Friday's column: Warmer weather ushers in cell phone humility
Something happened Thursday morning, when the sun came out and the first warm, spring breezes nuzzled into the tulip planters downtown. Chicago's seasons change without warning, rhyme or reason, without anything so pedestrian as a transition period or a gradual warming trend. One day it's winter, same as it's been since October, and the next day the banks' time-and-temp displays are racing each other to get to 70 degrees.
And, with this sea change -- an event every bit as distinct, though nowhere near as predictably scheduled, as the switching on of Buckingham Fountain -- comes a turning point in the city's collective mood.
Relief washes over us. The siege has ended. We can smile and laugh more easily.
Maybe it's biological: a sort of collective, low-grade case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or, possibly, it's evolution at work: a dose of patience and goodwill just in time for the start of road construction season.
But whatever the cause, our annual burst of fine weather euphoria arrived yesterday.
'I don't want to be That Guy.'
On the Brown Line, extra-crowded due to the ironically named "Capacity Expansion Project," standing passengers selflessly rearranged themselves to make room for a few more. And at each stop, they piled out onto the platform to allow for easier departures. Rumor had it that a seat had been given up for a pregnant woman, though this could not be independently confirmed.
The thing that everyone noticed, though, the thing that was really notably different on Thursday morning, was the quiet. Strangely and suddenly, cell phone conversation volume had been dialed down to near zero.
A middle-age woman, bragging to a friend about the big award her previously-presumed-to-be-a-slacker son had just won, looked around and realized she was the only commuter in the entire car using the can-you-hear-me-now? tone required for extended phone-on-train chatter and quickly decided she should hang up.
She took only a few more seconds -- just long enough to point out that her ex-husband, who had never shown any faith in, or offered any encouragement of the kid's obviously artistic temperament, should not be invited to the awards banquet -- and then declared, "You know what? I'm on the L and I'm being rude. I'd better go."
For a moment, there was the possibility that a round of spontaneous applause might break out, but no one wanted to be sarcastic and so, instead, everyone just smiled.
An electronic trill soon rippled across this smooth surface of benevolence and well-being and an embarrassed-looking young guy quickly grabbed for his phone.
He asked a couple of brief questions to his caller -- Was it OK to cancel lunch today? Could they meet up sometime this weekend instead? -- and then, following the example of the older woman, he said, "Let me call you later. I'm on the Brown Line right now and I don't want to be That Guy."
Kinder, gentler, warmer
The need to talk on a cell phone would not seem to be a seasonal thing.
It is, presumably, just as necessary to announce in a semi-public way that you are on your way, running late, unsure of directions and/or viciously hung over in the springtime as it is in the fall. And while my understanding of the physics involved is admittedly rather limited, there does not appear to be any marked improvement in sound quality or signal transmission that would make it easier to communicate without shouting or repeating yourself.
Instead, it's simply a question of desire. Perspective, even.
No longer in survival mode, finally releasing muscles that have long been clenched against the wind, it is possible to take a more charitable view of humanity. The shared sense of having come through something -- even, this year, to have gotten off easy -- creates a certain atmosphere of conviviality.
It is, to put it plainly, easy to be nice when you are not cold, miserable and depressed.
Parties for hosting, etc.
Christmas is reputed to be the most wonderful time of the year, but everyone knows that no quantity of spiked egg nog and sugar cookies can really make up for the gnawing, consumerist anxiety associated with attempting to buy gifts for your in-laws.
For my money, this is it: the brief period when things are as excellent as they can possibly be.
So we have to hold on to this moment, when warm weather pleasures -- Mark the demographically appropriate choice: Italian ice, ice cream cone, frappuccino -- are all the more thrilling for having been nearly forgotten, and warm weather complaints, like hair-spoiling humidity, are virtually impossible to imagine.
It will pass, of course. Entirely too quickly.
But for the next few weeks, the city will be shedding its old skin and celebrating its new colors.
Having been an artsy-fartsy kid myself, I'm a big one for arts education in the schools. So I get invited sometimes to check out programs, like the Franklin Fine Arts magnet school and the Ravinia-sponsored Music Discovery Program.
Yesterday, I went to Cleveland Elementary, on the North Side, to visit Virginia Oviedo's 2nd grade class, where musician Tricia Sebastian has been teaching the kids all kinds of cool stuff using songs and instruments from around the world.
It's the sort of thing that sounds ridiculously PC and silly when described on paper -- yes, they learned a song in the Miriam Mir language from the Torres Strait Islands and a dance that celebrates Australian Harmony Day -- but is actually totally inspiring and cool in practice.
The kids, almost all of whom are Latino, were dressed in their quasi-uniforms of white shirts and navy blue pants. When I arrived, the kids were sort of squirmy and whiny in the way of seven year olds around the world. (News flash: little girls still make those foldy paper fortune teller things.) But when Ms. Tricia arrived and began to tune her guitar, they got impressively quiet.
And, when they started singing, it was amazing to see how the kids had total command of lyrics and hand movements that they'd learned months ago. Kids who might, in the context of a math class or a reading lesson, be convinced that they're not smart or can't learn, were busting out with total confidence and joy.
I'm a total sucker for this sort of thing, I know, but, as the kids were busy choreographing dance steps to a Brazilian song, I was thinking that maybe this is precisely the sort of stuff we shouldn't be eliminating.
