Friday, November 05, 2004
"Hey, there's something I've been meaning to ask: All these years, you never thought about leaving?"
"Every single day, son."
"Where to?" Twilly said.
"Bahamas. Turks and Caicos. Find some flyspeck island too small for a Club Med. Once I bought a ticket to the Grenadines and got all the way to Miami International --"
"But you couldn't get on the plane."
"No, I could not. It felt like I was sneaking out the back door on a dying friend."
Twilly said, "I know."
Skink hung his head out the car and roared like a gut-shot bear. "Damn Florida," he said.
-- from Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
As others have pointed out on sites more learned and thoughtful than this one, there is a time for licking wounds and a time for getting angry, not bitterness-flavored angry but energy-flavored angry, the kind that drives you to get smart and organized, the kind that stirs you to volunteer your time to organizations and/or individuals who will be enriched by your help, the kind that reminds you that, to your opposition, there is no such thing as "just" a local race and that from small things, mama, big things one day come. I hope the time is coming for you, dear friends. It's almost, almost here for me.
This past week's election-based adventures have called up all of my worst turtley impulses, the desire to, in Terry Jones and Michael Palin's words, stick my head, sand-like, into an ostrich. I don't want to live like this forever, and as much as I love our dear friend Vicki, I'm not quite ready to move to Canada yet. But dear friends, I find myself sorely tested, and looking about for the nearest ostrich, by that whipping boy we love to hate, the media. Specifically, I find myself tested by the New York Post, who appeared to have discovered the 2,000,000-point font in their headline for yesterday's late edition, labeled simply, "W2." To those of you who live in red states, you Kerry voters surrounded by acres and acres of Bush country, I realize it's probably more than a little obnoxious to hear someone from the ne plus ultra of blue-state cities complain about the Post. I know, and I'm sorry. Understand, though, that despite all contrary appearances and/or stereotypes, New York is not the huge liberal monolith so many believe it to be. You have Staten Island Republicans, commuters from wealthy suburbs in Long Island and Rockland County and New Jersey and Connecticut, Upper West Side liberals who suddenly found themselves on the same side of the homeless issue as Rudy Giuliani, outerborough Reagan Democrats, new immigrants from conservative Catholic countries, and millionaires, both self-made and inherited, who have more money than God and vote with their pocketbooks. Just because their votes were not enough to put Bush over the top in New York doesn't mean that they don't have strong and passionate convictions about this election and these candidates. If you shout out your misery here, you will not hear your own voice echoing back at you. In other words, we effete New York liberals have to play nicely with our neighbors, who are very pleased with Tuesday's results, and it shouldn't be too much to ask that we be able to walk past a deli without being confronted by those enormous Post orgasm headlines. Then again, that's all part of the free and pluralistic society we all know and love, or at least claim to. If we all march in lockstep with each other, it's not a great day for pluralism. Dear Republican friends, I'll try to remember that if you extend the same courtesy to me. That means you, Mr. and Mrs. Ohio Couple Who Voted for Bush Because A White-Hatted Cowboy Always Saves The Day. (That's a paraphrase, but not by much.)
However, just because I recognize that we all have beliefs and opinions and they don't always dovetail with each other's, that doesn't mean that I'm going to smile prettily while the Future Dark Minions of Karl Rove try to pull another elaborate shell game, the kind that terrifies people into overwhelmingly voting for laws that would deny gay people the right to marry, while drawing their attention from the things that really should terrify them. From now on, I'm going to get angry, not bitterness-flavored angry but energy-flavored angry, and I'm going to throw my weight behind the candidate who will pick that energy up and run with it. To those friends of mine who insisted that Kerry was our only choice for an electable candidate, and that my long-ago-thwarted plan to vote for Howard Dean was tantamount to rolling over and handing the election to Bush, I appreciate your concern but I'm still saying no. Think of the way Bush galvanized his supporters; think of the way they screamed at every campaign stop, at the convention, at his Wednesday afternoon speech. Now think of how it would feel if we had a candidate like that. I'm not saying that Dean had to be the pony that you should have bet on, but I *am* saying that maybe this tendency to pick our candidates out of resignation is not doing us any favors. I can tell you that I had the first inkling that Dean might have been onto something when, upon announcing his candidacy, he called out, "Mr. President, I want my country back!" <em>Hmmmm</em>, I thought.
