by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Today in the poetry section; two new poems by Dorothea Lasky, of New York City.

People as universe

People start tragedies then blame the world
It wasn’t the world’s fault I’m afraid
That they started
The mess I couldn’t clean up
People as universe
People die, too
People as dark grey sky, the lights poke
Yellow dots of blue and silver
What is the field where the people live
What human tragedy could not stop this mess
People are the universe
When I enter a room I cheer the chatter of a thousand men
When I touch one heart, it spills its sky right out
What snow of hearts spill out
But leave no reminder?
And how do I feel? I am alone
I was always alone
Dead person in a peopled universe, with flowers
Dead grass in a simple universe
With people
The animals of the everlasting like clear blue stars and planets
The heart of the evermore a thick blue plate
Held up against an infinite light

I am the horse

I am the horse people should bet on
I am the person who will likely save you from a fire
I am the person who is black smoke
And blows black smoke in your eyes
I am the squeaky noise at night
I am the tables, and paper, and slugs
I am the thing that most excites you
I am the thing that most excites you
I am the horse that you should bet on
When you put your money down

Dorothea Lasky is the author of Black Life (Wave Books, 2010) and AWE (Wave Books, 2007). Currently, she lives in New York City.

You can reach the editors at poems@theawl.com.

by saythatscool

And now we turn our attention to the comments section of this website. Earnest political discussion! Apparently, it’s not just for people with Aspergers and the elderly. It’s also for those who take issue with Bill Henrickson’s pleated pants.Â

And really, who wouldn’t take issue with erection falsifying slacks?

In case you missed it last Friday, our Mormon chap stopped by to share his views on hot air ballooning and to offer an apology for his previous Wiccan mocking. And we accepted. Ohhhkay, sort of.

The truth of the matter is that finding consensus in any crowd of liberals is about as easy as herding cats. And it took a LolCat to actually build some bridges between Baroness, Mike Barthel and MissA. That consensus:

“As a white, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, presumably well-off male, Davis can afford to be all, ‘lets discuss.’”

I guess that’s consensus, of a sort.

But there wasn’t a groupthink love-in. Diplomatic #2357, Mar pleaded for patience and understanding:

I think it’s important to note that Davis didn’t say that he would be defending all of the Republican party’s positions. Instead, he said that he would be explaining why he, a fairly average Republican voter, would continue to support the Republican party. That’s an important distinction. Very few people could give cogent, thorough explanations for how the Republican or Democratic parties could solve ALL THE PROBS, especially with a community of smart, angry wonks nit-picking at the angles of every permutation of every issue.However, giving an explanation for why an intelligent, ethical person would support the Republican party is worthwhile. For all that libs like to cry out against Othering, there’s some very classist, elitist Othering of Them What Live in Flyover Country & Don’t Know What Life Is that goes on in pretty much every lib community. It’s very hard for a lib to give a critique of Sarah Palin that doesn’t use the term “white trash.”

So, it would probably be a good idea (by which I mean, an idea consistent with most secular humanist ideals) to treat Davis as a Republican individual, rather than a symbol of all Republicanism, ever. The Republican party isn’t just made up of hellghosts like Cheney and Beck; most Republicans are dotty grandmas who bake cookies from scratch; or incredibly lovable Friday Night Lights characters; or Elle Woods types who just read their first Ayn Rand novel got excited but who will later become Democrats; or autistic uncles who don’t understand ambiguity or metaphor except when it comes to Myst. Quit othering them.

On the other side of the political spectrum, KarenUhOh used the post to continue her Junior Samples bashing. Contemporary!

The gubment aside, sometimes we just want to problem solve and search out answers on our own.

In “Adventures in Facebook Privacy” after Tiffany Hodges noted that it was strange that a wetback (caldorone) [Ed. note — not his real name] and a towelhead lover (obama) [Ed. note- not the real president] is meeting and dissing OUR COUNTRY IN OUR WHITEHOUSE,” helpful #1881 kneetoe proposed It’ll be such a productive meeting: Obama can take the towel off his head and use it to dry Calderon’s back. Problem solved.” While curious #153 BadUncle was inspired to take on the burden of original research with Openbook– “Just testing the waters with a few favored search terms, I came across this: ‘I want his choad in my anus. if anyone finds him please tell him i want his black ass.’”