If you haven't already seen it, check out this scary New York Times story about how schools are killing everything other than reading and math in order to keep up with No Child Left Behind requirements.
Where's the special interest teach-them-Miriam-Mir lobby when you really need it?
The challenge of modern life is the problem of too much choice. There is, of course, no reason that there should be 9 million different types of faucets for a kitchen sink. But, since there are, in fact, at least that many, it suddenly seems necessary to examine and evaluate them all. Because surely my kitchen sink requires the best of all possible faucets.
Someone told us that the first six months of marriage represented the "honeymoon" phase, while the second six months would involve fighting like cats and dogs. Or cat and dog, anyway.
But I guess we're just not fighters generally, so the over-cute and extra-harmonious honeymoon phase has continued, even into the throes of home remodeling.
Flush with the success (OK, non-disaster) of our kitchen project, we've broadened our horizons and our relationship with the fabulous handyman, and, even as we wait for the counter top to be completed, we're moving into two bathrooms and a totally new paint job.
Weeks from now, this will probably seem like extreme folly, or at least overconfidence. But right now it's ridiculously exciting.
And so, in this moment of extreme positivity, I've been thinking about what's been working so well. (It will be so amusing to read this when it all goes to hell. ed.)
So here's my marital-wisdom-as-accumulated-in-eight-months:
1. When disagreeing on something (i.e., "that tile is hideous"; "I really like it"), there's no point in repeating yourself more than once. There are 400,000 varieties of tile out there, so it is not necessary to choose a style that one of us loathes. But there's no point in trying to change the other person's mind about it.
2. If you don't care, don't fight. R. has something against stainless steel sinks. I don't understand it, frankly, since they seem pretty harmless, but I also have no strong feelings about sinks whatsoever. So we're getting cast iron.
3. Sometimes, the best response to a ridiculous statement ("I'm thinking about purple for the bedroom walls. Do you think that would work?") is the time-tested, "S'pose so." It's so much more civil than, "No, absolutely not, you idiot."
"I like this place because it's nostalgic," state Sen. James Meeks (I-Chicago) says as he settles into a dark, undersized booth at Miller's Pub on South Wabash. "It's not a new, trendy place."
Meeks, dressed in a sharp pin-striped suit, orders a virgin pina colada and looks over the menu.
It's the day before the primary election, and Meeks, who is running unopposed for the Democratic Party nomination for the Senate seat he currently holds as an independent, seems to have all the time in the world. His fancy cell phone, with the wireless earpiece, has been switched to "silent" and stashed away. The coterie of aides and staff members that often surrounds him is nowhere to be seen.
But this low-key arrival belies Meeks' current state of mind. He is not focused on his slam-dunk chances of re-election.
He is thinking, in fact, about entering a completely different electoral contest, one that could change the face of Illinois politics for years to come.
Meeks, 49, the powerfully connected pastor of the South Side's 20,000-member Salem Baptist Church, is planning to run for governor.
He's ready to start circulating petitions that will put his name on the ballot as an independent candidate.
"On March 28, I can start putting petitions on the street," Meeks says. "And, so far, I've had nothing to deter me from putting petitions on the street on March 28."
State election law makes Tuesday the first day when third-party candidates such as Meeks can begin circulating nominating petitions for the fall election. He needs a minimum of 25,000 signatures by June 26 and must run with an entire slate of candidates for lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and treasurer.
Theme: 'At the moral center'
Saying that Gov. Blagojevich and the state's Democratic-controlled House and Senate are "morally wrong" for having failed to deliver school funding changes and other reforms important to the African-American community, Meeks says he views his candidacy as a way to bring the black vote, often taken for granted by Democrats, into focus as an important "swing" constituency.
"Not one time has the governor called together African-American leaders and said, 'What do you need?' " Meeks says, and adds that, unless this happens soon, he will go forward with his gubernatorial bid.
Meeks can hedge his bets until the "point of no return" on June 26, when he would surrender his Senate seat in order to be placed on the November ballot as an independent candidate for governor.
From then on, he says, he would launch a statewide campaign with a "moral center" theme.
"You'll have Judy Baar Topinka, who believes in abortion and gay rights . . . and Rod Blagojevich, who believes in abortion and gay rights," says Meeks, who opposes both. "Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I'm their guy. I have their philosophy."
Meeks, who grew up in Englewood and was president of the Harper High School class of 1974, says his understanding of Illinois politics has changed enormously -- "it's night and day" -- since he defeated Democrat William Shaw in 2002 in the state's 15th senatorial district.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand," he says, quoting Frederick Douglass. "And the African-American constituency, we have not placed a demand on the Democratic Party."
Meeks cites the $40 million World Shooting Complex in downstate Sparta as an example of a project that received state funds because its supporters are perceived to be swing voters.
"Three hundred million dollars went to Republican pet projects to get their support on the budget," he says, after offering a blessing over our meals. "Nine million dollars went to a meth clinic in Southern Illinois. But we've got crack, cocaine and heroin on the North and West Sides. Where are those clinics?"
Does he really want to be gov?
If lawmakers in the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, which Meeks chairs, could band together and similarly hold out on supporting the state budget until their initiatives were funded, Meeks says, spending priorities would look radically different.
