DATELINE–Atlanta, GA

A promising new anti-repressant lets the Prozac generation feel their own pain.

There are no dark clouds on Sophie’s horizon. A junior at a comprehensive high school outside of Atlanta, Sophie is a happy teenager who enjoys hanging out with her friends, surfing the Web and playing basketball. Few would suspect that this same Sophie has been on Prozac since she was six years old.

Before her family doctor placed her on antidepressants, she cried in the presence of strangers and suffered from severe separation anxiety as a result of her parents’ divorce. Attempts to resolve Sophie’s emotional problems using traditional therapy techniques failed.

With the help of Prozac, the little girl who once routinely refused to let go of her mother’s hand at the school door is now a model student. She earns straight A’s, participates in student government, and is the starting point guard on the varsity basketball team. She’s an exemplary teenager in all respects except one – she’s never experienced pain.

It’s been over a decade since the debut of Prozac, and parents and doctors are just beginning to see the effects of long-term use of antidepressants in adolescents. The results are surprising. While the drugs have been extremely effective at stabilizing moods in troubled teenagers, they have also produced a generation of youth on the verge of adulthood who haven’t had to face the emotional trials that once typified the adolescent experience.

“When I went to talk to my college counselor at the beginning of the semester, we talked about essay topics I should be thinking about,” Sophie explains. “When he asked about a difficult life change I had experienced and what I had learned from that, I thought, I don’t have anything to say.”

But for Sophie and others like her, that’s about to change. In therapeutic trials painstakingly scheduled to occur months before college entrance exams, thousands of young people are beginning to supplement their time-tested Prozac regimens with a daily dose of reality.

The reality comes in the form of anti-repressants, a new class of synthetic, mood-altering drugs that simulate the experience of emotional pain. Typically administered under close medical supervision for periods of no longer than two or three weeks, the drugs are now being prescribed to teenage patients by an increasing number of pediatric psychiatrists and psychotherapists.

“The ‘psychic pain pill’ may just be the most influential therapy innovation since the popularization of antidepressants like Prozac in the late 1980s,” predicts Marcus Sodenberg, an analyst with the pharmaceutical industry consulting firm, Brown & Sons. “It’s a big market, huge, in fact. We’re definitely going to see more drugs like DoloRX in the next few years.”

With more and more teenagers growing up on antidepressants these days, there is indeed a “big market” for anti-repressants such as SmithKline Beecham’s DoloRX (pronounced do-lor-ex). In 1997 alone, over 600,000 children and adolescents were prescribed Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft – an increase of 46 percent over the year before. In the same year, adult prescriptions for similar drugs fell off 5 percent.

Not everyone, however, is bullish on the effects of the new drug. Georgia Gottamer, a Los Angeles-based physician and class-action attorney, recently filed suit against the FDA on behalf of an unnamed class of children and parents. Her suit claims that not enough is known about the effects of either antidepressants or anti-repressants on the growing brain to warrant marketing the drugs to children.

“Our grandparents were mainly concerned with staying alive but my grandchildren have the luxury of harboring different concerns,” Gottamer opines. “Still, we have to face facts – you can’t learn without pain. If treating depression with drugs means you have to treat chemical happiness with a pain pill, perhaps the situation is getting out of control.”

Sophie’s mother disagrees with Gottamer and couldn’t be more pleased with the effect of the DoloRX trial. “No parent wants to see her child suffer, but all parents want to see their children live, learn and grow.”

DATELINE–San Francisco

A local alternative weekly is in hot water with one of San Francisco’s most famous residents. Celebrated actor Danny Glover has publicly denounced the San Francisco Bay Guardian for mistakenly using his likeness in an illustration of Mayor Willie L. Brown. Both men are African American.

The controversial cover, which was published last week, purportedly depicts Mayor Brown. But rather than resembling the recently re-elected politician, the front page drawing has been widely seen as a dead ringer for film star Glover.

In the contested cartoon, an African-American man, presumably Mayor Brown, is surprised while feeding government documents into a City Hall shredder. But the figure bears such a striking resemblance in complexion and expression to Glover, a star in the Lethal Weapon films, that several of Glover’s friends and family members contacted him to find out how he had become involved in a local political scandal.

The actor has complained about the cover in several interviews with local television and radio outlets and wrote an open letter to the Bay Guardian that was published by the San Francisco Chronicle. In his letter, Glover laments the Bay Guardian’s inability to distinguish between the faces of two very different but equally prominent African-American men. “It’s a sad day,” concluded the actor, “when a progressive publication can’t tell one black man from another.”

