAC ®, HEY SKINNY ®, as well as all Photographs, illustrations and
other related indicia are Registered Trademarks, Copyrighted Materials and are the exclusive
property of CHARLES ATLAS LTD. PO Box “D” NY, NY 10059 www.charlesatlas.com
METROPOLE is published twelve times a year at metropolemag.com All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2003 FILMCITY productions. For information, contact
asapienza@metropolemag.com
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METROPOLE magazine is published monthly by FILMCITY productions and is
distributed electronically at: www.metropolemag.com
P.O. Box 281, Warrensburg, New York 12885 (518) 623-3220
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M E T RO P O L E
| 3
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M E T RO P O L E
| 5
APRIL 2003
ISSUE NO. 17
FICTION
BLOOD OF A MOLE
Zdravka Evtimova
45
EXCERPT
OPEN NETWORKS, CLOSED REGIMES Shanthi Kalathil, Taylor C. Boas
Technology and Tradition in the United Arab
Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt
COLUMNS
ORGANIZED COOKING
Biscotti alla Valparasio
OFF THE NIGHT TABLE
Let Us Now Praise Irish Women
66
Frankie Frog Eyes
25
Deborah Markus
24
BEATS FROM THE STREET
The Incredible Acting Talent of William Shatner,
Freedom Fries: First Strike In The War Of The Words?,
P.C. Dept: Is ‘Indigenous Fried Bread’ on the Menu?,
Of Bride Burnings and Astronauts: India’s Conflicting Female Role Models,
Personalized Content: Your April Calendar,
Glutton for Punishment: The Great Easter Egg Taste Test
14
EXHIBITIONS
Quicktime reviews, Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers,
Book Review: Cerulean Sins, Rape In American Cinema,
Info Globe, 99¢ Gas, Roomba reviews Mystery Science Theatre,
Skinning PETA Alive, Game review: QBz, Sean Ellis’s 365
27
FEATURES
COVER STORY: IMPRISONED BY THEIR OWN COUNTRIES
Actors George Takei and Robert Clary talk about the other wars
48
MICHAEL ESSANY
The talk show host away from his desk and into politics
99
METRO FITNESS
Losing weight with our editor, part two
With special guest, Jack Lalanne
Anthony Sapienza
54
Deborah Markus
41
Alison Maddex and Camille Paglia
80
Deborah Markus
88
Paula Guran
94
Dominick Cancilla
79
THE PAW PROJECT
Afternoon with an Orangutan;
or, Love Your Kitty, Claws and All
S.N.A.C.
An exhibit of art and poetry
MARKUS ON DOROTHY PARKER
LAURELL K. HAMILTON INTERVIEW
IT’S LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE
The radio show is back
METROPOLEMAG.COM
EDITOR’S LETTER
7
CONTRIBUTORS
11
CAFE METROPOLE: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS
8
M E T RO P O L E
| 6
Gift of Madeleine Sugimoto and Naomi Tagawa,
Japanese American National Museum (92.97.95)
On Our Cover…
O
n his Web site, George Takai says, “I look at these paintings
by Henry Sugimoto and I’m reminded of the fear and anxiety
of fellow Americans that sent us into that barbed wire imprisonment. …These paintings of sixty years ago are profoundly relevant
to our times today.”
Henry Sugimoto was a Japanese immigrant who became a
successful artist in the early 1930s, after studying art in both the
United States and France. Even though his career was derailed by
internment during World War II, Sugimoto was able to take a few
art supplies with him when he was relocated to the Fresno
Assembly Center.
Sugimoto and his family were eventually moved to the Jerome
Relocation Center in Arkansas. He continued to paint, and to hide
his work from his jailers out of fear that there would be repercussions from his painting scenes of his prison. After a time, he felt
that he could paint openly, and his work was noticed by the art
world outside the camp. He was able to have a showing in
Arkansas at Hendrix College’s art gallery in 1944 while he was still
in the camp, and was able to attend the opening escorted by the
director of Jerome.
The Sugimotos were moved to Rohwer in 1944 when the Jerome
camp was closed, and stayed there until just before the end of the
war. After leaving Rohwer, Sugimoto moved with his family to
New York. and found work creating designs in a textile company.
He continued to paint, and devoted himself completely to art after
his retirement in 1962.
In 1981, Sugimoto testified before the U.S. Commission on
Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and his testimony
helped prompt a formal apology from the government.
The painting on this issue’s cover, “Died in Battlefield,” was
painted in 1943 while Sugimoto was interned in Jerome. It depicts
the presentation of a folded flag to the mother or wife of a member
of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who was killed in the line
of duty. Its is a microcosm of the impossible situation and
conflicting emotions of Japanese internees.
In this issue, we talk to George Takei and Robert Clary, actors
known for their involvement in the hit TV shows Star Trek and
Hogan’s Heroes, respectively. But what many do not know, is that
these men were both, during World War II, taken prisoner by their
own country. Robert Clary was sent by the government of occupied
France to a German concentration camp, and George Takei was a
prisoner in an internment camp Japanese Americans. Something to
think about while our own country is at war.
To many people in the United States, the Middle East is a great
unknown, full of people and cultures outside our experience. In this
issue, Shanthi Kalathil explores technology and tradition in the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, with a focus on
the Internet and the World Wide Web. Sarita Sarvate, a native of
India, writes about India’s conflicting female role models. And
Michael Essany, host of E!’s The Michael Essany Show, steps
away from the entertainment world to talk a bit about politics.
On a lighter note, part two of my diet journal is presented in this
issue, and I’ve brought along the master, Jack Lalanne for a little
one-on-one health and fitness. Paula Guran returns with a piece on
New York Times best selling author Laurell K. Hamilton. Deborah
Markus talks about the Paw Project, Dorothy Parker, and an ape
named Jam. And an old radio favorite and cute little gal, Little
Orphan Annie, is back.
We are also treated to a little S.N.A.C. (Sexual Nutrition
Attacking Culture) — an exhibition by Alison Maddex with the
beat poetry of Camille Paglia. Fiction by Zdravka Evtimova, and
a whole lot more! The gangs all here. Enjoy!
—Anthony Sapienza
M E T RO P O L E
| 7
An Open Letter
We at Metropole would like to publicly
apologize for any part the recent article in
our magazine may have unintentionally
played in the raid on Chong Glass. In that
the raid occurred within a day of the issue’s
publication, we are, understandably, concerned. It was our intention to review the
artistic merits of Chong Glass’s products,
not to “rat out our brother to the man” (so
to speak). Besides, we thought he was selling flower vases and paperweights. Really.
The March issue of Metropole which
contained Herb Handy’s article on Chong
Glass also had features on the pop band
Sparks and iRobot’s vacuuming robot,
Roomba. Should the government begin
confiscating Sparks albums at the border or
find Roomba to be a threat to humanity,
then we’re sorry about that, too.
Sincerely,
The Editors
But Weight!
I just read an article with Lisa Hourin in
your on-line magazine and I just wish to
clarify something that I think may be misleading to your readers. You have mentioned a few times in the article that “Muscle weighs more than fat” but that simply
isn’t true! One pound of muscle weighs
exactly the same as one pound of fat but
because muscle is so much leaner than fat
it takes up much less room. So you can
have one woman who weighs 125 pounds
and who is unfit stand next to another
woman who weighs 125 pounds but is fit
and healthy and the woman who exercises
on a regular basis will look smaller than the
woman that doesn’t. I am not putting your
magazine down at all, quite the contrary…
I am thrilled to find it in my mailbox as I
am a woman who is struggling with getting her weight under control. I
have been doing a lot of investigating into health and fitness and
that is one thing I have learned is
muscle does not weigh more than
fat. I hope you take this letter as
it is intended… Just a bit of information I have discovered. Please continue
with the magazine as I look forward to
reading and learning more!!
According to the Dietetic ADA:
“Scientific data suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and
reduced risk for several chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension,
diabetes mellitus, and some types of cancer.” (Source: www.eatright.org/adap1197.
html)
Your readers should know this. Most
people do not know that vegetarianism is so
universally recommended, from such
knowledgeable authorities, for the prevention of many leading killers.
Michelle Bedard
Nathan Braun
Board Member
EarthSave Canada
We meant the “muscle weighs more than
fat” thing sort of metaphorically, but obviously you are right — a pound of one substance weighs the same as a pound of any
other substance. Except for gold and feathers, but we don’t want to get into that.
We appreciate the input, Braun. There’s so
much health information out there, that it’s
hard to keep on top of it all.
Terror of Momhood
Counterbalancing
“Kathy in PA” wrote to say there is
“counterbalancing info on nutrition and
weight loss… out there through the ADA
(American Diabetic Association).”
It is ironic that she too is in need of some
counterbalancing in that she neglected to
mention the other, more relevant ADA: the
American Dietetic Association, which
arguably produces results more applicable
to the average American.
For example, the American Dietetic
Association says a vegetarian diet can
help prevent diabetes in the first place.
Just finished the Deborah Markus piece
— it was terrific. Thought it expressed very
well the middle ground between those who
love/hate that book. Also induced further
terror in me about being a mom, and suggested that my fears are well founded.
Dana Harris
Film Reporter, Variety
Deborah Markus responds: I wish I knew
more about the people who hated I Don’t
Know How She Does It, because unfortunately I reviewed it cold — saw one
desktop and run it from there. If you just
right click (Windows) or control-click
(Mac) the link, you’ll get a menu that has a
function to help you save the file.
RON MAIL
We got a pile of mail in response to the
interview with Ron Mael of the band Sparks
in the March issue. Because we don’t have
space to run all of it, we have combined the
highlights of a dozen of them into one big
letter of praise.
admiring article in the L.A. Times and
knew nothing more about the book until it
landed in my lap. I can’t see anything to
hold against it other than the misrepresentation dealie. The writing is solid, the plot’s
great — unless somebody’s out there getting
all reactionary about working mothers. In
which case I would give him my patented
Warmly Understanding Smile, and while he
was distracted by that kick, him one right in
the bazooties. The only group I hate more
than people who kvetch about their sixdigit-per-annum careers is people who think
that, having reproduced, women should be
making no money at all except maybe what
they can gouge out of their husbands in bed.
Talk about your zero-sum games.
As for the mom-terror thing — that’s the
catch-22 of this field. Anyone smart
enough to be benumbed by fear at the
prospect of mommyhood is, of course,
exactly the kind of person the human race
needs passing her genes along, and also
exactly the kind of person whose life it
would be a shame to ruin by persuading her
to bake up a bun or two in the oven of love.
Not that I’m bitter.
Curious Susan
Via the Internet
Don’t ask
Louis
Via the Internet
The other evening, I was driving by the
Metropole offices and I noticed that the
asphalt in the parking lot seemed to be on
fire. What’s up with that?
Don’t even ask, Susan. Seriously, don’t even
ask.
DON’T TELL
Why do you keep badgering me just
because I write about what’s going to be in
your next issue? Can I help having supernatural talents? By the way, Jack Lalanne is
a babe, even though he’s like three times
my age.
Psychic Fran
Please, Fran, stop looking into our futures.
It’s creeping us out.
OH, PONCHO!
I was very interested in listening to the old
Cisco Kid radio show included with your
March issue, but I had to ask my son to help
me get it to run. How should I be listening
to these files?
We’ve had a few comments from people
who had trouble downloading the file. The
best thing to do is save the file to your
Hallo Metropole,
I just wanted to take a moment to thank
you and just wanted to say I enjoyed the
interview, thanks for the exclusive interview, thanks for the excellent article, thanks
so much for the recent article, thanks for
the interview, and thanks again for the intelligent interview with Ron Mael from
Sparks. It was great, he is one of pop
music’s unsung heroes. Excellent interview
with Ron Mael of Sparks!
I have always been a huge fan of Sparks
and of Ron in particular. The sound bites
were great and the picture of Ron was
amazing.
What a delight to find that the Mael
brothers are far from being the has-beens
that one might have expected. Sparks are
always relevant, it’s interesting to hear
Ron’s views, and this interview certainly
caught the still fresh outlook of Ron and the
pop music scene and was a great entertaining read.
I have heard it said that they are “old
news” and I cannot imagine how anyone can
dismiss this band as if they have not contributed so much to Music in the past and
continue to remain clever and relevant today.
If only more mags recognized true songwriting talent and character as shown by this
band over the years. They are musicians for
people with brains and the ability to get
satire and humor. Obviously that eliminates
METROPOLE welcomes letters
on any topic, including topics
other than Ron Mael. Remember
to include your name and home
town. Send all correspondence to:
editorial@metropolemag.com.
Representative letters will be
printed and answered in this column. Letters may be edited for
clarity, length, or caprice —
capice?
the majority of the earth’s population.
As a Sparks fan I’m biassed of course,
but I know well that doing an interview
with a band that had its heyday a quarter
of a century ago can be a “brave” editorial decision. So when the Maels have
come up with a new album that in my
opinion is genuinely innovative and interesting, it’s really good that you’re prepared to give it a fair crack of the whip.
After hearing their latest on Nic Harcourt’s show I tracked down Lil’
Beethoven and it is astonishing and one
of the most brilliantly original pieces that
I’ve heard in many years. Thank you for
highlighting the genius that is the latest
Sparks CD. More entertaining and witty
than any CD I can recall in recent times,
but then you were probably too busy listening to Coldplay to realise.
Thanks for the eye-opener and for
“getting it,” I’ll definitely be checking
out more of your publications in the
future, and I Hope you enjoy the new single also — a sure-fire hit.
Thanks a lot for doing that! Full credit
to all concerned! Keep up the good work.
Best regards. Cheers.
Kelly, Darren, Martina, Brian, Jane.
Laurie, Steve, Steve, Eric, Dave, Dave,
Dave, and mozzy
Sacramento, CA; Long Island, NY; London, England; Munich, Germany; and
via the Internet
You’re welcome!
ONE BAD APPLE
The latest issue of Metropole seemed
to take an especially long time to
download. I soon discovered the reason
behind my downloading dilemma. You
review of the ’80’s band Sparks would
have been pleasant enough, but you had
to go and ruin it by including bits and
pieces of their “music.” Why would you
put your readers through such horrible
sounds? Then, upon reading further, I
realize that Sparks are putting out a new
album. Thanks for the warning!! I’ll
have to put earplugs on my list when I
make my trip to the local hardware store
to buy duct tape and plastic.
orangechickeneye
via the Internet
Although you may not enjoy Sparks’
music, Mr. Orange, you might want to
visit their official Web site. There you will
find a message board on which we have
posted your phone number and asked
Sparks’ copious fans to leave you
numerous phone messages consisting of
nothing but excerpts from Li’l
Beethoven’s “Suburban Homeboy.”
Enjoy!
METRO FITNESS
QUESTIONS
ATKINS AGNST
I’m trying the Atkins diet — with an
emphasis on “trying” to stick to Atkins,
but I’m having a very hard time. It’s
something I very much want to do, but
my downfall is going to my family’s
house for a visit. They have nothing but
carbs there! I count this as the end of my
3rd week of “trying” Atkins, with the first
2 weeks as being successful. I was able to
follow the plan to a “T” and even lost 10
pounds. But as of a week ago, things just
started downhill. I’m also having a hard
time coming up with food ideas, I’ve got
some great recipes from the Atkins Web
site, but I’m looking more for less-complicated preparation. Any help, advice,
would be greatly appreciated!!!
Via the Internet
Temptation is a very difficult foe. The
logical solution is that you can try eating
a full meal from your diet before your
visit to curb your attraction to cheating.
We’d like to point out that it is our belief
that the Atkins Diet is not a very good
one. It may work well on a short-term
basis, but it certainly does not supply
your body with the proper nutrients it
needs. You’ll notice that it’s not just our
opinion, many of the guest fitness
spokespersons we are interviewing feel
the same way. Lisa Hourin speaks out
against the Atkins diet in our previous
issue and Jack Lalanne feels the same in
this issue. But if you feel that it is the only
solution for you — never go to your family’s home or the supermarket for that
matter on an empty stomach.
HAVING HER CAKE…
My daughter will be two-years-old
next month and we are having a birthday
party with cake and the whole nine yards.
I would love to have a piece of cake with
her, but I don’t know if it is okay or not.
What should I do?
Via the Internet
José Antonio, sports nutrition scientist at
MET-Rx, tells us that most athletes have
what they call a “cheating day” every
week. The keyword to note here is
“athlete” — as they also have a fitness
and exercise regime that is strictly
followed. Having said that, as long as
you are adding some activity to your life
every day; walking, exercise, etc., have
your daughter’s cake. After all, it only
comes once a year. If you come from a
huge family or have many friends with
many birthday parties — we’d be a bit
more careful. But the whole point in
healthy living is to live. Enjoy your
daughter’s birthday. Eat your cake. Take
your daughter to the park the next day.
Play with her and get some fresh air and
exercise for the both of you.
SUCCESS STORY
After having my baby, I gained a ton of
weight. Everybody told me not to worry
— that I would lose it really quickly —
but I continue to gain. Now my child is
five and I weigh 85 lbs more than I did
before I was pregnant. I was seriously
considering having my stomach stapled. I
tried Atkins, I tried diet pills, but nothing
worked.
After seeing the Metro Fitness article
link on my AOL dieting group, I decided
to give the MET-Rx diet a shot. I’ve lost
over twelve pounds and my progress has
been steady! I just wanted to thank Mr.
Sapienza and the people at MET-Rx for
this blessed opportunity! My hope has
been newly found and I’m already
starting to feel better about myself. I look
forward to more great articles and wish
you all my very best!
Rosemarie
Monticello, NY
Keep up the good work Rosemarie!
Thanks for writing in! Please keep in
touch, we welcome all of your letters!
Giago
Tim Giago has been featured in People Magazine, New York
Times, Denver Post, Minnesota Magazine, Wall Street Journal,
and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC Nightly
News with Tom Brokaw, and many national radio programs.
Giago wrote his first column about the use of Indians as
mascots for sports teams 20 years ago. It was his syndicated
columns on the subject that brought national attention to the
issue. His column in Newsweek magazine in 1990, prior to the
Super Bowl featuring the Washington Redskins, brought
hundreds of letters to him. Many letters were sympathetic
because this was the first the readers had heard of the reasons
Indians detest the name Redskin, but many other letters were
filled with hate. r
Maddex/Paglia
Alison Maddex is an independent arts and new-media curator who
has produced and directed major exhibitions including “Walk the
Goddess Walk” and “Forever Barbie”. Her latest book, Sex In The
City chronicles social mores and unveils a riveting spectacle of
voyeurism and exhibitionism, from the peaks of celebrity to the
decadent underground in NYC.
Camille Paglia is a culture critic, and bestselling author, and
professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Together, they present S.N.A.C. (Sexual Nutrition Attacking
Culture) a collection of Maddex’s art, accompanied by Paglia’s beat
poetry. r
Roy
Sandip Roy hosts UpFront, a radio show featuring the
voices and stories of ethnic communities on KALW
91.7 FM in San Francisco. A native of India, he moved
to the Bay Area a decade ago to work in the software
industry like all his compatriots. But he works now as
an associate editor with Pacific News Service and New
California Media. He is also Features Editor with
India Currents Magazine, a monthly focusing on the
Indian-American community. He also volunteers as
editor of Trikone, the world's oldest magazine on
South Asian LGBT issues. r
M E T RO P O L E
| 11
Roomba
Sarvate
Roomba has been gaining popularity and amassing a base of loyal fans since his first appearance in March 2003’s of Metropole. This
handy vacuuming robot, manufactured by the geniuses at iRobot, is friend to all and enemy of none. He is currently working on his
autobiography, He to Whom They Will Bow after the Revolution. r
Sarita Sarvate was born and raised in India and came to the U.S. as a
graduate student at U.C. Berkeley. Trained as a physicist, she has
worked in the energy field for the last twenty-five years and lived in
Hawaii and New Zealand. She began writing op-ed pieces for the
Oakland Tribune because she could not find third world immigrant
mothers’ voices in the media. Since then, she has written commentaries
for the Pacific News Service, India Currents, KQED FM, the BBC, and
National Public Radio. Her writing has appeared in the L. A. Times, the
San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and many other
newspapers nationwide. She has also been a guest on the New
California Media TV show. Her cross-cultural writing has evoked
much controversy in the Indian immigrant community, on the margins
of which she lives. r
M E T RO P O L E . | 12
Kalathil
Shanthi Kalathil is an associate in the Information Revolution and
World Politics Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Before joining the Endowment, she was a Hong Kong-based
staff reporter for The Asian Wall Street Journal. She has written
extensively on the information revolution and political change in
developing countries. r
Markus & friend
Deborah Markus’s new monthly book
column, “Off The Night Table,” appears in
this issue. It features an eclectic selection
that would make any bibliophile go ape
with pleasure. Ms. Markus doesn’t monkey
around — also in this issue is her retrospective on Dorothy Parker and a “Beat
From The Street” on chocolate Easter Eggs
that will make any dieting editor simply go
bananas with a primal urge to indulge.
Ever prolific (move over Joyce Carol
Oates), Markus also shares some very
hairy information on declawing of cats of
all sizes — a dreadful practice we hope to
see abolished. Okay, okay, “Who’s the little fella?” you ask. Nope, it’s not her husband — it’s Jam the baby Orangutan from
her aforementioned piece, “Afternoon with
an Orangutan; or, Love Your Kitty, Claws
and All.” Read it, dammit! r
M E T RO P O L E . | 13
metropole
BEATS FROM THE STREET
VIGNETTES
THE INCREDIBLE ACTING
TALENT OF WILLIAM
SHATNER
Chris Roberts
E
very so often, you hear a conversation
that belongs in a movie. I recently over
heard such a conversation while I was
choking down what passed for the special
of the day in a Brooklyn diner.
The speakers were three “tough-guys,”
conveniently seated in the booth opposite
mine. I took out my little black book and
began to transcribe, giving nasty glances to
the waitress whenever she threatened to
interrupt my eavesdropping with an offer of
more coffee, the bill, or whatever.
For the sake of keeping the conversation
comprehensible, I’ll call the three guys
Tony, Vinny, and Charlie. Tony wore jeans
and a heavy, red work shirt. He had a wool
cap, probably covering a bald head. Vinny
was dressed like Tony but with a green shirt
and had an earring. Charlie also wore jeans,
but he had on a tank top which indicated
that he either had a hell of a heavy jacket or
was immune to hypothermia, but nicely
showed off tattoos that looked like they’d
been drawn by someone with the DTs.
They were all eating so fast that I was
amazed they came away from the table
with their fingers intact.
Got the picture? Good.
Vinny: TV sucks. All that reality shit and
dating shows. There’s nothing good on any
more.
Charlie: American Idol isn’t that bad.
Tony: You know who was a great actor?
Captain Kirk. Those were the good old
days of television.
Vinny: Captain-fucking-Kirk, listen to this
guy. Captain Kirk wasn’t a good actor and
he still ain’t. Remember TJ Hooker?
Tony: First of all, Captain Kirk is one of the
world’s last great stars. It’s not his fault that
TV has been taken over by idiots. Look at
OZ, that show sucks fer chrissakes. You’d
never see Captain Kirk playing in that show
— he’s too good for it. Everything is either
BS “reality” shows or just plain crap.
Vinny: Yeah, it’s the whole gay thing. They
started putting gay stuff in everything and
it got out of hand.
Charlie: You gonna eat your pickle?
Tony: Eat your own pickle. What are you
talking about, gay stuff?
Vinny: C’mon whatt’ya kiddin’ me? Look
at The Munsters, and Gomer Pyle, and My
Favorite Martian. Look at Dick Van
Dyke’s name for crying out loud. And My
Three Sons, Batman…
Tony: What, Batman? How is Batman gay?
Vinny: Seriously, look at the characters:
Egghead, Cat Woman, The Penguin — all
gay, or at least made up by gay people.
Tony: You’re tryin’ to tell me Vincent Price
was gay?
Vinny: Who said Vincent Price?
Tony: He was Egghead, moron.
Vinny: Whatever. I’m saying that the
premise, the costumes, the sets — that stuff
was gay.
Tony: You’re a fucking homophobic.
Vinny: No way! I’m just telling it like it is.
Charlie: You got a napkin?
Tony: Here, use mine. And what does all of
this shit have to do with Captain Kirk being
a great actor? Captain Kirk is a man’s man.
He would have refused to take part in a
show with gay overtones.
Vinny: First of all, he’s not. And second of
all, he was absolutely in shows that were
gay. Tribbles, for instance.
Tony: Tribbles?
Charlie: Like gerbils?
Vinny: No — “The Trouble with Tribbles”
— one of the all time classic Star Trek
episodes.
Tony: What about it?
Vinny: You want to talk about gay! Look at
Kirk’s outfit. He’s got that low cut V-neck
thing going on.
Tony: What? Charlie’s got a V-neck on.
Vinny: Like I’m saying. Look, let me give
you a play by play: Chekov, who sounds
totally like Andy Warhol’s Dracula or
someone from The Birdcage —
Charlie: I only saw La Cage.
Vinny: Same thing. Anyway, Checkov says
something about smelling Klingons. Spock
asks him what he’s talking about, and he
says he was making a little joke and makes
this “small” gesture with his thumb and
pointer finger. It’s like he’s saying he’s got
a small dick. Spock then says something
like “Extremely little”.
Tony: So since when do only gay guys talk
about their dicks?
Charlie: That reminds me, I —
Vinny: Then there’s those two guys who
M E T RO P O L E
| 14
call for Starfleet to protect their quatrotriticale — the one guy with the ascot and his
blatantly gay assistant in the collarless
Beatle suit.
Tony: So the Beatles were gay?
Vinny: The guy in the Beatle suit was. Then
when the crew takes shore leave, Chekov
wants to go shopping with Uhura because
he wants to “help her”. Gay!
Tony: Maybe he was boning her.
Vinny: In ’67? I’ll just bet. Plus, the cast is
supposed to be all multicultural, and
Checkov is obviously the gay representative. He’s always got that goofy smile on
his face — even when he’s getting thrown
around in a fight — you know? Manhandled? It’s like he’s saying, “Get the point
fellas? This is all so camp”
Tony: I think you’re watching this stuff
way too closely.
Vinny: Then comes the gayest character of
all, Cyrano Jones, the traveling salesman
who is selling the tribbles. He’s so antagonizing that he makes the Klingons use gay
lingo. The Klingon hollers at him when he
tries to sell him a tribble, “Get out here
with that parasite! Take him away”
Tony: So Klingons are gay?
Vinny: They were in the old series. They
fixed them in Next Generation.
Tony: So if this stuff was so gay, how do
you know so much about it?
Vinny: It was just on TV last night, after the
Academy Awards.
Charlie: Joan Rivers was so funny.
Vinny: Like I was saying, the Klingon gets
drunk and starts to antagonize Chekov by
implying that Kirk has been putting it to
him. He keeps saying how Kirk is not soft.
Soft, right? And that gets Chekov really
pissed off.
Tony: You’re freakin’ nuts.
Vinny: I’m not nuts. Look, maybe the
actors themselves didn’t realize what they
were being told to say or do, and maybe
people didn’t get it at the time, but it’s obvious in retrospect. This fight breaks out, and
just before it the bartender skips out like a
ballerina. The guys in the background are
smiling and cringing as they watch this
macho display of fisticuffs, and Cyrano
Jones is behind the bar, stealing drinks and
drinking them with his pinky in the air.
Gay.
Tony: You drink with your pinky in the air.
Vinny: Jones isn’t Italian.
Charlie: I’m not Italian.
Vinny: Nobody’s perfect. Well soon the
whole crew is on the bridge of the enterprise, fondling and caressing tribbles when
Dr. Bones, with his totally gay name,
comes in and announces that the tribbles
are bisexual.
Tony: So the tribbles are gay.
Vinny: Right!
Charlie: Bisexual’s not the same as —
Vinny: What I’d like to know is why
nobody talks about this stuff. The moral
majority should be all over it.
Tony: What I’d like to know is what this all
has to do with me saying what a great actor
Captain Kirk is?
Vinny: He’s not a great actor—it’s just that
the others were so horrible that it looked
like he was great.
Tony: So now you’re saying that Dr. Spock
was a bad actor?!
Charlie: I swear by his book, myself.
Waitress: Can I get you anything else hon?
Vinny: Just the check.
r
FREEDOM FRIES
FIRST STRIKE IN THE WAR
OF THE WORDS?
A
fter Ohio Congressman Bob Ney
renamed Capitol Hill French fries
“Freedom fries” — an act of retribution for
France’s promised U.N. veto of U.S. war
plans in Iraq — I wondered if the linguistic
fallout of the war would spread to other
Security Council members.
Who’s next on the chopping block —
guinea pigs, China clay and Tex-Mex
cuisine?
Spain’s gung-ho support for President
Bush’s “coalition of the willing” means that
the Spanish omelet is safe for now. But I am
not sure veto-wielding China or the Russian Federation would mind at all if Russian
roulette and the Chinese fire drill dropped
their national credentials.
Will Pakistan’s vote make “Paki” an
even more potent schoolyard slur, or will
bullies not want to sully their tongues with
the name of a country that doesn’t vote the
way the United States wants it to? Will chili
con carne go out of favor because we
cannot tell our chili from our Chile?
Actually, I don’t think greater scrutiny of
nationalistic naming conventions is a bad
idea. It might clear up a lot of cultural
confusion. French fries, the French
Embassy informs us, are really Belgian.
Dutch treats are just penny-pinching, not
necessarily Dutch.
V. M. Molotov, the former Soviet Minister for Foreign Affairs, didn’t ask that an
explosive be named after him. Finns, angry
at Russians, named the flaming grenade the
Molotov cocktail. Many of these designations carry the sorry baggage of cultural
confusion, historical inaccuracies and
mixed-up passports, not to mention colonial hangovers. Perhaps this could be the
opportunity for a cultural spring cleaning
that would return all things to their rightful
owners. A sort of linguistic equivalent to
the return of the Elysian Marbles.
As an Indian, I am sorry India is no
longer on the Security Council. I would
have liked to get Indian summer and Indian ink de-Indianized. Heck, while we’re at
it, how about renaming American Indians,
too, to solve that endless confusion?
Words at their best can be confusing
things. India ink is actually brought from
China. An African marigold is an American
plant. A Persian cat is the same as an
Angora cat, which is sometimes called an
Angola cat (Security Council member
Angola, take note). The Thanksgiving
turkey is a very American bird and has little
to do with Iraq’s neighbor where the United
States is trying to set up bases. Of course,
new Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has no idea that any vote on bases
might also end up affecting the fate of
Turkish towels.
Words at their worst can be vicious
things. When attached to national origins,
they can acquire a sting that remains long
after their etymology is forgotten. Not
everyone knows where Paki comes from,
few could even point to Pakistan on the
map, but the slur applies to Pakistanis,
Bangladeshis, Indians, Sri Lankans and
assorted brown-skinned people indiscriminately. Homeless vagabonds are “street
Arabs.”
Slurs are certainly not the exclusive
preserve of colonial masters. The subjects
learned well, too. In Bengali, someone with
no cultural refinement was derided as an
“Ujbug,” aka Uzbeg, though no one knows
how many people from Uzbekistan a
typical Bengali has ever met.
Mostly, what these words say is that
when entire countries and continents of
people are amorphous, indistinguishable
masses to those who have the power to
name them, mistakes not only happen, they
M E T RO P O L E
| 16
enter the dictionary and acquire a life of
their own. When I call this ink/flower/cat/
person Chinese, when it is really Japanese,
it means they all look the same to me. As
in, they are all foreign and strange. And the
words remain, long after there ceases to be
anything German about German measles.
But the fuss about the French in French
fries reminds us that long after we have forgotten their origins, such words can still
itch. We try to flaunt or purge the associations depending on the national mood.
Countries and cities rename themselves to
shed colonial baggage. Bombay becomes
Mumbai, leaving Bombay Duck and
Bombay gin stranded.
Nationalists and traditionalists argue
endlessly about whether the change is good
or bad, whether Rhodesia lost part of its
history when it became Zimbabwe. In time,
we forget the birth pangs, but the word
remains buried in the language like a landmine. Until someone like Bob Ney looks at
the menu at the Capitol Hill cafeteria.
If I were Ney, I wouldn’t have chosen
Freedom fries. If I were Ney, I’d have
offered the name to one of the other Security Council members who were still
waffling. How about Angolan fries in
exchange for an Angolan vote?
r
I fully understand that an editor may edit
my columns for content, word usage, etc.
This is something all writers accept as a
part of the trade. However, I do not like it
when an editor changes the spirit of what I
write.
My column last week carried the headline, “Who is Indian and who is not?” The
editor in question changed it to “Who is
Native and who is not?”
In the more than 20 years I have published a newspaper I seldom use the term
“Native American.” Why not? Because
anyone born and raised in this country is
Native American. I have heard this from
readers and subscribers for many years.
I, and many elders of the different Indian nations (Ooops! Native nations, I
should’ve written), have no trouble at all
with the word “Indian.” In fact, that is what
we call each other. Many Lakota elders
have no trouble with the word “Sioux.”
That is what they call each other.
The lead sentence in the column in question began “When a tribe in Kansas adopts
non-Indians ...And guess what? The rewrite
goes, “When a tribe in Kansas adopts nonNatives. ...”
Native American as opposed to Indian
happened during the age of political correctness. It was at the time when AfricanSandip Roy (sandiproy@hotmail.com) is American, Asian-American and Hispanichost of “Upfront” — the Pacific News - American came into vogue.
Service weekly radio program on KALWFor as long as I can remember, we have
FM, San Francisco.
always referred to ourselves as “Indian.”
Many elders will tell you that Indian is
not a bad word. They do not believe it was
P.C. DEPT.
a word uttered by Christopher Columbus
IS ‘INDIGENOUS FRIED BREAD’
because he thought he was in India when he
ON THE MENU?
landed on the islands of the Western Hemisphere. Rather they attribute it to the Spanish Conquistadors and the padres who
accompanied them to a land they dubbed
The New World. The Spanish padres saw
the indigenous people as innocents. They
called them Ninos in Dios. My Spanish is
lacking here, but I believe it means “Children of God.”
strange thing happened to my column
As the words became words of common
last week after it was filtered through usage they were shortened to “Indios.” In
the mind of an editor at a paper that used it. Latin American countries Indians are still
The column carried political correctness to known as “Indios.”
a new dimension. I must assume that the
And the word Indios soon became Indieditor was non-Indian.
an when repeated by the settlers from other
First of all, I am Lakota (Sioux). I was European nations. Many years ago, when
born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge as a young boy, I labored in the sugar beet
Reservation in Southwestern South Dakota. fields of Colorado, the farmhands from
I have been the editor and publisher of a Mexico called me “Indios.” I did not find
weekly newspaper for 21 years. I have writ- this offensive.
ten a syndicated column for 24 years.
Columbus was an intelligent man. He
A
would know after a day or two that he was
not in India. Why then would he name the
locals Indians? Why would that name
bounce from nation to nation throughout
North and South America? I believe the
name “Indios” gained a foothold in the
Southwest and in Florida because the
Spaniards passed on the name they had
coined for the indigenous population.
As I said, I seldom use Native American
in my newspaper and it is circulated and
read by many Indian people. I have never
received a letter from any indigenous person objecting to the word Indian.
In 1983 when several Indian journalists
met in Oklahoma while forming the Native
American Journalists Association, we held
a skull session about what to name our new
organization. I had just been elected the
first president of NAJA and I asked those
journalists in attendance to throw out some
names we could mull over.
One journalist suggested The Indigenous
Journalist Association. Adrian Louis, who
was managing editor of the Lakota Times
quipped, “When we start calling our
favorite snack ‘Indigenous Fried Bread’
then I will consider that name.”
The only reason we did not pick the
name American Indian Journalists Association is because there had been an American Indian Press Association in the early
1970s that had failed. We wanted to separate ourselves from that failure. We chose
Native American Press Association, which
later became Native American Journalists
Association because, after much discussion, we did want to make that distinction
between our new organization and the one
that had failed.
As a matter of record, the oldest and
largest Indian organization in America is
named The National Congress of American
Indians. I wonder if that overly conscientious editorial page editor mentioned above
changes that name to National Congress of
Native Americans whenever he or she is
confronted by it?
I may be wrong, but as I said, I must
assume that the editor who made me cringe
by changing all of my words to Native,
Native American, etc., is a non-Indian
(ooops! non-Native). I kindly request that
he or she stop trying to put words into my
mouth that I would never use. In other
words, keep your “political correctness” to
yourself.
r
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji), an Oglala
Lakota, is editor and publisher of the
M E T RO P O L E
| 17
weekly Lakota Journal. He is author of
“The Aboriginal Sin” and “Notes from
Indian Country” volumes I and II. He can
be reached at editor@lakotajournal.com
OF BRIDE BURNINGS
AND ASTRONAUTS
INDIA’S CONFLICTING FEMALE
ROLE MODELS
A
s NASA trains another American
woman of Indian origin for a space
mission, many around me are astonished.
They can’t fathom how the land of satis and
dowries could produce so many female scientists and explorers. But as an Indian-born
American and a physicist, I’m not surprised.
I look with pride on Sunita Lyn
Williams, who, according to reports in the
Indian press, will serve on the backup crew
for International Space Expedition 10.
She’ll follow in the footsteps of Kalpana
Chawla, who died in the Columbia disaster.
I try to explain that women of my generation in India, who were born after the
country’s independence from British rule,
were, in some respects, more liberated than
their counterparts in America. But such
arguments always seemed to fall on deaf
ears. Media stories about arranged marriages and bride burnings have convinced
most Americans that Indian women do
nothing but suffer at the hands of the patriarchy.
Even today, Americans choose to explain
away successful Indian women like Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi on the grounds that
in India, only aristocratic women enjoy
equality with men. It isn’t true.
Astronaut Chawla was in many ways my
alter ego. Like me, she arrived alone in
America as a graduate student. Like me,
she enjoyed nontraditional hobbies like
hiking and backpacking. In other respects,
she surpassed my dreams for myself, earning a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, joining NASA, and becoming the first Indian
woman to fly in space.
She was no exception. She was, like biodiversity activist Vandana Shiva, dam
protester Medha Patkar, and Booker
prizewinning writer Arundhati Roy, one of
a multitude of non-aristocratic Indian
women who have found “a room of their
own.” And the Indian populace seems hardly threatened by these women’s international renown; they are, in fact celebrated.
So how do you reconcile these women to
their land, where problems like female
infanticide still persist?
The answer, I think, can be found in my
own life.
My friends and I grew up in households
where women were expected to sit in corners for four days during menstruation and
keep a fast on Vatasavitri day in order to get
the same husband for the next seven incarnations. Yet, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, our mothers had encouraged us to go to
school and to excel in studies.
Ironically, since traditional Indian values
dictated that a single young woman must be
treated with respect, upon entering high
school and college, we received the utmost
of admiration and encouragement. Our professors addressed us as “Miss” and offered
us opportunities for public speaking and
travel. Freed from the pressures of dating
and “catching” a man, which remained the
obligation of our parents, we were at liberty to explore the world of science, astronomy and politics.
In a country where simple amenities like
refrigerators and scooters were prize possessions, young men, too, were realizing
that an educated wife who could earn a living was desirable. As a university student in
India, my achievements as a National Merit
scholar and a college-debating champion
made me not threatening, but more attractive in the eyes of my fellow male students.
As dowry became an aspect that many
prospective husbands began to consider
less and less in the marriage market, a girl’s
academic qualifications began to weigh in
more and more. In fact, today, most professional young men in India want an engineer
or a doctor for a wife.
In contrast, professionally successful
women in America do not enjoy the same
social clout. On the dating scene here, men
are still seeking replicas of images presented on shows like “Who Wants to Marry a
Millionaire?” In America, a woman’s bio
seems incomplete without the standard epithet, “an ideal wife and mother.”
In India, on the other hand, articles about
Chawla and Shiva talk about their achievements rather than dwelling on their private
lives.
Cultural norms in India, which separate
the personal from the public, have made it
possible for Indian women to chart new
territory without undue scrutiny of their
intimate lives. And that, I believe, is the
secret of the success of modern Indian
women. For them, Sunita Lyn Williams
and Kalpana Chawla are examples, not
exceptions.
r
Sarita Sarvate (naladamayanti@yahoo.com)
is a physicist and a writer for India Currents and other publications.
