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Y DAD M STRUGGLED, MY MOM STRUGGLED, MY GRANDMA STRUGGLED, AND NOW I’M STRUGGLING.” AMERICA’S WORKING POOR
MAY 12, 2013
05.12.13 #48 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Jodi Arias Verdict Is In .. The Printable Gun Arrives JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: The Age Gap Q&A: Tyler Perry Responds to His Haters HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE: The Week in Photos
Voices JOHN MONTORIO: A Mother’s Gift
THE GREASE TRAP Working full time, living on the poverty line. BY SAKI KNAFO
RITA F. PIERSON: This Will Make You Appreciate Your Teachers QUOTED
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FROM TOP: DAMON DAHLEN; DAVID FLUMENBAUM
BEHIND THE SCENES: The Tipping Point for Aging Action Stars STRESS LESS: On Slowing Down EAT THIS: Slow Down and Make Polenta TFU
LETTER FROM JAPAN To go forward, you must go inward. BY ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
FROM THE EDITOR: High Hopes and Low Wages ON THE COVER: Photograph for
Huffington by Damon Dahlen
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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High Hopes and Low Wages I
N THIS WEEK’S issue, Saki Knafo looks at the plight of America’s working poor through the eyes of one young man struggling to build a career in the fast food industry. Lost in the hubbub of each month’s job reports is one startling fact, one with major consequences for America’s economic future: since the Great Recession
officially came to an end, lowerwage jobs have far outnumbered jobs that allow workers to build a solid middle-class lifestyle. Joseph Barrera has one of those lowwage jobs. A 22-year-old son of Ecuadoran immigrants, he works at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Brooklyn, making $7.25 an hour while living rent-free in his uncle’s basement. Like many fast food workers, Joseph started as a cashier. After a time, he was promoted to shift supervisor, bringing him more responsibilities, but
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
not more money, as his managers never paid him the accompanying raise they had promised. As Saki writes, “Despite the American truism about hard work being the key to success, more and more working people are effectively trapped in poverty-wage jobs with few opportunities for advancement.” For Joseph, that truism came in many forms: from the encouragement of his parents and grandparents; from his bosses at KFC, who motivated him with the possibility that one day he might take over his own store; and from the company’s marketing department, with its promise of helping workers go from “finger lickin’ good to GREAT!” As Saki notes, companies frequently invoke the American Dream in their public relations rhetoric. And many of these companies are doing quite well — between 2007 and 2010, KFC’s profits rose by 45 percent. But the reality is that people like Joseph Barrera are not sharing in any of those profits. As Dorian Warren, a sociology professor at Columbia University who studies low-wage work, puts it, “People often talk about how we’re
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transitioning to a new economy. But we’re there already.” Elsewhere in the issue, since last week marked the launch of our newest international edition, The Huffington Post Japan, we’re featuring photos from our tour of the gardens, temples and shrines
People often talk about how we’re transitioning to a new economy. But we’re there already.” of Kyoto. Our stress-reduction coverage this week includes quotations from very productive people about the benefits of slowing down, and a delicious recipe that underscores the pleasures of slow cooking. And for Mother’s Day, we’re featuring John Montorio’s tribute to his mother, recounting a gift she gave him when he was 18 that set him on a lifetime of cultural exploration.
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JODI ARIAS VERDICT IS IN
Jodi Arias was found guilty this week of first-degree murder in the killing of her ex-boyfriend after a monthslong trial watched across the nation. The 32-year-old from California had testified that she killed Travis Alexander in 2008 in self-defense. She faces life in prison and possibly the death penalty. In an interview with a local Fox affiliate after her conviction was announced, Arias said that she would “much rather die sooner than later” and that “death is the ultimate freedom.” She was subsequently put on suicide watch.
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SEX ABUSE SCANDAL ROCKS AIR FORCE
Lt. Col Jeffrey, the Air Force’s chief of sexual assault prevention, was arrested for sexual assault and removed from his position pending an investigation. The arrest came two days before a Defense Department report revealed that about 70 sexual assaults involving military members took place every day in 2012.
BANGLADESH DEATH TOLL REACHES STAGGERING HEIGHTS The death toll topped 900 this week from the collapse of a building containing five garment factories in Bangladesh. More than 2,500 people have been rescued alive in the worst disaster ever to hit the garment sector. As the recovery operation continues, survivors protested to receive at least four months’ worth of salary — a government administrator said a deal had been reached. Authorities have agreed to a plan to improve working conditions for the country.
MIRACLE FOR CLEVELAND WOMEN
Three women from Cleveland who disappeared separately a decade ago were all found together this week, shocking relatives and friends. The women, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, appeared to be in good health, police said. In a frantic 911 call on Monday, Berry told a dispatcher, “I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m here. I’m free now.” Three men — one who owned the house where the women were found, and his two brothers — were arrested in the case. Knight had been missing since 2002, Berry since 2003, and DeJesus since 2004.
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TECHNOLOGY GONE TOO FAR?
A group advocating for DIY weapons has added a new element of controversy to the gun debate: It created the world’s first 3D printed gun, which fired its first shot on Sunday. “I recognise the tool might be used to harm other people — that’s what the tool is — it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not do it — or a reason not to put it out there,” Cody Wilson, the head of Defense Distributed, the company behind the gun, told the BBC. 3D printing is likely to become more common, with Staples expecting to offer the technology in stores next month.
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CHRIS CHRISTIE’S BIG SECRET THAT’S VIRAL RAPPER DIES AT 34
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie revealed this week that he secretly underwent gastric band surgery in February. Christie, who plans to run for a second term and whose name has been floated as a possible presidential candidate, said he underwent the surgery for his family, not in preparation for a 2016 White House run. “For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them,” he told the New York Post.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
AN NSFW, ONCEIN-A-LIFETIME PERFORMANCE
THE STRUGGLES OF MILLIONAIRE BANKERS
AND THEY’RE OFF!
GEORGE TAKEI STANDS UP FOR BOWTIES
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The Age Gap: Older Male Actors and Their Female Costars Older men dating younger women isn’t a cultural norm exclusive to film. A 2010 study by Dr. Michael Dunn of the University of Wales Institute found a “consistent cross-cultural preference by women for at least same-age or significantly older men.” The taboos associated with that “significantly older” swath, however, often vanish on the big screen, with no acknowledgement of the, say, 30 years between the lead actor and actress (looking at you, Jack Nicholson and Robin Wright). As we explored the disappearing careers of aging action stars for this issue (tap here for more on that), we found that the more things spiral downward in their box office bankability, the more they stay the same as far as the ages of their female leads are concerned: stagnating by and large in their 30s while the males push 60. We selected three older Hollywood actors in addition to our action stars to test
the theory out on a wider scale: Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Jack Nicholson. Arguably the least conventionally attractive actor on the list — Nicholson — has maintained leading ladies with one of the lowest average ages you’ll see ahead — 35.5 — considering Nicholson’s own age in his last starring role as a romantic lead: 66. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s co-starring actresses over the years have a lower average age combined than Schwarzenegger was when he broke out in the industry: 29 to his 35. The more conventionally attractive actors — Clooney and Cruise — started out at young ages, 23 and 21, respectively, and have seen a reverse trend. Cruise’s female leads out-aged him ... until he grew old enough to rent a car. Clooney is perhaps the only outlier here. Early in his career, he was paired with much older leading ladies — until he hit the ripe age of 40. — Gazelle Emami
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REALITY TV IS NOT DONE RIDICULING RURAL AMERICANS TV’S “JERSEY SHORE in Appalachia” reality series Buckwild had a very brief and very unhappy lifecycle. It launched amid censure from critics and lawmakers, over its largely cheap depiction of kids from rural West Virginia
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communities. It concluded ignominiously, with one cast member arrested on drug charges, and another dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, the results of a tragic accident unrelated to the filming of the show. One week after that cast member, Shain Gandee, died, MTV opted to cancel Buckwild. Since this crass experiment in rural poverty voyeurism ran badly
The cast of MTV’s Buckwild, with Shain Gandee at the far left.
