Who's responsible for vintage racism?

Sammee Tong

I also watched an episode of Bachelor Father, which was vaguely familiar. It starred John Forsythe and aired from 1957 to 1962, so that means I was six and a half when it ended. I suppose I may have seen re-runs. The patrician Forsythe plays the patrician Beverly Hills lawyer Bentley Gregg, who has taken in his teen-aged orphaned niece Kelly. This week I saw the 1961 show entitled "Bentley and the Time Clock," though it's really more about the "houseboy" Peter Tong, played by Sammee Tong, and unionization efforts. Anyway, in the Time Clock episode, Peter's conniving cousin starts a union,The Benevolent Society of Chinese Houseboys, which is so amusing to uncle and Kelly that they can't help smiling indulgently when Peter tells them about it, then giggling, and in uncle's case, lecturing. One night Bentley has a woman over for dinner and dancing and keeps getting distracted by a small, aged "houseboy" in a tuxedo observing from the next room and taking notes. Peter explains: He's monitoring working conditions. A frustrated and resolute Bentley picks up the small, stiff man as if he's a mannikin and deposits him outside the front door. The next day Bentley brings in a time clock to teach Peter a lesson. (You want to set up antagonism between Management and Labor? Then let's be strict about everything.) The white master never loses his superior status, of course. The servant in this case is especially lower caste because he's an immigrant and an imperfect speaker of the language. He's naive and must be saved by the master from con man Cousin Charlie. (In the antebellum South, benevolent masters knew they had to protect their slaves from themselves and the world outside the plantation, because their slaves were inferior, like children. They were incapable of taking care of themselves. The white man was doing them a favor--after other white men had done the first favor of kidnapping them and bringing them in chains and squalor to the New World, as well as introducing them to Christ, whom they resembled in tortures received.)

Peter learns that his employer has his best interests at heart. (Under the new system, Peter grosses more in a week, but has $19 less in take-home pay because of deductions for the union Christmas dance party, its widows and orphans guild, and--get the laff track ready--the salary of the national official, who is Cousin Charlie.) Order is restored: Peter goes back to being the happy servant; Bentley, the appreciative master--and Cousin Charlie, instigator, self-interested catalyst of a power shift--he ends up washing dishes at the master's dinner party.
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 On watching the p*rn film B*hind the Gr*en Do*r:
Beauty and intelligence was there with the whites, sexuality and the body is what characterized blacks. And I as a Japanese American? I was the one who watched, who did not participate, who was outside of that history. I was the neutered Hop Sing [ the Cartwrights' Chinese cook in Bonanza] or the houseboy of Bachelor Father.
--David Mura, "No-No Boys: Re-X-Amining Japanese Americans," New England Review, 1993
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So this is the question in the title of the post: If this TV show was racist, if the use of the word "houseboy" is objectionable, if the patronizing (at best) attitude of the the main white characters is offensive, why is this series being shown on a major TV station? Shouldn't the station refuse? Why is this acceptable and Amos 'n' Andy not?

You will say: Because we had Civil Rights.  Because blacks are vocal. Because Asians are the model minority (quiet, satisfied to be accepted as white and admired for their inherent abilities in math, science and laundry). They don't cause trouble. Because this isn't so bad.

The war on daytime tv

William Conrad as Cannon

Peter van Pels (aka van Daan)

Cancer Bitch's other nom de guerre is Holocaust Girl, and as Holocaust Girl, she has been watching daytime TV and movies this week because she's been attacked by her old arch-fiend, bronchitis. She watched an episode of a TV detective series called Cannon, which aired in the early 70s. . On Cannon episode "The Man Who Couldn't Forget," a Dutch Nazi-hunter has come to assassinate an SS man who was responsible for hundreds (I think that's what he said; was there anybody who was responsible for only hundreds?) of deaths that resulted from deportations in Amsterdam. Did they even use the word “Jew”? The ex-Nazi Erich Strasse is now a silver fox, a good man, a toy-making mogul named Elliott Straughn, played with a American accent by Leslie Nielsen. His young blond girlfriend had been planted by the Dutch anti-Nazi organization. But problem: She fell in love with him. The white-haired Dutch man,  Peter Van Damme, tries to convince... Wait--Peter Van Damme, as you other Holocaust Girls out there know, sounds a lot like Peter van Daan, which was the name (a pseudonym for van Pels) of the boy whose family lived with the Franks in the Secret Annex, and with whom she felll in love. Could the writers not have realized that it was the same name? It has to have been deliberate. Did the writers want the name to resonate with the viewing public, so they’d say, Hey, that sounds familiar, and thus, sympathize with him more?

