Nacho Marriage

I have a vision of hell, and in it, I am one of the "single ladies" being addressed by Beyonce in her new video:

Yes, the dancing is cool. And yes she’s very pretty. I mean, except for the creepy baby-sized teeth. And the metal hand-robot-jewelry-thing. Is Beyonce Michael Jackson now, btw? Because I heard she has a whole different personality, the Tyra Banksian-named Sasha Fierce, and that she assumes that personality on stage in order to feel free to, oh, I don’t know, bust a more awesome dance move than her normal personality would allow? Shit, I don’t know. You tell me.

Which is not unlike that alter ego Garth Brooks had when he was so popular that he thought he could fling poo in a brown wig and the public would still think he was a genius. Wow, you know, come to think of it, Garth Brooks may have been the first person ever to lose money by underestimating the intelligence of country music fans.

But, so anyway. Look. I’m not one of those feminists who’s constantly taking the culture’s temperature and pronouncing it sicker than it’s ever been, but…If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it…????

Really? Ladies, is this what we’re doing now, really?

I mean, well…fuck it, really?

First off, I got to say that as a two-time loser, I’m the last one who should sit in judgment of the institution of marriage. I take that back. I’m the second to last one. The last one, I’m pretty sure, has got a title that ends in “of Latter Day Saints.”

I suck at marriage. But you know what? I’m never going to do it again. I love Spooney, and I hope we’re still hanging out when the seas rise and engulf us all in about twelve years, but I’m not going to marry him. Because I suck at it. And it hurts to do something so important and to fail at it. It hurts a lot. And it’s hard to admit that I am really not good at something that I wanted so badly to be good at, but better to face the facts than to continue to delude myself, right? Because isn’t that worse?

Marriage isn’t for everyone. I admire people that do it well, don’t get me wrong. Let nothing in this post even begin to suggest that I don’t admire the hell out of you well-married people. Hell, I tried to BE you people. Twice.

And I swear, I will gladly live and die according to my own good or atrocious judgment. I swear to that. Because I just don’t compromise well. I balk. I recoil. It doesn’t fit. DO NOT WANT. And yes, I’m sure someday I will wonder if my stubborn independence was really worth it. But now, when I think about how I can buy all the shoes and books and music I want, and stay up until 4 a.m. smoking and drinking gin whilst burning through successive DVDs of my complete box set of Sex and the City - and have only to answer to myself, I marvel that I ever wanted it any other way.

You know what’s a good thing? A good thing, is that I live in a country that doesn’t force me to get married. And do that whole “obey” thing. Because, again, I love you Spooney, but I would rather stick needles in my eyes than obey you. Unless, you know, I was in the market for an amp, and then I have to admit that I would pretty much do whatever you told me.

You know what’s another good thing? That I don’t live in Afghanistan, where girls on their way to school are blinded with acid thrown by men who have fashioned themselves a god who apparently approves of such things. In such a world, a little forced marriage seems like a walk in the park. Well, a walk in the park whilst covered from head to toe in a black fabric jail. Whee.

And yet, it’s possible to be an American and still be unlucky in birth. There’s a young woman who works at my office-adjacent Starbucks who wears a head scarf, and I mean the religious kind of head scarf with the wee opening for her face, not the health-department kind of head scarf, and every time I see her, I thank my lucky fucking stars that I was not raised in a philosophy so warped that I am forced to feel pride for honoring a belief that declares even the hairs covering my head to be proof of the sins of my sex made manifest.

And I know I’ve been harping on this for a while, but what does it say about the Church of LDS that since Marie Osmond went off Dancing with the Stars, the most famous Mormon woman in the world is the one who took the worst Mexican restaurant in LA, the one with the awful food and the margaritas made with Everclear and Pixy Stix, and turned it into the most reviled Mexican restaurant in the history of, like, ever?

But see, all along, I believed that Mormons are really good at marriage, you know, or at least really efficient at it, but in fact now that I’ve considered it, I don’t really think they are.

When do most Mormon men get married? After they come back from their mission. Yes, approximately 80-90% of 19-year-old Mormon men go off, two by two, to strange and foreign lands for two year “missions.” These young men sleep, eat, pedal their little bikes and preach the LDS gospel to whoever will listen, day in and day out, with only each other to rely upon for two long years. Think about what that life must be like, especially in places like China, and in the more remote areas of Africa and the Middle East. During that time, as they pass the lonely nights in their barren rooms, a certain portion of them, being young men, must, you know, seek the comfort of one another. C’mon, it’s a statistical inevitability. And as they seek that comfort, they must feel as well the pain of knowing that that which brings them their only solace is also that which, if known, would bring down upon them the most passionate rebuke from that world to which they must someday ultimately return.

And then when they do return, they are married off – and quickly! Good-bye to the intimacy and camaraderie of their little mission for two, and hello to some teenage, conservatively-dressed bit of inexperienced virgin girl flesh. Go forth and plow yon fertile field, young man. Soon there will be little Mormons to support!

Christ, is it any wonder that Mormons revile homosexuality? Hello, it’s called PROJECTION!

Okay, I know that sometimes I can get a bit mean, but all I really want is for everyone, everywhere, to be able to live how they want. With remembering that bit about not hurting anyone else, you know. That’s it. And so even though I think, for example, that it’s ridiculous that Beyonce can put on a measly ten pounds and be pronounced fit to portray the lusciously zaftig Etta James, I wish her well, I do. I wonder why the scores of wonderful black actresses who actually resemble Ms. James physically were not cast, but you know, I’m willing to let it go. And if it makes Beyonce feel better to sing that damn Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) song, and to try to turn a symbol of acquiescence into a spunky anthem of defining your worth according to your highest bidder, well, then more power to her. I hope she’s doing okay, especially since she’s married to that Jay-Z, who always seems to be eyeing her as if she’s a nice piece of jewelry that he almost owns. If you think about it, probably one quarter of the world would gladly give up their own lives to step into hers, and yet, if Beyonce has to invent an alter ego to feel really free, what hope do the rest of us have?

