259. LUCIFER’S FOLLIES, OR, I KNOW, LET’S BLAME THE HOMOSEXUALS!

From the Archives (October 2006) Huh. Jerry Falwell says that Hillary’s nomination as Democratic presidential candidate would arouse even more evangelical opposition than Lucifer’s.

Wonder what Jerry’s nomination would arouse among thinking people?

And does anyone believe that Fox and O’Reilly accidentally—oopsie! real sorry folks—ran a banner identifying Foley as a Democrat at least twice before someone called them on their self-serving little blunder?

Yep, I’ve been catching up on my reading.

Checked out Mollie Ivins’s dildo diaries today and can confirm that Texas is even more backwards than my repressive home state.

Have also been following the Times series on the ever-expanding benefits that our leaders are extending to christianist groups. Hope the series garners a strong response.

This made me wonder what the christianists have been up to—besides being strangely silent about Foley—and that’s how I discovered the Christian Coalition trainer who encourages people to make up press credentials in order to find out if voters are planning to vote for republicans (and then harass them if they’re not).

The Christian Right’s lack of morals are really coming to light in the wake of this scandal.

Yep, another closeted Republican suffering from internalized homophobia has followed the path blazed by Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ralph Reed and gotten himself revealed as a moral hypocrite.

Is anyone surprised?

So how are the christianists responding? Well, they’re playing the specious blame game in an effort to avoid taking responsibility for putting their careers before their so-called morals. Or they're keeping quiet in an effort to keep the Republican failures in connection to this scandal under wraps.

Examples:

The Foley revelations, according to Gary Bauer, chair of the Campaign for [Homophobic, Evidenced-Based-Reality-Rejecting] Working Families, are merely "an attempt to discourage Christian conservative voters and to get some percentage of them to stay home so that the Left can retake the United States Senate and the United States House."

Yep. We Lefties brainwashed the man into seducing nearly grown boys using the same brainwashing methods that you christianists have used with the children you send to your brainwashing camps.

(I know. I’ve been there.)

Other politicos are trying to distance the scandal from political parties altogether and blame, yes, the homosexuals:

Neither party seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. (Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, in reference to the Foley scandal)

What? Don’t you wonder how this idiot can even write that with an um straight face on the heels of one heterosexual man raping and executing public school girls whom he took hostage in Colorado and another heterosexual man executing a roomful of Amish youngsters whom he planned to rape and torture?

At least Foley was flirting with people who have hair around their genitals.

Perkins also said, and fairly ungrammatically, that "it shouldn't be totally surprising when we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guidepost for public life this is what you end up getting."

Think about that.

Human Life International went a step further and attempted to blame the Foley scandal on Planned Parenthood. (The fuck?)

There is never an acceptable excuse or rationale for the type of deviant behavior former Congressman Mark Foley has admitted to. Homosexuality is every bit a part of the culture of death as is abortion and contraception. Not surprisingly, Foley was an ardent supporter of both, representing the interests of Planned Parenthood 64 percent of the time thus far in 2006.

Yes, put those children in christianist schools so they never have the opportunity to learn about evidence-based reasoning, then feed them crap like this and some of them just might buy your bullshit.

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Meanwhile, a woman on Craig’slist discovered that her academic husband is cheating on her and wrote this wonderful rave, which I’m posting here because it will vanish soon, although it’s currently posted at http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/141149695.html:

RAVE: My cheating husband!!!
Ok, so I just found out that you've been writing about 25 emails a day to one of your female colleagues, all signed with the words "with bated breath". GREAT! You seem to have decided that bisexual vegetarians with questionable hair choices are more up your alley. WONDERFUL! Oh, did you say that she cares about your academic career, unlike me, who is always at work? Great! I'm such a bitch, aren't I, me with all of my work and bill paying. I'm glad that someone has the time to listen to you talk about postmodernism. That really takes a lot off my back. Actually, upon close inspection, it seems like this whole thing is taking a lot off my back. For example...

Things I Don't Have to Do Anymore since You Have Found a Deeply Intellectual Fuck Buddy:
1. Pay your rent.
2. Get you through graduate school.
3. Hear the word "deconstruction" while I'm trying to eat a goddamn hamburger.
4. Fry bacon for you.
5. Pretend to enjoy CNN.
6. Pretend to care about all things academic.

