Boobee boobee de boo; A Little Internet Moment that Amazed and Delighted Me

I love music passionately but I'm a words person.

I know music intimately but in the way that a blind man knows the face of his beloved.

I don't know what words like "sharp" or "flat" mean.

It's weird. Hard to describe. To love something so much and yet be totally ignorant of the mechanics of it.

I am grateful for my ignorance of music. Words are constantly zinging around my head. I even dream verbally. When I am immersed in music, my love combined with my total ignorance allows my brain to escape from words.

I occasionally hear a piece of music on the radio that I like very much. I've never heard an announcer say the name of this piece of music. I was curious. What is its name?

How could I find out?

I went to an internet site that allows people to ask questions about pop culture. At three pm I asked,

"I'm seeking the title of an instrumental piece of music I hear on the radio now and then. There is no singing. The genre is popular jazz. I'm guessing it comes from the 1960s. It begins with a guitar solo, very upbeat, driving. The guitar strings sound loose. Then there is a brief drum flourish that stops. Then, as the guitar continues, a very smooth, driving, organ picks up the same tune the guitar was playing. To me it sounds like guitar – boobee de boo boobee boobee de boo organ -- ah ah ah. Guitar: boobee de boo boobee boobee de boo."

At four pm, based on my description, above, someone posted a link to the very song on youtube. It's called "Time is Tight" and it's by Booker T and the MGs.

This kind of boggles my mind. The internet is a miracle!

"Aimee and Jaguar": Film Review

"Aimee and Jaguar" depicts a Lesbian Jew living in WW II Germany who falls in love with an ostensibly straight Nazi. What an exciting premise! I was so let down. There was all this capital S !Stuff! up on the screen that I was supposed to have been moved by. I was less moved while watching this histrionic opera than while watching many a low-key documentary.

An example: the scene where Lilly, the German Nazi, and Felice, the Jewish Lesbian, first make love. Lilly kept shaking. She's very pale (Aryan, doncha know). And watching her shake and shake and shake and shake in a way meant to be erotic, and watching her pale, waxy skin, all I kept thinking was, "Geez, she looks like someone in the final phase of malaria."

There were naked and shadowed unmentionable gynecological bits in that scene, and lots of highly charged social/erotic elements, and it carried zero erotic charge, for me.

The movie was too long. It added a pre-plot intro and a post-plot coda that offered nothing. Scenes went on too long. I found myself counting the breaths between lines, the number of times people repeated the same sentence over and over.

The movie works to make Lilly a slob and a hoyden. Lilly meets one of her lovers while wearing stockings and wool socks and a sloppy slip – but the movie makes the point that even homeless Jewish Lesbians can look soignee in wartime Berlin. Lilly yells at her kids; she sleeps around. She isn't very bright. She isn't especially pretty, either. Okay, so ... why did Felice risk her life to connect with this Nazi? Just for her blonde, Aryan locks? For the cheap thrill? No, the movie wants this to be a BIG love story, a Scarlett and Rhett of Nazism. Um, nope.

The movie works really hard not to let the viewer know exactly what's going on. I didn't find this thrilling. I didn't feel, "Gee, I'd better figure this out fast," I found it boring and alienating. I didn't feel that underneath the movie's surface confusion and incomprehensibility – "Why is she pushing her away? Who is this character? Why doesn't he suspect Felice's true identity?" – that there was a comprehensible and full world I just needed to get to know. Rather, I felt that the movie's incomprehensibility was a sloppy, amateurish effort to be casual, while not really creating a coherent world. I just found it to be a very amateurish, utterly cold, badly put together movie. and that is such a shame. This could have been big.

I can't help but think of – go ahead, hate me – Steven Spielberg. Spielberg knows how to use a camera to communicate humanity, while handling similarly huge, titillating themes against big historical backdrops. The brief scene in which Robert Shaw in "Jaws" talks about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, or Tom Hanks talking about being a teacher in "Saving Private Ryan" convey more humanity than Lilly does during the entire movie.

