magnolia

my grandfather has worked in TV as a chief engineer and technical genius for damn near 60 years. because of this, my dad spent a good 16, 17 years doing the same. that also means that i’ve had cable for basically my entire life, save a four-month stretch in undergrad and the sublet i lived in over bar summer. TV and i have a long-standing friendship, even though i haven’t liked a new show in a very long time. i favor old shows. always have.

case in point: when i was three and a half, our cable system had nickelodeon, but did not carry nick-at-nite. it would scramble the channel at 7:00PM every night. this vexed me, because i could see all the ads during the day for all the shows on nick-at-nite. so my daddy [probably because he was sick of me fussing about it] carried me down to our friendly neighborhood cable provider, where he picked me up, set me on the counter, and said, “tell the nice lady what you tell me all the time.”

“i want my nick-at-nite! please?” was my pigtailed little response. we got nick-at-nite four weeks later, and i still like to think that my winsome little-girl charm had something to do with it.

but ANYWAY, the point is that i have always had a fondness for the sitcoms of the 1960s and 1970s. the mary tyler moore show, soap, benson, taxi, the dick van dyke show, M*A*S*H, maude, good times, all in the family, and the like. and honestly, no one will ever convince me that there’s been a sitcom that can equal those produced in the last 35 years. seinfeld was funny the first time, but on repeated viewing, reduces to narcissistic people whining. (not to mention that curb your enthusiasm outed larry david as a world-class self-absorbed dickhead, which i STILL cannot understand how people think that’s funny, and really stripped the humor out of george costanza.) i didn’t like friends at the time, much less now. sex and the city was funny for a season, but quickly lost its allure once they kept writing basically the same episode with different outfits for six seasons.

in fact, a lot of culture from the late 1960s through the late 1970s can be called the pinnacle of american artistic achievement, if you ask me. not that the last 35-40 years haven’t produced some good things (i commend your attention to the glory of homicide: life on the streets, especially if you think baltimore-based crime dramas begin and end with the wire). but the good has been few and far between. for every bright spot (treme) there are ten thousand horrorshows (whitney, the new girl, most of the NBC lineup for the last 10 years, how i met your mother, two and a half men, ad infinitum, ad freaking astram).

the sitcoms of the 1970s were ABOUT something other than meditations on the self and the self’s importance to the self. and they were DAMN funny about it, too. they were able to have frank, blunt discussions about racism, sexism and other issues. you could NOT talk about race they way they did on all in the family on a show today without people misunderstanding and misinterpreting 100 different ways from sunday. hell, maude had an abortion on a NETWORK SITCOM. in a time when a movie about getting knocked up could only bring itself to snicker around the edges (“sha-shmortion” – are you freaking KIDDING me?), that is unthinkable.

so call me a snob if you will. wouldn’t be the first time. i would quote my favorite beach boys song here, about how the current era and i do not necessarily get along, but everyone loves that song now because mad men used it a couple of weeks ago. (and if you want to know about a show i HATE, ask me about mad men.) i will continue to honor the viewpoint that the 1960s and 1970s brought to culture. remember how things were in a lot of respects? people actually (GASP!) thought about the things they said and did, and wondered how their actions impacted the world around them. it’s no surprise to me that the 2010s are nostalgic for the 1980s and the 1950s respectively. three eras in time that were about materialism, self-absorption and thoughtless greed. except that in the 2010s, the illusions that fueled the 1980s and the 1950s have been exposed as illusions. those visions and dreams are what put us in the mess we’re in.

but it’s nice to dream rich, isn’t it? thank you, but i’ll take my entertainment with some thought behind it. now where’s my remote? i’ve got a date with judd hirsch as alex reiger. give me something with some substance.

i don’t have a lot of structure to the following set of thoughts. so i’m just gonna let it rip.

number one. i will no longer tolerate the religious whack-nuts of the world and their fever-pitch insistence on forcing every single person in america to live our secular lives based on their religious rules. every time someone takes on the insanity of this demand that the hyper-religious make on the entire world, the critic must then immediately fall all over himself or herself to say “I RESPECT RELIGION! IF A RELIGION SAYS IT, IT’S TOTALLY OKAY! [whispered] i just wanted to maybe kinda say that it’s not the coolest thing ever that you insist that everyone follows your religion’s rules, BUT IF YOU INSIST, IT’S OKAY BECAUSE IT’S A RELIGION!”

