Sesame Street, Elmo, and Kevin Clash

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Over the past few weeks, a mini-drama has been growing over Kevin Clash, who voices Elmo, the little red Sesame Street monster.

 

 

First there was a man who claimed that Clash had relations with him while he was under 18; then he recanted his claim. Since then, however, two other men have come forward with the same story.

 

 

Oh dear.

 

 

I love Sesame Street, and the Muppets. During this past Presidential election, Mitt Romney said he was ready to end funding of PBS and CTW, the homeland of Sesame Street, and there was a backlash: people claimed (very fairly) that Mitt Romney wanted to kill Big Bird, inspiring images like this:

 

 

Well, Obama won the election.

 

 

And now it turns out that the voice of Elmo is a child molester.

 

 

Awful? Of course. But oddly timed. I can’t help wondering if this is Republican reprisal for the election, to weaken PBS as a whole. I wonder if they’ve been digging for dirt on PBS, and finally found some.

 

 

Clash, if guilty, should be punished. But PBS should not be punished.

 

 

The mission of PBS is to make America a little smarter. It made me smarter, back in the 1970s. As for expense: they (together with NPR) receive one one-hundredth of one percent of the Federal budget, for God’s sake!

 

 

If we have to jettison Kevin Clash, fine.

 

 

But let’s not jettison PBS.

 

 

Let your representatives and senators know how you feel about this.

 

 

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The 2012 Presidential election: why the Republicans lost

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Sometimes, when good things happen – as with the reelection of Barack Obama – I begin to reassure himself that things in general are getting better.

 

 

And, I suppose, they are.

 

 

But some things don’t change.

 

 

I had hoped that the GOP would understand, after four years, that Obama is not a fluke or a trickster. I had hoped they would stop pretending that he was the lovechild of Kwame Nkrumah and Lenin. I had hoped also that they would acknowledge that, Obama having won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, that he definitely possesses a mandate from the American people.

 

 

I was wrong.

 

 

Their party line, after two weeks, is still crystallizing. Given that they can’t admit that they were well and fairly beaten at the polls, they have come up with some (moderately ridiculous, and mutually contradictory) reasons for their loss.

 

 

(Naturally they didn’t lose because of their message, or their candidate, or their poor organization, or their alienation of large chunks of the electorate.)

 

 

Here are some of their rationalizations:

 

 

1)    We were outnumbered! (This is from Rush Limbaugh. I let this one speak for itself. Imagine being outnumbered in a democracy!)

2)    Voter fraud was rampant! (See this ridiculous Wisconsin senator’s statement that, if voter ID were universal, we wouldn’t have any more of these silly Democratic victories.)

3)    Obama voters were bribed with “gifts”! (Romney himself said this recently.)

4)    Poor beautiful Paul Ryan – he of the big luminous eyes – recently commented that he and Mitt lost because of the “urban vote.” What do you think that means? Why, minorities, of course. Minority voters kept Obama in, and Romney out, of the White House. How uppity of them!

 

 

I recently found a wonderful graphic showing minority representation in the House and Senate (including women, who are certainly not a minority of the US population). Here it is:

 

 

 

 

Please examine it and tell me how many Republicans you find.

 

 

Now tell me what conclusions you draw.

 

 

Here’s to another combative – but, I hope, constructive – four years.

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The 2012 Presidential election: a corporate viewpoint

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Lots of stuff has happened since last week’s election – almost more than I can keep track of. But here are two wonderful stories:

 

 

The day after Barack Obama won his re-election bid, the chief executive of Murray Energy, Robert E. Murray, gathered his staff and began to read a prayer. He asked God to forgive America for its choice of president, and he prayed for “guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.” He closed with a heartfelt “amen.”

 

Then he fired 156 people.

 

Murray explained that the layoffs were inevitable in light of Obama’s re-election. He’s not the only coal baron to cite the president as the cause of the industry’s supposed death knell. CONSOL Energy Inc. President Nicholas Deluliis blamed Obama for 145 planned layoffs, while Alpha Natural Resources CEO Kevin Crutchfield cited the Obama-created “regulatory environment” as the basis for 1,200 job cuts this fall. (See the full story on Slate.)

 

 

 

Isn’t that nice?

 

 

Here’s another story:

 

 

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter, who previously said that President Obama’s health care program would force the company to raise the price of pizza, now says the health care law could cause franchises to slice full-time employees’ hours.

Schnatter, who supported Republican Mitt Romney, made the comments Wednesday night to students at Edison State College in Naples, Fla., where Schnatter has a vacation home.

