Striking Neoliberalism in Chicago ? The Official Web Site of Paul L ...

Originally published on ZNet (September 14, 2012)?and Truthout (September 17, 2012).

The strike currently being waged by the teachers? union in Rahm Emmanuel?s Chicago is quite remarkable. A critical underlying issue is how teachers? performance is appraised. Under a new assessment system that strongly ties teacher evaluations to student test scores, the city is threatening to put ?as many as one-third of Chicago?s teachers on track for termination.?[1]?

In Chicago as in school districts across the country, the educational authorities have made students? scores on standardized tests the sacred gauge of whether a teacher deserves to keep her job.?

A big problem with this method of measurement is that teachers have no control over what serious researchers have long shown to be the primary determinant of students? performance on such tests ? those students? home and neighborhood environments and socioeconomic (class) status.[2] As Gary Orfield of the Harvard Civil Rights Project noted eleven years ago, ?When students come to class hungry, exhausted, or afraid, when they bounce from school to school as their families face eviction, where they have no one at home to wake them up for the bus, much less look over their homework, not even the best-equipped facilities, the strongest curriculum, and the best-paid teacher can ensure success.? [3]?

?Attempting to fix inner city schools without fixing the city,? education professor Jean Anyon noted in her 1997 book Ghetto Schooling, ?is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door?.Educational change in the inner city, to be successful, has to be part and parcel of more fundamental social change.? An all-out attack on poverty and racial isolation that by necessity will affect not only the poor but the more affluent as well will be necessary?? [4]?

Teachers also do not control the wildly divergent levels of per-student spending that?schools receive under local and state funding formulas that provide more for kids situated in property-rich school districts and less for those stuck in districts with a weak tax base.?

Blaming teachers for low test scores in under-funded urban schools with high proportions of poor and deeply disadvantaged students from broken neighborhoods and fragile families is like blaming a farmer for not having a bumper crop after a drought. It?s like blaming a bus-driver for being behind schedule when much of her route is closed by a flood. It is an especially noxious practice in the weak recovery wake of the Great Recession, which pushed U.S. poverty to its highest recorded levels while squeezing school budgets like no time in recent memory ? a double whammy for student/teacher ?performance? that can hardly be blamed on teachers (Wall Street and ?the 1%? are more appropriately to blame, to say the least).?

Another problem with the dominant teacher-assessment paradigm is that it incentivizes schools and teachers to gear instruction around the test. This turns the educational experience of many poor and minority children into little more than an authoritarian ?drill and grill? exercise focused on repetitive answer-giving mechanics and repetition. That is a surefire way to turn kids off and squelch schools? capacity to cultivate the many-sided and question-asking critical thinking that democracy requires. As the legendarily eloquent schools author and poor children?s advocate Jonathan Kozol has noted, test-targeted curriculum subordinates ?critical consciousness? to ?the goal of turning minority children into examination soldiers ? unquestioning and docile followers of proto-military regulations.? Under its reign, the prolific left social critic and education expert Henry A. Giroux notes, ?Teachers are prevented from taking risks and designing their own lessons as the pressure to achieve passing test scores produces highly scripted and regimented forms of teaching?worksheets become a substitute for critical teaching and rote memorization takes the place of in-depth thinking?Learning facts?becomes more important than genuine understanding.?[5]?

This might seem to be a strictly ?Republican? paradigm. In fact, however, the neo-Dickensian testing mania is richly bipartisan, like the vicious 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated funding and other federal penalties for schools that do not miraculously raise poor and minority children?s test scores and thereby contribute to the overcoming of the racial and ethnic ?achievement gap.? The mania is enshrined in the Obama Education Department?s ?Race to the Top? policy, which uses federal cash grants to encourage school districts to link teacher evaluations to student test performance and to increase their number of non-union charter schools. Obama?s former chief of staff and current leading Obama fundraiser and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is a firm proponent of the use of standardized tests without reference to socioeconomic context to assess the merit and performance of students, teachers, and public schools.?

Why this preposterous and educationally counter-productive method of teacher and schools assessment in Chicago and indeed across the country? Partly it may reflect policy makers? fatalistic sense that ?social class differences are immutable and that only schools can improve the destinies of lower class children.? This, the liberal educational researcher and author and author Richard Rothstein noted eight years ago, ?is a particularly American belief ? that schools can be virtually the only instrument of social reform.? [6]?

