Anecdote to Cognitive Dissonance

Tags

abuse, editorial, life in the foothills, women's rights

Life is sure simpler if you avoid conflict. I know how easy it would be to just shrug and say, “well, that’s me, complicated” and just return to my purchased serenity. But the price is the incessant nagging that won’t leave me alone. Conflict must be resolved. It seems, well unseemly to do anything else.

Let me dispel any notion that I was someone of importance in the feminist movement. I was a cipher to put it quite bluntly. I came along at a time when the movement to date meant that I didn’t have to struggle with some things and too late to matter regarding others.

For instance, I showed up right on time when it came to law school, with all universities working hard to bring their women’s numbers up. I benefited no doubt and probably got in when say ten years earlier or maybe even five, I might not have.  I was probably too early yet to be an air force pilot, and other occupations like police officer or firefighter were still male bastions. I consider myself lucky that those jobs were not within reach for me at the time.

I recall no march that I participated in, since those were few and far between. I was one of those “fellow travelers” who made their point largely by commenting on doors opened, “I can open my own door thank you,” and ladies first, “I’m fine being in the place in line I arrived at.”

But my heart was surely there. And as with most women of my time (and those who became politically aware) I read the required texts of feminism, listened to the words of feminist spokeswomen, and re-evaluated most of the “advice” I’d been offered by mother and other female family members. I mostly began to rethink the notions of what women want, and what they need to do to get it.

We rejected the casting couch. We demanded a say at the table of decision making on serious issues, not just those pertaining to “women’s issues.”

But old habits die hard.

I know there are women my age who married their childhood sweethearts. And bless them, if that turned out well for them. But most of us did not, and the 60’s and onward provided us opportunities to test out our sexual freedom as well. And with that came the perils. I would bet that not one woman who was sexually experimenting (meaning separating sex from love as men always do) was not subjected to some form of rape. Date rape is what I refer to. It need not have been violent, but it was insistent to the point that we succumbed rather than continue objecting. We told ourselves or were led to believe by an insisting man, that we had encouraged it, or brought it on, and we can hardly blame him now for wanting to “finish.”

So we understand about emotional and physical abuse, whether overt or “benign”.

Over the years the struggle has had its ups and downs and re-orientations. It has focused on poor women, and women in the boardroom. On wage equality, job opportunities, and image. Lately it has focused on abuse.

Many have recognized that until women and especially young girls have better images of themselves regarding power and influence, real progress won’t be made. This is because too many female children are still being raised in traditions that value being quiet and “polite,” and above all knowing “one’s place.”   Until we teach our young boys and girls that gender is fairly insignificant to their dreams and responsibilities in life, we cannot effectively marshal the numbers necessary to push old white men off their pedestals of entitlement and take our rightful place alongside.

We must however, not merely preach the message, but we must live it, and therein lies my conflict of the day.

We are a culture that deifies to a great extent anyone in the public eye. Whether they be movie “stars” or singers, or sports professionals, we look upon them as objects to be admired. We seek to act like them, in however that translates to the average life. We dress, eat, drink as they do. We attempt to live in our modest means with trinkets that resemble their splendor.

To a degree we do this with politicians as well. Who doesn’t admire those who have managed to become known to large segments of the world simply by wielding power?

We fantasize these people into very inhuman beings, almost in some cases, as incapable of being anything but the perfection we infuse them with. They are bereft of the failings that we suffer. We tell ourselves that this is not the case, but truly we do so.

And yet, many if not all of them are flawed, as deeply flawed as we.

And of course there is a tabloid press out there ready and willing to make a buck trading on their failures. This is good in one sense of course for it reminds us of their feet of clay.  But, to those we worship from afar, we tend to find ways of avoiding what we don’t want to believe.

I and my husband have determined that we cannot bear the ugly underbelly of hate that a Mel Gibson exhibits to the world when he is sufficiently drunk or angry to let his true beliefs come forth. Gibson is nothing but a hateful racist of the worst kind. Yet we recognize his talents in acting and are saddened that we miss the opportunities to enjoy it.

There are others. Many others.

Woody Allen is my nemesis. Such a huge talent, such amazing movie-making, yet  an ugly man in his abuse of girls. One can only claim so long that the charges, which he denies, are false. The fact that he married his adopted daughter speaks volumes. Mariel Hemingway was 17 years old when Mr. Allen tried to convince her to come to Europe with him.  I cannot ignore the obvious any longer, even though Diane Keaton seems to manage.

We cannot continue with “artists must be allowed their quirks” no matter how inappropriate.

