BD is back from the war. With an artificial leg. He's staying with an old friend while he's in DC for a short trip. Mark is gay. He makes a joke that alludes to BD's disability.
BD cuts him short.
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So why can't Mark joke about BD's new leg?
Power.
As a member of a group labeled "Disabled" BD is now seen as weak, as less capable, as different from the norm. Mark, as an abled bodied male, is part of the more powerful group - the group that doesn't need help, that isn't pitied, that doesn't have to talk to potential employers about accommodations. His joke calls attention to the difference between them, indirectly makes the point that Mark has more power.
BD emphasizes this when he says it's not ok for Mark to joke about his leg, "Not from you, from my peers."
Because the peers are part of the same out group. As members of an outgroup, they can actually make up their own 'in' group - people with disabilities. In the group, they can joke. It's a way out groups have always coped with their out status. Sigmund Freud wrote that humor was a way to express criticism that was "difficult so long as [it is] direct, and possible only along circuitous paths." Charles Gruner writes that, "Humorous situations can be best understood by knowing who wins what, and who loses what."
So BD turns it around.
"Sorry, Let's tell gay jokes instead. See if that helps."
Now BD is in the in group and Mark is in the out group. Now BD has more power than Mark.
When you hear people tell jokes, particularly jokes that are at someone's expense, think about "who wins what, and who loses what." Why did they tell that joke?
1. Paul Bauer has introduced an ordinance that would, among other things, require police to check immigration status of people they stop for traffic violations and to develop a working agreement with Homeland Security. This comes about because Anchorage has made itself a "Sanctuary City."
2. Hispanic civic organizations are strongly opposed because they believe they will be singled out as well as other people who 'look' foreign or have accents.
3. The Assembly Sub Committee had testimony from the following:
Paul Bauer, the Assembly member who introduced the ordinance, had 30 minutes to present a slide show.
Municipal Attorney said their analysis did not find constitutional problems, though there might be some problems with separation of powers issues - the assembly makes laws and the administration implements the laws. So if the ordinance would tell the police how they had to do their job, that might raise problems.
The Municipal Prosecutor had several issues
the negative effect it would have on police-community relations - that it would reduce trust of government and thus tips people give the police which is an important part of crime prevention and investigation
the effect on reporting domestic violence - women would not report their sponsors for fear of losing sponsor plus other issues
workload for his office
Chief of Police Heun said the would continue doing what they do now. If they stop someone they ask for a driver's license. If the person doesn't have one they call it in to check and talk to them to see if we have probable cause to detain them. We have a functional arrangement with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Robin Bronin, Alaska Immigration Justice Project (my notes aren't too good at this point, she reiterated points about impact on community and also about domestic violence I believe.)
Angelina Estrada-Burney from Bridge Builders - Their organization's board has unanimously voted to urge the Assembly to vote no on this.
Margaret Stock -this was by far the most impressive testimony. She introduced herself as a conservative Republican. I shouldn't be amazed anymore when I meet someone from Anchorage who turns out to be a nationally recognized expert on a topic. In this case - checking the web after the work session - I've found all sorts of things about her. From ilw.com:
Margaret Stock is an associate professor of law in the Department of Law, United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.; an attorney; and a lieutenant colonel in the Military Police Corps.
She had a number of problems with the ordinance.
The term sanctuary city is not a legal term, but one created on talk shows and blogs
The Immigration Reform Law Institute that is pushing this 'ideological experiment' is using Anchorage as a Guinea Pig but if Anchorage gets sued, they won't help with the legal costs, and they are proud that Paul Bauer has introduced their ordinance.
Generally went through a list of practical implications of this type of ordinance, written, she alleged, 'by people with no practical experience with immigration law'
the illegal alien lists used are extremely unreliable
causes people who are not a problem to be reported
lawsuits will result as people are wrongly detained
The Cost Benefit analysis is way off - it will be a very expensive ordinance because of future litigation
I've said in previous posts that both my parents were immigrants to the US and that my grandparents were unable to get visas to the US and perished in Nazi Germany. So I'm come to this with a bias.
