Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Domenech?
He certainly is. Oh, dear Lord, is he ever.
The Domenech post linked above has been removed from the Red America queue and archives, though the individual article link still works; in case that, too, goes dark, posterity might ask I point you hereabouts. I rather doubt it has anything to do with the post as it is and far more to do with the perfect storm battering the Post; some are already speculating it was the last missive from this particular iteration of Red America. If so, it’s rather like nailing Capone for tax evasion, or more to the point, like fighting a symptom and not the disease. Still, if you’re smiling into your coffee as you read this, take a moment to dwell on us and them and remember: arrogant racist homophobic incompetent crony apparatchiks are people too.
Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had he from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About his neck was hung.
So I’m reading the Wege (check out his anti-Paddy’s set—and why would you be up in arms against the good saint? Well, he needs to get back down here and finish the job), and he points me to this Tom Tomorrow post, which in turn directs me to among other classics this shining piece of punditry courtesy the Ole Perfesser, from back in April of 2003.
You remember: VI Day. Don’t you?
Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen’s cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn’t rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a “quagmire” were wrong—again!—how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong—again!—how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error—again—and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about “civilian casualties” now seem almost disappointed that there weren’t more—again—and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American “liberators” were proven wrong—again—as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn’t stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It’s probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.
Nah.
I have a dream. And in that dream there is a memorial, somewhere on the idyllic campus of the University of Tennessee. The particulars do not matter much: a small pedestal, a little fountain in a quiet corner somewhere, an eternal flame by someone else’s memorial bench, even a mere cornerstone. So long as there is enough room for a simple plaque: and on that plaque, the above words are carved. Over it, perhaps, a title:
LOOK ON HIS WORKS YE RAVAGED AND DESPAIR
(Of course I went back and looked at where I was in April of 2003, when the Zipless Cakewalk tumbled Saddam’s statue and flowers hung just for a moment in the air, and it turns out I was maybe too worried about libraries and vases and not enough about the people, and all I can say was the libraries and the vases were as much as I could grasp from there and then of the enormity of what we’d done; the staggering awfulness of how far wrong we’d gone, and every day since then the news as filtered and stunted and slanted as it’s been has driven the enormity and the awfulness home, again and again and again and again and AGAIN—)
The net treats censorship as yadda yadda badda-bing.
I was wondering why I was suddenly inundated with searches for “without a trace teen orgy.” —Out of curiosity, you think the American Family Association will also be fined? After all, they’re still hosting a clip of said “teen orgy,” shorn of any mitigating narrative context, and they used it rather prominently in a lurid fund-raising appeal...
“Quite frankly, sir, the sooner the better.”
Y’know, I’d forgotten about this.
Thou shalt put evil away from among you.
Ken Blackwell, the theocratic candidate for governor in Ohio, auditioned before the innocuously named Council for National Policy. Bad news for Ohio. Then, it was Bush’s audition before the Council on National Policy that got us all where we are today, and we can’t walk for tripping over the fruit that has fallen from that particular tree. Jesus + Nothing 4evah.
Let’s you and him fight.
Okay, see, there were these two students? And they were terribly jealous of each other. (Does it matter why?) Their master was old and infirm and had not one bum leg, but two. Withered, pale, stick-like things. Poor circulation. Feet like two blocks of ice in the morning. And each student was given charge of a leg, to rub and pinch and powder and clean, and every day they’d set to it, glaring all the while at each other over their teacher’s lap.
And it came to pass that one day one of the students had to get up and leave during the who leg-rubbing foot-massaging bit. Maybe to get a glass of water, maybe to take a leak, maybe they were out of talcum powder. And while that first student was gone, the second student took up a rock and bashed away at the opposite leg, the one the first student had charge of. Just beat it until it snapped in three or four places. Shattered.
When the first student came back and saw what had been done, what do you think? That first student picked up a stick and laid into the opposite leg, the one the second student had charge of. Blood flew. Bone splintered.
Our moral? Beats me. Something about the Mahayana and the Hinayana. You figure it out, let me know. My question: why the fuck didn’t the teacher get all Pai Mei on that second student’s ass the minute he picked up the rock? There was a perfectly serviceable sword sitting right there.
Okay, see, there was this snake? And one day, this snake’s tail speaks up (for back then, the tails of snakes could speak), and the snake’s tail says, you know what? I’m sick of this shit. (It’s speaking to the snake’s head.) You get to go first in everything you know? You just lead and lead and lead and drag me around through the dust and I’m sick of it. We’re gonna try things my way for a bit. And the head’s all, like, what? Is there an echo in here? Somebody say something? And the head just keeps on keepin’ on.
