ch-ch-ch-changes hillary and barack don’t want

i love how the rhetoric and SHABAZZ of the “change” theme has obscured something . . . large:  real change. so i made a list of what real change would look like, and i intend to send it along to the hill and obamarama web sites (they sure do have purdy mouths.  downright gleaming faces and hair, too):

1.  talking openly and with compassion and respect with and about gay people.  getting their rights properly up front where they should be, instead of dancing around political potholes.  getting rid of ALL barriers and prejudices.  like immediately.  like the urgency of now.

2.  eradicate homelessness. period. the urgency of now.

3.  shut your pie holes with all your “i’m for the middle class” mumbo jumbo and give your workers jobs, or i’m gonna get all emma goldman on your ass and encourage unemployed workers to take immediate action. Her exact words:  “Well then, demonstrate before the palaces of the rich; demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread.”

4.  erect a health care system a la francaise or oh canada.  quit pussy-footing around with lesser, dumber plans. by the way, micheal moore, where’d your balls go?

5.  quit treating minorities like the enemy.  who you calling illegal alien, pilgrim? just because your “plans” go down like a spoonful of sugar doesn’t mean you are lessening hatred of the other in our country, which is currently magnified to cinematic proportions.

6.  stop courting women, black and latinos like you are car salesmen–admit openly and with enthusiasm that women, african americans, and latinos (as well as all minorities, including gay people) are essential to the nation because they educate our children, they invent our most important ideas and products, they work harder than anyone anywhere, their intellects are equal to and in many cases superior to old white men, and the positions they occupy ought to once and for all be EQUAL in terms of legitimacy, authority, and oh yeah, PAY.

furthermore, about women, and about marriage, if we must keep that tired old institution around, say out loud and in the political realm that women are  “companions” to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, how about we make it part of the consitution that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.

and even more furthermore, that same-sex couples who choose to marry, which will be legal in all states since you are all about CHANGE, right, that they get everything straight people get. always. immediately.

7.  reinvent the military as a peace-keeping force, you pussies.

8.  dismantle texas, remove its people, and give the entire land mass and redistribute all of its wealth among native americans.

9.  create a public works revolution that gets us off oil RIGHT NOW. not ten years from now, not twenty.

10.  radically redistribute the wealth in our country so that poor people don’t exist as a caste or a class–put your money where your mouth is.

oh and one last thing–obama, if you don’t stop saying that “market forces and faith-based initiatives are good Republican ideas we can work with,” i’m going to send the ghost of kenneth lay, jeffrey skilling, Ted Haggard and a buncha catholic pedophiles over for lunch.

what comes

so i just received this comment on one of my posts (hillary clinton and the women abandoning women syndrome). and even though i know who wrote it, not because the person left their name, but because i know how to track that shit on the internet, i’m not gonna NAME who wrote it, because a) it hurts me that they felt like shooting from an anonymous position, and b) homey don’t go that way…anyways, here is what the person said:

“Jesus fucking Christ when did you get so self-indulgent? when I first read “Chronology of Water” I was blown away by the way you had turned these events into fucking art, into something that redefined tragedy, hurt, woman, and gestured brilliantly towards something that might get us beyond this paradigm. But now it’s all about fucking self-pity. When did you start playing the victim?”

and i’m wondering, how this person gets the idea that i’m carving out a victim position from what i’ve said. the things that have happened to me have in no way victimized me, and i’ve had some hum dinger hard knocks.

on the contrary, i have chosen the path of an empowered person.

oh and i also put my name on things i say and think, warts and all.

and i retain the right to articulate. no matter what. and i’ve never asked for anyone’s pity a day in my life.

when i speak of the “abandoning women” syndrome, i’m talking about a subject position in our culture that ALL women face sooner or later, whether they admit it or not. and when i use an “i” to tell that story, it’s a stand in. i say “i” so the topic can move into discourse, not so anyone can feel pity or go boo hoo.

i would have thought that was obvious.

oh and by the way, thanks for all the good will. you rock.