"Aimee and Jaguar" is full of scenes of Aktors Akting as if they are Brave or full of Joi de Vivre or Deeply In Love but I didn't see a single human being brave or expressing joi de vivre or loving.

There was one scene of "Aimee and Jaguar" that worked wonderfully for me. A Jewish Lesbian has been homeless and hungry. She goes to a Nazi club and begins to wash her undies out in the sink of the Ladies' Room, while complaining about sleeping in public buildings. A Nazi matron comes in and, contemptuously, sells ration coupons to the Jewish woman. The Nazi matron only saw the Jew to the extent that she could profit by selling a coupla ration coupons. Nazi Germany does have its parallels to contemporary life.

What I Learned from Talking about Islam on Facebook

Moo-slime, muzzie, sand-n****r, raghead, ass-lifters, camel jockey, towelhead, goat-f***ers, koranimals, pisslam, i-slime. 

I'm seeing words like this in more and more internet discussions. The words slip by without protest.

Also sentences like this: "Get rid of them all," "Wipe them off the face of the earth."

***

In a recent facbook discussion, someone mentioned Muslim terrorist Doku Umarov's threat against the upcoming 2014 Russian Winter Olympics in Sochi.

I said, "Of course terrorism is wrong, but the Russians should not be holding Olympics in Sochi. Sochi is a site of the Russian genocide of the Circassian people."

The other Facebook poster didn't care about the Circassian genocide. "Muslim troublemakers," was all he said.

I was stunned.

The Circassian genocide is very real. Please learn more about it here.

This genocide is as deserving of our compassion and concern as any other. The perpetrators were Russian Christians. The victims were Muslims.

***

The other day a Facebook friend posted a link to a youtube video, "Dead Dog Jihad" by a man calling himself "Wild Bill for America." "Guess what's coming to America," Wild Bill said. "Jihad against pet dogs…In every nation where Muslims become more than six percent of the populace, they begin to force their rules on everybody."

It's true that Islam includes significant hostility to dogs. It's true that dogs have been poisoned in Muslim neighborhoods in European countries.

That doesn't prove that Muslims in the US will begin to poison dogs.

***

Words like "Moo-slime" and "Muzzie" are disgusting. These words don't say anything about Muslims. They say something, rather, about the person using the word. They say that the person allows their lizard brain to speak in public. They allow themselves to be swept away by primitive hatred. They may publicly identify as Christian, but their words place Jesus Christ right back up there on the cross and crucify him all over again. See Matthew 25:40.

Words like "Moo-slime" and "Muzzie" are every bit as disgusting as "Kike" or "Polak" or "N****r" or "Fag" or "C***."

They should arouse the same kind and degree of condemnation.

Comments like "They should be wiped off the face of the earth" are genocidal. Yes, that's right. When you declare that you think all followers of one religion should be murdered, you share strategy with Adolph Hitler.

Believing, without question, someone named "Wild Bill for America" about "Dead Dog Jihad" is not the best path. A better choice: read books by scholars. 

In internet discussions of Islam, I have tried to make one simple point over and over. 

Muslims are human beings.

Islam is an ideology.

Muslims do not equal Islam.

I give this example.

I have never loved anyone more than I loved my Uncle John. A great man. A great human being.

My Uncle John was an atheist and a Soviet Communist. I reject atheism and have no respect for it, and I loathed the Soviet Empire. I was on the streets in Poland in 1989, actively protesting against the Soviet system, contributing to bringing it down.

I loved my Uncle John. A human being.

I loathed the system he was a part of. Soviet Communism.

A human being.

An ideology.

Two different things.

***

I feel pain, fear, and hurt for my Muslim friends when I read words like "Muzzie" and "Moo-slime." I recoil when I read sentences like, "They should be wiped off the face of the earth."

I want to introduce the people who write these obscenities to my Muslim friends.

Why?

Because Muslims are human beings. Just like those who hate them.

The same. Not different. The exact same: human beings.

Just like all other human beings, some Muslims are handsome, some are ugly, some are kind, some are greedy, some are smart …

Oh, this is all so basic. Why is it so hard to communicate in any way that gets heard.