Anyway, the tail of the snake is so pissed it does the only thing it can do, which is coil itself about an opportune tree. And the head pulls and pulls, and the tail holds on and holds on, and there’s a lot of hissed swears leaking back and forth until finally, exhausted, the tail lets go, and, exhausted, the head can’t keep the snake from rolling into a firepit and burning to death.
Our moral? It’s a toughie: that opportune tree is none other than the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the tug-of-war shook loose a fateful apple. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. —Aren’t we much better off these days, when nobody talks out their ass anymore?
Okay, see, there’s these two flesh-eating demons, right? Or maybe they were superheroes. Anyway, they’re fighting tooth and bloody nail over a chest and a stick and a ratty-ass pair of sandals. Just that: these epic killer combos unleashed over a wooden box you maybe saw on a shelf in Target in the World Beat Home Furnishings aisle, and a stick that, okay, might make for a nice walking stick if you ever went on walks anymore, and a couple of sandals too far gone to even make it as dumpster chic. Somebody’s already walked too many miles in them. But these two demons don’t show any signs of letting up. Biff! Pow! Blammo!
Until this guy walks up and he somehow manages to get their attention and he yells whoa, whoa, and they manage to stop, glaring at each other, taking these big deep panting breaths, wiping the sweat off. And the guy, he’s just this guy, not a demon or a superhero, he says, wow, I mean, this is incredible, but why are you fighting over this junk?
And the first demon says, that trunk isn’t junk; it contains everything you might ever possibly need in this world. Put in your hand and pull out gold, books, food, a house, beautiful paramours, the ear of the king. And the second demon says, the stick isn’t junk. You hold that in your hands, all your enemies are subdued. And he’s glaring at the first demon. Who says, those sandals? And the second demon says, yeah, those sandals. Look like crap. But, says the first demon, you put them on, and you can fly.
Okay, says the guy. I see. But still. You’re both such amazing fighters. It would be a damn shame to see you kill each other over this stuff. Just back up a minute, let me get in there, and I’ll split it up for you. Okay?
So the demons, reluctantly, backed away, and the guy leaped in and picked up the stick and shook it at them both, then scooped up the trunk and kicked into first one and then the other sandal, and he swooped up into the air. And he laughed and laughed and said, see? Now you no longer have any reason to fight!
Our moral? Demons can fly, too. So can superheroes. The guy was so scared when he saw them coming that he dropped the stick, and they totally smeared him into steak tartare and spread him on a loaf of bread they pulled out of the trunk.
Okay, there’s these two guys, see? And they walk into a bar. And the first one turns to the second and says, my dick is so big—
Continuing our tour of other people’s comments—
I know several people who really really wanna get sick, but can’t afford to.
elfranko, ladies and gentlemen! Try the veal! (Yeah, it’s probably pseudo-Al they’re mau-mauing, but isn’t the fact that you can’t tell them apart the point?)
Over the top.
You dumb shit, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the levees being overtopped or broached when the end result in either case is catastophic flooding in an unprepared city. You righties’ concern for public safety and the commonweal is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, the unprecedented death and destruction and the bodies they still haven’t gotten around to finding how many motherfucking months later pretty much speak for themselves. Go back into your hole, you stupid conservadick shithead. And don’t bother us anymore. You have to have to be able to correspond with reality at some level for anyone to take your bloviations seriously. You don’t qualify, you stupid shit.
Context? Oh, all right.
Do not fuck South Dakota.
Roy Edroso’s headline does not withstand the fundamental point Roxanne makes, but it’s PZ who most eloquently, even poignantly nails it: South Dakota is only trying to de jure (against the people’s will) what’s been de facto throughout the country for far too long.
At least we can buy Girl Scout cookies this year without a wingnut fuss. —More and more, I’m thinking this classic Herblock cartoon cuts to the quick of sexual politics here in crepuscular America:
Fifty years and counting, and they’re still fucking terrified. Take what heart you can.
Live through this, and you won’t look back.
So our government is bound and determined, it seems, to hand control of several major ports (including those of New York, New Jersey, Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and what’s left of New Orleans, all of them already grossly undefended) over to a corporate arm of the United Arab Emirates, which, among other things, some of them doubtless germane and even adducible to the business that is running ports, are known to have perhaps circumstantial but nonetheless thick and fast and furious connections to That With Which We Are at War; namely, Terror—at least, connections thicker and faster and more furious than those which nominally launched ten thousand Iraqi deaths.
