Time to Retire 'Camelot'

Continuing to refer to the JFK presidency as 'Camelot' doesn't do justice to either the administration or the man. Unpacking some literary and political mythology in The Guardian.

How Do We *Really* Protect Kids?

Giving cinematic depictions of sex a higher rating (see: Blue Is the Warmest Color's NC-17 rating) while giving violence a pass has strong historical precedent...and needs to be made history. In The Guardian.

Leaning In and Being Pushed Back

For those of us who love a retro style, this isn't what we had in mind. Read more in The Guardian.

From Poor Women to Affluent Women, Nasty Nestle Can't Get Enough

Oh, the unholy water alliance between Nestle and Project Runway. On the Bitch blog...

Clean your drunken, warty, lazy, knobby plate!

Heirloom vegetables have some pretty wild names - and terrific history. Ever hear of the Drunken Woman Frizzy-Headed Lettuce? Read more at the Boston Globe.

It's 1968 on Mad Men, and the Women Are Speaking Up

It has been far too long, but I was thrilled to write this piece for the Guardian, discussing Mad Men, the realities of women's opportunities in 1968, and the dawn of the Women's Liberation Movement. You can read the piece HERE.

On 'Clybourne Park' and Our History/Our Selves

Very honored to have this piece in Salon, discussing history, culture, and politics.

Looking Forward in Anger

Given his history, Rush Limbaugh's excoriation of Sandra Fluke can hardly have come as a surprise. He thrives on being incendiary, delights in upsetting rational people by using such absurd language as "feminazi," and shrugs off any revelation of his vast hypocrisy. He's rich and has a powerful voice – presumably any detractors are just jealous. And of course they are liberal, which in his mind means they don't count.

The excrement that shoots out of Limbaugh's mouth with such force and regularity boasts a particularly impressive vileness. He may not be a clever man, but being unencumbered by reticence, respect, or decency, he's managed to build a platform and audience that guarantees he receives press attention in a way his social predecessors – working short-wave radio or cranking out spew-filled pages on mimeograph – didn't know they could dream of.

Limbaugh, along with Bill O'Reilly, who echoed many of his comments with a modicum less repugnance, has enjoyed his position at the top of the food chain. This time, however, he may be looking at a fall. He and his cadre of grouchy rich white men are doubling down in their attacks on women and minorities because they are terrified. As they ought to be. Supposed historian Newt Gingrich might just know an historical aberrance when he is one.

There were liberal movements prior to the 1960s. The union movements that began in the 19th century were one of the most powerful – during which women agitating for more rights in the workplace were referred to in much the same language used by Limbaugh and O'Reilly. Impugning a woman's sexual morality is ever the first and best means by which a terrified plutocrat attempts to silence her – it's no accident that women accused of witchcraft were also said to be sexual consorts of the devil.

The shock of the Depression in the 1930s gave rise to another liberal movement, wherein government regulations were placed upon the banks and government stepped in to give people real assistance and lay safeguards against destitution.

But in the 1960s, the power structure changed. As did the rules. Black people, always meant to remain within their borders and do as they were told, insisted upon their equality and humanity and that they wouldn't settle for anything less, even if meant being beaten, abused, jailed, and killed. They weren't going to settle for being second-class anymore.

Gay people did much the same thing, shocking the establishment with the Stonewall Riots and insisting that they would no longer be complicit in their own invisibility. They were proud of who they were and after a few thousand years of society telling them they should be ashamed, they weren't going to hear it anymore. It was time for society to broaden its voice.

Then women stood up and demand that they be granted full citizenship within the social and power structure as well. One of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal was the legal access to contraceptives, made possible in part by the ruling in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965). Being able to control their fertility allowed women to storm battlements as never before. Even despite the prejudices against working mothers, marriage and the children that often follow are no longer automatic ejectors from the workplace.

This terrified the white, male, and powerful. It was one thing to have blacks, whom they probably only dealt with when they needed their shoes shined, or gays, whom they didn't think they dealt with at all, stand up and demand equal treatment. It was quite another thing to have their wives (or girlfriends, sisters, daughters, mothers), of whom they expected unquestioned loyalty and solicitude, start to say words like "no."

