Roe is Me

Okay.  I was born in the 1950's, when we wore white gloves to the theatre, when our mothers cautioned us about how to sit, how to cross our legs, spread our skirt just so on our seats, to place our hands correctly, to button up our blouses and even how to curtsey-- yes.  

As a teenager in the 1960's all bets were off.  We were free-- we fought for civil and feminist rights-- we wore overalls and workboots or flimsy gauzy dresses with no bras and shouted and shed clothes and celebrated our bodies.  We had access, as minors, to Planned Parenthood and the clinics; we embraced sexuality and took the consequences.  Many of us as young women were disrespected by the men around us-- teachers, bosses, our friends' parents, pederast uncles-- priests, rabbis...who took advantage of generational boundaries, the fact that few of us discussed intimacies with parents. But even my mother, who blushed at the word 'sex' and never discussed it with me, who was horrified by feminism, volunteered at Planned Parenthood.  It was the 'right' thing to do. 

The fact that abortion is a legislated issue at all seems not just absurd to me but a little medieval.  Until covid and the onslaught of online medicine, we were protected against sharing privileged medical information.  This was private-- exclusive... our own unique medical profile.  Who has biological control?  We do.  What happened in my Ob-gyn office stayed there.  My personal doctor had written a 1970's book called Healthy Sex which laid out without judgment the various sexually transmitted diseases-- risks and how to avoid these pitfalls.  A pregnant college student was treated as she requested... respectfully, clinically, safely.  From the age of 15 I've shared confidentialities with my Gynecologist.  He knows me for more than fifty years; I trust him. 

Any woman who has had an abortion knows this is not an easy decision.  It's a painful choice, an unhappy one; there are risks, yes... complications for some... and a post-procedure emotional response that is unpredictable.  I remember paying cash for my procedure in the 1970's.  Whether that was an indication that it was a deliberately undocumented choice-- I may not know.  Birth control, I recall, was out-of-pocket and could be procured at free clinics.  

The Affordable Care Act ensured basic contraceptive rights were protected and covered.  Unfortunately Obama-care became the targeted symbol, for the Republican conservatives, of everything that was wrong with the Democratic left.  To go back and attack the issue of birth-- to unravel 20th century logical human progress-- is not just absurd but twisted. 

The so-called moral majority that emerged in the late 1970's began this strategy of weaponizing religion for political ends.  They helped Ronald Reagan to get elected and planted the seeds of what America reaped in spades in 2016.  It was beyond ridiculous that these people were ethically or morally motivated.  Especially when the heinous abuses of the Church were revealed as their movement gained in popularity.  Trump couldn't be farther from a believer, and yet he managed to suck in a whole electoral population who suddenly became more aggressively religious as they found themselves with unprecedented power.

This country was founded on religious freedom-- on separation of church and state.  Where are ethics, morality, humanitarianism and kindness?  How is religion turning the Supreme Court on its own head? It's as though the undermining of American institutions has become a contest-- like Donald Trump's golf games and financial hocus-pocus maneuvers.  When did a major court decision simply leak out, for political reasons?  When did the word of a Justice nominee become disposable?  

For me, it began with Anita Hill-- the bravest woman I recall in American history. She bared her humiliations before the American public in the interest of saving the Court.  Day after day I watched that testimony... listened to the heinous descriptions of a man who abused his personal power and disrespected her dignity.   I read about her polygraph tests, and the ones Justice Thomas refused to take. This man-- who is now part of the Supreme Court backline-- gets to deliberate the fate of women, to unravel the process of justice and autonomy every person deserves, by dint of our Constitution, if nothing else.  I often wonder if the Me-Too movement had taken hold in those days, could any man accused of these transgressions be allowed to sit on a revered and powerful bench? Even one year later, the tide began to turn for women.  So is it any wonder that thirty years later we are handed our fate by men like Thomas?  And others who owe their career to political obligations and promises which belie the mission of their office?   

