“In my own circle of writers and rock fans…populism had another meaning: it derived from pop.”

-Ellen Willis, Introduction to Beginning to See the Light

To be a leftist in America in the days since the last true liberal president—probably Lyndon Johnson, despite Vietnam—usually meant being in a permanent defensive crouch. With Barack Obama, the president with the most potential since Johnson for real systemic change, the left is still terrified to come out of its crouch, to expose its underbelly to the world.

Leftists snipe at each other, often in some strange desire for a purity that can never really exist. The compromise necessary to create a mass movement to elect a president is anathema to a section of the population that for a while felt itself shriveled to a tiny but ideologically-unified group. The safety of that small group is hard to leave, especially in a media culture that has made it so easy to self-select only that which reinforces your beliefs and to connect with those that think like you across state and national borders and to police out those who dare think differently.

Which came first, really? Nixon’s “Silent Majority” and the retreat of a real solid progressive movement leading to the Reagan Revolution and faux-populism used to convince people to vote to give their money to the rich, or a fragmenting media culture that killed off the chance for a true mass bond?

It is no accident that the last real pop superstar, Michael Jackson, hit the apex of his popularity in the Reagan years. There was at least an idea of a mass consensus in this country, even though no one really could’ve defined what that consensus was, and yet while we had a white man in office slowly hacking away at the rights of people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and anyone who didn’t fit into a nuclear-family, gender-binary, reactionary ideal of an America that never really existed, our number one superstar was a man celebrated and loved not in spite of his fluid sexuality, racial ambiguity, and androgyny, but because of it.

Michael Jackson: pop superstar, appealing to men and women, old and young, and subversive as hell.

And yet when this symbol of everything Reagan fought died two weeks ago, some on the left were eager to condemn others for pausing in the midst of re-tweeting news of a popular uprising in Iran to talk about the last real uniter of American culture.

Ellen Willis, social critic, feminist, and lover of pop culture, wrote in the introduction to the second edition of her collection Beginning to See the Light,

“There is a common theme in leftists’ reductive view of bourgeois liberties, their contempt for mass culture, and their dismissal of sexual politics. I think all of these antipathies reflect a puritanical discomfort with the urge—whatever form it takes—to gratification now, an assumption that social concern is synonymous with altruism and self-sacrifice.”

Yet Willis also connected that same impulse, that contempt for mass culture, to an idea that populism and radicalism were intrinsically different; that once something became popular, it was no longer subversive or radical. We can see this reaction in the critique of popular reaction to Michael Jackson and to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has been derided for his celebrity status, but it not only put him in office, it brought two million people to Washington, DC to see him inaugurated. More than anything we’ve seen since the fracturing of mass culture brought on by cable TV, deregulated radio, and the advent of the Internet, Barack Obama was a mass culture phenomenon, and elitists on the right and the left decried that phenomenon while trying to steal for themselves the cloak of populism.

None of this is to say, of course, that figures of the popular culture are not deeply problematic: Jackson’s court cases certainly prove this. This is not an argument that one should not critique popular culture—if anything, one should take the pop culture seriously enough to engage it and critique it. To throw it out entirely in some misguided idea of purification is as silly as writing off entirely a president who might be able, with popular support, to make significant changes despite his failures on all-too-real issues.

Puritanism is always an essentially conservative tendency, even when it crops up in so-called radical movements. It is not the radical streak in feminism that leads women to police each other’s clothing and sexual behavior for proper adherence to the rules. A truly radical feminism would be a truly liberatory feminism—one that feels no need to deny women the freedom to dress how they want, enjoy their sexuality how they want, marry or not marry or have children or not, depending on what works for them. Liberation doesn’t look the same for everyone; neither does subversion.

By the same token, a true liberal movement would take a stand against sexual policing of politicians whether they’re on the right or the left—would hold true to an ideal whether or not you like the person’s politics. Far from the moral relativism the left is always accused of, this would be a solid moral stance: in favor of freedom.

Elitism too is a conservative tendency—it exists to preserve the status quo, to erect boundaries and keep the rabble out. And to decry others as not properly radical or as selling out is just as elitist as saying flat out “I’m better than you.”

