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.

Singlehood

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Noun: Singlehood.  Opinion: Love.

I’ve decided to stop fighting it.

I’ve felt this way for so long.  I’m…overcome.  At first I couldn’t find the right words for it, and then I was afraid of what you might think once I said it, but now I have to say it because holding it in any longer feels dishonest and that makes me feel incomplete and I…I…I’m just going to say it, out loud, whatever the consequence…I…

I love me.

Furthermore, I love the way I love me.

And if you’re making all kinds of masturbatory parallels in your sick twisted head, then…yes, well, all that applies.  That’s how much I love me and how goddamn good I am at it.

And as it is with all love, not everyone will get it.  They’ll be all, like, why is she so into herself?  She’s not even pretty.  Or—why her?  I do NOT see what she sees in herself.  You’d think she could do better.  Or—I’m happy for them and all?  But?  I once heard she was with someone else once, a guy?  And once a cheater, like, always a cheater, you know?  And your friends will nod gravely in agreement as you wait for this affair to come to a humiliating (for me) and satisfying (for you) end.  Though little do you know that this love reserves the right to meet someone online and elope with them three months down the road if it feels like.

But love needs no reason, and self-love is as irrational as any other.  And this self-love is a critical component to being a happy single person.  It may, in fact, be the only critical component.  There are many ways to do singlehood right, I would think—but not every way is doing it right.  Sitting in dark rooms with your eyes glazed over with soggy longing is not doing it right.  Whimpering at contented couples walking by your lonely park bench is not doing it right.  Preemptively naming unborn young and enrolling them in schools near desirable suburban subdivisions is not doing it right.  Singlehood is wasted on you.  You are the released prisoner who aches to go back to confinement—you lack something of the human spirit that your fellow parolee has, who relishes the wilds of liberty.

These wilds yield a bounty of pleasures—and you are granted a hut in the  jungle.  It’s your own damn hut, its mortgage has been paid off, and the coconuts that fall through your thatched roof are your goddamn coconuts and you’ll drink the milk straight from them before putting them back in the fridge.  You’re free to roam sans loincloth, you double dip the plantain chips, and when something’s itchy you scratch it.  You sweep on occasion for company (and make the bed for good company), but once they’re gone all bets are off.  To prevent going full-on native I do recommend regular social interaction.  Depending on your tolerance for people, this may mean friends or co-workers or itinerant toucans or high-fiving the proboscis monkey next door every other day.

Other than that, singlehood is what you make of it.  If you have in your mind’s eye an idea of what a partner would look and feel like as a material presence in your life—how s/he would support you, champion you and take care of you—you should take that vision and become that person yourself.  Be the provider and the recipient in one.  Some may resent how much work this represents, how the singleton has to be twice the person, superhuman almost.  Or some may realize that this is the path to full actualization, and that those who pair up are destined to be half-developed gimps who achieve but a fraction of their potential.

Stop hissing at me, coupled people; I am on record as being pro-marriage, so pipe the fuck down.  I get it, that’s a sore spot and I licked my finger and prodded it like a nerve-damaged proctologist.  And it hurts for different reasons, depending on where you find yourself—for some of you, I know that having someone else in your life has rather doubled your work than halved it.  Your life together works, but it works because you do the heavy lifting.  So if anyone is fully fucking actualized, it’s you, because you climbed up, count’em, TWO pyramids of Maslow’s hierarchy and did all the dishes on the way and now you’re in the second trimester of expecting a third little pyramid and I can go SUCK it.  Thus, to you I bow; you have my sincerest congratulations—and my deepest sympathies.  While your achievements are a great testament to your will and potency, they also serve to make me really, really, really smug about being single.  I will go suck it, thank you.

For others of you it hurts because you were very content feeling sorry for me up to this point where it’s starting to become clear that maybe I’m feeling sorry for you and that is all kinds of uncomfortable because if you don’t have the validation of others what the fuck do you have?  And now you think I’m such a bitch and I’m overcompensating for my pathetic, lonely life and now I think you’re such a dumbass and you’re overcompensating for your hollow, lonely life and neither of us are feeling sorry for one another but rather are threatened by each other.  We’re fighting now.

And for the rest of you it hurts because you know, despite my hyperbole, on some level I’m right.  You did leave behind good things when you found your mate.  And as much as you love your shmoopie, you miss these things.  Sure, your boo makes you a better person, or maybe just a different person, or maybe it’s hard to tell anymore.  You miss the clarity of your identity in the open air, stripped of the heavy weight of attribution and relationships.  You miss the simplicity and elegance of the you you are when you’re not them or we.  You miss the invigorating freedom and answering the calls of the wild, filled with adventure and possibility.  It’s not that your snookie-woo—I can’t—it’s not that your partner has held you back, it’s that you’re flying at a different altitude and caught a different tailwind and it wasn’t where you were before or where you thought you could be.  That’s the breaks.  And I, from my vantage point in the gorgeous wilderness, can look in through the glass at the fire in your hearth, the smoke curling from your chimney, and miss the sweetness of quiet, comfortable companionship.  That’s the breaks, too.

