SEVEN DISGRUNTLED MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES (current and former) have filed this here $5 billion race-discrimination lawsuit. They claim there’s a “plantation mentality” at the software giant, in which black employees were routinely denied promotions and raises and were subject to retaliation if they complained.

In its statements of denial, MS officials essentially said such a thing could never, ever have occurred at a company so forthright, so diversity-conscious. The routine tech-media gang of MS defenders has gone on to share this line.

Why are some people so shocked to hear about the Microsoft discrimination suit? You all oughta know by now how the software giant’s got this corporate culture in which only a certain type of person (the Gates clone wannabe) gets ahead.

The MS corporate culture was, at least indirectly, inspired by that of Nordstrom (which, you may recall, faced its own discrimination suit a few years back).

In both companies, and in whitebread Seattle society in general, the real goal of preaching “diversity” isn’t to bring more minorities into the corridors of power but to allow the white folks already there to feel better about themselves. If corporate Seattle could figure out a way to support minority rights without having to actually deal with real black (or hispanic or American Indian) folks in their own offices, they would.

One quintessential example of this hypocrisy is the awful movie version of that breast-beating, locally-written novel Snow Falling On Cedars.

It’s ostensibly about the WWII relocation camps and other racist acts against Japanese Americans in our state not too long ago. But the movie (in which no Asian-American actor is billed higher than eighth!), and the novel, are really all about raising audience sympathy for the nice white-boy hero, a noble hack journalist (and the author’s presumed alter ego).

This past week’s local Martin Luther King Day public-service ads further exemplify this faux-diversity mindset.

The ads all venerate King as a visionary, a leader, a forward-thinker (i.e., a representative of the values CEOs often imagine themselves to have). The ads then close with pats-on-the-ol’-back to the forward-thinking corporations who pitched in to pay for the ad space or time. Little or no mention is made of the real social issues King confronted, many of which still need confronting today.

So it stands to reason that a theoretical company that participated in these and other “diversity” themed self-celebrations (which theoretically might also include donations to inner-city schools, representatives at minority recruiting fairs, and internal sensitivity-training classes for white employees) might theoretically, and informally, decide it’s been doing enough to feel good about itself diversity-wise, and that it doesn’t have to go that extra, often-unpublicized step and actually demand fair treatment for actual minority persons within its own employment ranks.

If that’s what really went on, I (though perhaps not top company management) wouldn’t be the least surprised.

TOMORROW: I know what IT is. Will I tell you? Find out.

ELSEWHERE:

• How to add your own sounds to one of those talking mounted-fish robots! (found by BrainLog)….
• Somebody who actually likes the Interstate highway system….

FOR NEARLY A CENTURY NOW (actually longer if you consider the touring vaudeville circuits), the entertainment industry has been at the forefront of the drive to turn this mongrel assortment of conquered natives, ex-slaves, and immigrants from all over into One America.

A people of one language (American English), one cuisine (bland), one apparel style (the toned-down Sears knockoffs of the previous year’s couture), one politick (the narrow oscillation between “liberal” big-money stooges and “conservative” big-money stooges), and most especially one culture.

A culture defined by Top 40 music, Top 10 radio (and later television) shows, Republican newspapers, best-seller books, marketable celebrities, and especially by the movies.

As the other major media began to splinter into niches and sub-niches (secondary and tertiary cable channels, hate-talk and shock-talk radio, alterna-weeklies and local business papers, and this whole Web thang), the movie industry has held steadfast in its drive to mold and hold a single unified audience.

Every woman’s supposed to weep for Julia Roberts’s love life. Every man’s supposed to cheer at Schwarzenegger’s gunslining. Every child’s supposed to gaze in wonder at the Lion King’s antics. Not just across this continent but globally.

(The few established niche genres within the movie world (“indie” hip-violence fests, foreign “art” films, direct-to-video horror and porn) are exceptions that prove the rule.)

So it’s a small surprise to read from a card-carrying Hollywood-insider hype artist, longtime Variety editor Peter Bart, acknowledge recently that there’s no single American mass populace anymore.

The cause of Bart’s revelation? Not the changes within the non-movie entertainment milieu, but the Presidential election fiasco. The two big parties had so effectively thrusted and parried their target-marketing efforts that, by the time the statistical-dead-heat results came in, they’d forged equally-sized constituencies, each with strengths in different demographic sectors.