A friend of mine was violently raped in the 1970's by a high-profile man.  She agreed to testify in court, despite what it did to her career-- despite the humiliation her family suffered.  They were southern and judgmental and disowned her for her courage.  With no DNA testing in those days, her attacker was found not guilty.  He was maybe socially ostracized for a few months.  She, on the other hand, was blacklisted by her industry-- married badly, suffered depression and other physical ailments... decided not to have children. 

Anita Hill was born a little early.  We witnessed her intellectual and emotional lynching in a public forum-- we learned that honesty in a politicized justice system rarely pays.  She and so many of us had to cull our strength and go on with our lives while these men took office.  Then there was Donald Trump, the ultimate Disrespector of women who ties the Evangelical movement to his rear bumper like old cans on a bridal getaway car. 

We are born with bodies; we are not Gods.  We have brains and we think.  We have choices, and we are not constitutionally compelled to think one way or another.  We can worship as we please, and follow whatever individual beliefs we choose, as long as we don't interfere with another's rights. We protect these bodies from harm, from ourselves and from others. What we put inside ourselves is personal. The medical decisions we make are our own inalienable right, assuming we are in compos mentis.  To remove our ability to decide is tantamount to taking away the right to vote.  

Anita weighed in on the Kavanagh confirmation; beside Thomas, he looked like a choirboy.  But it was like a memo-- the past will come to bite you.  Already the sanctity of the court is broken by this leak. Personally I have lost respect for the Institution. Two of my classmates-- both women--  sit on this version of the Supreme Court. I have been proud of their thinking and their careful deliberations. Both have exercised their right not to have children, and beyond this fact, their choices are none other than private and personal.  Barack Obama saw the writing on the wall.  He did what he could to write into law certain protections.  He tried to appoint a reasonable Justice, to guarantee these assurances, but was prevented by the conservatives who were hungry for revenge. No better pathway for Trumpists  to undo the Affordable Care Act than pro-choice issues-- the ultimate wolf in the sheep-costume of evangelism.  This is not what Jesus meant.  Personally,  I always thought the courts were there to protect our rights, not to remove them. 

Reel to Real

Okay.  I confess I watched a few minutes of the Jersey Housewives--- enough to see one of these women whining about her autistic child who, despite all the therapists and housekeepers money can buy, is a bit of a challenge.  So… although she spent umpteen thousands and many weeks of tears getting pregnant in the first place, she now is going to go to California on her own to 'get a break' and have her stomach surgically reduced at the same time.  (I’ve got a mind to give up living… but I think I’ll go shopping instead).  After all, it is all about her. 

On the 106 bus yesterday, people were sighing and trying not to complain about the nearly 5 minutes it took to board and secure the wheelchair of a young black teenager with such severe cerebral palsy, his head and neck have to be strapped against the chair, and a sort of tray is attached to his chest to catch saliva and whatever fluids drip uncontrollably because he cannot close his mouth, and his tongue moves constantly between 3 or 4 irregular rows of teeth, as though he’s trying to say something we cannot understand. I wonder if his Mom whines.  He was alone--- relying on the driver--- unable to get a drink, protect himself from the soaking rain, blow his nose, wipe his eyes,  complain.  He seemed to be smiling, even when 2 boys boarded the bus, stared rudely at his plastic bib, and declared it was ‘disgusting’.  I wanted to kiss him.  But that is pathetic too. 

To think I used to complain about Sex in the City…now this Housewives (with an emphasis on ‘real’ just in case we were wondering) stuff has gone so far back down the ladder of media ‘evolution’—do people really find this entertaining? These prematurely botoxed brainless women with plasterboard mansions and hair extensions screaming like bloody siren-brats? They need to clean latrines for a few weeks.  They need to spend a few days with the boy on the bus.  They need to read a Pearl Buck novel and reevaluate what it is to be a woman. 

It is very confusing, though--- they are on magazine covers and talk shows, they travel among celebrities, they do fashion shoots.  At least Marge Simpson stays in a box.  Apparently in the US, as opposed to the UK, you can buy a crown and be a princess.

