50 Days and Counting

It is officially 50 days until I graduate! How crazy is that? It still doesn't feel quite real, like it's not really going to happen, even though I've already ordered my cap and gown, and started looking at diploma frames.

This year has gone by quickly and slowly, simultaneously. I was worried in September that I wouldn't be ready for this, the final stretch culminating in the closing of the (nearly) final chapter of my education. I have loved college, and at that point wasn't ready to leave, and couldn't even conceive of a me that was ready. I'm both happy, and sad, to say that it is no longer true. I am not only looking forward to the future of a life when I'm not in college, but I almost can't wait for it to arrive. I say almost, because there's still a lot of uncertainty and fear attached to it. I don't know where I'll be, what I'll be doing, or if I'll be successful at it. However, I'm still enjoying the not knowing. I suppose it helps that I'm sticking around for a graduate degree, but even that is more of an expedient to get a better and higher-paying job than a real desire to stay. While I do love Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, it's getting to be time to leave. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm so excited for the opportunity to go to Australia. (While not set in stone, it's looking more and more certain that I'll be there for about 9 months). I think I would have very much regretted not studying abroad later in life, so it's almost fate that I am able to get everything I originally wanted from my college experience so easily.

As of right now though, I have a loose agenda for the final 50. I plan to spend as much time with the people I love from Carnegie Mellon as possible. Who knows when we'll see each other again? My four years needs a proper and happy conclusion, and I'll be damned if I let anything stand in the way. ^_^

4000

The Iraq War has just claimed the life of a 4,000th soldier. This has been all over the news, just as nearly every soldier's death has been marked by overwhelming press coverage. I recently got an email from the College Democrats informing me that there will be a vigil tomorrow night to speak out against the war and honor those 4,000 dead soldiers.

Perhaps I am being callous and unfeeling, and while I do feel for those families who have lost someone due to this war, to be honest I don't particularly care. Soldiers go into the military knowing full well they could be laying down their life for the protection of the United States. Their families know this too. And while we should honor them for doing this so selflessly, I don't think it should be called a tragedy, but perhaps a mistake.

The real tragedy here is that there is one figure that is NEVER reported, and that is far more shocking: the Iraqi civilian body count. It is estimated to be between 82,394 and 89,914. Look at this news from the IBC, just yesterday:

Sunday 23 March: 74 dead

Baghdad: rocket/mortar attacks kill 19 (4 children among them); gunmen shoot 7 dead, Zafaraniya; suicide car bomber kills 5, Shula; roadside bomb kills 1, Mansour; 6 bodies.

Diyala
Abu Saida: gunmen kill policeman and his driver.
Baquba: gunmen kill policeman; mortars kill 2; 2 children (8 and 10 years old) are blown up by bomb in playground.
Nahar Sabah: 15 (most from the same family) die in US air strike.
Muqdadiya: 2 bodies.

Kirkuk
Kirkuk: roadside bomb kills policeman.

Wassit
Kut: 3 killed by mortars; 2 bodies.

Ninewa
Mosul: car bombs kill 2; 4 bodies.

These aren't soldiers, these are children, civilians, workers just trying to go to their jobs. The IBC records the numbers of actual violent deaths, non-combatant only. And I am expected to feel bad for the 4,000th soldier who died doing his job, a job he or she accepted willingly? We don't have a draft in this country, our military is completely voluntary.

Am I sad to hear that 4,000 soldiers have died since 2003? Yes. Especially because I think this war has needed to be over for a while. But my reasons for wanting it to end are not just those, to put it bluntly, selfish reasons that have been bandied around for a couple of years now: the exorbitant cost, the cost of US lives, the lack of justification (now that the WMD thing has been proven false), etc. We invaded a country that was ruled by an historically vicious dictator, but their government was not much worse than any other in their region, and in many ways better than others (Sudan, North Korea anyone?). At least before the country had some semblance of stability. Now it is being torn apart by violent factions that our army doesn't seem to have any control over. Regardless of what we do, whether we leave in a year or remain for 50, the power structure of the Middle East is changed, and I don't think it will be in our favor. The only thing this war has increased are graves.