i am over it. if your religion tells you that your personal salvation requires you to demand that the secular world bend to your conscience’s demands, you are 100% out of order. you are NOT entitled to live in a world that perfectly fits your vision all the time. and when it comes to marriage, the over-reachers are 100% WRONG. someone on facebook said, “marriage is not a ‘right.’ it is a gift from god between a man and a woman.” um, no, sweetie – FALSE. in america, you are not married when the pastor says so. you are married when, after filling out an application in a county office, all parties sign a contract and the county enters the contract into the public record. tell me the last time a judge had to approve it when someone changed from being baptist to being catholic. yeah. no. marriage in the united states of america is a civil contract. if the parties so choose, they overlay that contract with an optional religious ceremony.

and if your conscience insists on denying americans full citizenship by restricting civil-secular contracting ability because some twisted interpretation of 2,000-year-old fairy tales told you it’s icky to let them be full citizens, you are out of order and you need to sit down. it is time to stop granting this un-american claptrap with undeserved respect because it’s cloaked with fake authority granted by the supernatural. no. more.

number two. along the same sorts of lines, why the hell are we so obsessed with, not even social issues, but SEXUAL issues in this country? really. we have the biggest madonna/whore complex in the history of time in this country. the economy is in shambles, largely due to the unbelievable malfeasance of the robber-baron 2.0 classes and their lord-king willard romney. but what are people more concerned about?
1) how women raise children
2) punishing bad evil girls for opening their legs
3) punishing bad evil sinful sodomites for, i don’t know, breathing, i guess?
4) who people who shouldn’t even be famous are having sex with

now, i am a woman who believes fully in every person’s entitlement to personal pleasure in their private, individual sex lives, provided that all parties involved are consenting and of age. but sex is a small, personal, private part of my full and complete life. and that is the role of sex in society: a small, personal, private part of each person’s life. sex education should be given when kids are young so that they understand a) what their sex organs do, b) what the consequences of use of sex organs can be if not used thoughtfully, and c) how to avoid said consequences through a thoughtful combination of conscience and science, calibrated for each individual’s beliefs on the subject.

and THAT. IS. IT. we live in a sick society that is overly obsessed with prurience. we can’t even legislate a student loan program without tying it to women’s sex organs. that is not just insulting and dehumanizing to women. it’s indicative of a sex-DRENCHED culture, and an insanely immature sex-drenched culture at that. sex is great. it’s valid, and everyone should let his or her respective freak flag fly as he or she wants. but we can’t get to that place until we all grow the hell up about s-e-x.

number three. history and logic matter. science and reason matter. the reason things change is because we use our minds and powers of observation to make connections. so the unbelievable pushback against science, thought, evolution, reason and logic is staggering to me. president obama [ed. - thanks for the correction; i was totally wrong when i said this was hillary clinton] got in trouble for, well, breathing and being alive, but the time i’m referring to is when he said that people cling to guns and religion in the face of change. he was – and still is – 100% right. change scares people for reasons i do not understand. instead of viewing change as an illumination into the amazing world in which we live, and a really rock-star awesome thing, these backward fools view change as the enemy. unreal.

hmm. maybe there was a theme here after all. gay marriage. transgender rights. sex ed. women’s rights. science. logic. thought. reason. it all boils down to one thing:

if we’re ever going to fix our beloved nation, which is sick and hurting right now, we have to wake up to the fact that a) things change, b) that’s good and c) these things are so fundamental to being a good country that values its citizens that they are not worth the angst we throw on them. smart, reasonable people don’t care about these things. that’s how it should be: they are fundamental rights. you don’t notice oxygen, right? you’re not surprised when you turn on the tap and water comes out, right? these things are fundamental. and until we assign value to everyone, which would counterintuitively turn the volume WAY the hell down on the culture wars and limit these issues to their appropriate sphere, we will not cure the sickness.

so whack-nuts? resize your conception of your place. it’s no bigger than anyone else’s. and SHUT. UP.

i have come to a decision that many will find controversial. all the more reason to write about it on a not-really-all-that-hidden internet forum, right? but screw it. some things need saying. you know that old saying, blood is thicker than water? that whole construct that your blood relations are the ones who have your back way more than those who aren’t genetically connected to you? yeah. i call bullshit HARD on that one. there is no bright-line test in personal relations, and more often than not, true colors are shown at the most painful and obnoxious moments. and that’s what’s happened of late.

for as intemperate and rant-y as i am on the internet, i am very complacent in my personal life. i will bear a lot of stress in the interest of going along to get along. i don’t like to be the cause of drama, and i don’t like to keep drama started by others going. this generally means that i put on a victorian front of steel-jawed resolve as long as i am confronted with the situation, then fall apart in private once it’s over. and for entirely too long, which should be read to mean my entire sentient life, that dynamic has governed my relationship with a member of my family.