As for Limbaugh, he's made a career by being offensive, so it's interesting that only now is he hemorrhaging advertisers. Even despite his apology – worded with all the sincerity mustered by an indignant four-year-old – the flak is not dying down. He now bleats that he's merely an entertainer, that this was a joke. Quite the turnaround from someone who has effectively insisted that he be consulted in the makeup of the GOP platform. One imagines that if people take him at his word and think of him only as an entertainer, he will be displeased.

However, what was it about this bit of vitriol that has stirred up such a powerful counter-protest? Perhaps women and anyone else who thinks Griswold v. Connecticut was a proud moment in history has finally had enough. They laid into their supposed ally, the Komen Foundation, when that group turned on them - and won. If history is any indicator, more victories are ahead. You don't have to look back to the Civil Rights Movement or the Stonewall Riots to understand how anger is coalescing into action. Look more recently, to 1987 and ACT-UP.

ACT-UP – AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power was formed because a tipping point had been reached. AIDS patients and activists were tired of being at best ignored and at worst belittled, abused, attacked. They were done with being polite and playing by the rules to affect change. Instead, they engaged in civil disobedience. The forcefulness of their actions and messaging finally spurred real political action on AIDS, improving the lives of patients and channeling more funding and focus to developing a cure, so that today those living with HIV aren't living under a death sentence. As if this victory wasn't enough, it was arguably this re-politicizing of the gay civil rights movement that helped make marriage, employment, housing, benefits, and adoption rights such a regular part of the national and international conversation today. Anger begets action, which begets change.

And change is inevitable.

Nostalgia's Not What It Used to Be

Amid the usual hand-wringing about how the Oscars were boring, out of touch, silly, meaningless, etc, one point mentioned in various outlets was that the Academy itself is comprised of older white men, making it unsurprising that the Oscars are so, well, unsurprising. It's only natural that these members, though well-meaning and often politically liberal – if not progressive – would cast their votes for things white men like.

Much like Mark Twain's complaint that everyone talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it, it's worth a quick thought as to why the Academy is so white and male, and considering what to do. One need only look at all the teams of men winning the technical awards (the ones everyone always thinks are so boring and yet it's the good work of these teams that make movies look and sound terrific so a bit more respect might be warranted – no reason not to give them a moment in the sun after all the time they spend in the dark. Besides, they often give the speeches that have the most spontaneity and humor). The women who work behind the scenes tend to be in the expected fields of costume, makeup, hair, and set decoration. They are brilliant, but they aren't doing sound effects editing. That's the sort of job a man gets into after having spent an adolescence developing wicked computer skills (social skills questionable).

So that's why there are so many men – the issue of why they are almost uniformly white can be answered with a few depressing considerations. Clearly, the stars in this field should be engaging in outreach, finding young women and people of color with strong aptitude and offering classes, internships, and fellowships to bring them into the audiovisuals room.

As to age, well, it's a lifetime membership and a numbers game. But considering most people don't perfect their skills to award level until they are at least in their late twenties, it's unreasonable to expect a younger Academy. In point of fact, the Oscars is just the big show – what the Academy really does year round (it works in film preservation, education, outreach) is far more involved and demands members who know what they're doing. By last count, that isn't going to be the average 14-year-old, no matter how many movie tickets he buys.

But the other question begged in considering the average age of the Oscar voter is, "So?" Does age mean an end of discretion, or talent? Christopher Plummer's Oscar is of the sort people insultingly refer to as an award for longevity and a body of work, but his work in Beginners was almost universally hailed as very fine, some of his best. So why not allow that everything came together and this was his time to win an award for a specific job and not denigrate it by insisting that it's only because everyone felt guilty?

Then there's Woody Allen.

As everyone carped that the nominees and winners this year were all about nostalgia and had nothing to do with the modern world and what life really is, Woody Allen and his film Midnight in Paris was dropped into the category of "irrelevant film written by irrelevant old white man." Never mind that Midnight earned glowing reviews and made extremely respectable box office returns – the best of Mr. Allen's career. Once he won the award, plenty of people had to comment on his age and the "nostalgia trip" his film was – an old man's yearning for youth and a glittering past. Which completely ignores the film's full story. It's not about wallowing in the past, but embracing the present…and the future.

