Results tagged “human rights” from Uncivil Society
Today I'm in New Haven, where, among other things, I'll be meeting with the Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs. As is inevitably the case, the students are most impressive--for example, one of the founders, Zachary Kaufman, edited After Genocide, a new book on law and justice issues arising from the Rwandan experience. True to do-gooder form, profits from the book are going to support Rwanda's first public library.
Much more entrepreneurial than what I did with my time there, which was mostly spent watching puppet shows!
Sarah Gordon, a New York poll worker, was raised by her grandmother--born in 1862--and great-greatmother, who was born under slavery.
Coy about her exact age, Mrs. Gordon is in her 10th decade and came into the world before women could vote. After the early death of her mother, she was raised in rural North Carolina by her grandmother Mary Parker, born in 1862. She lived until she was 105. Grandmother Parker was born to a slave named Molly Sykes.
As a young girl, Sarah Gordon often sat in the lap of Great-Grandmother Sykes, who lived to be 106, long enough to tell her of life on a plantation as the property of whites.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Gordon sat in a chair behind a folding table in her polling place, helping to manage the surge of people who had lined up to cast a vote for the first black president.
“They were coming all morning,†Mrs. Gordon said. “It is because we will never see this again. The older people like myself, who always had the intention of seeing it, but didn’t think they would, they are coming to vote. They want to be part of something we never thought we would see.â€
At a time when we speak more of lengthening life than a life well lived, here's a reminder of how death can bring immortality.
Head over to Gothamist for more on the story of this marker and those who gave their lives so others could vote.
Scott Berkun: "I know for sure my great grandparents would never have made it through this - Instead of being here writing this, I, like they were, would probably be a peasant farmer somewhere in Eastern Europe."
Your tax dollars at work--it's published by the Library of Congress.
Below: the centerfold, which I guess would by NSFW were you to touch it. More at Banterist.
In her must-read expose' of the AIDS biz The Wisdom of Whores, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani talks about the practice of "beating up" data in order to gain support for a cause. As Pisani explains, beating up data isn't straight-out lying; rather, it's all about presenting information in a way that creates the desired rhetorical effect, even to the point of creating possible if unproven statistics that persuade people to take the desired action.
Boinkology provides a provocative discussion of the beat-ups & design flaws in the above PSA from Chicago's Prostitution Alternatives Round Table.
Ebert's entire essay is brilliant & subtle. Quote of the day:
The closest sight I have seen to Friday night's spectacle, and I mean this objectively, not with disrespect, is the sight of all those Germans marching wave upon wave before Hitler in "Triumph of the Will."
The depiction of women in comics has received its fair share of criticism in recent years, most notably in Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators and Valerie D'Orazio's Occasional Superheroine. Comics have likewise sparked some controversy in regard to images of heroic homosexuality. But as the latest documents released in the Jerry Siegel case illustrate, these issues have a long history.
The documents in question: correspondence between Detective Comics and Jerry Siegel from 1939 through 1947, entered into evidence as part of DC's attempt to establish that all the work done by Siegel & Shuster during that time was work for hire. The case still has a while to percolate--the judge has postponed the hearing on unresolved trademark/copyright issues until September 15--but the material itself is a gold mine for folks interested in the comics history.
Even apart from the gender issues there's a lot of amazing stuff here--the recurring savage criticism of Joe Shuster's art; an early critique of Wayne Boring as an artist unsuitable for Superman; the hiring of Winsor McCay, Jr. as Superman ghost-artist-in-training; the insinuation that Superman was not significantly more popular than Zatara, Pep Morgan and Tex Thomson; and the prohibition on depictions of a flying Clark Kent are just a few of the historical moments in the mix.
Yet it is the sex stuff that really stands out, providing a rare insiders' perspective on the comics writing culture of the past. One of the true highlights of the newly released correspondence is the black-and-white sketch of Lois Lane included in this post. The artist was Siegel's and Shuster's editor, Whitney Ellsworth, who was attempting to get the duo to make Lois Lane less curvaceous.
A little backstory is in order. Although we tend to associate comics censorship with the 1950s, in actuality the complaints arose almost as soon as superheroes made comics a ubiquitous pop phenomenon. In a letter dated February 19, 1941, Ellsworth makes clear that this was foremost on his mind when he says to Siegel, "You know as well as I do what sort of censure we are always up against, and how careful we must be."