***

I used to teach English to foreigners. My female Japanese students were perfect in their written work, and were painstakingly polite. They couldn't converse in English.

My Arab students bathed in language. They kicked up suds, splashed and played with idioms. Their written work was lush, but flawed – I got the sense that there is no tense in Arabic, no concept of time, except the time of the heart and the palate. So different from the English language's careful notation of time: I eat; I am eating; I will have eaten; I had been eating... But my Arab students were such ardent lovers of language that they bent English to their desires and their essays were among the best student essays I've read. We conversed for hours, on every topic.

My car got a flat tire. A Malaysian Muslim student not only changed the tire, he inspected the rest of the vehicle. Wouldn't let me tip him.

I remember one day at work my Arab co-workers bringing in a small mountain of rice, a platter of stuffed grape leaves, pools of hummus and plates of pita bread. It was their holiday, which they shared with all.

During Hurricane Sandy's closed roads and halted bus travel, one of my former students, a young man I had not seen in years, made sure to pick me up and drive me anywhere I wanted to go. He did this several times, once with his mother at the wheel. He had nothing to gain from this; I was no longer his teacher. But still he called me, "My teacher." A Palestinian Muslim.

Years ago, when I was very stupid, I traveled through rain forest in the center of Africa, alone, at night. I was picked up by Sudanese smugglers, a caravan of Muslim men on trucks. I was alone. They could have done anything. They could not have been nicer. They asked for nothing in return for transporting me the hundreds of miles to my destination.

I could go on. I grew up with Arabs in Passaic County, which has one of the US' largest Muslim populations. I've traveled in Turkey, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, in areas with heavy Muslim populations. I have met people who have been kind to me, who have fed me, who have befriended me, who have done me favors that could never be repaid.

You call these people "Moo-slimes?" "Koranimals?" Have you ever actually met a Muslim? Do you not realize that your using these filthy words says everything about you and nothing about Muslims?

Two features of Islam must be named and critiqued: Jihad and gender apartheid.

The rest of Islam is none of my business. If people want to abstain from pork, fast during Ramadan, make hajj to Mecca, pray five times a day, wear a hijab that does not obscure the face or bodily silhouette (which must be visible for reasons of civil society and security), that is none of my business.

If people want to kill me because I am not a Muslim, that becomes my business. If people do damage to women and girls, that becomes a universal human rights issue, thus, my business.

So, yes, I name and shame jihad and gender apartheid.

Not Muslims qua Muslims. Not all Muslims.

***

"But!" some insist. "All Muslims deserve to be condemned as if they themselves were terrorists or those who commit acid attacks on women or perpetrators of 'dead dog jihad.'"

No, all Muslims do not deserve to be criticized as if they were terrorists or child rapists or dead dog jihadists.

I'm Catholic. Am I personally responsible for the sex abuse crisis?

I'm American. Am I personally responsible for the Trail of Tears?

Could I have done anything to prevent either?

No.

We demand that Muslims look at themselves. How about we Americans do the same?

Our greed for petroleum funds terrorism. What did we do after the 1979 oil crisis? We bought SUVs! Gas guzzlers! We lambasted President Jimmy Carter for telling us to put on a sweater, rather than turn up the heat, when we were cold! We could strive for energy independence; we don't.

We tinker with foreign countries. We overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran's democratically elected prime minister. We supported the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and then entered into quagmire wars with both.

***

Let's look at another source of trouble in our own backyards. There are forces in the West eager to stir up trouble between Muslims and non-Muslims.

We need a name for this powerful force: Westerners who believe that the West is hopelessly flawed and should be turned to scorched earth so that a Brave, New World can come about.

These are Americans or Brits or Germans or French people who think that Western Civilization is nothing but imperialism, that white skin is nothing but a stigma of unearned privilege and oppression, that Christianity is nothing but witch-burning and that Judaism is a form of Nazism. They think that any belief system far from the West is inherently better than anything Western.

