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ARTINFO: "WORK OF ART" RECAP: Plato, Private Sexual Acts, and Terence Koh

Every Thursday, ARTINFO reviews the carnage and glory of the previous night’s episode of Bravo’s art-world reality show Work of Art. (Be sure to visit ARTINFO each Friday for an interview with the participant(s) voted off the show.)

Now, on last night’s episode of Work of Art…

Photo by Barbara Nitke/Courtesy, Bravo

This week, the judges of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist tried to prove that opposites attract, by having the remaining members of the weary gang pair up. Each duo was then meant to collaborate on one piece that incorporated their opposing thematic forces. (They could have just set up Simon de Pury and Nao Bustamante on a date, but sadly, that ship has sailed.) Anyway, what actually happened was that each person made their own individual work and then placed it in the general vicinity of their partner’s in the gallery. This was not the assignment, but for now, let us move on.

China Chow, whose tone is growing more ominous and apocalyptic as her garb becomes more and more prom-appropriate, employs her drama-heightening vacant death stare and intones that there are “only two more challenges to determine who will be going to the finale.” All of the artists whisper, “whoa,” but China Chow is not a horse and cannot be stopped. Simon de Pury wants “to be blown away,” which oddly evokes an image of someone removing the cork concealed somewhere on the auctioneer’s body and watching him whiz off, all of the air squealing out of him. Abdi Farah feels “clueless,” Mark Velasquez feels “all alone.” Peregrine Honig says of the challenge, “Oh wow, that’s interesting.” And then, in the commercial break Bravo shows nearly back-to-back Toyota and BP ads. Oh wow, that’s interesting.

Now down to business: Miles Mendenhall and Jaclyn Santos win for their interpretation of the man/woman dichotomy. Mark gets kicked off for his representation of heaven. And here’s why.

ORDER and CHAOS (Nicole Nadeau and Abdi)
“And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.” –PLATO

Nicole suggests that Abdi find inspiration for his depiction of chaos in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Abdi then makes a kind of lumpy sculpture out of what looks like Play Doh, which is a product with which children are meant to play and not a Greek philosopher. Then, Abdi will not stop telling all of the judges that his work was inspired by Socrates’s (sic) story about the cave. And none of the judges correct him. No one on the show corrects him, ever.

Nicole makes a pretty swell piece that sounds like it’s going to be one of those Rube Goldberg roll-the-marble-and-hit-the-bucket-and-have-the-toast-pop-out creations, but really it’s just something like an endless fortune cookie that you can crank through a spool. But it is neat anyway — at least until China Chow kind of breaks it during the gallery show.

What was neater, for pure entertainment value, is when Nicole goes into the biggest, nonsensical art-school rant in the history of the MFA: “When you’re in the order, you feel fine, but there’s this outside entity that’s breathing new life into something, you know? Like this supernova, like this explosion, but this beautiful explosion that creates new life. It’s like an energy that can’t be contained.”

MALE and FEMALE (Miles Mendenhall and Jaclyn Santos)
“All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.” –PLATO

Miles is sad that he wasn’t paired with Nicole. Primarily, it turns out, because his approach to collaborative art-making is to get his partner to do something sexual — although not necessarily with him (at least he sets his sights low). Miles’s Machiavellian approach to achieving total domination this time around is to feign, in his work, that he is “a man losing control,” while Jaclyn makes a related piece about being a “woman gaining it.” Miles then commands her to make a painting of herself masturbating. He thinks it will be “pretty saucy.” Then he gets her to help him on his contribution to the piece — an installation of two walls, one covered in tar and one with two small holes — by varnishing it without a face mask. That’s the way to keep a woman in her place.

He keeps telling her to “go inward” but every time he says this, he just makes this curvy lady gesture, from which we infer that Miles wants Jaclyn to paint what is inside of her clothing. Also, here’s a thought, masturbation is not the best emblem of feminine power — especially as Miles has already masturbated on the show for the “shocking art” challenge. Masturbation is not a symbol for everything, Miles.

Jaclyn is so not-at-all empowered by the process of painting herself pleasuring herself that she can’t even say the word masturbation. Asked by Simon de Pury what she’s up to in the image, she responds, “It’s a private sexual act.” Then, China Chow inquires during the critique, “what act are you performing?” “It’s a sexual act,” Jaclyn replies. “So you’re masturbating,” Chow translates for the rest of us. But Bill Powers still doesn’t get it. “This piece is not literal,” Powers insists emphatically. This piece is literally a realist self-portrait of Jaclyn masturbating.

Guest judge Ryan McGinness (looking like Andrew McCarthy in “St. Elmo’s Fire,” i.e. greasy and earnest) asks Jaclyn if she masturbates standing up. “It’s important,” he says. Creepy. Then Jerry Saltz says of the piece, “I actually get off on that,” a phrase that loses all pretense of euphemism when actually discussing masturbation. Finally, Jaclyn gets her groove back, boldly asserting, “the frontal composition makes me seem like an idol, almost.” Full-frontal idolatry brought to you by BP and Toyota. Time to discuss….

