Yet it seems that some at Princeton feel Obama has a special obligation to the current student body and her fellow alumni. In an open letter, Molly Alarcon, an opinion columnist for The Daily Princetonian, requests that the First Lady come to Princeton for the sole purpose of instructing audiences at her alma mater on how to address issues of race and diversity:

“Just as your ascension to the White House has given our country cause to think about race in America, your comments as the Class of 2010’s Class Day speaker on May 31, 2010, could encourage our campus to look inward at our racial problems. While racial dynamics here have improved since your time, we still have much work to do. It’s one thing if I write a column about racial issues on campus and quite another if you come tell us what we need to hear.” [Emphasis mine.]

Assuming that a person of color should do the work of teaching others (read: white people) about racism is an expression of racial privilege. After all, it’s not a subject that Michelle Obama speaks on very often in public, yet she’s been called upon by a white writer to “tell us what we need to hear.”

In a post on the popular blog Stuff White People Do, guest writer Belinda pointed out that

“… the irony and insult of that dynamic is that so many [people of color], now and throughout history, have already written and published extensively on the topic. These writers have effectively volunteered to educate white people, or to share their experiences of racism, or to further the ideas, language, and dialogue needed to combat racial privilege and disadvantage.”

She also noted that, “These authors are academics, activists, historians, journalists, artists, etc, etc. There is a vast body of work out there.” One wonders if the writer had made good use of Princeton’s abundant resources – libraries, professors, community groups – before calling upon Obama to further her anti-racist education.

It’s clear from the open letter that Alarcon already recognizes many of the challenges for racial diversity, education and tolerance which Princeton continues to face. Affirmative action policies, while progressive in nature, haven’t done much to increase the overall diversity of Princeton since Obama’s days as an undergraduate. The nonprofit organization Questbridge reports the racial diversity of Princeton undergraduates as overwhelmingly Caucasian (49%), with Asian-American student enrollment at 16%. Latinos and African-Americans each represent only 8% of the student population. Native-American students are less than 1%. It’s not too surprising to realize that thorny issues of race are swept under the carpet on a predominantly white-washed campus.

After all, this is the same university where Jian Li, a 2006 undergraduate applicant, filed a lawsuit claiming that his admission had been rejected because he was Asian-American. His lawsuit brought national attention to his case, sparking fierce debate about race and the college admissions process.

Rather than address Li’s charges through thoughtful commentary, The Daily Princetonian, as part of an annual Joke Issue, published an op-ed mocking Li’s complaints under the guise of “satire” with racist phrasing such as, “I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me.” In an editor’s note, the publication defended the piece by claiming, “We embraced racist language in order to strangle it. At its worst, the column was a bad joke; at its best, it provoked serious thought about issues of race, fairness and diversity.”

And Princeton needs Michelle Obama to show students the way to anti-racism? Something tells me they’ll require a lot more than a speech on Class Day to change attitudes on campus. But perhaps some hard-won wisdom can be gleaned from her legacy.

In Obama’s senior thesis, “”Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” she featured interviews with African-American alumni, analyzing how their perceptions of both the university and the African-American community evolved during their education at Princeton. She also wrote about how her time at Princeton had lead to feelings of intense alienation from her majority-white professors and peers. In her introduction, Obama observed that:

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

The last lines echoes powerfully in this context: once again, she has been seen as a woman of color first, positioned to educate others about issues of race, rather than as an alumna of distinguished accomplishment who could speak to the issues on which she has built her political platform as First Lady. It’s admirable that a member of the Princeton community expresses a need for more conversation on racism, but there are already many existing resources which could be utilized to spur campus dialogues.

Read books. Take classes. Seek out activities and groups which coincide with fostering conversation and change. But don’t ask Michelle Obama to do the hard work for you. She has enough on her plate.

Amidst the chaos, Twitter has proved to be an invaluable resource in providing news updates and live photos from Haiti. “Help Haiti” and “Red Cross” were two of the most popular trending topics today. Many tweets described prayers in the streets and survivors being pulled out from the dust and debris. Additionally, information about donations, relief funds, and aid organizations quickly spread throughout the social networking site to concerned citizens across the world, searching for a way to help in this great time of need. The U.S. State Department claimed that their text messaging fund, which encourages users to text “Haiti” to the number 90999 to make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross, had received nearly 83,000 hits as of Wednesday afternoon.

