Deborah Young's Open Salon Blog

Freedom of Speech

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:09:21 -0400

Che's Dead, Get Over It.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:01:22 -0500

I saw someone wearing that on a T-shirt last week and thought, "Thank God."

Che Guevara was Fidel Castro's executioner.

How did he, a monstrous mass murderer, responsible for the blood curdling murders of thousands of teenagers, women and men, become a popular cultural figure embraced by the t-shirt industry, college students and hollywood directors? It's not like we walk around proclaiming Charles Manson a brilliant & kind revolutionary. There must be some machiavellian backdrop. Because this seems like an Alice in Wonderland upside- down world where we celebrate a cold-blooded killer.

On Tuesday Benicio del Toro, who plays Che in Soderbergh's new movie walked out during an interview because he was "uncomfortable" with the questions. He dedicated his Cannes award to Guevara.

I first noticed this cultural phenomenan when my step-son started using "Che" as his pen name on the internet. Then Gisele Bundchen catwalked in a "Che bikini", & suddenly everyone under 21 was wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt. Taco Bell dressed up its Chihuahua spokesdog like Che for its "Taco Revolution" ads and now Steven Soderbergh comes out with his Che Guevara movie.

Beloved revolutionary? Or serial killer?

Myth #1: He was an "intellectual".

Fact: One of the first acts Guevara is known for when he first came to Havana is a massive book burning. Then he signed death warrants for the authors and had them hunted down. He jailed or exiled most of Cuba's best filmmakers, poets and writers. In the mid-60's, thousands of "effeminate" teenagers were taken by force and dumped into prison camps he helped create where the logo read: "Work will make men out of you."

Myth #2: He was for the "people".

Fact: Guevara said he "manufactured evidence" and went on to say "I don't need proof to execute a man...I only need proof that it's necessary to execute him." When he addressed the U.N. in New York in 1964 he proclaimed, "Certainly we execute. And we will continue to execute as long as it is necessary." And he received applause for this. According to the Black Book of Communism, the revolution's firing squad executions, which he started, reached 14,000 by the beginning of the 1970's. The people's crimes? Being anti-Stalinist or being a practicing catholic, among others. He loved and promoted Stalinism, which of course was itself responsible for between 3.5 & 60 million deaths.

Myth #3: He was a Counter-Revolutionary just like U.S. 60's Hippies.

Fact: Che Guevara was anti-rock & roll, making it illegal to own a rock record, to listen to rock music or god forbid! actually play rock music. Che's own grandson, Canek Sanchez Guevara fled Cuba and lives in Mexico. He's a heavy metal rock guitarist and in an interview with Mexico's Proceso magazine said, "In Cuba freedom is nonexistent. The regime demands submission and obedience...the regime persecutes hippies, homosexuals, free-thinkers and poets. They employ constant surveillance, control and repression." He was one of the lucky ones; he got out alive. Although he blames Fidel for the repressive regime, it was his grandfather who helped create it.

Che was such a visionary, he helped create the notorious peligrosidad predelictiva law ("dangerousness likely to leading to crime"); which predated Tom Cruises' job in the movie "Minority Report". Like Minority Report, where a special police department called "Precrime" apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by 3 psychics before any crime is actually committed; all you have to be arrested for in Cuba is your likelihood to commit a crime. Beaten, torture, labor camps, death.

And the machiavellian backdrop? The American media and hollywood who have chosen to set Che in the light of a 'benign revolutionary' have relied solely on diaries that he wrote and the memories of his co-thugs. The diaries went through Fidel Castro's propaganda machine and came out the other side with very little reality, and a whole lot of fiction.

And what of the hundreds of survivors and witnesses of this genocidal regime created by Che and Fidel, who mostly live in Florida, having fled the Marxist-Communist nation? They have been ignored in favor of this sanitized version of reality approved by Cuba's dictator. They stand ready as witnesses to tell their story. Time magazine has never come knocking. Neither did Soderbergh.

Post-script: An estimated 80,000 Cubans have died trying to flee Cuba by boat, rafts, makeshift anythings that might get them to the shores of the United States of America. They've died by drowning, sharks and exposure.

Ladies! Stop giving birth to your grandchildren!

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:01:38 -0500

Holly Hunter gave birth to twins at the age of 48. When they are 10 she will be 58. When they are 20, she will be 68...if she lives that long. Ditto actress Geena Davis and her twin boys. There's a long list of Hollywood women who put off having children while they built their career and then when their ovaries puttered out, they applied their extensive wealth toward in-vitro fertilization and voila! insta-family. Or they bought a baby in another country. {See Madonna who will be 60 when David is 12; Meg Ryan will be 60 when her daughter Daisy is 15}. Diane Keaton might win for most audacity, at 64 years old, her adopted daughter is 14, her adopted son, 9.

There is a reason that we're so fertile and energetic in our twenties: so we can have babies, keep up with the babies and send them off into the world while we're in our forties so that we still have 5 minutes left to read that book we've been meaning to get to.

