"Missouri," Meet "Cop's Wife"

"We can have animus and not be enemies," sayeth Jon Stewart. I can't say I'm there yet, but it gives me something to aim for.

Carolyn Hax perfectly expresses the feeling I had at the Rally to Restore Sanity, the one I'm trying to feel again, especially after Tuesday's results:

Missouri: Hi Carolyn,

I guess my husband and I are what the liberal East Coast would call conservative bigots. My question isn't about that, so I won't get into it. We are raising two kids our way, while being constantly told by the liberal media that it's the wrong way. Sorry, but we just don't agree, and neither do most of the people in our community.

The issue is that my husband's job is taking him to a liberal East Coast city, and we're now faced with the question of whether to uproot everyone and follow him there. If we go, I worry my kids will be exposed to a lot of hooey I have worked hard to keep out of their lives. If we don't, we're looking at at least two years' separation during which my husband will miss the last of his daughters' little kid years. It's well-established around here that you can't bubble-wrap kids, so basically I'm looking for suggestions on how to keep our values strong in our kids even if we choose to move them out east.

Carolyn Hax: You're right to worry--we liberal East Coast dwellers have two heads, learn a secret language at Ivy League schools so we can mock real hard-working Americans, make our preschoolers watch gay porn, and scream like pod people when we see someone going to church.

The exposure-to-a-lot-of-hooey ship has already sailed, I'm afraid--you've bought wholesale the whole idea that there's an "Us" and a "Them" in this country.

Here's a little welcome brochure for you in the form of my daily life, in case you decide to tough it out in the Eastern time zone:

I'm married, and we have three little boys.

We love them, work hard to teach them manners, values, civic responsibility, respect for adults, respect for themselves.

We care about the schooling they get, the food they eat, the bedtimes they keep, the community that surrounds them, the families that take them in for play dates. We care about setting an example of strong partnership in our marriage.

We have a hard time containing our frustration when we see even the slightest glimmer of entitlement in them, even though we know intellectually that all small kids see themselves as the center of the earth. We also know that it's up to us to teach them the value of hard work, of delayed gratification, of gratitude, of giving back as much as they take, if not more.

We also give them as much room as we can to be themselves, which means, at various times, letting them explore in stick and rocks and mud, and make play weapons, and fall off their bikes, and they've done target shooting and archery. (I hear a lot about attempts to "feminize" boys, and all I can say is, good luck. If it's in them to be house kids, then they'll gravitate that way whether they're pushed to or not, and if it's not in them, then they won't. Cultural norming works better in theory than in practice.)

We encourage them to play with neighborhood kids; these neighbors include four families with their kids in faith-based schools--one believes firmly in single-sex education--and four others with kids in public schools. (My kids go private because the classes are small, much better for their temperaments.)

Have you read anything yet that makes you tremble in fear for your children?

To be fair, I'll also say that I worship no higher power. However, I am also never in anyone's face about that, not even when someone of faith gets into mine, which does happen. I not only respect people's right to live as they see fit, but I also hope my kids will look to others as an example, compare other parents' choices to ours, and choose a path based on that exploration.

Which brings me to the point I could have opened with and quit (but then I wouldn't have been able to bring in the Pod People): If you are as assured as you suggest in the correctness--and righteousness--of the way you've chosen to raise your children, then there should be no reason it couldn't withstand the challenge of other points of view. Truth likes light, doesn't it?

Trust your choices, and trust your neighbors to be human--really, I swear they will bear an uncanny resemblance to you.

As as for Us vs. Them, may I please humbly ask of you to declare with me that enough is enough is enough?

Staying ovation for Carolyn! Full points.

Then of course there's the adorable five-year-old child whose mother allowed him to dress up as Daphne from "Scooby Doo" and defended everything from his neon wig to his go-go boots to judgmental mommies IRL and on the web in a post called "My Son is Gay."

SPOILER ALERT: The child in question is not actually gay. The writer is employing a rhetorical device to make the point that it wouldn't matter to her if he becomes gay at some point but that letting him dress up as a girl if he wants on a costume-oriented holiday will not affect his sexual preferences later in life. (As she puts it, brilliantly, "I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.")

In case Mrs. Missouri is wondering, this gender-bending Halloween is brought to you by a Stay At Home Mom who calls herself "Cop's Wife," sends her kids to church pre-school, and lives in the Midwest. Teh gays! Teh cross-dressers! They are EVERYWHERE. If you think you can avoid their pernicious influence by staying where you are, Mrs. Missouri, you've got another think coming.

Missouri, meet Cop's Wife. Bring the kids! I think you will get along smashingly, at least until / unless Mrs. Missouri does have to transplant to some godforsaken eastern urban hellhole. ("Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." --Alvy Singer)

But: breathe deeply, Ester. Abide. ("Calmer than you are." --Walter Sobchak) I don't need to resort to snark just because Mrs. Missouri did in her letter. Perhaps she is an open-minded person waiting to happen! After all, how Jesus Camp-y could Mrs. Missouri really be if she's writing into my favorite (and East Coast based) advice columnist? Perhaps there is hope for her yet.

Remember Two Years Ago?

I do:

On Nov. 4, 2008, as on every morning during that fall's presidential campaign, I began my workday by reviewing the latest battleground-state polls at Pollster and RealClearPolitics, checking up on the pundits at Politico and Wonkette, and seeing what the establishment had to say at the New York Times and the Washington Post. In contrast to the recent Election Days I had known, the news was more than encouraging. My co-workers planned parties. The experts were hopeful. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight predicted a landslide.

Still, concern spread through me until I was possessed: By the end of the day I resembled something out of The Exorcist: trembling and mumbling, with green-tinged skin. My husband, Ben, showed up at my office, took one look at me, and knew that I would never make it to our results-viewing parties; even if I did, I would scare the revelers. "Let’s go home," he said, worried enough that he suggested taking a cab back to Brooklyn. I was worried enough that I agreed.