Pat Robertson's 700 Club: staying "compassionate"

Yet for some foolhardy outsiders, this is a situation that deserves little pity. On Twitter, L.A. model Molly Shephard (mollymshephard) wrote, “I don’t think ANYONE should help Haiti. A country filled with FRENCH speaking Black people? I don’t give a f*ck! So sick of hearing it.” In a similar vein of blowhard-y self-absorption toward those in need, televangelist Pat Robertson called the earthquakes a “blessing in disguise,” then blamed the earthquakes on a “curse” from God as the result of a deal that he claimed Haitians had made with the devil:

“And you know… something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “Okay, it’s a deal.” And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . The Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same islands. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God.” [Emphasis mine]

On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph responded directly to Robertson’s comments by pointing to the critical contributions made to the United States through Haiti’s slave rebellion. “I would like the whole world to know – America especially – that the independence of Haiti, when the slave rose up against the French and defeated the French army (powerful army) that the U.S. was able to gain the Louisiana Territory for fifteen million dollars,” said Joseph. “That’s three cents an acre. That’s thirteen states west of the Mississippi that the slave revolts in Haiti provided America. Also, the revolt of the rebels in Haiti allowed Latin America to be free… So, what pact have Haitians made with the devil [that] has helped the United States become what it is?”

The tragedy in Haiti will continue to unfold in the coming days, as the unexpected passing of human lives, homes, and cities tallies into an immeasurable loss. People with a conscience and the desire to help those who have lost all they hold dear will bear witness to these events, helping where they can, and drowning out those who want to mock this tragedy, or profit from it. Whether our support is offered in providing funds, medical care, direct relief to those on the ground, or offering support for survivors and relatives in our home countries, we must not forget those who have been lost or who are struggling to survive during this unimaginable disaster.

Yet even among the so-called beautiful people of the world, ugliness has ensued in the tragic form of public fat-shaming. Earlier this week, the site canceled more than 5,000 accounts for members were accused of “gaining weight” over the recent holiday season. Although a few hundred members re-applied and were voted back into the network, the rest of the discarded members were sent emails which encouraged them to re-apply when they are “back looking their best,” with details of recommended fitness boot camps in New York, Los Angeles, the UK and Europe, according to a press release sent out by the company on Tuesday.

Many readers will probably find it hard to muster sympathy for the excluded members. After all, it does require a certain level of vanity to apply for membership in a network that claims to provide “an accurate representation of what society’s ideal of beauty.” But what I find most interesting in this discussion is the site’s double-speak in claiming to embrace its existing plus-sized members, while casting aside those who have gained weight as unattractive and unfit for membership.

Representatives for the website, who responded to interview questions over e-mail, claim that BeautifulPeople.com is not sizist by nature:

“We are in no way trying to encourage people to be a certain weight – many of our members vary dramatically in size and all are considered beautiful,” says Greg Hodge, global managing director of the site. “However, binging over the Christmas, in a very short period of time, has led a number of members’ appearances to become affected in an unhealthy way and we see no harm in encouraging people to focus on regaining the healthy standard that they were previously voted in for.”

The focus on healthy vs. unhealthy appearances is a common cover for many fat-phobic discussions. It’s unlikely that their attempts to push former members into weight loss will succeed — in a 2006 study of over 2400 overweight or obese adults, researchers found that nearly 3 out of 4 respondents responded to prejudice against their size by “eating more and refusing to diet,” according to the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). This would suggest that the tactics which Hodge calls “encouraging” may actually dissuade former members from losing weight. Conflating thinness with health is also a mistake. In a 2005 Time article titled “Can You Be Fat and Healthy,” writers noted that our current medical industry may be flawed in correlating weight gain with unhealthiness, ultimately leading to tragic consequences for overweight and obese patients:

“It’s not the number on the scale or the size of your khakis that will kill you, after all; it’s the elevated blood pressure and cholesterol and other nasty problems that come with moving to the relaxed-fit rack. If you eat well, work out regularly and walk away from your doctor’s office with straight A’s on your physical, what does it matter if you can’t wriggle into slim-cut jeans… In our effort to get healthy and look great, we have created an environment so hostile to the idea of obesity that overweight people have become marginalized, giving up on their well-being and sometimes failing to show up even for such routine tests as Pap smears and mammograms for fear of being hectored about their weight by their doctors.”

BeautifulPeople.com claims to have members who vary by size. “This isn’t a witch hunt for fat people,” says Hodge. “We have many large members who were voted in as larger, beautiful people and who look healthy and attractive with their extra weight. This is an expulsion of people who joined with a certain look and physique who have now gained binge-weight which has made them look un-healthy and less attractive.”

Yet if that’s the case, it’s a little odd that their press release headline labels the more than 5,000 ousted members as festive fatties and former beauties. Aren’t they a little worried about offending their plus-sized constituency? Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com, argues that “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.” I’m guessing that the body types for members don’t differ quite as much as Hodge was hoping, or the site might eventually collapse under its larger members’ collective girth.

By claiming to embrace size diversity while rejecting members who have gained weight, the site’s leadership is trying to have their cake and eat it, too. Fat-phobic language and jeering are hardly the hallmarks of body acceptance, yet Hodge and Hintze would have the public believe that they welcome all shapes and sizes under the umbrella of “beauty.” Perhaps knowing the truth, some members can muster up the courage to leave behind the Beautiful People and found their own exclusive social network, one that allows for health and beauty at every size.