Ask Jay-Z--- you can buy yourself a free pass to royalty—a color, changed name, the top of the charts---whatever.  Celebrity Fairy Dust… Remember the couple that crashed the Obama Inaugural Ball?  She managed to crash a reality show and get paid, and now she’s eloped with a rockstar.  Is that a 21^st century fairy-tale or what?  And the princess is probably 50 years old.  Does anyone ever call these people out? Say--- hey, you’re not even really singing! You’re just an impostor!

There is also the celebrity cancer thing.  Michael Douglas--- Angelina—Giuliana…these people make it almost desirable to have cancer.  They are more beautiful, they do not appear to suffer… they get clothing and more invitations, more dinners--- awards, accolades.  Not so for the people on the 106 bus,  a percentage of whom, according to statistics, will be diagnosed, are being treated, are in pain—have earned a crown of thorns. 

And who isn’t an imposter?  A-Rod who hit an unadulterated home-run today?  Lindsay Lohan-clean?  Michelle Obama with her Barbie hair and bangs?  A confessed murderer? After all, do we all not lie about small things, exaggerate?  Amplify our guitars and voices, wear clothing, smile, tolerate?

I attended another Blues Hall of Fame induction.  For me, Blues is what it was.  Who are these people, in 2013, including myself, and what is blues to this new culture besides the soundtrack to Viagra commercials?  There’s a Russian guy who for maybe 35 years has been busking on 23^rd St with a cheap little amp, singing and playing 12-bars.    Sure, he’s improved… but is the blues the music or the circumstances of his life?  He wasn't at the induction. The guy from Canarsie who get on our stage with difficulty, bears scars and holes from heroin abuse and beatings--- plays a harmonica and makes up lyrics that can’t quite find a rhythm?  He seems to have the blues.  He certainly dresses badly and wears a Disabled reduced-fare MTA pass around his neck.  When he sings or raps, I believe him.  He wasn't at the induction either.  How about the kids with the expensive guitars whose Dads diligently paid for lessons and Clapton-camp until after 30 years of diligently covering Muddy and Buddy like top-40, now sit in with their idols---at least the few who are left?  A few of these were there.  On and offstage.  Waiting for their Warholian Blues Moment.  Maybe if Andy had lived he'd have done a portfolio of Great Bluesmen.  It would have made a statement.  I would have trusted his judgment.    

Today I passed my neighborhood Health Food Store.   There is a vintage set of Beatles dolls in the window from the Yellow Submarine era, as a sort of nostalgic and dusty symbol—because this is where John Lennon shopped when he was a New Yorker.  I remember being on line here several times with some annoying asshole who pretended to be John Lennon, flirting and making jokes in his Liverpool accent while I waited to pay for my rice.  I was in my 20’s then, and the store manager suggested that I might not want to be rude to a fellow customer, and I replied…You mean that Beatle impersonator asshole?  And he whispered to me that no, that was the real John Lennon.  The thing is, the guy was annoying and I didn’t believe him.  I think the real John Lennon appreciated me for that.  He stopped making stupid comments and I continued to ignore him.  After all, what was the difference?  If I had a cellphone would I have taken a shot of us and posted it on my facebook page every year on his birthday to commemorate this happy coincidence?  Maybe if it had been George.  And I still don’t have a cellphone in 2013.

There used to be this Rod Stewart look-alike and he’d take people to the Hard Rock Café and they’d pick up the tab.  For all of us.  He’d even protest and they’d insist.  Last month I refused to go see the imposter CBGB’s bathroom that’s been replicated in a venerated Museum.  If this is the CBGB’s bathroom, I reason, how can I trust the Temple of Dendur? 

What was it Dennis Hopper said in ‘River's Edge’?  I’m not crazy; I know it’s a doll.  These people today do not know it’s a doll.  They can’t tell the real from the imposter because the labels have been all mixed up.  Like the last decade’s Real World… the endless versions of ‘Real’ Housewives.  Real housewives were pushing shopping carts today on east 106^th St with clusters of kids and benefit cards.  Real housewives are sitting on their stoops swapping cigarettes and spitting out bad teeth they can’t afford to fix.