The film's hero, Gil, is obsessed with Paris of the 1920s, as is just about any lover of art and literature. By chance, he is able to visit that long-gone world and take part in its glories, meeting Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, and Hemingway, among others. He also falls in love, despite the fact that he's in Paris with his fiancée and her family. Frustrated with his writing and lost in his life, Gil is renewed by these jaunts into the past. Stein advises him on his work and the others advise him on his life. But in the end, though sorely tempted to stay in this past he loves so much, Gil opts for the possibility of a new life for himself in the modern world. Which is to say, he learns from history and uses that knowledge to inform his decisions in the present and the future. The movie is about looking back only to guide you in going forward.

In other words, exactly what the study of history is all about.

Guest Post at Women and Hollywood

I'm honored to have a guest post at the Women and Hollywood blog regarding the ongoing Leveson Inquiry.

Sex, Lies, and Phone-Hacking: British Tabloid Journalism on Trial

A Blog for Choice

I had a friend who was born on January 22, 1973. She told me that all her life, people joked about how lucky she was to have made it in under the gun like that, else she might have been aborted. Whatever end of the political spectrum they fell upon, somehow anyone who knew her birthdate felt compelled to comment on its being the date abortion was made legal throughout the United States.

My friend was always very easygoing about these comments, although she told me privately that she found them astounding. Why anyone would think it was all right to joke about her being possibly unwanted was bizarre. She handled it with a remarkable aplomb, however, and always made a point of emphasizing that she was wanted, planned for, prepared for, and welcomed. That this made all the difference in the world. That her entering the world, this already loved child, on a day when it was at last legal for women to end unwanted pregnancies, was something in which she and her parents took great pride. Because all children should be born this way – loved and wanted. Because to have a family and a home are blessings that, if guaranteed at the very first breath, will help create a good life from the outset.

In 2004, she and I attended a special screening of 'Vera Drake', where Mike Leigh talked quite bluntly about issues surrounding legal abortion in the UK and conceded that there was certainly a movement to abolish it, but it was nothing like the "barbaric medieval fundamentalism" seen in the US. We couldn't help laughing – it's just not often that you hear people being that marvelously blunt – but as someone who's studied medieval history, it's definitely not a time I'd like to see re-created for the modern era.

And yet medieval thought is very much the order of the day. Many Republican politicians are proud of their anti-science, anti-intellectual stances, which is effectively anti-Enlightenment. To say nothing of profoundly dangerous. In proclaiming their insistence that, the minute they have the power, they are going to plunge us all back into a pre-Enlightenment world, they are touting the sort of early-Modern mindset that led to witch-burning being the major entertainment of the day.

Putting aside that without the scientific advancements borne of the Enlightenment, Newt Gingrich would likely have died twenty years ago (we think about all the ramifications of that progress and then politely move on), it is a continuing peculiarity of conservative politicians to aim further and further backwards. Doesn't that go against all tenets of Western civilization? We're supposed to take the lessons of history and use them as guidance to propel us forward, seeking to improve upon our past, not wallow in it. If you must wallow, I can recommend a number of reenactment societies.

What the extreme conservatives need to understand as they rail against abortion and birth control (and before they start railing against women's education and right to go out in public by themselves), is that a free society is never going to measure up to one group's aesthetic ideals. Freedom is not by its nature tidy and orderly. In artistic terms, it's a bit more like abstract expressionism. It looks easy, but that doesn't mean it is.

Above all, a free society means that there will be aspects some people don't like. The fear of change looms large, and even though birth control and abortion have been legally available for decades, the change they represent in so far as women enjoying real freedom to direct their lives and their health is still alarming to a contingent that would prefer to see women controlled. The control of women, relegated strictly to a defined and intransient sphere, represents a perceived continuity. An incorrect perception, because women have insisted upon equal rights for centuries, but frightened and desperate people cling to whatever they can. That's sad for them, but it's vital that their fear not be allowed to dictate societal practice and state and national laws. A quick scan of history indicates that doing so has never worked out very well.

I've lost touch with my friend in the last few years, but I hope she hasn't had to deal with anyone joking about how lucky she is to be here today. If she does, I know she'll answer as she did before, saying, "Yes, I am lucky that I was wanted before I was conceived and welcomed with ecstasy when I was born. With abortion being made legal and birth control accessible, the hope was that every child would start off that way. I'm still fighting for that, cause I can tell you from experience that it's a pretty great way to grow up."

Happy Birthday!

Meantime, in Publishing News...

Economies on the brink of disaster and youth unemployment at 25-year high, but there's some good news from the publishing world: Pippa Middleton has been paid to - maybe - write a book!

