Category Archives: Person

The Judgmentor Jumble: Things I Love That Other People Hate Edition

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Noun: Various. Opinion: Love.

Image credit: AMC

One of the interesting things about writing a blog like this is how often one comes up with opinions one would ordinarily never have bothered having about stuff no one else cares what you think about. Another interesting thing is finding out that it is more difficult to explain why you love things than hate things. There’s something about hating that people trust; the hostility acts as a dais on which you get to stand and allows you to be taller than everybody else and no matter what you say you see (bald spots! dandruff!) people will take your word for it as you’ve undermined anything positive they had to stand on. Say you love something, however, and people tend to scoff. Love seems to make you vulnerable and ridiculous. There’s something perverse, important and terribly interesting going on here, which I will not investigate. I will instead wallow and relish in this messedupness, the way a wolf rolls in deer shit and carrion, by celebrating the things I love that I know make other people spoon-gag.

Opera—I freaking love the opera (say in sing-song voice with extended vibrato on the last syllable–go ahead, go back and read it again just like that). The impractical costumes, the monotonous recitative, the lung-bursting arias! The fake weapons, the mediocre dancing, the part where two zaftig singers embrace but can’t quite encircle their arms around one another because of their oversized midsections! I love it all! I hate the overpriced tickets, but that’s about the only thing I hate about it. My love for opera does not, however, make me blind to the fact that other people really hate opera. I’ve had to turn off the radio, leave performances early and utilize headphones because of the rampant opera hate. This is entirely unfair, as most of the hate comes from people who’ve never properly listened to opera. This is also entirely understandable, as opera has lame public relations—like cats. Look at dogs, dogs have great PR: man’s best friend and all that. Dogs are always showing up on rooftops during floods and next to the graves of their owners who were killed in a natural disaster. They’re positioned as loyal and noble and loving and having low, easy-to-achieve expectations of you. Meanwhile, cats show up on You Tube beating up on dogs. Cats are loved by cat people despite their poorly managed reputation—cat people laugh when a cat rubs up against their leg then hisses at them when they bend down to pet it. Cat people find this adorable. When cats stare at cat people and cat people respond by saying “hi!” and the cat runs away, cat people think that’s endearing.

Opera people are like cat people. Opera and cats have something in common: they come across as detached and elitist, but they’re both really, really beautiful. And just because one cat is kind of an aloof asshole, it doesn’t mean all operas are boring. You follow? Look, if you’re one of these people who find opera boring or obnoxious—whatever, I don’t feel like fighting now. But if you’re someone who thinks you don’t like opera when you’re actually just intimidated by it? Come. I stroke your hair. Relax–it’s just opera. Even if you spoke the language it’s being sung in, you still wouldn’t understand what they’re saying—the melisma warps the vowels to the point that French, Italian and German all pretty much sound like the same gibberish. Hey, I’ve fallen asleep during the opera. So what? Sometimes they’re too damn long—usually by the time I wake up the same soprano’s still going at it; you won’t miss much, don’t worry about it. It’s just opera. Read the Wikipedia entry before you go, that will help you follow the story. Opera’s all about the journey, the music, that’s why you can see the same opera over and over and never tire of it. Most of the time the stories don’t even make sense, anyway. Again, it’s just opera. Bug Bunny did it, so can you.

Now, once you get over the whole intimidation thing, you might be surprised to find that there is a world of beauty you never knew existed. There are notes you’ve never heard sung before. There is emotion you didn’t think could be expressed with such accuracy or in such an interesting way. Once your brain encompasses the complexity of a Mozart aria, you may just wonder how you ever withstood the herp-derp repetitiveness of a contemporary pop song. Opera may be hard to love at first, but it’s easy to stay in love. If all you know about opera is what you saw in Pretty Woman, forget that twaddle immediately! If I recall correctly, he says something about how if you love opera the first time, you love it forever, but if not it will never be a part of your soul. She, of course, cries ecstatic tears her first time. That is because they are watching Verdi’s La Traviata, where a john falls in love with a hooker and then the bitch DIES. She cries because she herself is a HOOKER. Get it? Do NOT take life lessons of any sort from a goddamn Julia Roberts movie. Those of us who love opera know it took time; first familiarity, then friendship, then affection, then the kind of love that makes marriages work for life.

Gwyneth Paltrow—Everyone hates Gwyneth Paltrow, but I…actually, I hate her, too. A lot. Next.

Home Economics—I am not one of these women who takes pride in not cooking or sewing or cleaning. I do not knit ironically (I knit poorly, which resides in a different quadrant of attitude, catty-corner from the one that says “tragic, self-mocking hipster”). My oven is in regular use. I hate doing laundry and I hate ironing; I nevertheless fancy myself competent at both (as long as you ignore collars and sleeves. And the section around buttons). I take pride in generally being a good steward of my things and space. I do not feel any less the feminist for being domestic; in fact, I’d like to think I’m making a stronger statement. I am advancing the cause by using my powers for good, to improve the quality of my life and not in subservience to someone else’s pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, if I could afford it I’d hire the cadre of servants from Downton Abbey—but I believe that truly happy people are the ones who know to find joy in the chores they must do. Thus drudgery becomes delight! And a sinkful of dirty dishes gets cleaned in the span of one and a half Al Green songs with made-up lyrics (“I’m…so in love with you; Whatever I want you do; It’s alright by me…You–make me feel; Like a shoe…I–want to spend all my cash on food…”).

Betty Draper—AMC’s Mad Men is scheduled to return to the air in a couple of months, and this seems as good a time as any to assert my affection for this crazy bitch. If you don’t watch the show, you probably won’t be too insulted by my love for Betty Draper. In the beginning of the series, she is the model housewife of the main male lead. So textbook is her performance of the housewife role that it is hard to tell if her flawlessness comes from effort or vapidity. Then Betty’s character suffers through the indignities of an unfaithful husband, a repressive society, suburban scrutiny and imperfect children. We see her veneer crack little by little—when we see what’s underneath, instead of vulnerable flesh we discover a fossilized spirit cast in amber, once liquid resin but long ago polymerized by heat and pressure. She turns monstrous in her selfishness and contempt for the world, including her own children. This seems the most honest depiction of the influence of mid-century values on a bystanding woman. Trapped in a supporting role to my own life, confined within fences both physical and metaphorical, hindered from fulfilling every corporeal and emotional need, disallowed from pursuing my intellectual interests, required to set my hair every morning, demanded to maintain a certain waist size, dismissed for every quality I possess in mind or character, performing all these duties perfectly to the thankless indifference of the world, I, too, may eventually disassociate from decency and compassion when so little has been rendered to me. I, too, may subvert my oppressors in self-destructive ways. I, too, may lock my daughter in a closet out of frustration. I find her an entirely sympathetic figure, a beautiful body harboring a longing soul that was scourged by negligence. A waste of mind and spirit. A compelling picture of a heart blackened and gloriously corrupt. I hope she wins.