Enter off the rails, one would imagine there wouldn’t be a rush to recreate it. Well, one might be wrong. A memo obtained by The Huffington Post — authored by Katie Zwick of the Creative Artists Agency, delineating “network needs” to their client production companies — indicates there is still a strong interest in a Buckwild redux. More specifically, the memo describes a “BUCKWILD replacement i.e. a show set in the south with loud, unpolished, young kids” — among other ideas. The CAA memo reads as follows: From: “Zwick, Katie” [EMAIL REDACTED] Date: April 26, 2013, 8:06:22 PM EDT Cc: “Zwick, Katie” [EMAIL REDACTED] Subject: Network Needs as of 4/26/13 CAA ALTERNATIVE TELEVISION Disclaimer: The information contained in this email is constantly changing. The network needs listed come from numerous sources and are as current as of the publication of this email. The email is for the benefit of CAA and its clients. Please do not forward it or share it with anyone. Please note that Network Needs come out as often as we get the information which is not necessarily daily.
LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
MTV - Below is a list of categories that MTV currently feels like they are missing in their current programming: 1) A Latin American family docu i.e. The Latin version of RUN’S HOUSE. 2) A BUCKWILD replacement i.e. a show set in the south with loud, unpolished, young kids. 3) A big, loud competition show whether it is a music competition or social experiment. 4) A docuseries about an African American choir. Whether or not MTV actually “feels like they are missing” these concepts “in their current programming” is an open question. The network has disavowed this memo completely. In a statement, a spokesman told The Huffington Post, “This memo did not come from MTV and does not include accurate information.” Multiple attempts were made via email and phone to contact CAA for comment. All have gone unreturned. Dee Davis, the founder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies, still finds the memo “disappointing.” Back in 2003, Davis’s
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Enter organization mounted a successful campaign to halt CBS’s production of The Real Beverly Hillbillies, in which a poor rural family would be relocated to Hollywood, with cameras recording the resulting culture clash for cheap laughs. “Every community has aberrant people, easy-to-exploit exceptions for reality television producers looking to put reckless behavior on display,” said Davis. “All of the producers of these shows say that they are trying to augur some authenticity, but in the end, they end up using their subjects for ridicule.” “There are certain people who they feel they have permission to ridicule,” Davis added, and the rural poor are one such group. Davis echoes one of Buckwild original critics, University of Kentucky philosophy professor Alexandra Bradner, who wrote about the show for Salon back in January: MTV would have us believe that the kids of Buckwild are free and creative in ways that alienated, urban kids with cellphones will never be. But there are deeper reasons why Grandee says: “I don’t have no phone. I don’t have a Facebook. I don’t have none of that Inter-
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net stuff.” If we were to interrogate those reasons, we would have to care about him and help him. And that’s no fun. The non-Appalachian viewing audience needs this manufactured other, in order to see itself as sophisticated and cosmopolitan — as better. Bradley and her more urban peers seem to need their “country boys” in
There are responsible ways to document the reality of rural life without having to sacrifice the dignity of the larger community.” this way as well. Without the foil, we would have to face our own poverties, our own barbarism, our own shelteredness, our own actual lack of sophistication. There are responsible ways to document the reality of rural life without having to sacrifice the dignity of the larger community. Back when we first took up the issue of Buckwild, Huffington Post politics editor Paige Lavender
Enter — who is both a native West Virginian and a graduate of West Virginia University — recommended that people instead seek out and support Hollow, a documentary project centering on the residents of the state’s McDowell County. As Hollow story director Jason Headley says: Most of the thoughts and opinions of our state are formed by outside forces looking in. A project like this gives us the opportunity to do the exact opposite. To let people see West Virginia from the perspective of the people who live here. We can show the good and the bad. And the surprising thing for most people will probably be that the good is awfully good. And that the bad is much more real and nuanced than the cliches and stereotypes. This seems more in keeping with the way Davis would prefer residents of poor rural communities are depicted on screen. “I don’t want to pretend that we’re so precious and noble,” he said. “The reality is that there’s a lot of things that these communities are dealing with that are not
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pretty. But when they make these people an open target for ridicule and derision, it sends the message that they aren’t like you and me, they aren’t a part of ‘our culture.’” And that, Davis says, puts a layer of distance between those within these communities and those who
All of the producers of these shows say that they are trying to augur some authenticity, but in the end, they end up using their subjects for ridicule.” live outside, which, in turn, makes the very real struggles of rural America seem unimportant. “Reality television,” Davis said, “should come with a higher threshold of responsibility.” His reaction to the proposal delineated in the CAA memo? “I hope they don’t do it.” Seconded. But I am nothing if not charitable, and since this strain of reality television seems to do nothing but latch onto someone else’s original idea to make a cheapened version of it, might I suggest something like The Real Locavore Hipsters Of Portlandia?
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Tyler Perry Responds to His Haters
“I look for the truth in the critique, I honestly do ... but if it’s vitriolic, venomous, I don’t pay attention to it. But for me, it’s very difficult because I have to hear the balance, right? ... Why even pay attention to that when it’s the people that are moved and keep coming to see the films?”
Above: Perry speaks onstage at Spike TV’s Eddie Murphy: One Night Only in 2003. Below: Perry and writer/director Tina Gordon Chism on the set of his new film, Peeples.
