If you’re thinking of voting for John McCain…

I know that people sometimes—often, even—behave in ways that conflict with their own self-interest. We’ve all had tragically misguided haircuts. Many of us have a history of pursuing romantic relationships that are, essentially, toxic. And women, blacks, Latinos, gays, and working-class people of all colors and creeds occasionally vote for a political party that, by all reasonably discernible measures, hates them. I know this. Nevertheless, I still can’t believe that there are Hillary Clinton supporters who seriously plan to vote for John McCain in November.

I understand that, as an acknowledged Barack Obama fan, it’s easy for me to say that, had things gone the other way, I would be supporting Clinton right now. But I’m someone who still has bitter memories of the 2000 election—not just the vote-counting debacles and the Supreme Court decision, but also the Nader voters who argued that there was no real difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. I was not entirely pleased—and occasionally somewhat disgusted—by Clinton’s performance during the primary season, but I still can’t imagine that, right now, I’d be suggesting that McCain is in any way preferable to Clinton.

I know that McCain is a hero in the classic, undiluted sense of the word. I know that he served his country in an unpopular war, and I know that he maintained his integrity when many of his fellows did not. I am aware of his courage and his sacrifice. I am also aware of his reputation as a maverick, a man of principle unafraid to challenge the Republican party, and I would, at this time, like to publicly thank my yellow-dog Democrat husband for not declaring, “I divorce you! I divorce you! I divorce you!” when I made numerous, woefully under-informed comments expressing, more or less, the opinion that McCain might not be so bad.

John McCain really is that bad, and, if you don’t believe me, please allow me to suggest further reading.

A recent item in The New York Observer suggests that, since becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain has moderated his views—and his Senate votes—to appeal to the conservative establishment, while a longer article from The New York Review of Books suggests that McCain’s renegade persona was always more marketing myth than reality. The NYRB piece mentions an episode in which McCain publicly called his wife—the woman whose fortune made his political career possible, by the way—a cunt, which offers some insight into both McCain’s temper and his attitudes towards women. For more on the former—and, given the content of question 7, the latter—try taking the New Yorker’s “Senator Hothead” quiz (I scored 10 out of 15). And, for a poignant look at what it’s like to be friends with a Democrat threatening to vote for McCain, check out my clever and handsome friend Scott Shrake’s recent contribution to the Huffington Post.

Wish You Were Here

Ted’s Closing Comments in a Conversation about the Growing Ugliness of the Democratic Primary We Had as We Went to Pick Up Our Daughter at Daycare

“Well, nobody snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democratic Party.”

Pause.

“It’s what makes them ‘relatable’ to people like me.”

Pause.

“They’re the Charlie Brown of political parties.”

Last night I dreamt that I was watching Barack Obama on Regis and Kelly.

Last night I dreamt that I was watching Barack Obama on Regis and Kelly. It was the morning after a Democratic primary, and he was providing commentary as the votes were tallied. He was smart, funny, utterly at ease. He gave no sign that he found Regis and Kelly—the show or the people—ludicrous. Such was his self-possession and grace. He was gracious to his hosts, and they were ennobled by his presence.

Obama’s comportment was impeccable and he was thoroughly charming, but the really remarkable thing about him was his suit. It was made from a buttery yellow and soft teal windowpane plaid. The fabric was slightly iridescent, casting an apricot shimmer whenever Obama moved. His suit looked like the sun rising over the ocean. His shirt was blue-green, a slightly deeper shade of the plaid’s teal, and his tie was broad and rust-colored, picking up the suit’s flickering glow. It was a truly amazing get-up.

Now that I’m awake, recollecting Obama’s magnificent suit, I realize that it reminds me of the outfits sometimes worn by old black men as they promenade on a Sunday afternoon. The only thing missing was the matching hat, and maybe a color-coordinated Lincoln Continental. I would love to have a president who dressed like that.

NOTE: I was reminded of this dream when I read a “Talk of the Town” piece this morning describing a blog set up to collect nocturnal fantasies about the Democratic presidential candidates. Apparently, I’m not alone.

My Endorsement

I don’t like Hillary Clinton.

I don’t like Hillary Clinton, but I feel bad about not liking Hillary Clinton, and the reasons why are as follows:

First, I feel like I’m letting Bill down. Seriously, as soon as I realized that I just don’t like Hillary Clinton, I felt bad for Bill. This is, obviously, ridiculous. Fondness for an old president is no reason for choosing a new president. And, moreover: He let me down!

I also feel bad because her likeability has been a campaign issue. Nobody expects male candidates to be pleasant. Requiring that Clinton be likeable is like requiring that she have a sweet, girlish giggle and a nice rack—which would be absurd.

But my lack of liking for Clinton goes beyond the fact that if I was at a party at her house, I would much rather be drinking a beer and, say, watching a cowboy-movie marathon on AMC in the den with Bill than discussing single-payer insurance over chardonnay with Hillary in the living room. I don’t like her because I don’t trust her, for one thing. I think it’s a bit much to call her “Bush-Cheney lite”, but history does suggest that she has ruthless, secretive tendencies that are somewhat reminiscent of the current administration. I find that I am unwilling to endure a national campaign—not to mention at least four years—in which the first two Clinton administrations are rehashed by her many enemies. What she calls “experience”, I call “baggage”, and I get weary just thinking about it. On the whole, I find Hillary Clinton tremendously uninspiring. If she’s the Democratic candidate, I’ll vote for her (I’d vote for a ham sandwich if it was the Democratic candidate), but I won’t be excited about it.

I am, however, excited about Barack Obama. Like, honestly, unironically, seriously excited. And I’m not just excited because, as an Obama supporter, I might one day have the opportunity to chant, “We will, we will Barack you.” It’s not just because Barack Obama carries a picture of me in his wallet. It’s not even because I get to wear this awesome T-shirt.