Ooofa, servicey.

But as Barry White used to tell us, sexual is nothing without the intellectual. Accordingly, we heard from Academia with “The Shame of the Professor’s Summer Vacation” and advanced theories were offered for pontification and stuff! Forced from his reclusive North Dakota estate, Dr. #3787 Larson E. Whipsnade argued:

The key word in Dettmar’s post is “glory” in point #1. It’s closer to the medieval/religious conception of glory than the common modern/secular application of the word (to achievement in sports, for example). The whole problem with the institutionalized study of literature is the vestigal religiosity. “The profession” often thinks of itself as more of an order than a profession. It’s religion stripped of religion. The sanctimoniousness, shame, guilt, self-pity, and monkish denial of the worldly remains. It’s probably the world’s only profession (and protests too much by constantly yelling PROFESSION!!!) that frowns upon money to such a comic extent. Certainly this is not the case with everyone involved — I’m describing an overall tone. [Unnecessary, bitchy sentence redacted] Also, there’s work and then there’s work and then there’s work. 8–12 hours a day, 7 days a week of digging ditches is a different sort of work. The work of the mind is hard work, but let’s not brag about the hours put in to a type of work that does not cause the same sort of physical strain as hard manual labor.

Religious? Sure. But F’ING CATHOLIC MY ASS!! (Sorry, I had to do it.)

Speaking of a lovely getaway, ravishing # 384, BookishLookish suggested a “Wisconsin Death Trip.” I took a look at the vacation video and was disturbed.

So we opted for chick flick instead. Which made saintly #69, Dorothy Mantooth and us awl gush and beg for an addition to the cast here. Lindy West, come on down!

For our evening plans, the sensual #975, Wrapitup requested we dress a certain way on our date. That in turn, inspired elegant #273, Baroness to offer an alternative and an unrealistic demand for “median” hairy legs. Stop objectifying me!

We went to a late dinner with the gourmand #1321 Art Yucko who showed us his discovery of an On-Site Sausage-Gravy Dispenser.

Finally, we went home to Twincest which continues to haunt us awl. After that disturbing encounter, we just wanted to curl up with a good book but Garrison Keillor kept complaining that there were too many choices with “18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.”

The mysterious #2416, Screen Name, had a rebuttal:

Strangely, it never occurs to those who share Keillor’s dismay about the sad demise of book publishing that what they’ve experienced for the past, what, 50 years?, and benefited from financially (thanks for pointing that out), was itself an unsustainable bubble that emerged from the stranglehold publishers exerted as sole gatekeepers into the rarefied air of Tribeca rooftop literary parties.

The “new economics” of publishing aren’t really new at all. It’s an economy familiar to industries throughout history when the barriers to production suddenly fall, or in some cases are overthrown, and the unwashed masses suddenly find themselves free, literally, to participate at will. The flood of new production overwhelms the system and destroys the old pricing models. Naturally, those who benefited most from the old economy hate the new one. I imagine that long ago someone not unlike Keillor once stood in front of a public library and complained that it’s such a terrible thing to see the relatively few good books in the library get stuffed in among all the terrible ones. And people will be able to choose on their own which ones are good? Like they know! Such a terrible thing.

Yes, it’s true, Mr. Keillor; no one is going to pay me a large sum of money for my manuscript. No corn row whoops for me. You’re sorry I missed the Old Era? Don’t be. I’m sorry for you that the most beautiful moment you retained from it was once getting paid a large sum of money.

In conclusion, have a lovely holiday weekend and send me some recommendations next week: awlcomments@gmail.com.