I did get a chance to talk to Paul Bauer alone after the meeting. He talks calmly, politely, and reasonably. He has a background in the security field and said he was stationed in Berlin for a while in the military and they gathered information from East Berlin. So it is quite believable that security is a high priority item for him, for which some individual liberties are legitimately sacrificed. And at some point I might agree with that general principle, but I suspect that on a continuum from 1 to 10, he would be ready to sacrifice liberties at 1 or 2, while I would be waiting for 8 or 9. He also talked about prevention - that he wanted to deal with gangs before they became an issue and the same here. Even if illegal immigration is not a problem yet in Anchorage - and everyone agreed that we don't have very accurate numbers - he wants to get ahead of the curve.
But his arguments about national security [he started with a slide of Al Qaeda terrorists] seem to be contradicted by other parts of his argument, particularly when he emphasized that 50% of the "illegals" were Mexican and another large percentage were of other Central/South American heritage. I don't think that we are worried about Mexican being terrorists.
I don't really understand why people get so emotional about immigration. All non-Native Americans were once immigrants. There is some primal fear that is at work here. I can't help but believe that for many it is the fear of 'the other.' This is legislation that the blatant racists can get behind and say is about "obeying the law," not race. Just because sites like Alaska Pride support this law, doesn't make it racist, but it doesn't make me feel more comfortable.
If you check websites on immigration, clearly this is a hot button issue. Is immigration the 'gay marriage' of the 2008 election? Is this one of the Republican wedge issues? Is this ordinance and the attacks on Begich over the budget part of the conservative offensive to tarnish the Deomocrats' most successful politician?
Christian Heppinstall has been writing, directing, and acting in a live soap opera- Midnight Soapscum:Porn! It was supposed to be a playful, but serious exploration of the porn industry and Christian did a lot of reading and websurfing in preparation. The porn studio was going to do all the Shakespeare plays as porn. We were out of town for the first two episodes. We caught the third episode, but have missed the next two and finally Saturday night got to see episode #6. It was held at OutNorth, beginning in the art gallery with music by Tom Begich and friends. The ADN wrote (and I can't say it any more succinctly):
"Queer Space will attempt to capture 2,500 years of gay and lesbian drama, poetry, essays and short stories in a single night of theater this weekend at Out North, culminating with a melodramatic, absurdist soap opera about people trapped in or happily employed by the porn industry.
"It is a straight-friendly celebration of inspiring and funny literature from the Greeks through today that concludes each night with Alaska's most contemporary gay and straight performance work, 'Midnight Soapscum: Porn!'?" said Christian Heppinstall, the director of both shows.
The cast at the opening of the episode.
Thirteen performers will enact works by the likes of Sappho, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Whitman and Maupin, followed by the sixth episode of a live soap opera that includes a riotous hostage crisis, space aliens, a post-operation tryst between a transsexual and hermaphrodite from Transylvania, and far too much smooching."
Queer Space was 13 black clad actors sitting in a circle on a black stage The readers alternately stood and each with passion, wit, humor, and all with considerable talent and great timing read short passages from the writers spanning over 2000 years. The passages variously praised, described, lamented, and condemned love between same sex partners.
Soapscum never quite lived up to its promise to seriously consider the impact of pornography on society, though the relationships, the lies (Narcisso really didn't have a wife and ten children it turned out), the emotions, the money, the titillation, and the press' fixation on celebrity and various other consequences and impacts of porn were there on the surface as the scenes rapidly changed. The quality of the acting was impressive and it was never dull. Considering that Broadway plays spend a lot of time on the road working out the kinks, and that Christian has been writing the episodes as the run proceeds, with little time for the ensemble of actors to rehearse before the performances, it was quite good. And considering how much a Broadway play costs, I'm sure the value here (quality of script and performance/time+money spent) is considerably greater than any Broadway show.
Things went by so fast, I really don't remember where the aliens came from, though I guess the point was that other people were not necessary for sex if you have the right technology (they had a pleasure ball, that produced spectacular orgasm when you held it.)
I'm not sure if this clip from a previous episode that I got from Youtube proves that a) the live show just can't be captured on video tape or b) the show, isolated from the whole environment of the theater, is pretty thin. All I can say is that we enjoyed the two episodes we saw, and I stand by what I said above - this is a a rough draft that needs the kinks worked out and some of the social commentary originally envisioned to be slipped in.
It's May in Anchorage, so the sun was still high as we went into the Performing Arts Center at 7:45pm tonight.