Bart fails to realize these political coalitions are at least partly group marriages of convenience. Many Bush voters aren’t really censor-loving, art-hating hix from the stix; just as many Gore voters aren’t really free-trade-loving, hiphop-hating corporate mandarins.

A better explanation of the U.S. political divide comes from the British Prospect magazine, by a writer who asserts that, even after all these years, the socio-cultural-political divide in America remains north-vs.-south. In his view the Democrats, once the party of Southern racists and Northern Irish Catholics, are now the party of “good government” New Englanders and sanctimonious whitebread Northwesterners. The Republicans, once the party of Wall Street princes and Illinois farmers, are now the party of good-old-boy Texas oil hustlers and sex-loathing South Carolina reactionaries.

(The essay’s writer says he doesn’t know how to classify the West, but I do: Us Nor’westers are Northerners first and Westerners second; while Calif. is run by a Southern doublefaced aesthetic of public moralism and private crony-corruption.)

But even these classifications are overly broad. They always have been, but are even more oversimplistic nowadays.

The American scene isn’t breaking down into two cultures, but dozens, even hundreds. The politicians know this, and are scrambling to keep their coalitions together. The movie business, apparently, doesn’t know this. Yet.

TOMORROW: Micosoft? Discriminatory? How can one think such a thing?

ELSEWHERE:

• A tribute to the roadside art of Chicago….

IN THAT NEWSWEEK COVER PIECE a few years back about “Seattle Chic” (the one with Slate swami Michael Kinsley on the front), my ol’ UW Daily colleague Lynda Barry contributed a comic strip about how she’d never really fit in in this town. She was a giddy, borderline-superficial funtime gal in a place more welcoming to somber reflection.

But from the looks of her latest illustrated novel Cruddy, Barry’s quite adept indeed at the somber-reflection bit, even to the point of abject grimness and a teenage nihlism that’s not at all affected.

The basic plot: In 1971, 17-year-old Roberta Rohbeson has been grounded to her horrible family (bratty sis, hysterical mom) in a decaying rental house, after getting busted for dropping acid. She uses the time of confinement to write about her sordid past, which is even more nihilistic than her present.

Seems that six years before, Roberta had disappeared with her maniacal, violent (and possibly incestuous) father. She was found weeks later in a Nevada foster home, with no apparent memory of what had happened to her or where her father had disappeared to. But in the diary that becomes the flashback story of Cruddy, Roberta tells all about the road trip through various hells of the American west, complete with arson, smuggling, triple-crossings, many brutal murders by the father, and two equally gruesome slayings by Roberta herself (including patricide).

Two of the towns of her hellish odyssey are Seattle-inspired.

“Cruddy City,” where the 17-year-old Roberta’s “present day” (1971) story takes place, is an almost geographically exact rendition of the Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill.

More specifically, the dreary blocks around Roberta’s dreary home are modeled on the still-rundown area just west of the Rainier Avenue-Martin Luther King Way intersection; a land of sidewalk-less streets, weed-strewn yards, the Copeland Lumber yard with its spooky black-cat logo, garbage-strewn winding roads up Beacon Hill (one of which, clasic-TV fans, is named Della Street), and taunting hillside views down onto the affluent blocks closer to Lake Washington.

I became very familiar with the neighborhood in the ’80s, when I had a miserable job in typesetting and layout for the South District Journal/Capitol Hill Times chain of neighborhood weeklies. I worked on ancient Compugraphic phototypesetting machines, in a wooden shed that had weeds growing inside from cracks in the concrete floor. Barry perfectly captures the little-corner-of-despair sense of the place.

(Remember, 1971 was the depth of the Boeing recession, the economically bleakest period in Seattle since the Depression.)

In contrast to the nothingness of Cruddy City, lots of stuff’s happening in Dentsville, one of the stops on Roberta and her dad’s road trip of terror.

The geography of Dentsville is based on downtown Seattle; specifically the waterfront (including Ye Olde Curiosity Shop), the pre-Convention Center Pike Street corridor (including the recently demolished Gay Nineties restaurant-lounge), and the pre-Interstate 5 west Capitol Hill (where, in the 1965 flashback story, the no-good dad confronts a no-good relative who’s squatting in a freeway-condemned house).

