The Last Supper

--Cherish Perriwinkle, 
died 6.21.2013

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn't exist.
And like that, poof. He's gone. 
--The Usual Suspects (1995) 

So long as little children are allowed to suffer,
there is no true love in this world
--Isadorea Duncan

Bless the beasts and the children
for in this world they have no voice,
they have no choice
--Bless the Beasts and the Children, 
The Carpenters

It's a jungle out there
Violence and danger everywhere 
It's brother against brother
Pounding on each other 
--It's a Jungle Out There,
Randy Newman
_________________________

[In honor of International Women's Day.]

Funny how things come back around, sometimes with new meaning the second time. 

This time it is one of the harrowing and absurd tragedies visited upon the little people in life, in out-sized proportion to the rest of us.

RAW wrote in 2013 about the local rape and murder of 8-year-old Cherry Perriwinkle ["Prelude to the Finale"]. While in  Jacksonville recently, her story was back in the news Valentine's Day 2018, only adding to the grotesquerie of her story. 

To recap: the man who killed this girl predated upon her mother's indigence. His offer of food and a $50 Walmart gift card must have seemed like a small lottery win for the poor mother. Except, poor people do not often hit the jackpot.

Would you entrust your daughter to a stranger in the hopes that she might get her cheeseburger? While it is easy to say that her mother made a poor choice, the fact is undeniable: Cherry lost her life due to her family's economic insufficiency.  

The Jacksonville Times-Union devoted ran a four-paragraph piece (not online) of her killer's sentencing, offering some grim details offered by the public defender:

"He gagged her, he raped her, he sodomized her, and then he strangled her," State Attorney Melissa Nelson said in her opening statement. "He gagged her with such force her gums and her nostrils bled, he strangled her with such force her eyeballs bled. She did not die quickly, and she did not die easily, in fact, hers was a brutal and tortured death."

Please do not save all of your ire for the defective misfit who committed this crime, for if you do, any lesson is lost.  

People today have become too emotional and outraged at the drop of a dime. After the angst du jour is gone, it is off to the next fire. We might do better to stay rational in the face of what we might like to claim is "outrageous" behavior.

A simple thought: What people call outrageous happens with such regularity that they might lower their reactivity and ask simply and with deliberation, "This is factual, so, what now?" 

Cherry Perriwinkle's murder is monstrous, unspeakable. But too many people now become outraged over things against which they are impotent; worse, against things which are ill-defined, and sometimes, are not actually problems.

The hominid family contains myriad genetic freaks and perversions. Some members harbor violent impulses, and some act upon them; these are not concealed facts. Some might say that the most egregious behaviors result from genetic mutations, but more likely, we are all somewhere on a universal behavioral spectrum, and given the right circumstances are capable of things we don't want to confess.

To vent outrage upon a discrete actor like Cherry's rapist-murderer would be to tie a nice Hollywood bow around this actual story of want and depravity, and life is not tidy like that. The subtext to this murder trial is just as compelling as the actual crime, for without it, this particular murder could not have happened.

Lisa decided to conduct a perhaps macabre thought experiment: what does Cherry's story share with the accusers in the #metoo movement? Are the shared elements valid, and do they help illuminate any of the public angst being expulsed in all media outlets regarding female exploitation?

No disrespect is meant to any players, and this is not to victim shame or blame. And certainly, this girl's story and the cohort she represents is more horrific by orders by orders of magnitude than, say, any accusation against a Harvey Weinstein or Charley Rose.

We will consider only the female's who describe sexual predation. [Certainly males, albeit in fewer numbers, also find themselves in similar situations.] The challenge is to uncover the connections, connect the dots and to determine when and if the chain of connectivity breaks. 

Further, how should we define the problem? Does #metoo represent any cohesive cohort?  Do they present a clear platform, and is it actually a problem? If so, is it one of perpetration or perception alone, or both? Is it soluble?

The media has fatted us all winter on a glut of sordid exploitation tales of attractive females climbing the ladder of success on the coattails of powerful men. These "sexposes" exacted the requisite banal outrage of the viewing audience. 