Willis recognized this tendency in the left and the cultural elitists, writing,

“Changing times forced clarity upon us: increasingly we had to choose between populism and radicalism, both politically and culturally…I was, no question, with the avant-gardists, even as I missed in my nerve-ends that unique thrill of ecstatic commonality once so integral to the pleasure of rock’n’roll—and the tension struck me as emblematic of my overall situation. I still honored that commonality; I believed that it represented something real, something potentially liberating, and that aristocratic fear of the mob was death to genuine radicalism.”

Fear of the mob to some degree is eminently rational for the left—Reagan and Nixon were both elected by large popular majorities, after all. It’s easy to say that the majority of the population was deluded and that in fact the left has been vindicated in the collapse of the economy and the leftward shift of American voters. But the same tendency is coming out now, both from the right—witness the tea party protests—but also from the left, in the self-righteous declaration that Obama is just like Bush, that nothing will actually change.

Without popular support for policy changes, the cries from the right to preserve the status quo will drown out those from a self-anointed revolutionary vanguard. This will happen if the vanguard is more concerned with throwing out the people who are genuinely saddened by the death of a pop superstar, if it can’t understand the connection, the magic inherent in a country that for a few days united not around politics but around a pop song.

There’s something to be learned from this kind of cultural moment, that kind of unity and belief and inspiration. It should be admired, not shunned. As Willis said, what are we working for if not for the right to be happy, to have pleasure, to make music?

ii.
They save their best dress
Not for church, not for a dance.
They wear it when someone
in the family dies
so it’ll get some sun.

Tammy Ho Lai-ming

Tammy Ho Lai-ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, United Kingdom. She is a founding co-editor of the first and only Hong Kong-based literary publication, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. You can find out more about the author by visiting www.sighming.com.

The Jacksons were the little family from Indiana that rose from obscurity under the steel will of Joe Jackson. Today we are in the awe of the musical legacy left behind by their greatest star – Michael. In this time of mourning we are left to consider the cost of the gift that he left us with.

Michael paid for celebrity by sacrificing his childhood. He put his feelings to music in the song “Childhood”:

People say I’m not okay
‘Cause I love such elementary things…
It’s been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood
I’ve never known…

Have you seen my Childhood?
I’m searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne…

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?

The loss of his childhood would haunt Michel to his dying day. It was a sacrifice that his father Joe Jackson felt was necessary. Joe has enjoyed the role of patriarch and the second-hand fame he has achieved through his children. When BET held a tribute to Michael, Joe was the only family member in attendance.

Joe Jackson has taken every opportunity to raise his public status. When asked what the next step was by Don Lemon of CNN on the red carpet, he immediately began to speak about a record label he was attempting to promote, rather than discussing funeral plans for his son or the future of his grandchildren. He claims that he took the opportunity to promote his record company because that is what Michael would have wanted him to do. He further stated that he was crying on the inside. Each person deals with grief differently; however, it is quite incomprehensible that a loving parent would so easily cast aside the death of a child to promote a business venture.

Michael was a success in spite of Joe and not because of him. When one examines the life that Michael led, it is clear that it was filled with issues stemming from a very troubled childhood. What is ‘Neverland” but a palace dedicated to loss and suffering in the guise of play and whimsy? If Joe’s so-called methods were great, why did Michael feel the need to dedicate millions of dollars to attempting to escape his father? Why did Michael state that even as an adult the sight of Joe was enough to make him vomit?

Michael and LaToya have both spoken of being beaten with belts as children. Beating a child with a belt is not a form of discipline, it is abuse. Though Barry Gordie, the head of Motown records, claimed to have no knowledge of the violence in the Jackson family, it is hard to believe that such a terrible secret was not more widely known – and summarily ignored for the sake of profit.

In 2001 Joe went on the record to defend his behaviour in the German-language publication Daily News:

“There wouldn’t be so much crime these days if parents were prepared to punish their kids a little and take care that they stay on the right track.”

