EXOTIC PARENTING | HEALTHY PIZZA | COPS AND CUTBACKS
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
AUGUST 5, 2012
THE LIFE OF THE PARTIES How Congress Lives Now.
08.05.12 #08 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: India Loses Power, Romney Aide Spat, Norway vs. Snoop MOVING IMAGE DATA: Year of the PAC Attack Q&A: Dean Karnazes
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LIVING LARGE ON CAPITOL HILL COURTESY OF CAREN SELIGMAN (TEMPLE); MARCO DI LAURO/REPORTAGE BY GETTY IMAGES (NEWARK)
BY ARTHUR DELANEY
RICHEY PIIPARINEN: Courage Isn’t Going to the Movies BHAKTI SHRINGARPURE: On “Exotic” Parenting MARTA SEGAL BLOCK: The Wedding Trend Myth QUOTED
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SHALOM, Y’ALL
BY JAWEED KALEEM
MOVIES: How Soon Is Too Soon For A Hollywood Remake? FOOD: Eat Pizza Around The Clock... And It’s Good For You? EWISE: All-Grindr Edition GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK: Bringing Sight to South America TFU
NEWARK BLUES
BY JOHN RUDOLF
FROM THE EDITOR: Cutbacks and Cops ON THE COVER: Illustration for
Huffington by Lorenzo Petrantoni
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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Cutbacks and Cops Y NOW, THE script is painfully familiar: facing budget shortfalls, municipal governments find themselves underequipped to deal with the multiple crises they face. Politicians exhort the need to make “tough choices.” And communities are struck with a double blow, losing not only services, but jobs— which in turn further reduces local revenues, leading to more deficits, leading to more cuts, and the cycle starts again. This week, John Rudolf profiles one community for which that vicious cycle is more vicious than most. “Newark’s cops do not work at an ordinary job, like the rest of us,” he writes. The dangers they routinely face, coupled with years of catastrophic budget cuts, make the men and wom-
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en of the Newark PD more like “soldiers on the front lines of a ceaseless, low-intensity war.” With compelling interviews with Newark’s finest and a steady barrage of devastating statistics, John paints a picture of a community in crisis. Newark has about as many cops on the streets today as it did in the 1970s. Well over a third of children live in poverty, and the city’s heavily minority population suffers disproportionately from the effects of the jobs crisis. A wave of police layoffs in 2010 coincided with sweeping state cuts in education. To look closely at the situation in Newark is to come face to face with a tragic
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
truth: as a result of the ongoing financial crisis, we are not investing nearly enough in our children’s safety or in their future opportunities. As Brendan O’Flaherty, a Columbia economics professor says, “Why would you decide that the first thing you want to cut is police and education? You’re eating the young.” And while Newark’s problems first and foremost affect those who live and work in the city, John puts the story in a national context. There’s nothing left-wing or right-wing about wanting to ensure that our children grow up without the threat of gang violence and drive-by shootings, yet there is complete partisan gridlock around the quest for solutions that involve government action. Mayor Cory Booker, for his part, has sought to discredit such a dismissive approach to government. The idea “that government is destructive, that government hurts communities and hurts people… that’s patently not true,” he says. And by exploring the mayor’s complicated relationship with Newark’s police union, John provides an insightful glimpse into the workings
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of city government—a mix of individuals and groups navigating an imperfect and ever-shifting landscape of competing interests and limited budgets. Most memorably, John introduces us to the police officers who patrol the 7.5 square miles There’s of burned-out buildnothing ings and empty lots left-wing or where 80 percent of right-wing Newark’s shootings about wanting take place. There’s to ensure that Samuel DeMaio, who our children over three decades grow up rose from beat cop to without gang police director, takviolence.” ing over just as the city suffered its most deadly summer in 20 years. And Al Burroughs, the police lieutenant who sums up the department’s burden as if speaking not only for the Newark PD, but for the whole country: “The bottom line is that we’ve got to do more with less.”
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AP PHOTO/RAJESH KUMAR SINGH
INDIA LOSES POWER 1 More than 600 million people in India were left without power following one of
the world’s biggest blackouts to date. Three energy grids failed, sounding alarms about the country’s infrastructure and the government’s capacity to provide electricity for a rapidly growing and increasingly industrialized population. Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde blamed the blackout on some of the dozen states that went dark for taking more than their share of electricity. “I’ve given instructions that whoever overdraws power will be punished,” he said.
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AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAKT (GORKA); SCHRODER, TOR ERIK/AFP/GETTYIMAGES (SNOOP DOGG)
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ROMNEY AIDE: “KISS MY ASS”
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Romney aide Rick Gorka had some colorful words for reporters in Warsaw who asked about the presidential candidate’s offensive comments about the British and the Palestinians during his time abroad. “Kiss my ass, this is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect,” Gorka said before telling CNN’s Jonathan Martin to “shove it.” He later called two reporters to apologize for his “inappropriate” behavior.
BULLIED TEEN GETS FREE PLASTIC SURGERY
A Georgia teenager will no longer be called “Dumbo” by her peers, thanks to the Little Baby Face Foundation, a charity that provides free corrective surgery to children born with facial deformities. For years Nadia Ilse, now 14, had been begging her mom for an otoplasty to pin back her ears so that the teasing at school would stop. Nadia’s mom contacted the charity, which paid for $40,000 worth of surgery—including a nose job and chin alteration.
SNOOP DOGG BANNED FROM NORWAY
After playing a music festival in Norway last month, Snoop Dogg has been barred from returning to the country. The rapper was stopped at the airport on his way in when sniffer dogs detected eight grams of marijuana in his luggage. He was allowed to go on to play the gig, but Norwegian officials later gave him a two-year ban. “Smoking crip n. cuzns,” Snoop tweeted from the festival. “Hahahahagahhaha.” His lawyer told the AP his client “can live with the decision” and will not appeal it.
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ZOMBIES CRASH WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH PROTEST
There are things scarier than zombies, a group of demonstrators showed when they interrupted a Westboro Baptist Church protest at a Washington state military base. Westboro is known for picketing military funerals because of the U.S. Army’s tolerance of gays, and the group described its reasons for the protest on its website: “When you goofy, unthankful, flag-worshipping fools decided that you would declare war against the Lord and against His anointed, you put yourselves in the cross-hairs of a raging mad God.” About 300 counter-protesters showed up in zombie garb, far outnumbering only about eight Westboro picketers.
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DANNY VALDEZ (PROTESTER); JADA PINKETT SMITH’S FACEBOOK
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JADA TWEETS INSPIRATIONAL BIKINI PIC THAT’S VIRAL CHINESE MAN’S PENIS STOLEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Jada Pinkett Smith turns 41 next month, but that hasn’t stopped her from sharing photos of her body with the public. The actress tweeted to her thousands of followers a picture of herself emerging from the waters of the Dominican Republic in a skimpy pink bikini. “To my Forty and over crew! Don’t believe the hype...we DO get better with age!” she wrote along with the pic.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
LIONESS TAKES ON CROCODILE TO PROTECT HER PRIDE
THE MOST AMAZING IMAGES OF 2012 SO FAR
WAS MARILYN MONROE A LESBIAN?
WATCH: PAUL McCARTNEY CLOSES THE OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY
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Human Sculptures Dancers use their bodies to make art, but rarely do they contort themselves so dramatically that the art is more sculpture than performance. Here photographer Steven Laxton worked with several ballet dancers to mold their bodies into sculptures that push the limits of the human form. PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN LAXTON
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DATA
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Year of the PAC Attack Biggest Super PACs
(Total Spending Thus Far in 2012)
666
Total Number of Super PACs (as of July 11, 2012)
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After the Supreme Court lifted limits on political spending by outside groups, an already rising tide became a flood of cash that promises to alter the political landscape. —John Stephens TAP CIRCLES FOR INFO
Total Outside Spending by Year (as of July 11 of each election year)
Key = Roughly $1,000,000
Financial data, information and reporting from the Center for Responsive Politics, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Slate help paint a picture of the rapidly changing campaign funding environment. The impact of the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling in 2010 can be clearly seen in the overall surge in outside spending between the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.
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Dean Karnazes Makes Marathoners Look Lazy PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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CORY RICH
HINK ONE MARATHON is tough? Try 50, in 50 states, on 50 consecutive days. Dean Karnazes has. He’s also run 350 miles in 82 straight hours, raced in 120-degree heat and in belowzero temperatures and thinks 31 miles counts as a short race. At 49, Karnazes is the ultra, ultra-marathoner and, surprisingly, also kind of a softy — proud of anyone who laces up their sneakers, gets out there and runs. —Catherine Pearson
First things first, why such long distances? To an extreme athlete, there’s a certain appeal to doing extreme things — seeking the most extreme physical challenges in some of the most extreme climates in the world. Testing and expanding the limits of human endurance is kind of my thing.
What kind of training does that require? I do a lot of marathons as training runs. If I’m somewhere and there’s a marathon, I’ll sign up and just go run it. I’m also very opportunistic in my training. If I’ve got half an hour, I will throw on my running shoes and train. I have my whole office set up at waist level, I don’t
Quick break: Karnazes rests along a trailside in California
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sit at all during the day. Sitting, to me, is the devil. What about your diet? Jack LaLanne had two rules: If man made it, don’t eat it, and it if it tastes good, spit it out. I eat nothing that’s processed or refined — no high-fructose corn syrup, no sugar, no trans-fats. I eat a lot of fish and monounsaturated fats from olives, olive oil and nuts. A lot of organic, fresh fruits and vegetables. No bread. No gluten. No wheat. No rice. I use a formula of roughly 500 to 700 calories per hour of running I do, based on the intensity and heat. In other words, discipline, discipline, discipline. Well, [my diet] has become very refined over years and years. I’ll never live down the time I was out on a long run, in the middle of nowhere, and I was starving. I had nothing but a cell phone and a card. So what does any enterprising lad do? I ordered a pizza. Yes, I had pizza delivered to me while I ran. But then I really started tuning into how what I ate made me feel. Ever get lonely out there, all on your own? I’m an introvert. I prefer running
by myself, and I prefer running on trails in natural settings. Are there any lessons we mere mortals can take from what you do? One important one is baby steps. Even running these huge distances I run, you really do it one step at a time. In this day and age, there’s so much noise. Don’t think about distractions, just put one foot in front of the other to the best of your ability.
Sometimes you hear that it’s not healthy to do this, but I think it’s total rubbish.” Speaking of ability, there’s been an explosion in the number of people running marathons recreationally. Is the long distance thing really for everyone? I think it’s really a great thing that participation in running events is on the rise. I don’t mean ultra-marathoning, although certainly ultra-marathoning is growing. But participating in 5ks, in those couch to 5ks, that’s great. Sometimes you hear that it’s not healthy to do this, but I think it’s total rubbish. The media focuses on the injuries, because who
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wants to hear that someone finished a race and loved it? How do you push through when you just want to stop? When you run, there’s going to be a point when you just say “I can’t do this.” Typically what you do at that point is start looking at the mile markers. You think, “I’m at mile 18, I’m at mile 19 … I’m going to
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die in the next 10 feet.” Don’t do that. Don’t think about the future, you have to be in the moment, be present. Put your head down and say, “My next step is going to be the best step.” Ever going to quit? I always say, the finish line for me is a pine box. If one morning I wake up and I’m like, “I don’t like this, this is misery,” then I’ll stop. But right now, the fire still burns hot.