Hermione Granger and Hollywood

As Hermione Granger grew up, her bookish, brainy persona was reduced to being more sexy, less threatening – and less magical. --- In The Guardian

Pride in the Yankees

It was a good month to be proud – proud to be a New Yorker, proud to be on the right side of history. On June 24, New York became the largest state to legalize marriage equality. There were predictable howls, of course, but they were hard to hear amid the cries of joy. As though it had been staged, the vote came through on Friday night, still early enough to bring hordes of people to the Stonewall Inn, the bar where on June 28, 1969, riots began that presaged the modern gay civil rights movement. This night, things had come full circle. And with the annual Pride Parade on Sunday, it was icing – and a couple – on the cake.

With a majority vote and the governor's signature, citizens became that much more equal and the union that much more perfect.

But what took so long? Because for every person who insists it's too soon, that humanity isn't ready for single-sex marriage, there are hundreds of others who are sorry and ashamed that the path to equality in what's supposed to be one of the freest nations on earth has been so slow and rocky, to say nothing of unfinished.

Future citizens will cringe. Much as we cringe at photos of water fountains with the word "Colored" tacked over them, or at images of Phyllis Schlafly leading the battle against the Equal Rights Amendment, so will there be universal shuddering at photos of the 2008 California state ballot, with Proposition 8 inside – people's basic civil rights, being put to a vote, as though the rights of people to live and love as they want were no different than determining allocation of funds for state parks.

But as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." We rarely move with the haste we should, but we do move. We turn our anger into power, and we achieve change.

And it does take anger. Organizations like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis had worked tirelessly to achieve gay rights, but the rage unleashed by Stonewall pushed everything out into the open. It's a point made in Larry Kramer's 1985 play 'The Normal Heart,' fortuitously in revival on Broadway. The play is about the rise of the AIDS crisis. At the time, it was a call to action. Now, it is history.

Thirty years ago, on July 3, 1981, the New York Times published its first article about AIDS. It was written by Lawrence K. Altman and called "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." The slowness of state, government, and media to take action during the early days of the pandemic is another point that makes us cringe – San Francisco ran rings around New York in pouring money into health care. In 'The Normal Heart,' a character asks why those who rioted at Stonewall and formed the Gay Liberation Front didn't fight for right to get married, instead of the right to legitimize promiscuity. Later, it's pointed out that "Maybe if they'd let us get married to begin with, none of this would have happened at all."

With the "Defense of Marriage Act" still federal law, 'The Normal Heart' isn't yet as purely historical as we'd like it to be.

'The Normal Heart' won three Tony Awards on June 12, 2011. The ceremony was hosted by openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris and featured an opening number in which he sang that Broadway "is not just for gays anymore." It was hilarious and even audacious and highlighted the historical home theatre has always been for gay men and women. But the Tonys of the past few years are also remarkable for what hasn't been part of the ceremony. As the 1980s wore on, the "In Memoriam" segment featured dozens of young men. Year after year, the audience was shown an entire generation of theatre professionals being destroyed. Those faces, each a slap in the nation's face for not doing more, more quickly, have been mercifully absent in recent years. The men, and the theatre, are alive.

We're still too far away from full equality for all citizens. But New York took an important step towards making what was once deviant, normal. And for that, we can be truly proud.

My Post on Guernica's Blog

I am very honored to be published on Guernica Magazine's blog today, discussing the current war on women and how keeping poor women down is literally medieval:

Guernica / Sarah-Jane Stratford: The Taming of the Screw

Comments at Guernica most appreciated. Thank you!

'Spider-Man' Is (Not) the Stuff of Legend

It's back. Although it never really went away.

'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' officially opened on Broadway last night, after a record 180-odd previews (some well-reviewed new plays don't run as long), several serious injuries, and a critical bludgeoning on what was meant to have been one of its opening nights, back in February.

At that time, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, "“Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst." After the much-discussed sacking of the show's director, Julie Taymor, and an extensive rewrite, Brantley acknowledges that the show has improved: "this singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore."

'Spider-Man' is one of those shows that's becoming all too common on Broadway – the show that gets produced because it seems like a sure thing. It comes outfitted with its own brand. Tourists know what they're getting without needing a précis, and so long as they are given a spectacle, they will walk away happy. And it's critic-proof.

