Regarding A Genius
“You pick up a nickel, but you dropped five cents. It’s too bad you can’t have them both, but if you had both of them you’d still want something else, wouldn’t you? That’s my problem too.” -Gill Scott-Heron, in a letter to a friend
Gil Scott-Heron died last night and though I don’t usually care about these things, I cried this morning as I listened to “Winter in America.” And I didn’t even know the man.
Heron was an incredible artist, deserving of more recognition than he received during his lifetime. He was a man who had incredible foresight, a man whose lyrics and messages are as relevant today as during the time he wrote them. And, like many artists, he was a man who had demons. The New Yorker ran a piece about Heron last August, one that was equal parts intriguing and painful. Heron struggled with drug addiction during much of his life and at the time of Alec Wilkinson’s interview, an emaciated Heron had isolated himself in a tiny, cave-like apartment in Harlem.
Most famous for his song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Heron was prolific throughout the 70′s and his music has staying power. “B-Movie” is one of my personal favorites (I love how he addresses the “mandate” and “Ray-gun” and our bit parts in the big scheme of things). But I also love the more intimate, yet equally as global, “Your Daddy Loves You.” Makes me wish I had a daddy. Makes me glad my daughter does.
Both songs follow. Take your time with them. Its worth it.
Now sweet lil ol’ brown eyed girl, hey, now
Now that you’re sleepin’
I’ve got a confession to make
Of secrets that I’ve been keepin’
Me and your mama had some problems,
A whole lotta things on our minds
But lately, girl, we’ve been thinkin’ that we were wastin’ time
Nearly all the time, and
Your daddy loves you
Your daddy loves his girl
Your daddy loves you
Your daddy loves his girl, hey now
Now sweet lil ol’ chocolate girl
Now that you’re sleepin’ I feel braver
I’ve got a confession to make
I’ll sneak it in while you’re dreamin’
Me and your mama had some troubles
There’s been a whole lotta things on our minds
But lately when we look at you, we know that we’ve been wastin’ time
Damn near all the time, and
Your daddy loves you
Your daddy loves his girl, hey, now
Said your daddy loves you
Said your daddy loves his girl, hey, now
Your daddy loves you, and your mama, too
Your daddy loves his girl
Loves his girl
Loves his girl
On how not to celebrate
Saving lives or doing humanitarianism is like making love, while killing people is tantamount to a good, hard, and largely one-sided fuck; and unfortunately we know which of these two things men, in particular, are more apt to prefer. -Tim Wise
As I watched the news last night, I was disturbed and offended (imagine: me, offended!) by the throngs of privileged, white college kids pressing up against the fence along the White House North Lawn, waving American flags and making gestures befitting a successfully completed keg stand in which the drinker was able to keep from barfing. All this college-esque gaiety because a human being had been shot through the eye.
It seemed so inappropriate, this barroom behavior; so uncivilized, unenlightened, thoughtless, misplaced, barbaric, gross, demented, fill-in-your-own-adjective here. The fist-pumping and back-slapping and woo-hooing were not only disproportionate, but wholly divorced from reality on so many levels, and I was going to write about all the reasons it was wrong, wrong, wrong. But Tim Wise has already said every single thing I could have possibly said about the situation. And, as usual, he has said it so well.
It’s a must read. Go. Now.
Close eye on Wisconsin
“It is my belief that the Republicans will generate and propagate the idea that these are not the peaceful protests that they are,” said Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic Party in an interview with The Huffington Post. “They hate that democracy is happening in the way it should, instead of the way that Scott Walker wants and fashions in the Capitol, which is with no debate, no discussion, no deliberation, no speech. They hate that we have been peaceful and will continue to be peaceful, and they want to create and use a mythology to promote their agenda, which is absolutely harmful to the working man.”
It is interesting to note that this story is no longer featured on the homepages of CNN or MSNBC. FOX has it though. Front and center.