the final straw was christmas of this past year. needless to say, this was going to be a weird one. my first christmas as a DIVORCED WOMAN, which to some people is a BIG DAMN DEAL. christmas 2010 was the first post-filing christmas, so it was supposed to be the christmas with ALL THE QUESTIONS. and it was, too. 48 hours of nothing but awkward questions. oh, except for the insulting statements like, “i knew this was going to happen because [some dumb-assed reason that was made up in this person's head].” thank the gods in which i don’t believe for the christmas day snowstorm that hit the east coast that year. it gave me a convenient excuse to get the hell out of dodge “to beat the snow,” which of course meant “to get away from you and your craziness.” i fled there and spent two days plucking my way gingerly up I-85 and I-95, finally landing in the welcoming arms/bed of my beloved.

this past christmas, i brought my beloved home. this was not a first meeting for anyone involved. it had been a few years since the family saw the man – nine and a half, to be specific, when he was a groomsman in my wedding to the ex. [i always have to pause when i type that or say it. it sends one of those biting-on-tinfoil zings through me. i wonder if that'll ever go away? but i digress.] i figured there’d be an initial re-learning curve, then we’d settle into what passes for normal in my bloodline. i was already a little nervous, given that we were to be alone AGAIN. but i tried to be cheerful, even in spite of the gothic horrorshow that christmas with the man’s family turned into. (another time. maybe.)

then, the family member unleashed BIGOTRY-FEST 2011  onto us. oh, my GOD. every indignity that could be unleashed was, such as:

1) the man was called “my friend who worships cows.” [double insult: denigrate our relationship because of lack of wedding rings; multi-pronged slur against indian people (base level - slam against people who practice hinduism; extra credit - the man's father was raised buddhist, so anything related to hinduism is inapposite to a genuine interest in the man's heritage)]

2) he was repeatedly referred to as “mixed.”

3) when asked what religion he was, the man said “i’m nondenominational [heh - nice one; technically, atheism is nondenominational]. my dad was raised buddhist, but he doesn’t practice.” the IMMEDIATE response to that was, “good.”

4) the questioning related to his racial/ethnic/religious background was insulting in length – we’re talking hours here

5) my ex-husband was repeatedly referred to as homosexual (which is of course a) why we got divorced and b) the WORST POSSIBLE THING EVER), largely because of the way he held his hands. [yeah - i got nothing on this one. i get angry/upset with the ex, but my god, that's just beyond the pale. i will not stand for him to be denigrated like that. that's totally unacceptable]

6) another friend the man and i share was cited as the reason i blanched when item #5 was mentioned, “because i know he’s a homo too.”

7) black people were mentioned as a successively more derogatory list of names that STARTED with “the blacks.” yes, it got worse from there. [it should be noted that this family member is a lifelong proponent of segregation, including campaigning for school board during my father's youth as an anti-busing candidate.]

two straight days of this. TWO DAYS. it was unbelievable. but sitting through that was the proverbial smack in the face with a wet squirrel. to be treated so cruelly, so thoughtlessly, by this family member reminded me that this isn’t a one-time insult. even when i was younger, my decisions were castigated in really confrontational ways. two examples:

1) this family member bought me tori amos’s little earthquakes when i was 11. when this person found out what the lyrical content was, we had to have a confrontation where i was told stridently and at length how filthy and shameful this music is. when i returned home, my father was called and instructed to take the CD away from me. he entered my room with the phone in his hand. “tara. do you know the difference between fantasy and reality?” um, yeah, daddy, i do. “yeah. that’s what i thought. [back to the phone, speaking in a really cold, angry tone] i will NOT take an album away from her. she’s smart enough to handle it.”