I ask if he thinks this could actually happen.
He nods enthusiastically and says, between bites of Miller's famous baby-back ribs, "I hope to be the No. 1 cat that's making it happen."
So, is all this talk about a gubernatorial run just so much posturing for power in upcoming budget negotiations? I ask Meeks if he really wants to be governor.
"I want all people in the state of Illinois to be equally represented," he says.
When I point out that this is not exactly an answer to a basic yes-or-no question, he responds by repeating it.
I ask if he's really prepared for the possibility of being a spoiler in the November election, drawing enough votes away from Gov. Blagojevich to propel Judy Baar Topinka to victory.
"If the Democratic Party chooses to ignore its base," he says, "that's not me."
Meeks says he likes Blagojevich, whom he has hosted at Salem Baptist many times, and considers him a personal friend.
"It's not this administration only," Meeks says, describing the way he believes African-American voters have been taken for granted, "It's a national strategy. The blacks are put in the win column. So my new question is why shouldn't African-Americans nationwide become a swing vote? Why not put ourselves in that position?"
There is, Meeks says, a viable place for African-Americans, "at the moral center" of the American electorate.
During our "Lunch With . . ." interview, I asked Rev. Meeks what he thinks about the white evangelical community's interest in Africa.
Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, whom Meeks considers a friend and colleague, has been particularly active in raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Zambia.
Here's what Meeks said: "It's easier to go to Africa and have a one week mission trip and feel good about yourself than to drive a few miles to Englewood."
I've got my own critiques about the evangelical approach to Africa (economic development, not charity; education, not Bibles; etc.), but being a timid white chick, I've never had the nerve to say this out loud. Is it possible that some of us are a lot more comfortable helping black people who live far away than those who live in our own community?
Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield thinks there's a crisis of manliness in America, that the all-powerful liberal feminists have gone too far in establishing a "gender neutral" society that won't let boys be boys or men be men.
His new book, Manliness (Yale University Press, 304 pages, $27.50), argues that this problem of "unemployed manliness" is a critical issue of modern life and if we keep on trying to squelch manly behavior, we'll soon be living with a generation of boys who have no idea how to safely, productively channel their aggressive, masculine impulses.
It's hard to know whether to laugh -- Why couldn't the all-powerful feminists get it together in South Dakota? Or during the Alito confirmation hearings? -- or cry about Mansfield's screed.
Because I, too, believe there's a manliness crisis going on.
But I'd say there's a bit too much manliness in the air, rather than too little. And if one recent poll is any indication, a lot of women happen to agree.
A manly administration
Mansfield has many definitions for manliness, including "confidence in the face of risk," and "easy assumption of authority."
He says manliness "seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments." And it "can be heroic. But it can also be vainly boastful, prone to meaningless scuffling, and unfriendly. It jeers at those who do not seem to measure up, and asks men to continually prove themselves. It defines turf and fights for it -- sometimes to defend precious rights, sometimes for no good reason."
By these definitions, it's clear that the war in Iraq is one of our most manly national undertakings in a long time and the Bush administration is, in fact, just chock full of manly men (and Condoleezza Rice) doing manly things.
There's the pile of over-confident predictions of victory, and all those easy assumptions of authority -- "Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants." -- and, of course, the jeering stance against those who would dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called War on Terror.
This is an administration that casts its mistakes, like the increasingly apparent presence of innocent men among the enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay, as virtues and its failures as successes-yet-to-come.
Much as we'd all like our kids -- both boys and girls -- to develop great self-confidence as they grow up, this kind of unassailable manly bluster is probably taking things a bit too far.
Crossing the line
Women, unsurprisingly, have less patience than men for manliness-run-amok. And that probably goes a long way toward explaining why the president's approval ratings are 14 points lower among women than among men.
Just 30 percent of women say they approve of the job President Bush is doing in office.
Though a "gender gap" in political sentiment is nothing new, this one is notable because the president, in his 2004 campaign, managed to appeal to many women -- "soccer moms" was the term of art then -- who might usually have tended to vote Democratic but were persuaded by his manly insistence that he'd keep us all safe from the terrorists and evil-doers.
Sometime between then and now the president's tough-guy appeal has crossed an invisible border from John Wayne territory into Rambo land.
Man-hating? Not quite
Mansfield says the hairy, scary feminists are rapidly doing away with all differences between the sexes and that they hate all things masculine.
I don't happen to know any women, feminist or otherwise, who feel that way -- childbirth being a real sticking point on the whole elimination-of-differences front -- but lots of us have a certain intolerance for people who seem to live as caricatures of sex-based stereotypes. The girly girl who is scared of bugs, dressed in immobilizing high heels and unable to master the proper use of a hammer and nail is just as ridiculous to us as the manly man with his car, meat and beer obsessions and his forever-stunted emotional life.
Manliness, by this estimation, is no more or less of a virtue than femininity. It's one aspect of a (hopefully) complex personality. But, like any single trait, too much of it can be a problem.
Maybe our supposedly gender-neutral society is emphasizing this idea more than it used to and is less inclined to let bad behavior off the hook with a "boys will be boys" wink and nod. But moving away from having completely separate standards of conduct doesn't mean we've abandoned the notion that men and women are different.
I kind of like the idea of holding each other accountable, of, for example, being able to tell a whining complainer -- of either sex -- that it's time to "man it up."
