January 31, 2004

OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS

Reported by the indispensable MEMRI:

The Saudi Government daily, Okaz
'Bush Didn't Stop Beating the Drums of War;' 'The American People Itself Will be Scorched by It'

In an editorial titled "The American President, George Bush, Threatens the World with War!" the Saudi government daily 'Okaz wrote: "The American president George Bush … did not stop beating the drums of war in his address! In contrast with his previous address … in which he celebrated the decision to go to war against Afghanistan and announced the war on Iraq, in his last address the American president turned war into an open option and threatened additional wars if the American people elect him for another term…!"

RIGHT STUFF AWARD

“WEAKLING” WINS HORSEFEATHERS’ RIGHT STUFF AWARD

In this post-modern age in which cynicism and androgyny reign in sophisticated America let us take a few moments to doff our hat to 14 year old Justin Gregorich—a kid with the Right Stuff.

He comes from Clearwater, Florida and is a freshman at Countryside High School there. He wanted very much to join the team’s junior varsity football team even though he was only 5’3” and weighed in at a 130—a little on the light side. Nevertheless he went to conditioning practice last Wednesday after school to give it a try.

As it turned out, he couldn’t match some of the bigger guys in weight-lifting and they began to bait him and call him a weakling. Eventually, miffed, he left practice and started walking home.

Suddenly he saw a car up ahead swerve off the road and head right into a nearby pond. He ran up to the fast-sinking car and without a second thought dove into the snake and alligator infested water to save the driver. Along with a couple of other passersby they managed to get the car door open, drag the man out and swim him to safety. (More details here.)

Hats off to Justin Gregorich, a kid with great heart.

SAUDI PAIN: RUNAWAY SERVANTS

It's getting harder and harder to be a wealthy Saudi. Next thing you know their slaves may demand rights. Horsefeathers feels their pain.

"...I think the most difficult moment that anyone could face is seeing their domestic servants, whether maid or drivers, run away..."

See the rest here

BEYOND PARODY

ABC News reports that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are on the list of nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize-- along with Slobodan Milosevic and Adolph Hitler.

"...Other nominees are varied and include: Pope John Paul II; the European Union to mark its expansion to include former East bloc states; the Salvation Army; former Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler; former Czech president Vaclav Havel; former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic; and Chinese dissidents..".

January 30, 2004

RELIGION OF PEACE WATCH: OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS WELCOME PILGRIMS TO MECCA

Millions of pilgrims pray outside Mecca as hajj nears end

"...Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen (holy warriors) everywhere," al-Taleb said. "Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists...."
See the rest here

January 29, 2004

MARY ROBINSON (CONT.)

The New York Sun picks up the Columbia story:
Columbia Hire Sparks Protest From Jews
See the story here

FEEDING THE CROCODILE--AGAIN

"Each one hopes that if it feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last"
---Winston Churchill in his radio broadcast, Jan. 20, 1940 describing the fate of appeasers