HEAVEN and HELL (Mark Velasquez and Peregrine Honig)
“As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.” –PLATO

Here is another showdown to see who can get their fellow contestant naked. “I don’t know how comfortable you’d be nude,” Mark says to his partner, “especially even from behind.” Especially even? Peregrine looks sad, perhaps because she grew up on a commune riddled with unsafe sexual experimentation. But she, a woman regaining power, rebuts with, “what about your scar?”

Turns out that Mark had a gastrointestinal condition that once caused his stomach to explode. “I’m still uncomfortable seeing my image large,” says Mark, a comment at which we absolutely did not laugh. Peregrine, however, when she mentions that Mark’s stomach exploded during the crit, does laugh, which is awkward. Also awkward: when Miles says of Mark moving in, “you never know how he’s going to fit into the apartment.” Enough with the fat jokes. The partners make some banners out of photos of Mark shirtless. Peregrine uses a lot of glitter. Mark doesn’t know what color the sky is.

And Peregrine has a husband?

ALSO OF NOTE
“He was a wise man who invented beer.” — PLATO

The interstitial mid-commercial segment this week brings a rapid-fire montage of the artists espousing words and phrases that they don’t understand: “panopticon… tonal variations of the same hue… cerebralism… signifier… planned obsolescence” — essentially, a condensed version of the entire season of the television program thus far.

Also, Terence Koh is at the opening of the gallery show. This bears repeating: Terence Koh is at the opening of the gallery show. And Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn is missing for the second week in a row. Should we be worried? The other judges seem a little worried. China Chow actually starts crying when she sends Mark home. And Jerry Saltz sounds like he’s about to start doling out vigilante justice when he growls, “I’ve got three people in trouble tonight in my mind… deep trouble.”

-Emma Allen

For more Work of Art recaps:
Episode 1: Last Night, on [the First] Work of Art…
Episode 2: Last Night, on Work of Art: Judging a Book by What Jerry Saltz Says About It
Episode 3: Last Night, on Work of Art: Miles and Miles to Go Before We Sleep
Episode 4: Last Night, on Work of Art: The Undead Get Dirty
Episode 5: Last Night, on Work of Art: From Painterbation to the Panopticon
Episode 6: Last Night, on Work of Art: Jumping on the “Noumenon”
Episode 7: Last Night, on Work of Art: Cults and Crayola

And Work of Art contestant exit interviews:
Episode 1: Amanda Williams
Episode 2: Trong Nguyen
Episode 3: Judith Braun
Episode 4: Nao Bustamante and John Parot
Episode 5: Jaime Lynn Henderson
Episode 6: Erik Johnson
Episode 7: Ryan Schultz

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Amy Traub: Can Cities Make Wall Street Pay?

Wall Street devastated America’s cities. Consider the neighborhoods dotted with foreclosed homes; the jobs vanished with the bursting of the housing bubble pumped up by bankers; the public services slashed when the Wall Street-induced recession decimated city revenues. To add insult to injury, BusinessWeek describes how the same banks that brought down the economy in the first place are now raking in mega-fees from cities and states struggling to deal with the fallout. But here’s the ray of light: from Cleveland to Chicago to San Francisco, cities are contriving ways to get a bit of the money back. Through lawsuits and tax proposals that voters will have the chance to weigh in on, they’re blazing a trail for other municipalities hit hard by reckless speculation.

This week Cleveland suffered a setback in its an effort to sue major lenders and speculators in mortgage-backed securities for causing the plague of foreclosures ravaging the city. A federal appeals court ruled that the link between encouraging reckless mortgage lending and the arson, property deterioration, and crime that followed foreclosures was too indirect. Yet lawyers for the city insist that such consequences were “entirely foreseeable by Wall Street” when banks profited by encouraging more loans to homebuyers and homeowners who clearly never had the means to pay them back. Cleveland will seek a review of the decision. In the meantime, cities from Baltimore to Memphis are pursuing similar legal strategies to hold banks accountable.

In Chicago, banks may be asked to pay up at the point of foreclosure itself. Every other buyer and seller of property in the city is required to pay a real estate transfer tax, yet banks have traditionally been exempt. Alderman Roberto Maldonado proposes (pdf) closing the loophole, requiring the banks that foreclose on thousands of homes in the city each year to finally pay their share. The new revenue would support both the city’s general fund and the cash-strapped Chicago Transit Authority. Better yet, voters will have the opportunity to weigh in on the measure, which may appear as a proposition on the November ballot.

Meanwhile voters in San Francisco will have the chance to mark their ballots to increase the real estate transfer tax on the sale of the most expensive properties: those valued at more than $5 million. While the new levy wouldn’t hit banks directly, it would enable the public to realize some gain from the rampant speculation in high-priced real estate which is still going strong in the Golden Gate City. The real estate tax will appear alongside other revenue raising measures on the November ballot.