2) one of my favorite books of all time is called only begotten daughter. you should read it. it’s kind of awesome. this family member was horrified when i brought it into the house, and i was again castigated for inappropriate and blasphemous reading choices. the same reaction occurred that summer when i read james carville’s we’re right, they’re wrong, but i was old enough to have employed the steel-jawed strategy by then.

what is the point of all of this? i am nearly 31 years old. i have been a kind, dutiful and loyal member of this family i call mine. despite the fact that i have never been arrested; never been an addict; never had a child out of wedlock; have graduated from high school, college, law school and graduate law school in a timely and successful manner; AND hold a very prominent professional position (especially in comparison to, well, a large portion of my bloodline), i am still often the target of guilt and shame campaigns for the following failings:
1) i am a liberal
2) i am not sufficiently christian (i haven’t even tried to go there with the atheism thing)
3) i drink alcohol
4) i married a jew (leaving aside the fact that the ex is half-jewish) who goes to an episcopal church, which is a double-dose of satan’s pull
5) i divorced said “jew-piscopal,” clearly because he’s gay
6) i date a mixed-race man with a foreign father
7) i stayed in a hotel room with him instead of making him sleep on a couch at their house

so for the foregoing reasons, i have no choice. i will no longer suffer like this for such stupid, pointless reasons. family member who has done so much to me over the years: you are terminated for cause, bobby petrino-style. if my accomplishments and loyalty aren’t enough to remove me from this kind of insanity, well, i choose to remove you from my life. period, full stop.

this will not be a popular decision. but fuck ‘em if they can’t understand. i am no longer going to take abuse when i don’t have to. and this christmas? i will spend it with people who love me and accept me as i am. end of story.

[for title context, see here.]

so we’re basically one week into domestic bliss at the new place. we’ve started planning out the rest of our year in fits and starts. let’s see what’s on tap for socializing/recreation so far at casa mags-and-the-man, listed by weekend:

april 28: nascar race, richmond. yee-hah, y’all. (seriously: races are fun. don’t sleep. second-best tailgating i’ve seen, behind LSU, of course.)
may 5: housewarming soiree with the nearest and dearest (local chapter)
may 12: tax-lawyer meeting. yes, this counts as fun; annual conferences are always good for a laugh and some free food
may 17-20: vegas, baby.
may 25-28: memorial day weekend – maybe someone will have a barbecue, or maybe we’ll just stay low-key.
[june is actually pretty quiet]
july 2-8: birthday/giants-nats series/vacation days in honor of, well, me and my 31 completed trips around the sun

then, between late august and late september, he and i will see bruce springsteen either five or six times on five successive weekends [with a potential interruption for the richmond fall race]: toronto, philadelphia, DC and new jersey. (this is how the man gets happy – we travel around and watch bruce springsteen play. these will be shows 6-10/11 for me; he’ll be well into the 50s by then.) sometime in the fall, we make our annual football pilgrimage to the pelican state. then comes thanksgiving, then christmas, then new year’s, and by god, that’s 2012.

so in other words, now that all the dread and heavy stuff from the winter is over, spring is here and it’s time to shake a tailfeather. i want to squeeze a trip to the gulf into late summer, too. i am happy, and i have one hell of a ton of things to look forward to.

people have started asking me with increasing frequency about the procreation thing. i guess that comes with the 30-something territory, biological clocks and all that. and sure, there’s something to be said about that in the not-far future, i guess. but this year? 2012 is for the man and me to play. we are going to have fun. we are going to soak in everything we love to do. it is going to be all about us. selfish? hell yeah, it’s selfish. i’ve sacrificed a ton for too long. time to play with my beloved and the people who’ve stuck it out with me. besides, if i get my rocks off now, i’ll be a lot happier and more fulfilled when it becomes all about someone else for 19 or 20 years (which, as i see it, is what having a kid is – it stops being about you and starts being about the little person you made).

so hell, yeah. today, i love the whole world and all its messed-up folks. i’m gonna kick off work a little early today, drive home with the windows down (now that the pollen count has dipped below “apocalyptic attack on my sinuses” level), open my blinds and hang up my clothes while indulging in some of that pricey champagne i bought for after the move. when the man gets home, we’ll figure out what we want to do tonight. and it’ll be whatever we feel like doing.

boom-de-yada indeed, y’all.

and now, a few hundred words about my hair.

a lot of people i know, male and female alike, have a somewhat emotionally fraught relationship with their hair. my daddy, for example: when he became a teacher, he cut his hair very short and trimmed his mustache. [yes, i know - it was 1995 in alabama, and that sort of thing was still done.] but once he got tenure, and more importantly once he had enough experience under his belt to be comfortable professionally, he grew it all back out again. in stages, that is. he started with a soul patch and a few extra weeks between trims, then a goatee and a couple of months, and then a full beard and the end of trips to the barber shop. now, at almost 60, he teaches school with his hair in a ponytail. for him, the ability to be himself professionally had to be earned. wearing his hair long to school is an exercise in assertion of identity. can’t no school building hold his spirit down, so to speak.