Of course, realistic geography isn’t what makes a novel really work. That requires great writing, compelling characters, and an intriguing story. Cruddy has all those aspects in vast supply; plus some of Barry’s best-ever visual works (in the form of maps and sullen character portraits).

In its vision of completely justified youthful despair, Cruddy is the Great Grunge Novel (even if the flashback story takes place before most ’90s rock musicians were born).

Just, please, don’t let anybody make it into a movie. They’d never get it right. They’d undoubtedly use the horror and violence in the story to depict exciting action, not Barry’s world of desperate rootlessness.

TOMORROW: Even Hollywood insiders are foreseeing the death of mass culture.

ELSEWHERE:

• The New Yorker reveals the hidden connection between Ed McMahon and the Veg-O-Matic….

<

A LITTLE OVER A MONTH AGO, this virtual space contained a listing of certain groups of people who might consider themselves to be intrinsically superior to you, but who are not. (Go ahead and read it now if you haven’t; we’ll wait for you.)

This, in contrast, is a listing of groups of people you might consider yourself to be intrinsically superior to, but which you are not.

Here, therefore and with no further ado, are People You’re Not Better Than:

• TV viewers.
• Residents of small towns who didn’t move there from a bigger city.
• Adherents of religions other than yours.
• Members of races other than yours.
• Members of genders other than yours.
• People who shop at Wal-Mart.
• People who shop at non-coop grocery stores.
• People who listen to radio stations not affiliated with NPR.
• People who listen to ocuntry music (and not just that hipster-acceptable “alt.country” either).
• Fans of major sports teams.
• People who shop at thrift stores out of necessity, not fashion.
• Reader’s Digest subscribers.
• People without college degrees.
• People with college degrees in purely vocational fields.
• People who don’t have their own websites.
• People who don’t have home computers.
• People who don’t have homes.
• People whose drugs of choice (including non-chemical highs) are different from yours.
• Non-users.
• Julia Roberts fans.
• Carnivores.
• Clients of traditional western medicine.
• Non-car owners.
• Domestic-car owners.
• People who lived in White Center prior to 1998.
• People who live in the midwest or the south.
• People who wear polyester non-ironically.
• People who go, or have gone, to public schools.
• Romance novel readers.
• People younger than you.
• Athletes, brainiacs, and goody-two-shoeses.
• Cheerleaders, beauty queens, and models.
• Other females who have more sexual partners than you, or who simply look or act “cheap.”
• Other males who look or act less “macho” than you.
• Heterosexuals.
• That co-worker who seems to actually enjoy that shit job you share.
• Grunt-level employees of the farming, timber, manufacturing, transportation, and food-service industries.
• Men with pot bellies.
• Women with implants.
• Fast- and processed-food eaters.
• Bud Light drinkers.
• People who look, act, or talk too weird.
• People who look, act, or talk too “normal.”

MONDAY: Imagining, in a little more detail, a successor paper to the Seattle Union Record.

ELSEWHERE:

• Proof that the Web brings back everything great from pop-cult history–a tribute to the greatest achievement of post-1950 radio, Monitor! (Think of it as NPR without the Volvo-snob attitude problem)….
• Free the haggis smugglers!…

BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN year-2001 computer bugs, this will be the first MISCmedia entry for the year of “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

So what might you, my loyal (in your own fashion) readers, expect here over the coming months?

• Some more fiction experiments like the one serialized last week.
• Even more fun at MISCmedia Radio, our 24/7 streaming Net-music service. Perhaps even a second channel, devoted to the eclectic and exotic from all over.
• Attempts to play around with the online column’s currently standardized format (a single topic a day, running about the same length). Maybe I’ll return to my former threat to turn the daily site into something closer to a “weblog” or something close to the multi-topic format of the old Stranger column.
• Pieces of the new MISCmedia book (a photo-essay look at the city I have a lifelong lover’s quarrel with) as they emerge.
• Either more or fewer attempts to turn a financial profit from the site. It’s pretty clear the site’s current business model (or poor excuse for one) isn’t gonna work; but no new schemes (which might involve ads, subscriptions, special merchandise offers, etc.) have gelled in my viscous head.