Bill Cosby was easier. The sheer number of accusers is all the evidence needed. This man abused women in a ruthless  “because I’m Bill Cosby” sort of ugliness that offends on every level.

Charlie Chaplin abused girls. So did Roman Polanski.

It is said that John Lennon beat his first wife and so did Eric Clapton. Ike Turner beat Tina.

We make allowances because of who they are.

We cannot continue to do so. Lennon, I’m told, publicly confessed his sins. Ike certainly didn’t.

There will be no more Woody Allen movies in my future, much as it pains me to do so. He is a genius of sorts, but a sick bastard as well.

I cannot and will not pick and choose based on how much I admire the work they do. I cannot, because I have a responsibility to girls growing up in this very difficult world. I cannot send mixed signals.

WE cannot send mixed signals. We must stand up for all women everywhere who are subjected to emotional and physical abuse, who are beaten down into believing that they are entitled to no more than they get. We must stand up, or collapse into our suburban retreats being nice grannies while organizing family get-togethers in some refusal to be a part of the reality that confronts our youngsters every day.

That is what it means to be a grown-up. We must leave the world a better, safer place. Damn us if we don’t.

I AM My Sister’s Keeper

Tags

citizenship, editorial, humanity, poverty, the religious right, women's rights

As with so much with me, a number of widely disparate notions traverse my synaptic receptors before it dawns on me–the greater issue–that is.

Thus it starts with the insanely stupid Hobby Lobby decision, brought to us by five Catholic men who have probably long-since stopped depositing seed in the fertile womb of any woman married to or otherwise.

A perusal of but a few of the rags that pass for “right-wing” blather turns up gems such as “you want to have your fun and make me pay for it”, “keep your legs together or pay for it yourself”, or this upside-down logic, “if you can’t afford contraception, you can’t afford to have a baby anyway!”

Hey there brain-dead XY’er, umm, it seems that you fundamentally misunderstand some rather basic stuff. One,  if women are using contraception to “have fun” well guess who they are having fun with? Second, contraception coverage under an insurance plan is not a “gift”, it is a benefit owed to the employee in lieu of a bigger paycheck. Taxpayers have nothing to do with it bozo. Third, umm, under this theory why are you still getting your I-can’t-get-it-up-without-ya Viagra in your insurance plan? If you want to have fun, pay for it? And fourth, uh, contraception is the way you avoid a pregnancy you cannot afford stupid.

I am post-menopausal, yet this fight is my fight. For I am a woman. For I am a human being.

Some many years ago, when I still worked for a living, I had a work colleague. “B” as we shall call him was an African-American male and law schooled at U of M. “B” was inordinately proud of his U of M alumni status and wore a lapel pin announcing his alumni status virtually every day.

One day, “B” wandered into the law library (which contained a lunch room at one end) where a number of us (mostly women, Black and white) were discussing affirmative action and how we all were grateful for the opportunities it had given us as both women and women of color to advance in various professions. Added to that were the men and women before us who had labored on our behalf to ensure that we as young women had more opportunities than their generation.

“B” was asked if he too were grateful for the boost given him in his pursuit of a better life. He exploded in a vehement denial of being such a recipient. He got where he was, “by his own talents and abilities” and was beholden to no one for his success. We all were shocked, attempted to argue with him, but B left the room quickly in disgust at our suggestion.

I am retired and no longer work. Yet this fight to level the playing field is my fight.  For I am a woman. For I am a human being.

A friend just a day ago, talked about how she and her family had needed food stamps and other forms of public assistance to get by for a time in the past. All who know her, know she is a hard-working mom, a dedicated wife, a thoroughly responsible person. She puts a face on all “those” people that the Right so snidely likes to look down upon as “takers” and as developing a culture of expectation that the government will take care of them. She belies that picture assuredly.

I can echo that story by one of about my housekeeper who is struggling, working from sun-up to sun-down to raise six children all the while in the midst of a divorce from their father who continues to refuse to pay one penny toward their care as a way to punish her for putting him out for his drinking, drugging, and abusive ways. She receives what aid she can from where she can, and we struggle to find better ways to help her.

I am not receiving assistance, and if all goes as it seems to be, I never shall. But this fight is my fight. For I am a woman. For I am a human being.

How does this all tie together?

Only in one respect. Read Matthew 25.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, 36naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ 37Then the righteous^* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ 40ⁱ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 41^{* j} Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42^k For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ 44^* Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ 45He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

There are many who say that we are genetically wired to care about each other. Certainly humans are not meant to be alone like the cheetah or polar bear. We have found camaraderie and safety in numbers. We have sacrificed some independence, some freedom for the protection of those numbers. Somewhere in that movement from tribe to village to town and city, we have learned to care about the needs of others, not just ourselves. Beyond our concerns for the progeny we bear, we care for the old, and for the disabled.