Given the extraordinary amounts of money people are willing to spend on both weddings and so-called “VIP” experiences at concerts, I’m surprised no one has thought to combine the two yet! Leave it to Sharon Osbourne, who has cooked up the “Unholy Matrimony VIP Package” for her husband’s still-existent traveling metal carnival Ozzfest. It includes 10 pit tickets (for the bride, the groom, and an eight-person wedding party), an Ozzfest-themed cake, and a backstage tour conducted by someone named Big Dave — who will also conduct the ceremony. It’s only $266/a person, which I guess is why they couldn’t get Jack or Kelly to be the master of ceremonies. [Via]

“It was like a Hitchcock horror film. They simply pecked away!”
-A witness in Berlin describes a recent crow attack on a cyclist. As has become an annual occurrence, the arrival of spring to the German capital brings with it a rise in assaults on passersby as aggressive crows seek to protect their nests. One bird expert says concern about the avian bombardments is overblown, noting that, “the injuries are minimal, but nasty scrapes and blood make the attacks look more dramatic than they really are.”

I knew her hair as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Bright white and shining through the dusty windows of my office building — which was actually a dilapidated, sun-burnt performance hall stuck haphazardly behind a church — it was the same bleached shock I’d seen a week before, at a series of plays I’d helped stage at USC. At the time, I was working as an office manager at a nonprofit based in Venice Beach, where we would plan and put on after-school arts programs for at-risk youth. For a few dozen weeks, our trainers would teach the kids about acting, producing, directing and designing for theater, the hope being that accompanying such knowledge are lessons about self-esteem and setting goals.

I wasn’t earning much and my bosses, two waning actors who would speak often and lovingly of Woodstock, often seemed to have hearts bigger than their brains. But concerns about that stuff faded when I watched the children’s shows. Having trained for an entire semester, their performances were a final test, a chance for the kids to show off what they’d learned in 10-minute plays entirely of their own design. Themes were varied — drugs, gang violence, suicide, abuse — though one sure bet was the eventual appearance of an angel or other religious figure who would solve everything, as if a miracle was the only hope. The day I first picked up on that thread was the day one boy’s uncle, his sole guardian, called and asked if someone could bring his nephew to the Sizzler across the street when the play was over. “You aren’t going to the show?” I asked. “Nah, just bring him to the restaurant,” he said.

When part of a six-person nonprofit staff, you never end up doing just your job (in fact, the term “your job” loses all meaning, as every job is yours). The day I first saw E, her hair even more blinding in the May sun, I was shuffling around volunteers while trying to coordinate a Taco Bell delivery and move dozens of handpainted backdrops to the stage. She had a big, avian nose and would walk with her hips pushed forward, like a pregnant woman. She was so stunning that I soon felt embarrassed about my experimental orange fro-hawk, hiding it beneath my hoodie despite the blazing heat.

I remember looking several times for her mint green cardigan amidst the madness of the day and getting jealous — jealous! I didn’t even know her name! — if I saw her talking to a guy. And, as I cowardly watched her walk away at the end of the night, I remember turning to my roommates and saying, “I’m going to always regret not talking to that girl.”

But then, on Monday morning, there was that hair again. “This is E,” one of the co-founders said as I walked into her office. “She’s going to be our new summer intern.”

While entering E’s information into our database, I discovered that she lived two streets away from me in Silverlake. If you know LA, you know that driving to Venice Beach from our neighborhood every weekday at eight in the morning is the definition of maddening — a couple times, I’d have to pull over and cry — so it was with tremendous joy that I asked E if she’d like to start carpooling. That I wanted to kiss her everytime I saw her was something I kept to myself and was the icing on the Saving Lots of Gas Money cake.

Our car conversations started awkwardly, and on the first day, while trying to fill dead air, I told her about how my father’s right middle finger looks like a penis. “It was a freak tornado accident and now it looks like a cock,” I said. “It’s even got a little divot on the tip that looks like a urethral opening.” She laughed a little, but not as much as I would have liked, and I spent the rest of the night thinking, “Why say cock on the very first ride, you damn pig?”

Blessedly, things soon got better. It turned out E was studying costume design at the same art college as my roommate and best friend, a jazz musician; it turned out that one of her good friends, another jazz musician, was one of my good friends; it turned out that her favorite vegetarian restaurant was my favorite vegetarian restaurant; and so on.