What follows are the most important 14 minuets of news that Americans who believe in democracy need to see:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Republicans misinterpret Portlandia message, put bird shit on it instead
I haven’t watched a news program in, oh, about a year, give or take. But after reading about what’s transpiring in Madison, Wisconsin, Sam and I set Ruby up at the dining room table last night and retired to the couch to watch The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. To be clear, I am hardly ignorant about current events and political goings-on; I read the paper. But some time ago, I decided to stop paying close attention because the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that came from knowing the smallest details wasn’t conducive to a happy life. So watching the news last night was particularly upsetting. Before the hour was over, our mouths were agape. We had tears in our eyes.
Images of men pocked with bird shot filled the screen. Far away, people are risking everything for the kinds of basic human rights we Americans take for granted. Several weeks ago, from the comfort of a local coffee shop—with lattes and our too-big breakfasts in front of us—I read aloud to Sam about the Egyptian revolution. Sparked initially by what happened in Tunisia, the energy from the toppling of Mubarak has spread and now Libya, Yemen and Bahrain—places most American’s couldn’t find on a map—are seeing mass uprisings.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
The good folks of Wisconsin are standing up to power and hoo-fucking-ray for the Democratic senators who took their leave! It’s more Republican nonsense to claim these senators aren’t working. Indeed, the opposite is true. They are doing the job they were elected to do. They are actually representing the best interests of the people, whose massive protest is not about having to take pay cuts or contribute to their health insurance. It is about maintaining their right to bargain collectively. With the pretext of closing a $3.6 billion budget gap, Governor Scott Walker is trampling over the rights of workers, without (and the irony is certainly lost on him) being willing to negotiate about it first. The projected savings, according to NewsHour, is $300 million dollars over the next two years. Given that this is only 8% of the total budget deficit as projected right now, it’s plain as Sarah Palin’s capped teeth that this isn’t about acting responsibly or saving money. This is about power. This is about political ideology. This is about political thuggery that doesn’t leave physical marks the way bird shot does. Of course, thuggery today wouldn’t be complete without the Tea Party, which is mobilized and on it’s way to Madison. I predict they’ll manage to turn a peaceful movement into something ugly and violent. Is the Wisconsin capitol building Tahrir Square or Tianamen Square? We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.
Across country, Republicans are also hard at work slashing Medicaid funding for the neediest among us, money that goes to help people like my sister-in-law who suffers from multiple sclerosis and cannot afford her medicine without the assistance, and whittling down to ten the number of doctor visits she’ll be permitted in a calendar year. There is a seven-minute heart breaker right here if you have the stomach for it. Or you could read this little bit about how Arizona may be the first state to purge 250,000 childless adults from Medicaid assistance. Or! If you’re relatively healthy, have good insurance, a couple acres, a luxury car, a flat screen television, a Costco membership, and like to speak in violence-inciting euphemisms, you can just point to undocumented workers and say it’s all their fault. Never mind that many of them pay into social security which they will never get but you will one day collect.
And flying under the radar while all this other stuff is simmering, House Republicans are aiming to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and are attempting to strip just voted to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses and stripped Planned Parenthood of all federal funding. Seriously, people. Republicans are gangsters. Short-sighted, small-minded, self-interested malicious gangsters. But hot damn if California Representative Jackie Spier didn’t just throw herself on a grenade for women everywhere. She may have momentarily confused her vagina with her uterus, but her point was otherwise eloquently made. This is a must see three-minutes right here:
Instead of slitting my wrists last night, I sent my husband on an errand to retrieve emergency Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs for me. Then I had a bourbon. And then I had a dance party with my daughter. The song I picked is as salient now as it ever has been.
On Wisconsin! On behalf of thinking humans everywhere, get all Egyptian on Walker’s ass!
Happy Endings
I was going to write some fresh material tonight, but then Christine O’Donnell won the Republican primary in Delaware.
In honor of her victory, I am going to masturbate instead.
Who’s with me?