When Joe Jackson expresses a desire to be the legal guardian to his grandchildren, one cannot help but wonder if he has already begun to count the potential economic advantages that guardianship could entail. Forty percent of the trust will go directly to Katherine to revert to his children after her death and forty percent is to go directly to his children. Joe is a man that is clearly used to having his will obeyed and any objection on the children’s part may lead to a repeat of the experiences that their uncles and aunts survived.

Today, as Joe publicly claims to love these children and professes a desire to see that they get an education, one must ponder how much of this is posturing for the benefit of the cameras. At the peak of the Jackson 5’s fame, the family was regularly portrayed as happy and close even though their home was filled with violence. How many people would have bought their records, if they knew that behind the charming smile of their lead singer Michael there was a lonely, terrified, and abused child? Joe, like most abusers, made sure that his behaviour remained a dark family secret.

Children are defenceless and depend upon adults to advocate on their behalf. Placing the Jackson children with anyone who has a history of abuse would be a mistake.

Just because someone is related to you by blood, does not mean that they will have your best interests at heart. For Joe Jackson, his children were a meal ticket and a passport that whisked him away from brutal labour in a factory. It did not matter what the cost was; for Joe, any penalty was justified, if it equalled economic advancement.

Children are not the equivalent of property and therefore one cannot simply assign them in a will. It will be up to a court to decide whether or not to uphold Michael’s decision to place them with his mother. Though Kathryn and Joe have lived separately for years, they still occasionally share the same abode and Joe’s influence is still very much apparent in family affairs. Kathryn was unable to protect her children from his violence and therefore it is plausible to suggest that she may fail her grandchildren in the same manner.

Joe was never formally charged with abuse and therefore it is questionable whether his past actions will be taken into account; furthermore, if no one stands up to contest the placement of the children with Kathryn and Joe, it is doubtful whether a full fledged inquiry will be launched. In their father’s death, Prince, Paris and Blanket may gain a legacy that was his worst nightmare.

In the Antarctic, white sea-spiders sit in shallow blue waters under a thick layer of turquoise ice. Five, six, maybe ten bleached bodies rest upon eight-legged thrones, each spindly limb standing up on delicate tiptoe, paused, ready to scuttle, to kick around and break the suspension, but not just yet. They are frozen; for several minutes there is no movement at all, energy accumulates. And then, suddenly, a long segmented icicle-leg lifts, and replaces itself an inch from its original position. The clustered vigil lets time pass through it, eerily ambivalent, dismissive of our gaze. Theirs is a passive existence, patient, paradoxically self-aware and superior. It is only a matter of seconds before some activity will begin, inspired by instinct, nature, necessity perhaps, but free from the heavy awkwardness that humans call living.

Briege sighs. She has read about them and seen pictures in books, spending hours musing on their abstracted existence, wishing that they were not so distant, wishing that she could know them, wishing almost that she could be like them. She has brought her book with her, an encyclopaedia of sea life, and it is mostly useless. She knows of almost all the animals inside, and the attempt at classification does nothing but increase her exasperation. For every small plankton or mollusc there is a population of millions, most of which will remain unknown to the whole world, which can only know them in plural form: plankton, sea slugs, mussels, limpets, crabs, jellyfish, starfish and anemones in their multitudes, individually neglected.

The picture of the white sea-spiders is the only good thing about the book. Of course the editor is clearly an idiot, since he has reduced the picture to a thumbnail image in the corner of a page near the back of the book (being ’s,’ and with the dictionary being organized by common name, the matter of its position is more understandable). Still, she can conjure the beings up into her mind and tread water around them, relishing the pleasure she gets from watching what she secretly desires – like any true voyeur.

She can’t concentrate though. It’s too cold, and she’s in a caravan. There’s a rustling noise coming from outside, and Briege is imagining a varied cast of contemporary criminals congregating outside her van; burglars, serial killers, axe-murderers. This breed probably hangs around caravan parks, rustling the grass, ready to go fishing for young girls.