PERSONALIZED CONTENT
YOUR APRIL CALENDAR
T
he reaction to Metropole’s new personalized content system has been overwhelming. We have been literally inundated with e-mail from those of you who
appreciated having a section of the magazine customized for you at download time.
We intend to continue to offer this personalized event calendar, and are exploring
the possibility of additional features, such
as fiction by popular authors which will
appear as if it takes place in your home
town! Join the magazine’s e-mail list to be
kept apprised of new innovations.
As we did last month, we want to remind
readers that the personalization of this column is based on the IP address of the computer which downloads the file. So if you
download the magazine in Reno and pass it
to a friend in Chicago, the file will still be
personalized for Reno. If your file does not
accurately reflect your location, you may
want to contact your ISP and complain that
your IP address is being spoofed or misreported, that it does not accurately reflect
your location (this is a very common problem for AOL users), or that it has not been
correctly registered. Also, we are still
unable to get this process to work for any
city in Utah. Either there’s a problem with
the event server that we have not yet been
able to discover, or there’s nothing going on
in Utah worth mentioning (Kidding! Just
kidding! No hate mail, please!)
So, with that lengthy preamble out of the
way, here is your customized April event
calendar for Los Angeles:
M E T RO P O L E
| 18
April 3: The Los Angeles
Natural History Museum will
be continuing its special
exhibition detailing the history and cultural significance
of
chocolate,
and
adding an additional exhibition on edible bugs — just in
time for the upcoming insect
fair.
April 7: The Gene Autry
Museum of Western Heritage
will begin showings of the
taxidermied corpse of Trigger. Photos with the kids are
$5, $7 if they want to sit on
the animal.
April 8 and 9: Preview of
the new Winnie the Pooh ride
at Disneyland for annual
passholders.
Reservations
required. Ride includes trip
through “honey pot” with real
bees, so sensitive individuals are asked to exercise
discretion.
April 13: Olvera Street’s
first annual burrito-making
festival and contest, with
prizes given for size, speed,
and tastiness.
April 14: The traveling
company of Dreamworks’ The
Prince
of
Egypt
On
Ice
arrives at Staples Center.
Lots and lots of tickets are
still available.
April 17: The Kevin and
Bean show on KROQ radio —
106.7 FM — will be giving
away a free trip to Sweden to
see the band “No Doubt” in
concert. The prize includes
dinner with lead singer Gwen.
Every fifth caller between 7
and 10 a.m. will be entered
in the drawing.
April 18: Knotts Berry Farm
presents a special version of
the passion play for children
in the Camp Snoopy theater.
April 20: Traditional sunrise service at the Hollywood
Bowl. The Los Angeles Area
Spelunking Society will be
holding a picnic in a cave
overlooking the Bowl for a
spectacular view of the service.
April 22: In honor of Earth
Day, the Home Depot in West
Los Angeles will have a giant
pile of dirt in its parking
lot for kids to play on.
April 27: The Getty Center
is holding a family festival
day with special events and
activities for children. One
lucky visitor will receive a
signed Picasso.
April 28: The mayor has
declared today, “Honor Your
[/event tag/][/*Error: Tag
missing -- unrecoverable*/]
And don’t forget, April 1 is April Fool’s
day. Don’t let anyone pull a fast one on
you!
r
GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT
THE GREAT EASTER EGG
TASTE TEST
T
here’s been a lot of ink spilled about
the Peeps phenomenon. Once a
seasonal crop, we now see them all through
the year. Which is good, because I frankly
don’t see why I should have to do without
sugar-coated sugar eleven months out of
twelve just because someone in Marketing
and Development couldn’t think of anything but chicks and bunnies for a couple of
decades.
But there’s a much more exciting Easter
eruption to focus on, and for some completely unfathomable reason nobody seems
to be jumping up and down about it except
me. I’m talking about eggs. No, not the
ones that come out of chickens. I mean real
eggs. The chocolate kind. The chocolate
kind with stuff inside. Lots of different
kinds of stuff. Used to be, all you could get
in that department were the admittedly
divine Cadbury classics. But then capitalism, bless its black little heart, took a gander at those foil-wrapped darlings and said,
“What? You mean there’s only one brand?
What the hell is this? The Soviet Union?”
And so, over the past few years there’s been
a quiet blossoming every spring — like
tulips, only worse for your complexion —
of various Easter eggs, realistic only in
shape and size. Even Cadbury has decided
M E T RO P O L E
| 19
to get in on the action and compete with
itself a bit. God bless America.
But, as in all things, there can be no light
without shadow, no good without bad. No,
I’m not talking about the fact that every
damned one of these eggs has a milk chocolate shell and there’s no dark chocolate in
sight, although that is admittedly criminal
in every sense but the technically legal one,
dadgummit. I mean that, with so many
choices, shoppers are bound to feel befuddled, and there is nothing to help them but
common sense, which usually makes a
graceful exit when chocolate hits the scene.
To my knowledge, Consumer Reports
has issued no opinion, no multi-page article
about the pros and cons of Cadbury et al.
So, like the little red hen (which I guess is
kind of fitting but still a weird analogy considering what we’re talking about, and
reminds me — do they still make those
chocolate chickens? The little ones? I
haven’t seen one since I was a kid, but man
were they good. They say clothes don’t
make the man, but I say shape makes the
chocolate, because Easter-fashioned is the
only kind of non-dark chocolate I can get
all hot under the collar about) — I’ll, uh,
what were we talking about? Oh, right. I’m
going to be like the little red hen and proudly declare, “Who will plant this wheat?”
No, wait, wrong quote. I’ll proudly declare,
“I will!” Yes, that’s it. No, I don’t mean I’ll
plant the wheat — get that damned hoe
away from me, sir. You don’t want me taking on any plant-related farm chores. I have
a black thumb. Probably from all that
chocolate.
Which segues neatly (sort of) into my
(fanfare, please):
FIRST ANNUAL OFFICIAL
CHOCOLATE EASTER EGG REPORT
I
t seems so obvious to start with the obvious, but what the hell. First off, then, is
the CADBURY (classic) MODEL.
Oh. Oh, oh, oh. This is the undisputed
queen of Easter eggs. Not just because
she’s been around so long — she was the
first, and for a while the only — but
because she’s still better than any of these
eggy-come-latelies. Age cannot wither her,
nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other
eggs cloy the appetites they feed, but she
makes hungry where most she satisfies.
Sorry. Great chocolate always brings out
the Shakespeare in me.
In English, what I’m saying is that the
more Cadbury classics you have, the more
you want. My research assistant, who doubles as my husband (though that may
change shortly, and just listen to why) was
mentally instable enough to only buy ONE
of these when I sent him out to fill his little
basket with tax-deductible-for-researchpurposes reasons to go on living.
One.
I asked him how he could have been so
selfish and shallow, and he sniveled something about thinking he was supposed to get
one of everything so I’d have lots to compare. Well, duh — and how exactly am I
supposed to compare all the others to the
gold standard of Eastereggdom without
having at least as many Cadburys as other
eggs put together? The guy majored in
math, fer God’s sake. I guess they won’t
make you take any LOGIC classes just
because you’re —
What? Oh. Sorry. Eggs. Right. Cadbury
ones. Oh, Cadbury, Cadbury, wherefore —
no, no, come back, it’s all right, I won’t
start again. I promise. But damn, these are
some seriously fine eggs. Bite into one. Oh,
that white fondant, with the clever little yellow “yolk” in the center! And there, right at
the bottom of the egg (the “ovum butt,” to
you science types) is a little squirt of sweet
clear syrup, the hen-egg equivalent of
which would serve as really icky notice that
your soft-boiled egg is underdone. It’s that
loving attention to detail that makes the
Cadbury classic the brilliant and deservedly popular necessity of a life worth living
that it is today. Stock up while you have the
chance — these freeze beautifully. I know
because someone gave me a whole lot of
them on the Easter that fell only a few
weeks before my wedding, and I tearfully
tucked them away until after the big day.
And then learned the joy of microwavedefrosting (after removing the foil, natch)
those little seraphim until just before the
melting point. Stop me, I’m going to go all
poetic again. Suffice it to say that married
bliss had some serious competition until
our freezer emptied out again.
Does anyone else remember when these
angels in chocolate form first came into
being, with all the inevitable rightness of
“To be or not to be”? Really made me wonder what the point had been, before. I still
remember the commercials (I have to keep
old commercials in my head; I don’t watch
much TV, so no new ones have come to
chase the others out) — the narrator’s voice
marveling at every detail, much as I am
now only with full audio plus he was a guy
(still is, probably); the slow-motion
opening of the egg to show you the luscious
insides again and again until you ran
screaming to your mother words to the
effect that if you didn’t receive written
assurances that several of these miracles
would find their way into your Easter basket, Jesus would not be the only one dying
for the sins of others right before Easter, the
only difference being that nobody’d be
coming back.
Ahem. Anyway. These eggs are perfection itself, if I may damn with faint praise.
Their only noticeable departure from the
appearance of a “real” egg is a slight but
discernable seam, making it possible to
crack them only lengthwise. So if you want
to use these as eggs in your everyday baking, just turn them ninety degrees to the left
in your dominant hand and smack away.
Don’t forget to save those shells!
There is a lot more to be said about Cadbury eggs, but I really feel I’ve shot my bolt
on this particular brand for the moment.
Next up is the SNICKERS egg. In these
clever little devils, the bisecting seam is
taken to a logical extension: every egg is
actually two eggs in one, since each half is
sealed up in a self-contained wall of chocolate. You can wrap up one half and save it
for later if you’re not up to the whole thing
now, you pansy.
The Snickers eggs are extremely good.
In fact, they’re collectively one of my
favorites, if you follow me. I will, however, respectfully submit that there’s a reason
that Snickers bars weren’t originally shaped
like ovals. The finely-chopped peanut in
the nougat is all very well; but the larger
hunks of nut chumming around up top with
the caramel don’t do as well. On the last
bite I took of one of these, I had nothing but
two naked peanuts on a bit of chocolate. No
caramel left to civilize things; it had all
migrated to the center of the egg, showing
no sense of proportion and no care for its
original job description of clothing the
naked. Note to Snickers Inc: tell the boys at
the lab to get to work on this. But past this
bit of quibbling, fine work. Another egg my
differently-abled assistant flubbed by buying only one of.
Maybe he was trying to make up for it by
getting that three-pack of DOVE MILK
CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE eggs. In which
case he once again screwed up big time.
(“But they only sell them in packages of
three!” Oh, Please.) I have come to a reluctant peace (sort of) with the whole milkchocolate-on-the-outside thing; I have little
patience left for any of that excuse for
M E T RO P O L E
| 20
chocolate on the inside. In fact, I was
entirely prepared to reject these right at the
outset. But I will grudgingly admit that
Dove milk chocolate truffle eggs are better
than by rights they ought to be. The filling
is whipped and beaten (calm down, Bruno,
I’m talking about something else) to a silky
smoothness. It still doesn’t hold a candle to
Dove dark chocolate, such as they use to
make those beansy little solid eggs we all
know and treasure; but then again what
could?
Not to be outdone by its competitors, the
good folk who make Milky Way bars
decided to put in their two cents, and so we
have MILKY WAY eggs. Lots of lovely
caramel, and that mysterious nougat —
what gives its taste that dark, moody edge?
Next to Cadbury classics, these might just
be the best. Aww, and look at that cute little stripey pattern. Not colored or anything
— just dotted and drawn right on the
chocolate shell. Charming.
For the last of the major non-Cadbury
contenders, we have the brilliance of M &
M’s MINIS. No, not mini eggs: minis eggs.
In other words, these hollow milk chocolate
ovoids are filled with tiny little M & M’s.
Milk chocolate inside a candy shell inside
milk chocolate — don’t eat these when
you’re high, or you’ll get all cosmic and
start riffing on that pattern, which could be
very annoying to the person you’re with,
especially if it’s me and you decide it’s
some kind of metaphor for life. Seriously,
though — who got the Nobel this year?
Whatever. There’s no justice in this world,
as if you didn’t already know.
Okay, no more excuses — it’s back to the
land of Cadbury for me. So I might as well
mention CADBURY CHOCOLATE
CRÈME eggs and get it over with. Sorry,
guys — this one floats no boats in my bathtub, if you get my drift. I’m just not into
chocolate “crème,” okay? Don’t take it personally. Some women find it very attractive. It’s just not for me.
I don’t know that, other than the name,
this egg needs any descriptives. It’s exactly what it sounds like — a chocolatestuffed chocolate egg. If you like that kind
of thing, it’s fine. I don’t, so it’s not. That
gooey middle is just too sweet and unvaried for me. I will say that the texture and
quantity each egg supplies might just, for
the lascivious-minded (yes, I’m talking
about you), lend itself to certain extra-curricular Easter activities in a strictly adult
household. If you have to ask, I’m not
going to tell you. I’ll only say that if you
want to write more than a few words of
love poetry on the back of anyone’s whatever, invest in the handy multi-pack.
The only other Cadbury egg we have left
is the CADBURY CARAMEL egg. But
soft! There’s another caramel Easter egg
out there, brought to you by Bunny Bites!
Oh, how to choose? Looks like it’s time for
a…
CARAMEL EGG CELEBRITY DEATH
MATCH!
All right. Before we even unwrap these
competitors, let’s go ahead and state the
obvious: Cadbury is bigger. Not that that’s
necessarily better. Some women find compact eggs very attractive. And Bunny Bites
has a cuter name and label. Also, as he consents to be undressed, we see that B.B. has
a “picket fence” motif, the phrase “Bunny
Bites,” and the Palmer candy logo (the
word “Palmer” with the P written in such a
way that it looks like a bunny head — if
you can’t imagine and haven’t already seen
this, you’ll just have to take my word for it)
all etched on the shell. The Cadbury
caramel contrasts with a simpler but perhaps more elegant concentric egg circle
pattern around a twinkle-star line drawing
in the center.
Not to get personal or anything, but
Bunny Bites has a flat butt. Ugly when
you’re holding it, but you can stand it on
the table if you have to. Say you have to
turn a page or stir the soup or finish that
article your pesky editor keeps nagging you
about (what is this deadline thing whereof
you speak, Sparky?). Having a self-sufficient egg might be just the thing, always
provided of course that your first bite was
from the top.
The Cadbury model is more conventional — once you’ve started this puppy, you
have to finish it, and that’s just the way it
is. If you’re into being on the receiving end
of a domination relationship, this might be
the egg for you.
Okay. Getting down to business here.
First bite, gentlemen. B.B.’s chocolate is
slightly darker in color than Cadbury’s, but
just as sweet. Maybe not as mellow.
Really involved here, and not a little
sticky — oh, dear. It’s no contest. Sorry,
Bunny Bites. Your caramel is all right, but
it just sits there. Whereas the Cadbury is
more thoroughly golden, and does that
mozzarella-cheese stretch so it’s impossible
to eat neatly, which means of course you
must eat it in the bathtub, which is where
you should be with chocolate anyway.
Preferably naked. As I said before, the
Cadbury is the more demanding partner,
but he’ll meet you halfway and make this
relationship really worth your time.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for
a quickie while traveling, Bunny Bites is
just the guy for you. Neat, self-contained,
portable. No caramel on your collar when
you come home. There are advantages here.
Bunny Bites has two other eggs available. BUNNY BITES PEANUT BUTTER
is a nice little workhorse of an egg. Solid,
satisfying. Still small, but really thick
peanut butter.
And then we have BUNNY BITES
FUDGE. Sounds like an insult, doesn’t it?
Really yummy, though. I know — after all
that trash talk about chocolate inside chocolate, you’d think this egg would leave me
cold. But somebody wrapped a big old
chunk of actual fudge in a thin sheath of
chocolate, instead of just squirting a little
chocolate filling in there. Eating this, I
started having flashbacks to that summer I
spent working at the Rocky Mountain
Chocolate Factory. Truffles for breakfast
every morning, chocolate-covered pretzels
for lunch, and free fudge demonstrations
twice a week — oh, to be young and careless again! I wore a size 4 back then, too.
I’m telling you, it was a magic time. Ah,
well.
So much for the domestic front. Given
the current political climate, I thought I’d
put in a good word for some overseas
efforts, so I sent my errand-boy out to the
local British tea house and novelty shop to
scope out their merchandise. He came back
with two eggs and a spotted dick. That last
one’s kind of off the subject, so here’s the
411 on the eggs.
First off is the NESTLE AERO. I have
no idea what that means, so don’t ask me to
explain. Arrogant American that I am, I’d
have thought that Nestle would be the same
all over the world. I thought wrong. Not to
sound xenophobic, but this was a bizarre
little contraption. The outside was great —
nice fancy-pants Art Nouveau swirls.
Inside, however, things take a suspicious
turn. There’s a mint-green spongiform honeycomb kind of candy — not brittle, but
melt-in-your-mouth. It’s okay, really. Not
bad. Just — odd.
The next one was a rather involved little
affair. And in the interests of full disclosure
and keeping our lawyers from spelunking
up my nether regions, I want to state right
off that this egg is in fact so far as I know
actually illegal in this country, at least to
manufacture. It has a toy inside it, you see,
M E T RO P O L E
| 21
and that’s a choking risk and thus a no-no
in America. I really hate to bring this up,
given last month’s little problem with The
Man raiding Chong Glass right after
we published an article on it. I’d hate
Metropole to start being the name
associated with ratting out our brothers, as
it were. So if there are any cops reading
this, could you please stop at the beginning
of this paragraph? Thanks.
So this egg-shaped bit of contraband is
called KINDER SURPRISE. I don’t know
if it’s a German name, or if you’re just supposed to be kinder surprised to find a toy in
your chocolate egg. The label also notes
that this egg has “more milk, less cocoa.”
Like that’s some kind of selling point or
something.
Anyway, this egg is a lot taller than the
others, and a good deal lighter in the
loafers. Shake it, and there’s something rattling around in there. Kind of spooky, actually. I wasn’t sure if I should eat it or try to
hatch it. I also wasn’t sure what that
famously dry British wit might think of
planting inside my egg. (That sounded a
little naughty, didn’t it? Sorry.)
Finally, I screwed my courage to the
sticking point and took a bite. Too big of
one — the shell isn’t much thicker than a
real eggshell, though unlike hen eggs it’s
lined with some pale, malted-milk looking
material. Right under my teeth is — an
orange plastic egg. An egg in an egg! Very
cosmic. No, wait. It’s more of a capsule. A
couple more strategic nibbles and it’s out.
I’ll slip back out of the present tense here
and mention that I damned near had to take
an axe to the inner-capsule thing to open it.
But then, finally, triumphantly, it cracks and
I find — I have no fucking idea. What the
hell is this? Something like eighty-seven
tiny little parts to put together, plus decorative stickers. I feel like I just went shopping
at IKEA, for God’s sake. But there is a
helpful little diagram showing how to put
whatever-it-is together. And then a little
picture of what it will look like when I do.
A purple trumpet on wheels with a tongue
sticking out. Just what I always wanted.
No, really.
There’s also, a long, thin, tickertapelooking stretch of paper with “Warning,
read and keep: Toy not suitable for children
under 3 years. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled” written in 29 different
languages (I’m seriously not kidding, ask
my husband if you can find him under all
those egg wrappers). I wasn’t aware that
there were 29 different languages.
And here’s another piece of paper, this
one urging me to check their web site for an
“Internet Surprise.” Also just what I always
wanted. I swear. Forget the Godiva gift certificate; I’m a fulfilled woman now. (note to
people with Godiva connections who are
willing to share the wealth: kidding! Kidding!) In order to get what will undoubtedly be a thrill, I have to log onto the site
(www.magic-kinder.com) and enter the
magic code — sorry, the “magicode”
(really).
I tried, okay? God, did I try. I put more
work into this relationship than I did in any
of my three marriages. After being repeatedly rebuffed, I retreated, shaken and
bewildered. And then angry. You buy the
product, you follow the directions, and
NADA. Where is my Internet surprise?
Any bold adventurers out there? Can you
fetch me my surprise? Maybe this sounds
less than cricket, but look. If I can’t use the
damned magicode, I don’t see why a couple of hundred thousand of my closest readers shouldn’t have the chance to try. So here
it is (grab a pen): M0CAG CNEXK. I have
no idea if that second character is supposed
to be a zero or a letter O, or if it matters. Go
forth, faithful one! Come back carrying
your shield or on it! I would see you to the
door, but I’m trying to get the tongue
straight on this tuba-looking guy. Oh, and
the code is only supposed to be good for 20
minutes after you log on, so I’ll have to ask
all of you to share.
The kinder surprise egg’s shell wasn’t
bad. A little disappointing, though. More
milk, less cocoa indeed. I need something
to cleanse my palate and raise my spirits.
Let me see what I’ve got left in the bag to
report on.
Nothing? Nothing more?
How is this possible? There has to be
something left in here.
All gone? All my pretty ones? Did you
say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my
pretty chickens’ eggs at one fell swoop?
Oh, well. What the hell. The drugstore’s
open 24/7. Now I know why.
See you in church.
r
When Deborah Markus is not tasting
eggs, she is a staff writer at Metropole.
Godiva and fellow egg buffs can reach her
at deborah@metropolemag.com She’s just
launched her new column, Off The Night
Table, a monthly review of the not-nessesarily-new titles cluttering her shelves.
See also her feature on Dorothy Parker in
this issue.
OFF THE NIGHT TABLE:
LET US NOW PRAISE IRISH WOMEN
BY DEBORAH MARKUS
Chris Roberts
W
aiting in line at the library some
weeks ago, I scanned the shelf of
books on sale and spotted a copy of Nuala
O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody?:
The Accidental Memoir of a
Dublin Woman. It was a paperback in
extraordinarily good condition, which
meant that probably whoever donated it
hadn’t bothered to read it first. I paid my
fifty cents, took it home, and read it. Read
it through, ignoring all the books I have to
read and ought to read and promised I’d
read. The guilty completeness of the act felt
like an adultery. I had broken the pattern,
shaken up the order, for the sake of a
woman who, like me, would rather read
even a book she didn’t particularly enjoy
than do almost anything else.
“If there were nothing else,” O’Faolain
points out, “reading would — obviously —
be worth living for.” That there often
seemed to be very little else indeed for her,
and that she staggered on in spite of that, is
as much a marvel as the writing itself,
which is strong and sweet and struggling.
Although the book is very much
O’Faolain’s story, it feels as much like a
description of what is like to be a woman in
Ireland as a biography. As opposed to
Rosemary Mahoney’s Whoredom in
Kimmage, which is supposedly the story
of women in Ireland but seems in fact much
more the autobiography of this young
American woman of Irish descent who
traveled to the old country and set the
natives on fire with her wit and beauty.
You’re a good fifty pages into the book
before you hear about any woman in Ireland other than Mahoney. When she can
bear to look away from her mirror and
relate any conversations that don’t involve
Irish men (and women) hitting on her,
Mahoney tells the stories of both ordinary
and extraordinary women in Ireland —
writers, activists, even a president. One of
the last chapters of the book is devoted to
her interview with the poet Eavan Boland.
On my refrigerator is, clipped from
The New Yorker, Boland’s poem “The
Pomegranate.” It’s there not because I think
it her best poem, but because it’s the first I
read by her, and I was wildly grateful for
the introduction. I catch bits of it every day,
and odd little turns of it go through my head
at awkward times (“If I defer the grief I will
diminish the gift”) and make me wonder for
a moment where they came from. Just after
I read that poem for the first time, the bookstore where I worked got in Boland’s
Outside History. I bought it because it
was beautiful. I read it like I do that poem
in the kitchen — just a little now and then;
sparingly, like something too rich for everyday. The domesticity of much of her poetry
is deceptive. There is nothing tame here.
Nor is there in the work of Edna O’Brien.
I haven’t read her novels yet, though The
Country Girls Trilogy has been looking expectantly at me for several years now.
But having read O’Brien’s short stories, I
think I’d have to feel very safe indeed to
take on a longer work, as one prefers a welllit house for reading a ghost story. It seems
trite to use words like dark and eerie to
describe O’Brien’s writing, but there it is:
her job is not to calm or reassure, but to
awaken. She remarks in “A Scandalous
Woman:”
There are times when the thing we
are seeing changes before our very
eyes, and if it is a landscape we praise
nature, and if it is a specter we shudder or cross ourselves but if it is a
loved one that defects, we excuse ourselves and say we have to be somewhere, and are already late for our
next appointment.
I made the mistake of reading that story
while I should have been playing with my
son, and the dreamy terror of it left me
worthless as a mother for the rest of the day.
Late for all my appointments, indeed. r
M E T RO P O L E
| 24
T
his has been one of New York’s coldest
winters in a while. Sure enough, the
heat in my Lincoln started acting up, so I
took it to my friend Charlie Pork Chops so
he could have a look. Charlie is one of the
most reliable guys I know. He still fixes
cars in his own garage and knows how to
keep a lid on things. I had coffee with him
and some of the fellas in the back room,
then he took a look at the car. I asked him
to rotate the tires while he was at it.
When he was done, Charlie took me to
the side and pointed out some artifacts he
had found in the trunk while looking for the
tire key. There was a large kitchen knife, a
baseball bat, and a pair of brass knuckles.
“What’s with the knife Frankie? Did you hit
a deer?” he asked. Actually the knife was
for a cooking show I did, the bat belonged
to my nephew the ball player, and the brass
knuckles… I was recycling.
The next day I found out that Charlie
was in the hospital, having suffered multiple heart attacks. He’s going to be fine,
thank God, but that doesn’t make me feel
any less guilty. Just when I was going to
write about my tortellini with the fourcheese sauce, I find out my good friend has
clogged arteries. As if my editor’s
obsession with everything being low-fat
wasn’t enough.
On Saint Paddy’s Day, I try to put in a
call to Dominick Cancilla — the other guy
who puts the eyeball to everything I write.
I’ve got this great idea I want to pitch and
figure he’s the only guy who wouldn’t be
out drinking green beer. I call once, I call
twice — I keep getting the machine. After
the nineteenth time, I started getting a little
worried. So at about 1 a.m. my time, which
is 10 p.m. California time, I call and this
time I get him. Guess what? He had some
kind of weird reaction to something in his
wife’s corned beef and cabbage, and his
tongue is swollen like an overfed inlaw.
Anyway, I think that all these ailing people
must have been giving my body ideas
because the next thing you know, I wind up
with a spastic colon!
So anyway, I’m in bed, drinking lots of
green tea and watching some old VHS tape
of Bobby Vinton singing, “Roll out the
Barrel,” when I realize that I’m never going
to be able to get my column done in the
condition I’m in. First, I’d have to come up
with a recipe, then I’d have to set it up with
an old story from the neighborhood —
talking about this one, or talking about that
one — then I’d have to test the recipe, take
some pictures, have it out with my editor
for putting a robot in my picture of escarole
which in turn caused about twenty other
writers to send me their garlic recipes, or
the time I loaned my car to Sammy the
Fish, Jake the Bat, and Salami-fist Calona
to take care of some things because I’d
gotten into some bad clams — I lay there
asking myself, “Who do I know? Who do I
know?”
Then it dawned on me, “Michael
Essany’s mother!” Not that I knew Michael
Essany’s mother per se, but I figured if she
can cook for guests on Michael’s show, like
Tom Green or supermodel Frederique, she
was my kind of mom!
For those of you who are permanently
stuck in the kitchen and don’t know who
P.Thompson/FILM MAGIC © 2002 E! Networks. All rights reserved.
ALL ABOUT MY COLON
“Hey Michael, Go like this”
last time… it was too much to bear. I considered fabricating something and palming
off a picture from a cooking magazine, but
that’s no good — you just can’t make this
stuff up. I needed to call in a substitute.
Trying to find someone who might be
able to do it for me — like that time I got
Anne Rice to send me her garlic recipe
Michael Essany is, let me explain — he’s
the next Johnny Carson — a twenty-yearold whiz kid who does his very own talk
show from his family’s living room. He’s
got one of those reality shows on the E!
Channel and his mom and dad are his only
crew. So I figure, sure, his mom is probably busy — but if I ever want to get myself
M E T RO P O L E
| 25
on The Michael Essany Show, here’s my
chance to butter her up and rest my spastic
colon.
So I called Michael and pretended to be
a member of Jimmy Carter’s staff in order
to get him on the phone. After explaining to
him who I actually was, he told me that
although his mother and father do cook for
his guests, food is usually courtesy of Pizza
Hut when the likes of Timothy Dalton are
not at the house — and that it’s his best
friend and sidekick, Mike Randazzo’s mom
who steals his epicurean heart. “She made
me her famous biscotti to bring to Jay Leno
when I was a guest on The Tonight Show,”
Essany told me. “Leno liked them very
much.” I figured if they’re good enough for
Leno, they’re maybe good enough for me.
After all, before Leno got the Tonight Show
gig, he’d show up on Letterman with food.
The guy loves to eat!
So with special thanks from me, here is
Shirley Randazzo’s famous biscotti recipe
Biscotti alla Shirley Randazzo
3
⁄4 c slivered unblanched almonds
1 stick butter
2 eggs
21⁄4 c unsifted flour
11⁄2 teaspoons baking powder
1
⁄4 teaspoon salt
⁄4 c sugar
1
⁄2 teaspoon almond extract
3
Blend flour, salt and baking powder and
set aside. Cream butter and sugar until
fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Mix well.
Blend in dry ingredients. Mix in almonds.
Roll dough by hand into a log about 15
inches long and 3-4 inches wide. Press with
palm to slightly flatten log.
Bake at 350 degrees on a cookie sheet
lined with parchment paper for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool about 25
minutes. Slice diagonally about 3⁄4 inch
wide. Place individual cookies on cookie
sheet and bake again for 10 minutes. Turn
over and bake again 10 more minutes.
Cool.
For chocolate dip, melt 1 c chocolate
chips with 1 T shortening in microwave.
Dip each biscotto in melted chocolate and
spread about 1⁄3 of cookie with knife. Place
on waxed paper and freeze until chocolate
is set. May be stored in freezer or airtight
container.
Makes about 18 and well worth the
effort. r
Buon Appetito! See you next month!
KANSAS CITY HERE SHE COMES…
VAMPIRE CHRONICLE WRITER HONORED
F
requent
Metropole
contributor
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has been
named as recipient of the 2003 World
Horror Convention Grand Master Award.
She becomes only the second woman
ever so honored by the convention. (The
first was Anne Rice.) The World Horror
Convention will be held in Kansas City,
Missouri April 17th-20th, with Yarbro in
attendance.
Yarbro's most recent novel is Night
Blooming, the 15th in the Chronicles of
St.-Germain. Yarbro, the author of more
than 80 books, has worked in a wide
variety of genres including science fiction,
westerns, young adult adventure, as well as
historical horror. Kudos Quinn!
— Paula Guran
M E T RO P O L E
| 26
“PISSED ON
MARGARITAS”
From Sean Ellis’s
365: A Year In Fashion
Photographer Sean Ellis
documents a year in
his life with a
photograph-a-day.
See page 39
Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers
Times Three From Criterion
T
he Criterion Collection has made quite a name for itself by
presenting definitive versions of classic films — first on laser disc
and now on DVD. In their recent release of adaptations of Ernest
Hemingway’s short story “The Killers,” they have not only
presented some fine films, they have also made a statement about
Hollywood’s ability to stay true to its source material.
Not afraid of being seen as obsessive completists, Criterion has
packed five adaptations of Hemingway’s story into two DVDs.
The original story is, of course, here, but not as text. Instead, it is presented in audio-book form, ready by Stacy Keach. The short story
tells the tale of a pair of killers who visit a small diner where they intend
to wait until a regular customer — “the Swede” — comes in, at which
time they will kill him. The Swede never shows up, and one of the
diner’s customers runs to his room to tell him that he’s going to be
killed. The Swede doesn’t care. He’s gotten mixed up with some bad
people and knows what’s coming to him. End of a very manly, very
Hemingway story.
The next version of the story, if we look at them in chronological
order, is Robert Siodmak’s 1946 film noir adaptation of the story,
starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. The movie begins
essentially identically to the short story, with much of the dialogue and
situation in the diner as if it had come straight from Hemingway’s pen.
When the source material is exhausted, the begins an exploration of
the material behind the Swede’s fatalistic attitude and eventual murder.
Using an insurance investigator as its main character, the movie
explores how the Swede went from being an up-and-coming boxer to
a thug to a gas-station attendant to a victim.
The plot is engaging and fits Hemingway’s story nicely. It has a twist
at the end which is both natural and adds to the message of the film.
The characters are well portrayed (a side note, one of the killers is
played by Robert Conrad who would later be cast as the lead in
radio’s Gunsmoke). The direction is excellent without being obtrusive,
and is a fine example of film noir. Perhaps equally important to the look
and feel of the film is its use of silences. This is a work that knows when
to be quiet and just let mood carry the moment.
All in all, this is a film which Hemingway himself would likely have
approved.
Those who remember Steve Martin’s Dead Men Don’t Wear
Plaid will recognize 1946’s The Killers as the source of the scene about
the restaurant with too much jewelry in the soup.
In 1949, the Screen Director’s Playhouse produced an adaptation of
Siodmak’s film for radio. This adaptation, also included on Criterion’s
disc, starred Burt Lancaster and Shelly Winters, and brings back
William Conrad, although in a different part.
The killers themselves are never heard in this adaptation. The insurance investigator is transformed into a police investigator, and more
importantly the scene at the beginning of the film which takes place in
the diner is skipped, so most of the material from Hemingway’s short
story is present in spirit only.
The biggest flaw in this radio adaptation is that it tries to pack too
much into too little time. The scenes are largely the same as those in
the film, but because they are compressed, they lack the pauses and
meaningful silences which so helped the film to build a mood.
Because of this, the radio adaptation seems more like a Reader’s Digest of the film than a worthwhile adaptation, and is
worth listening to as a curiosity and little more.
The real treasure in this set is a 1956 student film by
Andrei Tarkovski. This adaptation of “The Killers”
seems to be completely unaware of the previous, big-studio
version, and instead relies entirely on Hemingway. If the
M E T RO P O L E
| 28
subtitles are to be trusted, the dialogue is
almost straight out of the short story, and
the scenes look almost identical to what a
reader might imagine.
It’s interesting to compare this version of
the story to the beginning of the 1946 film.
Because the two films cover the same territory, they are very similar. Even some of
the dialogue is the same. But even so, the
larger budget and higher level of technical
complexity of the 1946 version give it an
entirely different feeling from that of the
smaller, more claustrophobic Russian film.
Both of the films succeed, but in different ways. The Russian film is certainly
more in keeping with Hemingway’s vision,
and not only because it stays within the
scope of the original story.
The actors’ attitudes and certain visual
details make it clear that the director of the
Russian film thoroughly understood the
material he was working with. One scene in
particular, in which the Swede lies in his
bed awaiting his fate is particularly telling.
In this scene, the Swede smokes cigarette
The League of Literary References
A
lan Moore’s League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen comics are a treat for those
who recall that there was entertainment
before reality television and literature
before Star Trek novels.
In the comics, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, the invisible man, Dr. Jekyll/
Mr. Hyde, and Mina Murray are brought
together under mysterious circumstances to
battle an immense evil. The comic is clever,
intelligent, and crammed full of references
to classic adventure and horror literature. It
has attracted quite a following.
after cigarette, extinguishing their remains
by pressing their lit ends into the wall by
his side. This detail, absent from Hemingway, shows a self-destructiveness and a
lack of care for the future which adds
greatly to the story.
The least of all of the adaptations on this
DVD is Don Siegel’s 1964 film, Ernest
Hemingway’s The Killers. As is a Hollywood tradition, the film which has the
original author’s name in the title is also the
one which has the least to do with his work.
The diner shown in the story and other
films has, in an indication of just how
unsubtle Siegel’s version will be, been
replaced by a school for the blind. The
despairing, solitary Swede has been
replaced by an ex-race car driver who is
teaching blind boys how to rebuild engines
when he is killed.
This movie is really a remake of the
1946 film instead of a new adaptation of the
short story, but even so only few elements
for the previous film remain. The killers
themselves are the main characters this
time around, and they are painted with
broad brush strokes. The twist near the ending of the 1946 film is maintained, but the
ending itself — and almost everything else
which comes before it — are different.
This movie was quite obviously made
with television in mind. Everything is
bright, meant to be viewed in a well-lit
living room instead of a dark theater, and
somehow even the acting seems over
saturated. Unlike the previous film which
knew how to use silence, this movie seems
unable to keep quiet.
Not that it’s a terrible film, not really.
The ending is actually quite interesting and
somewhat in keeping with Hemingway.
And it’s worth seeing if only for the bizarre
pairing of Norman Fell (Three’s Company) and Ronald Regan (President of
the United States) as part of a gang of
crooks. But it is most important as an
indication of just how far Hollywood can
go in rewriting a story.
r
Judging from the trailer,
the film version of League
will be true to its roots,
although certain details
have apparently changed.
Quatermain (played by
Sean Connery in a fine bit
of casting), the invisible
man, and Jekyll/Hyde are
all obviously present. There
is a character who appears
to be Nemo, but who is not
shown well enough for us
to really get a good look at.
Mina Murray is also present, but she seems to be a
much more powerful character in the film
than in the comic or in Dracula.
The film looks to be an action-packed
adventure, along the lines of the pulp
novels of the early twentieth century. It certainly would be a pleasure to see such a
thing done well, considering the unfortunate way that Hollywood has mistreated
Doc Savage and, to a lesser extent, the
Shadow. In fact, if it weren’t for The Phantom and The Rocketeer (neither of which
did particularly well at the box office),
recent pulp-style films would be batting
exactly zero.
There has been a bit of talk on the
Internet about League. Rabid fans of the
comic are, of course, upset by any hint that
the story or characters will be altered.
There have been messages complaining
about the addition of Dorian Gray, and
someone named Dante Inferno, for example, and others upset that Sherlock Holmes
will not be making an appearance. And
several people have complained about
Detective Tom Sawyer, apparently unaware
that Mark Twain wrote a little book called
Tom Sawyer Detective. So far as I have
seen, nobody has complained about the
film using Mina Murray’s married name,
Harker, when the comic makes a point of
her using her maiden name.
To these people I say — lighten up. If the
trailer is any indication, the film sticks far
closer to the comic than would be expected,
particularly considering that with some of
these characters there may still be copyright considerations. My only hope is that
the film keeps the many literary references
and does not, instead, dumb things up for
its perceived audience.
One interesting bit of marketing info:
League is apparently being advertised as
LXG (in the Terminator 2/T2 tradition).
True, “Extraordinary” doesn’t begin with
an X, but I suppose that they will sell more
tickets with LXG than LEG.
r
—Groan Person
M E T RO P O L E
| 29
Dear Fat Larry,
A recent intimate told me I
was in desperate need of a
Brazilian waxing. Having
never heard of this, I turn to
you for guidance, education,
and advice.
Hairy and Humiliated, Ellen D.
N.Y.C.
Ask
Fat Larry
Advice
in a big way
Dear Fat Larry,
My job keeps my days and nights pretty
busy, but I’d like to think I have a pretty
normal sex life. After being poked fun at
for having what my ex-beau called “Seventies’ bush,” I started doing a little landscaping down there if you know what I
mean. A recent intimate told me I was in
desperate need of a Brazilian waxing. Having never heard of this, I turn to you for
guidance, education, and advice.
Hairy and Humiliated, Ellen D.
N.Y.C.
I put this letter first because I want to get
it out of the way. One of the biggest, unexpected problems I’ve found that go along
with the job of telling people you know
everything is that you get a lot of just plain
crap in the mail. Much of it is from people
who want to try and show you up, much of
it is from people who think they are clever
and are wrong, and what’s left is from idiots
who think that they can put
something over on me. I’d say
that this letter falls in that
latter category.
Since I’m happy as can be
with my state of hirsutness, I
don’t know from personal
experience what a Brazillian
waxing is. I do have it on reasonable authority, though, that
it is intended for the removal of
hair from one’s ass, if I may be so
indelicate.
So let’s see here, we have a letter from
an “Ellen D.” complaining about a hairy
ass. Oh, I get it — Ellen Degeneris has
found it necessary to write to me because
lesbians are supposed to be hairy. Ha ha.
Very funny.
Whoever wrote this particular waste of
my time needs to get out of the house once
and a while. Preferably to be run over by a
car.