Two girls were in my building lobby this afternoon wearing T-shirts that said ‘Anyone But Quinn”.  They were passing out leaflets.  I asked them who they were really for, and they didn’t seem to know, but they were earning $5 an hour and ‘meeting cool people’. 

We hope, eventually, the ‘real’ mayor of New York will step up to the plate.

Blurred Lines

I’ve been thinking since Saturday about race.  About how perfect black men look in a white T-shirt.  About how people in Harlem wait patiently for long minutes for a bus to take them maybe 5 or 10 blocks.  About not really complaining about the heat the way white people do. About why I swipe in black teenagers at subway turnstiles because they don’t say thank you.  They don’t even look at you.  Gratitude in a situation like this is unbearable.  A deterrent.

Last night I was on a packed uptown 2 at midnight and a great looking black woman had her maybe 18-month-old kid in a stroller.  Big enough to know what he wants, but not to ask for it.  Still has that baby mouth pout.  No chance is she going to fold this thing up, as per regulations, nor is anyone going to ask her.  She has gang tattoos and her midsection is bare.  She is wearing short shorts and Nikes and is buff and sexy and tough and her kid is yelling his head off because it is claustrophobic and he is at knee-level, strapped in, surrounded by sweaty tall people.  She doesn’t even flinch.  I am waving and playing peek-a-boo with him, and he is trying hard, but he can’t help panicking.  After all, when you are 18 months old, every moment is permanent, for all you know.  No one is telling him it will get better at 125^th Street; his mother is a tigress.  So this guy gets on the train… clean white wifebeater, tattoos, Daddy B shades… takes his earbuds out and puts them in the kids’ ear, hands over his iphone….finds some U.E.O.N.O….whatever… the kid is frozen… dead quiet.  No pacifier, no snow-cone or lollipop could do this.  3 stops later, he is getting off and takes back the iphone.  The mother?  She doesn’t flinch.  No eye-contact, no gratitude.  For me?  The good-hearted sympathetic middle-aged mothery white lady?  I get up and she gives me the smallest version of a smile…maybe not.  Anyway, I give one to her.  She is my idol of the moment.

Maybe it’s because I married a black man once---  but I don’t fear thugs.  I can’t get enough of them—the physical beauty, the style— what it represents-- -the ultimate tough soldier-macho thing… the obvious appeal Hip-Hop has for rich white kids.  No matter how much money they have, no matter how much power or success, how many women, how big their dick is--- white kids don’t walk in the hood alone after midnight.  But there is a certain safety that comes with middle age… no one is leering at me on trains, licking their lips in bad neighborhoods, touching and threatening.  I’m invisible. 

The young guys in my local Starbucks… sweet and attentive, hard-working and polite.  When I see them on the street, with their aprons off and their hoodies on—a different animal.  My husband pre-dated Hip-Hop.  Yes, he was a musician, and yes, white women threw themselves at him because he was dangerous.  Yes, he rocked my world literally.  Sometimes I could look at him objectively—after he went running with his dreadlocks and his glistening body—and I could appraise his physical power, his total composure and refusal to get upset or neurotic the way white men do.  Except when he played soccer, he slowed things down.  Easier to admire his wild and instinctual MO when I am not married to him, as these men in the white T-shirts, for the most part, do not seem like conventional good-husband material.  They seem unattached and unphased… life is there, in the moment. 

It took a bullying twisted cowardly asshole with a gun to get a child like Trayvon to scream.  And wasn’t that enough?  To get a scream out of him?  A little blood?  He didn’t run, that boy.  He fought the odds.  I can’t get it out of my head.  All the great sex he will not have—who knows what was on his mind before his life took that hellish turn and some sick perverted non-black man who knows he will never ‘get it’ decided the thrill of some primal hunt would ‘make his day’, would turn back a racial clock that didn’t need rewinding. 

