Vox Clamantis: Consider it an Investment
To the Editor:
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To the Editor:
Before Lindsay Lohan got weird, she made "Mean Girls," an early masterpiece that sets forth one of the most pressing dilemmas facing young women today. As Lohan's character Cady struggles to balance school, boys and popularity, the pressures she faces and the different identities she is expected to assume overwhelm her. While the women of Dartmouth thankfully have little in common with La Lohan, other than an unfortunate propensity for leggings, we face a similar balancing act.
My co-workers and I have been joking this past week that while our tans look like they've been acquired at some exotic locale, their origin is unfortunately much more pedestrian. Our bronzed color results from our hours spent sweating it out on the New York City pavement attending the various protests and rallies that have sprung up in the wake of the recent turmoil in the Middle East.
The hottest accessory for spring this year appears to be a baby. From new moms Katie Holmes (Baby Suri) and Brooke Shields (Baby Grier) to soon-to-be biological mom Angelina Jolie, Hollywood's obsession with celebrity motherhood shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Maternity clothes are getting chic-er, names are being scrutinized (shout-out to Nevaeh Sandoval), and exclusive post-baby workout plans are splashed across major magazines. Indeed, every day seems to bring news of another starlet and her brand-new, heavily- photographed little darling. And, of course, this being Hollywood, there's not an ugly baby in sight. Yet again, Hollywood is setting unreasonable expectations that none of us can hope to meet.
One of the highlights (or lowlights) of my internship this past winter was seeing -- or perhaps almost not seeing -- Today Show high priestess Katie Couric outside Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City. She was impeccably dressed in a tweed suit and heels, and was wearing way too much makeup. Since she only had one cameraman dancing attendance, my coworkers and I almost walked right past her without registering our brush with celebrity. In light of the recent media frenzy surrounding Couric, however, I wish we had paid more attention to observing the perky morning show host. As sources have leaked information that she will confirm her departure from NBC today to the anchor chair on CBS's evening news, previously held by Dan Rather and now currently occupied by the increasingly popular Bob Schieffer, Couric herself has become not only a reporter of the news but a generator of it as well. The question remains as to why Couric's departure has created so much conversation. In a high-tech 21st century, both an anchor's gender and the evening news broadcast itself should be increasingly irrelevant.
The Israelites may have been slaves in Egypt, but at least they had Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea. On a cold day freshman fall, as I stood knee-deep in the Connecticut River for an Ecology and Evolution lab, I was not so lucky. To make matters worse, unlike the Israelites, I had had not so much as a crumb of unleavened bread since sundown the night before. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year, which is usually spent in temple, fasting, praying, and reflecting on the year that has passed. While my TA had been more than accommodating, allowing me to postpone a quiz that wet Monday afternoon, it would have been very difficult for me to skip the entire class in favor of religious observance.
Karl Rove must be having a bad week. Not because of the Valerie Plame scandal, the allegations of ethically unsound behavior or even the danger to his job. No, I'm sure the real cause of Karl's sleepless nights is the debate about one of the nicknames our diminutive-bestowing president had given him. Not the flattering "Boy Genius," but the more graphic "Turd Blossom." Everyone else in the administration got cool names, since Condi is "Guru," Cheney is "Big Time" and Andy Card is the dangerous "Tangent Man." Even some dirty liberals have acquired cool monikers, like Barney "Saber Tooth" Frank and Maureen "The Cobra" Dowd. Apparently the only appropriately amusing nickname our president could devise for Ol' Karl involved potty humor.
Memo to the 2007 Class Council: The sophomore summer opening address was actually a great idea, and Gina Barreca '79 was an entertaining speaker, but you have got to do something about the design of those t-shirts that were handed out to attendees. Unless you were envisioning us all signing each others' backs in true "Camp Dartmouth" style, the plain white just doesn't cut it. But all design flaws aside, the program was surprisingly worthwhile and well-attended for a hot June afternoon. All the speakers seemed relaxed and interested in holding the audience's attention. Thus, the event easily established a new tradition while raising some questions about life at Dartmouth.
