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Monday, June 29th, 2009
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9:45 pm - One Step Forward...
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Wow, it's been a long time since I updated The War Journal.
I don't know if anyone who's still reading this journal can remember far back enough to how it began. I started it up a few days before the Iraq war began in March 2003. It was my objective to post something about and against the Iraq war every day until it was over. I soon realized I could not keep up that pace and still do my day job. Still, for a few years, I was updating it fairly faithfully. But like the Iraq war itself, this LJ was vulnerable to mission creep, and it eventually became a lot more about domestic politics than it was about the Iraq war. They were, of course, related; and when the Bush years finally ended with Obama's victory in 2008, I figured, well, the war will be over soon now, it's just a matter of time. And since then, I really haven't done much here. I started another LJ (under ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) idairsauthor) which is nominally devoted to my fiction, but which is mainly a place where I post whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time. Much of the content that used to show up here is now over there.
I'm now maintaining this LJ, basically, for one reason: The war is not over yet. When I have the stomach to get back to it, I hope to get into the swing of posting about it again. Oddly, the end of the Bush years has led to my feeling slightly more hopeless about political change. Our guy is in now, and so far, well, we're still in Iraq, and a lot of other shit that was supposed to be changing isn't. Yes, I know it's early. I'm not saying I'm not glad Obama was elected or that he won't accomplish a lot before his time is up. I'm saying that since Bush exited the picture I don't have the same fire in the belly that I used to have, despite the fact that many of the things that stoked that fire still exist in plenty in our brave new world.
But, I could not let this go by without saying something about it. American troops have withdrawn from Iraq's major cities, including Baghdad. This is the first step toward this promised total withdrawal in 2012.
One of the things that's demoralizing about the Obamaverse is that nobody on our side seems able to appreciate the small increments of positive change when they do happen. I think people are so used to being lied to that's hard to trust that the beginning of a process will ever lead to the end of it. One of the concrete expressions of this phenomenon is the extremely depressing atmosphere on DU, where nobody can post anything positive about the Obama administration without attracting a chorus of pessimists who insist on reading it as empty and deceptive posturing. And what is demoralizing about it is that to some extent they have a point. For instance, many of these U.S. troops are not leaving the country; they are merely withdrawing to very large bases outside the cities, where they will wait, I guess, to see if the Iraqi government still needs their 'help.' So one cannot say that the occupation is over. Nevertheless, I don't see why we have to jump from that straight to "the occupation will never be over." Nor do I see why we can't take a moment to appreciate the fact that at least at this time, American soldiers are not patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities any more.
This is a change. It is a good change. That ought to be acknowledged. Sure, it is not enough. But I hope that it may be followed by many other small positive changes and that EVENTUALLY we can actually say that the Iraq war is over. The War Journal will be there when that happens...even if I have to do the last update from a retirement community.
The Plaid Adder
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| Saturday, June 6th, 2009
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10:50 am - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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I posted a review of it over here. Bottom line: amusing, a fast read, needs more zombies.
The Plaid Adder
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| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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9:41 am - In Case Anyone Missed It...
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...I thought it should be noted that on Tuesday, April 21, Jon Stewart explicitly accused FOX News of writing Chavez/Obama RPS.
Go to the Daily Show website and watch the "This Week in Demagogues" segment. It's worth it.
The Plaid Adder
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| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
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5:15 pm - For those of you looking for the Straight Person's Guide to Gay Etiquette...
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For those of you who have contacted me to ask what happened to the etiquette guide: the WWWomen folks moved it to this location.
I will update the links on my own site as time permits.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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3:07 pm - In Memoriam Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
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So, as you may know, Eve Sedgwick died yesterday. She was one of the founding mothers of queer studies and the author of a staggering number of books on gender and sexuality.
If you have never passed through a graduate program at any point in your life you may never have heard of her. But if you are a slash writer/reader, please, pour a little libation for her departed spirit today. Because without the work she did in Between Men and Epistemology of the Closet, the number of readers/viewers who look at Frodo and Sam or Holmes and Watson or whoever it is you're slashing right now and can "totally see" the slashy subtext would be a lot smaller than it is today.