Sunday evening I stopped by Union Square.  My demonstrating days are way over, and I can’t say I took any comfort in the company of a mixed crowd who were equally angry and sad.   Instead I took a train up to Harlem… walked around.  It felt calm and solid.  White people are guests there.  It is its own kind of gated community.  I actually stopped to watch a neighborhood basketball game in one of the community courts, with the blaring boombox and the Gatorade and the girls primping and laughing, just like Florida didn’t exist.  An outsider in the Projects.  At first I had a few stares—what the fuck was I doing, some white bleeding heart psycho… but it was too hot.  Some grandmother actually offered me  Kool-aid in a Dixie cup.  The game was fun… the boys had their shirts rolled up to cool off their great young abs and each and every player had their own style.  They were safe here.  Everyone seemed okay. Calm. 

I walked back thinking how some white people still fear black people.  Instinctively---are they taught this?  Like animals and their natural predators?  And black people embraced this, for a while… being perceived as the predator.  But now the President is black (well… almost)… and maybe Superman,  and some of the power-broker people in New York, and white rich kids of course take most of their fashion and music cues from uptown.  But most of all, I think the core of being cool is to not be afraid, and that’s what George Zimmerman will never admit, along with his primal murderous guilt: that any average black kid--- with his iphone and his body--- is cooler than he could ever be, and no violent victory or acquittal will ever make a champion out of a poor pathetic loser.  Don’t retract your words, Victor Cruz.  Your instinct was right.  Fierce you are.  Fierce you were, Trayvon.  Trayvon I was.   May you rest in oblivious peace but justice will at some point have to be done.

Speak (No?) Evil

I have laryngitis today. Yesterday I was a little hoarse (straight from my First Grade Book of Jokes) and today I open my mouth and nada…it’s so completely dead, my voice--- that it feels like one of those syndromes---where you inexplicably simply cease having some basic human facility--- like walking or speaking… it occurs to me, having spent so many hours pondering my Mom’s madness—to wonder whether it actually is psychosomatic… which could be serious-- or maybe a kind of ‘spell’ someone has cast on me.  A cranky neighbor? An ex-boyfriend? Etc.

I went to my gym to avoid household conversation—the walk in silence was nice-- and on the treadmill I concentrated on the Knicks.  But after seconds, a girl was tugging at my sleeve--- had I seen her boyfriend… a middle-height guy with long brown hair who would obviously be looking for someone?   I gestured that I had been absorbed in the play-offs, and then was finally pressed into squeaking an explanation of my condition. ‘Well,’ she says, shaking her pointed finger, ‘at least your voice is going to get better.  Like my brother has throat cancer, and he’s lost his voice for a week, and you know what that means’… then I was subjected to what amounted to a scolding, for my apparent insensitivity to her brother and my hostility because I refused to inform on her boyfriend.  I was helplessly searching the room for a trainer, but realized my handicap would only require more explanation, so I just let her vent and tried to mime little cheering motions at the TV. 

Eventually the boyfriend shows up and they get on adjacent machines right next to me, even though the room is virtually empty.. and they have a pretty audible fight that no one else notices because their headphones are cranked and they can’t be bothered—it’s Sunday, the gym is under-populated, everyone with any semblance of a life is enjoying the perfect Spring weather.

The Knicks lose, I venture out to browse a few quiet used bookshops and thrift stores, places where people don’t come to get picked up or be sociable.  It’s actually liberating, this not speaking… I sneak back into my building, refuse to answer the phone, e-update a few friends and my son of my condition, clean up, drink gallons of soup, inhale some steaming water…still nothing.  My son comes in, more NBA playoffs, the laundry, dinner… he is happily monologizing and begins to get silly.  Behind me in the elevator he begins making these sounds--- when the boys were little, we had an episode on the subway with  a Tourette's sufferer.  They never quite recovered from the near-asphyxiating laughing fit afterward and it permanently warped their sense of humor.   Tourettes is something 7-year olds can’t process.  Especially in a city subway.  So after several annoying noises and expletives, I give him ‘the look’.  ‘Oh, ‘ he says.  ‘I forgot you could hear.  You know--- dumb and deaf’?
Is that funny? Or is he really stupid? Like when babies cover their eyes and think you can’t see them?  Is his worldview so simple? Has all that hiphop and texting prevented him from thinking and making conclusions?

