December 13, 2006

Bruce Robbins replies to Walter Benn Michaels [see Michaels's letter below]:

The legacy of racism, Walter Benn Michaels concedes, has produced disproportionate poverty among blacks in America. But doing something to compensate for that legacy would do nothing whatsoever to aid the struggle for economic equality. "We'd just have more poor whites and Asians."

By the time I arrived at Ellen Willis's memorial service,Riverside Memorial Chapel was packed with what I took to be friends and family.I hurried to the last open pew and asked the woman sitting there if I couldreserve space for two. She said yes, though her averted eyes suggested that thepew wasn't hers to let. Later, as the congregation was rising to leave, sheasked my friend and me if we'd known Ellen personally. Yes, we'd been herstudents, we explained. And she? "I never met her," she said. "I read one ofher books years ago, and it changed the way I think about feminism. I saw inthe paper that she'd died, and here I am." Read More

Dear Editors,

The polemic Jonathan Liu sets up in "A Sporting Chance," progress vs. stasis, is a phony one. Development doesn't inherently (as is implied) represent some kind of evolution, and Lethem is hardly proposing stagnation. What's more, Frank Gehry is only "beyond reproach" if one chooses to ignore the many individuals (Paul Goldberger) and organizations (The Municipal Art Society) who have come out against the Atlantic Yards project in its current state.

Best,

Jon Bonanno Read More

For a period, I personally despised Bruce Ratner.

It was the summer of 2004, and coming off two consecutive Finals appearances, the New Jersey Nets were enjoying the most sustained period of success in the team's NBA history. Ratner, CEO of the New York developer Forest City Ratner and the Nets' new owner, was a basketball neophyte who bought the team to move it; by August, he'd become the most notorious cost-cutter in the league, having traded away fan favorites Kerry Kittles and Kenyon Martin for nary a single live body in return. This was sports cleansed of any pretense to enchantment; my beloved, long-suffering franchise had become the loss leader for a real-estate deal orchestrated by a man who looked incapable of dribbling a ball. Caring about pro sports is mostly a matter of faith; Ratner, I was certain, had permanently snuffed out mine. Read More

July 16 was hot, so much of the crowd of over 2,000 gathered in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza chose to sit in the shade of Prospect Park, wearing hats and fanning themselves, far from the makeshift stage. On the stage, which was bannered with signs proclaiming "No to Ratner's Land Grab," Reverend Billy, a mock Evangelical pastor crowned with an ironic wave of blond hair, led his multiethnic Stop Shopping Gospel Choir in songs decrying the evils of consumerism and Wal-Mart.

In August, three months after Judge Willem van der Merwe's ruling, Cape Town was still experiencing Zuma trial fallout. The judge's name is amusing, because a proverbial Van der Merwe is South Africa's Polish person, the chronic butt of jokes that lampoon Afrikaner stupidity. (How do you confuse Van der Merwe? Put him in a rondavel and tell him to stand in the corner.)

The High Court has been kind to Jacob Zuma, poster boy of Zulu pride. Cleared of corruption charges in 2005, the former Deputy President and head of the National AIDS Council was acquitted of rape this May. There was not enough evidence to determine whether the sex was consensual; Zuma himself admitted it was unprotected. His accuser, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, had a raft of past rape claims; she also wore a skirt above the knee. In expiation, Zuma cited binding tribal roles ("In the Zulu culture you don't just leave a woman in [a state of arousal], because if you do then she will … say that you are a rapist.") and effective last-ditch measures (a shower afterwards). The case channeled the country's every major insecurity—cronyism, sexual violence, defiant tribalism, infectious disease—and South African constituents were riled, polarized, made intemperate with rage. Zuma showcased the government's incompetence, proved the ANC was a blery sham; or else he was a scapegoat, the girl a liar and a whore, and who was to say she had HIV anyway? (I wondered if he had HIV already.) Protesters outside the courtroom called for her to be stoned. Read More

I sat recently in the conference room attached to my hospital's intensive care unit, thinking about ethics and the end of life. Our ICU was remodeled last year, and the conference room has a clean, corporate feel; the wood intentionally unfinished, the chairs black nylon with hinges optimized for back support. My fellow medical residents—many of whom, having worked the night shift, were intermittently falling asleep—flanked me at the table. We wore blue scrubs. Read More

I'm on Zoram's Strand and this lvl 23 Tauren son of a bitch is camping me. Every time I steer my soul back into my body and rezz he takes advantage of my low health and ganks me without mercy. As I'm going down for the fifth time I send out a call on Local Defense, then steer my will o'wisp soul back from the rezzy point to my corpse. Just when I get to my body I see them thundering through the purple fields like the cavalry: a Shaman, a Warrior, and a Hunter, and they pwn that smug Tauren all over the glade. I rezz just in time to sink my kris into his back and he goes down like a ton of pixilated bricks and we're off, running through the field, taking lazy leaps and rolls like a group of fighter jets. Someone says "LFG Sleeper Awakens" and we all click yes, and we're off to escort the Druid Bearclaw through contested territories to Maestra's Post, my comrades and I. Carsickness, Gangrene, Isoceles, and NancyReagan running through the woods with murder on our minds and digital sunlight on our faces. I'm playing World of Warcraft and I've never been happier. Read More

Naguib Mahfouz was two days short of ninety when I met him at one of his weekly, two-and-a-half-hour nadwas in the Sheraton Hotel on the Nile Corniche. I went with a friend, an American like me, and Mahfouz stood up to greet us, as he did with all his visitors. He was about five feet tall with a dandyish cane and combed white hair, perfectly shrunken. He had a small, oddly adolescent growth of whiskers beneath his chin, as though still considering the role of Confucian sage, weighing it in the balance with the always-pressing demands of vanity. His suit was heavy tweed, maybe a little generous in the shoulders now, and he wore a good cologne.

When you have two girlfriends, John Madden once said, you have none. Madden, the football commentator, was talking about quarterbacks. If neither of a team's quarterbacks is good enough to end the debate on which one should play, then the team doesn't have a player fit for the job. So, too, if a man can't decide between two women, neither is the right one for him. Misha Vainberg, the narrator of Gary Shteyngart's second novel, Absurdistan, has two girlfriends: Rouenna in the Bronx and Nana in the fictional Central Asian country of Absurdsvanï. This is not a problem for Misha, but it is a problem for Absurdistan. Misha's frequent, fervent declarations of love for both women make him hard to believe about either one. Read More