“So, what was the highlight?”

That’s the question most people have asked since I returned from attending the Inauguration festivities in Washington, D.C.

And my answer surprises even me: It is the road trip home, listening for the first time to Barack Obama reading “Dreams of My Father.”

We’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. Somehow Americans have managed to elect an intellectual to the highest office.

As the self-aware reflections in his first book suggest, though, Obama is much more than an intellectual.  Listening to his narration, as he takes on voices as varied as his high school friend Ray and his Kenyan sisters, aunts and “Granny,” I realize our president could just as easily have been a novelist — not simply a stodgy law professor.

Considering Obama’s intellect and artistry, then, I have cringed each time a TV host or pundit has noted that this Inauguration is particularly historic because America now has its first African American president. The significance of that fact is undeniable, but it is such a limiting lens through which to see this moment.

Obama has so many other unprecedented qualities — which his cultural and political analyses in “Dreams of My Father” reveal. He is progressive in the most radical sense, the president who can truly navigate our 21st-century world because he has spent his life thinking … critically thinking … about … everything.

By this time in my own thought process, I shift my mind again (never has a moment of cognitive dissonance felt so good), and I begin to think about that rest stop in Pennsylvania on the way home. I went into the restroom, and I saw four adolescent boys goofing off, as they are wont to do.

But these boys — all African American — also proudly donned big buttons celebrating Obama. I hope I’m not being overly presumptuous here — but I’ve heard it time and time again — boys like these had been brought to the Inauguration by parents who wanted them to witness the moment first-hand: a black man becoming the most powerful person in the world.

The boys would now know they can be anything they want to be (or so the hope goes — more on that later).

There’s no reason, I realized looking at the boys, that Obama can’t be both the first African American president and the first president to grasp the complex realities of living and leading in the Information Age.

In fact, as a close reading of “Dreams of My Father” makes clear, Obama’s lack of a coherent familial and racial identity is what spurs his thinking.  He is able to approach most political and cultural texts (both spoken and written, informal and formal) as an outsider and coolly dissect their messages.

The passage from the book that most resonates in this regard comes when he walks into his first South Side Chicago barbershop — Smitty’s — soon after arriving in the city to start his career as a community organizer.

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Need to celebrate or drown your sorrows? Take The Wire food quiz

First, if you don’t know “Sheeeet!,” you don’t know … well, you haven’t been following the best show on television.

Whether it’s the best television show of all-time … that is a matter of fierce debate in critics’ circles. Check out this enlightening exchange between Alan Sepinwall (The Newark Star-Ledger), Andrew Johnston (Time Out New York) and Matt Zoller Seitz (The New York Times). Johnston argues for The Sopranos, Seitz for Deadwood and Sepinwall for The Wire — but they all admit The Wire holds its own.

In any case, the series finale is here — and many of us are in panic mode, wondering what the future of television might be like beyond the streets of Baltimore. Whether it’s sparking a conversation about masculinity, the media — or something inbetween — it has never failed to deliver on both a literary and a raw emotional level.

And it’s not just me talking.

The reaction to the final season, however, has been surprisingly mixed, to say the least. For a positive take on this season, see The House Next Door. For a more sober assessment, see David Zurawik of the hometown Baltimore Sun (which — and I’m not accusing Zurawik of bias here — has been mocked incessantly on the show this season) or Ross Douthat of The Atlantic. Or check out this debate between Dan Kois and Adam Sternbergh of New York magazine.

I happen to think that while the show made its various allegories a little too explicit this season, it worked as a climatic crescendo to what has been an incredibly patient and subtle show over the years. The show’s unflagging criticism of both personal and collective corruption is now blatantly obvious, I admit, and McNulty’s fake serial killer scheme does strain the very disciplined realism of the show. But it is the reactions of the media and the mayor to McNulty’s scheme that bring the show back home.

Those reactions, even though they are laughable and outrageous, feel undeniably true. That’s exactly how a modern for-profit newspaper and an idealistic but inevitably political politician would respond to the sensationalist opportunity that McNulty delivers to them. Yes, it’s over-the-top, but have you watched a 24-hour news channel lately when it’s got a celebrity scandal/scandalous murder to latch onto?

Whatever one’s thoughts are toward this final season, as the finale approaches it’s time for celebration and appreciation.