The Anchorage resident’s initial comment came in August when hetold stock analysts during a conference call that the cost of the Affordable Care Act will lead the company to raise its prices 11 to 14 cents per pizza. (From the Louisville Courier-Journal.)

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

-      I’m sorry to get all Marxist on you, but I need to remind you that owners will always exploit workers, and owners will always howl when government tries to make them treat workers better. This is why regulation is necessary.

-      Unions are vital to uphold the interests of labor. This ain’t just my philosophy – it’s in my bones. My mother (who grew up in a coal-mining area near Seattle) told me that, when she was a little girl, she used to go down to the mines during strikes and throw lumps of coal at the scabs.

-      Is Schnatter serious? Fourteen cents a pizza? That’s horrendous. Imagine! Just to make sure his employees have health care!

-      The coal industry is horribly corrupt as it is. It’s sweetly evil to see that the coal CEO quoted in the first piece began with a prayer for the salvation of America. I imagine a lot of his employees are praying for something quite different.

 

 

Now the good news: a majority of American voters backed Obama. Republicans are losing seats – not enough to make a huge difference, but the tide is turning.

 

 

So remember not to buy Papa John’s pizza.

 

 

(Not that you would anyway. It tastes like cardboard with pepperoni on top.)

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Voting cute

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There is an old truism that the handsomer presidential candidate usually wins. Sometimes it’s true: Warren Harding was very distinguished-looking, and Kennedy was certainly better-looking than Nixon.

 

 

I voted for Barack Obama last week (of course I did!), but I have to admit, to my shame, that I don’t think he was the handsomer of the two candidates. Mitt Romney, for all his wishy-washy political loathsomeness, is very good-looking, and Paul Ryan is perfectly dreamy.

 

 

Somehow, however, I managed to vote with my brain, not my hormones.

 

 

Does this really work? One wonders whether McCain’s advisors thought Sarah Palin added sex appeal to the campaign. (I honestly wonder if Romney’s advisors thought the same about Ryan.) John Kerry (who’s merely acceptable-looking) chose the soap-opera handsome John Edwards as VP in 2004. (It was only later that we discovered what a scuzzball Edwards really was. OMG! Fox News was actually right about something!) Clinton was certainly a more attractive man than either George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole.

 

 

And so on, and so on.

 

 

Does it really make a difference?

 

 

Sometimes.

 

 

In 1972 I managed to get my mother to register to vote, so that she could vote for George McGovern. (Dad registered too, and I’m certain he voted for Nixon, not that it did the country much good.) Mom got a little nostalgic. “This is only the second time I’ve voted,” she told me. “The first time was in 1948, and I voted for Tom Dewey, because he was so cute. I loved his mustache.”

 

 

So there you have it.

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Lessons from the 2012 Presidential campaign

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It has taken me a little while to compose myself after Election Night 2012.  Now that I’ve stopped screaming with joy, however, I’ve jotted down a few things I’ve learned over the past few weeks and months.

 

 

As follows:

 

 

Probably you shouldn’t try to redefine the word “rape.” It doesn’t make you many friends. (Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock: hear me?)

 

 

Money doesn’t necessarily win elections.  When it’s quite evident that you’re trying to buy a House/Senate seat (McMahon in Connecticut, Hinckley in Rhode Island), you will probably lose. And Donald Trump publicly mocked Karl Rove for wasting millions of dollars of PAC money on candidates who lost. (As a Tumblr commentator said: Who knows more than Donald Trump about wasting money?)

 

 

Lying is very traditional in American presidential elections, but it’s getting easier and easier to disprove a lie. Probably people should try to lie less (or at least more cleverly). And they should not openly flout the fact-checkers.

 

 

In a state where people traditionally hate and fear state troopers (like Rhode Island, for example), the opposition party shouldn’t nominate a state trooper as their candidate. (Bye-bye, Brendan Doherty.)

 

 

Don’t make fun of your opponent. It makes you look small. (This one goes out to former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who insisted on belittling his opponent Elizabeth Warren as a liar, as ugly, as untrustworthy, as a “college professor.” It didn’t work, did it, Scotty?)

 

 

Do not, in your concession speech, imply that God made your opponent win in order to make the Apocalypse happen sooner. (Okay, Mr. God-be-the-glory Todd Akin?)

