The signs have been there for months, but it was only when General Tommy Franks talked to Congress this week, that Americans first heard about extended occupation from those in charge. Franks says US soldiers may be in Iraq for another four years. For the 150,000 US soldiers there now, this is not the best of news.

Morale in Iraq is low, but also here, at home, where spouses had expected those mothers and fathers to be home at least by the end of this summer. Now polls are showing Americans are losing enthusiasm for a prolonged deployment. Some Democrats are discussing similarities to Vietnam, and the administration is working its contacts to get other nations to commit soldiers. Occupation, and what it means to be needed and not wanted at the same time.

Guests:

Robert Perito, A special adviser to the Rule of Law program at the United States Institute of Peace

Susan Wilder, Mobilization and deployment manager for Fort Stewart’s Army Community Service

Unclothed. Unfeathered. Unfurred. Unadorned. They’re all synonyms for the word naked. But the dictionary may be the only place where nakedness is presented as, well, a bare fact. Ever since Adam and Eve found fig leaves, the sight of human beings in their birthday suit has provoked every emotion from shame to anger to reverence. As America has loosened up on the morality front, more skin has been showing up on the street and in the movie theater. So maybe nudity is finally no big deal in America, or maybe not?

This week, 35 years after actors in the musical Hair appeared naked on stages in New York, LA, and even in Boston, a Massachusetts theater company was forced to wage a legal fight for the right to bare it all in that same musical.

Guests:

Mark Storey, author of Cinema au Naturel: A History of Nudist Film

Howard Burchman, president of the Provincetown Theater Company

Barbara Rushmore, activist in Provincetown, Massachusetts

Jennifer Warnes, played the lead in the L.A. production of Hair in 1969

If you are one of the 30,000 Americans who lost a job last month, you might be surprised that some people think that statistic is good news. The explanation is that for the past two years, the U.S. economy has been losing ninety-thousand jobs a month, and so some think anything less may be a sign that things are getting better.

Some of these same folks even think the current unemployment rate, which at 6.4 percent is the highest it’s been in nine years, is a sign of economic vibrancy because it shows that more people are out, pounding the pavement and looking for work. Ask these forecasters where the jobs are and they’ll tell you to hang loose, be flexible, take risks and be prepared to live life as a temp, at least for a little while.

Guests:

Michael Mandel, chief economist, Business Week

Robert Pozen, Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Affairs.

In Valerie Martin’s novel Property, the disaffected heroine speaks bitterly of the black woman who is her slave. The woman has managed to escape to the north in disguise, before being caught and returned. “She has tasted a freedom I will never know,” Manon Gaudet laments. “She has traveled about the country as a free white man.”

In the antebellum South a slave-owner counts his wife among his worldly possessions. So it is that Manon, white, pretty, and married to a dull, morally bereft plantation owner, longs for escape of her own. But don’t feel sorry for the mistress of the house just yet. In this story, no one, not even the wife trapped in a loveless, icebox of a marriage, is above reproach. The ties, and lies, that bind. Historical fiction’s unvarnished truth.

Guests:

Valerie Martin, author of “Property”

Iranians in and outside the country say they’re expecting a resumption of protests tomorrow. July 9th is the anniversary of a day 4 years ago when students at the Tehran University took to the streets protesting against Iran’s Islamic government, prompting a violent crackdown.

In recent weeks, students have marked the approach of the anniversary by going so far as to call for the death of the country’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamanei. Those protests have been supported by world leaders, like President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and they’ve also been fueled by Iranian exiles in the U.S. who broadcast satellite television programs back into Iran encouraging people to speak out.

Guests:

Jim Muir, BBC Correspondent in Tehran

Ladan Bouramand, a visiting fellow at the International Forum for
Democratic Studies in Washington DC and Director of the Boroumand Foundation for the
promotion Human Rights and Democracy in Iran

Zia Atabay, Founder of National Iranian Television in Los Angeles, California

You can’t not notice a neon sign, and that’s why they made them. Think of your father peering through the windshield of the station wagon, through the dark of the highway at the approaching motel’s vacancy sign. That burning red glow of inert gas once transformed America’s cities and its roadside attractions with razzle-dazzle, flickers and flashes of brightness.