Which made a curvy Lois a bit of a problem. When drawn in an especially tantalizing way she posed a risk of drawing the attention of the moral watchdogs, a risk that Ellsworth tried to forestall in 1940 by ordering the duo to "de-sex" her.
After Shuster showed no sign of taking this admonition to heart, Ellsworth made an argument that seems shocking even almost seventy years later. Shuster's Lois was so "unpleasantly sexy" that her pulchritude made her seem a bit too heavy--a problem for which Ellsworth and Murray Boltinoff had an easy solution:
[W]hy it is necessary to shade Lois' breasts and the underside of her tummy with vertical pen-lines we can't understand. She looks pregnant. Murray suggests that you arrange for her to have an abortion or the baby and get it over with so that her figure can return to something a little more like the tasty dish she is supposed to be.
And the criticism didn't stop there; editorial also had problems with her hair style and her clothing,
which looked like you have apparently dressed her out of a Montgomery Ward catalogue. [Jack Liebowitz] suggests Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar as likelier spots for dress-research.
A look at Superman's DC Archives shows that these admonitions had their intended effect. The previous two images are from Superman #7, complete with breast shading and vertical lines in her, um, lower tummy. In contrast, here she is a few months later, with a much slimmer waist and bust-reducing lapels:
The criticism did not stop with Lois, however. Another alleged problem with Shuster's artwork is that it made Superman look gay--or in the period slang of Ellsworth's January 22, 1940 letter, "lah-de-dah" with a "nice fat bottom"--
What's worse, the pose in the second panel also reminded Ellsworth of "certain FLIT ads done by a cartoonist who signs himself 'Dr. Seuss.'"
For a cultural historian, documents like these are a treasure trove, providing insight into attitudes toward women, standards of beauty, images of masculinity, censorship and the interplay between comics and other illustrated media.
For Siegel and Shuster, such critiques were serious business. If you want to understand why they took the risk of suing DC in 1947 to regain the rights to Superman, read these letters--time and again the company warns them that their work borders on the "unacceptable"--"the situation is serious enough to warrant your doing some real worrying," as DC might "make other arrangements to have [the work] done." Since DC seemed to be building a case to get rid of them, a lawsuit--no matter how risky--seemed to have better odds than the prospect of winning over the publisher.
P
Pictured above is a new t-shirt by gone green, "an independent tiny group of peaceful people representing peace, love and happy times."
And, apparently, the unlicensed appropriation of someone else' copyrighted graphic. The giveaway that it's not just a coincidence: the inclusion of the original's distinct design flaws.
This sort of thing happens more than the charitable community openly admits. In fact, I was recently at a do-gooder colloquium in which one of the participants raised a concern about how common it is for folks in these meetings to publish ideas discussed there as their own, thereby undercutting the research of the person who originally raised them in what was understood to be an academic discussion. A prominent academic's response: if you really want to change the world, you should be glad that I publish your ideas--even if I'm the one getting all the credit, the most important thing is that your useful knowledge is helping society.
To which I replied then, as now, bullshit. The academy has norms of attribution; the commercial world has moral rights and commercial licensing. You don't play by those rules, you're a self-seeking opportunist, even if you excuse your theft of someone else's creative insight on the grounds that it's saving the world.
In a Jezebel thread discussing, inter alia, bad labor practices in the modeling industry, a commenter likens the lots-of-work-at-no-pay-for-wealthy-companies ethos to NGOs. The last paragraph raises in particular raises an interesting question about whether free internships are in an NGO's best interest:
Yeah, that's why there is the so-called "NGO racket." Don't know what you want to do after graduation? Get a job seeing the world! Life experience! Come help people!
"We have selected you for this. You should feel so priveleged to work for this esteemed NGO. All it will cost you is your flight here, your housing and food here, obviously your health insurance, your transportation to and from work...etc etc. But you're doing a good deed! Aren't you proud!?? We PICKED you!"
Free internships are total exploitation, and DO privilege the people who can afford to pay the 8,000 dollars or whatever for six months to do that, not necessarily the most qualified. It is really doing a disservice to qualified employees, and ultimately, perhaps to the NGO itself.
The comments on this Amnesty International ad say it all--this is yet another sexed-up PSA that undermines its core message.
A sampling:
Chain looks so easy to tear. It must be not so difficult to stop slavery.
Slavery. Bringing sexy back.
yeah, this is confused shite.
it seems a more effective as an ad for naughty escorts. not the message i think they're after.
it's a lost opportunity to do something meaningful and great. shame on you switzerland.