To those who have communicated with me via e and/or other message boards and all asked me the same question: "But what about The Scream?" (That would be Howard Dean's whoop in Iowa, not the recently-stolen Edvard Munch painting)...for shame, dear friends, for shame. I know at least one of you was impressed with Jon Stewart's argument on Crossfire. If you'll remember, Jon was less than impressed with CNN's (and other networks') tendency to reduce complex issues to two formats: "Pro and Con, as Described by Two Talking Heads" and "Pro and Con, as Described by Two Screaming Jackasses." I don't know if Roger Ailes and Jamie Kellner (or whoever is responsible for the shenanigans on CNN now) really think that they are imparting news or providing entertainment, but from I where I sit, they are doing a piss-poor job of both. If you listen to the talking heads and the screaming jackasses, the Dean whoop was considered the beginning of Howard Dean's plummet from grace, the moment at which he proved himself as too unstable to lead the nation. Never mind that it was played over and over, out of context, the aural equivalent of taking a photograph of someone at the exact moment he is sneezing. The day that some smartass producer is comfortable with my taking a picture of him sneezing and then sending it to that really hot girl he keeps running into at Max Fisch, that's the day I'll cut them some slack for the Dean contretemps, that day and not one day sooner.
(You may wonder, <em>why all the Dean material, Jen, and why now?</em> I will admit that my mind was tickled by a conversation with my dear reality-based friend C. JoDI at Journal of the Demographically Insignificant. He has a theory that Dean was finished long before the scream; Dean was actually finished the day he appeared on one of the Sunday morning gasbag news shows and said that one of the first issues he would tackle in his administration would be the overconsolidation of the media. It was at about this point that we heard less about the wildfire nature of his campaign and more of the "Is Dean just too damn loony to be electable?" stories. I will try not to dwell on the observation that a man who cheers his own victory in a primary is considered batshit crazy, but a man who utters profanities about reporters into an open mike, who until recently didn't believe that Sweden had an army, and who still can't make up his mind on whether or not Osama Bin Laden is still considered a threat to this country is considered presidential. I will not dwell, simply because dwelling impedes action, and it is time to get my head out of the ostrich.)
Whooo! Thanks for the rush, Jen! The energy you feel and put out reaches others; it’ll be amazing what we’ll be able to do once we are all energized. I want my country back too. We have no choice but to fight for it because there is nowhere else to go.
oh, bakerina. i personally have found myself going from internet journal to internet journal, hoping to find some solace in the fact that there are so many other people just as frightened and angry and disgusted as i am. i’ve been waiting for your thoughts, so glad to see them up.
i agree we desperately need to rethink the way we choose who gets the democratic nomination. i hate to be an alarmist, and i’d hate to give anybody any ideas, but can’t you just totally see jeb bush running for president four years from now? on the exact same values platform? is it time for the kennedys to declare a war of the worlds? is ted kennedy just too old? is tom daschle just too docile-looking?
ugh. this all makes me want to go back to plastic.
oodles of love,
tristan
Oh, thank you both. I’ll admit that I was feeling rantier than I’d realized last night, and when I woke up this morning I had a bit of posting remorse, also known as the “My god, what have I done?” effect. I decided I’d take it down if it were full of too much damn crazy foolness. But I think I’ll keep it up anyway. 
Nasreena, I really do think that the future will be okay. Don’t get me wrong, I think that a lot of damage has been done, and a lot more will be coming. At the same time, though, I think the election really brought home to people—on both sides—the importance of getting their message out on local levels. One thing I’ve always admired about the right wing of the Republican party (now there’s cognitive dissonance for you! is that they are brilliant at raising money and then applying that money usefully and intelligently. If the Democratic left had its own version of Richard Viguerie, I think that we would not have seen so many gay marriage ban initiatives in so many states—or at the very least, we would have had an organized, vigorous response, one that resonated with disaffected liberal voters and brought them out to the polls.
