[Trigger warning for violence.]
So, Iain and I are watching the Bears-Seahawks game yesterday (go Bears!), and we see an ad for the Super Bowl, which will be airing on Fox, including the news that Bill O'Reilly will be interviewing President Obama before the game.
Apparently, this news was first reported on Jan. 6, before the shooting in Tucson and thus before the memorial in which the president called on the nation to engage in more civil rhetoric, but, in light of that event, he needs to cancel the appearance (to which he never should have agreed in the first place).
Bill O'Reilly is one of the most egregious offenders of violent and incendiary rhetoric among public figures today, a professional font of diarrheic invective who disgorges a continual torrent of contemptible rightwing rhetoric peppered with eliminationist language and overt threats. He has has lied about and stalked his critics, said that progressive bloggers should be dealt with "with a hand grenade," said Air America hosts were traitors and should be "put in chains," suggested Al Qaeda should be allowed to blow up San Francisco ("And if Al Qaeda comes [to San Francisco] and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."), engaged in despicable rape apology, used virulently racist anti-immigration rhetoric, said he would have ordered the execution of all the prisoners held at Gitmo, openly discussed killing a sex predator, routinely referred to Dr. George Tiller as a "baby killer," even called him "Dr. Killer" in covering Tiller's murder, and loves using the language of war as a rhetorical device, leading the "War on Christmas" charge and referring to himself as a "Culture Warrior."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The president cannot admonish the nation to be more civil and to discuss issues "with a good dose of humility," and then turn around and grant a hugely important interview to one of the most uncivil, egomaniacal, irresponsible commentators in the nation, thus tacitly legitimizing his aggressive, violence-laced shtick.
Well, he can. But not without looking like an integrity-challenged asshole who doesn't feel obliged to hold himself to the same standards he expects of everyone else.
It's not good enough to just not use violent rhetoric himself; he's got to refuse to endorse its use by other people, too, even if that's not politically expedient.
And let us note with bitter irony that this interview is just yet another foolish exercise in trying to appeal to the part of the population that don't even believe he's a fucking citizen. That he's caving for them is craven (and stupid) beyond measure.
And terribly disappointing.
Dear Mr. President: Please Reconsider
Giffords Update
Representative Gabrielle Giffords is now breathing on her own, and her condition has been upgraded from critical to serious condition.
Only two other survivors of the Tucson shooting remain in the hospital, and both of their conditions have been upgraded to good.
Very good news.
After the shooting, part of Giffords' skull was removed, which is a common strategy to prevent dangerous swelling in patients with traumatic brain injury. Once her brain has had more time to heal, that section of the skull will be replaced, which I imagine is the next big hurdle in her recovery. IIRC, CNN reported this weekend that would happen in the next couple of weeks.
Dr. King's Dream
[Voices singing "We Shall Overcome."]
Intro: At this time, I have the honor to present to you the moral leader of our nation. I have the pleasure to present to you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
[Applause.]
Dr. King: I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Open Thread
Hosted by a rubber duck.
This week's open threads have been hosted by Things That Are Made of Rubber.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Dudley lies on the couch, legs akimbo, while I ask him if he wants to go out, go to the dog park, eat a treat, get scratches, play. He yawns. No interest in doing anything but lying on the couch.
This is, by the way, after he's already been sleeping in that same place for five straight hours, lol.
Quote of the Day
"It's very clear the party wants to do something a little different and maybe a little better."—Current Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, who "has just dropped out of the race to retain his job at the helm of the RNC and endorsed Maria Cino to be the committee's next chair."
I've had my share of poking fun at Michael Steele over the years, and he deserved every last bit of it and then some, but I'm not going to make any jokes today.
I'm only going to say this: Many of Steele's biggest gaffes seemed to be evidence of a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. He's often spoken of being raised by a mother who was a Democrat, and they say you can't go home again, but it's never too late to cross the aisle.
Have lunch with Scottie, is all I'm saying.
In Shit I Couldn't Make Up
[Trigger warning for anti-Semitism.]
In an editorial arguing that "Mrs. Palin is well within her rights to feel persecuted" and defend her use of the phrase "blood libel," the conservative garbage-paper The Washington Times calls efforts to hold her accountable for her reckless use of violent rhetoric "simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers."
Yes. Seriously. A pogrom.
I don't even know what to say anymore.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud distributors of BEAUTIFUL RONALD REAGAN CAKES. Happy Birthday, Mama Shakes!
Recommended Reading:
crunktastic: Meeting My Sister
Cara: "This is a maid." [TW for sexual assault and rape apology.]
