Hillary and Obama among presidential hopefuls

THE winter is raw but the race to the Oval Office is warming up already, although there are another 22 months before Americans decide on their 44th president.

Last week, the biggest name so far threw her hat in the battle, to nobody's surprise.

Just two days before Hillary Clinton announced her bid for the White House, Frank M. Newport, editor-in-chief of The Gallup Polls, spoke to a group of foreign journalists in New York.

“It's inevitable,” he said of the former first lady's intention to join the race for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.

She constantly topped the opinion polls, and as Newport puts it, Hillary is one of the best-known politicians in the United States today.

“She already has a strongly chiselled image,” he said, unlike newbie Barack Obama, the Illinois senator, who is a blank slate to Americans.

It will be a long-distance race as the primary elections, where voters pick the candidate to represent their party, are still another year away.

And one year in politics is like 1,001 Arabian Nights, only 10 times over.

It's a fact that the Gallup organisation, which studies human nature, most readily acknowledged.

Newport looked to history; around this time 16 years ago, Bill Clinton ranked low in a Gallup poll for the Democratic nomination with just 2% support.

Gradually, his profile rose and by January the following year, he had emerged the frontrunner.

Meanwhile, the entertainment begins for the observers as public scrutiny of the presidential candidates intensifies. Nothing, and nobody, is left out by the eagle-eyed American media.

A tabloid even noted how tall Michelle Obama is.

The 43-year-old Harvard-educated wife of Obama is 1.8m, and that the two of them watched a movie called Do the Right Thing on their first date.

Her dressing, naturally, is placed under the microscope and she seemed to pass.

“She keeps her wardrobe strictly no-frills, her shoes are sensible and her jewellery, minimum.” That was how New York Post graded her.

Hillary also received high marks from image consultants, who apparently liked her Nehru-style jackets and her haircut.

However, her best asset remains hubby Bill, still wildly popular among Americans.

Voting for her means you get two-for-the price-of-one, as some people say.

But critics believe that she won't even be a senator if not for her last name and that she mirrors all that is wrong in politics.

Others are already jumping the gun, trying to predict the replacement as New York senator, should Hillary succeed in taking control of the White House.

One Democrat contender, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, is said to be a Guinness World Record holder. His feat? He shook 13,392 hands in one day during his campaign for governor four years ago.

The 2008 race will create a record of its own.

Hillary, 59, will be the first female president of the United States, if she's in and she wins, to borrow her own quote. At least eight other Democrat candidates are eyeing the presidential nomination.

Among them, Richardson, who will become the first Hispanic in the White House if he triumphs.

No prize for guessing the record that Obama will create if he wins.

Over at the Republican side, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a potential contender, will be the first Mormon president, if he's lucky.

“Americans are not ready to vote for a Mormon yet,” Newport said.

As Time magazine noted two months ago, most Americans are still not comfortable with the Mormon faith, although its followers are very much family-focused.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is heading the polls among Republican hopefuls, followed by Arizona governor John McCain.

So far, 17 politicians from both parties are in the race to the White House, although some of them have not made that formal declaration yet.

“One reason why this election is fascinating is because this is a truly open election. There is no incumbent running and at this point, everything looks more positive for the Democrat Party. This is one of the reasons why the Democrats are scrambling for it,” said Newport.

Hillary or Obama, they are not the only game in town.

Asian enigma in U.S. varsities

IT IS a timeless question, one that invites much debate and sees little agreement.

Asian students here often have the distinction of being academic achievers, so much so that US campuses are reportedly beginning to sport an Oriental look.

There is no end to the dissection on why Asians are scoring top marks.

Is it the Confucian tradition? (Those who do not study are only cattle dressed up in human clothes, according to the philosopher.)

Could it be the immigrant outlook? Or is it the acknowledgement of their parents’ struggle, hence the need for payback time?

The jury is still out. In the meantime, Asian-Americans – who number about 12 million or four per cent of the US population – are clawing their way into universities.

Scores of campuses, including some from the Ivy League, have recorded at least 13% Asian-Americans in their undergraduate student population.

In a free newspaper here, someone remarked rather smugly that if American universities practised meritocracy completely, half of their enrolment would be Asians.

Try telling that to John C. Liu, a New York City councilman who isn’t thrilled at all with such assumptions.

“That is a model minority myth. The fact remains that many Asian-Americans are struggling economically and academically,” said Liu, who became the first Asian-American to sit on the city council when elected in 2001.