I’m excited about Barack Obama because Barack Obama is exciting. I think Barbara Ehrenreich captures the pro-Obama mood pretty well in this post. The Bush years have been so tragically, unremittingly awful that I need something new. As a country, we don’t just need good policies: We need a little inspiration. Clinton can argue that “Speeches don’t put food on the table”, but I’m not sure that she’s right. I think that liberal wonkishness alone might not be enough to deliver the kind of real change we need. In yesterday’s New York Times, Representative David R. Obey, who has endorsed Obama, said, “You can’t make much headway on substance until you have somebody who can break through the rancorous atmosphere, build new alliances and cut through old barriers.” I’m not at all convinced that Clinton can do that, and I believe that Obama can. I don’t need a president who’s likeable, but I sure would like to have one who’s exciting.

[THANKS TO RUSTY FOR THE AWESOME LINKS. HE KNOWS WHICH ONES.]

Merry Christmas from Jessica and Frances

Ted sends his greetings, too. He just doesn’t have the sweater.

My Birthday Cake

Today’s Celebrity Birthdays

Erstwhile Monkee Mickey Dolenz is 61.
Fitness enthusiast Richard Simmons is 59.
“Dancing with the Stars” contestant Cheryl Ladd is 55.
Contemporary Christian superstar Sandi Patty is 51.
New Wave icon Gary Numan is 48.
Adorable actor Topher Grace is 28.
World’s greatest baby Frances Jernigan-Clayton is 1.

Bush v. The Rule of Law

If you didn’t spend Independence Day fuming about George Bush rescuing Scooter Libby from jail time… Well, I would have to suppose that you just haven’t been paying close enough attention. Or maybe you did have a cranky 4th of July—possibly one that’s even extending into the 5th—but you’re worried that you’re not quite as pissed off as you could be. In either case, I hope you find this analytical round-up helpful and infuriating.

• Sentencing Law and Policy noted the contrast between Scooter Libby and Victor Rita—a man convicted of crimes similar to Libby’s who received a within-guideline sentence that the Bush administration found quite reasonable—even before Libby’s sentence was commuted, but Obsidian Wings offers a spectacularly panoramic view of Bush’s view of what constitutes a reasonable sentence when the convicted criminal isn’t one of his pals. Neither exoneration through DNA testing nor having a court-appointed defense attorney who sleeps through your trial is enough for a pardon or commutation when you’re not Cheney’s right-hand man.
• Maybe you’re wondering why Bush chose to commute Libby’s sentence. Maybe you’re thinking, “Hey, at least it wasn’t a full pardon.” An op-ed piece that wasn’t published by the Los Angeles Times—but was excerpted by The Atlantic Online—explains why a commutation satisfies the rabid Republican base that still supports Bush while allowing the White House to continue their campaign of obfuscation.

• As a governor and as a president, Bush has enjoyed and actively fostered a reputation for being tough on crime. When he liberated Libby from prison before he had ever served a day, Bush used justifications that “the administration has aggressively sought to preclude judges from considering when imposing sentences on everyone else.”
• And, finally, this event gives that douchebag Tony Snow the opportunity to write complete bullshit like this in middle America’s paper of record.

[THANKS TO MY HUSBAND THE PROFESSOR FOR HELPING ME UNDERSTAND JUST HOW TRULY FUCKED UP THIS SITUATION IS.]

The Sentencing of Scooter Libby: Any Eyewitness Report

My very good-looking fellow Scorpio Scott Shrake moved to Washington, D.C., recently. He’s decided that his near-complete lack of knowledge regarding and, really, interest in politics will not stop him from becoming the Ultimate Washington Insider. He’s a true American hero.

He just posted his report on the sentencing of Scooter Libby over at The Huffington Post. This is my favorite bit:

Scooter’s very interesting-looking wife coughed, then leaned down and got a cough drop or something out of her purse. At the first 10-minute recess, she greeted people in the hall, and went and had a last chat with the security guards and court personnel, whom Scooter later thanked in his brief statement. She had on a black suit with a long, light-blue sash around her shoulders. Like a dark cloud with a bright lining. Her hair is amazing, and she knows it, and she makes a habit of pushing it back with her hand, sensuously. (You don't get these details from the AP, folks!) She really is fierce.

A Slight Discrepancy

When I left Bryn Mawr without graduating in 1994, I intended to complete my degree some day. The longer I waited, though, the more daunting the task seemed, so I was surprised to discover how very little work I actually had to do to get my diploma, and I was shocked by how much easier college seemed the second time around. One lab science and a few semesters of Spanish after returning to school, and I was done.

Finally completing my degree was so easy, in fact, that I couldn’t quite believe that I had actually done it, and I went back to Bryn Mawr for commencement half expecting to be told that there was a mistake, that I wouldn’t be graduating after all. I went to pick up my regalia with the fear that my name wouldn’t be on the rolls for the class of 2007. The fact that I was able to pick up a gown, a cap, and a hood with no trouble simply meant that I showed up for rehearsal imagining that someone would soon be telling me, “There seems to be a problem. You need to go talk to your dean.” When that didn’t happen, I relaxed—a little.

The afternoon of commencement, I got to Merion Green a little early, procured a program, and looked myself up. There I was: Jessica Lee Jernigan of Ohio. When the time came, I got in line for the procession. There was no red flag next to my name on the marshal’s list, and I marched with the rest of the class of 2007 when the bagpipers started piping. It was really happening: I was really graduating.

I waited for my name and I walked across the stage. I shook the College president’s hand and I took my diploma. When I got back to my seat, I untied the yellow ribbon and unfurled the parchment, eager to see my name—finally—on a Bryn Mawr diploma. What I saw instead was, I feel, the cosmic joke variant of the disaster I had been expecting:

I Graduated

I received my Artium Baccalaureus from Bryn Mawr College on Sunday, May 20.