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Karnazes takes it one step at a time
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RICHEY PIIPARINEN
HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
Courage Isn’t Going to the Movies THROUGHOUT THE WEEKEND following the tragedy in Aurora, television interviews showed folks queued up outside movie theaters waiting to get into The Dark Night Rises. The customers, in so many words, had a common message: the terror inflicted by one gunman would not keep them from movie going. The crux of the hundreds of broadcasts was contextualized on a backdrop of courage and resiliency—“going on” in the face of an
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American tragedy, as we always do. A Twitter handle was created called #defytheshooter. An article in Entertainment Weekly shouted: “Defy the theater shooter: Go out to see a film, and DON’T be afraid—ANALYSIS.” In it, the author pleads, “So if you want to defy the theater-shooter and the terror he has created — go out … to see a film and enjoy being with your fellow moviegoers ... Don’t be afraid.” That same message—a
Richey Piiparinen is a writer, urban policy researcher and co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology
Voices typical politician’s trope—was then broadcast on Meet the Press by Colorado Gov. John Hicklenhooper. Now, I get the sentiment. In fact, this kind of reaction of perceived courage vis-à-vis movie going is expected. When one community is afflicted with a rather spontaneous and senseless tragedy, other communities will adapt by packaging the irrationality of that event into something seemingly predictable—hence: the “movie theaters are actually a dangerous place” phenomena that has cities arming local theaters with plain-clothes police. One problem with this reaction is that movie theaters are, by and large, not dangerous places. Rather, a society polarized through politics, isolated through sprawl, alienated by a disintegrating social fabric and increasingly armed to the teeth… well, that is where many of the issues lie. So let’s temper the faux bravery related to eating popcorn. The horror of Aurora—while committed by an individual—was surely also precipitated by problems with deep societal roots. It is a horror that will be imprinted on the minds of the family members and survivors for the rest of
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their lives. It is not, however, a problem with a solution driven by the act of movie going. Movies are built to provide an escape from reality. They are experiences in which we can ignore life’s problems for a minute to live in that collective imagination that comes with a big screen exuding fast, vivacious images and loud sounds. And while it is ironic and twisted that the murders occurred in a location collectively recognized as an escape, it is beyond Where the pale to suggest is the real that dealing with an opportunity event that is terrifiof courage? cally impossible to igHow about we nore or run away from start by trying can be done through to understand a behavior that’s dewhy we are so rived from the act of afraid all the escapism itself. damn time?” So where is the real opportunity of courage? How about we start by trying to understand why we are so afraid all the damn time? The irony is that our increased armament has not led to us feeling more secure. Rather, it has created a situation in which even our amusement has become anything but.
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BHAKTI SHRINGARPURE
HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
On “Exotic” Parenting WHEN OUR SON Surya was five months old, he was finally starting to sleep longer stretches at night and we as parents were slightly less strung out. But soon thereafter, he suddenly stopped sleeping for longer than 45 minutes at a time. Surya has two sets of fawning grandparents—one American, the other Indian. My husband and I have become fluent in narrating baby stories twice every Sunday on Skype to our respective families. But when we spoke about
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the multiple awakenings we got hilariously contradictory reactions. Michael’s American parents immediately concluded, “It’s time to start showing that little boy who’s boss,” while my Indian mother gushed, “Wow, he is so advanced! It’s amazing he has figured out how to communicate with his parents!” Meanwhile, Surya’s sleep patterns only worsened and his
Bhakti Shringarpure is the editor of Warscapes magazine
Voices concurrent initiation into solid foods seemed irritating and impossible. As I piled up articles and books on sleep and parenting, I could not find anything that would work. The two cultures that I had been excited to embrace only sent tangential, contradictory messages and for my decrepit sleepless state, it was no longer a laughing matter. As it happens, this period saw the cacophony surrounding Amy Chua’s 2011 bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, about a Chinese-American mom whose “Chinese” approach to parenting, while verging on abusive, had startled and excited the wired-in urban American mothers searching for lifelines and panaceas for any number of parenting challenges. While everyone was debating the merits of “Chinese parenting,” I realized I had grown up with dozens of kids whose parents used an almost identically “firm” approach that, ultimately, is as Chinese as chicken tikka masala; or apple pie, for that matter. But none of these friends are Chinese. Looking to foreign or “exotic” cultures for answers to universal parenting challenges, I was beginning
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to realize, is ridiculous. A few months later, an even more ludicrous notion began to burn through American parenting cyberspace: That French parenting is, in fact, superior. Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bebe, another bestseller, seems meant to make American moms feel just about as low and awful as they possibly can. The French parents Druckerman depicts are no-nonsense. They’re independent. They’re beautiful. Their kids The eat vegetables (even two cultures beets). They’ve got that I had the secret formula. been excited Having been a to embrace nanny in France duronly sent ing college summers, tangential, and currently livcontradictory ing in Paris, I find messages.” Bringing Up Bebe not just fawning but also simply untrue. I am appalled by some of Druckerman’s descriptions of French parenting techniques and French food culture, particularly as applied to children. Druckerman’s universe, insofar as it may actually exist, represents probably the tiniest possible minority in France. Most of the parents here who
Voices also have a two-year-old complain just as much as me of poor napping habits and eating issues. Our wonderful babysitter here in Paris has been working for well-to-do French families for ten years and has never met a single one of Druckerman’s idealized French babies. So what explains the popularity of these simplistic and flawed books? My sense is that it points to a completely different problem than culture or nationality: that of older, once-career-driven, urban mothers struggling to adapt to life with a baby. The urban mom is obsessed with making a science of parenting. She channels her inquisitive energy into making Excel sheets about sleep, speech and food. Having had a baby right after finishing my PhD meant that I approached every single developmental stage with a stack of research. Whether it is looking for nannies, finding the right daycares and schools, hunting for organic products, shopping for strollers, pediatrician appointments or potty training, everything is regimented with vigor and intensity. This is healthy and completely normal. But here is where I draw the line: looking for solutions
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through cultural stereotyping and engaging in quasi-racist discourse under the guise of doing what’s best for your child. Any political correctness and dignity of speech seems to go out the window when there is a discussion on the differences between Caribbean nannies and Tibetan nannies or when one makes quick easy generalizations about how the Chinese or French raise their babies. Surya, at 2, is now speaking in complex sentences, singing Here is entire songs, scaling where I draw every jungle gym and the line: is the most amicable looking for international traveler. solutions But he has recently through started climbing out cultural of his crib and crawlstereotyping ing into our bed every or quasi-racist night at around 2 a.m. discourse.” Our pediatrician says this may go on until he is about eight or nine! In horror, I scramble for solutions and stumble upon a new book on Amazon spotlighting parenting techniques discovered in a little Alaskan village. I take a deep breath and switch off my computer seconds before my desperate hands hit the “buy” button.
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MARTA SEGAL BLOCK
HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
The Wedding Trend Myth A REPORTER RECENTLY contacted me to ask about the “new wedding trend” of couples getting married at home. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were married at home, so would others now do so as well? Over 2,000,000 couples get married in the U.S. every year. Thousands of these people will get married at home. But there have always been thousands of people getting married at home. Some of the current home weddings are
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large, complicated affairs. I have one friend who had a floor built over his mother’s swimming pool so that he could have room to get married in her backyard. Others are simple. My own booking company gets requests all the time for a soloist to play in a living room for a simple wedding with a small number of guests.
Marta Segal Block is the Editorial Director of GigMasters
Voices After Pippa Middleton wore a white Maid of Honor dress the wedding world declared that white was the new color; all bridesmaids would be wearing white for the next year or two. It’s true that many 2012 and 2013 brides have chosen white for their wedding party, some of them influenced by the royal wedding, but there are still countless other brides choosing pink, green, or “Tangerine Tango” for their bridesmaids. With so many weddings every year, almost anything can be considered a wedding “trend.” Also, anything can be considered “not a trend.” I recently wrote about people who hire Elvis impersonators for their weddings and request Elvis songs for their reception. One commenter said that she had been to two weddings this year and had not heard a single Elvis song. A bandleader said that his clients in New York never want Elvis. It’s a hard thing for me to say, but I was wrong and they were right—sort of. Among their friends and clients, Elvis is not a trend. But, in other communities, Elvis certainly is. I know because every year hundreds of people book Elvis imper-
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sonators for their weddings. So, if nothing and everything is a wedding trend, why do wedding blogs and magazines keep telling you what the newest trends are? Well, for one thing, they want to stay current and keep you looking at their sites. They’re running a business and your eyeballs pay the bills. But less selfishly, I like to think they want to help you come up with ideas of your own. Not ideas that fit the “trendy” idea This is the of what a wedding great things should be, but ideas about wedding that work for you and trend articles your wedding. and the Internet Somewhere there’s wedding world in a bride who would general—there’s love to come up with something a unique wedding for everyone.” favor. She reads an article about silhouette and caricature artists as a new “trend” and now she has her idea. This is the great thing about wedding trend articles, and the Internet wedding world in general—there’s something for everyone. Does a trend appeal to you? Great, do it. Do you think it’s stupid or tacky? Skip it, you’re bound to find something that works for you.
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“ I prefer not to have steroids, growth hormone, low dose antibiotics, or Jesus with my chicken....”
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“ The best part is, the Queen of England is less of a snob than Mitt Romney. At least she has a sense of humor.”
—HuffPost commenter labman on the Olympic opening ceremony
—HuffPost commenter Retrofuturistic on the Chick-Fil-A controversy
New school policy: School will start an hour later. School kid: Hey I can stay up later since school is starting later.
—HuffPost commenter DSherline
on a Massachusetts proposal to start classes later
“ You try to find words because it’s almost like someone passes away, and what do you say?”
—Martha Karolyi, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team coordinator,
to NBC about Jordyn Wieber not qualifying for the All-Around competition
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“ She is a very pretty girl and when you work that closely with someone for so long, sometimes things happen.”
The global-warmingdenier fig leaf just blew away, and we can see their shriveled little fiddly bits dangling in the wind....
— Michael Sanders, Rupert Sanders’ father, to People about his son’s tryst with Kristen Stewart
— HuffPost commenter Steelsil
on Richard Muller’s new climate change comments
“ That one I don’t think was well handled. The test to get on that small list has to be, ‘Is this person capable of being president of the United States?’”
— Dick Cheney to ABC
on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate
“ We must also understand that when a child opens fire on other children, there’s a hole in his heart that no government can fill.”