Perhaps this week's poll numbers are a message to the president that he ought to get in touch with his feminine side.
when you hire professionals to do the drudge work and can still have a job. Elle magazine's interview with the next big thing in making women feel bad, Caitlin Flanagan, will raise your blood pressure.
She'll need some body fat to make it through the winter
Word is out that Jennifer Aniston is moving here. This probably ups our coolness quotient, but won't do a thing for the economy, since it's not like she eats in restaurants or anything.
Demolition day went off without a hitch. All the old cabinets have been ripped out and the kitchen is now a blank slate for our remodeling ambitions.
OK, did I say "without a hitch"?
That was a lie.
What I meant was: no one was killed. But our "two week"-long project has already hit one major snafu.We have cabinets. But we don't have a countertop. And we just ordered one last night.
The thing is, the countertop people have to come and measure the kitchen AFTER the new cabinets are put in. And then it takes 3 - 4 weeks for them to make the countertop.
That's 3 or 4 weeks without, um, a kitchen sink. Bummer.
So we had this gift certificate for a free night at a nice downtown hotel. It was a door prize or part of a silent auction package that we got at a charity event last spring and it was about to expire. With our place in the throes of renovation madness (kitchen stuff in boxes everywhere; just-assembled cabinets stacked up in the living room and bedroom), we thought it would be fun to spend an evening in the luxurious neatness of the Hotel Allegro.
We decided on Sunday night, since it offered the added bonus of watching The Sopranos on HBO.
We watch about 30 minutes of television per day, so it's hard to make an argument for paying for a premium channel, although I suspect we'd watch more tv if we had HBO. But can you really say that's a good thing?
Still, its absence from our home does make us feel even less hip and in-touch than usual.
Thus, the formation of a super-cool plan for Sunday night that would involve watching the Sopranos in a king-size bed while eating ice cream from room service.
Things were looking great as we checked into our room and discovered the animal-print (one leopard; one zebra) robes waiting there in the closet for us. How much would Tony love that?
One tiny flaw in our plan: the Allegro doesn't get HBO.
So we watched the first two episodes of the Discovery Channel series, Perfect Disaster. Dallas was destoryed by a super tornado and New York taken out by a solar storm. Fun stuff.
Having spent much of the past week in bed with a wretched headache/sinus infection/early warning case of bird flu, I missed out on so much.
Like my alma mater's mercifully brief appearance in the NCAA tournament. The University of Pennsylvania Quakers actually make it to the, um "Big Dance," (if that is, in fact, the term of art) rather frequently since we're the dumb jocks of the Ivy League. Sadly, though, Ivy League dumb jocks don't generally hold up well against actual basketball players, so we pretty much always lose in the first round. (And my school loyalty always messes up my bracket pool chances.) So, belatedly, Go Quakers! It would have been so cool to beat Texas at, you know, something. Ah, well, as the beloved old cheer goes, "That's all right, that's OK. You'll all work for us someday." Ivy League sportsmanship at its best.
And, sure, some other stuff happened, like John Stroger's stroke (does anyone else think it's weird that he didn't go to Stroger Hospital?) and James Laski's guilty plea.
On Friday, R. rented a truck and went out to the Ikea warehouse to pick up the 83 boxes that contain our some-assembly-required cabinets. And, very impressively, he spent the weekend making actual cabinet-like objects out of the large piles of flat, seemingly identical, pieces of wood.
Monday morning, our fantastic handyman arrives to tear out the old cabinets.
I think I'm actually getting excited about this whole home improvement concept, though that might just be the antibiotics talking.
"Things are a little hectic," restaurateur Phil Stefani announces as he arrives, more than 30 minutes late, for lunch at Riva, the Navy Pier jewel in his many-venued crown.
He's spent the last couple of hours taking care of a last-minute crisis at the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, where his tenure as chairman is coming to an end, and he's got a flight to catch this evening so he can attend, as the guest of Sen. Dick Durbin, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's speech to a joint session of Congress.
If this is fairly heady stuff for a baker's son whose first job, delivering the track sheet to the neighborhood barbershop, paid 25 cents a day, Stefani doesn't seem the least bit fazed. He has, after all, famously slept in the Lincoln bedroom as a guest of the Clinton White House.
'I just wanted to go to Rome'
Despite close connections to Illinois politicians of both parties, Stefani says with pride that he has never asked for a political favor and that he cultivates friendships with "interesting people," not just the powerful. And, while Stefani often picks up checks for his friends, he says that former President Bill Clinton, who has dined at a number of Stefani restaurants and occasionally orders take-out, regularly pays his own tab.
As for his own political ambitions, he says, "It's better to be a politician's friend than a politician."
Stefani, 55, keeps his cell phone and the electronic key to his Land Rover close at hand as he settles in to a window-side table with a stunning view of the lake. The restaurant, which doesn't draw much of a lunch crowd in the offseason, is quiet and nearly empty.
He orders a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay and some appetizers: Ahi tuna, served sashimi-style; fried calamari and sliced tomatoes with fresh mozzarella.
There are deep tan lines in the creases of Stefani's broad face, evidence that he has spent much of this year in warm, sunny places, from a vacation in Hawaii to his usual monthly food and trend-spotting visits to Italy.