Recently remains of a Down’s Syndrome child was found among early human burial remains. The skeleton suggests that rather than kill or expose these disabled babies, they were cared for until their natural death. Similarly we find the remains of elderly who certainly could not have survived without help from others.

From this we learn that the desire to care for each other is ancient. We seek to serve each other,  either by genetics or at the very least by the call of the most perfect prophet the world has known–Jesus Christ.

Unlike our Right-wing evangelicals who twist scripture to reflect a Jesus who counsels against government assistance, eschews the minimum wage, and Paul who taken out of context tells us that those who will not work will not eat, we respond to what is in our hearts and/or in our DNA, called to reflect that what we do to others we inevitably do to ourselves.

When I hear the voices of hate-bearing sanctimonious condemnation, when I listen to their explanation that we are “coddling” and “creating a dependence culture”, I am not sure what comes first to me, the tears of grief that people can drape themselves in the flag while waving the bible in order to hide from the world their true self-centered motives, distorting Christ and his sermon of empathy and love, or the flashes of red-hot anger that wish to explode in slapping such people across the face as hard as I can, watching the self-satisfied holier-than-thou smugness fade as the cheek brightens into a red imprint.

We do what is right because it is right, quite simply. Women as poor as they may be deserve as good health care as the CEO of GM. Everybody gets to where they are in life due to the helping hands of untold dozens if not tens of dozens, and lack of means is no definition of worthiness or lack of it. Dr. Ben Carson has become the darling of the Right with his claims that government assistance to the poor, is akin in some measure to a return to slavery. Well Dr. Carson was the recipient of plenty of that assistance as a child and young adult, and that assistance gave him the opportunity to study hard and do all the things he had to do to achieve great success. He did not do it alone and he would be the first to be offended had his mother or he been treated as something less than the kids who grew up in better circumstances.  How soon we forget from whence we have come.

How soon we fall victim to our own greed for the “good life” and turn our backs on all those who are left behind. How soon we forget that but for the “grace of God, go I”. How soon we twist self-righteous religiosity into some sort of club with which to bludgeon all those who don’t do as we say, while we do as we wish, crying out to God when caught, that we too are sinners, but somehow still not sinners like those awful others. 

So we will gladly pay a little more if it means that everyone has a decent minimum. Everyone should have a home, clothing, medical care, quality education, and a job at a fair and living wage. We will do it because we don’t see the world as them and us, but as we.  It is the human thing to do quite simply. And you will never dissuade us otherwise, though you may win a battle here and there. You will not win in the end, because

WE ARE BETTER THAN YOU ENVISION US AND YOU TO BE.

 

 

A Serious Case of the Ass

Tags

teabaggers, women's rights

And you thought she would go quietly into the still dark night, returning to her lair, climbing into her sarcophagus, bidding adieu to Marcus, after relinquishing her role as beard to his hetero pretensions.

Nah.

Bat shit crazy don’t play that way.

She continues to play the game of stupid queen of the mountain better than such noteworthy rivals as Sarah, Phyllis, and Marsha, all rolled into one. Michele Crazy Eyes Bachmann once again wins the gold metal for craziest damn woman to ever have a vagina.

But then she doesn’t. See that’s the really fine thing about this new pronouncement by the bible in one hand, gun in the other, reparative theory is your friend, nut job, is that it truly is shocking. See, while Marcus has always been firmly wedged into his closet of gayness, his beard, was really a man all along.

Yes, Michele, nobodies, Belle, is a guy. It’s a fact.

Here’s how we came to know.

She spilled the beans…or shall we say she spilled the gonads for all to see.

She ‘splained it this way: See, your Barack…being all Black and all, now he was elected because there was all this guilt floatin’ around, and him being only “half” ya know, black, it was like getting rid of that black angst thing, without technically ya know, havin’ to actually elect one of them. (I had this explained to me by a couple of Christianist ladies, one of whom howled that Obama isn’t black, he’s only half-black, having a white mother. Another explained that  questioning his citizenship was not racist, because she had taken in a black girl to care for during her pregnancy’ and she was WAY darker than Obama, which proves I guess, in the mind of a racist, that well, only shades of color matter, but somehow that has nothing to do with RACE-ism)

But, Michele, intoned in her cutie little voice, tis not the same when it comes to women. Nah, America is not yet “ready for a woman President”, and for a coupla reasons. One, there ain’t no guilt in America over women, and two well, there is just no “pent-up desire” which is Michele’s way of saying there ain’t no stinkin’ hard-on for a woman.

