Archive for Politics

The tide is turning

January 12, 2007 / / 2 comments

The MSM is still staunchly conservative. Not a single network reported on the Democratic response to Bush’s speech Wednesday night.

Yet last night, while channel surfing, I saw extensive coverage of an anti-war protest in New York on one of the local stations. It was a lot more than the typical blip, it included a lot of respectful film (no crazies), signs, mothers of soldiers, and also mentioned the large number of protests going on nationwide.

This is the first time I’ve seen neutral-to-positive reporting of anti-war protests on a mainstream news show.

Bush’s Disorder

January 5, 2007 / / 6 comments

Here’s a fascinating analysis of Bush’s personality from a psychiatrist.

Even as a narcissist, Bush knows he isn’t a great intellect, and compensates by dismissing the value of intellect altogether. Hence his disses of Gore’s bookishness, and any other intellectual that isn’t kissing his ass. Bush knows that his greatest personal strength is projecting personal affability, and tries to utilize it even in the most inappropriate settings. That’s why he gives impromptu backrubs to the German Chancellor in a diploamtic meeting–he’s insecure intellectually, and tries to make everyone into a “buddy” so he can feel more secure.

As you’ve heard me say before, read the whole thing.

Queer Politics

January 3, 2007 / / 7 comments

Amanda Marcotte has written an absolutely brilliant “Real consent manifesto.” You should, as the saying goes, read the whole thing.

This paragraph in particular kind of blew my mind:

The feminist concept of enthusiastic consent for sex, or total consent or whatever you want to call it, is such a new, radical idea that apparently it confuses the hell out of people. And it’s absolutely fed by queer politics, if for no other reason than acceptance of homosexuality is basically the acceptance of the idea of relationships between people that aren’t in a power differential for gendered reasons. The notion that sexual relationships could be built on desire and enthusiasm from both parties instead of a series of trade-offs between someone with power and someone without is more radical than I realize a lot of the time.

You know, I’ve given a lot of thought to the relationship between feminism and queer politics, but I’ve never been able to put it so succinctly. This is why, at core, everyone working for feminism is also working for gay rights, and vice versa. And that awareness is crucial to understanding how gender rules are running us all day, every day, without our even realizing it. (But we can realize it.)

Vulnerable to Infiltration

January 2, 2007 / / 3 comments

Think Progress quotes nutcase Virgil Goode (emphasis mine):

Let us remember that we were not attacked by a nation on 9/11; we were attacked by extremists who acted in the name of the Islamic religion. I believe that if we do not stop illegal immigration totally, reduce legal immigration and end diversity visas, we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion, rather than working within the Judeo-Christian principles that have made us a beacon for freedom-loving persons around the world.

Yes, we are.

Has anyone ever left themselves so open to so pithy a response? I think not.

Mr. Goode, we are indeed vulnerable to those who wish to change the United States by molding it into the image of their religion. You are one of those people.

Guile and Calculation

January 1, 2007 / / 2 comments

I caught this quote of the day via Think Progress:

“Few have ever risen so high with so little guile or calculation.”
— Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking about former president Gerald Ford.

It’s a nice bit of eulogizing, eloquent and accurate…

Until you realize that Cheney is sort of saying that most of the people in his White House got there with guile. Nice one, Darth.

Mom on New Year’s Eve

January 1, 2007 / / Comments Off on Mom on New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve, circa 1992–95. House party at my friend Rosie’s. Kids are invited to come, and they play back and forth between Rosie’s daughter’s room and the rooms where the adults are.

I am dressed for New Year’s Eve. Black miniskirt. Stockings. Boots. Some kind of sexy or fancy or festive top. It’s a good party.

At some point, Arthur, who is a little younger than the other kids, wants to go to sleep and needs to be settled into bed. He’s somewhere between two and five years old.

So I tuck him in and lay down with him and sing him a little lullaby and stroke his sweet little forehead until he falls asleep. Which is, face it, kinda boring, and my mind wanders, and I sort of see myself from the outside and I think “This is never an image anyone sees. This is a banned image. I’d like to paint a picture of this.” Of a mom in a miniskirt and boots cuddling a baby to sleep.

It’s perfectly ordinary, really. We don’t actually throw away our hot clothes or our impulse to wear them when we give birth. And I’m not talking about the porn version of a sexy mom, which I won’t even name because then I’ll get hits I don’t want, I’m talking about a human mom with a human sex drive and a human urge to dress up.

It’s a banned image. You can’t see it. Maybe the porn of mom-being-hot, but not the ordinary beauty of hotty-being-mom. If that image was permitted, everything would be different. Everything.

Happy New Year.

Conversation is dangerous

December 24, 2006 / / Comments Off on Conversation is dangerous

Everyone is talking about this crazy-ass bitch at Townhall who wants the bitches to shut up and I dunno, be barefoot in the kitchen with a black eye or something.