RIP,
The Plaid Adder
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| Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
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2:37 pm - Dancing With the Stars
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I know this is not a matter of national import. But I feel a need to say this:
Steve Wozniak is not the worst dancer in this year's cast of Dancing With The Stars.
He may be the most out of shape. He may be the least attractive. He may be the oldest and the geekiest. But he is not the worst dancer. I would say that to me, it looked like he out-danced both Holly Madison and Denise Richards. The fact that he is an old, kind of dumpy-looking guy and they are both Barbie dolls naturally inclines most viewers to the opposite opinion. But if you just look at who can do the steps and groove to the music, I think he actually did a better job with that than either of the Barbies. Denise Richards was clearly never able to overcome her nervousness *except* during portions of the "dance-off" last night, and that meant that a) she made a lot of mistakes and b) she was in fact stiff and kind of brittle. Holly Madison seems less uptight in front of an audience but no more comfortable with moving her body, especially from the waist down.
Is Wozniak capable of going all the way? Obviously not. He doesn't have the stamina or the flexibility and I don't see him acquiring it along the way, regardless of how tough the training regimen may be. But it pisses me off to see people just assuming that he must be the worst contestant and that it's a crime and a shame that he's still on the show. It may be true that he fits the profile established by previous legendarily bad contestants such as Billy Ray Cyrus and John Ratzenberger. But unlike both Cyrus and Ratzenberger, Wozniak can actually execute the steps and he does genuinely seem to have a sense of rhythm. And also, despite his greater bulk, he is not as slow on his feet as Belinda Carlyle was.
Sometimes, geeks can dance, people. And a lot of the time, models can't. Why is that so hard to accept?
Don't answer that,
The Plaid Adder
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| Monday, March 9th, 2009
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1:57 pm - Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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This morning NPR informed me that "The Real IRA"--a splinter group which, if memory serves, was also responsible for the Omagh bombing--is claiming responsibility for the deaths of two British soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland who were shot while going out to take delivery of some pizza. This is of course very sad news. What's better news is the report on the official response from both the IRA and the loyalist spokespeople, which can be basically summarized as, "Nice try, assholes."
This is how a situation like this gets resolved: you get to the point where most everyone is getting enough of what they need and want under the status quo, and therefore even when events like this happen--as they sometimes will, since under no conditions can you stop *every* lunatic who has access to firearms--the war does not start up again, because apart from the lunatics involved, nobody wants it to.
The idea behind sending Mitchell to the Middle East was, I guess, that it might be possible to do for Israel/Palestine what has been done for Northern Ireland. And I'd like to hope that it might; but I'm not sitting up nights waiting for it.
Still. Fifteen years ago when the IRA cease-fire had just been announced, I couldn't have imagined that Northern Ireland would one day be taken off the International List of Tinderboxes. But if in fact this incident doesn't touch off a brand new war, then I guess it'll mean that we can. Things do change, after all.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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| Friday, March 6th, 2009
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9:31 am - Still Talking About Torture
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You all haven't seen much of me since the election. Nobody online has. Since PJ's birth, my internet life is one thing that has had to be cut back. Along with that, I have been spending a lot less time talking about politics to people, except to participate in other people's conversations about how glad they are that Obama won and how great he is. I don't have the whole crush thing going on with him that a lot of my friends seem to have, but it makes them happy, so I let them gush. For me, I mainly feel a kind of exhausted relief. The emergence of new evidence that the Bush team was trying to turn the country into a dictatorship does not surprise me or evoke much new in the way of emotions. I knew that was what was happening, just as I knew before the Iraq war started that there were no WOMDs in Iraq. It's nice that everyone else has the evidence now. But I basically have been more or less taking the opportunity to relax a little bit. Constant vigilance and all that, I know, I am grateful to everyone who's still keeping the fires burning, but mine have sort of died down for a while.