I’m not sure.  He gets bored trying to annoy me; his girlfriend is ignoring him, a night home is soporific…. He goes to bed.  

24 hours now-- not even a rumble.  Maybe I do have throat cancer.  I can’t remember what laryngitis is, I look it up on the internet… apparently not much I can do.  Gig tomorrow--- my guitarist will be thrilled that I can’t complain about vocals.  I’ll mouth the back-ups. 

Phone message.  It seems our drummer has ‘ear fatigue’.  The guy slams like a heavy artillery division every night of the week—practices in between… how can this be?  Maybe this is like a science fiction thing—people are losing their senses, one by one…we are being punished by some morally retributive karma for whatever we’ve abused.  My drummer for assaulting all of our ears…and me for my nasty habit of telling the cold truth lately.  I’ve been silenced, like a political prisoner.  I can’t badmouth alcoholic groupie girlfriends and ungrateful entitled kids, the conspiracy theory guy who drove me around last week convinced the Boston bombing was an FBI plot… I can’t tell my mother how much or little my grouchy old father loves her because he’s abusive and she’s demented, I can’t order my Starbucks venti... I’m feeling like an outcast…witchy and strange…

I remember this Twilight Zone episode.  For some reason these are as vivid as Alice in Wonderland in my childhood story-memory banks…In this one everyone was getting plastic surgery and the desired outcome was to have the face of a pig.  Conventional human beauty had become ‘ugly’.  I can think of several women I know who have gone under the knife recently and I have to admit they look a little porcine.  The nostrils--- the pulled skin and pinched expression.  Definitely. Pouchy silicon cheeks. 

Oink.  I can’t even laugh now.

There’s this girl at my gym… she’s a journalist/writer.  For a few weeks we gossiped and giggled; I was nice to her-- she asked if she could review my cd… and then she simply never mentioned it again.  For a week or two I worried. But I saw her today--- she wears tight little shorts and a tank top.  She’s over 40.  Way over.  Who wears this kind of outfit?  Olivia Newton John in 1972? She works out with great gusto and desperation.  Does she know she has cellulite?  Her book actually sucked… it was something about finding a man in New York City.  It was disgusting.  Why was I nice to her?  I hope she hates my album. 

Obama wasn’t really that funny last night.  I don’t like the president joking when people are dying and suffering, and the bombing victims are still in the hospital trying to adjust to the nightmare of their mutilation for no reason they can come up with.  Conan isn’t funny either.  The whole goddamn spectacle of American governmental pomp and the excessive catering.  Michelle Obama’s bangs.  They bug me.  Obamarama.  I used to believe.

This laryngitis thing is afflicting me with meanness.  Maybe that is the ‘meaning’.  I am punished…silenced.  Time will tell, I suppose.  Or I will.  Tell, that is. And for anyone who is offended by any compromising venting I’ve done… well, mum’s the word. 

Barack at the Bat

Lance Armstrong.  A name from a teenage boy novel.  Like who didn't know the guy was a phony.  Something totally irritating about him, but then I could never trust a man in bicycle shorts.  They embarrass me, like a dumb swimmer's wardrobe--- and then the helmet... and if that wasn't enough, the Sheryl Crow thing-- -the blatant fame sucking.... and now, from some, he gets a little of the sympathy vote.  Does he give back the money with the endorsements, the trophies?  Do I even care?