The Sanctity of Human Life

Gonzales v. Carhart feels like old news already (which is not to say that its legacy won’t be with us for a long, long time), but I haven’t been able to think about it and write about it as much as I would like—well, I don’t really like talking and thinking about it, but I do feel compelled—because caring for my baby takes up so much of my time and energy. Of course, the fact that I care about my baby at nine months as much as I cared about her before she was born is one of the reasons I find the anti-choice ascendancy so upsetting.

This New York Times article about escalating rates of infant mortality in the South seems to be archived now, but Lawyers, Guns and Money and Feministe both offer succinct analyses of the material, and a brief look at Mississippi tells you pretty much everything you need to know: As a governor who has backed a number of anti-choice laws, Haley Barbour is proud to call his state “the safest place in America for an unborn child,” but he has also presided over welfare and Medicaid cuts that have made Mississippi a decidedly unsafe place for children who have actually been born. Barbour has commemorated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by calling for “a week of prayer regarding the sanctity of human life,” but his policies are a perfect reflection of Barney Frank’s famous and sadly perfect formulation: While they might call themselves “pro-life,” most anti-choice advocates “believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Fetuses are sacred. Babies are expendable.

Thank you, Justice Kennedy, for protecting me from myself.

You want to know what bothers me the most about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart? It’s not that doctors are confused about what, exactly, has been outlawed, since “partial-birth abortion” is not a medical term, but, rather, an inflammatory phrase concocted by the marketing department of the Christianist right. It’s not that it encourages the antichoice movement to launch even more audacious attacks on the American citizenry’s reproductive rights. It’s not even that there’s no exception protecting the health of pregnant women. It’s the breathtakingly paternalist rhetoric Justice Kennedy employed in his explanation of the ruling:

“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child…. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”

If that doesn’t chill you to the bone, maybe you don’t get what Kennedy is saying.

He is saying that women are not fully rational. That they cannot be trusted to make vital decisions. That they must be protected from themselves. That they are, essentially, children.

I can’t help but wonder what’s next. Perhaps states might make it illegal for women to have sex outside of marriage, as a woman who engages in a one-night-stand might wake up the next morning and realize that she’s a slut. Maybe the professions should be closed to women, lest they reach their late 30s and discover that the corner office is not as fulfilling as they thought it would be and now it’s too late to have a baby. Maybe women should be barred from higher education, since men don’t like girls who are smarter than them. Maybe women should be denied access to desserts because, you know, they might feel all guilty and fat when they realize that crème brûlée has, like, a gazillion calories and three times the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat. I just don’t know. Maybe I better ask my husband.

I’m a Grown-Up Now

I buy CDs that I heard on NPR.

I laugh at New Yorker cartoons.

I just purchased a swimsuit from Lands’ End.

“Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?”

Nothing is easier to love than an unborn child.

An unborn child never cries all night. She never spits all over your shirt. An unborn child doesn’t bite the other kids at preschool. He doesn’t hurl food from his highchair to the floor. An unborn child doesn’t sneak out of the house at 3 A.M. An unborn child doesn’t get drunk and smash up the car. An unborn child never aggravates, upsets, or disappoints.

When I had a miscarriage, I lost an unborn child. Since having had a baby, I’ve thought a lot about the difference between the unborn and the born. One thing I can say for sure is that the born are a lot more work and a lot more mess. They make physical and emotional demands that the unborn do not. They’re not harder to love than the unborn, but it’s a different kind of love. My love for Frances is love for a real and willful individual, a human being who is changing and growing everyday and over whom I have little real control. The unborn child I lost was real, too, but what I mourned was a dream—my hopes for what she might become. The fact that those hopes will never be realized gives them a paradoxical power: They are impossible to fulfill, but also impossible to destroy. The unborn child is pure potential, and when she is lost, she attains a state of permanent perfection.

Emily Bazelon touches on this dynamic in “Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome ?”, her cover story for yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, as she describes a ceremony conducted at the end of a 10-week program for women—in this case, prisoners—who have had abortions:

Inside the Tom Baker Chapel of Hope at the jail, Harper and Kimbrough arranged long pieces of gauzy white cloth over the altar and onto the floor, so that the material lined a short aisle. Into the cloth they tucked white teddy bears with red hearts around their necks that read “Happy Mother’s Day” and “No. 1 Mommy.” Kimbrough sprinkled silk rose petals over the altar and floor. On a side table, Arias placed baskets of cloth “heritage dolls.” Their heads and hands were tied with thin ribbons. Their faces were blank. Heitzeberg erected a curved metal frame over the altar and draped it with more white cloth. Kimbrough climbed on a chair to hang a string of Christmas lights over the top. Arias surveyed the altar. “It looks like a bassinet,” she said approvingly….

Arias wove a sermon from Biblical stories: Jesus meeting the woman at the well in Samaria, Hannah praying to God to give her a child, Eve celebrating the birth of her sons. It was time, Arias told the inmates, to release their babies to the Lord. Kimbrough and Harper passed around the baskets of heritage dolls, telling the women to take one for each baby they’d aborted or miscarried. The women rocked the blank-faced dolls, many holding three or four. Their faces dampened with tears….

She instructed the women to stand up, speak in memory of their lost babies and take their heritage dolls to the altar. The women stood one by one. They clutched their dolls and said they were sorry. They imagined a baby with his father’s dimple or curly hair or green eyes. One woman mentioned a child who had been born and taken into state custody, and the woman who kissed the pictures of her daughters sent them her love. For the most part, though, the messy mothering of living children — and the reality of their lives outside the prison — did not intrude on the ceremony. The women focused on mourning the elusive, innocent loss represented by the dolls. They gave them fairy-tale names: Sarah Jewell, Angel Pillow, Xavier Dante. At a side table, Kimbrough and Harper wrote the names on certificates for children “expected to be born.” The documents promised, “By virtue of being conceived, the spirit of this child lives eternally with Jesus and in the heart and the mind of the mother, now and forevermore.”