Bush should not be "express[ing] sorrow" over the US deaths, but for the over 82,000 Iraqis that have been slain and murdered as a result of the chaos we have created in their country, for the 74 killed yesterday, for the however many die tomorrow. As a reference point, the Iraqi count is more than 20 times the US loss in the last 5 years. More than 20 times. It's time our leaders get some perspective....

The Obama Bargain

In a follow-up to my recent post on Barack Obama's speech on race, I'd like to share an article my parents sent me. It is widely known, I think, that I am a liberal daughter of extremely conservative parents. This has, for the most part, deterred me from discussing politics with them, and I'm very careful in what I do say and share; the last thing I want is to create animosity and anger between us, which comes with the territory when people with decided and opposing political views try to discuss them.

However, I sent them the video of Obama's speech anyway, in the hope that they would be affected by it and his candidacy in a greater way. I suppose I had hoped that it would begin a conversation about the election, and reveal their opinion of him more decidedly. (I am already aware of the distaste they both share for Hillary Clinton, and to some lesser extent John McCain). In response, they sent me this article, posted below. Written by Shelby Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford (i.e. a conservative policy think tank), and published in the Wall Street Journal, it takes a very pessimistic and negative view of Obama's campaign.

I was disgusted by it, to the point where I could barely finish it (so beware to the reader). The arguments made about racial iniquities in America have been around for decades, dare I say over a hundred years. These are not false, or misinformed. They have existed, and it is a stain on the country's history that African Americans and other minorities have been treated so shamefully by our system of government, and by its people. However, to use this argument against a black presidential candidate is, in my opinion, despicable. I am certain that his views, if the situation was reversed and Obama did not have the support and momentum he does, would be the same. Steele states that the only reason he is "in his position" in the race is due to his own race. That his heritage is the only reason he has gained so much popular support. He references Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton's campaigns in the 1980s and '90s to establish connection, that like them, "Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance". And yet, the arguments made for why they never made it were racial as well: they didn't make it because they are black, their "position" was solely due to their race. Essentially, he is arguing that black candidates for political positions like president are damned if they have support, and damned if they don't. Regardless, it is only because they are black that it is so.

Steele does not believe that Obama will win the presidency. Obama, he says, as used his race well in "bargaining" for the competitive position he has right now, with his promise of appeasing the "hunger for white innocence" and ending black inferiority. He "hopes to ascend [to power] on the back of [white] gratitude", but ultimately will not prevail. To thus simplify what has so far been an excellent and competitive political campaign in those "black and white" terms belittles Obama in the most offensive way possible. To Steele, he is not talented, appealing, intelligent, or wise, but simply a sly black man vying for the favor of a racist white America.

The historic nature of his candidacy is what is most attractive about him, Steele states. However, he overlooks a crucial point, one that I also find offensive and disparaging. Hillary Clinton is also an historic candidate, and yet the fact that she is a woman running in a country where gender discrimination is very real is never given a thought. She is dumped unceremoniously with the rest of the 2008 candidates because she is white. Apparently to Steele, the nuances of race are the only ones that matter.

In one aspect I do concede to Steele: Obama is on occasion lacking in what he calls a "galvanizing political idea". He can be rather vague about his tangible plans for acting upon the changes he seeks to make, and is sometimes even ambiguous about what those changes should be. However, I would like to believe that the reason he is supported despite these failings is because of his incredible ability to inspire us as Americans, not as white Americans or as black Americans or as Asian or Hispanic or Native Americans. There is a choice we make, to remain rooted to the past as Steele seems to be, with his negativity and pessimism towards the motivations of our nation's citizens (not just in this article, but in his many published works), or to embrace the potential of a future where our differences unite us, not divide us. We cannot hope to solve the problems of racial injustice in this country when we still allow ourselves to blame each other for it. We need to reconcile those problems, not chain ourselves to them.

