I got my culture fix last night at Third Rail Rep‘s Shining City. I reviewed it over at MetroBlogging Portland.

So who’s the big winner coming out of Iowa? Is it Obama? The Democratic Party? Change Agents? Christian right-wingers? Media consultants? Those-who-dare-to-hope?

I guess it depends on what your definition of “winner” is. America, the perennial nation of winners, is beholden to those who strive for victory – and then achieve it. Only winners matter. So with so much on the line psychically in our country right now, a win could really do us some good. Had you slept through the past year of media coverage and awoken on Tuesday to hear Barack the Blessed’s quasi-bombast from the winner’s podium that evening, you would be forgiven if you had assumed that he had just captured his party’s nomination for the presidency. When his voice soared to capture the heights of our capacity to dream, one could detect a resonant, uvular MLK trill in his speech that seemed directed at those of us who dare to dream his dream (aka South Carolina black voters). Our desperate need for a brand new president has us banking on an image and relying on an age-old political system founded on corporate backing and fealty to Wall Street. These are troubling times, and more than ever, it’s the message that counts. Stated policy initiatives and voting records are mere detritus that crumbles into meaninglessness as the candidates wiggle into our amygdalae and down our brain stems, looking to ignite that sweet glow of righteousness inside of us. Their politically-connected advisors and power-brokers are, along with the minions of the media noise machine, just names on a credit roll too fast for our eyes to discern.

I’d like to propose the one really big winner of the Iowa caucuses: the State of Iowa itself. Not average Iowans by any means, but the various factions, consultants, contractors, political flunkies and partisan luminaries that have had the good fortune to cash in on the record-breaking bonanza of campaign expenditures showered upon the unassuming state. By any estimation, Iowa has in the past year been the beneficiary of a financial fiesta that has dwarfed the take during any of its prior caucus seasons. Much attention has been paid to the intensity of the political circus that Iowans have been subjected to this past year, and there is no question that it has left its mark – if you know someone in Iowa, you know that they will never be the same again. But the din of media voices complaining of Iowa’s outsized role in the presidential selection process (hereafter referred to as Iowa Envy) misses the point entirely when it grumbles about how small, how white, or how just plain middling the state is.

The great American Political RoadShow is a production with an agenda of its own, and challenging outside voices are decidedly unwelcome. To participate in the horse race, you have pay the entrance fee. The front-runners made sure to pay up before they got in, and they continue to pay their dues as the act moves on to New Hampshire. Oh how giddy those pundits, politicos, and prognosticators would be – the ones with a bad case of Iowa Envy – were the RoadShow to premiere in their own backyard. The influence and the cash would be sufficient to motivate any state to protect its first-in-the-nation pork pie status. Who needs a tourist industry when you’ve got millions of dollars of outside money pouring into your tiny state each month for almost an entire year? And all Iowans have to do is “take their coveted role seriously”.

I admit it – I like to hear the words “corporate greed machine” when John Edwards speaks. I like to hear Obama speak of a united America, and I like it when Hillary Clinton characterizes the vice president as Darth Vader. These candidates are all speaking to folks like me when they make these remarks; the money spent on market research is paying off. But what I’d really like to hear from one of them is commentary the likes of which Dennis Kucinich delivered recently on PBS when he fingered the influential Des Moines insurance industry for keeping him out of the highly-visible Des Moines Register debate due to his lone support of not-for-profit universal health care for all Americans. That’s the kind of talk – speaking of brain stems – that really gets me fired up.

So go ahead – put the first-in-the-nation primary contest in your own racially diverse and populous state. You’ll be thrilled with your new status, with your shiny new suit, and with all the attention that the young female voters in your state will receive when they “inexplicably” flock to the cause of the senator from Illinois. All you need is spare hotel room capacity, some evenly distributed Starbucks franchises, and a few Thai restaurants to keep the hordes of media nitwits fed. The rest is gravy. You too can be a winner. Just make sure to call the coin while it’s in the air, because the rest of us will be watching on TV.

Benson is a writer and translator who resides in the Twin Cities.

…who evidently thinks I should allow commenters to embed youtube videos. (No friggin’ way, hoser!) Stompin’ Tom Connors — The Hockey Song

I know I am, so I’m heading to the theatre tonight. Here’s a little Bartok to tide you (me) over. The Ammadeus Quartet plays Bartok’s String Quartet number four, fourth movement.

At the risk of sounding naive or overly optimistic, signs continue to appear that some Portland Public Schools administrators (if not the school board — yet) are starting to “get it” on issues of equity.

