Marion Stein's Open Salon Blog

Palin-lite's New Reality

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:05:14 -0400

Exciting news, Bristol Palin's "much anticipated" new reality show, Life's a Tripp, will be premiering in June on Lifetime.

The program will show Palin-lite's day-to-day struggles as a single mom. Palin-Lite has "dedicated her life to being an advocate for the prevention of teen pregnancy." Of course, she has it much easier than most single teenage mothers who barely graduate high school at age 19 (although saying so probably constitutes class warfare). Her speaker fees range up to $30,000 a shot. She has appeared on previous reality ventures, plus Dancing with the Stars, and her memoir (published when she was twenty) was briefly a New York Times bestseller.

So what exactly will this show do to "prevent" teen pregnancy? How exactly does she not glamorize it? In addition to financial security without really having to work much, she is also blessed with a supportive family and a healthy child. There really couldn't be a stronger advocate out there for teen motherhood. She's made a career of it.

The premise of Life's a Tripp really doesn't sound very different from any number of "reality" shows about privileged young women, except for the baby part. If Bristol really wants to show the reality of having a baby while you're still in high school, why not actually live it -- the way most teen mothers do in real life?

Here's an idea for the producers: Give Bristol a makeover -- a new hair color and style, maybe even throw in a mole or something temporary to change her appearance. Change her name. Send her out in the world without ghost writers or handlers and take the fancy speaker gigs and television appearances off her resume. Take away her money too. Okay, to be fair you could give her two grand to start off. Let her rent a place with that and make a budget and a plan. What suspense! Let's see how far a girl with a toddler with no college or training can go! I'm sure her gumption and optimism will help her succeed. Then we can watch her handle a budget, somehow figure out how to pay food, rent and childcare on minimum wage. Will she need government assistance? Not, our Bristol. It'll be so exciting to tune each week and find out what Bristol will do next.

And, if you really want some drama, how about Bristol Palin in Trading Places? A non-celebrity teen mom who is surviving on minimum wage could switch with Palin-lite. It would be a Cinderella story, but one based on merit where viewers could vote to decide which one gets to be America's sweetheart and keep the fancy house, which one is most qualified to speak to struggling teens.

I'm sure Bristol would win. After all, it's her talent, abilities and hard work that have gotten her to where she is today.

Dharun's Lucky Roll

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:05:07 -0400

A life can spin out of control easily. The young man was in trouble. Never, arrested before in his life, suddenly he was facing serious felony charges. There was a potential to spend years in prison. On top of this, he was an immigrant who had come to the US as a child, a conviction would likely lead to deportation after prison.

The evidence against him was overwhelming. His actions, arguably, had indirectly contributed to the death of another. While even the prosecutor wasn't going to charge him with manslaughter, public opinion was against him. If the case went to trial, the victim's family would be sitting in the courtroom, a silent reminder to the jury that the young man's carelessness had had serious consequences.

Yet, he was given a way out. A plea bargain was on the table. Admit his guilt on some counts. Spare the victim's family a public trial. In return, no jail time and the state would recommend against deportation.

But he didn't take the plea.

He would tell the press he couldn't because it would have meant admitting guilt to a "hate crime" and there was no hate in his heart. Maybe he simply believed that the jury would see it his way. He had "committed" a prank, not a crime. You saw much worse on television shows like Punk'd. Nobody could "prove" a connection between what he'd done and what had happened later.

He went on trial charged with four counts of bias intimidation as a hate crime, two counts of invasion f privacy, two counts of attempted invasion of privacy, and seven counts of witness tampering and hindering apprehension based on his actions after the investigation began.

The jury convicted him on ten counts. They struggled only with "bias intimidation" but had no problem seeing his guilt on the other counts.

The young man neither apologized, nor took the witness stand. Many observers found his courtroom demeanor unemotional although when the verdict came in he appeared shocked.

The judge admonished the young man, telling him, "I heard this jury say 'guilty' 288 times -- 12 jurors, 24 questions, but I haven't heard you apologize once."

He could have gone to prison for years.

The judge sentenced him to 30 days, plus court costs, community service and probation. The judge will recommend against deportation to the federal authorities. Except for he brief jail time, the young man got the same sentence as had he taken the plea, with one exception -- he doesn't have to acknowledge his responsibility or apologize for his actions.

Now, one can argue that the plethora of charges brought against him would never have occurred had the roommate not killed himself, had "bullying" particularly of the cyber variety not been so prominent in the news.

One can argue that despite the judge rightly trying to keep the suicide out of the trial, it was there hovering and influencing the jury.

One might say that no amount of jail time would help the young man to grow up, to lose any of the "colossal insensitivity" sited by the judge. Would a longer sentence have been justice?