Keanu Reeves—It’s not like I’ll watch anything Keanu’s in, like I would for, say, Meryl Streep or Peter O’Toole. But Keanu manages to show up in a lot of movies I genuinely enjoy, like a traveling film bomb, including Much Ado About Nothing, the first Matrix, Dangerous Liaisons, A Scanner Darkly, etc. He shows up in a lot of other shit, too, so there’s that. However, while his range as an actor is limited, the diversity of his projects is prodigious, which is admirable. I never found Keanu’s screen presence disagreeable—what other people see as wooden strikes me as refreshingly lacking in exploitation. He does not chew scenery, he does not bully the viewer with emotion, his beauty is clean and unaggressive and quite delightful to take in. He’s a glass of unsweetened iced tea, a little on the underbrewed side. The waiter forgot to add the lemon wedge. But I drink it anyway. I hereby officially lobby for more pretty boys in the movies, or at least as many as there are less interesting, insipidly attractive women who have been tolerated on-screen (some even win Oscars for it). Maybe that will cheer up Keanu. It will me.

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, though why would you? I just spent six paragraphs expounding on things you hate. I apologize. But really, I gave you the opportunity to stand on your dais and laugh at the midget who likes fancy music, baking, frigid blonds and Ted Logan from his and Bill’s excellent adventure. Stand there on your platform, make fun of my hairline and enjoy it! Or…should you be among the few who love what I love…come join me and look for boogers up their nostrils! Haha, that’s a hairy one.

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Foodies

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Noun: Foodies.  Opinion: Qualified hate.

This topic seems relevant, today.  Today, around 2000 miles away from where I sit, many foodies are congregating in the Rockies at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.  They are searing and tasting and quaffing.  Because foodies don’t just cook, eat and drink, that’s beneath them.  Somewhere out there, little mountain foodies are feeling very important, disconnected from the rest of us.

I take food seriously.  I take the preparation of food even more seriously.  Once I was bonding with someone over being disgusting, gluttonous food sluts (that’s a bullet point on my resume) when I discovered that his idea of cooking was to buy fresh ravioli and assemble it together with some prepared sauce.  Like waiting out bad sex, I smiled mechanically, maybe even made some perfunctory “mmm!” noises, but silently felt betrayed—I had formed what turned out to be an entirely fraudulent connection with him.  I would consider that meal the affected, tweed-jacketed older brother of Kraft Easy Mac.  I’ll eat it, and probably have seconds, but that is because 1) it would be free, 2) I am deeply appreciative of any meal that someone else makes where I don’t end up doing the dishes, and 3) please refer to the third bullet point on my resume.

This betrayal has happened to me often.  I ate indifferent cafeteria food in school (betrayed by Education!), I ate untold numbers of burritos at work (betrayed by Corporate America!), I ate frankenfood protein bars when I was busy (betrayed by Time!), and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I learned to cook.  The betrayals stopped and the enlightenment began.  Through cooking, I learned about the world—its networks and chains, its synergies and yields.  I learned about animals and plants and weather.  I learned about health and history.  I learned about people, which is largely why I find food so wonderful—because it can create connections, because these connections form families, because these families structure society.

To understand a culture, I begin by eating what they eat.  To comprehend traditions, I study its cuisine.  To get on people’s good side, I eat what they put in front of me and rub my tummy approvingly like my life depended on it.  My wandering ass has been to many strange lands with strange customs, and when in doubt, I eat.  I came to know people in France by eating snails floating in a wild mushroom bisque (it was divine).  I came to know people in Korea by grilling sweet-marinated eel plucked hours earlier from a muddy delta (it was transcendent).  I came to know people in Peru by consuming unreasonable amounts of pristine ceviche radiant with the tang of local citrus fruits (it was glorious).  I came to know people in New England, who like to follow up a five mile morning jog with oatmeal (it…was).  Food, along with music and math, is one of our world’s universal languages.  It is, you could say, a passion of mine.

I am not, however, a foodie.

My skin crawls at the word.  I abhor what it has come to symbolize.  (Well, “abhor”…it’s a strong word, no?  But for effect, let’s say “abhor.”  I’m really more exasperated, but I’m here to judge, so we’ll pound the gavel with “abhor.”)

These people are not my people.  They, too, take food seriously, but in a different way.  These people think that food allows them to yell at cooks on television, to charge $500 for a meal, to preach and preach and preach their locavore gospel until you suddenly remember how good french fries dipped in Frosties are and make a midnight trip to the nearest Wendy’s. These people have a warped sense of the importance of food, as if our mismanagement of the food chain is somehow accountable for holy wars and dengue fever and irresponsible journalism.

We have gotten this far, after all, having for most of our evolution eaten berries and nuts.  We were grateful when they were there and didn’t give us diarrhea. And surely we ate the wildebeest raw before it occurred to us to cook it.  During the Middle Ages in the West, boiled swan on a trencher was considered sophisticated fare.  Yet here we are, alive, texting on our smartphones, putting bitches on the moon; you, me and Britney Spears, who subsists on a diet of Cheetos and still earns more than any of us who invest in organic rhubarb.  The point is, even on the most dubious of diets, man has accomplished many things.  Let’s not make food out to be something it’s not.  Foodies take food seriously, yes—but mostly because they want to be taken seriously.  They attach themselves to food in a serious way, then impose a seriousness on food that seems misplaced and artificial, so that by the transitive property they, too, are serious.

Listen to me, foodies–I get it, I’ve been there, that’s how I know.  School lunches, agribusiness, factory farming—these are important issues.  But you have to stop taking yourselves so seriously.  You have to stop being so fucking earnest.  You have to stop following Gwyneth Paltrow’s lead and thinking you know two shits about anything because you read Michael Pollan and the Dining section. Because you are talking about food; your food, your subsidized, imported, first-world food.  It’s a beautiful thing, I know.  But you can’t come at it from a place of entitlement—meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, some kid is sucking peanut butter out of an airdropped plastic packet, and she doesn’t give a shit if your dinner is free-range and grass-finished.  And, by the way, that piece of veal was prepared by some guy who just got out of jail, not by the chef you saw on Food Network, and was served to you by an out-of-work actor who contracted hepatitis from a penis piercing, and the cookbook you bought to take home with you was actually ghost-written.  Just so you know.  Enjoy your meal.

So stop being picky eaters and status whores!  If the point is here, you’re somewhere way over there.  You so missed it, it’s like it left last week and you only heard about it tomorrow. For foodies, food has become a contrivance of religious wholesomeness—I’ll eat this, I won’t eat that, I’m purer than you, better than you.  Look how superior I am, I eat wild ramps gathered by aboriginal farmers.  Seasoned with saba vinegar made by a third cousin of Mario Batali.  And finished with fleur de sel, collected by dipping berets into the Brittany coast because regular kosher salt isn’t as balanced and I would never use regular iodized salt because that’s what Top Chef told me.  I can’t with you.  You use food to justify your sanctity the way priests use sex, and I bet you’re eating pork rinds on the side the way priests…never mind.

Look, I eat ramps.  I like saba vinegar.  And, God help me, I’ve paid $25 for salt from the Guerande.  But here’s why I’m not a foodie—because I don’t like it like that.  I fucking love it!  Food makes me giggle.  Food brings family and friends.  Food parts the clouds and coddles me in sunshine.  While your clenched, joyless, over-regulated pleasure in food makes you look like Wallace farting (while Gromit contemplates suicide).  You’ve gone and depleted food of its greatest contribution to our lives: delight.