And she oughta know, since she RAN FOR PRESIDENT. And since she did, and since she appears to believe her own slimy brain farts, well, it can only be that Michele is really Michael and no woman at all.

That’s the logic of it as far as I can see.

It all just was the “last straw” if you get my drift.

I’ve been reading an essay on a critical examination of the phrase “Sarah laughed” in Genesis. Done from a feminist point of view and gathering the linguistic evidence and the EARLIEST manuscripts, we learn that Sarah was actually laughing at the possibility that her old and dried up vagina might become that moist Eden once again and her old and flaccid husband might actually be able to get it up at his age. As such, it violated the shame/honor society of the Egyptian Jews who were translating the Septuagint into Koine Greek–the same version that would be used by the likes of Jesus and Paul as they read Torah in the synagogue of Jerusalem in the early years of the Common Era.

And if it were not for a long line of women starting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who just oddly enough thought that maybe God and the baby Jesus thought as highly of them as it did about all the men it focused on, well, we’d still be in the kitchen, barefoot no doubt and with a child at each elbow and one on the hip as we prepared a feast for the menfolk who were out and about “important” business.

And then, just then, before that I have to contend with a Neanderthal male who,without a single modicum of biblical training purports to bolster his ill-conceived notion that it was solely the “Jews what kilt our Lord,” by suggesting that I was not the least bit attractive from his arrogant pig-oinking position, well, I’m getting the feminist juices all fired up again.

So Michele, pseudo-woman, and Phyllis Schafley and her idiotic “be a good wife” while I make millions writing books and speaking for large fees, and Marsha Blackburn, with her “I’ll say whatever you tell me to if I can just be on camera” drivel, you can all go take a massive flying leap cause ladies, and I do use that term most advisedly, you are FUCKING NOT HELPING HERE as some of us are trying to make a world where girls can grow up to be anything they want and make as much as any man, and that child rearing is EVERY BODY’S business and responsibility, and that women’s ideas about compromise, caring, and compassion just might, JUST MIGHT add a segment to the conversation that MIGHT, JUST MIGHT result in fewer wars and less death, and more freakin’ happiness for all.

So THAT’S what I’m thinking about today.

How ’bout you?

Black Women Writers Can Jump (or Shadow Mentors)

Tags

Alice Walker, autobiographical shit, life, women's rights

We watched American Master’s Beauty in Truth last night. The life of Alice Walker, best known for writing The Color Purple. She goes to the top of my list of people I’d love to spend an evening with. She joins a list that includes Kathryn Hepburn, Carl Sagan, Woody Guthrie, Malcolm X,  Dorothy Parker, Hypatia, Da Vinci, Socrates.

At the same time she makes me feel shame. More of that in a moment. The Contrarian said ditto for him in the shame department for much different reasons. He’s neglected women writers over the years. We talked a while of all the issues she raised.

How she said that “activism is the rent one pays for being alive”, or how she noted that “even the monk who meditates in a cave contributes to the world.” How she was puzzled that anyone would marry anyone “forever” since people come into your life to teach you something, and if we are growing, we grow out of relationships and we move on. As she moved from marriage to a white lawyer to a “partnering” with another man, to relationships with three women. How she birthed a girl and now doesn’t know who she is any more as that daughter streaked the tabloids with “why my mother no longer cares about me.”

How she traveled the world, dipping her hand into causes that fought for women’s and people’s rights, never caring what apple carts were upset. How she suffered the agony of aloneness when her own ripped her apart for  seemingly forever over her depiction of Black men in The Color Purple.

How she writes, and how she lives, and loves, and continues to smile gently and get on with the messy business of life.

And how she writes! How the voices of the characters chatter in her head and she seeks the quiet of aloneness and busily writes down “their story”. She upsets me whole idea of writing novels. She makes me rethink  my writing.

Such a powerful presence in our world. And she  makes me feel shame.

Shame that it took me so very long to begin to be who I am, and not who I was supposed to be, and desperately wanted to be for far too long.

I mentioned recently that I never saw myself in the house with the white picket fence, standing at the door with lunch boxes, apron, and a lipsticked mouth, waiting on three or four passing blazes of pre-teen energy bodies, to run by with a grab at the lunch as they tumbled forth to school, with a man in a suit and briefcase bringing up the rear, jutting his head to one side to peck me on the cheek as he sauntered off to enter the male world of “business”.