Today's headlines:
1)Israel Begins Freeing 400 Palestinians

2)Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 10 on Jerusalem Bus

January 28, 2004

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY WELCOMES LEADING VOICE OF U.N. ANTI-SEMITISM

         Columbia University proudly announced the hiring of Mary Robinson, one of the chief instigators of world wide anti-semitism, and apologist for suicide murderers. Lee Bollinger is fairly bursting with pride: "Mary Robinson is one of the most dynamic world leaders of our times -- a true humanitarian who has spent her career advancing human rights and the principles of inclusiveness in her native Ireland as well as throughout the world," said Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University. "With her extensive diplomatic experience and years of work on ethical globalization, she will be a tremendous resource and an inspiration as we continue to build on programs of international education."
        Let's have a look at that extensive experience: "...She was the driving force behind the Orwellian "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance." At the conference, Robinson presided over little more than an intellectual pogrom against Jews and Israel. She remained largely silent as the preliminary Asian Regional Conference in Tehran (to which Israel was excluded) inserted blatantly racist statements into the conference agenda. She failed to speak out when, on the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets depicting hook-nosed Jews as Nazis spearing Palestinian children. In the same tent where nongovernmental organizations depicted Israel as a "racist, apartheid state," were distributed fliers entitled, "What if Hitler had won?" The answer: "There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed." While Robinson takes no responsibility for enabling the greatest single display of anti-Semitism in 50 years, she failed to lift a finger when the South African government denied visas to European anti-slavery activists critical of human rights in Islamic nations like the Sudan, where over two million people have perished in a war since the regime in Khartoum declared a jihad against non-Muslims in 1983. Either black Sudanese are less worthy of concern to the human-rights commission, or it would be inexcusably politically incorrect to actually protest human-rights violations conducted in the name of Islam.
         Robinson's post-Durban record is little better. On April 15, Robinson's commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood (six European Union members voted in favor including, not surprisingly, France and Belgium). The vote came after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the now-famous massacre in Jenin (also known as "the massacre that never happened"). Curiously, in the months preceding Israel's incursion into the U.N. refugee camp in Jenin, suicide bombers launched from the camp wearing explosives likely bought with European money killed more than 100 Israeli civilians. However, for Robinson, a massacre is the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians in a war zone (47 Palestinian militants and 23 Israel soldiers also died). The deaths of more than 100 Jewish civilians by suicide bombers is worthy of little more than deafening silence interrupted by an occasional pithy statement of moral equivalence. The world still waits for Robinson to use her bully pulpit to call for an investigation of the terrorist murder of Jews (but then again, such an inquiry might lead uncomfortably close to UNRWA and European Union officials )..."
--Michael Rubin
See the rest of his article, titled Mary Robinson, War Criminal? here

MEN IN SKIRTS: THE ENCROACHMENT OF THE ANDROGYNES SPREADS

Horsefeathers hitched its trousers to a pair of suspenders and tightened its belt in the bargain before venturing out to the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—America’s most prestigious art museum—entitled “Bravehearts: Men in Skirts.” The exhibit, which continues through February, is advertised by a poster outside the museum showing a tall black man surely with America’s most prestigious upper body (the kind that gay body-building men would like to have and to hold) covered from the waist down with a floor length luxurious skirt of many glorious colors. A truly eye-stopping figure of dissonance and androgyny. (Click here.)

As one enters the exhibit, in the Costume Institute of the museum, one can see instantly that the exhibit is not there to serve educational aims but to promote an ideological agenda—bisexuality and androgyny. The sponsor of the exhibit is Jean Paul Gaultier, a gay French couturier. His statement appears forthrightly in the exhibition’s catalog: “Now the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a liberal and open-minded perspective dedicates their exhibition to a theme I feel very strongly about: ‘Men in Skirts.’ The skirt for a man is emblematic of the Jean Paul Gaultier wardrobe….In my mind the prestige of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, whose public is wide and diverse, will help the skirt to become a unisex item of clothing with cultural and historical realities once again. As a result of this exhibition, our western society will perhaps accept that men wear skirts, just as forty years ago it was accepted that women would wear trousers."

One does not have to read its annual report to understand the mission of the Met. Strolling around anywhere in its vast well-lit halls for fifteen or twenty minutes will show you that the museum exists to collect, conserve, and exhibit the best examples from traditions of art of a large variety of cultures. And it makes these works available for viewing for the pleasure and education of its constituents.

The hallmark of the Metropolitan Museum for more than a century has been its devotion to artistic tradition. Its art is not at the cutting edge of culture, it is not new, or modern, ground-breaking, cutting edge, or avant-garde. It is not the Whitney, or the Guggenheim, or the Modern—it’s the Met.

How to account for the anomalous exhibit at the Costume Institute? How to account for the fact that the exhibit is not backward looking—at the history of fashion—but forward looking—changing future tastes to make certain shocking styles more acceptable.

It’s as though the curatorial grownups had gone off on a holiday, and the curatorial teenagers had taken over the basement to act out some delinquent culture-trash fantasy.

Jean Paul Gaultier, the sponsor of the exhibit, is not your run-of-the-mill couturier. He has been one France’s most sensational and extreme fashion icons for many years. (To see a sample of his work click here.) A gay enfant terrible who rejoices in his transgressions, he often incorporates into his collections elements of gay style that he observes at gay clubs in London and Paris.