Some of these folks are atheists, some are Marxists, some call themselves "anti-fascist." These folks hate their own societies and they embrace Muslims not as real, flesh and blood human beings, but as tools, as levers they will use to overthrow the West. Islamists, of course, see these "liberal" Westerners as useful idiots.

***

In short, yes, we Westerners have a problem, and we Westerners, not just Muslims but we ourselves, are not addressing it as we might. How can we blame all Muslims when we haven't done all we could?

Let's stop blaming and start working on solutions. 

Some say, "It's impossible to reform Islam!"

True, reform of Islam presents challenges. Conversion from Islam, criticism of Mohammed, Islam's founder, and identifying the Koran as a human creation, rather than as divine, are all punishable by death. It's hard to reform a system that erects such formidable barriers against change.

We know, though, that there are uncounted millions of Muslims who have no interest in killing anyone for their faith, who are good neighbors, law abiders, loving family members and loyal friends. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by respecting and acknowledging these good people, and joining our dream of a better world to theirs.

***

Some say, "But Muslims are all to blame because they all support jihad and gender apartheid!"

When I hear things like this, I think of my friend "Leila."

It was late at night and we were coming back from a family party. Leila and I were in her SUV in a parking lot while her sister was buying a bottled juice in a supermarket. Her sister was taking a long time and Leila and I got to talking.

Leila was an exquisitely beautiful young woman. It wasn't her features that made her beautiful; it was her warmth, eccentricity, and her enthusiastic embrace of life. Leila was a Palestinian Arab and she wore hijab.

Leila lived in New Jersey and in the Middle East. She spoke fluent Arabic and English. She loved American TV shows and movie stars and she was a devout Muslim.

In that supermarket parking lot, waiting for her sister, we got to talking. I asked Leila, "Have you ever questioned the existence of God?"

She said yes, she had. And at those times, she said, she stopped doing her five daily prayers. When she did that, she said, she realized she had lost touch with her spiritual foundation, and was drifting toward something dark and negative. Belief in Allah and observant prayer kept her spiritually alive and in touch with all goodness, she said.

From other conversations, I knew that Leila didn't know much about the Koran.

What Leila knew of Islam was this: it was the religion of her beloved family. It was her source of spirituality. Mohammed was the best man who ever lived, the wisest and kindest. That's what she'd been taught.

She understood the world outside Islam as one of sexual promiscuity and drug taking and disrespect to parents and a lack of honor.

Leila didn't associate Islam with 9-11 or acid attacks or child marriage. All of those were foreign to her.

When those who want to be part of a counter-jihad use words like "muzzie" and say all Muslims are to blame, I think of Leila, a beautiful human being. I think of how she would hear those words. She would hear it as so much ugly, hateful, threatening noise. As the violation of all that was good, spiritual, safe and pure.

If you want to be part of a counter-jihad, learn how to communicate to a good human being like Leila. What would you say to her?

***

Sadly, the hate is on all sides, now.

When I observe internet conversations about Islam, poet William Butler Yeats' terrifying verses recite themselves inside my head:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

"Liberals" are as full of hate as those who use words like "Muzzie."

I received several impassioned emails recently from internet correspondents. All were sent by white-collar British women. They all condemned me for speaking out against jihad and gender apartheid.

To these "liberals," if you speak out against clitoredectomy, acid attacks, and child marriage, you are a "racist" and a "fascist."

One very long, very well-meaning message urged me to stop criticizing Islam, and to realize that Israel was the troublemaker.

In other words, it's okay to hate. As long as you don't hate jihad. Hate Jews! The liberal solution!

Just for the heck of it, I asked my trusty reference librarian for some facts. Here they are: The territory of the state of Israel constitutes 0.139 % of the world's land mass. For emphasis: that's point one three nine. Less than one percent. The population of the state of Israel constitutes .11%. of the world's population. That's point eleven. Less than one percent.

So a woman who finds it obscene to criticize jihad or gender apartheid struggles to point out that Israel is to blame for all the trouble. Less than one percent of the world's population and land mass.

Yes, there is as much crazy hating on the pro-jihad side as on the anti-jihad side.