I kept this all to myself, feared that I was strange, and did my damnedest  to act like everyone else. Being a bit on the chubby side and wearing glasses put me at a distinct disadvantage which meant I had to try even harder. Add in the fact that I went to a small county school where cliques were EVERYTHING and not being “in” was definitely out, and you can understand that graduation was met with a sigh of relief and the ever-present optimism that college would be better.

Indeed I did not ever see myself as mommy stuff. I was way more comfortable in those young years even seeing myself as Captain Kirk’s First Officer than I was being Donna Reed or The Beav’s mother, June. I mean no disrespect to mothers everyone and anywhere, but having charge of squalling smelly babies was not my idea of a good thing, and I gritted my teeth through a handful of babysitting jobs just to prove that I could.

Don’t get me wrong, I think kids are great, also necessary, delightful at times, undeniably wise sometimes, funny, and all that stuff. As long as they as they belong to someone else.

But I was raised in the time and place that I was and so even though I saw the world from a “liberated” perch long before I heard the word, I did my best to want what I was told I was supposed to want. I scoured the countryside and cities and located the men I was supposed to, and had all the relationships one would expect. Some loved me to death, others enough, some not at all. And I returned that favor. Some were dear friends, some sweet encounters, some were frantic matings between two who just got the instant hots the minute they laid eyes on each other. (I even did it in the police station once.)

They tell me that during her last sickness, my mother was told that I had married. She smiled.

I’m not surprised. She never thought much of my lawyering. Marriage was and would always be the defining feature of womanhood to her. My appellation switched from failure to success with a ring on the left hand, third finger.

I bought into that stuff for so much longer than I care to admit.

I got lucky. Found a great man. One who loved me madly. One who, as the months and years went by and I peeled off the scabs of long- ago received wounds, and showed him all the sore spots, uncovering the ugly scars of things I’d said and done that I’d kept hidden in that secret organ we all have inside that almost no one knows about, one, who, still loved me even then. The flawed me, he loved. And I loved him back a thousand times a thousand for that.

This is all to say that I was not the child, not even the adult who gives less than half a shit what you or anyone thinks and does what they want. I was not the Alice Walker kid who declared at age 13 that she was through with “formal religion” and made it stick. Such people have some hidden lake of self-esteem that they can run to and drink deeply from whenever needed. I knew it not, and so I tried to be as I was “supposed to be” because being liked meant everything, being normal was everything.

I’ve gratefully moved off that stuck spot. I’m me and glorious. I admit I like to play a few games of bingo every day, and I’m reading about feminist criticism as a methodology of biblical scholarship. I care passionately about a host of issues am a true bleeding-heart liberal, feminist (with the facts to back it up),  and tell people what I believe and argue with them when they don’t agree with me. I cook, don’t clean, and engage in more crafts that is sane. I was bored with law about the time I figured out I was doing it right. I’m smarter than most, but no genius by far. I know that education opened me up to a world that my provincial little auto town never would have.

I consider myself better than no one. My choices are mine, meant to make me right with me. Your choices might well horrify me, but I make no judgement about why you chose them. That I truly mean. Until your choices impinge on mine or others right to make their choices. Then, Houston, we got a problem.

And I love Alice Walker, and somewhere in the shadows of my soul she’s been mentoring me from afar, and somehow I heard her, albeit it took a long time to get through.

She makes me proud to be a woman. Hell she makes me proud to be human.

 

 

It’s Good News Thursday!

Tags

Entertainment, gay rights, Good News, Humor, psychology, sociology, women's rights

Don’t worry, be happy. I’m just oodly happy today. Don’t know why, no good reason. Just breathing in and saying hey, lungs fill up with this OX-y-Jin!

No, I’m not on pain killers nor other mind-altering substances. I’m just finding the news particularly upbeat today.

First, let me tootle my own horn just a tiny bit. I finished Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, and you can read my review here. It’s a humbling book I gotta tell you. Being smart and well-educated doesn’t necessarily make you any more open-minded. What it may do, as I surmise is make you more aware of just how much we intuit our  beliefs and then come up with “evidence” to substantiate it. Knowing that, we can, I hope, be more vigilant in being open, if you get my drift.