But far be it from me merely to rail about the wrong that’s going on! Silly notion: could we maybe, once we’ve staked the heart of this monstrous regime and cauterized the last neck-stump of its endless talking heads, could we put some safeguards in place? —We could wait till after the parade, you know, when the last of the ticker-tape settles on the makeshift stage, that moment, you know, the echoes of the cheers have died, and we’re starting to look at each other, a little uncomfortable, the whole future opening up before us with opportunities and possibilities and dare I even say it some little hope, but it’s all blank, formless, unshaped—what do we do now? Where do we go? What step should we take? —Might I suggest, and like I said, could be a silly notion, but hear me out: what we do, see, is decide, write down, codify an agreement that no one single, unitary person ever again should have this power to sell us out for a greasy buck: that the power to make such decisions be broken and scattered to differing, competing branches of whatever government we might put in place. Wouldn’t need too many: a couple, maybe three at most. Enough so that one can stop another should it step anywhere near being this far out of line. Needs a snappy name, though. Something like, oh, I don’t know, checks and balances?
(We may however have finally found the BTKWB limit: selling our port security to the highest bidder no matter whom. Jesus fucking Christ.)
Where we are; what we’ve become.
Fuck a bunch of vice president.
By the semi-nutty Stalinist line of discipline coursing through the fever-swamps of our national discourse—
—I hereby command you to stand the fuck up right now and salute the Editors. Present arms!
The loyalty “owed” a President, or any government official, or any policy of the same, by a private citizen, is this much loyalty: zero. Let me say that again: the loyalty I, or you, or anyone “owes” to someone in the government, or to some course of action they favor, is none whatsoever. To think otherwise, Teddy Roosevelt might comment, is “unpatriotic and servile.” Now, this is not to say you can’t give your loyalty to the President or his policies—it’s a free country, and you can do any non-treasonous thing you want with your loyalty—but that’s your decision, and nobody has to live with it but you (and all the people who suffer from the consequences of your stupid choice of loyalties, of course.) Personally, I think the President is a horrible fucking stupid cunt and his policies are for shit. Your results may vary. But if someone tells me that I “owe” it to the President or his crap policy to act like I don’t think that, well, that person can get in the big long line with WPE and the rest of folks who really desperately need to go fuck themselves.
But Democracy gets even worse. The President and the President’s policies owe me loyalty. The President and his policies are supposed to be working for the good of the country and her people. That’s how the loyalty flows. The President is required to act for my (ok, “our”) benefit; if he does not, the betrayal is his, and the sorts of things which you’d like to call “disloyalty” become duty. Does Gore’s speaking out against torture “undermine” the country? That’s a tricky position to hold if you oppose torture. Does it “undermine” the policy? I wish. No, it does this: it reminds the world that however fucked up our government is, it isn’t us, it doesn’t speak for us, and it can never, ever make us forget it. And I do say God Bless America.
So say we all, man. So say we all.
A mighty princess, forged in the heat of housework.
Remember when Belle had a pony? —Well, now she’s had a cow: an all too common and all too necessary cow, that too often sits in the living room with the dam’ elephant:
“Adrock”: Men seem to care less about certain chores. For example, in general, I think they’d rather just let the bathtub get grimy and deal with it than put a little time and elbow grease to clean it up. Is it a matter of priorities? Brain wiring? Societal influences? I don’t know.
Damn, why didn’t anyone ever consider that? Now that I consider this revelatory idea for the first time, I have to think it’s probably because “back in the day”, proto-human females liked to “tidy up” their area of the veldt in order to occupy their copious free time, while the males hunted big game. Makes sense to me! I mean, it’s obviously inconceivable that men in our society could learn that if they just flake out long enough, some woman will clean up their shit, and then they can be all “hey—you wanted to do that!”
It is brilliant, and hereby commended to your attention. —My only contribution is to violate a little copyright: in my ideal universe, we would all have copies of I Hate to Housekeep Book, with the delightfully frazzled Hilary Knight cartoons. (We might keep it next to The I Hate to Cook Book, and the Appendix to same. Our copy is apparently a first edition, ©1962 by Peg Bracken, ©1958 by The Curtis Publishing Company. It’s signed by Ms. Bracken (“Greetings!”) and inscribed: “From Mrs. Whittington, May 11, 1963.” Why, it’s only five years older than me.) —We would keep copies on hand so that when someone said something like, oh,
Wow, here’s a radical concept—men are generally sloppier/messier than woman and are better able to live with mess, women generally like a cleaner house, so it makes sense that women (unfairly) end up doing more cleaning.