Barack Obama has never been appealing to me because he is black, in just the same way as Hillary Clinton is not because she is a woman. I base my support as purely as I can on the merit of each candidacy. That is how I feel Obama has run his campaign thus far, addressing race only when it was completely necessary. Maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I feel Steele is sorely mistaken in his assessment of Obama's campaign, and hope to see him proven wrong.

The Obama Bargain

By SHELBY STEELE
March 18, 2008; Page A23

Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race. Possibly she was acting as Hillary Clinton's surrogate. Or maybe she was simply befuddled by this new reality -- in which blackness could constitute a political advantage.

But whatever her motives, she was right: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.

The novelty of Barack Obama is more his cross-racial appeal than his talent. Jesse Jackson displayed considerable political talent in his presidential runs back in the 1980s. But there was a distinct limit to his white support. Mr. Obama's broad appeal to whites makes him the first plausible black presidential candidate in American history. And it was Mr. Obama's genius to understand this. Though he likes to claim that his race was a liability to be overcome, he also surely knew that his race could give him just the edge he needed -- an edge that would never be available to a white, not even a white woman.

How to turn one's blackness to advantage?

The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.

This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.

His actual policy positions are little more than Democratic Party boilerplate and hardly a tick different from Hillary's positions. He espouses no galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future." And he has failed to say how he would actually be a "unifier." By the evidence of his slight political record (130 "present" votes in the Illinois state legislature, little achievement in the U.S. Senate) Barack Obama stacks up as something of a mediocrity. None of this matters much.

Race helps Mr. Obama in another way -- it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America's tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America's redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?

Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny. And, as the Clintons have discovered, it is hard in the real world to run against a candidate of destiny. For many Americans -- black and white -- Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority. So the Clintons have found themselves running more against America's very highest possibilities than against a man. And the press, normally happy to dispel every political pretension, has all but quivered before Mr. Obama. They, too, have feared being on the wrong side of destiny.

And yet, in the end, Barack Obama's candidacy is not qualitatively different from Al Sharpton's or Jesse Jackson's. Like these more irascible of his forbearers, Mr. Obama's run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson were "challengers," not bargainers. They intimidated whites and demanded, in the name of historical justice, that they be brought forward. Mr. Obama flatters whites, grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude. Two sides of the same coin.

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don't know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . ." And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a "blank screen."

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

Mr. Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 2007).

Young Talent Spotlight

This is a rather strange topic for me to write about, because it's about a person. A little-known person too, and one I've never met. I know if she googles her name and finds my post, it would be probably weird but gratifying. Don't worry, I'm not a stalker, I just really like your music!

To those who are unfamiliar, you should check out Julia Easterlin, an 18-year-old student at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. Her music is fantastic, from what I've heard so far: jazz with a very unique sound, subtly rock-influenced, and her voice is phenomenal (and I seldom praise female voices). My brother introduced me to her, and I'm really glad he did. It's rare for me to find an up-and-coming artist before they hit it big, and I think she will soon. Her early and great proficiency makes me feel old and unaccomplished, but I still appreciate it, and look forward to hearing more from this talented young musician.

Speechless

Obama's speech will go down in history as one of the best modern speeches about America's ongoing racial divide and the failure to address the roots of it.
- Dallas Morning News

For a 40 minute speech, my mind didn't wander. I watched it mesmerized by his power to capture the essence of a complex and controversial subject. He stated in more eloquent terms everything I had previously thought about the racial divide in America. He just gets it. And what's more, he gets how to convey it. He managed to take a divisive issue and talk about it rationally, calmly, and thoroughly. Notice how the crowd is silent for nearly the duration of the speech. His speeches make you speechless, and that is why he needs to be president. If he can connect with Americans as he does so well, unite them in the way he has his entire campaign, maybe we have a chance at solving the problems that plague us. Maybe we have a chance at moving the country forward. Maybe we finally have a chance.

Waiting for Godot

This was my last spring break. Well, undergraduate anyway, I think. Things get confuddled when one is planning on studying abroad. I spent a few days in Toronto, during which time I saw Waiting for Godot, a very famous play by Samuel Beckett. (Incidentally, I loved Toronto, and could very easily see myself living there, the cold and snow notwithstanding).