All in all, it would appear that Powell had it made: her biggest problems seemed to involve little more than burned food and the occasional tiff with her doting husband, Eric, over her obsession with Child’s recipes. Of course, not everyone thought Julie Powell was worthy of the attention heaped on by her adoring public. Cookbook author Virginia Willis belittled Powell’s talent (“What the hell did she know about food? Had she even heard of poulet au Bresse?”). Even Julia Child offered a scathing critique: she didn’t think Powell was a “serious cook,” but was instead “somebody… doing it almost for the sake of a stunt.” But literary critics, for the most part, embraced Powell’s style. Booklist hailed her first book as “joyful [and] humorous,” while Publisher’s Weekly decreed that Powell’s writing was “feisty and unrestrained… her voice is endearing… Both home cooks and devotees of Bridget Jones–style dishing will be caught up in Powell’s funny, sharp-tongued but generous writing.”

But the Julie Powell we knew and loved (or loved to hate) is no more. Her new book Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession serves as a meditation not only on Powell’s surprising six-month apprenticeship with a New York-based butcher shop, but also on a two-year extramarital affair with D*, a lover who engages Powell in BDSM (healthy) and emotional self-mutilation (not so healthy).

As an author with a history of using extensive personal projects to work through her internal issues, Powell’s foray into butchery allows her to symmetrically examine fractured pieces of meat and her changing marriage with Eric. The book is a frank, difficult, and revealing look at both her carnivorous and carnal desires, at once wincingly funny and unexpectedly tender. Yet, few critics this time around are willing to embrace Powell’s journey.

Much of the criticism Powell has received for Cleaving relies on all-too-familiar sexist tropes of female authors as mentally unstable (think: Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf) and unworthy of serious consideration. Newsday called the new Powell “unhinged,” while The New York Times wrote that “The woman who came across as simply whiny and self-absorbed in the film reveals a dark, damaged persona. Nora Ephron won’t be touching this one with a 20-foot baguette.”

Of course, infidelity and PETA-worthy descriptions of dismembered animals aren’t for everyone. But why is it that Raymond Carver and John Updike can write about adultery and enter the literary canon, while Powell struggles to maintain credibility? Her sanity has been openly called into question, but it’s hardly crazy for a memoirist to draw from life and write about the painful, wrenching experiences of a rocky marriage and adultery.

In a recent Double X article, Powell expressed chagrin over a review published in her hometown newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman, where columnist Addie Broyles argued, “There’s something to be said about modesty when it comes to writing about extramarital sex, the painful details of which I’m too embarrassed for her to share, just in case her family or friends are reading this.” Never mind that Powell actively pursued publication and is promoting her work in a U.S. book tour: infidelity is apparently just too shameful for a female author to write about or for a female critic to discuss.

Even BUST, a trendy U.S. feminist magazine, claimed that the book “should have stayed on [her] hard drive.” Apparently, women aren’t supposed to publicly express the same adulterous desires that prolific male writers often describe, at least not without being savaged by critics.

What’s equally interesting about the reviews is not only the condemning judgment passed onto Powell for confessing her adultery, but also a lack of consideration for the existence and legitimacy of polyamory. Though Powell’s relationship with D* is initially fraught with lies, she soon confesses to Eric and continues the affair with Eric’s full knowledge and consent; in retaliation, he develops a similarly extramarital relationship with another woman. This would suggest that their marriage was an “open relationship,” which Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy, co-authors of the book The Ethical Slut, define as “a relationship in which the people involved have some degree of freedom to fuck and/or love people outside the relationship.”

As much as we’d like to think that marriage leads to monogamous happy endings, it’s not always the case, yet women like Powell continue to be stigmatized for going against the grain of single-partner relationships. In her book Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, Jenny Block wrote about the difficulty of finding hard numbers and statistics on the adultery rates of women in the U.S.:

“Studies don’t often elicit honest answers and are often found flawed and biased in both design and execution. I found statistics stating that anywhere from 12 percent to nearly 70 percent of women cheat. Anecdotally, there’s evidence of these higher numbers in a bevy of successful websites that facilitate cheating, and magazine headlines about women who stray.” (Emphasis mine.)

Given the prevalence of infidelity, the practice of polyamory, which encompasses a wide range of sexual preferences – including both casual flings and committed loving relationships – makes sense for many couples. Ultimately, Powell was able to reconcile her marriage, although it’s unclear if either her or her husband’s ties with other partners have been fully severed.

Both Cleaving and its critics insist on a view of romantic love that only allows for one significant other to prevail. It’s true that Powell may have lost status in the eyes of the public, as she morphed from a bubbly Amy Adams-like chef to a fallen, fallible woman and butcher. But her important, critical dissections of meat and monogamy, as rendered in Cleaving, are not to be dismissed.

Television network ABC was flooded with over 1,500 calls of complaint. The Parents Television Council, a U.S.-based media watchdog group, wants parents to call and write in with their complaints to Dick Clark Productions and the broadcasting advertisers. “Good Morning America,” a daily talk show which appears on ABC, cancelled Lambert’s scheduled appearance on Tuesday this week, claiming that, “Given his controversial American Music Awards performance, we were concerned about airing a similar concert so early in the morning.”