Another factor is racism. Behind the testing frenzy lurks the nasty assumption that predominantly black and Latino poor students do not merit anything more than Giroux?s ?highly scripted and regimented? curriculum, which would produce major student and parent rebellions if introduced in affluent white suburban school districts.?

At the same time, the test-based policy is a convenient lever for the neoliberal rollback and elimination of public teachers? unions and for the related movement to turn public schools over to private corporations. Along with Republicans and many top Democrats, Mayor Emmanuel and Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan are determined to advance the privatization/corporatization of American K-12 education. If they share the belief that ?only schools can improve the destinies of lower-class children,? they also want to make sure that those schools are as private and authoritarian?as possible, free from (among other things) pesky teachers unions, which hinder authorities? cherished ?flexibility? by insisting on irritating things like decent pay, resources and downtime for workers on the rugged instructional front lines. The sadistic game of blaming and shaming teachers for poor kids? test scores is very useful for the politics and public relations of de-unionization and privatization, masquerading as ?school reform.? Teachers unions and indeed public schools themselves become perfect foils for the corporate agenda of misdirecting legitimate popular anger over the failings of the educational system. The misdirection naturally ignores the deeper determinant role of the nation?s steep and savage class and related racial inequalities to advance the false undemocratic solution of corporatization, sold as ?choice? and ?the free market.??

It is fitting that the right wing Romney-Ryan campaign has gone out of its way to express bourgeois class solidarity with Rahm Emmanuel,[7] who received $12 million from anti-union charter school advocacy groups in his 2011 mayoral election.[8] The Obama campaign has predictably kept its distance from the Chicago conflict even as it advances the neoliberal testing and charter school agenda that lay very much of the heart of the strike.?

National quadrennial electoral extravaganzas notwithstanding, the progressive Chicago Teachers Union has courageously drawn a line in the sand against the teacher-, student-, neighborhood- and public education-bashing schools agenda of the bipartisan and neoliberal elite. According to the progressive, Chicago-based historian Rick Perlstein on Salon, the fight the teachers have undertaken is a very big deal.? If Chapter 1 of the American people?s modern grass-roots fight against the plutocracy was the demonstrations at the Wisconsin State Capitol in the spring of 2011, and Chapter 2 was the Occupy encampments of that summer,? Perlstein writes, ?the Chicago Teachers Union?s stand against Emanuel should go down as Chapter 3. It?s been inspiration to anyone frustrated that people have forgotten how good it feels to stand up to bullies ? and how effective it can be.? That?s no small praise. Whether Perlstein is right or not about that (I hope so), the Chicago teachers richly deserve our support and assistance. [9]?

Paul Street (www.paulstreet.org) was the son of a Chicago Public School teacher (Beethoven and Shoesmith Elementary schools) and was Research Director of the Chicago Urban League from 2000 to 2005. His many books include Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post Civil Rights America (New York: Routledge, 2005) and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman&Littlefield, 2007). He can be reached at paulstreet99@yahoo.com?

[1] Elizabeth Schulte, ?Showdown in Chicago,? Socialist Worker (September 10, 2012), at http://socialistworker.org/2012/09/10/showdown-in-chicago. ?While the specific issues of the Chicago teachers? strike are limited by [state] law[s that prohibit the union from striking over issues other than pay, benefits and certain workplace procedures],? Schulte writes, ?everyone knows that this fight is about, as one local news anchor put it, how the schools are run.?

[2] See Paul Street, Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post Civil Rights America (New York: Routledge, 2005), ?Chapter 4: the Deeper Inequality,? 107-151.?

[3] Orfield was quoted in Stephanie Simon, ?Schools a $2 Billion Study in Failure,? Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2001.?

[4] Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Education (New York: Teachers? College Press, 1997), 168?

[5] Kozol and Giroux are quoted in Street, Segregated Schools, 79.?

[6] Richard Rothstein, Class and Schools (Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2004), 9.?

[7] Chris Moody, ?Paul Ryan on Chicago Teachers? Strike: ?We Stand with Ram Emmanuel,? Yahoo News (September 10, 2012) at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/paul-ryan-chicago-teacher-strike-stand-rahm-emanuel-211106035?election.html?