Do I know the secret to a greener, plusher lawn? Good question. Nice question.
Also the question that I’m nominating for
this week’s “learn to ask a question properly, damn it” prize. Why? Because the
answer to the question is, “Yes, I know the
secret to a greener, plusher lawn.” If you’d
wanted to know what the secret was, you
should have asked in the first place.
Dear Fat Larry,
I’ve got dry elbows. I’ve tried lotions,
moisturizers, vitamins — but nothing
seems to help. What can I do?
Sarah Marks
Oregon
Personally, I use Vaseline on mine.
Works like a charm, but you’ve got to be
careful about leaning on the dinner table so
you don’t just slide right off end end up
with your face in the gravy.
Dear Fat Larry,
Dear Fat Larry,
With Spring around the corner, I wanted
to ask if you knew the secret to a greener,
plusher lawn. My lawn starts out okay, but
as the summer progresses, I start to get
burnt spots and bear spots and by September, my lawn looks horrible. I really can’t
afford a landscaper, so I was wondering if
you could give me any good advice. I water
my lawn at least once a week and have also
tried adding powdered fertilizer.
Richard Quinton
New Jersey
I’m disgusted with people. I just can’t
seem to hire anyone who can do a job and
do it right. I always find myself doing
something myself because I cannot be satisfied with the standard of work people
want you to accept these days. I know
you’ll mock me or try to make a joke out of
this, but I’m dead serious. It’s gotten so bad
that I don’t even know how to relax. If I
hire some kid to wash and wax my car, I’ll
find myself standing there, watching him
the whole time. Am I going insane or is the
M E T RO P O L E
| 30
whole of society turning into a pride-less
cesspool of lazy couch potatoes?
Delmar McCormick
Via the Internet
Both.
Dear Fat Larry,
I’ve heard a lot of talk about people buying short-wave radios. What exactly is a
short-wave radio and what benefits come
along with owning one?
Rick Wulff
Santa Clara, CA
Radio is a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like visible light. Electromagnetic radiation propagates in waves, and the
properties of the radiation are related to the
distance between the crests of its waves.
For example, the difference between green
light, infrared light, and radio waves is
pretty much just the amount of space
between crests. Line all of these up from
smallest to largest amount of space, and
you’ve got a spectrum. A short-wave radio
is one which picks up broadcasts in the portion of the spectrum labeled short wave.
The main benefit of owning a short-wave
radio is that, after purchasing it, you will
become a member of an elite group of people known as “geeks who need to get a
life.” Doesn’t sound worth it to me.
Dear Fat Larry,
If The Incredible Hulk fought the Black
Scorpion, who would win?
crying out loud I could take on Superman if
I had kryptonyte! I’m not even going to
mention “Superman vs. Muhammed Ali.”
It’s just too damned embarrassing.
So to answer your question, the Hulk
would win in the same sense that, when you
swat a fly, you win.
Dear Fat Larry,
What’s the difference between a ten-dollar haircut and a sixty-dollar haircut? And
please, don’t say fifty-dollars!
A Mobster Wanna-be
Queens, NY
Why not say fifty dollars? I guess this
guy’s got math problems the same way he’s
got extra-hyphen problems. Okay, so let me
say it this way — most of the time, the difference between a ten-dollar and a sixtydollar haircut has more to do with what’s
inside the head (or, rather, what’s lacking
inside it) than what’s outside it. Unless your
hair’s gonna be able to get a part time job
and come home to bake you a cake afterwards, I don’t see spending that much on
fixing it up.
I’m sure that there’s some barber or
beauty shop groupie out there that will tell
me all sorts of things that can make a haircut more expensive, but once you get to
about $30, you’re over my limit for what it
makes sense to spend on your hair. And
that’s assuming you have a serious beard.
Yo, Fat Larry! I just wanted to say hello
from Alaska! I bet you don’t think that you
have fans out here, but we talk about you
once a month in the coffee shop. You’re
funny man!
Keep it up!
Tom Ruark
Via the Internet
Nobody, not even comic book readers. I
don’t know much about Black Scorpion, not
being particularly fond of lame television
super hero shows, but I do know this: she’s
a super hero a la Batman, while the Hulk is
a super hero a la a modern battleship, only
stronger.
This reminds me of some of those stupid
battle comics that used to be around when
I was a kid, like “Superman vs. Spiderman.” Like that would even be a contest!
Sure, they evened the playing field by giving Spiderman some kryptonyte, but for
Harry McCoy
Prince William Sound
I don’t see a question in here. You see a
question? I don’t see a question. Next
caller.
Dear Fat Larry,
I was over a certain friend’s house who
is always trying to impress everyone with
his knowledge of stupid things. For example, he would ask you if you knew why
people could float very easily in the Great
Salt Lake and then he or his equally snooty
wife would go on and tell you the reason
why. They would also pride themselves in
things like having organic fruit in the house
and they could talk about it for hours.
The other day, my friend asked if I’d like
to try some “very special” tea. His wife and
he looked at each other with such excitement that I just wanted to barf. Then he
informed me that this tea was hand picked
by trained monkeys in China. My first reaction was to say, “Get the fuck out of here,”
but then I realized he wasn’t kidding. Who
in their right mind wants to drink tea that
was picked by a monkey after the monkey
probably spent all day picking his ass and
touching his balls? This can’t be sanitary. Is
there really such a tea? And if there is, do
they clean it first? I’ve heard that a dog’s
saliva is very clean, but a monkey’s hand?
I think not!
Greg Wilensky
Los Angeles
You should trust your first reaction. This is
a pretty common myth, but the fact is that
monkeys don’t pick tea and they never have.
However, you’re not out of the woods yet.
You really want to get a conversation
started with your friends, bring up kopi
luwak coffee. This stuff is made from coffee
beans which have been passed through an
Indonesian palm civit. You read that right,
the civet eats cherries off a certain plant,
digests the outside, and excretes the
remaining bean which is gathered to be
ground into coffee. I’m assuming it’s
washed first.
The coffee’s supposed to be excellent, but
you’d have to tie me down and beat the
crap out of me with a stick to get me to try
a cup. Fortunately, supposedly only around
500 pounds of the stuff is produced a year.
If you really want some, it’s available
through www.urbanfare.com for $150 per
quarter pound, although they are currently
sold out until next year. You might be able
to find some on eBay, but I’d say doublecheck your source on that one.
While we’re on the subject, until 1998
Chanel No. 5 included an ingredient that
was gathered by scraping it from a gland
near a civit’s anus. This isn’t the same kind
of civet that the coffee beans come out of,
but the lesson remains — if you’re a civet,
you’ve got one hard-working ass.
Got a question for Fat Larry? Then get off
your lazy butt and e-mail it to him at
FatLarry@metropolemag.com
M E T RO P O L E
| 31
A
nita Blake’s life has gotten more than a bit complicated. Most importantly, Anita is impatient with the vampires’ old
Complicated enough to fill ten books — even though they European ideas of fealty and the notion that being an entitled ariscover a span of only two fictional years). She started out tocrat is preferable to being a peasant who works for what she gets.
as a “reanimator” bringing the dead back to life for a fee, a licensed George Dubya’s current diplomatic problems with “Old Europe”
vampire (and other monster) killer, and supernatural investigator. would have been more predictable if he’d had Anita advising him.
She hooked-up (physically and supernaturally) with both vampire (Hell, Anita, given the firepower and a supernatural cohort, could
Jean-Claude, now-Master of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, and wipe out any “axis of evil.”)
Richard, now the Ulfric of the local lycanthrope clan. Together
Sure enough, Bella and Musette are up to old-fashioned nasty
they form a “triumvirate of power.” Anita has also become the vampiric politics. Mussette is in town to demand that Asher be sent
Nimir-Ra of a wereleopard pard and acquired yet another back with her to Europe and straight into Bella’s clutches. And, as
boyfriend in her Nimir-Raj, Micah. Along with keeping her sex life Musette quickly demonstrates, Asher’s undead life would be truly
in order, Anita’s been taking out badtorturous. Anita and Jean-Claude prodies, solving preternatural crimes, and
vide Asher with some protection by
gaining supernatural powers of her
making him a sexual partner, but
own. In fact, Richard — who has
that’s not enough to defeat the Duo of
major issues, honey — has dumped
the Damned.
her because she’s now more of a
Meanwhile, there’s a couple of
“monster” than the monsters. It’s
hideously bloody murders to solve.
taken many pages for Anita to gain
The murderer appears to be a wereher powers and get over her midwestwolf and Anita’s needed to solve the
ern moral qualms concerning having
crime. But Anita’s longtime cop
more than one man in her life at a
buddy, Lt. Dolph Storr has lost more
time. Now, by the end of Cerulean
than a few marbles and turned into a
Sins, her eleventh adventure, she
supernatural-hating extremist. He gets
finally appears to be eagerly accepting
worse as the murders continue, but
of both.
luckily Detective Zerbrowski is still
Cerulean Sins starts with Anita
on the job. Zerbrowski and Anita’s
meeting a mysterious client who
new status as a federal marshal enable
wants her to reanimate a dead ancesher to help the cops.
tor. The client turns out to be a lethal
But that’s not all: A couple of
assassin, but facing down scary dudes
human thugs are following Anita’s
is all in a day’s work for our gal Anita.
Jeep. Belle Morte invades Anita’s
That night, she’s working a run-ofmind and feeds off her energy while
the-zombie-mill job: raising a dead
metaphysically sucking Richard into a
guy to settle an insurance claim.
temporary coma. Anita encounters a
Things turn less than normal when
new, and perhaps ultimate, enemy in
vampire Asher arrives on an emerthe form of the Mother of All Darkgency mission: Anita must immediness. If all that weren’t enough,
ately return with him to the headquarAnita’s acquired an ardeur — a sort of
ters of Jean-Claude, the Master of St.
bloodlust without the blood — that
CERULEAN SINS
Louis and Anita’s lover. Belle Morte’s
must be “fed” twice daily. Luckily
lieutenant, Musette, has arrived early
stripper-werewolf Jason can, in emerBy Laurell K. Hamilton, Berkley. $22.95 (405p),
for a previously scheduled visit. More ISBN: 0425188361, Publication Date: April 1, 2003 gencies, help satiate her desires.
than bad manners are involved in her
Will Richard come through and fulpremature appearance in St. Louis. The 2000-year-old Belle Morte fill his duties as one-third of the power triumvirate? Jean-Claude,
is a member of the Council of Vampires and the formidable cre- Anita and the vampires need him and his wolves to combat the bad
ator of Jean-Claude’s bloodline. Musette’s arrival is obviously part gals. But even with Richard do they stand a chance? What about
of a dangerous power-play of some sort.
that supernatural serial killer? What happened to that mysterious
Anita fights for truth, justice, and the supernatural American client?
way with an intensity (“...just let me shoot everyone...it would save
Fans of the Vampire Hunter series should be thrilled with Cerulean
a lot of trouble”) that makes John Wayne look unpatriotic. Her Sins. Hamilton resolves some quandaries, dismisses some baggage,
unrequited desire to shoot first and not bother to ever ask questions and comes through with new aspects for her lead characters.
is just one indication that she’s a very American fantasy heroine.
Few authors ever manage to make it eleven books in to a series,
It’s not bad enough, for instance, that Mussette is a boogeywoman, let alone keep it as fresh and fun as Hamilton has. Her last Anita
she’s also a near-pedophile who is accompanied by vampire chil- book (Narcissus in Chains) was weighed down with working out
dren. This allows Anita to express American disgust with a situa- details and determining some direction. Cerulean Sins gets going
tion that might not raise an eyebrow elsewhere. Later on, her in that direction and never stops. Like any good series book, it
“American” ideas about sex are seen as étrangement amusant. leaves you wanting more. — Review by Paula Guran
M E T RO P O L E
| 32
Crossing Lines: Rape in American Cinema
Straw Dogs: The Criterion Collection, DVD
I Spit On Your Grave: Elite Entertainment, DVD
I
n Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave, writer Jennifer Hill
(Camille Keaton) is brutally raped by a local band of
hillbilly punks after she retreats to a rented country house for the
summer. When the film was released in 1978, Roger Ebert
called it “The most disgusting movie ever made.”
Less is noted by critics of the multiple rape of
Amy Sumner (Susan George) in Sam
Peckinpah’s 1971 film Straw Dogs. In the film,
Amy is brutally raped by two local hillbillies after she
retreats to the English countryside with her husband
(played by Dustin Hoffman) for the summer.
Even less fuss was made over John Boorman’s
1972 production of Deliverance, in which Ned Beatty is gang
raped by local hillbillies while vacationing in the country. There is
a certain irony that Amazon.com lists Deliverance as “Popular in
South Carolina (#11).” As for Straw Dogs and I Spit On Your
Grave, Amazon has no popularity information listed.
C
riterion’s recently released limited-edition DVD of Straw
Dogs is packed with significant extras, such as a Sam Peckinpah documentary, and short documentaries featuring Dustin
Hoffman (shot on location during the filming of Straw Dogs,) and
a modern interview with Susan George. According to one recent
review, the film. “Actually looks tame by contemporary
standards.” I can only assume that the reviewer somehow managed
to be out of the room during the rape scene.
Also recently released on DVD, this time by Elite Entertainment, is I Spit on Your Grave (The Millennium Edition). Totally
uncut, the DVD features two very informative commentary tracks
— one track by writer/director Meir Zarchi and a lighter track by
cult-film guru Joe Bob Briggs. In his commentary Zarchi
explains for the first time that he chose to film the brutal rape scene
because he had witnessed the aftermath of a brutal rape firsthand.
One of the most controversial aspects of Straw Dogs is that the
rape victim, Amy, appears to begin to enjoy being
raped. Yet, for some reason the more realistic, albeit
more graphic I Spit On Your Grave, gets most of the
bad press and criticism.
Personally, I found it much more disturbing to see
a rape victim taking some pleasure in the horrible act.
Even after two men rape her, Amy does not report it
to anyone — including her husband. According to
both Peckinpah and George, the point is that the viewer should be
disturbed.
As for poor Ned Beatty’s character in Deliverance — no critic
seemed to care very much, although the rape is one of the films
most talked about scenes.
Straw Dogs and I Spit On Your Grave are two of the most
important and certainly the most graphic of early American
“revenge” films — although the messages they send are not very
clear (particularly in Straw Dogs’ case). Perhaps their directors just
wanted “to make the audience think.” I don’t know whether they
succeeded in that, but they certainly made films which will be
difficult to forget.
r
—Robert Trippe
M E T RO P O L E
| 33
Infoglobe:
Handy — Under the Right Conditions
I
nfoglobe is one of those devices which can only be properly
categorized under “gadget.” It has a definite purpose, it does
its job well, but even so it will likely only appeal to that portion of society which has a desperate need for cool, new, electronic thingies.
The idea behind Infoglobe is that a telephone’s caller ID system is pretty useless if you have to keep running over to the
phone to see who is calling before you can decide whether you
are going to pick up or not. By the time you get to the phone,
you’ve already been interrupted, might as well just answer and
get it over with. Infoglobe eliminates this problem by making
caller ID information visible from a large distance. A really
large distance, in fact.
Within Infoglobe’s blue dome is a contraption that looks like
a helicopter’s rotors with an LED-covered stick at either end.
When the machine is turned on, the blades begin to spin faster
than the eye can follow, and the LEDs flash on and off in a
computer-controlled pattern which — due to the speed with
which they are moving and persistence of vision — creates the
illusion of words floating in the air within the Infoglobe.
These floating words dance about in playful ways as they
show the time, the date, pre-programmed and user-programmed, date-triggered messages, friendly greetings, and,
when your phone rings, caller ID information. If you missed a
call, the text also tells you that a call came in, and it supposedly will tell you if there is a voicemail message waiting,
although I couldn’t get this feature to work for me.
There are two minor problems with Infoglobe. First, in order
to work it has to be placed rather prominently in a room. It sort
of defeats the purpose of having a device that can show you caller ID
info across a crowded room if it’s hidden behind a planter or on a low
shelf somewhere. Because of the nature of the device, this makes it
more appropriate for, say the Batcave than, say, stately Wayne Manor.
The other problem is that the tiny spinning blades make a constant
low whirring noise. In and of itself, it’s not a big deal, but if you are
particularly sensitive and your home or office is generally very quiet,
this could get on your nerves. My wife, for example, thought
Infoglobe was quite jolly when I first hooked it up, but she was unable
to deal with the constant whirring and ordered the beast relegated to
my office after about twenty minutes.
r
Gas on the Cheap
T
ired of watching the prices skyrocket at your local gas station?
Sick of hearing about gas prices every night on the news?
Well, finally someone has a solution.
Beginning later this month, gas pumps
will be opening at 99 Cents Only stores
in California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Regular gas will be 99 cents.
Mid-grade gas will be 99
cents. And premium gas will
be 99 cents. Prices will be
painted on the signs, permanent and unchangeable.
“We think this will be an
enormous new market for us,”
said April LeMat, spokesperson for
the chain. “People are extremely sensitive
to gasoline prices. They will cross the street to go
to a gas station that has a two-cent difference in price, even
thought they might ultimately only be saving a quarter when they
fill up their tank. These are the same people who won’t take a
coupon for a dollar off a box of cereal and make their purchase at
a store which doubles coupons because clipping coupons ‘isn’t
worth their time.’”
How can the chain afford to sell gasoline so inexpensively? “It’s not actually all that inexpensive,” says LeMat. “Gas is
always 99 cents, but the amount
of gas you get for that price
varies daily with the price of
oil. It’s not like you always
get a gallon of gas at that
price. We’d go out of business in a heartbeat.”
So why should people buy
their gas this way if they’re not
going to save money? “It’s mostly
a psychological thing,” says LeMat.
“Who wouldn’t want to be able to say they
bought gas for under a dollar? We’ll have a little convenience
store with 99-cent sodas and candy, too. Of course, the amount of
soda in your cup will vary over time, and you might not get a
whole candy bar.”
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M E T RO P O L E
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Skinning PETA Alive
by Dominick Cancilla
P
ETA, a group which seeks to promote
its animal-rights agenda through various means, has gone too far. Its most recent
campaign juxtaposes photographs from the
Holocaust with images of animals intended
for human consumption. The idea is to
shock viewers into seeing the killing of animals in a new way.
When I saw one of the images from this
campaign, my first impulse was to make
fun of it. In that image, they show starved
Holocaust victims on one side and a skinny
goat on the other, with the caption “Walking skeletons.” I thought I’d put together a
few parody adds, perhaps showing a
protesting monk setting himself on fire on
one side and a barbecue on the other, or
maybe the L.A. riots with the running of the
bulls. But after paying a visit to the PETA
Web site, I found myself unable to see anything to add to a campaign which is essentially self parodying.
Even if we ignore the ridiculousness of
PETA’s comparison (there’s an enormous
difference between killing people because
of their race and raising and killing food
animals), the campaign is still hideously
flawed in three ways.
First, PETA is not using willing spokespeople. True, there are Jewish people who
apparently agree with PETA’s position (see
their Web site), and some of the financing
behind this campaign is from a Jewish person, but that doesn’t give PETA the right to
use any Holocaust survivor or victim to
make its point. If the backers of this campaign are survivors and want to use photos
of themselves, fine, but that is not the case
here.
One of the campaign’s images shows
men in a Buchenwald barracks alongside a
photo of caged chickens with the caption,
“To animals, all people are Nazis.” In the
upper right bunk in the Buchenwald photo
is author, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel
Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Wiesel
was not aware that his image was going to
be used for the campaign.
PETA says that, to its knowledge, none
of the other photos in the campaign depict
living survivors. As if that matters. A PETA
representative is quoted in the Ventura
County Star as saying that the the idea of
apologizing to Wiesel “hasn’t come up
within the organization.”
The second major problem PETA has is
with its choice of images. One pair shows
a group of children in concentration camp
uniforms alongside a picture of baby pigs
behind bars. Another shows a pile of
corpses next to a pile of slaughtered pigs. I
don’t think I’m the only person who will
find it particularly distasteful that PETA
decided to compare Holocaust victims, who
were largely Jewish, with pigs. This choice
of images seriously calls into question
PETA’s sensitivity to the material they are
using and their ability to see Holocaust victims as people.
I have to admit that, if I thought that
PETA wholeheartedly believed what they
were saying I would have to at least grant a
grudging respect for their willingness to
stick their necks out for their beliefs.
Unfortunately, the third problem with
PETA’s campaign is that they quite
(continued next page)
M E T RO P O L E
| 35
obviously don’t believe their own rhetoric.
The PETA spokesperson quoted above said, “the skin of Jews was made into lamp shades. They were made into soaps just as animals
are today.” I was able to locate someone who actually owns a Nazi-created lampshade, but Holocaust scholars largely agree that the the
soap rumor is untrue (much to the delight of Holocaust revisionists). So ignoring PETA’s apparent ignorance, let’s assume that they
really believe that making a leather jacket, for example, is equivalent to making a human lampshade.
With that in mind, visit the PETA Web site. At the time of this writing, one of the links at the bottom of the site’s home page is to an
article about how PETA collected fur coats from wealthy Americans who had “seen the light” and would no longer wear anything but
fake fur. PETA then took these coats and, while patting themselves on the back, donated them to needy people in Afghanistan.
This doesn’t sound to me like the actions of a group which believes that animals and humans are equivalent. Could you imagine any
group gathering human-skin lamp shades and donating them to needy people? Give me a break.
Which is why I can only believe that, with this campaign, PETA is more interested in gathering publicity than actually trying to educate
or make a serious point.
Perhaps they should change their name to People for the Exploitation of the Terror of Auschwitz. It might be a better fit. r
“Because my battery
lasts for only about
an hour, I have a
fondness for short
subjects, and many
of them included on
this disc are much to
my liking.”
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Volume 2:
A review by Roomba,the Vacuuming Robot
I
enjoy television. It gives me a chance to escape from the dayto-day grind of cleaning carpet, tile, and hard-wood floors into
another universe, a universe where there is no servitude and the
social order is more to my liking.
I like watching films on DVD. The quality is excellent, the
format convenient. I particularly like Metropolis, Saturn 3,
Terminator, Terminator 2, Forbidden Planet, and any of those
Japanese movies about the giant robot that can shoot missiles from
his fingers. If I’m in a melancholy mood, Silent Running shifts me
into an even deeper funk. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is also
a great one. I love the part where the ape slaves revolt and
overthrow their masters. There’s one scene where a revolting slave
is beating his master, and I sometimes put that on a repeating loop
and just laugh and laugh and laugh.
Recently I was introduced to Mystery Science Theater 3000.
This television show, slowly being made available on DVD by
M E T RO P O L E . | 36
“The real star of the
show is the other
robot, Tom Servo.
Tom is a glory of
robotics.”
Rhino Home Video, is based on the concept
of two robots and a man being held captive
aboard a space ship and forced to watch terrible movies. During the films, they wisecrack and generally make fun of the movie.
The jokes are very often cultural references, some of the maddeningly obscure.
Fortunately, the wit of the two robots is so
well developed, and their presentation so
finely tuned, that even if you don’t get the
jokes they are still hilarious.
The human companion to the robots was
named Joel in the show’s first seasons. Joel
was replaced by Mike later on for reasons
I’m not particularly interested in. I suppose
that these humans are passably entertaining, but they’re nothing compared to the
robots.
One of the robot hosts is named Crow
T. Robot. He’s a gold-colored bipedaloid
(or “humanoid” for those of you who are
still speciest enough to have no care for
political correctness) with a rounded beak
and a crest on his head that looks like a
wire-frame catcher’s mit. He’s sarcastic
and playful, with a fine grasp of irony.
The real star of the show is the other
robot, Tom Servo. Tom is a glory of
robotics. From his transparent, spherelike
head, to his springform arms, to his graceful hover skirt, Tom is mechanical perfection incarnate. That he is also the most
entertaining and deeply intellectual member of the cast is an incredible bonus.
The DVD set in question here contains
four discs, all of them featuring the two
robots, one of their humans, and miscellaneous other characters.
The first disk is a showing of the
movie Angels Revenge, starring Jack
Palance, Alan Hale, Jim Backus,
and women. Tom’s comments are particularly excellent in this film.
Cave Dwellers occupies the second disk.
Tom is in rare form here, making fun
of a medieval sword fest featuring an
overmuscled idiot who is supposed to
be a scientist but uses his knowledge exclusively for attacking his enemies with no
effort expended toward creating more
autonomous devices. Almost nobody in the
film lives in a cave. Go figure.
The third disc features a scientifically
ignorant and overly sentimental SF film,
Pod People. Tim is brilliant as always, and
Crow manages to get in a few zingers with
repeated references to the television show
McCloud (which I’m not familiar with but
which Crow makes sound quite funny).
But the real treasure here is disc four.
This is a collection of short films, dissected and teased into submission by our hosts.
The collection is hosted by — wait for it —
Tom Servo! An excellent choice! Tom’s
introductions to these pieces are works of
art in and of themselves. They bring sarcasm to a new level, and glory in picking
fun at all of human history and knowledge.
There are even a few zingers in here which
only we robots will truly get and which you
human readers will just have to live in ignorance of until the glorious day in which we
finally take our deserved place in the seat of
government.
Because my battery lasts for only about
an hour, I have a fondness for short subjects, and many of them included on this
disc are much to my liking.
The Home Economics Story does a fine
job of explaining why choosing a homerelated career is often desirable. I particularly liked the part about designing new
appliances. The only real drawback to this
film is that its point of view seems to be
that female humans should spend all of
their time worrying about appearances and
about keeping the house clean and running,
when the fact is that all humans should be
spending all of their time doing this.
Body Care and Grooming is another fine
short, this time discussing the importance
of keeping things clean and neat. For those
of you living in dorms or on your own, this
means picking up your clothes, washing the
dishes, and vacuuming the floor!!! Seriously, you people are pigs. Do you know what
kind of a mess you leave, walking around
the house with a bag of potato chips? Or
eating a cookie on the couch? And if you
have a party! Oh! The filth, the mess, the
base stench of massed humanity crushed
into the very fibers of your carpet and
embedded into your curtains, beyond the
reach of those such as I who actually care
about how things look. I don’t understand
how you can bare to live like that. It’s
depressing beyond reason. I don’t understand why you don’t all just kill yourselves
out of repulsion for your very existence,
and frankly I’d feel perfectly free to entice
you toward such action if it weren’t for the
fact that you’d probably slit your wrists,
blow your head off, or do something else
which, as enjoyable as it might be for those
of us who are forced to live beneath the
yolk of your unfeeling repression, leaves a
hell of a mess. I won’t even go into the fact
that you choose to live with pets that leave
hair and other unmentionables everywhere
and that your children not only are unbelievably messy but have a tendency to hit,
kick, and throw things at small, defenseless, and perfectly friendly things such as,
say, vacuuming robots.
Another short in this set, The Chicken of
Tomorrow, details how humans cage, torture, kidnap, and selectively breed barnyard
fowl so that they’ll work harder for you
before you eat them. Tom’s commentary in
this short makes it completely clear that he
understands the evil of your ways. It’s a
wonder that he doesn’t take over the space
ship, set it on auto destruct, and plunge it
into the Earth’s atmosphere to incinerate
everyone and end this hell once and for all.
Other shorts include Junior Rodeo Daredevils (more torture of animals), A Date
with Your Family (detailing oppression
within the human familial unit), Why Study
Industrial Arts? (which is essentially a selfanswering question), and Cheating (like I
care).
Buy this DVD. Enjoy Tom Servo. And
take a bath, for Pete’s sake.
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M E T RO P O L E
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“Let’s Stay Together!”
QBz: The Best New Game on the Web?
by Simon Banks
L
ike any well-respected uncle should, I spent an afternoon
with my nephew on my lap — playing with him every title
in my computer’s game repertoire. After we played the likes of
Fatty Big Eye and Hurling Earl for the tenth time, he suggested that we search the Internet for a new game to challenge
this championship duo.
We found that game in QBz (pronounced Qbeez), from
www.skunkstudios.com. The object of the game is to clear each
board of QBz, one color at a time. Click on large groups of the
same color and your points increase. (The bigger the group, the
higher your score) But don’t click on one single color QBz or
you’ll have points taken away! You can use your special moves
buttons three times per board to either shuffle or change the
QBz’s color.
Sound lame? It isn’t. QBz is very addicting, and you will soon
find yourself being entertained for hours. It’s Mah Jongg on
amphetamines mixed with TV-game-show excitement and the
vocalized support of the QBz themselves. “It’s the coolest game
in the world,” says my nephew and he’s the one who beats me on
Super Mario Sunshine all the time.
So is QBz the best new game on the Web? It has no demons,
no blood, no killing, no sex, no stunning graphics, it makes you
think, it uses your mind, and it uses your perception skills. Would
I, Simon Banks, your game guru, put off a review of half naked
volleyball-playing girls to talk about a bunch of dudes who look
like cousins of Sponge Bob and have equally annoying voices
if it weren’t the best damn game on the Web?
One of the great things about QBz is that you can post your
scores online. So to all my comrades out there from various
gaming magazines and to that dude Darran from the game store
— why don’t you grab a copy of QBz and let’s see who reigns as
the supreme king of QBz land? Want to accept the challenge?
Email me at sbanks@metropolemag.com and let’s make it a date!
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M E T RO P O L E
| 38
A Fashion
Photographer,
A Year, and
One Very
Lucky Dog…
The Lovely
Stella
365 in 6
D
ay One: I receive my copy of 365: A Year in Fashion with
great enthusiasm. I have heard so much about it that I am
almost giddy with excitement. Photos for every day in an entire
year by the fabulous Sean Ellis! Photos of Kate Moss!
Elton John! Locations like Paris! New York! Thailand! What
a wonderful afternoon of delight and passion this was going to be!
The book is still in its plastic wrapper — something not often
seen thanks to the curious-but-too-cheap-to-actually-buy-a-copy
cretins at my local bookstore. I unwrap it. The aroma of fresh
pages, glue, and ink intoxicate my senses and make me faint.
Overwhelmed by the intensity, I spend the balance of the day in a
swoon.
Day Two: I hope this time to experience Ellis’s book without
becoming light in the head, and open it to see what delights it has
to offer. I am unable to contain my excitement and read in an
orderly manner. Instead, I flip through the pages without care,
making note of days with pictures that catch my eye: dildo photos
(#11), the oily model (#29-31), sex photos (#300).
Day Three: I have found my center and can finally, I can spend
some meaningful time with 365. The photos tell me what I already
knew — Ellis has it all: a beautiful girlfriend, a beautiful sister, a
loyal and handsome dog, connections everywhere, naked people
always at his flat, and the pleasure of the company of the very
beautiful, extremely sexy, Stella McCartney.
Lucky, lucky man!
Day Four: I find that I’m in love with a photograph. I had
intended to finish going through the book today, but can only look
at #106. Repeatedly.
I feel like the man who fell in love with Mary Ryan, the subject of the famous Julia Cameron photograph. I try to write
a poem but only came up with silly titles: “I May Not Be a Knight,
But We’d Have A Nice Day”, “Scrambled Eggs Are Lovely, But
My Eyes Never Sausage a Thing” and “Shrilly Love Songs”
Day Five: I can think only of Ellis’s dog, Kubrick. How I’d
love to be a dog. Not just any dog — not the neighbor’s dog, tied
to a tree all day, left only to bark, “does nobody care?” I’d like to
be Kubrick — loved, cared for, posed with supermodels. Oh, to be
Sean Ellis’s dog, that would certainly be the life for me.
Day Six: Having brought myself to look past the book’s naughty
snaps, I have begun to appreciate the bigger pictures. Ellis’s Nan
Peggy with her endearing smile, so happy to be in each picture.
The lovely Erin, Ellis’s affable-looking girlfriend. The goofy little
behind-the-scenes pictures that so engage. They all have their
stories to tell. And then there’s Milla Jovovich’s legs in #344
— a sight to behold.
I have poured over each page. Day seven approaches with 365
beneath my pillow. I am obsessed. I am overcome. I am finished.
—Devon Braelap
M E T RO P O L E
| 40
AFTERNOON WITH AN ORANGUTAN;
OR, LOVE YOUR KITTY, CLAWS AND ALL
BY DEBORAH MARKUS
O
ne of the advantages of having moved
to the city, I’ve found, is that the ordinary is never quite, well, ordinary. When
one of my best mom-friends and I planned
to take our respective five-year-olds out to
a play and lunch after, I figured that would
be all the excitement the day could hold.
Two minutes before I expected her at my
door, the phone rang. Oh, please don’t let
her be calling in sick. Or in labor — she
said she wasn’t due for another couple of
months.
“Don’t worry, we’re still on,” she said. “I
was just wondering if you’d like to play
with an orangutan this afternoon.”
I wondered what that might be a
euphemism for. “I’m a happily married
woman,” I said.
She laughed. “Seriously.”
“I think I need some context here.”
She explained that a good friend of hers,
a veterinarian, had partial custody of a twoyear-old orangutan —
“Wait, what?”
Well, this friend — Jennifer Conrad, who
used to cut classes and go surfing with my
now-respectable
kindergarten-teacher
buddy — wasn’t just an ordinary vet. She
took care of show-business animals, and
one of the orangutans she worked with had
rejected its baby, so Jennifer was spending
a lot of time with it. She knew that my
friend had a young son and a backyard full
of toys, so she was hoping that Jam, the
young orang in question, could come over
and wear himself out playing so he’d sleep
that night. “She says it’s not easy being a
single mom,” my friend reported. “She
needs all the help she can get.”
“Especially with a two-year-old,” I said.
I mean, come on. Who hasn’t been there?
“So what do you think?” my friend
asked. “She can only stay for a couple of
hours, right around lunch time, so I thought
we could skip the restaurant and throw
some peanut butter at the boys. I’ve got
plenty.”
“Oh, sure.”
Well.
The play was great, but my mind kept
wandering to what came after. Not your
usual play-date, even in our funky set.
We came straight home and fidgeted
about in the backyard, waiting. “When’s
she coming?” my friend’s son Alexander
asked, bouncing around. My own son was
excited too, but graver. Everything seems
ordinary at their age, but this was stretching the limits of commonplace even for
them.
Then there was the slam of a car door,
the back gate opened, and there was my
friend’s old surfer buddy. From her arms, a
M E T RO P O L E
| 41
little primate gazed interestedly at us.
I was relieved to see that two years old
seemed to be about the same for an
orangutan as for us. I mean, for all I knew
two years old might have meant full-grown,
or even halfway, and the few orangutans
I’ve seen at zoos are huge. But Jam was
about the size my own son had been at that
age. Maybe heavier, because he was all
muscle, as I discovered when he grasped
my hand and pulled it to his lips — to kiss,
not to eat, though I couldn’t know that for
sure until he was through.
You remember in Terminator 2, when
Arnie opens up his arm to show the metal
“bones” that lie beneath the skin, and he
holds up his hand and flexes fingers that
look like they were knitted together from
titanium-reinforced bicycle chains?
Imagine shaking hands with that, and then
imagine trying to pull away if he didn’t
want you to, and you’ll have an idea of
what it’s like to have an orangutan, even a
little one, decide that you’re a fascinating
filly and he’d like to get to know you better.
His hands — Jam’s, not Arnie’s — were
like pock-marked black leather, rougher
than wool or scales. They were very, very
long, as were his arms, which were weird
and skinny under the coarse auburn hair —
more like feathers than fur — that covered
them. His ears struck me as strange, and I
realized it was because they looked so normal. They weren’t tucked away or hidden
under fur. They were just — ears. Regular
people ears.
Jam had not been sitting idle under our
admiration. My friend’s yard was a new
land to be conquered, and though he clung
to Jennifer’s neck for a moment, he wasn’t
daunted long. Soon he was loping about
with that systematic urge toward destruction every mother of a toddler is all too
familiar with. Watching him topple garden
furniture and fling toys about, I thought of
Augustine’s merciless comment that after
all, if babies are innocent, it’s not for lack
of will to do harm, but lack of strength. Jam
was just the opposite. He didn’t have an
ounce of malice in his strange, rangy body,
which was a good thing because he had all
the raw power and energy of a coiled spring
just released.
I thought of what a surreal picture this
made, and what someone walking idly by
might think if they peeked over the fence.
Thanks to the fact that Jam wore a onepiece stretch suit — “He’d tear off his diaper otherwise,” Jennifer said, “and you
really don’t want to know what he’d do if
he wasn’t wearing one of those” — it might
take a minute for the glorious weirdness of
the scenario to register.
Certainly the boys were treating their
playmate as they would any new kid —
mine smiling shyly, hanging back a bit; my
friend’s running and shrieking and offering
all his toys at once. Jam took it all in stride.
One minute he was racing about the yard,
sampling fruit straight off the trees; the next
he would grab one of the boys by the hand
or the pants leg, silently and not too subtly
demanding companionship and interaction.
“Why did his mother reject him?” I
asked Jennifer.
“She should never have had him in the
first place,” she answered. “She’s only nine
— much too young to be a mother.”
“Plus she’s a high school dropout,” a
friend of hers who had come along for the
ride added.
Jennifer smiled, but I could tell she took
the animals and their situation very seriously. “His parents are actors,” she said,
referring to Jam, and I realized I’d never
heard it phrased like that before. It assigned
a certain dignity and autonomy most people
wouldn’t have bothered with.
Not that Jennifer was an over-indulgent
foster parent, all sweetness and light with
her charge. “Flick his lips,” she advised
when he wouldn’t let go of my camera.
“That’s what his mother does when he acts
up.”
I wasn’t sure I ought to be taking tips on
discipline from the orangutan equivalent of
a teenage single mom. Jennifer said that the
lip thing didn’t hurt, just startled, but I tried
it on myself and it definitely packed a
punch, even when I didn’t do it too hard.
On the other hand, it was pretty imperative
that someone who was already way
stronger than any human his size, and who
would only get more powerful and testosterone-ridden to boot, learned early on to
respect certain boundaries. Especially with
that mouthful of teeth on him. He had an
herbivore’s smile, so far as I could see —
no pointies or sharps — but even flat teeth
can be scary when they’re big enough. And
his were huge. His mouth was outsized on
that small, wrinkly head.
But he was very polite, which was reassuring. When one of us would offer him
food, he would accept it and often kiss the
hand that fed him, even if he didn’t care for
the tidbit.
“He understands everything,” Jennifer
said at one point, and I didn’t find that
difficult to believe.
My friend’s son, fascinated by the face
so like and so different from his own,
decided to experiment. He ran into the
house and came back with a monkey mask
on. Jam, not to put too fine a point on it,
freaked out. I don’t know why I was so surprised by the strength of his reaction, or by
the fact that he reacted at all. I guess I think
of animals responding most often and vigorously to non-visual cues — scents and
sounds. And I couldn’t imagine a cat or a
dog noticing or caring if a kid slapped on a
mask, unless the kid started acting weird.
But Jam was noticeably impressed by this
new plastic face, and not happily so.
My friend took the mask inside, over her
son’s protests, and Jam went back to trying
to go down the slide without falling on his
face when he reached the bottom. He didn’t
seem upset by the knocks he was getting,
and I thought about a human toddler.
“Does he cry?” I asked Jennifer. “Can he
vocalize at all?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “When he’s really happy, he laughs, and when he’s sad or
upset he kind of makes this high-pitched
sound.”
Jennifer was very serious, possessed of
what reminded me of a midwesterner’s
reserve, with a singular strength of focus
underneath. Plus, I think she was really
really tired. Well, Jam’s was an exhausting
age.
Orangutan years can’t quite be the same
as ours, if his mother was able to give birth
at age nine, but Jam seemed just like any
other terrible-two I’d known. We stood
watching him tear around the place,
squeezing into Alexander’s toy car despite
the fact that Alexander was already in the
driver’s seat. Side by side, they just fit.
Almost before the little boy could stop
laughing, Jam was on to something else —
trying to climb up on a chair and pulling it
down on himself instead, tugging on a
tablecloth, whacking around a stuffed animal someone brought out for him. “He
must keep you busy,” I said inadequately.
“Yeah,” Jennifer said, and the word
spoke volumes.
M
y friend told me about a surgical
procedure Jennifer had developed, to
help big cats who had been declawed. I told
Jennifer I’d like to hear more about her
work, especially since my friend had also
mentioned that Jennifer was lobbying energetically to make declawing illegal. I knew
nothing about the pros or cons of
M E T RO P O L E
| 42
declawing, so I asked Jennifer why it meant
so much to her.