We made it only to Union Square before I threw up, splashing my fear on the inside of the car door and my beloved new suede boots. I got out and sat shivering on the curb as the cab driver muttered curses and Ben ran into stores, begging for cleaning supplies. Two Manhattanites walked by me on spiked shoes and laughed, but I barely heard them. I was thinking about Pennsylvania. ...

The entirety of my oh-so-timely piece, entitled "Hope Over Experience," has been on The Morning News for about a week now.

The funny thing is, I'm still thinking about Pennsylvania. And Nevada. And Wisconsin. (Poor Russ Feingold!) The point is, if you need me, I'll be online shopping all day to distract myself, and pondering who I detest more: David "Pink Shirt" Brooks or Maureen "Fires of Mordor" Dowd? In fact, let's make it a poll!

Who Is a More Worthless Human Being / Pundit?

My Family Wins the Internet

On BNReview, my father-in-law, a Russian doctor, teaches all you Americans how to drink vodka. I don't need teaching because I have plenty of opportunities to watch the pros.

Meanwhile, my cousins of It's the Real do it up OK Go-style with their new music video, "My Girl's a Republican."


My Girl's a Republican from jeff on Vimeo.

Now I have their song competing for floorspace in my head with the Rally to Restore Sanity's mash-up of "the Peace/Love/Crazy Train."



Pictures of my favorite handwritten signs from the rally TK. It was pretty amazing, I have to say, to see hundreds of signs and not one typo. That should go down in history.

Two Weddings, One Ass

There is a terrific Yiddish expression that currently sums up a large part of what Juan Williams did wrong: "You can't dance in two weddings with one ass."

Fox News and National Public Radio are two very different weddings, playing very different music and enjoying very different food. Trying to please the machers at both was bound to be an exercise in futility, if not self-destruction.

Besides, wasn't this so far over-the-top as to be almost passive-aggressive? (After all, he got to be the news story for a change, and he got a hefty raise too.) Telling O'Reilly "you're right"? Using the words "I'm not a bigot" and then NOT STOPPING THERE?

Here's the full quote:

"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country," Williams said Monday. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

For those who are saying that Williams was fired in violation of his 1st Amendment rights, an anonymous NPR exec rolls his eyes in the Washington Post: "Williams's comments on Monday were the last straw, the executive said. He dismissed suggestions that NPR was suppressing Williams's freedom of speech, saying, "Juan has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants. He does not have a First Amendment right to be paid by NPR for saying whatever he wants." And there's the rub. Though we are all free to talk, we are not free to escape the consequences. Not even if a lot of loudmouths agree with us.

Besides, considering that Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell just publicly revealed she doesn't know what the 1st Amendment entails, the Republicans probably shouldn't be drawing too much attention to the Bill of Rights.

As TNC points out, what Williams said was a problem. What Williams CONTINUES to say leeches out any potential sympathy I'd have for him. From today's NYT:

Mr. Williams said in an essay published Thursday on FoxNews.com that he was fired "for telling the truth."

He continued in the essay: "Now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air). This is evidence of one-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought."

Sent to the gulag! Somewhere, Solzhenitsyn is groaning in his grave and stuffing dirt in his ears. If Williams is really that convinced that he is a victim of severe, historical injustice, then he belong at Fox News. Let me be the first to say, Welcome home.

The Best American Writing of 2010

Poetry by people who hate Elena Kagan and, most likely, all recent developments since Fluoridated water:

"The first thing wrong with this appointment; it is wrong according to the bible. Second she is againist the military which would place her in an unamerician position, therefore should have been rejected. Every senator who voted yes should be impeached for lack of mental ability to ascertain right from wrong"

"This is a sad day for God fearing,Jesus loving strate people in the US.As long as obama is in office he knows he has one sure voteon the court hopefully his will be a short stay."

"Jews make up less than 3 percent of the US population. Jews now make up 33.33 percent of the US Supreme Court. Something is WRONG with this picture. Only a handful of Bolshevik Jews took control of Russia in 1917 and eventually slaughtered tens of millions of Orthodox Christians. America, BEWARE."

this is what i get for reading polls

As some of you know, I'm a bit of a compulsive when it comes to numbers, as long as there is no arithmetic involved. Every day at 1:05, for example, I check my boyfriend Barack Obama's Gallup approval numbers. Not everyone loves him as much as I do (I know! Crazy!), and the fickle public must be monitored.

Then, when I'm done with Gallup, I head over to Pollster.com to get a sense of the bigger picture. Most of the time I scan the list of new polls, investigate three or four, then delve into the comments before recoiling like a dog who smacked into an electric fence.

This time I only got as far as this NBC/WSJ Poll before succumbing to whimpering & whiplash:

US: National Survey (NBC/WSJ 5/6-10)
Harry Enten | May 12, 2010

Topics: National

NBC News / Wall Street Journal
5/6-10/10; 1,000 adults, 3.1% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
(NBC: story, results; WSJ: story, results)

National

Approval / Disapproval
Obama: 50% Approve, 44% Disapprove (chart)
Obama Economy: 48 / 46 (chart)
Obama Terrorism: 48 / 42
Congress: 21 / 72 (chart)

Positive / Negative
Barack Obama: 49 / 38 (chart)
Democratic Party: 37 / 42
Republican Party: 30 / 42
Tea Party Movement: 31 / 30
British Petroleum: 11 / 45
Charlie Crist: 8 / 16
General Motors: 37 / 27
Citibank: 10 / 43
Toyota: 31 / 34
Goldman Sachs: 4 / 50

Preference for Congress after 2010 elections
Democratic Control: 44%, Republican Control: 44%

Let's break this down. Obama's at 50% approval (fine) with a 2 point advantage on the issue of the economy (!). Everyone hates Charlie "Opportunist" Christ, whose sham marriage, which failed to get him on John McCain's ticket, will also fail to help him stay afloat in Florida. BP, which ruined our water, polls almost as badly as Citibank, which ruined our entire economy. The Democratic Party is exactly as popular as failed, bankrupt automakers General Motors, while probably this asshole who hacked kindergarteners to death in China is still viewed more favorably than Goldman Sucks. All more or less to be expected.