While neither the Cleveland, Chicago nor San Francisco efforts has the potential to fully make up for the urban ruin triggered by the financial sector’s reckless profiteering, they represent important steps to hold lenders and speculators responsible for contributing to cities’ recovery. It’s also significant that in Chicago and San Francisco voters themselves will have the opportunity to reject yet more rounds of painful service cuts and austerity in favor of policies that ask banks and real estate speculators to give something back. If they win, other cities may take the hint.

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Deepak Bhargava: Federal Government: Step Up on Immigration Reform

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton enjoined the most hideous sections of Arizona’s racially profiling law SB 1070. It was a victory for the millions of people who have been organizing for months to uphold our country’s basic values and thousands of grassroots leaders in Arizona who have braved heat and harassment to take a stand. But the underlying problem hasn’t been solved, either in Arizona or nationally. Policies by the federal government still create the conditions for massive human rights violations, and inaction on comprehensive reform allows the problems to fester.

Federal government programs, the infamous 287g and Secure Communities programs, allow local police departments to enforce immigration law. Those programs, which invite racial profiling and other abuses, led to the mess we now see in Arizona – families separated and communities living in fear. What the Arizona legislature sought with SB 1070 was to force every police agency in the state to act like the infamous sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is probably the most notorious participant in the 287g program, which gives local police the authority to enforce immigration law.

Arpaio’s abuses are widely known. He is being investigated by the Justice Department, but it is obvious that Arpaio’s immigration sweeps are driven by racial profiling and that he relishes harassing the Latino community in Phoenix. He’s already announced he’s proceeding with a raid of a Phoenix neighborhood today, unbowed by the Bolton’s decision, emboldened by the authority the federal government hasn’t revoked.

Ultimately, the only thing that will stop people like Arpaio, who when they hear undocumented immigrants think “easy prey,” is comprehensive immigration reform that would finally offer these hard working men and women the protection they deserve and a path to citizenship. Yesterday, here in the nation’s capitol and in Los Angeles, hundreds of courageous U.S. born children marched for immigration reform. They weren’t marching for themselves, but for their undocumented parents, which was a stark reminder that with immigration reform we’d also be protecting these children and keeping families together. By organizing these events, groups like CASA de Maryland, Familias Unidas and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles have doubled down to press for the need for dramatic federal action to address the suffering in our communities.

Now that the injunction has been won, Congress should take this pause to do the right thing. They need to stop shirking their responsibility and accept that until they act decisively, ugly episodes like what we’re seeing in Arizona will continue to replay in this and other forms in cities and states across the country. Fortunately, our Constitution has prevented the most egregious anti-immigrant legislation from going into effect, but every fight has left scars. And Sheriff Arpaio continues to trample on the rights of people, court decision notwithstanding.

It’s unacceptable that because Congress doesn’t want to anger virulent anti-immigrant forces, a group that is not representative of the majority of Americans who favor legalization and an earned path to citizenship, immigration reform remains stalled. It’s unacceptable that we continue to leave vulnerable a group of people to be exploited by desperate politicians and abusive employers.

Judge Bolton couldn’t have been clearer in her decision. Immigration is the federal government’s responsibility. It’s time they start acting like it.

Join us in demanding that they do so today.

More on Arizona Immigration Law

Larry Abrams: How the Democrats Can Keep Congress

Yeah, I know what the polls say: That more people disapprove of Obama than approve of him, that only 11% approve of Congress.

But contrary to what the polls say, on all the big issues; Wall Street, the banks, the economy and environment, Republican ideas are not only unpopular, they’re not even credible. The only way for the Republicans to survive is to trash the Democrats and then say government doesn’t work. If I were a Republican I’d do the same.

Republican obstructionism has been a real problem for the Administration, but the biggest problem has been, and will continue to be, the economy. In its early days the Administration probably managed to stave off a great depression, however, subsequently Obama and Co. banked their political capital on an economic recovery that never really blossomed and now is dying on the vine.

Though I’m not sure how the Obamaites received it, Economist Paul Krugman actually provided a valuable service to the Administration with his New York Times column of several weeks ago, “The Long Depression.”

Krugman’s point was that we are in the early stages of a long, but comparatively shallow Depression and that the immediate — and only — way out of it is more stimulus, not the austerity cuts proposed by the same economic “thinkers” who brought us the Wall Street crash of 2008.

Krugman’s argument, I believe, was meant to give cover to the administration as it switches it’s argument — perforce — from one that says we are in a recovery, to one that acknowledges what even some Finance Professionals like Mohamed El-Erian and George Soros are saying; that this deflationary trend is the new normal.

By November, the dire nature of our economic predicament will be increasingly clear to the electorate. Meanwhile the Republicans will be — insanely — making the case for both austerity budget cuts as well as debt ballooning, supply side tax cuts for the Rich. And they will of course receive an adoring response from Fox News and a respectful audience from the mainstream media.

It goes without saying that the Republicans will be wrong, but Democrats are not going to be able to counter their argument solely with a defense of the achievements of the Obama administration.

Rather, Democrats will have to present their own diagnosis of the country’s economic problems as well as a practical prescription for what to do about them.