  Many folk these days are claiming pure “content” websites, as business propositions, are molding corpses from 1998. I believe, now that the stupid money has largely abandoned the field, we can all get back to the work of figuring out just what might work in this crazy, still-new medium. Remember that broadcast radio was around almost a decade before the first national commercial networks started; and TV’s developers spent the whole of the 1940s working out the medium’s operational shticks.

• Possible new directions for the MISCmedia print mag. Scrapping the free distribution has put the print mag more or less in the black, but without real growth opportunities as it’s currently constructed.

  To make it more than a “personal zine,” albeit a professionally written and designed one, will require a move up to a thicker, slicker, and possibly more infrequent format. Perhaps something along the lines of the great old humor magazines (Punch, the original New Yorker); though for that I’d need some outside investment and a lot more content contributors.

• More of that “fun” factor, so easy to spot yet so elusive to define. Looking back at the past year’s entries, I see too many that, in retrospect, feel as if they were filler items, laboriously ground out to fit a self-imposed quota of work. There’ll be far less of that this year, I promise.
• More stuff by other people, adding the ever-valuable variety of points-O-view. Send your stuff in today. (Yes, we’re still picky and won’t run everything.)
• More chocolatey goodness.

TOMORROW: Two books, two different “radical” interpretations of the WTO protests.

ELSEWHERE:

• “Gore cared more about chads than about blacks….”
• That unsung savior of western civilization, beer! (found by Fark)….

IN OUR REGULAR EFFORT to copy whatever every other pundit large and small is doing, we hereby offer our own take on this week’s second most overhyped media topic (after the continuing post-election fun): The WTO Riots One Year Later.

The chief result, to these eyes, is a whole New Positivity among leftoids and progressives who, for as long as a quarter century, to believe everything they really wanted from society was hopeless, that all you could do was protest.

Initially, that was what the anti-WTO affair would be: Just a lot of people protesting really loudly against the biennial convention of the World Trade Organization (which, by striving to make governments do whatever corporations want, had become an all-purpose villain for anyone who had anything bad to say about a social order dictated by markets and profits).

It just happened that a lot more folks than anybody knew had something bad to say about such an order.

The sheer massiveness and breadth of the anti-WTO groups, and the degree of organization and choreography behind them, gave those 50,000 marchers, and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers across North America and Europe, hope that the situation could actually be changed. That People Power really could mass up and stop, or at least call into question, the relentless reorganizing of the whole world around “market forces.”

Subsequent actions haven’t had the immediate impact that the anti-WTO affair did; but that’s only to have been expected. The AFL-CIO brass and some established environmental lobbies, for instance, wanted no part of the outsider protests at the US political conventions or with the Nader for President campaign; they still think they can get at least part of their agenda by continuing to Work Within The System.

And the Way-New Left that coalesced around Nader still has work to do in welcoming more true diversity (i.e., encouraging the participation of farmers, carnivores, and males without ponytails).

This ebb-and-flow, solidaritywise, is all to be expected. One chief aspect of the anti-WTO worldview is the battle between two visions of the future–the WTO’s, in which every activity on Earth would be controlled for the benefit of CEOs and financiers; and the protesters’, in which all manner of individuals, nations, and other groupings would maintain the right to forge their own priorities. Many of these are conflicting, or appear to be (jobs vs. environment, jobs vs. other people’s jobs, free expression vs. cultural tradition, etc.).

But that, as I wrote last year, is part of the whole point.

We, as a nation and a planet, can agree to disagree. We can forge our own paths, our own alliances, our own visions. We don’t have to accept an existence dictated by the single-minded whims of the Dow and NASDAQ. We can, as the X-Files movie said, “fight the future.”

We’re taking back the language of liberation, empowerment, and democracy.

TOMORROW: Amid all this, Tom Frank still finds plenty to bitch about.

ELSEWHERE:

• Let’s learn sex-organ synonyms with Aristophanes! (found by Arts & Letters Daily)…
• Discussion-board writers ganging up mercilessly on Nader….

THE TRADITION CONTINUES: For the 15th consecutive year, here’s your fantastical MISCmedia In/Out List. Thanks to all who contributed suggestions.

As always, this list predicts what will become hot or not-so-hot over the course of the Year of HAL 9000; not necessarily what’s hot or not-so-hot now. If you think every person, place, thing, or trend that’s big now will just keep getting bigger forever, I’ve got some dot-com stocks to sell you.