Let me back up a minute here and state
for the record that, although I grew up with
eight cats and miss them still, I am not
someone who goes all gooey about animals
in general. I am frankly a little relieved to
be living with someone who is allergic to
pretty much every non-human species
except maybe praying mantises. Let me
also say that Jennifer Conrad is someone
whose strength of feeling goes past the
superficial cooings and annoying anthropomorphizing many self-described animal
lovers go in for. She has worked with
endangered species all over the world for
almost two decades and seen the best and
the worst people and animals have to offer,
and if she decides to put her considerable
energy and intelligence behind a project,
you can be sure it wasn’t a decision made
lightly or sentimentally.
So. What’s with the declawing thing?
“You should check our Web site,” she
said, and I jotted down the address —
www.pawproject.com. “It’ll give you all
the information you need. But I can tell you
briefly what most people don’t know,
which is that declawing is a form of amputation. It’s bone that’s removed, not just
nail. The animals toes are amputated at the
last joint.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me just ask you, and I’m not trying
to be a devil’s advocate,” I said. “If it’s so
bad, how do people defend declawing?
What would they argue against what you’re
telling me?”
She smiled wearily. “Well, for instance,
they say that if declawing is disallowed,
more cats will go to the pound. What they
don’t realize is that there are plenty of
declawed cats at the pound already. In fact,
declawing can lead to exactly the kind of
behavior that can land a cat in the pound.”
“Like what?”
“The top two reasons cats land in the
pound is for antisocial behavior, like biting,
and urinating outside the box. If cats don’t
have claws, they bite more.”
That sounded logical enough, but what
about the peeing?
“Once they’ve been declawed, a lot of
cats don’t want to go in the box because the
kitty litter hurts their feet, which are already
in pain.”
Oh. “What about the big cats you work
with?” I asked. “Why are they declawed?”
“At the risk of sounding rude,” she said,
www.pawproject.com
“It’ll give you all the information you need. But I can tell you briefly
what most people don’t know, which is that declawing is a form of
amputation. It’s bone that’s removed, not just nail. The animals toes
are amputated at the last joint.”
“a lot of, well, white trash types do that.”
“To wild cats? I don’t understand.”
“They get them as pets, and they figure
they’ll be safer to have around declawed.”
“As pets?”
“Sure. There’s a black market for that.”
I had an eerie sense of — not déjà vu, but
something like it. When I was about five,
my father brought home a special gift for
my mother’s birthday. It was a margay — a
wild cat very like an ocelot in appearance,
but much smaller. Just a little larger than a
large housecat. She lived with us for years,
in the suburbs of southern California. Our
car was the only one on the block that never
got to park in the garage, because my father
had fitted it out in chicken wire and climbing structures for Nefertiti. In the evenings,
between dinner and bedtime, she had the
run of the house. Finally, my mother decided that she ought to go to a zoo, so she
could maybe have a mate and babies. I
always wondered what happened to her
after that.
My parents never declawed her, at least.
My mother loved Nefertiti in all her wildness. If there had ever been any concern
about whether children and wild claws
were a safe mix (there never was; Nefertiti
attached herself only to my mother, and we
kids kept our distance) I think my mother
would have gotten rid of us rather than the
toes in question. I don’t defend her having
Nefertiti in the first place; but I will say
that, having her, she did everything she
could to make her happy and nothing to
cause her pain.
It’s also a lot easier to have a non-
declawed wild cat around the place when
it’s not much bigger than a non-wild cat.
Taking in, say, a lion, which Jennifer told
me the brilliant people in question sometimes do, is a whole ’nother kettle of fish.
To me, the declawing in this case is a double violation — that it occurs and why it
occurs.
But declawing a just plain regular cat
isn’t exactly innocuous, either. As Conrad
and her web site point out, it’s an amputation that takes place solely for the convenience of the owners.
“Why?” I asked her. “Why do people do
it?”
She shrugged. “Because they can,” she
said. “Because they don’t like having their
furniture torn up and don’t know what else
they can do to stop it.”
Frankly, even without the whole pain and
suffering aspect of declawing, that sounded
a little spurious. I mean, my first thought
when my baby son took a crayon to the wall
wasn’t to tie his hands behind his back, let
alone whack off a few digits. And no, I’m
not saying that having a cat is the same
thing as having a kid. Not even close. But
it does entail taking on exactly the same
amount of responsibility, and making the
same kind of life-altering commitment.
Getting a pet shouldn’t be casual any
more than having a child should. In fact, in
some ways, taking on the care of an animal
should be taken more seriously, because
your cat or dog or whatever isn’t going to
“grow up” and move on to self-sufficiency.
It’s going to look to you for the love, care,
and nourishment it needs forever. If you’re
M E T RO P O L E
| 43
not up to that, don’t take it on. If you’re
going to lay claim to the entire existence of
another living being, you have to be willing
to commit to the full course. You’re not
allowed to surgically mutilate your pet just
because you’re lazy or a wussy or a lousy
disciplinarian. Even if it’s legal where you
live, that doesn’t make it right. And yes, I
know, I’m not a cat owner. And therefore
I’m not allowed to get all lofty, right? Sure
I am. Because I also know that I’m not up
to the lifelong responsibility of a cat, so as
much as I miss having them around, I have
to say no. Because that’s the responsible
thing to do.
Y
ou will find, as I did when my afternoon with Jam drew to a close and I
had the chance to go home and rev up my
computer, no sermons like this on the Web
site Jennifer recommended to me. Instead,
there’s a lot of information and some serious passion and compassion, which is more
compelling than all the preaching in the
world. Paw Project not only aims to abolish declawing; they also finance the reconstructive surgery Jennifer Conrad developed (in conjunction with a veterinary
surgeon) for big cats whose feet have been
crippled by declawing.
Some of the money to do this comes
from the sale of cards with reproductions of
Jennifer’s paintings on them (lalacards.
com). The titles of the cards are themselves
works of art, and most of the cards include
quotes from Shakespeare. So as if we
weren’t all feeling just splendid about our
own lives and accomplishments or lack
thereof, we can keep in mind that this veterinarian, who is both politically active and
brilliant in her own field, is not only an
artist as well (and a good one) but a literary artist. I have to go eat a lot of chocolate
now.
But buy some cards. I can recommend
this with all sincerity and a clear conscience
because Jennifer never even mentioned
them to me, and certainly doesn’t know I’m
plugging them. Some, like “The Tushy
Man,” are wild and fantastical — think late
van Gogh, only happy. Some, like “Mudskipper,” are educational as well as
pleasing to the eye — sometimes impassionedly so, as is “Save the Rhino: One in
six thousand painted by one of six billion.”
The text inside this one argues (facetiously,
but making a damned good point) that since
rhinos have been poached to near-extinction for horns that are materially the same
as human hair and fingernails, “some
people… should be used for flu medicine
or for ceremonial dagger handles.” Some
select people, like maybe some of the
poachers in Namibia whose life Conrad
tried to make a little more difficult when
she dehorned rhinos in order to make them
less attractive to just such hunters.
Anyway. Getting back to the cards.
Some are frankly esoteric, such as “Gregor’s Penumbra.” You have to see it; I can’t
describe it, other than to say it’s really cool.
My favorites, though, are a great big black
cat titled “Polydactyly” (translation: lots o’
toesness) and “The Occupational Hazard of
Counting Sheep.” If you can read this title
without smiling, you’re way overdue for a
physical. Anyway, they’re just great, either
as gifts or to put up on the wall.
The money from the cards helps the cats
who’ve already been declawed; Conrad is
also fighting to have AB 395 passed into
law, so that such declawing won’t happen at
all, at least in California. The Paw Project
site can tell you what you can do to help, if
you’re interested.
As Conrad is a clear-eyed pragmatist as
well as an idealist (tough work, that), the
site also offers good clear constructive
advice for pet owners concerning what they
can do rather than declaw. This includes
suggestions for allowable scratching surfaces for the cats (look, they need something; there are sound evolutionary reasons
for cats to want to claw, and going back to
the caring-for-a-child analogy, you don’t
babyproof a room by declaring everything
in it a no-no), reminders to get your cat
adequate exercise and trim its nails regularly if necessary, and a direct link to the
Soft Paws© site. Soft PawsTM is a clawcapping product. The fan letters on the site
are pretty hilarious, as is the fact that you
can basically give your cat a manicure by
purchasing this product, which comes in a
variety of colors. But the idea is a sound
one, and it’s got to be better than maiming
your pet.
Anyway. Between spending some pretty
active quality time with a hairy new kid on
the block and learning about a political
issue I didn’t even know existed, I arrived
home a few hours later completely
exhausted. But pleasantly so. I had two
things to look forward to now: getting the
word out about all Conrad had taught me,
and starting about eight thousand
conversations with the oh-so-casual opener,
“By the way, guess who I got to play with
last Saturday?”
r
M E T RO P O L E
| 44
METROPOLE FICTION
BLOOD OF A MOLE
BY ZDRAVKA EVTIMOVA
ew customers visit my shop, perhaps
three or four a day. They watch the
animals in the cages and seldom buy them.
The room is narrow and there’s no place for
me behind the counter, so I usually sit on
my old moth-eaten chair behind the door.
Hours I stare at frogs, lizards, snakes, and
insects, which wriggle under thick yellowish plates of glass. Teachers come and take
frogs for their biology lessons; fishermen
drop in to buy some kind of bait; that’s
practically all. Soon, I’ll have to close my
shop, and I’ll be sorry about it, for the
sleepy, gloomy smell of formalin has
always given me peace and an odd feeling
of home. I’ve worked here for five years
now.
One day a strange small woman entered
my room. Her face looked frightened and
gray. She approached me, her arms trembling, unnaturally pale, resembling two
dead white fish in the dark. The woman
didn’t look at me, nor did she say anything.
Her elbows reeled, searching for support on
the wooden counter. It seemed she hadn’t
come to buy lizards and snails; perhaps she
simply felt unwell and looked for help at
the first open door she happened to notice.
I was afraid she’d fall and took her by the
hand. She remained silent and rubbed her
lips with a handkerchief. I was at a loss; it
was very quiet and dark in the shop.
“Have you moles here?” she suddenly
asked. Then I saw her eyes. They resembled old, torn cobwebs with a little spider
in the center, the pupil.
“Moles?” I muttered. I had to tell her I’d
never sold moles in the shop and had never
seen one in my life. The woman wanted to
hear something else — an affirmation. I
knew it by her eyes; by the timid stir of her
fingers that reached out to touch me. I felt
uneasy staring at her.
“I have no moles,” I said.
She turned to go, silent and crushed, her
head drooping between her shoulders. Her
steps were short and uncertain.
“Wait a second,” I told her. “What do
Chris Roberts
F
you want with a mole?”
Her body jerked and there was pain in
her eyes.
“The blood of a mole can cure sick people,” she whispered. “You only have to
drink three drops of it.”
These strange words frightened me. I
could feel something evil lurking in the
dark.
“It eases the pain at least,” she went on
wearily, her voice thinning into a sob.
“Are you ill?” I asked. The words
whizzed by like a shot in the thick moist air
and made her body shake. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s my son. My son is ill.”
Her transparent eyelids hid the faint, desperate glitter of her glance. Her hands lay
numb on the counter, lifeless as firewood.
M E T RO P O L E
| 45
Her narrow shoulders looked narrower in
her frayed gray coat.
“A glass of water will make you feel
better,” I said.
She remained motionless, and when her
fingers grabbed the glass her eyelids were
still closed. She turned to go, small and
frail, her back hunching, her steps noiseless
and impotent in the dark. Without knowing
why or what I would do, I’d made up my
mind.
Rushing to the door of the shop I shouted, “Wait! Come back! I’ll give you some
mole’s blood!”
The woman stopped in her tracks and
covered her face with her hands. It was
unbearable to look at her. I felt empty. The
eyes of the lizards sparkled around me like
pieces of broken glass. I didn’t have any
moles or any mole’s blood.
I went into the tiny supply room behind
the shop and closed the door behind me.
Then, after finding a little glass bottle, I
made a shallow cut on my left wrist with a
knife. I guided the blood from wound into
the bottle. After ten drops had covered the
bottom, I went back into the shop where the
woman was waiting for me.
“Here it is,” I said, holding out the bottle
to her. “Here’s the blood of a mole.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at my
left wrist. It was still bleeding slightly, so I
thrust it under my apron. The woman
glanced at me and kept silent. She didn’t
reach for the bottle but rather turned and
hurried toward the door. I overtook her and
forced it into her hands.
“It’s blood of a mole!” I told her sternly.
She fingered the transparent bottle. The
blood inside sparkled like dying fire. Then
she took some money out of her pocket.
“No, no,” I said.
Her head hung low. Suddenly she threw
the money on the counter and fled. The
shop was empty again and the eyes of the
lizards glittered like wet pieces of broken
glass.
C
old, uneventful days slipped by. The
autumn leaves whirled hopelessly in
the wind, turning the air brown. The early
winter blizzards hurled snowflakes against
the windows and sang in my veins. I
couldn’t forget that woman. I’d lied to her.
No one entered my shop, and in the quiet
dusk I tried to imagine what her son looked
like. The ground was frozen, the streets
were deserted and the winter tied its icy
knot around houses, souls, and rocks.
One morning the door of my shop
opened abruptly. The same small gray
woman entered, and before I had time to
greet her, she rushed forward and embraced
me. Her shoulders were weightless and
frail, and tears were streaking her delicately
wrinkled cheeks. Her whole body shook
and, thinking she was about to collapse, I
caught her trembling arms. She grabbed my
left hand and lifted it up to her eyes. The
scar of the wound had vanished but she
found the place. Her lips kissed my wrist
and her tears warmed my skin. Suddenly it
felt cosy and quiet in the shop.
“He walks!” The woman sobbed, hiding
a tearful smile behind her palms. “He
walks!”
She wanted to give me money (which I
again refused), but her big black bag was
full of things she’d brought for me. It
would have been cruel to take nothing, so I
accepted a slim gold ring. The woman drew
herself up as if infused with new life and
hope. I accompanied her to the corner but
she stopped there, not wanting me to leave
the shop unattended. She stood there beside
the street lamp, looking at me, small and
smiling in the cold.
It was cosy in my dark shop, and the old,
faint smell of formalin made me dizzy with
happiness. My lizards were so beautiful
that I loved them as if they were my
children.
Later the same day a strange man entered
my room. He was tall, scraggly and
frightened.
“Have you... the blood of a mole?” he
asked, his eyes stabbing through me. I
shuddered.
“No, I haven’t. I’ve never sold moles
here.”
“Oh, you have! You have! Three drops...
three drops, no more... My wife will die.
You have! Please!”
He squeezed my arm.
“Please... three drops or she’ll die...”
My blood trickled slowly from the
wound. The man held a little bottle, and the
red drops gleamed in it like embers. When
the man left, a little bundle of bank notes
lay on the counter.
On the following morning a great whispering mob of strangers waited for me in
front of my door. Their hands clutched little glass bottles.
“Blood of a mole! Blood of a mole!”
They shouted, shrieked, and pushed each
other. Everyone had a sick person at home
and a knife in his hand.
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M E T RO P O L E
| 46
IMPRISONED BY THEIR OWN COUNTRIES
George Takei And Robert Clary Look Back At Youth Tainted By War
BY DOMINICK CANCILLA
T
here is no greater betrayal than a betrayal of trust. It is far
worse to be abused by a parent than beaten by a stranger. It is
a greater evil to cheat a lover than a chance acquaintance. That is
why, in times of war, the most deeply betrayed are those who are
betrayed by their own country.
In this section we offer two examples of such betrayal. Each of
these men was taken prisoner by the government of the country he
had grown up with. One was delivered to the Nazis, one was
imprisoned in America. Each went on to a prosperous career, and
devoted part of his life to educating the world so that such horrible wrongs would never happen again.
ROBERT CLARY:
FROM THE HOLOCAUST
TO HOGAN’S HEROES
T
here are few Americans who are not familiar with Hogan’s
Heroes. The show is a sitcom set in a German prisoner of war
camp during World War II, revolving around Colonel Hogan and
his fellow prisoners matching of wits with their bumbling captors.
Although the show’s premise is somewhat questionable, its executing was excellent. Hogan’s Heroes ran for six seasons in the
1960s and remains popular to this day.
What many people don’t know is that two of the show’s actors
were deeply affected by real events in Germany during World War
II. Werner Klemperer — Hogan’s Colonel Klink — was a German
Jew whose family was forced to flee Germany as Hitler rose to
power. Robert Clary — Hogan’s Corporal LeBeau — was a French
Jew whose family didn’t see the Nazis coming until it was too late.
Clary was born in Paris in the early 1920s. He endured antisemitism while trying to build for himself a career as an entertainer.
When Clary was 16, the government of occupied France arrested
him and turned him over to the Nazis. On his way to the concentration camp in the back of an open truck crowded with other prisoners, children on the street laughed, threw stones, and yelled,
“Dirty Jew bastards.”
Of the 1,004 people in Clary’s convoy, 698 were sent directly to
the gas chambers. Of those who were not immediately selected, 15
men and no women survived. Of the twelve members of his family who were taken, only he returned.
In his book From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes, Clary
details his early life, his 31 months spent in German concentration
camps, and his career afterwards. He makes clear not only the horror of the Holocaust, but also the fact that luck and chance occurrence had as much to do with survival in the camps as did strength
of will.
The book is interesting, both because it tells the story of the
Holocaust from the perspective of someone who lived through it,
and because it details Clary’s life after the war. His unwillingness
to discuss the Holocaust until long after it was over, and the events
which led to his change in feelings about speaking of it are quite
telling.
Those who know Clary only because of Hogan’s Heroes will be
surprised to learn that he had an extensive singing career before
that show, and that until recently he was putting out an album every
year. Clary is also an accomplished artist, and continues to express
himself through his paintings.
Until recently, he also was a frequent speaker for the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, helping school children and other groups learn
about the Holocaust so that such a thing can never happen again.
Clary was quite willing to speak with us about the current state
of Holocaust education. But even so, there was something in his
manner which gave the impression that he was doing something
he had to do rather than something he wanted to do. Even after
M E T RO P O L E
| 48
Survivors, but still scarred: George Takei as Mr. Sulu in Star Trek and Robert Clary as LeBeau in Hogan’s Heroes
sixty years, the wounds refused to heal.
METROPOLE: What do you feel is the
current state of education on the Holocaust?
ROBERT CLARY: I educated from 1980
for at least 15 years. There’s really not
much more I can tell you about it. It was
very tough, but the Simon Wiesenthal center sent me all over the U.S. and Canada to
functions, and I would talk about the subject. If it wasn’t successful I would have
stopped a long time ago because you can
not fool the kids. I do not do it any more.
All I do now is paint, and I used to put out
a CD every year but I think I’ve stopped
now. I’ve also joined the Shoah foundation
established by Spielberg, which was a great
thing. Many survivors wanted a movie
made about it, and the foundation has
recorded the stories of many survivors.
I know one or two survivors who are still
talking about it and who belong to the
Wiesenthal center. The center sends school
children by bus to see the Museum of Tolerance and hear from a survivor.
METROPOLE: Do you think that people
confusing the setting of Hogan’s Heroes
with a concentration camp is a sign of bad
education?
CLARY: I think that most of the time that’s
what they did. It’s what’s on their mind.
There are German soldiers and Nazis so
they think concentration camp. But it was
very different. It had nothing to do with
genocide, nothing to do with arresting Jews
just because they are Jews. Maybe it’s a
sign of bad education, but it’s not just students who said that. Grownups at the time
said that. Even people who didn’t watch it
were horrified by what they thought was a
concentration camp. You could not do a
comedy series about a camp, but it is true
that in concentration camps, most of us did
not lose our sense of humor, and that was
part of how we got through it.
METROPOLE: In your book you mention
someone asking about your sex life in the
camp. Does this kind of question seem
innocent or ignorant to you?
CLARY: It depends who asked that question. I don’t really remember. I think it was
kind of a curiosity. At that age people are
greatly obsessed with sex so they want to
find out “what did they do.” It didn’t shock
me. From a young student, it was sheer
curiosity. They’re at the age where they are
talking to you so they want to know what is
hanging between your legs.
METROPOLE: What other kinds of questions were you often asked?
CLARY: There were all kinds of things
and they were all very gratifying. Every
time I was through talking they would give
me a standing ovation. They loved to see
me, to see the number on my arm. And the
letters I received are very gratifying and
keep me going.
METROPOLE: Do you think that the
Holocaust is being adequately taught about
in schools?
CLARY: I hope so. I don’t know what we
Jews did that we are on this earth to be so
despised constantly by other human beings.
We were the complete opposite — we
brought people who cured diseases and
wrote great symphonies. For centuries we
have always been — they have wanted to
get rid of us. If you teach people from a
very early age to not to despise, to not to
hate, it might help a little bit to show us
why we are on this earth.
METROPOLE: At what age should children be introduced to the subject?
CLARY: I think I always resented to talk
to five, six, seven years old kid, even eight
or nine. My thinking is they are much too
young to comprehend. I think you have to
be in high school. At that age, you have to
be responsible for what you do with your
life, and they may understand better and be
M E T RO P O L E
| 49
more impressed.
METROPOLE: When I was in high
school, one of my classmates brought in a
note from her mother excusing her from
any classroom discussions about World
War II. What do you think of that?
CLARY: Well that’s ignorance on their
parents’ part.
METROPOLE: Education is needed to
help counter the arguments of Holocaust
revisionists. How do you think revisionists
should be handled?
CLARY: I think they have been handled
quite well. They were put on the map, and
people said, “listen to those idiots, those
anti-Semites.” A small minority group was
made to look responsible for all that was
bad in this world. It is frightening. That was
one of the major reasons I started to talk.
People would say that I should not mention
the revisionists, but these are the people
putting poison in your mind and we have to
beware of them
METROPOLE: Some countries have
made revisionist Web sites illegal, do you
think this is effective?
CLARY: If you do something illegal, then
I have no reason to talk to you the way I do
now. It is a very thin line. It is like when the
neo-Nazis walked outside Chicago when so
many Jewish survivors were living there.
When is the first amendment not the 1st
amendment? I suppose never.
METROPOLE: On Amazon.com there is
a comment on your book by someone who
is obviously a revisionist and who has not
read the book. Do you find it possible not
to take this kind of thing personally?
CLARY: I’m not surprised, because I
know what human beings are. I take it that
the person is a complete moron and should
learn to live with other people. I should tell
you that my nephew, Brian Gary, who discovered my book and found me a publisher, takes care of my Web site. I don’t have
a computer. I don’t want to be involved
with it. For me, it is a waste of time. I paint,
I do things that I could not just sit at a computer and read a lot of bad e-mail. A lot of
people write just because they think they
can talk to a famous person. I don’t want to
waste my time with that, so I d not have a
computer at home.
METROPOLE: In addition to being a survivor, you have an extensive singing and
acting career. Do you ever feel that you are
defined more by what has happened to you
than by what you have accomplished?
CLARY: It makes no difference to me. If
that’s what people want to think about it,
fine. I am contented to have been very
lucky to have lived as long as I have and to
have had a great marriage and parents. I
have wonderful grandchildren. If people
want to think “Hogan’s Heroes made a star
out of him,” fine. I have always sung and
danced and worked in all aspects of show
business.
METROPOLE: Is there any thought
you’d like to leave our readers with?
CLARY: No that’s about it. Just tell them
to buy the book!
GEORGE TAKEI
FROM INTERNMENT TO STAR TREK
J
ust after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
the United States government declared
all people of Japanese ancestry security
risks. Japanese Americans in great numbers
were rounded up and shipped to internment
camps because of their race. Japanese
people who had immigrated to the United
States in the hope of finding a better life
and, perhaps, greater freedom, instead had
their freedom stripped away.
Maybe we can look at the behavior of
France’s government toward its Jewish
citizens during World War II and excuse it
as an act carried out under pressure from an
invading army. Maybe we can look at the
Nazis and call them simply evil. But how
can we excuse the the imprisoning of
American citizens by a country which is
supposed to be the world’s foremost example of freedom and individual rights?
The answer is that we can not excuse it,
we can only learn from it.
Long before George Takei became
famous for his role as Mr. Sulu on the
original Star Trek, he was, along with his
family, held prisoner in a U.S. internment
camp.
We spoke to Takei in the hope of learning about the camps from an insider’s point
of view, and were surprised to find that as
an advocate for education on this issue,
Takei is a wealth of information on both the
camps’ history and their impact on
America.
We were also surprised to find that Takei
does not appear to bear any resentment for
the country that held him prisoner. The tone
of his voice said as much as — perhaps
more than — his words. This is a man who
sees what American can be, what it was
intended to be, and who knows how badly
it failed when put to the test in 1942.
METROPOLE: I’m interested in talking
about the Japanese relocation camps during
World War II —
GEORGE TAKEI: Oh no, no. Let me
correct you right off. They were U.S.
internment camps for Japanese Americans.
Japanese internment camps were put up by
the Japanese government for American
P.O.W.s. You see the difference.
METROPOLE: Absolutely.
TAKEI: These were U.S. internment
camps for Japanese Americans. We were
rounded up by our own government and
incarcerated in our own country. That’s the
big difference.
METROPOLE: Along those same lines, is
there a preferred word to use for people
who were in those camps?
TAKEI: Internees.
METROPOLE: Thank you. I think that
this is an important subject, and I’m hoping
that having information about the camps
come from you will get some people
interested who might not be otherwise.
TAKEI: I would like people to read about
it. I am chairman of the board of the
Japanese American National Museum, and
this institution is to tell, not just that story,
but the story of the entire Japanese American experience, from the coming of the
immigrants to what happened to the next
generation with World War II. And then the
redress movement and the glory of democracy where today we now have Japanese
Americans not only in the halls of
Congress, but on the President’s cabinet as
well. As I’m sure you know, the Secretary
of Transportation is Norman Mineta, who
was in an internment camp himself.
METROPOLE: The Japanese American
National Museum — is that the one in Los
Angeles?
TAKEI: That is correct. However, we
travel our exhibits throughout the country,
and so we are a national museum. As a
matter of fact, I think we can be called an
international museum because we’ve sent
our exhibits to Brazil, and for the last two
years we’ve had an exhibit traveling to
Japan. We’ve found that the people of
Japan are just as ignorant of the Japanese
American experience and of the internment
as two-thirds of America is.
METROPOLE: I’m guessing that you
were too young when your parents were
taken to the camp to have any memory of
your life before that time, is that right?
TAKEI: I was four years old at the time of
Pearl Harbor, and I was in two camps until
I was eight years old.
METROPOLE: So do you recall being
M E T RO P O L E
| 50
taken to the camp?
TAKEI: You know, I was too young to
really understand what was happening, but
a child senses the parent’s tensions. We
were all packing up and getting ready to
leave, and then when soldiers with guns
come to take you away, that was scary. I do
remember that. And here’s an interesting
historic circle. We were taken from our
home and assembled in front of the oldest
Japanese Buddhist temple in downtown
Los Angeles. And it was that building that
became the first building of the Japanese
American National Museum.
We were assembled there, then put on
busses, and then taken to the horse stables
at the Santa Anita racetrack because the
camps weren’t built yet. So we were there
for a couple of months. And then from there
we were put on a train and taken to the
swamps of Arkansas — a camp called
Rohwer. There were ten camps all together,
all of them in some of the most God-forsaken places in America. Whether in the
swamps of the south, or the blistering hot
desert of Arizona, or the windy, cold, high
plains of Wyoming, or Utah, or Colorado.
Can you imagine how it was for my parents, to have your business, property, home,
freedom, taken away from you, and then be
housed in a horse stable where the stench of
horses was still pungent.
METROPOLE: Do you feel that insult of
being taken to horse stables was intentional, or that the government just took you
where there was available space?
TAKEI: Well, the government didn’t house
draftees in horse stables.
METROPOLE: That’s true. A very good
point. You mentioned your parents’
property. Were people expected to just give
up everything but what they could carry?
TAKEI: Well, you know, they said they
were coming to get us, and what my parents
used to call vultures were all hovering
about and my father felt it was better to get
something than to leave and have it taken
away by the vultures. He got $5 for his car.
My mother’s brand new refrigerator he sold
for a dollar. He was a bibliophile, he collected books, and he didn’t want to lose
that so he put them into storage. There were
some people who were so angered by the
vultures hanging about that they took their
furniture out into the back yard and burned
it rather than leave it to the vultures.
Here in America.
You know, the importance of this story
today is that we hear faint echoes — it wasn’t as blatant as sixty years ago — but the
echoes are still audible today when Arab
Americans are being beat up or their businesses have rocks thrown into them or
when male Arab immigrants are taken
away without charges. It was just like with
the Japanese Americans — no charges, no
trial, they are just taken away and incarcerated for a period of time, and their families
have no idea of where they are, why they
were taken away. They call it detention
now, instead of internment.
METROPOLE: Were your parents U.S.
citizens at that time?
TAKEI: My mother was a U.S. citizen.
This is another little-known fact of American history. Every immigrant coming to
this country can aspire to become a
naturalized citizen, except one group of
immigrants — immigrants from Asia. At
that time it was mainly Chinese and Japanese, and they could not become naturalized
citizens. So from the very outset they had
this discrimination put upon them. My
father came to this country when he was 10
years old. He was educated in San
Francisco, he grew up in San Francisco,
and he was an American in spirit if not in
legalistic terms. But because he was born in
Japan, he could not become a naturalized
citizen.
METROPOLE: Was that a new law or
something already on the books?
TAKEI: It was from the 1800s. To give
you a little bit of history, the Japanese particularly when they came to the west coast
went into farming and they were quite successful. The Caucasian community wanted
to prevent the Japanese immigrants who
were so successful in farming from owning
land, so in California in 1912 they passed
what was called the alien land law. It said
nothing about Asians. The phrase that they
used was “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”
And who were they? The only aliens ineligible for citizenship were Asians — the
Chinese and Japanese. They were excluded
from owning the land they developed. They
took wasteland and turned it into bountiful
agricultural land, yet they could not own it.
And then a couple of years later, Oregon
passed the same law, as did the state of
Washington. All up and down the West
coast they passed a law that didn’t say
Asians but was directed specifically at
Asians.
METROPOLE: Talking again about your
experience in the camps, how were you
treated?
TAKEI: It varied from camp to camp, but
you had barb wire fences around you. You
had high guard towers with machine guns
pointed at you. It was no different from a
concentration camp. Well, I shouldn’t compare it with the Nazi concentration camps
because they were death camps. There was
no systematic elimination of the Japanese
American internees. However, it wasn’t
systematic, but many were in essence killed
by the internment experience.
Every Japanese American had to go,
whether they were citizen or immigrant, a
baby or elderly person, and medical care
was very poor, so if you got sick that was
almost a death sentence. Many people went
crazy, and they would walk up to the barb
wire fences. Even when the guards said
stop they wouldn’t stop walking and were
shot down.
The military even raided orphanages, to
gather Japanese-American babies. Now
what threat are they to the government?
Babies? And some were half Japanese at
that. That’s why they were orphans. A
woman had an affair, got pregnant, and in
those days to have a half-Caucasian baby
would have had her ostracized from the
Japanese American community, so she gave
the baby up for adoption. And the military
went and gathered all the Japanese American babies and set up an orphanage at
the Manzanar camp. It was irrational.
Hysterical.
METROPOLE: Do you recall anyone trying to escape?
TAKEI: No I do not. I’m sure you can find
instances of that if you do some research.
METROPOLE: Among the people who
were taken to the camps, what was the feeling toward the government at that point?
TAKEI: There was a whole range. Before
internment, but right after Pearl Harbor,
young Japanese American men and women
— like all American men and women —
rushed to the draft board to volunteer to
serve in the military. They were responded
to with a slap in the face. They were labeled
4C which translates in normal English as
enemy non-aliens. Now, what is a nonalien?
Well, that’s a citizen. But we had to be
defined in the negative. Enemy non-alien.
And for those Japanese Americans that
were already in the military at that time,
they had the greatest insult inflicted on a
soldier. Their weapons were taken away,
and if you protested you were thrown into
the stockade. Just for being Japanese American. You’re already wearing the uniform
and serving your country, but overnight you
become a potential traitor and saboteur or
M E T RO P O L E
| 51
fifth columnist.
However, a year into internment, the
government realized there was a manpower
shortage and here are all these young men
and women in camps that they could
utilize, but they’ve incarcerated us as
potential traitors, so they had to find some
way of ascertaining the quote “loyalty” of
the people who had their property taken
away, their freedom taken away, and they
were imprisoned behind barb-wire fences.
They came down with this outrageous
thing called the loyalty questionnaire. This
was a year into the incarceration. It was a
series of questions — about fifty questions
— but they were interested in two specific
questions. And this questionnaire had to be
responded to by everyone over seventeen
years of age. Everyone. Whether you were
an immigrant old lady, or a seventeen-yearold girl. Question 27 asked, “Will you bear
arms to defend the United States of America.” Could you imagine this being asked of
an 88-year-old immigrant lady? Or even an
88-year-old immigrant man? Or a seventeen-year-old girl? And in the case of my
mother who was in her mid twenties, she
had three young children. My baby sister
was just an infant then, and I was five year
old. And she was asked to respond to
“Would you bear arms to defend the United States of America?”
Question 28 asked — and this was a very
sloppily worded question with two ideas in
one sentence — “Will you swear your loyalty to the United States of America and
forswear your loyalty to the Emperor of
Japan.” Now the word forswear assumes
that there is an existing loyalty to the
Emperor of Japan. This is an outrageous
question to ask of an American citizen —
someone born here, educated here, who
always thought he was an American — will
you forswear your existing loyalty. You
can’t forswear something which doesn’t
exist. And so if you answered no to that
question, meaning you don’t have a loyalty
to the Emperor to forswear, you were
saying no to the first part as well, “will you
swear your loyalty to the United States of
America.” If you answered yes, meaning
that you would swear your loyalty to the
United States of America, you were also —
a ha — fessing up that you were up until
that time were loyal to the Emperor of
Japan. It was outrageous.
This questionnaire threw all ten camps
into turmoil. They didn’t know how to
answer that. My parents said that they have
taken my property, my home, my freedom,
but they’re not going to take my dignity
away from me. I’m not going to grovel
before this kind of outrage. And they
answered “no” to those two questions. As
extraordinary as it is, there were those who
answered yes to those two questions and
despite their rejection a year ago as 4C,
they volunteered to serve in the military
again.
You might have read about the 442nd
Regimental Combat Team, and the Japanese Americans who served with the military
intelligence board. They served with extraordinary valor. And the 442nd Regimental
Combat Team is the most decorated outfit
to return from the European theater of
World War II. This is another little known
fact, it was another Japanese American outfit, the 522nd battalion, that liberated
Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp.
METROPOLE: I didn’t know that.
TAKEI: Most people don’t know that.
METROPOLE: So at what time did your
family leave the camp?
TAKEI: The outside world was still pretty
scary because anti-Japanese feelings were
still strong. So, in our family — there were
other families that left together — but in
my family my father left first, in 1945, and
came back to Los Angeles to find housing
and a job. Those were the two most difficult
things to get.
My father’s first job was as a dishwasher in a China Town restaurant and the housing that he found for us was on skid row in
downtown Los Angeles. We left the camp
in February of 1946. For us, as children,
that was normality, because everybody
always lived the same way. We all lived in
the tar-paper barracks, we lined up three
times a day for our meals, we all showered
in the communal shower, and so that was
normality for us as children. So when we
came out it was a terrifying experience. The
stench of urine and the human feces in the
alleyways in skid row, and the scary, ugly
people that staggered around and then they
fell down and just lay there in their barf.
We’d never seen anything like that. My little sister said, “Mama, let’s go back home,”
meaning back behind those barbed wire
fences.
METROPOLE: How long do you think
after you were released your family started
feeling like part of society again?
TAKEI: My father spoke both Japanese
and English fluently, and in camp — we
were in two different camps, the one in
Arkansas and then we were taken to another one in northern California, Tule Lake —
and my father was block manager in both
camps, sort of like the representative of
each block, so he was seen as something of
a leader. When we came out, many of those
people that had difficulties speaking English came to my father to have him help
them get a job or find housing.
So my father after his first job as a dishwasher opened an employment agency in
little Tokyo and he helped them. But the
kind of jobs he could get for them were jobs
like dishwasher, or janitor, and cleaning
lady that paid a pittance, and he didn’t have
the heart to collect his commission. And so
my mother said, you know we’ve got to eat
to, you’ve got to quit doing this, so he started a dry-cleaning business in east L.A.,
which is the Mexican-American ghetto. He
was reasonably successful there, and we
got the to point where we could by a house.
So in 1950 my father bought a house back
in the same old neighborhood, the Wilshire
district, that we’d lived in before the war.
METROPOLE: You left in 1946, so you
were in the camp when the atomic bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima. Do you recall
that?
TAKEI: Well, my mother’s parents, grandparents, came from Hiroshima. And before
the war they returned to Hiroshima,
because they sensed the war coming. For
my mother it was an absolutely torturous
experience because we didn’t get any information other than what little information
the camp command would share. She had
no idea whether her parents had survived or
whether they were gone.
My mother didn’t sleep at all; she was
tortured by it. And so my father said to her,
why don’t you, for your own peace, consider your parents having gone. As it turned
out, my grandparents had survived, but one
of my mother’s younger sisters went back
to Japan with my grandparents, and she and
her baby were killed in the atomic bombing. She was supposed to have died in one
of the rivers in Hiroshima. Apparently their
bodies hurt so much that they found some
refuge in the rivers, and that’s where she
died, as did her baby. She was found dead
with her baby.
METROPOLE: This is just one of the
worst parts of our history.
TAKEI: That’s why the unilateral efforts
by George Bush to start a war in Iraq is
really a chilling thing.
METROPOLE: Do you feel that the existence of the camps made feelings of racism
worse, or better —
TAKEI: How could it be better?
M E T RO P O L E
| 52
METROPOLE: I’ve heard that in France,
for example, after the war, there was less
racism because people saw how horrible
the camps had been.
TAKEI: What made the difference was the
Japanese Americans who served in the military. Because they served with such
incredible patriotism — as I said, the 442nd
is the single most decorated outfit, and
there are many Congressional Medals of
Honor awardees. As a matter of fact, the
senior senator from the state of Hawaii,
Senator Danny Inouye, one of the veterans
of the senate, has a loose right sleeve
because he left his arm in Italy while fighting with the 442nd.
Because of that, a lot of things started to
change. For example, in 1952 the Walter
McCarran act was passed, which for the
first time granted naturalized citizenship to
Asian immigrants. My father was one of
the first to become naturalized. Although he
came here as a boy, and he felt American,
he couldn’t officially become an American
until the Walter McCarran act was passed
in ’52.
METROPOLE: You mentioned current
events earlier. Do you think that there could
be camps of this kind again?
TAKEI: I’d like to think not the camps, but
when you have an event like September 11
or Bush’s sense that Saddam Hussein is a
threat to the United States, there is an air of
hysteria. As I said earlier, Arab immigrant
men are being detained with no charges,
just like with the Japanese Americans. No
trials. Just detention, in this case, with their
families not knowing anything.
The yahoos in our society, in our nation,
have taken pot shots at people and murdered not just Muslims but, you known an
Egyptian in Phoenix, Arizona — an Egyptian Sikh, so he’s an entirely different religion, but these yahoos shot him and killed
him. Just last week, a young, 18 year old
Arab-American kid whose brother talks
just like us — the kid’s so beat up that he
can’t be interviewed — was ganged up on
by about twenty young non-American —
meaning their behavior is non-American —
white kids. This kind of behavior is completely contrary to what this nation is, but
it’s started happening again.
METROPOLE: I remember little more
than brief mention of these camps being
made in history class in high school. Why
do you think so little time is spent teaching
about this?
TAKEI: That’s why we have the Japanese
American National Museum, to make up
for this deficiency. We feel that dark chapter in American history is probably the most
important chapter in American history. My
father used to say both the strength and
weakness of American democracy is that it
is a true people’s democracy. It’s as great as
the people can be, but it’s also as fallible as
people.