Leaders from the African-American community have also voiced their disappointment with the Bay Guardian, decrying what some call a “persistent vision problem,” and pointing to a series of editorial illustrations in which a nondescript black man was made to stand in for the Mayor.

“Just draw a balding black guy in a nice suit,” says Amos Brown, a San Francisco Supervisor, “and you have the universal sign for Willie Brown a la the Bay Guardian.”

In the Bay Guardian’s defense, the paper’s executive editor Tim Redmond says that caricatures are meant to create an impressionistic rather than photorealistic portrayal of their subjects. He also cites his paper’s continued dedication to covering topics of interest to the African-American community such as housing, police brutality, and environmental racism. According to Redmond, the paper plans to issue a public apology to Glover in its next issue, while continuing to stand by the cover depiction as a valid editorial interpretation of Mayor Brown.

John Carroll, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, says he is not surprised by the controversy. Carroll believes the Bay Guardian’s editorial policy consists primarily of its irascible publisher’s vendetta against Mayor Brown. “I’ve never understood why they wanted to get him so bad, even worse than his Republican predecessor,” puzzles Carroll. “It’s as if Willie Brown was [Guardian Publisher] Bruce Bruggman’s Rosebud.”

Mayor Willie Brown, for his part, is more pleased than puzzled by the tabloid flare-up, which has linked him closely to the handsome Hollywood actor. Quipped Brown on Saturday night as he was ushered to his favorite table at Le Central, “It’s always been clear to me that the Guardian doesn’t know who the hell they’re talking about – this just proves it.”

DATELINE–Seattle

As an American flag dissolves into a panoramic shot of a sunny day in the park, a woman’s voice softly implores: “This November, cast a vote for your favorite dog.” As the spot fades to black, creative director Frank Siassi and a crowd of staffers break out in applause.

No, it’s not the next attack ad in the presidential campaign, but rather what might be the most outrageous publicity stunt yet in the short history of e-tailing. Pets.com, the online pet goods vendor, has effectively raised the ante on brand marketing in the $14 billion-a-year pet products industry by promoting a bill in Washington state that would extend a wide array of new rights to domestic animals.

The voter initiative, named Proposition 13 in honor of the 13th Amendment, which in 1865 outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, ensures that “nonhuman animals are afforded the common law rights to bodily integrity and liberty” and qualify for equal protection under the law against discrimination in housing, unfair imprisonment, and bodily harm. And despite the somewhat shocking implications of the law, Pets.com, with its enormous cult following among pet “owners,” has had little trouble collecting the 20,000 signatures necessary to secure a place on Washington’s statewide ballot.

Even though polls indicate that Prop. 13 has little chance of passing, the concept of codifying animal rights in the U.S. legal code is less preposterous than most might think. Just this year, Harvard University’s prestigious law school took the unprecedented step of offering an elective in animal rights. And a class action suit pending in federal court in Massachusetts may render “no pet” rules in government buildings and publicly subsidized institutions illegal.

Spurred by this progression in the nation’s relationship to domestic animals, the Pets.com marketing team responsible for Prop. 13 plans to put similar bills before voters in eight other states by 2001. “The more we talk to our customers about the unique needs of their pets,” suggests Siassi, “the more confident we are that some form of this bill will be a federal law in the next decade.”

Citing the booming gourmet pet foods industry as one indicator of the country’s growing love affair with its animals, Siassi contends that “the days of pets as noncitizens are numbered.” Indeed, according to a clause in Prop. 13, pets would be classified as “secondary citizens,” and afforded similar rights as resident aliens.

That language has irked many, even rabid animal rights advocates. Sandra Fifer, a lawyer who works pro bono on cases for the Seattle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, objects to both the letter and spirit of Prop. 13, claiming that it unfairly anthropomorphizes animals. In Fifer’s view, the bill violates the single most important right of all animals: “the right to be an animal and not a living puppet for a human being.” Moreover, Fifer and fellow Prop. 13 detractors question the interests of Pets.com in helping to fund the ballot initiative. “Is this really about increasing the quality of life for pets,” asks Fifer, “or increasing [Pets.com’s] profits?”

Certainly, clever television advertising campaigns have been largely responsible for increasing Pets.com’s market share. In a wildly popular ad series the company’s sock puppet spokesdog urges potential customers to purchase pet supplies online “because pets can’t drive.” With the pressure mounting for e-commerce operations to differentiate themselves from the pack, Pets.com has effectively turned legislation into advertising. But it’s still yet to be seen if politics and pet food make good bedfellows.

