Retour du Socialisme? Retour du Socialisme?
Paris Will Paris become the first large city in France (indeed, the first major city or national capital anywhere in the world) to elect an openly gay candidate as mayor--the S...
Mar 1, 2001 / Frédéric Martel
In Our Orbit In Our Orbit
LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FÉMINISME "Feminism...is the most popular and most effective movement to emerge from the sixties left," writes Katha Pollitt in her introdu...
Mar 1, 2001 / Books & the Arts / The Editors
Anti-Catholic? Round Two Anti-Catholic? Round Two
If a critic's clout can be measured by the ability to make an artist's name, the most important art critic in America today is clearly Rudolph Giuliani. Just over a year ago he e...
Mar 1, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Katha Pollitt
The Spanish Mien The Spanish Mien
V.S. Pritchett, whose essays are an invaluable companion, a sort of Dante's Virgil in the navigation of modern literature, once described Don Quixote as "the novel that killed a c...
Mar 1, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans
Electoral College–Flunking Out? Electoral College–Flunking Out?
Electoral College--Flunking Out? DeKalb, Ill. Thanks for Lani Guinier's superb critique of the election horror, "Making Every Vote Count" [Dec. 4]. Corporocratic America will never allow genuine democracy in this Republic. STEVE MITCHELL New York City Lani Guinier is right on the mark. We knew she was right when President Clinton bumbled her nomination in 1993. It was, perhaps, his biggest blunder. Given what happened in Florida, we now know what the problem was: Guinier was ahead of her (and our) time. George W. Bush won the election by suppressing votes. Suppressing the vote is an aspect of fascism. It is anathema to democracy, even as imperfect a democracy as ours. FRED J. BERG Miami Lani Guinier's article is 100 percent convincing. Every Nation reader should be solidly in the corner for total election reform. That includes instant-runoff voting (IRV), proportional representation, state-of-the-art electronic voting equipment, weekend voting and the elimination of the Electoral College. Speaking of the Electoral College: We have our fourth graduate with Dubya--the first since 1888. How does a person graduate? By losing the election! It's the worst college in America and needs to be closed down by the enactment of a Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution. In our political adventure novel, The Oakland Statement, published New Year's Day 2000, we predicted that Oakland, California, would be the first major city to initiate IRV, and the citizens did it on November 7. We also predicted that Al Gore would lose the presidency, and that happened on December 12. As we outlined the new amendment in our novel: All citizens shall have the absolute right to the most equitable methods of a representative electoral system. The specific language of the amendment is put forth in legal detail. As Guinier said, "We must not let this once-in-a-generation moment pass." We strongly believe that if this does not happen, our democracy will implode in the elite corporate boardrooms. Barry Goldwater was condemned in 1964 for his famous quote, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." He was correct. We believe that if the people are not given the absolute right to the most equitable methods of a representative electoral system, then, as the Declaration of Independence says, "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends...it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." Our interpretation of this founding revolutionary document grants citizens the power to take "extraordinary action" in order to save the democracy. We challenge all Nation readers to focus on what Guinier calls a "national conversation," which must end with the enactment of the Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution. FREDERICK ELLIS and PAUL FREDERICK Grand Forks, N.D. Lani Guinier made some good points about abolishing the Electoral College, but I have to take offense at her math. Wake me up if I'm wrong, but I thought representation was determined on the basis of a census and not on the voter participation in a given state. Wyoming has three electoral votes. With a population of roughly 450,000, each electoral vote could be said to represent roughly 150,000 people--a factor of two more than Guinier claimed. Her point, however, was to mark the disparity between states like Wyoming and Florida--where roughly 13 million people have 25 electoral votes. In Florida each electoral vote represents 520,000 people. JON JACKSON Brecksville, Ohio Lani Guinier's argument declaring the Electoral College as immorally conceived because it promoted slavery is incorrect. The Electoral College was intended first and foremost to temper the "passions" of the citizens eligible to vote. Considering the electoral map of the 2000 election, it appears that without the Electoral College, much weight would be placed on the opinions of those living on the nation's coasts and northern urban areas. Is that demographic truly representational of the needs and values of the country as a whole? I think not. The reverse is true as well. The Electoral College is part of the fundamental checks and balances that provide approximate equal weight to all citizens of this country. Furthermore I would bet my house that this article would never have been written had Al Gore won the election. JOHN HENRY SCULLY Saginaw, Mich. Lani Guinier argues that the Electoral College was