Fall in Love with a Twelve Year Old Egyptian Boy

Child Abuse is Hell. See Something? Do Something. For the Sake of Your Own Soul.

I just drove, alone, through my hometown. I don't often do that.

As soon as I crossed the border into my hometown, I felt a wave of incalculable agony and inconsolable grief.

At this point in my life, I can see that my hometown is actually rather picturesque. There are whirligigs on lawns, rolling hills, groves of trees I once rested under – much taller now – and family businesses that were there when I was a kid, somehow resisting competition from chain stores.

There is the colonial post office where a bemused postal clerk weighed and priced my writing as I sent it off to big city publishers, dwellers on alien planets, who would only ever reject anything I wrote. There are kids playing in the street. Blue skies; fluffy white clouds; lilacs, daylilies, dogs on leashes, rose of Sharon.

Why do these homey, almost bucolic visions overwhelm me with a sadness as dark and profound as anything I've ever felt, any joy, any hope, any elation when I finally did get my writing published?

I was an abused kid. I was abused by a primary abuser and several others. I was hated. I was told I was a loser, an idiot, that I'd end up in the gutter. I am dyslexic, a word I did not know when I was a kid, and I was slow to learn to read, to tie my shoes, to operate a key in a lock, to tell time. I was assured I was the ugliest, stupidest, most worthless entity on earth.

Kids would line up in school to ogle my bruises. My primary abuser went after me in public.

It was obvious. The hate, the beatings, the neglect.

No one ever did anything. No one. Not one teacher or priest or nun or doctor or neighbor or friend. Nobody. Everybody saw. Nobody said a word.

Years. And years and years and years and years and years. Years when I might have been happy. Years when I might have been healthy. Years when I might have learned to play a musical instrument. Years when I might have realized that I really wasn't an idiot and began to prepare for my future. Years when I might have had friends. Years when I might not have been afraid of walking down the hallway in my own house. Not my house. It was never my house. The house in which I lived.

Years of hell in that picturesque town full of churchgoing people who never saw, never spoke, never intervened.

In "Save Send Delete" I talk about why I believe in God. The book is a conversation I had with a prominent atheist I saw on television.

I believe in God because I survived my own childhood.

My belief in God is challenging because I lived that childhood.

An atheist attempted to contradict me recently.

"No," she insisted. "You survived your childhood because one person reached out to you. That's what scientific research shows. If an abused child has one person who believes in him or her, they can survive."

I told this atheist to stop trying to take over my own life story.

There was no one person who reached out to me.

I survived because of God. My survival was a miracle.

Being small, being defenseless, being malnourished, being unkempt, being inquisitive, being eager, being tender as children are – how could I otherwise have survived? I talk about it a bit in "Save Send Delete." It was hard enough to talk about it there. I don't want even to try here. I just got in from the ride through my hometown.

But, yes. Many people who have suffered do believe in God, and for many of us that belief is more of a vexation, a challenge, than the comfort snotty atheists insist that belief is.

***

No one spoke up for me. No one challenged my abusers. I do speak up. I speak up against wrong. I've been politically active all my life. I name perpetrators. I name victims. I name victimization.

If a student comes to me in tears and describes a boyfriend who needles her about being fat, or a mother who says she has to quit school to take care of abuelita because that student has no future, anyway, I say, "That boyfriend is abusing you. That mother is abusing you."

Just saying that is a big deal.

Recently, John, a Facebook friend, posted a story about two Pakistani girls, Noor Basra, 16, and Noor Sheza, 15, who were killed by family members for dancing in the rain. John and his Facebook friends, all good "liberals," tsk-tsked about these killings. Then they blamed Christianity. And Capitalism. And Mediterranean culture. Really. REALLY.

I said, "Honor killing. A custom in Islam." And they called me a bigot and just kept insisting it was Christianity and Capitalism and the Mediterranean.

Speaking up when you see someone hurt is dangerous.

The victimizer is powerful. The victim is weak. That is why one is a victimizer, and the other is a victim.