I can’t think of a better symbol, a better embodiment, of the unborn child than this heritage doll. It’s a blank canvas onto which one can project a fantasy child, a perfect child. To the extent that it suggests anything, it suggests an angel. The extent to which this meshes with Rhonda Arias’s description of aborted babies hugging their mommies in heaven suggests that the resemblance is intentional.

Should the anti-choice movement decide to start using heritage dolls instead of blown-up photos of aborted fetuses, it’s going to be bad news for reproductive rights. Those photos are arresting, yes, but they are also gross, and I really do believe that some of the bad feeling they engender bounces back on the people who display them. I do volunteer work at the Planned Parenthood in my town, and we’ve had our share of protestors. I’ve had occasion to talk to a few people who are disturbed and offended by the fetus photos—not because they’re staunch defenders of a woman’s right to choose, but because they don’t think they should be subjected to horrifying images while they’re driving to work or to Wal-Mart. I’m guessing that if you show these same people the haunting absence of the heritage doll, they’re going to see their own baby or grandbaby or lost baby. If you show them a thousand heritage dolls, they’re going to see a holocaust.

Similarly, when the anti-choice movement depicts a woman who has had an abortion as a monster and a murderer, the hyperbole and lack of compassion demonstrated by such an image reflects poorly on the movement that creates it. Bazelon hints at a future in which the anti-choice movement will instead represent the woman who’s had an abortion as a grieving mother duped into killing her little angel. As Bazelon writes at the conclusion of her article, this is a very powerful trope:

At the prison the day before, I watched the inmates drink in Arias’s preaching…. Abortion-rights leaders would accuse her of manipulation, of instilling guilt in women to serve the anti-abortion movement’s political ends. But Rhonda Arias ministers from the heart; the lack of scientific support for her ideas merely underscores that she is a true believer.

Her ardor and influence is better explained, perhaps, by the theory of social contagion, which psychologists use to explain phenomena like the Salem witch trials or the wave of unfounded reports of repressed memories of sexual abuse. Reva Siegel of Yale compares South Dakota’s use of criminal law to enforce a vision of pregnant women as weak and confused to the 19th-century diagnosis of female hysteria. These ideas can make and change laws. The claim that women lacked reliable judgment was used to deny women the vote and the right to own property. Repressed-memory stories led states to extend their statutes of limitations. Women who devote themselves to abortion recovery make up for the wrong they feel they’ve done by trying to stop other women from doing it too — by preventing them from having the same choices.

And then there is the relief in seizing on a single clear explanation for a host of unwanted and overwhelming feelings, a cause for everything gone wrong. When Arias surveyed 104 of the prisoners she had counseled in 2004, two-thirds reported depression related to abortion, 32 percent reported suicide attempts related to abortion and 84 percent linked substance abuse to their abortions. They had a new key for unlocking themselves. And a way to make things right. “You have well-meaning therapists or political crusaders, paired with women who are troubled and experiencing a variety of vague symptoms,” Brenda Major, the U.C. Santa Barbara psychology professor, explained to me. “The therapists and crusaders offer a diagnosis that gives meaning to the symptoms, and that gives the women a way to repent. You can’t repent depressive symptoms. But you can repent an action.” You can repent an abortion. You can reach for a narrative of sin and atonement, of perfect imagined babies waiting in heaven.

This is a powerful narrative, then, not just for women who have had abortions, but also for the rest of us—for everyone who gets to cast a vote for or against a ballot initiative outlawing abortion, for or against an anti-choice candidate. It’s an emotional appeal with an easy-to-follow plot that absolves us from making difficult decisions about abortion, and from dealing with the complex socioeconomic realities that make abortion such a huge issue in our country.

As Bazelon points out, just about half the pregnancies in America are unplanned. One would think that honest education and access to birth control would be the first steps in any attempt—private or public—to address the demand for abortions in this country. One would, of course, be wrong. Rhonda Arias, the preacher and activist that Bazelon profiles, discovered during the course of Bazelon’s research that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant (the father was a boy she met at church). This woman who had 4 abortions herself, and who has devoted her life to stopping other women from having abortions, explained that she talked to her daughters about chastity before marriage, but she didn’t talk to them about contraception. “‘Abstinence works better than birth control, really,’ she said. ‘It’s just that people don’t do it.’” This is one point on which Arias and I agree, even if we draw different conclusions from it. She doesn’t believe in birth control. I believe that making honest family planning and safe, effective contraception available to everyone is the best way to reduce the number of abortions performed in this country.

I don’t believe in “post-abortion syndrome,” but that doesn’t mean that I believe abortion is easy. Any woman who has ever had a child—or lost a child she desperately wanted to have—can tell you that it’s disingenuous to call a fetus “a blob of tissue,” and it’s equally misleading to refuse to acknowledge the fact that—for some women, at least—an abortion is more traumatic than, say, a bikini wax. Whether or not the anti-choice movement decides to shift its focus from the aborted fetus to the woman who aborts it, I think that pro-choice advocates need to make room for more open, more honest conversation about abortion. I know that a lot of activists are afraid that such a conversation would be a gift to anti-choice forces. I’m familiar with the slippery slope argument. But I would counter that, for most Americans, abortion is already a slippery issue. Polls affirm again and again that we don’t really want it to happen, but we do want it to be legal. I don’t see a position that reflects that ambivalence as a weak position. I think it’s an honest one, and I think anything less is a tragic disservice to the very women we hope to protect.

[PHOTO BY TOM SCHIERLITZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES]

She’s In

Hillary Clinton announced her intention to run for president today. I wish I was more excited about a woman trying to win a major-party nomination for the nation’s highest elected office, but I have always been ambivalent about a Clinton candidacy. It’s not that I don’t like her, and it’s not that I don’t think she would make a good president. It’s just that I’m disturbed by the idea that she’s the Democratic party’s best hope because I have trouble believing that she can win a general election.