Things I Will Be Able to Do:
1. Buy shoes.
2. Eat chicken, which you find disgusting.
3. Shop at a store other than Target.
4. Unapologetically watch America 's Next Top Model.

So go ahead. Fuck her. I know you want to. I mean, you pretty much said so in that last email, now didn't you? If you'd just get on with it, I could possibly have you out by the end of the month, and be able to enjoy all of next month's pay check without having to buy any of your books or any of your pencils or any of your goddamn subscription-only foreign news channels. You've been to the movies, you've had study dates. The next logical step is fucking. So put down the goddamn books and get your mouth on hers. Let's step it up! I want to go buy myself some shoes!

And yeah, I'll be sad, and I'll cry and I'll eat some Ben and Jerry's. But you know what? I won't be homeless. You, my friend, you're going to have to get a job that doesn't involve reading Nabokov. So enjoy that. God knows I will. In fact, I'll give you five bucks if you'll just hurry the fuck up and get it over with. Take the money, dude. You're going to need it.

Oh, and yeah, I did break into your email. So go ahead...tell me what you read in some obscure book about privacy. Tell me loud and long. Because I'm never going to have to hear that shit again.
141149695

Yee haw, babe.

188. I NEED A HERO, I’M HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO TILL THE MORNING LIGHT ...

From the Archives

(February 2006) Just drove to the Gothic Wonderland to hear my friend Tuscaloosa read. The place was packed and she was, as always, brilliant and charming and oh so literate.

I’m so proud of her and the good work she’s doing.

Our friends remain aghast that Tuscaloosa and I never got together and, occasionally, I’m surprised by this too. In many ways, we’re a perfect fit. But I was married, then she was married, then I was married again and, well, the timing just never worked out.

We are very dear friends who recognize each other’s gorgeousness however and she’s someone I can talk with about anything—and someone I do talk with about writing on a very regular basis.

I’m going to include a long excerpt from Molly Ivins’s “Why Hilary Won’t Save Us,” but, first, can you believe that I actually heard an advertisement for a Toddler Spa (!) that offers designer haircuts and manicures?

Oh for the love of gawd throw your precious little rugrats outside and let them get grubby instead.

I mean, come on, if they can’t get their hands dirty when they’re toddlers, what hope do they have?

Anyway, here’s Molly. It’s just too good not to paste here:

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to relearn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy—rough, tough Bobby Kennedy—didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines, who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. Who are you afraid of?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

... Oh come on, people—get a grip on the concept of leadership....

Alito is all but confirmed. New scandals are erupting daily. Please! Someone rise up already and call a spade a spade. As Barack Osama said of Rosa Parks, “she reminded us all of the central truth of the American experience—that our greatness as a nation derives from seemingly ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

We are in need of a person who can do extraordinary things right now, before the corporations completely take over. (Alternet, 1/23/2006)

Molly’s letting out all the stops now.

102. COMFORT TOTEM

From the Archives

(June 2005) This is how you know that Medea is sick: I am curled up in bed on a summer afternoon in my blue-polka-dotted white flannel PJs with happy red piping, drinking diet ginger-ale and eating a bright orange bowl of artificially colored (and flavored and...) mac and cheese with my well-worn Tony the Tiger spoon ... and I actually put on clothes to go to the store to buy this fake-tasting stuff!

Got the spoon after saving cereal box tops as a kid and still pull it out on bad days. It’s how I comforted myself back then and I guess it still works as my little comfort totem.

Am pretty certain that I have a good old-fashioned sinus infection, but really don’t want to go to the doctor. Hence I’ve been lying here saving up my energy as I surf the Web and pop echinacea and hope that I recover.

Molly Ivins’s Alternet article begins ”The Texas Legislature gives itself a huge retirement pension and, the next day, cuts retirement benefits for teachers. Welcome to a Republican-ruled state.” The wonderful (but sobering) title of her article is THE VIEW FROM THE OWNER'S BOX. Ivins also notes “You know, it's one thing for Republicans to run year after year railing against government. But once you win, you got to run it, people.”

I love her spunky smart self, but she strikes me as someone who may be lonely deep down in her heart. I hope I'm wrong though.

Also checked out the Free Will Astrology site.