Lambert was quickly able to book another talk show, CBS network’s “The Early Show,” and he immediately launched into pop star mea culpa mode. “Those [moves] were not rehearsed and came from more of an impromptu place,” he said. “I got carried away, but I don’t see anything wrong with it… That wasn’t my intention, I wasn’t being sneaky. It got the most of me, I guess.”

The network helpfully replayed the scenes from the night before, with blurred-out censorship to bring home the point of just how objectionable a little oral sex and kissing is to the American public. Yet, when asked by the show if he would offer an apology to the children, Lambert switched gears and refused to say “I’m sorry” for being sexually explicit: to do so would have meant apologizing for his identity, as though being an out gay man who kisses and caresses other men is something to be sorry for.

Although Lambert only briefly addressed the inherent homophobia of being singled out as the most risqué and “adult” performer at the 2009 AMA broadcast, he did point out that his performance was hardly the most graphic or mature content of the night. “Just to play devil’s advocate: Lady GaGa smashing whiskey bottles; Janet Jackson grabbed a male dancer’s crotch; Eminem talked about how Slim Shady has seventeen rapes under his belt. I haven’t heard one peep about that. There’s a lot of adult material on the AMAs this year and I know I wasn’t the only one.”

As usual, the focus of the nation’s collective moral outrage is not the would-be rapist Eminem, but the gay man who (gasp!) made-out with another dude on camera. The commercial consequences of a boycott from parents may leave his record company wary of similar repeat performances. And unlike Madonna and Britney Spears, who shared a far less passionate smooch at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2003, Lambert’s kiss will not send droves of heterosexual men (ages 18-30) to record stores, eager to shell out their hard-earned cash for his new album.

Never mind that Entertainment Weekly has hailed Adam Lambert as “the belle of what turns out to be one heck of a glitter-pop ball.” Forget about The New York Times calling Lambert “a national sensation” or The Washington Post praising his album as more successful than Susan Boyle’s debut, which has also released this week. As far as the world is concerned, Lambert’s sexual orientation is far more compelling than any song he could belt out. And his flamboyant sensuality seems to make a lot of straight people feel very, very uncomfortable.

Of course, Lambert has faced criticism in the past for his performance antics, particularly his photo shoot with semi-nude women as part of the Details magazine headline, “Why Does Every Woman in America Want to Sleep with the American Idol?” While his appeal to multiple markets is undeniable, including teen girls and older women who are entranced by his image, Lambert has been taken to task for his performances, publicity stunts, and his loose-cannon expressions of sexuality. It’s true that Lambert’s fame could eventually be used in the service of political and social change for the LGBTQI community in the U.S. But as an entertainer, Lambert’s artistic self-image reflects his unique point of view, one which is clearly just as comfortable with the eroticism (and objectification) of women as well as men.

Yet, why should Lambert feel forced to play to one audience or the other? His material has cross-over appeal to straight and queer audiences, so Lambert’s decision to market his music to multiple groups is hardly cause for criticism. In a satiric open letter to Adam Lambert that was recently posted at The Huffington Post, signed by “The Gay Thought, Fashion, and Culture Police,” author Joe Vogel makes a case for Lambert’s entertaining opposition to the political and social agendas of the American LGBTQI community. He warns Lambert:

“…you can either be a cog for the mainstream music machine or the gay community. There are no other options. You cannot be complex, you cannot be both masculine and feminine, you cannot resist labels or boxes, you cannot experiment, you cannot form your own identity, you cannot just be. You must always match stereotypes, meet expectations.”

Lambert actively courts controversy, as do many of his pop star counterparts, but his sexuality as a gay man will always be viewed as the single aspect of his persona which must be challenged, negotiated, overlooked, amplified, or downplayed, depending on the audience. Yet his tendency to divide fans and viewers will undoubtedly fuel record sales. Billboard.com reports that “For Your Entertainment” has been projected to sell 225,000 units in its first week, which will outperform previous expectations for the album’s debut. It was Pink who sang, “I’m not here for your entertainment / you don’t really want to mess with me tonight” and I’m beginning to think Lambert has taken a cue from her and played it both ways – he may titillate and entertain you, but he won’t apologize if you don’t like the show.

Magnanti’s revelation defies stereotypes of sex workers as being either drug-addicted, helpless victims, or unintelligent enough to support a “real” job. From 2003 through the end of 2004, her work for a London brothel supported her PhD studies in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science at The University of Sheffield. In the case of Magnanti, erotic labor has more than paid off her educational debts, it also helped to launch her into two highly successful careers as a published writer and scientist. She currently works as a research specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology for a hospital research group at Bristol University. Her books include The Intimate Adventures of Belle de Jour (2005), The Further Adventures of Belle de Jour (2006), Playing the Game (2008), and Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men (2009). She is currently working on a novel, which she plans to publish under her given name rather than her pseudonym.