established by the Founders to increase the power of the Southern states, by way of the three-fifths compromise, in the election of the President. While it is true that the compromise increased Southern representation in the House, and thereby in the Electoral College, the assumption that this was intended to increase the powers of the slaveholding states in choosing the chief executive misses an assumption held by many of those who participated in the Constitutional Convention. In the Convention's last comprehensive debate on the method of electing the President, several delegates expressed their belief that in most elections the Electoral College system would result in several candidates receiving electoral votes, making it likely that no one candidate would receive the required majority. In those cases, the House would choose the President, with each state having one vote. The three-fifths compromise would have no effect on a state's power in that eventuality. Of course, the development of the political party system has resulted in the electoral votes being distributed between two major parties, thereby almost guaranteeing that the choice of a President will be made by the electors, contrary to the expectation of the Founders. The Electoral College system is rightfully open to criticism, but making a causal connection between it and the slavery system is a stretch. BOB HANLEY Santa Clara, Calif. Before we scrap our Electoral College, let's remember some of the people we would have gotten without it: Stephen Douglas, Samuel Tilden, Aaron Burr, George McClellan and Charles Evan Hughes. Does Lani Guinier think they would have done better? President Lincoln benefited from it in 1860 and 1864. Thomas Jefferson was also a beneficiary. The Senate, the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court were all created to alleviate fears of states' rights advocates. Nullification, the prelude principle to secessionism, was put forth by Jefferson, the grandfather to neoliberals. So before we start attacking the Founding Fathers about parts of the Constitution that they got wrong, namely the inhuman equation that kept slavery, let's praise what they got right, institutions that may slow us down sometimes but at least help guard against Weimar constitutions. JAMES ROWEN Newport Beach, Calif. Despite her inflammatory attacks on the Founders, Lani Guinier has some valid points. But a more feasible, less extreme step would be to modify the Electoral College system to allocate the "House" votes from each state by Congressional district and give the two "senatorial" votes to the winner on a statewide basis. As a resident of a large state, I recognize the unlikelihood of three-fourths of the states agreeing to abolish the Electoral College, but a reform to allocate votes by district would achieve many of the goals Guinier seeks and would be more likely to be acceptable to the small states. It would also make Congressional redistricting more important and perhaps mitigate the current emphasis on preserving safe districts for incumbents. It would avoid the balkanization that so often attends proportional representation and a proliferation of minor parties. PETER J. TENNYSON Atlanta, Ga. Lani Guinier's comments prove once again that her writings are within the best of the traditions and legacies left to us by the Founding Fathers. When our Founding Fathers met at the Constitutional Convention, the issue regarding the election of the President generated considerable controversy. The debates revolved around how much voice the people should have. Some thought the people were not capable of making a wise choice. Some wanted the states to determine the chief magistrate of the new nation. Many wanted to continue the practice in the Articles of Confederation of having Congress elect the President. Others, led by James Madison, argued for a very radical idea--a popularly elected President chosen directly by the people. The result was the compromise that created the Electoral College. The Electoral College was, then, the mechanism developed to include the people. In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Electoral College would provide an obstacle to "cabal, intrigue, and corruption" by not making "the appointment of the President to depend on any pre-existing bodies of men [Congress or the state legislatures], who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes," but rather the Constitution has "referred" the election of the President "to an immediate act of the people of America." In Federalist 10, Madison wrote that the Constitution was "the great desideratum by which" our form of government "can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind." Today, our form of government again labors under an opprobrium that has been, in part, created by the rulings of the Supreme Court and the actions of the Florida legislature. We again need "the great desideratum." Guinier, with her recommendations for more effective ways to include the people in the process of electing the President, has proven herself to be a modern-day Madison whose ideas, if implemented, will once again allow our government to "be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind." JIM SCHMIDT GUINIER REPLIES Cambridge, Mass. I am heartened by the sheer volume of responses generated by my essay, the overwhelming number of which confirm my view that the time is ripe to build a pro-democracy movement out of the wreckage of our last election. LANI GUINIER
Mar 1, 2001 / Lani Guinier and Our Readers
Eminem–Bad Rap? Eminem–Bad Rap?