I’m not actually into astrology so much, but Rob Brezsny is really cool and insightful and always references obscure and fascinating things that make me think.

My horoscope this week is particularly interesting, given that a friend just informed me that a (now well-to-do) ex of mine apparently still tries to live up to my values where money is concerned.

Huh.

I’m not really opposed to money—you can do a lot of good things in the world with it, as Paul Farmer can assure you—but I do hate to watch the way so many Americans spend it and am continually appalled by what we throw away. I also refuse to sell my soul for the sake of having more money and try to make decisions that further the care of my soul first and foremost. I want to be fiscally comfortable, but don't really care about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses otherwise and view conspicuous consumerism and those horrible McMansions as pathetic commentaries on our emptiness.

I also took enough advertising classes to recognize marketing manipulation when I see it.

I do have "money issues” though, as this ex pointed out to me on more than one occasion. Grew up in a working poor family that struggled, but have spent most of my adult life around people from solidly upper- or upper-middle-class families. This translates into sometimes feeling out of place around folks who assume that their references include me—and, well, they don’t.

Here's reality: Poor Americans are hyperaware of the fact that they are considered failures by their culture (and their current president). They're are aware that they are believed to be stupid and unmotivated by the more well-to-do around them (even though they often work two jobs in an attempt to keep up with their bills). And they're aware that their poverty makes people who have more feel uncomfortable.

We grew up knowing we were Other.

My best friend and I talk about this and how differently we grew up. Her family of origin was working class, too, but in a mostly working class town. And there were very few books in her house. My family of origin was working class in an affluent town, yet our house was filled with books—architecture and philosophy and science and art and history and arecheology—and my father spent a lot of time talking about philosophy and ideas. We struggled financially though, in part because he was a dysfunctional creative type who made consistently bad financial decisions and turned down raises that required him to relocate because, as he said, "I like where I live. It's beautiful here. And my flag is stuck down here."

All-righty then.

I'm also aware that my education and professional employment require me to spend most of my time around people who do not live the way most Americans live, that I spend most of my time among the most highly educated people in the country.

But what's that MLK line: "We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing oriented society to a person oriented society."

Yea. That about sums it up for me.

Anyway, here's my Free Will Astrology reading for this week, which actually does tie into what I've been blabbering on about:

I live pretty simply, and often have an allergic reaction in the presence of people who have their own jet airplanes, travel with personal servants and style consultants, drink $300-a-bottle champagne, and vacation in palatial spas on private islands. Having said that, I am duty-bound to report that you now have an astrological mandate to indulge in as much extravagant pleasure as you can afford. Your watchword for the week comes from Frank Lloyd Wright: “Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.’"

Meanwhile, apropos to, perhaps—but not really—nothing, I noticed in the grocery store last night that there is a magazine called Billionaires and wonder, do people actually purchase this periodical and take it home to read it instead of living their lives? The f*ck?!

READING: Aureole by Carole Maso (mmmm)

LISTENING TO: Until recently, I was listening to KRS-1, because I need a good beat to get me moving. He’s singing about Afrocentric education: you don’t know that you ain’t just a janitor coz no one told you about Benjamin Baneecke: A brilliant black man who invited the almanac. Can’t you see where KRS is coming at?

BEST OF SPAM: Does Ur Cock Hard Enough?

78. PASS THE COW CHIPS

From the Archives

(2005) Today is April 15. One year has passed since Lynne's untimely death and I am in a pensive mood.

It's also tax day. Or, as Molly Ivins’s aptly says

April 15: You’re Getting Screwed.

She refers to NYT regular and Pulitzer prize–winner author David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal—The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich—and Cheat Everyone Else.

Johnston reports:

Through explicit policies, as well as tax laws never reported in the news, Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super-rich—the top one-one hundredth of one percent of Americans.

People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more.

The rest of us are subsidizing not only the super-rich, but also corporations. Fifty years ago, corporations paid 60 percent of all federal taxes. But by 2003, that was down to 16 percent. So individual taxpayers have to make up the difference, as corporate profits soar and wages fall.

It’s a Bush world after all.

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Meanwhile, the stock market fell to the lowest it’s been in two years today and the World Cow Chip Throwing Contest was held in Beaver, Oklahoma.

(The ways in which some people can distract themselves never fail to amaze me.)