— President Obama on gun control following the Aurora shootings
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FEATURES LIVING LARGE ON CAPITOL HILL SHALOM Y’ALL NEWARK BLUES
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R T S U L L I Y E N A BY A RT H U R D E L
S U T R A P P A C I T AT I O N B Y A E S T H E
Last year, 21 freshman members of the House of Representatives made a show of sleeping in their offices. Instead of renting apartments and living among the city’s lobbyists, reporters and political hacks, the incoming Republicans wanted to be seen as outsiders, unsullied by the ways of Washington. “I think it’s important that we show we don’t live here, we are not creatures of this town,” Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told CBS News. While the ethics reforms of the past two decades have cut down on some of the most egregious displays of excess, Washington can still be very good to the politicians who work here—even Tea Partiers who claim to live like ascetics. Despite a series of ethics reforms targeting things like outside income and unseemly junkets,
members of Congress receive grandiose compensation and live a lifestyle that’s too big to fail. At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin last year, a constituent challenged Rep. Sean Duffy, one of the new Republican couch surfers, about his salary. “I’m just wondering what your wage is and if you guys would be willing to take a cut?” the man asked, according to a video of the event. The man seemed surprised by Duffy’s answer: Members of Congress make $174,000 a year, the congressman said, after some hemming and hawing.
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“That’s three times—that’s three of my family’s—three times what I make,” the constituent stammered. He described himself as a builder who’d been having a hard time finding work since the economy tanked. Duffy pushed back against the perception that his salary meant he was a member of the nation’s white-collar elite. “I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you,” Duffy told the town hall attendees. “With six kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I’m living high off the hog, I’ve
got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now.” Duffy may have debts, but the reality is that, when compared to the population at large, members of Congress still manage to live on the uppermost portion of the hog. A congressman’s salary is more than three times the median income of American households— currently about $49,445. That paycheck comes fully loaded, with generous health insurance, retirement benefits and other perks that set lawmakers apart from average Americans—and set them up for a lifetime of fortune and comfort. So, all gestures of austerity aside, the guys and gals on the couches are still doing very, very well, thank you.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), right, shares a laugh with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal at the Democratic Party’s summer picnic in 2006.
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PERFECTLY LEGAL
On a recent Thursday morning, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), another member of the freshman Tea Party class, hosted a breakfast fundraiser at Johnny’s Half Shell, one of Washington’s most popular eateries. Feasts like this are held nearly every day in Washington. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), for instance, recently lunched at Art & Soul, the southern restaurant owned by celebrity chef Art Smith. Lawmakers sometimes complain that they’d rather skip these free meals and do the people’s work, but that the reality of financing a campaign gets in the way. Lobbyists pay thousands of dollars to the politician’s re-election campaign for the privilege of face time with the lawmaker, and doing that over copious amounts
People rightfully get pissed when they read about the game up here.”
of food is part of the drill. Besides, with the right mix of people, dining for dollars isn’t so bad. “If you’re with people that are kind of fun to hang around with, fundraisers don’t have to be miserable. They can be enjoyable,” said a Republican lobbyist who frequently meals with members but requested anonymity to protect his firm’s business. “A lot of time the guests happen to be a good friend of [the lawmaker’s]. These guys don’t have a lot of spare seconds to relax and have a drink of wine.” Not to mention they get to eat fancy steaks, free-range chicken and other upscale fare instead of the grub from the Capitol’s cafeterias. “People rightfully get pissed when they read about the game up here,” the lobbyist said, explaining his reasons for anonymity. To get some exercise and work off all of that high-end cuisine, current and former members of the House and Senate can make use of two gyms reserved exclusively for them on Capitol Hill. Between them, the gyms offer lawmakers cardio and weight machines, a basketball court, paddle ball court, swimming pool, sauna and steam room. Membership runs $400 a year—a bargain compared to near-
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REBECCA D’ANGELO/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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by gyms like Results, where annual dues exceed $1,000. Our lawmakers certainly don’t need to work hard to get to the office or to get around. A private subway system, built in 1909, ferries them the short distance between their offices or committee rooms and the Capitol. When senators approach their members-only elevators, staffers push the buttons and open doors ahead of them so the lawmakers don’t have to wait. If some Republicans’ offices double as bedrooms, their living room more than makes up for it. On the House side, lawmakers
can relax in the Speaker’s Lobby, an opulent, history-soaked lounge with plush chairs and multiple fireplaces just off the House floor. Building staff makes sure the room is stocked with plenty of firewood. For congressmen, parking in Washington is effectively free. Members on “official duty” are exempt from most local parking laws. And when lawmakers leave Washington and head back to their home districts on Fridays, taxpayers pay the fare. The farther a member’s district is located from Washington, the greater the travel budget to which they are entitled. Taxpayers also pick up the tab whenever congressional delegations visit foreign countries on
Lobbyists Heather and Tony Podesta of the Chairman Podesta Group celebrate the marriage of Rep. Loretta Sanches (D-Calif.) at a barbeque in 2011.
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diplomatic missions or fact-finding tours—excursions intended to inform lawmakers about international issues and help them do their jobs at home. Still, members of Congress often manage to have some fun while they’re at it. Lobbyists Heather and Tony Podesta told The Washington Post that they have entertained some 20 members of Congress at their place in Venice over the years. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) told The Huffington Post in 2010 that she had known the Podestas for 12 years when she met up with them while leading a trans-Atlantic congressional delegation—an official, taxpayer-funded trip—
Members of the current Congress have gone on 2,548 privatelysponsored trips so far, collectively worth more than $8 million.
that happened to stop in Venice in May 2008. She did not recall how she and the Podestas arranged their date, but that they ultimately met at a restaurant. “I didn’t go to cocktails with them, but we had dinner that everybody paid for themselves at a restaurant they recommended,” Berkley said. “But we didn’t talk business at that dinner. That was a strictly Venice dinner.” (Socializing with lobbyists is legal if lawmakers pay for their own meals and lodging.) Records provided by Berkley’s office show the trip included 16 other members of Congress at a total cost to taxpayers of $55,000. They spent three days in Slovenia and four in Italy. Congressional delegations are just one kind of trip. The other experience is often privatelyfinanced. In reaction to the Jack Abramoff scandal, in which the former lobbyist and other K Street denizens won favors by taking lawmakers on outrageous junkets, Congress passed new rules in 2007 restricting what kind of free travel and other giveaways lawmakers could accept from outside groups. The rules also mandated that only nonprofits could sponsor trips.
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But Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen, says a loophole allows private companies to set up nonprofit fronts to pay for trips, and that privately-funded travel is inching its way back up. Before the Abramoff scandal, members of the 108th Congress went on more than 9,000 voyages worth $20 million over two years, according to LegiStorm, a nonprofit that tracks congressional disclosure forms. Members of the current Congress—which still has several months to go—have gone on 2,548 privately-sponsored trips so far,
collectively worth more than $8 million, compared with 2,540 trips worth more than $7 million during the 2009-2010 session.
TEA PARTY MOJO
Lavish gatherings of Washington’s power elite were even more frequent in the 1980s—a period The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn recently described as a golden era for dinner parties featuring “a power-filled room of politicians, diplomats, White House officials and well-known journalists.” Back then, members of Congress made $89,500 a year (the median household income was $24,879 at the time) and supplemented their salaries by moonlighting as speechmakers. The law let mem-
Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff arrives at Miami Federal Court in 2006 to plead guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud charges.
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bers accept $2,000 per speaking engagement, with senators allowed to rake in 40 percent of their salary annually and representatives allowed 30 percent per year. Common Cause, a watchdog group led by Fred Wertheimer, revealed in 1986 that members had lined their pockets with more than $7 million worth of honoraria in 1985, up from $5.5 million the previous year. In December 1988, however, Congress prepared to vote themselves a 50 percent pay raise—a proposal that touched off a populist backlash. “It’s the tea bag revolution .... an updated version of the Boston Tea Party,” Detroit radio announcer Roy Fox told The Washington Post at the time. “The idea came from a listener of mine on Dec. 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. It was too good to pass up.” David Keating, then vice president of a conservative group called the National Taxpayer’s Union, which advocates for smaller government and lower taxes, slammed Congress on more than 30 radio shows in fewer than 30 days. He encouraged listeners to send tea bags to Congress with little notes that said “Read my tea
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bag. No 50% Raise.” A poll at the time revealed that 82 percent of Americans opposed the pay increase, and members received scores of tea bags through the mail, according to news reports. The teabagging worked: In February 1989, Congress voted down its own raise. “People are thrilled,” Public Citizen spokesman Bob Dreyfuss told The Post at the time. “It’s almost the only example in recent memory where people actually defeated something by sheer voice of popular opinion.” Congress won in the end, however. After the outrage faded, lawmakers gave themselves raises a few months later. The deal reined in the honoraria system, restricting gifts and sharply reducing what lawmakers could earn on the side. But it also made annual pay increases automatic from then on, so members could spare themselves the embarrassment of voting to boost their own pay. Since then, Congress has passed a number of additional ethics reforms, strengthening lobbying disclosure requirements, restricting “soft money” in campaigns and further restricting gifts to members. Despite these reforms, Congress
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can still be a ticket to the good life if you play the game right.
BILL CLARK/ROLL CALL
THE MILLIONAIRES CLUB
Among the arguments for giving congresspeople relatively generous salaries is that they need the money to maintain residences in Washington and their home districts, without having to rely on integritycompromising side income. “That’s good money, but it’s also really expensive on Capitol Hill,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a campaign organizer for FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-oriented group, about congressional salaries. This rationale is strained, however, by the reality of life on Capitol Hill these days: Congress is rich. Nearly half of the current crop of federal lawmakers are millionaires, and their median net worth has risen 13 percent since 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of financial disclosure forms. Meanwhile, the median net worth of U.S. households fell 35 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The reason Congress has become stuffed with rich folks, analysts say, is that the cost of political campaigning has soared. “It’s very simple,” says Jim
Manley, who worked as a Democratic congressional staffer for 21 years before joining a public relations firm last year. “If you are going to slash members’ pay you are soon only going to see the very wealthy or the incompetent run— and we already have enough of both right now in Congress.” Others agree that the cost of campaigns is larding Congress with millionaires, but not necessarily that the barriers to entry justify the compensation. “Campaigns have become so taxing we elect millionaires,” says Public Citizen’s Craig Holman. “That’s where the rationale [for the current compensation scheme] falls apart.” Another argument for paying lawmakers well is that they shoul-
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), seated, shakes hands with Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.) ahead of their 2011 news conference on Obama’s stimulus package.
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der a considerable amount of responsibility. “It’s not the job of the average person in America to be an elected representative, to make national decisions about how we raise and spend our money, whether we go to war,” says Fred Wertheimer. Wertheimer, who helped lead the charge against the corrupt honoraria system in the late 1980s, says he considers $174,000 a reasonable salary given the work that lawmakers are required to perform. But how hard are they working? A recent CNN analysis showed that the current Congress has passed just 132 bills. The previous
Nearly half of the current crop of federal lawmakers are millionaires, and their median net worth has risen 13 percent since 2008.