Then, at some point yesterday, apropos of something else, I found myself talking about torture.
Look, I said. It's easy enough to argue about the injustice of something when you can point to the innocent people who have been subjected to this kind of treatment even though they don't deserve it. But what keeps places like Guantanamo operating is the belief that somewhere out there, there *is* someone who deserves to be tortured, who *needs* to be tortured, and so we need to be able to do that to *those* people. It's a shame that innocent people get drawn into this sometimes; but all the same it's necessary. Whereas, I said, the argument against torture and for human rights is based on a really simple core principle: If you are a human being, you are entitled to a basic level of humane treatment, period. Whether you are innocent or not. You cannot end the torture of innocent people until you are committed to the idea that it is never acceptable to torture anyone.
I've made this argument a billion times. I discovered, this time, that while I was making it, I could feel myself starting to get agitated. And I was glad the conversation ended pretty soon after that point, because I was almost shaking.
Wow, I thought. I guess it's still bothering me.
It seems so obvious to me. A human body with a human soul in it is entitled to certain rights and the right NOT to be tortured is one of them. No matter what you may have done, you do not forfeit your humanity, and no human agency on earth has the right to strip you of it. If you lose sight of those principles then you start telling yourself all kinds of lies about what being human really means, and that's what leads to things like Guantanamo. And there's no point to closing down Guantanamo if we're not also going to shut down the bullshit that propped it up. If we don't recommit to the principle that torture is always and everywhere wrong, then we're just going to be beating the shit out of people in a different set of locked cells in some other hellish limbo that none of us know about yet.
I think I had it again, yesterday, during that conversation: the feeling that this place is not a place I belong to, that if I get even an inch below my surface I will discover that the world I normally think I'm living in does not in fact exist any more, and that all the things that I thought we all believed about life and freedom and the good are merely private delusions of mine.
I hope that's not actually true any more. I hope that was just a moment of haunting and that in time, it will finally sink in that Bush's world has passed away and that we're moving into a new one now where there are some truths that people still hold to be self-evident and the inviolability of human rights is one of them. But dang. If I thought I was over it, well, clearly I'm not.
So, I think it is maybe a sign that I need to get back in the game. It's Lent, after all; it's as good a time as any to be trying to figure out what I can do to make torture un-American again.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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| Saturday, January 24th, 2009
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4:12 pm - Goodbye, Guantanamo
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I know, it's not closed yet. But it will be. Thank God.
It really is different with this guy in charge. It is taking some time getting used to it. I referred to him as "our current president" yesterday and for the first time in 8 years I wasn't using it as a euphemism for "THAT ASSHOLE!"
Thank you,
The Plaid Adder
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| Friday, January 16th, 2009
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9:48 am - Sign My Farewell Card for George W. Bush!
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A good friend of mine got laid off last week. We discussed the fact that it's hard to find a "sorry you got laid off" card in the Hallmark aisle. She's always wanted to have a second career as a writer of cheesy Hallmark greeting cards. So in her honor, I wrote this "sorry you got laid off" card for George W. Bush. Please reply with your own thoughtful message!
TO A VERY SPECIAL PRESIDENT
You mutilate our language,
You lie and steal and cheat;
And when we face a crisis,
You run like you've got cleats.
Your war is a disaster;
Your "policies" were theft;
We'd offer you a parting gift
But we've got nothing left.
And so we send this card
On your special day,
To say, "Too bad you got laid off--
Now GO THE FUCK AWAY!"
I have a tear in my eye just thinking about it,
The Plaid Adder
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| Sunday, January 4th, 2009
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3:37 pm - Carrot Dip
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Today's magic number: 214.5
Today's food diary:
( Read more... )
I'm still hungry, but maybe it will pass.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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| Friday, December 19th, 2008
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10:08 am - Change We Can Believe In
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My partner has a theory about Obama's slogan. She believes that "change we can believe in" really means "not very much change." Because *big* change would be difficult to believe in, at this point.