Andy: First Gay Couples Married in Canada Celebrate Tenth Anniversary
scatx: On Rising Food Prices and Why They're a Problem
Pam: Chicago's Cardinal Francis George on Marriage [TW for homophobia]
Rana: Scraping By
Leave your links in comments...
And Never the Twain Shall Meet, Part II
[Trigger warning for violence.]
In Part I, I argued that the national abortion debate in the US did not get more civil as much as go away. And it's certainly not because the two sides have declared a detente: Roe is constantly in danger of being rendered an empty statute as anti-choicers strike at its heart in steady degrees on the state level.
As I've written before, anti-choice activists, in conjunction with the GOP, have successfully chipped away at abortion rights on the federal and state levels for two decades, hollowing the right guaranteed by Roe via "partial-birth abortion bans" and "parental consent laws" and state legislatures that refuse to fund clinics offering abortions and local municipalities creating barriers with zoning laws.
A lot of progressives treat legal abortion like an on-off switch and Roe as a magical abortion access password, but it's not remotely that simple. Legal abortion is only worth as much as the number of women who have reasonable and affordable and unencumbered access to it. That number is dwindling: By 2000, less than a third of the incorporated counties in the US had abortion clinics.
That's not just inconvenience—between travel expenses and time off work along, the cost of securing an abortion can become an undue burden.
And instead of the national conversation about abortion access getting louder in the wake of this assault on women's rights, it has gone virtually silent.
Because violent rhetoric is a successful silencing technique.
Especially when it's clearly associated with actual violence and destruction. That makes decent people more reluctant to vehemently defend their position, creates a nagging thought in the back of their minds that they're accountable just for speaking up if they know that speaking up will elicit violent rhetoric in response.
If we're all very quiet, maybe no more doctors will get killed.
The people who use violent rhetoric, and violence, bank on that response. They provoke until Something Bad Happens, and they count on their opponents' decency, which they exploit for maximum gain.
In the void of noise where our volatile national abortion debate used to be, there is the slow but certain erosion of women's bodily autonomy.
And we're admonished to be quiet about that. Just to make sure no one else gets hurt.
Meanwhile, we've got a Democratic president whose greatest legislative accomplishment is also "the most expansive restriction on access to abortion Congress has passed," who considers acceptable company a man who equates abortion with the Holocaust and admonishes anyone who objects that "we can disagree with about being disagreeable," who wants pro-choice women to "find common ground" with people who deny their basic autonomy, and who invents straw-women to play concern troll on abortion.
That's what violent rhetoric seeks to accomplish: Surrender on a national scale, because decent people don't want to inflame irresponsible jackasses who will stop at nothing to win.
The only thing to do is be honest about this reality as loudly as possible.
Not more silence. Less.
Speaking of runaway government spending
Since I'm apparently on the Twin Cities beat, here's a fun story from City Pages, a local weekly:
"The Twin Cities activists who had their homes raided by the FBI last September are starting to learn more about why they're being investigated by a Chicago grand jury in relation to material support of terrorism.
Lawyers for the activists have learned from prosecutors that the feds sent an undercover law enforcement agent to infiltrate the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee in April 2008, just as the group was planning its licensed protests at the Republican National Convention."
"[Agent 'Sullivan'] 'really took an interest,' [Anti-War Committee member Jess] Sundin said. 'It raised some suspicions among other members at first, but after the other undercover agents from the RNC Welcoming Committee came out, and no in our organization did, we figured we didn't have any. Besides, we didn't think we had anything we needed to be secretive about.'
Sullivan began to take on more responsibilities with the organization, chairing meetings, handling the group's bookkeeping, and networking with dozens of other organizations."
Wow. Nice work keeping America safe from America, FBI.
America. :jazz hands:
--
It's a bit off-topic, but LOL @ "Karen Sullivan"'s backstory. She's a lesbian. Who lives in Seward. Who spent time working on activism in Northern Ireland. And likes the Red Sox. It's not that there's anything wrong with at least three of those things; I wouldn't be shocked to hear members of the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee possess any of those traits. It's just: holy. fucking. stereotypes.
And Never the Twain Shall Meet
[Trigger warning for violence and a description of a perineum tear.]
Paul Krugman makes some excellent points in his column "A Tale of Two Moralities," like, for instance:
[T]he truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let's listen to each other more carefully; but what we'll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn't really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it's about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.Yes. Absolutely. Spot-on. It can't be said how truly thrilled I am to see that point made by a widely-read commentator.