Does The Marshall Mathers LP--in which great white hip-hop hope Eminem fantasizes about killing his wife, raping his mother, forcing rival rappers to suck his dick and holding at knife-point faggots who keep "eggin' [him] on"--deserve Album-of-the-Year honors? This is the question before members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), who have, since nominating Eminem for four Grammy awards, received unsolicited advice from a bizarre constellation of celebrities, journalists and activists ranging from Charles Murray to British pop singer (and Eminem collaborator) Dido. Bob Herbert of the New York Times took the opportunity to deplore not just Eminem's lyrics but the entire genre of rap music for "infantile rhymes" and "gibberish." In a more nuanced report, Teen magazine asked, Eminem: angel or devil? and discovered that 74 percent of teenage girls surveyed would date him if they could. The Ontario attorney general even attempted to bar Eminem from entering the country for violating the "hate propaganda" section of the Canadian Criminal Code. But the most vociferous and persistent criticism of Eminem has come from an odd combination of activists: gay rights groups like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and family-values right-wingers like James Dobson's Focus on the Family. They all argue that Eminem's album threatens not only the objects of his violent lyrical outbursts but also, in GLAAD's words, the "artist's fan base of easily influenced adolescents who emulate Eminem's dress, mannerisms, words and beliefs." In the face of all this attention to Eminem's "hate speech," even the usually taciturn NARAS is doing some public soul-searching. The academy's president, Michael Greene, recently said, "There's no question about the repugnancy of many of his songs. They're nauseating in terms of how we as a culture like to view human progress. But it's a remarkable recording, and the dialogue that it's already started is a good one." As I have been forced to sit through all this Eminem-inspired hand-wringing over the physical and psychological well-being of faggots like myself, I've wondered just how good that dialogue really is. For one thing, so much of what has been said and written about Eminem has been political grandstanding. For example, Lynne Cheney, not usually known as a feminist, singled out Eminem as a "violent misogynist" at a Senate committee hearing on violence and entertainment. Eminem's lyrics, she argued, pose a danger to children, "the intelligent fish swimming in a deep ocean," where the media are "waves that penetrate through the water and through our children...again and again from this direction and that." Pretty sick stuff. Maybe it comes from listening to Marshall Mathers, but maybe it's the real Lynne Cheney, of lesbian pulp-fiction fame, finally standing up. GLAAD, for its part, argues that Eminem encourages anti-gay violence, and it has used the controversy over Eminem's lyrics to fuel a campaign for hate-crimes legislation. While GLAAD and Cheney have different motives, both spout arguments that collapse the distance between speech and action--a strategy CatharineMacKinnon pioneered in her war against pornography. Right-wingers like Cheney and antiporn feminists like MacKinnon have long maintained such an unholy alliance, but you would think gay activists would be more cautious about making such facile claims. After all, if a hip-hop album can be held responsible for anti-gay violence, what criminal activities might the gay-friendly children's book Daddy's Roommate inspire? Because the lines between critique and censorship, dissent and criminality, are so porous and unpredictable, attacking Eminem for promoting "antisocial" activity is a tricky game. Thankfully, GLAAD stops short of advocating censorship; instead it asks the entertainment industry to exercise "responsibility." GLAAD launched its anti-Eminem crusade by protesting MTV's heavy promotion of Marshall Mathers, which included six Video Music Award nominations and a whole weekend of programming called "Em-TV." After meeting with GLAAD representatives in June, MTV's head of programming, Brian Graden, piously confessed, "I would be lying to you if I didn't say it was something we struggled with." Liberal guilt aside, MTV nonetheless crowned Eminem with Video of the Year honors and then, in an attempt to atone for its sins, ran almost a full day of programming devoted to hate crimes, starting with a mawkish after-school special on the murder of Matthew Shepard, called Anatomy of a Hate Crime, and concluding with a seventeen-hour, commercial-free scrolling catalogue of the kind of horrific and yet somehow humdrum homophobic, misogynous and racist incidents that usually don't make it into the local news. Perhaps understandably, Eminem's detractors still weren't satisfied, but given the fact that Eminem is one of the bestselling hip-hop artist of all time, what exactly did they expect from MTV and the Grammys but hypocrisy and faithless apology? And what do they really expect from Eminem--a recantation? Does anyone remember the homophobic statements that Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and Marky Mark made a decade ago? Point of fact: Marky Mark revamped his career by becoming that seminal gay icon, the Calvin Klein underwear model, and Bach, long blond locks still in place, recently starred in the Broadway musical Jekyll and Hyde. All of which just goes to show, if hunky (and profitable) enough, you