Well, here's one thing that hasn't changed: a Democratic politician deciding that he can afford to piss off the GBLT segment of the base, and that it's worth it to him in order to court some other constituency.
I don't think his invitation of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration was a "mistake." I think it was a calculated political decision. One thing that is happening over there on the Christian right is that the selection of issues they care about has expanded to include stewardship of the environment and humanitarian causes in Africa (including HIV/AIDS). He wants them on board. This is one way of signaling that.
It also signals to his GBLT supporters that he really doesn't give a shit about us. Which is disappointing, but it's not surprising, and it's not new. Clinton (Bill) took the same approach: all I have to be is better than the Republicans, and they will support me. And sadly, we will, and we do. Because what the hell else are we going to do?
I knew when I voted for Obama that he would not be willing to take risks on behalf of my rights. That was clear from the campaign. I didn't know that he would pick someone like Warren to have an important symbolic role in his inauguration; but from what I know about how his campaign operates politically I guess it makes sense. It will be good for him, from a political capital perspective, to be seen to be pissing off "the left," and it won't hurt him either that this underlines his lack of support for same-sex marriage. I mean, it'll hurt him with GBLT Americans and their straight allies, of course. But not enough to make them not support his agenda--because we actually support those policies for their own sake, regardless of how pissed off we might be at the people putting them forward.
So it is pretty much politics as usual, where we are concerned. And it sucks. Especially because, despite the evidence, a lot of us expected better from him.
I have not a whole lot more to say about Obama's decision--it's disappointing, it's painful, it does not augur well for things to come. I want to point out the single thing which I think accounts for the vast differences in response from GBLT DUers (and straight DUers who make GBLT rights a priority) and those who don't see this as a problem:
Obama's justification for Warren's invitation during his recent press conference keeps mentioning his "views" on homosexuality. He keeps going back to the language of "viewpoint," "opinion," "diversity," "disagreement," and so on. And this is what sets me off and will no doubt have set off a lot of Obama's GBLT supporters: his language indicates that he believes (or wishes people to think he believes) that homophobia is not hatred or bigotry, but a legitimate "point of view." This is one of the biggest obstacles that GBLT Americans still face in their fight for equal rights. A person who states that non-whites are inferior to and not deserving of the same rights and privileges as white people is not treated as someone expressing a "view" or an "opinion;" he is treated as a bigot whose prejudice renders his "perspective" on this topic (and pretty much anything else) invalid and indefensible. A person who states that GBLT people are inferior to and not deserving of the same rights and privileges as straight people--and that IS what you are stating if you oppose same-sex marriage--is treated, at least by Obama at this moment, as someone expressing a valid and valuable "viewpoint" which needs to be included in the Great Conversation that Obama wants to have with all of us Americans.
In other words: one thing this whole incident reminds us is that bigotry against GBLT people is still not recognized by a lot of other people in this country--including our president-elect--as bigotry. It is instead a point of view which deserves respect. And to GBLT people, the fact that Obama is endorsing that idea so publicly is not just deeply offensive; it's dangerous. Because that "opinion" gets expressed in ways that materially hurt us; so the more that "opinion" of us is respected and protected, the worse our lives, overall, are going to be.
Obama's election is still an amazing thing in a lot of ways, and I look forward to seeing him make this country better for a lot of us. But as far as GBLT rights are concerned...well, this is a lack of change that unfortunately I have no trouble believing in.
The Plaid Adder
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| Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
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10:28 pm - Meanwhile, In The Rest of The World
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| Friday, November 14th, 2008
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8:51 am - In Search Of An Old LJ Icon
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Dear Friendslist,
One of you, at some point, once used to have an icon with the legend, "Strength! Joy! Nutrition! Toast!" If it was you, would you post it in the comments? I would like to use it in a presentation. You can let me know how you would like to be acknowledged.
Thanks,
The Plaid Adder
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| Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
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4:55 pm - There's No One As Irish As Barack Obama
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| Thursday, November 6th, 2008
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11:13 pm - And in the other room of tears...