For a celebration, how about some crab cakes — Baltimore-style. Get the recipe here (or try yellow pepper coulis). Thanks to the the Raleigh News and Observer — which also created the definitive Wire food quiz (pdf).

Better yet, if you are near Baltimore, hit some of the show’s favorite bars.

Putting aside food and drink, you might enjoy BET’s Top 10 Wire Moments and other fun stuff.

For an appreciation, beyond reading the critical appraisals noted above, let’s leave it to David Simon, the show’s creator, who recently held forth on The Wire — its take on journalism and its roots in everything from Greek tragedy to Stanley Kubrick.

Most importantly, though, let’s give Simon and the other minds behind the show a final chance to remind us that for all its literary greatness, it’s a show very much based in a reality that persists and that we must fight to change. In their humble opinion, that means rejecting, among other things, the so-called war on drugs.

After humanizing a part of America that had been dismissed or forgotten by media and popular culture, after representing what many thought was unrepresentable, in this election season they have my vote.

You could have bowled me over with a Poulan Weed Eater when I realized that I had already missed as many as 10 bowl games. The parade of epic struggles will continue well into the New Year, grabbing the attention of a handful of people beyond friends, relatives and alumni of the concerned teams. Yes, it is the season of the bowl games, and several things have caught my attention.

First, there seem to be more of these games, though I can’t be certain because who could possibly know this sort of thing or retain this information from year to year? The answer of course is “Google.” Turns out there are actually four new bowls this year — and no doubt more lurking just over the horizon.

Second, of the games played thus far that I have had the pleasure of watching for as long as 30 seconds, there are an inordinate number of fans wearing the now famous “empty seat disguise.” These are mainly seen at bowls whose pay out per team is so small that the teams playing in them lose money.

Of course, some teams can lose millions even at the major bowls by spending millions to take everyone within earshot of the university on chartered planes to wherever on the planet the games are played. I believe Wisconsin holds the NCAA record for the worst debt-to-pay-out ratio.

Another thing I have noticed is the high number of players who will not be making the trip to the big game. The consensus national champion in this regard is Florida State University, which I am proud to say is one of my several alma maters. More about them in a moment.

A short perusal of Googleland reveals that 36 players from 13 universities would not be participating in these educational excursions. The major reason for the ineligibility is academic, with arrests playing a role in a few cases, thus demonstrating that student athletes outnumber criminal athletes.

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The newest revenue stream in college athletics appeared this year in the form of a life insurance scheme developed to generate a new source of revenue from dying boosters.

Oklahoma State led the way, taking out $100,000 life insurance policies on major boosters. Other institutions of higher athletics have rushed to put such a program in place on their campuses, all to help produce winning athletic teams.

We know that in addition to this rather strange bit of financing, it is possible to generate revenues through the sale of coffins, coffin liners and various items of clothing and icons in university colors and logos. These can be taken into the eternal stadium, site licenses not required. Maybe they should be?

I wondered at the time of the insurance policy ploy what the next step might be. Now we know.

Hamburg SV, the German football club, has announced that its faithful fans will soon be getting a cemetery all their own, located some 50 meters from the stadium. According to the BBC, the entrance will look like a goal.

Uli Beppler, a stonemason, said visitors will proceed through the goal to a green area in the center where graves will be “arranged on three levels like the stands of a sports stadium, and in a semi-circle to resemble a football pitch.” Gravestones will be in the team colors of blue and white with matching floral arrangements.

When asked about the need for a cemetery next to the stadium, Beppler provided a wise, if obvious, answer.

“If you think about people supporting a club for 30, 40, 50 years, it’s part of their life,” he said. “So why shouldn’t it be part of their death?”

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After a break from writing this column for several weeks, I am at a loss as to where to begin. The last few weeks have been full of stories from the wacky world of sport and, with the beginning of college football, the number of stories of crime and corruption have increased geometrically, although in fairness, the colleges have no monopoly on these.

In a strange echo of the Michael Vick case, a star Gaelic football player was arrested for gambling and dog fighting. He was a key figure in a dog-fighting ring, one of many in Northern Ireland, and owned several dogs. He has been banned from Gaelic football for five years and assessed court costs.

This week, a player for Ireland’s national team begged off of a European Cup game because his grandmother died. When I first saw this story, I was delighted to see that skills learned in college could be useful in the real world. Upon checking, it turned out his grandmothers were still alive, and the real problem was that his girl friend had a miscarriage. Odd, isn’t it, that the death of a grandmother is deemed worthy of missing a game, while a miscarriage of your girl friend is not?