Practically speaking then, here’s what the Democrats have to do to keep Congress:

1) The Democratic leadership of the Congressional party in both houses needs to commit to letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich lapse and using the new revenues both to pay down the deficit, but more importantly, sending money to the states to alleviate their own budget short falls.

This September hundreds of thousands of teachers and public service workers all over the country will be laid off from their jobs. The notices have already gone out. I know; my wife got one. Not only will these layoffs cause untold personal suffering, they will severely damage local public services and local economies, and are likely to set in motion a chain of events leading to much greater economic dislocation.

In the first decade of the 2000′s we saw what cutting taxes for the rich led to: Massive speculation and fraud in the financial and real estate markets, an immense transfer of wealth from the bottom 50 percent of the economy to the richest one tenth of one percent among us.

The extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the rich are a losing issue for Republicans and the Democrats have to nail them to the wall on it.

2) Congressional Democrats should demand that Elizabeth Warren is hired to
head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — by
Recess appointment if necessary as suggested by Barney Frank.

Warren is very popular generally, even with some Republicans, but especially with progressives who form the vital, activist core of the Democratic base. Lose them and for Obama, it will be like losing LeBron was for Cleveland. But the second reason to hire Warren is even more salient: that Secretary of Treasury Tim Geitner and the Bankers she would help regulate don’t like her.

Ideally, the best thing Obama could do to help Congressional Democrats hold their own in the mid-terms is to fire Geitner as a broadside against Wall Street and the Bankers who rigged the faux recovery so that it built their profit sheet, even as they cut off credit to the rest of us.

Obama should fire Geitner, but won’t, so hiring Warren is the next best thing.

3) The Democrats have to reintroduce the Climate Change bill in its original form — even strengthening it — and campaign for its passage. While some pundits and journalists, most notably in the New York Times, have tried to blame Democrats for politicizing the climate change issue, it’s actually not the Democrats who have politicized Climate Change and the Environment.

Nevertheless, in the course of the fall campaign it must be made clear that the Environment is not a political issue, but an issue of planetary survival. Perhaps ironically, it is only by reframing the argument in this way that the Democratic leadership will able to build sufficient public pressure for the Bill to be reintroduced with a fighting chance of passage.

This last point goes to the broader question of political campaigns and how to win them. If you believe the electorate is a static thing made up of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, all in discrete little boxes without interaction or common cause, then given the polling, things look pretty bleak for the Democrats.

But, if you believe that elections are actually an opportunity to address the problems of the country and the system itself: that the electorate is by its nature fluid, and ideas can be transformational, then Democrats have little to fear and a world to win.

An election is a terrible thing to waste.

Craig Newmark: Craigslist Foundation boot camp coming August 14th!

Hey, I’ll be speaking on the closing panel at the Craigslist
Foundation Boot Camp this August 14th on UC Berkeley Campus,
discussing “The Future of Community” with keynote Chip Conley, Futurist
Bob Johansen, Marsha Semmel, John McKnight and MacArthur genius Lateefah
Simon.

My role really is no big deal, but the other speakers are important, helping community and neighborhood groups be more effective. That includes basics like social media, grant writing, presentation skils, etc.

They’re partnering with Cindy Gallop’s IfWeRanTheWorld to capture the on-site energy and
ideas of the 1,500 attendees and figure out what’s next. Tickets are still available, see
you there!

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Ashley B. Carson: RAISING SOCIAL SECURITY RETIREMENT AGE: A BIG BROTHER "REFORM" THAT REDUCES BENEFITS, WHILE INCREASING RISKS – QUITE UNECESSARILY

By Joan and Merton Bernstein

It takes colossal gall to propose, during a period of near-record unemployment, forcing older people to work longer by cutting their Social Security benefits and calling that “reform.” Yet that is precisely what Alice Rivlin, one of President Obama’s appointees to his Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and others propose. Their mantra is: we are all living longer and so should work longer. Advocates of this “reform” don’t also urges measures to assure job availabilioty. Nor do they proposes like limitations on private plans subsidized with employer tax breaks. Nor do they advocate banning employer offers to induce employees to retire early, offers often accompanied by threat of layoffs if “voluntary” acceptances prove insufficient.

“Reformers” attempt to neutralize senior opposition to these and other proposals to cut Social Security benefits with assurances that such changes will exempt those already retired or those aged 55, sometimes 57, on other occasions age 60, the different numbers used by former Senator Alan Simpson, President Obama’s appointee commission co-chair. Mr. Simpson at a commission meeting shrugged off his imprecision by explaining, “I’m not a numbers man.” The promised exemption cannot survive once the tens of millions marked for the benefit reductions realize they would be bilked.

But an accomplished numbers man, Jeffrey Liebman, President Obama’s Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) collaborated on a 2005 “Nonpartisan Social Security Reform Plan” that advocated “Benefit cuts” through [rejiggering the benefit formula and]….”an increase in retirement age.” Raising the age at which full benefits become payable also reduces benefits that become payable thereafter at any other age.