I would also come to learn that E was from northern California, loved puppets and the Beatles and was the daughter of two Irish cops. Her teeth were so big that she had to have eight of them removed when she was younger so the rest would fit her mouth. I really liked that about her, but my favorite was her hands, which were some of the most elegant things I’ve ever seen; on the day she was born, her dad said he knew she’d be beautiful because of her outsized, delicate, pale fingers.

On E’s days to drive, she would play me David Bowie tapes. On my days, I would play her mix CDs full of Boot Camp Click, Biggie, Mobb Deep and The Smiths. Sometimes we’d do impressions of our bosses: “Could you tell them I’ll call them back? Mercury’s in retrograde today.” And in meetings, where we’d sometimes begin with improv icebreakers like “mime what you did this weekend,” E and I would shoot each other knowing glances and pass notes saying things like, “Can you mime puking in the Short Stop?”

E loved working with the kids and making art, and by the end of her internship I loved her. Of course, due to the aforementioned cowardice, I didn’t ever tell her this. We stopped carpooling and she went back to school, though we’d still see one another for quiet dinners before going our separate ways to separate bars. It took my friend Tracy cornering E in the bathroom at a massive Halloween party for anything to actually begin. “You know Cord basically loves you, right?” Tracy asked. “He’s just a total pussy.” And I was, because when Tracy told me what she’d done, the most I could muster when I saw E was, “I, uh, like you like more than friends,” and that I could only do because I’d had two forties. It felt like my heart grew to twice its size when she responded, “I’m kind of obsessed with you.”

I was dressed as zombie Basquiat and she was something called a “garbage clown.” Our fake blood smeared together when we kissed and, when I had to dive into a fight my friend was having with a group of assholes dressed as Girls Gone Wild cameramen, I returned to see that she’d folded my blazer across her arm and kept my beer from spilling.

Becoming a man isn’t a question of age, but experience. I imagine many boys become men when their father hits them for the first time. Perhaps all boys become men when they go off to war. Hardship and turmoil, I think, is the turning point for lots of young males, the moment when they say, “Oh, so this is real life.” For me, I’d never felt more like a man than when I would lie in bed with E, her white hair blurring into my pillowcase. I loathed my job, occasionally struggled to pay rent and longed to do something creative with my time. But she made me forget all of that, replacing those considerations — which made me feel so small — with the realization that love from the right person can make you almost certain that you’re the most powerful being on earth. “Fuck everything,” I would think. “Because if this loves me, this immaculate, strong, enlightened, precious, perfect thing, then I am invincible. In fact, I feel sorry for you, because it is one of earth’s true tragedies that there is only one of these people to go around.”

There was a swagger in my step when I walked with her. She made me feel purposeful. Once, she kept her cowboy boots on when we ducked out of a block party to make love in my darkened bedroom. When we were done, I told her to go ahead while I washed my face. Actually, I sat on my bed and wept; I could still smell the leather and dust on my shoulders.

A few weeks ago, I thought I saw her in a YouTube video of a sunny, packed Dolores Park. Same nose, but it wasn’t her.

Cord Jefferson also writes at The Root.

Photo by snackfight, from Flickr.

“Also, have you tried out for Jeopardy? Even the nerdy girls look cute when Alex prods them for personal anecdotes during the first round.”
— The Boston Globe commenter pool is giving out dating advice again, this time to a 25-year-old lady who, if she is a real person, is someone who actually keeps around friends who ask her “How are you still single?” I mean, maybe they think they’re being weirdly nice or complimentary? But EFF THAT FOR REAL. (Also, Alex Trebek’s prodding isn’t always that cute, FYI.) [Previously]

by Abe Sauer

Later this year, America’s dream factory will foist upon an already blooded-up America a remake of 1984’s Red Dawn. It’s probably the most unnecessary, irresponsible, Sinophobic film in America’s history, and that’s saying a lot. And it will be just in time for midterm elections already foul with the tea party’s red-white-and-blue jingoism. What a time for it-America’s relationship with China hasn’t been this crucial since, say, 1941.