I am so put off by grievance mongering industries. I am so unwilling to participate when someone announces to me that he or she is a victim deserving special funds or treatment simply because of identity. So many of these people have never suffered. I know. People who have suffered wear it. It precedes them, like the scent of a perfume.

I wish we had a grievance industry dedicated to abused kids. It's happening right now. Some kid – millions of kids – are being abused right now. And they will never enter the halo of any grievance industry.

As much as I support gay rights, and I do, I was nauseated when Facebook friends changed their profile pictures to equal signs to celebrate gay marriage. All well and good, I want to say, you CAN speak up and be visible when it is trendy, when it is easy.

Will you speak up when it is not trendy? Because real speaking up is always risky.

I just googled the phrase, "If you witness child abuse." I found a website, and it looks good. Please read it. Please speak up. If you witness child abuse read this.

Sharing "The Searchers" with a Young Writer

One of the creepiest embraces in film history: Debbie (Natalie Wood) and Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) 

Did John Ford know now to compose a shot, or what? 

Do these pioneer women want Ethan Edwards to be arriving, or leaving?
Will he protect, or will he kill? What is the difference? 

I cried. 

Comanche warriors.
This image was probably not so picturesque if your village was about to be raided.

Comanche, no longer warriors. Source

Perhaps the depths of ignominy. Source

My student is brilliant and beautiful, talented and spirited.

She is, like me, a hyphenated American, from a little-known ethnic group.

As a writer and a woman, she's looking at writing, women writers, and the body of literature by and about hyphenated Americans.

We'll look at the predictable classics: Willa Cather's "My Antonia," Anzia Yezierska's "Salome of the Tenements," and a more recent work, "The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf," a book I have to say I really hated.

But, to start with, I wanted to look at the original ethnic others against whom European Americans defined themselves: Native Americans.

So, we started with the 1956 John Ford / John Wayne classic, "The Searchers."

"The Searchers" tells the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) who spends five years searching for Debbie Edwards (Lana Wood and Natalie Wood), his niece, who has been kidnapped by Comanche Indians. It soon becomes apparent that Ethan is not searching for Debbie in order to rescue her. He is searching for Debbie in order to kill her.

Debbie has been sexually used by the Comanche chief, Scar (Henry Brandon). In Ethan's eyes, the only way to respond to that is to kill Debbie.

***

I had seen "The Searchers" years ago. I don't like Westerns and I don't like John Wayne. I'm a film fan, though, so I felt obligated to watch it. I sat down and thought I'd give it ten minutes of my time. Two hours later, my response was "Holy Cow!" I had been totally drawn in by the flic.

I wanted to research it before sharing it with my student. I learned more about why the Comanche kidnapped and sexually exploited Debbie.

Google brought me to material that ruined my day, material I almost wished I had never read. Native American torture practices: gang raping, enslaving, torturing and mutilating captives, both Native American and European, were all ritualized. I read of tortures I had never read of before, things that even the Nazis didn't do. I had been taught that Native Americans were all peaceful and spiritual. I wasn't prepared for this material at all. It put Ethan's obsessive quest in a new perspective.

The film was made under production code standards. They'd never show mutilated bodies in a big budget movie in 1956. The film alludes to these nightmares, though, in several scenes. Ethan comes back from a mutilated body and is visibly upset. When asked what he saw, he says, "What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me! Long as you live, don't ever ask me more!"

I had to leave my desk after reading about Native American torture practices. I went for a long walk. After days of thought, I realized: Native Americans didn't live in walled cities. They needed some way to protect their own. Establishing a reputation as diabolical torturers was a form of self-protection.

My politically correct assumptions about benign Native Americans defending their land against all powerful and all evil European American settlers was further disrupted when I read about the Comanche. The Comanche, just like the Europeans, did not start out in Texas. The Comanche started out in Wyoming, hundreds of miles north of Texas. They adopted the horse in warfare, adopted a "total war" mindset, and expanded, as successful warriors do.

Part of their expansion was from the integration of captives from other tribes. Comanche widows immolated themselves. Comanche stole horses and cattle as well as women and children. Their name, Comanche, comes from an Ute Indian word for "enemy" or "foreigner."