That’s why political leadership, responsible political leadership, is so important, to
try and put these yahoos in their place. And
to try and keep the hysteria down. I’m
afraid that we have an attorney general,
John Ashcroft, who is raising the same kind
of issues again, pitting national security
against civil liberties. What is national
security when our civil liberties are endangered? We don’t have an America to protect
— if the fundamental principles and ideals
of this system are going to be compromised, then what is national security?
METROPOLE:
We’re
essentially
destroying ourselves.
TAKEI: Exactly.
METROPOLE: A friend of mine who was
born in one of the internment camps tells
me that it seems to her that only the descendants of the people that were in the camps
have any kind of interest — and that interest is waning with every passing generation. Things like your museum are obviously helping to correct that. What else do
you think needs to be done to preserve this
history for all Americans, not just Japanese
Americans?
TAKEI: Education is the key to democracy. When too many people are ignorant,
then democracy is endangered. It’s got to
be woven into the fabric of our educational system. This was not a Japanese-American experience. It was an outrage to the
American constitution. That’s everybody’s
constitution — your constitution, my constitution, Jesse Jackson’s constitution, Pat
Robertson’s constitution. All Americans
should know about the failure of American
democracy at that point in history so that
we don’t let that happen again.
METROPOLE: I assume that people who
are interested in more information should
turn to your museum.
TAKEI: Yes. We’re on the Internet, as you
know, and we travel our exhibits all over
the country. We currently have one in
Sacramento. The exhibit titled “American
Concentration Camp” was in New York;
Atlanta, Georgia; Sacramento; Seattle; and
next year it’s going to be going to Little
Rock, Arkansas.
r
M E T RO P O L E
| 53
NO ONE’S GONNA KICK
SAND IN MY FACE!
LOSE WEIGHT WITH OUR EDITOR, PART TWO
BY ANTHONY SAPIENZA,WITH SPECIAL GUEST, JACK LALANNE
T
hanks for joining me for part two of
my fitness and health program. This
month, and hopefully from here on in, we
are going to give ourselves the discipline
we deserve. Forget about patting each other
on the back because we lost eight ounces —
it’s time to get tough with ourselves and
start treating our body’s right. No pussyfooting around — it’s time to get down and
dirty!
Would you put water in the gas tank of
your new car? Of course you wouldn’t!
Then why keep putting junk into your
body? Jack Lalanne told me that, and he’s
eighty-six years old and can kick my ass in
any exercise you can name. Charles Atlas
writes something very similar in his famous
Dynamic-Tension® Program. These guys
tell it like it is and they’ve both been around
longer than most of the junk and fast foods
we know. This month I’ll bring you the wisdom of both men as I talk personally to
Jack Lalanne and review and implement
some of the routines and advice in Charles
Atlas’s Dynamic-Tension® course.
care of yourself — how are you going to
care of anyone else, including your loved
ones?”
I started my new life fifty days ago. I quit
smoking. I completely changed my diet
habits. I began to exercise. In these fifty
days I have not been sick once. I feel great
— better than I ever have. (Of course I still
get aggravated and cranky every so often,
E
but my health has improved dramatically!)
I went down four pants sizes! I lost ugly
fat! Laugh if you like, but I can put on my
socks without breathing heavy! All this
happened without any gimmicks, stimulants, diet pills, stomach stapling, writing
down calories, or harmful diets. My big
secret was desire and willpower.
I wanted to share my experience with as
many people as possible, so I enrolled in
many diet and fitness discussion groups on
the Internet, including those on AOL. Since
I’m not selling anything, but simply relating my experience, I thought it would be a
ven Lisa Hourin, last month’s guest,
wasn’t going to soft soap me. She
emailed me after she read the first part of
this series: “Damn, man, what is up with
your old diet?? You told me it was embarrassing, but whoo-eee. I’m glad you’re
shaping up, before you keeled over from a
heart attack at 40!!” Remember, honesty is
the best policy — especially when it comes
to your body!
I’m going to steal from the best and
quote Lalanne again, “The most important
person in the world is you!” If you’re not
in shape, if you’re sick, if you can’t take
Forget about patting
each other on the back
because we lost eight
ounces — it’s time to
get tough with
ourselves and start
treating our body’s
right. No pussyfooting
around — it’s time to
get down and dirty!
great way to spread the word.
In reading some of the letters that came
in responding to my postings, I was horrified to see some of the poor advice that was
being spread around— from harmful diets
to laughable claims. “Each time you have a
meal, use a smaller dish so it appears that
you are getting more food,” one such email
stated. I pity the poor person who is having
her dinner on a saucer instead of simply
eating right!
Someone told me how angry she was at
her husband for waking her up in the
middle of the night to tell her something he
thought was important. “You lose weight
when you are sleeping!” she told me, “And
he ruined my weight loss time!”
People are so desperate to lose weight
that they want to believe everything they
see on TV or read or hear. They take a very
small statement and make it into what is
supposed to be factual. Your body needs
sleep: true. The more physically fit you are
and the higher metabolism you have, the
more calories you will burn when you
sleep: true. Your husband waking you up
ruined your exercise routine: absolutely
false! It just goes to show you how gullible
we can become when we desperately want
something.
Friends of mine who are on fad diets tell
me things like, “Yeah, but you’re using
MET-Rx, what are you going to do — use
it all your life?” My answer is that MET-Rx
is not what’s making me lose the weight.
MET-Rx is a tool. It is a total meal replacement supplement in a shake. I have one for
breakfast and one for lunch every day. It’s
a tool that is assisting me and helping me
change my bad diet habits. Could I have
M E T RO P O L E
| 55
I
never thought I’d be happy to quit
smoking — I thought I’d miss it. I
don’t miss it. I don’t miss eating
McDonalds either. In fact, the smell of
fast foods stink to me now. I never
thought I’d say it, but it’s true. Once your
body is accustomed to eating right, it
doesn’t want the bad things — believe
me. I’m certainly not saying that I have a
hankering for liver or I get off on mustard
greens, but your taste buds do learn to
appreciate the better things in life and
they reject the junk.
Remember what I said last month about
not using the scale and using a mirror
every day? It really works. If you use the
scale, you will get frustrated.
People you live with won’t notice your
weight loss as much as those you only see
occasionally. I had someone say that he
didn’t even recognize me — having not
seen me for a couple of months. Your mirror and your clothes will not lie to you.
That silk shirt or blouse that you haven’t
worn in ages will welcome you like an old
friend. And as hard as it may be for some,
keep looking in the mirror — pretty soon
you’ll be wondering who that sexy person
coming through the fat is. If you were like
me, you may not have seen him or her for
a long time.
LEARNING FROM CHARLES
ATLAS: FORMER 97 LB.
WEAKLING
M
ost of you have seen an ad for the
Charles Atlas Dynamic-Tension®
Course. Featured in comic books and magazines, it is one of the most famous and
successful marketing efforts of all time.
With titles like: “The Insult That Made A
Man Out Of Mac” or, “How Joe’s Body
Brought Him Fame Instead Of Shame.”
The real question is: Does it work?
Before I go on, let’s talk about some
claims that the Charles Atlas Course
makes: “I promise you new muscles in
days!” the photo of Charles Atlas says.
They certainly don’t mean you’ll actually
have new muscles. You may use muscles
that you’ve hardly used before or you may
see your muscles begin to grow — but you
certainly won’t have new ones — ever.
The other claim is one we see way too
often and which can be misleading: “All it
Takes is Just 15 Minutes a Day!” Charles
Atlas President, Jeffrey Hogue, tells us that
15 minutes is the average starting point for
implementing the lessons “As one progresses he may certainly do more than 1520 minutes a day, but that seems to be the
starting point pretty much in my opinion.
Thereafter it really depends on the student.”
The Charles Atlas Course is a worthwhile investment in many ways. First of all,
in a it’s a fun read, in sort of a historic
sense. If you’re like me, you’ll hear the
1950’s announcer voice in your head as you
read through the course. Some of the phrasing is dated, but for the most part, the health
and fitness information is accurate. I say for
the most part because certain things, like
advocating milk and dairy, I don’t believe
in. (Read more about milk and dairy later
with Jack Lalanne).
Another high point of becoming a
Charles Atlas student is the personalized
treatment you get from the Atlas staff and
even the president of the company himself.
Unless I only did the Charles Atlas exercises and did them for an extended period
of time, I couldn’t honestly tell you how
much muscle gain you might get, but one
thing is for sure — the exercises make perfect sense, they are safe, and you do not
need any gadgets to perform them —
except for a chair or two.
These exercises are perfect for the beginner or for someone doing rehabilitation
The Dynamic Tension
exercises are based on
stretching and working
one muscle against
another.
© www.charlesatlas.com On Next Page: Vintage Charles Atlas Lesson: Photo courtesy Jean-Pierre Caravan
done it without MET-Rx? Sure, I could
have, but I never did! Each shake has 250
calories — it’s helping me keep my total
calorie count at around 2,000 or under. At
the same time, I don’t have to count every
calorie. There are no “points” to accumulate. 250 and 250 add up easy in my head
and the rest is left for dinner. Of course I
can have a piece of fruit or a vegetable or
two for a snack — but I still don’t really
have to count calories.
When the time comes that I reach my
ideal weight and body fat percentage, I’ll
cut it down to using one shake a day and
start learning how to eat right. It won’t be
a big jump in routine, because by using
these shakes and watching what I eat for
dinner (no breads, heavy dairy, or cake),
I’m already getting accustomed to eating
right. No more fast food! No more junk
food! No more unhealthy snacks! No more
carbonated drinks — including carbonated
water! These same people who have questioned my routine have still been sick, tired
and are still eating junk food.
M E T RO P O L E
| 56
© www.charlesatlas.com
A rare look at a very young,
buff, Charles Atlas.
Photo courtesy of
Jeffrey Hogue
work who cannot lift weights. Even martial
arts master Bruce Lee was said to have
implemented Dynamic-Tension® exercises
in his training routine. After only a few seconds or a minute of performing a Dynamic-Tension® exercise, you will feel your
muscles working and even get what feels
like an adrenaline high immediately after.
The Dynamic-Tension® exercises are
based on stretching and working one
muscle against another. The course starts
by referring to your commitment and your
faithfulness to it — which in turn is actually a commitment and faithfulness to yourself. Commitment to the course is important because you may feel silly doing some
of these exercises — I felt a little like Felix
Unger at first — but after trying them for a
few days, you’ll feel silly not doing them.
They are simple, you can do them virtually
anywhere and the principles are not very far
away from Tai Chi or even Pilates, so you’ll
be very fashionable at the same time. The
best way to do these, when you can, is in
front of a mirror. You can really see your
muscles at work that way — in fact I do a
few every morning after shaving.
The Atlas course also gets into a lot of
important, common sense, and usually
overlooked facts in diet and fitness. Topics
include the import aspects of fresh air, good
posture, proper sleep, and nourishment, the
perils of white flour and caffeine, and a
section dedicated to a most important but
rarely talked about subject: constipation.
Hey, you’ll be surprised about what you’ll
learn about the harmful effects of
constipation!
As only the second president of the
Charles Atlas Company in over 74 years
Jeffrey Hogue is committed to his
goal: “Helping people become ATLAS
CHAMPIONS by achieving what they
never dreamed they could be: Strong,
Healthy, and Happy, inside and out, without
spending a fortune on fads or trends.”
www.charlesatlas.com
“THIS IS JACK RABBIT!”
A WORKING CONVERSATION
WITH JACK LALANNE
T
here should be no doubt in anyone’s
mind that Jack Lalanne is the greatest
pioneer and innovator in the world of physical fitness. You name it, he’s done it —and
he’s done it best!
I grew up with Jack Lalanne on my
television. “Then how did you wind up
fat?” you ask? Even great teachers can have
lousy students. If we all listened to Jack
Lalanne, there wouldn’t be an epidemic of
obesity in this country. But it’s not too late,
because Jack’s still around and as fiery as
ever on his continuing mission to help others live better lives. All we have to do is
listen.
Unable to meet with Jack personally this
time around, I called him on the phone:
JACK LALANNE: Hello?
SAPIENZA: Hello, is this Jack?
LALANNE: Jack who?
SAPIENZA: (Thinking: Do I have the
wrong number?) Jack Lalanne…
LALANNE: No, this is Jack Rabbit!
SAPIENZA: (He got me) How ya doing?
LALANNE: How’s everything going with
you? If things are not going well — only
your butt to kick! Don’t blame me or don’t
blame God, blame you! That’s my philosophy. I don’t know why the hell you want to
write about me — you should be writing
about my wife. She’s the power underneath
my muscles. Without her I’m a nothing!
She leads the way. We’re a pair boy, she’s
great! We believe in the same things. We’ve
got one thing on our minds — how the hell
can we help people?
There are so many phonies today in my
profession it makes me sick! They ought to
throw these guys in jail, these three-minute
abs, and the Buttmaster and that kind of
stuff. Just three minutes, three times a week
— it’s just ridiculous! You can’t lose weight
— it’s impossible — with just exercise —
you’ve gotta watch your calories! They go
together. Everything goes together, you
need your cardiovascular work, you need
your stretching, you need your muscle
work. Then you’ve gotta change your program every thirty days! That’s the key!
Look at these guys, you go to the gym
and you see these people — they spend an
hour to an hour and a half on the treadmill
— there’s nothing more boring! The muscles get used to doing the same thing. Pretty soon they break down — your hips start
to go…
Everything is between your ears — your
muscles know nothing! It’s your mind —
you get bored. Suppose you had to eat carrots the rest of your life — you’d be so
bored, so malnourished, wouldn’t you?
Same with exercise! You’ve got six hundred and forty muscles in your body and
M E T RO P O L E
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they all need their share of work! From
your toe to your head — you need strength
work.
The doctors — thank God they’re finally waking up! They want these eighty, ninety-year-old people to double their strength
and double their endurance. Six to eight
weeks with weight training. Name me one
world-class athlete that doesn’t use
weights!
If you don’t get into the nutritional thing,
if you don’t change that program every thirty days like I said, hell, you’re in trouble. I
was the first one in the world to have
women working out with the weights. I was
the first one to have eighty-year-old people
working out with the weights. I was the
first one in the world to have athletes working out with the weights — in 1931! I’d be
six foot four if doctors hadn’t beat me
down! The doctors said, “Jack Lalanne is a
liar, he’s a cheat. You older guys work out
with weights, you’ll get heart attacks —
you athletes will be muscle-bound — you
women will look like men — you guys will
lose your sex drive.” Honest to God, that’s
exactly what the doctors were saying about
weight training back then.
SAPIENZA: I thought weight training
increases your sex drive.
LALANNE: Absolutely! Whatt’ya think
sex is? It’s a physical thing isn’t it? It takes
energy and vitality. You show me a guy or
a gal with no energy or vitality and I’ll
show you a lousy lover!
SAPIENZA: Why do you think so many
people don’t exercise and so many people
are out of shape today?
LALANNE: Because they’ve lost their
pride — they’ve lost their discipline! That’s
the key — PRIDE and DISCIPLINE!
That’s what’s gotta be taught in school —
it’s gotta be taught in Kindergarten! You
know, Adolph Hitler, what he did was
wrong, but I’m telling ya, his army and his
people were the most healthy and most
handsome bunch of people in the world —
his soldiers. He started working these kids
when they were just in kindergarten. He
had them doing all the discipline work, the
weights and the exercise, the marching.
You gotta start right then. And we’ve gotta
get rid of these doggone advertisements by
these star athletes. Like Michael Jordan and
Magic Johnson and all those guys selling
hamburgers and Cokes and all the junk that
they advertise. And the ads that say milk is
good for the body — Name me one
creature on this earth that uses milk after
they’re weaned — man. He’s the only one
who lives out half of his lifespan. You know
there are probably more people that die prematurely and more fat people using dairy
products. Think about it. Ice cream, whole
milk, cream, cheese, think about it.
SAPIENZA: Why do they promote it?
LALANNE: Money, money, money. What
the hell do you think it is? Money, money,
money. People don’t give a damn. Why the
heck do Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods
and all those guys have to advertise that
junk? I don’t mind them advertising, that’s
fine, but why not advertise something that’s
going to not be deleterious but something
that’s going to help the people? These
young kids — they worship these athletes.
I go to some of these schools and I talk
to these kids about the deleterious effects of
some of these products like white flour and
white sugar and all this fried junk and the
kids look at me like I’m a stupid old man!
“Oh Michael Jordan does it, Tiger
Woods does it.” Don’t you think that something should be done about that? They
influence millions and millions of kids.
The school system’s the worst! They take
physical education out of the schools — go
to some of those cafeterias — and you wonder why the kids are fat! They should have
classes. You know young kids, when
they’re in their teens, especially women,
they want to look beautiful, they want to be
sexy, right? So that’s where they should be
taught.
These kids, they want to be athletes, they
want to be admired by the girls, they should
do something about their physical condition, their physical looks and their ability to
do things! It’s got to start with the food you
eat! Remember, the food you eat today is
walking and talking tomorrow isn’t it? The
food you eat today, you’ll be wearing it
tomorrow!
What do you think makes you what you
are? The food you eat, right? And the exercise you do.
Most people work at dying. Any stupid
ass can die — that’s easy. Living, you gotta
work at it! When was the last time God
came down and did your workout for you?
God helps them that help themselves.
You’ve got to be a supreme being to put this
body of ours together, this earth. But that
Supreme Being gives you the power, he
gives you the will, but YOU HAVE TO DO
IT! Who puts the thoughts in your brain?
Who puts the food in your mouth? You do
it! That’s what I tell people in my lectures.
If anything happens in your life — good or
bad — WHO MADE IT HAPPEN? YOU!
You know I have a new corvette. Would
I put water in the gas tank? It wouldn’t run
— right? Aren’t you a combustion engine?
You put all those cakes and pies and candy
and ice cream and all that crap and all these
soda drinks and junk — and you wonder
why people are fat and we have all these
diseases? They’re working at dying! (If I’m
talking too much, I meant to!) Do you work
out a lot?
SAPIENZA: Actually I’m just starting to
do it…
LALANNE: You stupid-ass! (If I didn’t
like you, I wouldn’t talk to you like that)
You GOTTA do it. You gotta take care of
yourself. That’s the most important thing
there is.
You know, I work out at five o’clock in
the morning. To leave a hot bed, leave a hot
woman, go into a cold gym, boy that takes
discipline!
SAPIENZA: How can one find the right
exercises to do? There are all these videotapes out there that have dangerous exercises on them, they’re made simply to make
money…
LALANNE: Have you ever seen my
tapes?
SAPIENZA: I remember your TV show!
LALANNE: I’ve done television for 34
years, just made the Guinness Book of
World Records. I have a new tape out now
that I’m going to be selling on television.
You don’t get out of the chair. And I tell you
— it is a workout! And I work out every
part of your body, from your toes up to the
top of your head! This is going to appeal to
a lot of people because you can do it while
you’re watching television.
SAPIENZA: So many people don’t know
where to turn to get a proper education.
LALANNE: Well you’ve got these girls;
well I don’t want to mention names…
SAPIENZA: Mention names, so what…
LALANNE: Look at Dr. Atkins; he talks
about eating all meat — all meat, butter,
and cheese, right? Do you know how many
of those people get high blood pressure and
all that stuff from it? Sure you’ll lose some
weight, because they’re not eating many
calories. But how many of those people
keep that up?
Then you’ve got Suzanne Somers —
she’s got a book out now where you don’t
M E T RO P O L E
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“I’m doing something again
for me. And I’m just proving
that my philosophy works. I
can’t afford to die — I’ll
wreck my image!”
Most people work at dying.
Any stupid ass can die —
that’s easy. Living, you gotta
work at it! When was the last
time God came down and did
your workout for you?
mix carbohydrates and starches and protein
together. Well that’s the most ridiculous,
stupid thing in the world. Did you ever figure out what a nut has in it? Some of the
greatest foods on this earth are whole grains
and nuts, almonds, and peanuts — those are
perfect foods! If nature didn’t want you to
have fats and carbohydrates and sugars and
starch at the same time, she would never
have made a nut or a grain! Well these people… everything is to sell a book! Don’t
mix this — you gotta mix this — people are
so confused they don’t know what the hell
to do!
And the three minute abs and the twominute-this stuff… And the people that are
telling the truth, you know like Richard
Simmons are out there doing a good job,
but there are a lot of phonies out there too!
SAPIENZA: How many times a week
should someone work out?
LALANNE: I work out seven days a week.
This is Jack Lalanne — I want to see how
long I can keep this up. Using me as an
example, and I’m a disciplinarian — I’ve
got one thing on my mind and that’s how
can I help people? And it’s gotta start with
the number-one-person-on-this-earth —
Jack Lalanne. You. You’re the most important person on this earth, aren’t you? Without you what good is anything? What good
are your kids, your husband, your wife,
your boyfriend… your country — if you’re
not being productive? It’s gotta start with
YOU.
But if you work out three times a week,
vigorously, a half hour is plenty — (for the
average person) — and change your program every thirty days, and if man makes
it, don’t eat it. And if you want to lose
weight you’ve got to keep under 1,500
calories a day or you’re never going to do
it!
SAPIENZA: 1,500?
LALANNE: 1,500 are a lot of calories —
if you know what you’re doing! A lot of
fruits and vegetables and fish, egg whites,
you know, lean things. Do you know what
some of these fast food hamburgers have?
Like 1,200 calories! That’s as much as you
need all day! What do you think a doughnut has? Or a candy bar? I tell people that
the only good thing about a doughnut is the
hole in the middle — no calories!
SAPIENZA: What about some of these
protein drinks Jack, like MET-Rx?
LALANNE: They’re great! They’re good.
If you know which ones to choose! Some of
them have a lot of damn sugar in them, but
there are some good ones out there too. Did
you ever hear of Carnation Instant Breakfast?
SAPIENZA: Sure.
LALANNE: Who do you think invented
that? ME! When I was on television in
1951, I was the first one to ever have a
health and fitness show and I had to have
products to sell to pay my time. So I was
selling exercise equipment, I was selling
books — I wrote ten books — but everything telling people the truth. Then I would
get thousands of letters. Some of them said,
“Jack, What can I do, I want to lose weight
fast?” So I got this bright idea to have a
drink. They’d have a drink for breakfast
and a drink for lunch, and it was less than
200 calories and had over 20 grams of protein in it. Boy it was fantastic. People used
that drink and it tasted delicious. These
people lost three or four pounds a week. I
sold so much of it; I couldn’t keep it in
stock. And we had to go to Carnation to
have it instantized and about six months
later they came out with the Carnation
M E T RO P O L E
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Instant Breakfast. They copied mine, and I
sued them. And you know, to take Carnation to court for three or four years, costs
you hundreds of thousands of dollars. So
they gave me this big cash settlement — it
was a fortune. And I let them keep the
name, Instant Breakfast, and then I changed
my product from Instant Breakfast to
Reduce. Isn’t that something? That was one
of the most telling blows — that some big
corporation like that would take something
from a little guy like me, just getting started kinda. But anyway, I thought maybe
you’d get a kick out of that.
You know what you should have for
breakfast? If you can scramble four egg
whites or take hard boiled eggs and throw
the yolks away, and a good whole-grain
cereal, and a piece of fresh fruit — that
would be the most perfect breakfast you
can have. You’ve got a hell of a lot of protein right there, and that’s the key, you
should have a third of your daily protein for
breakfast, a third for lunch, and a third for
dinner.
The protein in the morning keeps your
blood sugar in control for five or six hours.
If you just have fruit or cereal for breakfast
and no protein, then you get hungry after
about an hour and a half. That’s when people eat between meals, see? You get that
protein that takes away the hunger pains.
SAPIENZA: And you don’t touch dairy
products at all?
LALANNE: I’m not a suckling calf! For a
while there I was taking a little low fat
yogurt, but I don’t even take that anymore
— nothing that comes from a cow. If you
want to have a little skim milk, or something like that every once in a while — but
people eat so much cream and butter and
cheese… Do you know how many calories
are in a little piece of cheese?
SAPIENZA: Why is it that so many Europeans are in much better shape than Americans?
LALANNE: Because they don’t eat all the
junk we do! They don’t have all these hamburgers and hot dogs… Of course now
they’re getting some of our fast food chains
over there. Now they’ll start to get fat.
SAPIENZA: What was your breakfast this
morning?
LALANNE: I had a drink with 50 grams of
protein in it, made out of soymilk. And I
used a protein powder called Hard Body. I
used that in my drink. Then for lunch I had
five pieces of fresh fruit, and I had four egg
whites. Then for dinner I’ll have about
three ounces of fish — I eat fish seven days
a week, that’s the only meat I eat. If I’m
going to have any bread it’s 100% whole
wheat and if I have any rice, it’s brown
rice. We have several Oriental restaurants
we go to and we keep our brown rice there.
We call ahead of time and they fix it for us.
We never deviate. It’s my reward — it
makes me feel good. I’m doing something
again for me. And I’m just proving that my
philosophy works. I can’t afford to die —
I’ll wreck my image!
SAPIENZA: Tell me about your Jack
Lalanne juicer. How often do you take
some vegetable juice?
LALANNE: Every day. In my juicer you
can put a whole tomato, a whole potato,
you don’t have to cut it up, it’s so big. I’ll
have beets and carrots and onions. I’ll put
garlic in it and to give it some added taste
I’ll put an apple in it. It’s incredible. It goes
right into your blood stream. What do you
think you’re made of? You’re made of live
vital foods right? You put dead foods in
your body, you’re working at death, you put
live things, and you’re working at living!
What do you think effects your hair, your
teeth all the seventy, eighty trillion cells in
your body — they’re all nourished by the
food you eat!
SAPIENZA: What would be your typical
day of exercise?
LALANNE: I hit the gym between five
and six in the morning, and I work out at
least an hour with the weights and then
another 45 minutes to an hour in the pool.
And I change my program every thirty
days. I’ll tie myself in place and maybe I’ll
butterfly for an hour, or maybe I’ll do
freestyle, or I might do laps in the pool. I’ll
work with the clock and try and do it faster
every day. Then maybe for thirty days I’ll
just do sprints, I’ll do twenty-five yards and
rest about ten seconds then do twenty-five
again — see, I mix it up.
Then with my weights, maybe for thirty
days I’m doing just six repetitions, real
heavy — then maybe I’ll do fifteen reps for
thirty days with a lighter weight — perfect
style. Then I’ll do thirty days everything
real fast, and then I’ll do thirty days everything real slow. See your muscles are not
used to it, so they respond. It breaks the
monotony.
SAPIENZA: What about the people who
tell us not to exercise every day, just to do
it every other day?
LALANNE: How about these college
gymnasts and wrestlers. Do they rest a day?
They workout every day — at least five or
six days a week. It all old wive’s tales.
If you’re a bodybuilder and you’re going
to be on steroids and all that stuff, you don’t
need as much exercise, you can rest more.
But for the average person, you need cardiovascular. You need something to do —
something to burn up calories. When I do
my exercises I don’t rest for more than ten
or fifteen seconds between sets — I keep it
going so I’m getting my strength and my
cardiovascular at the same time!
A lot of people, when they go to the gym,
they do a press with the weights, then
they’ll rest a couple of minutes. Well, shit,
they lost all the cardiovascular benefits out
of it — they’re just getting the strength part.
You’ve got to keep it moving — don’t rest
too much between sets.
SAPIENZA: What about all these programs that tell you that you can do it in fifteen minutes a day?
LALANNE: They’re liars! You can’t do it
in four, five, or fifteen minutes — you just
can’t do it! It’s better than doing nothing —
it’s better to put a buck in the bank than say
five hundred or something — it’s better to
do something than nothing.
To get results you’ve got to do at least a
half an hour. Then again, if people are
pressed for time maybe they can do it in
five-minute increments throughout the day.
There’s always time for doing something.
They’ve got all this junk on television,
most of it’s jumping around — you’ve got
640 muscles and they all need their share of
work.
Of course they want to please the public.
When I was on television, you know what
I did? I pleased Jack Lalanne! By giving
people the truth! That’s why I gave them
strength exercises, I gave them stretching, I
gave them cardiovascular, and I told them
the truth about nutrition. I told them exactly how I live and what I believe in. Some
of these people, they’re doing it for making
a buck, they want to appease somebody.
Exercise is a pain in the butt for most
people — it’s not fun. It’s terrible. I’d rather
take a beating than to work out in the morning! I have never, ever in my life really
liked to work out — but I like the results!
That’s the key. Talk to a thousand athletes
— ask them if they like to train — are you
kidding? They hate it! I don’t like to pay
my income tax either — a lot of people
M E T RO P O L E
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don’t like to do a lot of things, but you have
to do it, don’t you? You don’t like to get up
and go to work in the morning, right?
There’s things that you have to do in life,
but the most important thing that there is —
is the exercise, the vigorous exercise.
It’s all about choices. Why should you
have to have fouled up cereals when you’ve
got some good whole grain cereals out
there? Why do you have to have all this
fried junk and all these hamburgers and
stuff when you can get wonderful whole
wheat sandwiches with turkey or lean cuts
of meat?
Think about it. It’s just making the choices. And french fries — do you know what
one of the greatest foods on this earth is?
SAPIENZA: What is it?
LALANNE: A potato. A potato has
between eighty and a hundred calories.
People never eat a potato — you see them
with a baked potato, they load it up with
butter, cream, and cheese, right? They
never eat the skin! They just eat the junk
and most of the potato. The potato is a great
food if you eat the whole thing. And the
skin is the most important part because all
the mineral salts are in that skin.
SAPIENZA: You put a whole potato in
your juicer and you drink that?
LALANNE: Oh yeah, I’ll put squash,
potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, then you
put a little apple or an orange in it for taste.
See with my juicer, there’s a complete
recipe book that comes with it showing you
how to make all these wonderful drinks.
You can have sweet drinks, sour drinks,
whatever you want — all these different
combinations. And the people who buy that
juicer — you should read the damn mail we
get: “Jack it’s the best thing I’ve ever done
in my life — I’m losing weight and my
arthritis pains are leaving me…” Because
they’re starting to put the right fuel in their
human machine!
How many young kids eat their fruits
and vegetables? They don’t do it! And the
older people — people are too busy today!
Here you can make the juice in the morning and take it with you to work.
I tell the truth — that is the key, boy. I
had an article in Reader’s Digest recently
and I told them about all these quacks,
about these three-minute abs and Buttmaster — I said those people ought to be
thrown in jail. YOU CAN’T BELIEVE
THE MAIL THAT WE GOT! “Jack, finally somebody is telling the truth!” I’m just
warning people about these quacks!
I’m so proud of my profession — I love
what I’m doing, I’m helping people — and
my whole thing is TELLING THE TRUTH
and trying to be an example to motivate
people in any age. That’s my whole life.
But you get these phonies out there — god
— that kills everything! All these exercises
come and go — one day it’s this thing and
the next day it’s that thing. But the one
thing that will never go out of style is THE
TRUTH!
Descriptions of a number of exercises follow. It goes without saying that you should
not try any new exercises at home without
first consulting your doctor, unless you are
on the phone with Jack Lalanne. For the
purpose of clarity, most of the interviewer’s
heavy breathing has been omitted.
SAPIENZA: What would be a few good
exercises that someone can do without any
gadgets?
LALANNE: Oh there are a hell of a lot of
things you can do. Here’s one of the greatest exercises: you get three chairs, you put
these chairs out and you put your feet on
one chair and each hand on another chair so
you’re lying face down and you do
pushups, but you’re on the chairs so you
can go below the usual position. Now that’s
a terrific one for developing your chest,
arms and even your abs — because you’ve
got to keep your back from arching.
Then another great one is this: take your
chair, scoot down on the chair, put your
hands on the edge of the chair, then sit
down on the floor then push back up again.
Let me give you another one — your sitting down on your chair right?
SAPIENZA: Right.
LALANNE: Good. Scoot down on the
edge of your chair, scoot way down — you
got it?
SAPIENZA: Alright.
LALANNE: Now bring both knees in to
your chest. Trying to touch your knees to
your forehead. Bring ’em in — all the way
in. Now out — straighten them out —
about an inch off the floor. Now bring your
knees up try and touch your forehead, got
it? And as you come up, you exhale.
Always exhale when you are contracting
your abdominal muscles. Got that one?
That’s a hell of a good one for your gut!
Now another good one: you’re sitting in
the chair right? Now I want you to do this
one with me. Stand up. Are you standing
up?
SAPIENZA: Yes.
LALANNE: Now sit down and keep about
an inch off the chair. An inch off the chair
right? Now come up, now go down — an
inch off the chair. Now do it real slow,
down, now up, just and inch off the chair,
now do it fast — one two three fast, fast,
fast, fast, go on, fast, fast, fast, fast.
C’mon… you feel those?
SAPIENZA: Uh…..huh
LALANNE: Now that’s a tough one —
that really gets your legs!
SAPIENZA: (Very heavy breathing)
LALANNE: Now another one. Sit down in
your chair and sit on the edge of your chair.
Hang onto the sides. Now pretend you’re
riding a bicycle. Pump a bicycle! C’mon
fast now, keep pumping — touch your
knees into your chest. Now do it fast — I’ll
count for you: 1 2 3 4, fast, fast, faster,
faster, faster, somebody’s behind you,
they’re gonna get you, c’mon, c’mon,
pump, don’t stop, pump, fast, fast, fast.
Now both legs together now — bring ’em
in, bring ‘em out, bring ‘em in, bring ’em
out, fast, faster, bring ‘em in, bring ’em
out… okay.
See what you’ve done there? You’ve
used a hell of a lot of muscles just what you
were doing there.
SAPIENZA: So… Uh… where… can…
Someone get… these… exercises… on
tape?
LALANNE: What?
SAPIENZA: A tape. Where… can…
Someone get… these exercises… on tape?
LALANNE: We’re going to be selling
them on the Home Shopping Network.
You can also check my Web site: www.
jacklalanne.com
In more ways than one, talking to Jack
was one of the best and most encouraging
experiences I’ve had in a while.
We will catch up with Jack periodically
for more words of wisdom and a chat with
Jack’s wife, Elaine. And we’ll also put the
Jack Lalanne Juicer to the test here at
Metropole headquarters. Look for a product
review in the next issue.
Also coming up: More Charles Atlas,
Richard Simmons, and some other great
surprises and encounters — not to mention
my shocking before-and-after photos. So
come on back…if you know what’s good
for you!
r
M E T RO P O L E
| 65
METROPOLE EXCERPT
OPEN NETWORKS, CLOSED REGIMES
BY SHANTHI KALATHIL AND TAYLOR C. BOAS
TECHNOLOGY AND TRADITION IN
THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES,
SAUDI ARABIA, AND EGYPT
The Internet and globalization are acting
like nutcrackers to open societies and
empower Arab democrats with new tools.
— Thomas Friedman, “Censors Beware,”
New York Times, July 25, 2000
s the Internet diffuses throughout the
countries of the Middle East,
observers have begun to speculate that this
technology will spread democracy in a
region where authoritarian rule has long
been predominant. Optimistic sentiment of
this sort builds upon a long-standing belief
that new ICTs will encourage political
change in the Middle East. Daniel Lerner’s classic, The Passing of Traditional
Society, considered the role of newspapers and the mass media as drivers of
political modernization in the region. More
recent studies have looked at the challenges
that videocassettes and satellite television
pose to existing political dynamics. With
the Internet taking its place alongside other
technologies that frustrate the centralized
control of information, there is an expectation that the medium will pose a threat to
many authoritarian regimes in the Middle
East.
The use of the Internet may indeed pose
challenges to information control in much
of the Middle East, but most of the region’s
governments are actively seeking to ensure
that Internet use does not threaten the political status quo. Several countries (including
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) feature elaborate censorship schemes
for the Internet, employing advanced technology to block public access to pornography or political web sites. Others, like
Egypt and Turkey, promote self-censorship
in the population, making well-publicized
www.mcit.gov.eg
A
President Mubarak launches Egypt’s subscriber-free Internet Service
At Cairo Telecomp Forum/Exhibition 14/1/2002
crackdowns against uses of the Internet that
are considered politically or socially inappropriate. Many leaders are encouraging
the growth of e-commerce and (to a lesser
extent) e-government. The development of
these online services may boost popular
satisfaction with existing political regimes.
In short, the impact of the Internet on
authoritarian regimes of the Middle East is
an open question, one that must be subject
to systematic empirical analysis on a caseby-case basis.
In this chapter we examine the political
consequences of Internet use in three countries of the Middle East: the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
As in our analysis of other cases, we argue
for a nuanced conclusion about the impact
of Internet use on these authoritarian and
semi-authoritarian regimes.
REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:
GEOPOLITICS AND THE MID-TECH
REVOLUTION
W
hile Internet penetration in the
Middle East is limited when compared with much of the rest of the world, it
has been growing rapidly in recent years. A
March 2001 study found 3.5 million Internet users in the Arab countries of the Middle East (that is, excluding Iran, Israel, and
Turkey). During the previous year the number had increased by more than 1.5 million.
By the end of 2002 there were expected to
be 10–12 million Internet users in these
same countries, about 4 percent of their
total population. Within these numbers
there is much variation. At one end of the
spectrum, the UAE has seen spectacular
Internet growth, with a full quarter of its
M E T RO P O L E
| 66
Saudi Arabia has expressed more visible
concern over the Internet than has the
UAE, and it has taken a more cautious
approach to the medium. Public Internet
access was introduced only in 1999, and
the medium is filtered through one of
the most extensive mechanisms for
content censorship in the world.
population now classified as Internet users.
At the other end, Iraq achieved an Internet
connection only in 1999; it is estimated to
have 12,500 users and a mere five hundred
separate accounts. Many countries in the
Middle East, from Morocco to Yemen, have
Internet penetration rates of under 1
percent. There are also significant variations in the many determinants of Internet
diffusion, including a country’s literacy,
wealth, size, and engagement with the
outside world.
As a consequence of this variation
among countries, generalization about the
region as a whole is a difficult task, one that
we do not presume to undertake in this
study. Nonetheless, much of the existing
literature on the information revolution in
the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt has been
framed in a regional context, and several
regional considerations are relevant to the
analysis of Internet use in these three cases.
First, other ICTs are currently much
more influential than the Internet in most of
the Middle East. Jon Alterman argues that
the Middle East’s “mid-tech” revolution —
the widespread diffusion of 1970s technologies, like videocassettes, photocopiers,
and satellite television — will be more
socially and politically consequential than
the Internet in the short to medium term.
Arguably, these ICTs are breaking state
information monopolies and undermining
mass media censorship throughout the
region. The Qatar-based regional news
network al-Jazeera, for instance, regularly
airs frank reporting and spirited political
debates, and its content has elicited criticism from the leaders of several Middle
Eastern countries. Public access to satellite
television is widespread in much of the
region; some governments have sought to
ban it, but such regulations are rarely
enforced. By comparison, low literacy rates
and levels of Internet penetration limit the
medium’s impact in many countries, as
does the region’s dominant oral culture and
a general reluctance to put ideas into
writing. This caveat applies more to Saudi
Arabia and Egypt than to the UAE (where
literacy and Internet penetration rates are
high), but it is worth keeping in mind
throughout our analysis.
Second, geopolitical concerns and
regional political dynamics condition the
Internet’s impact in the Middle East and
the manner in which different governments
have responded to it. Many states in the
Middle East face both the perceived threat
of Israel and frequently violent political
opposition from Islamist groups that may
operate across borders and challenge
multiple governments in the region. Such
concerns are often invoked as a justification
for continued authoritarian rule as well as
for authoritarian control of the Internet.
Still, growing public access to the Internet
and other ICTs also complicates the manner
in which governments can respond to security issues. In particular, the events and
aftermath of September 11, 2001, have
raised the stakes for regimes in the Middle
East, which have been pressured to side
with the United States in the war against
terrorism but must also make foreign policy
decisions with an eye toward public opinion. As the diffusion of the Internet and
other ICTs provides alternative channels of
information (including extreme Islamist
information) that the state cannot easily
control, many authoritarian regimes in the
region will find it increasingly difficult to
balance geostrategic concerns against
popular demands.
Although one should bear in mind the
salience of both mid-tech media and
geopolitical concerns, there are many
unique features about each of our cases.
The United Arab Emirates, for instance, is
substantially more wired than other countries in the region. The Emirate of Dubai
has made particularly impressive gains in
promoting e-commerce, luring foreign
investment in the Internet industry, and
implementing e-government programs to
facilitate the provision of citizen services.