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Congress passed 383. Divided government isn’t the only explanation: The 107th Congress of 20012002 passed 377 laws despite the fact that one party didn’t control both chambers. The Chicago Tribune, measuring votes taken, bills made into laws and nominees approved, reported last year that the current Congress is even underperforming the “donothing Congress” of 1948. On the other hand, to some people—especially conservatives —fewer new laws might be a good thing. And an unproductive Congress could just be a democratic reflection of a divided electorate. But if people are happy with what Congress is doing, it doesn’t show. In February, Congress achieved its lowest approval rating in the history of the Gallup poll. Even Wertheimer said people might start to wonder why politicians are paid so highly if they aren’t doing their jobs well. Members “are raising questions for themselves because of the extraordinary gridlock in Washington,” he says. Calls have arisen again within Congress for paycuts. Eight bills in the current Congress would repeal the annual automatic pay
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adjustments (members have voted not to accept increases for the past three years); nine bills would connect congressional pay to outside economic indicators; and four bills would just cut the pay. “THE LAST TIME Members of Congress took a pay cut was on April 1, 1933—in the midst of the Great Depression,” wrote a group of lawmakers last fall to the co-chairs of the so-called “super committee,” who were seeking a grand bargain on deficit reduction. “At a time of similar economic turmoil and record deficits, Congress should not require sacrifices of others without
tightening its own belt.” The same group of lawmakers noted that legislators in other developed nations are paid 2.3 times more than their constituents, while American legislators earn 3.4 times more. (Only Japanese lawmakers are paid better relative to the people they represent than American lawmakers.) A 10 percent pay cut would deliver $100 million worth of savings over 10 years, the American lawmakers noted in their letter to the super committee. Still, some lawmakers cry poverty. Freshman Republican Rep. Scott Rigell (Va.) said he doesn’t support slashing salaries because some members really need the money (though he told the Huffington Post that he himself
Rep. Shelly Berkley (D-Nev.), listens on before the Senate votes on the Paycheck Fairness Act in June.
JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS
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hands back 15 percent of his salary to the government as a matter of principle). “I know after votes are finished, when I’m walking back to a place, going back to a regular bed, many of my colleagues are not going to an apartment,” says Rigell. “They’re going to their offices because that truly is all they can afford.” After more than a year since their arrival in Washington, 12 out of the 21 congressmen who vowed to live in their offices say they’re still committed to couch surfing, according to their spokespeople. One, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), admitted to giving up, though his
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office declined to say why. The rest did not respond to multiple requests for information. Duffy, who is among the committed couch surfers, told his constituents at the town hall last year that he’d support a salary reduction. “Let’s go across the board and all join hands together,” he said. “Let’s all take a pay decrease, and I’ll join with you. Absolutely.” None of the current paycut proposals are expected to go anywhere, however. After all, a member of Congress offering to cut his own pay is like the guy who makes a big show of reaching for his wallet when someone else has already offered to pay for dinner. “Those bills are just politicking,” Holman says.
Sen. Scott Brown (RMd.) and daughter Ayla Brown arrive for the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner.
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Exactly, say others. “There is a reason why it’s usually the freshman members who introduce bills calling for a reduction in members’ pay,” Manley notes. “That’s because it is nothing more than a cheap political stunt guaranteed to get favorable press coverage or kudos’ from socalled pro-taxpayer groups.” An action lawmakers did approve last year was a 5 percent cut to budgets for their own offices. While the vote didn’t affect congressional compensation, it did prevent raises for many lesser-paid staffers. Lawmakers nevertheless
While employees around the country are watching their retirement benefits vanish, congressional pensions remain generous.
thumped their chests about how they were tightening their belts just like regular Americans. “Everybody knows that across this country families and small businesses have cut their spending, are paying off their debt, and are striving to live within their means,” Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) said on the House floor before the budget-cutting vote. “We should do the same.” Some staffers aren’t impressed. “I’m not mad because we didn’t get raises. I’m mad because they used this as a political issue,” says one Republican House staffer, who after 16 years of service earns less than $60,000, and requested anonymity to protect her job. “In their office budget, they still have plenty of money to get all new BlackBerrys, new computers, flat screen TVs, iPads—every little thing. They don’t cut back on travel expenses, but yet they make it look like they’re sacrificing.” Holman said he’d be open to a means-testing setup that pays lawmakers less if they’re really rich—something similar to what many lawmakers embrace for safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the
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National Taxpayers Union, said many of his group’s members also favor reforming another lush congressional benefit: pensions. While employees around the country are watching their retirement benefits vanish, congressional pensions remain generous— two to three times more than what similarly-salaried private-sector workers typically get, according to Sepp. After five years of service, lawmakers who are 62 or older can draw lifetime income. The longer they serve, the greater the proportion of their salary they receive, up to 80 percent if a member has put in 32 years or more. “It is therefore no wonder that taxpayers, who often struggle to provide the most meager of retirement benefits for themselves, find Congress’s package so offensive,” Sepp wrote in an open letter to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in 2011. “This is especially true since the contributions lawmakers provide to the system cover only a fraction of their typical lifetime payouts.” Where does the rest of the money come from to fund lawmakers’ pensions? Taxpayers. Great health insurance has long been another perk of a job in Congress (although the health care
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reform law will force lawmakers to participate in health insurance “exchanges” like the rest of us in 2014). Until then, members can choose from a variety of plans available to federal employees. They can’t be excluded because of pre-existing conditions, and enrollment doesn’t require a waiting period. By contrast, 74 percent of workers with employer-sponsored health care face waiting periods averaging 2.2 months, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. After leaving Congress, lawmakers eligible for pensions have been allowed to keep their health insurance, too (another perk that will evaporate in 2014). When all is said and done, the biggest perk a legislator corrals is when he or she finally calls it quits and wanders over to K Street. An influential former senator or chairman of an important committee, for example, can fetch a seven-figure salary as a lobbyist or “adviser.” No fewer than 160 former members of Congress are registered as lobbyists today, according to First Street, a lobbying analytics company. And that total excludes the many former lawmakers, like Tom Daschle and Chris Dodd, who are top advisers to K Street firms
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but haven’t officially registered as lobbyists, which is easy to avoid thanks to the law’s narrow definition of lobbying. Daschle, for instance, can wield all the influence he wants so long as he doesn’t personally make more than one phone call in an effort to influence legislation. If an underling does it for him, though, that’s fine. (Dodd and Daschle did not respond to requests for comment.) Among the non-lobbyists are former Sens. Robert Bennett (RUtah) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who took jobs last year with D.C. law and lobbying firm Arent Fox. Arent Fox’s chairman said in a
statement announcing the hires that Bennett and Dorgan “will add a tremendous amount of proven strategic, policy and business expertise that is important to our clients and our law firm.” The Huffington Post asked the senators if they were concerned critics might accuse them of cashing out. Dorgan didn’t respond but Bennett was game. “Is there anything in the Constitution that forbids me from earning a living?” he said. “I have skills, people want to pay me for my skills, I want to earn a living, and this is the way I do it.” When asked how much money he would be making, Bennett paused. “Enough,” he said.
Former Sen. Tom Daschle, right, greets a Washington resident after his 2008 meeting with seniors on the topic of health care.
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BY JAWEED KALEEM PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARY NORTON
WHY THE SOUTH IS LOOKING FOR
A FEW GOOD JEWS
B I R MI N G H A M, A LA . — On a recent Tuesday night at Rojo, a trendy Mexican restaurant on the south side of the city, a group of women were kicking off an unusual welcome party for someone they’d never met. Their guest of honor: Lisa Pataky, a 25-year-old student who was new to town, trying out a summer internship and considering moving to Birmingham full-time. Around her were supporters of the Birmingham Jewish Federation, peppering her with reasons to stay: abundant jobs, lack of traffic, low cost-of-living, and — most important – a friendly, tight-knit community of 5,200 Jews spread among five congregations. Caren Seligman, the outreach coordinator for the group, had recently been introduced to Pataky through a mutual friend. And Seligman was the one responsible for inviting these women to the restaurant that evening for their first crack at recruiting Pataky to their city. “If I can get her to like this place for the next six weeks, maybe I can get her to move back here when
she graduates,” Seligman, 53, recalls thinking at the time. Though the population of Jews in the South hovers at 1.1 million overall, Jewish life in less bustling parts of the region has taken a dive. More than half of Southern Jews — 638,000 — are in Florida. Another 140,000 are in Texas; 120,000 reside in Atlanta, and 97,000 are in Virginia. But the
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Jewish communities in cities like Birmingham have suffered. “There has been a huge influx of Jews from the Northeast down South,” says Stuart Rockoff, director of the history department at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Miss. “But there’s also been a significant migration of Jews from other parts of the South to big Southern cities.” Alabama, once a beacon for Jewish immigrants and AmericanJewish migrants seeking prosperity in its booming steel industry,
has 8,850 Jews left in a state of 4.8 million people, down from a high of 13,000 in the early 20th century, when the state’s population was less than half of what it is now. The decline has become more evident as historic congregations and communities have lately shut their doors and withered. In the small towns surrounding Birmingham, two synagogues have closed in recent years and two Jewish religious schools have merged. Synagogues in a handful of other Alabama towns — the state’s 16 amount to a third less than what it had at its peak in 1927 — are in danger of closing. Several don’t have rabbis and are
Seligman hosts an event for young Jewish women at Urban Cookhouse in Alabama.
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led by volunteers. In Greater Birmingham — home to one million Alabamians and the bulk of the state’s Jews — the Jewish population has plateaued, and by some estimates, declined. Meanwhile, the region’s broader population has grown by tens of thousands in a decade, fueled by growth in its medical research industry. To help combat this trend, Seligman, the outreach coordinator, is looking for a few good Jews to bring to her city. The stakes are high. Not only could Birmingham’s historic synagogues one day disappear, but so could its secular Jewish organizations, including popular schools and social service groups that often cater to non-Jews. For Seligman, who lost her own children to the Jewish metropolises of Houston and Minneapolis but dreams of the day they move back, the job can get personal. Her task is not easy. She works long hours — often arriving at her modest office by sunrise — trying to recruit young Jews, one at time, to a city with a graying Jewish community that’s eager for a more balanced population. She tracks down college students who have moved away to entice
them to return. She travels to campuses as close as Tuscaloosa, Ala., and as far as Bloomington, Ind., to pitch the city to students who would otherwise end up in Chicago or New York. She fields phone calls from strangers considering jobs in Alabama. When a new Jew arrives, she’s ready with
From top to bottom: A bulletin board hangs in Seligman’s home office, which she works from below; afterdinner drinks at the Tavern.