I studied up on John Ford, too. "The Searchers" was made in my student's grandparents' time. Would she grok this flic?

As the door was slamming on Ethan's retreat from the peaceful home his violence made possible, and the lights went up in the screening room, I turned to my student. "Well?"

"I think there was something going on between Ethan and Martha!" she announced. I could have burst from happiness. Ford leaves little hints that what drives Ethan is his relationship to Martha, but those hints are not easy to pick up. Martha's theme is "Lorena," a Civil War ballad about impossible love. Lorena plays on the soundtrack, as Ethan closes in on Debbie, to kill her. It's a subtle clue, one of many – clues my student picked up.

We chatted about the film for a bit, and I tried to bring it home why a movie from over fifty years ago, about events that occurred over a hundred years ago, might have pertinence to a hyphenated American today. We looked at snapshots of Comanche today, including Comanche casinos. Two hundred years ago, Comanche housewives, without metal, lined a hole in the ground with buffalo stomach in order to heat water with hot rocks. Comanche women today have access to running water and electricity. My student and I both have ancestors who could build their own houses with their own bare hands. We come to America and that physical labor is no longer necessary, but we lost something in process of Americanization.

We looked at a snapshot of a modern-day Comanche woman. She looked like a Comanche-themed Barbie doll. Exquisite beadwork; hair permed; lots of lipstick. A bit kitschy, and not really true to the spirit of a nomadic, warrior tribe.

What can we save of our past? What is usable today? How can we communicate the best of our past to American readers? My student will be working on those questions. I look forward to her answers.

Paula Deen, Mark Fuhrman, and the Public Stocks

Paula Deen cries on the Today Show 

LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, a star of the OJ Simpson Murder Trial 

Pillory, or Stocks, a method to immobilize and publicly humiliate transgressors 

I'm troubled by the public pillorying of Paula Deen. I don't own a TV, and I don't eat crap, so I'm not really a follower of Paula Deen. One of her recipes involves a Krispy Kreme donut, a hamburger, bacon, and egg. I'll pass.

I check Google news every morning and Paula Deen kept turning up in the feed. She had admitted in a court document that she had used the word n----- decades ago after being held up at gunpoint. Further, a former employee, Lisa T Jackson, accused Deen's brother of workplace discrimination.

If Deen done bad, that's between her and her employees and the court. I was annoyed that Deen's name and use of the word n––- kept coming up in my news feed, next to weightier topics like Egypt's mass demonstration against Morsi and Snowden's NSA allegations.

The public pillorying of Deen reminded me of the public pillorying of Mark Fuhrman. That also disturbed me.

I wrote the essay, below, in the 1990s.

***

We knew everything we needed to know about Mark Fuhrman. Even those of us too pure, too intellectual, to follow the O. J. Simpson Murder Trial knew that Mark Fuhrman was not a man. Like a fairy tale ogre, he was our bête noir personified, without individuality or motivation. He was racist, if not racism itself. Late night comic David Letterman joked about racism using the name as shorthand; a reporter equated Fuhrman with Hitler. Forces usually in opposition, like the iconoclast Bill Maher and conservative pundits, were united in their vilification of Mark Fuhrman.

All you had to say was: "Mark Fuhrman," and you were using the trendiest, most economical vocabulary available to convey the evil of racism. Detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter made the LAPD look squeaky clean, Clinton displayed sensitivity to the needs of African Americans, columnists took on the authority of clergy, all by isolating and ritualistically denouncing Mark Fuhrman.

Did we interrogate the private lives, the public actions, the secret thoughts of these politicians, columnists, comics? Did we dig up their unfinished novels, dream diaries, office e-mails, and expose them publicly in a search for sin? Did we ask if they have ever gone the extra mile for a member of another race? Did we ask that of ourselves?

No. America drew a border around racism; it was embodied in Mark Fuhrman. No matter how bad we were, we were at least not him. As long as we were not him, we could enjoy a temporary respite from our racial agony. Isolating, trying, and condemning Mark Fuhrman provided catharsis. That's the whole point of having a scapegoat.

