Dumbing it down
This is the Old Cedar Mill in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, the quaint and charming town where my husband grew up. At Christmas time, the lone fire department plays classic carols through externally mounted speakers and the notes drift through the air and mix with the scent of sugar from the local candy store, creating a tearful nostalgia even for people who have never been there. It is a storybook. It is a Norman Rockwell painting.
Perhaps because of this, because it is so reminiscent of American lore, it is the place where John McCain and his running mate made their very first post-convention stop last September. On September 8, 2008 to be exact. For that occasion, Cedarburg High School shut down for the day. As in, closed it’s doors.
All the students and all the faculty and all the administrators were given time off to attend the rally. And the school band played in honor of the candidate. And this small town of roughly 11,000 people was billed more than $12,000 for additional police security. Imagine what $12,000 could do for a school…
Last week, the principal of Cedarburg High School sent an email to all of his staffers, informing them that it would be up to their discretion as to whether they wanted to show the twenty minute speech by the President of the United States of America, slated for today.
And that is where we are in America: A school cancels classes for one day and a town spends money for the appearance of a presidential candidate. And the same school later makes it optional as to whether impressionable children should be exposed to a speech by their country’s elected President.
This is no idealized painting. This is the schizophrenic lobbing off of an ear.
We live in dark days.
Ringing It In: An open letter to the new year
Dear 2009,
Welcome! Throw your coat on the bed, cozy up by the fire, make yourself at home and stay a while. By the way, what took you so long? I thought you’d never get here.
Your arrival has been more hotly anticipated than Fred Goldman’s overdue retribution, the latest album from Guns ’N Roses, or the birth of baby Tripp, whose blessed arrival—surely no thanks to freedom of choice—completed a bizarre yet hardly surprising tongue-twisting tundra triad. Say it three times fast: Track, Trig, Tripp. Track, Trig, Tripp. Track, Trig, Tripp. Has a fun moose-shooting rhythm to it, doesn’t it?
I barely kept the PTSD at arm’s length this past year, biding my time with the knowledge that you would eventually show. But yours is a bittersweet arrival: Even with all the promise you hold, my relief is hindered by trepidation because, honey, the pressure is on.
It wasn’t just 2008 that slipped into obscurity at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31. No. As the ball dropped and fireworks burst and confetti fluttered, and as millions of people around the globe engaged in a simultaneous wet kiss, the previous insufferable eight years were ushered into a history that is already, as I write this, being rewritten. Just look at how the flying-shoe-ducker is being painted as a sympathetic character these days, what with his professed regret over the “Mission Accomplished” banner. That’s his main regret? The banner? Not the costume he wore with the harness snuggling his balls into a nifty little don’t-fuck-with-me bulge for all to see? Gah. My shoe is off and I’m ready to huck it.
Let’s remember this: Bush has always been and will always remain an abomination. He is a festering boil, a giant pockmark on the forehead of our glorious and now gloriously flawed nation. There’s little about Bush the Younger that should cause people to feel anything but despair, disdain and disgust. And while he packs the moving van, I think it’s imperative that we put Georgie’s contributions in an easily accessible lockbox of the American collective conscience.
Much like he was handed everything in his life, George was handed the presidency, and three days after his inauguration, he waged a war against women with the global gag rule barring U.S. funding for abortion counseling overseas. He effectively banned late-term abortion, as if women are tripping over each other to scrape their uteruses at month eight because pregnancy is an inconvenience. Later, much to the chagrin of this adoptive parent, he bounced a “snowflake” baby on his lap to show-off the amazing fruits of in-vitro fertilization while hundreds of thousands of parentless children lingered in our broken foster-care system.
He sat like a beady-eyed goat as the Twin Towers fell, told Americans to heal themselves through shopping and then repeatedly touted the success of no subsequent attacks on his watch. He squandered international good will in uncountable ways, and two of our GOP leaders embodied the rampant smallness-disguised-as-patriotism when, for a time, our representatives could only order “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” at their cafeteria. Take that France! Neener neener!
Never mind that our revered Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French in 1885.
Lies, damn lies, were at the root of one of his—now our—two wars, were used to dismiss the embarrassing, appalling events at Abu Ghraib and resulted in a domestic-surveillance program that we now know was used to spy on innocent Americans. I make it a point to offer a breathy hello to the spies when I’m having phone sex these days.
Secrecy defined our energy policy, firing of U.S. attorneys, limbo-treatment of detainees at Gitmo and the outing of a CIA agent. It shrouded our Vaderesque Veep who just might shoot you in the face if you’re not paying attention.
Indifference, incompetence, callousness and racism led to the horrific handling of—as Laura Bush called it—Hurricane “Karina.” (You can bet if the same set of circumstances had befallen La Jolla, Brownie would have done a better heckuva job.) Those were Americans drowning down there as Bush finally did his 35-minute fly-over, while Condi shopped for Ferragamos.
Dubya’s callousness and cynicism can be summed up as a fratboy prank: He dropped trou and hung his white buttocks out the window of his daddy’s Hummer. Now he swaggers into the sunset with eight precious years like notches in his belt.