Then we get to the fun stuff.

"The Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. It requires local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally, making it a crime for them to lack registration documents."
64% Support, 34% Oppose

"How likely do you think it is that the decision in Arizona to promote strong enforcement of immigrants who are NOT in the U.S. legally will lead to discrimination of Hispanic or Latino immigrants who ARE in the U.S. legally?"
66% Likely, 31% Unlikely

More Off-Shore Drilling
60% Support, 34% Oppose

So, there's this law, right? It requires that you have your papers on you at all times if you have even a tinge of melanin in your skin or a faint whiff of chile on your breath. As an LA councilman puts it in an LA Times piece on the boycott of the Saguaro State:

"Los Angeles is the second-largest city in this country, an immigrant city, an international city. It needs to have its voice heard," said Councilman Ed Reyes, one of the resolution's sponsors. "As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who's having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be deported, no questions asked. That is not American."

Knowing that, how do the American people feel about this law? 64% of them think it is A-OK!

Well, back up a minute. Maybe they don't realize it's racist. No one likes racists or racism, right? That shit polls worse than Toyota. Let's ask the American people whether they think this new law will be racist.

Well, cock-a-doodle-doo! They don't care. 66% percent of respondents think that HELL YES, despite Jan Brewer's insistence to the contrary, this law will be racist. It doesn't bother them! Heck of a job, whiteys.

Oh, and as an extra kick in the pants, the poll then kindly informs us that 60% of Americans support *more* off-shore drilling, because what has the Gulf of Mexico ever done for us? Damned lazy, welfare-check-cashing, bean-eating, sombrero-wearing, American-job-stealing Gulf of Mexico. When was the last time we saw *its* passport? We say, let the sucker drown.

BONUS: In Portugal recently, the pope overlooked poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, iodine deficiencies, sexism, racism, religious extremism, child-rape, terrorism, environmental catastrophes and sinkholes that eat houses to declare that "same sex marriage and abortion were among the 'most insidious and dangerous challenges that today confront the common good.'" Just, you know, FYI.

Arizona: the Police State

For days now I've been mulling over the new AZ immigration law and why it bothered me so much. Possibly it's because I was just recently a judge at a student Holocaust film festival, so I'm more sensitized to fascism than I am on a day-to-day basis. Which, by the way, is pretty effing sensitized. I grew up breathing the air of the Inside Room and learned the Devil's Arithmetic before I managed to Number the Stars. Every season was the Summer of my German Soldier, goddammit, to the point where if I heard German spoken in real life I jumped.

When I needed to cool down from YA Holocaust lit, I picked up on other kinds of injustice through biographies of Harriet Tubman and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Even my very first smutty smut book, Night Over Water, had fascism as a subplot. (Reading the description is fascinating now because all I remember is the sex [vividly] and the politics [hazily], and that only because at 10 or 11 years old, I was surprised to learn there were fascists in England, too. By contrast, my mother, who gave me the book to read, didn't remember the sex at all.)

Back to Arizona, the state that gave us John "Never Said I Was a Maverick" McCain. Bisbee is great! Try the killer bee honey. You can't argue with the Saguaros everywhere, which are evidence of God's prickly sense of humor. But why, WHY, does anyone think it's acceptable to force people to carry identification papers with them at all times because they could be stopped and asked for those papers by the police?

Linda Greenhouse does not think it is acceptable. In fact, Linda Greenhouse is smoldering with rage.

And good on her. Having to wear a badge on your sleeve is only five paces in that direction from having to carry ID papers with you everywhere. Knowing you could be stopped and frisked by cops simply for leaving your house in your darker skin is a kind of low-level terror no one should be exposed to: not illegal immigrants, not legal immigrants, not citizens of this country.

As May Day is almost upon us, it feels appropriate to quote Billy Bragg's excellent translation of the Internationale, which is unfortunately playing in my head to the tune of La Marseilleise, but never mind:

Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all. ...

PC / JC

On the way back from finally seeing Avatar, I hear a couple across the car from me discussing the Academy Awards and the meta-narrative of Cameron vs. Bigelow: Who Gets Custody of Oscar.

The conversation is very run-of-the-mill and I zone out, paying attention instead to the Daley article in the New Yorker. Then I hear the boy say something is "political." My antenna goes up.

GIRL: Really?
BOY: Of course it is. You remember that movie, Brokeback Mountain?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: That was nominated for Best Picture!
GIRL: Really?
BOY: Yes! And you know what it's about?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: And *that* was nominated for Best Picture! Even though it was about ... *that*! It's just 'cause it was politically correct. Now, if it was a good movie, I wouldn't mind ...
GIRL: I never saw it.
BOY: Me neither, but still ...

This reminds me of the time when I was about thirteen and my mother took me to the Algonquin hotel. I was a passionate devotee of Dorothy Parker's, and I sat where she had once held court soaking up the Vitamin D. At least, I did, until my reverie was broken by the sound of a man a couple tables away lecturing his female companion on my favorite author. And he was wrong! More wrong than a cat being thrown out into the snow.

My mother could tell how incensed I was. I glared and shook my head and snorted like a horse but the man kept talking in his pompous, Master of the Literary Universe kind of way. "Please can I go over there and correct him," I asked my mother. "He's pretending he knows all this stuff and he doesn't!"

In this case, I will content myself with saying to you, the Internets: that boy is a fool.

Of course, it is tempting to dismiss anything you find distasteful without feeling like you first have to sit through it. Especially in our digital age when we can easily access the proxy opinions of friends, or "Fox and Friends," why bother exposing yourself to something whose agenda you suspect you don't want to support?