After two years of silence, Mark Fuhrman, the man, has recently been making the talk show circuit. We had reason to expect a shallow racist who would continue to entertain us and provide us with the opportunity to feel relatively righteous. After all, as the press has been reminding us, where has he been hiding out but Idaho, that white supremacist enclave? Why else would anyone leave the coasts? Either for the siren song of supremacy, or potatoes.

Our favorite fairy tale ogre has not materialized. This Mark Fuhrman was able to complete whole sentences and use words appropriately. As he spoke, traces of humor, pain, hope, quivered over his face. Fuhrman wasn't only simply human, although that was enough to be rattling. He apologized for his actions while disavowing racist action or sentiment. He talked of his complex relationships with African Americans throughout his professional and personal life. He revealed: he is not the Beast we so wanted him to be. Now we ask ourselves, what made this man so easy to demonize?

Fuhrman is obviously male in a traditional sense. He has short hair, he wore suit and tie, he sat erect. He appeared physically fit. He spoke courteously but with decision, he spoke Standard English, he apologized but did not plead for mercy. He revealed accomplishment and intelligence, perhaps the source of what looked like arrogance but what might be simple self confidence. His former occupation – police detective – is a traditionally male one involving weapons, crime, power. And he's white.

However Fuhrman may classify himself, as a good cop, a once poor kid without a father who took on adult duties at a very young age, an artist, a felon, we classify him as a white male. In a woman or a person of color, the kind of dignity and sang-froid that Fuhrman displayed would be admirable. In him, it is read not as self-mastery but as tool for the oppression of others. No less than Willie Horton, Fuhrman's public assessment suffers for the class our fears and current politics place him in.

Fuhrman may be the only major figure in the Simpson Drama who has not had a crying scene. Were Fuhrman to produce one, to reveal a temporary lack of mastery, we could embrace him. Public weeping would violate the taboos of his exotic tribe of martial white males, and demonstrate surrender to our more civilized mores.

Race is not the only divide in America. Class is another. Fuhrman did the kind of work it takes a body to get done. And we know those guys need the thinkers to keep them in line. Problem is, action risks; actions can be seen, actions can be judged. As Fuhrman himself has pointed out, he spent his career working with and, he says, protecting African Americans. The assassination of his character was the gambit of wordsmiths, whose actions may or may not mirror their avowed and popular politics. Not risking action and material consequence makes it easier to appear superior.

Like Robert Bork, Lanie Guinier, and Clarence Thomas, we gave Fuhrman his fifteen minutes to provide ourselves with target practice. Unlike those figures, he was not judged on alleged actions. An extensive review of his professional record, The L.A. Times has reported, revealed no indication that he ever planted evidence or engaged in racist activities. The contents of his notorious tapes were the basis of a fiction project; not even his thoughts, rather, his imaginings. Mark Fuhrman was pilloried in the court of public political correctness, not for anything he did, but for what he imagined. Even the low-tech Puritans, our archetypal witch-hunters, never pulled off such a coup.

Having gone through Hell, Fuhrman has not gone crazy the way we want martial white males to. He is not Bruce Dern in "Coming Home," not Michael Douglas in "Falling Down." He seemed to receive Larry and Oprah's outrage and sermonettes in a centered place, and not lose balance. He revealed awareness of his demon status, yet he doesn't look damaged to the core. He expressed awareness of the pain and wrong that resulted from his action, yet, at certain moments, his face revealed what looked like an almost Buddhist resignation to the complexities of life.

The main character of a story is sometimes defined as the one who changes. Change may be beyond O.J. Simpson. Mark Fuhrman has revealed the capacity to change, not just in public perception, but in himself. He has learned and grown from his trauma, rather than let it destroy him. The question now is whether or not we change. Yes, Jay Leno apologized for his Richard Jewell jokes, but only after Jewell sued and cried. America shouldn't wait for Fuhrman to cry before we change the virtual courtroom that chewed him up. Any one of us could be next. Do we really want to be judged simply on how media savvy we are, how well we can pose?