Gaultier, an only child who came from a middle class suburban family, was greatly influenced by his grandmother, with whom he lived much of the time. She, not one of your run-of-the-mill grandmeres, was a hypnotist and practitioner of alternative healing who encouraged Jean Paul to pursue the pastimes of sketching and costume-making.

While Gaultier had no formal fashion training, he was, beside having a naughty wit, a showman, and found his own style when he began adapting London's youth subcultures to his own fashion world.

According to GLBTQ (an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture) “His fusion of classic fashion with unconventional elements made his clothes popular with gay clubbers, fashion students, and working women…. In addition to producing groundbreaking and outrageous clothes for his highly theatrical fashion shows, presented by unconventional models (transvestites, old and fat women, tattooed and pierced youngsters)….In 1985 he created his first skirt for men. While it did not create a major impact, it had some effect, as fashionable young gay men were seen in the clubs of London and Paris wearing skirts.”

Andrew Bolton, the Associate Curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the gatekeeper of culture directly responsible for the exhibition at the Met. He is a charming young man with a shy nerdy look about him—the Hugh Grant of the academic fashion world. He’s a Brit, raised in a quiet village in East Anglia. Like Gaultier, he’d always been interested in clothes and fashion, and at the age of eleven he started dressing Punk.

After University he worked for ten years at the Victoria and Albert in London before coming to the Met. There, with his knowledge of London sub-cultures and his affiliations with Gaultier—a frequent visitor to the London gay club and fashion scene—and other gay designers, he was able to mount a smaller version of “Men in Skirts” at the V & A.

Is this the way it came about, this little subversion of the standards and mission of the great Metropolitan Museum of Art ? Andrew Bolton, the charming nerdy academic curator within whose breast beats a punky heart meets Gaultier the Paris/London gay enfant terrible with a message: Men in Skirts. Each camouflages and supports the other in their quietly androgynous aims, Gaultier with money and big reputation, and Bolton with academic credentials.

Bolton’s catalog for the exhibition is intelligent, and predictably uses history and anthropology to rationalize, legitimize, and justify the wearing of skirts by men. There are many examples in the exhibit of costumes worn by men in the past, or men in exotic cultures, which are skirt-like in appearance. After all if men have worn dresses in other places and at other times then it must be all right.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there is no clothing configuration that is essentially male or female. Clothing forms evolve over epochs in various climates and cultures. They are based on a large number of interacting factors which include weather, health, safety, technology of agriculture, technology of cloth making, husbandry, technology of tailoring (needles, pins, scissors, etc.), religion, morals, and aesthetics.

In every culture each sex evolves its own conventional gender configurations enabling men and women to distinguish each other by length of garment, by color or pattern, or by accessories. There is no built-in ambiguity about gender in the traditional evolution of clothes no matter what the culture.

Gaultier and the androgynes want to undo this entire process of evolution and development of clothes in the service of unisex—the post-modern term for androgyny. And, although androgynous trends are not new, America has witnessed a rapid growth in the intensity of this trend in the past thirty years. This acceleration has been driven largely by the Women’s Lib and Gay Liberation movements, both of which, for different reasons, have a similar cultural goal—the disavowal of evidence of any difference between the sexes.

The radical feminists want to eliminate what they perceive to be evidence of men’s superiority in any sphere and many gay men take pleasure and comfort in images of gender confusion—Marlene Dietrich dressed in top hat and tails singing in her deep voice; or the gifted gay parodist Charles Busch playing a Joan Crawford-like character in one of his Hollywood-kitsch satires; or the many instances of gender-bending in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”

As Bolton says in his catalog quoting Rebecca Arnold’s “Fashion, Desire and Anxiety”: “In the 20th century, the fragmentation of traditional lines of status and power has led to periods when solace has been sought through this denial of difference. The diversity of contemporary culture and the breakup of existing ideas of gender… and sexuality led to confusion surrounding definitions of identity…."

There is yet another central aspect to the exhibition which is associated with its androgynous and homosexual components, but which is important and distinct—its transgressivity.