Trips to Italy have long been part of Stefani's life -- his parents were immigrants, and much of his extended family remains there -- but the style of his travel has changed a bit over the years.
He was a sophomore at the University of Illinois when he and some enterprising friends decided to organize a spring break tour of Rome.
"I'm 19," he says, letting loose a big laugh at the memory. "So, hey, let's charter a plane."
His buddies all pitched in $200 for Stefani to make an initial trip, over the winter holidays, and scout out, in those pre-Internet days, a decent hotel.
He started at the Excelsior and worked his way though pretty much every hotel in Rome, mostly getting laughed out of the lobby when he proposed to book a large block of rooms for a group of American college kids with no money down. He was heading back to the airport, utterly defeated, "knowing I've got to go back and I've just wasted all our money," when he spotted an apartment building under construction.
With nothing to lose, he stopped at the site, found the owner and negotiated a $35-per-person rate to fill the place for a week.
"I got home and it was, 'OK, we got a hotel. Now we just gotta get a plane,'" he says. "So, you know, I'm a kid: I walk in to TWA and sign up for a charter."
Eventually, the trip, which the group advertised on posters around campus, grew to 250 students, enough to fill two flights.
"We filled up two airplanes," he says now, still relishing the memory, "and we didn't know anything about anything. I was 19. I just wanted to go to Rome on spring break."
'What if I sell everything?'
Stefani's own kids, now both college students themselves, are, unsurprisingly, a little less entrepreneurial.
Daughter Gina is a junior at Loyola, majoring in psychology, "whatever that means," quips Stefani. And son Anthony is a freshman at Arizona State.
"My son's asking me as a freshman, 'Why do I have to go to school? I know what I want to do ... go into the restaurant business,'" Stefani says. "So I have to say to him, 'Well, what if I sell everything by the time you're done?' I always tell him, 'Everything's for sale except for you and Gina. So what else would you do if there weren't any restaurants?'"
Thinking on the question, Anthony told his father he might like to be a sports agent.
"Great," Stefani says with real enthusiasm, having scored a parental victory. "Now he's gotta stick it out all the way through law school."
'I'm just interested in the food'
Despite the Rolex on his wrist, Stefani projects an intensely regular guy image. Like the menus at his restaurants, he eschews pretense.
So, when I mention some of the new darlings of the Chicago restaurant scene, like Grant Achatz's Alinea, he chuckles and replies, "So far, everyone I know who's been there has told me how many courses they had and how much it cost, but they don't really mention the food. I'm not interested in how many courses or how much it cost. I'm just interested in the food."
And, though he expresses admiration for Rich Melman's Lettuce Entertain You empire of "concept" restaurants, he says of his own holdings, which include Tuscany, Tavern on Rush and 437 Rush, "The only concept I knew was doing good food."
He happily finishes his second order of tuna and the remainder of his wine.
"America has become creepy for women who think of themselves as ladies. It has in fact become assaultive."--Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2006
In writing about an annoying experience with airport security -- I guess this would qualify as breaking news for those Journal readers who travel only in corporate jets -- former White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan seemed to have a hard time articulating exactly what it is that bothered her about being pulled out of line and searched with a handheld metal detector.
As an ardent supporter of the "war on terror," she is hesitant to say that there is little value in this strange shoe-removing, underwire-bra-detecting exercise that has become a ritual of American life. I suppose admitting that these goofy little searches don't make us any safer is a first step along the slippery slope that could lead to the realization that the entire Homeland Security bureaucracy is an exercise in fear-mongering, repressing civil liberties and generating big contracts for Halliburton.
So naturally Noonan doesn't go there.
And instead of exploring the complicated psychological underpinnings of a cultural moment that pushes Americans to forget Ben Franklin's wise words that those who give up liberty for security deserve neither, Noonan decided to play the sex card. (Or is it the gender card? I'm never sure.)
The problem with those airport searches, she asserts, is not that they're intrusive. Not even that they're ineffective.
No. The trouble, she says, is that they're unladylike.
Sing Tom Jones song here
Having been born in the '70s, I've never actually heard the term "lady" used unironically. But Noonan, the author of fine, beautiful phrases like "kinder, gentler nation" and "thousand points of light," is not an ironist. She's 100 percent serious about this.
She describes her "pat down," which was conducted by a female security officer, like this: "I experienced the search not only as an invasion of privacy, which it was, but as a denial or lowering of that delicate thing, dignity. The dignity of a woman, of a lady, of a person with a right not to be manhandled or to be, or to feel, molested."
By this logic, conducting "wand" searches on men, or, say, on women who smoke, chew gum, avoid lipstick, wear jeans or appear on the Jerry Springer show, is absolutely fine. There's only a problem when you search the delicate and sensitive among us.
What standard, exactly, was the TSA supposed to use to determine that Noonan was a lady and therefore not subject to the usual indignities? Should a white-gloved grandmother be stationed at each checkpoint to make the call? Or is this a jury-of-your-peers sort of thing?
Noonan doesn't say.
She offers up some dictionary definitions of what it is to be a lady -- having "high standards of proper behavior" is the key -- but slides over the way that expectations of "ladylike," and its younger sister "good girl," behavior have been used to marginalize and demonize women who want to do things like, um, work in the White House or write on the opinion page of a major newspaper.