And the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences — something that won't happen any time soon — but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.
But I really take issue with his example here:
In a way, politics as a whole now resembles the longstanding politics of abortion — a subject that puts fundamental values at odds, in which each side believes that the other side is morally in the wrong. Almost 38 years have passed since Roe v. Wade, and this dispute is no closer to resolution.Maybe this appears to be true from where Mr. Krugman, a progressive but not a reproductive rights activist, is sitting, but it is, in fact, dangerously wrong.
Yet we have, for the most part, managed to agree on certain ground rules in the abortion controversy: it's acceptable to express your opinion and to criticize the other side, but it's not acceptable either to engage in violence or to encourage others to do so.
The only reason it appears that we have achieved civility in the abortion debate is because the Democrats and other prominent liberals have abdicated their role as public champions of choice, standing by idly as anti-choice activists chip away at Roe on the state level. When, for example, the anti-choice Attorney General for the state of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, circumvented the state's general assembly by issuing a legal opinion that redefined abortion clinics in a way that created significant barriers for small clinics to stay open, neither of the two (male) Democratic Senators from that state even bothered issuing a perfunctory press release.
Abortion opponents hardly need to resort to violent rhetoric when the alleged defenders of choice can't actually be arsed to defend it.
And on the frontlines of the abortion fight, things look very different. When Angie Jackson live-blogged her abortion last year to demystify the process, the response was not universally civil, to put it politely. Clinics get bomb threats, which aren't exactly civil. Women seeking abortions at those clinics frequently need escorts to navigate screaming picketers, who aren't inclined toward civility. I am hardly a full-time reproductive justice advocate, yet my inbox—and, I imagine, the inboxes of most writers and activists who dedicate any time at all to reproductive issues—receives missives that I will also charitably describe as less than civil, not that I don't appreciate pictures of bloody fetuses as much as the next steampunk abortion robot. The murder of Dr. George Tiller was not civil; it was an act of terrorism committed by a terrorist as part of one of the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaigns in America, its co-ordination and orchestration frequently done right out in the open—at meetings, on websites, in email alerts.
And, I know I'm just an exhaustingly tedious feminist hysteric and all, but I actually find the anti-choice position inherently violent, no matter how politely it is stated. If anyone else suggested that I should be forced to submit my body against my will to nine months of potential discomfort and pain, followed by an act that might include the skin and muscle between my vagina and anus being torn open, I don't think we'd mince words about whether they were using violent rhetoric. But because we can couch it in the bullshit terminology of "a pro-life position," that's supposed to be evidence of civility.
Krugman might well note that he did stipulate it is only "for the most part" that the abortion debate is free from violent rhetoric. But I fear that's only true because we've largely ceased to have that debate in public square on a national scale. The Democrats have left it to the choice orgs and activists, and the Republicans have left it to the anti-abortion extremists.
It's the Democrats' dereliction of duty, and the mendacious nature of the debate which masks its inherent violence, that enables the Republicans to appear civil about abortion. I wouldn't exactly hold that up as a model for achieving better public discourse.
My neighbor is kinda a bigot
[Trigger warning for homophobia]
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has written a book.
That's the joke.
Okay, not really. Presidential hopeful (also not the joke) Pawlenty was on right-wing [TW] talk radio to promote, well, Tim Pawlenty. It turns out he hates gay people. Still.
"I have been a public and repeat supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell. There's a lot of reasons for that, but if you look at how the combat commanders and the combat units feel about it, the results of those kinds of surveys were different than the ones that were mostly reported in the newspaper and that is something I think we need to pay attention to. But I have been a public supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstating it as well."
:yaaaaaaawn:
Anyhow, since T-Paw has decided to share his autobiography with the world (for $27), I thought it was fair that I opened up, too.
Tim Pawlenty got his start in politics in Eagan, Minnesota. I grew up in Burnsville, the next town over. As much as I don't often admit it, T-Paw and I both have ties to Dakota County, south of the Twin Cities. So we're a lot alike.
When I was a sophomore in high school, some guy started a fire at Edina High School. Edina is known (and widely derided) as one of the suburbs west of Minneapolis where folks in upper management live. The fire singed an entryway, and was quickly extinguished by the sprinkler system.
A few days later the same guy started a fire at Burnsville High School. (Go Blaze!) (Yes, I know.) My high school (part of a district that includes a sliver of Eagan, BTW) was gutted. Several months earlier, the middle-managers* (and middle-manager wannabes) in the district had rejected a referendum that would have installed sprinklers in the school. Too expensive.