I didn't really follow the Trustee Election, but I like that both Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88 are academics, and more importantly, writers. Robinson wrote the famous "Tear Down this Wall" speech, while Zywicki is an author and commentator on the popular blog "The Volokh Conspiracy." In light of the recent emphasis on the significance of writing, both on the Dartmouth campus and among the college admissions community, the ability to string sentences together well is increasingly important. However, if one were to try to write the way the College Board seems to like, the famous "tear down this wall line" would have been much longer and clunkier.
I have a new guilty pleasure. With dialogue worse than "The O.C." and plots more incredible than "Joan of Arcadia," NBC's miniseries "Revelations" is not to be believed. Literally. It revolves around the mysterious adventures of a nun and an astrophysicist, united by the scrawlings of a brain-dead child, who uncover signs that the biblical "End of Days" is upon us. The program draws from the Book of Revelations, the same source for many of the beliefs subscribed to by the evangelical Christians who made the Left Behind books one of the best-selling series of all time. These Christians are also the target audience for a new series of ads for a telecast being put out by the Family Research Council. The ads, which show a boy holding a gavel in one hand and a bible in the other, feature the tagline "a filibuster against people of faith," referring to Democratic attempts to block some of President Bush's judicial nominees. The implication, that Democrats are anti-Christian non-believers, is, in my mind, much scarier than any End of Days scenario NBC could dream up.
Between Easter, the mailing of college acceptance letters and the start of the new baseball season, it seems as if we are in the middle of a period of change and new beginnings. With the end of the snow and the arrival of sunshine on the Dartmouth campus, there is an almost palpable shift in the atmosphere, both meteorologically and metaphorically. This anticipation of change can also be seen on a national and international level, as a string of recent deaths and illnesses have brought latent religious issues to the surface. And while these opportunities for change must be embraced, we should not lose sight of the personal aspects of the events. We cannot allow our need to create symbols out of both beloved and controversial figures obscure the tragic and private elements of this atmosphere of change.
Is Condi taking fashion tips from Jacko? Based on the photographs coming back from her European tour, it seems as if the Queen of the State Department is taking style advice from the King of Pop. Her all-black ensemble of skirt, high-necked button-up coat and knee-high stiletto boots has a military flair similar to that of Michael Jackson circa the 2002 VMAs. And her outfit is certainly getting a lot of press. In Friday's Washington Post, Robin Givhan, describes it as a look that "speaks of sex and power." The blogosphere has also responded, with opinions ranging from Ann Althouse's assertion on MSNBC that "these boots are made for running for president," to Wonkette's tart comment that "no male politician would get a 618-word review of his outfit in the Washington Post." Regardless of whether you liked the outfit -- I personally want those boots -- or whether you think that the Secretary of State's clothing merits a full article, it is fascinating to see that the fashion mania one usually associates with Hollywood and the Oscars has crossed over into the political realm. For those who think that politics has been already been watered down and trivialized, it is a disheartening development.
The existence of an official Presidential reading list, about which rumors surfaced last week, seems the perfect invitation for jokes about the President's mastery of the English language. Are the collected works of our dear old Dr. Seuss on the list, or has he graduated to The Hardy Boys, for instance? However, most of the resulting snarkiness has not focused on the existence of the official list but the reputed existence of an unofficial list, prominently featuring Tom Wolfe's latest satirical opus "I Am Charlotte Simmons." According to Elizabeth Bumiller in the New York Times, Mr. Bush has been enthusiastically recommending the book. While I agree with our President that "Charlotte Simmons" was worth reading, primarily as a social commentary, I find it interesting that he would recommend such a risqu book in the wake of the recent wave of moralizing that has swept both the Bush administration and the country at large. This preference for this particular novel is an interesting contrast to recent attempts to control morality by members of President Bush's party and administration.