A friend and I were recently discussing this in relation to, as it happens, Avatar: Is it fair to hate it without having seen it? Especially with an international blockbuster that seems to have been covered quite in depth by the media, it feels pretty easy to get a sense of whether you'll like it in advance. (Good questions to ask yourself: How did you feel about Titanic? Fern Gully? Cats? [The animal, not the Broadway show.] How do you feel about white male protagonists with one-syllable "J" names? Great. Lastly, mother-goddess worship. Is that a deal breaker for you?)

Well, I decided to take myself to see it, by myself, to decide in as much of a vacuum as possible how I felt about it. There are my primary reactions. *CAUTION: SPOILERS*

1) James Cameron can sure make movies. I found myself thinking like a film student a lot of the time: "Those two characters are going to kiss at this point. Wait, but will they? They're not human; why would they kiss? American audiences expect it even though it doesn't make sense in this context. I wonder what Cameron will -- oh, there they go! Well done."

Assuming that Titanic and Avatar are about equally long, I would give you excellent odds that the first kiss between the couples in both films happen at roughly the same time. Like, within five minutes of each other. Because there is a kind of science to this and Cameron knows how it works.

I also made mental notes of the characters who seemed marked as Dead Meat and, indeed, most of them bit it. In a couple of cases I was surprised, which is another Well Done for JC.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I was carried by the narrative. I was impressed with the visuals. At times I was moved and at times I laughed, though a couple of those chuckles came at the expense of particularly ham-handed lines of dialogue. The movie was long but I didn't get bored.

But:

2) the story -- specifically the politics of it. Oy. I don't need to get into this; others, more prestigious and better suited to the task than I have done it already (here, there, and everywhere).

It should be noted that right-wingers think "Avatar" is a tree-hugging, socialist fantasy:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, conservative commentator John Podhoretz called the movie's clash between heavily armed humans and an indigenous tribe of aliens as "anti-American, anti-human." In an upcoming piece in Commentary magazine, Stephen Hunter writes that "the movie essentially decodes into a 1960s pseudo-intellectual's power-trip dream." A headline on a piece by John Nolte, editor of Andrew Breitbart's conservative Big Hollywood site, declared the movie wasn't for Heartland America: "'Avatar' Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge ..."

Hee! I love conservative outrage. For more from the left, here's Dan Savage on the film's sexual politics. He's not happy either.

To all of that, I will only add that the film's gender politics do get points from me. Most mainstream movies pass the Ms. Test only on a technicality. JC gives us several interesting, active female characters. Even the warrior princess kicks ass, and not just once, like, when a maternal instinct helps her save a baby rabbit. She hunts and flies and fights; her dad gives her his huge bow and arrow. She doesn't need saving. Well, once, a bit, but then she does some excellent saving of her own.

In short, the women are just as developed as the men (which is to say, not much, but this is not a deep, character-driven flick). For an action movie, that's not nothing.

Here, however, is where JC falls short:

3) the tails. WTF, JC? You give these 10-feet-tall blue-skinned cat-people *tails* and then do nothing with them? Think of the possibilities! Think of the children! (We barely see the children. What are the little Na'vi doing all day? Plugging their braids into everything they can find?) Many people, including one of my favorite high school teachers, would kill to have a tail. That showed a lack of imagination, Mr. Cameron. I am disappointed in you.

Overall? I liked it better than I thought I would. It helped to have expectations set to virtually zero. And now I can feel even more morally superior to that little blond idiot on the subway than I would have felt already.

It's all in how you see it

I would think that flying a plane into a building is a pretty black-or-white act, especially in our post-9/11 world. What is terrorism if not an attempt to intimidate people into acting in a certain way because of violence or the threat of it? If I demonstrate that I am willing to kill people for what I believe politically, whether I believe in lower taxes or global jihad, I become a terrorist.

Or -- and here where it gets tricky; you might want to sit down -- a hero.

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

His actions, which included murder, arson, and the destruction of federal property, were "inappropriate." Because they were successful, however, and "now maybe people will listen," he's a hero.

The daughter went on to say, "'But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,' she told ABC. 'But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.'"

That government workers deserve to be killed? That our taxes are so high (in Texas, mind you, where there is no state income tax) that we are entitled to resort to extremism and destruction? What exactly does she agree with? Or, in this age of Tea Partying populist anti-government paranoia, does it not even matter? "Injustice," she says. Injustice towards whom? About what? I am trying to stay calm, trying to understand what on earth she is talking about. I am not having an easy time.

I would like to knock on her door and ask to come in and have a nice quiet polite chat where I ask her whether she now identifies with the hypothetical daughter of a 9/11 hijacker who thinks her father is a hero. Because what's the difference? Are Muslims terrorists and white men who act out merely "inappropriate"?

And then I will put down my cup and look her in the eye. Very quietly, I will say, I have been to three funerals and four shiva calls in six months. I have traveled to Connecticut for death and to North Carolina and to DC and to Westchester. I am tired, and I am angry, so angry that I am probably clutching the table right now. Because how dare anyone think that he is entitled to kill people, to fly a plane into a federal building just because he believes something? My mother works in a federal building and my father used to. I don't care what you believe; you can die for your beliefs, if you feel that strongly about them. But how dare you take other people with you to prove a point?

OH MY GOD SANFORD STOP TALKING

Mark Sanford, stop it now. You hear me? Stop it:

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.

He said that during the encounters with other women he "let his guard down" with some physical contact but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail.

Right, of course, he wouldn't go into detail. What do you call what he's been doing for the past week? Is John Ensign paying Sanford to stay in the spotlight, performing his weepy one-man reality show day after day ("Sanford and Sons"), to distract from Ensign's more tawdry sex offenses?