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The Week That Was
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Louisville, Kentucky 5.04.2013 Desirae Masterson, from Indianapolis, Ind., shares a mint julep with her husband Ray before the running of the 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, her hat covered in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain. Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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JOHN MONTORIO
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A Mother’s Gift: Stoppard, Shakespeare and a Cultural Awakening
MY MOTHER NEVER went to the opera or attended the ballet. She never read Shakespeare or listened to Chopin. Her theater experience was limited to once-a-year outings at second-rate dinner theaters in New
Jersey where has-been TV stars and C-list actors tried their best to resurrect Neil Simon, and their careers, for a night or two. But my mother had dreams, and there was poetry in her. And she had an intriguing beauty, with chestnut hair and one blue eye and one green. When I was very young, I asked her about her eyes. She
Voices smiled and told me it gave her the ability to see the truth. I believed her. She had a way with words, too, and reading the diary I asked her to keep in the last six months of her life was all the proof I needed that, in another time, another place, she would’ve been a novelist. Or a poet. Or perhaps an editor as her son would become many years later. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when, on my 18th birthday, she introduced me to culture. Culture came in a plain white envelope that contained two tickets to a Broadway show along with a simple note in her looping script that said, “I know you’ll enjoy this. Love, mom.” The show was Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, hardly a likely choice for the wife of a bricklayer and daughter of an immigrant day-laborer, who worked as a secretary at a car dealership. It was an unexpected gift on many levels. What had prompted my mother to present me with theater tickets in the first place? I had not yet shown any particular passion for the arts and none for the theater. My idea of culture at the time consisted largely of going to see Doctor Zhivago twice (mostly for Julie
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Christie) and never missing an episode of The Twilight Zone. When it came to aesthetic refinement, I was, as they say, a late bloomer. And then, of course, I have to wonder even now, why was she inspired to choose this chilling and funny play about death? That year, as I look back, there were other
My mother had dreams, and there was poetry in her. And she had an intriguing beauty, with chestnut hair and one blue eye and one green.” more fanciful options on Broadway — Annie Get Your Gun, I Do! I Do! and Cabaret were all playing to packed houses. Why didn’t she pick one of those musicals? On the night of the performance, I put on the one corduroy sports coat and solid tie I owned and took a bus into the city with the girl I’d taken to the senior prom only a few months earlier. She wore a red dress and heels and smelled of White Shoulders Powder. We settled into our mezzanine seats only minutes before the lights went down. The week before, I had
Voices read Hamlet and a summary of Mr. Stoppard’s play, so I understood the gist of things: this was a re-imagining of the great Shakespearean tragedy, but not as seen through the eyes of Hamlet. Rather, we watch the action unfold from the bewildered perspective of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two insignificant and foolish functionaries in the original drama. In Hamlet, these two have no lives of their own. In Mr. Stoppard’s rendering, they are the lead players. Well before the curtain came down, I was mesmerized and helplessly in love. Not with the young woman who accompanied me, but with the art of the theater. It was electric — the audience, the actors, the music and, most of all, the power of Mr. Stoppard’s words to transport me and create an exquisite and temporary moment in another time. The next day, I told my mother about all these feelings. I know it gave her happiness. Or maybe it was satisfaction that she expressed. She never told me why she chose that play, except to say, “I thought it was the perfect gift for you.” Since that night I’ve read many reviews of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and I know as a teenager
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I missed a lot of its deeper meanings about identity and alienation and self awareness (though I’m sure that’s not the kind of understanding my mother hoped I’d gain). And since that night I’ve enjoyed many plays in many cities, and I have been to the ballet and to the opera and I have listened to Chopin.
Reading the diary I asked her to keep in the last six months of her life was all the proof I needed that, in another time, another place, she would’ve been a novelist. Or a poet.” But nothing can compare to that night, now long ago and far away, when I sat in the audience at the Alvin Theatre and was first struck by the notion that there was a magical world out there just beyond the small horizons and modest ambitions of my blue-collar neighborhood. And I could reach those worlds if I only tried. So thanks, ma. John Montorio is the editor of Huffington and the executive features editor of The Huffington Post.
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EDUCATION
This Will Make You Appreciate Your Elementary School Teacher TEACHERS DON’T make a lot of money. They are usually not deemed worthy of news coverage unless there is a scandal or a strike. Most of the time, their ma-
jor accomplishments are shared only with colleagues and family members and not the media. The celebration is often cut short by some catastrophe the next day. Yet, in spite of the highs and lows, I cannot think of another profession that brings both joy and chal-
Rita F. Pierson discusses teachers in her 2013 TEDTalk.
Voices lenge on a daily basis. In the spring of my career, I found myself questioning the choice of my life’s work. The students did not appear to be motivated, the paperwork was overwhelming and the constant change of educational direction was discouraging. But, I just could not seem bring myself to do anything else. “Next year,” I would say. “Next year I will switch jobs, make more money and have far less stress.” Next year just never came. I am now in year 40. And while I am no longer in the classroom or at the schoolhouse, I remain an educator. It finally dawned on me that there was no other profession that would let me change children’s minds and have an impact on their future, long after the school day and school year were over. For every student that finally “got it,” for every rookie teacher that said, “you inspired me to stay,” I get the raise that never quite made it to my paycheck. I was on a plane recently and the flight attendant asked my name. When I told him, he said, “I knew that was you! You taught at my elementary school. You made me take my cap off in the building
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Unless there is a connection between teacher, student and lesson, learning becomes tiresome to all involved.” and told me I was handsome.” He then paused and said: “I think I kept my hat on until you saw me, just so I could get that compliment. Thank you for making me feel special.” I don’t think he realized how special he made me feel that day. There have been so many former students over the years who have made me realize the sustaining power of relationships. I most certainly realize the extreme importance of being a competent teacher. Unfortunately, far too many in our ranks are unqualified and poorly trained. Many are working tirelessly to rectify that. But while we ad-
TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful “idea worth spreading” every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new op-eds, thoughts and responses from the HuffPost community. Watch the talk above, read the blog post and tell us your thoughts below. Become part of the conversation!
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dress what we teach and when we teach it, we must not forget to include how we deliver those lessons. Unless there is a connection between teacher, student and lesson, learning becomes tiresome to all involved. Veteran educator, James Comer, states that, “No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship.” Yet, the value of relationships is often downplayed or ignored completely in teacher preparation programs. Even more disturbing is the lack of useable information on the relationship building process. There is the belief among some that
camaraderie between teachers and students leads to unprofessional familiarity or places the teacher in a weakened position in the classroom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Strong relationships encourage learner exploration, dialogue, confidence, and mutual respect. I made it my business to know everything I could about my students. Where they lived and with whom, how often they changed schools, how many siblings they had, whether or not they lived in a house or an apartment, whether there was trauma or drama in the household. I went on home visits and shopped in the neighborhood stores so I could be certain to run into my students and the
“I want to look into your eyes when the answer finally dawns on you,” Pierson writes of her old-school teaching style.
folk they lived with. (Some of my best parent conferences were held in the produce isle at the grocery store). Many may consider my actions extreme. I called it “preparation for what might lie ahead.” Teaching and learning is often hindered by the details not found in school records. There is an African proverb that states: “The best time to make a friend is when you don’t need one.” I was being proactive. It is advice I always give to others. The more you know about a person, the easier it is to develop an alliance (if that is your intention). Positive, healthy relationships rely on clear communication. Without it, misunderstandings occur and intentions are misinterpreted. I wanted an open pathway to learning, so I was open to their questions, as well. We have now entered an age where nothing is private and secrets are hard to keep. Your
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RITA F. PIERSON
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TEACHING IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT
For every student that finally ‘got it,’ for every rookie teacher that said, ‘you inspired me to stay,’ I get the raise that never quite made it to my paycheck.” “friends” are counted by simply clicking a button. Face to face interactions are seen by many as unnecessary and time-consuming. Of course, we can do just about anything online, including teaching and learning. But I guess I am just old school. I want to look into your eyes when the answer finally dawns on you. I want to hear that inflection in your voice when you are angry with me. I want to see the smile on your face when you forgive me. I want to share in the joy when we both realize that we make a good team. Rita F. Pierson is is an educational trainer and consultant.