To him, the typecasting of an Asian-American as the poster boy of good grades will do more harm than good for the community.

“It sounds great, but it actually hurts us more,” he said in an interview.

He explained that the stereotype, no matter how seemingly positive, could be used as a divisive agent among the minority groups.

And Liu is not way off the mark.

Questions have been raised as to whether Asian-Americans are impinging on the chances of African-Americans and the Hispanics.

A study called “The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities” has been cited to show that if affirmative action were done away with, the admission rate for blacks and Hispanics would be lowered as Asian-Americans would sweep up four out of five seats that would otherwise have gone to the other two groups.

An article in The New York Times entitled “Little Asia on the Hill” said: “In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically under-represented blacks and Hispanics.”

The article picked California because the Golden State, with an estimated 36 million population, has a very diverse face: Asians (12%), African-Americans (6%) and Hispanics (35%).

Others beg to differ, however.

One report pointed out that many black students who got into university under affirmative action failed to complete their courses.

The writer argued that these undergraduates would be better off if they were placed in campuses where their academic qualifications were on par with everybody else’s.

So, would there be an Asian invasion if universities practised meritocracy strictly?

Ng Hock Min, a scientist who previously studied in Boston University, does not think so.

“There tends to be more Asians in fields like science and engineering but fewer in the humanities such as literature and history,” he said.

Based on his experience, Ng found the majority of Asians diligent and serious about their studies, particularly foreign students.

“There was definitely a lot of competition amongst us. When I was an undergraduate, there weren’t scholarships available, so most of them were self-funded.

“There was a lot of pressure to do well,” he said.

To these people, there are no short cuts in universities, so there really is no mystery surrounding the rising Asian enrolment.

Wacky start to winter

IT’S no small talk when it comes to the weather here. In fact, it is so serious that broadsheets like The New York Times devote one page on the topic every day and bloggers write nothing else but the weather.

Last week, when the mercury went up abnormally high this winter season, the subject was all that people could talk about.

Normal January temperature should hover around 2°C but last Saturday, it hit a peak of 22°C. New Yorkers were scandalised.

Where’s winter, they wondered. Others made sardonic comments about “back in those days when we had winter.”

This wacky winter, as the tabloids called it, evoke both applause and alarm from the Americans.

“I haven’t had a chance to wear the sweaters that I bought during the Christmas sale,” a staff at the Borders bookshore complained to his colleague.

But his co-worker disliked getting frozen so the warm weather was delightful news to her.

For her, it was a winter of content. “The biting cold will come soon enough.”

She was quite right. By Wednesday, it turned frosty and New York experienced its first snow of the season, albeit a mere 15-minute flurry, which meteorologists said was too little to measure.

News reports pointed out that here in New York, the last time that snow came so late was on Jan 4, 1878. That means 129 years ago.

Global warming got the most blame so far. Others accused El Nino. The weather guys had a more plausible explanation, which they attributed to an unseasonable air mass that was further warmed by strong winds.

“Weather anomalies are constantly occurring across the globe. The warmth in northeast United States was much remarked over because it happened where many millions of people live. However, countless weather extremes go unreported because they happen over sparsely populated areas or oceans,” according to one forecast.

Last week, newspapers published pictures of people wearing sleeveless T-shirts. Joggers ran about in shorts.

Cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden made an unscheduled appearance and dolphins were spotted in the East Hampton town of New York state.

The balmy weather led to gloomy faces among retailers.

A week before Christmas, they were already complaining about the slow sale of winter coats and accessories such as gloves and scarves.

Weather reports are heavy-duty stuff here where it doesn’t just suffice to say “hujan di satu dua tempat.” Reports on the TV and newspapers will provide the condition in Central Park the previous evening, trends in the last 10 days, and also a comparison with the corresponding day last year.

The time of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset is available as well besides ozone reading and UV index.

There is an endless list of indicators such as C (clouds), F (fog), I (ice), Sn (snow), SS (snow showers), H (haze), PC (partly cloudy) and T (thunderstorms).

Most news programmes will show the current temperature in a little box below the TV screen.

Americans, by the way, have not embraced the metric system yet. So, the report says: “Much cooler, sunny. High 53.” By our definition, that’s 11.7°C.

Few people pay scant attention to the weather report. Their attire and activities are governed by the temperature of the day.

They need to know how much, or how little, to wear before stepping out of the house. It also settles the question about the umbrella. An outdoor event organised by one company recently came with the caveat “subject to inclement weather.”

