Applebee's, Meat, and the Dearborn Independent

Today D. and I went to the local Applebee's for a quick bite after doing some shopping at Target. We don't eat there often, but it was close by and we figured it would be fast and easy, and it was.

While we were waiting for the check, I idly surveyed the sports memorabilia decor. Jets jerseys sharing a wall with Giants jerseys, an assortment of hockey team photos, and along one wall, a number of humorous golf-related signs.

And then my eyes fell on something unusual on the wall of golf items. For there, between the sign indicating that hitting your caddies with a five iron is more effective than with a driver (or something like that, it seemed very violent either way) and something else about golf being outlawed in fifteenth-century England, there was a little framed magazine cover showing a man in classic golf pose, having just driven the ball 200 yards and looking very satisfied.

It was a cover from the Dearborn Independent.

Had I been in this Applebee's a year ago, I might not have even made any association, although the name was certainly familiar. However, over the last couple of months D. and I have been watching The Jewish Americans, a great documentary that aired in three 140-minute segments on PBS. It's really good so far, although I haven't yet wanted to watch the next segment. Learning about Jews in the Old West is one thing, but we're just about up to World War II and that's a little harder.

In the meantime, though, we have learned a lot about Henry Ford and the newspaper he purchased that published some genuinely bonkers anti-Semitism. Among other things, it ran the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Dearborn Independent was founded in 1901 and purchased by Henry Ford in 1919; it didn't publish again after 1927, after lawsuits about above-mentioned bonkers anti-Semitism forced him to shut it down. The cover in the restaurant was dated 1926, putting it squarely within his era.

I'm not calling for some kind of mass action against Applebee's; restaurant chains have enough going on right now with the economy doing what it's doing. But it did get me thinking. I had actually been planning to email the company anyway; the menu is dreadfully dead-animal centric, although, as our waitress helpfully pointed out since it wasn't on the menu, they do serve vegan burgers. I think I will mention the magazine cover in my email as well. I know that their intention was not to offend; I'm sure it's only up on the wall because it fit the golf theme of that section. But I do think it's worth reconsidering whether it should be up there at all.

What do you think?

Massive NY Times Update

One of my favorite hobbies (if you can call it that), as you have surely noticed by now, is reading the New York Times. I love the Times. I am a Times junkie. When I don't get to read my articles I get a little cranky.

What's your favorite section? (Tell me in the comments!) You might think that mine is Science, but you're only half-right... it's actually more of a toss-up between Science and Opinions. I love the editorials and columnists, especially arguing with David Brooks and calling people with incorrect opinions names while sitting at my computer. I also read the Education section religiously, looking for religion trying to interfere with education.

The upside of this is that it gives me a lot of blogging material. The downside is that I got backlogged during the end of the semester and I now have more articles to post about than I will ever get to, since new stuff keeps appearing! (That's why they call it the news.) Very frustrating. So, here is a rundown of everything I wanted to post in the last few weeks, with brief commentary, all in one big post. They're not in any particular order, and some of them are not recent, but they're all interesting reads. Enjoy!

• Exodus Exegis -- Kristol's editorial about the 3 presidential candidates' Passover greetings.
  
• Bambi (1942) -- the original review of Bambi, back when deer were more cute than a nuisance.
  
• Tests Confirm T. rex Kinship with Birds -- geneticists confirm what we've known for a while.
  
• 2 Clues Back Idea that Birds Arose from Dinosaurs -- paleontologists had this idea already fleshed out in 1993. Based on evidence from bones. Oh, the horror.
  
• Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans -- humans tend to assign morality to the animal world, to varying degrees and with various consequences for our perception. I could write a whole blog post about this, but I think I'll hold off for now.
  
• An Elephant Crackup? -- one of the most moving, fascinating, and troubling articles I have ever read. Published over 18 months ago, it still haunts me. War has considerable consequences for animals other than humans.
  
• Albert Hofmann Dies at 102 -- the inventor of LSD made it to 102; in related story, flying pink elephants have turned 70.
  
• From Auschwitz, a Torah -- a Torah that survived Auschwitz is restored and rededicated. The story of how it was found is a great read.
  
• Battle at Kruger -- how an 8-minute amateur video of lions, buffalo and crocodiles became an Internet phenomenon and then the subject of a 1 hour documentary. If you haven't seen the original, check it out. Note: had I posted this video, I probably would have titled it, "Between a Croc and a Herd Place."
  

What, you're still here? I didn't give you enough stuff to look at? Go read some of these articles!

Two Stories, One High School Student

Matthew LaClair is a troublemaker.

Last year, he brought a law suit against his high school (in New Jersey!) for a history teacher's utter failure to make the separation between church and state in the classroom. He secretly taped the teacher saying things like, "only Christians had a place in heaven, that the Big Bang and evolution theories were not scientific and that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark." (Did I mention that I live in New Jersey too?)

Other than the fact that I'm still getting over this sort of thing happening in New Jersey (!), there are two sentences I find alarming in this article. First: "After the tapes became public, Matthew received a death threat and was shunned and bullied by some of his classmates, he has said." Wow. It's unbelievable to me that his actions would actually be cause for people to shun someone. If this had happened in my high school, I'm pretty sure we would have thrown him a parade.

Second: "In the fall, the board reprimanded the teacher and later adopted a policy barring students from taping in class without a teacher’s permission." I find this vaguely unsettling. What if another teacher is saying wildly inappropriate things in the classroom? How can students prepare themselves to keep church out of school if the school makes rules against what Mr. LaClair did? Very shady if you ask me.

Anyway. Sometimes you don't need a tape; the evidence is already written down and published.

You can't keep a good rabble-rouser down, and he's causing some more trouble in history class. This time, his beef is with a textbook that plays down the causes and impacts of global warming. (For example, although millions of people might lose their homes as coastlines are flooded, they won't have to pay as much for heating! Yay!)

Whether you agree with him or not, this guy deserves a lot of credit for standing up to The Man. Freethinking is not taught in most high schools; anyone who comes away with that particular skill is likely to be self-taught. Mr. LaClair, I salute you.

The boy who sued Jesus.

School Board to Pay in Jesus Prayer Suit
Struggling to Squelch an Internet Rumor

I emailed these articles to a few people when they first came out a few weeks ago, but it's worth putting them up again, I think. I found the juxtaposition of these two articles bizarre and interesting. (When they were first published, they were right next to each other on the Education section home page.) On the one hand, people (on the Internet) are ready to spring into action against what they see as a slight against Jews, even if it's a complete falsehood and based on assumptions of the "backwardness" of Kentuckians. On the other hand, people actually don't like the Jews in some places, because we hate Jesus, apparently. (And in the backwards state of... Delaware?) So I guess the national spirit is, "We don't like the Jews, but at least they're better than those Muslim types." Alarming.