One of the first things one encounters in the exhibition is a quotation from Deuteronomy in very large print: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does these things, is an abomination to the Lord your God."

This thunderous commandment looks out over man and woman manikins wearing the same miniskirt outfit by Rudi Gernreich as well as a platoon of skirted male manikins in various states of undress.

Bolton states in his catalog: “The transgression of gender has a social and even a political charge that few other forms of self-expression can match. Various men who have wished to characterize themselves as resistant, rebellious or simply contrarian have adopted skirted garments as a sign of their refusal to meet societal expectations.” He goes on to describe the various incarnations of London’s transgressive sub-cultures—Glam Rock, Punk, Queer—each with it’s own set of subversive, iconoclastic, and androgynous manifestations. The most famous of these, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, are by now elder statesmen or members of the peerage.

But here is what Bolton says about Punk Rock—his own choice of antinomianism during his adolescence: “The disruptive impact of men in skirts was actively sought by Punk Rockers…. Punk’s self- representation was abject, aiming to appall and disgust….Punk style reflected an apocalyptic androgynous tribalism. Make-up to provoke rage and indignation was worn by both boys and girls.”

Vivienne Westwood, an edgy London designer whose clothes Bolton sometimes wears, was responsible for formulating the quintessential punk outfit according to Bolton. This consisted of a pair of bondage trousers worn with a T-shirt with an obscene image or slogan. “Designed to be worn by both men and women, Westwood's bondage trousers epitomized the nihilism, narcissism and, most notably, gender confusion that motivated Punk fashion.”

Well, what, after all, is so bad about a guy wearing an unbifurcated garment? What Jewish doctor, deep in his heart of hearts, wouldn’t give up his season ticket to Yankee Stadium to look like Sean Connery when he wears his kilt?

But isn’t that the point? Men don’t mind wearing kilts because for two hundred years—since George IV and Queen Victoria gave it prestige and legitimacy—it has been associated with heroism, honor, pride, and manliness. It isn’t the clothes that make the man, but the man that makes the clothes.

It’s not the skirts in the exhibit that are the problem, it’s the underlying meaning of the skirts in the show and the show itself—its subversiveness—small-bore subversiveness. It’s the death of masculinity and tradition by ten-thousand cuts. It is the unrelenting drip, drip, drip of cultural androgyny that will wear away the shape of the stone until we have lost what was of value in our imperfect heterosexual life.

And don’t be surprised to see us eyeing that handsome kilt outfit in Ralph Lauren’s Madison Avenue window when it shows up one of these days.

January 27, 2004

SEX AND THE RELIGION OF PEACE(CONT.)

Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran offers a vivid glimpse of life in Iran's theocracy. One of the members of her reading group had been translating the magnum opus of the great Islamic scholar Ayatollah Khomeini. In his masterwork, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, he addressed some pressing social problems, such as the dangerous pressure of men’s sexual appetites: “Did you know that one way to cure a man’s sexual appetites is by having sex with animals?” But this leads to very important moral, intellectual and philosophical problems, to wit: “You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can he then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken’s meat, but it is okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away.” Nafisi adds that “these texts were taken seriously by people who ruled us and in whose hands lay our fate and the fate of our country. Every day on national television and radio these guardians of morality and culture would make similar statements and discuss such matters as if they were the most serious themes for contemplation and consideration.”

SEX AND THE SHEIKS

Once again, human nature trumps utopian fanaticism. Islamo-Nazi fanatics like their totalitarian predecessors, must curb and contain women because those terrible and dangerous creatures provoke sexual desire in men and can thereby derail the quest for transcendent perfection. Hence, while Islamic sheiks rail against the sexual depravity of the West, prostitution and sex-slavery flourish in the land of the mullahs:
"...Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics acting as pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, this is not a contradiction. First, exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both exist where women, individually or collectively, are denied freedom and rights. Second, the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are not simply conservative Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is a political movement with a political ideology that considers women inherently inferior in intellectual and moral capacity. Fundamentalists hate women’s minds and bodies. Selling women and girls for prostitution is just the dehumanizing complement to forcing women and girls to cover their bodies and hair with the veil..."
See the rest here