This is the year of Lance Armstrong.  Of Sandusky.  A-Rod.  Mitt Romney.  What is it, America--- it's not enough that these people are the lying puppet versions of some symbol we have lost... it's that we continue to buy tickets to their theatres.   How many years ago did we sing 'We won't get fooled again'?
I mean, we have a president--- a black man,  to whom I pledged all belief, in 2008.  I made phone calls-- -I raised cash-- I was passionate.  And now even he seems--well, downright flippant.  It's as though we have a breakfast menu choice here between --well, a Democratic bowl of American cream of wheat with brown sugar, or a Republican photograph of bacon and eggs.  A picture.  Personally, I can't eat paper.  Or pixels.  Whatever.

I heard Bruce Springsteen tonight sheepishly playing his brand-new campaign song offering on an acoustic guitar, no doubt for much too large an audience.  The  Bruce Springsteen with the Grecian Formula hair, like Romney's.  Giggling, he was, making fun of the fact he'd run out of things to rhyme with Obama.   The song was dumb, apologetic.  Stupid.  Like a couple of frat boys sitting around after too many beers, ad-libbing.  I failed to find the point or the humor.  It's not a moment for playing rhyming games.   This is a country, a world-changing decision.  Okay, it's Bruce, not Oprah.  But it felt like the movie version of this campaign... like there is no longer any real world.  The Detroit pitcher had more conviction before he threw a breaking ball.  More commitment.

I'm tired of the digs and scripted humor, of the snide clever repartee.  The news anchormen and women are over-styled and too chatty.  They announce some tragic event and then they comment on someone's tie; their new puppy.  They wink and smirk.  I don't want to be friends with these people; I want some sobriety and some truth with my news.  I've noticed the doctors in those TV dramas these days tell jokes while performing dangerous surgery.  Maybe there's my writerless metaphor-of-the-moment:  America the anesthetized country on the operating table, our president in a white coat studying x-rays and making clever funny analogies while the Republican candidate is scrubbing to do a triple bypass without ever attending medical school.  Who let the dogs in?

We are going to wake up on the other side of a fence that has no return entry.  Doesn't anyone get this? I get a daily barrage of Obama-driven requests for money and cute little slogans and soundbites.  Tweets.  I want to be shaken.  I want my neighbors to be shaken.  I want someone to realize that it's fine to obsess about the wedding and the flowers and the bridesmaids and the ceremony--- but it's the marriage... it's the next four years and the perilous path we could be on toward eradicating the version of democracy that shaped my generation.  The grass will definitely be greener on the other side, and we will have lost access to that field forever.  It will be mere nostalgia which we will contemplate with growing bitterness and regret.  Are we that dumb? To fall for a man with Lance-worthy swagger and false leader-ly bravado?  At least Reagan could once act.  This actor is nasty.

So sit down Bruce.  You're a confusing political message at best.  A New Jersey billionaire in a denim shirt who lately has acquired a Clinton-esque accent.  A songwriting cowboy in a gated community.  We need to turn off our ipods and televisions and get tough and smart.  We need to use the minds Madison Avenue told us are a terrible thing to waste.  We need our president to stand up and one-two it and earn our trust and respect.  I don't want to live in a Lance Armstrong world.  I don't want to see Beyonce singing instead of Etta James at the next Inaugural Ball.  What were they thinking? Etta's ironically no longer around to separate the women from the girls by example.   And if we don't wake up, we won't be able to tell the difference between grass and turf.  This is not an SNL debate spoof...but from the comments and footage I see, I'm confused.

I'm sick of the rich guys winning.  I'm especially sick of the bad rich guys buying us off and winning.
I'm even glad the Yankees lost.  But this election isn't the World Series.  It's our future that will strike out.  My future.  My kids.  I'm ashamed to be represented by a smirky snarky tilted misogynistic power-seeker in a suit.    We need to use our hearts and our ideals and our eyes and ears and rip the masks off.   Mr. President--- you're not a super-hero, you're a man with a good brain and decent instincts and we elected you as such.  It's your final obligation as president with home-field advantage to come up with not a song but a slammer in this last inning.  Yes.