 

 

Don’t assume that gay marriage is a passing fad. Before Tuesday, every popular referendum on gay marriage had failed, and the Republicans / social conservatives were convinced they had a failsafe way to defeat gay marriage: bring it to a popular vote. Well, on Tuesday, four states voted, and three (Washington, Maine, and Maryland) upheld gay marriage. You can be sure the GOP will be less confident in future about this particular strategy. (So Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee can take their Chick-fil-A sandwiches and jam them up one another’s asses. And they can make sure those sandwiches are up there real tight, too.)

 

 

And finally:

 

 

The country is changing. We are more diverse, and more tolerant, as a whole. (A commentator in 2008, shortly after Obama’s first election, said that bigotry and intolerance in the USA would decrease over time, but (like seawater evaporating) they would become more concentrated and intense. I remember thinking this was a very wise thing to say. Now, after four years of concentrated intense vicious hatred of Obama and the liberal agenda, I see how prescient he was.) But we are not Sarah Palin’s America, and we are not Mitt Romney’s America (whatever the hell that was supposed to be about). We are a multicolored America. We do not care to be ruled by Christian law, or Sharia law, or any kind of religious law for that matter. We like our marijuana. We like being married to our common-law partners. We like Planned Parenthood. We like knowing that, if we become ill, we will not go into bankruptcy if we go to the doctor. We have no problem with electing women, and gays, and differently-abled people; in fact, we’re proud to be represented by them.

 

 

Let the right-wing nuts shriek about socialism and the Death of America, kids. They’ll tucker themselves out in a while, and we can have some peace, maybe even through Inauguration Day.

 

 

And I’m sure the 2016 campaign won’t begin before June or July of 2013.

 

 

(I plan to vote for Hillary. How about you?)

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For Election Day 2012: Homer Simpson votes Republican!

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I learned a lot from this clip. I already knew that Romney invented Obamacare. However: did you know that the government actually paid Romney taxes for five years? And that Romney has six wives, all named Ann?

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

And vote, for God’s sake.

 

 

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Living under an enemy administration

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On Election Night 1980, I was in the Graduate Center Bar at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, watching the election returns. The media declared Reagan the winner over Carter fairly early, as I recall. I was standing next to a short fat guy, who muttered: “Now it’s our turn.”

 

 

I got the creeps all over as he said it.

 

 

As it turned out, I had the creeps for another twelve years.

 

 

I have lived under a Republican Presidency for most of my life, as I calculate it: 1957-1960 (three years of Eisenhower, which I barely remember, as I was a toddler); 1969-1976 (seven years of Nixon/Ford, which was intermittently disastrous, but not entirely catastrophic); 1980-1992 (eight years of Ronald Reagan, tragedy/comedy, and four years of G. H. W. Bush, mostly comedy, with the terrifying exception of Operation Desert Storm); and eight years of George W. Bush (pure disaster).

 

 

So that’s thirty years of my life under a Republican administration. And I am still alive.

 

 

To be sure, Eisenhower was not out to kill or disenfranchise me. Nixon, much as he was a rascal, did not try to do so either. Gerald Ford, God bless him, was not the kind of person to do harm to a little periwinkle like me. G. H. W. Bush was a quasi-jerk, but not as extreme as his son. G. W. Bush was a total jerk, and eight years of him was agony.

 

 

Mitt Romney has declared himself against gay marriage, abortion, Affordable Care, etc. He says he wants to “take back America.” From whom? I don’t have it at the moment; I feel, in fact, that I am not so much in control of anything in America. So who’s he taking it back from?

 

 

Mitt Romney is the total anti-package. He is what I do not want.

 

 

I do not want to find myself on election night in November 2012, with a sweaty little fat man standing next to me, watching Romney being declared winner, and hearing him say: “Now it’s our turn.”

 

 

Once is enough.

 

 

Kids: you know what you have to do.

 

 

Vote, please. Vote your hearts. And make sure your friends and family vote. (And if you’re unlucky enough to have family in a Republican-controlled state, help them get their ID cards.)

 

 

Keep climbing.

 

 

We can do this.

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The Mitt Romney video

 

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Pretty much everyone in the universe has seen or heard of Mitt Romney’s magic video by now. I’m not a pundit, but, as Chris Matthews said on Tuesday evening, I find the whole thing “delicious,” and just want to underline the following points:

 

 

1.     Mitt was comfortable with his audience. One of his sticking points throughout this campaign, and his abortive 2008 campaign, has been his awkwardness with audiences. Well, now we know why: he hasn’t felt comfortable. The video was taken at a $50K/plate dinner, and Mitt was in his element, and speaking to his peers.