The problem is that justice in this country is relative. There are people who like the young man chose a jury trial rather than a plea deal. Perhaps the deal they were offered wasn't as good, and so they decided to roll the dice with a jury. Maybe the deal involved jail time. Maybe they believed they were not guilty in their hearts, as the young man did, that somehow their actions were justified, or just not as bad as the state thought, and they would be able to get a jury to see it that way. Maybe they were psychopaths who thought they could charm the jury. Maybe they were simply innocent.

Still they were convicted, and in most cases the judge didn't subvert the jury's intentions in quite the same way. They went to jail. They didn't get the deal they didn't take.

So what on earth made this case different?

Some might question the judge's own bias. His statement in sentencing the young man to learn to respect "those with alternative lifestyles," shows at least a tone-deafness, if not a prejudice of his own.

Some people wondered if the sentence might have been different if the victim hadn't been his roommate, but perhaps a female friend -- a young woman who had had an intimate moment caught and broadcast on Twitter.

But maybe the bias, was not so much against the victim as for the defendant. Maybe things would have been different if the young man had had a previous offense or two in his record, or this happened at a 7/11 and not at a respected state university. The young man came from a middle class home, from law-abiding people, hard working immigrants. While his dark skin might get him profiled at an airport, he probably wouldn't be a victim of a stop and frisk unless the police mistook him for a Latino or a Moslem. His is a minority stereotyped as smart and ambitious, rarely subject to discrimination in housing or hiring.

So let's replay the same crime. An eighteen-year old white girl is working at a 7/11 while working her way through community college. She takes a room in an apartment with a couple of coworkers, also part time students -- another female and a young man. One day, the young woman, who is barely out of the closet, invites a date home. They kiss in her room, where the male roommate has a hidden camera. It's broadcast on Twitter. The woman discovers tons of messages about the event and a possible encore performance. A day later she kills herself. Maybe there were other things happening in her life, and the connection between the two events is peripheral, but who knows? The timing seems to connect them.

Now, lets imagine the male roommate is black AND Hispanic, the son of immigrants, who has already had a little trouble with the law. Perhaps he was stopped once by the cops and found to have a small amount of marijuana. His mouthing off to the police about his "rights" led to a few more charges.

The young man is offered a deal. Does anyone think this deal would not have jail time and deportation? And if he chose to take his chances with a jury, does anyone think that after being convicted a judge would give him 30 days and 300 hours of service?

The problem is not so much that Dharun Ravi got off too easy. It's that justice is a crap shoot, and the dice are loaded. In this case, Ravi chose to roll the dice. They came up snake eyes, but the judge called it a seven.

A Night At the Opera, Another Night at the Theater...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:04:04 -0400

The better half and I try to vacation at least three times a year — my birthday, his birthday, and our anniversary. This being the Internet, I won’t tell you which one occurred last week, but we weren’t able to get away, and so decided to celebrate at home, in New York City. Here’s what we did:

Wednesday: Dinner at Hell’s Kitchen, a trendy “progressive”-Mexican place in (where else?), Hell’s Kitchen. Being reluctant omnivores, we went for veggie choices. A recent trip to Italy had made us more aware of the lovely artichoke, which is not on enough menus in the United States, so we started with the poached artichoke quesadilla with idiazabal cheese, roasted sweet corn, and poblano crema. Yummy. For main courses we ate light and shared family style: We ordered huitlacoche with avocado, and mascarpone cheese. Hutlacoche for the uninitiated is a truffle that grows on corn — or in simple terms a fungus. It has a unique taste and texture, a bit smoky, a bit spongy. We are fans. Plus the cheese didn’t overwhelm the dish, which is one difference between “progressive” Mexican and run of the mill. The crispiness of the taco created a perfect balance of textures. As a second main, we had the burrito with wild mushroom, guacamole and poblano sauce, which was also well balanced and delicious. The mushrooms tasted like they might have been sautéed with a teriyaki sauce, giving them a steak-like flavor. We split a dessert, banana empanadas with chocolate sauce and fresh whipped cream. The cream was unsweetened as it should be to help offset the sweetness of the sauce and the banana. There were other dessert choices that sounded equally good.

Then we walked up to the Metropolitan Opera House to see La Traviata directed by Will Decker with Natalie Dessay, as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Germont, I am an opera ignoramus. The decision to go to the opera was made by my better-half, based on its being on both our bucket lists. Neither of us had seen live “grand” opera before, except maybe once or twice on PBS. We are now both fans, trying to figure out what we can sell to pay for season tickets next year. We were expecting to be entertained. We were expecting “theater.” What we got was an emotional wallop. Even in the back of the orchestra where we were, when Gourmont slaps Alfredo and you hear him fall, there was more than a murmur in the audience. To train the human voice to do what they do and do it while dancing, laughing, running and crying is amazing. To do it while acting is a miracle. While we were expecting the tragedy of the lovers, Hyorostovsky’s nuanced performance made us feel Germont’s guilt and regret for separating them as well. The stark set with its surreal clock ticking away the minutes of Violetta’s life, and the contemporary dress created a sense of timelessness. This wasn’t a story about a nineteenth century courtesan, but about life, death, love and regret.

