Salon.com > Peter Birkenhead

Why we still can’t talk about slavery

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

The menu at the Cabin was long, one of those unwieldy, laminated mega-menus that grace the tables of roadside diners and chalets everywhere, and reflected a classic attention to theme (gumbo burger, gumbo omelet, gumbo). If the menu had been covered in tinfoil, I would’ve had a late-summer tan by the time I reached the dessert page. When our waiter approached, I asked -- in what I imagined was a small act of clever, Yankee defiance -- if the gumbo was any good.

My friend Gabbie and I had come directly from a tour of a former sugar plantation down the road, in Vacherie, La., called Oak Alley, and I had a crook in my neck. Up until that morning, whenever I heard the word “plantation,” I’d thought “slavery.” When I’d booked the tour, I had done so in the spirit of a visitor to Dachau or Wounded Knee. But the tour itself was given in the spirit of a visit to the home of a tasteful, Southern movie star. Our guide, in a tone equal parts admiring and envious, devoted 90 minutes to the armoires, linens and chamber pots of the home, but almost no time to the people who built, creased and cleaned them. The words “slave” and “slavery” were never mentioned.

Cribs vs. Beds: Parenthood’s all-out war

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:01:00 +0000

A wise woman once said it takes a village to raise a child, and as a new father I have found this to be true.

But lately I have also found the village to be dominated by two gangs of extremely, frighteningly organized parents, whom my wife and I spend a lot of time trying to avoid. Members of these gangs are lurking in every Pain Quotidian and farmers' market in Los Angeles, fighting tooth-and-nail turf wars over the best way for kids to be born, eat, learn and especially sleep, which is how the gangs came by their now notorious names in our house: the Cribs and the Beds.

The Cribs, as you probably know, believe in "crying it out," "walking it off," and midcentury modern furniture. The Beds, of course, believe in co-sleeping, home birthing and placenta soup. Both groups believe that I, as a new parent, am a dangerous idiot, and they are not at all shy about letting me know that.

So I'm writing this to take a stand, to ask for your help in taking our village back, and in not getting the stink-eye at parties.

After only eight months of fatherhood I've learned a lot about the gangs. I've learned to recognize the Cribs' distinctive attire (if I see a pair of orange Crocs coming my way, I just cross the street). I've come to know the Beds' brutal hazing rituals (which they refer to as "Bikram yoga"). I've learned each gang's colorful parenting patois.

Better to be Hamlet than President George

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:10:00 +0000

"There's no doubt in my mind that each person who has been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed." -- George W. Bush, June 2, 2000

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world." -- GWB, Jan. 28, 2004

"There is no doubt in my mind that this country cannot [sic] achieve any objective we put our mind to." -- GWB, April 20, 2004

"There's no doubt in my mind we made the right decision in Iraq." -- GWB, Sept. 2, 2004

"There's no doubt in my mind that Afghanistan will remain a democracy and serve as an incredible example." -- GWB, Jan. 5, 2006

"There's no doubt in my mind [warrantless surveillance] is legal." -- GWB, Jan. 26, 2006

Remember good old doubt? When a capacity for self-doubt was a prerequisite for self-knowledge and a hallmark of maturity? To put it another way, can you imagine John F. Kennedy walking with the swagger of George W. Bush? Kennedy walked like what he was -- a man in pain from injuries he suffered in an actual war, and he allowed himself to be photographed hunched over with worry during the Cuban missile crisis. That picture, now an iconic image of heroic doubt, is sadly anachronistic.

Give my petards to Broadway

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:50:00 +0000

Dear Theater World,

I know Sunday's your big moment, and I don't want to spoil anyone's party, but I think you know not many people will be tuning in for the Tony awards that night. It's not just because "The Sopranos" series finale will be on at the same time, though, frankly, that you scheduled the awards to run directly against it -- essentially shrugging your shoulders at the culture-minded audience members you claim to court -- does seem startlingly symbolic.

You seem to have trapped yourself in a system of theater creation in this country that is positively Soviet in its unwieldy, self-satisfied stuck-ness. A system that, for the last 50 years, has reacted to television not by learning from it but by "distinguishing" itself from it -- and thereby neutering and bleeding itself into desiccated, rarefied irrelevance. But it doesn't have to be that way.

“Eugenics” or freedom of choice?