All her life, she has watched crabs, cuttlefish, and prawns being hauled up in their nets by the thousands, by the local desensitised fishermen with their big, homogenous hands, numb extremities attached to something called men. She has agonised over the creatures, which they only valued when dead, mostly to be exported, and eaten. After her parents had put her to bed she would close her eyes, and bring the dead sea-creatures to life, watching them in their aquatic world, moving with them through the seconds of her sleep, feeling connected to each and every one of them. She tries now to close her eyes and reach for some comfort in the vision, but she has grown up a bit and lost some of the ability. Anyway, the rustling is too loud.

Eager not to prolong her fate, she decides to see who it is that wants to eat her, and draws back the curtain of the van. There is a man, bearded, hunched beside the next van. Briege inhales quickly and averts her eyes to the mounds of black, which are horses sleeping in the moonlight, or maybe not. She wishes that she was one of them, instead of the girl about to be fished.

She closes the curtain, for this is actually happening. He not only looks like a murderer, he also resembles a fisherman. Her fate is sealed. She courageously peers out again and sees this time that he is going into the front door of the adjacent caravan. Actually, he falls into it, his legs still protruding from the step.

It’s been three minutes, and the man has not moved. Briege, still at the window, hardly breathing, realises that the man is no longer a threat so there is only one thing to do. She goes outside with her sketchbook and her enclyclopaedia. She hunches on the grass to the right of the legs and begins to draw the man, with big sweeping movements. She cannot see his face, but reassured of his vitality by his snores, she proceeds to capture his form, leaning the pad on the encyclopaedia, which is also a ready weapon should the man wake up and try to fish her.

What?

OK, no one really believes that. But no one really expected Palin to announce, on July 3rd, that she was stepping down from the governorship of America’s northernmost state. It’s been widely believed that Palin would run for president in 2012, as she hasn’t exactly been circumspect about her ultimate goals.

The biggest criticism of Palin on the campaign trail—and after it—was that she was unqualified, that her single unfinished term as governor of a sparsely populated, oil-rich state didn’t prepare her to deal with the complexities of running an entire country. John McCain’s aides have continued to drop comments into the press about Palin’s incompetence months after his opponent took office, but as other GOP hopefuls drop off the stage (paging Mark Sanford), Palin seems to have decided that now was her chance to seize the spotlight… by telling America that she was going to forego the chance to gain more experience.

In a spectacularly incoherent speech, loaded with bizarre basketball analogies and claims about the wonderful things she’s done for Alaska, Palin declared that she would not run for reelection. Then, because apparently lame duck governors always run around the country ignoring their state, and doing that would be unfair to the people of Alaska, she declared that she would turn power over to her lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell.

Nowhere did she mention a third option, which would’ve been to finish out her term and keep governing, bringing more of those Ethics Reforms (capitalization straight from the governor’s Web site) that are apparently her specialty. From her speech:

“We need those who will respect our Constitution where government’s supposed to serve from the BOTTOM UP, not move toward this TOP DOWN big government take-over… but rather, will be protectors of individual rights – who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have drastically changed and are willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it’s time so the team can win! And that is what I’m doing!” [Once again, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation straight from the governor's site.

Will Inglis, a political activist from Alaska, said,

“This proves what a lot of people have thought since she ran for VP; that the governorship had taken a back seat to her national ambitions. This shows an incredible lack of character for her to not finish out her time in the office that she was elected to. She hasn’t accomplished any of her stated goals such as lowering energy costs for Alaskans and getting work started on the natural gas pipeline. She obviously wasn’t cut out for the job, and has demonstrated that she is not qualified for any higher office.”

Palin is such an easy joke that it’s easy to sit back and laugh at her, yet one has to assume that she has some sort of team advising her on issues like this. Speculation started almost immediately upon her announcement that perhaps she had a job offer as a Fox News analyst or perhaps an eye on the Senate seat held by Lisa Murkowski, but I’d be willing to bet that the target of Palin’s intentions is still the White House, and in her thoughts this makes her look even more maverick-y and thus, in some way, more appealing to the rest of the country.

Either that, or she just can’t stand one more minute in Alaska.