Is it ironic? Possibly. Does the company’s target demographic love it? “Absolutely,” says Eric McEllis, a columnist for the industry publication AdWeek. He believes that other dot-coms will follow suit with similar nontraditional “co-branding” campaigns. “People with pets crave a sense of family and are looking for emotional relationships with their companions,” explains McEllis, “so anything that makes animals more like people allows Pets.com to simultaneously serve and expand its customer base.”

And that’s just what Pets.com is banking on. The company has already spent $2.7 million to publicize the initiative with a slick series of television ads in which the familiar Pets.com sock puppet urges voters to support Prop. 13 “because pets are people too.”

DATELINE–Chapel Hill, N.C.

It’s the 30th anniversary of this highbrow hillbilly incarnation of New Orleans’ annual orgy, and despite cloudy skies, more than 10,000 spectators have crowded along Columbia Street. For most Americans, March 7 is just another Tuesday. But for the residents of this otherwise laid-back university town, the first Tuesday of March is also the end of civilization – at least for 16 hours or so.

As the first float turns the corner of East Rosemary Street, an electric silence falls over the crowd. With the measured gait of a funeral procession, the two-story “Cellular Degeneration” rolls forward. Atop the float are life-sized mannequins posed in various positions of panic. Some are crouched to the ground, while others have thrown their hands over their heads to protect themselves from a flurry of small objects whirling around a tall pole in the center of the float. When loud beeping noises fill the air, the crowds begin to cheer. As the float comes into focus, the flying debris reveals itself to be cellular telephones raining down upon the human figures.

“Look at that Danny,” says a father hoisting his infant son up on his shoulders, “those are cell phones.”

Welcome to Coup de Mardi Gras, Chapel Hill’s version of Venice’s Carnival and New Orleans’ own Mardi Gras celebration. Started in 1970 by a motley crew of student groups and bohemian locals, the alternative march of oversized papier-mâché figurines began as a short procession around the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus. As the years passed, the number of participants increased, to the present average of more than 50 entries, and the city, which in the mid-1980s embraced the event as a unique tourist attraction, now stages the event along its main business corridor.

Chapel Hill’s mayor, Rosemary Waldorf, led this year’s parade from the passenger seat of the truck towing “Cellular Degeneration,” a float built by the Chapel Hill firefighters’ union under the close supervision of Chief Morris Samuels. “This is an ancient tradition,” shouts Waldorf, whose head has been decorated with a football-sized tumor, “and it’s also good clean fun.”

North Carolina’s Research Triangle area, which includes the towns of Raleigh and Durham (home to Duke University), in addition to Chapel Hill, boasts more Ph.D.s per square mile than any other region of the U.S. But that doesn’t stop locals, and some academicians, from reveling in off-color humor that would shock even the most seasoned fan of Fox television. Take the “Wood Pecker” float, for instance. The brainchild of N.C. State government professor Patrick Calhoun features a larger-than-life Soon Yi Previn with her feet up in stirrups and a woman-child in full bridal attire popping out of her womb. Beside her is a Woody Allen effigy waiting on bended knee to accept what spectators can only assume to be the delivery of his next wife.

In yet another racy float, President Clinton is depicted on his knees performing oral sex on his wife, would-be New York state senator Hillary Clinton. In the background an oversized Monica Lewinsky doll falls over and over again onto her exaggeratedly ample derriere. Surprisingly, this often grotesque combination of innuendo and slapstick caricature has yet to offend some of the community’s more conservative citizens.

“This is the world-turned-upside-down but in a constructive way,” remarked Fred Randall, a local insurance salesman who has only missed one Coup de Mardi Gras since its inception 30 years ago. “Besides, most of the humor here takes an adult mind to really comprehend.” Although a handful of float proposals have been turned down through the years, most are approved with minor adjustments, made to ensure even the most graphic demonstrations are heavy on suggestion and light on illustration.

Nonetheless, it did take a few days of intense negotiations to clear one of this year’s most controversial entries, “Prisoners on Parade,” which features actual inmates from the Wake Correctional Center singing and dancing inside a mobile cellblock. After a citizens’ group pointed out the potential risk of involving convicts in a public celebration, the local sheriff’s office allayed concerns by supplying an additional dozen support officers at no cost to the city.

Of course, it is serious humor that has come to define Coup de Mardi Gras, and this year’s most talked-about entry gained added resonance in the wake of last week’s school shooting in Michigan. The float, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Kids Kill People,” was designed by the local punk band Her Majesty’s Secret Cervix. Modeled on the Walt Disney theme park attraction “It’s a Small World,” the HMSC entry features cherubic animatronic child figures armed with semiautomatic weapons. As the figures rotate first clockwise then counterclockwise, the sounds of rapid bursts of gunfire punctuate the high-pitched strains of the classic children’s song “It’s a Small World After All.”