Secondly, I found out that neither rich, poor, religious or not, we all mostly look out for Number One, we can all be altruistic to our “tribe”, we all cheat if we can get away with it to a greater or lesser degree (the rich the most), and we all worry about what others think of us (the conservative more-so than liberals). At least those were big take-aways for me. And it suggested to me that the claim that conservatives give more of their money and time to charitable concerns may be the result of inflated self-reporting than anything else. I do admit that that conclusion is the result of (1) a desire on my part that it be so, (2) the knowledge that conservatives worry excessively about their reputations, and (3) anecdotal evidence that the only people who ever tell me about their charitable largess or right wingers. So it’s my extrapolation and may not be accurate. Do tell what your experience has been.

Anyway, my bottom line? Professor Haidt’s revelations are perhaps as anger provoking to liberals as they are to conservatives. And that means it’s probably important to read and understand. I am fairly convinced that he makes some good points about what liberals miss and what some conservatives bring to the table. I would argue that nothing much good comes from the tea Idiots however, but that again is my elephant in full control. (read the book and you will get the reference).

So, the other good news for me at least is this:

I adore Glee. I say that with a certain degree of embarrassment because we didn’t watch it for a couple of years. Thought it was for kids. But kept hearing all the raves about it. So tuned it one evening and we’ve been hooked ever since. Silly as all get out. Nobody ever in life went to a high school like this, but we all should have. And it’s great fun. And it sends a very important message about being WHO YOU ARE, and about being accepted for WHO YOU ARE, even when that can be just down right a horse’s ass. The most important point they make, and you have to watch for a while to get it, is that seemingly mean people have soft undersides, and very nice people have dark hearts. And we all have to make allowances for each other, and support each other just because we are all really freakin’ human and being human is freakin’ hard a lot of the time.

So anyway, the good news is that my darling boy Adam Lambert is joining the cast this fall. Adam, is drop-dead boy toy gorgeous if you didn’t know.

And he’s so young that for me to get excited means I’m a sick woman. So I only from a distance say, damn that is one fine lookin’ child, and no more.

And if you listen to him, he’s not dumb either, which is something that seems to often unfairly attach or not to people who are that good-looking.

Johnny Depp is another exception, being fabulously gorgeous, closer to my own age, and not dumb as a rock either.

So, I can hardly wait until fall. And I know I shouldn’t be that way, because at my age, wishing time to pass is surely not a good thing.

Speaking of gay.

Oh, yes we were!

All kinds of crappy shit is going on in Pennsylvania these days but here is some good news.

The AG for PA, (has a snappy sound no?) has apparently said that she has no intention of defending against the lawsuit filed by a gay couple challenging the ban on gay-marriage statute in that state.  So says Joe.My.God, who so says the Washington Post.

It appears that the thing about gay marriage has turned a corner, or as we science-oriented types like to say, passed over the event horizon, meaning nothing in the known universe can turn back the procession to full equality for our friends who are other-oriented than me. I for one couldn’t be more happy. It seems that the latest polling in PA suggests that well more than half of the population in that state now favors marriage equality, which is why the AG perhaps decided what she did.

Anyway, hurrah, hurrah.

Those of you in the know, know that Scott Walker, Guv from Wisconsin has been a real pain in the rear for women. He pushed through a repeal of women’s right to equal pay, has essentially defunded PPH, and has signed a number of bills making abortion rights much much harder for women to exercise. Sarah Silverman, comedienne, tweeted: “I’d very much like to anally probe @govwalker each time he needs to make an “informed decision” “.

The Right-wing has gone bonkers over this, accusing Ms. Silverman of wanting to “rape” the governor. Breitbart was suitably chagrined.   (read the comments which quickly degenerate to Hitler’s death camps I promise you). Anyway, pissing off the right just makes me joyful. It’s my great happiness to know they are turning purple in the face. It makes me happy, and this IS happy day.

Taken by a British Photographer (Austin?)

Related articles

• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion ~ Jonathan Haidt [updated May 28, 2013] (planetizen1network.wordpress.com)
• Adam Lambert Joins ‘Glee’ Season 5 (aceshowbiz.com)

 

I Have Nothing to Wear to a Funeral

Tags

fundamentalism, gay rights, GOP, religion, social issues, teabaggers, women's rights

Disclaimer! This is not original thought. I give all credit to Andrew Sullivan in his thought-provoking remarks here. He makes some very cogent points, and when you add up the evidence, I think he might well be right.

Sullivan argues that the GOP as it exists today has ceased to be a political party. It no longer acts rationally, from a national party point of view, but rather has been captured by a group and is being forced to take on its persona.

He argues that the GOP is now nothing more than a religious party.

Think of a snake devouring a furry mouse, swallow by swallow until it simply disappears and is digested to be no more.