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a welcome kit of shabbat candles, kosher wine, memberships to the Jewish community center and a pitch to stay. Once a place where Eastern European Jews flocked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Birmingham was home to powerful, enterprising Jews who ran major merchants and department stores, such as the now-defunct Parisians chain. Poised for much of its history to become the new Southern Jewish metropolis (the titles instead went to Atlanta and South Florida) the community is now at a crossroads. The old are getting older. The young are in short supply and headed to big cities. Neither the smaller towns that once fed into the city’s Jewish landscape nor the region’s former industrial or retail strength can be counted on to propel the population into the 21st century. Birmingham isn’t the only place recruiting Jews. In Tulsa, Okla., a similar effort is underway, while in Dothan, Ala., and Meridian, Miss., graying small-town synagogues have offered to pay Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate. In New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina wiped out an Orthodox syna-
“ We’re not worried about the Jewish community in the next 10 or 20 years. We’re worried about the next 100.” gogue, the Jewish Federation gives small stipends and memberships to a Jewish dating website to encourage newcomers to settle. Fueled by immigration and transplants from other parts of the country, the religious makeup of the South has diversified, with Islamic, Mormon and Spanishspeaking congregations making headway in places once reliably spiritually homogeneous. Birmingham, too, has become more diverse. But unlike more prosperous Southern cities with large Jewish populations, Birmingham’s Jewish community is being confronted with a harsh reality: It needs to grow to survive. “We’re not worried about the Jewish community in the next 10 or 20 years,” says Seligman. “We’re worried about the next 100.”
“YOU BELONG IN BIRMINGHAM”
A third-generation Sephardic Jew, Seligman exudes Southern hospitality with a sense of cosmopolitanism that sets Birmingham apart
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from much of the state. She punctuates conversation with “sweeties” and “honeys” while extending her vowels in a drawl. She has a weakness for iced tea and banana pudding, and can only take the “hustle and bustle” of big cities like Atlanta for a few days at a time. With seemingly endless energy, she starts her workday by checking emails and text messages from home before arriving to the office hours ahead of her small group of colleagues. A recently certified spin instructor, Seligman leaves midmorning to teach class, an occasion where small-talk after exercises often leads her to learn about new Jewish arrivals to the city. In her rare moments of relaxation, she enjoys lounging on the white coastal sands of the Florida Panhandle. When she picks up newcomers for tours of the city, she opts to use her top-down convertible over her sedan, where her stereo shuffles between Frankie Valli, Michael Jackson and Maroon 5. But when she imagines what her Jewish community may look like in a generation, she thinks back to growing up in Montgomery, 90 miles south of her current home. She remembers the festive songs and celebrations at Congre-
gation Etz Ahayem, the Sephardic synagogue her grandparents’ generation helped establish in the early 20th century after immigrating from Rhodes, Greece. The small temple — its name means “Tree of Life” — would overflow on Fridays with the close-knit 30 families who had maintained it for decades. Prayers were in a mix of Hebrew, English, and Ladino, a flavorful Judaeo-Spanish tongue. Like many of those she tries to lure back into the city, Seligman moved away from her birthplace after college in Tuscaloosa to follow her career in advertising and her Birmingham-raised husband. Her son’s Bar Mitzvah and confirmation were at Birmingham’s Conservative temple, Beth-El (their original rabbi moved to a new job in Atlanta three years ago), and she became an active
Emanu-El, one of many Jewish temples in Alabama to close in recent years.
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volunteer in the community. But each year for the High Holidays, Seligman would return to Montgomery for services at the temple of her forefathers. Cousins and old neighbors would catch up over fried snapper and potato and cheese-filled pastries, traditional Sephardic foods that transported Seligman back to her childhood. Etz Ahayem, no longer able to sustain a congregation and long without a full-time rabbi, closed and merged with another synagogue a decade ago. Its Torah scroll was transferred to the new temple along
with its sanctuary doors. The building is now a Baptist church, indistinguishable from so many others. Only a memory remains. Seligman hopes the same won’t prove true for Birmingham’s Jewish communities. In her purse, she carries black-and-white business cards stamped with large blue Stars of David. She’ll slip them into the pocket of any young Jew she comes across. “YOU Belong in Birmingham!” they say in large letters beside her phone number. Like most of the broader American-Jewish community, most Jews Seligman recruits are secular or from the Reform or Conserva-
The congregation at Temple Beth-El gathers during Hanukkah.
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tive traditions. Her own spiritual observance is varied. She attends synagogue once or twice a month and hosts shabbat dinners on Fridays. She also enjoys the occasional barbecue pork rib. She’s armed with the email addresses of hundreds of young Jews who have left Birmingham — procured from their parents — a stack of resumes and an inbox with descriptions of job openings. Her goal: to get one child from every Jewish Birmingham family to settle in the city and to convince those who happen to pass through that it’s a worthwhile place to be Jewish. That can be difficult.
MAKING THE PITCH
Pataky, the student who arrived in Birmingham in the spring for an internship as a physical therapist, knows the hurdles. “When I moved here, it was Passover. And when I said to people around town that I was observing Passover, nobody knew what it was,” she recalls. “I never had to explain it before.” Jefferson County, where Birmingham is located, is commonly ranked as one of the most Christian places in the nation — there are 67 churches for every syna-
“ When I moved here, it was Passover. And when I said to people around town that I was observing Passover, nobody knew what it was. I never had to explain that before.” gogue. But despite the community being overwhelmingly Christian, its people by and large embrace diversity. There are two Hindu temples, two Buddhist temples, a Sikh gurdwara and several mosques. Birmingham is also home to a small community of Russians and popular Greek and Lebanese restaurants. No matter for Pataky. A selfdescribed “atheist cultural Jew” who observes the occasional Jewish holiday, she has a month to go in the city. It’s not a bad place, she insists. She’s not accustomed to being around so many evangelical Christians, but everyone has respected her beliefs. She’s grown attached to the craft brewery not far from her suburban apartment. She loves the job and has been less bored since making friends through Seligman’s introductions over sangria. But when her internship is done, she hopes to move to New York,
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Boston, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. All have sizeable Jewish populations. She doesn’t want to join a synagogue, but she does want to be around people who understand her. “There are some natural cultural differences between Jewish people and others. It’s nice to have a certain baseline with people you meet,” Pataky says. “If I move to New York, I’d probably never even have to think of being Jewish.” She feels the same about Atlanta. While she isn’t looking for a religious community, Pataky’s social needs echo a refrain that Seligman often hears. Young people want to be around people like them. They want variety and a big singles scene. They want a city with a major sports team. They want to be by the buzz. Birmingham, which is revitalizing its downtown with lofts, art galleries and a burgeoning restaurant scene, still pales in comparison to bigger cities. “All these kids go to Atlanta thinking this is going to be the place. This is where I’m going to meet that person or land this perfect job, you know, because it’s Atlanta,” Seligman says. “I tell people when they call me and say they are thinking of moving to the South, ‘We are no Atlanta and we
don’t want to be.’” Birminghamians are proud of their city, which is situated in a valley surrounded by lush mountain ranges and majestic hillside homes. Blacks and Jews here played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement. While Birmingham has one of the highest crime rates in the nation, the metropolitan area has one of the lowest. Anti-Semitism is rare, though there have been isolated incidents. About 80 percent of Birmingham Jews are members of a synagogue or otherwise involved in Jewish organizations — according to the Birmingham Jewish Federation — making for a close community of familiar faces. Nationally, the Jewish affiliation rate is 51 percent. Despite its selling points, there’s a certain unease among some Birminghamians about their city.
Seligman’s organization sponsors a team of young Jews in a kosher BBQ competition each year to get them active in Jewish life in Birmingham.
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Though its neighbor two-and-ahalf hours east was also founded as a railroad town in the mid-19th century, the growth spurt that hit Atlanta never transferred to Birmingham. Many Birminghamians will lament the conservative Christian culture that pervades everyday life outside the area’s urban core where more than a third of Alabama’s counties ban alcohol sales. They’ll half-jokingly call the city, where a 24-hour restaurant is rare, “Boringham.”
EXPRESSING YOURSELF “JEWISHLY”
“Our growth really depends on the fortunes of the city of Birmingham,” says Rabbi Jonathan Miller, a Reform rabbi who has led the city’s largest and oldest Jewish congregation, Temple Emanu-El, for 21 years. He points to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, home to one of the best medical research programs in country, which has attracted an increasing number of the region’s new Jews and temple members. He mentions the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa — about an hour from Birmingham and a feeder to the city — where a vig-
orous campaign to recruit Jewish students recently resulted in a 50 percent increase in Jewish enrollment over just a few years. Similar to Seligman’s program, the university’s efforts included visits from admissions officials to far-flung Jewish communities in Maryland, Texas and Georgia. A new Hillel building opened in 2010 that serves 675 students, and the Jewish fraternity and sorority have grown. The Birmingham Jewish Federation’s recruiting, which began six years ago, has so far netted a few dozen new or returning young Jews to the city, and Miller has gleefully offered a spiritual home to many of them. His congregation, which dates to 1882, has about 690 members, according to Miller. About a quarter of them attend services in its airy, 62,000-square foot temple that includes a sanctuary with colorful stained glass windows, small chapel, religious school and banquet hall. While Miller boasts that membership has barely budged during his time, he admits it’s graying. Last year, Miller hired a 27-yearold rabbi to increase young adult involvement in the temple. Rabbi Laila Haas, who was raised in Mi-
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UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA HILLEL
SHALOM Y’ALL
ami Beach and studied in Cincinnati, has started discussion groups at members’ homes on religious and cultural topics, including lessons, she says, “on how to express myself Jewishly in a non-Jewish place.” While synagogue memberships can typically cost thousands of dollars, Haas says she encourages young people to join by asking them to both pay and get involved “at their comfort level.” For traditionally religious Jews, Birmingham is a harder sell, but improvements to religious life have been made recently. The
region’s first kosher restaurant opened a year ago, and the Modern Orthodox synagogue hired a lively 30-year-old rabbi to reinvigorate its small congregation. Still, a mohel, a rabbi trained in performing ritual circumcisions on newborns — a segment of the population the city needs if it is to grow — is harder to find. Some Birminghamians have a physician do the medical procedure while a local rabbi says prayers. But for the group of mostly young couples and less traditionally religious Jews that regularly seeks a mohel’s services, the most popular choice is farther away. He’s in Atlanta.
Students gather at a University of Alabama Hillel event.