I’m not sure how housework got to be elevated to some leftist cause, but it all sounds a bit petty.
well, we could sit them down with a copy and have them read for a spell, and they might could cop a clue or two as to how much of this earth-thing called “cleaning” is due to nurture, is a learned response, is all-too-terribly cultural, is easy enough to pick up for themselves. (I’d especially recommend the chapters entitled “How to Remember and How to Remember to Remember” and “How to be Happy When You’re Miserable.”) Heck, they might even glimmer to some of the reasons why it’s learned the way it’s been learned; might even muse aloud as to as well-meaning as these books are, they’re pretty clear indictments of just how thin and awful the tactic of going along to get along can be; might see just that even though women in this culture and this society have come as far as they have since then, it’s outrageous that Betty Friedan is dead of old age and they’re still in the aggregate expected to cover 70 of the cooking and cleaning at home. —But let’s not hold out too much hope. There’s nothing so self-righteous as a man explaining why he didn’t think to pick up his socks, and I say this as someone who’s a degree or two more slovenly than his Spouse.
The copyright violation? Well, I thought I might give you a taste of the foreword, here, along with a cartoon, and then close with a moral. And it’s not like anyone should care too terribly much about piracy; the dam’ book’s no longer in print.
For a number of long years, through no fault of my own, I have been shin-deep in the business of giving advice on Housewifery. This is a better name for it, I think, than Homemaking, which is rather too pretty, like Nuisance Abatement Officer for Dogcatcher. Housewifery is more honest and more inclusive.
Housewifery isn’t among the Seven Lively Arts, though it can certainly be regarded as the Eighth. It is lively indeed, in the same way sand-hogging is. They both take courage, muscle, and endurance. The main difference between a sand hog and a housewife is that he has a nice clean tunnel later to show for his efforts, and it stays put, while she has it all to do over again the next day. She must simply keep tunneling.
She is faced constantly with mute but persistent supplicants for attention. There are several choices; move it, clean it, shine it, brush it, wash it. Or hide it.
I have been doing all this myself for about twenty years, and I find it hard on the manicure. I’ve found, too, that none of the books about it does me much good. The household experts hand out cures that are worse than the ailment. They expect you to do things that depress you merely to think about, let alone do. They think you’ll actually keep an orderly file of all the washing instructions that come with the family clothes, once you’ve been told to. The efficiently organized expert makes the mistake of assuming that you, too, want to be one.
My own goals are more modest. I only want to make it around the clock, that’s all, and I don’t want to think about it too much, either, because I’m thinking about something else. If you’re a bit nervous in the service anyway, and your mind is on raising the African violet or running an office or painting a picture, reorganizing yourself into an efficient housewife is a giant step you’re not about to take. You want an aspirin, not radical surgery.
So, though I admit hastily and gratefully that many of the things in this book were discovered or invented by experts (even the experts slip up once in a while and recommend something you’d consider doing), just as many of them weren’t.
Indeed, some of the wee nuggets herein are ones that I mined, all by myself.
Take the matter of diapers. I had often heard, from wiser folk than I, that a soft, old, much-laundered diaper makes as nice a dish towel as any girl could want. When my child outgrew the diaper stage, I learned that this was true.
However, as one runs out of babies, one tends to run out of diapers. This happened to me, and for at least three months I was wiping the dishes on anything handy. Then, one day, with the lightning-swift grasp of fundamentals that has long marked my slightest move in the household arts, I realized that you don’t have to have another baby in order to buy more diapers. You just go buy some, that’s all. If you don’t have a wedding ring, let alone a baby, and if this sort of thing bothers you, you can always have the diapers gift-wrapped.
A note here, about language. I suppose it was inevitable that around so old a business as housekeeping—surely the second-oldest profession—a special vocabulary should have evolved.
It has. All the housekeeping experts say “food preparation area” when they mean “kitchen,” and “soiled spots” when they mean “dirty places,” and so forth.
In this book I prefer to call things by their right names, if they will let me. (Sometimes they don’t let you. Once, when I wrote a book about having a baby, I wanted to use the word “pain,” having come to a point in the proceedings where that seemed to be the only word that said what I meant. But they changed it to “discomfort.” These are things the writer can’t do a thing about, and he shouldn’t be blamed for them.)