Tristan, sweetheart, I’m so glad you posted here, because I tried to leave a comment on your guestbook a couple of times yesterday and kept getting server errors. You are definitely not alone (and please tell your friend Erin that that is meant for her, too). As far as 2008 candidates, I think that there will be an effort to field Jeb as a candidate, but I don’t think the Repubs will just hand him the nomination, no matter what he or his brother think. I know that Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki have both formed exploratory commissions, but I don’t think they have a prayer, as there are too many Republicans who have a visceral antipathy toward anyone from New York. The Dems have started talking about Hillary, but I don’t know if Hillary is the answer to our problems. Ted Kennedy hasn’t run for president since 1980, and I don’t think he wants to try again any time soon. Daschle will be fielded as the most viable candidate by the DLC wing of the Democratic party, but again, I don’t consider that a good thing. God, how nice it would be to just stay home and talk about this all day. Stupid lousy working for a living! 
Oh, and come back to Plastic. I don’t post as much as I used to, but I’m still having fun with it. And I miss you.
Incidentally, it appears that WYSIWYG editing has come to TypePad. I know there are some rogue floating html tags in the text, but it took me about five tries to get this up last night. I’ll try to fix them later. Sheesh. Je suis une doofus.
Great post Bakerina! I especially appreciate your thoughts on Howard Dean. I was mightily offended by the media playing that whoop over and over again. Then again, I know that I’m really a leftist (not just impersonating one to fit in with my friends) when some conservative pundit or politician knocks a liberal for doing something that makes me go “yeah!”
The Democratic Party needs to come up with some passion.
Thanks for the great, intelligent, weigh-in. I was a Dean fan too, and as a media educator I have to say that they did a brilliant job of making him un-electable, based on one bad moment. Of course, I also think that it’s a huge challenge for liberals to win against the black/white vision of our current administration. How do you start a discussion with a zealot, much less an organized, well-funded, army of ‘em?
Keep fighting the good fight.
i still think things must get worse before they get better. as for candidates, well, being governor of vermont doesn’t really cut it as far as presidential resumes go… if there were to have been (is there a name for this verb tense… pluperfect conditional counter to fact?) a kerry presidency, dean could have gained tremendous national credibility in a cabinet level job, but alas, tis not to be.
an anti-war platform isn’t just a hard-sell right now, it’s an impossibility. recall eugene mccarthy’s flop as an anti-war candidate—and that was for a war that often exceeded iraq’s thousand some odd casualties on a *daily* basis (eg, tet offensive.)
i believe in charisma. kerry just doesn’t have it, although edwards seems to show flashes of it. clinton had it, even carter did, albeit in a disappointing way. the people who are charmed by george w., though, i can’t begin to fathon what the fuck is wrong with them.
on a different tangent, there was a time in my life when events compelled me to take action: the los angeles riots really hit me hard; perhaps it was the imagery on television, esp that trucker being beaten. somehow i felt i couldn’t go on doing what i was doing, which at the time was prostituting my computer skills to corporations. so i signed up with big brother/big sister of hartford, a nonprofit wh seemed to hold out the hope of changing inner city lives before rather than after it’s too late. of course, what i had to offer them was database help, i never did get to know innercity anybody, but still, at the beginning i felt i was doing a GOOD THING.
but united way, bless its heart, it’s just a line item on corporate balance sheets. when i was in a “breakfast strategy session” at the best hotel in town and noticed that the tab per person was $100 (this is breakfast), i don’t know, i began to become disillusioned with the charity (only after i finished my caviar and sour cream omelette.)
as it turns out, the best years of my mostly good-year-less career were right after my alleged volunteerism… through my united way connections i got work at a big six (or were there big seven back then?) accounting firm, the biggest corporate law firm in town, plus eventually a bank which was about to devour every financial institution on earth until it was devoured instead. moral of the story: it is useless to take up arms against a sea of troubles… if your goal is social justice, you’ll only end up making money.
I’m with Orionoir. Things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better. The only hope now is that things get so bad in the next four years that Bush and his party are completely discredited by the end. Of course by then, the damage may be irreversible. If there ever was a time for a UN invasion of the US, that time is now.
heh. i guess that’s what you get for being born in 1981. i didn’t even know ted kennedy had already run for president.
baby! tristan, you are such a baby!
