Debbie Nathan

For three or four years after 9/11/2001, working-class New York abounded with a new take on old Christian symbols. From the tourist shops of Canal Street to street vendor tables near Chambers, and on to shlock stores in the Bronx’s Marble Hill and Elmhurst in Queens — then to restaurant and barber shop exteriors in City Island, Inwood and a thousand more of those nothing places of which the mystical-materialist urbanist Marshall Berman once said (more or less): “We New Yorkers like our dirty, crummy neighborhoods.” These communities were a mouse museum of 9/11 mourning, whose imagery invoked ancient icons of Western civ. Mary Magdalene, the Pieta, the stations of the cross. It was all there in street murals, snow globes and wall clocks that shone and winked and blinked in the sun, or in the dark if you put AA batteries in back.

Now this stuff is disappearing: victim to the natural elements, and to declining consumer demand (click here for squib and photo I contributed the other day to New York Magazine about the demise of the WTC postcard).

To commemorate the passing of a folk art genre, here are a few artifacts I’ve collected and photographed in the past six years.

(1) (above) Angels and ambulance, WTC mural, City Island, Bronx

(2) (above) Detail from post 9/11 snow globe. Looks like famous Iwo Jima photo, sure, but note deeper resemblance to

(3) (below) The Procession to Calvary, by Ridolfo Giarlandiao, 1505.

(4 Calvary snow globe in situ in Upper Manhattan. Purchased in Bronx in 2003

(5) Mural, City Island, with Statue of Liberty as the Magdalene of the Pieta

(6) End of an era: peeling mural on Mexican restaurant, City Island, summer 2007

Fascinating article in today’s Times about Israeli unease over a closeted genre of 1960s-era porn novels – stuff so outré that it even seems to have spooked editors in New York.

Stalags, the porn is called. It first appeared around the time of the Eichmann trial. It was inspired by the testimony and work of one K. Tzetnik, a concentration camp survivor who wrote a trashy book called House of Dolls after the war. According to the Times, the book “told the story of a character purporting to be the author’s sister, serving the SS as a sex slave in Block 24, the notorious Pleasure Block in Auschwitz.” The article goes on to discuss how the brothel story is treated as historical fact by many Israelis, and how K. Tzetnik’s porny writings are still used in Israeli high school curricula and on tours of Auschwitz for teenagers.

But, the Times quotes Israeli holocaust researcher Na’ama Shik saying, K. Tzetnik’s tales of sex slavery are myth. “It was fiction. Block 24 didn’t exist,” she comments.

Actually, Shik says a little more in the version that appears online today at the Times web site. “There were no Jewish whores in Auschwitz,” she adds there (click to see the onine article).

But that sentence is missing from the paper for sale in New York, and from the archived item available for posterity on Lexis-Nexis.

What should we make of this? “There were no Jewish whores” goes beyond simply saying none in Block 24. It’s a more comprehensive denial of debauchery and sexual victimization of Jewish women at Auschwitz. Which could be some small comfort to Jews, and you’d think the editors would want to preserve it. On the other hand, the point of this troubling piece is the extent to which Jews – like everyone else – often fantasize the darkest terrains of sexuality, including, sometimes, by using their own historical tragedy as grist (again, not unusual across cultures). Shik’s sentence, with its titillating word “whore,” just might add to the mill.

Apparently, some editor at the Times kind of got this, then another didn’t, and something got cut in print but not in woolier cyberspace, preserving greater frankness (and truth?) in the latter.

And media shirts ask why fewer and fewer people read newspapers and go online instead.

Orale! (Translation: “Dude!”) Seth B. is winner of last week’s T-shirt design contest. He’s shown here in the shirt I made after he submitted the prize acronym for “Gringo.” Seth is now catwalk ready for his next demonstration or protest march. Felicidades!

In an episode from the late 1950s or early 60s, Alan Funt approached people outside an employment agency and described the most disgusting, ill-paid work imaginable – he called it something like “The Job from Hell.” It involved shoveling offal in a “flaming pit,” with sweltering temperatures, deadly germs, and a salary of $60 for 100 hours a week. “Wouldja take this? It’s an immediate hire,” said Funt. Maybe the people he collared (caveat: they were not undocumented) recognized Funt as a celebrity. Maybe they knew they were being filmed. “Sure,” one man answered, “I’ll take it.” “Yeah,” said another. And another. Har har har! Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!

Funt is long gone, and so is sneak filming. Cameras are in the open now, along with this question: Will post-moderns do anything for 15 minutes of fame?

We already know they’ll sing when they can’t sing, dance with two left feet, curse at and strike their spouses, offer their bodies to plastic surgeons for carving, suffer catty putdowns from talk show hosts, talent scouts, and “survivor” program peers.

And now, we learn, they’ll indenture their offspring.

New Mexico’s attorney general is investigating the upcoming CBS reality show Kid Nation on suspicion of violating child labor laws. The series is slated to premiere on September 19 and will feature 40 children, ages 8 to 15, who spent almost six weeks in the desert building – as CBS puts it – “an adult-free society.” They were on call 24/7 and often worked 14 hours or more every day. For this they were guaranteed $5,000. Yup, sounds like illegal child labor, but CBS says it wasn’t acting as an employer and thus wasn’t subject to labor laws. The 40 kid’s parents seem to have agreed. They gave permission for their sons and daughters to make the series. (Click here to see the contract they signed.) As a result, several children accidentally drank bleach while working, and one got burned in a cooking accident.

But who cares about exploitation when you’ve got a chance to be discovered?

Is this principle the answer to America’s labor problem?

It’s not that we don’t have warm, U.S.-born bodies for our lettuce fields, maid services and fast food joints – it’s just that no one wants to do these crappy jobs for prevailing wages and working conditions, except foreigners who had it even crappier in their native lands. But these days they’re not so welcome in this country. And they’d be less welcome if we could get recalcitrant native labor to take their place. Incarcerating some and placing them in prison workshops has helped a bit. Still, you can’t lock up everyone.

But how about putting them on TV?

Imagine the new show: W-2 Idol. Stakhanovism minus the tractors, updated with Lamborghinis and MacMansions for grand prizers, down to IPods for honorable mention. People wishing to compete would make themselves available for no wages. No vacations, either, or safety guarantees or health insurance. The word worker would drop out of our vocabulary to be replaced by contestant. Enterprising bosses – oh, excuse me, producers -- could recruit hundreds of thousands of contestants. Workplaces would become sets. And instead of GNP, we’d have RATINGS.

Everything would be in English, though it might be somewhat misspelled.

Happy Labor Day!

Labor Day flash: The September 3 New York Times reports CBS is worried that no state will allow it to film a second edition of Kid Nation. So the network is thinking of off-shoring its operations to a country like Mexico, and doing a maquiladora version of the show. Few kids in Mexico go to school past sixth grade, and lots are out working by age 10 (uh, that’s why their parents want to move them to the US). Great idea, CBS!