and about my story “chronology of water”? well, maybe you should read it again.

love lidia

This Bridge Called Her Back: Hillary Clinton

as the possibility of having the first woman president in my lifetime begins to slip away, i’ve been thinking.

in november, when i step up with glee to vote for the obamarama, i want to close my eyes and feel something for a second that ISN’T about him.

it’s about her.

i want to thank her.

i think he should thank her.

i think we all should.

because like all women who against all odds work their way up to a position of power like a salmon fighting upstream before she spawns and dies, she’s made a bridge of her body.

i hear all the time (in a sort of tepid and high pitched voice) from fellow women this:  “I WANT to vote for a woman, just not this woman.”  Then they list all of her faults, or what they’ve decided to see as her faults; chief among them is that she voted to authorize the use of force, which somehow turns into she sent our troops to war, which somehow starts sounding like the war is partly her fault.

i like to slow down in my brain and remember something that they don’t seem to.  i don’t have any problem at all addressing her dreaded vote. i think it was wrong. i think she made a mistake voting to authorize the use of force.

but the thing i can’t seem to get through on is that congress didn’t vote to go to war. like ever. and the reason is, because BUSH BROKE THE LAW. he didn’t ever make a full declaration of war, he didn’t bring it to the congress to vote on. remember? that’s one of the things he ought to be impeached for.

so NO ONE in congress voted to “go to war,” because our president broke the law by not asking them and getting their unanimous consent, then he did an end run around the US congress by going straight to the united nations with the house negro.

so i don’t place the blame at her feet in quite the same way as others do. i think she’s been scape-goated for a big mistake she made. and then all the stones got cast at her, instead of at the heads of the shitwads who really are responsible, bush, cheney, and rumsfeld.  and nobody, it seems, seems willing to remember that our own complacency also contributed to this clusterfucked war–we didn’t do a hell of a lot. did we.

but it’s much easier to throw rocks at hill’s head than look in the mirror, huh.

sigh.

and i’ve been thinking about the NEXT WOMAN.  for surely, since the problem is this woman, who has fought her whole life in concrete and direct ways to make the lives of women and children better, and to get the needs of women and children up on the same level of political discussion and action as the “boys list” of priorities, since the problem is her, surely the NEXT WOMAN will be what we want, right?

for one thing, she’ll be prettier, younger, definately more hip.  and she’ll be inspirational of mouth.  hugely.  her speeches will move nations.  it won’t be the slow and steady hard labor of changes a chunk at a time like all the important women of history have had to spend their lives toiling at.  it will be THE PERFECT WOMAN who can claim the position of power.  a woman who has never made any mistakes, doesn’t have very much experience, speaks so eloquently it makes you think you can fly, smart as a whip, and utterly unconnected from anything which has come before her. and her husband will keep his mouth shut and his dick in his pants, he won’t fight to defend her because she won’t need that, since we live in such a fair and balanced society, and she will never fail at anything important like health care–she won’t have to come back for round two because everyone will magically do everything she wants with no opposition.  NEXT TIME–this perfect woman–she’ll be the embodiment of CHANGE.

i just hope that when SHE COMES, and everyone who said they wanted her–this NEXT WOMAN–when they step up to vote for her, i hope they take a second to look down at what we’re all standing on.

this bridge called her back, and all the womens’ backs we stand on and then forget.

because without her body THIS TIME, NEXT TIME, we got butkus.

(title riffed from This Bridge Called My Back/Gloria Anzuldua)

about words: barack obama, martin luther king, and jfk

it’s true, words are powerful.

“we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” hum dinger. utterly inspirational.

“i have a dream . . . ” you know the rest, because of how moving — even messianic it sounds. no question.

“the fierce urgency of now.” REALLY good one. particularly in times of crisis. gotta go with that one all the way.

and many (though not all) of barack’s speeches carry beautiful language, moving language, rhetorically stunning language, language that makes you want to believe in things, language that make you want to be a better person, live in a better world. maybe even language that make you want to change yourself–which is painful at best, and the world around you, which requires enormous sacrifice and patience. even for me.

here’s where i get the big fat “lidia, you are ugly, cynical, old and unpopular” vote.

there is a difference between mlk jr, jfk, and the obamarama.

my discomfort is this: when he compares himself to JFK and MLKjr, when he riffs off of their language and integrates his own, i get a stomach ache.