Lest ye be judged

It was 1992, and I was a waitress in Chicago. Bill Clinton was campaigning for president, and finally, people like me were beginning to feel like our long national Reaganomic nightmare might soon be over. Most of the people I worked with were excited about the idea of giving Bush the Elder the heave-ho, after all, waiters are, by and large, very sensitive to the injustices of the world. We’re like the princess and the pea, only the pea is some douchebag in an Armani suit who snaps his fingers at us and leaves 8%.

One woman I worked with, however, missed no opportunities to rail against the politics of helping those less fortunate. She grew up in Hawaii, and had only recently moved to the city of the big shoulders. She wasn’t native Hawaiian, she was Hawaiian sort of like Bette Midler is Hawaiian. And she was a tiny thing, maybe 4’10’’, or 4’11”? I’m 5’9”, so it’s sometimes hard for me to gauge the height of people who don’t clear my bra straps. The restaurant where I worked was known for its outdoor patio, and there was a homeless couple who would stand on the sidewalk on the other side of our prep station and beg for bread. We called them George and Martha, since they were prone to very nasty public spats about which one of them should be getting up off their ass and procuring them some alcohol. Still, the waiters developed an affection for them, and once a night, one of us would toss them a bag with a small loaf of bread and a few pats of butter.

The managers were well aware that we did this, and offered no objections. Even if they weren’t crazy about giving away product, they realized that the sooner you got rid of the couple, the sooner you got rid of their smell – a significant factor when trying to encourage the appetites of customers. Also, in those days, in the wake of trickle-down, the streets of Chicago were swarming with homeless people. They were everywhere. Everywhere. We considered ourselves lucky to have only taken on two of them.

But the little chick from Hawaii would never give them bread. She would yell at them to leave, which would trigger George, and especially Martha, whom I’m pretty sure suffered from Tourette, to yell back, causing huge scenes and once, necessitating the presence of the Chicago PD to move them along. You’d think that after causing a completely unnecessary ruckus like that, little Hawaii would’ve learned her lesson, but she didn’t. She continued to be surly to our adopted homeless.

One day, I came in for my lunch shift and found the guys in the kitchen talking excitedly in Spanish and laughing. I asked them what was going on, and they told me that the Hawaiian chick had come in through the back gate, and had surprised George in the rear courtyard stealing a cantaloupe from the crates of produce that had just been delivered. They told me that she grabbed the cantaloupe and tried to wrestle it away from him. He fought just as hard to hang on to his stolen booty, and Hawaii started screaming, which caused the guys in the kitchen to come running out the back door, thus scaring George away. Needless to say, the kitchen guys thought the whole incident nothing short of hysterical.

Later, at the waiter meeting, the manager told us that we should never confront a thief in that manner. That it was dangerous. Ms. Hawaii was unrepentant, however, and announced after the manager had left that she would do it again if the opportunity presented itself.

“Why do you care?” I said to her, “It’s not your cantaloupe.”

“He was stealing,” she replied, “I’m not going to stand by and let someone steal.”

“He’s homeless. He was stealing food. He’s hungry.”

“I don’t care, he should get a job then.”

“Are you serious? He’s sixty years old, at least. He’s got half his teeth. He’s covered in sores. He’s addicted to alcohol. He’s barely coherent. What kind of job should he get?”

“90% of homeless people are homeless because they want to be.”

“What? Where’d you hear that? Convenient Theories for Republicans Weekly?

That made her mad.

“People choose to be homeless. They don’t have to be.”

I had just read an article in the Trib about Chicago’s homeless, so I knew she was full of shit. “Sixty per cent of the homeless on the streets of Chicago right now are from downstate, and are here to find work because the farm economy is collapsing. Many of these people are trying to make it off the streets. Many of them are on the streets because they’re mentally ill and cannot get treatment.”

“Yeah, well, most of them just don’t want to work. They’re lazy.”

“Really? Tell me, do you have any original ideas about this issue at all? Or are they all your daddy’s?”

I remember she turned beet red and stomped off. Even though I felt like I was picking on someone half my size, I didn’t feel bad about it at all. Look, I don’t care if someone’s a conservative, as long as they can speak intelligently about why they feel that way. And if someone is old enough to be out of college and in the working world, they are old enough to be able to see that world for themselves and formulate their own opinions, instead of spewing whatever pre-fab hate their parents had filled them with before setting them loose on the rest of us.

After that day, whenever I worked with Ms. Hawaii in the indoor dining room, I would arrive for my shift early and move all our supplies to the very highest shelves in the station. So every time she would need a creamer, or a sugar ramekin, or tea, or extra napkins, or bread plates, or coffee, she would have to ask me for it. I would walk into the station, and she would have this fake-friendly smile plastered on her face, and she would ask me to please get something down from the high shelf for her.

And here’s the best part: I was never anything but completely accommodating and gracious about helping her out. Never was there one hint of gloating nor any bitching about being asked so many times during my shift to assist her. I was so nice to her, I don’t think she ever had any idea that I was also her tormentor. I was positively charitable.

Yeah, it was fun, but it accomplished nothing, save for inflating my already healthy sense of self-satisfaction. Because as unpleasant as it was for her to have to constantly ask for help from someone whom she knew full-on loathed her, I don’t think it made her a more humble or compassionate person.

I don’t know. I could be wrong.

I thought about the Hawaiian chick today, as I heard one of the owners of LA hangout El Coyote plead with gay activists not to boycott her restaurant. I don't know, it was something about the way she spoke, like she could not even believe that her tidy little world might not be exactly as she saw it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

See, this woman from El Coyote had given money to Prop 8. She had done it because she’s a Mormon, and her church asked her to give money, and the way she expressed it, was what the church asks, you do. Whether that answer is honest, or merely self-serving, I have no idea. Apparently, she didn’t know her donation would be made public. In any case, she was found out, and now, now that she’s been found out, now she’s sorry about it. Now she is pleading with her gay clientele to excuse her and to continue to come to her restaurant and give her their hard-earned dollars, even though she has given her hard-earned dollars to the stripping of their rights.

She wants forgiveness. She wants it badly, although not badly enough to promise a contribution to the anti-8 movement. Because, again, her church would not approve. But above all, she doesn’t understand what she did wrong. She doesn’t understand why everyone is looking at her that way. All she did was what she was told to do. She says she loves the gay people who are her employees and her clientele. And she says she is following her faith when she helped to take rights away from those same people. What’s the problem?