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Yesterday I sent an email to a friend of mine out in California. A little over ten years ago, my partner and I drove a tiny rented Geo Metro through the hills of California to watch her get married to her partner. It was then and is still the best wedding memory I have. Of course, this was in 1997, and there was no legal component to it. It was just a ceremony, officiated by a woman they knew, a rite that the two of them had made up together and were celebrating in front of the community of friends and family they had invited. They had already been together for several years, of course; her family was mostly OK with it but her mother was still not prepared to take the relationship seriously. One of their friends played guitar; they exchanged vows; they asked if anyone in the audience had anything to say in support. I said something, and I can't remember all of it, but part of it was this: "It's a hard thing to keep love alive in an evil world, but no matter how hard it is it's always worth it."
After the wedding, they registered as domestic partners. Many years later, when the mayor of San Francisco decided he was just going to start marrying same-sex couples, the two of them ran down to the state house and became one of the band of renegade spouses who then had their licenses canceled out by the courts afterward. And then, when the state supreme court finally made it really legal, she and her wife went downtown and got married--for the third time.
And now Prop 8 has passed, and they don't know whether they're married or not.
In my email, I told them that they are married, that their years together and the experience of that first wedding can never be taken away from them no matter what happens. But of course that isn't going to be much comfort. I know well enough how hurtful and humiliating this is; I've been through it myself. This December my partner and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary together. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1988; a lot of changes in our country and certainly a lot of changes both in what it means to be gay and what it means to be married. We are going to be legally married fairly soon in Boston, where it appears that the attempt to amend the state constitution has been abandoned. But of course that won't do us much good back here, blue as our state is. People we tell about this seem surprised we're not making a bigger deal over it. The truth is that it is a big deal, but that it also isn't. Because we know well enough by now that what the state gives, the state can take away. What we have, we hold, and nobody can take it from us. We want the legal rights that other married couples have. But we also do not want to give anyone else, other than us, the power to say that we are not really married.
It is humiliating to be legally blocked from doing something every straight couple takes for granted. It hurts a lot. It hurts worse to see, every time one of these anti-same-sex marriage initiatives makes it to the ballot, all the latent homopohbia crawling out of the woodwork and dripping down the walls into the voting booth. For us, the passage of anti-marriage and anti-family initiatives against us all over the country during this historic election isn't just a fly in the ointment.
I've now seen several threads on DU railing about the fact that minority voters who supported Obama still voted for Prop 8 in California. I do not dispute the facts nor do I belittle the anger and hurt under the ranting. I will say only this: Yeah, it's tragic that members of one minority group wouldn't see common cause and act in solidarity with those of another. But you know what, it's been a fact of American political culture for all my life and it happens in all directions. I don't see what's to be gained by beating up on each other over it now. Why not blame fundamentalism instead? Because that's what's perpetuating homophobia, in white and minority communities alike.
Here is the basic problem: There is simply not enough popular support for same-sex marriage in most parts of the country to make it a reality *except* through the courts. Massachusetts has worked out because the vast majority of Massachusettsians either support marriage equality or don't give a shit who gets married--and because it is harder to amend Massachusetts's state constitution than it is to amend California's. Demographics aside, the truth is this: at least since I've been paying attention, whenever an anti-same-sex-marriage initiative gets on a state ballot, it passes. The only way to win against these damn things is to keep them off the ballot.
Why do they always pass? Because the Bradley Effect is not a myth; it is only misapplied. There are loads of straight people out there who are fine with gay people in most every way but still in their heart of hearts do not want them to get their mitts on marriage. Why? Who knows. Nostalgia for "tradition," maybe; some unarticulated emotional resistance to the idea that they have not tried to identify or examine; bullshit about how we don't really need marriage because civil unions are just as good; refusal to let go of heterosexual privilege; I don't know. All I know is that the number of people in this country who can be perfectly decent to gay people on a day to day basis and even believe that gay people are just A-OK is a lot larger than the number of people who understand why marriage equality matters to us and truly want us to have it. And they don't talk about that, because they know it would only lead to hurt feelings and anger; but they go into the booth and pull that lever all the same.