In addition, they proposed raising the earliest eligibility age [EEA] from current age 62 to age 65. Liebman and his colleagues asserted that raising the EEA does not reduce overall program payout because a deferred benefit increment boosts benefits for each year of delay. But, the three omitted years are lost to those who die before age 65. It is no answer that surviving family members spouse would draw benefits – because they would be lower than the husband/wife combined benefit and for people dying at ages 62-64 surviving children would be uncommon. Shorter-lived program participants, disproportionately low earners, would get a lower return for their long-term work and program payroll tax contributions than under current arrangements.

Liebman and collaborators assert that boosting the early eligibility age “is likely to have positive labor market effects…encouraging people to work longer…because we want to protect individuals who might shortsightedly retire too early if given access to their Social Security benefits at too young an age.” They also refer to “myopic individuals who claim benefits too soon.” In other words, big brother knows best.

Such advocates mistakenly assume that personal choice determines the timing of applications for Social Security benefits. In the real world, technological change, surging imports or other competition, plant, office or store shutdowns, layoffs, an individual’s health, the health of one’s partner or parent, the absence of local or regional job prospects often force that determination.

In the real world, labor force participation by older people has steadily increased since 1994. Past age 65, a major determinant is extensive education. That argues for improving opportunities for education and training.

Beyond that, the presence of a pension plan than Social Security, more often available to high-earning white men, can be a major factor facilitating retirement. Some employers seeking to trim their work force provide extra benefits from retirement as early as age 55 to the onset of Social Security payments. In yet other circumstance, applicants have been out of work prior to the age of earliest eligibility.

Plans like the self-styled non-Partisan proposal offer no amelioration of dire circumstances. Rather, as Candidate Obama noted, the ownership society really means “you’re on your own.”

Advocates of delayed retirement assert that they seek to provide incentives for people to choose continued employment over Social Security. But it is cruel to “induce” such a choice when realistically many cannot choose work. Further, Social Security is already chock full of such incentives for those who can choose. Continued work produces higher benefits by virtue of a deferred retirement credit for each year of delay. Moreover, Medicare is unavailable until age 65. Yet the great majority of program participants commence Social Security before age 65, most do so by age 62 ½. We should pay attention to that conduct and not, as Jeffery Liebman and his cohorts urge, adopt a policy that eliminate options that fit personal circumstances best known by those living them.

The proposal would divert substantial funds now used to pay for assured benefits and place them in private accounts – the very device President Bush proposed for privatizing Social Security. Such accounts incur additional administrative costs and risks that the investments will fail, as they did so disastrously in the recent past.

Indeed, we should improve Social Security’s protections and benefits. We can afford Social Security and assure long-term solvency with only slight changes, for example the very revenue improvement that Candidate Obama urged – raising the upper limit on Social Security taxable earnings. And we should extend the Medicare’s coverage below age 65, thereby providing both necessary protections and achieving savings through the efficiencies and economies that Medicare constantly produces.

Sahil Kapur: Arizona Law Battle Will Further Imperil Immigration Reform

In a partial and last minute victory for opponents of the new Arizona immigration law, a federal judge on Wednesday blocked its most controversial components just hours before the crackdown was set to go into effect.

The decision, which Arizona is expected to appeal, serves as a boost to the Obama administration’s lawsuit challenging the measure as unconstitutional. It also raises the stakes of a showdown poised to influence the course of the national immigration debate. Whatever the outcome, it seems, this will dampen already grim prospects for reform and politically benefit Republicans in the short run.

US District Judge Susan Bolton placed holds on provisions requiring Arizona police to demand residency papers from individuals based on suspicions, and delayed implementation of clauses making it illegal not to carry documentation at all times. Bolton declared that the measure “burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked.”

Echoing the Justice Department’s argument that the task of enforcing immigration laws belongs to the federal government, Bolton added that the statutes “would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

The S.B. 1070 measure’s enactment in April by Gov. Jan Brewer set off a firestorm of criticism from civil rights groups, which argued that it unfairly targets Hispanics and people of color legally in the United States, reigniting an explosive national debate on immigration policy.

The law polls well nationally — partly because Americans are desperate for an immigration overhaul, and support action on the part of states amidst Washington inaction — and has become an issue in the November midterm elections.

The immediate impact of the ruling will be to tame the copycat laws percolating in legislatures of at least five states. At the same time, it will infuriate and galvanize Republicans, who strongly back the Arizona crackdown, in the midst of an already harsh election climate for Democrats.

A legal victory for President Obama could inject new fire into GOP efforts at stonewalling immigration reform, as they will likely use it to claim Democrats aren’t serious about controlling the border. Republicans, some of whose votes are necessary to pass a bill, have unanimously refused to consider broad reforms until after border issues are dealt with; Democrats argue that enforcement must be viewed as one aspect of a comprehensive effort.

The seemingly irresolvable issue of how to deal with existing illegal immigration further complicates reform prospects. Republicans appear immutably opposed to any kind of legalization program, while omitting such a program is a nonstarter for too many Democrats.