She doesn’t understand what the problem is.

And she’s not alone. More and more people on the list of donors are finding themselves and the companies they work for being scrutinized due to their support of 8. Boycotts have been threatened against their businesses by gay people. They have been called bigots by gay people. It seems that gay people think themselves fit to stand in judgment of them.

Can I hear a “how dare they,” anyone?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so.

Time to rend

Mormon temples and other church property in California and in Utah have been vandalized as part of the backlash against the passage of Prop 8 in California.

I would like to say to my readers that I don’t think that it’s appropriate to vandalize churches, and that not all Mormons agree with the actions of their church, and there is nothing to be gained by attempting to terrorize anyone. And I would like to say to those Mormons that are upset about these recent events –

How’s it feel?

How’s it fucking feel?

Do you feel sad? Misunderstood? Do you feel like people are against you for no good reason? Do you feel like people hate you, even though they don’t know you?

How’s it feel?

The LDS church has released a statement (emphasis mine) saying: "No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information."

Oh, now they tell us! Prior to this, they seemed quite comfortable indeed with vilification and erroneous information. In fact, the LDS pro-8 website still contains the videos wherein they say that gay marriage will endanger freedom of speech!

What, huh?

Yeah, I’m not kidding. They say gay marriage will endanger freedom of speech and freedom of religion. They say that parents won’t be able to teach their own values to their kids anymore. They say that the passage will not take any existing rights away from gay couples, and, to top it off, they proclaim that the issue of the happiness of gay people is a “diversion.”

But I’m glad they’re so concerned now about erroneous information. Douchebags.

In their statement, the LDS also said that we should "act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other."

To which I say: you first.

CA? WTF?!

Readers, words really can’t express my frustration over the passage of Proposition 8 in California.

For those of you that have been trapped in a closet somewhere, Prop 8 is the biggest, hatingest, vilest prop ever in the state of California, and that’s saying a lot. Because we’ve had some crazy-ass props, y’all.

Unfortunately, the high voter turnout for Barack Obama in African-American communities may have contributed to the success of Prop 8, since approximately 70% of black voters favored 8, compared to roughly 50% in other demographics.

Yeah, I know. Nothing like the achievement of a civil rights milestone to inspire people to…deny others their civil rights. It’s so full-on ironic that even Alanis Morissette couldn’t miss it.

I am completely stumped as to why, in a town full of the most creative, savvy, politically active, and – hello! – richest gay people on the face of the earth, why did the “Yes on 8” side so completely outspend, outcreate and outexecute us? What the fuck happened, people? Was the election too close to Halloween? Were you distracted? Did the acquisition of that snowmachine for your First Dude costume take up way more time than you thought it would? Why did I see 15 thousand “Yes” commercials on television, but never this commercial, which is fucking brilliant and makes one of the most politically marketable arguments there is for the “No” side, which is, if you don’t care about the rights of gay people, and many douchebags don’t, then perhaps you care that the Mormon church, which financed and organized the “Yes” campaign, is now dictating policy to us!

Dude, we’re Califuckinfornia! We don’t let the squares tell us what to do! We should be kicking their ass, see, because California is like Dee Snider, and the Mormons are like that uptight asshole in the video who gets blown out the window by our awesomeness.

Fucking Mormons. You know, they do have a whole state of their own to fuck up and hate people in, why do they have to come here and start this shit with us? Well, apparently, their big motivation for backing the measure was to earn street cred from the other Jesus freaks, so that the evangelicals and Catholics will see how effective they are at oppressing gays, and stop ostracizing Mormons from their gay hating parties.

I tried to think of some way to get revenge on them, but all I could think of was for the HBO series “Big Love” to continue to present Bill Paxton as the ultimate expression of Mormon manhood. I mean, that’s pretty humiliating, right?

Okay, I’ve heard so many stupifyingly nonsensical arguments from the “Yes” side that my brain has a tendency to lock and freeze whenever I get around this topic. I mean, what do you say to someone who keeps insisting that they have nothing against gay people, and of course some of their best friends blah blah blah, and yet they insist that it’s God’s will that gay people do not deserve the rights that they themselves possess? What do you say when that same person is black, or Latina? Look, you cannot respect gays and also disenfranchise them. You just can’t. How exactly do you convey that their position is perhaps the most idiotic one taken in the entire history of idiotic positions?

The commercials for Prop 8 all entreated the voters to “restore” traditional marriage.

Restore? Restore? Is it gone? Did it go away? If you believe it did, perhaps you should look inside your own heart, and your own head, and leave the rest of us alone. The sanctity of your marriage, whatever the fuck that means, is determined by you and your spouse, and gay people got fuck all to do with it.

Not only that, but the biblical support for a ban on gay rights is scant and vague, and if you’ve ever bothered to look it up, you know what I’m saying is true. If anything, the Bible recommends treating others as you would have yourself treated, and it says so pretty plainly, so don’t come to me with your “I’m a Christian!” arguments, because they’re horseshit, and we both know it. If the thought of gays marrying invokes revulsion in you, examine yourself. Disgust of gays, and fear of gays and hatred of gays is a weakness. It is a weakness within you. It is self-delusion. It is a failure of character, and I pity anyone who suffers from it, because it cripples you, it makes you mean and small and not worthy of the respect of your fellow humans, let alone the love of that God that you pretend to care so much about.

With hope, good morning.

In the end, it fell easily into our laps like leaves falling off a changing tree.

Of course, I can say it all seemed so easy because I wasn’t out there in a swing state knocking on doors and telling people to get their asses to the polls. I appreciate that Obama’s campaign was probably one of the most difficult political accomplishments since Henry VIII basically overnight changed everyone in England from Catholic to Church of Hot New Wives. But once the returns began to roll in, it became quickly apparent that this was not 2000, nor 2004. There were too many of us, and we could not be denied.

So what’s the difference? Why so comparatively easy this time?

How about this: the difference was the guy.

As much as I love Al Gore, and still have hot sex dreams about him wherein he shows me a PowerPoint presentation about all the different ways he’d like to raise my core temperature, and as much as we all now of course realize that he would’ve made a kick-ass president, Al didn’t inspire voters to stand in line for 8 hours at the polls. Oh no, not American voters. Yes, we want policies that we can believe in, but we also want to be on our couches by 6 p.m. with a beer in our hand.