can always bite the limp-wristed hand that feeds you. Meanwhile, the dialogue among Eminem's fans has been equally confusing. Some, like gay diva Elton John (who's scheduled to perform a duet with Eminem at the Grammys) and hip-hop star Missy Elliot, praise Eminem's album as hard-hitting reportage from the white working-class front. They argue that his lyrics are not only excusable but laudable, because they reflect the artist's lived experiences. This is, as London Guardian columnist Joan Smith pointed out, a "specious defence." Should we excuse Eminem because he is, after all, sincere? Should we ignore his own genuinely violent acts--like pistol-whipping a man he allegedly caught kissing his wife? Others, like Spin magazine, have defended him as a brilliant provocateur. Far from being about realness, they argue, Marshall Mathers is parody, a horror show of self-loathing and other-loathing theater, a sick joke that Eminem's fans are in on. They point to how he peppers his rants with hyperbole, denials and reversals, calling into question not only the sincerity of his words but also their efficacy. For example, he raps about how he "hates fags" and then claims he's just kidding and that we should relax--he "likes gay men." I don't know if Eminem really likes gay men, although I'd sure like to find out. What is clear from listening to Marshall Mathers is that he needs gay men. When asked by MTV's Kurt Loder about his use of the word "faggot," Eminem said, "The lowest degrading thing that you can say to a man when you're battling him is to call him a faggot and try to take away his manhood. Call him a sissy, call him a punk. 'Faggot' to me doesn't necessarily mean gay people. 'Faggot' to me just means taking away your manhood." Of course, using the word "faggot" has this effect only through its association with homosexuality and effeminacy, but there, really, you have it. Homosexuality is so crucial to Eminem's series of self-constructions (he mentions it in thirteen of eighteen tracks) that it's hard to imagine what he would rap about if he didn't have us faggots. Eminem is, in his own words, "poor white trash." He comes from a broken home; he used to "get beat up, peed on, be on free lunch and change school every 3 months." So who does he diss in order to establish his cred as a white, male rapper? The only people lower on the adolescent totem pole than he is--faggots. This strategy of securing masculinity by obsessively disavowing homosexuality is hardly Eminem's invention, nor is it unique to male working-class culture or hip-hop music. Indeed, Eminem's lyrics may be more banal than exceptional in the way they invoke homophobic violence. Marshall Mathers reworks the classic Western literary trope of homosexuality, which manifests itself as at once hysterical homophobia and barely submerged homoeroticism. It reflects the kind of locker-room antics that his white, male, suburban audience is well acquainted with. So too were Matthew Shepard's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, and the perpetrators of the hate crimes MTV listed (who were, not so incidentally, almost all white men), and, for that matter, the Supreme Court, which recently held in the Boy Scouts' case that homophobic speech is so essential to boyhood that it's constitutionally protected. Herein may lie the real brilliance of Eminem as an artist and as a businessman. In a political culture dominated by vacuous claims to a fictive social unity--tolerance, compassionate conservatism, reconciliation--he recognizes that pain and negativity, of the white male variety in particular, still sell. So does Marshall Mathers deserve Album of the Year? Well, I probably wouldn't vote for it, but if it does win, that would be perfectly in keeping with Grammy's tradition of rewarding commercial success. And where might a really good dialogue on homophobia, violence and entertainment begin? It might look at why The Marshall Mathers LP proved to be so pleasurable for so many, not despite but rather because of its violent themes. It might start by seeing Eminem not as an exception but as the rule--one upheld not just by commercial entertainment values but by our courts, schools, family structures and arrangements of public space. As Eminem says, "Guess there's a Slim Shady in all of us. Fuck it, let's all stand up."
Feb 23, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Richard Kim
Unreality Television Unreality Television
The network honchos called by Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin and the House Energy and Commerce Committee to testify on the election night debacle were a decidedly un...
Feb 23, 2001 / Column / Eric Alterman
Race: the Continental Divide Race: the Continental Divide
The first moments of a recent documentary about Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Rebels With a Cause, recall one of the signal images of the 1960s civil rights struggle: p...
Feb 23, 2001 / Books & the Arts / Stanley Aronowitz
Hate Versus Death Hate Versus Death
Almost every week, it seems, we get to read about some state execution, performed or imminent, wreathed in the usual toxic fog of race or sex prejudice, or incompetency of ...
Feb 23, 2001 / Column / Alexander Cockburn
Right With Bush Right With Bush
Every conservative is now a compassionate conservative. Well, most were at the recent annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which drew more than 3,000 right-wing acti...
Feb 23, 2001 / David Corn