i guess i’m no different. i always wore my hair short as a kid, until the year i turned 13 and started ninth grade. right before school started, i went to my mom’s salon, and when i wanted a “bob,” they gave me… well god, i have no idea what to call what happened. the words “asymmetrical” and “neo-modern” were involved. [again - it was the mid-90s in alabama. style was different there and then.] chin-length in front; razored in the back. RAZORED. it was in that moment that i said, self, we are never doing this again. i got another haircut six months (!!!) later to equalize everything to a chin-length blunt cut. that was the last haircut i got in high school.

by the time i got to the tiny mountain college for freshman year, i had several feet of long, bottle-auburn waves. it was my calling card. people at my high school who didn’t know me personally knew me as the loudmouth with the hair. in high school, that was a compliment. at college, however, not so much. and it became quickly apparent that a new persona was needed to adapt to that environment. (hmm. in retrospect, maybe that level of adaptation should’ve been a hint that a) the college and b) the boy might not have been the perfect fit i thought they were…) so one day in october, i went down to the day-drunk barber on main street and said, “chop it off.” in ten minutes, my hair went from hip-length to shoulder-length. BAM. the change was instant. even the way i held my head changed, largely due to the fact that i no longer had several pounds of hair hanging from it.

and with that, i was a different person. i had lost my signature, and i lost my confidence right along with it. delilah sliced off samson’s hair and it destroyed his strength, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the day-drunk barber did the same to me. for a 17-year-old kid who barely has any idea how the hell anything works, superficial transformation isn’t just superficial. that haircut changed me, and for a long time, i kept my hair short like that. it fit the new persona i had built around life at the tiny mountain college. i went blonde again, after years as a bottle-redhead, because those folks thought it necessary. the way i wore my hair was a part of the way i wore that mask, i guess.

then came LSU, and the epiphanies, and the attendant behavioral shift. my hair grew blonder with each touch-up job, because louisiana girls wear their hair BLONDE-blonde when they go that route. we’re talking straw, platinum color. almost as pale as my irish-pale skin. and it stayed like that, until one particular interaction with the man in mississippi. i walked through his hotel-room door, and it just slipped out: “you’re BLONDE.” it was the first time in the entire length of our friendship that he’d ever said a word about my hair. “that noticeable?” i asked him.

he bit his lip. “you’re… blonde.”

something about that moment was jarring to me. he said, “you’re blonde.” i heard, “i don’t recognize you.” and he was right. i had spent ten years, at that point, hiding behind costumes, hairstyles, and fake conceptions of who i was. the platinum treatment was the last straw. when i got back from mississippi, i spent a good 20 minutes staring at myself in the mirror. i was looking at my hair - which was brittle, over-dyed and split-ended – but i was also looking at myself. and i did not see anyone i could remember.

the next week, i went to the salon. i chopped it all off again, and i had the girl color it a dark reddish-brown. close to what it was when i went to college lo those many years ago, actually. and it’s been growing ever since. i got a trim yesterday, a little shorter than i’d like, but all the split ends are gone. it suits me, i think. and it’s ME. maybe i put way too much weight on the whole hair thing, but there’s something about my hair that feeds directly into how i feel about myself. when i chopped it all away in 1998, i was trying desperately to change myself into something i wasn’t. when i did it again in 2009, i chopped off the fake veneer. i’ve now grown back into the old me, the way i was before. i feel at home in my hair again. and what’s more powerful than that?

the dust has largely settled. (most of it is in my sinus cavities, i think.) the boxes are slooooowly getting unpacked and thrown out. the trash at the old house is getting picked up tomorrow, and our final dealing with the crack-addled looney who rented the house to us will soon follow that. (oh, the stories i could tell, but i won’t. discretion is the better part of valor on that score.)

in other words, the man and i are home, sweet home at last.

it is amazing. our home is too great for words. when i need groceries, i get in the elevator with my shopping bag (sorority letters, of all things), go down two floors and i’m there. bang. i can bring things back to my kitchen, which has counter space and a refrigerator that is not shared with anyone, and cook them. i can wash clothes in my laundry room, and i can do all this in my freaking lingerie if i want to. there’s no danger of someone who’s not the man walking in on us. hell, if we get the spirit, we can make out on the couch without fear of intrusion.