A selection of the week’s related blogs HEADLINES TO VIEW BLOGS ABOUT THIS WEEK’S THEME
MY FIRST TEACHER-COACH
SECURE STUDENTS’ HEARTS
IN PRAISE OF NON-TRADITIONAL TEACHERS
QUOTED
Voices
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“ We will do it. A family is a family,”
—Ruslan Tsarni
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: IDA MAE ASTUTE/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES; ALLISON SHELLEY/ GETTY IMAGES; RANDI805/FLICKR; KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IAMGES
“ I’d like to be reconsidered as a person.”
told the AP about claiming the dead body of his nephew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, now that his wife has agreed to release it
—Amanda Knox
to Diane Sawyer, in an exclusive interview
“ I’m afraid there were a few ‘thespian’ words used.” —Helen Mirren
to The Telegraph, on yelling at a group of drummers who disrupted her play
“ Now who wouldn’t love a Rastafarian Banana in the face of adversity?”
—HuffPost Commenter El_Trife,
on Henry Gribbohm losing his life savings at a carnival game, and winning a stuffed banana with dreadlocks
Voices
QUOTED
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“ These results in many ways are the worst of all possible worlds.” —Climatologist
Peter Gleick,
CLOCLWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RAY TAMARRA/GETTY IMAGES; SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES; DONALD ERICKSON/ GETTY IMAGES
on the latest results of a NASA study on our changing climate
I played a lawyer in a movie so many times I think I am a lawyer. And clearly I’m not a lawyer, because I got arrested.
—Reese Witherspoon,
speaking out on Good Morning America about her recent arrest
“ After 50 what is the point of living if you can’t eat bacon?”
—HuffPost commenter matchles,
on “5 Foods You Shouldn’t Eat If You Are Post50”
“ Reading a lot of the snarky comments here, one thing becomes very clear — some people are simply incapable of being happy about ANYTHING.”
—HuffPost commenter WHTrout,
on “One World Trade Center Spire’s Final Sections Lifted To Roof”
DAVID FLUMENBAUM
05.12.13 #48 FEATURES
THE GREASE TRAP LETTER FROM JAPAN
THE GREASE By SAKI KNAFO
THE GREASE TRAP
HUFFINGTON 05.12.13
KFC worker Joseph Barrera, 22, poses in front of one of the restaurants in Queens, N.Y.
PREVIOUS PAGE: AP PHOTO
Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Working Poor The Kentucky Fried Chicken where Joseph Barrera works stands at a busy intersection in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up, down the street from some auto body shops, a few rice-and-beans joints and a White Castle. Until the day Barrera found himself mopping up the grease that had spewed all over the store’s basement, he was confident that his $7.25-an-hour job represented the beginning of a career that would lead him out of the neighborhood and into a middle-class life. PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON DAHLEN
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He believed KFC’s website, which claimed that the company helped workers go from “finger lickin’ good to GREAT!” He believed his manager and boss, who assured him that if things went well, he’d get a promotion and a raise and would eventually earn an opportunity to take over his own store. And he believed his father and mother and grandmother and uncle and everyone else who had ever told him that if he worked hard and saved money, he’d get ahead. Then came the explosion of the grease trap, a machine that separates grease from the drainage that flows into the sewers. Grease splattered all over the basement floor and walls; a manager asked Barrera to clean up the mess. Barrera agreed, figuring that he’d prove himself worthy of a raise. The company had recently promoted him to shift supervisor, adding to his responsibilities. But Barrera was still waiting for the extra pay
“ He offered $7.25. I saw a look on his face, like, if I kept asking for $9, there wasn’t going to be a job for me.”
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that was supposed to come with the new title. He spent two days scrubbing down the basement with ammonia and bleach, determined to show his boss that he deserved more what he was making. But the raise never came. Barrera is a wiry, restless 22-year-old who belongs to the fastest-growing cohort of American workers — people who go to work every day but earn so little that the government classifies them as poor. His experience at KFC underscores a reality faced by tens of millions of Americans: Despite the American truism about hard work being the key to success, more and more working people are effectively trapped in poverty-wage jobs with few opportunities for advancement. “People often talk about how we’re transitioning to a new economy,” said Dorian Warren, a professor of sociology at Columbia University who studies low-wage work. “But we’re there already. And it’s a very different type of economy than what we had in the immediate post-war period, when there were middle-class jobs, there were job ladders that people could move up within a company or an industry. Those days are over.” By the government’s definition, a married person with two kids who lives on $23,283 a year
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or less is poor. By that standard, someone who works full time but earns no more than $10.60 an hour can be considered working poor, a classification that describes about a quarter of the U.S. population. The working poor cook burgers, deliver pizzas, fold shirts, help people pick out shoes, cut grass, answer phones, move boxes in warehouses, organize items on shelves and take care of children and the elderly. Contrary to the outdated image of the neighborhood kid hustling for “pin money” at the local McDonald’s, low-wage workers are mostly adults, not teenagers. Few receive health insurance or other employee benefits, and the government often subsidizes their wages, providing them with food stamps and other entitlements. During the course of the downturn now known as the Great Recession, which saw the official unemployment rate peak at 10 percent, the economy lost more than 8 million jobs. Sixty percent of those jobs paid between about $14 and $21, according to the National Employment Law Project. In the 46 months since the official end of the recession, the economy has added more than 4.6 mil-
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lion jobs, while the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.6 percent. But as of last summer, around 60 percent of those new jobs paid about $14 per hour or less. In other words, since the recession officially ended, lower-wage jobs have grown nearly three times faster than jobs that pay more. While more and more Americans try to get by on these wages, many of the major employers of low-wage workers are reaping big profits. Between 2007 and 2011, the corporation that owns KFC saw its profits rise by 45 percent. McDonald’s had an even better run, posting a 130 percent profit surge in the same period. For decades, many of these corporations have justified their wages by portraying their job offerings as stepping stones to the middle class. But labor economists and other scholars have often questioned the validity of that premise, and some argue that it’s more hollow now than ever. In recent months, the plight of low-wage workers has prompted calls for reform from a number of prominent economists and political leaders, including the president. In his State of the Union speech in February, President Barack Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.
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“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty,” he said. Political opponents and some business leaders protested that businesses would have to lay off workers in order to absorb the higher labor costs. At the same time, some liberals raised concerns that the president’s proposal didn’t go far enough, suggesting that workers would need at least $15 an hour to escape poverty. For Barrera, escaping poverty would mean moving out of the windowless room in his uncle’s
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basement, where he’s been living free of charge for nearly a year. “Look at that,” he said one recent day as he showed a reporter around the space, flicking his hand in embarrassment at a threadbare Scarface pillowcase. “I’ve had that since I was in high school.” He pointed to the South American blanket on his bed. “Lama hair is the warmest,” he explained. Barrera’s parents are Ecuadoran immigrants, and there were nights in the unheated basement when he felt very grateful for the traditional wisdom of the Andes. The room smelled of mold and dampness. There were no closets and no television. Barrera sold his TV to a friend. He said he rarely
Barrera holds up a picture of his grandparents he keeps in his room at his uncle’s house in Queens.