(P.S.: Most every damned item on this list has a handy weblink. Spend the weekend clicking and having fun.)

NO COLUMN MONDAY, BUT ON TUESDAY: What you might see on this site in the year of Also Sprach Zarathustra.

ELSEWHERE:

• “If the music industry had its way, there’d be no such thing as a cassette player….”

Favorite Videos and Worst Job

by guest columnist Ryan

(ED.’S NOTE: One of the email lists I’m on had a topic thread last month, in which members posted the books they’d least likely let anyone borrow. Thanks to the well-known factor of topic drift, that led to people listing their favorite videos. Ryan [last name redacted at his request] went a step further and added an additional topic-drift step, as printed by permission below.)

Delivered-To: clark@speakeasy.org

Reply-To: [email address redacted]

From: “Ryan” [email address redacted]

To: wallace-l@waste.org

Subject: RE: wallace-l: Top Videos/Degrading Job

Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:03:11 -0500

X-Priority: 3 (Normal)

Importance: Normal

Sender: owner-wallace-l@waste.org

TOP VIDEOS:

Apocalypse Now

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Dazed and Confused

The Usual Suspects

The Harder They Come

…and anything by Stanley Kubrick (esp. 2001)

MOST DEGRADING JOB:

Feel free to disregard this, but I must vent.

I worked for a company called DSMax. They call themselves an advertising and marketing firm. They are lying. I could probably write a book about what was horrible about this job, but here’s a handy list instead.

1. 4:45 a.m. Wake up, shower, put on mandatory shirt and tie.

2. 5:45 a.m.-7 a.m. Commute 1.25 hours to DSMax branch office in Norristown, PA.

3. 7 a.m.-9 a.m. Engage in motivational cheering sessions and spirit-building exercises with fellow “representatives.” (“Where we going?” “To the top!” “WHERE WE GOING?” “TO THE TOP!” “When?” “Now!” “When?” “Now!” “WHEN WHEN WHEN?” “NOW NOW NOW!!!” And other humiliations too numerous and depraved to list. Let me just say there was “hand jive” involved.) Listen in quiet horror as co-workers enthusiastically discuss pro wrestling/soap operas/fanatical, cultish commitment to DSMax/plans for all the money they’ll make once they get promoted to branch manager. Take note of surprising number of co-workers who’ve quit since you started. Envy them.

4. 9 a.m. Commute back to Philadelphia in order to walk door-to-door in the run-down ghetto business districts of West Philly. In December. Peddling long-distance phone service to local small business owners (i.e. hair salons, corner stores, dive bars (people drinking straight vodka at 10 a.m.), garages, endless parade of delis and other shithole restaurants, etc.) Do this until 5 p.m. Return to “office” (really just one large rumpus room) during rush hour.

4a. Locate potential client (e.g., sucker). Check soul at door. “Pitch.” Trudge, defeated, out door OR (rarely) attempt have customer sign multiple contracts and make multiple phone calls to complete sale. Trudge

forlornly out door when customer informs you that he/she “don’t have time for this shit.”

5. 6 p.m. Return to office. Ring small bell, large bell, or gong, according to your sales performance for the day. Calculate commission. Choke back tears at realization that commission will not pay rent and there is NO BASE PAY. Gather round for another session of cheering and practice pitching (just follow your five steps and your eight steps!–DSMax’s keys to success, in addition to trite little coffee mug aphorisms and the sort of pithy acronyms that Judge Judy would find clever: KISS–“Keep It Simple Stupid”). Fend off barrage of entreaties by over-zealous co-workers to attend post-work DSMax get-togethers at nearby Applebee’s.

6. 8 p.m. Return home. Microwave taste-free/nutrition-free food because you are too tired, beaten to cook. Complain to sig. other.

7. 9 p.m. Pass out on couch in front of mindless television.

8. 1 a.m. Wake up on couch. Get up and go to actual bed. Cry self back to sleep.

9. Repeat steps 1-8.

I lasted five weeks. I probably made a total of $1,500.

A part of me died that I will never get back.

TOMORROW: Unionizing a dot-com, an impossible dream?

REMEMBER: It’s time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.