ever since i left my ex, i’ve been a bit… nomadic, i guess. this is my fourth mailing address in 23 months. i had a sublet, then a room in a group house full of strangers, and then a room in a group house full of friends before this. rootlessness was a way of life for me. but now, it’s back to the way i prefer to live: alone with someone i love, in a private family place. i was never cut out for communal living. i don’t share well with people with whom i’m not currently sharing a bed. and at the time i needed a home base most, when my life was nothing but tumult and chaos, i didn’t have one. there was really no place in the world where i could be 100% sure i was in private. even at the old group house, our room was constantly being disturbed, either by the cleaning ladies the roommate hired or by the roommate himself. [yes, i know you went in there when we were gone to hide dishes and move food around rather than just ask me to do it.] there was never, ever a sense of comfort. it was a serious intrusion on my emotional health.

that will never happen again. when i go home, i am home. the man and i are completely ensconced in our little domestic bubble. our things are - well, will be, once we unpack all the way – exactly how we want them to be. we will make our own decisions and come and go without any interference from anyone outside our family. this is the way grown people are supposed to live, in my opinion, and we have finally gotten to that place. not a moment too soon, either.

y’all. i finally, finally have a HOME again.

2012 has been a radically insane year, chocked to the gills with just an unbelievable amount of stupid at which to rage. but that [snap] you just heard? that is the sound of the weight of anger-worthy material breaking my ability to be angry about it anymore. and it, weirdly enough, might be the best thing that could have happened to my sanity.

see, i’ve had a lot of stupid in my personal life in the last five years. some of it y’all have seen; some you haven’t. but i have officially reached the point of anger-fatigue overload. i can’t carry anger anymore. it’s too heavy. mainly, i don’t like what being so angry about everything all the damn time is doing to me. not to say that there aren’t very valid reasons to be angry about the world and what’s happening: trayvon. the attack on women. pretty much every republican on the face of the earth. i also have VERY valid reasons to be VERY angry at people in my personal life, and i hope to the god in which i don’t believe that by now, they know who they are and why i’m angry.

but it’s just… corrosive, i guess. i am always sore. i am always tense. little setbacks become GIANT ISSUES. things that should roll off my back stick there like someone stabbed me. there’s a definite pattern to this too. a) something dumb happens. b) i get annoyed. c) a channel of deeper anger, unrelated to the dumb thing, is tapped. d) that anger starts flowing. e) before i’ve quite realized what’s happened, i am ENRAGED at something that deserved little more than a “seriously? that’s stupid. anyway.”

the people i love deserve better from me than that kind of irrational foolishness. so i am going to practice a new discipline. i’m calling it “failing to give a fuck.” i will still vote, donate and stay active in stopping the political insanity in the world. i will not allow the forces in my personal life – and seriously, y’all haven’t figured it out yet? – to push me around. but i am slowly starting the process of building up emotional calluses. this is necessary at this point, as necessary as breathing. i simply cannot sustain life as i wish it to be with this level of stupidly unrelated anger in my system.

so this is one of those starting-anew kind of statements. how fitting, as tax season 2012 ends (!!!!!) and the move looms in a mere four days (!!!!!). all kinds of life resets are happening right now. why not add one more? i am done being enraged all the time. it’s time to give less of a fuck about the stupid and insurmountable. turn the focus inward. care for what’s in front of me. so here’s to shedding rage. let’s break that last little piece off and move forward, eh?

[snap]

i’m not really all that angry about the war on women anymore.

stay with me.

see, i decided to listen really hard to all the crazy-ass rhetoric being tossed around by the armies of the right lately. and there is a lot to choose from, isn’t there: law students as sluts; aspirin between the knees; transvaginal ultrasounds; life begins at menstruation; etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad astram, forever and ever amen. but the one little snippet of foolishness that finally pulled it all together for me was mitt romney and the so-called war on moms gambit from last week. the fact that someone inelegantly pointed out that ann romney has no damn clue what life is like for a woman who isn’t scandalously rich turned into a rousing chorus of “motherhood is the hardest job in the world!” from all corners of the earth.

and then someone found mitt romney saying this. snap. there it is. pulled straight from the mormon theology of charity itself: the dignity of work. if you’re going to get help from us, you’d better get out there and slave. man has to live by the sweat of his OWN brow. i guess if you’re married to a spectacularly wealthy man, his brow’s sweat is OK. sigh. leaving aside the whole “dependency” canard that RWNJs love to toss around – really, these people must never have been poor a day in their lives, because NO ONE enjoys living below the poverty line – that’s a pretty stark statement of how religion influences ol’ willard’s attitude towards work, women and motherhood

i don’t know why i didn’t see it before, but it makes perfect sense. the assailants against women hear all the arguments we make against them. y’know, how we point out that birth control gives women autonomy, that having children is a monumental challenge that shouldn’t be entered into lightly, all the sense- and reality-based statements that are, what’s the word, oh yeah, TRUE. they hear this. but our main problem in the reality-based community is that we are arguing logic and reason. these folks know exactly what they’re doing. it breaks down like this.