And Kerry – well…Christ. Who wasn’t holding their nose on that one? The guy would have made a serviceable president, and it goes without saying that he was about 25 gazillion times more capable than the alternative, but still. You’d think the guy could’ve managed to go one day in his campaign without acting like an asshole. And his wife! She made Cindy McCain look like Mother fucking Theresa.

Last night, one of pundits said something that made me realize that part of the reason I ended up loving Obama was that he was ice cold, baby. Nothing phased him. McCain would lie to his face, and he would smile and raise his hand to the moderator to refute. And as much as people praised his gift of elevated oratory, Obama’s victory was a victory of logic over emotional appeal, of Spock over Kirk, as we all collectively realized that the fat, bald, old warrior playboy so wasn’t capable of saving us anymore.

So the Obama campaign got it right. They let Obama be Obama, and trust that we would eventually all come along for the ride. They didn’t goad him into phony expressions of emotion like Hillary’s fakey laughter and Gore’s exaggerated eye-rolling. The McCampaign can not claim the same kind of foresight, as they sought desperately to reinvent their candidates at least once a week. After experiencing one of the biggest “OH SHIT” moments in the history of presidential races, the McCain camp sought at first to hide Palin from a skeptical press, and, when that didn’t work, and after numerous calls from within their own party to “free Sarah Palin,” they finally unleashed her onto a mostly receptive public. However, that public soon discovered that, contrary to how she had been described to us by the toady scribes on the right, Palin was not curious, not intelligent, not witty, and did not possess a talent for campaigning.

What she could do, was honk out pre-fab lines in a voice that would embarrass the average cartoon character, wink, and look good in expensive clothes. She was nothing less than an base insult to serious female public servants everywhere. In short order, most Americans went from expecting to be delighted & charmed by this new breed of VP pick, to wondering why she would apparently eat a big hot steaming bowl of ignorance for breakfast each and every morning. Believe me, nothing about this campaign gives me greater pleasure than the thought of her packing up her suitcase full of ambition and disappearing into the Alaskan wilderness for the next four years, and hopefully forever. And if she’s ever lost in that wilderness, I sorely hope that the wildlife of her home state shows the same compassion and mercy to her that she has shown to them.

And of course, I have to give big ups to BushCo. Without the complete pillaging of the American economy, it would’ve been difficult for this flawed nation of ours to imagine electing the black dude with the scary name.

Last night, when it became apparent that the imminent closing of the polls on the West Coast would bring a momentous announcement from the networks, I quietly pulled a bottle of Moët from the liquor cabinet and slid it into the freezer to chill. I am, as I have said before, a big believer in the rule of not mentioning a no-hitter to a pitcher, but I thought that if Spooney and my friends didn’t notice me, then the gods of jinx would spare me from their wrath. The champagne had barely chilled at all when I popped the cork on the final word of McCain’s quite gracious concession speech, but no one seemed to care. After all the times I have lamented, over the past eight years, our dismal tendency to repeat and repeat and repeat the same sad mistakes of governance, with the same pitiable and often deadly results, I suddenly felt the weight of inevitability lift from my shoulders. Yes, I thought, as I cast my glad eyes upon the faces of my beyond joyous friends, history will repeat itself. Except when you show courage, and then it can be writ anew.

Fight Club

Grinning baboon for the right William Kristol – you know, the one who’s made a career out of being wrong about Iraq, is promising that if Obama wins, conservatives “will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism.” Also that “being conservative means never being too surprised by disappointment.”

Oh, really?

That’s funny because I remember a time, not so long ago, when Clinton beat Bush the elder and became the first Democratic president since one-timer Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976.

And how did conservatives react?

I’m searching for the words to describe their reaction, and what I’m NOT coming up with is “resolute stoicism” or “cheerful fatalism.” My memory of their reaction is more along the lines of “hysterical hand-wringing” and “dire predictions of economic collapse,” followed shortly thereafter by “declarations of all-out war against Democrats” and “secret financing of scandal-mongers,” and, my personal favorite, “hypocritical moralizing.”

Does no one remember that Clinton was bullied by a press apparently bullied by faxes from the RNC to force through a campaign promise in the first, like, nanosecond of his administration, and the result was the ridiculously ill-advised “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of military service?

Does no one remember that the press was so goaded by the relentless harping of the sore losers of the Republican Party that they declared Clinton’s administration a complete failure before he even took the oath of office? The press so had it in for the Clintons that it actually became a barb inflicted at the media to refer to the “failed Clinton administration” by the spring of 1993.

So, if Obama wins, I wouldn’t exactly prepare myself for an onslaught of cheerful Republican fatalism. They will hit him, and hit him hard. The media, besieged by RNC talking points and the constant prevaricating from the right about how liberal the press is, will decide that they will lose credibility if they are not hyper-critical of Obama’s every move.

I could be wrong. Maybe this time, the press won’t bite. But what I will guarantee is that the Republicans will try to make it happen.

Kristol may find it amusing that “liberals” are so anxious about the imminent election. He thinks it’s cute to pretend to sooth us by pointing out the advantages of a McCain administration. But you know what? Fuck Bill Kristol.

He never had a president from his party so relentlessly hounded by trumped-up trivialities: Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate (seriously, Travelgate was a scandal, y’all), and then the stupendous clusterfuck that was the Ken Starr investigation.

He never had an election stolen from him by a panel dominated by trollop-headed party hacks pretending to be serious jurists.

He never lost an election because state-sanctioned criminals were allowed to deny his party members their civil rights with impunity.

So fuck him and his fake largess. To be a Democrat these days is to constantly fight for every square inch of ground. To be a Democrat is to be ever vigilant against the eroding of our rights by the toadies of the haters. We must constantly remind the press that we are not just the other side, we are the right side. It is right to extend civil liberties to all Americans. It is right to spend our money on health care, instead of arms deals. It is right to stop the erosion of our economy into a feudal system of CEO lords and working class serfs. We are not just the other side. We are the right side. No matter who wins. No matter who fucking wins.