ELSEWHERE:

• Meat: You can eat it, you can wear it on your head!…

Generation S&M, Part 2

by guest columnist Charlotte Quinn

(YESTERDAY, our guest columnist began musing about the ’90s revival of bondage fetishism in pop culture, and some of its possible sources. Her conclusion: A generation had come of age after growing up with Catwoman and Emma Peel.)

MY GENERATION was the first generation raised in front of the television.

Suddenly there were shows geared just towards us. Our moms bought us the new TV dinners, then set us in front of the tube while they went to their ESP development class.

And it wasn’t just The Partridge Family and Leave It to Beaver reruns we ate with breakfast, lunch, and dinner too. We’re talking some pretty heavy sexual-revolution morsels from the ’60s. Things even too risque for today’s TV.

I’m talking Catwoman, in full dominitrix gear, playfully torturing Batman. Sure, she was evil, but she was sort of doing Batman a favor by punishing him. I was five and I understood that.

Then there was I Dream of Jeannie, a scantily clad Barbara Eden dressed like a Turkish concubine who called a guy “Master.” (Impossible on today’s television.)

On Bewitched, Samantha was cheesily nice, but did you ever catch her evil twin sister Serena, the dominitrix? Between changing Darren into various livestock, she always had something vicious to say to her sister and just about anyone else around.

Emma Peel, in tight leather, karate-chopped men and always had the upper hand on Steed.

These were the women who raised me while my mom was at work. Me and my friends couldn’t swear by oath because it was against our religion, so we would say, “Do you swear to Catwoman?” If you lied on that one, we all knew you would go straight to hell.

In the ’70s, suddenly schools couldn’t make us cut our hair, pray or even insist we pledge allegiance to the flag. Just when we wanted Catwoman for a teacher, gone was the enticing restraint of the ’50s. All that work from the women’s libbers paid off, too; they couldn’t stop us from joining the army, cutting our hair, wearing pants and completely desexing ourselves.

We could do anything we wanted, and boy were we bored.

Our parents were all divorced and “finding themselves,” repeating Stuart Smalley-type self-affirmation mantras in the bathroom mirror, or smoking a joint; so they were too busy to give us any discipline.

In rebellion, my classmates starting getting born-again all over the place, finding the rigid moral confines of the fundamentalist church comforting.

In comparison, punk rock and S&M were sane alternatives. Not only did S&M give us something to bounce off of for once, but it made sex illicit, exciting, unnatural, and deviant. We could finally get that disapproving look from our society that we had waited for all those years.

The end of S&M as we know it: Now, of course, it is not so risque to be a dominitrix. it’s no longer considered deviant. In fact they even have advocacy groups and support groups.

In the ’80s, as a sociology student, I watched a “sexual deviancy” film. There was the prostitute, the nymphomaniac, the transsexual etc., and of course, the dominatrix. She was pitifully tame. Nowadays they would have to take her out of the film.

And the ’70s have come back into style–not only clothes-wise, but suddenly the 20-year-olds stopped wearing makeup and everyone thinks they have ESP or are a witch. N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys are singing some really sugary-sweet stuff that is as barfable as Barry Manilow. Madonna traded in her tight leather corsets for that flowy polyester look.

Sex looks boring again; or at least I wouldn’t find it enticing to do the dirty with the anorexic, bell-bottom-wearing, self-loving, and self-affirming teenyboppers out there. I mean, do Ricky Martin and Matt Damon really look at all dangerous?

I guess I will just have to wait 20 years or so to have any fun.

Or maybe I’ll just ignore that S&M is no longer chic.

That would be SO Catwoman of me!

TOMORROW: A blowhard gets his comeuppance and refuses to admit it.

REMEMBER: It’s time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.

IN OTHER NEWS: The three U.S. news magazines often share the same cover-story topic, but rarely have Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report all used the exact same cover image, with two of the three using the same banner headline.

ELSEWHERE:

• Could that most Web-user-beloved of humor institutions (and former home of many of the original Stranger staff) be selling out?…
• The NY Times marks seven years after the WWW became an established institution (which, in the paper’s estimation, was when the NY Times first reported on it)….

Generation S&M, Part 1

by guest columnist Charlotte Quinn

THE OTHER DAY I was surprised to see a preview to the new movie Quills, a tale loosely based on facts about the Marquis de Sade.