Still, the days of warm winter are numbered, as the mercury isn’t rising anymore. By the middle of last week, it was a different story as people began to bundle up again.

On Wednesday, the temperature dipped to below zero.

In the words of the weatherman, it was frigid.

Living History

IN THIS rip-roaring city, echoes of a history that began three centuries ago are everywhere. It’s there in that carton of milk which carries the kosher trademark and the challah, a traditional bread sold in bakeries. More obvious are the synagogues in all the grandeur of a compelling past.

Then there is the almost iconic bagels, in every flavour imaginable from garlic to blueberry, found everywhere from Dunkin’ Donuts to classy cafes.

Yup, we are talking about the Jewish heritage in New York.

Kosher means halal food, where the basic rules include no pork and no mixing of dairy with meat products.

When they shop for food, Jewish people would look for symbols (with the letter U or K printed inside a circle) to verify it is kosher.

Yummy bagels, so universally enjoyed now, were introduced here by Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe.

The story began in 1654 when Jewish refugees arrived in the United States. They made their home at the Lower East Side of New Amsterdam, now known as New York .

Today, one in eight New Yorkers is Jewish.

Jonah S. Boyarin, who grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is one of those fine young men who take pride in their traditional upbringing.

“There is an old saying that it’s hard being a Jew. But I enjoy being Jewish. It feels right and natural,” said the 20-year-old Boyarin, a double major student in religion and economics at a Connecticut university.

He spoke of how, as a school kid, he often had to cram all his homework on Sundays because Jews observe the Sabbath (from Friday night to Saturday night) as a rest day.

That time was spent instead following his father to the synagogue where they would pray in Hebrew.

There was also the prohibition of switching on electrical installations and devices during the Sabbath.

“In some orthodox apartments, the elevators would automatically stop at every floor so that the residents would not need to press the button during that time,” he said.

Other ways of adapting include getting someone else to switch on the lights for them.

A Malaysian friend who works in a Jewish hospital noted that his colleagues would not drive or answer the telephone during the Sabbath. The answering machine handles the calls.

On Christmas Day, it has almost become a standard practice for Jews here to eat Chinese food since most restaurants are closed on the day.

A Jewish woman wrote in the newspaper two weeks ago that she bought a Christmas tree, finally buckling to her yearning to have all the trimmings and tinsels.

Didn’t Boyarin ever wish for a pine tree? “No, I never wanted one,” he replied. Neither did it bother him that he couldn’t eat bacon.

The only sore point that he could recollect was how his parents forbade him from joining his friends for trick-or-treat on Halloween Day.

But the grown-up Boyarin now cherishes his Lower East Side heritage although the place has lost most of its old culture since the original inhabitants moved out.

“It is, however, still a piece of living history. It’s a truism to say that Lower East Side is a neighbourhood in transition,” said Chava Gottlieb, executive director of Congregation Chasam Sopher, New York’s second oldest synagogue.

The numerous walking tours for visitors keen to explore the Jewish side of the neighbourhood are proof that it is not a forgotten place.

As for Boyarin, he relishes sharing stories about his roots.

The Three Stooges, he said, often made jokes in Yiddish, the common language of Eastern European Jews.

Jerry Seinfeld and Woody Allen are just some of the famous Jewish celebrities from New York.

American Jews, according to Boyarin, are overwhelmingly Democrats, which partly explained why New York is a blue state.

Here, it is common to bump into the Hasidim, known to adhere strictly to Jewish laws, and where the men, dressed in black, keep long, curled sideburns.

Last week, the city’s first Hasidic policeman was accepted into the force and the New York Post called him “The kosher cop”.

The art of not saying ‘I do’

MARRIAGES are made in heaven but Americans are so down-to-earth that married couples have become almost a minority as shown in findings released by the US Census Bureau.

Five years ago, married couples made up at least 52% of US households. Last year, the numbers dipped to 49.7%.

Alarm bells tolled when a report titled “It’s official: To be married means to be outnumbered” appeared in the New York Times recently.

“My phone rang non-stop when the figures came out as people called, concerned about how we can save marriage,” said Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-profit organisation.

Coontz, who has visited Malaysia with her husband, is more optimistic.

“Unlike many women in Japan and Singapore who forgo marriage, Americans ARE getting married and the birth rate is high. The husbands and the US government, like the French, are more supportive of the working women; and there is more time spent on childcare,” she said.

But people delay marriage as they get more educated, said Coontz, whose book on Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage” was picked by The Washington Post as one of the best books of 2005.