I feel dirty
Tonight, for the first time since I was legally able to vote, I blew off an election. With a reported 35% voter turn out in today’s California primary election, I am THAT person: The one who doesn’t bother to show up, the one I always disdain, the one the other side counts on. Today, I joined the 65% of California citizens in apathetic solidarity.
I wish I could say it was apathy that led me to hurl my yellow absentee ballot along with the voter guide into the recycling bin more than a week ago, which at the time, felt really good, I’ll admit. Indifference would be so much more preferable to the real reasons I shrugged as I pitched the material into the square straw bin beneath my office desk and then walked to the kitchen to pour myself a whisky. Why does it matter? I thought to myself in the days before I made my decision.
My voting materials sat for three days, untouched, on my dining room table where I’d neatly stacked them. I’d eyeball the sealed booklet and envelope—the window of which displayed my name with an extraneous initial I’ve attempted to correct with the registrar’s office multiple times—on every pass through the room, contemplating whether I could actually go through with it. On the fourth day, I picked them up and moved them to the office. I sat down on the chair, pressed my toes against the floor and launched myself into a slow spin while I wrestled my thumb into the corner of the envelope with the yellow ballot. I yanked at the paper, making a jagged, uneven tear, immediately giving myself a paper cut.
“Shit!” I said, tossing the half-opened envelope away from me, sucking the blood from my thumb. Clearly, I was supposed to sit this election out.
“MAH-ahm! You owe a quarter,” Ruby said to me from the other room.
And thinking about that quarter got me thinking about all of the many quarters I’ve paid for my potty mouth, which got me thinking about my daughter’s college education, which got me thinking about the state of public education in California, which got me thinking about our fiscal nightmare, which got me thinking about the self-interested, re-election-happy representatives too paralyzed to do anything productive, which got me thinking about how our public offices and initiatives are really just for sale to the highest bidder, which led me to the conclusion (again) about how this is all a big dog and pony show.
I’ve always operated under the philosophy that it’s my obligation to vote. That by doing so, I’m at the very least staking out my right to complain. But I’ve started to think that if I participate in a broken system, then I am part of the problem. So I decided to skip it.
And all day, I felt nothing. Until I began watching the returns and realized that I didn’t know a single local initiative. Certainly, there is a peacefulness in having no investment and I am definitely a happier person by not following politics as closely as I did way back when I was more hopeful and less cynical. Still. I started to feel sorta bad when I couldn’t have an intelligible conversation with friends.
Maybe I should have voted…not that my voice would have mattered. But what if even half of the other 65% of us had voted. Would my voice have mattered then?
Who needs representatives when we have guys like Stupak?
While listening to an interview between Michele Norris on NPR and Bart Stupak, Democratic member of Congress from Michigan, I became outraged. Go figure. It’s so rare for me…
Anyway, I wrote about why I’m incensed over at The Women’s Colony. Check it out and see if you don’t agree. And if you wait long enough, the conservatives will come slithering along to tout their I-Got-Mine attitude throughout the comments section. Some of them will probably call me names, too. Oh, goody!
In the meantime, people, IT’S FRIDAY and I don’t have to go to my shit-sucking job!!! And my friend Justin posted the following video to my Facebook wall today so things are really lookin’ up. Gosh darn it, if I don’t adore Olivia Newton John. She was, and still is, totally awesome. Watch this and be happy with me despite all the craptastic news, won’t you?
C’mon, Californian’s: Let’s demand better
I ran into the mother of one of Ruby’s little classmates yesterday when I was picking my girl up from school. We’d barely gotten past the daily niceties when she said, “Well, I got my pink slip today.”
She’s a teacher and like previous years, as the state of California faces a never-ending and unfathomable budget crisis, pink slips are distributed mid-way through the school year. This year was even earlier than last. Now she’ll finish her work knowing she doesn’t have a job in the fall, wait to see what budget our deadlocked legislators hammer out and then hope to be rehired next year. This is just one teensy, tinsy corner of the tip of the iceberg-of-a-problem facing the schools in this state. Good things kids aren’t the foundation of our society or anything.
