Peter Krupa

I try my best not to follow Paris Hilton, but, what can I say? It’s been a slow day, and this Salon.com piece about the evil of Paris Hilton is an extremely well-written and respectable example of the Pop Fluff Essay:

She is, frustratingly, indestructible. Hilton has been caught on tape referring to two black friends as “dumb niggers.” She has been arrested for drunk driving. She has peed herself in a taxicab in Hawaii. She has vomited onstage while singing her own songs. She has laughed like a retarded hyena as boyfriends like Davis and Niarchos have embarrassed themselves and ruined their own reputations. And yet, she has never had to go on Letterman to apologize; she has never had to meet with leaders of a community to make amends; she never even had to clean the taxi that she befouled. As a completely non-achieving celebrity, there are no higher moral, spiritual or intellectual expectations burdening the heiress. So she’s a moronic, racist, boyfriend-stealing, talentless twit? Surprise. We never thought her anything better.

Well. So that’s that. On another topic, and for an equally useless but possibly more interesting piece of trivia, according to the recently-released Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters, Crane’s father invented Life Saver candies. He sold the concept for $2,900 to one Edward J. Noble, who proceeded to make millions off it.

You win some, you lose some.

There’s a bit of a strange story in the New York Times today about New Orleans. Not only are illegal “Latino” immigrants flocking to that town to work construction jobs, but they’re breeding like Catholics. The sheer volume of babies is swamping an already beleaguered health care system. Not only that, the “Latino” population has in certain parts of town grown from 10,000 to 60,000, even though the population overall has dropped by a quarter.

Immigrants can be seen working on roofs, installing Sheetrock and laying tile all over town, from the up-market Lakeview neighborhood in the west to East New Orleans. At the Lowe’s home improvement store in the city’s Bywater neighborhood, clusters of day laborers mill about in the parking lot every morning, waiting for jobs.

Most are not new to the United States. They come from Texas, Florida or California, seeking construction work that can pay $150 a day. But there are some newcomers, including Sara Alvarado, a 26-year-old Honduran, who arrived in the United States in August after a monthlong odyssey through Mexico with her partner, Tony, 32.

Here the Times launches into a long and predictable anecdote about a pregnant mother scrambling to get into the United States so her baby can be born here, at which point she throws herself on the begrudging charity of a private hospital.

The implication is that it’s too bad the US healthcare system isn’t developed enough to take care of these poor people and their babies, without really considering the fact that the US healthcare system is neither designed nor funded to take care of the entire pregnant population of Latin America.

I really have little problem with illegal immigrants, and I’ve argued in the past that they’re good for the economy and America as a whole. But when people come to the US illegally, they’re taking big risks, and they know they’re taking big risks. And they’re not taking big risks to escape war zones, they’re mostly dreaming about getting rich, like tio Jose with his contracting business in Las Vegas.

Like I said, I don’t have any problem with this, and in a sense it’s more American than most Americans. But the Times’ tendency to portray illegal immigrants as victims is a little insulting, both to the illegal immigrants who are intelligent enough to do their own cost-benefit analysis, and to the American tax payers (including legal immigrants) who end up footing the bill for any paternalist public aid the Times may be hinting there should be.

As my good mother used to tell me when I was about to do something risky: “Go ahead, but don’t come crying to me.”

There is an excellent and infuriating piece in the Washington Post today about how big business uses federal regulation to screw innovators. This time, however, it’s about the dairy lobby, which - along with other agricultural industries - still manages to pass itself off as the little guy, even though it’s made up of huge conglomerates that make billions every year.

A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores.

That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga’s initiative. For three years, the milk lobby spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions and made deals with lawmakers, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

I wish this stuff could be made less complicated so that more people would read it. Still, the Washington Post has done a fantastic job with this piece, and everyone should read it to get a better idea of the horse-trading that goes on up on Capitol Hill.