I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with the much argued-over Atlantic article that suggested there was some moral distortion innate in eating excessively and excessively well,  but there is certainly a pomposity to it.  The irony is that food doesn’t need pomposity.  Food is important, food can be artistic, food does have impact.  But food is also delightful—so let it be delightful.  Foodies, stop using food to separate yourself from others.  Start using it to connect.

The Judgmentor Jumble: The Sex Edition

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Noun: Various. Opinion: Slow head shake.

Welcome to another edition of the Judgmentor Jumble!  This time we focus in on recent stories having to do with The Sex.  Because The Sex seems to be ever-present in our society, upstaging The Honorable, undermining The Truth and distorting The Relevant.  The Sex has an entourage, too, made up of The Politics, The Egocentric, and not infrequently, The Internet.  The Sex is everywhere all the time!  And luckily for me, that makes it all the easier to judge.  Let’s begin.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: This is in many ways not Arnold’s story. It’s Maria’s story. It’s Maria’s story because all the interesting elements of plot and character development reside with her. It’s not Arnold’s story because when we heard that this body builder turned movie star turned politician slept around and had an illegitimate kid no one was fucking surprised. There’s no narrative there; in the town of Not Surprised (population: all of us) one continued buffing one’s fingernails, breathing regularly, and whistling nonchalantly down the street with our hands in our pockets. But when we saw things from Maria’s perspective, our sympathies were activated. You? Slept around on me? Do you know who I am? I’m a fucking Kennedy, you disgusting, indiscriminate Wiener Schnitzel, I’m a fucking Kennedy. And not one of those tragic, inert Kennedys, either, I had a real job that I was fucking good at because I talk in complete sentences in something other people can recognize as English. Who the fuck are you? A piece of Spaetzle made of dick cheese, you think you can stick your Frankfurter anywhere you feel like? You were nothing but a Bratwurst-sucker when I first met you! I made you Governor of California! You were a vapid Hollywood Kaiserschmarren, tell me who would have taken you seriously without me standing by your ridiculous Iron Giant torso legitimizing your absurd pectorals and Bart Simpson head? And now there’s a kid? Who you probably conceived in my own house, with a trusted employee who was embedded in the most intimate aspects of my personal life? And this all comes out while I’m dealing with the death of my father, WWII veteran, public servant, intellectual giant, whose mind in his last days was so ravaged he didn’t even recognize me? If there were a nuclear option for complete humiliation, absolute invasion, total betrayal and all-consuming regret, you detonated it. You dumbass vat of Tiroler Grostl.

Anthony Weiner: Married to an aide to Secretary Clinton, married by President Clinton, it may have been written in the stars that Weiner would have his I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman moment. And when it happened, we were expecting something really good, no?  I mean, based on the name alone, expectations were set pretty high, right?  I think we were within reason to expect something explosive, lascivious, prurient, something to call Ken Starr out of his retirement as romance novelist.  Instead, we have sexts and twitpics which feel strangely juvenile. Using a cigar as a speculum seems downright erotic compared to a two-dimensional close-up of someone’s full-rise briefs. Juvenile, unsexy, yet revealing—more revealing than Clinton, more exposing than Spitzer, more uncomfortable than Sanford using the term “soul mate”.

Because it’s awkward. Sex is not very photogenic or articulate in real life; it looks good in certain lighting, sounds interesting in context, but when you’re across the room it seems shorter, quicker, clumsier, jigglier than you thought up close. If you’re not an active participant, sex looks weird or boring or a little funny at best. Sex needs hair and makeup, maybe calf implants, to be camera-ready.  Otherwise sex grows best in the dark; like endives. Endives are grown in the dark or they get bitter. And even then endives need a little dressing.  Sex is like endives.

I’ll leave the analogy here, I believe I made my point. Weiner’s scandal comes with pictures, which basically means we see him sexing in the bleak, open daylight of reality, with no mystery cloak or porn glitter. And it’s weird, boring and a little funny. When he said he was embarrassed, it was the first time I believed anything he said.

Does being a bad husband necessarily equate to being a bad politician? No. I thought Clinton was serviceable as president. And let’s disclose this fact, because it’s germane: there is a double standard here in favor of liberals. Liberals, in general, have a platform of permissiveness when it comes to two consenting adults. Liberals are inclusive when it comes to marginalized sexual activity. Liberals admit to having sex. Conservatives, however, campaign on a platform of sexual “morality.” There’s a stricter standard they hold others to, so we hold it right back. If you deprive others of fundamental rights based on whom they sleep with or how often, you make this issue fair game. Being sexually undisciplined doesn’t make you a bad politician, but hypocrisy does.  Lying doesn’t make you a bad politician (it just makes you a politician–ba dum kshhhhh), but bigotry does.

Having said that, Weiner’s done. Get out. Go home. The truth wouldn’t have been less true if there weren’t pictures, but the fact is that those images are indelible. They reveal a truth beyond the fact that you’re a skeev; they say you’re self-centered, you assume others like what you like, you take too much pride in your looks, you’re desperate for validation. You’ve revealed your soul in way Clinton never did, and what it shows is nothing good.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: This is the saddest because it is the most serious because it was the least consensual. DSK, as he’s known to people who’ve never actually met him and are too indifferent to say his name (guilty), couldn’t have engineered a situation less in his favor. It is too rife with symbolic significance. Chief of the IMF (allegedly) assaults African hotel maid–>Rich (allegedly) rapes the poor–>Man (allegedly) violates woman–>First-world (allegedly) exploits third-world–>Entitled (allegedly) abuses underprivileged–>Leisure class (allegedly) mounts working class. It goes on and on. The details are too sordid and depressing for anyone who internalizes this sort of thing as a reflection of the state of the world—this seems like a symbol for all that we do that keeps children starving, men disfranchised and women oppressed in developing nations.

Luckily, the symbolism doesn’t stop there. The fact is, DSK—leading candidate to run one of the largest economies in the world and head an important Western state—was arrested. Not quietly taken to the side and whispered his rights at a cocktail party-arrested, but pulled off a goddamn airplane and made to march the perp walk in front of camera flashes-arrested. He was denigrated and sneered at—not in gossip circles of the rich and connected, but in front of the whole world, everywhere from  television to the New Yorker. He is ruined—not for assaulting a cosseted princess, but a humble maid whose identity is thoughtfully protected. Because every woman deserves safety from perverts, no matter their pedigree or job. And every (alleged) degenerate warrants a trial, no matter their pedigree or job.  I would bet my left nut–wait, I don’t have one–I would bet your left nut (you don’t have one?  We’ll find a left nut somewhere) that this would not have happened in West Africa or in France.  This is America doing it right, maaaaaybe save for jumping to a few conclusions.

So amidst the symbol of sadness, there is a symbol of faith—in the system, in America, and in democracy. After this post, we certainly need to see the good to wash off the sticky film that covers us for knowing too much about where certain penises decided to take up residence.  Let us shake our heads nay to the poor judgment of these individual men. But let us also nod our heads yea to having greater wisdom in the collective.

Death of Osama bin Laden

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Noun: Death of Osama bin Laden. Opinion: Conflicted.


The mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and leader of the al-Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden, was killed during a raid by US commandos on a compound located in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.  The culturally sanctioned forum for any conversation between three or more people without Twitter accounts, Facebook, was afire with a passive-aggressive fight over the appropriate response on May 2, 2011.