We’re going to look through the equity lens on what we’re offering. And we’re going to stay focused on what kids need. Is every school one where you would send your niece or nephew? Is every classroom a place you would put your own kid? If the answer isn’t yes, we have work to do.

— Judy Elliot, Portland Public Schools Office of Teaching and Learning. (Melton, Kimberly. “IB and AP not as easy as ABC” The Oregonian, Monday, January 31.)

Hey, that’s what I’ve been saying for almost a year now! And what my friends at the NSA have been saying for much longer!

Of course actions speak louder than words. The proving ground for the district’s intent on equity issues is Jefferson High School, the poster child for PPS inequity.

District administrators are clearly getting out ahead of the school board on this. Board members continue to insist that we need to increase enrollment at Jefferson before we can increase the program offerings there.

But with Jefferson administrators receptive to the community consensus of “if you build it, we will come,” and administrators sounding like concerned parents instead of ideologues, the school board will eventually have no choice but to fall in line behind us. (Honestly, who could think “come and we will build it” has any hope of success after all the broken promises at Jefferson?)

Another district administrator who’s saying the right things is Zeke Smith, Superintendent Carole Smith’s chief of staff, who asked parents at a recent Jefferson meeting for “proof points” that the district could implement by fall 2008 as signs that the district is serious about making Jefferson work. You mean the district wants to not only listen to parents, but actually implement their suggestions?

Now that’s a breath of fresh air. Let’s make sure that wind continues to blow and brings real change and real equity for the children and young adults of Portland.

Sounds lofty, eh? Well, I don’t have all the answers, but now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll tell you there is a growing consensus about what we need to do.

Over the last decade or so, the once proud, comprehensive Jefferson High School has been allowed to stumble through a combination of malign neglect, massive out-transfers, and corporate grant-funded experiments that amount to a pattern of institutional racism. Enrollment now stands at around 600, with a catchment area population of around 1,700. The student population is disproportionately black and poor, and their educational opportunities are starkly limited compared to the wealthier, whiter students who live in the Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland and Franklin clusters.

What remains of Jefferson is a segregated, balkanized, underfunded shell, carved up into four separate academies that benefit neither the black community nor the larger North and Northeast Portland area Jefferson once served.

The attendance area of Jefferson is the most diverse in Portland. There is no single ethnic group in the majority. Imagine if the school looked like the neighborhood, with a focus on unity and understanding. This is exactly what Portland (and the world) needs right now. Imagine Jefferson CommUnity High School, where every student has the same opportunities as children at Lincoln or Grant, and then some. Imagine a championship athletic program, world-class performing arts, and a rigorous academic program that serves the full range of students.

Portland Public Schools and the City of Portland have a moral, ethical, and legal obligation to offer the young adults of North Portland every opportunity that is available elsewhere in Portland. There is a growing cross-community consensus that Jefferson needs to be returned to its comprehensive roots. There also appears to be a growing openness on behalf of the district to really listen to the community, admit mistakes, and move forward.

Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s going to cost money — a lot more than the district is currently spending — to bring Jefferson back to its once proud status.

There are two ways to pay for it (assuming we’re not getting any new funding any time soon): by phasing out neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers (the biggest source of the current inequity), or by shifting funding and resources away from schools like Lincoln, Cleveland, Franklin and Grant. The former makes the most sense, and would be the most equitable, but we can’t force students back to Jefferson without first rebuilding it. That means the latter is required, at least in the near-term.

At this point, I don’t care how we fund it; it is imperative that we create a school with equal opportunities for our most disadvantaged students. It is not fair to punish students who chose to attend their neighborhood school as opposed to playing the lottery and commuting on public transit to school. The transfer policy states that students have a right to attend their neighborhood school, but is silent on the fact that this gives extra privilege to students who live in the wealthiest neighborhoods at the expense of the rest of us. I propose an amended policy statement to the effect that every student has a right to attend their comprehensive neighborhood school.

It’s important to define comprehensive, of course. So here’s what I’d like to see:

• a rigorous academic core
• business education
• vocational education
• college prep (A.P.) in all disciplines
• special education
• foreign languages
• performing arts (dance, theatre, band, orchestra and choir)
• visual arts
• athletics
• journalism (TV, newspaper and yearbook)
• science
• technology

The district excuse that Jefferson doesn’t have the enrollment to fund these things can no longer stand under the bright light of public scrutiny, especially given that it is district policy that has allowed — and even encouraged — enrollment to drop so low.

I propose we immediately fund Jefferson at a rate at least two times the district average per student, and return a full slate of electives, foreign languages and performing arts beginning in the 2008-09 school year. I also want to see the firewalls between academies softly and quietly dismantled, to the extent that students aren’t limited in their academic options based on a choice they make in the ninth (or sixth) grade.