The film is, indeed, just a film. Or as the MGM executive I spoke with described it: “just an action film.” Nonetheless, it is a bald example of how one-dimensionally America generally, at all levels, thinks about China and Chinese people.

And now, Red Dawn. Just the latest bit of escalation in the villainization of China, propaganda that’s sure to turn frothy in the next decade.


I obtained a copy of the script. In it, the Chinese invade and subjugate Americans to pinko commie rule all under the guise of “helping” the nation that has become too irresponsible to take care of itself. It is a paranoia tale of an America where our children no longer get stupid Chinese character tattoos because they want to; they get them because they have to. It’s basically porn for survivalist militia types who believe it is “real” scenarios like this that justify everything from the sale of assault rifles to electing nationalist fear-mongers.

Even worse, it’s just another in a long, tired, example of how America’s thinking about China has not progressed past Rohmer’s “Fu Manchu.”

When I contacted MGM, and expressed these concerns about the film, spokesman Grey Munford told me, “Red Dawn is an action film, it is not xenophobic and it is far too early in the process to make assumptions about the film that will appear in theatres.” He also told me the copy I had was stolen and a draft. (They declined to share a final copy or shooting script.)

That’s not the message the movie’s PR is putting out there though. Josh Hutcherson, who stars in the film, recently told MTV that “We’ve changed quite a bit of the story, but the heart of the story is there. The American, patriotic feel of the original, rising up against the invaders, is still definitely there. The Chinese are invading now, so we’re switching that up just to stay with the times a little bit.”

The film’s producer, Tripp Vinson, claims that “a lot of research” went into the China invasion scenario, including input from military “experts.” One of those experts was the RAND Corporation. RAND’s involvement may be the detail that most connects the remake to the original. Maybe no single organization went further and did more to architect and, more importantly, justify the anti-Communist military industrial complex and anti-Reds mindset that defined 20th-century America and that still in many ways defines America’s military structure. The Obama socialism/communism scare tactics the nation has seen recently all have their roots in the Cold War; RAND was the fertilizer for those roots. That, 20 years after the Cold War ended, RAND has its hand in a hawkish right-wing paranoid wank fantasy about China taking military action against the U.S. speaks to the persistent Red-Scare roots of an organization that still shapes policy (Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi pooch-screw has its connections to RAND).

When I pointed out the remake to Jeff Yang, the “Asian Pop” columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a trendwatcher for Iconoculture, he was appalled. Of MGM’s “action film” reasoning, Yang said, “The notion that ‘action’ and ‘xenophobia’ are somehow contrasting principles is idiotic.” Then he told me what he really thought: “The action genre tends to be Manichaean — there’s good, evil, and little or nothing in between — and archetypal — characters are drawn big, iconic, and cartoony to eliminate anything that might distract from the mayhem. Your catharsis comes from rooting for the pure-hearted heroes and hating on the corrupt, inhuman villains. Unfortunately, the combination of these factors tends to turn action cinema into a cesspit of ultra-nationalism and, in the case of films where the villains are uniformly of another color, racism. It’s a short slide over from hating the evil Chinese villains in a film like this to subconsciously or consciously seeing all Chinese as evil villains, and hating them as well. The promotional campaign, which basically steals a page from the miniseries ‘V’ but with Chinese people rather than lizard aliens as the bearers of Trojan gifts, makes things even worse.”

America’s direct mistreatment of its own Asian (especially Chinese) populations is not so well known by Americans. While most are probably aware that our liberty-loving government interned over 100,000 Americans (who happened to have Japanese ancestry) during WWII, few are aware that the Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943 (and even then Chinese immigration was effectively hobbled by low quotas). To this day the Aliens and Nationality section of the United States Code has only one entry specifically targeting a nationality; it is “Chinese.” Off the books and under the radar, there also continues a relentless unconscious drive to stereotype and dehumanize Asian populations both inside and outside the United States.