NEWARK BLUES
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BUDGET CUTS. FEWER COPS. AUSTERITY HITS THE
MEAN STREETS. B Y JOHN RUDOLF
I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y PJ LOUGHRAN
IT’S COMING UP on midnight on a sweltering July night in Newark when the call goes out from dispatch: shots fired in Vailsburg, a gritty residential neighborhood in the West Ward. The officers joking outside the 4th precinct station house scatter, scramble into squad cars and race down the darkened streets. They find the victim, a man in his 30s, sprawled on the pavement under a crooked elm tree, a red patch spreading across the shoulder of his
white T-shirt. He stares up at a starless sky as paramedics arrive and take him off on a stretcher. He’ll live, an officer observes. Shirtless boys gape in front yards and old women lean out of windows. The shooter escaped on foot. Another call crackles on the radio: more gunfire in Vailsburg. Again the squad cars race. The scene is chaotic, with dozens of agitated young people swarming outside a dilapidated single-family home. At the curb sits a
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Police cars arrive with lights flashing to arrest a man holding a gun in his house in Newark.
red Chrysler coupe with bullet holes in the rear window. Detectives scan the ground with flashlights, looking for shell casings, and a bulletin goes out for the shooter’s car. Paramedics carry away a terrified teenage boy whose camouflage shorts are slick and dark, soaked through with blood. This is policing Newark. It’s a hard task in the best of times, and these
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARCO DI LAURO/REPORTAGE BY GETTY IMAGES
are not the best of times. Over the past three years the Newark Police Department has endured savage cuts, as the city struggled to balance its budget in the face of historic deficits. Staffing is down about 25 percent, to a little more than 1,000 officers, the lowest level in decades. Much of the decline happened quietly, through attrition, as positions of officers who retired or left for other jobs went unfilled. But in late 2010, the city laid off 160 officers,
“WE REALIZE THAT THE KEY TO OUR PROBLEMS … IS NOT TO GO OUT AND ARREST EVERYONE.”
many of them fresh from the academy, sparking widespread community angst. That year, Newark saw a spike in homicides that again drove its murder rate up among the very highest in the country, right alongside New Orleans, Detroit and Baltimore. The police layoffs came just as New Jersey’s governor and legislature slashed education spending throughout the state, including in Newark. The cuts may be a onetwo punch for New Jersey’s at-risk youth, some experts fear. “Why would you decide that the first thing you want to cut is police and education?” says Brendan O’Flaherty, an economics professor at Columbia University who specializes in urban issues. “You’re eating the young.” The task of running Newark’s depleted police department falls to Samuel DeMaio, who rose from beat cop to police director over 25 years at the agency. DeMaio, 44, is a compact man with a neatly trimmed goatee and salt-and-pepper hair, who
speaks in a gravely, rapid-fire patter. He took over as police director in June 2011, at the beginning of one of the worst sustained outbreak of violence in 20 years. By that summer’s end, 32 people were dead. Violent crime eased somewhat since then, but not the department’s fiscal woes. “If you look at the number of cops that we have today, it’s the same number that we had in the late 70s,” he says. “Two years ago there was an overtime budget for the police department of $20 million. Now it’s $4 million.” An investment in cutting-edge technologies like gun-shot detectors and surveillance cameras is helping the department better deploy its resources. In response to falling manpower, DeMaio also pulled cops out of precinct houses and headquarters and sent them into the streets. Cops once behind desks now ride in radio cars, day and night, or patrol high-crime areas in specialized drug and gang units. The shift means that property crimes like break-ins and thefts often get just a cursory review by investigators, according to
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Local children play in the midst of a police operation on summer day in Newark.
the city’s police union. DeMaio says the arrangement also ruffled feathers in a department long resistant to change. Either way, it is a policy that is here to stay. “We’re going to have to keep on doing that, because the department is going to keep on shrinking down, until we start to do some more hiring, and that’s not anywhere in the fore-
seeable future,” he says. During the previous three major recessions, under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, the public sector grew, as municipalities, states and the federal government boosted spending to stimulate the economy and offset the decline in private employment. But not this time around. At every level of government, payrolls are shrinking, often dramatically. Federal economic data show that at least 600,000 pub-
THE FIGHT TO PULL THE CITY BACK FROM THE BRINK WILL “LIVE AND DIE” ON WHETHER PEOPLE CAN FEEL SAFE IN NEWARK AGAIN —CORY BOOKER
lic sector jobs, from teachers to tax collectors, have disappeared since Obama took office in 2008. Police departments are not immune. In the wake of the Great Recession, cities of all sizes and in every state have cut back on police staffing, in some cases drastically. For wealthier cities with low or manageable crime rates, such cuts can be seen as a reasonable source of savings in tough economic times. For poorer cities with serious crime problems, these cuts may mean that the cost of the current austerity climate will one day be tallied not just in dollars and cents, but in bloodshed and tears. In cities like Stockton, Calif., and Flint, Mich., sharp contractions in police staffing were accompanied by an explosion of violence that shows no sign of abating. It is a situation that Newark’s leaders desperately hope to avoid.
“A DANGEROUS VIEW”
The struggles of municipalities have emerged as a potent issue on the campaign trail, with President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress pushing a new stimulus bill allocating tens of billions of dollars for local public safety and education hiring. Republicans in Congress dismissed the bill out of hand, calling it porkbarrel spending that will only add to the ballooning deficit. The Republican push toward smaller government—premised on the idea that spending cuts and lower taxes will stimulate the economy and revive struggling cities—has been even more successful on the state level. For many conservatives, a model to emulate is Wisconsin, where the newly-elected Tea Partyallied Republican governor slashed pay, pensions and health care for the state’s public sector employees, then stripped their unions of collective bargaining rights. Mitt Romney, the Republican presi-
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A man arrested for holding a gun in his home is hauled into the back of a squad car by Newark police officers.
dential standard-bearer, enthusiastically embraces this philosophy. In a speech in Iowa in June, Romney mocked Obama’s public safety and education stimulus proposal as yet another wasteful government handout. “He wants another stimulus. He wants to hire more government workers,” Romney said. “He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
For Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, this viewpoint is deeply out of touch with the realities of governing in urban America. Booker has close ties to Wall Street, and clashed with Obama advisors in May after he criticized the campaign’s attacks on Romney’s career at Bain Capital, a private equity firm, as unseemly. But like many big-city mayors, he agrees with the Democratic president about the need for more fiscal stimulus, and calls Romney’s worldview wrongheaded and deeply troubling. “That is a reflection of a dangerous view of government, that views government as the problem, that there’s no
NEWARK BLUES
need for government, that the less government the better… that government is destructive, that government hurts communities and hurts people,” Booker says. “And that’s patently not true.” Booker took office in 2006, inheriting a city written off by many in New Jersey and the country at large as a near-hopeless case, crippled by endemic violence, economic decay and political corruption. Now in his second term, he points to numerous indicators that Newark is experiencing a long-overdue revival. Development is returning to downtown, with the construction of the first new hotels and office buildings in decades. The population is rising for the first time since a massive exodus began in the 1950s. Businesses are coming back, including major corporations lured by generous tax incentives. And the city now hosts a major league sports franchise, the New Jersey Devils hockey club. Newark has much going for it, starting with its close proximity to New York City — Manhattan is just eight miles away — and a transportation network that includes a major port, a confluence of highways and one of the country’s largest international airports. As Booker has said often since taking office, the fight to pull the city back from the brink will “live and die” on whether people can
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feel safe in Newark again. To makes this happen means bringing peace to the epicenter of the city’s crime problem, a patchwork of deeply impoverished neighborhoods, about 7.5 square miles in size, that surrounds the far safer and more prosperous downtown core. About 80 percent of the city’s shootings take place here, in a decayed landscape of crumbling and burnt-out buildings, boarded-up homes, empty lots, liquor stores and fast food restaurants. This job is made infinitely more difficult by the city’s current financial predicament and the loss of nearly a quarter of its cops. The work continues nevertheless.
TURNING IT AROUND
On a blindingly bright morning in mid-July, the mayor gathers with other city leaders to kick off a public safety academy for several dozen Newark pre-teens. Over several weeks, they will see first-hand how the city’s police, firefighters and county prosecutors do their jobs. It’s one of an array of programs designed not just to stamp out crime but also to steer young people away from trouble in the first place. DeMaio is the first official to address the kids, who sit fidgeting in folding chairs in a cavernous, hangarlike building that serves as the fire
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Officers assemble for a roll call prior to an operation.
department’s training facility. They are mostly black or Latino, reflecting the demographics of a city with a nearly 90 percent minority population. Well over a third of the city’s children live in poverty. “We realize that the key to our problems in this city of Newark is not to go out and arrest everyone,” he says quickly and somewhat grimly,
staring down at his notes. “We need to get you guys, at the age you are, and let you understand what’s right and what’s wrong, and turn your life in the right direction.” Booker then bounds to the podium and gives a brief though spirited speech about the heroism of the city’s public safety workers. “You may not get up-close and personal with Batman or Superman or Spiderman,” he says. “But during this summer you will get a chance to be
KEVIN COOLEY/REDUX
Newark Mayor Cory Booker in 2008
FOR POORER CITIES WITH SERIOUS CRIME PROBLEMS, CUTS MAY MEAN THAT THE COST OF AUSTERITY WILL ONE DAY BE TALLIED NOT JUST IN DOLLARS AND CENTS, BUT IN BLOODSHED AND TEARS. up-close and personal with men and women who are not fiction but fact, every single day, being the heroes that I most admire.” It’s a nice image, but in reality, Booker’s relationship with the police department is considerably more nuanced, as he acknowledges afterward to Huffington. In late 2010, he sought concessions from the police union on benefits, pay and perks that he argued would prevent most if not all of the looming layoffs. While other city employee unions took the cuts, the cops stood firm. It was a difficult political moment for Booker, and he now feels that the police union wields too much clout. “We have some reforms to do, where public sector unions have to work with us,” he says.
The police union, for its part, accuses Booker of playing bait-andswitch, authorizing a generous new contract before the 2010 election, then seeking to dissolve it after his second term was secured. James Stewart, president of the Newark Fraternal Order of Police, maintains that the concessions requested by the mayor amounted to roughly $10,000 per officer. “That was deemed unacceptable,” Stewart says. (Booker’s office calls that figure wildly inflated.) The mayor’s bitter fight with the police union makes for good political theater, but it mostly serves to obscure a larger truth: Newark is caught, like so many other cities, in the teeth of a brutal economic crunch that is national, even global, in scope. Over the past five years, New Jersey municipalities lost a collective $700 million in state aid due to budget
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RICHARD PERRY/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Newark Police are called to a man who collapsed in the street.
cuts, according to data compiled by Raphael Caprio, a Rutgers professor. Those cuts, in tandem with hits to local tax collection, forced virtually every major city in the state to slash vital public services, including police. It’s a pattern being replicated across the country, from California to Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Florida. In cities where cuts ran deepest, crime is
climbing, defying a national downward trend. And in almost all cases, these cuts would have been even deeper if not for federal assistance, particularly from the 2009 stimulus package. With the stimulus exhausted, and an anemic recovery underway, these cities may have further to fall. Some national Democrats, like Vice President Joe Biden, have drawn an explicit link between shrinking police departments and rising crime. For Booker, though, the relationship
NEWARK BLUES
between police staffing and crime is more complicated. “Simplistically, we say, ‘crime bad, more cops.’ But that’s not the answer,” he says. He agrees that cities need wellstaffed police forces. But turning the corner on crime over the long term requires other strategies as well. Booker says these include drug treatment, re-entry programs that connect newly-released prisoners to jobs and social services, and specialized courts that aim to keep addicts, the mentally ill and veterans from cycling in and out of the legal system. The Obama administration has invested in these strategies, steering millions of dollars to fund drug treatment, prisoner re-entry and similar programs in cities like Newark. The Justice Department has pushed to reduce mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. And some recent reports suggest Obama may push for substantial new reforms in federal drug policy in his second term. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has made little or no mention of crime, urban policing or criminal justice system reform in the nearly two years of his current presidential bid. “Mitt Romney’s policy is scary to me,” Booker says. “He’s not talking about the innovative programs that Barack Obama supports. He’s not
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talking about the kind of funding that would fuel an urban agenda. In fact, I haven’t heard him talk about an urban agenda at all.” A spokeswoman for Romney’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Yet Booker is himself not immune to criticism on the issues of crime and spending. To some observers of Newark politics, he has been too cozy with Chris Christie, New Jersey’s fiscally conservative Republican governor, who pushed through dramatic cuts in aid to the state’s struggling cities over the objection of many Democrats. Christie’s first public appearance after his election in 2009 was in Newark, with Booker by his side. Booker told the crowd that the new governor had pledged to help him on crime reduction. Since then, their relationship has remained more than cordial: the two have appeared in public repeatedly and even filmed humorous Web videos together. Booker should be criticizing Christie more vocally on public safety, says O’Flaherty, the Columbia economics professor. Instead, he says, Booker has mostly given the governor a pass. “The fact that several major cities in New Jersey are in terrible shape is Christie’s problem,” he says. “Cory is letting it not be his problem.” Booker deflects the criticism, say-
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Officers are struggling to secure the city amid escalating crime and a dwindling police force.
ing he repeatedly asked the governor and legislature to moderate the deep cuts in aid to the city and to provide more help on public safety, to little avail. “Some of those cuts were justifiable, and some of those cuts were not,” he says. “We as a state should be finding ways to prioritize public safety better than we are right now.”