National political parties exist for the purpose of ostensibly giving voice to their constituents. We can of course argue that neither the Democrats nor the GOP exist for that purpose any more, but rather as a vehicle by which to motivate their constituents to vote them into office with the promise that it will benefit them. The book of apologies for not doing that is of course at the ready and is every two or four years, dragged out and used to “explain” why it was not possible to do most of what was promised.

National parties, however, tend to the flock if you will, by making it appear that they truly care.

We have terms for the political spectrum. Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Reactionary, Anarchist, and so forth. Those terms are defined, and have over the eons of political discourse starting at least in Athens, come to mean something. But in this country, Sullivan argues that the term Conservative no longer means what it means around the world. For in this country, so-called Conservatives don’t act that way at all.

In England and in Australia, the Conservatives support gay rights. It is logical that they do so. They see it as a conservative thing. Since the objections to marriage equality come almost exclusively from the religious sector of society, true conservatives are determined to keep religion out of the governing region, as we too, by our Constitution, claim to desire.

Yet in this country, people who call themselves conservatives are vehemently opposed marriage equality. Moreover, these same people are exceedingly happy to have the state involved in women’s bodies.

Across the country in states controlled by Republican majorities, we find bill after bill  determined to interfere with Roe v Wade, bills  that are patently unconstitutional on their face. Planned Parenthood, the rallying point for so many Tea People, is facing such an onslaught of legislation deemed “regulatory” that it is closing offices all over. Women who wish abortions now face the real problem of transporting themselves hundreds of miles to find a provider. This is intended. It is working.

Every means is being used to embarrass and shame women, by forcing them like children to view sonograms, and endure body probes, and various “counseling” because surely women don’t understand what’s in their uterus.

These are not conservative actions. They are actions of those who wish the government to be MORE, not less intrusive in their lives. Except of course the rub is obvious–they don’t intend the intrusion to be in their lives–just yours.

If that is true of conservatives, what can be said of Libertarians who are even more hysterical at the idea of government. Yet Rand Paul, the libertarian + teabagger, finds himself not only opposing abortion and apparently in favor of all these attacks on women’s rights, but is also against marriage equality, finding, as insane as it sounds, that it will surely lead to marriage with animals.

A true conservative would be in favor (one would think) in their being as little government intrusion into the sacred sphere of voting. Yet across the land, conservative-held states are enacting again and again laws that make it more difficult to vote, at least for certain segments. Tea baggers, without batting an eye will tell you that they aren’t really sure that non-property owners should vote.

While some of the old-timer Republicans see the necessity of reaching out to the gay community and the Latino community as a means of party survival, not so the teabaggers. They figure that there must be a way to.” get more “white people to vote for them.” Do you hear that? Let’s become the White Party! What could be wrong with that?

And indeed, I suspect that the average teabagger, uneducated as they usually are, would agree. In the fundamentalist world they live in, Cain was that dark one who was banished. The mark of Cain has always been “being born black” to that crowd. It remains such, no matter how much the rhetoric changes. It spawns the “playing the race card” defense and the “uncle Tom black Republicans” we see today.

Couple that with the conservative love for loyalty to one’s “tribe” and suspicion of those not “one of us”, and you have all the makings for a racism that simply over rides common sense and evidence.

It brings you the likes of Phyllis Schafly and her continuous assertions that Latinos aren’t “our kind“, and should be ignored by the new GOP.

But it brings forth more than racism.

It brings forth the true agenda of the new GOP.

It has everything to do with theocracy. It has everything to do with scrapping the Constitution in favor of a new one that keeps the white folk in charge, and the “right” church pews filled.

In Pennsylvania, a right-winger blocked the floor speech of a fellow legislator, using a technical procedural objection, simply because he believed that his colleague was going to “speak against God’s law.”

Did you get that?

A elected legislator stopped another duly elected legislator from speaking on the floor of their state house, because he was going to, (he thought) speak against God’s law (as he interpreted it of course.)

How insane is that?

I assumed that following the whippin’ the GOP took in 2012, they would purge themselves of the virus.

I was wrong.

You see some attempt to do so in the Senate, but Cruz ignores the Old Guard.

Boehner is too in love with being called Mr. Speaker to stop them. He’s allowed them to control the House, and will reap the rewards of that decision in the future one hopes.

But an effective party?

The GOP is fading into oblivion and is being transformed into a party of crazy white people who have an unhealthy and wrong understanding of Christianity. They are pretty much convinced that all would be well if only “we” weren’t here, or in charge, or having any say in the way things are done.