His American century

Look, I'm not nearly up to the task of eulogizing Studs Terkel. I will only say that as someone who tries hard to keep the issues of labor and civil rights close to my heart, what better example and hero is there to emulate than Studs?

When I worked at the now-defunct Jerome's restaurant on Clark street in Chicago, I used to wait on him from time to time, mostly when he would have lunch with people I assumed to be involved with publishing. You know, you can tell a lot about someone by how they treat the wait staff. Here's how Studs treated me when I waited on him:

- When I approached his table, Studs would immediate halt his conversation and give me his full attention. I could've counted on one hand the number of customers who did likewise in my waiting career.

- He always said "please" and "thank you." Always.

- He talked to me like I was a person, working a job, not like I was his servant.

- He tipped big. Like 30%. If his companion was paying the bill, they would tip big also, no doubt due to his influence.

These days, so many politicians, activists and advocates talk the talk, but don't walk the walk, that it's hard to remember what the walk even looks like anymore.

Studs, who wore something red every day to remind him of the rights of workers, and who took the bus even though he could've taken a cab, and who made the oral history of the People into an art form, he walked it. And more than that, he was funny, and curious, and talked almost as well and as much as he listened. He was an old man busting with life. When I am old, I hope, I really do, to enjoy myself just one tenth as much as he clearly did.

And Obama's only down 1 point in Indiana

In this bizzarro election season, I have come to expect the tax cuts to be called socialist, the unethical to be called ethical, Christians to worship a golden calf, and some guy who's neither a Joe nor a plumber to be known as Joe the Plumber.

What I didn't expect, is for The Economist to endorse Obama. Wowza:

Most of the hoopla about him has been about what he is, rather than what he would do. His identity is not as irrelevant as it sounds. Merely by becoming president, he would dispel many of the myths built up about America: it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate in the Islamic world to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein; and far harder for autocrats around the world to claim that American democracy is a sham. America’s allies would rally to him: the global electoral college on our website shows a landslide in his favour. At home he would salve, if not close, the ugly racial wound left by America’s history and lessen the tendency of American blacks to blame all their problems on racism...

Political fire, far from rattling Mr Obama, seems to bring out the best in him: the furore about his (admittedly ghastly) preacher prompted one of the most thoughtful speeches of the campaign. On the financial crisis his performance has been as assured as Mr McCain’s has been febrile. He seems a quick learner and has built up an impressive team of advisers, drawing in seasoned hands like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Of course, Mr Obama will make mistakes; but this is a man who listens, learns and manages well.

That's it, folks. Next year the Cubs are definitely winning the World Series.

The Devil wears nada

As a special Halloween treat for his fans, god among men Bruce Springsteen has recorded "A Night with the Jersey Devil," an electric blues tribute to the mythical monster that supposedly haunts the woods of southern New Jersey.

As a special Halloween treat for me, the video features footage of the Boss, soaking wet and singing "kiss me baby, 'til it hurts."



Mmmm. Feels like Christmas, suddenly.

Victory with honor

I’m going to resist talking about former feminist turned idiot Palin zombie Elaine Lafferty, and instead bring up what not enough people seem to be acknowledging: that McCain’s policy on Iraq is not only wrong-headed and dangerous, but it’s also kind of impossible.

The U.N. resolution that governs the operations of U.S. forces in Iraq is set to expire at the end of the year. Iraq has said it will not seek a renewal.

We have negotiated with the Iraqi government an agreement to basically replace that resolution. The agreement will define the terms under which we operate there.

Stay with me. It gets slightly less boring.

BushCo has been so anxious to leave office with an agreement in place, that they have kinda sorta agreed to everything Bush said he would never agree to, mainly that U.S. forces would pull out of cities and back to bases by June of ‘09, and would be out of the country by the end of 2011.

Yes, it’s a timeline for withdrawal, y’all!

And it smells remarkable similar to the timeline that Obama has proposed.

The fuck?

How many times did Bush pinkie swear to us that he would never agree to a timeline? I think the reasoning was if there was a timeline, then the terrorists could just hide behind some trees until we left. Never mind that if that was their goal, to survive the occupation, then they could’ve simply taken up the tree-hiding strategy at any point in our five-and-a-half-year clusterfuck.

Does anyone ever get the feeling that in spite of their preoccupation with terrorists, BushCo doesn’t really understand what they do? The terrorists in Iraq want to kill U.S. forces. Whenever we say we’re going to leave, they’ll keep trying to kill us until that day comes. They’re not going to hide out until the game is over, and then pop up and claim victory like that douche I played paintball with that one time.

In other words, a terrorist hiding out until the enemies leave isn’t really, strictly speaking, much of a terrorist.

But it doesn’t really matter that BushCo caved to their every demand like some divorced dad at Chuck E. Cheese. Because the Iraqi government sent the agreement to their parliament, who must approve it for it to become law, and the parliament came back with a big fat DENY.

Yeah, they said no. They want more concessions.

And they’ll probably get them, because the U.S. is all tick-tock on the 12/31/08 deadline, and we SURE AS FUCK do not want to be caught playing security guard in a country with no little piece of paper with some rules written on it to back our ass up on the world stage.

So, okay, I’m not going to keep going on about that whole mess, but do you understand now that when McCain says that he is going to let conditions on the ground dictate our withdrawal from Iraq, that he might as propose that each American be given a $2500 tax rebate for EVERY MONKEY THAT FLIES OUT OF THEIR ASS? What he’s proposing is impossible! I mean, that whole “conditions on the ground” thing is so 3 years ago. Hello! It’s 2008! We’re negotiating an agreement to bug the fuck out! The Iraqis are going to want to see, oh, SOME FUCKING DATES in the goddamn thing!

What’s the matter, Mr. Maverick? Is Lieberman not whispering sweet foreign policy nothings in your ear anymore? Is that why your grasp of the war in Iraq is starting to sound about as deep as Palin’s grasp of the Mesozoic Era? Look, Gramps, I understand that you feel humiliated about the whole Vietnam debacle. This is not that. Do you understand me? This is not that. You’re having a flashback or something. Plus, you’re doing that old man thing where you can’t seem to keep your tongue in your mouth anymore. You’re done, Gramps, you’re done. Bush stole your dreams in 2000. Join the fucking club, already.