Which this mostly is. Even prior to the re-work, 'Spider-Man' was one of the few shows regularly playing to full capacity. Whether that was because of the above reasons for why it was produced, or because its troubles became legendary enough that people had to see it just to enjoy a train wreck, hardly matters. It's bringing people in, and may continue to do so.

But no matter how much redemption it might be said to earn in the form of box office receipts, the stories of its troubles will always cling like stubborn cobwebs. Putting aside those audiences, it might be Broadway's 'Heaven's Gate.'

(for those who thought that honor goes to the notorious 'Moose Murders,' which Frank Rich reviewed so memorably in the Times, the difference is that 'Moose Murders' was a comparatively inexpensive production.)

The similarities between 'Spider-Man' and 'Heaven's Gate' are striking. Director Michael Cimino, fresh off his Oscar win for 'The Deer Hunter,' was touted as a visionary (although without question, Ms. Taymor is far more deserving of that accolade). He was given a lot of money and free rein to make his film, which almost immediately ran over budget and schedule. The executives at United Artists were tempted to fire him, but the dailies were beautiful and, after all, the man was an Academy-certified visionary. He finally gave them a film that was five hours and twenty-five minutes long. They forced him to cut it to four hours and the result was famously described by Times critic Vincent Canby as an "unqualified disaster" and similar to a "forced four-hour tour of one's own living room."

'Heaven's Gate' was promptly yanked from theatres and edited down to 140 minutes – this time, without the director's participation. It was then re-released. Roger Ebert was one of many critics who still could find nothing good to say about it. He noted that "If the film was formless at four hours, it was insipid at 140 minutes…It is the most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen 'Paint Your Wagon.'"

David Ansen observed in his 'Newsweek' review that “An epic vision isn’t worth much if you can’t tell a story," but Cimino, who wrote the script, wasn't interested in creating a comprehensible narrative. He once said: "I don’t believe in words and dialogue. They are quickly useless. One only gets near people when taking the time to live with them." Which sounds like someone trying to say something "important," but forgetting that dialogue can be a key function in a film.

Julie Taymor does care about story, and would never say anything so asinine. But when she said that “tying this story back to mythology…is something I really wanted to do. It’s something you can do in the theater — go into this absolutely dreamlike mythic place, out of time, between reality and dream world,” it suggested that the story for 'Spider-Man' might be going places that would be hard to follow.

It was not, perhaps, Ms. Taymor's artistic hubris that made 'Spider-Man' such a spectacular mess. She has made films that failed, but her inventiveness and attentiveness have never been called into question. Ironically, she may have suffered from the same problem that helped fell 'Heaven's Gate' – too much money. With so much cash at hand, the show could be turned into an extravaganza of special flying effects, elaborate costumes, and set pieces. A complicated Greek myth plot thread allowed for yet more spectacle. But in the end, all that's created is what Steven Bach, one of the United Artists executives who oversaw 'Heaven's Gate,' described as "the perfection that money can buy, the caring it can't."

This is, after all, why theatre still matters. It has the power to make us care, to create connections in its own fully unique, millennia-old medium. Done simply, but with care for its story – as was the short-lived 'Scottsboro Boys,' 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,' and 'Passing Strange,' just to cite a few – theatre can truly connect and transport us. As the late, great book writer Arthur Laurents said, "That was all and it was enough for me: fantasies are better left fantasies."

-- Oh, and here's a 'Spider-Man' that has serious street cred:

Truth Can Hurt, Even When Tap-Dancing

Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon in 'The Scottsboro Boys

Broadway's Tony Awards will be held this Sunday, honoring the plays and musicals of the 2010-11 season. Although nominations usually include some surprises – to the delight of journalists and theatergoers alike, most of whom hate being bored – this time the surprise was a juicy one. The long-closed Kander and Ebb musical 'The Scottsboro Boys' was nominated for 12 awards, second only to the likely winner, 'The Book of Mormon.'

Despite its pedigree – Kander and Ebb also created the legendary shows 'Cabaret' and 'Chicago' – 'Scottsboro' was not a Broadway success. There was plenty of speculation as to why, mostly centering on the show's subject: the horrible true story of nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931 Alabama. While they escaped the death penalty, they were jailed for years and most of their lives utterly ruined. The case did much to galvanize those who would begin organizing the Civil Rights Movement, ultimately bringing about the end of Jim Crow. Without knowing that 'The Scottsboro Boys' was a dazzling marvel, as vigorously entertaining as it was vigorously unsettling, Broadway audiences shrank from it.