We get weakened environmental policies, failing schools, a broke-down healthcare system, an inconceivable national debt, an unprecedented accumulation of wealth for corporations and scoundrels, a nearly obliterated middle class, an ever-increasing unemployment rate and a sorry-ass willingness of a portion of our citizenry to accept as acceptable a vice presidential candidate who thinks proximity to a foreign country gives one international-policy experience.
Of course, I could go on, but I’m ready, 2009, really ready to wrap my arms around you and lower my expectations as we begin clawing out of this crevasse. I’ve finally removed my last anti-Bush bumper sticker and have begun to speak like a normal human being again, excising from my vocabulary various terms like “misunderestimate” and “subliminable”—and the ubiquitous “Internets.” I know my editor is glad to see me purge that one. Fun with sentence structure has given me an outlet, but it’s time to say goodbye to all that.
Besides, I have an inkling that despite the progress you will bring, I’ll have other opportunities in the not-too-distant future there, too, also, to play with creative paragraphery and conjugationalness.
I wish you strength, 2009. You’re gonna need it.
In Peace,
~aaryn
(As published on January 6, 2009 in San Diego CityBeat.)
Still pinching myself: It’s my last column about The Messiah, I swear
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat. Oh, and I made the California Sex Offender News!!! Hilarious.)
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Snuggled firmly between Tibet and India is the world’s newest democracy, a tiny country called Bhutan, where last Thursday, a very young and handsome man had a colorful raven-topped crown placed upon his head by his father, officially anointing him the fifth Dragon King of Bhutan. Oxford educated Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of the Wangchuck Dynasty is, at 28, the youngest head of state in the world and will preside over a country where success is measured by the Gross National Happiness, or GNH, as it were.
The strapping new Dragon King, who The Associated Press described as having “Elvis-like hair,” has promised to balance modern policies with traditional philosophies, thereby ensuring the GNH remains high in his homeland, where television was un-banned in 1999. This was a crucial step toward the modernization of Bhutan, but it came with a gentle warning: Too much TV can be detrimental to GNH. You certainly don’t go to Oxford ’cause you watched a lot of it.
It should come as little surprise when I say that Nov. 4, 2008, culminated with a dramatic explosion of my own personal GNH. I hit the jackpot of happiness that night. I won the lottery of love. Sort of like that carnival game when you swing a big mallet-thingy onto a platform, the impact of which forces a rubber ball to shoot to the top of a poll and ring a loud bell. Well, this election was the mallet-thingy, and that bell was my bliss.
Overcome with emotion—and probably due in some small part to the consumption of obscene amounts of champagne straight out of the bottle and later, regrettably, some tequila—I risked living the rest of my joyous days as a registered sex offender. With my husband and four friends, I ran through the streets of North Park, indecently exposed, in nothing but running shoes, white over-the-knee socks with black stars and two strategically placed Obama stickers. Incidentally, those stickers are made to stick, boy. Owwwch! is all I’ll say about their removal.
Now, perhaps the emotion that precipitated my hurling of caution into the wind was due to the Herradura. Or perhaps not. Because, the thing is, I’m still exhibiting never-before-recorded (at least not in my family) levels of euphoria.
And I’m not talking about the kind induced by something you eat, drink, smoke, snort or shoot. I’m talking about an organic, spiritual, big-picture, comprehend-the-gravity-of-it gross national happiness.
I’m talking about the kind of ridiculous glee that makes me want to put a giant framed photo of our next president above the fireplace, or to wonder whether our awesomely awesome new first lady will jump up and down on the presidential bed her first night in the White House (because, you know, I would), or to obsessively read stories about where Malia and Sasha (whom the Secret Service has aptly dubbed “Radiance” and “Rosebud”) will go to school come January and what they will name their new puppy. For the first time in my life, I cannot wait for the annual White House Easter Egg hunt.
My GNH is an unfamiliar yet overflowing emotion so abundant that I find myself lusting after Rachel Maddow, hanging on her every chuckled word. I imagine being Maddow’s girlfriend and staring into her mischievous brown eyes while she speaks of Holy Mackerel moments. (I’ll fess up now that I have a thing for Maddow. Rachel thinks Sean Connery was the best James Bond; I think Sean Connery was the best James Bond. Rachel loves a crier; I’m a crier. Political girl-crush complete.) This GNH is causing some childish and geekish, if not all together, losery behavior.
Like millions of people across the country and, in fact, around the globe, I thrill at the reparative prospects of President-elect Barack Obama so thoroughly that I weep on and off throughout any given day—which has made me question whether I’m turning into my father-in-law. Hopefully, I won’t grow hair on my back.
I think I’m in shock, really. I didn’t believe we would elect Obama. Did. Not. Believe it. I doubted that Americans had it in them and, when it comes right down to it, I had good reason to be skeptical: Alaskans, as of this writing, have elected a convicted felon to the Senate. In Minnesota, a McCarthy-esque woman who accused her colleagues in the House of being “anti-American” was sent back to D.C. for anther term. And, most pitifully, California, Arizona and Florida passed reprehensible legislation against our gay brothers and sisters, citizens of this nation. Oh, and then Arkansas up and banned gay couples from adopting. None of this is terribly reassuring.