Mr. Sedaris was in the lobby signing books before (and after) the show.
We went in as the auditorium was filling up. Bede Trantina, the program director of KSKA, the local NPR station that sponsored the evening, whose cheery voice has greeted Anchorage at 9am on Fridays since about 1978 with "Yipee, it's Friday" got loud and sustained applause as she walked out to introduce Mr. Sedaris. And he got a rip roaring greeting when he walked out. And then he started reading. He is funny, and he sounds just like he does on the radio. But... Authors on book tours do readings in book stores. It's usually free. Somehow I thought he'd be actually talking to us.
Alaska is a red state. Our Supreme Court had to rule that the state had to pay health benefits for same sex domestic partners of state employees despite a Constitutional Amendment saying marriage is between one man and one woman only, so gays couldn't get married to get the benefits. And an advisory vote last month to prohibit the benefits through a Constitutional Amendment did pass, though not by an overwhelming majority. And it's only advisory. All the poeple at the PAC tonight must have voted no. The full house was right with Sedaris as he talked about being asked - not just by the girl friend in the trailer park of his pot supplier in North Carolina, but also by so called liberals - which of you 'is the woman?" ["Were both men, that's what homosexual means."] But he then went on a riff to describe the 'male' and 'female' roles his partner Hugh performs.
Eventually he stopped reading and talked about his recent trip to Japan where he 'finished' smoking, studied Japanese, and got a haircut. And he plugged the book The Zombie Survival Guide (Yeah, go ahead and click, it's a fun website) that he explained was written by someone he doesn't know, a Max Brooks. Most Zombie survival strategies, he told us, 'are just common sense." And then he answered questions.
I'm still mulling over the reading thing. After all, he's a writer, so reading his work sort of makes sense. But I'm guessing that he's scratching his head about us paying money to hear him read too. He did say one reason he stopped smoking was so he could stay in the $700 hotel rooms people put him up in. He thought it was kind of crazy but he wasn't going to argue since they were paying. Someone else told me it was also a fundraiser for KSKA, so it's ok. And he did some talking too.
"This is a live action soap opera with a new episode going up every two weeks. Come find out what straight boy Rex and Gay boy Basil are going to do when the evil Oleg Smirnov and his dreaded mother get the addicted to drugs and force them to work in the Porn Industry!!!!"
Christian, a former student of mine, and the director, writer, and an actor in the play, told me it was going to be a comedic look at the porn industry. We missed the first two episodes, but episode 3 was fun, Though any commentary on the porn industry was pretty light. The actors were great and we had a good time.
My daughter recently told me she saw a lot better theater and film in Anchorage than she sees in Seattle. Instead of having 30 choices every night, we have 3-10 (not counting regular movie theaters) or so. Still more than one can do. But of that number, most are pretty good. And often the venues are relatively small, so you are right there face to face with the actors.
Thursday, we saw Tony nominated Lisa Kron in 2.5 Minute Ride at Out North. The room holds, maybe, 100 people. We tooks seats in the front row. A one-actor piece, three spots on the stage, three different intertwined stories going on. A mock slide show of her trip to Auschwitz with her dad and the Dutch woman who'd lived with them when she was a high school exchange student; an annual family trip to a big amusement park in Indiana; and her brother's wedding. Ultimately it was a tribute to her dad who was sent alone to the US from Germany as a 15 year to escape the Nazis. Since my mother came to the US alone in 1939 as a 17 year old, there was a lot for me to relate to. And I'd had many of the same reactions while wandering through Buchenwald, that she had at Auschwitz. She played her father to tell one story of a kid named Lohman, the only other kid in his school class not to join Hitler Youth. Her dad wondered, "If I weren't Jewish, would I have the courage to say no like Lohman?" A question for us all to ponder carefully today.
Friday we saw Little Shop of Horrors at Mad Myrna's. A tiny stage, in a back room of a gay bar that was crowded with a little over 100 seats, a bar, a four piece band, and a place to store the grown Audrey II until she was needed on stage.. But we have great local talent, and Christian Heppinstal pulled together a great production. All the actors became their roles, with highlights by the dentist and both Audrey IIs (the puppeteer who was inside the giant plant and danced with real soul, and voice of Audrey who sang with real soul.)
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