Penalty for unladylike conduct
I've been mildly ticked off about Noonan's column since I first read it, but my sputtering annoyance didn't come into full focus until I heard about what 20-year-old Adrian Missbrenner, acquitted of rape charges this week, said about his experience.
"I think everyone did something wrong that night, including her," he said of the evening three and a half years ago when he and two friends videotaped themselves having sex with an obviously intoxicated 16-year-old girl.
The young woman involved -- drinking and hanging out with Missbrenner and his buddies -- clearly must not have been a lady. And if she's not a lady, if she's doing something wrong, she deserves what she gets.
That's the logical extension of Noonan's idea that only "ladies" should be treated respectfully. It makes all the rest of us fair game: instead of being invested with the rights to privacy and decent treatment just because we're human beings, we have to earn those rights based on some fuzzy standard of correct social behavior.
It's coy and cute for Noonan to claim that her delicate sensibilities are offended by something as banal as being frisked in an airport. But there's a reason the whole "oh, help, I'm a lady, I might swoon" thing has fallen out of fashion.
I'll open door for myself, thanks
Most of us don't have much expectation of special treatment these days. We open our own doors. We don't faint when we hear profanity. We even, on occasion, go out for drinks and cigars.
Maybe this means we've lost something: a little of that special dignity that Noonan holds so dear.
But we'd like to think we've gained something, too: the right to be treated like people, rather than ladies.
You have to love a story that makes you do a spit-take with your morning oatmeal. Today there were two.
First prize goes to this article about the lawsuit that 25 year old Matt Dubay, of Saginaw, Michigan, has filed to try to get out of paying child support.
The "logic" is that if a woman doesn't want to have a child, she can have an abortion, but a man has no similar recourse.
I guess Matt missed that day in health class when they did the condom demonstration.
A close second prize must be awarded to the story about young Adrian Missbrenner, in which he declares that he's suffered far more than the woman who was videotaped having sex with him and two of his friends and then later, while unconscious, being spat upon as guys scrawled lewd words on her body.
I hope Missbrenner's parents, who demonstrated their own contempt for the law by helping their son flee to Europe to try to escape the charges against him, are proud of the kid they've raised.
I'm wondering why no one has mentioned the most obvious irony in the whole controversy around the Governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes, which is that the resignation of five members in the wake of Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad's refusal to renounce comments made by her boss and religious leader, Louis Farrakhan, has not, in any way, effected the commission's effectiveness.
And, definitely, if you're celebrating International Women's Day today, do not read this Slate.com article about the many ways in which modern women manage to over-think our own personal satisfaction.
I was getting my hair done this weekend (if you really happen to care, you can check out the results on my Chicago Tonight appearance tonight; my commentary appears at the very end of the show) and had one of those little "slice of urban life" moments that, sadly, you just don't read about in the New Yorker.
A woman came in for a "consultation" with my stylist/colorist. He took a moment from cutting my hair to talk to her. They stood just a few feet away from the chair where I was perched.
Uncharacteristically, I wasn't eavesdropping, but I couldn't help catching the gist of the conversation.
The woman, who had two long blond braids sticking out from under a stylish cashmere ski cap, said she hadn't had her color done in several months and was worried about whether it would ever be possible to get the dark roots (now a couple inches long) to match the rest of her very blond hair. She had a magazine with her, and she pointed to a picture in it, which, I assumed, was an example of the color she wanted to achieve.
There was a brief, highly technical discussion of how this might be achieved. She went back to the front desk to make an appointment and my stylist returned his attention to my new 'do.
After a minute or two, he asked, "Did you happen to catch any of that?"
"Not really," I said. "What was up?"
"She said she's from New Orleans and that she lost everything — including her hairdresser — in the flood."
We talked about this for a few minutes and decided she must have meant that she lost touch with the hairdresser, rather than that the stylist, um, floated away or something worse.
"So she hasn't gotten her hair done since," he continued.
"Wow," I said, realizing that this was the kind of hardship that would, even more than, say, having to move away from my cozy, familiar neighborhood, that would really cripple me emotionally. I tried not to dwell on this new revelation of the depths of my shallowness.
"So," he went on, "she brought a picture with her. I thought it was just, you know, a random magazine photo, but it was actually a magazine that she was in. She was showing me a picture of what her hair used to look like."
And, he didn't want to be judgmental, but he was slightly taken aback by the fact that the magazine was not so much a magazine as, well, a brochure for the escort service where she worked.
This, frankly, is a whole category of displace New Orleans workers I hadn't even thought about. I don't suppose the government is very quick to replace not-quite-legal income.
Naturally, this story has now become associated in my mind with already nascent obsession with the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." (I also have this idea to make a "Grey Album"-style remix of the song that will include some of the vocal tracks from Kanye West's "Jesus Walks," but that's a topic for another day.)
Americans are consistently found to be among the most optimistic people on the planet. But this Sunday New York Times article points out that Africans are actually even more optimistic than we are.
In my experience, this is absolutely true. It is, I think, some combination of very deeply held religious faith along with a realization that things just can't get much worse.
I'm not a religious person myself, but I'm always deeply moved by the faith of the people I know who are doing incredible service work in poor communities in Kenya and Tanzania. Who am I, after all, to say there's no God when it's a miracle for them even get up in the morning and go on in the face of inconceivable challenges and hardships?