HMSC bassist Stefani Hess defended the entry the day before the parade on local television, after a newspaper editorial criticized the group for not removing the float from the lineup given the recent school shooting. “I don’t want people to focus on how this float makes them feel,” says Hess, who is earning a master’s degree in urban planning at UNC, “but on what they can do to make sure the real-life version of our float doesn’t happen again.”

DATELINE–SAN FRANCISCO

Shortly after two in the afternoon, Juanita Moore is facing the hardest task of her day. After a two-hour “exercise period” at nearby Dolores Park, she tries to get her 10 dogs, ranging in size from Chihuahua to Weimeraner, to take a short nap so she can grab some lunch. On this day, it’s “Lil Buddy,” the Norfolk Terrier, who is giving Moore the runaround. “It’s like they know I’m hungry,” Moore jokes, as she tries to coax Lil Buddy into his sleeping cubby.

Even though she calls them “her children,” the dogs aren’t Moore’s. They belong to working pet owners in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying Mission neighborhood, which is also home to the public housing project where Moore has lived for the past 15 years with her “real” children, a boy and girl aged 10 and 12.

For the last year and a half, Moore has been running a successful doggie day care operation that caters to the needs of her upscale neighbors. “I saw money swirling all around me, and I decided to reach out and catch some,” declares the 30-year-old African-American, who, like 9,000 other San Franciscans, must transition from welfare to work as a result of federal welfare reform initiatives. But Moore’s charges – both her children and her dogs – are in danger of losing the roof over their heads because Moore had the audacity to start a home business in her public housing unit.

At $215 a month, a one-bedroom apartment in the 246-unit public housing development known as Valencia Gardens is priced well below market value. But in a city where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years and the average public housing resident earns only $9,413 per year, places like Valencia Gardens are the only viable residential option for people on public assistance.

It was through the Valencia Gardens Tenants Association that Moore was introduced to entrepreneurial workshops for women on welfare. An animal lover, Moore began to solicit dog-walking clients in her up-and-coming neighborhood by posting flyers in local cafés and upscale pet goods stores. But she soon discovered that most of the people who inquired about her services wanted dog day care and not just a walk in the park. It was then that Moore conceived of Pooches n’ Cream.

Using a small business loan from a state-funded agency, Moore purchased soundproofing materials and rubber flooring at a hardware store and quickly converted her two-room apartment into a kennel. Charging $50.00 a day, $200 a week, or $400 a month, Moore soon amassed a steady clientele of working professionals desperate for someone to look after their companions during the day.

“The government only gives me a voucher for $250 for housing, and rich people in this neighborhood will pay me twice that just to keep their dog company,” Moore laments. “But I’m not complaining; I’m just trying to work it.”

After only three months in business Pooches n’ Cream adopted a reservations-only policy and boasted a two-week waiting list. With business booming, the single mother moved herself and her two sons, along with Moore’s sister and her newborn, into a single-family home in Fruitvale, a suburb of Oakland, Calif.

But Moore’s newfound success may leave her worse off than when she was on welfare. On February 22, two inspectors from the San Francisco Housing Authority showed up at Moore’s former apartment-turned-home business. The inspectors, who had been tipped off by one of Moore’s neighbors, presented her with an order to vacate the premises. According to an SFHA spokesperson, publicly subsidized housing can, under no circumstances, be used for commercial purposes.

Moore disagrees with the SFHA policy that bars residents from working out of their apartments. “If home industry isn’t an option for the working poor, how will we ever be able to take care of our families and get ahead?” She now risks losing her business and, if revenues are lost, her Fruitvale home will be in jeopardy as well.

With the help of an attorney who also happens to be a Pooches n’ Cream client, Moore is fighting her eviction. She claims that public housing should be eligible for a “live/work” designation, just like the dozens of private developments that are popping up all over the city.

In fact, Moore is determined to help other Valencia Gardens residents use their resources at hand to pull themselves up out of poverty. If the SFHA case is resolved in her favor, Moore plans to partner with a local developer to start a commercial “matchmaking” service that connects companies looking for office space in the Mission with public housing tenants who are fed up with their inhospitable living conditions and are desperate to move their families to the suburbs.

“Either the residents start a business themselves, or rent their space to someone who already has one,” reasons Moore. “Not everyone who gets off welfare has to work for the minimum wage; we need to encourage people to use what they have to make a living for themselves.”