Regardless, much as I feel for anyone who stands in front of a camera and cries, Sanford lost me at "I love your tan lines." Not that anyone expects the Song of Solomon, especially not in email form. But isn't a little poetry in order if you're writing to your "soul mate"?

Not to mention the fact that he skipped off to do the dirty over Father's Day weekend. Maybe I'm just bitter because I was stuck in New York, seeing a mediocre movie, eating mediocre food, and dealing with mediocre melodrama. (We did go see the Avedon exhibit at the ICP, though, which was worth the $12.) But when you have four kids, I think an international tryst that weekend is in especially bad taste.

Ooh, neologism time! When one has been caught "hiking the Appalachian Trail," one suffers from "Trystesse" -- affair-induced melancholy. Eh? Eh?

ETA: Wonkette is similarly horrified, though it chooses to malign Anne of Green Gables for some reason. Leave Anne out of this, Wonkette. She had "bosom friends," but she never "sparked" with any of them, let alone "crossed the ultimate line." That we know of, anyway.

"... ladies."

A Cambridge student athlete has made it to the finals in the Miss East Anglia competition, precursor to the Miss England pageant. Is this more or less shocking than a Hispanic woman who grew up in the projects getting a Supreme Court nomination? Check out the picture below and weigh in.



This is a toughie. Let's hear comments from the peanut gallery:

"Slim women - not anorexic - look better than fat blobby women. Get over it. If that weren't true, people wouldn't prefer them, would they?"

An excellent point, since "people" do objectively "prefer" the slim over the blobby, and we know this from detailed examinations of everything since the dawn of time. Thank you, John Stern from London.

What about Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx: could she really hold her own on America's highest bench? Educationally, she has scaled some very high ivy walls, graduating from

Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1976, where she won the Pyne Prize, the highest general award given to Princeton undergraduates.[7] Sotomayor obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Still, surely there's a more qualified white man in the wings who is being overlooked simply for the sake of color? Again, speak, O peanut gallery!:

"This country has taken a dangerous shift away from the basic tenets of our Constitution , and instead of seizing the opportunity to right that ship, we get another poor choice designed to placate the masses.

Randy Barnett would have been a much better choice.

Unfortunately, being white and male,he didn’t have much of a chance from the start."

SO TRUE, SgNews. Btw, who is Randy Barnett?

the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University, where he served as the faculty adviser for the Federalist Society. He joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in 2006. Barnett is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute. ... In 2009, he drafted the Bill of Federalism, 10 proposed amendments to the US Constitution designed to limit federal power and strengthen individual rights.

In other words, he's the Ron Paul candidate for the bench! I can't believe Obama didn't pick him. Of course, it wasn't his Libertarian views, his involvement with the Federalist Society, Cato Institute, or Goldwater Institute that held him back; it was his sex and his race, which as we all know are a serious barrier to advancement in America.

For more, because there is always more, see here and here.

Honestly, I am as shallow, judgmental, and quick to stereotype as anyone else who has grown up in this flawed society, and both of these women strike me as eminently qualified for their positions. I wish them the best. With all this criticism from all sides, though, is it any wonder women say they are less happy than they used to be? (Also, did anyone running that study consider that perhaps women feel allowed to be more honest these days?)

Klutziness

Can stress make you clumsier? In the last couple days, I've dropped things, stumbled, spilled water on a friend, cut myself in a very sensitive region, and nearly gotten hit by a car. The worst incident came at the end of my second interview yesterday. I bid farewell to the nice crowd of people who had been quizzing me, then strode gracefully through the lobby and straight into a glass door.

"Oh!" gasped the three women nearby. "Are you okay?"

I was, luckily. Nothing was broken: not my nose, not the glass. I did however leave a perfect kiss on the door, as though I'd planted it there on purpose.

In general I am not a klutz, because I am neurotic about not hurting myself. Even when I kid, I just sort of knew: Do this, and you could die; and as you don't want to die ere you become a famous writer, leave ice skating / roller coasters / black diamond slopes to the masses of future unknowns (or future deads). The closest I've come to a broken anything is when I twisted my ankle before my debut as Tzeitel in my 7th grade production of Fiddler on the Roof.

My mom took me to the ER, where a nervous young doctor fussed over me for a while and then finally took an x-ray. Several minutes later, he tracked me down in the waiting room and said, "I'm sorry, I messed up. Can we try again?"

The second time was also a flop, and he looked more pale as he asked for a third go-round. But when he came out the last time, he looked like he had just seen the Ghost of Christmas Future and it had told him his fate was to end up a dentist. He gestured for me to follow him to a corner a discreet distance from everyone else.

"You're not pregnant, are you?" he asked the thirteen-year-old me.

"Um, no," I said, wondering what the hell the x-ray had shown.

"Phew!" he said, the color flooding back to his cheeks. "Because we would have killed the baby."

Speaking of both clumsiness and inept professionals, the Daily News reports that an Arkansas state senator named Hedren has made an art of putting his foot in his mouth. First he called Chuck Shumer "that Jew." Now he's trying to make things right in the most hilarious way possible:

Defending himself again to the Arkansas News, Hendren went further, saying he didn't know why the words "that Jew" came out of his mouth. He added that there is a Jewish person he admires — Jesus. He's also partial to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

"i just don't dig on swine"

This SiF hysteria was getting out of hand (although it did produce this touching tribute to school nurses). Thank goodness Arlen Specter stepped out to shift media focus onto something else. My newsfeed lit up with love for Arlen moments after his announcement, and Twitter's been abuzz all day.

It seems a bit to me like a deathbed conversion. Did he suddenly realize it must have taken a blue God to put a black man in the White House? Did he want to be in good graces with that deity when his time comes? Or is he just crushing hard on Michelle, like the rest of us?

Regardless, he has my blessing. Go with guilt, Arlen! If Charlotte can be a Jew, you can be a Democrat. Don't let those spurned, angry wingnuts get you down.