Her comic, tongue-in-cheek style often uses literary references to great effect in what comes across as almost conversational and seemingly effortless writing. She writes about her experiences with candor and humor, proving that raunchy jokes aren’t just the exclusive province of Judd Apatow. After all, it’s not every writer who can make a casual reference to both anal sex and Indian food, yet Magnanti joked that her answer to “Can you do anal?” was, “Oh, right. Yes, I can do that. Provided I haven’t been out for a curry the night before.”

Her blog was even named by The Guardian as its Best Written Blog of the Year in 2003. Beating out top-rated blogs such as Call Centre Confidential and Beyond Northern Iraq, Magnanti’s writing proved to be irresistible to the newspaper’s judging panel. Judge Bruce Sterling noted that:

“Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It’s not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use this new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable … She is in a league by herself as a blogger.”

In her interview with The Sunday Times, Magnanti claims she doesn’t object to the concept of “hookerdom,” yet throughout the interview, she does not once refer to herself as a “hooker.” Yet, people like Bruce Sterling, India Knight – The Sunday Times interviewer, and other journalists seem to have no issue with offhandedly using this incredibly derogatory term for sex workers. The first six words of the ABC News story “Diary of a Call Girl Blogger Is Revealed – Gasp – as a Scientist” refers to Magnanti as “[t]he most celebrated high class hooker in the world.”

I would even argue that beyond its fundamental lack of respect for Magnanti’s story, the word isn’t even used correctly: “hooker” traditionally refers to those who solicit sex in public places, like street corners, while Magnanti was a “call girl,” or a sex worker who accepted and set appointments via a brothel. Regardless, if Magnanti hasn’t used the word “hooker” to describe her erotic labor, it’s debasing for journalists to refer to her as a “hooker” rather than utilize Magnanti’s preferred self-identifying label.

Although there has been great speculation for the past six years as to Belle de Jour’s real identity, Magnanti may never have come forward if not for the potential danger of being thrust into the spotlight by her ex-boyfriend. Magnanti made a bold move in going forward with her story, since only a handful of her co-workers knew her background; her agent did not know her real name, lest it slip out during book promotions, and her parents must have found out all about it this week. In coming forward, Magnanti has had to deal with unwanted visits to her workplace at Bristol University, as well as new threats of public harassment, slut-shaming, and other unwanted attention.

Ironically, Magnanti has not revealed her ex-boyfriend’s name to the media, referring to him only as a “big mouth lurking in the background.” Owen (last name unpublished) has come forward to the Daily Mail with a tell-all story to the tabloids, arguing that it’s somehow less pathetic to date a call girl than to be one. “She has brought the Sword of Damocles down on herself,” he told the publication. “While she thinks she hasn’t been cut, I think she’ll find that she has when she goes for another job in a couple of years.” And yet, she has book deals, a successful career in medical research, plenty of money, and a new boyfriend of just over a year, whereas her ex-boyfriend has… a thwarted attempt to blackmail Magnanti. How’s that for pathetic?

Even as some readers will gasp in horror at Magnanti’s travails in the sex work industry, their opinion means little in the face of her enormous accomplishments as a writer, scientist, and public figure. Through it all, she has maintained a sense of irreverence toward her work, claiming that, “I’ve felt worse about my writing than I ever have about sex for money.”

Perhaps Magnanti will soon pave the way for other sex workers around the world to come forward and offer their stories of using this complex underground industry to further their educational goals, fund their travels, care for a family, or support other “acceptable” pursuits. As Magnanti condemns human trafficking and involuntary prostitution, her story still stands as proof that those who enter the industry with free will, savvy and clear goals can use this unique opportunity to reshape public perceptions of what might otherwise be considered kinky promiscuity.

In the academic realm of anthropology, which demanded his implicit adherence to conformity of thought, Lévi-Strauss challenged many of his field’s previously accepted tropes. His controversial stances on the history of civilization radically changed the script for humankind’s history on Earth, one which claimed that so-called “primitive” societies were populated by uninspired tribes of humans who were collectively driven by their basic physical needs. Lévi-Strauss insisted that both reason and logic were central to the group dynamics, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious to the field researchers who had come before him.

In his work, he hoped to prove that oral and written myths, from tribes as seemingly disparate as two villages in Brazil and South France, were connected by the evidence of unified structures and patterns which govern all human activity. He argued that tribal communities were formed by their guiding laws and the community’s adherence to these laws. With the minor shift of a few details which were specific to each region, Lévi-Strauss believed the most advanced and the most remote of cultures and time periods shared universal motifs of binary opposition: hot and cold, raw and uncooked, black and white.

Lévi-Strauss’ career-making search into the history of humanity’s existence was a blend of unlikely elements. His complex writing merged literary theory with Marxist philosophy, psychoanalysis and ethnological anthropology to support what he and other Structuralist theorists of the time saw as the universe’s fundamental patterns of logic, which underlie all of our actions, thought, and behavior. But humans, as far as he saw it, were a blip in the chain of life and hardly could be considered as a final step in the universe’s evolution. Yet he frequently noted distinctive ways in which our species evolved over thousands of years from natural to cultural states of being.