Palin says Obama palling around with terriers

I’m sorry, but it’s so hard to take this shit seriously – except in how it could cause idiots absent the sense god gave a chicken to vote for McCain.

But you know what, readers? It doesn’t sway anyone. It only gives people an excuse to do what they were going to do anyway. Serious voters don’t think Obama’s a socialist, because serious voters know how the freakin tax system works (hint: it redistributes wealth). They don’t think Obama’s secretly a terrorist, or hiding a “muslin” agenda. But they might use those stories to rationalize voting against him.

Why would they have to rationalize their decision? Why not just simply state their motivations?

Good question.

Enter Joe the Plumber. Yeah, I know, we’re all sick of hearing about the guy. But stay with me, because I so know that guy. I grew up with that guy. I got a couple of uncles who are that guy.

The guy’s a racist. And he sees Mr. Hotshot Obama shaking hands with voters, acting like he’s so much better than everyone else, and Joe decides he’s gonna take that boy down a peg or two. So he makes up a scenario that he’s gonna use to try and make Mr. Smartypants looks stupid in front of the cameras. He decides to say that he’s a plumber – which he’s technically not. And that he’s intending to buy the company that he currently works for – which he is not even close to being able to do. And that the company that he would then own would make more than a quarter of a million dollars a year – which it does not currently make. And that he would then have his taxes raised by Obama’s tax plan – for an income he doesn’t have owning something he doesn’t own doing something he doesn’t do.

I know, he’s got McCain campaign centerpiece written all over him!

Sweet fucking Jesus, I know that guy. They spin impossible webs of justification rather than face the realities of their own lives. Hey, you, Joe the Plumber, yeah, you - the guy who doesn’t want to pay his taxes! You do not make 250k. Obama will cut your taxes! Hear me? He will cut your taxes! Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t it?

So why the attempted take-down on Obama, then? Why the façade, the fairy tale, the big act?

Good question.

I don’t believe in the Bradley effect, but I believe that the Republicans profit from us believing in it. They want to sell the scenario wherein Obama’s lead evaporates for reasons other than their own manipulations. They want us to believe that there are legions of racists out there that are lying about voting for Obama because they don’t want people to know they’re racists. Because then when Democrats are wiped from voting rolls, which they have been, and when Democratic precincts are given defective machines and not enough personnel, which they have been, and when Democrats are kept from voting by election day mischief, the Republicans can point and say see? Bradley effect. Too bad those darn racists led y’all to believe you could win.

But let me tell you, readers, some of my best friends are bigots, and bigots do not say they are going to vote for Obama and then vote for McCain. Here’s what they will do:

Say they’re going to vote for McCain and then not vote.

Say they’re going to vote for McCain but lie about why.

Say they’re going to vote for McCain but then secretly vote for Obama because they think he’ll cut their taxes.

What bigots don’t do, is SAY THEY’RE VOTING FOR A BLACK GUY.

Now you’ve gone too far. You’ve upset Tim Gunn.

Proposition eight, on the November 4^th ballot in my state, will basically rewrite the our constitution to take away the right of gay people to form unions that are recognized as matrimony in the eyes of the state of California. Make no mistake, ANY form of “civil union” might hereafter be challenged as unconstitutional under state law if this proposition passes.

Prop 8 has been gaining electoral ground in the state recently, thanks to the efforts of the bigoted minions of – guess who?

The Mormons.

I’m trying to think of a greater force for evil in the United States right now than the Mormon Church, and I’m coming up empty, readers. Sure, there are still pockets of the Klan, and skinheads and such, but they don’t have the financial backing of 12 million tithing motherfuckers worldwide like the LDS does.

Because it’s not just local LDS temples that are organizing. Their whole operation is being run at the highest levels of church leadership in Salt Lake City:

Members of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the second-highest church governing body, explained their plan to pass the ballot initiative. They asked each California congregation to commit 30 volunteers to donate four hours a week to Proposition 8. They also urged young people to use technology -- such as social networks, text messaging, and blogging -- to spread the word.

And that’s not all. LDS dollars now constitute 77% of Yes on Prop 8 funds. Not since the 1970s, when the Mormons were instrumental in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment, has church leadership been so intent in denying one sector of the population of this country the very rights that they themselves enjoy.

Here’s some typical propaganda that Mormon volunteers have been passing out in malls and church parking lots. It’s called “Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails,” and believe me, this shit is right out of the anti-ERA women-and-men-will-have-to-use-the-same-public-restrooms playbook from the ‘70s:

1. Public Schools will teach that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are normal and acceptable-and if you disagree, you are a bigot. Books like "Heather has Two Mommies" or "Daddy's Wedding" will be used to teach kindergartners about homosexual relationships. When parents in Boston complained about an eighth-grade teacher instructing students about gay sex, the teacher responded, "Give me a break. It's legal now."

First of all, you are a bigot, so you might as well get used to being called one. Secondly, the teacher in question was teaching SEX EDUCATION, so yes, part of what she was teaching was gay sex education. Gay sex is a kind of sex, you know, no matter how tightly you shut your eyes and wish otherwise.

2. Churches will be required to perform homosexual marriage ceremonies or face prosecution under anti-discrimination laws. The California Supreme Court recently ruled that medical professionals may not defer treatment to another professional based on their religious objections. In other words, Christians and those with moral beliefs must check their conscience at the door when they arrive at work. The same case law will apply to churches. Pastors will no longer be allowed to refuse marrying homosexuals based on their religious beliefs.

Churches are not subject to anti-discrimination laws, you silly motherfuckers. Can Catholics sue a Jewish temple for not admitting them as members? No. See how that works? See how easy? As for medical professionals – exactly what kind of treatment are you proposing that they deny to gay people? And how does refusing to “first, do no harm” constitute “checking their conscience”? Goddamn, you are some fucking cold motherfuckers. And you don’t understand that doctors are not churches, either, so you’re fairly stupid as well.

3. Businesses will be prosecuted for not participating in homosexual ceremonies. A New Mexico photography company is being prosecuted for refusing to photograph the "commitment ceremony" of a homosexual couple. The full force of the government will be used to make citizens publicly accept homosexuality.

