Dana Goldstein

White Hipsters Lurve Expenisve Food!

While we're on the subject of foodies, sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words.

By the way, when will this bushy beard trend finally end? You know who you are.

My Friends are Delicious

Also famous and adorable. Read the Washington Post story about their entrepreneurial food blogging exploits.

Re: Michelle Obama, Race, Gender, and the Sixties

If you've been following our recent discussion of Michelle Obama's image, you should check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic profile of the woman he calls, simply, an "American girl." Yesterday I wrote that in her increasingly policy-driven role as first lady, Michelle has been distancing herself from the Jackie O image she seemed to cultivate during the general election, after she got into trouble for her "first time in my adult life" comment. But Coates, whose reporting dates back to the later part of the campaign season, has a different interpretation of Michelle. Early 1960s nostalgia is something she deeply feels, he writes, as it brings Michelle back to her stable, middle-class childhood on the segregated South Side of Chicago -- a place where, unlike the elite institutions in which she would spend her young adulthood, being both black and high achieving felt completely "normal." The first lady truly laments, Coates posits, "our collective fall from motherhood, Chevrolet, and a chicken in every pot." Michelle tells Coates:

My mom and maybe a few others were some of the few who were able to stay at home. A lot of my friends, they weren't called latchkey kids, they were just kids whose parents worked. ... We went to the public school right around the corner and we had lunch, and you could go home for lunch, and we had recess and there weren't closed campuses then. ... They'd bring their bag lunch, they'd sit on the kitchen floor and talk to my mom.

The power of this reminiscence from Michelle isn't just that it hearkens back, comfortingly, to a time of traditional gender roles and single-income prosperity. It is that memories like this one are treasured by just as many white baby boomers as black ones. Indeed, the Obamas are quite adept at using "family values" to cut across racial divides; think of Barack's focus on responsible fatherhood, for example, or Michelle's vow to have her daughters make their beds each day, as if the family didn't have a small army of servants at their disposal.

What's important to remember though, is that the reality of the Obamas' lives haven't always comported to their PR push around traditional family values. When the couple met, Michelle was Barack's boss. They delayed parenting until their mid-thirties. Michelle didn't stop working full-time until her husband's presidential campaign was underway. As much as Michelle treasures her own stay-at-home mom, you can't really understand this woman unless you realize she has never, herself, been a stay-at-home mom. At The Root, Dayo Olopade wonders whether Michelle is a "secret working girl." The truth is, there is no secret at all. Michelle has always worked. And she still is working, every single day.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Michelle Obama: Buh Bye, Camelot?

"Mad Men." "Revolutionary Road." Endless Updike remembrances. It's no secret that we're living in a time of nostalgia for the early sixties. And although many of the celebrated cultural products of that era pick apart gender constructs, there's one place where the media has seemed just fine with uncritically recreating the age of stay-at-home-moms, 9 to 5 dads, and traditional values: inside the White House.

Michelle Obama is lounging sultrily on the cover of Vogue. Her official biographyrefers to her "first and foremost" as "Malia and Sasha's mom." Her professional mentor, Valerie Jarrett, took to the airways shortly after Election Day to reassure America that "having a seat at .... the table and being co-president is not something [Michelle is] interested in doing." Yesterday, the first lady's main activity was giving culinary students a tour of the White House kitchen. And the New York Times style section is breathlessly conveying that the Obamas are tough love, do-your-chores kind of parents; none of that wishy washy, Me Generation self-esteem stuff.

And yet, in unscripted moments and with small gestures, you can see the old Michelle Obama emerging from behind the Jackie O facade. Most obviously, there is Michelle's tour of federal agencies, where she's been pitching her husband's stimulus package and thanking tens of thousands of bureaucrats for their service. A friend pointed out to me that these events are making Michelle more visible than Joe Biden. That's true. Don't look too closely, or you might see the Obamas' marriage for what it really is: something quite like the infamous "two for the price of one" that so terrified conservatives when it came to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

I'm not one to make too much of hair. But I have to say, I was struck by this swept-back, no-nonsense look that Michelle debuted at the Department of Transportation on Friday. The first lady is lovely with the sweet up-flip 'do she's been sporting since the campaign really got down and dirty. But with this new look, Michelle appears professional. And that's exactly what she is --- even if, as she joked to a second grader earlier this month, the job she's got "doesn't pay much." (How much does it pay to play the full time role of first lady? Exactly nothing.)