[8] Rick Perlstein, ?Stand Against Rahm,? Salon (September 11, 2012) at http://www.salon.com/2012/09/11/stand_against_rahm/ Perlstein make an interesting comment on how important this strike is: ? If Chapter 1 of the American people?s modern grass-roots fight against the plutocracy was the demonstrations at the Wisconsin State Capitol in the spring of 2011, and Chapter 2 was the Occupy encampments of that summer, the Chicago Teachers Union?s stand against Emanuel should go down as Chapter 3. It?s been inspiration to anyone frustrated that people have forgotten how good it feels to stand up to bullies ? and how effective it can be.? I would give Preface status to the Chicago Republic Door and Window plant occupation of December 2008.

[9] Perlstein, ?Stand Against Rahm.? Perlstein notes that ?Chicago public schoolteachers don?t have a strike fund; the lost wages come straight out of their household budgets. One kindergarten teacher of my acquaintance took to Facebook to ask for bean recipes.??? Here is a link to the CTU?s ?Strike Central? link on its Web site: http://www.ctunet.com/for-members/strike-central.? The CTU Strike Hotline phone number is 312-329-6209.

Source: http://www.paulstreet.org/?p=810

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Bay Area Men Claim In-N-Out Burger ... - Personal Injury Law News by

Browse > Home / / Bay Area Men Claim In-N-Out B... September 24, 2012 (AmericanInjuryNews.com - Current News, Press Release)

09/24/2012 // San Francisco, CA, USA // Keller Grover LLP // Attorney Eric Grover // (press release)

San Francisco, CA?A popular fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger, is facing a class-action lawsuit filed by two Bay Area men who claim that the restaurant discriminates against African Americans and those who are older than 40-years-old, reports Eric Grover, a Bay Area employment attorney at Keller Grover LLP.

The lawsuit was filed after two Bay Area men attempted to obtain jobs at San Francisco and Oakland locations, but were rejected even though they were advertising open positions at those outlets. Both men are African-American and are over the age of 40-years-old, reports the San Jose Mercury News

In May 2012, plaintiff Carlos Dubose reportedly applied for a position as a cleanup associate at the Fisherman?s Wharf location in San Francisco. Dubose was denied the job, so he applied for a job at the Oakland location in June. Both locations were openly advertising on their website that they were ?accepting applications for all shifts.? But Dubose was also denied the job at the Oakland location as well, even though the manager stated that they planned to hire five people within a two-month time span.

Alonzo Brown encountered a similar situation when he applied for an associate job at an Oakland location in June. After meeting with the store manager and being told the company was hiring, he was denied the job about two months later.

The discrimination lawsuit asserts that both men were qualified for the positions they were seeking. Although both plaintiffs were initially told that In-N-Out Burger was hiring, they were later informed that they weren?t actively hiring.

?These are not isolated examples of employment practices or individual decisions,? the lawsuit read. ?On the contrary, these incidents are representative of the Company?s systematic discrimination against the Class and in favor of applicants who are under the age of forty and/or not African American.?

?The company will aggressively defend itself against these baseless and irresponsible allegations,? the attorney for the Irvine-based chain stated.

?Under state and federal labor laws it is prohibited to discriminate against someone based on their race or age, which is what the suit against In-N-Out Burger alleges,? says Eric Grover, a Bay Area employment lawyer. ?If some one is qualified for a an open job, they should be given a fair chance to prove themselves on the job, not passed over because of their race and age.?

Media Information:

Address: 1965 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: 415-659-9937
Url: San Francisco employment lawyer | Los Angeles employment attorney

Tags: class action lawsuit, employment attorney, employment lawyer, employment practices, grover, in-n-out-burger, san francisco ca
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Source: http://www.americaninjurynews.com/2012/09/24/bay-area-men-claim-in-n-out-burger-discriminates-in-hiring-process_201209247188.html

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PFT: Bush has no sympathy for Revis

Packers Seahawks FootballAP

The good news in the wake of last night?s very bad news at the end of the Packers-Seahawks game is that the NFL and the locked-out officials spent a fourth straight day negotiating on Tuesday.

The bad news in the wake of last night?s very bad news at the end of the Packers-Seahawks game is that the NFL doesn?t seem to recognize that it has gambled with the use of replacement officials ? and it has lost.