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goes out and hasn’t been on a date in a long time. He held up his iPhone. “This is my only form of entertainment,” he said, explaining that his grandmother bought it for him using funds she saved as the owner of a roadside restaurant in Ecuador. “It’s embarrassing to say she takes care of me,” he said, his voice rising. “It should be the other way around. It makes me feel like I’m not a man.”
‘JUST TO BE AHEAD’
Barrera grew up poor, but for a brief time in his childhood, his family seemed to have a shot at joining the middle class. In the late ‘90s, his father, one of 12 children, managed to rise to a managerial position at a Brooklyn supermarket. He saved enough money to put down a mortgage on a home. A few years later, Barrera tested into Brooklyn Tech, one of the best public schools in New York. Barrera loved computers, cars
By the government’s definition, a married person with two kids who lives on $23,283 a year or less is poor.
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and sophisticated machines of all kinds. He hoped to become a hightech mechanic or an engineer. But then his father fell behind on his mortgage payments and bought a laundromat in a gamble to keep the family afloat. The business folded after a few months. At the time, Barrera was working after school at a high-end catering place for “decent money.” His parents were fighting over bills, so he got a second catering job to help his mom keep the lights on. “Little by little I stopped going to school,” he said. By 17 he was working full time, hoping to move into his own apartment. For a while he juggled three jobs, including the night shift at a valet agency on Long Island. He drove rich kids’ cars — Porsches, BMWs, Lamborghinis. “I got a glimpse of a lifestyle that I could never reach,” he said. Still, on good nights he could clear $100 in tips. He put down a $3,000 payment on his own Mitsubishi Lancer GTS with 18-inch rims, power steering, and antilock brakes. That summer, after late shifts at a steakhouse, he’d relieve his stress by blowing past the other cars on the Long Island Expressway. Occasionally another young driver would pull alongside him and give him a stare, and Barrera
AP PHOTO/ROB CARR
“Get out there and work for those dreams. For that’s the only way you can achieve success,” says “Colonel” Harland Sanders in a promotional video on the KFC website.
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would flash his hand at the road to signal that he wanted to race. Then he’d blast the horn three times and tear off into the night. There was no finish line. “The point was just to be ahead,” he said. Barrera took pride in the fact that he never lost control of the wheel while causing at least two of his challengers to crash. But his aggressiveness got him in trouble with the cops, and he eventually lost the valet job because he couldn’t pay off the fines on his license. For months after that, he wondered whether he’d blown the best chance he’d ever have to pull himself out of poverty. Despite his family’s good years in the ‘90s, he didn’t know anyone who’d recovered after falling into a life of “poverty and depression.” He spent most of his time on his laptop, surfing the Internet and reading about the stock market. He did odd jobs as a janitor and an
“ It’s embarrassing to say she takes care of me. It should be the other way around. It makes me feel like I’m not a man.”
HUFFINGTON 05.12.13
off-the-books car mechanic. After about two years of this, his mother kicked him out of the house. He moved into the windowless room in his uncle’s basement and applied for work at the KFC. Barrera informed the manager that he’d worked at fast-food restaurants before and felt he deserved $9 an hour based on his experience. “He offered $7.25,” Barrera recalled. “ I saw a look on his face, like, if I kept asking for $9, there wasn’t going to be a job for me.” He took his place behind the counter the following week. Barrera worked hard and was quick on his feet, and after just three months his boss promoted him to shift supervisor. Barrera spent $114 of his own money on a food preparation certificate that made him eligible for the expanded role. In addition to working the cash register, he was now responsible for preparing pot pies and biscuits, baking cookies, and changing the syrup in the soda machine. He also answered the phone, handled transactions for Spanish-speaking customers, unpacked boxes, arranged food in the freezer and on the shelves, closed the store three or four nights a week and checked that the money in the registers matched up with the receipts. His managers encouraged him to
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discipline disgruntled workers by threatening to cut their hours, so at one point Barrera sent home an uncooperative friend without pay. “I felt myself turning into one of them,” he said. He didn’t like that feeling, but he still believed that if he followed the path his boss had laid out for him, he’d work his way up to a salaried position as a manager.
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Companies that pay low wages often try to entice workers by encouraging them to look past the immediate moment and toward the possibility of advancement. Walmart’s website declares that a job at the company “opens the door to a better life” and “the chance to grow and build a career.” McDonald’s courts online job seekers with tales of “superstars” who climbed the company ladder. Many companies explicitly invoke the American dream in
One of Barrera’s KFC supervisor shirts hangs over a bed frame at his uncle’s house.
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their public relations rhetoric. The National Restaurant Association, which last year spent more than $1 million on campaign contributions and $2.7 million on lobbying, deploys the phrase as a matter of course in the pro-forma statement it sends to reporters who inquire about wages: “In addition to providing more than 13 million job opportunities, the industry also gives individuals the chance to achieve the American dream, with 80 percent of owners and managers having started their careers in entry-level positions.” The twin expectations that hard work will lead to success and that each generation will do better than the last are practically enshrined in the Constitution — and they’re personified by the unlikely figure whose portraits hang on the walls of thousands of KFC
“ My dad struggled, my mom struggled, my grandma struggled, and now I’m struggling. It’s rigged that way. It’s rigged that way to keep you down.”
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franchises around the world. Although “Colonel” Harland Sanders eventually turned himself into a popular symbol of prosperity by appropriating the white suit and black string tie of an antebellum aristocrat, the fast-food magnate grew up in a shack in rural Kentucky and dropped out of school when he was 12. Like Barrera, he had problems at home and escaped them by moving in with an uncle. Like Barrera’s Ecuadoran grandmother, he opened a roadside restaurant. Sanders had some good years as a restaurant owner, but his big break didn’t come until the age of 65 when he began franchising his brand and recipes to other owners, a novel concept in the restaurant industry at the time. The strategy made him a millionaire. On KFC’s career website, a short promotional video shows Sanders gazing at a beautiful sunset. “We all have to have dreams,” he says in a folksy rumble. But that’s not enough, he adds. You have to “get out there and work for those dreams. For that’s the only way you can achieve success.” Today, KFC belongs to the Yum! Brands corporation, which also owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. It is led by David Novak, an effusive veteran of the advertising world whose career highlights include helping in-
AP PHOTO/BOB STRONG
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vent Cool Ranch Doritos and opening thousands of KFC outlets across China. According to Forbes, Novak received a salary of nearly $1.5 million in 2011. He also earned some $19 million in stock awards and other forms of compensation, making him one of the country’s bestcompensated executives. Novak attributes his success not only to his hard work, but
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also to his long-standing belief in the importance of recognizing the contributions of everyone on the payroll, from fellow executives to cashiers and janitors. In his memoir, he tells of getting stiffed on a tip while working at the desk of a Holiday Inn in his youth. “I’ll remember until the day I die how bad that made me feel,” he writes. “It was probably my first realization about why rewarding people for a job well done is so important.”
Yum! Brands Corporation CEO David Novak at the floor of the N.Y. Stock Exchange in 1997.