Surprised because I thought that S&M was out. The movie is complete with a star-studded Hollywood cast and lots of flogging.

Some fads go out slowly, occasionally bobbing their heads aggressively before drowning completely. You can’t really write a fair essay about a fad until it’s over. You have to give it time to die, and God knows you don’t know a fad is happening while you’re in it. No one knew the roaring ’20s were roaring until at least the ’50s.

So it’s stupid for me to reminisce about S&M and the glorious late ’90s yet, but I’m doing it anyway.

S&M made a comeback in the early ’90s. I heard someone once say that Seattle was some sort of Centre de Sadism renowned throughout the world. I don’t really think so.

I mean, of course there was the Vogue, which started having Sunday fetish nights in the nineties. Then the Catwalk, where you could playfully whip boys in leather, a few underground S&M raves that were hard to avoid if you ever danced.

There was even a more serious bordello/dungeon of sorts in Magnolia. The torturous Jim Rose Circus Side Show and The Pleasure Elite originated here. Still, I never thought of Seattle as an epicenter for S&M.

I did notice that suddenly S&M was cool. People were wearing corsets and spiked heels and dog collars again and suddenly black rubber was everywhere. People were “coming out” about their sexual strangeness. The personals started being really entertaining with all the weird fetishes. Post-grunge fashion picked up on the trend.

The S&M love story by Anne Rice, Exit to Eden, was made into a (crappy) Hollywood movie. Xena: Warrior Princess started kicking the shit out of men; as did Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catwoman, and Lara Croft the cyberbabe.

Obvious dominitrixes like Miss Parker of The Profiler came back to TV. The Gimp appeared in Pulp Fiction; vampires made a comeback; Clinton was elected (and everyone knows he’s a bottom).

When you write an essay about a fad, like for example the slew of Vietnam movies made in the late ’80s or the preppy movement of the early ’80s, or even anorexia nervosa, you have to say what were the factors that allowed the fad to be.

Like for example, a lot of preppy kids had these cool ex-hippie, pro-pot, pro-everything parents, and the only way suitable for them to rebel was to change their name to Buffy and buy stocks and iron their clothes. Works for me.

Much the same thing happened with S&M.

Everyone knows that our parents raised us in the ’70s and they were into the most hideous, revolting, normal sex.

Encounter groups, est, Unitarian Church Singles Groups (called USAG). I’m OK, You’re OK. The Show Me! book, the anatomically correct dolls. The ’70s, when people sang “I’m Easy” and “Sometimes When We Touch” with a straight face.

Yeeech. Blek.

Our parents’ sex, although “open” and “free”, bored us all to tears. I mean, Alan Alda and Woody Allen as sex symbols?

While their twenties were spent rebelling against the sexual repression of their ’50s-era parents, our twenties were spent trying to re-achieve the coolness of repression.

And I think I personally found it in Catwoman.

TOMORROW: A possible source of S&M fascination–’60s sitcoms.

REMEMBER: It’s time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.

ELSEWHERE:

• No products, no employees, no customers, no business plans; nothing but domain names for sale on eBay, all promising smash revenues…

Police Action

by guest columnist Sky Callahan

AT ABOUT 8:30 P.M. ON NOV. 30, I arrived downtown by bus, after having worked late. A resident of Belltown, I’d originally planned to make a quick stop at the Bon Marche, then a subsequent stop for groceries at Ralph’s Deli before returning to my apartment near Fourth Avenue and Bell Street.

Upon reaching the Bon, I discovered that a large number of protestors had reoccupied Westlake Plaza, after having earlier dispersed for the purpose of attending a candlelight vigil at Seattle Central Community College. I also noted that a large number of police officers were forming lines around the knot of demonstrators.

Employees of the Bon were applying duct tape to all the entrances for the purpose, I was told, of preventing possible damage from any tear gas assault that might occur. The store was effectively closed for the night, so I lingered outside one of the Fourth Avenue entrances for awhile, intrigued by the scene around me.

At about 8:45 p.m., police issued their first order for the crowd to disperse. This was followed by another order at about 8:50, and a third at 9:00. Each order saw the departure of any number of protestors and, by 9, almost everyone had completely dispersed and the intersection at Fourth and Pine was reopened.