As for the birth rate, nearly four in 10 babies were born last year to unwed mothers mostly in their 20s. They were not teenage births as often assumed. This, they say, was proof that more couples are postponing marriage or opting for cohabitation.

“Most people will eventually marry. The Census Bureau estimates that about 90% of people will marry at some point in their life. People still believe in marriage but they just don’t want to rush into it,” said Thomas F. Coleman, the executive director of Unmarried America, a California-based information service which focuses on the nation’s estimated 89 million singles.

As he pointed out, marriage is popular with same-sex couples.

“Many gays and lesbians are fighting for the right to marry. There is a high level of interest in marriage among them,” he said in an e-mail interview.

“However, among heterosexuals, there is a reluctance for people to marry early. They want to have fun. They want to go to college and establish a career.”

Besides, the well-trodden path of divorce so common among the generation of their parents and grandparents is unappealing. About half of the marriages will end in divorce.

“The rate of divorce peaked in the 1980s and has been slowly declining since then,” Coleman said. “I don’t think that the divorce rate is alarming. It’s just a fact of life.”

(Coontz attributed the drop to education, affluence and maturity.)

Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate at 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people in 2003.

Marcella Simmons, an office manager in Manhattan, observed that most of the single people she knew were divorced.

At 30, Simmons’ own two-year marriage ended in May when her husband had an affair.

She recently earned a degree in business management, saying that she wanted to better herself.

The dating scene, she said, was difficult because it wasn’t easy finding someone who was compatible and shared similar personality and goals.

Most of her friends were single, too. “One of my friends has four kids but she has never been married. I guess she prefers it that way.”

People now were more cautious about who they dealt with, said Simmons, a vivacious woman who previously spent five of her seven years in the military as an auto mechanic.

“You may be dating for three months and you realise that he’s a slob. For me, I am picky. If you don’t have the credentials, I move on.”

She has quite a long list of her choice of the most preferred male.

“He must be passionate, sympathetic, energetic and a traveller. He must also want to have kids because I want to have kids later.”

An AP report last year called Manhattan the loneliest place in the United States for having the most number of single-person households.

Then again, loneliness is perhaps just a New York state of mind.

A Clinton in demand

THE line was long but the crowd at the book-signing event was disciplined. No screaming, no shoving.

After all, they were not waiting to meet a movie star but a 59-year-old woman who just might be the next US president, at least according to recent polls which put her ahead of her Republican foes.

Hillary Clinton was at an Upper West Side bookstore on Monday to hawk the 10th anniversary edition of her book on child-rearing titled It Takes a Village.

Hours earlier, the New York senator was the guest at an NBC morning show when she was asked the question that has been on everybody’s mind: Does she want to run the village?

Her reply was direct from Politician-Speak 101. “I’m working hard to make a decision. It’s very flattering and overwhelming. I’m trying to approach this with a big dose of humility. I’m honoured people are urging me to run (for the 2008 presidency).”

When she appeared for the Monday book-signing, two TV screens at the in-house Starbucks transmitted the event although no one inside the cafe paid particular attention to it.

However, press cameras flashed in a manner befitting that of a potential contender to the White House.

“I love her,” gushed Richard Darden, 65. He had no qualms about a woman presiding his country, saying that women had been powerful from time immemorial. Look at Gaia the Mother Earth, he said, referring to the Greek goddess.

A carpenter from Anchorage, Alaska, Darden was visiting a friend in Manhattan when he decided to come to the bookstore upon finding out that Clinton was also in town to promote her book.

“Her husband was one of the greatest presidents we ever had. He was more tolerant and more liberal,” he said, citing his efforts at helping the impoverished native Americans living in Indian reservations.

“The Bush administration, on the other hand, merely helped the rich to get richer while the middle class disappeared.”

Clinton may have her devotees like Darden and the woman who handed her a rose during the book-signing, but she has formidable competition for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For one, there is a young sensation from the Democrat Party who seems to have a magic wand in charming the crowds who have met him.

Barack Obama, the Illinois senator, has been on the mind and lips of the American media especially.

Born to a Kenyan father and a white Kansas mother, the African-American Obama has been described as exciting, charismatic and charming with a smile that helped him own any room he walked into.

His book The Audacity of Hope, which is a memoir of sorts, is currently at the top spot of The New York Times’ non-fiction bestsellers list.

When talkshow host Jay Leno pressed him recently on whether he was making a 2008 bid, he deadpanned: “You know, I have made a commitment to the Food Network that I would announce there.”