The must-read book on the subject of America’s dehumanization of its Pacific enemies, War Without Mercy, prophetically notes that even though “vicious racial stereotypes were transformed” after Vietnam, it “does not mean that they were dispelled. They remain latent, capable of being revived by both sides in times of crisis and tension.’’ In the 1980s that meant fear of Japan buying up America, which prompted the Foreign Ownership Disclosure Act and saw the oh-so-open-minded Gore Vidal warning of “the long-feared Asiatic colossus….” The New York Times Magazine ran a feature titled “The Danger From Japan.” Two laid-off Detroit auto workers got only probation and $3,000 fines after beating a Japanese-American to death with baseball bats. The original judge noted that the men were partially justified, as it was Japanese automakers that put them out of work. The dead man turned out to have Chinese heritage.

Next: The Beijing Olympics and the Media

By the late 1990s, Japan was an economic smoking crater. Today, to watch Sean Connery in Rising Sun is to have a good laugh. Our new Asian nemesis is China and starting with the Cox Report of 1999 (which accused China of using thousands of legitimate business in the U.S. as fronts for spying) and continuing through to Wen Ho Lee (the handling of which saw The New York Times finally, barely apologize), to the 2008 Olympics and beyond, America has turned to its old standby characterizations of Asians (this time the Chinese) as a faceless horde devoid of individualism, preparing to swarm. This is tragic.

The media’s anti-Asian bent is subtle and generally manifests itself in anti-China rhetoric. Last holiday season’s Zhu Zhu pets were reported to be toxic. Except on further testing, they weren’t. Yet the 120 seconds of national evening TV news the story got (about the same as the climate change conference) did not pass up the opportunity to say “made in China” over and over again. The New York Times printed a article describing certain bowls as having “Chinaman lids.” (The Times’ correction then recognized that Chinaman is “a term the paper considers disparaging” but that didn’t seem to stop it from getting printed to begin with.) When Obama met the Korean delegation to the UN, Jay Leno ran a “they all look the same bit.” Everyone laughed. 
Despite enjoying running Asians down, America does understand new economic realities; the other 1984 remake this year, Karate Kid, moves the location to China but keeps the Japanese martial art’s name. (Because if if they’re not the same thing, they all totally get along, right?) These small, day-by-day subtle racist slights are somewhat understandable coming from a culture that has nearly zero understanding its East Asian peers. For the 2008 Olympics, that subtly dispersed.

The Olympics saw Sinophobia explode and perfectly capture what War Without Mercy calls the stereotypical masculine “alien swarm” fear of Asians (as opposed to the feminine “exotic individual” one). In a Telegraph piece headlined “Beijing Olympics off to scary start,” Iain Martin wrote this of the Beijing opening ceremonies: “Thousands of people banging drums, dancing in a threatening and synchronised fashion, all the time shouting something that didn’t sound very friendly.” WaPo sports columnist Thomas Boswell made the long-awaited crossover into political op-ed in his review of the ceremonies, noting, “Watching the Bird’s Nest start to erupt was almost scary. The entire floor of National Stadium was filled with 2,008 drummers, all in silver robes trimmed in crimson. What did they portend?” Or as gasbag Bob Costas noted of the opening ceremony (between running down China for its connection to Sudan0, “It’s awe-inspiring. It’s also a little intimidating.”

Then there were the numerous inevitable, insufferable hacks who wrote about how the Beijing opening ceremonies were clearly comparable to those of 1936 Nazi Germany’s. This goes triply for Newsweek’s Olympic ceremonies liveblogger, who noted “The Chinese have resented any comparisons critics have made to the ’36 Berlin Games. Still, watching soldiers goosestep [sic] the Chinese flag feels a little eerie.”

The Olympics are over. So now the “Asian” carp are here, “invading” our Great Lakes in “swarms,” the only sized group in which Asians ever travel. The Washington Post from November, 2009: “’Asian carp are like cancer cells,’ said Cameron Davis, senior adviser with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. ‘They can grow and spread very, very quickly and overtake other healthy living organisms.’”

Not to leave out the states without lakes, the “Asian lady beetle” is “infesting” America: “…since 2003, the exotic Asian beetle has been on the attack” even though it is “smaller than a grain of rice.”