Understand that this is Tim Pawlenty's base.
When I was safely in college, I had a summer job doing mosquito control. It was fun-- I still miss parts of it. Very rarely, I got to work in northern Dakota County. This was always scary. Not because I got to walk around thousands of acres of swamp and marsh by myself (:sigh: male privilege), but because having to talk to the public was a constant threat.
When I worked closer to The Cities, people would occasionally chat with me. 'Hey cool, it's some kid in the government poison truck.' Nothing unusual. Mostly folks seemed disappointed that it was over-the-counter poison. We'd joke about the awesome stuff they used to spray back in the day. Trucks full of poison are part of the urban experience, I guess.
People in Burnsville and Eagan didn't necessarily mind the poison. Usually, they'd want to talk about the government. Or some guy would want to tell me about how his "boy" had this great career. This always seemed displaced, because I was 19-years-old and driving a poison truck that had an AM-radio and multiple flashing lights.
Occasionally, there'd be talk of "those people." Usually, it'd be said in hushed tones, with shifty eyes, as if someone was waiting behind the cattails for the right moment to spring forth bearing food laced with actual spices.
As I drifted away from the county, things got weirder and weirder on my return visits. I'd even see people with cowboy hats on rare occasions. Which was odd, because there is exactly one bull in Dakota County (outside of South Saint). I know this, because I've met him.
On each visit, it seemed like people were driving bigger and bigger cars, with bigger and bigger tires. Aside from making it easier to run bicycles off the road, this never struck me as serving much purpose. Most people seemed to drive between their jobs in middle-management, Target, and church, none of which involved driving up mountains.
And the churches! Shortly after my high school was remodeled, a remember a evangelical church moving in on Sundays. The last time I was in Dakota county (it's been a few years; my family has moved to the city, and I do my best to stay there), it seemed like there were megachurches everywhere.
There were billboards for these churches, too. They always showed a guy (the pastor) with his arms around his wife (also a pastor, but not really). Their faces tended to have happy yet vacant stares-- the kind you'd have after having sex, or whatever the fuck evangelical pastors publicly admit to doing for fun.
My church-going experience is largely limited to various Lutheran churches in Minnesota and Wisconsin, you know, the ones Garrison Keillor tells unamusing stories about. But if I'm to believe my tv, these are the kinds of megachurches that have escalators and stadium scoreboards, and lasers and cool shit hanging down from the ceiling so that the pastor can drop some David Blaine style awesomeness while delivering a sermon about why Jesus is the bomb but lots of living people aren't.
My people are, by-and-large, a church revering people. That said, the reverend (Is he a reverend or a pastor? Do I care?) is pretty intimidating. We're much too shy to approach him about the whole government (ewwwww) thing. So we picked the self-important guy who parks cars at the megachurch, and asked if he'd mind taking care of the government for us. And Tim Pawlenty has.
--
At this point, you've probably got one or two issues:
1) What the
2) OMG, I'm from Dakota County, Minnesota (or better yet, you're Tim Pawlenty, who probably spends several hours a day Googling himself and is now really embarrassed), and you can't just start telling a largely irrelevant story invoking crude stereotypes based on your extremely limited experiences. Dakota County's not like that at all! (And in fairness, there are any number of wonderful people back home-- it's just that there are also people who aren't.)
And that's precisely my point. Because I'm some lady having fun on the internet, I'm free to unleash my own bizarre autobiography that I've based on carefully-selected tidbits about my bizarre life in a bizarre place. However, and this is a big one-- my crude stereotypes are not a particularly good basis for national policy.
I strongly suspect I haven't lived as sheltered a life as Tim Pawlenty, so maybe, just maybe, he really is enough of a jackass to not know anything nuanced about queer people (you know, like that we're people). Maybe he's merely being disingenuous. Neither possibility qualifies him to be president.
--
*Not that all middle managers are assholes. I have it on good authority that Liss used to be a middle manager in another lifetime, and is actually still married to one. Mostly I object to people who think middle managerhood entitles them to trucknutz. Nobody is entitled to trucknutz.
"He literally went in the line of fire to save Gabby."
President Barack Obama greets Daniel Hernandez, a intern for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who helped her after she was shot, at a memorial service in Tucson, Ariz., on the University of Arizona campus, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011. [AP Photo]This is a really nice piece on Daniel Hernandez, the intern without whose immediate care and attention Rep. Giffords would not be alive. He seems like a very neat guy.