2.     Explaining the video later, he said something like he hadn’t expressed himself elegantly. I disagree. He was very elegant. He believes, very frankly, that many poor Americans are moochers, and said so straightforwardly.

3.     Mitt has not been very forthcoming about his plan to shrink the government budget. From this video, I think we can extrapolate some of the areas he’d shrink: anything benefiting the less affluent classes. They really need to work harder, don’t they? We don’t want to empower them. They need to be put in their place.

4.     Mitt said that he didn’t rise from privilege, he didn’t inherit money, he earned everything he has. Is he deluded, or is he just telling the same lie that all wealthy heirs tell themselves? Of course he inherited money from his CEO/governor father. He’s turned it into billions, of course, and good for him. But, Mitt, don’t tell us that you were born in a log cabin, okay?

5.     There was some garbled nonsense about being born a Mexican. I will leave that alone. He said he was joking, but then again, he took it back and said (very seriously) he’d have a better chance for the Presidency if he were Latino. Meaning: “Stupid people just love voting for those damned minorities.”

6.     I haven’t even read the whole transcript yet. (I can’t stand to watch the video; his voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.) It is, however, the gift that keeps on giving. Today it was noticed that he said (a few months ago) that, if there were any foreign-policy difficulties overseas, he’d try to capitalize on the opportunity. Remember last week, when he ranted about how the Obama administration “sympathized with the attackers” rather than condemning the attacks in Egypt and Libya? Huh.

7.     Rarely have I seen such cynicism freely expressed. The whole video boils down to Mitt saying to his wealthy audience: “Between you and me, I’ll say and do whatever I have to say and do to get elected. And once I’m in there, I’ll do what’s necessary to advance our agenda.”

8.     Vote for Obama.

9.     Vote for Obama.

10.   Vote for Obama.

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Mitt Romney and his tax returns

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I hate the last two months of a presidential election.

 

 

The ads are everywhere. I only thank Ganesha that I live in a non-swing state, where they’re not spending tons of money on ads. In Ohio and Florida, people must be committing suicide because of the political ads on TV.

 

 

Naturally the Romney ads, and statements, drive me bonkers. Only the other evening, on “Hardball,” I saw a Romney ad showing a white middle-class couple clucking in disapproval over Obama’s support of gay marriage. “That’s not the kind of change I had in mind,” they said, judgmentally.

 

 

Well, go f*** yourselves, imaginary political-ad married couple.

 

 

And then, the other day, Romney said, in advance of the debates, that Obama will lie. Isn’t it lovely to call your opponent a liar in advance of anything he’s said?

 

 

(Also – just a word about Paul Ryan. He is the male Sarah Palin, isn’t he? A younger, cuter Mitt Romney. His ideas amount to approximately nada; economists – real economists, that is – have looked at his “budget plan” and shown it to be completely unrealistic and naïve. We’re supposed to take him seriously? Check out Paul Krugman – a Nobel Prize-winning economist – on the subject.)

 

 

(But I digress.)

 

 

Let’s talk about Mitt Romney, the business candidate.

 

 

Where I work, we do background checks on prospective employees. The higher-level they are, the more we want to know. If they’re being hired into positions with financial authority, we want to know as much as possible about their background, and often run a credit check.

 

 

(Did Mitt Romney’s various companies do the same? I will wager that they did. It’s silly not to, isn’t it?)

 

 

But Mitt Romney won’t release his tax returns, because the Obama campaign might use them against him. 

 

 

Well, not if they’re honest. Because, if they’re honest, how could they be a problem?

 

 

Unless there are some problems. Or inconsistencies. Or . . .

 

 

Hm.

 

 

Oh Mitt Mitt Mitt.

 

 

Vote Obama, kids.

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The Presidential campaign: an update

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I don’t write about politics very often. It doesn’t win me many friends. The people who agree with me still agree with me, and the people who disagree – well, they can just shut their pieholes.

 

 

But I cannot resist commenting on the past week’s Presidential-campaign events, which have been truly delicious.

 

 

The overture was Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP. “ROMNEY IN THE LION’S DEN!” trumpeted any number of commentators. See? Mitt is the prophet Daniel, and the NAACP were the lions, or the Persians, or the Assyrians, or something. Anyway, it didn’t take long to see that Mitt was using this as an opportunity to show his (white) supporters that he isn’t going to take any backtalk from any (nonwhite) minority groups when he becomes President. It reminded me of those wonderful moments in professional wrestling when the villain grabs the microphone from the scrawny announcer and begins to berate the audience. He knows they hate him. That’s what it’s all about.