Regularly scheduled programming was interrupted for a special report.  Facebook’s ears perked up, a small wrinkle forming between its brows.  The story was leaked to the networks, who excitedly wrung their hands while waiting for Obama to make the announcement.  Facebook cried out in surprise and triumph.  Obama read his teleprompter, his eyes shifting back and forth belying the spontaneity of his confidence.  Facebook nodded, admiring his swagger, then ran out to post pictures of flash mobs singing off-key around the White House and Ground Zero.

Facebook was elated!  Facebook was emotional!  Then Facebook went to sleep, it was late.

When Facebook woke up, it was with the repentance of a bad hangover.

Some seemed chastened and embarrassed by their initial delight.  Others who chose to remain sober the previous night decided that the outburst was unseemly and said so.  Facebook cringed.  But that’s what relief feels like!  And Facebook was just doing what it does: emote and over-share.  After all, the existence of bin Laden weighed heavier on some than others.  He besmirched good hearts with dark shadows as a symbol of whatever evil seemed most odious to them.  There are just some things that the spirit resists sharing this world with; for me, it’s the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.  For others, it was bin Laden.  We’re both just saying we don’t trust men in hoods and white robes carrying large guns.

Then Facebook discovered the fabricated Martin Luther King, Jr. quote:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

It was a conflation of someone’s editorial and the famous “violence is…a descending spiral” quote by King.  It was probably birthed over at Twitter, but Twitter makes no apologies.  Twitter has a character limit, and can’t be bothered to explain every little thing it publishes.  Twitter looked Facebook up and down, shrugged, and walked off #thisisallyoubitch.

What Facebook was trying to say, really, was embodied by a young fellow the Washington Post tripped over in the Financial District:

Ryan Beckley, a 21-year-old student at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, stood at the gates of St. Paul’s Chapel holding a sign quoting John Donne. “Any man’s death diminishes me.” He found it difficult to vilify bin Laden given the “infinite complexity” of the world, an attitude at which various passersby sneered. One called him “a moron,” and another told him to rot, and another simply said, “[Expletive] you, idiot.”

Facebook and Ryan needn’t be embarrassed.  These sentiments, too, are valid, because I’m assuming they are not so much celebrating the life of a terrorist as attempting to mollify the hubris of the conqueror, which history has shown leads to bad endings.   The world is indeed complex and so are the men who live in it.  And people like Ryan—that is to say, people who quote John Donne and are earnest enough to spend good money on tuition for a degree in jazz and contemporary music—are people of principle.  People of principle tend to understand other people of principle.  People of principle are familiar with the rip current driving the actions of other people of principle, even while finding such actions contemptible.  Thus a moral American can find the gray area in an extremist philosophy, can account for the impact of foreign policy during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on the making of a terrorist, can calculate the effects of global disfranchisement on a region that allowed a radical movement to flourish.

And yet this same moral American may be unequivocally merciless towards a mother who beats her kids or a priest who rapes altar boys or a psychopath who tortures prostitutes.  Their motives are not as clear, you see.  Their actions are inexplicable; they were not driven by principle.  This is only to explain where the Facebooks and Ryans of the world are coming from; why they may come across as forgiving of a certain kind of evil.  It’s not due to a lack of moral compass.

It may be due to misplaced identification and an incomplete thought process, however.  Because as much as we should refrain from relishing in violence, we should also not indirectly advocate serial mass murder, which was a cause bin Laden committed himself to freely, financially and whole-heartedly.  If some people revel in the passing of a maniac, if there is some disproportionately small amount of pleasure experienced by those who have lived through massive amounts of pain, if the President of the United States chooses to call this grotesque abortion’s demise “justice”—I am not moved to correct them.

Even those who take greatest satisfaction in bin Laden’s death would rather 9/11 had never happened at all.  So would those who censure a jubilant reaction.   Facebook is better off not splitting hairs over who’s the more honorable.

If you take the arithmetic mean of our collective reaction to the death of bin Laden, you will find that we are, in fact, a conflicted nation.   And as far as I’m concerned, this is great.  This is the right response.  This conflict is healthy, this conflict is necessary, and this conflict is most compassionate to those who need it—the victims’ friends and families.  Because through solidarity and association, we are telling them it is OK to feel what they feel.  However the hell they are feeling.  An event like this is just as likely to evoke a rush of victory as sunken fury.  Peace and Tolerance were burdened by the arrogant presence of a fanatic; his death does not win them over, but after years of silence his acts of terror were delivered a decisive response.  Closure is a gift.  Yet equally valid is the latter feeling of despair; a response to the reality that this basically changes nothing.  Parents are still forever absent in New York, collateral victims are still limbless in Iraq, children are still dead the world over.  Closure is a chimera.  And if they feel some combination of every feeling under the sun, apparently so do we as a country.

One man perished.  One bad man among many.  The symbolism of that is arguable and, ultimately, personal.

International Women’s Day

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Noun: International Women’s Day.  Opinion: Yeah, ok, sure.

 

March 8 is International Women’s Day, isn’t that nice?  Very generous of The Someone in charge of the Roman calendar to give us a day.  According to the CIA World Factbook, there are around 3,429,458,135 of us in the world today, which yields 0.000025 seconds for each of us if we split the day evenly.  ZOMG!  I wonder what I should do with mine?

Surely I’ll use it shopping or getting a manicure or avoiding math!  Squeeee!

Ok, ok, punch-yourselves-in-the-head it out.  I know, shhh, it’s ok now.  Let’s just resign ourselves to a post consisting exclusively of sweeping generalizations, because that’s really the only way we’ll get through this before the turn of the next decade.  Are we all on board the USS Slippery Slope?  Good, nobody move, not even to adjust a wedgie, lest we all topple overboard.

Despite the unavoidable implication that a day for women (international ones) cedes the rest of the year to everybody else (men, iguanas, candy corn, etc.), I’m not against taking a moment to remember the achievements of womanhood.  Not at all.  The fact that most of these achievements were not documented is a function of a rather unfortunate history of subjugation—but if we were to judge the leaps in human progress by only that which was chronicled and sourced, let me just testify for the record: THE JUDGMENTOR INVENTED AWESOME AND ASS-KICKING.  There, noted in the annals for all posterity to take heed.

But on the off-chance that greatness existed even without witness, that thunderous advancement was served in the quiet footnotes of history, that titanesses lived alongside titans, whether as intellectual equals or supporters that facilitated the latter’s achievements… let us take a moment (say, a day—give or take forever) to be grateful for the magnificence contributed to humanity by women, despite a long and universal custom of trying to prevent such contributions from happening.

It makes the utmost sense, for example, that in the dark, primitive days of man’s survival, the silence was broken by language as discovered by women.  If men were hunters, communicating with noise could not have worked to their advantage as they moved stealthily ever closer to their prey.  If women were gatherers, it seems only natural that their social clusters would have harvested its own social customs and practices.  This is how I imagine things went:

Woman 1: *pointing to snake in wolfberry bush*  Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Woman 2: *looks at Woman 1* Durrr?

Woman 1: Durrr!