Here’s a little intrigue for you on a Sunday afternoon: Who was behind the 1992 coup d’etat in Venezuela that set the stage for today’s current mess? You say it was Hugo Chávez who led that coup? Well, it was. But it’s much more complicated than that, much more conspiratorial.

See, Chávez was just a pawn in the hands of the late founder of Opus Dei, St. José Maria Escriva de Balaguer, who in turn was acting at the request of an anonymous Maracucha, someone you would never expect. Not really a mastermind – just a little girl, in fact, who didn’t want to take an exam.

A little girl named Ona Flores Montero.

That’s right, my wife is responsible for the bloody coup that launched Chávez into the national spotlight and set the stage for his eventual ascendance to the presidency. She admitted it to me, sheepishly. The night before the coup, she told me, was also the night before an exam for her, and so, like a good little Catholic, instead of studying she was praying fervently to José Maria Escriva de Balaguer – he hadn’t been sainted yet – begging him that somehow she would not have to take the test.

The next morning she walked sleepy-eyed into the living room to find her entire family sitting around the television.

“Qué pasó?” she asked, holding her breath. Her father scowled.

“Fue un golpe de estado.”

Although she didn’t know quite what that meant, she understood at least one thing: no school.

“I wasn’t praying for a coup,” she told me later. “I just didn’t want to take the test.”

Here, I suppose, is where we get to the moral of the fable, which could be something along the lines of “Be careful what you wish for.” But really, I think a greater concern is that José Maria Escriva de Balaguer has since been sainted, because as this incident illustrates, his judgment is frighteningly bad.

Similarly, if these are the kinds of lunatics God has been selecting to be his most trusted servants, what does that say about the character of the Catholic enterprise as a whole? Seems to me it’s pretty shaky. And come to think of it, with Latin America being an overwhelmingly Catholic region, it explains an awful lot…

Before reading any critics, before seeing the movie, before diving into any of the buzz, I can tell you why Mel Gibson’s Apacalypto is different from almost any movie that Hollywood has ever made. It’s a simple reason: Apacalypto has absolutely nothing to do with European culture.

Hollywood makes all sorts of movies set in exotic locations populated by foreign peoples. But the central character - the one we’re supposed to identify with - is inevitably some variety of European. Make a short list: Dances with Wolves, The God’s Must Be Crazy, Blood Diamonds, The Constant Gardener, Quincy Down Under, King Kong, The African Queen, The Last Samauri, Empire of the Sun, and pretty much any recent movie with Angelina Jolie.

Hollywood likes to send us to exotic locations, even make us think we’re watching culturally sensitive/socially conscious movies. The trick is that the dark and exotic people always function as props or colorful side-kicks for the overall action, the center of which is usually Brad Pitt.

Gibson, on the other hand, doesn’t flinch. Not only is the entire cast - including the main character - made up of unknown indigenous actors, but they speak an unknown indigenous language. European culture and history are completely irrelevent.

In doing this, Gibson - Jew-hating, anglo, uber-Catholic Gibson - has exposed the real racism of Hollywood, where the conventional wisdom is that Americans like to be titillated with foreign themes, but there has to be a white anchor to bring it on home.

If Apacalypto proves this conventional wisdom wrong, Hollywood movie executives are going to have some explaining to do.

New York City has dropped it’s plan to allow people to choose their own official sex, genitals notwithstanding. Says the city’s health commissioner: “This is something we hadn’t fully thought through.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten enraged enough at my internet connection, computer, or browser to type something like www.fuckyou.com into the address bar. Tonight, unfortunately, has been one of those nights. More disappointing still is that it’s not helping any. For such a punk-rawk-sounding URL, Fuckyou.com has a surprisingly oppressive message forum policy:

5. Do you “HATE” something, someone, somewhere? Nobody really cares, and it won’t be tollerated here. Don’t like it? That is your personal problem. Deal with it elsewhere. We don’t want you here. Bigoted topics and comments of any kind are not acceptable here. Don’t go away mad… Just go away!