It seems almost cruel to wish a fate of public office on someone, given the state of US politics, but I hope he continues to be involved in public service and, if he considers running himself someday, I wish for him two things: 1. Success. 2. A staff as dedicated as he is to Congresswoman Giffords.
One observation about the article: The fact that Hernandez is "a large man" is stuck in there so awkwardly, and without purpose. And it's interesting how differently the fact that he is fat is treated from the fact that he is gay and Latino. It's not treated as central to his identity, nor a qualifying attribute of a marginalized population, and there is certainly no effort to note that his courage and quick-thinking and decency and ethics contradict many stereotypes about fat people, even though the article includes this:
Hernandez, who is gay and Hispanic, has become a particular hero for those groups in recent days.Hernandez is a hero to this fat activist, too. For lots of reasons.
... In a time when both of those minorities have been at the center of heated, emotional debates about immigration and bullying, he has served as a model of reason and strength.
Ellen Stewart -- 1919-2011
We have lost a great voice for American theatre.
She was a remarkable force, even more so in a business that is tough enough without being a person of color and a woman. It is safe to say that without Ms. Stewart and La MaMa, the world would have missed out on some incredible talent and voices.Ellen Stewart, the founder, artistic director and de facto producer of La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, a multicultural hive of avant-garde drama and performance art in New York for almost half a century, died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 91. [...]
Ms. Stewart was a dress designer when she started La MaMa in a basement apartment in 1961, a woman entirely without theater experience or even much interest in the theater. But within a few years, and with an indomitable personality, she had become a theater pioneer.
Not only did she introduce unusual new work to the stage, she also helped colonize a new territory for the theater, planting a flag in the name of low-budget experimental productions in the East Village of Manhattan and creating the capital of what became known as Off Off Broadway.
She was a vivid figure, often described as beautiful — an African-American woman whose long hair, frequently worn in cornrows, turned silver in her later years. Her wardrobe was flamboyant, replete with bangles, bracelets and scarves. Her voice was deep, carrying an accent reminiscent of her Louisiana roots.
Few producers could match her energy, perseverance and fortitude. In the decades after World War II her influence on American theater was comparable to that of Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, though the two approached the stage from different wings. Papp straddled the commercial and noncommercial worlds, while Ms. Stewart’s terrain was international and decidedly noncommercial.
Her theater became a remarkable springboard for an impressive roster of promising playwrights, directors and actors who went on to accomplished careers both in mainstream entertainment and in push-the-envelope theater.
Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Dreyfuss, Bette Midler, Diane Lane and Nick Nolte were among the actors who performed at La MaMa in its first two decades. Playwrights like Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Harvey Fierstein, Maria Irene Fornes and Adrienne Rich developed early work there. So did composers like Elizabeth Swados, Philip Glass and Stephen Schwartz.
La MaMa is the kind of theatre that I love; the home of spontaneous and energetic new efforts that can create magic out of an old chair and a rickety table on a bare stage. That is the way theatre really should be done; not the pre-packaged and over-produced thrill rides that pass for Broadway musicals now. There's a lot more meaning and truth in the "wooden O" that Shakespeare spoke of in Henry V or the bare stage of Our Town, and the legacy of these theatres, be it La MaMa in Greenwich Village, the Manhattan Rep (where my play Can't Live Without You was done in a shoebox-sized space over a Duane Reade store on West 42nd) or the basement of a church in Toledo or a vacant shoe store in Minneapolis, is that they are where the new plays, playwrights, and actors are born, grow, and outlast the multi-million-dollar turkeys on Broadway.
And had it not been for La Mama, chances are that playwright Lanford Wilson and director Marshall W. Mason would not have met and formed their collaboration that led to the creation of the Circle Rep Theatre, and I would not have had a topic for my doctoral thesis.
[Note: If there are less flattering things to be said about Ms. Stewart, they have been excluded because I am unaware of them, not as the result of any deliberate intent to whitewash her life. Please feel welcome to comment on the entirety of her work and life in this thread.]
Shameless
House GOP to resume health-care repeal effort, but with more civil tone: "House Republican leaders said Thursday that they will begin their effort to repeal the new health-care law next week, a return to normal legislative business after the shootings in Arizona suspended activity on Capitol Hill."
You know what every last Democrat in Congress needs to start shouting in front of every camera and into every microphone they can find...? That Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is only alive today because she had access to some of the best healthcare on the planet, which is paid for by the taxpayers of this nation, who deserve the same as she's got.
And let the Republicans contend with THAT.
The End.
