Rambling

Finally getting to read a many-months-old Alumni magazine. I'm intrigued to know that research on human aging continues apace, and, sort of related, music can, and does, relieve anxiety about one's life. Less anxiety, longer life, wouldn't you say? Ha!

Here's a short cut: folk wisdom is correct; life expectancy (longevity) is partly genetic. Lab experiments with other life forms substantiates what has  already been observed about people. Scientists are also wrestling with the question, 'Why does minimal intake of food, especially later in life, with  all-nutritious food intake, prolong life?' That too involves genes and their functions. 

Tchaikovsky wrote, "Without music I'd go insane." Apparently he knew a thing or two. Music is therapeutic. Think I'll listen to it more often. For some bloggers writing is 'music,' probably, and not only makes them feel better, but extends their life span.   But we already knew all this stuff, right?

 

Barry 

Arab Wars

CNN comes into its own in time of war. So much is happening in the Middle East, and happening so fast CNN has far fewer repeat broadcasts than has been usual. What a boon to History teachers at High Schools. Just turn on the news and ask questions from the class, and/or ask the class to simply comment.

Then, in Sociology class ask questions about Taliban shooting of women in the football stadium in Afghanistan because they had dressed or behaved improperly in public. What does war and sexual repression have in common? What sex fantasies do ultra conservative Arab men indulge in? and, among each other, what fantasies do they share about Jewish, particularly Iraeli Jewish women? Interesting that we hear nothing about that. An American Muslim woman, a woman with an American doctorate in Psychiatry, had her views about Arab terrorists broadcast on Al Jazera. This news snippet was published on the front page of the Daily News in Los Angeles. To my knowledge that was published nowhere else in America. The American woman psychiatrist simply stated the obvious, that suicide terrorists are psychotic. What were we afraid of that the Al Jazera broadcasts were hushed up? What's to be afraid of?

Have to mull this one over and post again. Help, anyone?    

Barry

RACE II

Part Two:

Race. William Faulkner writes, or has a character say that the only solution to problems of race will be the inevitable "bleaching out" that will result from interbreeding. We are witnessing that. The tension in race relations are obvious in big cities; CRASH might not seem interesting to white people living in rural America, but it is riveting to those living where the story is set, Los Angeles. The "Best Original Screenplay 2005" ends on the note that today people are literally still being bought and sold. It is staggering to me that any immigrant from Europe would dismiss the movie because it doesn't have any plot. (See Comment on previous entry.)

The nearly all Black women jury that found O. J. Simpson "Not guilty" did so for reasons prosecutor Marcia Clark gives on page 389 of her book Without A Doubt, Viking 1997:

"Experience had shown me that Black female jurors are perfectly capable of convicting a Black man who brutalizes his wife or girlfriend. As I've said before - and I'll say it as many times as I have to - The Simpson case was an anomaly. What was perceived here as apathy on the part of black women jurors toward Nicole's suffering seemed to me rather a deliberate form of denial. I truly believe that our black female jurors knew in their hearts that O. J. Simpson was no better than the average asshole who gets drunk on Friday nights and  throws his woman against a wall. But I think they felt they couldn't afford to act on that knowledge. Too few black men succeed in penetrating the ranks of upper-class white society for them to allow one to be taken out in such an ignominious way. Looking back on it, I think I'd have to say that blacks of both sexes were moved to breathtaking feats of denial in order to keep the Juice from going down."

That's a strange piece of writing. Notice that the word 'black' is not capitalized. Today Black and African American are interchangeable and both are capitalized. It's not simply a matter of color, it's race in all aspects: voice, movement, attitude, and the  baggage of history. Nevertheless some of what Marcia says is true.

What Marcia leaves out is the deliberation with which Nicole sought to torment her former husband. She virtually flaunted her affairs knowing that her stalker husband would, in effect, 'watch.' Nicole had an affair with the restaurant Mezaluna's Manager, not just with the 'boy' waiter OJ murdered. Simpson actually went to the table where Nicole and the Manager were dining and made threats up close, nose to nose. The other branch of the restaurant which the Manager also ran was in Aspen. Nicole bathed first in a tub festooned with candles. She could have charged admission.  

Isn't there an Othello psychology at work in the dreadful drama? with the difference that Desdemona was innocent while Nicole definitely was not.

The Black women jurors played God: they knew OJ was guilty, but they hated the method adopted by the prosecution in order to prove he was guilty. Race was the lens throught which all parties to the trial prepared their Defense, and their Prosecution, and deliberations by the jury. Even the city of Los Angeles was at fault in failing to make available a larger and more varied jury pool. In Santa Monica, where such a jury pool was provided, the
Civil case prosecution was successful and OJ was found guilty.

As was shown so thrillingly in the movie CRASH race in Los Angeles has a direct influence on the life of all of us. In one inner city area it has been shown that 69 different languages are spoken.

Barry

 

 

RACE

Several times my posts that had anything whatsoever to do with Race were completely ignored. (Of course my journal on some other subjects were frequently almost ignored, ha!) For example, apparently not a soul who has an AOL Journal has seen, or if seen will discuss, the Best Picture, Oscar for 2005, CRASH.  I consider it the best movie I've ever seen. So I hope you can understand my resultant feelings of dislocation. My all time favorite movie cannot even be discussed?!? My children, ages 4, 5, 11, ask frequently to see the movie again. They are children of an interracial couple! They know some of the lines, can remember the names of the characters, and recall scenes, especially scenes with police, weeks after the last time we screened the movie.

With that in mind I can hardly expect anyone to pay the slightest bit of attention to my ruminations of the subject of the Orenthal James Simpson double murder trial. I'm about to conclude the book Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark, with Teresa Carpenter. Recently I read two other books on the same subject, In Contempt by Christopher Darden, with Jess Walter, as well as Madame Foreman A Rush to Judgment? by three jurors Amanda Cooley, Connie Bess, and Marsha Rubin-Jackson. as told to Tom Byrnes.

In sum the three books together prove that OJ (aka 'The Juice') Simpson was guilty, and the murder trial failed to convict him because of machinations springing from considerations of Race. The trial took place in Downtown Los Angeles, where the potential jury pool was made up of a majority African Americans. The subsequent civil trial reached a conviction because that trial was held in Santa Monica, about 15 miles away on the Pacific Coast where it was easier for both sides to find a jury equally black and white. The convicting jury downtown was made up of eight Black women and four jurors white and Hispanic.

The moment I learned the makeup of the acquital jury, of which I was ignorant during the actual trial, I could immediately understand the not guilty verdict. Black women are brought up to defend their man. I learned that years agowhile researching for an interracial play I was writing. I read Black Rage written by two Black psychiatrists. Black Mothers know their daughters will have far less trouble finding a job than will their sons. Knowing just that much, plus the makeup of the jury, and I'd have been certain from day one that OJ would get off. Black women on the jury were insulted that the co-Prosecutor Christopher Darden was Black: they smelled out that he was a 'token' Black man chosen only to cynically endear the prosecution to that jury. It didn't, it alienated them.

                          

                             End of Part One

Barry