Of course, those really dead-set and determined to see China as a global threat to America should maybe not look to the gun or the gulag. The truest threat China poses to the United States is ideological. China’s success on its own terms could make hollow America’s promise of being the world’s best model for happiness. Nobody has summed that up better than China scholar, author and Asia Society expert Orville Schell. Schell, noting that China indeed has its problems and that it’s sure to have many more, nonetheless told NPR:

“…it raises a question that is sort of frightening to contemplate for an American, and that’s this: Does the Chinese system, this sort of autocratic form of capitalism, deliver better than democracy? And as an ardent democrat, I contemplate the answer to that question with some trepidation, because I think, you know, we feel in America, and in fact I think it’s more than a feeling, that in many ways our government is paralyzed, paralyzed by a lack of money, paralyzed in Congress, paralyzed by sort of vicious partisan politics, whereas China is able not only to gather information well but to form policy quickly and then, most importantly, to effect it. And you feel that everywhere you look in this country now, that they are on top of things, they’re able to do things swiftly to meet the very high-speed demands of the situation, whereas I think we are kind of languishing in many respects.”

Now, if red-white-and-blue-bleeding apple-pie-eaters really want to worry about China infiltrating the U.S., they should concentrate less on ammunition and more on erudition.

Next: Visiting an American High School’s Chinese Class.

Approximately 24,000 of about 54 million U.S. elementary and secondary school children are now studying Chinese. Yes, Chinese language instruction in American schools is “booming.” Of the 27,000-some middle and high schools in America offering a foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese “exploded” from 1 percent to 4 percent between 1997 and 2008. From The New York Times’ special report on Chinese language education: “Jackson High School outside Cleveland, OH has seen its Chinese program go from 20 students to 80 in just three years. Part of the reason the school could even offer the language was that it procured a free Chinese teacher. Not a teacher with free time, but a teacher who worked for free.”

As The Times notes, the teacher is actually not free but is paid for by an outreach program sponsored by China that places language teachers all over the United States. Minnesota, a state on the cutting edge of Chinese language education in America, operates a Confucius Institute out of the U of M that funnels money to grade and secondary schools looking to start Chinese language programs. A chunk of that institute’s funding comes from China’s Chinese Council on Language International (Hanban). Yes, China is paying for us to learn their language, hardly a roll-the-tanks-into-town and subjugate-the-masses scenario envisioned by the-coming-war wingnuts.

It’s not a threatening scenario at all. While there are many schools across the U.S. that want to begin teaching Chinese, it is often impossible to convince schools boards to approve funding. So, essentially, China is, in some cases, paying to educate our children because, as the richest nation on earth, we so often refuse to do so ourselves.

That doesn’t mean schools can start Chinese programs with ease. Natasha Pierce, a teacher who heads up Madison, Wisconsin’s Memorial High School Chinese studies program says that finding a Chinese speaker isn’t the problem: “There are a lot of native Chinese speakers-but a huge shortage of Chinese speakers who understand how to teach Chinese.” As Pierce points out, students do not learn much from a native speaker who has no teaching background.

Pierce recently let me visit her year three and year four Memorial High School Chinese class, which is Madison’s only.

In a classroom shared with the German program (ironic, as Chinese is now passing German to become the third-most tested AP language), I spoke with Pierce’s students about their perspectives on China. Beyond being shocked at their proficiency (the entirety of the class-hour was conducted in Chinese), it was moving and a testament to how much more these teens are learning than just the language. In fact, America’s future relationship with China may benefit exponentially from the cultural understanding these Chinese language students are taking with them.

“China’s going to be the next superpower,” said one student, after which everyone laughed, loudly. But he’s not joking and the rest of this class understands this.

One wants to major in business and thinks it will help her in the future. Another, wise beyond her years, said, “I take it not only for the language and the culture but because of the number of people you can communicate with in Chinese. I also take Spanish. Taking those together that allows me to speak with billions of people.”

Another student said, “It’s dumb to blame people in China. I’m sure they’re people in China who disagree with what’s going on with their government.”