I have friends who had their babies late in life. I'm talking their first baby.

When I was growing up women often had their 4th or 5th baby in their early forties - their ooops! baby, their just-about-to-enter-menopause baby. But those kids had siblings to help out and experienced parents who had already raised children and knew what the heck they were doing.

My friends who had their first baby in their forties, well, it hasn't worked out so well. And they'll be the first ones to tell you. By the time their kid is rarin' to go with hormones and discipline problems and peer group pressure, they are worn out, exhausted and dare I say? Old. They are grandparent material. They don't have the energy to walk up two flights of stairs, never mind stare down the flighty teacher, the neighborhood bully or their 6 ft. son who wants to experiment with drugs. My colleague told me yesterday that the son she had in her forties, she pretty much gave up any oversight on after the 8th grade. He was 12, she was 52. She'd burned out from the previous 12 years. She doesn't recommend it for anybody.

Now I know there are always exceptions to the rule, and I'm sure you know somebody who had their first child in her forties and while her daughter is 16 and she is 61, they find lots of things in common with each other and Mom has her finger on the pulse of her progeny. I just haven't seen it. These stories tend to be anecdotal.

The disconnect appears to be generational. If your own parents are 23 or 28 years older than you, there's still a bit of cultural references that you share, common histories. When you are 14 and your mother is 64 the conversation and shared touchstones can be almost invisible. How can your mother possibly understand internet, texting, twitter and the easy access of the drug ecstacy? There weren't even computers when she was your age; she watched black and white TV that shut down at 9pm. It's "Father Knows Best vs. The Simpsons" & the cultural clash ain't pretty. And that's where it stops working so well. The teenage angst that your parents don't understand you is absolutely true once your mom and dad are the age of most kids grandparents. How can they understand you? They still refuse to use email and need your help using their ancient VCR.

You are also burdening your offspring with your elderly self. While they may be going to college, they are on high alert as you slowly start to stroke out, get forgetful, or succumb to cancer. Do you want your legacy to be that you orphaned your kids at a young age? Kinda cruel if you ask me. Their grandparents were dead before they were born and now their parents are dying. Fun times!

I don't think history will judge this social experimentation kindly. And it may only last one or two generations before the women who chose this path tell the women coming up after them, "have your babies early!" This is the first time in history women had the ability to put off having children and then be able to afford the medical interventions to allow them to have them later. And it's the first time in history single, older women have been allowed adopt. We are still in the middle of this particular continuum; the outcome is yet to be decided.

My stint as a Starbucks barista, baby-boomer style

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:01:50 -0500

The first clue that we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto, is that all of my co-workers are 20-somethings. I'm a baby boomer. I took this job as Assistant Manager for Starbucks when my Corporate gig got unendurable, see: [http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=74808] I took this gig because:

1. I need a job

2. I like coffee

3. How hard could it be?

I'm a big believer in these 3 words: "Get A Job." Usually I use them when watching ancient rock stars perform, or yell them at the T.V. at a particularly grotesque politician, or think it to myself when an ice-head bums money from me at McDonalds. And always one to take my own advice, signed up at Starbucks. I was immediately surrounded by energetic, peppy, caffeine-driven 20 somethings, otherwise known as Generation Y's or Millenials. To say I was a bit intimidated is an understatement.

"Would you like an iced coffee?" Fact: these have the most caffeine of any of the drinks served at Starbucks.

The Millenials that I worked with were, as they are want to say, "awesome!" They were smart, in committed relationships, highly educated, high-tech savvy and the girls don't take shit from anybody. While they were smart in the "I'm studying to be a doctor" smart, they were politically imbecilic , leading me to conjecture that in 20 years we'd have gulags in the midwest or New York filled with super smart doctors on chain gangs going through caffeine-withdrawal. I"m just saying.

"Would you like whipped cream on your Frappuccino?" We always ask if you want whipped cream because it's homemade and expensive. I used to make the whipped cream. Happy Face.

Point #2. I like coffee. And there is plenty of free coffee when you work for Starbucks. Skinny vanilla latte's, brewed coffee, cappuccino's, espresso shots straight. One of my favorite things to do was to taste test the espresso shots once an hour to make sure the quality was good. As Robin Williams once said, coffee is the poor man's cocaine. They should have a wing for it at Betty Ford.

Point #3. How hard could it be? Oh dear, dear self. Are you really so self-deluded as you approach fifty that you couldn't figure out that bagging trash (coffee grounds!) and bringing it out, mopping floors, bringing boxes down from storage, sweeping and scrubbing endlessly was easy? Ah no, working at Starbucks is less about making coffee and more about keeping the store CLEAN. I don't even like cleaning my own house. The day I'm proudest of is when I channeled my inner Gandhi & volunteered to clean the employee toilet. It was less an act of sacrifice and more a chance to rest my right knee which was swollen from the endless standing, walking and schlepping, causing me to limp for a week while the millenials scampered around me like the 101 dalmations. And you cannot wear Bengay while working at Starbucks. Suck it up!