Hooray for the recognition of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," but doesn't it just bring into bold relief the Academy's utter failure to celebrate the — yeah, I'm going to say it — visionary use of the Geto Boys' "Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangster" in Office Space?
Gail Sheehy, the best-selling author whose 1977 book Passages (Bantam, 564 pages, $7.99) chronicled the "predictable crises of adult life," makes 60 look very good.
Sheehy is, in fact, 68 now, but she has the ageless, beautifully (and, presumably, expensively) maintained look of the rich and semi-famous. In the gently dimmed light of the Geneva restaurant, downstairs at the Swissotel, she could easily pass for fortysomething.
She's in Chicago promoting her latest work, Sex and the Seasoned Woman (Random House, 354 pages, $25.95), a book that could be summed up, if one was in a cynical summing-up sort of mood, as saying, "60 is the new 40."
New age for sex
Age 60, Sheehy says, "is an extraordinary new jumping-off place," especially for women who, having finished with the business of child rearing and all the related work/life balancing issues, can rediscover themselves in all kinds of new ways. Especially sexually.
Some of the stories in the book can't be fully reprinted in a family newspaper, but the essence of them is that being a "seasoned woman" (sounds a lot better than "old," doesn't it?) is a seriously rocking good time. If you happen to read the book while you're still in the throes of your hectic and stressful 30s or 40s, it might very well make you wish for your 60s to hurry up and arrive.
It's for that reason, Sheehy says, that she doesn't much like hearing the whole "60 is the new 40" tag line.
"Nobody wants to go back to 40," she says, with the authority of someone who has actually taken a survey.
Sheehy started off her research for this book by posting a 13-item questionnaire on her Web site. With questions like, "Are you tempted to have a love affair with a younger man?" the survey tips its hand just a little bit, but Sheehy says she was surprised by the many passion-filled responses she received, particularly from divorced women and widows.
And now that she has written the book, she says, "Everywhere I go, some 82-year-old woman will pop up and share the passionate affair she had with a man in the mountains after her husband died."
Sheehy, who is married, stresses that "you don't have to be divorced to evolve, although women who have been divorced have a great opportunity to re-dream. For the women who are married, that same evolution requires a kind of break ... it's very often sending the last child off to college and contemplating the empty nest. Or, sometimes, it's the mid-life crisis of a husband."
The main thing is, she says, "you do have to learn to be alone with yourself. Becoming a seasoned woman is about reaching the point in your life at which you're no longer defined by all the pleasing roles."
Says it's mainstream America
Following up her survey with a series of group interviews -- they were kind of like consciousness-raising groups, she says -- Sheehy traveled the country for about six weeks, talking to "seasoned women" about their intimate lives.
"The movies have told us that it's either 'First Wives Club' or 'Desperate Housewives,'" she says, "but that's definitely not the reality."
Many of the women she talked to were involved in Internet dating and swapping stories and advice with their adult daughters because, Sheehy says, "the younger adult women were likely to tell them, 'Yes, of course, go to Thailand with him.'"
And while the women she surveyed were obviously generally pretty well off financially -- poor women get so few offers to be whisked off to Thailand -- Sheehy says her subjects do represent mainstream America. There are no celebrities, only one New Yorker (a neighbor of Sheehy's) and no one from Los Angeles.
Meeting so many real women who were having the time of their lives was a great experience, she says, adding that "I have no fear now about aging. I know now I'll be a granny babe in my 80s."
Strangely enough, the babe issue is, to my mind, the one really troubling aspect of the whole seasoned woman thing. Because none of these seasoned women seem to, um, actually look seasoned.
"Practically every woman I talked to does something to [color] her hair," she says, matter-of-factly. "And between Pilates and spas, they really look fantastic."
Two spoonfuls of yogurt
Sheehy, who has surveyed the restaurant's entire all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and selected two spoonfuls of yogurt, a few fresh raspberries and pineapple chunks and a cup of decaf coffee, looks like she's pretty familiar with a Pilates routine or two herself.
"What would you say to those who were looking forward to their 60s as a time when they could finally stop fighting those damn 20 pounds and holding in their stomachs?" I ask. "Is that just not done anymore?"
She looks slightly aghast.
"You can do that," she says slightly warily, "but if you want to remain attractive in the world -- and to men -- it is work. You have to go to the gym; 75 percent of life is maintenance. Maybe now it's 85 percent."
And then she adds, a little ominously, "if you think you're done fighting those 20 pounds, you have to ask yourself how long you want to live."
Would you like to have a Chicago street named after you? Simply fill out the form below and attach payment of the appropriate application fee. (See section 3.) Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for our response, unless you are eligible for our VIP program. (See section 4.)
Please fill out this form as completely as possible by circling the answer that most closely matches your situation. Use a No. 2 pencil.
Section One: Merit
1.) What is the nature of your contribution to the city of Chicago?
A. Civic leadership, community service or volunteerism
B. Invention of giant concrete planter, wrought iron fence, remote control camera or similar innovation
C. Someday, the site of my surrender to federal authorities will be a national landmark
D. There's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
2.) Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
A. No
B. Yes, but only because someone turned state's evidence
C. Does Operation Greylord count?
D. The real story will come out in my appeal
3.) Are you currently under indictment?