Once considered glamorous, neon signs might now be termed the under-class of the light bulb world. All over the country, these one-of-a-kind signs are coming down. Even in Las Vegas, the old “Say I Do and Drive Through” sign is gone. What’s lost when the neon glow goes.

********************

New England Neon
through September 14, 2003
National Heritage Museum
Lexington, Massachusetts
www.monh.org

Neon Unplugged: Signs from the Boneyard
through January 4, 2004
Nevada State Museum and Historical Society
Las Vegas, Nevada
www.neonmuseum.org

Guests:

Sandra Harris, Executive Director, The Neon Museum, Las Vegas, NV

Dave Waller, whose neon collection is on view at the National Heritage Museum, Lexington, MA.

Tom Friedman once described the U.S. Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, as “good, milk-faced boys who stepped into the middle of a passion-filled conflict, of whose history they were totally innocent and whose venom they could not even imagine.”

More than 20 years later, while American troops are in Iraq, Lebanon is still a code word for a worst-case scenario in Middle East military intervention. America’s active involvement in Lebanon ended in 1983, after Islamic terrorists bombed a military compound and killed 241 U.S. marines.

Amin Gemayel, who was then the president of Lebanon, says the U.S. decision to pull its troops was a turning point for his country and the region. Amin Gemayel on occupation and intervention — then and now.

Guests:

Amin Gemayel, former president of Lebanon.

The answer lies in adding up the minutes of that fateful September 11th morning, and just how long did the authorities know that hijackers were at the controls, and what does that have to say to us about the way that America was, and continues to be protected. In her new book “Who Defended the Country?,” Elaine Scarry states that “the Pentagon could not defend the Pentagon let alone the rest of the country.”

She goes on to argue that the passengers of Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, provide a model for a new kind of security, and new kind of citizen soldier; an independent, democratic, home grown activist that all Americans should emulate and imitate. Elaine Scarry and political scientist Dana Villa on citizenship, security and American independence. Next on the Connection.

Guests:

Elaine Scarry, professor of aesthetics at Harvard, and author of “Who Defended the Country.”

Dana Villa, an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of California Santa Barbara, and author of the book “Socratic Citizenship.”

Who are you? Do you define yourself by your role, your job, your family background? For generations of Americans, the first answer to that question was a color: black or white. But today, a growing number of young people are refusing to check the race box, and choosing instead to identify themselves by lifestyle, by the music and movies they watch, by friends and pastimes and clothing.

And, when asked about their race, many young people are more likely to say something like Blaxican. Mexipino. Chino-latino, than one of the 63 color-coded Census categories. But while some see a real racial blending in this blurring of colors, others see a feel-good, corporation-created “we are the world” fantasy out of touch with American life.

Guests:

Leon Wynter, author, “American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business and the End of White America”

Thomas Tseng, founder, New American Dimensions, an ethnic marketing firm in Los Angeles and a research fellow at Pepperdine University

Lynn-Maria Chiang, aspiring hip-hop artist.

From the knock of the traveling salesman, to the ring ring ring of the telemarketer, to the electronic virus that is SPAM, marketing has never been more invasive. For many Americans, home is becoming less sanctuary and more like a place under siege.

To gauge all-out consumer frustration just look at the response to the new National “Do Not Call” registry, which gives consumers immunity from telemarketing. In less than one week, more than fifteen million people have put their names on this national do not disturb sign. But maybe Americans are missing the point. Maybe the incessant calls and emails and faxes about generic Viagra, watermelon weight loss programs, are not just annoyances, maybe they’re just the latest greatest face of good old fashioned capitalism.

Guests:

David Weinberger, columnist for Darwin Magazine, author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Internet contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered

Adam Hanft, President of Hanft Byrne Raboy & Partners. He’s a nationally recognized authority on consumer marketing, business strategy and social trends, and monthly columnist for Inc. magazine

Adam Goldberg, Policy analyst at Consumers Union in Washington DC.