My husband and I have been arguing about this for years now. I suggest that it’s crazy to have a candidate that a sizeable portion of the country hates with a passion utterly divorced from reason. Ted maintains that Clinton-haters aren’t going to vote for a Democrat no matter who it is, so it might as well be Hillary. I really hope he’s right, but I still think that at least a few of the people who have misgivings—however irrational or unearned—about Hillary might be persuaded to vote for a centrist Democrat who is not such a divisive figure. I know that a lot of liberals are sick of centrists, and they want a candidate who will appeal to Democratic loyalists, but I wonder: Do any Democratic loyalists love Hillary Clinton as much as Bill O’Reilly’s fans hate her?

I’m not saying that I’m excited about the prospect of a thoroughly unexciting nominee. I mean, I voted for John Kerry, but I didn’t get much of a thrill out of doing it. It’s just that I believe any Democratic would be better than any Republican, and I would really, really like us to win this election, and I just don’t know that Hillary can do that.

If she is going to be our candidate, however, I say, let’s go nuts: Make Barack Obama her running mate. I am a member of the Democratic base—despite what the Republicans seem to think—and I would consider myself energized by such a ticket. I would also enjoy the fact that it would be a hearty “Fuck you!” to the segment of the American public that would never, ever vote for a chick or a black dude.

Merry Christmas

Get Out the Vote

I’ve been getting a lot of mail from the Republican party. I asked Ted (he’s a political scientist) why that might be, and he suggested it’s because I am now a mother, and, as a mother, I am more likely to share the GOP’s “family” values than I was before giving birth. This says a great deal about the Republican party, and why they have any chance of continuing to win elections even though most Americans feel that the Republican President and the Republican-controlled Congress are doing a spectacularly shitty job. It all comes down to marketing.

First of all, it’s simply amazing that the Republicans have been able to define and own a concept like “family.” Think about it: Family is the basic unit of human civilization, but it has become synonymous with a radical Christianist, homophobic, sexist, and subtly racist worldview. This is a remarkable achievement, and it’s just one part of the fairly astonishing P.R. campaign that the Republicans have been running since their “revolution” in 1994. This party has, after all, successfully convinced people who don’t have a pot to piss in that the estate tax is a pressing issue. This party gets people to the polls by telling them that gay marriage is somehow a threat to straight marriage, without ever explaining why, exactly. This is the party that, to cite one example from my own state’s gubernatorial race, has decided that the best way to motivate the base in the days before the election is to run ads raising the shibboleth of welfare queens. I know that foreign policy is a hard sell, so I don’t expect my fellow citizens to be as worried as they should be about North Korea and Iraq, but you’d think that our abysmal, untenable, irresolvable position in Iraq would be more upsetting to voters than, say, faggots in wedding dresses and lazy black women, but that’s because you live in the real world rather than the scary, embattled, endangered universe successfully conjured by the Republicans.

The second thing to notice about the election literature I’ve been receiving is that the Republicans know that I’m a mom now. It’s not because I sent Ken Mehlman a birth announcement. It’s because the RNC knows everything worth knowing about me. That the Democrats have to fight to win in the current political environment is, of course, at least partly attributable to their own weaknesses and failures. But it’s also because the Republican Party knows who owns a snowmobile, and they’ve called snowmobilers to remind them that treehugging Democrats are more likely than freedom-loving Republicans to take away their God-given right to pollute and generally despoil publicly-held forests. Thus, the Republicans are able to motivate the laziest among us—those who believe that cross-country skiing is for Swedes and pussies, those who prefer the noise and stink and generous cushioned seat of the Rascal of the wilderness to a simple hike—to go to the polls on election day and vote Republican.

The Democrats are working on building a database that equals the mighty Voter Vault, but, obviously, it ain’t happening this election year. Those of us Democratically inclined have to vote the old fashioned way. We have to be motivated enough by the real issues facing our communities, our country, and the world to actually get out and vote. If you’re not motivated yet… Well, I would suggest that you haven’t been paying attention, but I would also recommend that you read this Rolling Stone cover story from a few weeks back. I know that the Democratic Party has a lot to learn about marketing, and “Hey, at least we’re not Republicans,” is not an inspired or inspiring rallying cry, but—this year at least—it really should be enough.

Trick or Treat

This Day in Matrimonial History

Bride Nicole Kidman
Groom Keith Urban
Date June 25, 2006
Location Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel on St. Patrick’s Estate, Sydney
Matron of Honor Antonia Kidman, television personality
Best Man Shane Urban, groom’s brother
Dress Ivory Empire-line silk organza-and-lace column with one micropleated puff sleeve by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga

Bride Jessica Jernigan
Groom Ted Clayton
Date June 25, 2004
Location Washtenaw County Courthouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Maid of Honor Kate Felmet, pediatrician
Best Man Eric Kos, professor
Dress Pink and white seersucker strapless sheath with matching jacket by J. Crew

Pena ajena, plaatsvervangende schaamte: However you say it, I feel it when I watch Tom Cruise “dancing” on BET.

Back when I posted an entry on Ashlee Simpson’s SNL appearance, I said that it made me feel embarrassed to be human, and that I knew that there was a Spanish phrase that meant something like “alien embarrassment”, but that I didn’t know what that phrase was.

A helpful reader named Manuel informed me that the phrase I sought was pena ajena, which apparently means “mortification on behalf of another”. A fellow named David chimed in with plaatsvervangende schaamte: Dutch for “shame in another’s place.”

Anyhoo, both are pretty good descriptions of the feeling I get watching Tom Cruise do his little motorcycle stomp on BET.

[YOU TUBE LINK VIA DEFAMER.]

“Christ Among the Partisans”

As an undergraduate, I was drawn to Christianity because it’s so scary and weird and unfamiliar—unfamiliar to me, anyway. Sure, I had grown up with friends who went to church and a Baptist great grandmother, and I had the bare-bones version of the Jesus story residents of Western culture just kind of absorb, but I had never read the Gospels, and I had no idea of just how nutty they are.