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The public relations department at KFC turned down a request for an interview with Novak. In a brief email, Rick Maynard, a spokesman for the company, said, “We are proud that the franchise system of KFC restaurants provides employment and opportunities for career advancement to thousands of workers in the New York City area.” After three months as a shift supervisor, Barrera wasn’t buying the career advancement story anymore. Despite his increased responsibilities, he still hadn’t received the raise his boss had promised. And whenever he brought it up with management, they just told him to be patient, he says. In February, Barrera handed the key to his manager and said he wanted to return to a less stressful job at the cash register. He says the manager called him selfish and insisted that moving ahead takes time. “That’s how it works in the fastfood industry,” Barrera said. “You have to just wait your turn. But that turn may never come.”
WALKING OUT
The myth of American opportunity has never quite measured up to
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the reality, but some economists say it’s harder for poor Americans to get ahead now than at any other time since World War II. “Since about the mid- to late1970s, what economic growth we’ve had has not been broadly shared,” said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “People with lots of education have done well, people at the very top of the income distribution range have done extraordinarily well, people in the middle have basically treaded water, and people at the bottom have seen their real wages — inflationcorrected wages — fall. And then came the recession in 2008 and things got much worse.” Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a labor attorney at the National Employment Law Project in New York, acknowledged that the restaurant industry is “probably telling the truth” about most managers starting out in the kitchen or behind the cash register. The problem, she said, is that nearly all restaurant workers do non-managerial “front-line” jobs like cooking and serving. “Yes, there’s opportunity for advancement,” she said. “But there are only so many managers.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2020, the number of food preparation jobs at fast-
Barrera stands at the stop near his uncle’s home where he catches the bus that takes him to his job at a KFC in Brooklyn.
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food places and other establishments will have increased by 14 percent. Other low-wage occupations are expected to grow by as much as 70 percent. As more and more people from places like Barrera’s Brooklyn neighborhood fall into those kinds of jobs, it will likely become harder for working people to lift their families out of poverty. As Sawhill puts it: “When the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder.” Over the last few years, a growing number of workers and activists have been trying to raise the lowest rungs. Last fall, on Black Friday, hundreds of Walmart workers walked out of their stores, demanding decent wages and better treatment. In New York City, 200 fast-food workers from 30 restaurants walked out in solidarity, and on April 4, more than 400 fast-food employees participated in a second strike, prompting organizers to boast of breaking a fast-food record and inspiring
“ When the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder.”
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hundreds of fast-food and retail workers in Chicago to follow suit. In the past, labor leaders have had trouble organizing low-wage workers, in part because those jobs mostly attracted two types of employees: high school kids who didn’t expect to stick around long enough to enjoy the fruits of victory, and down-and-out folks who weren’t necessarily up to the challenge of a fight. Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said labor leaders could draw some hope from the changes the longshore industry has seen since the early part of the 20th century. “People who did longshore work used to be the scum of the earth by definition,” he says. “Longshoremen used to be drunkards and pickpockets.” That began to change during the Depression, when out-ofwork farm laborers began joining the “drunkards and pickpockets” on the docks and demanding a greater share of the profits they helped produce. As their pay improved, the industry attracted even better workers, who in turn demanded better wages and eventually earned enough to send their kids to college. Longshoremen can now make $100,000 a year. Labor organizers today hope that the
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fast-food and retail industries will follow a similar trajectory. In January, an organizer with New York Communities for Change, the main group behind the April fast-food strike in New York, walked into Barrera’s KFC and asked if he wanted to join a campaign for a $15 hourly wage. At first Barrera was skeptical. “I said you shouldn’t sell people a dream that they can’t catch,” he recalls. But he gave the organizer his phone number and over the following weeks they spoke every few days. Through his conversations with that organizer and others, he began to connect the dots between his personal struggles and the larger theme of economic injustice. “When I look at my family, it’s like a vision of struggle,” he said one recent afternoon. “My dad struggled, my mom struggled, my grandma struggled, and now I’m struggling. It’s rigged that way. It’s rigged that way to keep you down.” A few weeks ago, Barrera came to work to learn that his boss had cut his hours from about 40 to
“ You just have you wait your turn, but that turn may never come.”
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30 a week. The funds in his pocket dwindled first to $20, then to $10. He began arriving to work early and leaving late, so that he could sneak meals behind the manager’s back. At one point, a cousin called and asked for help with his transmission; Barrera fixed it for $20 and a couple of bowls of soup. He still hopes to become a mechanic, but until the state reauthorizes his driver’s license, he’s unlikely to find a decent-paying job at a dealership. On the morning of April 4, Barrera was one of five workers who walked out of his restaurant, leaving a newly hired cook and two managers to try to fill the void on their own. That same day, he appeared on a cable news show to talk about the campaign. In the course of the interview, he learned for the first time that most new jobs in America pay low wages. “I didn’t realize that,” he said a few days later. “If workers get a little more educated about what’s going on, that would cause outrage. It’s not that people don’t want to fight. It’s that maybe they don’t think anything better is even out there. They think fast food is a low job that isn’t meant to be a career, and that may have been true a decade ago. But it’s different now. That may be the only career people can get.”
Letter From Japan By looking to their oldest customs, the Japanese can make it through a very modern crisis.
By ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
Arianna gets a chopstick lesson at the Kappo Sakatmoto restaurant in Kyoto.
Tokyo —
Konnichiwa! Greetings from Japan, where I’ve been for nearly a week leading up to Tuesday’s launch of our latest international edition, HuffPost Japan. Japan is an amazing place — almost overwhelming in how singular and beautiful it is. And we are fortunate to be launching HuffPost here at a remarkable time. This is a time of big transitions. Japan’s spirit is being tested by the same recession and financial crisis afflicting all industrialized nations. But some of the solutions to these new and unprecedented difficulties might well turn out to be found in the most ancient Japanese traditions. Some here are finding that, to go forward, they must go inward.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID FLUMENBAUM
LETTER FROM JAPAN
Every country hit by the global financial crisis is going through it in different ways — or, to borrow from Tolstoy, every unhappy country is unhappy in its own way. Japan spent much of 2012 in recession before a small uptick of .2 percent growth for the fourth quarter. The country has a much lower unemployment rate than we do — 4.1 percent — but that obscures other problems, like falling wages, deflation and low growth. Also, according to the World Economic Forum, Japan ranks 101st in the “gender gap index” — women constitute only 12 percent of new hires in career-track jobs. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. There’s a widespread sense that Japan’s idea of itself as a country on the cutting edge of technology is slowly becoming outdated. Japanese tech giants are having a hard time keeping up in a globally competitive environment. And a report in the Tokyo Times concludes that Japanese tech firms are no longer as desirable a destination as they once were to the top ranks of young talent. Japan’s identity crisis is falling most heavily on those who must carry that identity forward — the young. The lack of opportunity and
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mobility available to young people has become so entrenched that they’re now referred to as the “Lost Generation.” Many of the young people I’ve spoken to this week blame the long work hours and the uphill battle for advancement for their decision to have no children, or no more than one. In an astounding survey among 20-yearolds, more than 55 percent of men
To borrow from Tolstoy, every unhappy country is unhappy in its own way. preferred that their wives stay home (among women, 44 percent want to stay home). The anxiety, uncertainty and even despair have manifested themselves in the country’s suicide rate, which, since 2007, has risen by 250 percent for those around age 20. Of course, this bleakness isn’t confined to the young; Japan overall has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, with more than 27,000 suicides in 2012 — the first year in 15 years where fewer than 30,000 people killed themselves.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
Paradoxically, there are answers to be found to all these very modern stresses in the most ancient Japanese traditions. Japan is a place that puts great emphasis on balance and harmony, and the tools to help the Japanese find a new harmony and equilibrium in these very unharmonious times are all around them. There are shrines and temples and gardens everywhere. It is common to see monks meditating and even to join them in meditation (which I did at 8 a.m. on Sunday at the Nanzenji temple in Kyoto). And even an ordinary meal can have an extraordinary power to it, with each place setting positioned in a certain way, each course presented with ceremonial beauty. Life Artistry — cultivating the ability to allow ourselves to be moved by small things — is at the heart of Zen. Most fascinating is how some of these ancient traditions are being tailored to directly confront the new challenges the country is facing. In 2011, a Buddhist temple in the Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture, began a program using Zen meditation, cold-water ablutions and other traditional ceremonial practices, along with lectures, to help young people looking for jobs.