Per multiple reports (including one from Peter King of SI.com and one from Nancy Gay of FOXSports.com), the NFL has opted to stand firm on certain key issues.

First, the NFL wants a bench of replacements (they?ll need a better word than that) to serve as in-season understudies for officials who aren?t performing at an acceptable level.? King reports that the NFL won?t guarantee that the officials will work at least 15 games.

Second, the pension issue continues to prevent an agreement.? The league wants to change from a defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution system.? The difference, per King, is roughly $3.3 million per year.? The officials don?t believe they should have to tighten belts at a time when the NFL continues to grow fat.

Third, the amount of the raise for the officials remains in dispute.? The officials want an eight-percent bump.? The NFL has offered an increase of 2.5 percent.? Again, the discrepancy comes from the fact that the officials believe that, as the league?s pie grows, their slice of it grows commensurately.

The NFL remains stubborn, oblivious (at least externally) to the fact that the performance of the replacement officials underscores the value of the regular officials, who operate far more efficiently and reliably in the crucible of 60,000 fans and foul-mouthed coaches and big, strong, fast players and millions of eyeballs.? The performance of the replacements demonstrates the value of the regulars, and yet the league refuses to relent.

As King explains it, the league wants to ?wrest back control of the officials? performance week to week in an NFL season.?? But the ritual of collective bargaining requires a party that wants something to give something.? It seems like the NFL wants plenty, and that the NFL likewise isn?t willing to bend.

Sure, a raise has been offered.? Why shouldn?t it be?? Everybody connected to the NFL is making more and more money.? The officials should get more and more, too, especially if the NFL wants to emerge from the talks with new powers.

When it comes to the power the NFL has amassed over player discipline, the league is quick to point out that the NFLPA has sacrificed those rights through collective bargaining.? Regardless of whether it makes sense for the league to have a bench of officials, the NFL has in past negotiations allowed the current system to emerge.? To change it, the NFL must make real concessions.

But the NFL doesn?t want to make real concessions.? The NFL never wants to make real concessions.? That?s fine, but the NFL can?t then pretend that everything is fine.

As King writes, ?Ihe NFL is willing to look at the dispute as something like a game of chess vs. a game of checkers.? The league believes that the short-term pain of a football nation up in arms will be worth it two to four years down the road if they can improve the overall quality of officiating by adding what would be a taxi squad of three additional crews.?

Or the NFL can acquire that right by paying for it.? Instead, the NFL is willing to alienate fans, anger players, and tarnish ?the shield? in order to get its way, hoping that half of the locked-out officials plus one eventually will vote to take the deal.

The NFL is taking us all for granted.? In the end, there?s a good chance the NFL is guessing right.? But that doesn?t make it right.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/25/bush-on-revis-injury-what-goes-around-comes-around/related

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The October 5th edition of Entertainment Weekly has a built-in Twitter feed (really)

The October 5 edition of Entertainment Weekly has a builtin Twitter feed really

Youth-oriented TV drama factory The CW is hoping that Entertainment Weekly readers are interested in taking Twitter from smartphones and computers to the printed page -- er, at least a printed page with an LCD insert attached. The October 5th issue of EW features a miniature LCD display with the six most recent posts to its Twitter feed (@CW_Network), as well as a "short video showing stars of new CW shows," according to The New York Times. Yes, seriously -- an LCD screen with some form of internet connection embedded directly into copies of a physical magazine. "Emily Owens M.D." -- a new show on The CW -- is the first to receive direct promo treatment via the magazine's LCD display. It's unclear if all issues of the Oct. 5 edition will contain the embedded video screen (only 50,000 issues of a 2009 EW issue ran an embedded Pepsi video ad, for instance).

CW executive VP Rick Haskins said the company's social media team overseeing the project will only filter out "profanity or other unacceptable language." As for negative tweets, however, those are fair game. Not that we'd encourage such things, but this setup sounds all too ripe for exploitation by the denizens of the internet. Do with the information as you will, unscrupulous readers.