At the University of Florida, yet another source for the revenue stream has been found. It was recently announced that a booster who donates $1 million will lead the Gator football team out of the tunnel and onto the field. This idea is apparently not new, as Tennessee has been doing it for a several years. The Gators did, however, come up with another idea.

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Sexploitation: 70 percent of the viewers for “Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Model” on CW are female. The percentages are pretty much the same for reality shows of the same ilk like “The Ultimate Cowboy Ugly Search” and “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team” on CMT. Is this surprising? According to Erin White of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it should be, considering that most of these shows “feature scantily-clad females in what many would say are situations that degrade women and turn back the clock on generations of feminist work.” Even the CMT executives she interviewed thought the viewers of their shows, which clearly employ a “male gaze,” would at least be “pretty evenly split.”

To me, however, any surprise at those percentages only reflects a naivete about the way in which corporate capitalism constructs desires and needs. The real question is how many of the female viewers, despite their dismissive statements that the shows are just “guilty pleasures,” are looking at the women — and themselves — through male eyes.

I Think This Might Be Overdone: Not that we need another article about how men — can you believe it?!? — actually like to cook. But Pervaiz Shallwan of the AP reveals a series of noteworthy ways in which the marketing of cooking to men has significantly changed. The Food Network reports that although they from the beginning aimed their programming at women, “men quickly tuned in and now account for half of all viewers.” Men’s Health magazine reports that while the recipe section used to be the least read (and they sometimes actually left it out), now it’s the most popular section — and they now devote over a quarter of the magazine to food and nutrition. The editors and publishers of Food and Wine and Cooks Illustrated, as well as Rachael Ray, have all also recognized a growing male audience. Even Maxim — do they have no shame? — is launching a line of salsa and barbecue sauces.

Of course, all of this says more about the entrenched biases of the cooking and marketing industries than the men themselves — who never seem to have a problem dominating the kitchen in places they actually pay good money (only 20 percent of professional chefs are women, Shallwan also notes).

That Darn Media: From the latest poll numbers, Hillary seems to be successfuly walking the line between the center right and the left (she’s leading among both self-described “liberal democrats” as well as “moderate/conservative democrats”). She also probably considers it a victory to have conservatives like Brent Bozell giving her favorable coverage for her “courage” in taking on Hollywood.

Bozell actually makes several valid points about both Clinton’s strategic, and somewhat hypocritical, stance against an immoral media culture. Unfortunately, what he (and many others whom Clinton is trying to appease) see as “media literacy” is actually just a cover for the promotion of a very specific moral agenda. What would really be courageous would be for a candidate to start talking about media literacy from an educational rather than a moral standpoint — as a tool of empowerment rather than censorship.

That Darn Spanish Media: Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that Latinos — if they really want to succeed in America — must tune out Spanish-language newspapers, TV and radio. What’s interesting here — besides Schwarzenegger’s myopic sense that what worked from him coming from Austria will work for everyone — is that the criticism of his remarks seems somewhat tepid. It appears that English-only advocates have staked out a place of legitimacy on the cultural battlefield.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the battle, the complicated relationship between language, power and cultural heritage gets lost — and the simplicity of the “all or nothing” strategy too often wins the day.

Just Let Jack Bauer Try to Defuse This One: The Pentagon once seriously contemplated an Air Force proposal in 1994 that called for a “gay bomb” — “a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.” We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Thanks to the Berkeley’s Sunshine Project for uncovering this gem (see their scanned copy [pdf] of the original proposal). And thanks to Raw Story for original link.

As a high school English teacher, I am speaking from the frontlines of what can only be classified as a war against plagiarism. Teachers at this very moment are putting suspicious phrases from their students’ papers into Google — and more often than you’d like to believe, they are finding a match.

From a teacher’s perspective, this is the dark side of the information revolution. It is now much easier for students to cut and paste lines and whole passages into their “own” essays, as quality sources are only a click away. What is much more disturbing, though, than these acts of plagiarism (which, after all, are only new in form, not substance) is that the ease of it actually makes many students believe that it’s not really wrong.

In this context, I have taken great interest in the debate sparked by Jonathan Lethem’s ingenious article — “The Ecstasy of Influence” — in the April issue of Harper’s magazine. Lethem ultimately defends plagiarism — or at least many forms of it — on the grounds that it is often performed for the public good.