At this juncture, the demonstrators began moving north on Fourth Avenue, toward Denny Way, followed by a large contingent of police. The procession was slow, and someone operating a megaphone informed the crowd that a party would shortly be underway on Minor Avenue.

It seemed quite apparent to me that the group, numbering perhaps 200 at this point, was truly dispersing.

I stopped at Ralph’s Deli to pick up my groceries, and exited the store with two bags. Upon stepping back onto Fourth, I saw that police lines had begun forming alongside of the street on both sides, and I asked an officer if it was possible to continue down Fourth to Bell Street. He assured me there would be no problem, and urged me to continue on. I did so, noticing more and more police were arriving and taking up positions along the street as I walked.

Upon reaching Bell Street, I realized I’d forgotten to pick up soft drinks, and went into a small convenience store on the corner to rectify my oversight. I was in the store perhaps five minutes, and exited to realize that a police line had taken up a position spanning the width of Bell Street where it crossed Fourth.

At this point, I was half-a-block from my apartment, laden with grocery bags, and approached to police officer to ask if I could pass through the line. I explained my purpose, pointing my apartment building out to him, but was denied passage. I was instead directed to retrace my steps one block back to Blanchard, turn east and walk north on Fifth to circumvent the now-restricted area.

I did as instructed, only to find my passage was also blocked at Blanchard. I proceeded to each intersection, only to be turned away at each. I found that the police had completely hemmed in the length of Fourth Avenue between Lenora Street and Bell Street, and were not allowing anyone to pass out, for any reason.

I was eventually directed to speak to a sergeant commanding a line on the west side of Fourth and Blanchard, but this proved to be of no avail. The sergeant told me he’d been given orders to let no one pass in or out, and couldn’t find his commander to allow him to do otherwise.

As I stood there, I saw a line of police in riot gear move toward us, from the west, on Blanchard, and noted that a similar line was forming on the east side of the intersection. As the minutes passed, more helmets and bulletproof shields materialized, and I began to get the sense a baton charge was imminent.

Meanwhile, an increasingly large number of people, both individually and by megaphone, began to assert that they only wanted to leave the area and either go home or go to the party. The police refused to allow them to do any such thing, and a feeling of tension began to rise precipitously.

My own concern was reaching epic proportions. I’d taken to visualizing any number of possible scenarios, and only wanted to get home after a long day at work. I’d been repeatedly assured by a couple of different police officers that I could achieve this goal by going here or going there, only to find I’d become further enmeshed in this situation.

I suppose an increasing alarm began to register on my face as, finally, a young bicycle officer asked to see my driver’s license. It naturally indicated my address, just a block away, and he took it upon himself to escort me past the police line and to Third Avenue. He did so with some concern, as he had no particular authority on the line, and was ostensibly going against the wishes of his sergeant. I suspect that the fact I was carrying grocery bags, reasonably well-dressed, and middle-aged probably convinced him that I had been mistakenly swept up in this situation.

For about the next hour, these protestors were completely trapped in this three block length of Fourth Avenue, and refused permission to exit although there were openly requesting to do so.

I dropped my groceries off at home, and made my way to the Two Bells Tavern, near my apartment building. There, I sat with friends while watching a new police line form just outside the door of the tavern. We would occasionally stick our heads out to see Metro buses taking up positions, and cops milling about in rather massive numbers.

After a bit, the police waded into the crowd they’d trapped, and arrested something on the order (according to newspaper reports) of 140 of them. The Seattle Times states that the arrest were for failure to disperse and pedestrian interference.

No protestor was ever allowed the opportunity to disperse, and had even been engaged in the act of dispersing from Westlake Plaza when they were surrounded and stopped. In fact, after the separation from Westlake, no subsequent order to disperse was ever given.

Additionally, the only pedestrians suffering interference could have been other demonstrators. Several friends and neighbors found themselves swept up in the arrests, having been out to dinner or shopping, or simply taking walks with significant others.

So far as I know, I’m the only person who was ever allowed to leave the scene, and the precise reason why is still something of a mystery to me.

TOMORROW: Nostalgia for nerd-dom.

ELSEWHERE:

• “The Many Faces of Propaganda Art….”
• “Please help the Buy Kate Moss A Sandwich Fund….”