January 25, 2004

AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM: BASEBALL IN AFGHANISTAN

Expect fatwas from Islamic sheiks:

How Baseball Helped Children and Saved Lives in Afghanistan

Spirit of America reports that the great American game is loved by Afghan youngsters:

"I am very happy to come here and play. This is my favourite game."
Abdul Hameed
Afghan teenager

“Everyone likes baseball, it's a gift from the United States."
Adam Khan Massoudi
District Minister of Education, Afghanistan

See the whole story here

SOCIALISM'S BRAVE NEW WORLD: NO MORE JEWS

        Horsefeathers has noted that utopian fantasies, like Communism and Islamo-Nazism, require scapegoats to explain their failures. The dream never dies, even when millions are slaughtered in its pursuit. Thus supporters of Communism are still regarded, by many, as kind hearted idealists. Jews are the most persistent scapegoat, even though Jews are themselves not immune to the utopian temptation. In fact, Jews sometimes seem particularly determined to cling to a dream of universal peace, love and understanding, even when they are told they are the obstacle that must be removed to attain it.

        Here's the leader of the Lebanese "Socialist Progressive Party" reaffirming the goal of annihilating the Jews.

"...Yesterday, the Palestinian mother Reem Al-Riyashi sacrificed herself, and by so doing joined the columns of the brave Jihad warriors and broke the atrocious and troublesome Arab silence, the helplessness, and the retreat that precede failure and disintegration. She offered hope in a sea of complacency, indecisiveness, and fear. It is a new Intifada. It is the Intifada of the revolutionary Palestinian woman and of the land, opposing the 'Jewification' [of Palestine], the Jewish reality, and the Arab regimes. Did it come out of despair?

"No, and again no. It is an act of belief and it is the correct path, because the fall of one Jew, whether soldier or civilian, is a great accomplishment in times of decline, subservience, and submissiveness, as a way to undermine the plan to 'Jewify' all of Palestine..."

See the rest here.

January 23, 2004

BOOK REVIEW- NO EXCUSES: CLOSING THE RACIAL GAP IN LEARNING by ABIGAIL AND STEPHAN THERNSTROM

Horsefeathers is pleased to present a guest review by Richard Munro from the front lines of the education wars.

NO EXCUSES:CLOSING THE RACIAL GAP IN LEARNING by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom Simon and Schuster 334pp. $26.00

Reviewed by Richard K. Munro, Mentor Teacher Arvin High School, Adjunct Faculty Advisor for Advanced Placement, ETS

As a public school teacher I approached No Excuses with a certain apprehension. Yet the integrity, intelligence and courage of Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom in books such as America in Black and White (1997), gave me the confidence that whether I agreed with them or not they would have much to say, they would say it well and they would provide strong documentary evidence.

The Thernstroms’s book is divided into five basic parts. The FIRST PART is the PROBLEM: We have a serious problem in American public schools, particularly but not exclusively inner-city public schools. The SECOND PART is the necessity of creating a culture of learning. This is done principally by great teaching. The THIRD PART discusses how this culture is achieved. The Thernstroms discuss Asians, Hispanics and Blacks as case studies. The FOURTH PART discusses CONVENTIONAL WISDOM on educational issues. THE FIFTH and final part discusses the political failures, the need for authentic standards and lastly “roadblocks to change” such as sclerotic unions and impotent administrators.

No Excuses examines the performance of Public schools that are in their words “spectacularly good ”and have prevailed against the odds. The Thernstroms suggest the evidence from these successful schools –mostly charter schools- might provide models for educational reform. They give us an analysis of modern American education which by any standard is telling and devastating. American students of all ethnicities are graduating from high school with marginal basic skills in NAEP’s basic categories of reading, math, science, U.S. history, Civic Education and geography.
The Thernstroms say “the formula for these terrific schools is not a mystery”. All of their prize examples are charter schools such as the KIPP academies with certain key characteristics;
1) They are autonomous of district control
2) They generally speaking are free to hire non-union teachers
3) Have considerable discretionary power over their budgets
4) No one tells them how to organize their instructional day or what textbooks to buy.