Well, you’ve got me there, businesses that discriminate against a portion of the lawful citizenry of the United States might be fined (not prosecuted), as the company you mention was. You know what else businesses might be forced to do? Allow black people to sit at luncheon counters. I know, we’re just asking for trouble, aren’t we?

4. Married couples will no longer be considered "bride and groom," but "Party A and Party B." A young couple in Placer County wrote the terms "bride" and "groom" on their marriage license, which was returned from the state as an "unacceptable alteration." A husband and wife are legally referred to now as Party A and Party B according to the California government. By redefining marriage, every marriage has already been affected.

Wow, you know, your self-esteem seems very dependent upon how you’re referred to on a California state marriage application form. Are you seeing someone about that?

5. The role of parents will be diminished. The family unit is already under assault with no-fault divorce, acceptance of single parenthood, and nanny government usurping the role of fathers. Homosexual marriage worsens this trend by giving government approval to single-sex parenting. Children need both a mother and a father. By approving homosexual marriage, government and society denies children their right and need for both parents.

So, your premise is that Christians are very concerned about children growing up in stable marriages? Then Christians should have a very low divorce rate! Let’s look at the divorce rates per capita (leaving out Nevada for, um, obvious reasons). We’ll start with the highest rate of divorce, and work our way down to the lowest, shall we?

1. Arkansas

2. Oklahoma

3. Tennessee

4. Wyoming

5. Indiana

6. Alabama

7. Idaho

Oops, this is awkward. Is it just me, or are we sensing a trend? Well, why don’t we just look to see which state has the lowest divorce rate, then. I’ll bet it’s Utah!

Oh, no, it’s Massachusetts.

Say, don’t they have gay marriage there?

And, whoa, wait a minute, where is reason #6? Oh no, don’t tell me that the publication that posted this list called “Six Consequences…” didn’t even notice that there are only five? Dang, readers, ya’ll can just make up your own joke about that one.

At any rate, I have a solution for all this political activity that the Mormons seem hell-bent on orchestrating: Tax the motherfuckers! Tax them! Tax their fucking property! I have to pay taxes on my property, why should they be exempt?

A church in Pasadena, California almost lost their tax-exempt status for suggesting that Jesus would be critical of the Bush Doctrine.*

And the Mormons are fucking rich! They have 17 MILLION DOLLARS to spend on trying to make the lives of gay people miserable. Tax the fuck out of the tax-exempt motherfuckers, I say. Put the argument in terms they can understand.

*Note to Sarah Palin: The Bush Doctrine asserts this country’s right to pre-emptive war if another country is, you know, looking at us funny. Jesus was, and you’re an Evangelical Christian so you may not know this, very anti-war.

WTF Happened

Of all the weasels that BushCo has tapped to sell their lies to the American public, Scott McClellan at least had the good grace to be really bad at it.

He was eventually forced out by BushCo when his defense of the administration became increasingly weak, ineffective and convoluted. Earlier this year, he published a memoir of his years in the WH titled What Happened. It was critical of BushCo, if not exactly condemning it outright. BushCo responding by calling McClellan everything from disgruntled to possibly insane. Rove basically suggested that McClellan must have fallen asleep next to some left-wing blogger pods.

Aw, but payback, she is the bitch, and political payback may be the biggest bitch of them all, because McClellan has endorsed Obama.

You buy the gal $150k worth of designer suits...

...and she's still gonna stick a cheap-ass animal pin on the lapel.

Is Sarah Palin secretly an Avon lady? Because my mom is, and I'm pretty sure I got that pin for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Spreading the wealth around

And thus the legend of "jumbo shrimp" was born

So, back from my sun- and booze-fueled mini vacay in Mexico and I’ve got a couple of thoughts.

First of all, I really am getting, in the words of Danny Glover, too old for this shit. So, thanks to my body for a solid quarter-century plus of consequences-free partying, and I’m going to go drink water and eat oat bran now until my hands stop shaking.

Secondly, there’s nothing like a trip south of the border to pound home how extraordinarily hard are the lives of Mexican children. Everywhere you look in Mexico, you see children standing or walking for hours in the sun and the sweltering heat selling toys, selling souvenirs, selling Chicklets, sometimes selling only the fact that they’re adorable and photogenic.

And if you are being charmed by one of these children in a bar or restaurant, you may, at some point, become concerned for the welfare of the child because they seem to have been left entirely on their own. It is at that moment of that the mother will inevitably appear, arms laden down with tortillas or beaded necklaces or whatever else she is selling, and will wearily herd the child and the rest of her brood on to the next bar or restaurant in their nightly rounds.

Contrast to the lives of the children I saw on the way home in the Phoenix airport, whose parents seemed interested in endowing them with 1) a precious name, and 2) a sense of entitlement, and very little else.

And I think somewhere in between the two extremes, the truth, as usual, lies.

I try to avoid romanticizing my own upbringing, because lord knows there is plenty wrong with the attitudes Midwesterners harbor regarding the rearing of children. For one thing, I wish they would get through their thick skulls that affection is not necessarily a sign of weakness. But one thing that I am grateful for is that I would never have been allowed to lie prone across three seats in a waiting area while other people were forced to stand. That definitely would have earned me an arm jostle and a sternly delivered admonition to pay attention to others and to stop being so selfish.

Curmudgeons are forever claiming that the latest generation of humans are the worst ever, and I’m not saying that, exactly, but I do think that there has been a subtle paradigm shift in the attitudes of parents over the last 50 years. Now, when faced with a crowded airport gate and insufficient seating, parents seem to think “I will provide my children with seats before they are all taken. That is what a good parent does,” whereas my own mother would’ve said, “You’re a child, you can sit on the floor.”

She also would’ve said “Go help that woman pick up those packages she dropped,” and “Go help our neighbor carry out her trash,” and “Are you blind, or can you not see that that gentleman needs help opening that door?”

Don’t get me wrong, I did not particularly enjoy being so helpful, in fact I spent the majority of my childhood asking my mother who her personal slave had been before I’d been given the job. But what I realize now is that they were teaching us, in that typically Midwestern way, that we were not the most important things in the goddamn world. They were teaching us to be, well, liberals. And not by whining about the underprivileged at dinner parties while the maid cleaned up after us. My mother didn’t need a maid – she had children. And while I frequently took pains to remind her that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, she no trouble understanding, instinctively, that all play and no work makes Jack a fucking asshole.