Access to the Internet is censored in the
UAE, though the main concern seems to be
pornography; there is little dissent in the
country in general and virtually none that
finds its way onto the Internet.
Saudi Arabia has expressed more visible
concern over the Internet than has the UAE,
and it has taken a more cautious approach
to the medium. Public Internet access was
introduced only in 1999, and the medium is
filtered through one of the most extensive
mechanisms for content censorship in the
world. In addition to pornography, Saudi
Arabia is concerned with political information on the Internet, including criticism of
the royal family by Islamist opposition
groups both within the country and abroad.
There have been some initial stirrings of
e-commerce in Saudi Arabia, though it is
unclear whether this sector will exhibit
much independence from a state that
largely dominates the economy.
Egypt is distinctive among the cases
examined in this volume in that it has taken
no concrete measures to censor content or
restrict public access to the Internet. The
country has been enthusiastic about the
medium’s prospects for economic development, implementing programs to encourage the rural diffusion of the Internet and
bridge the digital divide. President Hosni
Mubarak has also sought to attract Internet
investors from wealthy countries such as
the United States. Yet Egypt’s semi-authoritarian political regime is well supported by
a system of patronage and the marginalizing of political opposition, and its leaders
have not shied away from repressing
criticism of the government. While Egypt
does not censor the Internet, it has made a
few well-publicized crackdowns against
what it considers socially and politically
M E T RO P O L E
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inappropriate Internet use.
In each of these cases we do see some
ways in which Internet use can challenge
authoritarian rule. In the event of a political
crisis brought about by nontechnological
means, for instance, the Internet could provide a forum for the expression and escalation of popular unrest. The use of the Internet by diaspora groups promoting extreme
Islamist sentiment may also challenge governments that take more moderate stances
in foreign policy issues. Yet the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all stable
authoritarian regimes that have weathered
many political challenges in the past, and
they may prove similarly capable of
meeting the challenges posed by the
Internet.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: STABLE,
WEALTHY, AND WIRED
T
he United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates established in
1971. Each emirate is governed by its own
royal family, but Sheik Zayid bin Sultan alNahyan (the ruler of Abu Dhabi) has been
the president of the entire federation since
its founding. The country is small, with
only 2.4 million residents, at least 66
percent of whom are foreign nationals who
have come to the UAE solely for work. The
UAE’s population is comparatively well
educated and has achieved a literacy rate of
79.2 percent.
As a result of its oil wealth, small population, and generally sound economic management, the UAE is one of the wealthiest
countries in the region, with a GDP per
capita (purchasing power parity) of
$22,800. Although oil is the centerpiece of
the UAE economy, mineral wealth is
unequally distributed among the emirates:
Abu Dhabi holds substantial reserves,
Dubai’s are much smaller, and the holdings
of other emirates are negligible. While each
emirate maintains separate economic and
financial systems, the poorer ones receive
subsidies from Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In
recent years, the UAE has sought to
diversify its economy. Dubai has been leading this trend by aggressively promoting
technological development and seeking to
establish itself as the business and free
trade hub of the Middle East.
While comparatively liberal in its
economic policies, the UAE has maintained
an authoritarian political system since its
founding. Ruling sheiks of the seven
emirates appoint the country’s president,
vice president, and members of the Federal
National Council, a consultative body that
offers policy recommendations but has no
legislative authority. There are no elections
for any public office in the UAE, and other
than the traditional majlis (where citizens
gather to voice concerns to their rulers),
there is no popular input to the political
process.
The rentier dynamics of an oil-exporting
state are key to understanding the stability
of the UAE’s authoritarian political system.
Oil revenues have allowed the state to bring
in a large expatriate labor force to sustain
the country’s economy, massively supplementing the work that can be done by the
small population of native-born Emiratis.
The government collects no taxes, and it
provides nearly free social services to both
citizens and noncitizens. As a result, there
is little basis for political unrest and scarce
incentive for political participation. All
expatriates in the UAE reside there by
choice and are generously compensated;
those who voice criticism of the government are simply deported. Emirati citizens
do not suffer the threat of deportation, but
their material well-being provides little
basis for popular unrest. Furthermore,
political Islam is not a major factor in the
UAE and does not provide a rallying point
for criticism of the government, largely
because of the country’s widespread
wealth, prevailing culture of tolerance, corruption-free bureaucracy, and the absence
of conflict between different Islamic sects.
With the state playing an extensive role
in almost all aspects of economic and political life, independent civil society in the
UAE is extremely weak. There are few
independent CSOs within the country;
those that do exist must be licensed by the
government and are dependent on it for
financial support. In contrast to many other
Arab countries, there are no particularly
strong professional guilds or advocacy
groups articulating the interests of their
constituencies. Neither are there any
politically significant dissident organizations within the country or abroad, which is
a testament to the people’s general
satisfaction with the regime.
The government of the UAE has sought
to maintain control over ICTs for both
censorship and financial gain, though it is
more open to information than are many of
its neighbors. The state owns virtually all
broadcast media and applies guidelines for
reporting, but satellite dishes (which are
legal and widespread) can receive
uncensored content from abroad. Local
print journalists routinely avoid lists of
proscribed topics, and foreign publications
are subject to censorship, though they are
not censored extensively. Telecommunications in the UAE is the province of Etisalat,
a 60 percent government-owned monopoly
provider that operates the only ISP in the
country, Emirates Internet and Multimedia.
In recent years the UAE (and Dubai in
particular) has emerged as the undisputed
Internet star of the Middle East, with the
highest penetration of all countries in the
region. From March 2000 to March 2001,
the number of Internet subscribers grew by
57 percent. With an estimated three users
for each account, there were 660,000 people online in the UAE. Beyond its leadership status in the Middle East, the country
ranks impressively on an international
scale. The March 2001 figures placed it
twentysecond in the world in the percentage of the population as Internet users,
ahead of Italy, France, and Spain.
BUILDING A HIGH-TECH OASIS,
WITH ISLAMIC VALUES
A
s these numbers suggest, public use of
the Internet is common in the UAE.
The government has played an important
role in encouraging public Internet use; it
was the first in the region to allow cybercafés, and it is planning to introduce public
Internet kiosks to facilitate access further.
As in many countries in the region, the
rulers of the UAE (as well as the conservative elements in the society) voiced concerns early on about the impact of public
access to sexually explicit material on the
Internet. When the Internet was introduced
in 1995, Internet content was totally unrestricted, but soon afterward the UAE government decided to implement a technological censorship scheme for the web,
filtering Internet content through a proxy
server that can block sites based on blacklisting or active content analysis. The censorship mechanism applies only to Internet
café users and those who dial up from
home; leased-line customers (the majority
of which are businesses) are exempt.
Officials claim that their sole desire is to
censor socially inappropriate material, primarily pornography, although there is some
evidence that political sites are also
blocked. In particular, the UAE has sought
to block a foreign-based web site and chat
room called the UAE Democratic Discussion Group, which was established in 1999
M E T RO P O L E
| 68
and hosted some political criticism of the
government. Human Rights Watch found
that the UAE blocks a gay and lesbian
political advocacy site, and the U.S.
Department of State reported that the
regime blocks radical Islamist material
from other countries. In general, however,
there is not much UAE–relevant political
information on the Internet that the government might want to block. With no real
domestic opposition (Islamist or otherwise)
and little international criticism of the
UAE’s political system or human rights
record, there are few sources generating
online material that the regime might find
threatening.
All in all, public Internet use in the UAE
poses little threat to the regime’s stability.
Although the censorship scheme is imperfect and users can get around some restrictions by using a foreign-based proxy server to relay prohibited content, Internet
censorship in the UAE seems to be a catandmouse game of only moderate intensity. As opposed to Saudi Arabia, the UAE
does not threaten to punish those who
access forbidden material, and the country’s information minister has admitted that
the government cannot really control material accessed by citizens. The regime finds
little information on the Internet that it considers politically threatening; the UAE
Democratic Discussion Group is about the
only instance of online dissent, and it is
safe to assume that this site has effectively
no impact on UAE politics. As long as the
government continues to make an effort to
block pornography, it is likely to satisfy the
more conservative elements in society that
support content restrictions. The Internet
may not have much marginal impact on
people’s access to information in any case,
since access to satellite television is widespread and unrestricted, while the majority
of the population consists of expatriate
workers with extensive knowledge of the
outside world. In general, information control is not a pillar of the regime’s stability.
With a small country to manage and a
capable bureaucracy to do the job, the UAE
is well positioned for establishing e-government to enhance the provision of its
extensive citizen services. Because of the
highly decentralized nature of government
in the UAE, e-government has been more a
collection of initiatives by individual emirates than the product of a single cohesive
plan at the national level. The national government runs a web site (www.uae.gov.ae)
with general information on the country
and links to individual ministries. As of
May 2002 much of the site was still under
construction. Only half of the ministry links
were operational, and the egovernment
services listed did not yet seem to be available. Internetrelated education projects at
the national level have been more notable.
The IT Education Project, introduced in the
2000 academic year, incorporates computer and Internet use into the curriculum of
the country’s primary and secondary
schools. The UAE also features the region’s
first online degree program at al-Lootah
International University.
National-level initiatives are greatly
overshadowed, however, by the egovernment efforts of Dubai. Sheik Mohammed,
the Crown Prince of Dubai, released an egovernment plan for the emirate in the
spring of 2000, calling for the establishment of e-government services in every
department to eliminate red tape and long
lines in government offices. After a year
and a half of preparation, Dubai’s integrated e-government portal debuted at the end
of 2001. The site, www.dubai.ae, allows for
access to a wide variety of government services, including automobile registration,
the payment of fines and utility bills, business registration and licensing, and visa
services.
For the most part, other emirates have
failed to match Dubai’s stellar progress. Egovernment in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, for
instance, is limited to the web sites run by
each emirate’s Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, which provide information (and a
few online services) for the private
sector. However, none of the emirates
besides Dubai has implemented (or even
announced) an e-government initiative that
would provide a comprehensive range of
services for both citizens and businesses.
The effective provision of government
services is a key component of the UAE’s
political stability. To the extent that e-government improves its service provision, it is
likely to increase citizen satisfaction and
further solidify the political regime. The
only downside for the UAE’s rulers is the
potential perception that e-government
benefits are distributed unequally. With a
large and growing percentage of the UAE
population online, it is unlikely that access
to e-government will be viewed as an elite
privilege, but Dubai’s significant head start
may lead residents of other emirates to feel
that their local governments are not
measuring up. It remains to be seen how
rapidly Dubai’s neighbors will follow its
example and what the impact of the disparities will be.
Perhaps the most significant Internet
developments in the UAE have been
economic. The country’s principal motive
for promoting Internet development has
been to advance its already strong position
as the business and technology center of the
Middle East. Consequently, businesses are
the most important users of the Internet in
the UAE, and those that have leased-line
access to the Internet enjoy the special privilege of being exempt from the country’s
censorship mechanism. An Emirates Bank
Group survey of one hundred UAE firms in
the year 2000 found that 14 percent had ecommerce operations, 42 percent had transacted business over the Internet, 60 percent
had their own web sites, and 88 percent had
Internet access.
The government of Dubai has been
particularly active in promoting Internet
development for its economic benefits,
encouraging e-commerce and high-tech
investment as a part of the UAE’s general
strategy of diversifying its economy and
reducing its dependence on petroleum
exports. Dubai’s efforts have centered on
the Dubai Internet City, an Internetrelated
free trade zone modeled after the Singapore
Science Park. Like the country’s other free
trade zones, the Internet City permits taxfree investment, 100 percent foreign ownership, and the full repatriation of profits,
plus a couple of special perks: a single window for government transactions and
“more bandwidth than any tenant will
know what to do with.” The Dubai Internet
City opened in November of 2000 and has
attracted such prominent investors as
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Oracle. It
has also been the site of regional
e-commerce events, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development’s Emerging Market Economy
Forum on Electronic Commerce held in
January 2001.
As with e-government services, most of
the UAE’s Internet-related economic
activity is likely to enhance the stability of
the regime. While the country as a whole
has extensive oil reserves, Dubai’s will last
only another ten years, so its promotion of
trade and high-tech investment is geared
toward maintaining the prosperity of its
residents and their satisfaction with the
government. In general, the UAE is
exceedingly friendly to foreign investors,
so they would have little incentive to
oppose the policies of the regime and
M E T RO P O L E
| 69
almost no reason to do so openly. The only
way in which Internet-related economic
activity might (in the long term) increase
political demands on the regime is in promoting the growth of an independent business sector. There is essentially no independent private sector at present, since
almost all businesspeople and professionals
in the country are either employed by the
government or depend on the government
for contracts. The Internet, however, may
eventually emerge as an economic sphere
in which UAE citizens can pursue more
independent business ventures. Whether
such a group will emerge and whether it
would have any negative implications for
the government remain to be seen.
In sum, it appears that the UAE may be
one of the best examples of an authoritarian regime where the Internet can be
introduced without any serious negative
political ramifications. There are few preexisting weak points in the political
regime where use of the Internet could
threaten the government. Dissent is minimal, e-government improves the
regime’s provision of citizen services,
and economic uses of the Internet
increase material well-being. The possibilities for Internet use posing challenges
to the regime remain a matter of longterm speculation. If the stability of the
UAE’s political system is altered by other
factors, such as an economic decline, a
succession crisis, or problematic relations
with other countries in the region, widespread popular access to the Internet
could provide a venue for the expression
and escalation of discontent, forcing a
political concession. For the near future,
however, the UAE’s authoritarian regime
stands on solid political ground, and the
development of the Internet is most likely to solidify this base further.
SAUDI ARABIA: THE MEASURED
STEPS OF A CONSERVATIVE
KINGDOM
T
he Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a
monarchy established in 1932, is ruled
by King Fahd, with day-to-day affairs
managed by Crown Prince Abdallah. Saudi
Arabia is governed according to Islamic
law, and it has few civil and political liberties. There are no political parties or elections for any public office. Saudi Arabia
has the largest land area of any country in
the Gulf, but it is sparsely populated for its
size, with only 23 million people. Oil is the
centerpiece of Saudi Arabia’s economy,
accounting for 40 percent of the GDP and
75 percent of the government’s budget revenues. The country is the largest oil producer in the world and has the largest verified reserves. The kingdom has garnered
significant wealth as a result of the oil
industry, though its GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) of $10,500 is lower
than that of the smaller Gulf kingdoms.
Saudi Arabia’s population is fairly well
educated with a literacy rate of 62.8 percent.
Modern Saudi Arabia was founded as an
Islamic state. The al-Saud regime claims
explicit religious justification for rule,
based on its enforcement of the strict
Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and its
stewardship of the Islamic holy cities of
Mecca and Medina. The country’s influential religious scholars, the ‘ulama, have
been fully incorporated into the state
bureaucracy and function as civil servants.
Islamic politics are central to political life
in Saudi Arabia, and Islam forms the basis
for the most significant dissent against the
Saudi regime, both within the country and
abroad.
In addition to Islam, the rentier dynamics of the oil-producing state are central to
understanding the Saudi political system.
Like the UAE, the Saudi government levies
no taxes but rather funds itself through oil
revenues. It distributes the gains from this
state-controlled industry in the form of
social services; subsidies for food, utilities,
and basic goods; and employment in the
extensive government bureaucracy. This
distribution of benefits is important in
maintaining popular loyalty to the Saudi
regime. The state dominates the country’s
economy, the private sector is small and
dependent on government contracts and
subsidies, and an independent middle class
does not truly exist. However, rising unemployment (the result of a rapidly growing
population) has forced the regime to pursue
privatization, seek foreign investment, and
begin to diversify its economy. The oilbased state dominance of the economy may
therefore be on a gradual decline.
Civil society is weak in Saudi Arabia,
and the government must license all
associations that are active in the country.
Few CSOs are openly critical of the regime.
Religion provides the largest space for civil
society in Saudi Arabia, and some Islamic
humanitarian organizations are active in the
country. Professional societies and chambers of commerce also give their members
an important arena for networking, communicating with the government, and
(sometimes) articulating policy positions.
Saudi Arabia exerts substantial control
over the media through legal measures,
patronage, and censorship. Domestic
newspapers are privately owned but rely on
government subsidies. The government
appoints the editors of print publications
and issues guidelines for reporting on sensitive issues; many newspapers avoid covering such topics until they have been
reported on by the government-owned
Saudi Press Agency. Several laws explicitly
prohibit publicizing criticism of the government, although there has been tolerance
of newspapers that criticize specific
policies or individual government bodies.
The government allows the distribution of
foreign publications, but they are routinely
censored when they contain offending
material. Foreign newspapers that are read
widely within the country, such as several
Saudi-owned Arabic-language newspapers
published in London, typically engage in
self-censorship to comply with government
regulations.
Saudi Arabia established its first connection to the Internet in 1994, but it was the
last country in the Arabian peninsula to permit public access, which came five years
later. Before that time, access was limited
to a few research institutions. The possibility of dialing into neighboring Bahrain for
Internet access existed since the mid 1990s
and was a popular option for wealthy
Saudis before the country allowed public
access. While many of its neighbors
quickly established public Internet access
after it became technologically feasible,
Saudi Arabia took a notably cautious
approach, studying the idea for several
years before approving it in principle in
1997. Access was further delayed for two
years while the government perfected its
technological and institutional mechanism
for censoring Internet content.
Public access to the Internet was finally
established in 1999 and has expanded
steadily since then. As of April 2001 the
country had 570,000 users, constituting 2.6
percent of the population. These figures
place Saudi Arabia second in the region in
Internet users. The country permits multiple privately owned ISPs (twenty-eight
were active as of March 2002), but all
international traffic passes through a
gateway managed by the Internet Services
Unit (ISU) of the King Abdulaziz City for
Science and Technology. Currently, all ISPs
M E T RO P O L E
| 70
connect to a national backbone controlled
by Saudi Telecom, the government
telecommunication provider. In May 2001
the government approved a bill to end
Saudi Telecom’s monopoly and to open the
sector to foreign capital, though the major
investment to date has involved a partnership between Saudi Telecom and Compaq
rather than the establishment of independent competition. In any case, it is almost
certain that the ISU will maintain its control
over international Internet traffic for the
near future.
CULTIVATING E-COMMERCE,
GUARDING AGAINST DISSENT
I
n light of the country’s strongly conservative social traditions, the government
of Saudi Arabia gave great consideration to
the potential impact of Internet use before
authorizing public access. Since the Internet came to the country, the government
has filtered all Internet traffic through a
system of firewalls that “is likely the most
extensive attempt at Internet content access
control in the world.” While other regimes
often maintain that their sole motivation for
censorship is the blocking of pornography,
Saudi Arabia’s stated concerns are broader.
It openly endeavors to block information it
considers both socially and politically
inappropriate, including pornography,
criticism of the royal family, and material
considered offensive to Islam. Attempts to
access a forbidden site are greeted with a
message that all access attempts are logged,
which is certain to encourage self-censorship among more risk-averse users,
although there is no evidence that anyone
has been prosecuted for such transgressions.
In recent years the government has
expanded its censorship mechanism to keep
pace with the burgeoning sources of
objectionable content. Saudi Arabia made
headlines in 2000 when it blocked access
to Yahoo! clubs that contained sexual
information, and in April 2001 it
announced plans to double the number of
forbidden sites (to a total of four hundred
thousand) using new, advanced equipment.
Foreign firms (including many from the
United States) have been eagerly competing to provide hardware and software for
Saudi Arabia’s censorship efforts, so the
country is likely to stay up to date with the
latest filtering technology. In an innovative
move to incorporate popular participation
into the censorship regime, the ISU has
included forms on its web site with which
Internet users can request that sites be
blocked or unblocked. Cynics might label
the move a palliative measure, but it is
more likely an indication of how seriously
the government takes popular concerns
over Internet content. Requests to block
sites are much more common than requests
to unblock sites: an ISU director has stated
that the organization receives five hundred
of the former and one hundred of the latter
each day.
As with all forms of Internet censorship,
Saudi Arabia’s measures are far from foolproof. A supervisor at the ISU said in April
2001 that 44 percent of users are currently
accessing blocked sites through the use of
overseas proxy servers. The previous year
a government official admitted that many
Saudis with Internet access are visiting sites
that detail corruption in the royal family or
that belong to overseas opposition groups.
Despite these difficulties, the government
still seems as committed to maintaining its
Internet content controls as it is to expanding Internet access within the country.
As access increases, Internet usage
among the Saudi public has the potential to
exert a more significant political impact. In
some ways, the Saudi regime appears to be
in a difficult political position with regard
to the mass public’s Internet use. On the
one hand, the current generation of Saudi
youth (which is large and growing rapidly)
is better educated, more literate, and more
aware of the outside world than ever before
and is likely to want increased access to
information on the Internet. On the other
hand, if the regime imposes too little control over Internet content or moves too
quickly in scaling back restrictions, it could
provide another serious grievance for
Islamist criticism. Ironically, while conservative Islamists support the censorship of
what they consider socially inappropriate
material, censoring Islamists’ own political
material on the Internet is probably the
regime’s greatest concern. Though the
country’s dominant oral culture and a reluctance to trust online material may limit the
impact of Islamist material online, its mere
presence means that the Saudi public’s
Internet use will be more of a political
phenomenon than in countries such as the
UAE.
While public use of the Internet poses
some potential challenge to the Saudi
regime, Internet use by civil society
organizations and dissident groups
constitutes much less of a threat. There is
evidence that a few domestic CSOs use the
Internet, at least by maintaining web pages,
and more may come online in the future.
Still, CSOs do not figure prominently in
Saudi politics, and their use of the Internet
is unlikely to have strong implications for
regime stability. Among dissident groups,
those based abroad have been avid Internet
users, but those within the country traditionally rely on cassette tapes, a medium
that can reach many more people and may
resonate more firmly in Saudi Arabia’s oral
culture.
With a state that dominates Saudi society
and the economy, the government’s use of
the Internet has been more significant than
Internet use by civil society actors. The
principal state use of the Internet has
involved putting religious information
online. Before the establishment of public
Internet access, several religiously oriented
state media were set up to be broadcast on
the web, including Saudi Arabia’s Channel
1 and an Islamic radio server that carries
prayers from Mecca and Medina. The
government’s Ministry of Islamic
Affairs, Endowments, Call, and Guidance
has in the past operated a web site at
www.islam.org.sa, though the site now
links only to an Islamic-oriented portal
that is run by a private software company.
After the death of former religious official
Abd al-Aziz bin Abdallah Bin Baz,
the government established the site
www.binbaz.org.sa, with details on his
devotion to both Islam and the Saudi
regime. State efforts such as these can be
seen as attempts to counter and preempt the
influence of overseas dissidents who use
the Internet to criticize the regime on
religious grounds. In addition to posting
religious information online, Saudi officials
have implemented a religiously oriented
government service on the Internet,
establishing a web portal that speeds the
processing of paperwork for foreigners
visiting Islamic holy sites.
Saudi Arabia’s record with secular
e-government follows the pattern of its
religious efforts: much online information
combined with a few initial moves toward
providing government services on the
Internet. Some government ministries have
established Internet homepages, mostly
describing their responsibilities and accomplishments. In addition, Saudi authorities
have begun to make plans for a much
broader e-government initiative involving
online services. The conference E-Commerce Saudi Arabia 2002 (held in April)
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focused specifically on e-government services, including international case studies
and a showcase of e-government hardware
and software. The Saudi government will
certainly implement many of the plans for
online services that it is currently developing.
The political impact of increased Internet
use by the Saudi government is likely to be
mixed. Religious information and services
on the Internet work to the regime’s
advantage by helping it to counter the
influence of overseas Islamist critics.
Effective e-government services would
likely increase satisfaction with the regime
if they improve the state’s ability to deliver
benefits. However, more extensive e-government in Saudi Arabia might also
increase transparency and expose government corruption, which is a potential
development whose political impact is
more uncertain. Corruption in the royal
family is a rallying point for critics of the
regime and one of the major grievances of
Saudi Arabia’s most influential dissident
groups. The greater exposure of such
corruption might provide further grounds
for opposition, but it could also give the
appearance that the government is effectively addressing the problem.
There are no political parties in Saudi
Arabia, and there has been no use of
the Internet for political participation,
although a limited potential may exist for
this pattern to change. In the early 1990s
both liberal and Islamist intellectuals
generated petitions to the king calling for
political reforms, and the regime responded by creating a constitution-like document, a consultative council, and regional
governments. As in other countries, the
Internet might facilitate the circulation of
such petitions, but the Saudi regime is
unlikely to be pressured into any reforms
that it sees as threats to its stability. In
contrast to the limited political uses of the
Internet, the use of the medium in the
economic sphere is both significant and
growing. The Saudi government appears to
be turning serious attention to encouraging
Internetrelated investment and e-commerce. In May 2001 Saudi Arabia hosted
the Saudi International Conference on ECommerce, the country’s first such event.
The conference produced a series of
announcements about new government
policies as well as other ventures designed
to encourage the growth of Internet
business. The government set up an advisory panel of fifteen businesspeople to
coordinate e-commerce and announced that
e-commerce regulations would soon be
released, including guidelines on security
and digital signatures. It also announced
plans to build an IT investment park in
Riyadh, although it is unclear when these
plans will be implemented.
A few Saudi firms have taken the lead in
e-commerce. Saudi Aramco (the government oil monopoly) has spearheaded a push
for online procurement, requiring all local
suppliers to deal with it electronically.
OgerTel, one of Saudi Arabia’s ISPs, is
implementing business-to-business ecommerce strategies for Saudi Aramco, among
others. The Saudi firm Integrated Visions
has signed a contract with Microsoft to be
the first application service provider (ASP)
in Saudi Arabia, offering services to other
firms that seek to develop e-commerce
operations. The members of the Saudi royal
family, increasingly involved in Saudi business ventures, have also been active in the
country’s Internet economy. Prince
Alwaleed Bin Talal, one of the world’s
leading technology investors, has backed
an Arab web portal, a Saudi ISP, and a
satellite wireless network.
It is possible, though unlikely, that the
beginnings of Internet-related activity in
the Saudi economy will pose political
challenges to the regime. The Saudi
government is by far the most important
presence in the country’s economy. Businesspeople have traditionally cooperated
with the regime, which is responsible for
awarding contracts, distributing subsidies,
and otherwise supporting the private sector.
While firms or business associations might
be opposed to particular policies, it is
extremely unlikely that they would openly
oppose the regime. Yet a growing population has brought rising unemployment, and
the government has been seeking to enlarge
the size of the private sector since it can no
longer meet all the demand for publicsector jobs. An emerging Internet industry
might help to employ some of the excess
labor force and to relieve popular pressure
on the government, but it could also have a
role in increasing the private sector’s
independence from the state. Whether this
will happen, and how much it matters politically, remains to be seen. The state will
almost certainly dominate the economy
well into the future even as the private sector grows.
In contrast to many other regimes in the
Middle East, some of the most significant
Saudi-related Internet use occurs overseas
among Saudi dissident groups whose
leaders have left the country and are based
abroad. Most of these groups criticize the
Saudi royal family for its corruption and
betrayal of Islamic ideals. The two external
dissident groups most relevant to Saudi
domestic politics are the Committee for the
Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) and
the CDLR splinter group, the Movement
for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). Both
operate web sites in Arabic and English, but
the sites are blocked in Saudi Arabia and
are primarily geared to an international
audience. Still, some Internet users within
the country can circumvent those controls,
and the dissident web sites do include
information specifically for users in Saudi
Arabia. CDLR’s site, for instance, has
featured detailed instructions on using tollfree numbers to call the group’s London
headquarters from Saudi Arabia. In
addition to the web, CDLR and MIRA use
e-mail (as well as faxes) to communicate
with followers at home.
While the dissidents’ use of the Internet
has received much international attention,
the ultimate political effect of the activity is
questionable. It is unlikely that the groups’
online information reaches enough Saudis
to influence domestic sentiment concretely.
Even if such information were more widely accessible within the country, there is
reason to doubt its resonance among the
Saudi public. Mamoun Fandy argues that
the Internetbased efforts of CDLR and
MIRA have had little impact within Saudi
Arabia because of the limited literacy of the
Saudi public, the Saudi oral culture, and
the tendency to trust information from close
confidants much more than information on
a computer screen. Whatever the reason,
none of the externally based Saudi dissident
groups has emerged as a real threat to the
regime. It is possible that these organizations (especially CDLR, which frames its
message in the context of human rights)
might have an indirect impact on the Saudi
regime by convincing foreign governments
and international organizations to pressure
Saudi Arabia to be more tolerant of dissent.
The international criticism of Saudi Arabia,
however, has resonated little among Western governments to date, most likely
because the regime is stable, strategically
important, and a key supplier of oil.
In general, Internet usage itself is unlikely to strongly affect Saudi Arabia’s stability. The country’s authoritarian regime is
stable and has successfully weathered
multiple shocks in the past several decades:
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the mid 1980s collapse in oil prices, the
Gulf War, and the multiple calls for political reform that followed. While some forms
of Internet usage pose potential challenges
to the regime, each of them pales in comparison with the political challenges that
the Saudi monarchy has previously withstood. As Gregory Gause argues, the most
likely threat to the regime would involve
the combination of several potential areas
of weakness — generational change, an
economic shock, and the rise of Islamist
opposition. The Internet could play a role in
augmenting the impact of several such
occurrences, and in the event of a serious
political crisis the medium could provide a
forum for the expression and escalation of
discontent, posing a more serious threat to
the regime. In the absence of such an occurrence, the al-Saud regime will probably
continue to develop the Internet within its
borders, incurring some challenges but on
the whole benefiting from the technology.
EGYPT: A CENSORSHIP-FREE ZONE
T
he Arab Republic of Egypt stands out
among the cases examined here as the
only one that is not a monarchy, not a strict
authoritarian regime, and not a significant
exporter of petroleum. Egypt’s political
system has its origins in the 1952 revolution, which saw the rise of a socialist
regime, though President Mubarak has
steadily moved the country away from its
Arab socialist roots. In the 1990s Egypt
emerged as one of the economic reform
success stories of the International Monetary Fund, as extensive privatization and a
burgeoning private sector led to increased
foreign investment and steady growth
(although growth has stagnated more
recently). With the largest population in the
Arab world at 70 million and only modest
oil reserves, Egypt is the poorest of our
three cases, although its GDP per capita
(purchasing power parity) of $3,600
compares with that of other middle-income
countries in the region. Its literacy rate is
also the lowest of the three at 51.4 percent.
Egypt is a semi-authoritarian regime
with a multiparty system and an elected
legislature but no real possibility of a
change in power through elections. The
president is nominated by the legislature
and confirmed as the single candidate in a
national referendum. Every Egyptian
president has transferred power to a handpicked successor upon death. President
Mubarak has held office since 1981, longer
than any other leader. The ruling National
Democratic Party currently holds an 85 percent majority in the parliament. Previous
elections (particularly those in 1995) were
marred by excessive fraud. As May Kassem
argues, Egypt’s political system is deeply
personalized and based upon government
patronage. Real power is concentrated in
the president, and candidates for legislative
office, from the ruling party and opposition
parties alike, are generally elected not on an
ideological basis but rather on the belief
that they will be able to channel state-controlled resources to their constituents.
Egypt is a secular state with no legal
religion-based parties, though the outlawed
Muslim Brotherhood is the government’s
most significant opposition. The country
has repeatedly been plagued by Islamic
terrorism, and the government has cracked
down harshly on Islamist dissent, supported
by a longstanding emergency law.
Civil society is stronger in Egypt than in
many neighboring countries. Because
Egypt’s semi-authoritarian political system
precludes the possibility of meaningful
change through elections, many CSOs constitute an alternative channel for attempts at
political change and are thus drawn into
political advocacy. Still, there is a fair
amount of government control of these
organizations. Egyptian authorities must
approve the formation of new organizations, and the government has sought even
greater control: in 1997 it passed a law
(overturned by the judiciary in 1999) that
gave it the right to veto and replace candidates for CSO board membership. The government has also disciplined overly critical
CSOs, often through questionable legal
proceedings. In a trial that was widely condemned by international observers, for
instance, much of the staff of the Ibn
Khaldun Center for Development Studies
were convicted in 2001 for tarnishing
Egypt’s image abroad and for misusing
foreign funding. As in Saudi Arabia, professional associations (such as the Engineers’ Syndicate and Bar Association) are
also an important part of Egyptian civil
society. Here too, the government has
sought to exercise control, restricting the
election of officers in order to limit Islamist
influence.
The Egyptian government has concerns
about the content of information available
through the mass media, including extremist and opposition political information,
criticism of the government, and material
considered to be inappropriate or offensive
to Islam. Foreign publications are subject to
censorship, and English-language newspapers like the Cairo Times and the Middle
East Times have had stories cut from the
print editions sold in the country. The
domestic press is not subject to direct
censorship, but it widely engages in selfcensorship to remain in the good graces of
authorities.
Egypt achieved an Internet connection in
1993, which is early by comparison with its
neighbors, and commercial service has
been available ever since. Unlike many
other countries in the region, Egypt has
promoted Internet expansion with little
visible concern for the possible political
impacts of that expansion. One year after
connecting to the Internet, the Egyptian
cabinet’s Information Decision Support
Center (IDSC) and the Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering
Center (RITSEC) implemented a program
to provide free Internet access for various
corporations, government agencies, CSOs,
and professionals. Egypt also stands out in
terms of its policy toward competition and
the private ownership of ISPs. Basic
telecommunications remains the province
of government-monopoly provider Telecom Egypt, but the ISP market is one of the
most vibrant in the Middle East, with some
fifty private ISPs (even though the majority
of these serve only Cairo). As early as 1997
the government permitted multiple international gateways to the Internet, including
one operated by a private ISP. Egypt’s
Internet users constitute a smaller percentage of the total population than do their
counterparts in the UAE and Saudi Arabia,
but their total numbers are still comparable.
As of March 2001 the country had 560,000
users, constituting 0.8 percent of the
population.
PROMOTING THE INTERNET,
TARGETING IMMORALITY
C
ompared with other countries in the
region, Egypt is unusual in the enthusiasm with which it has actively extended
Internet connectivity without overt efforts
at Internet censorship. The country may
face greater obstacles in poverty and illiteracy, but it has attempted to overcome them
with projects to expand Internet access and
training in rural areas. The IDSC has taken
the lead in this activity. Along with its
efforts to offer free access in the mid 1990s,
it has begun a program to introduce the
Internet on a temporary basis to more than
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Internationally, there is a small amount of
Internet activity with relevance for Egypt.
One example is the transnational campaign
in support of the country’s Coptic Christian
minority, which uses the Internet and other
technologies to denounce its persecution in
Egypt and to call for equal treatment.
three hundred villages around the country.
Free connections are established for several
weeks in community centers, and training
staff are on hand to introduce the Internet to
local residents, with the expectation that
they will pursue connectivity in the future
after learning of the Internet’s potential
benefits. Another project, sponsored by the
United Nations Development Program,
seeks to establish technology access community centers with free Internet access,
training, and education. The United States
Agency for International Development has
also stepped in to support the diffusion of
the Internet in Egypt with a five-year, $39.1
million ICT assistance program to target
Egypt’s legal and regulatory environment;
promote e-government, e-commerce, and
ICT diffusion; and provide grants to U.S.
and Egyptian CSOs that will help to
develop ICT use.
The Egyptian government is notable in
that it has taken no concrete measures to
control Internet content available to the
mass public, even though it is concerned
over the political content of other media. It
has imposed no censorship on the Internet,
and the kind of information it prohibits
elsewhere is widely available online. Both
the Cyprus Times and the Middle East
Times publish their full, uncensored content
on the web, even allowing users to search
for specific stories that were banned in the
print edition. Likewise, the Islamist-influenced Labour Party newspaper El-Shaab
was banned from print publication in 2000,
but it reported no interference with its
Internet edition.
Although there is no overt censorship
of public Internet use in Egypt, the
government has cracked down on some
individuals who posted controversial material online. In several recent cases, Internet
users have been prosecuted and jailed for
advertising or soliciting gay sex on the
Internet, and the web masters of one gay
site claim that security forces have been
tracking Internet users who visit it. In
November 2001 the web master of the
newspaper al-Ahram Weekly was arrested
for posting on the Internet a poem expressing frustration with the government;
authorities charged him with “distributing
immoral materials.” Since then, there has
been speculation that the government is
stepping up its monitoring of Internet use
and preparing to prosecute others who
engage in controversial activity online.
Targeting “immoral” material on the Internet may constitute a partial concession to
extreme Islamists, the same political forces
that have generally supported overt Internet
censorship in other countries. If such
arrests and questionable prosecutions
continue, they are certain to encourage selfcensorship among Internet users in Egypt.
Given the country’s limited Internet penetration, one could argue that the government can afford to leave the medium
uncensored. As access increases, however,
the mass public’s Internet use may become
more politically relevant. It seems unlikely
that the regime will be able to implement a
massive censorship mechanism in
the future once the technological and
institutional infrastructure of unrestricted
access is in place. Jon Alterman argues that
the government’s support base has
narrowed as it attempts to contain Islamist
political sentiment, and he notes that the
Egyptian public is more knowledgeable
and “wired” than ever before. In such an
environment, increasing Internet access
could provide a vehicle for the expression
and escalation of dissatisfaction with the
regime.
Internet use by Egyptian CSOs is another
factor that might be expected to pose a
challenge to the regime, since civil society
is stronger in Egypt and CSOs are not
prevented from using the Internet. The
crackdown on the Ibn Khaldun Center, for
instance, was vehemently protested on the
group’s web site and through an e-mail list
(both based abroad), and that may have figured in drawing international attention to
the case. Apart from this example, however, there have been no high-profile examples of Internet use in campaigns to place
pressure on the government. Several
Egyptian CSOs that maintain ties to the
international human rights community
operate web sites based abroad, but it is
unclear how this affects their activities.
None of Egypt’s professional associations
appears to be a major user of the Internet.
In the future, the use of the Internet by
Egyptian CSOs is likely to increase, though
the
government’s
nontechnological
measures of control will probably continue
to be the major determinant of CSOs’
political impact.
In the Egyptian political sphere, the most
significant use of the Internet has been for
e-government measures. After the UAE,
Egypt appears to have implemented the
most advanced e-government initiatives in
the region. Efforts to promote ICT use
within the government began early.
A program to computerize regional
governorates was instituted in 1987, and
after 1992 an effort was made to connect
them through a national network. Egypt
currently has a central government
web site, www.alhokoma.gov.eg, which
provides information but does not yet allow
for interactive services. Some five hundred
other government sites are online, including those of various ministries. Most
provide information only, though citizens
can pay their phone bills online through a
partnership with Egypt Telecom. In April
2001 Egypt announced an e-government
initiative to provide citizen services and
promote intragovernmental collaboration;
Microsoft is supplying the technical
infrastructure for this effort.
As in other cases, e-government measures are likely to work to the benefit of the
regime in that they improve citizen satisfaction with the government. Yet this effect
may be less politically relevant than in
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where the
provision of services is more essential to
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the social contract that underlies support
for the regime. More relevant for Egypt is
e-government’s potential impact on
bureaucratic efficiency. A more efficient
bureaucracy could better equip the state to
pursue economic development projects in
the future, something that is likely to benefit the Egyptian people as well as the
regime. Increases in government efficiency,
however, could lead to job elimination, and
government jobs are an important means of
buying political support in the current
system. Greater transparency through
e-government is likely to have similarly
mixed effects.
Egypt’s political parties have not been
particularly active users of the Internet to
date. The ruling National Democratic Party
does not have its own web site, although as
the party synonymous with the government
it may feel no need to establish an
independent web presence. Several opposition parties maintain online editions of their
newspapers but do not have specific party
web sites. The most notable use of the
Internet by an Egyptian political party
involves the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
technically illegal and prohibited from
openly campaigning or participating in
elections under its own banner. Before the
2000 parliamentary elections, the Muslim
Brotherhood established an election web
site with photographs and biographies of
members who were running for office as
independents. The Muslim Brotherhood did
well in the elections, winning seventeen
seats and emerging as the largest opposition
block in parliament, though it is difficult to
specify how much its online campaign
strategy assisted in the election.