It’s hard to see how this move can work out well for Palin. She’s got her hardcore supporters—probably a good portion of the tea party protesters scheduled to come out again in droves on July 4 to declare independence from some nebulous socialist fascism defined by a government spending money to try to keep people from starving in a recession teetering on the razor’s edge of depression. Beyond that, though, she’ll have to win over Americans who didn’t buy into “drill, baby, drill” as an energy policy and weren’t won over already by folksy comments about her kids.

Simply put, Palin’s image problem isn’t that she doesn’t have a national profile, like so many other governors who dream of DC. It’s that she has one—and it’s bad. It’s hard to see how quitting her job early, with no plans to gain political experience in the next three years before the next presidential election, will improve her profile.

There really is nothing new or shocking about Sanford’s story. Each day, countless people are unfaithful; according to The Monogamy Myth by Peggy Vaughan, statistics show that approximately 60% of husbands and 40% of wives will have an affair at some time in their marriage. Today, it is often more shocking to find that a husband is not a lecher. The only real twist to this drama is the reaction of Jenny Sanford, Mark’s wife.

When Mark Sanford made his predictable atonement plea, he was standing in front of the cameras by himself. Jenny Sanford seems to have declined to take on the role of long-suffering wife awaiting the return of her fickle lover. Dina Matos McGreevy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards all stood by their men, allowing the public to feed off of their grief like suckling pigs. Edwards and McGreevy even went as far as to write tell-all books, just in case somehow, in all of the public commentary and accusations, you missed essential points of their rise to public martyrdom.

In Sanford, we have been introduced to a woman that not only declines to express shame for her husband’s actions, but summarily declares the importance of maintaining dignity and respect in the eyes of her children. Unlike the women that have gone before her, political ambition was not her foremost thought. There were no ambitions of running for president one day or retaining the power that comes with being the first lady of a state.

Jenny Sanford’s response to her husband’s infidelity has introduced an image of the political wife that’s rather different from smiling doormat. Jenny Sanford, instead, appears as a self-assured and dignified woman. Though she has not displayed any of the anger and betrayal that she must surely be feeling, her curt responses to the media make it clear that the shame of this incident does not belong to her and that she is unwilling to sacrifice her self-respect while enabling her enamoured husband’s midlife crisis.

Unlike other cheated-on spouses, Jenny Sanford’s response has engendered empathy as well as admiration. Political wives have been forced to perform a very specific form of womanhood, and by refusing to wear the scarlet letter of shame, Sanford is viewed as a trailblazer by many.

Feminism is about choice and even while claiming this as truth, the decisions of Edwards et al. to stand behind their men always seemed a problematic choice. A decision that reflected such complete passivity hardly seemed informed by any real agency; rather, it reflected a social demand that a woman be subordinate to her husband. By separating herself, Sanford’s decision is easier to own as feminist even though she justified her actions by claiming to desire the respect of her children rather than her own self respect.

In the end, what happens in the Sanford’s relationship is really no one’s business. Both parties have asked for privacy for the sake of their children, though Mark continues to feed the media frenzy with more revelations. Perhaps what we should all take away from the Sanford affair is that no matter how powerful the husband in question is, women have a right to respond in whatever way makes them comfortable. Even as emails from his lover continue to titilate, we can still choose to turn away from such media coverage and focus on the example of Jenny Sanford, one wife in the public eye who won’t “stand by her man” without a damn good reason.

As on drunken nights aplenty
Since before the age of twenty;
Alcoholic cognoscenti:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Once our numbers swamped the tables,
Packed the snug up to the gables,
Filled the air with jokes and fables:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

But in ones and twos and threes
Young blades fell to love’s disease;
Moved to Surrey, if you please.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

By coup de main or escalade,

Sniper’s shot or cannonade,
Cupid drew them in his shade:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Just we few still gather gladly,
Sing the old songs somewhat sadly,
Drink and laugh a little madly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

We who, shunning home and sleep,
The rites of Dionysus keep
And laughingly refuse to weep.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Cheery, beery, worldly, weary,
Playing out our revels dreary,
Hair and numbers thinning yearly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Sooner than we care to think,
As our numbers fade and shrink,
One alone will sit and drink:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

Shorn of satire, robbed of farce,
He’ll watch the leaden moments pass
Reflected in an empty glass:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

The water in his bleary eye
Will mutely question how and why
We let the youthful laughter die,
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Scenario two: someone stands in the street with a sign that says “America deserves to be bombed,” or “Americans deserve to die,” or even “I will bomb America.”