JFK was in Congress for 14 years. He was a war hero. He had quite a few accomplishments under his belt before he got his thousand days, pretty and popular as he was.

MLKjr was gassed. He was beaten. He was incarcerated. He started a movement that changed a country.

(when hill pointed these things out she was positively burned at the stake.)

the stakes for MLKjr and JFK were mighty. The risks they took to GET TO the words they spoke were quite serious. Mortal, even. For years and years.

oh and both men had guns pointed at them on a daily basis.

i guess i’d just like to point that out. what place words come from in a body, what the conditions around that body are in a material sense, how they came to those words, matters to me.

so tell me, somebody, how are barack’s words, and especially when he’s borrowing from people we consider to be the greatest leaders in American history, earned? is it enough that he says them at the right time? do we need to hear them so badly that his experiences don’t need to shape the speech?

or did these mens’ bodies and experiences have something to do with the power of their ennunciations?

maybe all we need is language now.

i hope this doesn’t piss you off out there, but if that’s the case, then the deconstructionists and postmodernists (those rat bastard devils) were right after all.

language is reality.

viva the obama revolution.

hillary, barack, and the art of the american fight

so.

can somebody tell me what the PROBLEM is with intelligent people debating, disagreeing, using several different rhetorical tropes or stategies of debate in order to succeed at winning the Democratic nomination?

and if some anger shows, or some frustration, or some other uncontrolled emotion, facial tic, body stutter, eye dart, so what? if one of them sucker punches the other, or if one of them lets their balls show now and again, why is that a bad thing? if one of them takes it to the other, why is that so quickly critiqued with disdain as “going negative?” why isn’t it understood as passionate critique, serious debate, a fight carried out via lanugage and representation?

it’s not like the entire country and its direction are at stake or anything…

did we get so swept up in all that healing and uniting and change talk that we can’t handle it when intelligent and capable people COMPETE for something worth a crap?

I’m not saying I want them to get the gloves on and step in the ring or anything (though that shot of hillary holding up the boxing gloves cracked me up), but man alive, isn’t it ok for them to fight for what they believe in?

Why I mention the fighting metaphor is this: Our country is in deep shit. Serious, literal, shit. And SOME of whatever the next president is going to have to do will involve fighting. I’m not talking about war talk. I’m talking about the intelligent alternative to war–the brain fight. The word fight. The winning your audience fight. The artful fight.

I know it’s not the popular thing to say, and it’s not all inspirational sounding, and it’s damn sure not feminist rhetoric, but being able to fight is NOT the opposite of hope. And being able to fight is NOT the same as making war or adopting a militaristic approach to life. Taking a punch and thinking about it, going down but not giving up, be willing to risk your name or reputation or body even as you are being publicly pummeled, stratagizing, taking your opponent’s energy and redirecting it–these reflect the ART of fighting.

you think oil companies, drug companies, multinational king pens or even republicans and christians are going to suddenly go a soft one because someone sang them a beautiful song?

are you dreaming?

so I say let em finish this round out. Let it go to the bell. And let the best man win.

enjoy the fight. THIS fight is the kind where nobody dies, and energetic change arises no matter who wins.

Whoz Your Daddy: Barack Obama and the fall of the Crone

In times of national crisis the country often turns to one of two male archetypes in order to feel protected:  the benevolent or the bellicose father.  If it is the benevolent father, it usually means that psychologically we are in desperate need of healing and hope.  If it is the bellicose father, it usually means we have a desperate need for revenge and revival of a masculine war code.  Barack Obama and John McCain fill these positions perfectly.

In particular, Barack Obama daddy has this mouth:

1.  he takes on a christlike quality because he extends hope and forgiveness to everyone–includng white people–without requiring an apology or reparation in return.