Not that other shows dealing with complex, uncomfortable history have failed to draw audiences. 'Cabaret,' for one. But when it comes to dealing with American history, and particularly race, people get squeamish. It didn't help that 'Scottsboro' was not only about a ghastly episode of history, but used a ghastly musical format – the minstrel show – in which to tell the story. Minstrelry has the dubious distinction of being the first truly American theatrical style. Wildly popular in the 19^th century, minstrel shows consisted of white people in blackface lampooning (and insulting) African-Americans. By the time the shows were passing out of fashion during World War I, they were already creating discomfort. As such, the format works well for 'The Scottsboro Boys,' a show that seeks to inform and unsettle, even as it entertains.

It's the "inform" aspect that also raised some objections. Some people complained that the show overused its artistic license, particularly in its depiction of the central defendant, Haywood Patterson (played by the highly deserving Tony nominee Joshua Henry). The show suggests that he died in prison in Alabama, rather than tell a lie that might have set him free; whereas in reality he successfully escaped the Alabama prison, only to be reincarcerated years later in a Michigan prison on a charge of manslaughter, and this was the prison in which he died. The show might have avoided going into these details so as to maintain the character's nobility – or maybe because it's a bit convoluted for a coda.

Whenever you're compressing several years of history into a two-hour show (the Scottsboro trials went on through 1938), things need to be cut and altered. It's the old saying, "God writes lousy drama" – sure, truth is often stranger than fiction, but if it's going to work in an artistic medium, it needs some massaging.

Arguably, it wasn't what the show didn't include that really bothered people. It was what it DID include. There's a difference between taking a true story and making it wildly inaccurate to serve modern taste or a creator's prejudice, versus streamlining in order to more deeply explore the characters and events. It might be best to term 'The Scottsboro Boys' as springboard history. Yes, it's not exact, else it wouldn't be good drama, but it might propel audiences to study the real events of the case if they don't know them, or revisit them if they do.

Good drama makes hard choices. Some people shuddered at 'Scottsboro's' use of the minstrel format, particularly because the brilliant writing, directing, and acting made it so entertaining, which added to the discomfort, which heightened the thrill. This should have brought audiences in by the boatload – it's the rare show that includes electrifying numbers about electrocution, for a start.

'The Scottsboro Boys' is not a show that wants you to sit back and relax for two hours. It wants to touch you, to make you see real people and the pain inflicted upon them. It wants to make you think, and ask questions. Above all, it wants to make you angry. Anger, real anger, is what changes the world. When someone stands up – or, in the case of Rosa Parks, sits down – and says "No," it's like lobbing a grenade into the social psyche. The more people realize that, the more they might take that knowledge gleaned from history and apply it to modern injustice.

Which is exactly what also made 'The Scottsboro Boys' relevant to our times. In the space of only 80 years, what was accepted then has long been abhorrent. But modern America is also the sweet land of birtherism, Prop 8, and HR3. Clearly, a lot more "No" is necessary.

Just think about all the great theatre it'll make someday.

C'est N'est Pas Magnifique

As more French women feel emboldened to come forward about sexual assaults committed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other politicians, there are some in France who are desperately trying to insist that turning private behavior into a subject for the public discourse is purely American. The fact that there are political consequences is pronounced even more ridiculous. After all, it was the French who rolled their eyes and could not comprehend the ire when Bill Clinton was being publicly raked over the coals for being a rake.

The difference is, back then, the French had a point. While the president was not going to win any awards for being a good husband, and given the political atmosphere should have been more circumspect, one still needs to draw a distinction between consensual acts among compos mentis adults, and highly unwelcome coercion.

Both Maureen Dowd and Katrin Beinhold have written cogently about the ongoing story and the wider discussion regarding gender disparity. Kelli Goff made the further point that poor women come in for extra scrutiny. Plus ça change – women are no sooner done fending off attacks than they must defend themselves in the public eye. It must be blissful for the conservative cranks who want to turn back the clock to the 1950s. It was the rare woman then who, if she was assaulted, wasn't accused of having asked for it.

The larger problem, as both Dowd and Beinhold point out, is that men take up a disproportionate amount of political and journalistic space, meaning men still get to set the gender agenda, along with the political discourse. However the women conduct or present themselves, the contempt the men have for them is abundantly clear. In the 1950s – and earlier, and later - girls were told that they had to be chaste and modest or else boys wouldn't respect them. Guess what? Boys don't respect them anyway!