Another obstacle for reformers is that Republicans have succeeded in making sure border security dominates the debate, while Democrats have done a poor job conveying that the immigration system’s problems run much deeper, and that fixing them requires a wholesome approach. Democrats also seldom emphasized the broad public support for offering undocumented workers a path to citizenship. According to a new CNN poll, 81 percent support such a program; 19 percent are opposed.

The stalemate encompasses even less controversial, piecemeal provisions such as the DREAM Act, which would grant legal permanent residency to children who entered the country illegally with their parents, on the condition that they go to college or join the military. Some Democrats also worry that passing popular provisions on their own would sap the energy for comprehensive reform.

Meanwhile, a drawn-out court battle over the Arizona law, which might reach the Supreme Court, would intensify Republican opposition to reform and simply leave both sides to yell at each other and point fingers in the interim. For Democrats, the short-term diagnosis just isn’t good, through little fault of their own.

President Obama has taken an uncharacteristically forceful stance on the crackdown, declaring that it “threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness.” The delicate politics of the issue are inextricably linked to the Hispanic community, by far the fastest growing demographic in the United States, which fiercely opposes the Arizona measure and views immigration reform as a top priority.

In the short run, Republicans stand to gain from drawing attention to the Arizona fight. But alienating Latino voters will ultimately spell political disaster for the GOP, which already fairs poorly among non-white voters, in a country where minorities are on their way to constituting a majority. For Democrats, fighting against the Arizona law paints a much more pleasant picture in the long-term than it does in the foreseeable future.

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Maria Rodale: A Visit to My Kitchen: Bart Yasso

Bart Yasso is in my kitchen today, talking about the good food and great inspirations that have been so valuable to his running career.

Bart is the race and event promotion director at Runner’s World. He is a member of the Running USA Hall of Champions. Bart invented the Yasso 800s, a marathon-training schedule used by thousands around the world. He is one of the few people to have completed races on all seven continents–from the Antarctica Marathon to the Mt. Kilimanjaro Marathon. In 1987, Yasso won the U.S. National Biathlon Long Course Championship, and he won the Smoky Mountain Marathon in 1998. He has completed the Ironman five times, and the Badwater 146 through Death Valley. He has also cycled, unsupported and by himself, across the country twice.

Why is living organic important to you?

For me it’s all about helping the environment. Chemicals from nonorganic practices go into the ground and affect our water system. We have to get away from the chemicals to truly make the world a better place.

I get harped on all the time when people find out I’m a vegetarian, but really, I don’t eat meat or fish because of health and ethical reasons. Also, the fewer chemicals and artificial flavoring in my food, the better I feel. I buy as much organic food as possible, although sometimes it’s hard when I travel. I don’t want to eat any food that has chemicals or artificial anything; I make a conscious effort to avoid that as much as I can. I think stuff with no artificial flavoring and chemicals tastes better.

What was your favorite food growing up?

I didn’t eat my veggies as kid; my favorite food was pizza. We ate crummy, greasy pizza a lot. If we didn’t have dinner plans or decided to go out for something, pizza always came to mind. Maybe because it’s so convenient–no matter where you are in the U.S., you’re never far from a pizza place.

Now I’ll have a pesto or white pizza. Something with pesto and veggies; sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, and some pineapple makes a good pizza to me now. When I make pizza at home, I make my own dough and use a lot of veggies, not like traditional pizza.

What’s your go-to comfort food now?

Indian food and veggie curry is right up my alley. On my trips to India it’s very easy to find 100 percent vegetarian restaurants. If I had my choice, I’d sit back on the deck and kick back with an organic veggie stir-fry with green spicy curry. That would be my go-to every day of the week.

What’s the one thing in your kitchen you just can’t live without?

Our juicer–I love mixing up a bunch of veggies or fruit. My wife and I use our juicer a lot; when we end up with a lot of produce, it’s fun to mix it all up into a juice you can sip over a long period of time, and it’s easy to do.

Sometimes that replaces a meal. It’s easy to put stuff in the juicer–it comes out like a smoothie. Sometimes we add ice to it; often, I’ll add mango. Add mango to anything, it takes life to a whole new, good level.

What magazine, website, book, album, or product are you most obsessed with right now?

I’m mostly obsessed with Nelson Mandela, and South Africa and East Africa. Spending time in South Africa, you could sense his presence. Mandela just had his 92nd birthday. Obviously he’s near the end of his life, but I think he is the most famous person who had the largest effect globally in my lifetime. “If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.” This quote from him, about goodness and forgiveness, plays a role in our lives every day. If we’d keep it in mind, the world would be a better place.

I’m obsessed with East Africa because of the runners. I’ve done multiple trips to East Africa, and both the runners and picture safaris fascinate me. It’s the best way for me to relax and take a vacation.

Our house is full of artwork from East Africa. My favorite piece is the life-size Masai warrior wood carving in our living room. My wife got this idea to put our marathon finish medals around the warrior’s neck. It didn’t start out with many, but now there are about 400 medals around it. Masai warriors are great runners, so this carving became a focal point; it’s the one thing everyone comments on when they come in.