I was waking up at 2:15 a.m. some mornings to be part of the opening shift. I had 2 10 minute breaks a day and a 1/2 hr. lunch, usually eaten in slumped relief at a table outside, trying to sleep with my eyes open, wishing to appear relaxed instead of easing into a coma. I'd come home saying things like, "Dude!" "Awesome!" My husband would cock his head at me, like a puzzled cockerspaniel and my son would cringe, secretly convinced my lifes purpose was to embarrass him. [Of course, it is.] Even the dog took pity on my social flaws and nosed her bone to me as if to say, "Eat, eat, you'll feel better." Just what I need, a blue-heeler jewish mother.

I had a lovely manager who was training me. Except for the eensy, tiny, little life-changing event happening in her life in that she was currently married to the boy of her dreams and was about to come out of the closet, which would most likely rock his world and the church they attended weekly. Uh-oh. One night she stayed out all night drinking (she hadn't really drunk much in years) and came to work at 4:30 for the opening shift, dead-on drunk and giggling like Judy Garland. Try to imagine a straight-laced young woman about to announce to the world she was gay, drunk at 6am and making cappuccino's and flirting endlessly with the male lawyers (??) coming through the line. There was something just so wrong about that.

After eating one too many turkey pesto sandwiches and smiling perkily at one too many paranoid customers "WHY do you want to know my name?!", another corporation tracked me down to offer me a job in my actual career path.

Thank you, Jesus! I mean, I'll have to think it over.

When your Nemesis dies

Sun, 4 Jan 2009 14:01:52 -0500

What to you do if your nemesis dies? Besides feel the appropriate grief and conflict?

I worked for D. for 5 years. For 5 years she was my supervisor. At the risk of sounding cranky and bitter, she came in with no qualifications, because it's a who-you-know Corporation. Perhaps they all are. Knowing she was unqualified, she brought in two horrible Yes-Women to help her run the show, effectively creating a glass ceiling for those of us who started the Dept. I tried to like her. I really, really did. She was a tiny whirl of energy. Perfectly groomed, her hair was perfect, her makeup was perfect, her wardrobe was outstanding, her tiny body was a bit upsetting but maybe that's just me. She was happily married her to her highschool sweetheart, the fireman. 34 years at this writing. She had two grown kids, a son happily married with 2 kids of his own, a daughter with 4 children. Each had spent some time in the lower level of her gorgeous large home she and her husband had built near the ocean. D. had 9 brothers and sisters scattered across the U.S., her mother still lived nearbye. She never tired of talking about her family and herself and her Yes-Women, especially during my performance evaluations or when we took the time to socialize during a work day. Inappropriate? Yes. I was like the young boy who pointed out the Emperor has no clothes !! It was exhausting.

I have flashes of moments with her. At a department Christmas party, I am leaving and she says, "come, give me a hug. Merry Christmas," while I hug, puzzled at this unexpected intimacy. She came by my home to drop something off and met my dog: "My, she's chunky isn't she?" and simply could not comprehend I lived there with my boyfriend and wasn't renting it alone. She describes attending a concert with her husband and cousin and tells us, "I got drunk, they had to each hold onto me to walk me to the car." Her grand family Thanksgivings held at her house, where, she tells me, everyone has too much to drink, and she laughs like a child. She still enjoyed smoking cigarettes and after a business trip to California, exclaimed wide-eyed: "There's nowhere to smoke! I spent most of the trip outside of buildings smoking." And telling me how she loved her grandson, who went to school with my son, and how she tells him, "If Papa and I move away to retire, you'll have to come with us." and how he rolls his eyes at her. She introduced us to her husband last year; I can barely remember what he looks like.

She had no friends. She marveled at a group of women she once had wine with and how they were all either divorced or getting divorced and how she couldn't relate. I raised my eyebrow. Must be nice.

So last December, after my 5 years of being delegated to a sherpa role as she gave her friends promotions and raises and social prestige & I spent my time trudging up the mountain, showing them how to climb, I gave my 2 weeks notice. I called her to tell her. She answered with a quick, "I don't have time to talk! Just email me." So I emailed her: I am giving 2 weeks notice. And how quickly my phone rang back. Really? she asked. Was I sure? We'd have to meet for an exit interview. Of course. Of course.

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving of 2008 she sent out an email to her staff, telling them how much she appreciated them and to enjoy their Thanksgiving and the day after to shop till they dropped. Ha ha. And she went home and what happened next, only her family knows for sure. There are rumors. She hung herself over the banister so that her husband would find her when he returned early Thanksgiving morning from the firehouse. She showed him.

And I think back on a year ago, during our exit interview, where she talked about herself and her family and her job. When did suicide become an option? But after much contemplation, I've come to realize it's always been an option. Virginia Woolfe was not an exception, she was a trend. And now that my eyes have been opened, I see it everywhere. In the choices of humans, and we have so few, suicide is right up there with changing jobs, move to another state, kill yourself, stop talking to your parent. Exit, stage left is just another possibility, just another menu option.