I don't have the Sif; I do, however, a pretty mean cold that's left me with a voice like Bea Arthur, and two interviews over the next two days. Hopefully my prospective employers have a soft spot for the Golden Girls. Hopefully they will also view my coming in this condition as a show of dedication rather than obliviousness. Hm. Perhaps I shouldn't shake hands?

And to think that I saw it on Montague Street

I'm pretty broken up about Bristol and Levi but not as broken up as they are. Zing!

Yes, I know I already Twittered that. But I wanted to keep it around for posterity. Speaking of Twitter, I am loving this #fuckitlist thing, wherein people list things they will never do (this is as opposed to composing a "bucket list," where you make a list of things to do before you die or before you make two hours of inane, waste-of-celluloid-and-talent Christmastime pap).

Choice samples from the Twitterati's #fuckitlist:

#Fuckitlist - Learn to speak French. I mean, really, what's the point? A few well mangled words out of a phrase book and they speak English.”

“Upon my death I will have never seen all of the avante guarde films of Andy Warhol nor ever have volunteered for the Rose Parade #fuckitlist”

“#fuckitlist Eat turducken”

“#fuckitlist: learn ballet.”

“#fuckitlist Saving for retirement. I'll just shoot myself at 45.”

“#fuckitlist getting tickets to Jimmy Fallon”

“#fuckitlist Make a turducken.”

“#fuckitlist: give country music a chance.”

“#fuckitlist pay off all my debt, get arrested in Mexico, oh yeah, join a dance troup or the circus”

“#fuckitlist Read Twilight or Harry Potter, pay for cable, drink beer, eat raw meat, become a sumo wrestler”

“#fuckitlist Getting tickets to The Price is Right”

“Watch The Godfather #fuckitlist”

The hostility cheers me right up somehow. Things are basically better, anyway, as always happens: darkest before dawn, right? I mean, not in Darfur, where it's darker before the dark continues and it's like fucking Narnia over there -- always winter and never Christmas -- but here in America, for us privileged folks.

Darkest before dawn! Only hours after writing that last post about broker-monsters, I met a kind, funny, and helpful guy who found me a large one-bedroom on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights in my price range with high ceilings and laundry in the apartment. Then he convinced the owner to pay the broker's fee and didn't ask for any money for either the application or the credit check. Basically he did everything but secure me a three-book deal with HarperCollins. Mr. Ben and I are very grateful and we should be signing the lease in the next day or so.

Take that, broker-monsters!

Still no job, though.

Go Inaug Yourself

While I tried to jet down to DC, my queer Brooklyn posse, which was already in the city, scoured websites and schedules and even called the Secret Service in order to plot our strategy. Around 11:00 pm, they informed me of the plan and though I yelped in protest, I gave in. So it was that after three hours sleep, I got up and got ready to leave at the house at 4 AM and met them inside the appointed Metro station. Even at that hour, Tenleytown/AU was thronged by hopped-up youngsters, many of them looking like they hadn't bothered going to bed at all. The first train that came by was too crowded to board -- and that was the first warning signal of what this crazy, historic, overfull day would be like.

The second signal came at the final station, where enough people to fill a football stadium stood paralyzed by the Metro's insistence on swiping cards again to exit. The roar of the standstill grew until some frightened Metro employee finally made an executive decision and threw open the turnstiles so that the impassioned hordes could pour through. This was 5 AM.

We made it to the southern part of the mall where the ticketless were allowed to congregate, and after doing a lap to consider vantage points we committed to a location. Only then did we realize several key things:

1. It was fucking freezing.
2. We had almost a whole workday's length of time to kill
3. No one had thought to bring a blanket

We took turns sitting on the one stool we had with us and taking walks in vain attempts to keep our feet from petrifying. On one of my walks, I sought refuge in a port-a-potty, hoping it would be a little warmer. Finally, with the memory of the Time-Traveler's Wife vividly in mind, I decided drastic action must be taken, and I begged temporary shelter from a CNN man with his own trailer.

Kind, gentle man, he let Reb W. and me both into his lair which smelled like hot chocolate and which informed us, via several screens, that it was ten degrees outside. "Stay here," he said, leaving us alone to watch one TV count down the hours til the proceedings (4:40 to go ...) until he returning bearing hand and foot warmers. We blessed him and thanked him as we bowed our way out the door. For the first time in 2009, my boldness had won Reb W.'s respect.

Back with the posse, we danced to keep warm, played games for distraction, took pictures of the ever-expanding mass of people behind us, and watched the sun rise over the capitol. Never have I been so grateful to see that busy old fool, unruly sun, which almost immediately began to help us thaw. It wasn't doing the job fast enough so my friends ended up sacrificing belly warmth to tuck each other's bare feet under their shirts.

A few yards away from our camp I spotted John Oliver reporting live from the field for the Daily Show and snapped a few pictures. I have a huge TV crush on John Oliver but in person he looked depressingly normal, so I decided not to throw myself at him, even though I'll bet he too had a warm trailer that smelled like hot chocolate and could have given my feet a hot oil massage to bring them back to life.

After what felt like the entirety of Bush's presidency had flashed before our eyes again, the festivities began. The objectionable Rick Warren made a largely unobjectionable speech, forgoing any mention of hot topics like the gays. I had to laugh when he recited the "sh'ma" in English and said Jesus's name in Hebrew. I guess that's multiculturalism for you?

We cheered for everyone related to the Obamas and glared at folks who rudely booed Bush and his henchman Cheney, looking more diabolical than ever in a wheelchair. The lady behind me put it best as she chided the crowd: "People! What would Obama do?"

We shrieked when John Roberts fucked up the oath, laughed every time the booming announcer voice said "You may now be seated," and swayed in disbelief when the smart, calm, resolute, handsome, strong, thoughtful man I have every faith in came forward at last to assure us, over eighteen and a half minutes, that our years of wandering through the desert were over. The text was thrilling enough but the subtext was even better: It's all going to be okay. This is for real now. It's all going to be okay.