Think about this: The San Diego Unified School District is facing budget cuts somewhere in the $175 million dollar range for the coming year; the state is looking at a $3 to $6.5 billion-with-a-B deficit. (I know, your eyes are glazing. But I’m almost done with big numbers so STICK WITH ME, HERE!) Meanwhile, back at the ranch, certain decision-makers felt it was more important to put $300 million dollars toward digital whiteboards in classrooms of SDUSD schools, than it was to put it toward building repair. Now the teachers—those that are left—need additional training (with all their free time) on how to use the glorified chalk boards. And when a $200 light bulb burns out, the school is asking parents to pony up. It’s that or let the new-fangled technology gather dust and force teachers and students to get by with—gasp!—chalk. How primitive. Almost as primitive as trying to learn in a building with no heat or a leaky roof or which doesn’t have drinking fountains.
I’m not even in the public school system yet and the whole thing is totally demoralizing.
The news on education is bad. It’s bad everywhere but I’m speaking specifically of California. And to highlight just how dire things are, today is a nationwide day of action. My friend, the teacher, and her colleagues—and my daughter, but that’s pretty much a given—are all wearing pink to raise awareness. I’ll probably try to dig up something pink, too. (I’ve seen elsewhere that people are wearing red. Whatever. I think it would be best if people just make sure to wear clothes.) Throughout California, activists are going to be raising awareness about cuts to higher education through a flurry of activities.
Then tomorrow, a group of activists, including the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and other unions, labor leaders, religious leaders and business leaders (yes, business leaders, too!), will begin a 7-week march from Bakersfield to Sacramento. The purpose of this March for California’s Future is to engage people and create a dialogue about the realities facing this state and the dire need to change the course we are currently on. To understand the purpose and goals of this march, please read this short piece. This isn’t just about education. This is about the future of California (hence the name, go figure) and, too, the rest of the nation.
I will be writing about this over the coming weeks, and posting excerpts from an interview I did with Jim Miller, a professor at San Diego City College and one of the organizers of the March. And I will be hoping that that all this hard work pays off, that my friend has a job in the fall, and that the education system gets better before my child is ready to graduate high school.
Dichotomy: Heidi Montag journeys to become ‘the best me’ while thousands die beneath rubble
An acquaintance of mine blogged recently about some things she’s sick and tired of, and her post inspired me to account for a few of my own. As I racked up my itemized list of grievances, the worst earthquake in 200 years struck the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Oh, Haiti. How you put things in such clear perspective for the rest of us.
On Jan. 12, 2010, this list might have been just a bunch of snark. Today, it’s down right absurd. That being said, here are a few things that I am really friggin’ sick and tired of:
1. Carrie Prejean. San Diego’s crown jewel—and the boobs that beauty-pageant officials cruelly forced on her—simply will not go away. Prejean and her erect right nipple were spotted frolicking in a Hawaiian ocean with her boyfriend du jour last week and made the headlines alongside “Thousands Feared Dead.” Since when did 15 minutes become 15 years?
2. Adam Lambert. OK, I’m not sick of Adam Lambert, per se; he’s the anti-Carrie Prejean, a guy with actual talent who used his celebrity to encourage his fans to donate to Haitian relief. So I root for him. I’m more sick of the hullabaloo over his American Music Awards performance, for which he is now on a World Apology Tour. I watched his three minutes on the AMA’s via YouTube. That he nearly finger fucked one of his female dancers was surprising. But kissing a boy? Bitch, please. He should have shoved his tongue down Carrie Prejean’s throat if he wanted to be outrageous.
3. Speaking of outrageous, how about Heidi Montag’s 10-hour, 10-procedure plastic surgery? At 23 years old, this talentless, soulless fame-whore has finally chiseled away her self-proclaimed “ugly duckling” looks for something a little more Barbie. I guess she didn’t get the memo that beauty comes from the inside. Too bad for her, there’s no surgery to fix inner ugly.