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“ In finding fulfillment in expressing what’s on your mind for the moment, Twitter is like haiku. It is so Japanese.” More accurately, it’s not just about finding a job, but finding the right job — and to do that, a person has to truly know who they are. “Many young people try to get jobs at major companies because of the companies’ brand and status,” said chief priest Zenkai Imoto. “Our practice should provide opportunities for young people to find what it is they really want to do.”
LETTER FROM JAPAN
As the Japan Times reported recently, the practice has caught on. “An increasing number of jobseeking students get into a state of depression and commit suicide, so I thought something must be done,” said Shudo Abe, one of a group of Zen priests from the Soto sect who have been organizing similar sessions. According to the National Police Agency, in 2011, 150 people under 30 committed suicide for reasons specifically related to job rejections, which is over two times the number from 2007. Then there’s the Japanese tea ceremony, the heavily-choreographed, nearly 1,000-yearold ritual: “Preparing tea in this ceremony means pouring all one’s attention into the predefined movements. The whole process is not about drinking tea, but is about aesthetics, preparing a bowl of tea from one’s heart.” The essence of the Japanese aesthetic is Ma — space, the pure and essential void between “things,” the emptiness full of possibilities, promise waiting to be fulfilled. And then, of course, there’s haiku: “The water is deep / In the ocean; Drought in the land.” No wonder the Japanese have taken to Twitter much more than
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they have taken to other social media platforms like Facebook. They are already used to conveying complexity and nuance in a few words. “In finding fulfillment in expressing what’s on your mind for the moment, Twitter is like haiku,” says Rocky Eda of Digital Garage, which works with Twitter
There’s a widespread sense that Japan’s idea of itself as a country on the cutting edge of technology is slowly becoming outdated. in Japan. “It is so Japanese.” Like the U.S., Japan is facing huge challenges. But by taking old traditions and adapting them to solve new problems, and taking new innovations and applying a uniquely Japanese twist to them, by going both forward and backward, both outward and inward — juxtapositions that in Japan don’t have to be contradictions — the people of Japan are poised find a new and vibrant balance for the 21st century. Or, as Takahama Kyoshi wrote: “A paulownia leaf / Is falling down with Sunshine on it.”
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Arianna and her daughter, Isabella, pose in front of a cake shop in the Kyoto train station.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Shots of the Hongwanji Temple, a Shin Buddhist temple established in 1602. The temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bottom right: Outside the Hyatt Regency in Kyoto.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Arianna, her tour group and temple guides pose for a photo outside the Hongwanji Temple, pictured to the left.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Above: A dish of sashimi at the Kappo Sakamoto restaurant. Left: A view of a groomed rock garden at the Nanzenji Temple, where sand and gravel are traditionally stylized to look like ripples of water.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Above: A water bridge at the Nanzenji Temple, a Zen Buddhist temple established in 1291. Rumor has it that anyone who falls into the water ends up in Osaka, another city an hour away. Left: Arianna, Isabella, HuffPost Executive Projects Editor David Flumenbaum, and Executive International Editor Nicholas Sabloff, tempt fate on the bridge.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
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Views of the Heian Shrine in Kyoto, dedicated to the first and last emperors who ruled over the city. Top right: A collection of old sake barrels welcome visitors at the entrance.
LETTER FROM JAPAN
The group takes a post-meditation stroll at the Nanzenji Temple.
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AP PHOTO/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX 2013
Exit
BEHIND THE SCENES
The Tipping Point for Aging Action Stars BY CHRISTOPHER ROSEN
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Exit
ARLIER THIS YEAR, a scary thing happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone: They became expendable for audiences, at least when starring in movies not called The Expendables. Schwarzengger, 65, back in front of the camera in a leading role for the first time since 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, weathered his worst opening in 27 years with The Last Stand. The action film earned just over $12 million overall, a tally
AP PHOTO/WARNER BROS. PICTURES, FRANK MASI
E
BEHIND THE SCENES
even lower than Schwarzenegger’s much-maligned 1996 flop Jingle All The Way grossed during its opening weekend. Stallone, 66, didn’t fare much better with Bullet to the Head, which earned just $9.4 million at the North American box office, roughly three times less than the Stallone bomb Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot pulled down in 1992. Added together, The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head totaled $21 million in North America, a far cry from the $85 million the pair earned together in The Expendables 2 last August. Even fellow Expendables cast member Bruce Willis, 58, an A-
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Sylvester Stallone (left) and Jason Momoa in a scene from Bullet to the Head.
ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
Exit list star who made a career balancing blockbusters like Armageddon with indie releases like Moonrise Kingdom, stumbled this year. Willis’ fifth Die Hard film, A Good Day to Die Hard, grossed just $24 million during its opening salvo; overall, the film has earned only $66 million in North America thus far, about half of what the last Die Hard, Live Free or Die Hard, grabbed from ticket buyers in 2007. (Willis still has muscles overseas; A Good Day to Die Hard, which takes place in Russia, has earned $219 million in foreign ticket sales.) “Time was that these guys were box office gold regardless of the movie, but today’s entertainment landscape is exponentially more competitive than it was 25 years ago when these guys were in their heyday,” Hollywood.com box office expert Paul Dergarabedian told HuffPost Entertainment. “The movies they star in (and their concepts) have to be spot on to grab contemporary audiences.” Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the movies have to be good, just marketed in a way that makes audiences want to show up. Take Olympus Has Fallen, with former box office pariah Gerard Butler
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Time was that these guys were box office gold regardless of the movie, but today’s entertainment landscape is exponentially more competitive than it was 25 years ago when these guys were in their heyday.” in the leading role. Despite many negative reviews and a star with a conga line of flops over the last five years, the film earned $30 million during its opening weekend — just $5 million less than the openings of The Last Stand, Bullet to the Head and A Good Die To Die Hard combined. “The marketing was terrific and
Stallone and Schwarzenegger arrive at the premiere of The Expendables in 2010.