Thanks to The Da Vinci Code, everybody’s all excited about non-canonical texts with their images of Mary Magdalene triumphant and the heroic Judas, but the stories that made it into the New Testament are just as strange and unnerving—if you actually read them, rather than simply listen to the heavily homogenized, white-bread holiday versions. This is why I have always been baffled by the What Would Jesus Do? movement: Jesus was not a nice kid, a clean-cut young man who did his homework, said “No” to drugs, and went to True Love Waits meetings. He sure as hell wasn’t interested in the “traditional” family. He was a rabble-rouser and a troublemaker and a generally freaky guy.

Jesus is not, Garry Wills argues in an op-ed piece from yesterday’s New York Times, the kind of guy you want to take out on the campaign trail. Not only does he make Howard Dean look like the very picture of calm, reasoned governance, but to add him to your ticket is to reject or ignore his mission and his words:

There is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: “My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here” (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: “When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6). He shocked people by his repeated violation of the external holiness code of his time, emphasizing that his religion was an internal matter of the heart.

Lord knows, I would like to see Democrats win some damn elections, and it drives me insane that Republicans have been able to own the concept of “values.” And, like a lot of Democrats, I would like to see my party get over its fear of religion. I agree with Wills, though, that drafting Jesus is not a winning strategy. It’s not just that I don’t believe that Democrats can sell such a move—although I don’t—it’s also that I think Jesus has no place in politics. Jesus deserves better than that.

Doing My Part to Make “Napoli” the New “Santorum”

When asked to provide an example of someone who might be worthy of an abortion, Bill Napoli, a state senator from the benighted republic of South Dakota, had this to say:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Taking a page from the book of Dan Savage—who has successfully redefined the word “santorum”—Candy at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels (why am I only now learning of this site?) would like to turn Bill Napoli into a brand new verb:

napoli (not to be confused with the proper noun, which indicates the Italian city) Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): napolied
Pronunciation: nA'poli
1. To brutalize and rape, sodomize as bad as you can possibly make it, a young, religious virgin woman who was saving herself for marriage.
2. To hella rape somebody.
Etymology: From State Senator Bill Napoli’s (R-SD) description of an acceptable rape that would merit an exemption from South Dakota’s abortion ban.

[SMART BITCHES LINK VIA MOTHERTALKERS.]

I Really, Really Hope that Kate Michelman Doesn’t Run for the Senate in Pennsylvania

The best is the enemy of the good.—Voltaire

I have taken some shit—in blog comment threads and in real life—for my willingness to support anti-choice Democrats. My position has been and remains: any Democrat is better than any Republican. In the case of the Pennsylvania Senate race, I would go so far as to argue that any carbon-based life form—ferret, sea slug, dust mite, algae—is better than Rick Santorum. Next to Santorum, George W. Bush is a man of discerning intellect, keen thoughtfulness, and deep compassion.

I am willing to support anti-choice Democrats who have a shot at winning elections because, while I care very much about reproductive rights, I care about other things, too, things like basic human rights, access to healthcare, the environment, the social safety net, education, unchecked executive privilege, preemptive wars, and America’s place in the world community. I believe that a Senate with a Democratic majority—even if some of those Senators are anti-choice—is more likely to shape policies that reflect my views and desires on all these issues than a Senate with a Republican majority.

When it comes to politics, I am a pragmatist. This is why I really, really hope that Kate Michelman doesn’t run as an Independent. As I see it, the only thing her candidacy can do is make life a little easier for Santorum. It’s not like any of his supporters are going to vote for the former president of NARAL. Instead, she will draw the votes of people who prefer ideological purity to winning elections, people who would have grudgingly cast a vote for Bob Casey or, perhaps, have stayed home on election day.

I have little respect for a futile protest vote in any case (Nader supporters, I’m looking at you, and I’m still kind of pissed off), but it’s not like there isn’t a pro-choice candidate running against Casey for the Democratic candidacy. If Michelman really wants to do something useful, she could put her muscle behind Chuck Pennacchio and help to make him a viable, electable candidate.

UPDATE Michelman has decided not to run. I guess she read this post.

Congratulations Dr. Clayton, Tenured Professor

On February 23, 2006, the Central Michigan University Board of Trustees voted to award tenure to Dr. Edward William Clayton II. Way to go, handsome!

A Little Baby News

Those of you not following my pregnancy at my other blog may nevertheless be interested to know that it’s…

I Told You So

Back in 2000, right before the presidential election, I sent out an unsolicited, not-well-received mass mailing to practically everybody I knew. It happened that I knew a lot of people who were planning to vote for Ralph Nader—remember him?—and I begged them to reconsider. I understood their desire to lodge a protest vote, but I didn’t think it was worth letting George W. Bush become president.

In my message, I raised three points. I said that Bush would be bad for the environment. As it turns out, he’s not just bad for the environment; he’s also bad for science. I predicted that John Ashcroft would turn out to be at least as scary as he seemed; anybody remember Operation TIPS? And I warned that the next president might have the chance to appoint one or even two Supreme Court justices, and that it would be frightening indeed if Bush was that president.

All I have to say now is, “I told you so.”

My Favorite Paragraph on the Frey Fracas

Oprah is Embarrassed. Don’t Fuck With Oprah. A Novel Is Something Different Than A Memoir. I Have A Headache. If I were to write a Memoir of my Drug Addiction, it would be called, I Smoked Pot And Sent A Silly Email To My Ex-Girlfriend, And Then I Watched Futurama For A While.

Bless You, Neal Pollack, Very Famous Author with Whom I Have Eaten Sandwiches.

From “Brutally Honest” to Just Plain Brutal: James Frey Gets a Spanking from Oprah

I wasn’t planning to write anything about James Frey and A Million Little Pieces, but watching his second appearance on Oprah has kind of encouraged me to organize my thoughts. It was a riveting piece of TV, mostly because we have so few opportunities in this day and age to view a public flogging. When Oprah said, “I regret that phone call”—referring, of course, to the call she made to Larry King defending Frey—it was kind of like watching Bill Clinton apologize for lying about Monica Lewinsky. It was almost that uncomfortable. My unease, of course, was nothing compared to Frey’s. These were among her first words to the disgraced author: “It’s difficult for me to talk to you.” I mean, the woman talks for a living. She’s talked to wife-beaters and teen sluts. She’s talked to Dr. Phil, for heaven’s sake. Ouch.