The following evening was theater night. Ducking work, we got to TKTS at 2:20. The main line was already huge, but the Play Express line was short. By 3;15, we had two FRONT ROW seats to the Clybourne Park, which had opened earlier that week. On the one hand, we were amazed at our luck; on the other, hand, it’s scary that almost all the non-musical plays had availability. The play, itself has been described as a “sequel” to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. More accurately it’s a re-imaging, with a first act taking place in 1959, the time when the original is set, and the second act fifty years later. It’s been described as an “uproariously funny” comedy. While it is that, it’s also an explosive drama. There are several points at which violence seems imminent, and we weren’t prepared for the tragic tone of the first act. When the curtain came down for intermission, my better half said, “After this, I’m going to need a drink.” The second half is funnier, broader, more satiric, dealing with gentrification and reverse integration, but that too moves into dangerous territory.

We ate after the theater at Marseille, an unpretentious but stylish, French bistro on ninth avenue. We ordered snails, of course. Going carnivore, I ordered the honey glazed duck breast. The better half had the mussels with fries. Lots of mussels, and the best fries either of us had ever tasted, ever, in our lives. We tried to figure out what made the fries so perfect. Garlic might be one answer, but there was also the lack of grease and perfect crispiness. The desserts are a bit more extensive than what’s on the posted menu. We had something mousse-like with dark chocolate, so intensely rich that we were satisfied with just a few spoonfuls (rare for us).

We hardly left the house over the weekend, except for errands and long walks to local parks — Central Park, Fort Tryon, Morningside and Riverside, where everything seemed to be in bloom. Saturday night, I started to read Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of her time in New York as a bookstore clerk/struggling artists/poet and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I kept reading into Sunday morning when I finished. I mention it here because like our two nights out, the book could only have taken place in New York, although the New York, Smith writes about where young artsy types could somehow eke out enough of a living to afford the smallest room in the Chelsea Hotel is long gone as are the bookstores where she worked Brentano’s and Scribner’s. Argosy somehow survives. Gotham Books which published her early work, gone as well.

Smith, herself, has been quoted as saying that New York is now beyond the means of struggling artists who would be better off going elsewhere. Still for those of us, artist and non-artist who remain or are just visiting, and have limited incomes, some discounts are available. Our two front row theater seats costs were about $60 a piece at TKTS, and though we paid full freight at the opera, discounts and standing room are available. Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen offers many reasonably priced restaurants. Walking is still free, as is browsing, and books remain here and elsewhere the most affordable form of entertainment going.

Another Ex-SNL Player Becomes an Embarrassment

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:04:06 -0400

Victoria Jackson, a novelty act whose main talent was headstands, has become a full on “birther” and right-wing activist, trying to push her “conservative version of The View” featuring anti-Islamic rants and song, in which she and her cohorts bitch and moan on Youtube about how they are being repressed by the “govment”, as evidenced by their inability to land a prime time network gig.

Dennis Miller another of the more limited alum, turned his nonsensical rants right and became a Fox news blowhard who somewhere along the way, lost the little funny he may have once possessed.

Now, it seems Jon Lovitz, primarily known as the “liar guy” has started ranting about his “50%” tax rate. Poor sap, maybe he needs a better accountant, or maybe he wants us to think he’s doing well enough to have a 50% tax rate, even though such a thing doesn’t exist. He’s also calling the President a “fucking asshole,” having apparently mistaken him for his agent.

A recent article described him as a “former SNL star,” but that’s just wrong. There is no such a thing as a “former SNL star.” There are stars who were once on SNL and then went on to do brilliant work, these include most (but not all) of the original “not-ready-for-prime-time players,” and many from the following seasons, including Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Robert Downey Jr., Will Farrell, Tina Fay, and dozens more. A few may not have received that level of fame, but have gone on to respectable careers as character actors or theater stars (I’m talking about you, Miss Christine Ebersole).

Then there are all those other not-ready-for-prime-time players who never became ready for prime time, never grew as performers, and for whom SNL represented the pinnacle of their success. The one-notes. Some may have squandered their talents with drugs and alcohol. Others never had much to begin with. While many of them have disappeared gracefully, a few will do anything to get attention. They rant, they whine and they blame others for their failure, including the “govment,” the President, and a public that has ceased to care.

Don't Ask Why If You Already Know the Answer

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:03:46 -0400

It’s the racism.
It’s the racism and the firearms.
It’s the racism, the firearms and vigilante culture.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vigilante culture and everybody wanting to be a hero and enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vigilante culture, everybody wanting to be a hero and enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, and it’s the isolation of the gated community.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vigilante culture, everybody wanting to be a hero and enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, the isolation of the gated community, and anybody who’s not in a car must be up to no good.
It’s the racism, the firearms, the vigilante culture, everybody wanting to be a hero and enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, the isolation of the gated community, anybody who’s not in a car must be up to no good, and badly written law.
But mostly it’s the racism.