A. No
B. No, but my boss is
C. My lawyer is sure we can beat it.
D. That damn U.S. attorney: The "sexiest man" thing has really gone to his head
4.) What block or intersection would be most appropriate to bear your name?
A. The street in front of the humble bungalow in which I was raised
B. Some place adjacent to my brother's ward office
C. The site of my (absolutely wrongful) arrest
D. Nowhere near the Federal Building, thanks
5.) Are you currently a resident of Chicago?
A. Yes
B. I'm certainly registered to vote here
C. No, but I own a business in Chicago or am a frequent visitor
D. Current address: Leavenworth, Kan.
Section Two: Clout
6.) Are you related, by either marriage or blood, to any of the following individuals?
A. Mayor Daley
B. Ald. Ed Burke
C. A sitting member of the City Council
D. A sitting member of Congress, other than Jesse Jackson Jr.
7.) Are you in possession of incriminating photographs of, or evidence against, any of the following individuals?
A. Mayor Daley (please list details on back of application)
B. Those two Hired Truck reporters from the Sun-Times
C. Ald. Dick Mell
D. Jesse Jackson Jr.
8.) Are you a top-rated defense attorney, willing to do a certain amount of "pro bono" work?
A. Yes
B. No, but my guy was very good, and I'm willing to make a phone call
9.) Please list the dates and amounts of your contributions to the following:
A. Millennium Park construction
B. Hispanic Democratic Organization
C. Salem Baptist Church
D. James Laski defense fund
10.) Please list any special circumstances that should be taken into consideration with your application.
Section Three: Scoring
In Section One, give yourself five points for every A or C answer; three points for every B or D answer.
Add up your total number of points and multiply by five. Now disregard this number.
In Section Two, give yourself 10 points for each answer circled in items 6, 7 and 8. Give yourself one point for every hundred dollars in contributions listed in item 9. If this number is less than 1,000, please include a $10,000 application fee with this form.
Give yourself as many points as you feel appropriate for item 10.
Subtract 20 points if you have publicly called for the murder of a Chicago Police officer or other public official. Add 30 points if you are dead or soon will be.
Section Four: Processing
If your total score is equal to or above 15,000, you are eligible for our special VIP program. Simply fax this form to your alderman, and we'll begin printing up your street sign right away. Be sure to include the correct spelling of your name.
If your total score is less than 15,000, don't call us. We'll call you.
It's enough to make a person weep. In the midst of a terrible drought that is already leading to famine, not to mention the usual day-to-day crises of HIV/AIDS, intractable poverty, etc., the government is so pre-occupied with holding on to power despite revelations of serious corruption, they're now attacking the media for reporting about the scandal.
If there is any good news in this -- and I'm really reaching here, trying desperately to hold on to my optimism -- it's that the international community is actually (sort of) paying attention.
This is yet one more reason for those of us who are deeply interested in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic to work with grassroots and community-based organizations, rather than big government initiatives.
Want to help? Check out Chicago-based Global Alliance for Africa. (Full disclosure: I am a GAA volunteer.)
I'm generally a Brown Line girl. And I have, on several occassions declared my precious Ravenswood line as "the most literate" of all the CTA routes.
This morning, I happened to take the Red Line downtown (Fullerton to Chicago) and, I have to admit, my seat-mates made an impressive literary showing.
There was the soccer hooligan-looking young guy, improbably reading Ron Powers' Mark Twain biography.
The vaguely hip-hop-ish looking guy behind him tapped him on the shoulder and asked how it was, initiating a long, graduate school quality discussion of the book's literary merits.
The young woman sitting next to hip-hop guy was reading a well-worn copy of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Across the aisle, a middle-aged guy was reading Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst's early novel, The Spell.
And, next to him, an artsy dude was reading Laura Joh Rowland's The Perfumed Sleeve, one of a series of mysteries set in 17th century Japan. (I had not heard of this book before, but looked it up, hoping it would be on par with the other excellent books. Turns out, it might be.)
Anyway, I take this small but impressive sampling as a challenge to my fellow Brown Line travelers. Let's get off the best seller list standards, people, and start breaking out some serious literature for the commute.
Other L line stereotypes, casually tossed out:
Orange Line - newspapers only. (Special thanks to those of you who buy your copy, rather than pick it up off the seat next to you.)
Blue Line - All iPods; no printed matter.
Green Line - Knitting and bead-stringing. What's up with that?
From the New York Observer, via Romenesko, comes this story about CNN crusader-for-justice Nancy Grace.
It turns out that her compelling life story, the one in which she was Failed By The System, isn't quite true.
Her college boyfriend was murdered, but not by someone with an extensive criminal record who had slipped through the cracks of the system.
And, oh yeah, the murderer confessed, was quickly convicted, was sentenced to life in prison and has never appealed his conviction.
So, while the story is horrible and tragic, it is not, in fact, a story about how the justice system punishes crime victims. In this case, the criminal was punished.
At the intersection of Bangher and Leever Streets . . .
Check out this contest for weird street names and intersections at TheCarConnection.com
Personally, I like the intersection of Grinn Drive with Barret Road, but that's mainly because I'm pretending to be above finding Dingleberry Road funny.
The contest is over, sadly, but feel free send submissions here. (No honorary street names, though. Those are funny in an entirely different way.)