One more point: the housewifery manuals I have seen pay little attention to certain aspects I consider pertinent; for instance, how to make yourself do things you don’t like to do, and how to remember to do them. Some of these techniques are included here. There are some swift recipes, too, for days when you shouldn’t have got up in the first place but still must go that last long mile and cook dinner. And there are some slightly slower recipes for company. And there is the matter of keeping up a good front—
Indeed, there is a small mountain of miscellany here—and naturally enough, in a book about the most miscellaneous of all miscellaneous businesses. Putting the scraps together was like sorting confetti in a wind tunnel, and you should have seen the ones that blew away. Catch them as they sail past, if you can. And meanwhile, here are the rest, in a book by a nonexpert for nonexperts, with warm good wishes, and best of luck to the African violet.
The moral?
Last night, we wanted a nice quiet evening at home, the Spouse and I, since the past couple of nights I’ve elsewhere or she has, and so we settled down together with some leftover risotto from a couple nights before, since I do the cooking and I didn’t want to cook, though I did stop on the way home to pick up a loaf of ciabatta and a bottle of plonk and another bottle of port, and after we’d supped and sipped and sat back from our empty plates, she said, did you get any chocolate? And I had to say, um, well, no. Hadn’t thought of it.
From which one can only conclude: there in the African veldt, while our male ancestors were out hunting giraffes, our female ancestors were sitting around sweeping and gossping and chewing on cocoa beans, which hardwired their neurochemistry (something to do with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, I think you’ll find) to damn well expect the stuff, and they’ve been nagging us about it ever since.
—cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.
Just checking.
Lemme see if I got this right:
- The editorial page of a newspaper—a community organ—is a perfectly appropriate place to print ill-conceived, unfunny cartoons for pretty much the sole purpose of mocking the faith of some members of that community, and it’s irresponsible to voice even quasi-official disapproval despite the shockingly murderous backlash because, hey, free speech, they should grow up and suck it up and learn to deal;
- However, a memorial service—for a woman whose life has been dedicated to the fight for peace and justice and damn well grabbing the arc of the universe and bending it with her own bare hands—is a staggeringly inappropriate place to say much of anything at all about the fight that was her life, and the very particular strife and injustice yet afflicting her world and her country, because, hey, the president might be embarrassed, and how dare they carry on like that.
Okay then.
—cross-posted to Sisyphus Shrugged.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
James, over at vacua, is looking for a macguffin.
In suspense movies and the thrillers you buy at airport bookshops, the discovery of one single significant piece of evidence—an incriminating letter, a tape recording, a computer disk—suffices to bring down the government. In the real world, the state of the evidence is apparently quite irrelevant. We know perfectly well that the current administration conducts aggressive wars on the basis of fudged intelligence, tortures suspects, taps phones without a warrant in direct violation of black letter law, engages in endless character assassination, buys television personalities, suppresses scientific information from public agencies, helps energy companies rip off states, and winks as its corporate supporters rip off the treasury through sweetheart contracts. Only a tobacco lobbyist could raise doubts about the reality of this pattern of wrongdoing.
Scruggs thinks it’s the other shoe.
Treating as normal people who are dangerously batshit is self-defense. If you pretend not to notice, they pretend too and don’t have to kill you to protect their charade. As always, the people who disturb me most are those who have coddled the charade, but are now getting that sinking, oh my fucking god feeling. They’re anxious for anything that would return us to a world where epistemic relativism isn’t the rule, but they’ve circumscribed their ability to assist that by playing the short term smart game.
Me, I just can’t get over how they’re running a plot that’s right out of (say) your average Xena episode.
FEINSTEIN
Can the president suspend, in secret or otherwise, the application of Section 503 of the National Security Act, which states that no covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media? In other words, can he engage in otherwise illegal propaganda?
GONZALES
Senator, this will probably be my response to all of your questions of these kind of hypotheticals. Questions as to whether or not—can Congress pass a statute that is in tension with the President’s constitutional authority? Those are very, very difficult questions, and for me to answer those questions sort of off the cuff, I think would not be responsible.
FEINSTEIN
You’re lost for words? That’s somewhat outta character, don’t ya think? Bush wanted this war on terror ’cause he thought he could scare you into thinking change would bring anarchy. This man would do anything to remain in power—including lying, murdering, and brutalizing your children.
GONZALES
It’s—it’s all lies! Everything I’ve done was for the sake of the children!
Now’s the bit when Xena and Gabrielle solve everyone’s problems, right? —In that episode, they did it by dancing.