I loved the play. It really fit my current mood, because I've been in a real funk the past few weeks, and don't know why. To be honest, I've kind of been in a funk for a while, but it seemed to be more severe recently. If you haven't seen it or read it, you must. It is absurdist, so don't worry, it's supposed to be that way. And by that way, I mean confusing, untraditional, and lacking in the common features you usually see in a plot. In watching it performed you really get the full weight of its meaning: the repetition and futility of life. While seated, you are intrigued and yet bored by the character's interplay, which I think is how it's meant to be. The conversation is dull and goes over the same things again and again (e.g. "Go-Go: I'm going to leave. Di-Di: You can't. Go-Go: Why not? Di-Di: Because we're waiting for Godot!" repeats many many times throughout both acts.) The time moves slowly, and the scene doesn't change. There are few characters. You feel the full weight of their own boredom and the struggle to find things to pass the time. In the end, there is no resolution. It is readily apparent that both acts (essentially the same in structure and content) form a representative sample of the whole of their lives. Nothing changes, Godot never comes. They continue waiting.

Most interpretations of the play say that the two main characters, Estragon and Vladimir (Go-Go and Di-Di) represent all of humanity. The constant struggle for them to wait for Godot, someone who will never arrive, can mirror the futility of life itself, the fact that we wait for nothing, because it never comes, whatever that nothing may be. Godot is often considered to represent God, which makes sense given much of the dialogue in the play, but Beckett has said this is an incorrect interpretation, and that he never meant it to be so.

I found the play to be tragic, depressing, but wonderfully done and exactly fitting a very pessimistic mood, most likely brought on by other factors I won't mention here. The theater we saw it at was great, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, deep in the Distillery District. The audience for this play was less than 30 people, and we were front and center, about 10 feet from the actors. It made for an enveloping experience.

Don't fret for me and my mood, however, if you would do so. I think that a lot of the factors that were contributing to it will (hopefully) go away soon. Then I can go back to being my chipper self.

100 Films

I've been searching for a good list of the the best films ever made. There are many, but I think I'm going to reference the American Film Institute's. It was created from a poll of 1500 artists and other members of the film industry, so I'll take it as a pretty good averaging of what people think of as the best movies ever made. I've looked at Time's list, imdb's, and others, but I feel like the AFI's is the most representative of qualified opinion, and I just decided to go with it (sometimes my choices are made arbitrarily, ah well). There is a reason behind all of this, of course. I'm going to try to watch all of the ones I have never seen on it. I feel that it's important to not just see movies, but see the best ones. If I'm going to spend 2 hours sitting in front of my tv, I might as well infuse that time with as much culture, history, emotion, and great acting as possible. And when I see myself watching tv as much as I do (more than I would like, but it IS hard to get away from), I want to do something productive with it, to stop myself from watching the trash so many people are addicted to (Family Guy, while funny, is by no means something I wish to spend more time watching). So I'm going to start renting movies from the library, if they have them, or getting them from The Dreaming Ant, a great dvd rental place on Craig Street that I love.

Rather than taking the list of best picture winners and watching them, I decided to go with these lists primarily because there's a lot of overlap, and many critics believe that many of the best films never won, or in some cases were even nominated, for the award. Citizen Kane wasn't, and it is considered to be one of the most influential films ever made. Unfortunately, the list is made of American films only. One day I might delve into foreign film more deeply, and I truly love many a foreign movie (Water or Spirited Away, anyone?) but then I think I would spend all my time on my couch. They've also updated this list since 1998, when it was first made, but I think I'll just stick to this one. Otherwise it gets far too complicated. We'll see how far I get.

As it is, I think I've already seen about half of the films on this list (go me!). Now to seek out the rest. The one's I have yet to see are in bold. One of the worst things, though, is that I've seen bits of far more than what's shown. But because I haven't seen them the whole way through, I haven't counted them. Ah well. I can even make this more fun, and see if I can get any friends to join me.