Fri, 11 May 2007 12:25:00 +0000

Several years ago, my ex-wife and I decided to terminate a pregnancy because the 18-week-old fetus she was carrying had tested positive for Down syndrome. It was the most agonizing decision either of us had ever made, but one I know neither of us regrets. We were lucky to have a sympathetic obstetrician to consult, and family and friends to support us, as we groped in the dark for a decision. What I remember from that time is an almost physical sensation that we were "searching ourselves," that we were reaching for the truest, steadiest foothold we could find in ourselves from which we could forge ahead. It was a very quiet, intense, reflective experience. Thank God.

I can't imagine having to go through that experience again without the privacy that made it a productive one. But as Lynn Harris detailed in her Broadsheet post a few days ago, a group of parents of children with Down syndrome have started a campaign to "educate" couples who have been given a prenatal diagnosis by having them meet children with the syndrome. They're convinced that a significant portion of the women who did would choose to not terminate their pregnancies. I'm sure the people behind this campaign have the best intentions, but the premise behind it is a condescending and dangerous one, guilty of the very thing it purports to oppose: helping to create a nightmarish future where our population will be engineered, rather than born of individuals respected enough to make their own decisions.

Oprah’s ugly secret

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:31:00 +0000

Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help clichés, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

A hard rock

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:45:00 +0000

The diamond industry wants everyone who sees the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie "Blood Diamond" to know that diamonds aren't just "forever," anymore -- now they're "conflict-free." Good for them. Me, I wasn't so conflict-free when I bought one. I didn't even feel very romantic. Not by then, anyway. I walked into a jewelry store one day, with little cartoon hearts floating above of my head, and a month later, when I finally had my hand on an engagement ring, I felt like I'd been run over by a cartoon steamroller.

Don't get me wrong -- I was even more in love with my fiancie, Jenny, than I'd been before. But the process of buying a diamond is not a romantic one. I was expecting it to feel like buying flowers, only more so. Instead it felt like buying a house or a car, with all the humor and romance that only lots of paperwork, inspections and serious ethical concerns can provide.

Conflict-free diamonds are a great idea, and a worthy endeavor. Diamonds are designated "conflict-free" if they meet the requirements of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, created by the United Nations in 2000 to ensure that the profits from their sale aren't funding human rights abuses in Africa. The main requirement is that a KPCS Certificate, certifying that the country of origin is a signatory to the scheme, accompanies each shipment of rough diamond exports.

Confessions of a utility actor

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

When I tell people I'm an actor, the second thing they ask is always, "What's so-and-so like?" So I keep a mental card catalog of pithy responses designed to strike just the right balance between regular-guy humility and possible access to medical records. George Clooney is a hugger. Portia DeRossi smells really good. And Patrick Dempsey is very skinny. This Tuesday night I'm on an episode of "House," and sooner or later I know I'll be at a party telling someone that Hugh Laurie rides a motorcycle to work.

But to get to that second question I have to answer the first -- "What shows have you been on?"-- which is usually asked as if I'm on trial for impersonating an actor. I don't know what makes people so junkyard-dog proprietary about television shows and their favorite stars. Maybe it's the intimacy of the TV-watching experience -- after all, we usually do it at home, alone, on couches. We think of actors as people we see every night in our living rooms, like old friends we just haven't gotten around to meeting yet. So if we don't know who someone is, how can he be an actor?

The answer: with a very thick skin.

TV’s leading men need to get laid

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 17:30:00 +0000

When I got divorced and moved into an apartment, I started keeping the TV on, just for company. I wanted to occupy my mind until I could pick myself up off the couch and get back into the game. But the television only made things worse: Almost every show I watched was about a guy who was "on the bench" -- who had sat down in front of a microscope or a butterfly collection and never gotten back up. This was not the kind of company I was hoping for -- I already owned a mirror.

Why don't men on television these days have lives? Is even one leading, male character on a nighttime drama married, or dating? As far as I can tell they're all widowed or divorced. William Petersen on "CSI," Anthony LaPaglia on "Without a Trace," David Caruso on "CSI: Miami," Neal McDonough on "Medical Investigation," Vincent D'Onofrio on "Law and Order: Criminal Intent," Hugh Laurie on "House," Mark Harmon on "Navy NCIS," Gary Sinise on "CSI: NY" -- the characters they play form one big and inexplicable Lonely Hearts Club.