Exit Butler’s willingness to stump for the movie was also a key factor in its ability to perform at nearly $10 million above opening weekend expectations,” Dergarabedian said. “Also, the concept of the movie was cool (shades of Air Force One) and they had a good release date as perfect counter-programming to the kid-friendly animated film The Croods.” The same couldn’t really be said for The Last Stand or Bullet to the Head, two action films that never looked like anything more than the type of cable movie your father might fall asleep watching on Friday night. “People need a compelling argument in order to open their wallets and that could include an intriguing story, an exciting trailer, unique special effects, or a combination of it all,” Gitesh Pandya, editor of Box Office Guru, told HuffPost Entertainment. As Pandya noted, it’s not just aging action heroes dealing with the increasingly fickle nature of the audience; Tom Cruise and Matt Damon also watched their recent films flop, lending credence to the idea that movie stars are as obsolete as Blackberrys. Wrote Mark Harris in a GQ piece about
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the new rules for leading men: “If, in 2013, our primary allegiances are to genres and concepts and properties rather than to people, if our biggest modern movie stars are Batman and Bourne and Wolverine and James Bond, and if the most a flesh-and-blood actor can hope is to be chosen to serve as the temporary avatar for
If our biggest modern movie stars are Batman and Bourne and Wolverine and James Bond, and if the most a flesh-and-blood actor can hope is to be chosen to serve as the temporary avatar for one of those characters, then what meaning can the term movie star possibly have?” one of those characters, then what meaning can the term movie star possibly have?” Harris concluded that “movie star” has plenty of meaning, which is true; it’s not the same meaning Stallone and Schwarzenegger might be used. “You can’t just count on your brand name anymore,” Dergarabedian said.
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STRESS LESS
On Slowing Down BY KATY HALL
RUMAN CAPOTE once described himself as a “completely horizontal author” who wrote his best works lying down, often with a cigarette or sherry in hand. Most of us don’t have the luxury of working on our backs. Life doesn’t slow down, but we can choose to stop rushing through it. Here are some smart reasons for making time to do nothing at all, from people who have done quite a lot.
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“ Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
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— William S. Burroughs
“ If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.” CLCOWISE FROM TOP: JUERGEN VOLLMER/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; PICTORIAL PARADE/GETTY IMAGES; DINODIA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
— Lin Yutang
“ There is more to life than increasing its speed.” — Mohandas Gandhi
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“ To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.”
— Milan Kundera
“ For fastacting relief try slowing down.”
— Lily Tomlin
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“ There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.” — James Carroll
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“ Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”
— Hermann Hesse
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“ Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”
— Ray Bradbury
“ Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” — Pooh’s Little Instruction Book
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Slow L Down and Make Polenta
GETTY IMAGES/DORLING KINDERSLEY
BY REBECCA ORCHANT
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ET’S TALK about polenta. You might be a little wary of it. It might sound finicky or hard to cook well. Maybe you’ve heard a horror story about lumpy polenta. Maybe you’ve only eaten the precooked kind that comes out of a tube. Whatever is keeping you from making your own polenta, we’d like to show you the light today. Because it is delicious, cheap, a
LEW ROBERTSON (POLENTA); GETTY IMAGES/DORLING KINDERSLEY (WHISKING POLENTA); GETTY IMAGES/STOCKFOOD (GARLIC)
Exit perfect base for so many other things and — most importantly — is a great food to take your time with. It is totally possible to make quick polenta. You can absolutely do it in a pinch. But it is not possible to make great polenta quickly, and great polenta is what we’re going to talk about today. The amazing thing about slow, creamy polenta, is that you do most of the work in the first hour, and then you just let it magically get better on its own, while you cook whatever you’re going to spoon over the top of it. The best polenta we’ve ever made has benefitted from staying warm and cozy over barely simmering water, for at least an hour after it “looks ready.” The legend about polenta is that you have to perfectly shower it into simmering water, grain by grain, while you and three of your closest friends whisk vigorously to make sure there are no lumps. Take a big, slow breath, because that is just not the case. Because we are always willing to experiment in the kitchen, we tend to make a lot of mistakes, which we then learn from. So trust us on this one: polenta is way harder to screw up than it seems, because we’ve never done it.
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Here’s how you’ll make the best polenta you’ve ever made: INGREDIENTS ■ 1
■ ■
■
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cup polenta (coarsely ground is best) cups water 5 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, minced salt to taste b utter (salted, unsalted, whatever — just taste to make sure you’re not over-salting) c reme fraiche or sour cream (optional)
1. B ring your water to a boil in a large, thick-bottomed saucepan. Once it boils, add in your garlic (we like to add it right away, so it gets really soft and perfumes the whole batch, gently), and knock the heat way down to a simmer. Whisk your polenta in slowly, and continue stirring until the pot starts to bubble a bit again. The polenta will start to thicken, just a bit.
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2. B ring the heat down until the pot sends up only an occasional bubble or two (think about science videos of lava bubbling — that’s what you’re shooting for). Cook this way, uncovered, for about an hour, stirring every once in a while, just to make sure the polenta isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. After an hour, stir in salt and butter to taste.
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4. W hen your other components are ready (or you’re ready to dig into a bowl of polenta on its own, as we sometimes do), uncover your polenta pot, set it back over gentle heat, stir in a few tablespoons of creme fraiche or sour cream, if you’d like, and taste again for salt. Serve hot, in abundance.
3. Here’s the important stuff: now, you need to keep this saucepan covered, over indirect heat to stay warm while you do other stuff. You can accomplish this in one of two ways: you can use a doubleboiler, or you can do what we do — cut a length of parchment paper to fit just inside your saucepan, resting on the top of the polenta, then cover the pan with its lid. In a wider, deeper pot, heat a few inches of barely simmering water, and put a ramekin in the middle. Set your polenta pot on top of the ramekin. Leave it there for at least an hour (it can handle more if you need it, but I wouldn’t leave it for more than three). Why are you doing this? Your polenta is made of corn, and the more moisture corn takes in, the creamier and more tender it gets.
▲ You can top this polenta
with roasted mushrooms and asparagus, meatballs, Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with butter and onion — really anything you want. We’ve even cooked grits using this method with great success, and you can reheat any leftovers with a trickle of water and a pat of butter.
01
TFU
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NYC Police Commissioner Says Black People Are Being ‘UnderStopped’
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Michigan Mom Thinks Diary of Anne Frank Is Too Pornographic for Children
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PEEPING TOMS CRASH THROUGH MOVIE THEATER CEILING
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Teacher Makes Elementary School Students Write on Sandpaper
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Hospital Takes Infant Away From Parents After They Sought a Second Opinion
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TFU
KERI LEARY/ GETTY IMAGES (CAT); AP PHOTO/GARY C. KNAPP (ROBERTSON); RON LEVINE/ GETTY IMAGES (PRIVATE SCHOOL); JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES (MCDONALDS); PETER ARDITO/ GETTY IMAGES (BIRTH CONTROL)
People Are Giving Their Pets Medical Marijuana
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Pat Robertson: ‘It’s OK to Call Jason Collins an Abomination’
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$43,000 A YEAR PRIVATE SCHOOL WANTS TO TEACH KIDS HUMILITY
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10 Nearly Half of America Went to McDonald’s in March
Study Finds That the Poor May Pay More for Birth Control Than the Wealthy
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