Woman 2: *detecting urgency in Woman 1’s voice, intuiting danger, following direction of Woman 1’s finger, noticing snake in wolfberry bush and safely moving locations, nodding*  Durrr.

And henceforth snakes were known as Durrr.  And pointing meant “regard the general space in the direction indicated by the trajectory of the sightline that begins from the end of my index finger and note any item or person that is unusual or germane in the context of our current communication.”

A similar scenario may have played amongst the men, but it would have ended differently.

Man 1: *pointing to snake in tall grass* Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Man 2: *punches Man 1, gets bitten by snake, dies*

I also suspect that agriculture was discovered by women, whose environment and habits would make them receptive to the very unhurried and protracted messages of Nature.

Woman 1, year 1: picks berries from wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 1, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices decomposing wolfberry germinating on ground

Woman 1, year 2: returns to wolfberry bush, notices new, mini-wolfberry bush next to it

Woman 1, year 2, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices mini-wolfberry bush dying in the shadow of bigger wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 3, after drought: returns to wolfberry bush, notices both dead.  Comes up with the words “Son of a goddamn it.”

And after cursing the inconvenience of gathering, the Woman figures out that seeds, earth, water and sun have something to do with developing new life and more food.  And if life and food can be manipulated, people can stop wandering around the planet like idiots and farm.  Which pretty much changed, you know, everything.

Not that this really needs a male scenario, but let’s indulge ourselves for 0.000025 seconds:

Man 1, year 1: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 2: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 3: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 4: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 5: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

No, no, this is not meant to be a male-bashing session, I…oh, get over it.  After millennia upon millennia of violent oppression and sexual degradation and tyrannical conditioning, you can take thirty fucking years of women’s lib and having your feelings hurt.  It’s International Women’s Day, suck it up.

Wait, wait, I have a father and a brother and know too many good men for that kind of prejudice, so I take a fraction of it back—the fraction that corresponds to the ratio of good men to bad.  Because I have more in common with good men than I do with bad women.  And bad women exist—in fact, all kinds of women exist.  We as a gender are more diverse by orders of magnitude than men are, I think.  Men come in primary colors, women come in every shade in between.   There are varieties of women I regard as completely different species from myself—unfortunately, some of these women, few as they are, tend to dictate disproportionately the stereotypes used to perceive the rest of us.  That tends to happen in fragmented markets, but those stereotypes are not only unfair, they’re too often untrue.

Rational, thoughtful women—with rapier intuition, refined sensitivity and invaluable problem-solving skills and finesse—are among the finest creatures this planet has produced (besides puppies).  I would rather have these women as my president, my boss, and my banker than anyone else in the world.  I would trust them to guide me in good times, lead me in bad, and be stewards for the world peace we’ve always longed for under the rule of men.  Are they too few?  Maybe.  Maybe we create a hostile environment for girls to develop into such women.  Certainly we could do a better job of keeping them safe from rape and war, encouraging their literacy, having faith in their judgment as they grow into adults.

So it is for those women—those who were, are, and will be—that I dedicate my 0.000025 seconds of International Women’s Day.  I can’t think of a better use of my time.

Tina Fey

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Noun: Tina Fey.  Opinion: Z-snap.

My hypocrisy knows very little bounds.  I’m pretty comfortable with this fact but understand if you’re not.  I’m probably not very excited about your hypocrisies, it’s like wearing someone else’s bathing suit.

At least my hypocrisies aren’t in the same category as, ohIdunno, going to black-tie Parkinson’s fundraisers but not supporting stem cell research.  Or being the marriedest, reproductivest, church-goingest small-government alpha-male homophobe while meeting members of the high school wrestling team off-road in local parks for bouts of Craigslist-method intercourse.  Or having German blood and hugging.

That was probably more tangential than necessary.  OK, the point is that of my many hypocrisies one is having so very many opinions on pop culture while not working very hard at participating in topical shared experiences.  Like television.  Never watched a single episode of Dancing with the Stars.  Never regretted it.

I’m not saying I have very discriminating tastes, I don’t (the goblins and harpies and hacks—oh, my!—on the Food Network are my televisionary Klonopin).  But I’m not very attentive and don’t give any of it my all—it’s just not as exciting as it used to be.  You know, I just kind of lie there.  We’ve been together a long time, the TV and I.  These things happen in long-term relationships.

Then along came 30 Rock.  And I haven’t crushed this hard on a sitcom since Arrested Development. Like any crush it makes me do stupid things that I, under any other state of consciousness, would recognize as being really, really uncool.  Like remembering lines I find particularly well-crafted.  And being home on time to watch episodes.  Or referencing storylines to support my real-life anecdotes.  Christ, I hate myself.

And I’ll admit it, I’m kind of girl-crushing on Tina Fey (to all you young straight girls out there struggling with the wretched dearth of rational role models…it gets better).  She won the Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this year, much touted as the youngest recipient in the HISTORY OF THE AWARD EVER OMG, at 40 years old.  The award itself is 13.  I have pairs of shoes that have been around longer and they would have some choice words to share should they ever find one of those trophies on their lawn.  I’m betting younger winners are coming; I wouldn’t get too comfortable on those laurels.

The age thing has contributed to a weird national conversation about whether she deserves it.  I mean, it was a fetal attempt at a conversation, not really very developed, but sticky from the placenta of groupthink and definitely out there.  It was because she hasn’t been around as long as, say, Bill Cosby (last year’s winner) and I would conjecture not as male as, say, Whoopi Goldberg (2001’s winner).  OK, that was rude.

I don’t buy it, though, as I see her accomplishments as justifiably deep and edifying.  Her contributions to comedy have been pivotal in ways that will impact the way we laugh at things, and God willing, look at things—which is what Twain was talking about when he said: “Be good and you will be lonesome.”  No, no, I mean when he said: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”

Among her accomplishments is that she has figured out a way to be funny as a woman.  I’ll let you catch your balance for a second because I realize we are on a dangerous precipice with one foot on a stereotype and the other on a banana peel.  She hasn’t done it alone, obviously, and there is a cavalcade of other females who nobly bodyslammed the gates until the fissure grew wide enough for Fey to enter, including Mae West, Lucille Ball, Betty White, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Roseanne Barr, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and, yes, Whoopi Goldberg.  Those aren’t, by the way, arbitrary women who have done comedy—those are specific women who were allowed to be funny.  Not just straight-man funny, but deliver-the-punchline funny.  They got to play Homer instead of Marge, not wife-whose-name-I-can’t-be-bothered-to-look-up instead of Raymond-who-is-loved-by-allegedly-“Everybody”-but-me.  Fey plays Homer, donuts and all.

There is an earnestness to owning fallopian tubes that runs counter to being laughed at.  Which I get, since our obvious roles are relegated to being virgins (not funny) or whores (not funny) or moms (mine’s pretty funny, but generally, not funny).  And to this day, women doing scatological or slapstick humor leave me pretty cold—especially if the cause is a guy’s dumbassery, as it’s too close to being exploitative (not funny).  And while the self-consciousness latent in caring about one’s looks is not an area populated exclusively by vulvas, we definitely take up more space.  Lipstick is not funny (that’s how Ellen Degeneres got in).  Yet Fey is an attractive woman, and seems reasonably confident in her looks.  Like most smart, pretty women, she also seems hesitant to exploit it lest the inflated proportions of society’s fetishism obscure her talents.  So, she subverts it and defies it until you’re forced to dismiss it, but not so much that it seems like she’s fishing for compliments because then it’s annoying the way a skinny girl complaining about her weight kills any buzz within a mile radius.