Frey might have been a little more discomfited had he not maintained a near-sublime state of disconnection. When Oprah asked him about The Smoking Gun, he replied, “I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate.” It was like he was talking about something utterly unrelated to himself.

His cool, kind of stupid—turns out he’s quite the mouth-breather—detachment was an interesting contrast to the tough customer named “James Frey” he created for his memoir (I haven’t read it, but I’ve, you know, read about it). Of course, this may be because Frey is now a successful author rather than a recovering addict; during the show, he explained that he found self-aggrandizement to be a useful coping mechanism during his darker days. I think most of us can relate—Lord knows, I cherish my anecdotes of alcohol poisoning—but most of us don’t publish memoirs in which, say, a failure to take out the trash when mom asked turns into matricide.

Mostly, this episode of Oprah was a chance for her to say she was wrong, and then make Frey pay for it by sending him through a journalist spanking machine. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but the show really didn’t address the more interesting facets of the situation.

At one point, Oprah asked him whether or not his successfully suicidal girlfriend really existed, and Frey affirmed that she did—she cut her wrists rather than hanging herself, though. This turned into a brief conversation about whether or not other individuals in the book were fabricated or misrepresented, and Frey tried to make a distinction between characters and real people. Oprah wasn’t buying it, but he kind of had a point. Speaking as someone who has written some autobiography—I’ve got a little something in an anthology coming out later this year—I can say that, in order to craft an effective memoir, one has to turn one’s friends, relations, and self into characters, and one has to turn one’s experiences into story. This transformation is an aesthetic necessity. I’m not talking about making shit up—I’m talking about writing. I guess I’m saying that the people—the real people—in the memoirist’s life might be surprised by the way they are portrayed, and that the memoirist might be a little surprised by what the process of writing reveals, too.

As part of their insanely exhaustive coverage of the Frey scandal, The New York Times ran an essay by Mary Karr. Not only do I feel like the hard-luck memoir maybe could have been retired after her The Liar’s Club—she so totally nailed the form—but I also think that Karr’s response was one of the more illuminating to come out of this sad episode. Here’s my favorite part

...I rejected the strong suggestion of one publishing executive that I include a touching goodbye scene with my mother. “But I don’t remember it,” I told him, and readers were left without what I’m sure would have been a narratively comforting farewell. Sometimes to forget an event may be the most radiantly true way of representing it.

Mr. Frey seems to have started with his perceived truth, and then manufactured events to support his vision of himself as a criminal. But how could a memoirist even begin to unearth his life’s truths with fake events? At one point, I wrote a goodbye scene to show how my hard-drinking, cowboy daddy had bailed out on me when I hit puberty.

When I actually searched for the teenage reminiscences to prove this, the facts told a different story: my daddy had continued to pick me up on time and make me breakfast, to invite me on hunting and fishing trips. I was the one who said no. I left him for Mexico and California with a posse of drug dealers, and then for college.

This was far sadder than the cartoonish self-portrait I’d started out with. If I’d hung on to my assumptions, believing my drama came from obstacles I’d never had to overcome—a portrait of myself as scrappy survivor of unearned cruelties—I wouldn’t have learned what really happened. Which is what I mean when I say God is in the truth.

Nan A. Talese, Frey’s publisher, tried to make a distinction between truth and authenticity that reminded me of a friend’s description of her senior thesis on the difference between history and heritage: History is a good-faith attempt to describe the past; heritage is what you get at Colonial Williamsburg. However, Talese was right when she said that “People do not remember the same way.” Oprah wasn’t interested in exploring this idea, but it’s an important one, I think. Throughout the show, Oprah kept emphasizing the value of truth, but at no point did she acknowledge that it’s not always easy to find. One doesn’t have to deny the existence of objective reality to argue that the truth is sometimes inaccessible, and that memory is subjective.

In any case, I think Oprah’s concern for the sanctity of the truth is not something she shares with all or most of her viewers, or all or most Americans. Rather, I don’t think people are disappointed to learn that Frey is a big, fat liar simply because we all cherish the truth as an absolute good. I think people are pissed because we all love a freakshow. We love stories filled with degradation and debasement, and we not only want writers to tell us these stories—we want them to be the story. The JT Leroy saga is good illustration of this phenomenon: Leroy’s books were bought and sold as fiction, but would they have been as successful—as beloved by hipsters and the literati—if people didn’t believe that these novels of a transgendered teen hustler weren’t written by a transgendered teen hustler? And, as we all know by now, Frey actually tried to market his manuscript as a novel, but he was only able to sell it as a true story. I don’t know what this says about us as a culture, but it can’t be anything good. As for Mr. Frey, I guess he’s got one thing going for him: At least he didn’t pretend to be Native American.

I’m blogging for two now.

That’s right: I’m knocked up, up the duff, preggers, expecting, enceinte, in a delicate condition, in the family way. Choose your euphemism. The baby is due in late June or early July.

Like all parents, I find my child entirely fascinating. If you do, too, you may wish to visit my new blog, Pepita. It’s a pregnancy journal, with occasional entries on celebrity moms and other, related topics.

Christmas in California

Given the warm weather and the sunshine, I was afraid I’d have trouble getting into the holiday spirit in California. I need not have worried. While we were in L.A., Ted and I stayed at the Hollywood Roosevelt, and The L. Ron Hubbard Winter Wonderland was just down the street from our hotel. Hollywood Boulevard is also home to Hollywood Toys & Costumes and their selection of seasonal wigs. We also paid a visit to The Grove, the lavish outdoor mall that boasts the largest Christmas tree west of the Mississippi and where fake snow blows once every hour. And a drive by the House of David made our Yuletide complete.