4. The goddamned pandas. The adult pandas, the baby pandas, whatever. Seriously. I. Am. Over. It. Panda-cam? Bo-ring. The giant panda exhibit at the zoo? Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. The line to get into the panda exhibit at the zoo? Biggest scam they have going. I like to go through the exhibit of always-snoozing pandas just to eavesdrop on disappointed tourists. I watch as they try to navigate their double-wide strollers along the narrow passage, keep the kids from swinging on the railings and strain to hear the barrage of panda factoids whispered over a microphone by zoo employees. “All they do is sleep” and “We should have gone to SeaWorld” are two of my favorite overheards.
5. Christmas decorations left up after Jan. 1. Look, I know it’s festive and romantic and twinkly and Christ-y, but FYI to my neighbors with the giant corner window: We’re pushing February here. It’s time to let go. The tree must come down. The electric moving snowman, too.
6. Shitty customer service. Hey, Tom, at Fairlane Cleaners. If you melt the buttons off my sweater without first warning me that the buttons might melt off my sweater, it’s your fault, and I do not appreciate a lecture about why it’s my fault.
7. The orange construction cones left behind by the company that made my neighborhood sidewalks wheelchair friendly more than a month ago. Way to find conscientious contractors, city of San Diego! It’s nice that the physically disabled have better access, but is it really that hard to clean up your mess?
8. Oversharing via Twitter. Tila Tequila, Courtney Love and Lindsay Lohan can tweet “the truth hurts” or “it’s the truth” or “the truth will come out” all they want. They’re still abominable, individually and collectively, and no amount of truth-telling will change that. Unplug, ladies, unplug.
9. Athletes and crocodile tears. Mark McGuire, I’m talking to you.
10. Liars who lie and know they lie and don’t get called on their lies by people who perpetuate their lies. Two recent lies that come to mind: “We had no domestic attacks under Bush,” by liar Rudy Guiliani and “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term,” by liar Dana Perino.
11. Not Of This World window decals. If you’re not of this world, what world are you of, exactly? I can only assume you’re of the world that teaches you how to expertly snake parking spaces from me at the library. Obviously, being Not of This World anoints you with VIP status, and your need to check out that book trumps the fact that I was waiting patiently—indicator on—for that space. Peace to you, brother. I don’t care what world you’re from: I would help your sorry ass in a crisis.
12. Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Your responses to this particular human emergency were predictable and nothing short of vile. You are worms, both of you, which is a bitter insult to worms the world over. Keith Olbermann said it better: “Mr. Robertson, Mr. Limbaugh, your lives are not worth those of the lowest, meanest, poorest of those victims still lying under the rubble in Haiti tonight.”
Aaaand just like that, I’m back to Haiti. I can’t not think about Haiti for very long, the devastation and the heartbreak and the unimaginable horror those people have endured—continue to endure—all while life here hums right along. It’s senseless and unfair that the sun should rise and set on two places not so far apart and yet everything is terrifically lopsided. I feel helpless and frustrated. So I donate a few bucks and make a few jokes to feel normal. I go to the gym and the bank and the grocery store. I play with my child who tonight sleeps safely under layers of blankets and a solid roof, unlike thousands and thousands of Haitian children just like her. All I can do is not linger too long on the images and be extremely thankful for my plain luck of geography.
And when it all gets to be too much, when things get really low, that panda-cam sure can take the edge off the overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
(Image from Reuters)
(As published—sans photos— today in San Diego CityBeat.)
It’s most certainly not comparable to Trent Lott’s comment
Michael Steele is a peach.
The Republican Party’s chairman and blackface (double entendre, intended), is calling for Senator Harry Reid to step down as US Senate Majority Leader over a purportedly racist comment he made during the 2008 election. In the forthcoming book Game Change, Reid is quoted as having said that Barack Obama would be a viable presidential candidate because he is “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”