--cross-posted at TAPPED

States Jockey for Education Stimulus Funds

The stimulus package's $54 billion for schools is the largest ever investment in the Department of Education. You better believe that states, many of them facing budget crises, are eager to get their hands on the dough. But there's a catch. Before any state can access the dollars, they must promise to "maintain service." That means avoiding draconian cuts to education by maintaining 2005-2006 levels of funding. The underlying message to governors and legislatures was simple: Find a way to balance your budget that does not directly disadvantage children. 

But after intense lobbying from states that planned on cutting education budgets anyway, the Obama administration agreed to consider waivers for individual states. Now the jockeying for a waiver has begun, with Florida leading the charge. That state cut its education budget by $600 million from the 2006 level, and now stands to lose $2.7 billion in federal funds if not granted a waiver. 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he'd like to get the stimulus money into the hands of each state. Here's the problem: By allowing for the waiver process in the first place, Congress and the administration lost their ability to strongly influence state budget priorities. Yes, many states are required to balance their budgets, and that isn't easy in this economic climate. Yet governors and legislators have a way of sending their knives for the schools when cuts need to be made. In Florida's case, Senators Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez are asking the federal government to show sympathy for Florida families affected by unemployment and foreclosures. But if Florida itself were serious about that, its Republican legislators would, for example, raise the cigarette tax to prevent cuts to children's services. Instead, Gov. Charlie Crist, who has lately taken to appearing in public with Obama, is so confident of an infusion of federal dollars that he is considering a state constitutional amendment to cut the property tax. 

Hat tip: Alexander Russo. 

--cross-posted at TAPPED

What I Did on Valentine's Day

I have been in bed with a raging sinus infection for the past four days. My one foray out, so as not to feel totally and completely pathetic, was to a Saturday matinee of "He's Just Not That Into You" with four lady friends. A steady stream of network TV commericals had informed me that "HJNTIY" was the "number one movie in America." So I figured that since I have no intention of reading The Purpose-Driven Life, I should check out HJNTIY and see what all the self-help fuss is about.

In short, I have to say that I did not relate to this movie at all. From what I could tell, the movie made the following arguments: 

1. All women want to get married. In fact, getting married is a woman's main goal in life. 

2. Women cajole and trick men to the altar. No man has ever gone there willingly! 

3. Don't call a man. Only desperate, clingy women call men. And since you are desperate and clingy, but you don't want him to know that you are, never call. 

4. Straight women who date are white. 

5. Men want sex. Preferably with Scarlet Johansson. Women are indifferent to sex. Except for Scarlet Johansson.

6. Straight men who date are white. 

7. You are not the exception to the above dating rules. You are the rule. Until you become the exception because you meet your one true love. Or something like that. 

The ideology of this movie was completely incoherent. The only thing the movie was quite clear about was that women are infantile dating-bots with little capacity for self-examination or sense of self-worth outside of their relationships with men. They spend all day at work procrastinating on dating websites and running to the bathroom to cry and/or call the man in question, desperately. HJNTIY is a truly stupid movie. I have not read the book, which I know some women swear by. In any case, I'm open to being convinced that I am wrong. But as I told a friend, as much as I love a guilty pleasure, I fear my IQ dropped at least 10 points just by sitting through this film. 

cross-posted at TAPPED

Did Obama Insult the Teachers' Unions?

The Washington Times reports today on the supposedly shocked reaction of edu-wonks to the president's Feb. 9 comments on education, in which he stated that in addition to more funding, schools need reform. Here is what Obama said:

But we're also going to need more reform, which means that we've got to train teachers more effectively; bad teachers need to be fired after being given the opportunity to train effectively. ... We should experiment with things like charter schools that are innovating in the classroom, [and] we should have high standards.

I have a long feature coming up in our April print issue about the so-called "education wars" within the Democratic coalition, but let me say this for now: It is bunk to hype these particular comments as insulting to teachers or to to their unions. In a Nov. 17 speech to the National Press Club in D.C., Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and currently the most prominent teachers' union leader in the country, made essentially the exact same remarks. When Weingarten chose to portray her union as open to differentiated pay, charter schools, and common standards, she essentially allowed Obama and other national Democrats to embrace the "reformer" mantle, without vilifying unions.