His work critiqued the dynamics of social hierarchies within groups. Certain parts of his public persona resisted the lure of being at the top of institutional hierarchies: he regularly insisted, for example, that he not be called the “father” of structuralism. Yet he did not shy away entirely from the siren calls of elitist prestige. He was a professor of anthropology at universities around the world, as well as secretary general of the International Social Science Council at Unesco, and in 1973 he received the Erasmus Prize for his “notable contributions to European culture, society, and social science” and was appointed to the Académie Française, a widely regarded intellectual honor in French academia. His many honors reflect a man who was highly revered for the content of his work.

Native mythology in North and South America inspired him to write a four-volume set which examined the re-telling of a single myth across two continents. “The Raw and the Cooked” (1964), “From Honey to Ashes” (1966), “The Origin of Table Manners” (1968), and “The Naked Man” (1971) were later published as the collection “Mythologiques I-IV.” The New York Times describes “Mythologiques” as a powerful collection which “attempts nothing less than an interpretation of the world of culture and custom, shaped by analysis of several hundred myths of little known tribes and tradition” and also notes that his analysis of myth and culture might “contrast imagery of monkeys and jaguars; consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies); and establish connections between weird mythological tales and ornate laws of marriage and kinship.”

Several Facebook groups have formed this week as readers and fans in France express grief for the loss of their beloved cultural icon. A wall photo of Lévi-Strauss on the profile of one of the newest groups, “Hommage à Claude Lévi-Strauss,” offers a glimpse of him in what many saw as his signature pose: a thoughtful and serious man, his wizened-looking head in one hand and his brow furrowed with intense concentration. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Lévi-Strauss in lighter moments, though his biographers claim that he was occasionally a man of leisure who enjoyed classical music and good books.

His supporters remember him as one who offered immeasurable contributions to his fields of study and as a national treasure who will be greatly missed. A description of the group’s mission characterizes Lévi-Strauss as “un géant de la pensée française reconnu dans le monde entire” (English: a giant of French thought acknowledged worldwide). On the wall of this Facebook group, member Delphine Picout shares her tribute to his legacy, writing, “Adieu à un grand Monsieur, et merci pour ton savoir, et ce cadeau que tu nous a fait” (English: Goodbye to a great Man, and thank you for your knowledge, and the gift you have given us).

In French and in English, Claude Lévi-Strauss forever changed the ways in which we understand the shaping of civilization and our unifying connections across culture and time. Future generations of students will turn to his work for the page-turning myths buried in his writing, even as the life of Lévi-Strauss provides fodder for not so much legend as admiration of his extraordinary gifts to anthropology, literature, and academic scholarship.

The author would like to thank Anna Waltman for her help in translating the two French lines in this article.

The University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, a South African college, has reinstated two white students who were expelled last year after serving four black female housekeepers and one elderly black male housekeeper with beef stew which one of the men had previously urinated into. But it was not enough to harass these workers: the students filmed their heinousness, as well as the vomiting of the five housekeepers after learning they had been served urine-soaked stew.

At the end of the video, the students boldly announced, “That is what we think of integration.” The video was purposely filmed, the students claim, as a “satirical slant” while the campus prepared to racially integrate the residence halls and dormitories. At that point, the campus was still divided into white and black dormitories, nearly twenty years after the end of legal apartheid in South Africa.

Two of the accused students, Roelof Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe, maintain their innocence in spite of the evidence which had previously been released for the viewing of the university’s student body. It appears that the university is taking them at their word. After being banned from the campus in 2008, the vice-chancellor of the university announced on Friday that complaints against the two students were being withdrawn and both men could return to campus to resume their scholastic studies. Both men will still face human rights and criminal charges from the South African government.

They are not racists, these men claim, and the employees were in on the joke the whole time! It must not have been terribly funny, though, since all five of the employees continue to be harassed by the students they are cleaning up after. They have requested new uniforms, as the old ones are “painful reminders” of the incident, as well as asked to be moved to a different dormitory, as all five housekeepers are “still being taunted, they are still being humiliated,” according to comments made to CNN by Ranjeni Munusamy, a spokeswoman for South Africa’s ministry of higher education.

In February 2008, Malherbe and van der Merwe released a joint statement, claiming that,

“Although, as was intended at the time, it appears to viewers as if one of the persons urinated in the traditional brew prepared, it most certainly did not take place and a close study of the particular insert will confirm that the liquid was squirted from a bottle.”

This argument will strike some viewers as logical. Living in the age of YouTube, web-savvy Internet users are generally not surprised when action scenes are exaggerated, altered, or even faked in order to drive up interest. However, this was no ordinary film stunt, and the effects of the video’s “satirical slant” bring up serious questions about the legacy racism, sexism, classism and colonialism within this university’s walls.

Satire, as most people understand the concept, involves “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” What, exactly, are the vices and follies of Black housekeepers in this video?