Until that's not true any more, we're going to keep getting pounded like this. I hope that it will someday not be true any more; but it will be a slow process. Still, if you look at what's happened even in the past 20 years, there is plenty of room for hope there. When my partner and I got together, we could never have imagined that gay people would be able to get married ANYWHERE in this country; nor could we have imagined that we would ever have a child together. Let alone that my mother would ever come around to it, which is really the biggest miracle. The change WE need is coming; it's already in progress. But the charge will not be led by our politicians, because they know that marriage equality is a loser for them. Until popular opinion shifts, they're going to be useless to us on that score. Obama, I fear, included.
But Obama's victory does make things better for us, even though my hopes to see him actually working for us are not high. Because he's president, we will not have another four years--or God forbid, eight--of right-wing Christianity screaming invective against us through every channel of communication that the U.S. government controls. Palin's national humiliation in the media and the crushing defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket have significantly diminished the power of the religious right and sent the message to the rest of the country that they no longer have to train themselves to believe that crazy view of the world. That will make a huge difference in our battle to change public opinion about our right to marry.
In the meantime, though, we can no longer get married in California and unmarried couples (of ANY description) can no longer adopt children in Arkansas. And that sucks. A lot.
The Plaid Adder
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| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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1:58 am - The Room of Tears
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Man, I'm still waiting for it to sink in. It's so WEIRD for an election to be OVER on election night!
Yesterday I posted saying I was sick and wouldn't be around much today. Well, today I felt better; but my partner is coming down with whatever it was that I had. So she didn't get down to Indianapolis after all to do GOTV; but as it turns out it didn't matter because Indiana or no Indiana it was a @#$! LANDSLIDE. I was well enough to go vote, though.
Anyway...so tonight, my partner was in the bedroom resting up, and I had a lot of work to catch up on, having been out sick, so I was doing it with the TV sound off, glancing up now and then whenever I heard a screech of elation break out from the election party going on across the street. (We live pretty close to Obama's house. People are kind of excited.) The first outbreak of glee was when they called Ohio for Obama, which I duly ran and reported. "He's won both Ohio and Pennsylvania!" I said. "What about Florida?" said my partner, groggily. "I don't know!" So I got her some more Gatorade and went back out to the TV.
The counter was stuck at 207 for a while, so I stopped paying attention. Then I heard another burst of screaming, looked up at the screen, and ran down to get my partner.
I said, "He's up to 288! I don't know how!"
We ran back down to the TV. We were watching ABC, and they weren't calling it yet. At some point my partner observed that it was sort of stupid for them to not be projecting the winner when they were projecting 288 votes in Obama's column. I said, "But he has to get to 290." She said, "No, he has to get to 270." I went, shit, she's right. OH MY GOD! HE WON!!
Here's the thing. I've seen that 270 number thrown around here all day every day for weeks on end, and yet, when I saw that 288 number, my brain just adjusted the target up. Because God knows, my brain was thinking, we can't actually be WINNING.
But then McCain conceded. And I had to face the fact that in fact, it looked like we had won.
It was a good concession speech. It was, of course, interrupted by boos from his supporters, who apparently don't value graciousness. It must be sad to be McCain right now, knowing that he sold himself to the devil--I'm sorry, to Rove's minions--and all for the chance to not only lose by a landslide but to give his moral high ground speech to an audience of people clearly incapable of appreciating it. But at least he didn't try to drag it out by whining about Acorn.
So we waited, and the numbers kept going up, and finally we watched Obama's speech from Grant Park. And as soon as he came out and started into it, I thought, "Damn, he looks really tired. And he doesn't really look that happy."
Pretty early into the speech he mentioned his grandmother. And then I remembered: oh yeah. His grandmother just died. Of course he doesn't look happy.