Bob Thompson of the Washington Post nicely summarizes Lethem’s main point:

Listen to Jonathan Lethem hold forth long enough and you’ll come to understand that he sees the question of literary borrowing as part of a larger dialogue between private property and “the commons.” He thinks that artists who take an absolutist position on copyright are complicit in “what is essentially an attack on the public good” — the privatization of things “that should belong to everyone.”

He’s talking about copyright-obsessed corporations like Disney, which Lethem likens to a creative roach motel (”cultural debts flow in, but they don’t flow out”). He’s talking about environmentally essential wetlands paved for private profit. He’s talking about private fortunes exempted from estate taxes because they were supposedly amassed independently of the social fabric surrounding them

What Lethem doesn’t reveal until the end of the Harper’s article is that he has himself plagiarized his entire argument. He concludes the article by revealing the sources of all of his best lines.

After giving props to Lethem for that brilliant manuever, however, I can’t help but feel that his perspective shows a slight naivete. Ultimately, he doesn’t recognize the key role of academic honesty in the educational process. It’s one thing for a creative artist to make something new out of something old, but it’s another thing for someone still learning how to articulate her or his thoughts in writing — to construct an original voice — to avoid the learning process by using the words of someone else.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of what Lethem calls “good plagiarism” — something which the Creative Commons, among others, does a great job of promoting.

And I also recognize that the very concept of “originality” is being redefined in the 21st century. “AhhWoo,” a commenter on the Washington Post article, makes a very valid point: “I’m surprised this article managed to get by without a nod in the direction of YouTube and the mash-up. It seems like to a large extent, Gen Y is defined by its liberal ‘plagiarism’ of popular culture. If there’s a generation gap, it’s that.”

I just believe that my students need to learn about the line between dishonesty and creative adaptation before they cross it. And they need to practice constructing their own voice — which is ultimately the most difficult part about writing and creativity, in general.

They may never write “one true sentence” (which was famously Hemingway’s only goal) — a sentence that comes purely from their own mind. That’s probably impossible — and maybe, to accept Lethem’s premise somewhat, not that desireable in the end. But understanding, through the attempt, that they themselves have something — however mashed-up — to add to the cultural conversation is essential.

I regret not posting on the occasion of Adrienne Shelly’s untimely death last Fall. I am familiar with her work chiefly as the unassuming but devastatingly complex actor in the Hal Hartley cinematic masterpieces “Trust” and “The Unbelievable Truth.”

These films are difficult to preview — they need to be experienced (preferably, over repeated viewing). Their minimalism, black humor, and somewhat fantastical situations and coincidences would make you think they only tangentially touched upon the actual human condition. But somehow, with the help of Shelly, they go deeper and provoke more thought about what it means to be human — and negotiate an often very impersonal world — than almost any other films I’ve seen.

Shelly, though, has a much larger resume than these early acting stints. She wrote, directed and acted in three feature films, including “Waitress,” which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and is set to be released in early May.

Fortunately, I have been given another opportunity to pay Shelly homage, as The Adrienne Shelly Foundation has just announced its first set of educational initiatives to fulfill part of its mission “to aid in the advancement of talented women filmmakers.” The American Film Institute, New York Women in Film and Television, Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television as well as Columbia University and New York University have all announced awards, grants and scholarships in Shelly’s name.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Make Me Dance Around the Question: Watch the Democratic candidates squirm when asked, in light of Gen. Peter Pace’s comments, if they too believe that “homosexuality is immoral.”

When are the Democrats going to realize that backbone is a turn-on for voters? Even if they might disagree with you on a specific position, nothing shows character like having real values.

My Cousin Pookie: Speaking of Obama’s awareness of audience, he said the following during his recent Selma sermon: “If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching SportsCenter and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics.”

Wondering who Pookie is? Jonathan TiLove of the HNIC report has the complex, nuanced answer:

In their interviews and e-mails, Pookie emerges as a stock character of the black popular imagination, a name that has come to personify the kind of layabout kin who, if endearing, is also a source of some embarrassment and consternation to his more successful relations. And, it turns out, in his use of Pookie, Obama reveals something about himself …. In dropping Pookie’s name, Obama is signaling to those who question his blackness — because his mother was white and his father an African without slave ancestry — that he is not an outsider to black life.

Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, claims, “It’s a way of Obama getting purchase on that brand of black self-critique and establishing … his bonafides as a black figure willing to be critical of his own.”

Mark McPhail, an expert on rhetoric at Miami University of Ohio, see it somewhat differently: “This is the type of appeal that reveals Obama’s willingness to play on the worst type of stereotypes.”

The Real Black Youth: Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago professor, is the author of the Black Youth Project, which interviewed 15 to 25 year-old African American women and men about their attitudes and actions. Their “Topic Area Primers,” which provide very accessible and well-organized results of their research, should be required reading for anyone who strives for accurate image of possibly the most stereotyped demographic in America.

NPR’s News and Notes has held repeated conversations with her and other academics about the state of black youth. The latest installment on the role of sex in their lives is what triggered my interest.

Free Love: A University of Alberta study found that one third of Canadian boys are heavy users of pornography:

Ninety percent of males and 70 percent of females reported accessing sexually explicit media content at least once. More than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos “too many times to count,” compared to eight percent of the girls surveyed.

The great majority of the students surveyed use the Internet as their main conduit to the pornography.

Conservatives have latched onto the study as proof of our collective moral decline. Sonya Thompson, the author the study, however, has a more relevant question: “What kinds of expectations will these young people have going into their first sexual relationships? It may be setting up a big disconnect between boys and girls and may be normalizing risky sex practices.”

Between the Thought and the Act: From Scientific American: “People who play car racing video games may be more prone to drive recklessly and get into accidents, according to a study that adds to evidence that video games can influence the behavior of some players.”

Which brings us to the age-old question of the power of media in altering behavior, particularly of youth. Jonathan Turley, writing in the Washington Post, considers himself a “weapons-tolerant parent” who is not concerned about his sons playing with toy guns. Citing a few disparate psychologists — but mainly ruminating — Turley believes their games model “notions of courage and sacrifice,” work out “more basic emotions in more basic ways,” and, in the words of child psychologist Penny Holland, make sense of the world through “timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.”

Oh, for a world so simple.

American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls issued a report Monday confirming what we all know: images of women and girls have become increasingly sexualized, and those images are virtually ubiquitous in American culture.

What is new, beyond the urgent tone and the remarkable thoroughness of the report, is the Association’s focus on the dire consequences that exposure to those images has on young women — “harming girls’ self-image and development.” We’re talking everything from eating disorders to lower test scores.

Even if you consider yourself aware of the problem, you won’t see purveyors of these images — the media and the marketers — quite the same way again. Sleazy would be an understatement.

Almost as noteworthy as the report itself is Stacy Weiner’s article on it — “Goodbye to Girlhood” — in The Washington Post. She nicely highlights the key issues in the report — but also provides some historical context, citing Diane Levin’s argument that much of the problem can be traced back to the deregulation of the children’s television in the 1980s — when product placement really began.

Weiner’s article also points to a way out: teaching media literacy. The article ends with Genevieve McGahey, a 16-year-old who has become empowered by her mother’s and her school’s commitment to educating her for the real world:

“It’s a little scary being a young girl,” McGahey says. “The image of sexuality has been a lot more trumpeted in this era. … If you’re not interested in [sexuality] in middle school, it seems a little intimidating.” And unrealistic body ideals pile on extra pressure, McGahey says. At a time when their bodies and their body images are still developing, “girls are not really seeing people [in the media] who are beautiful but aren’t stick-thin,” she notes. “That really has an effect.”

Today, though, McGahey feels good about her body and her style.

For this, she credits her mom, who is “very secure with herself and with being smart and being a woman.” She also points to a wellness course at school that made her conscious of how women were depicted. “Seeing a culture of degrading women really influenced me to look at things in a new way and to think how we as high school girls react to that,” she says.

In a New York Times Op-Ed, Tom Moore, a 10th-grade history teacher in the Bronx, responds insightfully to recent cinematic images of teaching — specifically teaching in underprivileged schools. Ultimately, he sees most films as missing the pedagogical point:

The great misconception of these films is not that actual schools are more chaotic and decrepit — many schools in poor neighborhoods are clean and orderly yet still don’t have enough teachers or money for supplies. No, the most dangerous message such films promote is that what schools really need are heroes. This is the Myth of the Great Teacher.