As portrayed by these students, Black women and elderly men who live and work on-campus are naïve, eager to please at the expense of their innate dignities, and willing to undergo extreme humiliation in order to be accepted by white Afrikaners. The satirical joke of the video mocks these four women and one elderly man for, essentially “working while black.” That’s not satire. That is racism, rooted in colonialist oppressions which have been perpetuated against Blacks in South Africa since the nineteenth century, long before the General Election of 1948, which legalized apartheid in the colony.

Women of color suffered tremendously under the system of apartheid and surely, it is no coincidence that working-class Black women are the main targets of this film. Without access to public education, voting, or the right to own property, many endured poverty and unemployment. In the Women’s Charter, adopted by women of color at the Founding Conference of the Federation of South African Women in 1954, the women noted :

“We women share with our menfolk the cares and anxieties imposed by poverty and its evils. As wives and mothers, it falls upon us to make small wages stretch a long way. It is we who feel the cries of our children when they are hungry and sick. It is our lot to keep and care for the homes that are too small, broken and dirty to be kept clean. We know the burden of looking after children and land when our husbands are away in the mines, on the farms, and in the towns earning our daily bread… We women have stood and will stand shoulder to shoulder with our menfolk in a common struggle against poverty, race and class discrimination, and the evils of the colourbar.”

The individuals who have been “satirized” in this video share several common factors: they are middle-aged; working-class, held as subservient employees to the student body on-campus; they are Black. In mocking both their existence and the attempts to desegregate the university population, these young white guys have flaunted their class, gender, and racial privileges and made clear that any attempts to integrate will be met with their scorn. Regardless of whether the actions of the video were faked or legitimate, their message of intolerance to racial and gender-based differences shines through. The University of the Free State has already endured mass protests in response to the video’s release. Perhaps further peaceful protests will bring greater attention to this issue and bring justice for the workers of the university.

Clearly, Playboy is hoping to attract not only controversy, but a younger audience who would statistically much rather log-in to a website than buy a magazine. Internet pornography is a vast and seemingly limitless market which offers anonymity, low-cost or free-trial membership, and instant access anywhere, any time. In contrast, the average Playboy subscriber is 35-years old and might prefer the printed medium to the web.

Ecommerce Journal argued in a recent editorial that “Young people, especially teens, tend to subvert accepted standards of beauty. They want to watch porn related to their world, porn that they can purchase online. The adult entertainment industry has nothing to do but jump on the bandwagon and begin promoting for the younger generation.”

Lacking a younger audience and plunging into a financial nosedive (along with the rest of the publishing business), Playboy hopes this cover will reverse its downward trends in newsstand sales and subscriptions. CNN noted that the magazine, which at peak circulation boasted 3.1 million magazines sold, recently “came in 200,000 short of its 2.6 million rate base — the minimum circulation a magazine promises to advertisers.” In a bid to compete with their online rivals and attract a younger audience, Playboy is even offering the magazine for sale at 7-11 locations in the U.S. This is a savvy marketing strategy and a clear homage to the fictional Kwik-E-Mart. 7-11 locales also have the added benefits of being both less seedy than the typical adult video store and far more likely to have younger teens and adults parading the aisles.

Given the character’s conservative demeanor on the show, fans are surprised that Marge would bare all (or, at least, bare some) for the likes of Playboy.

On the other hand, Marge has played much more than homemaker and mother on the show. In twenty seasons, Marge has portrayed many diverse career roles, including a cop, a nuclear technician (with Homer beside her, of course), and even a pretzel-franchise owner. Yet her sexuality is often portrayed as monogamous in the face of extramarital temptation, religious (in the episode “The Haw-Hawed Couple,” Marge prays, “Dear Lord, we thank you for the sexual intimacy we are about to enjoy”) and conservative in dress and demeanor.

Too often, Marge’s “family values” have been pitted against the rowdy behavior of Bart and Homer Simpson. As Bart and Homer revel in excess, law-breaking, and mischievous antics, Marge has only dallied in controversy, and even those storylines (her addiction to gambling, for example) are played for redemption rather than laughs.

Religious author Kenneth Briggs told the Guardian in 2001 that Marge was his personal “candidate for sainthood … She lives in the real world, she lives with crises, with flawed people. She forgives and she makes her own mistakes. She is a forgiving, loving person … absolutely saintly.” Given these high moral standards, is it any wonder that Zap2it blog writer Hanh Nguyen announced,

“Yes, the blue-haired matriarch of Springfield has revealed a bit more of that yellow skin than we’ve ever seen before for an alluring pose that makes us feel, well, kind of disturbed. Check her out: We love Marge, but sexualizing her? That just seems wrong somehow.”