Australia recently elected a female prime minister, but that doesn't equal equality. When Finance Minister Penny Wong was interrupted in a meeting and firmly requested to be allowed to finish, MP David Bushby MIAOWED at her. She told him exactly what she thought of his schoolyard behavior, and he eventually apologized, but will it change anything? Some of the world's more repressive regimes justify their lack of women in the public sphere on the grounds that they are protecting the women from this sort of harassment.

Wittgenstein said "The world is everything that is the case," but increasingly, women are saying that it had better not be. They've been considered as having to be responsible for their own behavior and that of men for centuries. Decades ago, when Israeli ministers suggested a curfew for women to avoid possible rape, Prime Minister Golda Meir responded: "But it is the men who are attacking the women. If there is to be a curfew, let the men stay at home."

She won that round, but the battles continue. In the States, it's the far-right that proves itself inherently misogynistic again and again in both behavior and policy – it's hardly shocking that so many proposed laws are directed at women, attempting to keep them "in their place." When Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, she was discredited as a bitter woman trying to bring a good man down.

Thomas prevailed, but plenty of men on the far-right have been brought down by sex scandals of their own creation. But cheating on a spouse, while reprehensible, shouldn't destroy a career. No, the problem is that these are the men who have extolled themselves as moral exemplars, so much so that they freely legislate how others live and love. They seek to punish women for putative promiscuity by taking away access to affordable contraception and safe abortions, but clearly hold themselves above their own moral law.

In France, they congratulate themselves for not being so hypocritically puritanical. Maybe not, but neither have they progressed. Liberté and égalité are very much just for the fraternité. A fraternité that might do well not to rally so enthusiastically around DSK and assorted atavistic attitudes about women. Assault is a crime, pure and simple. As Richard Nixon might have had it, there's a difference between being a dick, and being a crook.

Memorializing, Not by Rote

World War II Soldiers

In his thoughtful article in the New York Times on the most recent crop of books discussing World War II, Adam Kirsch poses the question, "can this war still be considered the 'good war'?" As he says, the "passage of time changes the contours of history," and these books are detailing aspects of the war's prosecution by the Allies that are decidedly less than noble, thus attempting to call into question the extent of the moral compass that has hitherto been so exact.

Not that history has shied from the war's dirtier stories. The firebombing of Dresden, the fact that Stalin was at best a complex and worrying ally, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have all been explored at length for decades. But with the exception of those who believed that we should instead have been allied with Hitler against Stalin to suppress the threat of communism (expressed by a repugnant character in the 1946 film 'The Best Years of Our Lives', representing the vocal minority), there has never been any cogent reason for any member of an Allied nation to feel anything less than pride for having fought and won the war.

Even as more stories of Allied ruthlessness are given a spotlight, it does not – nor should it – lessen the pride in the fight. The British and other European nations can regret not taking a harsher diplomatic stance during the 1930s, and the Americans can be remorseful about not entering the war at once to stand with our friends, but understanding more about the nature of the fight only gives us a clearer sense of both the present and the past.

As Kirsch says, we turn events into myth for the purposes of memory.  "We need stories to live by, because we want to honor our ancestors and our country instead of doubting them." Where we fail history, both in its truth and in our understanding, is in romanticizing the prosecution of war. Even when causes are just – the impetus of the Union in our Civil War; the Allies in World War II – the battles themselves are still ugly. It's David's paintings and Wilfred Owen's poetry that are beautiful. The poetry of the first world war in particular reminds us of the humans who were conscripted into the great inhumanity. Most wars throughout history have been the attempt of humans to destroy other humans for the sake of human gain. World War II forced humans to destroy other humans to preserve humanity – a point acknowledged by the former enemy as well.

Which is perhaps why the Allied side of this war, as opposed to many before and since, has virtually escaped being satirized. The stances and policies of the 1930s are subject to jokes, as are American neutrality and, of course, the Axis powers, especially the Nazis. These points were made the subject of criticism through comedy at the time and are still done so today.