Films like ‘Freedom Writers‘ portray teachers more as missionaries than professionals, eager to give up their lives and comfort for the benefit of others, without need of compensation. Ms. Gruwell sacrifices money, time and even her marriage for her job.

Moore notes an exception — The Wire — which we would as well. But his point is well-taken: dedicated teachers are great, but without resources and reinforcement, they are fighting a futile fight. And when films and television shows glorify the individual teachers, they are actually participating in a reactionary ideology, which insists that money and community support don’t matter.

And the letters to the editor in response to Moore’s piece make it clear he has struck a chord.

Plus: Speaking of cinematic misrepresentations of work, find out how recent films are also making employment at fashion magazines a lot more interesting (and relevant) than it actually is.

Anyone claiming that our educational system has become biased against boys in recent years must read Michael Kimmel’s “War Against Boys?” in the latest issue of Dissent magazine.

Kimmel recognizes that boys, on many levels, are not doing as well as girls in school — but broader factors, involving race, class and, most significantly, hypocritical cultural expectations, are to blame, not the feminist movement or a softening or “feminization” of our culture at large:

Countless surveys suggest that young boys today subscribe to a traditional definition of masculinity, stressing the suppression of emotion, stoic resolve, aggression, power, success, and other stereotypic features. Indeed, the point of such successful books as William Pollack’s Real Boys and Thompson and Kindlon’s Raising Cain is to expand the emotional and psychological repertoire of boys, enabling them to express a wider emotional and creative range.

How does a focus on the ideology of masculinity explain what is happening to boys in school? Consider the parallel for girls. Carol Gilligan’s work on adolescent girls describes how these assertive, confident, and proud young girls ‘lose their voices’ when they hit adolescence. At that same moment, Pollack notes, boys become more confident, even beyond their abilities. You might even say that boys find their voices, but it is the inauthentic voice of bravado, posturing, foolish risk-taking, and gratuitous violence. He calls it ‘the boy code.’ The boy code teaches them that they are supposed to be in power, and so they begin to act as if they are. They ‘ruffle in a manly pose,’ as William Butler Yeats once put it, ‘for all their timid heart.’

Kimmel, a professor of sociology at SUNY Stonybrook, has always been one of my favorite popular academics, able to speak eloquently to a wide audience while maintaining an academic rigor. His book-length study, Manhood in America, can at times simplify complicated historical issues but it is always at the service of making his research useful in the here and now. The implication of all his work — inspired heavily by Pollack, Thompson and Kindlon in recent years — is that we need to stop being so reactionary in our advocacy for boys and starting seeing them as real people — with complex desires that are buffeted between strong social and historical forces:

To many who now propose to ‘rescue’ boys … all boys are the same aggressive, competitive, rambunctious little devils. They operate from a facile, and inaccurate, essentialist dichotomy between males and females. Boys must be allowed to be boys — so that they grow up to be men.

But what boys need turns out to be pretty much what girls need. In their best-selling Raising Cain, Michael Thompson and Dan Kindlon describe boys’ needs: to be loved, get sex, and not be hurt. Parents are counseled to allow boys their emotions; accept a high level of activity; speak their language; and treat them with respect. They are to teach the many ways a boy can be a man, use discipline to guide and build, and model manhood as emotionally attached … [W]hat they advocate is exactly what feminists have been advocating for girls for some time.

With this perspective in mind, no place — in our popular culture, at least — is giving boys more respect than two television series — The Wire and Friday Night Lights.

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When will the over-30 crowd ever realize (and remember) that drawing a line in the fashion sand is simply providing a welcome mat for teenage rebellion? Not in the near future, I’m afraid:

Citing safety and decorum, Randolph Public Schools is poised to ban hoodies later this month, along with baseball caps and other nonreligious headcoverings, from middle and high school classrooms and hallways.

Hoodies pose a safety threat, area school officials say, for several reasons. Students, perhaps after doing something wrong, can make a quick, anonymous exit from school by shielding their faces from security cameras. Nonstudents can blend in and sneak in and out of the school. Also, students can hide contraband more easily.

If it’s a legitimate security issue, so be it. But I have my doubts. Regardless, unlike other parts of culture, the very definition of “cool” fashion is what lives on the edge. As one parent in the story says, “They’re not going to buy sweaters to keep them warm.”