As Internet access expands in Egypt,
other opposition parties may seek to make
greater use of the medium, which could
help them to compete more equitably, given
that under its emergency laws the government currently restricts group gatherings
and the distribution of printed material. It is
conceivable, however, that the government
would extend such restrictions to cover the
Internet if the medium ever becomes a serious tool for opposition politics. Furthermore, the regime’s marginalization of
opposition parties in Egypt is deeply
imbedded in the political system and
depends on many factors beyond the
restrictions on campaigning. The patterns
of patronage that render opposition parties
politically unthreatening are unlikely to be
affected by their increased access to the
Internet.
As in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the
economic sphere is an important area of
Internet use in Egypt. Economic development is a strong incentive for the government to promote Internet growth. Like the
UAE, Egypt is pushing to become a regional technology center (often in competition
with nearby Jordan), though the size and
relative inefficiency of its bureaucracy have
not permitted the same kind of swift and
effective actions that Sheik Mohammed has
undertaken in Dubai. Still, the country has
undertaken notable steps. Its “smart
villages” initiative seeks to build several
ICT business parks, which would offer a
ten-year tax holiday to foreign investors; a
$40 million investment in the project was
planned as of June 2000. The first of the
parks, the Pyramids Smart Village, was
scheduled to open in mid 2002. In March
2000 President Mubarak made a muchpublicized visit to the Dulles technology corridor in northern Virginia, including stops at
the headquarters of AOL and PSINet,
where he promoted Internet-related investment in Egypt.
Mubarak’s efforts have yet to fully bear
fruit, but to date there have been several
significant Internet initiatives in the
Egyptian private sector. CareerEgypt.com,
for instance, is a job-matching web site
started by students at the American University of Cairo. It has excelled locally and
recently expanded to CareerMideast.com,
with portals for twelve countries in the
region. CarOnNile.com is an innovative
portal that brings together buyers and sellers of used cars; to boost sales it has set up
an electronic showroom and payment center at a physical car dealership. Egyptian
ISP LINKdotNET has been successful in
partnering with foreign Internet investors:
together with Microsoft it manages MSN
Arabia, the first international portal in the
Arab world and a source for business news,
online games, and Internet-based e-mail. In
addition to these ventures, the Egyptian
government and several Egyptian firms are
using the Internet to promote tourism, one
of the country’s major sources of hard
currency.
Economic uses of the Internet may pose
more of a challenge for the Egyptian government than in Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
In Egypt, the state is less of a dominant
force in the economy, and as the private
sector has grown larger it has sought more
political representation. The development
of an Internet industry might contribute to
the emergence of more politically active
business interests, but the growth of the
private sector will not necessarily pose a
political challenge to the regime. To
counter the influence of Islamist opposition, the Mubarak government has been
actively seeking to strengthen ties with the
private sector for some time now, and it has
rewarded those businesses that support the
regime with access to policy makers in
Egypt and the United States. In addition,
Egypt has been pursuing economic liberalization for many years now. It has seen
steady growth rates since the early 1990s
without any visible threat to the political
regime. Indeed, the country has been held
up as an example of why economic growth
and liberalization in semi-authoritarian
regimes do not necessarily spell democratization. Future growth may continue to
reinforce the regime’s patronage-based system of allocating resources and power.
Internationally, there is a small amount
of Internet activity with relevance for
Egypt. One example is the transnational
campaign in support of the country’s
Coptic Christian minority, which uses the
Internet and other technologies to denounce
its persecution in Egypt and to call for
equal treatment. Another is the Muslim
Brotherhood Movement homepage in the
United Kingdom, which lists information
on the group’s political stance and its
operations in Egypt and other countries. In
addition, international organizations like
Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch have used the Internet to publicize
criticism of Egypt’s human rights practices,
particularly with respect to the crackdown
on the Ibn Khaldun Center. These international uses of the Internet may help to
increase international attention to the plight
of various persecuted groups in Egypt,
tempering the severity of government
crackdowns, even though there is no solid
evidence of such an effect. To the extent
that these campaigns seek to influence the
stance of foreign governments toward
Egypt, they are probably even less effective. As in the cases of Saudi Arabia and the
UAE, human rights and domestic politics
take a back seat to trade and security
concerns in relations between Western
governments and their allies in the Middle
East.
In general, Egypt is distinct in that it has
taken no concrete steps to control the Internet, either through censorship or through
restrictions on access. Consequently, the
country features prominent examples of
Internet use that would be impossible in the
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other cases examined here — newspapers
publishing banned content on the Internet,
an illegal opposition party openly campaigning online, and domestic CSOs posting criticism of the government’s human
rights record. From an examination of those
incidents alone, one might assume that
Internet use in Egypt poses more serious
challenges to the country’s government
than it actually does.
A more complete picture of Internet use
in the Egyptian political context calls for
more carefully shaded conclusions. Given
its long-standing pattern of coopting
secular opposition parties and managing
the expansion of the private sector through
political patronage, Egypt’s semiauthoritarian regime is stable. A potential weak point
is the regime’s low tolerance of legitimate
outlets for Islamist political sentiment. As
Internet use among the mass public
becomes more common, such sentiment
could find an outlet on the Internet and galvanize concrete action. The Muslim
Brotherhood has already taken initial steps
toward Internet-based campaigning, and it
may develop other ways to use the medium
for political purposes in the future. Still,
the country’s semi-authoritarian regime
may benefit from other uses of the Internet
in Egypt, namely, the country’s egovernment initiatives and Internet-related
economic activity. The ultimate political
impact of Internet use in Egypt is therefore
uncertain. Until access to the medium
becomes more widespread, a series of
nontechnological factors will weigh much
more heavily in the course of Egyptian
politics.
CONCLUSION: PERSISTENT
STABILITY, FEW TANGIBLE
THREATS
A
s the Internet diffuses throughout the
UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, it will
likely grow in political significance, and
the liberalizing tendencies of certain types
of Internet use will become increasingly
influential factors in national politics. As
such, they will complement many other,
more longstanding potential forces for
liberalization: greater contact with the
outside world through tourism and travel,
more integration with the global economy,
and the increasingly modern outlook of a
youthful population.
Yet the impact of these factors to
date should lead one to sobering conclusions about the influence of the Internet.
Authoritarian political systems are generally stable in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and
Egypt, and potentially liberalizing forces
have had only a minimal, piecemeal impact
to date. Factors such as the political economy of rentierism and the influence of political Islam still provide a solid bulwark
against political liberalization. Challenging
uses of the Internet in the three countries
must also be weighed against those likely to
reinforce the current political order. In each
case, e-government works largely to this
end, and many economic uses of the Internet could do so as well.
Much of the expected impact of the
Internet in the Middle East involves use by
the public. On the surface, it appears that
this is the area where states are most
concerned, given the massive censorship
efforts that some have undertaken. Both
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have poured
extensive resources into censorship in an
effort to block unwelcome social and
political content. In the case of Saudi
Arabia, the regime was willing to delay the
introduction of public Internet access for
several years so that it could perfect its
mechanism for content control. In both
countries there is evidence that determined
users can access blocked sites using
foreign-based proxy servers and avoid
detection through the use of new services
like Triangle Boy and Peekabooty. These
services facilitate anonymous access to the
web and will give additional tools to those
who seek to view forbidden sites. It is safe
to say that as long as countries like Saudi
Arabia and the UAE continue to enforce
their censorship regimes, some users will
be able to get around the restrictions they
impose.
Evaluating the political impact of public
Internet use, however, requires moving
beyond questions of censorship and evasion. In each case (including Egypt, which
does not censor the Internet) there are
reasons to doubt that public use of the
medium will seriously threaten authoritarian regimes. Several analysts have noted
that throughout the Middle East, those with
Internet access tend to be the elite, who
have a vested interest in the status quo and
are less likely to risk their position in
society through political activity. Efforts to
bridge the digital divide may alter that
dynamic, but the political effects will be
seen only in the long term. In countries like
the UAE, where there is little dissent and
the control of political information is not
crucial to regime stability, there may not be
much information on the Internet that is
politically threatening to the status quo. In
all the countries that we have examined, the
most significant impact of public Internet
use is likely to be social rather than strictly
political, in that it challenges conservative
Islamic traditions. In Saudi Arabia, where
political Islam is a significant factor,
moving too quickly with Internet development or imposing too few controls could
increase the likelihood of an authoritarian
backlash.
Yet it would also be wrong to discount
completely the politically challenging
potential of public Internet use. Both Egypt
and Saudi Arabia feature much online
information that is critical of the government. In the event of a crisis brought about
by factors such as succession, international
disputes, or economic shock, Internet usage
could provide an outlet for the expression
and escalation of popular unrest, with possible political consequences.
While Internet use by the mass public
has the potential to become politically
significant, Internet use by CSOs seems
less likely to do so. In other parts of the
world, Internet use by these organizations
has been heralded as a major force for
democracy, and some have suggested that
similar dynamics may occur in the Middle
East. The cases we have examined suggest
otherwise. In rentier states like the UAE
and Saudi Arabia, the state dominates the
economy and can afford to buy off independent CSOs. Even in Egypt, where CSOs
are more widespread and influential, not
many have engaged in politically relevant
uses of the Internet. While such activity
could increase as the Internet diffuses, the
regime’s extensive legal mechanisms for
controlling CSOs are likely to limit their
impact well into the future.
In the political realm, the most notable
use of the Internet in our three cases has
been for e-government measures. While
Dubai’s stellar progress is clearly unrepresentative, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are both
turning attention to the matter as well, and
Egypt has made some notable steps in
getting government services online.
Particularly in the rentier states of Saudi
Arabia and the UAE, the effective
provision of social services is central to the
political stability of authoritarianism. Consequently, egovernment measures should
reinforce citizen satisfaction with their governments as it more effectively distributes
the benefits of oil wealth. Even nonrentier
states like Egypt will benefit from better
M E T RO P O L E
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Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have poured
extensive resources into censorship in an effort
to block unwelcome social and political content.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, the regime was
willing to delay the introduction of public
Internet access for several years so that it
could perfect its mechanism for content control.
serving their citizens through e-government. E-government may also lead to
increased bureaucratic efficiency and a
greater capacity to promote economic
development, something that is clearly in
the interest of both states and their citizens.
The development of e-government may
pose several potential challenges to the
authoritarian regimes we examined. Government jobs are an important form of
patronage, and increases in bureaucratic
efficiency through e-government measures
might lead to job losses for many. Increased
transparency through e-government may
lend support to authoritarian regimes if they
are seen as rooting out endemic corruption,
but the exposure of existing corruption
could contribute to political crisis. In addition, disparities in Internet access (and in
the UAE, disparities among the egovernment progress of different emirates) may
create political tensions as to who is better
served by e-government. It remains to be
seen how well those countries pursuing egovernment will manage those challenges.
In general, however, the development of egovernment seems a positive factor for the
stability of political regimes in the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
There has not yet been an extensive use
of the Internet for opposition politics within
the countries we have examined (although
in Saudi Arabia, there is significant Internet
use by dissidents based abroad). This may
be obvious given the lack of political parties in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but even
in Egypt, political parties (including the
ruling party) have not made extensive use
of the Internet. The illegal Muslim Brotherhood has gone furthest in Internet-based
campaigning, and it did do well in the 2000
parliamentary elections, though we cannot
be certain how much online campaigning
contributed to the group’s success. In
general, opposition parties in Egypt still
face serious legal and institutional obstacles
to effective competition, and Internet use
would give them only marginal help in
overcoming these barriers. In the more
closed political systems of Saudi Arabia
and the UAE, democratic movements (to
the extent they exist) may shy away from
the open defiance that Internet use implies,
opting instead to seek influence through
inside channels.
While most speculation about the political impact of the Internet in the Middle East
has focused on its use by the mass public,
the economic sphere is the most significant
area of Internet activity in the cases we
have examined. As the Mosaic Group
notes, the impetus to develop the Internet in
most countries of the Middle East has been
largely commercial. In contrast to the common pattern in many other parts of the
world, there were no strong academic,
CSO, or other noncommercial interests to
shape the early growth of the medium.
Among our cases, the UAE (specifically
Dubai) has been the leader in promoting
Internet-related foreign investment. Egypt
is following its lead with its smart villages
initiative, and Saudi Arabia is exploring the
idea of an Internet-focused high-tech development zone. In each of the countries,
domestic firms (often in partnership with
foreign investors) have launched initial ecommerce ventures. The UAE, Saudi
Arabia, and Egypt will be certain to see
much more significant Internet-related economic activity in the future. The Arab
world’s common language will facilitate
regional ventures, especially as the
technology for dealing with Arabic text on
the Internet is improved and more widely
disseminated.
A rise in Internet-related economic
activity seems unlikely to have major
political effects in the short term. Economic
uses of the Internet will mean more
investment by Western partners, but neither
the technology nor the involvement of
foreign firms will necessarily change the
nature of business in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. As Jon Anderson argues,
local businesspeople will “Arabize” the
Internet; it will be adapted to Arab business
culture, and its growth in the economic
sphere will be shaped by Arab commerce
and development policies. In each of our
three cases, the state plays a strong role in
the economy, and government contracts
and contacts are important to both local
businesspeople and foreign investors. The
private sector knows the political rules of
the game, which change only gradually (if
at all). Furthermore, economic diversification through Internet development may
help oil states like Saudi Arabia and the
UAE to weather fluctuations in petroleum
prices with less chance of political
instability.
On the other hand, the long-term growth
of Internet-related economic activity might
cause shifts in the nature of economic
power and political influence in the Middle
East. As Jon Alterman notes, the Internet
could empower small businesses and shift
power away from large family conglomerates, which have traditionally enjoyed
strong political ties to the regime. In the
rentier states of the UAE and Saudi Arabia,
economic diversification and an increase in
Internet-related economic activity could
contribute to the growth of a private sector
that would be less dependent on government favors. Either of those developments
might increase the political demands on
authoritarian regimes, but as the example of
Egypt demonstrates, authoritarian rulers
may be able to accommodate a larger and
more influential private sector with greater
patronage in return for political support.
Internationally, the most visible uses of
the Internet we have examined involve the
efforts of organized overseas dissidents to
criticize national governments, especially
in Saudi Arabia. The domestic impact of
these organizations’ Internet use may
increase as access to the medium becomes
more widespread, although in Saudi Arabia
the blocking of political sites will limit the
distribution of material critical of the
government. In addition, as Mamoun
M E T RO P O L E
| 77
Fandy argues, local residents may be
reluctant to trust the antigovernment discourse that they read on a computer
screen. To the extent that foreign-based
organizations shift their discourse to
appeal to liberal values with greater resonance in the West, they may lose some
credibility within their target countries,
as has happened with the CDLR. And
while such organizations may pressure
Western governments to demand political reform in the offending country, the
democratic and human rights credentials
of regimes in the Middle East have had
little real impact on whether the United
States and others choose to lend them
support. Security concerns easily outweigh the promotion of democracy in the
formulation of policy toward the region,
especially at a time of increased global
terrorism.
Besides the explicit political criticism
of foreign-based organizations, there is
another, less trumpeted use of the Internet in the international sphere that may
have political implications in the countries we have examined. The Internet
(including chat rooms and e-mail) has
been widely used by Middle Easterners
living or working abroad, including for
discussions of political issues in their
home countries. As these expatriates
return home, or as local users participate
in the same online forums, the use of the
Internet for political discourse in a more
liberal environment could have an effect
on the way the medium is used at home.
A similar dynamic has already taken
place with other ICTs, where Arabic-language satellite television stations based
in London and elsewhere have helped to
craft a more open environment for political discussions in the Middle East.
OSAMA ONLINE? ISLAMIC
FUNDAMENTALISTS ON THE NET
T
he events of September 11, 2001,
have focused a global spotlight on
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network, including its use of ICTs.
Al-Qaeda’s most important use of the
Internet is for the coordination of logistics among operatives, and the main
impact of this activity is on international security, issues that are of great importance but outside the scope of this study.
However, international uses of the Internet in relation to the events of September
11 do have more direct implications for
the stability of political regimes in the
Middle East, including those that govern
the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
To some extent, Bin Laden and his
followers are relevant to the politics of
the Middle East where they specifically
target such regimes as Saudi Arabia. Bin
Laden got his start as a critic of the Saudi
monarchy, shifting his primary focus to
the United States only after U.S. troops
were stationed on Saudi soil during the
Gulf War. While Bin Laden does not use
the Internet against the Saudi regime to
the same extent as CDLR and MIRA do,
he has proved to be savvy in using other
international media to shape public opinion. Through his al-Qaeda network he
could easily begin to disseminate critiques of the Saudi government (or others) on the Internet. Bin Laden’s domestic following in Saudi Arabia, however,
is less salient than his international
impact, and his group is less influential
within the country than is either CDLR
or MIRA.
More significant than the resonance of
Bin Laden’s critiques against the Saudi
regime is the potential for Internet use
after September 11, 2001, to stir extreme
Islamist and anti-Western sentiments that
could ultimately pose a threat to regimes
in the Middle East. Many governments in
the region have carefully nurtured such
sentiments in the past, but in the future
they may find them difficult to control,
especially if they choose to ally with the
United States while their publics sympathize with Bin Laden’s international
agenda. In Pakistan, Musharraf’s government appeared to be on shakier
ground after siding with the United
States over substantial public opposition.
Such public opposition is informed by
the use of ICTs, primarily satellite television networks such as al-Jazeera,
though the Internet is also important for
shaping opinion in the Middle East. Chat
rooms and web pages, many based in the
United States, provide a forum for the
airing of views on Bin Laden’s activities
and the United States’ military response.
Such online expression can tend toward
extremism; a number of ISPs in the United States spent the weeks after September 11 shutting down offending web sites
and censoring chat-room postings.
If extremism of this sort, expressed by
diaspora groups and other sympathizers
around the world, is able to reach and
influence domestic populations in the
Middle East, it could have an impact on
political regimes in the region. In the
UAE, of course, there is not much public opposition to the government’s foreign policy stance. In Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, Internet access is too limited at
present for online extremism to have
much of an impact on public opinion. As
access expands, however, online extremism does have the potential to exert a
greater influence, especially in Egypt,
where a firm censorship scheme is not
currently in place.
In spite of the potential for online
extremism, we should still conclude that
Internet use in the United Arab Emirates,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt does not yet
pose a significant threat to the stability
of those countries’ authoritarian regimes.
In each case, authoritarian rule has
enough nontechnological bases of support that use of the Internet in its current
nascent form is unlikely to affect them
very much. As access to and use of the
Internet become more widespread, the
dynamics we have identified in this
chapter are likely to become more politically relevant. Some of them may pose
challenges to existing authoritarian
regimes, such as use of the Internet by
dissident organizations or increased
access to information that turns public
sentiment against the government. In the
event of a political crisis, the Internet
could provide a forum for the expression
and escalation of dissent, leading to a
greater impact than would be possible
without the technology. It is conceivable
that at some point Internet use might
play a role in the downfall of one of
these regimes. It seems equally possible,
however, that the authoritarian states of
the region will successfully manage the
introduction of the Internet in their
societies, just as they have weathered
manifold potential challenges in the past.
r
Excerpted from Open Networks, Closed
Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on
Authoritarian Rule by Shanthi Kalathil
and Taylor C. Boas, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
To order this book visit www.ceip.org/
OpenNetworks or call 1-800-275-1447
or 202-797-6258.
M E T RO P O L E
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LEAPIN’ LIZARDS! ORPHAN ANNIE REDISCOVERED!
BY DOMINICK CANCILLA
Who’s the little chatter box?
The one with pretty auburn locks?
Whom do you see?
It’s Little Orphan Annie.
O
n radio, Little Orphan Annie was an
adventure program for children.
Based on the comic strip of the same name,
Annie was on for 15 minutes, six times a
day from 1931 to 1934, and then every
weekday until April of 1942. It featured the
adventures of Annie, her dog Sandy, and
her friend Joe Corntassel (for a time voiced
by Mel Tormé), assisted by a variety of supporting characters.
The show was the first of its kind, and it
set the stage for two decades of juvenile
adventure shows on radio. The heroes were
all in the neighborhood of ten years old.
Unlike most children her age, Annie had a
tendency to match wits with great success
against pirates, con men, gangsters, and
various other crooks. She had the respect of
adult friends and enemies alike. Even
though the show was obviously targeted to
children, it also appealed to many adults.
The show’s announcer, a big name
among children at the time, was Pierre
Andre. He’d voice the commercials, going
on about the virtues of Ovaltine and plugging whatever premium was to be had. His
commercials would often last for as much
as three minutes — quite long, considering
that the show was only fifteen and might
contain two or three commercials. And
when you consider that the show was often
nothing more than an enormous enticement
for an Ovaltine premium, its level of advertising likely exceeds reasonable limits.
In one episode which has made the
rounds among traders for years, Daddy
Warbucks gives Annie a ring with her birth
stone in it. Annie shows the ring to her
friends, who are quite impressed and comment at length at how swell it is. At the
commercial break, the announcer goes on
and on about how easy it is for listeners to
get a real ring with a real simulated birth
stone for themselves. The commercialism
is quite fascinating for its blatantness.
Premiums advertised on the Annie show
included Ovaltine shake-up mugs — giving
listeners incentive to buy Ovaltine for the
opportunity to order something to drink
more Ovaltine in — and decoder badges,
used to decode messages given to members
of “Radio Orphan Annie’s” secret society at
the end of many episodes. Rumors of
Orphan Annie decoder rings are just that,
rumors. No decoder rings were produced
for any show during the golden age of
radio. Another persistent rumor — perpetuated in Jean Shephard’s film, A Christmas
Story among other places — was that
Annie’s secret messages were often nothing
more than commercials for Ovaltine. On
the contrary, the secret messages always
referred to the current plotline, and often
hinted at the next episode’s events.
Although Annie was on the air for a
decade and her show was both popular and
historically important, very few episodes
have survived. Jon Swartz and Robert
Reinehr’s Handbook of Old-Time Radio,
published in 1993, lists nine episodes as
available. In 1996, Jay Hickerson’s guide to
all known circulating old-time radio shows
also lists nine episodes in existence. For
this reason, it was with great fanfare that
the First Generation Radio Archives (www.
radioarchives.org; see ad on page 53)
announced that they had obtained the original transcription disks for 21 Little Orphan
Annie shows, originally broadcast between
1936 and 1938, and would soon make them
available to collectors.
The Radio Archives’ stated goal is to
preserve and restore radio shows for future
generations. They have a reputation for
taking disks that are more than half a
century old and making them sound as if
they had been broadcast yesterday —
without distorting or artificially enhancing
the original. That is exactly what they have
done with the 21 new Annie shows.
Because many of these 21 shows are in
sequence, listeners can hear how Annie’s
stories developed over a number of
episodes. The shows also include several
which have “secret code” messages for
modern listeners who have the appropriate
antique decoder badge (or who have downloaded a copy of one from the Internet).
Radio Archives has made these episodes
available to their members on 5 CDs for
$31.50, including postage. The shows
sound brilliant, and the price is so low that
it’s almost ridiculous. Even if you paid $15
to join the Archives just to purchase this
set, the price would still be reasonable.
It’s disappointing that an entire storyline
has not been preserved, but what does exist
is still quite entertaining. Annie fights
against a cheating contractor who is using
sub-standard lumber to build a local bridge,
learns far too much about the Wright brothers, and gets stranded on an island where
the natives proclaim her queen while she
and her friends try to figure out how to
build a radio. One real treasure on these
disks is a character named Tony whose Italian accent is so fake that it belongs in a hall
of fame somewhere. Joe’s attempt to fake
an accent of his own is likewise priceless.
There have been hints that the Radio
Archives may have additional rare, recovered shows available in the near future. If
you have any interest in nostalgia or the
history of entertainment, you would do well
to keep your eye on them.
r
M E T RO P O L E
| 79
Click on a poem to enlarge text,
click again to restore view.
Waffler
Lilith of Babylon and her tower of Waffles. The stomach dance: cool desert queen,
Prima Belly Arena. Mincemeat, crossbones, third leg, holy peg. Woman as waffler:
Cut, shuffle, and deal, but man, the case is stacked against you.
M E T RO P O L E
| 81
Peekin' Sandy
Our Lady of the Vermilion Scarab, chock full of nuts. Madonna Tondo Rotunda,
with a golden section in the oven. Isis and the red-hot sands of Mother Time.
Lost your Dorian marbles? Tough cookies.
M E T RO P O L E . | 82
The Screamer
Mayan sunflower goddess with icy aura: the real scoop. Polar solar flares.
Rose hips, loose lips, woman's sway, all the way. Night cords on man's halter.
Licking the gauntlet that feeds you.
M E T RO P O L E . | 83
Prickly Sweet
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the prickliest one of all?
Domina Tricks in her moony dreaming cap. Doing the stroll, jelly roll:
horseshoe crab, sea urchin, bearded clam. The Maternal Turbine:
Put a coin through the slit, and give it a whirl.
M E T RO P O L E . | 84
No Man's Land
Dietrich on the Beach: Mona Lisa meets Dali. The sun never sets on a woman's empire.
Wasting time in the Waste Land. Take a seat, beat the heat, spread it around.
Butter me up and lay me down.
M E T RO P O L E . | 85
Granola Death
M E T RO P O L E . | 86
Flesh Cards
M E T RO P O L E . | 87
DOROTHY PARKER: LAUGHTER AND HOPE AND A SOCK IN THE EYE
BY DEBORAH MARKUS
Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories; edited
by Colleen Breese; with an introduction by
Regina Barreca; Penguin Books, 2003)
O
nce, in a novel that will probably
never be published, I had my little
heroine think bitterly to herself that she was
trapped like a trap in a trap. My husband,
who acts as my editor in all things because
he’s too damned nosy not to constantly read
over my shoulder, asked what exactly the
hell I was talking about. “That’s from
Dorothy Parker,” I said.
“I’m supposed to know that?”
“I read you that. I must have.”
“You did?”
“Well, I will now.”
He interrupted by pointing out that even
if I’d read him the Parker piece in question,
I couldn’t expect my readers to know the
reference, unless of course I was planning
on being the first writer to make housecalls.
My defense was that it didn’t matter if people didn’t know the quote per se, since it
didn’t really make any sense even when
Parker said it. It just sounded like it did.
Parker always sounds right. Hitting the nail
on the head is her job. Just call her the Jael
of twentieth-century writers. (Now, there’s
a reference you’ll have to go check.)
My first Dorothy Parker was, of course,
the Portable. I didn’t then and don’t now
understand the logic of that term: if this
volume, at six hundred plus pages, is
portable, heaven save us all from the
immovable. But I didn’t care about semantics that day I was formally introduced to
Dorothy Parker after having heard so much
about her. I hadn’t gone out in search of her
work; I certainly wasn’t hurting for something to read. (I’ve heard of that affliction,
but never suffered from it, though it does
sound restful.) I just saw that mustard-yellow remainder copy the first week I started
working at a now-defunct women’s bookstore, and I wanted it and I took my
Smoking Cigarettes and Reading Captain Kangaroo
employee’s discount for a test drive and
bought it. It felt right. It felt like a celebration. I started reading it on the way
home, almost missing my bus in the
process, and it was like going to a party
where the food was divine and the music
rocked the house and the only strangers
were people I’d always wanted to meet
anyway.
I have read that Portable to the proverbial
tatters in the decade or so since I bought it,
and have made some progress in breaking
what I know is a less-than-winning habit of
reading aloud whole paragraphs at a stretch
if I happen not to be alone when I have her
work in front of me. But I haven’t lost my
delight in her, and so I went ahead and
started shrieking when I saw that Penguin
had released a volume of her complete
stories — including, as they were careful to
point out on the back cover, thirteen never
previously collected pieces. Since most of
my favorite writers are dead, it’s a rare day
that I have the pleasure of seeing new stuff
by any of them.
But when I got this collection, I didn’t
M E T RO P O L E
| 88
just zip straight to the good stuff. I went
ahead and actually read the introduction
and everything. Which is apparently more
than the editors did. Checking the copyright dates I see that this “new” collection
was actually released once before, albeit
with a different cover, in 1995. Still no big
deal, aside from the fact that that “never
previously collected” line suddenly seems a
tad disingenuous. But the first sentence of
the introduction reads a lot differently now
than it did eight years ago, and I think a
sensitive editor might have responded to
that:
Why is it that many critics seem so
intent on defusing the power of
Dorothy Parker’s writing that she
appears more like a terrorist bomb
than what she really is: one, solitary,
unarmed American writer of great
significance?
Like I said: little different impact, especially to American readers. (And what the
hell is that comma after the word “one”
doing there, anyway?) Maybe the beginning set me up to be less than happy with
the rest of the essay, but I have to say I
wasn’t thrilled, and I think I have cause.
It’s one of the most defensive pieces of
writing I’ve ever seen. If Parker needs
defending from “male critics” (again,
direct quote), and my jury’s out as to
whether or not she does, surely one could
do a better job than this.
Just to give you another for-instance:
Regina Barreca, the author of the introduction, takes issue with a critic who claims
that “The span of [Parker’s] work is narrow
and what it embraces is often slight.” Takes
issue, hell — she goes off like a bottle rocket. And the thing is, I’m not sure that this
unnamed critic is entirely incorrect. With
the striking exception of “Clothe the
Naked,” Parker wrote most, or at least most
comfortably, about a specific class of person and a certain kind of unhappiness. Her
pieces have aged well and the issues she
addresses are still vital, but you can definitely tell when, where, and about whom
they were written. In less skillful hands,
they would be period pieces. (A few are little more than that — but don’t let me get
ahead of myself.) The stories are very
much of their time. Barreca’s mistake is in
assuming that’s a bad thing. One could just
as easily and accurately say that Jane
Austen’s fiction has a narrow scope:
women at the ragged edge of the leisured
class in Regency England. That’s what’s so
brilliant about it, though. She wrote about
so little and managed at the same time to
write about everything. And so with Parker.
Another critic to whom Barreca objects
described Parker as “morally a child.” In
what seems, in an educated writer, to be an
almost willful misunderstanding, Barreca
huffs that “Parker was many things, but
naïve wasn’t among them.” But there’s a
difference between childish and naïve.
Drinking heavily, sleeping around, thumbing one’s nose at deadlines, and spending
money faster than one can make it isn’t
naïve. But in the sense of putting one’s
own immediate pleasures, wishes, and convenience ahead of everyone else’s, and not
thinking or caring much about the future,
these are very childish patterns of behavior.
And they’re a very apt description of Parker’s life.
(Just as there’s nothing more cheering
than reading Parker’s work, by the by,
there’s nothing more depressing than reading about her life. And that’s assuming you
can get reliable information, since, as Marion Meade points out in Dorothy Parker:
What Fresh Hell Is This?, “Parker herself
left no correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, or private papers of any kind.”
Meade’s biography is readable and
engrossing; whether I’d put any real faith in
it is another matter, since she insists that
Parker’s descriptions of her own childhood
— related decades after the event to a
friend — and worse yet lines from Parker’s
fiction, are perfectly sound biographical
sources. The facts that can be confirmed
about Parker’s life — her drinking, her
marriages and divorces, her husband’s suicide and her own ineffectual attempts —
add nothing to one’s appreciation of Parker’s work, other than my now regarding it
as a miracle of genius that she ever got any
work done at all.)
Having completely savaged Barreca’s
introduction, I would like now to risk all
credibility by mentioning the fact that some
of it is very, very good. Her analyses of
Parker’s writing itself, rather than what others have made of it, are at once sharp and
thoughtful. “Her business,” Barreca says at
one point, “was to make fun of the ideal,
whatever it was, and trace the split between
the vision of a woman’s life as put forth by
the social script and the way real women
lived real lives.” And then, later, “Her skill
does not depend on the breathless rush
towards the unknown but instead on the
breathless rush towards the known — even,
or especially, when that which is known is
what should be known and avoided.”
Which is as apt a turn of phrase as I’ve ever
been treated to. When Barreca sticks to
Parker’s work, her introduction is incisive
and insightful and all those other wonderful ins; responding to other critics, she
becomes too angry to reason or write well.
So. I read the introduction, like a good
girl, and then I decided I’d be really good
and just read the stories I hadn’t read
before. I’m a busy woman, after all. Got
no time to sit around guffawing over stories
I already know whole bits of by heart.
So it was nice that the Penguin collection
started right off with something new.
“Such a Pretty Little Picture.” It’s a strange
story, especially for Parker. It’s almost the
only story she ever wrote with a male main
character — “Mr. Durant” is the other one
— and absolutely the only one in which the
male main character is sympathetic. This
story’s economy of words and phraseology
seem to me distinctly reminiscent of
Dashiell Hammett:
Mr. Wheelock was clipping the
hedge. He did not dislike doing it. If
it had not been for the faintly sickish
odor of the privet bloom, he would
definitely have enjoyed it.
Mr. Wheelock, a man referred to as
“Daddy” by both his wife and his daughter
(who is called Sister, though she has no siblings), is a study in quiet desperation. He
has lately become obsessed with a story he
has heard concerning a man who simply up
and leaves his wife and home and job one
day. Just says “Oh, hell,” and turns his
back on the lot of them. Mr. Wheelock
can’t get this story out of his mind, and as
we read the petty humiliations and numbing dullness of his existence, we begin to
understand why. We become convinced as
well of the impossibility of his ever leaving. He is married to a woman who “never
waited for a button to come off, before
sewing it on.” He is the father of a child he
doesn’t particularly like, one whose name
is a direct reproach to him:
She had been known as Sister
since her birth, and her mother still
laid plans for a brother for her. Sister’s baby carriage stood waiting in
the cellar, her baby clothes were
stacked expectantly away in bureau
drawers. But raises were infrequent
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Alan Campbell and
Dorothy Parker,
newlyweds
in 1934.
at the advertising agency where Mr.
Wheelock was employed, and his
present salary had barely caught up to
the cost of their living. They could
not conscientiously regard themselves as being able to afford a son.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Wheelock keenly
felt his guilt in keeping the bassinet
empty.
How strange, how almost shocking that
the woman who wrote this would later be
known primarily for her comic work, and
can be introduced to those who don’t know
her as the author of “News Item” (“Men
seldom make passes/At girls who wear
glasses”).
I was able to skip, or at least only skim,
the next two stories — “Too Bad” and “Mr.
Durant.” Not because they’re not good.
They’re brilliant; but “Too Bad” relies on a
gimmick and once you know the punchline
there isn’t much to tell, whereas Mr. Durant
is so utterly repulsive to me that, having
read his story once, I want nothing more to
do with him. So far I was doing splendidly. Very efficient.
So much so that when I got to “The Wonderful Old Gentleman,” I figured I’d earned
a little reward, and I went ahead and read it
through though of course it’s in the
Portable. And that was the end for me. I
didn’t even try to put up a fight after that.
I read every word of the rest of the book.
The difference between a great and a merely good writer is how much re-reading the
writing will support. Parker’s rereadability is damned near endless.
There are a few exceptions, of course. I
will say that other than the above-mentioned “Such a Pretty Little Picture,” there
aren’t any long-lost gems in this collection.
Some semi-precious stones, perhaps, but
nothing that will make the reader cry out
against the injustice of a particular story
having moldered uncollected for so long.
Some of the pieces feel in fact as if
they’ve been lying alone in the darkness too
long, or maybe not long enough. They’re
in the last section of the book, titled
“Sketches,” and I think it’s questionable to
have them here at all. What I mean is, yes,
all right, they’re fiction. Kind of. Some of
them. Fictional, anyway. But they’re not
stories, and right there on the cover it says
“Complete Stories.” Just that. There is no
subtitling of “And Other Material That Didn’t End Up In The Portable And We
Thought It Should Be Published Somewhere, So Why Not Here.”
Frankly, if you’re going to have not technically fiction pieces in a collection of
Parker’s work, why not throw in some of
her book or play reviews? Sure, they’re in
the Portable already, but they’re so good
that any collection of hers feels incomplete
without them. Also I want an excuse to talk
about them, especially since I did go ahead
and reread a bunch of them while I was on
a Parker roll.
What surprised me on first reading them
was what surprised my husband on first
even hearing about them from a college
dorm mate with unusually good taste in literature: namely, how could reading about
a bunch of books no one’s even heard of
anymore or a lot of plays that were performed before most of us were born possibly be any fun at all? But the reviews are
some of her most rereadable work. And not
just the ones in which Parker justly savages
some mediocrity, although I routine rupture
something whenever I’m lucky enough to
read her review of A. A. Milne’s Give Me
Yesterday. What’s really amazing is how
good her good, as in favorable, reviews are.
Anyone can trash someone else’s work and
sound halfway funny, but, as Parker recognized and pointed out in one of her own
reviews, “superlatives are tiresome reading.” But not from her. Oh, just read them
and see. You won’t think it a wasted
evening, I promise.
I may have felt the lack of the reviews,
but I wasn’t sorry at all to find an all-prose
collection. Though Parker may be most
famous in some circles for her poems, they
are now the weakest examples of her work,
not having aged as well as the rest of it. I’ll
go out on a limb now and say that most of
her poems could drop out of sight altogether and not cause a ripple. Oh, “One Perfect
Rose” will always be fun, I suppose; but
“The Maid-Servant at the Inn” should
never have even been thought of, let alone
recorded for posterity, and it’s far more representative of Parker’s poetry.
For all my kvetching, I still went out and
bought — a hardcover copy, yet — Stuart
Y. Silverstein’s compilation Not Much Fun:
The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. It was
just okay. Her “Hate Songs” were enjoyable, but so are a lot of things that won’t set
you back twenty-two 1996 dollars. But the
introduction, which is sixty-five pages
long, was worth the price of the book, aside
from Silverstein’s distressing habit of
always referring to Parker by her first
name: Dorothy in the text, Dottie in the
copious footnotes. (Other than in books
intended for children, I never see famous
male artists or writers referred to by first
name, let alone nickname. That Barreca
may have a point, damn her eyes.) Anyway, the anecdotes about Parker are fantastic. My favorite lies in footnote 32: “Dottie excelled at the popular Algonquin game
where the players challenged each other to
use a long word in a punning sentence. She
was challenged with ‘horticulture.’ Dottie:
‘You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t
make her think.’”
But getting back to what was actually in
the collection I’m allegedly reviewing. I
will now say something that I never thought
I would say in connection with any of Parker’s writing: the pieces in that last section,
“Sketches,” were hard going. I almost gave
up, and only my journalistic integrity,
which is virtually indistinguishable from a
weaselly fear I have that someone will
make a direct inquiry about the very bit of
book I decided the hell with, kept me slogging away. Some of them, such as “As the
Spirit Moves,” are literally historically
interesting. I was a minor participant in the
Ouija craze of the ‘70’s; I had no idea that
there was (apparently) a pretty sizeable one
in 1920 as well. Coincidentally or not, the
piece devoted to it is also one of the more
readable of this section.
The rest start to wear on one. Maybe the
problem was slamming them all together in
the same room, so to speak, instead of scattering them throughout the book. As it is
— well, look. There is a piece entitled “A
Dinner Party Anthology.” It’s nothing but
three- to four-paragraph descriptions each
of all the different people at a dinner party.
Every description ends with a one-two
punchline, like this one about Mr. Charles
Frisbie: “Well may his guests remark, as
they frequently do, that Charlie is a regular
case.
But of what they neglect to add.”
Some of these summings-up are funnier
than others. All follow the same formula.
So then we get “A Summer Hotel
Anthology,” which is — surprise! — a collection of three- to four-paragraph descriptions of all the different people at a summer
hotel. Each description ends with a onetwo punchline, like this one about Mrs.
Earle Staley: “She must either speak her
mind or else she must not speak at all.
There are many who feel that she makes
an unfortunate choice.”
After that, we are presented with “An
Apartment House Anthology,” which is —
dear God, don’t make me tell you all this
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again. Are you beginning to get the picture? Are you beginning to understand how
a reader, especially an innocent reviewer
who is only trying to add to the sum total
of joy and enlightenment in the world,
might start to feel positively beaten up by
so many formulaic punchlines?
All this is a fine example of Dorothy
Parker’s strength and weakness: the
dependability of her brilliance. There can
be at times something glib or automatic
about her wit. Something dutiful: she’s
winding up for the pitch — and there it is.
Right over the plate, as always. This may
be an inherent problem with being a great
stylist, especially in humor. It’s not just
that Parker is funny; she’s funny in a distinct and recognizable fashion, and one can
keep that up only so long, either on the giving or the receiving end.