Scenario three: in the wake of a terrorist attack, someone goes to a church group meeting in a conservative American community and urges them to “take matters into their own hands” and to drive to a nearby Muslim community.

No country has guarded speech so fiercely as America and yet now, as Guantanamo prisoners are beginning to be transferred and released, we confront the issue head-on: is dissident speech intolerable when it comes from terrorists? Who qualifies as a terrorist? What qualifies as dissident speech? And how are courts to treat this perimeter while it is in process of being drawn?

When President Obama announced intent to close the facility and disperse all of its prisoners by January 2010, a question seemed to lurk beneath the cozy surface of popular approval. Of course Guantanamo has taken on an increasingly negative persona; Abu Ghraib and the disturbing John Yoo memo were further testimony. But once we drive beyond the theoretical, the question, of course, is “now what?,” because once we dispense with the prisoners who seem most obviously wrongly detained, we will get to those who just might constitute real threats.

It has become a struggle to find a home even for those prisoners who we have long known to be falsely imprisoned, such as the Uighurs. In fact, two weeks ago Congress voted to maintain funding for Guantanamo, with no movement towards accepting detainees released into the United States. Four Uighurs found refuge in Bermuda June 11; one national of Chad and one of Iraq were transferred to their home countries, the Department of Justice announced the following Thursday; and three Saudi Arabian detainees have been returned to their home country. Now, Palau anticipates thirteen Uighurs, Portugal will welcome two or three former detainees. But now that the easy cases are done, we are coming to the hard parts about closing Guantanamo: how do we understand, protect or prosecute dissident speech in an age of terror?

Until we develop a policy for terrorist evidentiary standards, most detainees will go into appeals court limbo indefinitely, not only wasting government resources and precious years of people’s lives, but probably also crossing constitutional lines and with no method to the madness.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, charged with murder and conspiracy in connection with the 1998 bombings that killed 224 people, was, earlier this month, the first detainee to be brought to US courts for trial. Ghailani’s records show that he confessed at a 2007 Guantanamo hearing to having helped with the 1998 Dar es Salaam embassy bombing, yet has consistently denied firsthand involvement in the attack, claiming that he was not aware of the complete plans or even what the target was. Even if his confession is admissible in a court of law (which is not certain by any means), this confession places him within the realm of conspiracy conviction. The burden of proof required for any crime resulting in incarceration—especially prolonged incarceration—is intentionally high. And given the unique delicacy of national security sources (confidentiality of US information trails, informants that cannot be revealed and witnesses that cannot be transported to testify, timeliness and potential statutes of limitations), the First Amendment charges of speech and association may survive as the only viable charges.

Laws against terrorist speech may be tempting—and seemingly necessary. Other countries have criminalized terrorist speech, including Israel and the UK. The UK’s Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance No. 33 of 5708-1948 extends criminality to a person who “publishes, in writing or orally, words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for acts of violence…or [in] support of a terrorist organization.”

But before we take this step, let us be wary: Iran’s response to protesters crystallizes the danger of criminalizing anti-government speech. If we criminalize antigovernment speech in the name of counterterrorism, what cost does that muzzle come at? And what value is the First Amendment if it cannot tolerate dissent against government?

We have often reassessed our protections during war— as Justice Frankfurter wrote in 1951, “The right of a government to maintain its existence—self-preservation—is the most pervasive aspect of sovereignty.” Of course here, Frankfurter was affirming a conviction under the Smith Act—which authorized the executive detention of any individuals believed to have “propensity for espionage or sabotage”– for Dennis, general secretary of the Communist Party USA.