Large numbers of Safety and Security officers are usually associated with frat parties and big weekends, not academic lectures. However, there were quite a few members of S&S present at the lecture given by controversial Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes last Thursday afternoon. They were there to keep the event peaceful and secure and to hand out little blue booklets about free speech at Dartmouth, ostensibly to prevent the stifling of discussion and civilized dissent. Neither of these issues, however, proved to be a problem. Indeed, the overarching opinion of the event seemed to be one of slight surprise at its civility. However, this civility did not reflect any particular actions on the parts of any of the participants. Rather, it was a direct result of both speaker and audience sticking directly to the topic of Pipes' lecture and avoiding discussion of issues that made Pipes a controversial speaker. Thus, while as Professor Meir Kohn said in his introduction, Pipes' presence was a "triumph over political correctness," the content of his lecture was a concession to those very forces.
I'm a big fan of theme parties, but you've got to hand it to the Brits for coming up with some awesome ideas. The originators of the "Vicars and Tarts" scheme, as well as the inspiration for the "Professors and Sluts" genre, the United Kingdom has a long history of "fancy dress" fetes, both literary and real. You have to wonder, then, why the British uppercrust felt the need to go with the outr idea of a "native and colonial" party at the house of Olympian Robert Mead last week. And you have to marvel at the fact that with the rich history of British Imperialism, Prince Harry felt compelled to dress up as a Nazi, albeit one who served in Africa. Perhaps the Prince was too busy on the rugby fields of Eton to pay attention in geography class, or he watched too many Indiana Jones flicks. Still, the extreme insensitivity of this boneheaded move has prompted a variety of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. The prince, and indeed everyone involved, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Jon Stewart isn't exactly a household name in Scotland, where I'm currently studying on the Religion FSP. Hence, I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't hear immediately about what a number of pundits are referring to as "Tuckergate." But now that I'm aware of the diatribe against "serious" political talk that constituted Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" last Friday, I can't believe I've missed this media tempest in a teapot. The resulting flurry of articles and discussion once again puts Stewart into the middle of yet another journalistic feud.
India is still relatively young as countries go. However, in the less than 60 years that it has been a self-governing democracy, it has seen its fair share of both triumph and turmoil. It also has found itself facing questions that more established democracies, such as our own, have not yet resolved. The refusal of Sonia Gandhi to become Prime Minister of India this past week highlights a number of these issues. For one, she is a woman, albeit in a country with a tradition of female leadership. She is also a member of one of India's predominant political families. She is a Catholic in a country where Hinduism is the dominant religion, and where faith is a very decisive issue. But perhaps the main reason she declined the position is that she is a foreign-born citizen of India.
What is the difference between a Review staffer and a Free Press reporter? It sounds like the set-up for a comic strip in The Dartmouth. One plays croquet and the other fill in clever inversion here. But thanks to Marco Iacoboni of UCLA, science may now have a way to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans. Last week, it was announced that preliminary results from an experiment comparing the brain scans of Democrats and Republicans when exposed to campaign ads found significant differences. Although the study is far from complete, it raises some interesting questions both about our reactions to politics, as well as about the ethics of campaigning.
Condi is under attack and Martha's going to jail. Christie Todd is long gone, and Karen Hughes just published a book explaining why she left the Bush administration for motherhood. Lea Fastow may do more jail time than Ken Lay, and Amy just got booted off "The Apprentice." No one has heard a peep out of Nancy Pelosi in ages, and the only woman on the list of possible Democratic vice presidential candidates is good ole' Hillary. No wonder "The Prince and Me" is doing so well at the box office. All of a sudden it seems that the only way a woman can obtain -- and maintain -- a position of power these days is by marrying a king.
Dartmouth Cable does not include HBO. Thus, those of us in Hanover missed Carrie's last stroll down a New York street during the opening sequence of the last episode of "Sex and the City" Sunday night. We most likely did not miss, however, the whirlwind of publicity that heralded the end of the edgy cable sitcom. Television tributes, magazine covers, the front page of The New York Times' "Sunday styles" section -- PR that would make Samantha, the predatory publicist played by Kim Cattrall, thrill from the coiffed hairs on her head to the toes of her Manolo Blahniks.