So, yeah, it’s a funeral. And frankly, I’m going to miss the GOP. The New GOP? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I’m Going As Fast as I Can!

Tags

Iraq war, life in the foothills, women's rights

Really I am. Actually, I’m traveling at lightening speed.

For example:

Yesterday I got up, cleaned house until 6:50 a.m., walked Diego two miles, finished cleaning the house, went to the grocery store, returned home, put away groceries, searched through all the papers in the file cabinet, finding 90% of what was necessary for the accountant tomorrow and the taxes, drove the Contrarian to the Eyemart with his new prescription, picked out frames, and stopped for *gasp* fast food for lunch, and arrived home, all before 1 p.m. At 3:00 p.m, I returned to Eyemart and picked up his glasses. The(Two more weeks and I can have chocolate again!)

Today, I cleaned house until 6:50 a.m, (finished by the way!), walked Diego two miles, and returned to make the basic parts of a Shepherd’s Boy casserole, which is now waiting to go in the oven. And *gasp* it’s only 9 a.m. and I have 50 minutes of leisure before we head off to get the taxes done.

Tomorrow, I get to go to the pool, and get my hair cut. We are determined to get all our “stuff” done this month. We have to hit the Veterans Affairs office to turn in our property tax exemptions yet, and something else that needs filling out, which I no longer remember.

I keep waiting for that blessed week when there are no “things” to attend to. I never used to be this busy. I really never used to be. The more retired I get, the busier I get. I know there is something important I should be ingesting from that realization, but I’m either not aware of what it is, or I’m scared to discover what it is.

I once upon a time said that virtually everything I dreamed about moving down here came true, but for a couple. The Catholic churches basically suck here (which I never would have imagined), and there is no pool within two blocks of where I live. Well guess what? One just got a good deal closer.

It turns out that one of the parks and rec outdoor pools is only about four miles from me. A darn sight closer than the approximately thirteen mile one that I go to now. It doesn’t open until Memorial day, but I have been told that almost nobody goes there, so I can enjoy myself in solitary bliss probably. Why they wait so long I have no clue–it’s in the mid-seventies every day now, and often in the low to mid-80’s.  Go figure.

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It’s been ten years since the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq. Where are all the celebrations? Were we not greeted as “liberators”?  Yeah, I guess not. It’s really hard to make an argument that awful as he was, the Iraqi people are not really any better off than they were before we “saved” them. I suspect they are much worse. And nobody worth a damn went to jail for that crime.

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The GOP screams like a stuck pig that they have “no war on women”. Well, yeah they do. But it’s only a huge segment of a much bigger picture in which a lot more people (mostly men, but not all) are implicated. Cases in point.

• Remember the dude at the CPAC who wanted to know why Frederick Douglass sent a letter forgiving his slave master? After all, the North Carolinian “white demographic” pointed out, he got “food and shelter” after all. He pointed out it would be a damn sight better if we still had segregation, and that Black folk could do all the voting they wanted in Africa. Well it turns out that as that meeting broke up, a woman approached and proceeded to give him a thing or two about his overt racism. Said White Male, retorted, as I am told, “so is this the new rebranded version of the GOP where women confront and tell off men in public?” or words to that effect.
• You all no doubt heard or read about the Steubenville case where at least two young men of high school age took advantage of an inebriated fellow teen girl, and raped her. The coverage has been, to say the least, extremely sexist in its presentation. The reporters and their networks cannot get over how sad it’s been for the boys, who had “promising football careers” and were so altogether nice in every way. They never missed a chance to remind us that the girl was so drunk she passed out. Oh and they ALL “inadvertently” dropped her name in their video reports even though she is a minor.

Forgive me if I still bluster about the need of women to continue the fight for full and complete rights in this still patriarchal world we live in. We put on the trappings of equality, and people do the “politically correct thing” and underneath it all, well, men will be men and boys will be boys, and women? Well women just keep taking it.

Read the link. It’s an important commentary on how we still operate in this country.

And well, it’s time to be off to the tax accountant. Sigh…you know I just love this!

Related articles

• Tar Heel Teabilly at CPAC: Frederick Douglass Should Have Thanked His Former Slave Master for Giving Him Food and Shelter (pensitoreview.com)
• CPAC 2013: The racism at CPAC (dailykos.com)
• CPAC ‘trump the race card’ event goes wrong (thegrio.com)
• A Low, Dishonest Decade: New Details for the Iraq War Crime Mosaic (willyloman.wordpress.com)
• 10 Years After Iraq Invasion: Continued Myths, Hundreds of Thousands Killed (intellihub.com)