6. Threats of physical violence will not be tollerated.

7. Admins are not your first point of contact if you have an issue. Ask the Mods first.

8. You must check the rules on occasion for any updates. This site changes with the times, and the rules do as well. Stay Informed.

9. Do not harass anyone (members, moderators or admins). If someone is harassing you, put them on your “Ignore List”. Ask someone how to do this if you don’t know how. If someone is *stalking you, post the details in public so that others may know about the stalker, and so the Mods or Admin can deal with it.

Sheesh, it’s like a playground with a big sign that says “Don’t hang from the monkey bars.” They try to make it all “Fuck you! These are the rules!” But come on. If you can’t hate or stalk or threaten someone on a message board, what fun is it?

Anyway, back to my crappy internet connection. I’d call someone and yell at them, but I’m just too tired.

“crawfish,” says the AP Style Manual, “Not crayfish. An exception to Webster’s New World based on the dominant spelling in Louisiana, were it is a popular delicacy.”

Which raises the interesting question: In what context do we commonly use the word delicacy? Is it, as the dictionary would have us believe, “a choice food considered with regard to its rarity, costliness”? On the face of it, sure. But think about it - when is the last time you’ve ever called something you consume a delicacy?

It seems to me that in common use (and as the AP uses it here) the word delicacy has actually come to connote something slightly disgusting that “those people” enjoy. Poached monkey brains, crawfish, and the live snakes so zealously consumed in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are the things journalists today would describe as popular delicacies, and you can almost hear a little sneer.

Interesting, that no matter how hard one tries to be sensitive/tolerant/cosmopolitan, language will bend itself around to say what one really thinks.

Since my audience seems to get particularly animated when I post about sexy issues like birth control and bestiality, I present for your considerationg John Harvey Kellogg’s thoughts on masturbation. Being, of course, the namesake for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Mr. Kellogg was particularly intrigued by matters of diet and, apparently, stopping the “sinful” act of self-pleasure. He gives us a few tips on how to spot a masturbator: They are characterized by bashfulness, unnatural boldness, mock piety, and “confusion of ideas,” among other things.

Easily frightened children are abundant among young masturbators, though all easily frightened persons are not vicious. It is certain, however, that the vice greatly exaggerates natural fear, and creates an unnatural apprehensiveness. The victim’s mind is constantly filled with vague forebodings of evil. He often looks behind him, looks into all the closets, peeps under the bed, and is constantly expressing fears of impending evil. Such movements are the result of a diseased imagination, and they may justly give rise to suspicion.

Mr. Kellogg recommends, “In younger children, with whom moral considerations will have no particular weight,” that methods such as “tying the hands” be used to restrain them, although “this will not always succeed, for they will contrive to continue the habit in other ways.”

Indeed they will. What’s particularly interesting to me about Mr. Kellogg’s little tome is the explicit combination of diet-and-fitness legalism with more traditional forms of American Puritanism. I’ve always suspected these two manifestations of busybodyment were related, and it’s interesting to find them both in the same place.

(Hat-tip Bob.)

By some strange twist of Web browsing, tonight I wound up reading an online libertarian graphic novel. It’s like a blend of political economy class, The Maltese Falcon, and a Chick Tract.

Scene one finds our hardbitten cop hero munching a sandwich and staring grimly at a murder victim stripped of skin and hanging upside down like a side of beef. “Happens every time they decrease the meat ration,” he declares matter-of-factly. Damn that government regulation.

The real kicker, however, is a second murder victim named, whimsically enough, Vaughn L. Meiss, which allows for hilariously nerdy exclamations like, “Vaughn Meiss is DEAD?” As one would expect, the plot bogs down a bit when our hero pokes his head into the office of the Colorado Propertarian Party, which I guess in a normal didactic publication is the scene where they tell you about Jesus and what he did for you on the cross. Instead, the libertarians give us a nice primer on why private citizens should be allowed to tote handguns. See, it makes society safer. Really.