 

 

This is an interesting campaign strategy, trying to win the Presidency with not a single minority vote. (Mitt might still pick a ringer for VP, like Marco Rubio, but I doubt it; it’ll be a whitey like him and me, like Pawlenty or Ryan (well, Ryan sounds Irish, so I don’t know), or that guy from Ohio that no one’s ever heard of. Absolutely not a woman. Not Sarah Palin, and not Condi Rice. She’s pro-choice! She’s been on “30 Rock”! She’s black!)

 

 

Then there was the call for Mitt to release his tax returns. He will not, will not, do it. (Do you wonder what’s in them? So do I. I’m not normally eager to read other people’s tax returns, but these I’ll take a glance at.) Speculation is running wild. Were there years in which he paid no tax at all? Quite possible. Would the itemizations yield up interesting facts about the Romney fortune? Also quite possible.

 

 

There was a day or two of Mitt looking strangled and hopeless over this issue. Then the GOP figured out its riposte: OBAMA ISN’T AN AMERICAN!

 

 

Yes, you heard me.

 

 

Mitt called his policies “foreign” in a speech a day or two ago. John Sununu said that he wished “Obama would learn how to be an American.” (John Sununu, by the way, is an Arab-American. You would think – wouldn’t you? – that an Arab-American would realize that this kind of rhetoric can be inflammatory.  Apparently not.) Sununu said lots of other unkind things. Obama’s team are “liars” (because the Obama campaign has said – with perfect reasonableness, and in the absence of any extenuating evidence – that, if Romney lied about his status at Bain on his tax returns, it might have been a felony. Naturally this can be disproven if Romney were to release his returns.). Also: Obama has “demonized success.” (Not at all. Would that we could all be as wealthy as Mitt Romney! Of course, he inherited part of his fortune, and his handsome sons will inherit even more, from all those fat Swiss / Cayman bank accounts.)

 

 

Most deliciously: Rush Limbaugh has decried the new Batman movie, because the villain’s name is Bane. Obviously this is a reference to Bain Capital. (One Tumblr wit pointed out that, since the Batman villain Bane is a fat drug user who was popular in the 1990s, you’d think that Rush would like him.)

 

 

Oh, it’s all pretty funny.

 

 

So why am I not laughing?

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The Supreme Court’s health care decision

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Yesterday morning I was at the office, crawling under a desk to connect a telephone wire, when Partner called me. “The Supreme Court upheld health care!” he crowed. “Roberts voted with the liberals!”

 

 

I was so excited that I got up too quickly and bumped my head.

 

 

Seriously: I’m delighted. Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act was a landmark piece of legislation, which finally put health care into the same category as education: everyone should have access to it, in the same way. No more marching poor people off to emergency rooms, where they can wait patiently like the paupers they are. No more hospitals amortizing the money they lose on emergency-room care by charging more for standard services. No more insurance companies charging inflated premiums because hospitals charge inflated rates.

 

 

Well, maybe not all at once. But a huge step in the right direction: the biggest step since Medicare.

 

 

The Right’s attempt to overturn the health care act was, for me, sick-making. They couched it as a moral and political issue: how dare the government tell us what to do?

 

 

Honey, they do it all the time: law enforcement, income tax. Get used to it. And this is for something good and well-intentioned.

 

I have seen, just last evening online, images of Obama burning the Constution. I also read online that a number of angry conservatives are Tweeting about moving to Canada, to escape the communist tyrant Obama. (Canada, get it? That place with free health care?) When it was pointed out to them that this made no sense, they claimed it was a joke. Really?  “I’m moving to Canada” means, to me, “I like the idea of free health care.” One said: “At least in Canada they’re openly socialist, unlike Obama who pretends to be a democratic leader.”

 

 

Yikes yikes yikes.

 

 

And here’s the best part: even if the Mayans are right and Romney becomes President, he will have a hell of a time overturning Obama’s legislation; he will never have a supermajority in either house, and Democrats will filibuster him to death on the issue.

 

 

And the American people, in the meantime, will discover that it’s nice to have health care, and the polls will turn in favor of health care.

 

 

And you know how Mitt Romney feels about polls, and about agreeing with the majority.

 

 

I got up yesterday morning thinking it was going to be a sucky day. And it turned out to be a great day for America.

 

 

Who knew?

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Cory Booker

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Hey, Cory Booker. It was very neat of you to pull that woman out of that burning building. And I loved the way in which you addressed Chris Christie on gay marriage. (I’m always thrilled when I see Democrat politicians doing worthwhile things.)