What’s the most important news story today that you think we all need to pay more attention to?

The BP disaster, and its long-term negative effect on the environment and wildlife. I just don’t think people realize how long it’s going to take to clean up the environment, and how lasting an effect it’ll have on the wildlife; it will go on for years. We tend to think, “Well, it’s capped, everything’s good,” but for 10 to 20 years it could still be affecting the animals.

Thank God for modern-day media. This thing is 6,000 feet deep, but they were able to photograph it and really put it in front of us. What a disaster, how much oil was spilled. We can’t ever allow this to happen again.

Where do you get your news?

CNN.com. If I’m at my desk and want to find out what’s going on with sports, mainstream media, or international, to me, CNN has the plethora of things to choose from. The way they break it down is real simple. They always list the most popular stories right now so if there’s something on people’s mind, you tend to know.

I’m also a weather fanatic, so I live on Weather.com. I’m obsessed with weather, not so much what’s going on where I’m located, but what’s going on all over the world. I should have been a meteorologist, I think.

Working at Runner’s World, I’m on that site a lot, but I like to go investigate what people are saying when we post things on Twitter and Facebook. I love to listen to the feedback and comments. All the stuff we post to the website–I should know all that info, but what I love about today’s instantaneous media is that you can listen to comments and opinions on anything and respond right away. You get a pulse on what people’s interest levels are.

Related Links:
A Visit to My Kitchen: Amanda Kimble-Evans – Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen
How to Exercise in the Heat – Rodale.com
Bart’s Last Great Race – Runner’s World

For more from Maria Rodale, go to www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com.

Jim O’Grady: Art You Can Eat

On an oven-hot afternoon this past Saturday, more than 250 people descended on an outdoor pavilion displaying 85 sculptures on tabletops in the Hudson Valley village of Tivoli, NY. They came first to view the sculptures–each one ingeniously made of food–and then eat them. After the viewing and before the eating, the press of drooling art-lovers clapped for those whom a team of judges wearing tri-cornered hats had lauded as the makers of the most striking and original creations. Because this was the Fourth Annual Edible Sculpture contest and contests must have winners.

The sculptures fell into roughly one of three categories: topical, conceptual and eternal. (Because how can you write about art without categories?) Each of the three co-winners illustrates one of them.

Topical. Mara Ranville and Farley Crawford depicted The Slow Food Movement, a new-old approach to eating that prizes the savoring of unprocessed ingredients, by using fruits and vegetables to create a stately parade of snails. Other topical entries included Jerk Chicken, which arrayed Jamaican-style pieces of poultry around a portrait of Mel Gibson, and several representations of the BP oil spill with molasses and mole standing in for the spreading ooze of Gulf-despoiling crude.

Conceptual. A good number of the participants in the Edible Sculpture Contest are artists or teach art at nearby Bard College. So they’d know about the recent Marina Abramović retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, at which the artist showed she was “present” by sitting silently across from any visitor who took the empty chair at her table. Hence Richard Press and Phillip Gefter’s entry, Carmen Miranda Abramović: “The Fruit Salad is Present,” that had one of the creators sitting placidly at a table with a riot of grapes and hibiscus, in the style of the Portuguese samba singer, balanced on his head.

Participants did, indeed, sit across from the enigmatic man with the braid of black hair and hoop earrings stabbing at the melon bits and strawberries on his plate. To be in on the gag meant adopting the pensive pose of a consumer of high art. Many tried, but more than one burst out laughing. Of course that was also the point.

Eternal. Most of the entries took the approach of using food to render an image so familiar that it seems to have always been with us. If you know only one thing about African art, it’s probably the stylized profile of Yoruba statuary. Daniel Mason took one such piece–a foot-high woman carved of milky stone–and, using a scanner, 3D printer and complicated mold, produced the woman’s twin in gourmet chocolate. Then placed the two side by side in an eerie dialectic, with only half of the contrapuntal being yummy.

Another example of the eternal approach was a Pointillistic representation of a “Deer Crossing” sign that made the image of a leaping deer out of black beans and the reflective yellow background out of corn kernels placed on a stabilizing bed of mashed potatoes. It won one of three Honorable Mentions, as did two realistic balls of yarn constructed of curved and artfully woven strips of colored pasta that sat daintily in a wicker basket with a pair of darning needles protruding suggestively–as if to say that, in the right hands, they could be wielded to whip up a fettuccine sweater.

There was also the self-explanatory Sconehenge.

Clearly, this was not your found Virgin Mother in the swirls of a toasted tortilla: a lot of work goes into making a comestible and commendable work of art.
All Photographs by Kazio Sosnowski

The contest began four years ago as the brain-child of a pair of Bard professors: Tim Davis, a photographer, and his wife, Lisa Sanditz, a painter. Davis says, “It all came out of long walks and hikes where we’d be very hungry and we’d start imaging, if you could eat anything, what would you eat?” The couple, who used to live on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, somehow combined that mental exercise with the making of sculpture and then placed the concept in service to the idea that, as Davis put it, “When you move to the country, you need to make your own fun.”