Fey is remarkably tender when she deals with traditionally female issues.  PMS is a topic that has been sufficiently explored by comedians, and it’s one that, quite frankly, isn’t a rich enough mine to sustain what laughs people attempt to excavate from it.  As are biological clocks, grooming, singlehood over 30, nesting instincts and all the other stuff that makes one guy sitting next to another look across the intentionally empty seat between them and chuckle “yeah, bitches be crazy.”  That’s…not funny.  Well, it is, but only because they’re retarded.  Fey ventures into the same territory but she laughs from the inside.  She’s not dismissing that there are certain things innate to having a vagina that are hard to deal with and suuuuuck chickenballs.  She allows it, engages it, defers to its tragedy, creates a semi-safe place and THEN ridicules it.  That’s funny.  Not this time, obviously, because I just analyzed the fuck out of it, but trust me.  That’s gold, Jerry.

She’s created one of TV’s only honest heterosexual platonic relationships on the show.  Two attractive people, both smart, obviously fond of one another—chemistry exists but it’s one completely devoid of sexuality.  He’s rich and powerful while she’s a single subordinate—in Hollywood this had always been a set up that begged for a specific resolution, one that made single women everywhere roll their eyes and made attractiveness a liability in the eyes of bosses, bosses’ wives, female bosses, female bosses’ husbands, and any staff member who won’t take orders from a cervix (alright, everyone, let’s just all calm.  Thefuck.  Down.).  It helps to be reminded that people are people before they are genders, and that connections and affections can arise from the commonality of being human.  We never see enough of that.

Which brings us to two of her greatest accomplishments: Tracy Jordan and Jack Donaghy.  Not only has she broken ground for uteruses everywhere (I’m running out of reproductive organs), she’s created greater male characters than any all-boy Harvard-educated writing staff has ever done for women.  These two roles are about as well tailored to the actors as any on television, and the results are close to sublime.  They would both be degenerate pieces of shit in real life, and some may argue they are played by two, but that’s why comedy heals.  In terms of writing loving, impish portraits of a collection of despicable traits for men better than most men could, take a seat because she has this.

So as much as this entire entry has been unloading about her womanhood, Fey’s best contribution is showing that wit and intelligence and sensitivity and sarcasm and talent are fundamentally gender-neutral attributes.  According to Peter Kaminsky, one of the producers of the telecast, the Kennedy Center gave the award to Fey because they were “recognizing a body of work that is important to our culture. What Tina has done has come to define humor in our culture today. It’s not an award for quantity, and it’s not a career-sunset award. It’s for a person whose body of work is defining of our time.”  Let’s hope that’s true.

Babies

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Noun: Babies.  Opinion: Buckle up.

The world is being taken over by babies.  Everyone I know has been busy getting knocked up and delivering blobular mini-people.  Babies in wombs, babies in bonnets, babies here, babies there, babies everyfuckingwhere, babies babies babies!!!!  Damn.  That’s a lot of…storks.

I have nothing so much resembling a maternal instinct.  Kids and I are cool, we can hang, they like me and I like them, but that is as much a function of my knowing when to call it quits and leave the romper room as it is my affinity for adorably clumsy limbs and juvenile Tourette’s.  I have been friends with girls who yearned for motherhood since they were twelve, but never did my uterus that way incline. 

My doctor tells me that the day will come when my hormones turn on me and I’ll come running to him to inject me with anything that will make my raisin-like ovaries cough out the remains of their fast depleting inventory.  Apparently, Nature gets sneaky on women like me and when time is almost up she releases the crazy hormones, and this pretty much explains the premise of both Sex and the City movies.  I’m looking forward to that.  But for now, from my seat of detached but benevolent observation, I have to wonder at the eagerness of my peers to procreate.

After all, what is the value proposition of life?  You can guarantee this innocent child nothing.  Not health, not happiness, maybe your specific love but not its duration or its acceptance.  You can guarantee it death and taxes.  So, basically, you are bringing in a child to the world offering it nothing certain but that it will have what shit it earns taken away, and an eventual demise that will either come too early or after a helpless decline of youth and vigor.  The brushstrokes may vary in color, but they all paint the same picture.

This line of thinking is most distressing when you see the poignant delicacy of childhood in front of you.  The bloom of innocence and wonder is nothing less than enchanting.  But its transience is foreseeable.  It’s an augury of what is inevitable; it’s an ephemeron, a sunny day with a biting sea breeze.  Suffering is ahead; pain is coming.  Death will be here.  You don’t deserve any of it and you certainly didn’t ask for it.  Your friends will protect you the best we can, but the demons are many.  Ennui, self-doubt, embarrassment, devastation, disappointment, heartbreak and all elements of the human condition are part of the package.  And that’s if you’re lucky.  Even if you escape hunger, disease, avarice and murder, you have to live in a world filled with them.  If we succeed in providing for you to adulthood, giving you a conscience, having you outlive us, you bear the weight of environmental ruin, human neglect, the providence of general ignorance.  Terrorism grows banal.  Oil endlessly spills.  War rages and flares and proves intractably resistant to squelching.  These may, God forbid, reach into the bubble we patch together for you in a combined state of hubris and protectiveness.  Family, for you, will not be a decision to be as blithely made as for us.

But it was never easy, even before we figured out how to start our own fires or whittle a spearhead out of flint.  Because besides shit to make you poop your loincloth like running into the odd roaming smilodon or thunderous electrical discharge splintering out of the darkening sky, there were always the assholes.  God, the assholes.  There are…so many.  So very many.  And even the people you love and are friends with will occasionally be assholes.  I am often an asshole.  But I hate other assholes, as you will.  I guarantee you assholes, and lots of them.

So, I promise you death, taxes and assholes.  But listen, little occupied womb, if you’re lucky you’ll be born with some modicum of imagination and an ability to recognize magic if not create it.  And if you are, there are a few things out here worth coming out for.  Like the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3 played on a Gofriller instrument where it’s singing—singing!—to the world, drawing from its earth every blood drop of beauty and magnificence, calling to everything good and wonderful until the sunset spills jewels on the ocean, David nods and smiles to himself, ancient epic poetry echo in caves, summer peaches cry tears of nectar, and an undiscovered Vermeer glows quietly in an attic.  It’s the same song you’ll hear when you taste your first velveteen sip of potato leek soup or take a twilight walk by the Seine where the laughing lights make your heart burst.  The world reverberates with beautiful things buzzing and humming to each other, lilacs to kittens to seared scallops to Shakespeare sonnets to Jane Austen novels to pink diamonds to the roar of a crowd erupting out of a coliseum/stadium/arena/theater to big steaming bowls of laksa to sunlight creating prisms through water glasses to downy blankets to Mozart arias to red rooftops on Greek isles to mountaintop monasteries to Seinfeld reruns to mist rising over prehistoric rivers to napping puppies to blazing meteors on an inked canvas sky to your sweet little laugh of pure delight.  And if you manage to place yourself…just…right…where these sonic waves converge…

Well, I’ll let you discover that for yourself.  Here are a few tips for finding that sweetspot—1) your parents will be preoccupied with a lot of things that may seem mundane and silly to you, like safety, family and good health.  Listen to them for longer than you think you need to…you’ll need these things more than you can imagine.  2) You will cry.  It will hurt.  Do not not cry or not be hurt—that’s the worst thing you could ever, ever do to yourself.  If for no other reason than it makes the times you laugh less fun.  Instead, when you cry and feel hurt seek people out whose hugs and guidance make you feel better.  Mom’s a good place to start.  3)  Once you find a moment of being and inspiration, you’re not done.  This is a moving target.  You have to keep looking.  Sorry, no one solicited my opinion about this, either. 