There is no panacea; just as in many aspects of law, the system will always reflect (and we hope, at times, rise above) our imperfect humanity. So the question lurks: in what manifestations is terrorist speech and association criminal? And if we criminalize it today, what does that mean for our world tomorrow? As in Eisenhower’s parting advice, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. We may be forced to sacrifice some freedoms, but we certainly ought to be cognizant of the cost of retreat from our First Amendment protections, not for terrorists’ sake but for our own.

Merritt Baer is a Harvard Law School student in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The film was adapted from the 1994 international best-selling exposé by French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam (played by James Caviezel). At the outset of the story, Freidoune’s car breaks down in the small Iranian village of Kupayeh. The mechanic, Hashem, initially reluctant to work on the car, agrees to fix it so that the journalist can make it to the border before dark. A woman in black follows Freidoune around, watching as he sips his tea in a local café, and finally captures his attention with a crumpled note that holds a map to her house and a human finger bone. The village’s mullah (Ali Pourtash) and Mayor Ebrahim (David Diaan) offer a greeting to the new stranger that barely masks their fearful, menacing postures.

The woman in black is Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), a grieving aunt compelled to share her deceased niece’s story. Once Freidoune’s tape recorder starts, the audience is immersed in the narrative of Soraya (Mozhan Marnò), a battered wife and mother of four, facing enormous pressure to grant her abusive husband Ali (Navid Negahban) a divorce. Soraya refuses the divorce, citing her inability to care for two young daughters if Ali leaves her with no income and takes their two sons to the city. Eager to see his wife make money so that he can marry his new 14-year-old love interest, Ali negotiates a job for Soraya – housekeeping for the newly-widowed Hashem.

The mullah, a corrupt religious official with plans for his own gain, is then pulled into a corrupt plan by Ali: together, they frame Soraya for adultery, citing a “smile” exchanged between Hashem and Soraya. Though Soraya maintains her innocence until the very end, she is convicted by Mayor Ebrahim and sentenced to a public stoning by her village.

Amnesty International initiated a campaign last year to end stoning in Iran, citing the imprisonment of “Eleven people in Iran – nine of them women… waiting to be stoned to death on charges of adultery.” The organization also notes that women are particularly at risk for punishment by stoning, since “Women are not treated equally with men under the law and by courts, and they are also particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because their higher illiteracy rate makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit.”

The web-based media outlet Iran Human Rights Voice supports this action and argues that the victims of stoning are subject to gender and class bias, as “Women who have been stoned have been from poor and families or were women who were unable to divorce. These women were either married to husbands who were addicts, or were subjects of domestic abuse, or their husbands had attempted to marry multiple women… this kind of punishment has been one which was directed exclusively against women, but which has now begun targeting men in order to spread the atmosphere of fear, terror and panic in Iran.”

New York Post columnist Abby Wisse Schachter notes that,

“The brutal murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, shot dead in the street for the ‘crime’ of getting out of her car, even moved President Obama to finally condemn the Iranian regime’s crack-down. Neda has become a martyr for the cause of liberty and women’s rights. That resonates with The Stoning of Soraya M. because at its core is an innocent woman brutally murdered by an oppressive and tyrannical authority.”

The film has been banned in Iran, despite receiving accolades at the Toronto Film Festival and winning the 2008 Audience Choice Award, as well as being a runner-up for the festival’s People’s Choice Award.

Though it has received much negative press for its extended scene of violence, bloodshed in the film’s climactic stoning scene is far from gratuitous. Dressed in white, Soraya is buried up to her waist and left to struggle against hurling rocks thrown first by her father, husband, and even her two sons. The patriarchal implications of this are undeniable – tried and convicted by a closed jury of men, she is then viciously assaulted with rocks aimed at her head and torso. None of the women cast stones at Soraya, but instead tremble in fear at the sight; after all, their lives are just as vulnerable and subject to the same torture solely for being women.

With strong storytelling and an important message on women’s rights in Iran, this is a must-see for audiences in search of global perspectives on human rights violations and the necessity of reforming international torture practices.

The Canadian version is played with twelve men and an oblong ball on a longer and wider field. The Aussies play their eighteen man version of what they call ‘footy’ on a field with an oblong ball as well with four goalposts on either end.