these people are acting biblically. they know the policies they espouse are hugely disempowering to women. they know it hurts us, demeans us, makes us less than human. that’s exactly what they want. in these folks’ minds, that’s the correct result. women are SUPPOSED to be inferior to men. we’re supposed to submit to authority. the only pleasure and happiness that matters is the man’s; serving him, and doing as we’re told, will bring rewards in heaven to a godly woman. telling these people what they’re doing is strengthening their resolve. this is what they want.

and if you transgress? if you resist? if you dare open your legs for a non-sanctioned reason? well. you’ve broken divine law. any struggle you face is the result of disobedience of the will of god and of men. pointing out to a dominionist christian that women are disproportionately harmed by all of this is an affirmation that, in his crazy mind, he’s on the right track.

dominionism is powerful juju, y’all. you’d think that such an anti-woman ideology would be facially repulsive to women. not so. women from my grandmother to lila rose to michele bachman to jan brewer eat this poison up like sugar candy. why? for the women who’ve used this trash to get into powerful positions (which is a dynamic that must cause so much cognitive dissonance it’s not funny – a “godly, submissive” woman running a whole state runs counter to the adam’s-rib model, but because that works for the dominionists’ policy goals, they wink at it), it’s a convenient way to get what they want. it’s a soft, subtle manipulation of the electorate, and it’s an attempt to steal rational people’s best argument. hey, if these women are down, it’s only the angry man-haters who are harmed, right?

but for regular people? ugh. i have two big examples in my own personal life of women who have struggled mightily in their lives. these women have faced some nasty challenges. so giving up to god and trusting that “god will provide a way out for me, as long as i follow his will” is an escape hatch and a half. in one case, the harder life gets for her, the more she clings to empty religious platitudes. [if you follow me on twitter, you saw what happened with that today, and how she hurt me pretty badly because of it.] it’s just easier not to have to worry about these things on your own. if there’s a god out there, and he promises eternal reward if you can just suffer through 70 or 80 short years of submission, it can be a very tempting way out of pain here.

so that’s why i’m not angry about the words that are said by these hucksters anymore, and why i won’t attack them head-on, talking point to talking point, anymore. it’s not going to do any good. the only way to stop this foolishness is to replace these politicians and break their dangerous seduction over the downtrodden. we can’t save them all – i’ll write more on this another time, but my homeland is a lost cause – but we can save enough of them. anger about words won’t work anymore.

ozzie guillen is the manager of the miami marlins. he said something kinda dumb and inelegantly worded. in the past, he’s praised the attitude of latin american political leaders in their dealings with the united states government and other dectractors. he’s said this about hugo chavez, a dictator who he has also strongly denounced for political reasons. it’s a strange stance to take, and remarkably nuanced for someone as nearly certifiable as ozzie is. he’s trying to walk a very fine line here: praise someone’s toughness while denouncing the substantive policy to which the toughness is applied. whether a person can be both praiseworthy and contemptible is an interesting philosophical discussion, and it’s not really the point. the dumb thing ozzie did this time, however, is to apply this praise/denounce construction, with REALLY sloppy wording, to fidel castro while he manages a baseball team in the home base of the pro-batista cuban national population.

ozzie guillen was suspended for five games today. bud selig has also reserved the right to punish him further.

here’s why this is unbelievably stupid and unfair. and no, it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the first amendment. as we’ve discussed before, the first amendment does not let you run your mouth consequence-free; it just keeps the government from punishing you for running your mouth. private actors can do whatever they want. (although i’d be interested, from a law-dork perspective, to see a test case on something like this. i mean, as much public money as the marlins have taken to build their stadium, they’re not strictly private anymore, are they? hmm. but i digress.) so ozzie does not have the constitutional right to expect a consequence-free reaction to something that explosively controversial.

but let’s talk about tony larussa for a second. as manager of the st. louis cardinals, he spoke at length at glenn beck’s restoring honor rally. the things glenn beck stands for are long-catalogued and HORRIFICALLY offensive to a lot of people. so where was major league baseball then?

and let’s talk about luke scott. he’s said incredibly incendiary things about the president’s lineage and heritage. he has also thrown banana chips at an afro-dominican teammate felix pie to remind him not to be a “savage.” so where was major league baseball then?