See, you and I aren’t fighting.  You and I are the same–but cast in different plays.  You’re Star Wars, I’m Looney Tunes, but we’re both Pez dispensers.  Yeah.

So happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy couples out there.  But a very happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy singles out there.  No one ever says it to you, and we all should—yours is a love to be celebrated and cherished.  And if you were once one and now are the other, then a happy Valentine’s Day to you and your great adventures in love.  Happy Valentine’s Day to you all, may your lives be filled with freedom and joy and exquisitely delicious chocolate truffles you buy yourself.

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.

The Judgmentor Jumble

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Noun: Various.  Opinions: Varied.

Come play a game with me!  Sit in the middle of the room with wipeable tiles and scooch your butt cheeks across from mine.   Sometimes there are too many things to judge and simply not enough time.  During these periods of high judgmentable activity, you’re going to spit out nouns at me and I’m going to knee-jerk a reaction all free-association style.  I get three passes.  You get ten seconds to think of another noun.  Whoever quits first loses.  Winner gets Tootsie Pop.

Gay teen suicides: Can we first of all agree that these are tragic regardless of the preceding adjective?  As I’m certain there are fat teen suicides and sad teen suicides and straight-but-perceived-weird-in-other-ways teen suicides every day.  The adjective is not what binds these events together—social rejection is.  Isolation is.  Cruelty is.  The fact that being gay triggers these things is a problem.  That these things are rampant is a societal crisis—bullying is not the way to react to people we dislike or disagree with.  Even if you don’t co-sign someone’s lifestyle, you cannot, must not turn a blind eye to the moral bankruptcy latent in the souls of kids who tease to torture.  It is at least a cavity that can be treated, as they are still young; but this means you are obligated to do just that.  Hate.

Streaker at Obama rally:  Was he doing it for money?  Was it for his sick sister?  Was he protesting clothes?  Talking heads psychoanalyze streaker on news shows.  My mother has a more succinct diagnosis.  “It seems,” she says, “he is naughty.”  My mother is always right.  Naughty people are often naked, or vice versa, either way they are more easily identified when they are publicly nude.  Indifferent.

Syncing (noun credit: Andres): It’s easy to do, takes only a couple of clicks, and is good for you.  I never do it, it’s still a pain in the ass.  I’ve been listening to effing Keane for three years.  Hate.

Ginni Thomas: I give women two and a half more generations of a free pass to release themselves from social and financial dependence on their husbands and start being accountable for the choices they make in marriage.  Deny while you can, ladies.  The day’s coming when succeeding Judgmentors will brutally enforce your honesty and make you stop clawing at each other in defense of a man who should be able to live up to his own damn honor.   Indifferent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Related, but dissimilar.  I love women who look like they’ll care of it when shit gets real.  I’ll make a run for the panic room and when I re-emerge I’m pretty certain the zombie apocalypse will have been managed to a desirable outcome.  She’ll have played dirty, for sure, but it will be for the right cause and that doesn’t bother me.  Love.

Chipotle (noun credit: Lokesh): I know I’m in the minority on this but this shit just doesn’t curl my toes.  Their chips are unforgivable.  Smart business model, though, so, you know, props for that, I guess.  Hmm.  *scratch neck, stare off into space*  Indifferent.

Rick Sanchez: Have you heard about this shit?  Pete Dominick got away with murder in the press, but only because Rick Sanchez eclipsed him with the immense dimensions of his stupidity.  Making generalized remarks about anyone, like they both did, in a public forum is something less than wise.   Calling Jon Stewart names just sets you up—dude, he’s got an entire staff of comedy writers and you only have your overextended ego staying up at night trembling in a scotch-induced rage.  And look what you came up with.  He’s a “bigot.”  That’s the best you could do.  Sad.  Look, this wasn’t just a Cuban-American journalist making provoking remarks about Jews in the media—there were a lot of layers here and it was a doomed debate.   They stumbled into something too big and serious and complex for them and made a mess of things like the sloppy-thinking bitches they are.  It was like monkeys eating oatmeal with forks.  Facepalm.

Starbucks (noun credit: Katherine): I parked my ass in one of these crack dens recently and had a pleasant enough time.  Until the United States adopts the sidewalk café model of European cities this serves as a completely inadequate substitute in terms of both ambiance and coffee quality but it’s the only thing we got.  Being snobby/counterculture/anticorporate about Starbucks was so 2003, get over it.  My productivity level was pretty low but the sugar high from their surprisingly tasty wee pink sparkly donuts made me feel like I was tearing my spreadsheet up.  Like.

Mustard (noun credit: Sarah): Dijon.  Smooth.  End of fucking story!  No grainy shit!  No yellow squeeze bottle!  Dijon, goddamn it!  Nothing else passes must…er.  Love.

OK, I’m done, you win.  Keep returning for another edition of the Judgmentor Jumble!  Check your local listings.