(The Food Network is a cable TV network which airs cookery shows.)

“Obama is to politics what Tiger Woods is to golf; they simply transcend the issue,” a reader wrote in The New York Times.

But a lot of people feel that it is all just hype and that Obama’s biggest setback is his inexperience in the rough-and-tumble of politics. The 45-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer has been a senator for less than two years.

“Obama’s problem may be less that he’s black than that he’s green,” said Newsweek in its latest cover story.

Of course, it is not all about Clinton and Obama. Over at the Republican side, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s possible candidacy has generated buzz as well.

It’s a topic that gets everybody talking, except that potential contenders remain tight-lipped.

But here in the Empire State (a.k.a New York) where the colour is blue, the Democrat Party spells fervour and the flavour now is all about Clinton versus Obama.

Making a monkey of the English language

EGG Foo Gun. Whacky Kazakhy Attacky. Show-’Toon Shrek.

These were headlines from the New York Post, the fifth largest newspaper in the United States, besides being the leading tabloid in New York.

When a robbery suspect was hospitalised in Brooklyn for a lung ailment, the policeman assigned to guard him was so sloppy in his job that the detainee’s buddies managed to smuggle in a gun for him.

The weapon was concealed inside a Chinese take-out meal and the New York Post probably had egg foo yong on its mind when it published the story last month.

As for now, Borat is big in America.

The mockumentary “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” has pulled in US$120mil (RM432mil) in less than two months.

But Kazakhstan was not happy with the satirical film which poked fun at the country as an undeveloped and racist nation with weird practices like drinking horse urine.

New York Post reported the story, calling it “Whacky Kazakhy Attacky”.

Another movie that made the news three weeks ago was Shrek. The adorable green ogre is reportedly making its Broadway debut in 2008, hence “Show-’Toon Shrek”.

The tabloid’s arch-rival Daily News loves to economise on words and spelling as well.

“2 BRs, river vu & peace of mind for Sliwa” was the headline of a story about a radio host, Curtis Sliwa, buying a two-bedroom apartment with good security and a great river view.

Such a manner of using the English language is tearing out the hair of language purists.

“The fondness for abbreviations and a casual way of writing is causing distress to English teachers. For me, I love the written word and the old grammar is still beautiful to me,” said university professor S. Schroeder.

She observed, however, that young people couldn't care less about it.

“I respect the fact that it is impossible to expect them to accept what I hold dear. Abbreviations are here to stay,” she said.

This was especially so with more and more people going online these days. “On the blogs, you can see that people use all kinds of English,” she said.

Another practice which most Americans frown upon is the excessive use of the word “like” by the youngsters.

This was nicely exemplified by a reader’s account relayed to a columnist in New York Post two months ago.

The reader, Joe La Zizza, was walking around the city when he heard a bunch of schoolgirls peppering their conversation with that word in almost every sentence.

He got exasperated and turned to them, saying: “Like, can you, like, tell me, like, where the Actors, like, Playhouse, like, is?”

One of the girls got upset and retorted: “You, like, making fun of us?”

Hot young celebrity Lindsay Lohan is a bad speller, according to the gossip pages which leaked out an e-mail from her that she sent to her friends. Lohan’s e-mail showed that she wrote “adequate” as “adequite”.

The next day, the newspaper ridiculed her with the heading “Maybee I Shud Go Bak Too Skul”.

Tabloids being tabloids love to give a twist to names of VIPs. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is “Bloomy” or “hizzoner” (his honour) and former president Bill Clinton is sometimes referred to by the rather unflattering “bubba”

“No freedom or fries in Bloomy’s Lean City,” the bold headline in New York Post declared when the mayor was delighted with a plan by a fast-food joint to stop the use of trans-fat oils on its menu.

The city authorities may have meant well as they forged ahead with plans for healthy food in restaurants but some New Yorkers are upset that Big Brother is telling them what not to eat.

When the Iraq Study Group recommended for a pullback of US combat troops by 2008, the New York Post (again!) depicted co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton in monkey suits.

Blaring “Surrender Monkeys” with the sub-heading “Iraq panel urges US to give up”, the page one cover got the goat of its readers.

Disgusting. Shameful. Absurd. They called the tabloid all sorts of names, fuming that the paper was immature in its reporting.

Sensationalism? Outrageous?

Guilty as charged, probably. Still, the tabloid and its long-time competitor Daily News are way ahead of many other dailies, even the respectable Washington Post, in the list of newspapers with the highest circulation in the United States.