Sounds like someone needs a cookie and a hug.
(handing Bakerina a molasses-ginger cookie, a cold glass of milk and giving her a hug)
My words of wisdom on this issue are that things are never nearly as bad (nor as good) as they seem at the time. The only Really Bad Things that are likely in the next four years are several Supreme Court appointments. As scared as I am of those, I know that justices often prove to be very different on the Supreme Court bench than their promoters expect. And I also know that there is enough popular Roe V. Wade support that if anyone is stupid enough to try to overturn it, the backlash will be strong indeed. Chipping away will happen and that’s bad. But even the Republicans are not stupid enough to actually act for a full overturn.
That said, my most zealous form of political activism remains as it has been for years. Every time I see the anti-choice protestors outside the Planned Parenthood near my office, I go inside, sign onto the computer and donate. It’s not as fulfilling as punching someone in the nose would be, but it keeps me out of jail.
The other thing keeping me going is the irony of a potential Hillary v. Jeb match up in ‘08. That’d show that both sides have a proper sense of humor about All This.
Gadzooks, people born in 1981 can use the internet and know how to type? Damn I’m old.
Such good, thoughtful commentary here these past few days. I’m so glad I have such thoughtful friends, although I feel a little sheepish at not being able to carry the heavy lifting here. I feel like the models that Jon Stewart used to spoof: “I put lipstick on my lips!”
It will indeed get worse before it gets better. I remember being afraid in the 80’s at the thought of a Reagan-packed Supreme Court, but for some reason I’m even more frightened now. And I foresee some real damage being done by the close ties between various industry sectors and the regulatory agencies charged with policing them. Tomorrow’s NY Times has a front-page story about the close relationship between railroad companies and the agency that is supposed to regulate them. It is going to be ugly, and it scares me, but it also makes me bound and determined to agitate, agitate, agitate.
Michael, I agree with you that being the governor of Vermont isn’t exactly a job qualification for the POTUS, but then, neither was governor of Texas, or Arkansas, for that matter. I wish I disagreed with you on the inviability of an antiwar candidate; I wish I could say it were possible, but no, I know exactly what you mean. Your volunteering tale is fascinating. United Way is LuthorCorp’s only approved charity, and I’ve been loathe to join the drive; good to see that my apprehensions are not unfounded.
Now, friends, we are not old. Not, not, not. I think of Mark Morris’s observation on turning 50: “I feel just the same turning 50 as I did turning two, only with more hair now.” And even though I know it was meant affectionately, I can assure you all that Tristan is *not* a baby; she is so hardworking and detail-oriented that I feel like a dorky underclassman in her wake. When the Bakery of Dreams opens up, I am hiring Tristan to be my VP of Sales. (Tris, I know I didn’t ask you if you wanted to sell baked goods, but I’m willing to offer profit sharing and four weeks’ vacation if you’ll say yes.
Thanks again, everyone, for helping me get some perspective on this election, and for your kind words. (And ‘mouse, I needed that. Thank you, bubbeleh.)
Thanks for taking the time to post such a detailed and informative article. It has given me a lot of inspiration and I look forward to more like this in the future..
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Great post. Very thought provoking. And I love it that you quoted an excerpt from Carl Hiassen. Hiaasen’s hijinks are outrageous, unbelievable, and thought-provoking. The worrysome grains of truth and reality in the story give pause.
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A comic romp that is thoroughly enjoyable.... Hiaasen’s novels seethe with fury against the despoilers of Florida, but his perverse comedy cuts the message-mongering like cream cuts Kahlua.
All of us have different beliefs and opinions but we have to meet halfway for peace’s sake.
This is the best post I’ve seen obout Carl Hiaasen. You really have a good feel on this topic, and the way you wrote about it made it both entertaining to read, and informative at the same time. I will definitely check back in the future to read such a profitable blog.
Hiaasen’s hijinks are outrageous, unbelievable, and thought-provoking. The worrysome grains of truth and reality in the story give pause.
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Whooo! Thanks for the rush, Jen! The energy you feel and put out reaches others; it’ll be amazing what we’ll be able to do once we are all energized. I want my country back too. We have no choice but to fight for it because there is nowhere else to go.