And as he got further into the speech, and he started talking about what lies ahead, I thought about what this unexpectedly grave acceptance speech really meant. It's not just that it brought home to me something that I've seen Obama supporters talk about a lot here--the fact that unlike many politicians we could name on both sides of the aisle, Obama seems to have preserved the human being within the shell of the politician's exterior. I've been skeptical of that claim for a long time because I can tell how slick that exterior is and I can see the work that goes into it. But I am starting to come around to it tonight. Not just because you can see--at least I could see--him integrating his personal sense of loss into his performance of this extremely public moment. I think that what I was very, very surprised to be looking at--and surprised mainly because of the 8 years I've spent staring at the train wreck engineered by the Bush/Cheney/Rove axis--was a politician who knows that winning the race is not the point. The point is to do the job, and to do it well. And Obama has defined some pretty ambitious parameters for what his 'job' as president really is. And he must be feeling the weight of all that coming down on him now. And he understands that this is not the beginning of one long party for him and his buddies, but the beginning of a difficult, dangerous, and terribly important mission that will shape the destinies of millions of people here and elsewhere.
One of the things that has maddened me most about Bush was my conviction that he never for one instant of his life understood how serious his responsibilities were, or cared what consequences his actions had. For Bush, it was all about him--his glory, his power, his ability to order up a grilled cheese sandwich from the White House chef at any time of the day or night, his own crazy blood-spilling havoc-wreaking insane plans for how to make himself the savior of the universe. And that is why, as I thought about it, I decided I was glad that Obama didn't seem to have his party face on tonight. Because it shows that he knows that what he does in the next four years is going to matter a lot more than what happened tonight. And he's got to know that he's taking over a country that's in really, REALLY bad shape.
In the Vatican, apparently, there is a room called the Room of Tears. It's where the new popes go to be alone for a while after they've been invested. It is so called because the typical response to being given that responsibility is apparently to break down and cry. I don't know whether the Presidential suite at the Hyatt has a Room of Tears, but I kind of have the feeling that that's where Obama was while he was in the wings waiting to come out to give the speech of his lifetime. I personally don't think it was the best speech he's ever given, as the pundits seem to be saying. But I actually think that's a good sign. The time for political theater is over. The words are still going to matter. But from now on in, it's really about what gets done.
It's important for us, on our smaller scale, to feel the same tears and to make the same transition. We're the party in power now. We've finally got the executive branch back. We have to start thinking not about how to resist power but about how to use it. We have to start thinking about how to prevent our own desires to see our erstwhile overlords dragged through the mud from getting in the way of the work that needs to be done. We have to start seeing ourselves as the ones who are responsible for what happens next, who have been given the charge of making the country and the planet better. The best part of that speech tonight was Obama's call for us to do that. I gotta start thinking about how our family's gonna answer that.
In addition to all that, of course, there is the extra weight of the 400 years of history that Obama's election will change. Others are talking about that better than I can tonight, but I want to say that despite what the media will tell you, Obama's election does not mean that racism is dead in this country. I don't believe that and I certainly don't think Obama believes it. He's got to know that all the people who voted for him did it because they trusted him to make this country a better place for them--and he's got to know how hard that's going to be. He's also got to know that he will have to be at least twice as successful to be thought half as good, and that there will be sharks all around him, all the time, waiting for the taste of blood. And it's just as well that he feels the gravity of that, too.
PJ slept through it all, of course. But she'll wake up in a different world. I do wonder what it will be like for her, the future she will live into, unencumbered by the 38 years we've been dragging around. Maybe she'll be able to be better than we are, to do better things, to take better care of the world, because of what's happened tonight. And thinking about that does kind of make me cry.
Yes we have and yes we will,
The Plaid Adder
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, November 1st, 2008
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10:09 pm - The Palin Prank Call
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The YouTube link at which I listened to it is no longer viable, but here's a link to an AP article about Sarah Palin's run-in with the Masked Avengers, a Canadian comedy team who have dedicated their careers to embarrassing world figures by calling them up and pretending to be other people. One of them managed to string Palin along for 6 minutes pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France. The linked article summarizes the best bits, but really, you have to hear Palin's voice to really understand how howlingly, universe-shatteringly humiliating the whole thing is.