Here was Weingarten, in that speech, on teachers and training:

...teachers are the first to say, 'Let's get incompetent teachers out of the classroom." So let's talk about creating a tenure process that both promotes excellence and ensures fairness. This summer, the AFT national convention called upon our local unions to make the process more rigorous. Through peer assistance and review, master teachers can help new colleagues learn their job, help struggling colleagues to do better, and counsel unsuccessful colleagues out of the profession.

Weingarten on standards:

Yes, we need strong and common standards.

Weingarten on charters and public school choice:

We must expand the variety of high-quality school choices within the public system. In fact, we have developed two union-run charter schools in my hometown [New York City].

So as you can see, Obama is not stepping out on too much of a limb here. He is careful to embrace reform, but only using rhetoric that fits into the unions' definition of what could be acceptable.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Cut From the Stimulus: Neighborhood Development?

Right now, not many people know the details of exactly which programs, of those initially supported by House Democrats, have been cut from the stimulus package in negotiations with the Senate. But Politico is reporting that in addition to school construction funds, neighborhood preservation funds have been "slashed."

The program originally included in the House version was quite innovative: It provided $4.1 billion to be distributed by HUD for the purpose of buying and redeveloping foreclosed properties, thus preventing neighborhood blight. But instead of funneling the money through state and city governments, HUD would have created a bidding process through which local and national non-profits could have competed with municipalities for the dollars. One of Obama's campaign platforms was to better integrate the entrepreneurial non-profit sector into the workings of government, and this program could have provided an important model.

Predictably, part of the Republican opposition to the plan was that ACORN -- yeah, remember them? -- would have been eligible to apply for the funds.

I'll follow up when I learn more details about what happened to the neighborhood preservation programs in the final version of the bill.

--cross-posted at TAPPED

Update: Mike Lillis reports that the neighborhood development program has been preserved in the stimulus package, although it has been cut in half to $2 billion.

In Vogue

Michelle Obama graces the cover of the March issue of Vogue, on newsstands today. She is wearing a dress by Jason Wu, the designer who created her white, one-shouldered inaugural gown. It would be nice to see Michelle in a stronger pose than this one, in which she is twisted awkwardly over the arm of a couch. After all, this is the woman who has been speaking to thousands on a tour of federal agencies, promoting her husband's economic stimulus plan. In the accompanying photo spread, you can also see Michelle "working." Ladies out there -- don't you always take business notes in a slinky pose like this one, accentuating your curves?

Anyway, oh well. It's a fashion magazine. And just to take a trip down memory lane, I thought I'd also post the last first lady to appear on Vogue's cover, Hillary Clinton.

--cross-posted at TAPPED

What Does the Stimulus Mean for Education Reform?

As I reported last week, the House version of the stimulus bill contained a total of $140 billion to support early childhood centers, school districts, colleges, and to expand the Pell grant program. The bill passed by the Senate yesterday decreased education funding to $80 billion, mostly by cutting direct education aid to states and funds for school construction. But as Education Week reports, the Senate's plan is still larger than the entire current discretionary budget of the Department of Education. In other words, this investment would be the federal government's biggest ever in local schools -- larger than the investment the Bush administration made in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind, which was severely under-funded. But is this "education reform" money? Or simply a way to help schools maintain their services during the economic crisis?

The difference between NCLB and this cash infusion is that stimulus funds will allow school districts to plug ailing budgets or pursue "shovel ready" technology and staffing projects on the ground, largely without federal "accountability" strings attached. But the legislation does provide specific funds for attracting highly-qualified teachers to low-income schools. The Obama administration is also pushing for the final bill to include $15 billion for a "race to the top" fund, which would encourage states and districts to create internationally-benchmarked curricular standards and tougher assessments. Under NCLB, many states watered down standards and assessments in order to avoid the legislation's punishing outcomes for schools that did not meet test score thresholds.

The presence of these school "reform" measures within the stimulus package is a good indication of the direction Congressional Democrats and the administration are planning to take later in the year, during the reauthorization process for NCLB. Look for more discussion on national standards and how to move the best teachers to the neediest schools.

Hat tip: GothamSchools.

cross-posted at TAPPED