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The October 5th edition of Entertainment Weekly has a built-in Twitter feed (really) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/25/the-october-5th-edition-of-entertainment-weekly-has-a-built-in-t/

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Einstein's brain is now interactive iPad app

This digitized image made from a screen shot of a new iPad app, provided Sept. 24, 2012 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, shows an image of brain tissue from renowned theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. The new application to be released Tuesday, Sept. 25 will allow users to see Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The application promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look. (AP Photo/Courtesy the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago)

This digitized image made from a screen shot of a new iPad app, provided Sept. 24, 2012 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, shows an image of brain tissue from renowned theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. The new application to be released Tuesday, Sept. 25 will allow users to see Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The application promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look. (AP Photo/Courtesy the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago)

In this Monday, Sept. 24, 2012 photo, Dr. Phillip Epstein, left, and Steve Landers of the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago talk about the new iPad app being released Tuesday, Sept. 25 that allows users to see Albert Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The application promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look. (AP Photo/Carla K. Johnson)

This digitized image taken from a screen shot of a new iPad app, provided Sept. 24, 2012 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, shows an image of a portion of the brainstem of renowned theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. The new application to be released Tuesday, Sept. 25 will allow users to see Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The application promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look. (AP Photo/The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago)

In this Monday, Sept. 24, 2012 photo, Dr. Phillip Epstein, left, and Steve Landers of the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago talk about the new iPad app being released Tuesday, Sept. 25 that allows users to see Albert Einstein's brain as if they were looking through a microscope. The application promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look. (AP Photo/Carla K. Johnson)

(AP) ? The brain that revolutionized physics now can be downloaded as an app for $9.99. But it won't help you win at Angry Birds.

While Albert Einstein's genius isn't included, an exclusive iPad application launched Tuesday promises to make detailed images of his brain more accessible to scientists than ever before. Teachers, students and anyone who's curious also can get a look.

A medical museum under development in Chicago obtained funding to scan and digitize nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955. The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.

"I can't wait to find out what they'll discover," said Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago who designed the app. "I'd like to think Einstein would have been excited."

After Einstein died, a pathologist named Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy, removing the great man's brain in hopes that future researchers could discover the secrets behind his genius.

Harvey gave samples to researchers and collaborated on a 1999 study published in the Lancet. That study showed a region of Einstein's brain ? the parietal lobe ? was 15 percent wider than normal. The parietal lobe is important to the understanding of math, language and spatial relationships.

The new iPad app may allow researchers to dig even deeper by looking for brain regions where the neurons are more densely connected than normal, said Dr. Phillip Epstein, a Chicago-area neuroscientist and consultant for the museum.

But because the tissue was preserved before modern imaging technology, it may be difficult for scientists to figure out exactly where in Einstein's brain each slide originated. Although the new app organizes the slides into general brain regions, it doesn't map them with precision to an anatomical model.

"They didn't have MRI. We don't have a three-dimensional model of the brain of Einstein, so we don't know where the samples were taken from," said researcher Jacopo Annese of the Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego. What's more, the 1-inch-by-3-inch Einstein slides on the app represent only a fraction of the entire brain, Annese said.

Annese has preserved and digitized another famous brain, that of Henry Molaison, who died in 2008 after living for decades with profound amnesia. Known as "H.M." in scientific studies, Molaison participated during his life in research that revealed new insights on learning and memory.

A searchable website with images of more than 2,400 slides of Molaison's entire brain will be available to the public in December, Annese said.

"There will be another Einstein and we'll do it like H.M.," Annese predicted. For now, he said, it's exciting that the Einstein brain tissue has been preserved digitally before the slides deteriorate or become damaged. The app will spark interest in the field of brain research, just because it's Einstein, he said.

"It's a beautiful collection to have opened up to the public," Annese said.

Some may question whether Einstein would have wanted images of his remains sold to non-scientists for $9.99.

"There's been a lot of debate over what Einstein's intentions were," museum board member Jim Paglia said. "We know he didn't want a circus made of his remains. But he understood the value to research and science to study his brain, and we think we've addressed that in a respectful manner."

Paglia said the app could "inspire a whole new generation of neuroscientists."

Proceeds from sales will go to the U.S. Department of Defense's National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md., and to the Chicago satellite museum, which is set to open in 2015 with interactive exhibits and the museum's digital collections.

___

AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-09-25-US-SCI-Einstein's-Brain-App/id-01ee0acac0bc41a8af9035742bbeb5c2

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The Anthropologist in the Museum: What Is Burlesque? | Savage ...