Frank Adu and Woody Allen in 'Love and Death'

World War II remains an untarnished memory because of its clarity. Kirsch states that "the present is always lived in ambiguity," but if a war is going to be fought successfully, the combatants actually require certainty. Otherwise, there is no means of justifying the action. The attempt to do so without a tangible and unambiguous enemy is what has prompted jokes, such as Woody Allen's point in his 1975 film 'Love and Death,' satirizing the Napoleonic Wars (among other things). The squad leader explains "If we kill more Frenchmen, we win. If they kill more Russians, they win." Allen's character - a proudly unwilling soldier - asks "what do we win?" The answer is nonsensical, the question quickly dismissed. Although it is not discussed, it is easy to imagine that Allen had Vietnam in mind as he chronicled the silliness and ultimate pointlessness of the combat.

In Alan Bennett's 2004 play 'The History Boys,' a character who treats history as an opportunity for show and personal gain opines that "there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it" – meaning that in honoring the dead, people don't recall the facts surrounding any given war. The character's approach to history is irresponsible, but in this sense he has a point. Memorial Day should not be an excuse for forgetfulness or detachment. Our present is always bound in our past, and understanding the past in full is the only means by which we can guide ourselves in the present and thus into the future. We honor the dead, but history lives.

"...And I Feel Fine."

Apocalypse, As Envisioned in the Middle Ages

The end of the world has been in the works for a while. The first recorded mention of it was on an Assyrian clay tablet, ca. 2800 BC, wherein the writer complained that "bribery and corruption are common" and so assumed that the world must be getting ready to call it quits.

The predictions of apocalypse are comparatively scattered until things really heat up in the middle ages. (One presumes the Greeks and Romans were too busy inventing things, writing literature and philosophy, and building aqueducts to think much about whether it was all going to get obliterated.)

Medieval life, however, was just about as rough as Hobbes supposed life without organized community would be, with: "no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" being more or less de rigueur for most people's existence. Faith was just about all anyone had, and though very few could read the Bible themselves, they understood that it mentioned a time when God would return to the earth and establish a Kingdom of Heaven there. For people constantly dealing with wars, diseases, and any number of hardships, this couldn’t happen fast enough.

There were those who tried to speed it along. Plenty who joined in the Crusades did so thinking they were fulfilling biblical prophecy and were in fact pilgrims to the Holy Land. The fact that nothing they did seemed to bring about a biblical apocalypse did not sway people from thinking it must be coming soon.

In 1184, a prediction of the end of the world appeared in the form of the Letter of Toledo, insisting that astronomical forces meant the world would end in September 1186. So certain were the believers of this prediction that, when October 1186 rolled around, they simply changed the date and other pertinent points and said the end would be coming soon enough. This lasted a good few centuries before enough new predictions took over to capture attention.

Oddly, there don't seem to have been any predictions of the end times as 1348 dawned, which seems a poor show on the part of the prophesiers. This was, after all, the year of the Black Death, when half or more of Europe's population was obliterated. Perhaps, as it got underway, it seemed obvious that this was the end of the world, and no one needed to be so tactless and redundant as to point it out.

After the plague, life actually improved for a lot of peasants – the shortage of labor meant they could negotiate for higher wages and better working conditions, although this process was not without a few snags. Likewise, the inability of clergy to stop the disaster, and the poor quality of the monks who were hastily recruited to fill badly depleted ranks, made a lot of people more cynical about religion. All told, it seems a recipe for the beginning of the end of end times predictions.

But this was not to be. The certainty of the end being nigh continued to flourish right alongside the Renaissance, although more and more Europeans were growing skeptical and much less willing to give the doomsayers an ear.

Ears were given to a British soldier, William Bell, in 1750. There was an earthquake in London, which was unusual enough, but 28 days later, there was another. That was enough for Bell, who took it upon himself to tear through the city announcing that in another 28 days, the world would go belly-up, London first. Widespread panic led to people leaving the city in droves (although exactly why they thought they would be safer in the countryside is unclear). The appointed day, however, saw no apocalypse and the city authorities made their own announcement: Bell was a nutcase and was tossed into Bedlam.

His fate did not dissuade other doomsayers. The world was supposed to end regularly throughout the nineteenth century, and the Jehovah's Witnesses were sure that World War I was the Battle of Armageddon. (reports from Ypres might almost bear them out)

And on and on and on until now. When Sunday rolls around and this current crop of believers finds that the world is still as they know it, they'll shrug and start making calculations to determine the next date of rapture.

Wonder what their high school math teachers would say?