Intelligent? Who can say? Unconstitutional? Definitely.

In a recent post, I argued that “intelligent design” does not belong in science classrooms because it is not science. It seems that John E. Jones III, the federal judge who issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District yesterday, agrees.

The complete ruling is 139 pages long. You can read it in its entirety if you want to, but MSNBC and the New York Times offer some choice excerpts. My favorite extract can be found at Washington Monthly:

....Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

This bit, quoted at Pandagon, is also good:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

I don’t make a habit of reading legal opinions, so I don’t really know what they usually look like, but I’ve got to say that this one is pretty hot.

A Theocracy of the Mind

I had to take an oral exam for my Spanish class recently. One of the questions—designed to test my knowledge of the superlative—was “¿Cuál es la mejor revista de los Estados Unidos?” My answer was, “El New Yorker.”

I really do think it’s the best magazine in America—better than The Atlantic, better even than Us Weekly. Margaret Talbot’s piece on Kitzmiller v. Dover in the December 5 issue was just the kind of writing I have learned to expect from this fine periodical. For one thing, it was gorgeously written. Talbot is a great storyteller with a good eye for compelling characters. More importantly, though, she makes it very clear that the movement to teach intelligent design alongside or instead of evolution in schools is about more than teaching “both sides of the issue.”

One thing Talbot points out in her article is that, regardless of what some proponents of intelligent design might actually believe—and regardless of what they want the rest of us to believe they believe—intelligent design and creationism were fundamentally interchangeable for leading members of the Dover school board. Their objections to Darwin were religious, rather than scientific, and they regarded intelligent design as a way to get God—their own particular Christian God—into public schools. Talbot describes the situation in Talbot, and the birth of intelligent design, in this Q&A.

This underscores the basic problem with teaching intelligent design in science classes: Intelligent design is not science. This is not my judgment; this is a simple fact. Science is a naturalistic system, one fueled by observation and experimentation and guided by empirical reasoning. Intelligent design isn’t science because there’s no way to test its hypotheses. As Talbot reports, the defenders of intelligent design admit as much.

To teach intelligent design in a biology classroom requires a paradigm shift; basically, it requires the substitution of a system of belief for a system of knowledge. Many of the supporters of intelligent design know this, and they approve. Talbot’s story includes an anecdote about a Dover civics teacher who wrote to the school board asking, facetiously, if they had any advice for someone preparing to teach students about the Supreme Court. The head of the school board replied that they were planning to update the social studies curriculum next.

Obviously, the fight for intelligent design is about more than evolution. It’s about more than biology or the sciences in general. The New York Times recently ran a couple of articles about Christian high schools and their struggles to get their courses recognized by state universities. Basically, the universities are arguing that Christ-centered pedagogy might be good catechism, but it’s seldom good American history or English lit. One of these articles includes excerpts from some disputed textbooks, and it’s not too hard to see that the universities have a point. Consider, for example, this excerpt from Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, published by Bob Jones University:

Dickinson's year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary further shaped her "religious" views. During her stay at the school, she learned of Christ but wrote of her inability to make a decision for Him. She could not settle "the one thing needful." A thorough study of Dickinson's works indicates that she never did make that needful decision. Several of her poems show a presumptuous attitude concerning her eternal destiny and a veiled disrespect for authority in general. Throughout her life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life.

This critique of Emily Dickinson looks a lot like the critique of Mark Twain included in the same text, and they both resemble criticism of Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives found in United States History for Christian Schools, also from Bob Jones University.

The educational worldview presented by these textbooks is one in which God is the right answer—the only right answer—to every possible question. There is nothing here to foster real critical thinking or problem-solving. There’s no room for creativity or indepent ideas. Faith, in the form of received wisdom, takes the place of actual thought. It’s chilling to imagine public schools in which this might be the educational norm, and it’s heartening to know that all the Dover school board members who voted for the anti-evolution speech were voted out of office in the last election.

Baby Jesus Federline

Reprinted from UK-Flava.com:

Britney Spear’s new son, Sean Preston, is to play the baby Jesus in his very own nativity scene this Christmas.

The pop princess, and husband Kevin Federline, have transformed his bedroom into the nativity setting in celebration of his first festive holiday. The beautiful singer has splashed out on the lavish decorations—which include six waxwork models and several life-size toy donkeys and cattle. The 23-year-old singer is so excited about her first Christmas as a mum she has even bought a cherrywood style manger for her baby.

A source close to the star is quoted by Britain’s Daily Star newspaper as saying: “It cost an absolute fortune. But at least she didn't have to buy a baby Jesus—because Sean is playing the part.”

[THANKS TO TED FOR THE LINK.]

Too Crazy? Or Too Pretty?

I'll admit it: I find it hard to resist a Yahoo! headline like “Florida teacher pleads guilty in sex case”. So, I read the story of Debra Lafave, considered that it sounded a bit like the story of Mary Kay Letourneau—except without the fairy-tale ending—and was musing to myself that perhaps middle schools should stop hiring blonde teachers with French surnames when I got to this:

Fitzgibbons said in July that plea negotiations had broken off because prosecutors insisted on prison time, which he said would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as Lafave. He said then that she planned to plead insanity at trial, claiming emotional stress kept her from knowing right from wrong. [emphasis added]

After reading this paragraph a couple of times to make sure I’m understanding it correctly, all I can say is, “Um, what the fuck?”

Off Target

As you may or may not know, Target has been in some trouble lately with Planned Parenthood and other reproductive-rights organizations. The trouble stems from the fact that, on September 30, a woman tried to get a prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B filled at a Target pharmacy, and the pharmacist refused, apparently on religious grounds.

Anyhow, Planned Parenthood asked supporters to write to Target and complain. As of Monday, Target is replying with an email that says, in part

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members' sincerely held religious beliefs.

The email also says (you can read it in its entirety