Believe it or not, Jefferson administrators are open to these ideas. They are relieved that the glaring inequities are a concern to the community at large. They understand that the biggest struggle is with the district, specifically with funding.

Our two-tiered system of high schools belongs in the Jim Crow south of the past, not in a city that prides itself on its diversity and civic-mindedness. It’s time to move past the debacle that was the Jefferson redesign under Vicki Phillips. It’s time to come together and demand equitable opportunities for our children, no matter where they live.

Even though I’m an atheist, I still love It’s a Wonderful Life.

I never quite know what to say when people ask me about the upcoming presidential election. People are generally well-meaning, but if you know me, you know I haven’t been registered Democrat since the 1984 election (I caucused for Alan Cranston who won me over with his support of the nuclear freeze movement).

So when asked about the current election cycle, I have to assume people want to know what I think of the Democrats. The truth is, I tend to see all of the mainstream candidates, Democrat and Republican, bunched up way to the right of my belief system. Oh sure, there’s Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, but who really believes they have a prayer?

Anyway, I found this site today that asks you some overly-simplistic questions and matches you up with a candidate.

The questions cover Iraq, immigration, taxes, stem-cell research, health care, abortion, social security, line-item veto, energy, gay marriage, and the death penalty.

My top dog, not surprisingly, was Kucinich, with Gravel as a close second. What did surprise me was that this quiz scored John Edwards the lowest of all Democratic candidates as a match for me, tied with right-libertarian Ron Paul. Which goes to show you how little you can glean from such a simplistic quiz.

For a better view of where I stand in relation to the candidates, I took the slightly more nuanced test at politicalcompass.org. This test will place you on a grid that has the traditional left-right continuum for economics, coupled with a north-south axis for social values, with the top being “authoritarian” and the bottom being “libertarian.” (This may be confusing to some people. The bottom point should be called “civil-libertarian” to make clear the distinction between this and what is known as libertarianism in the US. Ron Paul’s position on the grid is about where most US Libertarian Party acolytes would fall. That is, they are economic libertarians but hold generally moderate social views.)

They provide some context, including placing the 2008 US candidates on the grid. Here’s where I stand:

So you can see the source of my consternation when people want me to discern between Clinton and Obama. They’re both so far away from me, they appear indistinguishable from one another, and barely distinguishable from the mainstream Republicans.

Politicalcompass.org also publishes this chart for reference, with some more meaningful labels on the endpoints:

I’m glad to share the southwest corner with Gandhi. The food’s better over here, for one thing.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always. — Mahatma Gandhi

Since I’m on a YouTube faves kick, here’s a movement from one of my favorite string quartets. The Hugo Wolf Quartet plays Bartok’s fourth string quartet, first part, Allegro, with a little cinematic treatment. (Sorry, the clip kind of cuts off at the end.)

Isn’t it ironic that the Oregonian, whose Web site is the crappiest of all local news outlets, has suddenly discovered (thanks to the folks at Nielsen) that blogging is kind of a big thing in Portland. The front page of today’s living section features a story — yet to be published on the Web, evidently — about how Portland is the #2 bloggingest metro area in the US.

With a cutesy blog style article, complete with comments from Real! Live! Portland Bloggers!, the big O barely scratches the surface. In typical lazy Oregonian style, Steve Woodward did a cursory browse of ORBlogs and didn’t quite mention this blog.

He quotes the blurb on my ORBlogs page (“This may well be he only anti-war hockey blog… in the universe”) without mentioning the title or URL, and lumps me in with sports blogs.

Lordy, I’ve tried to be a sports blogger, but I just don’t have what it takes. All my hockey fan readers have left in droves since I’ve become more about politics than pucks. So it’s obvious that Woodward has no clue that this is one of a small handful of sites where Portland Public Schools policy and politics are discussed with any depth and regularity. The Tribune has pegged me and this blog as “the leading voice for equity issues” at PPS (I don’t think I’m worthy of that, but at least they’ve got the general drift). To the Oregonian I’m a sports blogger.

Most glaringly, there was no mention of Wacky Mommy, the internationally adored blogger I share a bed with.

Naturally, there’s no mention of the Portland Mercury’s very popular, pop culture-saturated Blogtown, or the less popular, more newsy Willamette Week WWire.

The fact that the Oregonian is trying to get current, with their generally irrelevant blogs and Oregon Reddit on oregonlive.com, doesn’t make up for the fact that they have the most outdated, least usable Web site of any local media source. The fact that I can’t even link to the story I’m writing about says it all. Even if it were published on the Web, the link would go dead after a couple weeks, since the O refuses to keep archives online.