In Mexico, there were eight of us, four couples, and so we were able to afford to rent a huge 4 bedroom & 4 bathroom condo right on the beach. However, when we got there, there was a lone maid, a tiny, thin girl still maybe in her teens, who was still cleaning up from the previous tenants, and it was plain that she would not finish cleaning for some time. Surveying the scene, which included garbage strewn on the floors and penises drawn on the bathroom mirror in soap, for pete’s sake, I cringed to think what kind of frat-boy douchebags had preceded us.

We called the rental company and asked them to send more maids to help the girl, which I knew might be construed by her as a complaint about her job performance, and sure enough, the maids that arrived subsequently eyed us warily. There we were, us Americans with our overpriced flip-flops, and our coolers full of beer, and our sunglasses that cost more than they make in a month, probably. There we were, with less Spanish between us than a Mexican two-year old could speak, even though we’d been vacationing in their country for 20 years or more. There we were, waiting on them to finish working so that we could play.

It occurred to me that the least I could do would be to sweep the sand off the deck, but I didn’t. No doubt it would have mortified my companions and dismayed the help even further. And so I waited until they were finished and loading up to leave, and I quietly walked after the girl who had been there since we arrived. I didn’t want her supervisor, the young man with the walkie-talkie who refused to do any work himself, or any of the other maids, to see us. “Senorita,” I said. She turned to look at me, expecting…I don’t know what, but nothing good. “Gracias,” I said, and I pressed a ten-dollar bill into her hand. She flashed a big smile and said “Gracias” to me, and then they all left us to commence our party.

Look, I know it’s her job to clean beach houses, not mine. And I know that I cannot single-handedly reform the image of asshat Americans abroad. But I also know that I could have helped her instead of given her money, or I could have even done both. It would have gotten me what I wanted - a clean condo - sooner if I had. But instead I calculated the value of my inaction. It came to ten dollars. I paid it willingly, with relief even. I wonder what my mother would’ve thought of that.

La señora protesta demasiado, yo piensa

I had a dream last night in which I was involved with a group of people who wanted to protest the war. The idea they came up with, was to make full body casts of themselves in poses that suggested protest, and then to fill the molds with molten Lucite. The result was these transparent sculptures of people protesting that the group then displayed publicly.

At that point my clock radio went off, and before the dream could be pushed from my brain by news of closures on the 118, I remember thinking, “Why not just protest?”

How little we know of real protest anymore. Because everywhere, all around us, is fake protest. Despite the demise of the uber-partisan prevaricating of CNN’s CrossFire, fake protest and phony defense doth make up the better part of our national dialogue, or at least that’s the way it seems with 19 days to go.

So poor John McCain couldn’t seem to rattle Mr. Unflappable last night, and over the course of the debate you could tell it began to bother him more and more. At one point I began picturing him à la Looney Tunes, with his face bright red, steam coming out of his ears, and blowing breath through his lips like the whistle of a very angry little choo-choo who’s pretty sure that the tracks should belong to him.

McCampaign has tried to gain traction by invoking the Holy Joe Trinity: Joe Lieberman, Joe 6-Pack, and now, Joe the Plumber. It’s interesting that they think a plumber who’s worried that his quarter of a million dollar profit might get taxed at a higher rate will somehow become this country’s economic touchstone. Because I know quite a few guys who make bread in that neighborhood. They drive Lexuses and Jaguars. Their kids go to private school. They own vacation homes. I’m not fucking worried about Joe the Plumber, ya fucking idiot Rovian assclowns. In fact, I think I got ripped off by Joe the Plumber once, when he charged me $800 to replace my S-trap.

But McCain, fucking clueless as ever, continued to pound his point about the hypothetical future earnings of some overpaid schmuck in Ohio, and he even threw in another reference to Obama meeting world leaders “without preconditions,” because THAT niggling foreign policy point has so resonated with voters afraid of turning on the radio in the morning for fear of finding out that the company they work for doesn’t exist anymore.

The Republicans are either listlessly going through the motions at this point, or else wildly stabbing at the heart of the Democrats with very dull knives. Last Friday I saw conservative columnist Steve Moore on Real Time, freshly armed with RNC talking points about the voter registration organization ACORN. The Republicans’ latest scapegoat in their whole ongoing pumped-up phony voter fraud teapot tempest was so hot off the RNC presses that even political junkie host Bill Maher had not heard of them yet. “What does ACORN stand for?” he asked Moore. Moore admitted he didn’t know. Fellow panelist Maxine Waters (D-CA) countered “well, if you don't know anything about it, then you should probably stop talking about it.” Moore then checked his talking points for a response to Waters, and finding nothing, shrugged and changed the subject to his less than convincing protestations that Palin was absolutely qualified for the most important job in the world. Without a doubt. Sure, she was. I could tell Moore was more interested in the single-malt scotch waiting for him in his airport limo than he was in mounting a credible case for Governor Flailin’, but he continued his ridiculous assertions nevertheless.

It’s an interesting turn of events to see the Republicans play the role of victim in this election, hence the Republicans and McCampaign testing the waters on this whole ACORN story, seeing if the press will bite. They probably will. They’ve shown themselves all too willing in the past to balance real stories of disenfranchised minority (mostly Democrat) voters with baseless charges from the RNC that Democrats are handing out ballots at prison gates and setting up voting booths in Tijuana.

But no matter what the outcome of the election, I relish the thought of so many Republicans holding their noses in the election booth. Their candidate hasn’t smelled so bad since…okay, well, since the last election, but still. They had no incumbent. They had the entire country to choose from, and they picked Grandpa Grumpy and the 80s beauty queen who spent 6 years getting a degree in broadcast news journalism, which, forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you used to be able to get one of those free inside every box of Breeze detergent?

Well, readers, as that last joke clearly indicates, I need a vacation, and I’m getting a mini one. I’ll be taking a long weekend with Spooney, sis & her beau, and a few other people down in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, celebrating my sister’s birthday. Vive el cumpleaños de mi hermana, bitches. So, drop by her blog and wish her a happy. I’m going to go find my swim suit, my sunscreen, and my voter registration forms.

I'll be back late next week.