Photo of Burlesque Hall of Fame by Mimi Hyland

As Kerim noted a few weeks back, I am currently the director of the Burlesque Hall of Fame, a museum located in Las Vegas committed to preserving the history and legacy of burlesque as an artform and cultural phenomenon. If you had asked me a few years ago what direction I expected my career to develop in, I?d have never said ?Museum Director.? Sure, I?d taken some museum studies courses in grad school and have worked in a couple of museums, but I always thought I?d help out with an exhibition here and there and that would be the extent of my involvement in museums.

Well, life, as they say, happens, and here I am today, responsible not just for an exhibition here and there but for a budget, a nation-wide volunteer network, a collection of 4,000+ artifacts, and a whole slew of legal, professional, and ethical concerns I?d barely even imagined 5 years ago. Since a) anthropology as we know it today grew out of museum practice, and b) the perspective of a museum worker has rarely been seen on Savage Minds, I thought I?d write up a few posts detailing some of the things that occupy my thoughts and time. I won?t be aiming for any grand theoretical statements here, just some musings on what constitutes life in the museum for this particular anthropologist.

And since it?s the question I deal with most, I thought I?d start with a discussion of what burlesque even is in the first place. Defining the field of study, so to speak. Easier said than done, I suppose ? burlesque as an art form grades into and branches off from a lot of other theatrical traditions, and has been in a state of near-constant change for at least the last century-and-a-half.

The simplest definition of burlesque is ?parody?, typically parody of the powerful by the powerless. In that sense, burlesque can be found in the very earliest theatrical traditions, with pretty clear burlesque elements being found in the plays of Classical Greeks and, closer to our own time, the work of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. By the mid-1800s, first in England then in the United States, large productions featuring what were, at the time, scandalously-clad dancing women and men (wearing tights that showed the shape of their legs and bodies as they danced) had become popular entertainments for emerging urban working and middle classes. Authors from William Makepeace Thackeray to Mark Twain to HL Mencken wrote books of burlesques, providing light humor for an increasingly literate populace.

The lavish extravaganzas of the big city productions were stripped down and sexed up for mass consumption by first minstrel shows and then vaudeville-style theaters, transforming by the turn of the 20th century into variety shows featuring skit humor, sideshow-style acts, and dancing girls. While the promise of a flash of tight-clad leg might have been a draw, the stars of the show were the comics, and not a few household names got their start on the adult-oriented stages of one of the burlesque ?wheels?, nationwide circuits of theaters supplied every week with a new traveling show: Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, and dozens more.

By the early 1930s, two big changes occurred in burlesque, transforming it into something much more familiar to us today. The first is the siphoning off of comedic talent by radio and talking pictures. While comics remained part of the standard burlesque show lineup, many of the best comics left the grind of the road behind and settled down. At the same time, striptease emerged, shifting the emphasis away from the comics. Just in time, too ? as family-friendly vaudeville was replaced by movies (the last vaudeville theater was converted to a movie house in the early ?30s), its cousin burlesque could offer something neither vaudeville nor Code-era movies could: sex appeal.

By the ?50s, strippers ruled the burlesque stage. But not ?strippers? in today?s sense ? striptease was never about showing off the naked body, it was about the process of getting there, the slow seduction of the fan dance offering glimpses of the female form, the tortuous tease of the burlesque artist peeling away layer after layer.

Of course, even as superstars like Blaze Starr and Tempest Storm reached the height of their fame, the culture was changing. Burlesque dancers opened the door, but they weren?t the only ones through. By the ?60s and early ?70s, topless gogo dancers, mainstream pornography (movies like Behind the Green Door and especially Deep Throat showed in the same movie theaters that showed The Godfather and 2001), even typical beachwear had made burlesque seem quaint, even a little prudish.

By the ?80s, live erotic entertainment had solidified around the strip club, emphasis on the ?strip?. Gone was the tease, replaced by women who started a set scantily clad, quickly stripped, and then took a turn on the pole or around the stage to collect tips. It?s fair to say that this is still the dominant form of live sexual performance, while hardcore pornography dominates the field of recorded sexual performance.

But these new developments met different needs than burlesque had. Remember, burlesque wasn?t just about the sex, it was about power. Burlesque is parody ? when a poor immigrant girl from the ghetto steps onto stage in a fur coat and pearls and proceeds to take her clothes off, she?s not just showing off her body, she?s making a point about the put-on airs of the rich, the place of sexuality in the lives of people used to satisfying their desires through spending.