 

 

What the hell were you thinking about on May 20 on “Meet The Press”?

 

 

You sniped at the President’s anti-big business stance, saying that it “nauseated” you.

 

 

But you were, and are, a designated surrogate for the President when you speak.

 

 

Did you remember that on May 20 on “Meet the Press”? Did you realize that you were on television?

 

 

You spent most or all of last week apologizing for what you said, and (contrariwise) defending what you said. You said you were entitled to a mistake, and that it was no big deal

 

 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are gloating and using your words to advance their own position.

 

 

Hmph.

 

 

We had such high hopes for you.

 

 

And now you turn out to be a nudnik after all.

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

(It’s a shame. You were nice-looking, and smart. Until you opened your stupid yap.)

 

 

We’ll find someone else to take your place.

 

 

Bye now.

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Bristol Palin, defender of the traditional family

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I do not write about the Palins much, but this was far too delicious to pass up.

 

 

Bristol Palin – the little Alaskan hillbilly girl who did so well/poorly on “Dancing With The Stars,” and who had a baby out of wedlock by someone named Levi Johnston, but who now (for some reason) thinks that she’s the ideal spokesperson for teen chastity / traditional values – put this forth on her blog the other day (I give you the whole thing, straight from Patheos.com, and I feel strangely filthy for even having visited the site and given Bristol one more blog hit):

 

 

Is anyone really surprised by the fact that President Obama came out of the closet for gay marriage? What was most surprising is when he explained how his position (supposedly) “evolved,” by talking to his wife and daughters:

 

“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president continued. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Let’s pause for just one second.  When Christian women run for high office, people inevitably bring up the question of submission.  Once, Michele Bachmann, for example, was asked during a debate, “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?”

 

People automatically assume that a Christian female President isn’t capable of making decisions without her spouse’s stamp of approval.  (I should add female Republicancandidates –liberal women don’t get the same kind of questions.)

 

So are all those reporters who feared excessive family intervention in the White House all up in arms over the President’s announcement yesterday?  Um.  Not quite.

 

Liberals  everywhere are applauding him for his bravery and his wisdom.

 

So let me get this straight – it’s a problem if my mom listened too much to my dad, but it’s a heroic act if the President made a massive change in a policy position that could affect the entire nation after consulting with his teenage daughters?

 

While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads.  In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage.  Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.  Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.

In this situation, it was the other way around.  I guess we can be glad that Malia and Sasha aren’t younger, or perhaps today’s press conference might have been about appointing Dora the Explorer as Attorney General because of her success in stopping Swiper the Fox.

 

Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking.  In this case, it would’ve been nice if the President would’ve been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee.

 

Let’s see if we can pick some main points out of this morass:

• -        President Obama changed his mind on gay marriage just because he didn’t feel like rationalizing traditional marriage to Sasha and Malia.
• -        In other words: President Obama is a big pussy who lets his kids push him around.
• -        Watching “Glee” makes you gay, or at least gay-friendly.
• -        Babies are best brought up in a traditional mommy-daddy household.
• -        Michelle Bachman would make a terrific president.
• -        Tradition is always the best guide for determining social norms.
• -    Bristol is very up-to-date on Dora the Explorer.  I like to think I keep up with children's programming, and I never even heard of Swiper the Fox.

 

Take a moment to absorb the delicious irony of all of the above.

 

 

Now let us turn to some very funny celebrity retorts to Bristol’s blog:

 

 

JWoww: "Bristol should keep her uneducated ignorant mouth shut... If Ur living in the past u wouldn't have a kid w/out marriage #hypocrite. It's 2012!” And later: “My best friend will get married one day and not just have civil union with his man. Stop hating people."

 

 

Sherri Shepherd: "Sarah Palin educated Bristol... and not blaming Bristol, but I'm blaming Bristol being young & not exercising good judgment."

 

 

Samantha Ronson: "'We know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.' really bristol palin? how's your kid doing?"

 

 

Lo Bosworth: "Bristol Palin - you so silly, girl."

 

 

Perez Hilton: "‏I think I need to give Bristol Palin a good massage. Girlfriend needs to RELAX!!!"

 

 

Amber Riley, cast member of “Glee”: "We support you @BarackObama and commend you for taking a stand. #equalityforall #loveislove #gleesupportsObama"

 

 

To which fellow cast member Lea Michele responded: "Amen."

 

 

To which I add my own little “Amen.”