Oh, wait, I found an alternative link to a version using pictures of frolicking polar bears as the visual.
Here were my thoughts:
1) The fact that she got pranked is not in itself what matters, really. These guys are apparently very good at what they do and they have done this to people a lot smarter than Palin. One of their diabolical methods is to exploit the rest of the world's almost-total ignorance of the ins and outs of Canada and its politics, which they certainly do beautifully here. As someone who is only about 15% less ignorant about Canada than Palin is, I have some sympathy with her for playing along and trying not to reveal the fact that she had never heard these names that "Sarkozy" was throwing at her. The fact that the call got through to her is, of course, the fault of her press people, especially "Betsy," who I suppose is now not only unemployed but unemployable.
2) Here's what's really horrifying about that phone call: we got to see how Palin acts when she thinks she's talking to a head of state. And it's OMGWTFBBQ HUMILIATING! One DUer on another thread described her as sounding "like a 16 year old meeting Lance Bass for the first time," and by God that's exactly right. Who greets a foreign head of state by squeeing, "We LOVE you!"? Also not pretty was how gushily, desperately grateful she seemed to be--or was pretending to be--to "Nico" for showing her attention and approval. This is something that has just bugged me about her from the beginning, and I may as well rant about it now: What makes it possible for right-wing men to love Sarah Palin despite the threat that she might otherwise represent to the patriarchy as a female VPOTUS is the way she performs that bootlicking, adoration-oozing, oh-thank-you-so-much-for-fulfilling-my-life-by-noticing-me BULLSHIT that patriarchal bastards love so well and which, no doubt by design, contributes to their impression of her as a cute gal who deserves a little help and sympathy because she's gosh darn it trying so hard even though clearly she doesn't have a brain in that pretty little head of hers. She may be a pit bull when she's talking about Democrats but to the guys in her own party everything she does sends the message, "I just love you sooo much and you're sooo great and I'm sooo grateful to you for helping out the helpless little woman that I know I am." Which, OK, works all right when you're sleazing your way up the rungs of the party ladder...but NOT WHAT IS CALLED FOR ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE!
3) "Marcel the guy with bread under his armpit." Funniest line in the whole conversation.
4) You know what I like best about this? I got done listening to it and I said to myself, "I better go write up a thingy on it now, cause come Wednesday nobody's gonna give a shit about her." And THAT is gonna be a beautiful thing.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
*************
PS: some translations:
"on pourrait tuer des bebes phoques aussi"--we could also shoot some baby seals
"du rouge a levres sur une cochonne"--"Lipstick On A Pig"
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 31st, 2008
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8:39 pm - Hockey Mama For Obama
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This you gotta hear. "Don't Speak For Me Sarah Palin," performed by a hockey mom with a pretty good soprano voice, while her moose-antlered partner performs on piano.
C ya,
The Plaid Adder
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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1:16 pm - Starting my own election weekend meme.
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Post a link to, and a snippet of, an entry you made just before election day 2004.
Here's my link, and here's the snippet:
I know more now about what I believe. I know what matters to me. I know what I'm willing to fight for. I emerge from these four years (please God only four) with stronger convictions about right and wrong, good and evil. I have a greater commitment to the truth and a more intense desire to do what I can to make light in this darkness. I am a better activist. I am about 200,000 times better informed about politics than I have ever been in my entire life. I am even a better writer. I can say now that I love my country and know that it doesn't mean I have capitulated to the belligerent ignorance that has been masquerading as 'patriotism' under this administration. I can say now that I love my country but I miss the world and want it back. I can say that no matter what happens on Tuesday, I will not shut up, I will not back down, and I will not surrender my mind, heart, and conscience to the state just because everyone else is doing it.
Go forth and propagate,
The Plaid Adder
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(comment on this)
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