By the mid-?90s, burlesque was on its way back, with a new generation of women on the lookout for models of femininity a little more empowering than the bone-thin makeup platforms offered them by the likes of Cosmo. Part retro revival, part performance art, the new burlesque celebrated the diversity of bodies and the power of women?s sexuality (and, as time went by, increasingly offered alternative models of male sexuality and power as well).

Burlesque continues to change and evolve, making it many things to many people. As the director of a museum dedicated to burlesque, I feel very strongly that it is not my place, or my organization?s place, to try to produce a definitive definition of burlesque, to try to standardize the meaning of the word, but instead to reflect the way the meaning of the word has changed and continues to change ? and hopefully to feed into that process. That said, I can offer a couple of identifying characteristics, a kind of ?Field Guide? to identifying contemporary burlesque.

Basically,there are two characteristics of contemporary burlesque, of which at least one should be present. The first is striptease ? burlesque dwells on the act of undressing, not on the state of being undressed. The second is humor ? the best burlesque should make you laugh like crazy. That?s the big difference between what happens on a burlesque stage and what happens at a strip club: you almost never laugh at a strip club unless something?s gone terribly, and funnily, wrong. That?s not to say stripping, pole dancing, and other forms of adult entertainment aren?t valid in their own right (and quite a few burlesque performers have and do work in multiple fields), only that they?re not burlesque.

There are other factors that distinguish burlesque, especially today?s burlesque ? the control the performer has over her act, choreography, and choice of music; the lack of lapdancing and other direct interactions with the audience off-stage; the typical lower limit of nudity being pasties and g-string; and so on ? but striptease and humor are, in my opinion, the hallmarks.

So that?s burlesque, and that?s the world I live in. In my next piece, I?ll explore what kind of place a ?museum? is, especially in today?s world of blurred disciplinary and institutional boundaries, always-on communications, and complex representational politics.

Source: http://savageminds.org/2012/09/24/the-anthropologist-in-the-museum-what-is-burlesque/

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Brazil seeks Google exec arrest over YouTube video

12 hrs.

SAO PAULO???An elections court in Brazil has ordered the arrest of Google's most senior executive in the country after the company failed to take down YouTube videos attacking a local mayoral candidate.

Google is appealing the order, which follows a similar decision by another Brazilian election judge. In that case, a judge found another senior executive responsible for violating local election law. That decision was overturned last week.

The legal challenges underline broader questions about Google's responsibility for content uploaded by third parties to its websites, such as an anti-Islam video that sparked a wave of protests and violence in the Muslim world.

A spokesman for the regional elections court in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul state said on Tuesday that a judge had ordered the arrest of Fabio Jos? Silva Coelho, Google's top executive in Brazil, unless the videos attacking a mayoral candidate were removed.

"Google is appealing the decision that ordered the removal of the video on YouTube because, as a platform, Google is not responsible for the content posted to its site," the company said through a spokesman in Brazil.

The arrest warrants for Google executives follow the filing of criminal charges in March against Chevron Corp and Transocean Ltd and 17 of their employees and executives, in a case that showed the Brazilian justice systems' willingness to target senior executives for alleged misdeeds.

Public prosecutors, who have almost total independence to bring cases in Brazil, are seeking jail terms of up to 31 years in the case, which resulted from a November oil spill. Chevron is the No. 2 U.S. oil company. Transocean is the world's largest offshore oil-drill-rig operator.

'What an idiot'?

In Google's case, judges have held executives responsible for resisting the removal of online videos in violation of a stringent 1965 Electoral Code. The law bans campaign ads that "offend the dignity or decorum" of a candidate.

Earlier this month an electoral court in the state of Paraiba ordered the arrest of another senior Google executive, Edmundo Luiz Pinto Balthazar, after the company refused to take down a YouTube video mocking a mayoral candidate there.

The video clip loaded by the user "Paraiba Humor" seized on a verbal slip by a candidate in a montage remarking, "What an idiot ? give him an F!"

Within days another judge overturned the order to arrest Balthazar, writing that "Google is not the intellectual author of the video, it did not post the file, and for that reason it cannot be punished for its propagation."