To the rest of the planet, football (or soccer as we call it here in the States, Canada and Australia) is played with two eleven player teams of either men and women battling to kick a round ball into a netted goal on a variable 100–110m by 64-75m pitch.

Oh yeah, national pride and sporting prestige is on the line as well.

No pressure!

Every four years the pressure and fan frenzy gets ratcheted up another level when international football supremacy is up for grabs in the FIFA World Cup. The Olympics, World Cup qualifiers, or major FIFA international tournaments such as the Confederation and Gold Cups also grab the attention of die hard football fans, yet most sports fans in the USA are rather ho-hum about it.

But as a US sports fan, I have to give kudos to the first men’s USA football team to ever qualify for a FIFA tournament final.

That’s the extent of the good news for American football fans. The bad news is they were playing the mighty Brazilians, who knocked off the host South Africans 1-0 in the other semifinal match.

Team USA took a surprising 2-0 lead into halftime before the Brazilians woke up and scored three second half goals to capture the 2009 Confederations Cup tournament title in South Africa.

The Confederations Cup is held every four years and includes the winners of various continental tournaments plus the host nation of the upcoming World Cup. Team USA qualified because they won the CONCACAF region championship in 2007.

Many world football fans are still shocked that Team USA knocked off FIFA number one ranked Spain 2-0 June 24 to reach the finals of this tournament in South Africa.

But if world football fans had been paying attention, it really shouldn’t have been. Team USA is currently in second place in the CONCACAF region and in a great position to qualify for next year’s World Cup competition in South Africa.

However, they have a critical August 12 qualifying match with the Tricolores in Mexico City, where they are 0-11-1 all time.

As evidenced by their performance in this tournament, Team USA over the last few years has been making groundbreaking strides in recent international competitions.

But the Team USA men aren’t playing just for the respect of the football world or moral victories any more, they want to win. Player Landon Donovan stated as much in an ESPN interview conducted moments after their disappointing 3-2 loss to Brazil.

The interesting thing to me is that the usual sporting script is flipped. It’s the FIFA world number one ranked Team USA’s women footballers who get the media attention and love at home, not the men. The U.S. women rock.

They are the two time Women’s World Cup champions (1991, 1996) and were runners up in the 2000 final. They are three time Olympic gold medalists in 1996, 2004 and 2008. They are one of the teams favored to take home the championship in the Women’s World Cup tournament being hosted by Germany in 2011.

The USA men are trying to step up to that level. Their FIFA world ranking has climbed to number 14 from their FIFA 28th world rankings a year ago. After failing to do so in 1998, Team USA qualified for the 2002 and 2006 World Cup competitions. They made a remarkable run in the 2002 tournament but fell to Germany 1-0 in the 2002 quarterfinals. They qualified for the 2008 Beijing Games after failing to do so in 2004 and finishing fourth in 2000.

What many football fans don’t realize is that the United States has a football history. We’ve been a member nation of FIFA since 1914. It may also surprise you to know that Team USA made it to the semifinals of the first FIFA World Cup tournament contested in Uruguay in 1930. Ask our British cousins about the 1950 World Cup ‘Miracle On Grass’ in which we knocked off heavily favored England 1-0 in group play with basically an amateur squad.

FIFA and the United States Football Association would love for the USA men to become consistent contenders in world football competition as well. Getting reasonable ratings and a share of the USA’s massive and lucrative sports television market for football has been a challenge, but the USFA is forging ahead and bidding to host the World Cup for the first time since 1994.

We’re shooting to land either the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments, and there are many American cities interested in hosting games should our bids be successful. Civic leaders know that the World Cup is the most watched sporting event on the planet.

Interest in football in the States on the men’s side would have taken a massive leap forward if the underdog Team USA could have pulled off a historic victory against the Brazilians. But their Confederation Cup silver medal run has already created major football buzz amongst US sports media. It has garnered coverage on ESPN and increased chatter on US sports talk radio stations about football with casual sports fans.

The rest of the football loving world may believe the USA men doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades to one day take a World Cup championship back to the United States. But as any sports fan can tell you, once the whistle blows and you begin playing the games, anything can happen.