This year’s winners received hand-crafted medals depicting a ham on a rainbow, which is the title of one of Davis’ favorite poems. They also gave brief speeches into a balky mic explaining how they’d crafted their concoctions. All spoke modestly while clutching the medal like it meant something.

A brass band played. Children, their mouths smeared with the remnants of manipulated victuals, ran underfoot. And in an unexplained development, local carpenter and chef Roland Butler led the crowd in chants of “roast pork / roast roast pork,” and “because we like them younger / because they have more hair,” before he did a robot walk and then, in the shadow of the spidery stilts that hold Tivoli’s water tower, breathed fire. (See video.)

That seemed to be the signal to start eating, and eat the people did.

Edible Sculpture 4 from Kazio Sosnowski on Vimeo.

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Andrew Levine: Deflate Petraeus

A cult of personality around General David Petraeus was launched about three years ago when the Iraq War was going so poorly that Republicans feared colossal losses and the larger bipartisan war party realized that Operation Iraqi Freedom was at risk. A White Knight was needed to keep domestic opinion on board and to secure the military’s influence; so the political class and its media invented one. The Petraeus cult subsequently flourished under the patronage of two administrations and both political parties. It was internal Iraqi politics, not Petraeus’s genius, that reduced the level of violence in Iraq enough to make it possible to spin the Petraeus legend. Nevertheless, it has become the conventional wisdom that the General is a wonderworker.

Conventional wisdom aside, the counterinsurgency doctrine championed by Petraeus is Vietnam all over again. It is a warmed over version of long discredited colonial and neo-colonial practices. Petraeus’s generation of military leaders is obsessed with getting Vietnam right; with proving that counterinsurgency would have worked if only it had been better resourced and if smarter generals had directed operations. Iraq provided an opportunity to prove this fantasy correct. But notwithstanding the media-fueled illusion that Iraq today is somehow a feather in Petraeus’s cap, military professionals realize that the evidence it provides is, at best, equivocal. But Petraeus and his co-thinkers are undaunted, and they still have Afghanistan.

Petraeus’s vaunted wrinkle on the old strategy is his emphasis – more apparent than real — on “nation building.” But it has long been plain that nation building in Afghanistan is a lost cause. The other side of counter-insurgency doctrine, the crucial “special operations” component, is for obvious reasons less touted. In the 1970s, Congress acknowledged the illegality, immorality, and ultimate futility of “targeted” assassinations and related tactics. The eventual consequence was the adoption of a military doctrine named for Colin Powell, according to which overwhelming technological superiority is key and, so far as possible, military personnel are kept out of harm’s way. Though hardly less immoral, illegal or futile, the Powell doctrine did help make imperialist wars acceptable again. This, in turn, made it possible for the next generation of military leaders to have their day.

The Powell Doctrine’s last hurrah was the “shock and awe” campaign that launched the 2003 Iraq War. When it became plain that that mission wasn’t quite as “accomplished” as the Commander-in-Chief proclaimed, counterinsurgency revivalists were at the ready. It was in this context that, as the war went from bad to worse, the Petraeus cult emerged.

Nowadays, of course, the evidence is mounting that the darker side of counterinsurgency theory is no more effective than its ostensibly kinder, gentler side. In the past several days, the WikiLeaks revelations have made this conclusion impossible to “refudiate” or ignore. Who now can deny that Obama’s main reason for escalating the Afghanistan War was to look strong on “defense,” and that the only reason America has to keep the war going is that a clear defeat would expose the empire’s vulnerability?

Now is therefore the time to hone in on the fatuity of the General’s ideas. There is no more effective way to turn back the war party and its White House accomplice; no better way to prevent subaltern populations in revolt against foreign domination from generating the “insurgents” our troops are in Afghanistan — and Pakistan! — to fight.

To be sure, faith-based fanaticism would not automatically disappear were the US to do the right thing; after all the murder and mayhem, it will take years to work that danger out of the system. But the problem is manageable. The longer the US stays the course, the less manageable it becomes.

But don’t count on Democrats to turn the “ship of state” around, and not just because party loyalty compels them to try to win one for their Gipper. Ever the party of pusillanimity, Democrats outdo themselves when it comes to “defense.” They fear their funders; they fear Republicans; they fear Fox News; perhaps they even fear the military brass. Thus they dutifully “support the troops.” There would be no harm in this if the idea were to keep the troops from doing or suffering harm, or to indemnify them against the harm the Bush and Obama administrations have done them. But nowadays, “support the troops” means supporting the empire’s wars, and that now implies lauding General Petraeus, no matter how obvious it is that the Emperor (or rather his General) has no clothes.

It is therefore up to the people Obama disappoints, the people Democrats purport to represent, to stand up against the Petraeus cult and the nefarious practices it underwrites. We can begin by asking of counterinsurgency doctrine “what is it good for?” Edwin Starr got the answer right: “absolutely, nothing.”

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