 

 

(Bristol, babe: your mother is giving you bad career advice. You're way out of your depth here. Go home.)

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Gay marriage, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney

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So many thoughts swirling round in my head right now on this topic. Let me see if I can cough up some bullet points:

 

 

-        Good for Joe Biden, and President Obama, for speaking up on the subject of gay marriage. It’s about time. But they were brave enough to say the right thing. All the pundits (including Chris Matthews on “Hardball” the other night) were saying: oh, Joe, you blew it. Let Obama get elected, and then let him bring up the issue in 2013. Well, Chris, you know what? Phffft.

-        You know another thing? Obama may lose the election on this issue. But (if I were him) I’d rather take a stand on an important issue, so long as I know I’m right, even if it means I’m going to lose. Because it means I’m going to win in the long run.

-        Some other Democratic politicians are following the President. Stalwart Jack Reed, our senior Rhode Island senator, came out immediately after the President’s statement to voice his agreement. God bless you, Jack; you can count on my vote next time you’re up for election.

-        Even some Republicans are warning that declaring war on this subject may be a non-starter. Republicans run a very real risk of being painted as dinosaurs and bigots, behind the curve.

-        (No, Partner and I are not getting married anytime soon. But it’s nice to know we could get married if we wanted to. I hate thinking of the nightmare scenarios: being forbidden hospital visits, things like that. This is an important issue.)

 

 

And then there’s Mitt Romney.

 

 

Mitt Romney has spent the last couple of days squealing and quacking about gay marriage, and civil unions in general. They’re just un-American. Households are just one man and one woman! And I love the way he expressed this: "I have the same view I've had since, well, running for office."

 

 

Now, just for a little spice, please look at this link from a 1994 issue of the New England gay newspaper Bay Windows, headlined: “Romney: I'll be better than Ted [Kennedy] for gay rights”!

 

 

Is the top of your head steaming right now? Mine is.

 

 

Let’s continue, shall we? Mitt Romney is a Mormon. He has stated unequivocally (to Piers Morgan!) that he is not a spokesman for the Mormon church, and I accept that. However: can you think of any unusual stances on marriage that the Mormon church has taken over the past hundred years? Well, for one thing, Mitt’s great-grandfather had five wives.

 

 

Mitt has (magnanimously) stated that his Mormonism is not that of his ancestors. Certainly he has had fewer wives than his recent political rivals (Gingrich, for example, who has been married three times – serially, of course – although his sexual relationships with partners #1, #2, and #3 appear to have run concurrently in some cases).

 

 

I don’t know. Maybe we need a new definition of “marriage”: two adults who agree to set up a household partnership with each other, sharing all assets, etc. No mention of gender. (I know, this allows incest. I’m not sure how much of an issue this might be, as I have never once wanted to marry any of my relatives, and I don’t know many people who like their relatives well enough to marry them. Naturally there will be exceptions to this rule. We’ll have to work on that.)

 

 

This is a work in progress, kids. Stay tuned.

 

 

And vote Obama.

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Tim Thomas, Barack Obama, and free speech

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 I was checking my BlackBerry yesterday when I was brought up with an “Urk!” by the following Providence Journal newsbrief:

 

 

 Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, the biggest hero of the team's Stanley Cup championship run of last year, declined to join his teammates during today's visit to the White House. Team officials indicated that the decision had to do with political differences.

 

 

Partner is a big hockey fan.  I have a hard time watching the game with him: too fast, too violent, and I can’t even see the damned puck most of the time.  But I rejoiced with him when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup last year, and enjoyed watching the local victory celebrations.

 

 

Thomas was certainly the team hero: he’s widely considered to be the main reason they won the Cup.

 

 

But he cannot meet the President, or be seen at the White House, because he does not agree with him.

 

 

 

I could not stop thinking about this.  I investigated a bit further, and found that he is not only a far-right true believer, but a follower of Glenn Beck. 

 

 

Yikes!

 

 

I would have gladly forgiven him his beliefs, however, given that he’s such an excellent player.

 

 

But then he had to go thumb his nose at the White House.