And then Bishop Lowry, possibly hopped up himself, had us all shouting Amen! to his fervent prayer for a time when "black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right." That's my kind of God talk.

Later, after the festivities finally ended around 12:30, we realized the city had left the millions of us on the mall no way to get home. The parade route had blocked off half of downtown, and the subway entrances were so swamped they looked like temples directly before stampedes. We holed up on the third floor of the Hirschorn, leaning on each other for strength, as we tried to wait out the masses. But, as it turned out, that was a bit like trying to wait for a bathtub full of molasses to drain through a narrow hole.

Despite the fact that we'd been up (and literally up on our feet) since the wee hours, battling soreness, sleepiness, and the beginnings of hypothermia, we decided our only option was to walk, and walk we did, around the police checkpoints and blocked off streets, through winter-savaged gardens and on curbs, over four miles, and some of it at the pace of molasses draining from the bathtub because we got caught up with the masses and could only walk as fast as the cops and traffic would let us. By the time I made it to Dupont Circle where my parents were, I decided I would never venture outside again.

But it was absolutely worth it.

The Wistful Whining

My life is beginning to feel like something out of the Series of Unfortunate Events. After a month and a half of paralyzing anxiety, I finally find the right chemical assistance only to have to face:

• the loss of my job;
• the paltry amount I will receive in Unemployment Compensation;
• the impending loss of my apartment (the new owners of the building want to live where we do, no doubt to feast on the tomatoes we so lovingly planted and cultivated in the backyard);
• a small tumor in my father's pancreas;
• and all in the most unforgiving winter weather in memory.

I've been reacting in the most logical possible way: either by steadfastly avoiding reality by rewatching action/adventure movies and musicals, or by throwing myself into the job and apartment hunt with the vigor of a young Sabra.

The upshot of these various, often contradictory efforts is that I have a few leads, one semi-solid freelance blogging gig, one future client for my new business as a paid know-it-all, a new membership to the Brooklyn YMCA, and a mortgage application in my future, because what should one do when laid off in a shitty economy except buy an apartment?

This week will be a break from everything. I head down to DC to see Hopey get inaugurated and to hold my father's hand, and I won't be back until Friday, at which point my oldfriend Rebecca is taking me out for an Evening of Fun. This is a tradition for us: when she last had a series of unfortunate events plaguing her, I planned a Day of Fun for the two of us that culminated at Build a Bear where I birthed a koala named Krackden. The best part came at the register where the chipper lady ringing me up had me say the name out loud. With the courage of my convictions and ignoring the resulting look of disgust, I said, "Krackden." He has been a comfort to me ever since.

Stumbling

Governor Blaggo, you are as transparently, hilariously, on-the-record corrupt as a James Bond villain. Thank God Obama's staff heard his offer -- cash in exchange for appointing their preferred person, apparently Valerie Jarret, to Obama's senate seat -- and told Blaggo where he could stuff the seat, if it would fit. This led, by the way, to a tirade in which Blaggo called the president-elect a "motherfucker." AND rumor has it that Obama's dreamy, morally-upright people were the ones who tipped off studly prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Yes! See, these are the kind of glad tidings that joyous-up an otherwise dreary holiday season.

Of course, it's easy for Obama to turn his nose up at a briefcase full of cash. He's like the only person in America with a positive balance in his checking account. (And yet somehow I still get emails begging me to help defray Hillary's expenses.)

The other north star in these dark skies is, of course, top ten lists and Culture Awards. I haven't seen much that's knocked me over this year besides Milk and Wall-E, though I'm excited about Rachel Getting Married, the Reader (because I am gay for Kate Winslet), and Doubt (because I am also gay for Kate Winslet-in-training Amy Adams).

Luckily I've had great TV to fill the void, in the form of 30 Rock, the Wire (which I watched in its entirety this year), and especially Mad Men. How I Met Your Mother, which has taken over lunchtimes at my office, has helped my brain take a much-needed break every workday for a while now. Thanks, Barney!

Mr. Ben and I also decided to try to shift the holidays from Bearable to Awesome by leaving civilization over the long Christmas weekend. New Orleans, we decided, was a little far and a little pricey -- but you know what's neither of those things? MONTAUK. An off-season, deserted winter paradise where they basically throw classy hotel rooms at you and stand in line to rub your feet when you're done wandering around empty, windy beaches. Plus we've never gone anywhere together just the two of us, except for that time we tried to have a honeymoon in the least romantic country on earth during typhoon season.

What Not To Say

Did you hear about this hilarious Republican congressman who compared to Obama to Hitler? Yeah, he wishes he hadn't done that:

Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a 'Marxist' and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

He also called Obama "liberal." Since Communists hated liberals, liberals hated Nazis, and Nazis hated Communists, in one breath, Broun has taken history and bent it into an infinity symbol. It would literally make more sense for me to compare Broun to Stalin because they are both from Georgia.

Sarah Palin has me shaking my head in mock-admiration, also:

"But not me personally were those cheers for," she said to Ms. Van Susteren in an interview shown Monday night on Fox News. "But it was just for the representation of a woman on the ticket, a mom, somebody who loves this country so much, somebody very, very committed to policies that I believe will progress this country in the right direction."

Dan Savage got a lesson in What Not To Say after he blamed blacks for the passing of Prop 8. Though they did come out en masse for Obama and, while there, pull the lever to ban gay marriage, King Nate Silver has absolved them of any kind of responsibility: there just aren't enough African-Americans in CA for them to have made a decisive difference. Savage on Colbert last night acknowledged this, shifting his ire to "old people," who, as he pointed out, "are dying, which is some comfort." Okay, Dan! You're getting there!