In Britain, the United States and Canada, men account for only 20 percent of the market for fiction.  What are the cultural implications of this remarkable trend? Lakshmi Chaudhry of In These Times for one believes it’s a big, rather disturbing deal: "Don?t look now, but we may be headed back to the 19th century, when the
novel was considered a low-status, frivolous, pastime of ladies of
leisure, unfit for real men." 

This is especially bothersome when conservative critics (and other book review editors and columnists) try to blame what they see as the dismal state of literature on women:

In recent years, various pundits have used this so-called ?fiction gap?
as an opportunity to trot out their pet theories on what makes men and
women tick. The most recent is New York Times columnist David
Brooks, who jumped at the chance to peddle his special brand of gender
essentialism. His June 11 column arbitrarily divided all books into
neat boy/girl categories??In the men?s sections of the bookstore, there
are books describing masterly men conquering evil. In the women?s
sections there are novels about ? well, I guess feelings and stuff.?
His sweeping assertion flies in the face of publishing industry
research, which shows that if ?chick-lit? were defined as what women
read, the term would have to include most novels, including those
considered macho territory. A 2000 survey found that women comprised a
greater percentage of readers than men across all genres:
Espionage/thriller (69 percent); General (88 percent);
Mystery/Detective (86 percent); and even Science Fiction (52 percent).

Stereotypes aside, the question remains, how do we get men back to their books?

Rockstar, the gaming company behind the Grand Theft Auto series, knows what buttons to push. Its latest offering is Bully, set to be released in October:

The story follows Jimmy Hopkins, a teenager who’s been expelled from every school he’s ever attended. Left to fend for himself after his mother abandons him at Bullworth to go on her fifth honeymoon, Jimmy has a whole year at Bullworth ahead of him, working his way up the social ladder of this demented institution of supposed learning, standing up for what he thinks is right and taking on the liars, cheats and snobs who are the most popular members of the student body and faculty. If Jimmy can survive the school year and outsmart his rivals, he could rule the school.

Needless to say, the game had put many wary organizations in a tizzy. Brian D. Crecente of the Rocky Mountain News does some excellent reporting, giving voice to a variety of opinions and providing some social and historical depth to the controversy.

To cite one example, his juxtaposition of two particular voices is revealing:

“This is plainly a new way to communicate messages, to tell stories and a new way to get people conversing with one another,” said Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

“(Video games) plainly have certain levels of subtlety that are not easily available to other genres. The story can move in a lot of different directions depending on how you play it.”

But Frank Bolaños, the Miami-Dade school board member who pushed for the game to be banned in his district, has a different view. “It’s just a violent game,” he said. “It just seems to be profit driven.”

Bolaños, who hasn’t seen the game, formed his impressions from the three screen shots released for it last year. He asked the board to add the game to the school’s banned list as part of an ongoing effort to “increase student safety and reduce bullying.”

Bolaños thinks the game will lead to an increase in violence at schools. School districts have a responsibility to look out for what games and books children are exposed to, said Bolaños.

“Parents need to be aware of the impact books or video games have on children.”

What bothers me so much here is not the act of censorship itself but the process by which Bolaños “formed his opinion” of the game. Stephen Colbert (see previous post) would argue that while Bolaños doesn’t know the facts of the game, he has the “truthiness” of it — he just feels it’s a bad thing.

The unwillingness to critically engage our culture allows us to be prey to many forces — not just the forces asking us to consume without question but also the forces who assert a prejudiced moral absolutism about entire cultural genres — and entire generation, for that matter.

Why can’t we have conversations about cultural texts like Bully when it is available to everyone — referencing specific scenes, discussing point-of-view, etc.? Why are we so afraid of that dialogue? Younger generations, from my experience, know very well when they are being insulted.

Clive Thompson, video game critics for Wired News, is very articulate on this point:

Video games are as divisive as rock ‘n’ roll was and they have created an experiential generation gap ….

There are a number of reasons why games are more disturbing to people than movies or music. It is demographics; the people who are worried about them, don’t play them, and don’t understand them. It’s a perfect storm of misunderstanding.

[...]

Play tends to disturb America. All forms of play are seen as wastes of time, but they are philosophically, existentially important.

Video games are forms of valid expression, without question. You can use them to convey ideas, thoughts, a world-view, they are so obviously art.

We’ll have to wait and see how artistic and complex Bully actually is, but the only way we will form an educated opinion is to play it, watch it and talk about it.