But the silver lining is visible in the form of Barack Obama. He looks different than any president we’ve ever had, and it is impossible to see him without being immediately conscious of the history behind him and the progress he embodies. If he represents any one thing, it is the fact that change is inevitable; it will come. It takes time and effort. But it will come. As Newark, N.J., Mayor Corey Booker told Maddow last week, “There is no right or left. Only forward or backward.” Americans have chosen the forward trajectory.
The 19th-century French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Maybe we’re not as happy as the citizens of Bhutan. We’ve gotten ourselves into a deep hole, and now it’s time to start digging our way out. But we’ve turned our backs on fear and chosen possibility. We’ve offered up one gigantic apology to the rest of the world and the promise of a better, more humble and self-aware America by electing our own Dragon King. By so doing, we’ve exponentially increased our Gross National Happiness, if only for the honeymoon period. I’ll take it.
What about the ember of love?
I’m not a huge fan of Keith Olbermann. At one time I was; I found his sharp closing comments to be a welcome relief from a media that was busy giving Bush and Cheney a collective suck-off. I liked that he railed against the administration and their policies when it was so dangerous to do so. That, and I liked his giant pin-striped suits and shiny purple ties with the wide French knots.
But I quit watching television for a gloriously long time and when I came back to him during the past few months, I found that he’d taken a turn down Dramatic Street, steering sharply away from his Edward R. Murrow-style homage in favor of Enquiring-minds-want-to-know antics. I find his “Stupidest Person in the World” as ghastly as O’Reilly’s “Pinhead of the Week” segment. That I even know what the Pinhead segment is makes my aortic valve stick in the closed position.
But.
Sometimes I’m able move past Olbermann’s self-aggrandizing oration and let myself focus on the words. Such as in this video where he absolutely nails It.
Get it together, California
I drove Ruby to school on Tuesday morning just like I do every Tuesday morning and as I turned from North Park Way onto 32nd Street, I saw these two angels standing on a corner.
They were huddled together beneath their umbrella in what had to be the first real rain storm we’ve had in San Diego in six months. They were not deterred by the weather but instead were sunny as they smiled and waved at passing cars.
After leaving Ruby, I went back to the corner and snapped a few photos through the rain drops on my lens and the tears in my eyes. This is Gina and Carla Grossini-Concha. They are in love and they were married a couple of weeks ago. They planned on a big family celebration next autumn but despite being able to convince some voters to cast their ballots against Proposition (h)8 that day, a disturbingly misguided 52% of Californians have decided that Gina and Carla aren’t entitled to the same rights to which Sam and I are entitled simply because they love each other, instead of men. Look at them:
Do you see anything but two beautiful people in love?
I believe we have a moral responsibility to stand in solidarity with Gina and Carla and all gay citizens. If you live locally, there are two rallies being held this weekend and, as Carla wrote to me in an email today, “…for the sake of the freedoms and equality that the constitution is intended to protect for everyone, please come!”
Friday 11/7/08 (TODAY!) at 9 PM
From Balboa Park -6th Ave and Laurel Street, down to City Hall
Saturday 11/8/08 at noon
From 1st Ave and University all the way down University to 30th Street
Mostly sweet, a little sour
I’m still trying to process all the emotions I’ve been feeling since Tuesday night. I can barely believe it’s real, that Barack Obama is our next president, and what that means to me, to my daughter, to our nation, to the world. When I awoke at 3:00 in the morning on the 5th, I actually pinched myself. Lying in the dark, I thought of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. spoken on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated:
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
Certainly, we are living this prophetic goal and the enormity of it overtakes me in thundering waves. But my elation has a bittersweetness to it; there is still struggle and there will be until all people have equal rights. The Golden State has shown the world her ugly side; blue California still breathes hot red bigotry and the passage of Proposition 8 stands in stark contrast to the progress we watched unfold on the national stage. For the first time I can think of, the citizens of California have amended our constitution to take rights away from people and that is nothing short of shameful. Because of this, my elation was tempered.
But I’m not despondent and here’s why: Those narrow-minded folks who used deceit in their advertising, who tricked and frightened a small majority of terribly confused Californians with the financial backing of the Mormon church, these unscrupulous idealogues will eventually take same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court. And guess who is going to have at least one (maybe as many as three!) appointments during the next four years? Yes, indeed. Our new steward, Barack Obama! Hell-OH! I believe we overwhelmingly elected a president who would not put a judge on the court who doesn’t support civil rights for all citizens.
While this latest denial of equality and basic rights is a sad reflection of an ever-shrinking sliver of haters in our country, progress will come. It takes time to get to that mountain top but we will get there. Barack Obama is leading us now.
Let’s get this party started. Let’s be Dixville Notchian.
Here’s hoping the nation follows this example today.
And then I’ll finally be able to get back to writing about Ruby’s boogers and her annoying habit of telling me I’m stinky.
Until then, watch this.
One. Last. Time.
Turn it up loud.
Barack Obama for President.
In California:
No on Prop 8.
No on Prop 4.