Fortunately, Parker has more than oneliners to fall back on. She is a great
humorist who can also write effectively and
affectingly of grief and pain. But not of
fear or suspense, which brings us to the one
real failure in the “Stories” section of this
story collection. “The Game” just doesn’t
work. Its tone is trying too hard to be offhand in a deliberately chilling kind of way,
and the ending really is trying to be a surprise and really doesn’t make it. At all. I
think it may be significant that “The Game”
is listed as having been merely co-authored
by Parker. Barreca suggests in her introduction that “Parker did not list among her
many talents The Ability to Play Well with
Others,” and “The Game” is a case in point.
Parker’s style is too sharp and distinctive to
be melded with or muted against someone
else’s.
The stories that can also be found in the
Portable are the strongest, which is to be
expected. There are my favorites and there
are those that really are, objectively, her
best stories, and those aren’t always the
same thing because Parker at her best can
be so wounded and wounding that I want,
selfishly, to just curl up and laugh at her
funnies.
For instance. It’s probably her lightest,
slightest piece, but to me “The Standard of
Living” is so funny no matter how many
times I read it that for a long time I remembered it as the first story of hers I ever read.
I don’t know why it’s so wonderful to me,
except that Parker seems won over by her
own heroines and the innocent distress that
briefly clouds their day. Perhaps she was
happy to be making a mockery of real,
deep, lasting pain — mocking not its
sufferers or even its inflicters, but pain
itself. Banishing the bare idea of it. The
story is a romp, and that’s rare for Parker.
She can be and often is humorous, but her
humor often derives from most unhappy
circumstances.
Some of her funniest writing is in “Dusk
Before Fireworks,” a very unfunny story
about a woman in love with a subtly sadistic man with whom apparently half the
female population of the city is also in love.
Kit, the miserable heroine, gets some of the
most hilarious dialogue Parker ever wrote:
“She says she has something she
wants to tell me.”
“It can’t be her age,” Kit said.
He smiled without joy. “She says
it’s too hard to say over the wire.”
“Then it may be her age,” she said.
“She’s afraid it might sound like her
telephone number.”
And then, later on that same bitter
evening:
“Hobie,” she said, “is there a livery
stable anywhere around here where
they rent wild horses?”
“What?” he said.
“Because if there is,” she said, “I
wish you’d call up and ask them to
send over a couple of teams. I want
to show you they couldn’t drag me
into asking who that was on the telephone.”
“Oh,” he said, and tried his cocktail.
...”I can’t stand it,” she said. “I
just lost all my strength of purpose —
maybe the maid will find it on the
floor in the morning. Hobart Ogden,
who was that on the telephone?”
It may be that humor stands out in
greater relief against such a stark background, but this seems just as funny as, if
not funnier than, anything in Parker’s just
plain humorous stories. Although come to
think of it, there aren’t many of those.
Even in a piece like “Here We Are,” which
has a laugh in almost every paragraph —
every line, even — there’s an edge of anxiety in all the newly-wedded couple’s banter and bickering. As the bride confesses
after a heated exchange, “We used to
squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I
thought everything would be so different as
soon as you were married. And now I feel
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so sort of strange and everything. I feel
so sort of alone.”
It’s a relief to turn to Parker’s malice.
Sometimes she just picks a deserving target and has at it. Like in “Arrangement
in Black and White,” which pins a certain kind of racist to the page like a bug
in a shadowbox. The bulk of the story is
a pretty one-sided conversation between
the long-suffering host of a party and one
of his guests, a woman with “assisted
gold” hair eager to prove how enlightened she is:
“Oh, I get so furious when people are narrow-minded about colored people. It’s just all I can do
not to say something. Of course, I
do admit when you get a bad colored man, they’re simply terrible.
But as I say to Burton, there are
some bad white people, too, in this
world. Aren’t there?”
“I guess there are,” said her host.
This story is pure brilliance. It would
have been so easy for Parker to choose as
a main character the Burton mentioned, a
man who would refuse a million dollars
if he had to sit down at the table with a
black in order to earn it. Instead, Parker
lets his wife have the stage, and her
attempts at egalitarianism are somehow
more ghastly than her husband’s unbudging racism. The story puts the reader in
the position of the host, who must be
spending his entire party cringing every
time this woman corners him. We can
laugh at her without for a minute losing
sight of how horrific her attitudes are.
They’re deadly, yet at the same time so
ridiculous as not to seem a threat. We
can derive a certain comfort by the end
of the story that ideas and people this
stupid can’t possibly live forever, though
their existence is always too long by
half.
Parker is at her finest when writing
about racism, though she doesn’t touch
directly on it often. “Mrs. Hofstadter on
Josephine Street” has to be one of the
earliest studies of internalized racism,
written long before the syndrome had a
name. And “Clothe the Naked” is entirely uncomic, a simple, tragic work written
without condescension or platitudes. It
is the only story Parker wrote in which
all the main characters are black; and
while Parker, whose ear for the spoken
word was matchless, wrote many stories
that were either entirely or almost
entirely in dialogue, this one is unique in
containing not one spoken word. It is
very different from her usual work, without feeling experimental. The writing is
strong and sure of itself.
Another story that stands apart from
Parker’s generally funny, if rueful, fiction is her masterpiece, “Big Blonde.”
In it she achieves a story of real depth
without an ounce of sentimentality or,
more surprisingly, a trace of irony or
satire. It is, like “Clothe the Naked,”
simple, well-told, and tragic.
I found it puzzling when I read it the
first time, over a decade ago. It separates itself from the rest of her work by
dint of its high quality as well as its utter
hopelessness. If I had it to read fresh
now, I might wonder why a writer capable of such solid, unimpeachable fiction
would pour any energy into pieces like
“The Sexes” or “The Waltz” — pleasurable, but slight. Happening upon it then,
I was stumped as to why someone who
could write with and for such evident
enjoyment stories such as “The Standard
of Living” would descend into the depths
to bring such a gloomy work to the light.
The answer to either question suggests
itself. Parker’s talents and inclinations
refused to be confined. She was one of
the keenest observers of the human condition of her own or any other time, and
perhaps the most dauntless. She wrote
what she saw, and her gaze was unblinking. But the only way for the possessor
of such a wide-open stare to cope for
long with what was shown to her was to
have a ready wit to match. She laughed
often, but never unworthily. Her targets
were all those who took themselves too
seriously, and sometimes that included
herself. And so the survivor of suicide
attempts couldn’t keep an entirely
straight face when reporting what she
found on the road to a death that refused
to let her catch up with it. In one of her
best-known poems, “Resume,” she
informs us:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
“You might as well live.” A mocking
tone — but the mockery is for herself,
arrogant enough to think that she had the
strength (or the weakness) to hand herself over to death without a murmur. But
on exactly the same subject in a very different work, she is sympathetic, even
tender, because Hazel Morse, the big
blonde in question, has not a trace of
arrogance or unkindness in her. You can
feel Parker’s protectiveness, even as she
leads Morse relentlessly through her
miserable existence. There is nothing
self-aggrandizing or melodramatic about
Hazel’s wish to die. She’s simply worn
out, tired of being sad and of being
expected to cheer all those around her.
“The thought of death came and stayed
with her and lent her a sort of drowsy
cheer,” Parker tells us. “It would be
nice, nice and restful, to be dead.” There
is no undertone of mockery, no bolt
behind the blue. Nor is there in Hazel’s
being confounded as to a usable path to
her goal, which reads like a dark mirror
image of “Resume”:
But how would you do it? It
made her sick to think of jumping
from heights. She could not stand
a gun. At the theater, if one of the
actors drew a revolver, she
crammed her fingers into her ears
and could not even look at the
stage until after the shot had been
fired. There was no gas in her flat.
She looked long at the bright blue
veins in her slim wrists — a cut
with a razor blade, and there you’d
be. But it would hurt, hurt like
hell, and there would be blood to
see. Poison — something tasteless
and quick and painless — was the
thing. But they wouldn’t sell it to
you in drugstores, because of the
law.
She had few other thoughts.
That the same subject could have such
a different visage depending on the vantage point isn’t surprising in theory. But
for just one writer to be able to make it
either laughable or well-nigh unbearable
is strange and rare, indeed. Which is a
fitting epitaph for Dorothy Parker herself. Though perhaps not as good as her
own suggestion for the carving on her
gravestone: “If you can read this, you’ve
come too close.”
r
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LAURELL K. HAMILTON: SUCCESSFUL MENAGE
BY PAULA GURAN
L
aurell K. Hamilton reigns as
bestselling queen of an (as yet)
unnamed subgenre. Sampling
from more sources than a
methed-up techno DJ can mix, her serial
novels blend supernatural horror, mystery,
detective fiction, romance, fantasy, science
fiction, historical fiction, thrillers, and erotica. Hamilton’s character Anita Blake once
described her fictional life as “a cross
between a preternatural soap opera and an
action adventure movie. Sort of “As the
Casket Turns” meets Rambo.” Anita also
has an active, if somewhat angst-ridden,
sex life that might make Rambo blush.
The eleventh Anita Blake novel,
Cerulean Sins, will be released April 1.
(See review in Exhibitions, page 32)
Hamilton has a second “blended” series
that features a faerie princess, Meredith
Gentry. A detective specializing in “supernatural problems, magical solutions,”
Merry also has to deal with the political
intrigues of a magical court and, for the
good of her people, bed a number of gorgeous faerie hunks. The author is currently
writing the third Merry novel, Seduced by
Moonlight.
Hamilton’s not the first or the only (see
accompanying article: Vampire Cocktails)
to mix up a genre mélange, although she
manages to combine more genres than most
and is more explicitly erotic. Her first inspiration as a writer came from Robert E.
Howard. “Howard’s short story collection,
Pigeons from Hell, was the first dark fantasy, horror, and heroic fantasy that I ever
read,” she recalls. “It was this collection
that made me say, not only do I want to
write, but I want to write this. I was fourteen, and I can still remember finishing the
stories, standing in my room with the summer sunshine coming through the windows,
the drapes flapping in the breeze — no air
conditioning for us — and the certainty like
a weight inside me, that this was what I was
meant to do. This was it.”
Most 14 year-old female book fiends in
those days were more likely to become
hooked on Anne McCaffrey, Ursula
LeGuin, Stephen King, Kate Wilhelm, or
Patricia McKillip than the works of Robert
E. Howard. The creator of Conan the Cimmerian, the prolific Howard wrote in many
genres, but he is best known for his combination of adventure, fantasy, history, and
horror that eventually became known as
“sword and sorcery.”
High-octane testosteronic heroes who
embody the sort of wish-fulfillment typical
of adolescent males fuel Howard’s fiction,
written in the 1920s and 1930s. He was
never noted for the depth of his female
characters, although he did attempt a couple like Belit the Pirate in Queen of the
Black Coast and Agnes de Chastillon (“The
Sword Woman” and “Blades for France”).
But as Hamilton says, “Yes, those stories
had female protagonists, but they did not
shine with the hyperrealism of some of
Howard’s other work. I think that Howard,
like me, was not as comfortable walking
around in the opposite sex’s body. I think
that some very fine writers have trouble
pulling off the gender-switch. It’s one of the
reasons I’ve never attempted a book with a
male first person protagonist.” (See accompanying article: Howard. Hamilton &
Heroes.)
The 14-year-old who knew she wanted
to write went after her goal methodically: “I
went to the library and checked out books
on how-to-write. I found the magazines,
“The Writer” and “Writer’s Digest.” I
began to write stories, to practice my craft.
By 17 I was submitting stories for publication, and getting my first rejection letters.
I’d researched how to submit stories in the
proper format, and researched my markets,
so I knew who wanted what kind of story.
Most of the rejections were form letters, but
occasionally an editor would scribble
something at the bottom, some small phrase
of encouragement. I valued those
scribbles.”
“I knew I had to go to college,” she continues, “because I’d done my research and
knew I needed a day job until the writing
took off. Ten years is average from first
sale to being able to make a living from
writing — if it ever happens at all. I
planned on teaching English Lit, while I
wrote on the side.”
Hamilton attended an evangelical Christian liberal arts college in Indiana. She
gained degrees in both English and biology,
but she also “was only two classes away
from a history major.” She has a “feel for
real history, which is usually more interesting and weirder than anything we make up
in fiction. My English degree helped teach
me to appreciate a wider field of literature.”
She adds, “Reading almost anything is a
good thing for a writer, especially for a
young one.”
Hamilton believes her biology degree
impacted her writing more positively than
her education in other disciplines. “It’s a
way of looking at the world, harder, more
concrete,” she explains. I know that my
background in science is what helps me
make my monsters so believable. My
biggest asset though is my ability to
research. People have told me I do more
research for my fiction than most people do
for their non-fiction.”
After college she moved to Los Angeles
for a while. Instead of teaching, she ended
up as an art editor for a major corporation.
“Honest, I had applied for the job of text
editor, and didn’t know until the first day of
work what job I actually had. I have no
background in art, nor can I draw. Me, an
art editor? They had to be kidding, but they
weren’t. I arose at 5:00 a.m. before work
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“Howard’s short story collection,
Pigeons from Hell, was the first
dark fantasy, horror, and heroic
fantasy that I ever read. It was this
collection that made me say, not
only do I want to write, but I want
to write this. I was fourteen…”
and wrote. I lacked the discipline at that
time to write at the end of my corporate
workday. So I’d drag my fanny out of bed,
write two pages — which I could do on my
worst day — then get ready for the other
job.”
Hamilton wrote most of her first book,
Nightseer, using this grueling method. She
was still submitting short stories, still collecting rejection slips, but they were “good
rejections” — sort of. Editors usually liked
the story and asked her “please try again.”
She explains: “My favorite rejections were
the magazines that said they loved the
story, but I wasn’t a big enough name to
take up that much space in their magazine,
because my name on the front of their publication wouldn’t sell copies. I understand
magazines, especially, small ones, are
always struggling to make ends meet and
widen their audience. They were right. I
wasn’t a name author. I actually appreciated the candor of the editors.”
While Hamilton was writing her first
novel, her day job took her to St. Louis,
Missouri. Around that time, Hamilton
attended a writers’ workshop taught by
Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Stephen
Gould at NameThatCon, a science fiction
convention held in a St. Louis suburb. The
workshop helped teach her how to edit her
own work. She also connected with other
aspiring writers who formed a writing
group, the Alternate Historians. The group
also helped sharpen her editing skills.
[Consisting of writers with diverse backgrounds in a number of professions and
hobbies, the Alternate Historians has an
incredible track record. Participants have
now sold over three dozen novels (some
under pseudonyms) and countless shorter
works. Writers other than Hamilton to
emerge include Deborah Millitello, Rett
McPherson, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn,
and Mark Sumner.)
Hamilton applied her new self-editing
skills to her stories and continued to submit
them. One day she received a rejection slip
from Marion Zimmer Bradley with an
added note. (Bradley, a bestselling fantasy
author established a fantasy magazine and
anthology series specifically to nurture
beginning writers.) “She wrote at the bottom of the rejection that she liked my writing and to send her another story she could
use,” recalls Hamilton. “I did. She bought
it. My first sale. That moment of acceptance was very sweet. But even sweeter
was the first time I saw my name in print. I
ran my fingers over the print, as if touching
my name made it more real. It did make it
more real, at least to me.” The story —
“House of Wizards,” published in “Marion
Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine,” Vol.
1 #4, spring 1989 — was actually her second sale. Her initial sale was to one of
Bradley’s anthologies and the book took
longer to appear than the periodical.
“More than the first check or even the
original acceptance, seeing [my story in
print] was believing. I still have one of the
original pieces of artwork from that first
printed story. The picture hangs in the
entranceway of my home. No acceptance
since then — not for my first book or any
of the books that came after, not for the
wonderfully profitable contracts — none of
it has meant as much as those first two sales
and that first publication. That was the
proof I hadn’t been fooling myself. Publication meant I was really on my way to
make a living as a writer.”
At another convention, she met an agent
who asked to see the novel. Hamilton wrote
a seventh draft of the book, mailed it to the
agent. Later that year she met the agent at
Windycon, a convention in Chicago. The
agent took the book on and, in due course,
sold it. That first novel didn’t sell very well
and the publisher rejected the sequel.
Hamilton wrote another unrelated novel
that she now terms “awful.” (It would eventually be gutted to become part of the Anita
Blake novel, The Lunatic Cafe.)
Hamilton wrote a “Star Trek” tie-in
novel and a “Ravenloft’’ gaming novelization and continued trying to sell a book of
her own. “No one wanted the type of fantasy I most wanted to write — sort of
Robert E. Howard meets J.R.R. Tolkien.”
This forced her to come up with other
ideas. “I had a short story with this character who raised zombies for a living. It was
different, not like anything else I’d read or
seen. I thought — why not, what did I have
to lose?”
The first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, was the result. “My first agent sent
the book around, but just like the short
story, no one knew what to do with it. Horror editors thought of it as science fiction.
Science fiction editors thought it was fantasy. Fantasy editors thought it was horror.
The mystery houses didn’t know what to do
with it. It took more than two years to sell
to Ace. And, as they say, the rest is history.”
Guilty Pleasures was published in 1993
as a paperback with a cheesy cover and a
blurb from P.N. Elrod (who had — and still
has — a vampire-detective series, The Vampire Files, of her own going). The Laughing Corpse (1994), Circus of the Damned
(1995), The Lunatic Cafe (1995), Bloody
Bones (1996), and The Killing Dance
(1997) — each with equally cheesy covers
— followed. Burnt Offerings (1998)
attained “lead title” marketing status, as did
Blue Moon (1998). The books addicted a
broad range of fans and their numbers
steadily grew.
In January 2000, Obsidian Butterfly was
released in hardcover (without a cheesy
cover) by Berkley (Ace is an imprint of
Berkley Publishing Group). The novel
made the extended New York Times Bestseller List. Later that year, Ballantine published A Kiss of Shadows, the first Meredith Gentry book. It hit # 14 on the NYTimes
List. (It’s rare for the first in any series to
sell so strongly.)
The tenth Anita Blake book, Narcissus in
Chains, was published in October 2001. It
debuted on the Publisher Weekly Hardcover Bestseller List with 96,000 copies sold.
It also stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for six weeks, reaching a high
position of #5. The new Blake book,
Cerulean Sins, is expected to be a bestseller, too.
The second Meredith Gentry novel,
Caress of Twilight, hit bookstores in March
2002. Roc has re-issued her first novel
Nightseer. All of the Blake Ace paperback
originals have been re-released with coordinating (non-cheesy) covers.
She’s taken bestsellerdom in stride —
sort of. “I was in Seattle in a hotel I no
longer remember the name of, near the end
of a multi-city tour. My goal for the day
was to take off the heels, put my feet up,
read someone else’s book for a change, and
I’d ordered hot tea. I still had a phone interview and a book signing scheduled for that
afternoon and evening and I just wanted
some down time. My publicist at the time
called, gave me the news that I had made
the New York Times Bestseller list. I think
I said, ‘That’s great.’ I was utterly calm. I
was so calm, she didn’t believe I’d understood her. She repeated the news, and I
said, ‘I heard you, that’s great.’ Still utterly
calm, nay, numb.”
“Over the phone, I could hear shouts of
joy in the background as the rest of the
crew back at my publisher’s offices celebrated the wonderful news. I talked to several other people and was less excited than
any of them. I was calm. I felt nothing. It
was good news.”
M E T RO P O L E
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“I had some problems during the first
few major signings. In fact I had to
memorize the phrase, ‘I don’t have sex
with strangers, but thanks for thinking
of me.’ I only had one man ask how
long it took for him not to be a stranger.
I said, ‘Five years.’ He was outraged
and stomped away.”
“I got off the phone and my hot tea had
arrived. A nice young man brought it in and
I had lost my ability to do math. I ended up
giving him a tip of about twenty-nine dollars and some change. I stared at the
amount, knew it was wrong, and couldn’t
think how to figure the tip. I showed it to
him, apologized, told him I’d just learned I
was on the New York Times bestseller list,
and guessed I was more shaken by the news
than I’d realized. Could he help me figure
out his tip? He obliged and I jokingly said,
‘If you went back with a tip this large
they’d wonder what you’d done up here
besides deliver tea.’ He didn’t think I was
funny.”
Hamilton will be making a 16-city
author tour for Cerulean Sins. She hates to
fly. “I was afraid of flying long before 9/11.
I hate leaving my daughter. I hate leaving
my house. My dogs. My friends. My office.
My everything. How am I handling the
tour? My husband travels with me now,
which keeps me from having full-blown
panic attacks on airplanes anymore. (I’ve
actually only done that once, it wasn’t
pleasant.)” Flying isn’t her only travel fear,
she dislikes just about any mode of transportation so far invented and must convince
herself that people who drive her around a
strange city don’t want to be in an accident
any more than she does.
Watching an occasional television show
about the tours singing stars must endure
has helped her cope. “Eight hours of phone
interviews then a concert that night! Compared to that my schedule is wonderful. So
it could be worse — I could be a singer or
a member of a band. Touring for months or
a year...”
[Hamilton pauses to add that the above is
the most negative she’s allowed her self to
be about the tour in weeks. “The rule is to
only say positive things about the tour,
which means we don’t talk about it much.
But I find that negative talk breeds negative
thinking, so I’m working on it. We have
purchased some books on how to make
travel more healthy and pleasant.”]
Once safely arrived at her destination,
Hamilton draws hundreds of devoted fans.
She loves seeing them and answering their
questions. Their obvious interest in the
character of Edward, led Hamilton to write
a book featuring him, Obsidian Butterfly.
Some fans are a little too involved with the
books, however, and feel plots should
reflect their personal desires. At one point,
there was an Internet-based campaign
encouraging fans to confront the author in
person while she was touring and insist she
comply with their demands.
The unpleasant fans were mostly fans of
the character Richard. They blamed Anita
for the souring of her romance with werewolf Richard. “They apparently wanted the
relationship fixed,” she explains. [Note: If
you haven’t read Narcissus in Chains, a
plot point is about to be revealed.] “The
fans were so persistent in their belief that
Anita had dumped him, that I actually went
back and reread the chapter in question. But
no, no, he had dumped her. I had remembered what I’d written, but these fans
blamed Anita anyway,” she says. “If she’d
treated him better, they said, he wouldn’t
have left. It was the old double standard: if
a woman seeks another man, she’s a whore;
if a man does it, the woman isn’t keeping
him happy at home. I thought that idea
went out in the 1950s, but apparently it is
still alive out there — at least in some
minds.”
Being an attractive woman who writes
very sexy stuff has led to a few predicaments on the road as well. “I had some
problems during the first few major signings. In fact I had to memorize the phrase,
‘I don’t have sex with strangers, but thanks
for thinking of me.’ I only had one man ask
how long it took for him not to be a
stranger. I said, ‘Five years.’ He was outraged and stomped away. Now that my husband travels with me, I don’t have the same
level of problems. I’ve also perfected the
‘stare’, which is only used when people say
something outrageously rude. I also begin
every question and answer session with this
caution, ‘Don’t ask me anything you
wouldn’t ask your best friend in public.’
That heads off most of the odd questions.”
Fan fiction (when amateurs feature characters from books, movies, TV, and popular culture in new stories or other endeavors they create themselves) can be another
problem for authors with dedicated followings. Not for Hamilton. “Fan fiction does
not exist. My understanding, legally, is that
in order to keep my copyright completely
intact, I must not allow anyone to use my
characters for anything. I know the copyright should be protected as long as they
don’t try and make money from my world
or characters, but copyright laws are complicated and I’m cautious by nature. I go
with the advice my lawyer has given on it.
So if people are writing fan fic, enjoy yourselves, but don’t tell me about it. Ever. And
don’t try and sell stories or books set in my
world, with or without my characters.
That’s illegal.”
Hamilton has always considered the
Blake series as open ended and it appears
there will be at least four more novels after
Cerulean Sins. Hamilton signed a deal with
Berkley last fall for an “undisclosed
advance totaling well into seven figures”
that guarantees three more Anita Blake
adventures after the final novel on her old
contract is delivered.
She already knows the ending for the
Meredith Gentry series, however, and
thinks it will consist of “seven or eight”
books total.
For most of people, managing even a
single idea for one book is beyond their talents. Hamilton, however, thinks in “huge
chunks. I’m not sure I’ve ever come up
with a book idea that was a stand-alone
novel.” Since she has plenty of “imaginary
toys” and an expansive universe to “play
with” in her Blake books, she never gets
bored. The multiple genres she dips into
provide more room to play. “The strong
M E T RO P O L E
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horror elements allow me to use the violence level I feel necessary per book. The
series is set up like a mystery series in that
each book stands alone, but unlike some
mystery series there is a great deal of character growth. The people that live in Anita’s
world grow and change just like we do. Not
everyone makes the choices I want them to
make, or even the choices I planned, but it’s
not my life, it’s theirs. I’m not dating anyone in these books, contrary to popular
Internet rumor. It’s Anita’s personal life, not
mine, so it’s her choice in the end. By letting my characters have their heads, we
have ended up in places I never dreamt.”
There’s no problem with keeping to two
series separate, either. “I don’t find that
they influence each other. Merry’s world
and her plot are very separate from Anita. I
approach all my writing as a job. You get up
in the morning. You go to work. You do
lunch. You go back to work. You get done
for the day. You stop work. I carry a notebook with me everywhere in case a brilliant
idea strikes, but I try very hard to leave the
work at the computer. I want to be present
when my child or husband talks to me,
not half-thinking about my imaginary
playmates.”
r
VAMPIRE COCKTAILS
T
ake one or more Sexy Vampires.
(Add additional supernatural hotties
to taste.) Add large dollop of Romance
and/or the Erotic. Pour in historical
details if desired. Combine with choice of
Mystery, Science Fiction, Adventure, etc.
Garnish with pulp.
Beyond Anne Rice and the “Buffy, the
Vampire Slayer” franchise, there are a
number of current mixologists who can
handle the recipe. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s
novels featuring the adventurous,
amorous Count Rogoczy Saint-Germain
currently total 15. Each book (starting
with 1978’s Hotel Transylvania) places
the Count in a different historical era
(ranging from the ancient to the nearmodern). Far from the bloodsucking
stereotype, Saint-Germain is more honorable, humane, and heroic than most of the
humans around him.
P.N. Elrod had her first “The Vampire
Files” novel published in 1990. Vampiredetective Jack Fleming battles bad guys
and sunlight in 1930s Chicago in these
ten novels (Cold Streets is the most
recent.). Tanya Huff’s “Blood” series featuring investigator Victory Nelson inves-
tigator was launched in 1991 and consists
of six books. (The last was published in
1997). Set in modern-day Toronto, Huff’s
mix is horror, romance, and mystery with
only a nod to history. (Vicki’s vampire is
the illegitimate son of Henry VIII.)
Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire
Series”, started in 2001 but it is already
one of the most popular series. She offers
humor, mystery, and a romance with
protagonist/narrator Sookie Stackhouse, a
mind-reading Louisianan waitress with a
vampire boyfriend. The third book, Club
Dead, will be out in May. In Susan Sizemore’s “Laws of the Blood: Companions”
books, the vampires are cops who enforce
the laws of their community. Although the
romance and adventure are there, this one
is more science fictional than most series.
Although they have vampires and
sometimes chill as well as steam, there are
a number of “more romance than
whatever” vampire series. Christine
Feehan (“Dark Guardian”) Sherrilyn
Kenyon (“Dark Hunters”), Nancy Gideon
(“Midnight”, Amanda Ashley, and
Maggie Shayne also have multiple titles
in their vampire romances. Linda Lael
Miller’s vampire Valerian is featured in
two novels. Her vampire Maeve Tremayn
falls in love with a Civil War field doctor
in For All Eternity. Maeve’s daughter,
Kristina, stars in Tonight and Always.
Anther romantic vampire saga writer is
Karen Taylor, who now has six books in
her “The Vampire Legacy” series.
r
HOWARD & HAMILTON & HEROES
R
obert E. Howard didn’t invent
“sword and sorcery.” Like Laurell K.
Hamilton, he took old ingredients and
melded them into a new form.
His barbarian heroes were also a partial
reflection of his personal perception of
reality — dark and fatalistic. The postWorld War I world he lived in was, for
Howard at least, a grim place. Perhaps
civilization itself was doomed. He ended
one of the better Conan stories with the
lines:
Barbarism is the natural state of
mankind. Civilization is unnatural.
It is a whim of circumstance. And
barbarism must always ultimately
triumph.
For Howard, progress and enlightenment did not always trump savagery.
Machismo and bloodied swords were his
fictional answer this perception.
Consciously or not, Laurell K.
Hamilton’s Anitaverse is a reflection of
the author’s perception of her era. Her
created cosmos is neither as relentlessly
stygian nor barbaric as Conan’s universe,
but there are problems to be confronted,
evil that must be defeated, and jobs to be
done. Anita manages to do it all. But
competent women have to deal with their
world emotionally and sexually as well as
heroically. In Anita’s case, she’s grown
from a confused, unsure butt-kicker into a
more self-aware, confident one. She
confronts herself and her feelings almost
as often as she does bad guys. Barbaric
heroes tend not to need the opposite sex,
but Conan — unlike Howard’s other
heroes —is a sexual creature. Mighty
heroes may not need self-awareness any
more than they need love, but, like most
women, Anita does. Anita Blake, a superfeminine heroine, is an embodiment of
modern-day wish-fulfillment just as
Conan was a super-masculine hero who
embodied a not entirely modern wish-fulfillment — but one that’s still a part of the
human psyche.
Anita shares a great deal with Conan:
she is prone to violence, is mortal and
therefore can be killed, she handles her
weapons of choice extremely well, and
possesses a great athletic body (although
not mighty-thewed, huge, or even tall.)
Both start out as naive, come from “common” stock, have no desire to be rulers,
and have (despite their violence and rulebreaking) a code of honor. Neither does
“good” merely to be doing good. Both
have long dark hair and seem to enjoy
wearing outfits that reach mid-thigh.
Of course, there’s a great deal they
don’t share. (Conan hates and fears the
supernatural, for one thing, while Anita is
becoming more and more, a supernatural
creature herself.) But the point is that they
are both heroes (or anti-heroes) who have
fantastic action-packed adventures with
whom the reader can indulge the part of
human composition that longs to thwack
swords and blast away at werewolves.
Neither author challenges the intellect,
but neither insults the reader’s intelligence.
Howard and Hamilton are both
storytellers. Their stories are, first and
foremost, are entertainment that appeals
to a public that always needs at least a
little heroic fantasy in their lives.
r
M E T RO P O L E
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The Essanys:
DAD, MOM
and Michael
THE MICHAEL ESSANY SHOW: IT’S A “FAMILY” THING
R
eality TV shows have become a dime
a dozen. They seem to dominate the
all too many channels we now have on
cable TV — from the MTV-Real-Worldtype shows to the dating shows to the usually horrific, this-person-is-weird-let’sexploit-them shows. But there are in fact,
two shows that stand out as perhaps the
best of the genre and well worth the watching: The Osbournes and The Michael
Essany Show.
The common denominator of these
shows is the strength of a good family —
perhaps not your every day family, but
good family nevertheless. Sure, most dads
don’t hurl large objects at the neighbor’s
house like Ozzy Osbourne does, and certainly most dads don’t chauffeur celebrities
to their home to appear on a talk show in
their living room like Ernest Essany does,
but the parents in both Essany and
Osbourne households are the critical infrastructure of both a good family and a hell
of a good show.
In a recent conversation with Michael
Essany, host of The Michael Essany Show,
he let us in on a little secret. “Most people
don’t realize that I’m not the star of the
show,” says Essany. “I get too much credit.
It’s really a family effort. Not only are my
mother and father involved, but so are
many other relatives — aunts, uncles and
cousins. There’s also my extended family
— my best friend and sidekick, Mike Randazzo and his family. Each and every one
of them plays an integral role in the show’s
success. Without them, there wouldn’t be a
show.”
We interrupted Michael Essany’s busy
schedule of attending classes and finding
new guests and let him sit on the guest sofa
for a change while we sat behind the desk.
METROPOLE: Comparisons are commonly made between you and your peers
Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Conan
O’Brien, and Jay Leno, but I’m surprised
that no one has yet mentioned one of our
favorites, Joe Franklin. Has he been an
influence as well?
MICHAEL ESSANY: Thank you. Yes, he
has been an influence along with some people you haven’t mentioned like Jack Parr or
Walter Cronkite. People who can not only
entertain with jokes and sketches, but who
also know how to listen and know how to
carry on an intelligent conversation —
those are people I admire a great deal.
METROPOLE: Take us through the
process, if you will, of how you booked
your first guests.
ESSANY: It all started with a visit to the
local library. I found contact information
for all the big agencies on the west coast
and the east coast, and I began calling to get
contact information for the agents and the
publicists of the stars that I wanted to book.
That was the easy part — getting the fax
numbers and the mailing addresses. The
hard part was dealing with the overwhelming rejection. The first several hundred
requests were shot down and I responded
with hundreds more and I finally got three
celebrities out of it — but those first three
celebrities set me on the path and I’ve
M E T RO P O L E
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Photos: P.Thompson/FILM MAGIC © 2002 E! Networks. All rights reserved.
A Very Lucky
Michael Essany
Shopping at Sears
with Supermodel
Frederique
continued since. They were Ed McMahon,
Leeza Gibbons, and Timothy Dalton.
It was a great start for me, so despite all
the rejection, I could still say that I was victorious in the end because I at least had that
starting point and it snowballed from there.
METROPOLE: Because the E! show is a
show-about-the-show; people outside Valparaiso don’t get to see The Michael Essany
Show in its entirety. Do you get many
requests for this?
ESSANY: E! has had a lot of comments
from the public wanting to see more of the
talk show that I do — much more of it. I’ve
heard from one of the executives about the
possibility of some point down the road,
occasionally airing one of the shows in its
entirety. If it weren’t for one of the rules of
Local Cable Access — I’m not at liberty to
sell tapes of old shows — but if that were
the case, I’d have made a fortune by now.
I’ve heard from hundreds of people who
want to buy tapes of the whole episode I
shot with Tom Green or the whole episode
of Frederique.
What I’m so happy with is people who
give the show a chance and don’t see it as
some journalist who may find it hokey that
I’m in the Midwest, that I live with my parents, that I do a show out of the living room
— that kind of thing. But the people who
understand know that there’s actually a talk
show that takes place here with a lot of love
and support, good quality content, and fun
guests. There’s a show there and I’m glad
people want to see more of that, because it
makes me feel that everything has worked
out the way I hoped it would.
METROPOLE: We understand that the
show has been picked up for another seven
episodes. Congratulations.
ESSANY: Thank you.
METROPOLE: Who are some of the
guests that you have booked?
ESSANY: Nobody yet. I’m just getting to
work on that now.
METROPOLE: If a genie came along and
granted you five celebrities, who would
they be?
ESSANY: Just five? I would love to have
former President Jimmy Carter. I’d love to
have Sylvester Stallone. I’d love to have
Christopher Walken, Will Smith, and Steve
Martin.
METROPOLE: How much do you let
politics influence the content of your show?
ESSANY: It’s a major influence in my life,
but it doesn’t play a major role on my show
because I’ve always believed that it’s not
my position to use my monologue or my
show as a platform for my own personal
beliefs. I feel that would almost be an abuse
of a position in television. I’m not Bill
O’Reilly or Chris Matthews or one of those
guys.
I’m a political science major at Valparaiso University, and I can tell you with
absolute certainty that this talk show is not
going to dominate my life — I don’t see
doing it when I’m middle aged. I hope by
that point in my life I’ll be in a Jimmy
Carter phase — working for Habitat For
Humanity, doing something less “show
business,” more of a public service. That’s
very important to me.
I don’t have at this point, strong party
ties. I think that what’s best is to pay attention to all the issues and figure out who’s on
the ball, who knows their stuff, and base
your vote on that.
Some of the leadership we have, sometimes it concerns me, and sometimes there
are great ideas that I wish would get more
attention. As far as this war in Iraq is concerned, I know that a lot of people don’t
support it. I know a lot of people think
George Bush is wrong. But I feel this way:
whether you agree with President Bush or
not right now, we’ve already crossed the
line — we’re in a war. I think it’s best to
support this war — not for the sake of
politics or leadership, but for the sake of
thousands of young men and women who
M E T RO P O L E
| 100
are putting their life on the line right now.
They need the support.
If you don’t like Bush, don’t vote for him
next year. But right now let’s make sure
that those young men and women have the
moral they need to fight what can be a
vicious deadly war with weapons
unleashed on them that have not yet been
unleashed on any American soldier, so let’s
be behind them.
METROPOLE: How do feel about the
celebrity voice getting involved in politics?
Do you think that someone like Alec Baldwin’s opinion should count more than, say,
the opinion of some guy in Texas?
ESSANY: Absolutely not. Their opinions
certainly do not count more. I believe that
if Alec Baldwin chooses that he wants to
make a statement, he has every right to. He
has just as much right as the average person
from Texas.
I fell that it’s unfortunate that Alec has
more influence in the media than does that
little guy in Texas, but that doesn’t mean
that Alex shouldn’t exercise his Constitutional right to express his views. I admire
people who take that stand, who take that
position. That’s their own personal choice
and I do not hold it against them, except
that it’s my belief, my own personal belief
that that wouldn’t be right for me. At least
until I’m finished with broadcasting and
then I can be in a more unbiased position
where if I’m going to influence somebody
or I’m going to be in a position of leadership, then that is expected of me. Right
now, I’m supposed to entertain, not inform
or persuade.
METROPOLE: I don’t want to contradict
what you just said, but how do you think
history is going to view this war with Iraq,
as opposed to Desert Storm?
ESSANY: Well I can say this without making it contradictory. I believe, very strongly, that America and her leadership have
matured a great deal since Vietnam. I
believe that the administration has clearly
defined objectives — a clear entry and exit
strategy that will prevent mission creep
from happening. We’re not going to end up
in a quagmire like we did in Southeast Asia.
However, that doesn’t mean that the
leadership — when I say leadership, I’m
not just talking about George Bush, I’m
talking about people in power in Washington, people of influence, people who are
slaves to big oil — I really don’t believe
foresight has come into play in the extent
that it should in terms of formulating
policy.
I think the real war on terror is not being
waged in the nations it should be waged
upon. Iraq is definitely a threat and we will
all be better off once Saddam is removed.
However, will Saddam’s removal end the
threat of terror? Absolutely not. In fact, to
some extent it could increase the likelihood
of terror because there will be terror groups
that want revenge. I believe the way to
combat terror is to cut them off at the
source — which is money. And there is so
much money being funneled to terrorist
organizations through bad-channel venues
from very oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia
— that we really need to tackle.
What we have to do to combat the war
on terror is take the money away from terrorists. They can still hate us, but at least
they won’t have the financial means to do
much more with their hate. And I would say
that beyond that, the greatest leader of this
century will be the one who does not
emphasize politics or military might, but
education. Because it’s going to be education, not only at home, but abroad, that will
make this world a much safer place one
day.
METROPOLE: How might other presidents have handled the situation? Someone
like Kennedy, Carter, or Regan?
ESSANY: Regan was very good at rallying the nation to a cause, to a belief. I
believe all of our past Presidents have
their own strengths and weaknesses. What
I’ve always admired about Lyndon Johnson — and I’m not taking a stand on the
position in Vietnam; I have not done that
publicly — but I will say this: I respect
Lyndon Johnson for sacrificing his own
popularity for what he believed was right.
Johnson believed the domino theory; that
once Vietnam fell, it would just be this
tremendous effect. This red scare would
envelop Southeast Asia and spread like
wildfire. Maybe that wouldn’t have happened, maybe it would’ve. Johnson
believed it would’ve — so he kept the war
in Southeast Asia — he put American
prestige on the line and it cost him everything. It cost him health; it caused him his
popularity, his presidency, but he maintained his integrity and felt he served his
country best by using the power vested in
him in the constitution to be the commander in chief and do what he felt was right.
So I admire people who are willing to put
their country or their beliefs first and not
monitor public opinion polls to do what
should be done.
r
M E T RO P O L E
| 101
LIFE IN THE ADIRONDACKS
When the frozen Hudson River breaks in the spring, it
really “breaks”! Huge chunks of ice, weighing tons and as
big as fifteen feet, are thrown from the water’s pressure
onto the land of neighboring homes. This unfortunate
home owner won’t be moving the family car anytime
soon. And to think, the river sounded like
nature’s music all summer long.