Good luck finding it.  You will, I know you will, but I hope you find it often.  I wish I could guarantee you love and success and a path of bountiful luck and just enough resistance to make you interesting, but I’d be lying if I said those were in the cards for most of us.   Most people will lie to you, and sure, it will feel great!  Yet indulge in too long and you cheat yourself the opportunity of finding what reality and truth have to offer, which isn’t too bad–the list I wrote above isn’t even close to comprehensive.  Seeing those things can take some hard-won strength, which is, you know, hard.  The smart ones always feel like life is hard.  I’d advise against being smart except the alternative is to be stupid, so live a hard life.  If you’re lucky you’ll be regularly reminded that it’s so worth it.

Debrahlee Lorenzana

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Noun: Debrahlee Lorenzana.  Opinion: Just stop, already.

Mother of Christ, let’s make this one quick.  In, judge the shit out of it, then out.  Because I just don’t have it in me to torture a verdict out of this one.

Debrahlee Lorenzana, whose body is as manufactured as her name, is suing Citibank for firing her on the basis of her eyeball-melting hotness.  You know, by her assessment.  I’m not disagreeing with her, I’m just saying that is not an official Judgmentor-stamped opinion.  Every time she walked by, hard-ons would follow, preventing all kinds of spreadsheets from being attended to and losing the bank billions of dollars.  She was, if I understand the case right, the cause of the Greek debt crisis and the stock market plunge of May 6.  Because she was so distracting, you see.  And best of all, Citibank said so, and it had something to do with her turtlenecks.

OK, I know I’ve used this analogy often enough that most people born after 1935 have heard it.  But it’s the only way I can frame men’s perspective on women in a manner that makes any kind of sense to me.  Men like women the way I like puppies.  Take out any suggestion of weird, sexual fetishism, and this kind of helps me understand.  If I see a puppy on the street, I may give it a whistle.  And I’m pretty sure it likes it.  And if it ignores me and refuses to make eye contact, that’s a little fucked up and kind of hurts my feelings, but whatever, brush it off and laugh about it with my friends.  I may pal around with a random dog at the park, even if I have one at home, and not really feel bad about it—it didn’t mean anything and is no reflection of how I feel about Ginger, I didn’t even know that dog’s name.  I sort of like dogs in general, and the more the better, and the younger ones are particularly cute, and even though one specific puppy may mean the world to me, this one puppy will never be as good as two puppies.  I like the idea of two puppies.  That seems fun.  One black lab and one yellow one, maybe.

Now, let’s play this out and envision a puppy in the office.  I mean, there are several puppies—not the majority of my co-workers, and probably not the friendliest, frolickiest of their breed, but puppies nevertheless, and I’m not very discriminating about which I like.  But there’s this one puppy that’s just…I mean, really, really adorable.  Like, it has the face of a Jack Russell, the gait of a Greyhound and the sweet little ass of a Corgi.  You know, with one of those shaggy, curly pig tails.  Just so goddamn delightful.  And it kind of minds its own business, but you always know when it’s around because it is that cute, and…dare I say…it’s kind of…damn it, yes, I’ll admit it, yes, it’s distracting.  That stupid bitch.

And you know what I’d do?  Because I’m an adult with responsibilities who is being paid to perform at a task?  Because I live in a litigious society and am smart enough to account for it?  Most of all because I can maintain perspective on where my problem begins and the puppy’s problem ends?  I’d suck it up and deal.  I would laugh to myself about being an idiot while thanking my lucky stars that I’m surrounded by lovable puppies.  Then I would observe that puppy’s performance and fire it if it’s not making me money and never once, ever, ever, never ever, mention its Corgi butt.  Because I’m not a fucking moron.  Because I’m an ADULT not a fucking moron.

And if it turned out that that puppy were actually an Old English Sheepdog who just got a good facelift and haircut and tail implant, it would never matter.  If that puppy wanted to do everything it could to distract the shit out of me by being irresistibly cute, it would still not matter—the fact that I like cute puppies is my problem, the fact that this puppy has tragically low levels of self-esteem is its problem.  I hired the puppy, ostensibly, to make me money—and that is the basis on which I will fire it.

And if I, the Judgmentor, were this puppy?  And I wore my rhinestone-studded pink collar a little tight?  If I curled my pig tail in such a way to best accent my Corgi features?  I would know exactly what I was doing.  I would be asking for the attention, but by soliciting it I forfeit my right to reject what is given (attention, that is, not harassment–that merits rejection in every and all scenarios).  Maybe I am particularly retarded in the way of puppy signaling, which happens on occasion…but that is not very likely in this case.

In this case, we’ve seen what results in the perfect storm where narcissism, sexism and stupidity collide.  Which is exactly why I prefer puppies to people.  Because they would never in a million years exhibit such implacably copious amounts of any of the above.

Unions

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Noun: Unions.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: Jen.


Among the nicer, more conscientious of you, there may be those who were wondering where the Judgmentor hath been these many weeks.  Among the rest of you are those who never really noticed the absence but are curious now that the topic has been brought up.  And the remaining of you may go back to playing Farmville for all I care.

Where have I been?  I’ve been busy.  Growing more deeply disenchanted with the world is a time-consuming business, I’ll have you know.  I have been off having what little remained of my idealism touched in private parts.  I have been occupied with the violation of an entire life philosophy.  In short, I have been busy becoming more cynical.

The easy joke here is to laugh a not very slightly supercilious laugh, the way Americans laugh at European people, and ask if that is even possible.  Just so you know, there is no faster way to have me get my sanctimony on.  Idealism is not vacuous, or silly, or embodied by your Tickle-Me-Elmo approach to life.  It is not always graced with beauty but it always has an element of splendor.  As if there were virtue in serenity, in canopied buoyancy, in blinding smiles and drawing your mental curtains to screen out the ugly.  Who’s more cynical, I ask—me, who had pursued an exquisite chimera, or you, chipper as you were, who never questioned whether the world could be better?  Me, who made choices with the faith that the result would direct itself towards a normative path, or you, who made negative decisions by accepting the positive reality?  What’s a more cynical statement: “This goddamn fucking sucks” or “That’s ok, it’s just the way things are”?  No, this is not me getting defensive, this is me not getting you.  Some idealists focus on the positive, some focus on the negative, but none of us find willful ignorance funny.  Skepticism is not cynicism, though admittedly it’s a slippery slope.

Chew on that while I climb off my soapbox.  Anyway, the point is that the slope turns into an outright freefall down the rabbit hole.  I (barely) stand witness to it.