and to broaden past baseball, let’s talk about tim thomas. he was denounced in public, at least, for the things he said (and his subsequent refusal to even take questions on the subject, even ending press conferences when the topic is raised). just like tony larussa, he is a highly politically active supporter of glenn beck. but he received no discipline of any kind from the NHL or his team. why?

the guillen thing isn’t stupid and unfair on constitutional or legal grounds. it’s unfair because it shows that this kind of discipline isn’t about a team wishing to avoid all controversy and stay open and entertaining to all fans. if MLB wanted its sports teams to be wholly publicly apolitical, they could easily have that policy. and good things do slip through the cracks, such as the it gets better videos from teams like my beloved’s san francisco giants (who also have union nights, honoring organized labor, at AT&T park every year).

but when it comes to incendiary political speech, it seems like only certain kinds of speech are targeted for corporate consequences. remember the differences between this and other supposedly “liberal-friendly” firings/discipline in the past. marge schott‘s hateful speech violated federal employment law (racist comments against her players/employees). john rocker‘s comments were not only hateful, but also vulgar and specifically directed at the fans of another team.

but what ozzie said is not at all as severe as anything luke scott’s done. why the discipline? pressure from the VERY vocal minority of pro-batista, anti-castro cuban nationals in miami. this bloc also happens to be VERy strongly republican, and the love affair is mutual. in other words, ozzie guillen has to be punished because he crossed a well-connected group of conservatives. imagine what would have happened had he spoken the other way and praised the toughness of a dictator like batista? or one of the other right-leaning dictatorships that the american government favors? i don’t think we’d have this problem.

this isn’t quite “it’s OK if you’re a republican” territory. but it’s DAMN close. and if ozzie guillen has to sit out for offending the cuban nationals, why is luke scott gleefully playing outfield for the rays after accusing the president of hiding his true non-american citizenship? that’s just as controversial. maybe it’s just not the kind of controversy that major league baseball cares about avoiding.

and if corporate consequences aren’t severity-based, but opinion and content-based, that is a serious problem. and one that deserves some answers. commissioner selig? we’re waiting.

so things are changing, fast and furious. the move is in 11 days (!!!!!!). tax season 2012 is wrapping up even s0oner. and of course, now would be the perfect time for my body to decide that i am allergic to every single thing that exists on the face of the planet, so i am physically miserable. (my two choices of physical state of being are now a) itchy, sneezy, and swollen-eyed [unmedicated] or b) bleached-out of sinus and floaty of head [medicated]. yay?)

i do not shine my brightest under pressure. i mean, i do good work and take care of business, but i turn into something of a monster. i do not really bear hard times with a smile, especially after the parade of insanity that i’ve been through over the last few years. and it wears on me. and it wears on the people around me. i am remarkably good at being sweet to strangers, acquaintances and coworkers. i wait until i am in “private” to transform into a snappish tornado of angry prickles. so, y’know, the man i love more than life itself gets to experience me at my utter and absolute worst, while people i don’t know and couldn’t give a damn about if you paid me get to see me nice and friendly.

rational, right?

he’s a little sick of me when i’m like this. i can tell. the things he says to me when we’re cross with each other have moved into the “i can’t take all of your negativity” and “your demeanor completely changes when you’re challenged” territory. and he’s not wrong on either score. and it’s a nasty little feedback loop, too. i feel so bad for making him unhappy, which makes him feel worse because, as he says, “all i want is for you to be happy.” this in turn makes me feel even worse for being unable to even give him the courtesy of being pleasant and happy.

ad infinitum, ad astram, forever and-damn-ever amen.

one of the great things about my beloved is that he is singularly devoted to my happiness. he’s always had my back, even in the pre-relationship days. but now it’s transformed into, as i see it, a strong determination to create a world, in our home at the very least, that is designed to bring me the least amount of strife and sorrow possible. bruce hornsby has a song about this. in tribute to my beloved, and as a reminder to accept with grace the gift i have in him, the words are reprinted in their entirety.

bright light streaming in through my window pane
think i’ll stare at the shapes it makes on the floor and then stare again
you’ve got your curtains drawn, anything i can do?
maybe a rose or a pillow or a picture or a funny joke just for you
to carry you away
let me bring you some tokens of esteem
close the door on the world, make it our own beautiful scene
there’s a darkness visible, maybe only to me
maybe just a dream, a time-slowing-down dream
a hole you’re sinking down deep
comes loose at the seams, make the dream leave

he’s a good man. this is all he’s ever told me he wants for me. one day, i will let him bring me those halcyon days, silver tray or no.