Some in the class left me with longer thoughts on our nation’s (or at least their personal) future relationship with China. These thoughts follow unedited and are wildly encouraging, as they are held by 16- and 17-year-olds:

• “In the coming years I hope to see the relationship between China and America improve. I don’t think it can, however, unless we strive to have our younger generations learn about each other’s culture. If we begin learning something foreign earlier in life, such as culture or language, it is easier to assimilate into our own way of life. I think simply growing up to have a better respect and regard for each other would greatly improve the political relations of future generations.”

• “China will be at least a full equal of the US. It will happen, it cannot be avoided, and we must prepare for it, instead of wasting time and effort trying to stop it. A US attempt to stop China’s rise would only increase motivation and efforts to surpass the US in all areas. A welcoming approach leaves the best chance of future equality.”

• “I believe that in my future China and the US will continue to be wary of each other, but at the same time, will (I hope!) work together more closely. I do not believe that these two world powers will ever be as close as, say, America and England, because of the preconceptions the citizens of both countries have of the other. However, I think it would be unwise for the two countries to turn against each other, because China could make a formidable enemy to the US, and of course vice versa.”

• “In the future, I see China as becoming an economic ‘superpower’ and I think that there will be a lot more job opportunities concerning the US and China (think business) and knowing Chinese will be incredibly useful in the future. Instead of most people learning Spanish as their second language, most people will be learning Chinese as their second language in the future. I would suggest that the future generations of Americans learn Chinese as a second language.”

• “I think that government officials need to have a deeper understanding of the culture of the other country, especially when it comes down to making foreign policy decisions. I feel that often conflict arises between two nations due to culture-based misunderstandings. I have found that in my studying of Chinese language and culture, I have come to understand the influence one’s culture has on their actions while some would otherwise make generalizations.”

Red Dawn and RAND attitudes are not the only hindrances these students face. As The New York Times “Room for Debate” blog demonstrated, there is a lack of optimism even amongst proponents of education, and certainly less amongst the general population, for Chinese language programs. There are utilitarian roadblocks aplenty, from the fact that the Chinese already learn English (so why bother), to the idea that it’s just a fad, like Japanese, (so why bother). Learn Chinese or learn math and science seems to be the choice offered, as though the ability to do both is impossible.

It is not realistic to expect U.S. schools to begin turning out fluent Chinese speakers. In linguistic terms, Chinese may be easier to learn than Spanish or French; but in practical ways, it is much, much more difficult. But UN-translator-level pronunciation and vocabulary should not the only goals of such programs. It is valuable to breed cross-cultural understanding. It’s valuable to create a generation that regards China as neither a Shangri-La of dragons, mysticism and sideways vaginas nor as a red menace poised to invade the U.S. with its billions-strong horde army of indistinguishable and interchangeable multitudes. American educators, and parents that care about how their children will live in a post-U!S!A! world, have a unique opportunity right now to expose children to more than just a language; they have a window to craft a future with a better chance of peaceful coexistence, a world where Red Dawn remains a fictional remake trotted out by manipulative profiteers every 20 years to sucker reactionary fools who, by refusing to see the future, have always been dragged kicking and screaming by the rest into a more progressive era.

In a Red Dawn world, our high school students must be armed to kill the Chinese. Arm them with some Chinese and maybe they won’t have to… or want to.

Abe Sauer won’t be hitting this one in the theaters.

At the very moment that a KTLA news crew was out front of their home filming a report on recent bear sightings in the neighborhood, a family in San Dimas, CA, noticed that the bear and her cubs had returned to their backyard. The family called in the crew and got some amazing footage, including this clip of the cubs climbing a tree while the mother roots through the trash. There’s plenty more here which will interest the bear fans out there, of which we know there are many. (Related: Please stop sending the clip of the kung-fu bear from Japan. We know! Thanks.)

The victim-perpetrators of the World’s Worst Wedding DJ video speak: “It wasn’t a routine or anything.”

Today until 4 p.m. Eastern Time, the Biblioracle will tell you what book to read next if you tell him the last five books you have read. Handy! (In other local news, there is a lost corgi puppy in Bushwick, should you happen to find one.)