The company also defended users' political rights in a statement at the time.

"Google believes that voters have a right to use the Internet to freely express their opinions about candidates for political office, as a form of full exercise of democracy, especially during electoral campaigns," the company wrote.

Google faces frequent legal scrutiny over the limits of users' expression in Brazil, where it opened an office in 2005.

Over the years, the company has received repeated requests from Brazilian authorities to reveal the identity of bloggers and users of its social networking site Orkut, whose posts violated local libel and anti-racism laws.

In the second half of last year, Google removed four Orkut profiles after an electoral court order, the company said on a portion of its website called the Transparency Report.

This story was updated at 8:40 p.m. ET.

(Story by?Brad Haynes?with?Additional reportingby Jeb Blount;?Editing by Tim Dobbyn)?

(c) CopyrightThomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at:?http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/brazil-judge-orders-arrest-google-exec-over-youtube-video-1B6097570

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'The Casual Vacancy': Adult content shows we're not at Hogwarts anymore

J.K. Rowling's new book for adults is highly anticipated, and adult content in the books shows it's no Potter do-over, though similar themes echo in 'Vacancy.'

By Husna Haq / September 24, 2012

J.K. Rowling's new book 'The Casual Vacancy,' to be released Sept. 27, reflects on the two topics that she says are her obsessions: morality and mortality.

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If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once proclaimed, ?There are no second acts in American lives,? J.K. Rowling is proving there are in British ones.

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And third and fourth, it seems. The once-single mother who survived on welfare, then struck platinum-status with her seven-book series on the magical world of Harry Potter has reinvented herself again, this time as a novelist for an entirely new audience ? adults.?

Rowling?s post-Harry era begins Sept. 27 with the release of ?The Casual Vacancy.? The new novel is a 512-page tale of class warfare, morality, and small town politics set in an idyllic fictional English village.

The question on everyone?s mind: Whether Rowling can successfully crossover from her stratospherically triumphant reign as a children?s author and creator of the 450-million-selling Potter books, which made her net worth almost $900 million and set the bar for forthcoming books frighteningly high, to well-received adult novelist.

This much is clear: ?The Casual Vacancy? is no ?Harry Potter? and Rowling, thankfully, makes no apologies for this decidedly different track. Set in the fictional English village of Pagford, the book begins as a ?rural comedy of manners? that builds into a portrayal of class warfare, strewn throughout with treatises on social welfare. Following the death of Pagford council member Barry Fairbrother, the well-heeled town is pitched into a divisive battle about its connection to Fields, a neighboring town characterized by its public housing and poverty. Historically, Pagford extended a hand to Fields ? children from Fields could attend primary school in Pagford (?a place of flower baskets and other middle-class comforts) and the town also ran a drug-treatment clinic that served many in Fields. But with the death of council member Fairbrother, Pagford?s ?anti-Fields faction sees an opportunity to rid Pagford of this burden.?

After reading the 512-page novel and interviewing the famously reserved Rowling, writer Ian Parker shared his thoughts in a 10,000-word feature in the New Yorker.?

?Within a few pages, it was clear that the novel had not been written for children,? Parker writes. ?The Casual Vacancy,? after all, is a tale of ?class warfare set amid semi-rural poverty, heroin addiction, and teenage perplexity and sexuality.?

??But reviewers looking for echoes of the Harry Potter series will find them. ?The Causal Vacancy? describes young people coming of age in a place divided by warring factions, and the deceased council member, Barry Fairbrother ? who dies in the first chapter but remains the story?s moral center ? had the same virtues, in his world, that Harry had in his ? tolerance, constancy, a willingness to act.?

Even Rowling found similar themes. ?I think there?is?a through-line,? the author told Parker of the New Yorker. ?Mortality, morality, the two things that I obsess about.?

But, by most accounts, the similarities end there. For those accustomed to Rowling?s more traditional, buttoned-up children?s fare, ?The Casual Vacancy? is most certainly not that.

There?s this: ?The leathery skin of her upper cleavage radiated little cracks that no longer vanished when decompressed.? And this, about a lustful little boy who sits on a school bus ?with an ache in his heart and in his balls.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/NyW_hEm_G7A/The-Casual-Vacancy-Adult-content-shows-we-re-not-at-Hogwarts-anymore

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