1	Citizen Kane	1941
2	Casablanca	1942
3	The Godfather	1972
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
6	The Wizard of Oz	1939
7	The Graduate	1967
8	On the Waterfront	1954
9	Schindler's List	1993
10	Singin' in the Rain	1952
11	It's a Wonderful Life	1946
12	Sunset Boulevard	1950
13	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957
14	Some Like It Hot	1959
15	Star Wars	1977
16	All About Eve	1950
17	The African Queen	1951
18	Psycho	1960
19	Chinatown	1974
20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975
21	The Grapes of Wrath	1940
22	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968
23	The Maltese Falcon	1941
24	Raging Bull	1980
25	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	1982
26	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	1964
27	Bonnie and Clyde	1967
28	Apocalypse Now	1979
29	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	1939
30	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	1948
31	Annie Hall	1977
32	The Godfather Part II	1974
33	High Noon	1952
34	To Kill a Mockingbird	1962
35	It Happened One Night	1934
36	Midnight Cowboy	1969
37	The Best Years of Our Lives	1946
38	Double Indemnity	1944
39	Doctor Zhivago	1965
40	North by Northwest	1959
41	West Side Story	1961
42	Rear Window	1954
43	King Kong	1933
44	The Birth of a Nation	1915
45	A Streetcar Named Desire	1951
46	A Clockwork Orange	1971
47	Taxi Driver	1976
48	Jaws	1975
49	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	1937
50	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	1969
51	The Philadelphia Story	1940
52	From Here to Eternity	1953
53	Amadeus	1984
54	All Quiet on the Western Front	1930
55	The Sound of Music	1965
56	M*A*S*H	1970
57	The Third Man	1949
58	Fantasia	1940
59	Rebel Without a Cause	1955
60	Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981
61	Vertigo	1958
62	Tootsie	1982
63	Stagecoach	1939
64	Close Encounters of the Third Kind	1977
65	The Silence of the Lambs	1991
66	Network	1976
67	The Manchurian Candidate	1962
68	An American in Paris	1951
69	Shane	1953
70	The French Connection	1971
71	Forrest Gump	1994
72	Ben-Hur	1959
73	Wuthering Heights	1939
74	The Gold Rush	1925
75	Dances with Wolves	1990
76	City Lights	1931
77	American Graffiti	1973
78	Rocky	1976
79	The Deer Hunter	1978
80	The Wild Bunch	1969
81	Modern Times	1936
82	Giant	1956
83	Platoon	1986
84	Fargo	1996
85	Duck Soup	1933
86	Mutiny on the Bounty	1935
87	Frankenstein	1931
88	Easy Rider	1969
89	Patton	1970
90	The Jazz Singer	1927
91	My Fair Lady	1964
92	A Place in the Sun	1951
93	The Apartment	1960
94	Goodfellas	1990
95	Pulp Fiction	1994
96	The Searchers	1956
97	Bringing Up Baby	1938
98	Unforgiven	1992
99	Guess Who's Coming to Dinner	1967
100	Yankee Doodle Dandy	1942

Why don't people blog anymore?

Seriously. I'm usually fairly regular about it, once a week or so, partly because I like using my blog as a means of connecting with people I see rarely, and partly to keep a history of what I've been up to, to reference in the future (at least, that would be an option). However, much of what I love about blogs has nothing to do with mine, but with those I try to read. I enjoy hearing other people's thoughts on a variety of subjects, and usually it's a treat to read something well-written and thought out. But recently most of the blogs I peruse regularly have gone off the radar, and nothing has been published in months. It's sad, but true, that I miss these regular updates, even from people I see several times a week. If they don't update now, what's going to happen when I don't see them everyday? This has already started happening, and will be even more significant in a few months.... Graduation is just 73 days away, people! Let's stay connected. Indulge my voyeuristic tendencies! Update! Update more often!!

That is all. :)

No Snow Can Stop Us!

Enjoy my pictures from the most recent Soundbytes weekend tour. We went back to my hometown (for the 4th time) to sing at my high school, and the next day we performed at Cornell University. Despite the awful driving weather (it took 8 hours to drive what is normally 5 1/2), good times were had by all.