The Simpson family, while not ethnically defined, are most often read as Caucasian by viewers. Why, then, did Playboy model Marge’s cover after that of another Playboy first, Darine Stern? In October 1971, Stern was the first woman of color to appear on the cover of Playboy. Her iconic image – while never being paid tribute in previous issues – is replicated on this cover by Marge, a cartoon character. Editorial director Jimmy Jellinkek claims,

“We decided to re-create [it] because it’s one of our most iconic covers and because Marge’s sexy blue beehive immediately made us think of Darine Stern, whose beautiful, voluminous hairdo was front and center on the October 1971 cover.”

Is the magazine actually suggesting that hair belonging to women of color most closely resembles a cartoon? Or that only a cartoon character could pay tribute to a woman of color model? This statement, endorsed by the magazine, takes product endorsement and equates it with the experience of a woman living at a critical intersection of race and gender.

Without getting into a debate of sex-positive vs. anti-pornography ideology, I think it’s safe to say that the November cover of Playboy is a move based more heavily in consumerist tastes than subversive art. “The Simpsons,” which continues to win awards and receive media attention, is also hoping to keep its fan-base interested, titillated, and returning in large droves on Sunday nights to watch the show. A cross-marketing strategy with Playboy might seem risqué, but it’s actually more of the same capitalist-publishing which readers of the magazine and viewers of the show alike have come to expect: product placement, the exploitation of people of color, and another ho-hum nod to female sexuality.

Celebrities are not the only ones who are coming forward this month with allegations of long-term incest and rape. An Australian man was reported last week to have raped his daughter for more than three decades and siring four children with his daughter. The abuse was reported by the survivor in 2005 and again in summer of 2008, yet police took no action. In Victoria State, the unnamed man has now been charged with five counts of rape, five of incest, two of indecent assault and one count of common assault.

The Australian case represents one of several high-profile cases throughout the globe involving crimes such as incest rape, kidnapping, and false imprisonment. A 56-year-old British citizen is currently serving a twenty-seven year sentence for the rape of his two daughters from 1980 through summer of 2008; his erratic, violent sexual assaults resulted in nineteen pregnancies and seven living children born to his two daughters. The presiding judge described the case as “the worst I’ve ever seen.” In a case of eerie similarities, Austrian man Josepf Fritzl held his daughter captive for twenty-four years in a concealed basement dungeon within his family home; he beat and raped her daily during her imprisonment, resulting in his daughter’s delivery of seven children and a miscarriage.

Cases which involve long-term incest rape often share common threads of abuse. Survivors are often isolated from outside intervention and assistance, with some abusers, like Josef Fritzl, imprisoning their children in order to secretly perpetuate sexual violence and total control of their victims. The convicted Brit, referenced above, “moved frequently from village to village in the county of Lincolnshire to avoid detection,” according to The Earth Times.

Within the confines of the home and private sphere, these men used brute power and dominance to ensure their children would not come forward and bring them to justice. Though many often decry the absence of intervention from the law, these abusers are willing to go to any lengths in order to conceal their motivations and deeds. The extended periods of unreported rape are a reflection of the abuser’s actions, not the survivor’s inability to seek help. Yet the implicit blame falls too often on the shoulders of these courageous survivors.

For survivors of rape and incest, reading the media coverage of these cases can be a highly traumatic experience. People broke the story of actress Mackenzie Phillips with an attention-grabbing headline: “Mackenzie Phillips: I Slept with My Own Father.” Using a tell-all confessional style in this manner suggests that Phillips was complicit in her rape and casts doubt within readers as to whether Phillips could have consented to being sexually assaulted.

Yet the magazine quotes Phillips as saying, “Had this happened before? I didn’t know. All I can say is it was the first time I was aware of it.” In her drugged state, Phillips was in no condition to consent to sexual activity and to this day remains confused as to whether her father had previously attempted to rape her. Well, I suppose it’s only fair to admit that no one ever claimed People needed to make sense; the publication just needs to sell magazines.

Paparazzi are notorious for crossing the boundaries of privacy and propriety in order to obtain an illicit photograph or a quote. Many survivors in these cases go into hiding to escape the media glare and seek recovery. In March this year, paparazzi invaded the home of Fritzl’s daughter and began to photograph her in her kitchen. Not only did the paparazzi break the law in this instance, but they also further traumatized a woman who has undergone many, many years of isolation, torture and abuse – all for a much-coveted photograph. In these cases, there is little respect shown by many media outlets for the extensive recovery and healing required for survivors to move forward with their lives. All that seemed to matter was a snapshot obtained at any cost.

As discerning readers, we are responsible for the financial support we provide to media publications that misreport on cases of incest-rape. Whether it’s People magazine or an Austrian tabloid, a survivor’s health and sanity is compromised by a severe lack of journalistic integrity. Yes, it’s all too important that major media publications, and even entertainment rags, cover these cases and bring awareness to issues of rape, sexual assault, and incest, all of which are traditionally stigmatized within the public sphere.

However, conflating “sex” with “rape” and invading the homes of survivors are two ends of a media spectrum that lacks any sensitivity or critical understanding for these tragic experiences. In showing respect for the experiences and privacy of incest rape survivors, we bear witness to their testimony and offer what little justice can be gleaned from their trauma.