 

 

Some questions:

• What if it had been me and a president I detested – like, let’s say, George W. Bush?  It would have been tempting to snub him.  But, then again, it would have depended largely upon the reason for the invitation.  If it were for a personal achievement, like winning the Nobel Prize, I’d have told him to go stuff himself.  If it were this kind of honor – a team being celebrated as a group – I might well have swallowed my pride and gone, for the sake of my teammates.  Because – really – what would I have to lose by standing alongside someone with whom I disagreed?
• Does Tim Thomas agree politically with all of his teammates?  I certainly hope so.  If he should ever learn that they don’t agree with him, he might not agree to appear on the same ice with them.
• Does Tim Thomas think that President Obama is trying to make political points by appearing with a popular sports team?  Really, think about that one. If you stand alongside the President, which one of you will people notice first?  And (last I looked), New England / Boston athletes are generally detested by the rest of the country.  Obama’s doing the Bruins a favor, not vice versa.

 

 

 

 

Greg Wyshynski, a hockey blogger for Yahoo!, wrote a comment about this on Monday.  He makes the point that the team general manager and team president both tried to talk Thomas into going – in fact, they could have compelled his attendance - but in the end they gave up and respected his wishes.  He’s an American; he can do any damn fool thing he likes.

 

 

(Wyshynski makes a false comparison of Thomas’s no-show at the White House to Rangers player Sean Avery’s public support for gay marriage, and says that both are governed by free speech.  This is not an excellent comparison.  Thomas can say what he likes, and hold whatever beliefs he likes; that’s free speech.  Snubbing a White House invitation because you don’t like the current occupant is bad manners.)

 

 

And Wyshynski ends by pointing out that free speech has consequences.  This is his very well-written conclusion: “This is the moment when Tim Thomas, the most valuable player to his team last June, did something that detracted from his teammates' celebration. This is the moment when, for better or worse, he becomes something more than the blue-collar hockey player from Flint with the great backstory and the sterling save percentage. And as long as he's willing to accept that his absence from an event that even Tomas Kaberle attended has overshadowed this day and changed his profile as an athlete, then like Cam Neely I'll respect the decision.”

 

 

Same here.

 

 

Thomas may be a great hockey player, but he ain’t no hero around these parts no more.

 

 

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Ironic America

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Partner and I take turns in the bathroom getting ready for work every morning.  If anything scandalous happens on TV while I’m in the bathroom, Partner says “OH MY GOD!” in a loud voice, and I come running out to see what it is.

Yesterday morning it was the new series of All-American Chia Pets.  Washington, the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln – hmm – Obama.

“I notice they didn’t do a George W. Bush,” Partner said snappily.

“I think George W. Bush already has stuff growing out of his head,” I said, quick as a flash.

The wit fairly flies around here.

I pondered this new product all day.  On the one hand, I bet President Obama might think this is pretty funny.  It goes without saying that he has the perfect head for a Chia Pet; only Elmer Fudd has a more symmetrical cranium.  Obama might take it as sort of an ironic tribute.

Or someone could buy one as a mean gag gift for the entrenched Republican on his gift list.

Either way, whether you buy the thing ironically or sincerely, the company makes out like a bandit.

We are drowning in irony these days.  One of the NBC junior executives on “30 Rock” referenced his “ironic kickball league” last week.  New York Magazine wrote an article on the death of hipster culture, which brought out lots of bitter (and deeply ironic) commentary from both pro-hipster and anti-hipster partisans.  New York Magazine also keeps track of trends with the “Undulating Curve of Shifting Expectations,” charting “pre-buzz” trends, “saturation-point” trends, “backlash” trends, and – here we go – “backlash to the backlash” trends.   Apparently these last are things that are so tired, so ridiculous, so overplayed, that they’re worthwhile again.  


Or maybe they really were worthwhile in the first place, and we just got tired of them because we hipsters are so jaded.


Real-life examples:

• Designers are sending handbags to Jersey Shore's Snooki. Not their own handbags, though. They want Snooki to be seen with their competitors' handbags, since Snooki is Ms. Bad Taste. Snooki is probably completely unaware of this; she only knows that she gets a lot of free handbags. (What do you suppose she likes best about a handbag? Separate pockets for pickles, lip gloss, and bronzer?)

• There was a snarky little article in the New York Times dissing the pretentiousness of the foodie movement. This was followed by a snarky little New York Magazine article dissing the pretentiousness of the New York Times article.

• And one last local example of unconscious irony: the night before Halloween, I heard a student talking on her cellphone.  “MU-thaw!” she bellowed.  (I’m trying to give you an impression of how completely unbearable her voice was.)  “I’m GOING? To a PARTY?  And I need something – like, some Seventies dress – something REALLY AW-ful and UGLY – you know, like you probably still HAVE, like in your CLO-set?”

Imagine you're that girl’s mother.  What would you have said to her?


And keep it unironic, please.

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