2.  he comforts and calms voters with a national narrative that kicks ass, telling us there is power in words and in convictions (abraham lincoln lines).

3.  he references himself inside a “lineage” of male leaders who “took good care of us..”  Roosevelt and MLK.  And he calls himself the “American Ideal,” since he is the fulfillment of this lineage.  If you vote for him you can be part of the resurrection and the transcendence.

4.  he talks about his rise as a “quest,” a symbolic journey that we can join him on; if you are not on that path with him you are a nay-sayer, a cynic, a hope-hating loser.

Who wouldn’t want that daddy?

Why, the question arises for me, don’t we have a feminine archetype we turn to in times of national crisis?  Where is the pattern of turning to the mother healer or the mother warrior in times of national crisis?

Maybe the answer is we don’t have any experience with a woman leader–experience we could draw from and recognize as a viable option during times of need.  America isn’t Britain, nor any other country that has successfully chosen a woman leader.  How would we know what we were choosing?

We have no experience to draw from except this:  Mothers.

I know everyone is gonna say we all love our mothers.   But the problem with how we love our mothers is that the more we value them as mothers, the less they have any “worth” outside the box of the home.  And so the more experience they gain as mother healers and mother warriors and mother intellects, the less worth they have out in the world, since those “powers” are limited to the sphere of the domestic.

Even worse, once they get a little age on ‘em, crows feet forking out their eyes, tits bloated and sagging, ass expanding into a continent, a laugh that, by rights, has taken years to emerge labeled a “cackle,” unrehearsed facial expressions (gasp), and a tone that, even though it should reflect wisdom, experience, and intelligence, just sounds more and more like a crone-shrew–once her age emerges, she’s even more devalued, and so her moment of power becomes a big fat bull’s eye on her ass.

Take the crone OUT.  She’s OLD.  as in OLD SCHOOL.  OLD REGIME.  part of the OLD SYSTEM.  OLD CYNIC.  married to the OLD WAYS OF DOING THINGS.

And listening to Hillary is like, well, listening to your mother or grandmother when you want to do whatever you want.  You know it is.

How the first woman running for president lost her chance to a young charismatic male orator doesn’t seem that difficult to understand…and it says a hell of a lot about our endlessly clusterfucked feelings about women, in ADDITION to saying a lot about our primal needs for men.

hillary clinton and the women abandoning women syndrome

LOOK at this picture. Scary, isn’t she. Good thing there’s a better man afoot.

I’ve been thinking about the “abandon the fallen woman” motif.

You know, the one that allows us to ralley behind a strong intelligent woman and then throw her off of a bridge when we become holier than she is? So we can be prettier, sexier, and less dogmatic than the raving madwoman she has become?

I happen to know a lot about the abandon the woman syndrome.

The thing is, we like to put a spotlight on strong intelligent creative women. We like them to shine. We like them to stand up for us–look what we can do.

Then we like to crucify them, because in the end, when they begin to draw the hatred and disdain of a culture who still can’t handle a woman in power, we don’t want to be associated with them. And when they make choices we don’t like, we turn on them like spoiled sisters.

Why those she-bitches from hell.

By the way. The “we” I’m talking about? I mean women.

When I was 15 I made my big “break” from my abusive father in a showdown argument in the garage. There was nothing else he could do to me after that day. I simply became a son and fought the paradigmatic fight and got myself out.

Of course my father’s abuse left major scars on my mind and body, so even though I was “free” and strong and smart and brave, I was also fucked up, and I made some self destructive choices coming out of the tornado. When I turned to heroin to dull the pain of my oedipal childhood, my friends abandoned me. Because I made a giant mistake. A not pretty mistake. A not smart mistake. An embarrassing to be around mistake.

Yep, they dumped me like a leper.

When I was 20 I had a beautiful baby girl who died.  All the women friends I had who were mothers or about to be mothers stopped being able to talk to me or look at me.  You wouldn’t believe the sentences that came out of their mouths as they tried not to have to be around me.  To this day the only women capable of really talking to me about having a dead daughter are women who have disabled, or troubled, children, or other women whose children have died.