These characteristics can exist in a public school setting. Perhaps in big cities, however, the union rules are so stultifying that liberation from the system is the only way to go. Unlike other public school teachers I am not afraid of school choice though I am skeptical vouchers per se will make any difference.
The authors are right when they say in the introduction that schools that aim to transform the culture of their students are on the right track. As Victor Davis Hanson and Allan Bloom have observed American pop culture is notoriously anti-intellectual, shallowly materialistic and hedonistic. Good teachers, therefore, like Marine D.I.’s must be counter-cultural. Then they can, as the Thernstroms write, “instill the desire, discipline and dedication –the will to succeed- that will enable disadvantaged youth to climb the educational ladder of opportunity.” The Thernstroms say that not all cultures are the same, some are academically advantageous but at the same time “neither poverty nor culture is educational destiny”. As I often tell my students there is no divine “kismet”: You sweat you get, you snooze you lose”

Throughout NO EXCUSES the authors are level-headed and sensible. Our progressive friends Deborah Meier, Theodore Sizer and Jonathan Kozol attack, not without some validity, the excessive reliance on standardized tests. The Thernstroms, however, sensibly stress the need for testing. Testing doesn’t tell us everything but it does give us some facts.

There are wonderful quotes from Gregory Hodge of the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem who says: “Without an education, these children are slaves to the world they live in.” They also quote Jaime Escalante whom I remember from the 1998 prop 227 campaign “Teachers need to teach ethics, morals and responsibility to the kids…things…lacking in our curriculum.”

The Third Part of the of the book deals with why CULTURE MATTERS.and here the authors knock Gerald Bracy, right out of the box. Bracey has argued that Asians do well chiefly because of the ”mundane” facts of parental socioeconomic status. The Thernstroms document that Bracey’s assertion is not true because even when the influence of social class is eliminated Asian students outperform others. The fact is Asian kids are more engaged in school. They care more about academic success, they do not spend much time “hanging out”, are less likely to work part time jobs and are less likely to be over-involved in extracurricular activities. Asian students take AP classes at three times the rate of White students. The Thernstroms correctly say Asian American families “have successfully transmitted to their children a culture conducive to high academic achievement.”

One of my (minor) criticisms of this excellent book is that it doesn’t fully understand or value, in my view, the strength of Hispanic culture with its deep sense of pride, faith and sacralidad (sacredness). Also, though many Hispanics (I am generalizing) are not academically ambitious they have real cultural advantages over African-Americans IF they are not completely de-Hispanicized, deracinated and “ghettoized.” When that happens Hispanics are culturally, linguistically and academically similar in achievement to Blacks. But by and large many Hispanics have a great work ethic and succeed by hustle in spite of their English and academic deficiencies. The authors reasonably suggest Hispanics may follow the path of slow assimilation and success that another Latin people, the Italian-Americans have followed

The Thernstroms rightly note that even in affluent suburbs Black score lower than their white and Asian counterparts. Only 30 percent of African-Americans take any AP or honors course at all as compared to 87% of whites. Tragically only one of nine –less than 12% - of black students take half of their classes at the AP or Honors level while 60% of whites do. They point out that money alone doesn’t make the difference.

One of the things that has happened to Black culture, in my opinion, is that religion and two parent families have not passed into urban culture. The trauma of slavery plus exile to Northern cities seems to have been a double whammy for black families far worse than for example the experience of Puerto Rican or Mexican immigration. The Thernstroms point out that growing up in a single-parent, female headed family is almost always associated with “lower educational attainment”, behavior problems and psychological problems as well. They point out that the ratio for children to parents is very high for blacks as compared to whites “roughly three per parent as compared to one child per parent for white.”

I would like to add that in my experience Black students-so dedicated to sports- avoid AP classes like the plague. Academics means staying eligible, period--taking the least demanding classes. Asian students by contrast are not as focused on sports as a route to “full-ride scholarships”. The lower educational attainment of African-American students is due to anti-intellectualism, an ambivalent attitude towards standard English and societal norms, as well as peer pressure and the low expectations of parents and perhaps, I would add, their coaches who care (mostly) about winning ball games. Have hollow C, will play.