The Judgmentor, in fact, never left.  The problem was that my last entry was up for all of two minutes before I took it down—it was too dark, too much, too Tori Amos on downers and pomposity.  It’s the space my brain is in right now.  For the first time in my career, I am working with unions.  For the first time, I am working with those without graduate degrees or suburban upbringings or ambitions that don’t involve winning the lottery.  For the first time, I am working with the noble proletariat, the great unwashed masses who struggle mightily against the new feudal system of capitalism, those whose income come from honest labor and not from exploitative ownership of the means of the production they make possible.  As vulnerable as they are to abuse and mistreatment, as susceptible as they can be to corporate manipulation, do they not have a right to protection?

Well, yes.

Do they deserve it?

Fuck, no.

But not because they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some such Tory nonsense.  I don’t buy into a merit system based on accumulated wealth, it smacks too much of over-simplification chased with malice (hear me, Fox News cocksuckers?).  Unions don’t deserve to exist because people fundamentally SUCK and because they don’t stop at protecting the innocent from the exploitation of management.  They will grab, snatch and claw at more.  Samuel Gompers, leader of American unions and founder of the AF of L, summed up human nature when he said “we do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.”   And voila the suckiness of mankind—this isn’t the innocent organizing against corporate evil, this is a simple case of assholery versus assholery.

And what kind of result can possibly manifest from a war of assholes?  Never a good one.  Where’s Troy today, after all (or Greece, for that matter)?  The distortions to the free market system I’ve witnessed that were direct consequences of the union and their irrational demands have been astounding in scope.  Hey, I’m no unadulterated fan of competitive capitalism—but however rickety its operations when left alone, it is fucked upside-down when you introduce a market abortion like a collective bargaining agreement.  What you can do, say, suggest, how you can execute, scratch your pits and carry out reasonable business practices is completely hamstrung.  There is jockeying and posturing on both sides, each trying to position themselves with perceived advantages.  The most charming part about the battle is how very human it can be— arbitrary, irrational, and mean-spirited.  Unions will negotiate themselves right out jobs just out of spite.  Businesses will resort to any covert maneuver to save a buck.   And after all that, management still treats workers like shit.  If asked by any of the manual laborers I come into contact with, you better believe I tell them to go union.

And thus my idealism lies gasping for breath on the asphalt, bleeding from the head.  Beaten to a pulp by the misled notion that responsible self-interest can exist and butt-raped with a broomstick by the idea of dignity inherent in simpler lives.  Absurd, of course.  But worth saving…on the off-off-off-chance that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is someone out there who’ll deserve and benefit from the elusive justice idealism lives to enable.  Because his or her demise is a far greater injustice than all the ill-begotten victories of the assholes put together.  So I’ll resuscitate that pathetic invalid, bandage its wounds, and have it live another day, keeping it alive on bare faith and defiance alone.  It’s gnarled and broken and looks a little like an old Chinese Crested with conjunctivitis, but it’s goddamn splendid.

Harry Reid

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Noun: Harry Reid. Opinion: Not OK.

Noun credit: Erica.


Get over here, Harry, right this minute. This here rolled-up newspaper is for whacking your fug face. You’re lucky it isn’t a cast-iron pipe. What you said is NOT OK.

I’m mad at you not because what you said was untrue, I’m mad because you’re a douchebag who never bothered to exorcise your racist demons. HELL YEAH, I dropped the r-bomb. Kaboom! Kerplooie! No, I’m not taking it back, because it’s true. You can raise uncomfortable observations about race in America and not be racist; you can even express racial generalizations and not be racist. There are intelligent ways to do this, but you didn’t, and that’s why I think you’re a racist (whabam!). I mean, I don’t think the word “racist” carries as much pejorative weight as, say, the word “Negro” uttered by an old white man. Pwned! On top of it all, I’m mad at all your little minions who are going through the most absurd mental contortions trying to defend your pathetic dumbassery.

Seriously, people, what does it take? What does it fucking take to call a spade a goddamn bigoted retard? Does one seriously have to don a pointed cap and dance a jig around a burning cross? If after years of social conditioning, political experience, message spinning, PC-brainwashing and Democratic propaganda you have failed to eliminate the word “Negro” from your vocabulary, it has to suggest that your urge to profile based on skin-color grows deep motherfucking roots. How white, male, privileged and self-entitled do you have to be to so ludicrously out of touch?

Hey, I live in the Mecca of out-of-touchiness. New York is to the United States what Pluto is to the solar system—it belonged at one point but by now has been demoted to a freestanding asteroid populated by freakashit aliens. Beam me into any state whose shape involves a right angle and stick a fork in me. But I’d know better than to sally up to a man wearing the largest hat in the nearest saloon and tell him that God is a gay man who thinks America sucks cock (a compliment in some parts of the world). There are just some things better left unsaid.

How you say what you say matters. I KNOW—if only people could take everything you said at face value and not read into it, we wouldn’t be such oversensitive assholes! Especially when it comes to race, we get all touchy like we’re having our taints poked with a slave owner’s whip. Why do people make things so complicated? Well, for one, because you lie (like, all the fucking time) and for two, because the words you choose signal ten billion things about you and how your message should be absorbed. Anyone who has been asked how they are by the observably disfranchised cashier at Duane Reade knows that bitch doesn’t care because she’s cutting you with her eyes. And if at the end of your transaction she says: “Have a nice day, you fucking chink,” that would indicate…something. I wouldn’t actually think she was indicating her emotional investment in the manner in which my day played out. I would think she was an ignorant cunt.

What’s really complicated is the lengths to which we’ll go to rationalize stupid behavior. What’s complicated is how to deal with someone in such a position of power and influence when they do something bad, especially if their power and influence can win you wars with high stakes. What’s complicated is how we’ve come about using the amount of melanin produced by a person’s flesh as a shortcut to determining his or her value. What’s complicated is the evolution of language and its use to designate belonging and separation. What’s not complicated is finding a way to say this: American voters still harbor prejudices. Obama looks and presents in a way that mitigates these prejudices. Shit, I wish getting out of bed in the morning were so easy.

And while I’m at judmentorizing on books I haven’t read, let me have at Bill Clinton. Oh, I’ve been a huge Clinton apologist for years; I couldn’t have cared less how many dresses he squirted on that belonged to women other than his wife, it didn’t seem relevant to me. But saying something like “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee” in reference to Obama is…blargh. This hurts deep, Bill. Because while being a fat slut doesn’t necessarily subvert a nation’s progress, being a dismissive wanker with malicious intent makes the entire goddamn universe worse. I could get over your skankiness, your tubbiness, your habit of letting your tongue loll out of your mouth like a junkyard dog in the sun, I even got over your ridiculous southern accent. But I don’t know if I’ll get over this, if it’s true. Ah, the hell with you, you prick.

As for Obama, I’d like to see him for once not accept an apology. Man up, now. You don’t have to tell them off, but when they apologize in the rote, phony way everyone does who’s ever been caught with a dick in his mouth (“I want to apologize for what I said/did. It was in no way meant to hurt/offend you. I’m very sorry and hope you accept my apology.”), just look them up and down and say: “No, thanks.” Just to show them, and the rest of the world, that what they did is not OK.