My motherhood failure became their monsterhood fears.

When I divorced my second husband, who was a BIG TIME charismatic, chaotic, womanizing, alcoholic man-boy, I fled. I left the state. And none of my friends supported me. They stopped calling, they didn’t want to know how I was, my failure at my marriage became their failures and it was no fun to be around me. Me the symbol of the failed marriage. Me the thing they feared would happen to them.

Yep, they dumped me like a sad housewife.

When I had an affair with a grad student at my spanky Visiting Writer job in San Diego, I was fired. Quite dramatically. It didn’t matter that three of my older, tenured, male colleagues had been sleeping with their students for, oh, about 40 years (they still are, by the way, ancient as they are becoming). None of my male colleagues supported me (though they were pretty excited to hire me and put their hands near my body when I arrived). My female colleagues abandoned me like rats leaving a sinking ship. They actually spoke out against me and my sexual excess. And the chair of the department, who was female, actually told me I should be ashamed of myself (for dating a 30 year old man who was my student).

And to make matters worse, because I knew this man was it for me, and we decided to go for it, we got pregnant, on purpose, in love, to make a family. So the last few months of my job there I was big with belly, and I came very close to painting a giant red “A” on my belly as fuck you to anyone who looked at me. Because in the end all the hatred and shame being projected at me couldn’t hold a candle to the risk we took to make a life together as artists, lovers, and parents.

Yep, they dumped me like a whore.

By the way. I’ve been married to that man for 8 years now. We have a brilliant, beautiful, 6 year old son. My male colleagues are still sleeping with students whenever they want, carrying the mystique of the great male artist in their pants.

Lots of people have told me that I have helped them, or that I have given them inspiration in their lives for various reasons. As a teacher. A writer. A mother or friend. But I know what it’s like to be shunned, to be demonized, to be abandoned by women when I make choices they don’t like, or choices that make them have to face themselves.

I think maybe Hillary Clinton is on her way to losing the primary election. But I have no intention of abandoning her until she is literally out of the race. I’m quite able to stand up for women who have the courage to live human lives–with all of their mistakes and victories out front where people can see them.

So I don’t care who she married or what happened to her marriage. And I don’t believe in this idiotic “fall of the house of clinton” saga that William Kristol has cooked up. And I refuse to join the posse of banshee women who hate her guts, because you know what? It’s probably your own guts you are hating, and I’m not in the self loathing body anymore, so I don’t have to hate women who are human, just like me.

So all you Hillary Haters? Fuck all y’all.

And in your dazzlement of Obama…try to keep in mind why, how, and when we tend to fall for the equally fictional character and theme of the charismatic male. If he is indeed going to be the nominee, can we please keep our intelligence about us as we support him, and stop sucking his dick?

Barack Obama Poetics

So now I’ve researched my eyeballs off and I STILL don’t quite see the specifics of Obama’s policies–how they will LITERALLY manifest. I read his website up one side and down the other.

But I also have a memory. At least so far (heh).

I remember how his rising star happened at the convention. And in case you DON’T REMEMBER the things he said round about 2002, here…let me refresh your memory…

In 2002 Barack spoke at an anti-war rally. Like Kerry, he only quibbled over the hows. The day before his speech, Obama told reporters, “On Iraq, on paper, there’s not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago.” He added, “There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.”

The speech itself took Bush to task for lying about the reasons for war and for invading and occupying “without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.” In other words, Obama, the great liberal hope, thinks that Bush should have sent more troops–and that the Democrats are more capable of seeing the war on Iraq through to victory.

Obama is a gifted politician. Like Bill Clinton, he knows how to encourage people of opposite political beliefs to see what they want to see in his speeches and policy prescriptions. Thus, even Rich Lowry, a right-wing booster of the Bush gang, praised Obama’s speech for its “hawkish attitude,” its “rallying cry of unity” and its “authentic, unashamed” embrace of “an awesome God.”