Mary Grabar isn’t pissed off at Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton. Nope. She’s going after The View:

…it’s a sign of our crumbling civilization that a bunch of girls of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds, sitting around all dressed up for a coffee klatch, some of them with cleavage spilling out of Victoria’s Secret Infinity Edge Push-Up bras, spout off opinions borrowed from disturbed teenagers and Michael Moore, and call it a talk show.

This was the danger of giving women the vote. The danger to conservatives (and the survival of this country) is the voting bloc of single women, i.e., those who lack the guidance of a man in the form of a husband or intellectual mentor.

This is sick shit, and other bloggers have smacked it down effectively. But what gets me is how desperate the right has become. It’s not enough to throw misogynist insults at Nancy Pelosi. It’s not enough to imply that Barak Obama is secretly a terrorist. It’s not enough to Swift Boat every Democrat at every turn. Because they’ve done all of that, and Democrats have still regained control of Congress, the American people still want us out of Iraq, and Bush is still woefully unpopular.

So now they have to tell husbands what they should allow their wives to watch on daytime television. Think about how silly that is. How weak and ineffectual. That conservative ideas are so shaky, so meritless, that to protect them they must make sure that liberal women cannot have conversations without being, not ridiculed, but treated as a serious threat to the common good.

When you are in danger even from afternoon talk shows, then afternoon talk shows are indeed the least of your worries.

Fritalian

December 21, 2006 / / 3 comments

I don’t actually see many commercials, what with the TiVo and the Netflix and all, but the other day I saw a Dunkin Donuts commercial that made my eyeballs bleed from the sheer offensiveness of it all.

The commercial shows unhappy looking people ordering latte and cappucino and other specialty coffees. They complain

My mouth can’t form these words. My mind can’t find these words. Is it French or is it Italian? Perhaps Fritalian.

At this point, my eyeballs hurt from the pain but do not yet bleed. Making fun of foreign “unpronounceable” words is nasty. But then they offer you Dunkin Donuts, a place where you can order your latte without resorting to foreign words.

Read that again. Latte. Without foreign words. Feel the blood dripping from eyeballs? Yes you do.

So is this some sort of irony? Is DD saying their customers are SO FUCKING STUPID that they don’t know “latte” is a foreign word? Does this oh so clever irony thereby justify and excuse making fun of nasty-sounding ferriners? (No.)

And I’m bothered because if you know me, you know I loves me some plebian. And therefore, the fact that I actually prefer plain ol’ Dunkin to a fancy Starbucks coffee delights me. And this commercial is clearly designed to establish plebian cred. Clearly designed with the assumption that plebian=ignorant xenophobic slob. Which is more than disturbing.

And p.s., while I was googling for a link to the video, I found I am not the only blogger offended by this bit of nasty.

Women: Dull, or Chris Hitchens: Idiot? You decide

December 6, 2006 / / 8 comments

Per Shakes, I learn that brain dead Christopher Hitchens has written an article called “Why Women Aren’t Funny” that Vanity Fair was crass enough to publish.

I’m not going to skewer him, although skewering he deservies, because Shakes already did. And Amanda, and others as well.

No, I just want to tell this story.

When Arthur was five years old, I was tucking him in. I don’t know what I said that made him laugh, one of the ten thousand things I say that make him laugh (and now that he’s older, we make each other laugh, and stuff gets snorted out the nose way much in our house). And he put his tiny five year old hand on my neck and said

“That’s what Moms are for. To be funny.”

Take that, Snitchens.

World AIDS Day

December 1, 2006 / / 2 comments

Today is World AIDS Day.

The first friend I lost to AIDS died twenty years ago, in 1986. It was such an early date that when Steve was walking around with pneumonia for months and months, no one in our group of friends thought anything of it except that he needed antibiotics. When I visited him in the hospital, he wouldn’t accept a kiss on the cheek, afraid he would infect me.

By 1987 everyone I knew was very aware of what pneumonia might mean, but no one, I think, believed we’d still be fighting this disease in the 21st century.

I cannot think of AIDS without thinking of my dear friend Scott, gone since 1993. Scott thought he was so lucky to have AIDS when he had it, living as long as he did. AZT gave him years more than if he’d been diagnosed in 1987. Then again, had he been diagnosed just a couple of years later…

AIDS has challenged previously carefree communities to face death, and has taught adults to speak openly about sexuality. The language of safer sex forces communication. Irresponsibility looks uglier. Of course, it allows Puritans to be even more Puritan, prudes to be more prudish, and the hateful another venue by which to spew hate. But I don’t think you can judge anything by how the hateful react to it.

Now AIDS challenges us to face ethnocentrism, as Americans struggle to care about Africa, normally a place we know and care nothing about. The world is small and we can’t afford such carelessness. Time to wake up and grow up yet again.

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