On the other side of this debate, there are the comments on this topic from The Root that draw from the word of God to give their opinions legitimacy:

just because we accept people for the color of their skin, which is actually something that the Bible teaches us to do, does not mean we should let two people of the same sex get married, which the Bible vividly prohibits. ... this country was founded on the principals of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and to confuse loving thy fellow man with telling him it's o.k. for him to marry another man is not what this country is supposed to be about.

and

Interracial marriage should have never been an issue but was an issue with this country but because of prejudice it was. God never condemned interracial marriage but does condemn same sex marriage. I just hope and pray that this country stands for what is right in the site of God. God defines marriage is between a man and a woman, not between two women or two men. When it comes to immoral issues it is wrong. Again interracial marriage is not a moral issues but gay marriage is. Let us understand that there is a difference between the two. If anyone having problem with that person is having a problem with God.

Again with the wrongness. Opponents of intermarriage absolutely thought -- and still think -- they had Jesus on their side. I mean, Deuteronomy, dude: Deuteronomy 7:3-4: 'You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son, for he will cause your child to turn away from after Me and they will worship the gods of others then the L–rd’s wrath will burn against you, and He will destroy you quickly.'

Of course, that's silly, cuz that Old Testament God is only talking to Jews there and the passage is specifically about religion, not race. He wanted a strictly limited gene pool for His chosen people, possibly because He wasn't paying attention in high school genetics class, and also because He's a jealous, overbearing God who likes to make rules. Whatevs.

The judge who ruled in the Loving case in 1958 also said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no case for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did intend for the races to mix."

Sure! And the fact that He gave us Barack Obama shows us that He knows the fabulous results mixing can have.

In short, this is all bullshit. Can't we just admit that the idea of Group X getting it on with Group Y squicks out Group Z, where Group Z is those who aren't in on the fun? Let's leave religion out of it.

Aftermath

Post-election, life feels strange. It lacks urgency, lacks tension. Part of me feels compelled to stake out bars near off-off-Broadway theaters to try to find some High Drama friends to help make up the difference.

Instead, I'm joining a Swarthmore alumni book group whose curriculum is set by a current prof. You know who could have been an alum but isn't? Barack Obama. True story! This both adds value to my degree and subtracts value from it, since I *was* accepted, but who could care about having been chosen by a place with such poor taste?

It does allow me to picture an alternate universe in which Obama is a Swattie, though. He graduates, as my friend Rebecca E. put it, full of "relentless criticism and liberal despair." He spends a summer working at an alternative camp for disadvantaged city children; this inspires him to join Teach for America, where he meets a cute fellow teacher, a Peruvian-American anarchist. They get married in West Philly, where they set up house and grow food in an urban garden. Every once in a while Barack feels a disembodied itch to be doing something more significant with his life, for which his wife chides him and then asks him to remember to stir the compost.

Of course, he still has holes in the bottoms of his shoes.

Speaking of High Drama types, poor Sarah Palin. Yeah, that's right. I have now argued with one brother and two parents about this, and I'll argue with you too if necessary. (At least Flea agrees with me.) Flinging anonymous shit at a person is WRONG, no matter how stupid and possibly evil that person is. Maybe it's true that Our Sarah didn't know what countries were in NAFTA or that Africa was a continent. Our President has a pretty iffy track record himself.

As I see it, McCain's people paired an ambitious, attractive, charismatic woman with an old man to draw audiences, using her the same way Winona Ryder, ScarJo, and Catherine Zeta-Jones have been used (mostly with the same meager results). They spruced her up to get her camera-ready and fed her already healthy ego by putting her in front of adoring crowds while keeping bad news -- and the press -- far from her.

When their plan backfired, thanks in no small part to Katie Couric and Tina Fey, the gentlemanly thing to do would have been to return her to Alaska and thank her for her service, not leak blind, spiteful quotes to a Fox news reporter. "Jerks" is a kind word for what these staffers are; they should dream of being hanged by their tongues and wake up screaming. Not that I wish them any harm.

The Liveblog That Wasn't

I was supposed to liveblog Election Night, the best night of my or anyone's life, and unfortunately I couldn't. Here, as a substitute, is a reconstruction -- a retroactive liveblog! -- of the events that prevented me from liveblogging. (I know. The internets are too amazing.)

6:45 AM: Mr. Ben and I wake up simultaneously, look at each other, and agree to run to the polls.

7:15 AM: We arrive at P.S. 282, check out all the people in front of us, and hope that waiting in line to vote is as patriotic as paying taxes.

8:00 AM: I pull the lever for Mr. Barack Obama.

8:01 AM: I realize I forgot to say a little prayer while inside the voting booth. Silently, I recite the sh'ma.

9:00 AM: Go to work.

9:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Read lots and lots of coverage. Begin feeling ill. Take a break from the computer; walk around the block. Return.

5:10 PM: Yup, definitely ill. Hide in the conference room where it's dark and cool.

5:30 PM: Still hiding. Chipper McCheerful keeps me company, saying reassuring things.

5:35 PM: Mr. Ben and Rebecca appear to say more reassuring things. We watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother -- I am gambling on the curative powers of Neil Patrick Harris.

6:00 PM: NPH has failed me. We decide to take a cab home.

6:05 PM: Hail a cab.

6:06 PM: Throw up in the cab.

6:07 PM: Sit on the Union Square curb next to a pile of my vomit looking at my stained suede boots. Mr. Ben runs to get cleaning supplies. People pass by and laugh, "Hey, look! That girl just threw up in the cab!" The driver shakes his head at me and mutters about drunks. Mentally I browse through low moments in my life to see where this one ranks.

6:30 PM - 11:00 PM: Shivering on the bathroom floor in green-tinted misery.

11:05 PM: Mr. Ben checks my phone, which has been receiving text after text. "We won," he tells me gently.

11:15 PM: I throw up one last time in celebration and finally go to sleep. All night, I dream of my stomach and Pennsylvania, which have somehow fused to become one anxiety-causing entity. I blame John McCain.