“THIS IS REAL”
Newark typically sees a spike in violent crime during the summer, as bored and frustrated young people commit robberies, fight in the streets or shoot at each other from cars in drug-related disputes. In a bid to disrupt the violence, the police department’s latest strategy is to flood crime-prone areas with cops in a high-visibility show of force during the evening and early morning hours. Al Burroughs, a Newark police
“WHY WOULD YOU DECIDE THAT THE FIRST THING YOU WANT TO CUT IS POLICE AND EDUCATION? YOU’RE EATING THE YOUNG.” lieutenant, helps lead this effort in the field. Late on a Tuesday night in July, Burroughs stands by the department’s mobile command post, a hulking blue-and-white van, puffing thoughtfully on a cigar. Sawhorses and squad cars with lights flashing shut down the block. Across the street sits a public housing project, a sprawling complex of squat, ugly brick buildings known as a hotspot for gangs and drug crime. Out in the streets, teams of officers patrol on foot, while gang and drug units in convoys of marked and unmarked cars swoop down on known hot spots, driving suspected drug dealers off the corners, at least for a short while. A few undercover narcotics units, meanwhile, are using hardwon intelligence to set up sting operations in a bid to take down bigger fish. One of the major flaws in the department’s strategy seems to be that its depleted manpower means that even as it floods one problem area with cops,
pressure is lifted from other crimeprone neighborhoods. “Right now it’s quiet. But crime gets displaced while we’re here,” Burroughs says. He believes that the city’s gangs are well aware of the police department’s cutbacks. “They know that we’re restricted with resources,” he says. It has been a tough couple of years for the police force. Many officers lost close friends during the layoffs. They watched crime rebound after it fell to some of the lowest levels in decades just a few years ago. And just seven months after the layoffs, Willie Johnson, an extremely popular 16-year veteran of the force, was killed in a drive-by shooting while standing in line at a local pizza joint. Johnson worked in the 5th precinct and Burroughs considered him a good friend. He left behind a wife and two young daughters. “He was killed in the same precinct he worked in,” he says. For officers like Burroughs, there’s little they can do about the broader economic forces shaping the city and their department. But they must carry on. “The bottom line is that we’ve
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MATT RAINEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Booker discusses the fatal drive-by shooting of Newark Police Officer Willie Johnson at a news conference in Newark in 2011.
got to do more with less,” he says. In a time of widespread fiscal hardship, this refrain is surely familiar to workers of all stripes, whatever sector they fall in. Yet Newark’s cops do not work at an ordinary job, like the rest of us. Their work is closer to being a soldier on the front lines of a ceaseless, low-intensity war. As Burroughs tells it, less than 24 hours earlier an officer in the next precinct over was patrolling a low-income housing development when gunfire erupted from two cars circling the block.
The officer called for backup, then charged after the shooters, who shot a few rounds at him. They missed. “He went straight into the line of fire,” Burroughs says. Two teenagers bailed out of one of the cars and fled on foot. They were pursued and tackled to the ground, and a pistol was recovered from the vehicle. The next day’s paper buried a summary of the shootout in the back pages. It was nothing special for the Newark police. “It’s a dangerous job,” Burroughs says. “This is real. It’s not TV.”
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MOVIES
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How Soon Is Too Soon For A Hollywood Remake? S THE OLD ADAGE goes, “There are no new stories; it all depends on how you handle them.” Or, how you make audiences want to buy another ticket. Remakes have been a part of Hollywood for decades — Alfred Hitchcock made The Man Who Knew Too
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ILLUSTRATION BY GLUEKIT
Much twice — but the process has seemingly sped up in recent years: This summer, Sony is reviving Total Recall after just 22 years. Is that too soon? Audiences will decide, but here’s a look at Hollywood’s recent obsession with remake culture — and how the box office has responded. —Christopher Rosen
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MOVIES
ARTHUR (2011) F LO P !
KING KONG (2005) YEARS BETWEEN: 29 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $646.8 MILLION From Middle-earth to the middle of Manhattan. Peter Jackson used his technical prowess to bring the classic film King Kong back to the big screen after 29 years — and 72 years after the original.
HIT!
YEARS BETWEEN: 30 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $46.6 MILLION If the underwhelming Arthur taught Hollywood anything, it’s that Russell Brand is no Dudley Moore.
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OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001)
TKTK
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HIT!
YEARS BETWEEN: 41 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $584.3 MILLION The rare remake that actually improves on the original — both in gross and content. Steven Soderbergh turned Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack classic into a playground for George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts. It worked.
GET CARTER (2000)
F LO P !
YEARS BETWEEN: 29 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $25.8 MILLION The revenge thriller flopped at the box office, pushing star Sylvester Stallone back to what he does best: Playing Rocky and Rambo.
F LO P !
FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) YEARS BETWEEN: 26 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $41.8 MILLION Last summer, Colin Farrell had no box-office luck with Fright Night, a genre classic remake. Fingers crossed his remake of Total Recall, another genre classic, fares better here in 2012.
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FOUR FILMS READY FOR AOurREBOOT picks for
HIT!
hits that can stand the test of time
CASINO ROYALE (2006)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
YEARS BETWEEN: 4 REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $676.4 MILLION
(2002)
Just four years after Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry made the derided Bond film Die Another Day, the franchise was rebooted back to square one with Daniel Craig. Casino Royale made 007 dark and brooding, but that didn’t stop audiences from showing up in droves.
Nia Vardalos’ 2002 indie is still the highest grossing rom-com ever. It’s already spawned a short-lived TV series, so a remake — with Vardalos as mother of the bride (Selena Gomez) — doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
HIT!
Sister Act
(1992)
WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) YEARS BETWEEN: 52 REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $695.3 MILLION Steven Spielberg dusted off H.G. Wells’ classic novel, and added some harrowing 9/11 imagery and Tom Cruise. The results are the most successful reboot ever — at least until The Amazing Spider-Man shuffles out of theaters.
Back in the zeitgeist thanks to a Broadway musical adaptation, Sister Act might be ready for a blockbuster reboot. Maybe Adam Shankman (Rock of Ages) can direct, with Amber Riley (Glee) in the lead role.
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HIT!
An Officer and A Gentleman
(1982)
This film grossed $129.7 million in 1982 (almost $300 million in today’s dollars) and made stars out of Richard Gere and Debra Winger. A remake now, with Channing Tatum and Greta Gerwig, just feels right.
TOP TO BOTTOM: PARAMOUNT/EVERETT COLLECTION; COLUMBIA PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION (THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN/SPIDERMAN 3); EVERETT COLLECTION; PARAMOUNT/EVERETT COLLECTION
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012) YEARS BETWEEN: 5 REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $654 MILLION (AND COUNTING)
The Godfather
Sony was chastised for rebooting the Spider-Man franchise just five years after Spider-Man 3, but the studio has had the last laugh. Amazing Spider-Man could top $800 million worldwide, making it the biggest reboot ever.
(1972)
F LO P !
Eventually, this will become an offer Paramount can’t refuse. The studio — in a downturn after high-profile misses like The Dictator — could use the lift from one of the most successful and highly-respected franchises ever.
ALFIE (2005) YEARS BETWEEN: 39 YEARS REBOOT/REMAKE WORLDWIDE GROSS: $41.3 MILLION What’s it all about, Alfie? Apparently, an unwanted remake. Like Get Carter, this was another failed attempt at remaking a oncesuccessful Michael Caine film.
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FOOD
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Eat Pizza Around The Clock ... And It’s Good For You? BY AJ BARBOSA & KRISTEN AIKEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARSHALL TROY
Exit We’ve merged everything together to come up with one complete pizza solution: a complete balanced meal.”
FOOD
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MAKE HEALTHIER HOMEMADE PIZZA Use Cooked Tomato Sauce
HE AVERAGE AMERICAN consumes 23 pounds of pizza every year, but a recent development in the food industry has made it possible for that figure — but not the already bursting national waistline — to balloon. Glasgow University nutritionist and professor Mike Lean and British entrepreneur Donnie Maclean teamed up to develop what they claim is a nutritionally balanced pizza. Each serving of the frozen pizza contains 30 percent of an individual’s daily nutritional requirements for vitamins, minerals, calories, carbohydrates and protein. Swapping in traditional ingredients for nutritional replacements — adding seaweed to the crust, for instance — the team was able to reduce the amount of salt and fat in their pizza while adding in essential vitamins and nutrients. Other tricks, like adding red pepper to the tomato sauce to boost its vitamin C content and concocting unusual
T
Fresh, uncooked tomato sauce sounds like a healthier option than traditional marinara, but that’s usually not the case. Cooking tomatoes brings out their lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that may help to prevent some chronic disease.
Use Sauce With Olive Oil
Make sure your sauce has olive oil, which greatly increases the absorption of lycopene. Our bodies don’t absorb lycopene without fat, so in the same way that a salad is better for you with a little dressing, sauce is also better with a little oil.
SHUTTERSTOCK (OLIVE OIL, YEAST)
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vegetable combinations, helped them strike the perfect nutritional balance. “We know there’s pressure on the food industry to get the levels of fat down and levels of salt down,” said Maclean, whose company, Eat Balanced, is dedicated to making it easier for people to eat a balanced diet. “There’s demand from consumers saying they’re looking to eat better, and people know they need balanced diets, so we’ve merged everything together to come up with one complete pizza solution: a complete balanced meal and one with portion.” Maclean said he has developed a software system that allows him to analyze a food’s recipe and determine both the nutrition content as well as adjustments to portion sizes and ingredients to find the nutritional sweet spot. “We created recipes that brought down anything that was too high and pulled up what was too low so we got a fairly level grasp on all the different nutrients you need,” he told Huffington. “It’s difficult to do pepperoni because it’s so high in fat and salt. But I could do hundreds of varieties of pizza with all kinds of different toppings.” And while his product is expected to make its way to U.K. grocery stores by the fall, he believes the U.S. is particularly hungry for his product — and
But Don’t Overdo It
Beware of grease puddles. Dabbing a napkin on top of your pizza can cut at least 4.5 grams of fat per slice, because one tablespoon of olive oil contains 119 calories and 14 grams of fat.