This method carries through on other issues. Obama finds a way to talk left–but makes it clear that he will never pose a threat to corporate interests or make a policy proposal that would carry a hefty price tag.

In Illinois, where it’s obvious that the death penalty system is too flawed to fix, Obama is celebrated by liberals as a crusader for death penalty reform–but he continues to support capital punishment for “punishing the most heinous crimes.”

Obama calls for tax breaks for American workers and government measures to create jobs. But he’s a supporter of Corporate America’s “free trade” agenda, and his convention speech praised Kerry because “instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he’ll offer them to companies creating jobs here at home.”

Obama claims to be a defender of the public school system who will campaign to put more teachers in classrooms. But he also trumpets charter schools–with their record of union-busting and siphoning funds from public schools.

In his convention speech, Obama didn’t make the case for Democrats fighting for new government programs for poor and working people–or even defending existing ones. Instead, he echoed conservative themes attacking big government–but with a seductive liberal wrapper.

“[People] don’t expect government to solve all their problems,” Obama said. “They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the [suburban] collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn.

http://www.counterpunch.org/ruder08032004.html

SO.

Let’s just keep our eyes open. Shall we? In the excitement of the next great liberal hope, let’s try not to be dazzled into believing he’s radically different from those around him.

Neither was Kennedy, by the way.

Hillary, Barack, and where they can stick their money

look i’m media literate. big time. i’m down with sign system semiotics and the politics of image manipulation.

which is why i don’t need to see millions of dollars worth of advertising in order to make my choices. hey barack and hillary–here are some ideas on what to do with your piles of money that make more sense than spending it on yourselves to get elected:

1. don’t just go to new orleans and hold a campaign event, go down there and give them your money. seriously. our government has let those people down in criminal ways. do what nike does. just do it.

2. give homeless people places to live, and feed starving people. i’m not EVEN talking about 3rd world excursions. i’m talking about here.

3. hire the team it’s going to take to socialize medicine in the country.

4. give money to the arts–not the entertainment industry, mind you, they have enough money. i’m talking about artists who have to go without insurance or medicine or housing or food to make their art. oh and put art and music back in the schools, please, before we breed any more generations of bush-like, cheney-like, rumsfeld-like tards.

5. bail out my single mom friend who is probably one of the most talented artists i know, and who would be making art that matters in the world if she didn’t spend every second of her exhausted life worrying how she’s going to afford to stay alive and give a life to her daughter.

6. bail out my father of three friend and his wife who got evicted out of a home their landlord stopped paying the mortgage on due to the dreaded sub-prime fiasco–and get the irs off his ass while you are at it so he can live in peace and write and teach.

7. pay the fees for all my gay and lesbian friends who deserve to get married if they want to. it’s the least you can do, since you are both unable to talk openly about supporting gay people on, well, any issue. pussies.

8. float a buck or two for rehab and counseling centers so we can stop treating people with radically difficult human problems as outcasts and criminals.

9. give the people who no doubt clean up after you and take care of your lawns and the johns in buildings you work in a fattie raise.

10. give your life’s wealth over to native americans. it’s their america you hope to run.

Hillary Hatred & How Sexism gets under the skin

I’ll take a break from the overt misogyny underway in the current Presidential elections to remind everyone of this:

Sexism is everywhere. It’s inside the dynamics of oppression. Duh.

But it’s also a habit of being–sewn into relationships, family hierarchies, religions and social interactions. And though it’s most obviously between genders, or inscribed within our forms of entertainment, or inside the heroes we choose and the women we demonize, it’s less obviously embedded inside things like structures of consciousness, definitions of human worth, and language itself.

One could almost pick examples randomly.

Oh and by the way, it aint just men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXr15K2uSc

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/02/06/sot.holloway.vries.cnn

(you have to hold your breath and close your eyes past the shitty ass COAL ad. my god.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06dowd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
(from the “liberal” nytimes…the paper that endorsed her)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2008/01/pushing-pelosi.html
(a cat fight)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/06/britney.released/index.html 
(mental illness)