The FOURTH PART of No Excuses discusses CONVENTIONAL WISDOM about improving schools which boils down to “send more money”, smaller class sizes, improved hygiene, the role of de facto segregation or racial isolation and the role of teacher quality. The Thernstroms are right when they say “something is wrong beyond money” As for class sizes? First, subtract the certified “teachers” (educrats) from the“blob”. Class size is not as important as the number of preps a teacher has, student attendance and classroom discipline. As Diane Ravitch has noted training principals is of no importance if these principals do not have real authority over “their staff, resources or discipline policy.” The classroom should be a place where the teacher has authority within her or his sphere backed up by the department chair, the Dean of Students and the principal.

What about the “roadblocks to change”? There certainly are many The Thernstroms don’t spend too much time on the dreaded V-word- what I call voucherism. They do advance the role of teachers unions. Let me say that I like more than 80% of public school teachers am a union member and have been since my first day in public school. I personally am glad that the rules regulate class preparation time, paid sabbaticals, lunch duty, adjunct duty etc. Though Unions must protect teachers in general they should not defend lazy incompetents, the low achieving ‘civil servants” the Thernstroms speak of. For school reform to succeed, teacher quality must improve. For teacher quality to improve we must promote respect for authentic high achievers with good pay, good benefits and, perhaps special tax credits. Any reform that fails to attract and retrain good teachers will fail.

The authors question the relative success and efficiency of Title I and Head Start. Essentially these federal subsidy programs help poor and minority constituents. These are not small programs but huge programs costing billions. Lt’s be blunt: what we have here is a new spoils system. Much of Title I and public education is about featherbedding not about education. Roman emperors paid off the Praetorians or else, and politicians, likewise, cut public jobs and the health care they provide at their own risk.

Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind (and its mandatory testing program) gets high praise. States or districts can ignore the mandates but then they risk losing Title I funds. Only time will tell if NCLB will be deemed a 100% success by the year 2014 as far as kids are concerned. This writer is skeptical but unafraid.
No Excuses is an important book. I admire the Thernstroms for daring to suffer the slings and arrows of the PC ideologues. In my opinion every educational leader in the country should read this book. Unfortunately, many people have closed minds. They have their jobs already, they have their “empire” already and it is in their interest to defend the status quo above all else despite their protestations to the contrary. After reading No Excuses I felt stronger than ever that teaching values and establishing a culture of learning or a true paideia by any means is vital. We should leave no stone unturned in our search for the best schools possible in every community, rich and poor, black and white, Hispanic and Asian etc. Education is vital for the success of America as a country and as a democracy. There is always hope that a few courageous souls will learn from this book. The day may come yet when many bless the Thernstroms for lighting the way to true and lasting reform.

WINSTON CHURCHILL: DEATH HAS ITS UPSIDE

The first Sonning Prize (thanks to Scott Burgess) a biannual award for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of European civilization" went to Winston Churchill. Fortunately he is not alive to know that this year's prize goes to Palestinian 'artist', Mona Hatoum. "...Ms. Hatoum is best known for: Corps étranger ("Foreign Bodies," 1994), a work using techniques of endoscopic photography most closely associated with surgery, in which the artist began the work by passing a camera throughout her body, inserting it into each orifice as far as possible. Splicing the footage together into a continuous loop, Hatoum added a soundtrack consisting of magnified sounds of the body's internal organs. The video is projected onto the floor of a half-open oval structure which the viewer must enter to see the work clearly. The viewer's required position -- standing over the projected image of the body's interior -- creates a sense of vertigo, heightened by the degree of magnification and the relatively claustrophobic space."
         In adddition to her aesthetic oeuvre, Ms. Hatoum is an aggrieved Arab, oppressed by the merciless Jews and thus a worthy recipient of the prize. She describes one of her works of art as follows:"[It] is made with blocks of [..] Nablus soap. Red beads pressed into the rectangle of soap cubes delineate the small parcels of land which, according to the Oslo peace accord, were supposed to be handed back to the Palestinian Authorities."

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