Find A Flavorful Cheese Alternative Instead of sprinkling your pizza with grated parmesan, try nutritional yeast instead. Sure, it sounds gross — but really, it’s delicious. It tastes like the cheesy powder you find on popcorn, and it’s good for you to boot.
SHUTTERSTOCK (LAVASH)
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he’s anxious to get it to America. “I think the States have a bit more of a problem [than the U.K.] because they’ve had this allyou-can-eat-buffet culture for the last fifteen years,” he said. “This has done some damage and people are used to eating more in terms of portions. Something has to be done. It’s not just calories — there are companies like Weight Watchers that focus on that, but we focus on the bigger picture. We’re looking at the full spectrum of all the nutrients to make sure what you eat gives you everything you need.” He’s now looking for U.S.-based distributors to license his product, with a particular eye on the Northeast and the goal of getting a deal on the books by year’s end. Until then, there are a few places in the U.S. that are making it easier to enjoy a healthier slice. The Miami-based Power Pizza makes its dough with whey protein, which claims to preserve lean muscle tissue and promote fat loss. New York’s Pizza Roma imports flour from Rome and allows it to rise for 96 hours, using less yeast that it claims results in a lighter crust that is easier to digest. And then there’s Naked Pizza, with 20 locations in the U.S., which uses a prebiotic dough mix of more than 10 seeds and grains. Naked allegedly promotes digestive health, bone health, weight management and glycemic response.
But Don’t Skip The Cheese Altogether
Cheese is an excellent source of calcium, and it also helps absorb lycopene from tomato sauce and other nutrients found in your vegetable toppers. Using a little can be a good thing.
Go Grainy
Make or purchase whole wheat pizza dough, and stretch it out as thin as you can get it. You get less bulk, and the added fiber will actually make you feel fuller. Mix in some flax seeds for extra omega3s if you’re really feeling ambitious.
Cheat With Lavash
Cut down on bready mass by buying some lavash, which is a very thin Middle Eastern flatbread that turns almost cracker-like when baked. Top it, pop it in the oven, and you’re done.
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eWISE
BY KATY HALL
I recently met a guy on Grindr, and we hit it off, way more than just a one-night stand. We’ve been seeing each other now for a few weeks, though we’re not exclusive, and I just learned that he blocked me on Grindr. He says he doesn’t want to see if I’m online looking at other people, but I can’t help but wonder if he just doesn’t want me to see what he’s up to. Do I have a right to be upset? — Blocked, NYC
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You don’t need to be right to be upset. The most upsetting situations are those we know are troubling but are in no position to fix. But if you become angry with him before you agree to exclusivity, you may find he starts blocking your calls and texts as well. You’re still on Grindr too! This is a potential
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ILLUSTRATION JASON SCHNEIDER
HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
relationship, not a game of chicken. Whenever seeing him casually becomes more painful than not seeing him at all, tell him you think it’s time to close your accounts. His story about wanting you all to himself may hold up. If it doesn’t, be glad you don’t have the option of monitoring his Grindr activity as you start to look for someone more into you.
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eWISE
I was killing time in the waiting room before a doctor’s appointment, and I pulled up Grindr. Lo and behold, less than 100 feet away, I found my doctor! For some reason, this really freaked me out. I didn’t say anything during the appointment, but I’m not sure I feel comfortable going to him — let alone hearing his advice on sexual health — ever again. Am I being unreasonable? I know the man has a right to a private sex life, but something about this isn’t sitting well with me. — Freaked out patient, NYC
TOP TO BOTTOM: AP PHOTO/CHRIS PIZZELLO; SHUTTERSTOCK; JORDAN STRAUSS/INVISION/AP; AP PHOTO/SINTAY
Q
Relax. Someone who is having sex is probably better qualified to advise you on staying safe than someone who is not. And there’s no reason to believe he’s not following his own advice. It may even be easier to be candid about your own habits with a doctor who is unafraid of posting his photo on Grindr. There is nothing like a judgey doctor to make you avoid embarrassing questions and neglect tricky health issues. You will not surprise this man! But if you’re no longer comfortable disrobing in his office or discussing your sexual health with him, it may be best to find a new doctor.
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Have a question about electronic etiquette? Email ewise@huffingtonpost.com.
ENOUGH ALREADY
totally over. Things we’re
The “American Idol” judge shuffle Fringed handbags Shorts in the office Instagrams of dogs Matthew Perry Beer cocktails Rowdy Gaines Katie Holmes divorce analysis Neverending heat waves
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Once it got into my blood I couldn’t stop.”
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GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
Bob Martin
Bringing Sight To South America
BY AJ BARBOSA & MICHAEL SEWALL
SINCE 1985, thousands across South America have made the long trip to wait in the even longer lines snaking outside Vision Health International’s makeshift optometry post. At times, it takes several days in the Amazon Valley’s stifling heat before eye doctors can see a patient, but that hasn’t seemed to discourage anyone. Some are partially blind, othPHOTOGRAPH BY JIM LUNING
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GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
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ers have cataracts and others yet just need new eyeglasses—imaginably, the opportunity for a new lease on sight is worth the wait. It’s worth it in the eyes of Bob Martin, too.
AN EARLY START Ever since a 15-year-old Martin visited South America with Amigo De Las Americas—a non-profit that sends U.S. high school and college students on trips to volunteer throughout the continent —he’s worked to stay involved in assisting locals who don’t have access to decent healthcare or optometry. “Once it got into my blood I couldn’t stop,” Martin said. Now 52, he organizes Vision Health’s yearly trips from his hometown of New Lenox, Ill., and translates for patients while on location in South America. “A lot of people we fit with eyeglasses—it’s their first time,” he says. “All of a sudden they can see the mountains and sew again. It allows them to either go back to work or go to school and do things of that sort that we often take for granted.” It’s not just the personal stories that are telling—the num-
bers show a demand for Vision Health’s services. Martin says the company provides 250 free surgeries each summer and has given around 15,000 eye exams since its first trip. He says that, though there are some well-qualified optometrists in most of the areas, there simply aren’t enough to ensure every person in need of eye care gets help. “The issue is that they usually only have one or two public health doctors and they’re on another side of the country,” he says. “There are private doctors,
Martin stayed in this home on the Muisne River in Ecuador during his first trip with Amigos de las Americas in 1976.
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GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
but just like [in the U.S.], they’re very expensive.”
VISION HEALTH’S VOLUNTEERS The organization is funded entirely through donations and it’s operated by health care professionals and other volunteers who give their time for several traveling programs throughout the year. Though Vision Health hasn’t ever struggled to find doctors and optometrists who have been willing to help, they’ve had some trouble rounding up enough nurses to help out in the operating room. “It’s hard because they have to use their vacation time and pay their own way to come down with us,” Martin says. “The two things we need most are money and nurses. We already have thousands of dollars in meds and glasses to account for and we pay our own way, so we don’t have much of a budget left over.” For the most part, though, the company’s recruitment troubles don’t appear to be crippling. Martin mentions that there is a waiting list of doctors who want to travel with the company and, all told, around 25,000 different volunteers have worked with Vision Health since the company started.
It’s an impressive number, considering the time and energy expected of doctors and other volunteers. “Very few people come down for just one trip and stop working for us,” he says. “These doctors are usually a bit older and they work from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. for seven straight days.” The organization has wound its way all through South American, from Ecuador and Peru to Guate-
“When you take the patch off, some of them spontaneously start dancing because they haven’t seen in 10 or 15 years… They’re just so happy.” mala during its Civil War. Everyone pays their own way for the trip and use vacation days to get off work. The volunteers stay in schools, hospitals, homes of the locals or anywhere else they can. “They just work like you wouldn’t believe, and still, you wake up and everyone’s in a great mood every day,” he adds.
“THEY REMEMBER YOUR NAME” Martin says that the patients’ ap-
Exit preciation for the long hours and hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. “There’s just a genuine gratitude that you feel from these people,” he says. “They don’t forget about you down there, either. They remember your name.” One woman who regained her sight after surgery even named her baby, Randy, after the doctor who helped her. “People always say I’m so giving. But I get a lot more than I give from the program,” Martin said. “It makes me value what I have. I have a TV, a car, clean water, a bathroom. These people don’t have these things. It’s a whole different world than what I’m used to here.” He has four children — three in college and one in high school — and he took them to Latin America when they were young. “I wanted to show them that life isn’t sitting around playing Playstation on a big screen TV and ordering Pizza Hut,” Martin said. “This helped shaped my values.” For Martin and Vision Health’s doctors and volunteers, the emotion and gratitude patients show after eyeglass fittings and surgeries can be as overwhelming as it is fulfilling. “When you take the patch
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
off, some of them spontaneously start dancing because they haven’t seen in 10 or 15 years,” he says. The mood is so euphoric that, when testing their new vision, he likes to joke and ask if they think he’s handsome. “They almost always say ‘yes’ and laugh,” he says. “They’re just so happy.”
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From top to bottom: Cataract operation in Peru; a street festival in Sicuani, Peru, in 1982; Martin checks a patient’s teeth for cavities.
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SARAH PALIN’S FACEBOOK; AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE (GRASSLEY); AP PHOTO/SUSAN WALSH (OBAMA); ARCO IMAGES GMBH / ALAMY (SHEEP); SHUTTERSTOCK / VASILIY KOVAL (RAT)
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HUFFINGTON 08.12.12
Sarah Palin Proudly Supports Chick-Fil-A
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PETA Takes Bets On Sen. Grassley’s Death Following “Meatless Mondays” Controversy
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STILL? 17% OF REGISTERED VOTERS THINK OBAMA IS A MUSLIM
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HE’S BAAAAD: Sheep Rapist Wanted In Sweden
Artist Serves $100/Person, Multi-Course Rat Dinner
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TFU
NBC Edits Out “Victims’ Tribute” Portion Of Olympics Opening Ceremony
LEON NEAL/AFP/GETTYIMAGES (OLYMPICS); AP PHOTO/DENVER POST, RJ SANGOSTI, POOL (HOLMES); SHUTTERSTOCK (FIREWORKS); MIKHAIL TOLSTOY / ALAMY (ARK); KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES FOR AFI (DYLAN)
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AUSTRALIAN MAN SHOOTS FIREWORKS OUT OF HIS BUTT
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Idaho Billboard Compares Obama To Aurora Shooter
Alabama Pastor: Gay Marriage Brought On Noah’s Ark Flood
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NEW YORKER WRITER CAUGHT MAKING UP BOB DYLAN QUOTES IN BIOGRAPHY
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