Can't there be forgiveness? asks Anna, the Dutch woman who's fallen in love with the ex-Nazi. Can't people change?

Isn't that odd! That's the sort of thing you might say if you were pleading for a deadbeat to be given another chance to rent an apartment, or if you're arguing for early release from prison. But if someone is responsible for many deaths, does it matter whether he had a jailhouse or in-lieu-of-jailhouse conversion? In Cannon, the guy gives the usual explanation: he had his orders. Everyone said that, Peter says.

Get your government to prosecute him, he’s advised. He rebuts: A rich man can buy his freedom.

God ex machina, apparently, is his judge because the ex-Nazi falls to his death during a fight. Oh, thank goodness it could be wrapped up so quickly! And neatly.

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Youtube is apparently full of Holocaust Girls, with clips from Anne Frank films and commentary. Such as: i watched the movie when I was 11. Im 20 now, but i remember being traumatised for months after watching it. Eventually I got over it and 'forgot' about Anne. When I was 12 I started writing a diary, and later, I realised that my first entry was dated 12 June. Anne's birthday! Anne became one of my comforts during my crappy teenage years. She's taught me so much about appreciating life. i've decided if i ever have a daughter I'm calling her Annelies. My middle name is Anne and im so proud of it
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It goes without saying that when a Holocaust Girl has bronchitis, she thinks about: how when she had asthma as a child she would imagine how she would be an absolute goner in a concentration camp; and how bronchitis was nothing compared to typhus, malnutrition, etc., borne by prisoners who still had to stand in line for hours and haul rocks, etc., all day. 
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One more thing to ponder: In another Cannon episode, "The Avenger," one character is named Ted Anschluss. 

News!!! Spine discovered by Republican-founded Komen Foundation

NYT: Cancer Group, Reversing Course, Says It Will Maintain Planned Parenthood Funding Komen is reversing its course on cutting the breast-cancer screening funds at Planned Parenthoods throughout the country. (The PP in Illinois was not a recipient of the funding.) Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation said on Friday it had changed its mind about withdrawing funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, and apologized. Founder Nancy Brinkman said that Komen has a policy of not funding organizations under investigation. PP is under investigation by a House committee. Read more: www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

And just in case People Who Buy Pink Amulets are confused,  Ariana Barbour has come up with a poster to guide them...

O, you Komen!

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation has funded some 170,000 breast exams at Planned Parenthood in the last five years. But no more. And Komen ain't talkin' about it. Planned Parenthood has always been controversial in some sectors, and CNN reports: In September, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce began an investigation of Planned Parenthood over the organization's "compliance with federal restrictions on funding abortions."

In a letter sent to Planned Parenthood, the committee asked the group to provide information on how it segregates family planning from abortion services, as well as its policies on reporting cases of sexual abuse, rape and sex trafficking.

Just too much controversy for Nancy Brinker, Komen founder, to handle. More here: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/31/susan-g-komen-drops-funding-for-planned-parenthood/

Chocolat

I have been abstemious in my eating: no sugar, no flours since September or so. Today I had chocolate (73 percent dark, as people in my social class are wont to require) from the city of Paree at Miz G's house. I'd gone there to report on my melancholia. What helped said melancholia was: chocolate. And deciding that I will go back to my friend S's apartment in Lafayette, IN, to keep working on my novel. At home I told L and he said, You have commitments. Of course I have commitments. But I will work around them. I got so much done in Lafayette in December. Plus took in a number of Zumba classes at the Y. It is so much easier to work there, away from everything, where it's just me and the ms. Indianer here I come. Soon.
My home away from home:

A quarter of a year later...

The Bitch returns. The Bitch is still aflutter: What does this blog serve? What does it do for her own imperiled psyche? What should the subject of it be? If it is not about breast cancer all the time, will it be considered AWOL from its mission? And most of all:
Does it matter?

The fears: If I do not document my life, my memory of it will disappear so that it will seem to have disappeared. If people want to read about my life, they will. If not, they'll click off. So be it. I do believe in selfishness (even Ayn-Rand brand of selfishness) when it comes to writing. You write for yourself. You revise with others in mind.

Tonight I felt sadness. A lump in my throat I tried to eradicate the direct way, with Ativan generic. Worked some but also made me feel sleepy. Or was that the Atarax generic I took with it? Indeed, better living through chemistry. Sadness. Deep sadness. Deepening sadness. I try to do a check: Rage? I ask myself and see if I get a response. Fear? No, it does seem to settle on sadness. My dream last night, so very sad. Something with Jews on a boat coming back, a trial going on, I was sitting next to Sidney Brustein (as in The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window), who was a 60-ish buttoned-up lawyer. At one point someone drew blew pencil lines connecting all of us (a picture of us? maybe) and there was a blue line on him, so I said, you've been caught but he denied it. Later he went out of the ship and was watching frogs with his grandson. Then he jumped in the pool/ocean behind the kid and the frogs. I was about to jump in behind him, but then we had to all get onboard. We couldn't wait for the Brusteins. It was assumed that they would be killed by being run over by the boat.
Why did I dream of a character from a play I've never seen? From tooling around online, I find that this was written by Lorraine Hansberry and produced as she was dying. Sidney is unlikeable. He's the Jew in a play with blacks and Jews. What is his sign? I don't know. There's a wife who lowers herself to do--commercials, of all things. There's an in-law who's a prostitute. There's a candidate who isn't worthy. There's Sidney and his allegiances and schemes. In my dream he was Bourgeois with a capital B, very very conservative. Finally he lets out his playful side and...is crushed.

Alas, too tedious to examine all the influences on this. The big public one is the Italian cruise ship and the captain who was dedicated to saving his own skin.
As my mother always said, If you do the right thing, you never have to worry.
She didn't add: In dangerous situations you may die an uncomfortable death. The stakes weren't so high when I was young.

But we digress.

The sadness is what we came here to dissect. The sadness while walking up Lincoln Avenue, thinking of The Guild Bookstore that closed down maybe 30 years ago, the years in my 20s and 30s when we were forming the National Writers Union and there seemed to be so much promise, both public promise and private promise. The younger you are the more promise you have. Usually. Government, social change seem to have gotten heavier, requiring more effort to push and shift. Or maybe it's the lump in my throat that's spread to my chest. It was easier to get swept up in movements. Those were utopian times, for me. The most recent Atlantic: profile of Mearsheimer at U of Chicago, promoter of Realpolitik by by another name. I don't want to live with Realpolitik. I liked the days when there were masses of angry and frustrated young people and clergy who knew what had to change. We knew what had to be done. Mostly it was that the US had to get the hell out of [fill in the Latin American country of your choice here]. Now a deeper malaise that's stronger, more insidious than just some covert bombing in service to imperialism. A feeling of scorched earth. In the Trib today the same list of big regional polluters as you would predict. Refineries. Coal. What was that clean coal that Obama used to talk about? We were skeptical then about it then. The pall cast over everything. A college student reporter asked me weeks ago what the worse problem was in the neighborhood. I couldn't rank them. Poverty I thought, which is behind much of crime. I said crime. What I fear most is crime to my person. Already much unknown crime committed in my name, the name of Western consumers: oppression in Chinese factories. As if I woke up and found that everything was made in China. It used to be that a lot was. When did the ubiquity start?
A Linked-In invitation from R, who was lovers for many years with K. They lived in one of those old, comfortable and beautiful houses in the Berkeley Hills. I admired both of them. I accidentally rubbed K the wrong way by asking her to write a letter of rec for me posthaste. It was stupid to ask, to press her to do that favor for me. But that stopped her email responses. She didn't ask me to join on Linked-In. Or maybe they divided people up and R got me. I knew her first, though not well, in Paris, mid 1970s.
Going through boxes of cards today to find posters and such to put in my office at the Smart University. A card from M traveling in Europe. Which M? The poet R talking about a short story. When did I send it to her and when did I meet with her? I have no recollection. A card with letter inside from H reporting giddily about the roaring response to his lecture on photographic history. Then he published his book, he divorced, he married a former student, had a child, then died suddenly while walking into Wrigley Field.
This Shiva Nataraja has many arms but has such good balance that he doesn't look stressed out.

Cell phones get the OK

Now you can call all your friends and tell them the news: The link between cell phones and cancer is not strong. Not at all. The New York Cancer Times reports about the findings of a study in the Brit medical journal BMJ. Researchers studied almost 360,000 Danish cell phone users and according to the Times, found no increased risk of brain tumors with long-term use.

There's a caveat: The researchers said they did not record the actual amount of time that callers used their phones. There still might be a small increased risk of cancer in people who use cell phones often, and for 10 or 15 years. (Well, won't we all have used them for 15 years pretty soon?)

So don't throw away your tin cans and string yet. And keep studying that Morse Code!