The usual suspects were netted (predominately powerful older men). A social media movement was born (#metoo) and the media has been devoted to covering the "new" female outrage. Eventually, predictably, just like after Watts or Ferguson, the furore will die down.

There will be nor furor for the child in Jacksonville, though much like the actresses in Hollywood, her mother appealed to a more powerful male figure for assistance.  Certainly the perpetrator was a criminal in a way that the men of the #metoo movement are not.

One might also say Gwyneth, Salma and Uma also made poor choices regarding Hollywood producer Weinstein, but they were operating from farther along the power dynamic curve. At the least, they had transportation or cab fare, and could have left the scene of their reported exploitation.

But operating on a principle of charity, on a sliding scale as far as egregiousness, what is the commonality among these offenses?

Whether it is for want of a McDonald's cheeseburger or a part in a Hollywood film, the attempt to gain favor from a powerful male is the constant, and concomitantly, the desired liberation or power that comes with that. Because such transactions are entered from a position of a power imbalance, they must by needs end that way.

Maybe we are trained early on to pay obeisance to an all-powerful God the Father, and that is a hard archetype to smash. But if children like Cherry had economic sufficiency, and their parents were given proper education parenting skills, such children could at least grow old enough to face the next hurdle of potential exploitation, like those faced by their economic betters in Hollywood or Washington D.C.

Maybe men and women both would be served by a unit of moral education in primary school (reinforced later in secondary). Of course, values clarification is heretical to most public school boards who must honor and protect diversity. Further, who would be our Solomon?

For many of a more liberal bent, if a person who has achieved the age of consent and wishes to trade his or her body (much as we trade our mind-power in the workplace) for goods, who is to say otherwise? To them, the body is owned exclusively by the inhabiter thereof, and can be bartered into another fungible asset as long as all parties are on board with the terms. 

But for those who buy into that construct, there must be allowance made for the emotions entailed by a quid pro quo gone awry. This is where the disingenuousness and hypocrisy enters, for if one has economic security and the exchange is a discretionary one, who is to criticize either party? 

Moreover, is it that element of shame which makes the female in such a transaction "reveal all" at some future time? What is the impulse to both partake in the "crime" (for those who do so discretionarily), and then to condemn it? Is she seeking moral absolution via support groups, and the subsequent denigration of the male?

If you focus on the nugget, you cannot see the big picture. You cannot fight an effective battle if you don't know what you are fighting for. You can expulse your angst, if that feels good to you, but you will not accomplish much.

We are all somewhere on the green brick road: Cherry was at the beginning, and met her demise in her desire for a McDonald's cheeseburger. Gwyneth, Salma and Uma were a little farther along the path, their desires, a bit more lofty. 

The question is, how do you move along it, and how far will you go? Are you willing to use yourself, and how will you do that -- by creating something, or by trading yourself in a direct exchange for goods?

Humans have free will and often make poor choices. Some are up, and some down. And thus ends the lesson on why parity shall never be reached.

Submitted for your consideration.

Curious Yellow Boys

There's a sucker born every minute
--David Hannum

We're doing a series on the
ten most sordid social welfare cases.  
--I Am Curious (Yellow), 1967

____________________________

Subtitle: Stupidity Masquerading as Violence and Redemption.

Talk about turning rutabagas into sunflowers.

Our group think culture has taken a tawdry act on the part of all parties and massaged it into a cause célèbre. The incipient plucky heroine of the recent Stanford sexual assault case has a book contract and is well-placed for a Medal of Freedom.

Except, she is no heroine, and the story of this case lies in a place other than where the media shines its spotlight. However, everything is to be wrung dry for its entertainment value, or for its exploitation by vested interests, and "Emily Doe" is a "Citizen Ruth" for our times.

Vice President Joe Biden called her "courageous" and the Swedish passers by, "heroes". One of the ersatz news programs gave her 12-page manifesto one-half hour of valuable air play. Last week "House Members United to Read Stanford Rape Victim's Letter" (except in their passion they and the NYT got it wrong -- it was not rape but sexual assault.)

Representative Ann McLane Kuster, Democrat of New Hampshire said, “We are all Emily Doe,” a la President Kennedy's momentous, "Ich Ein Berliner" speech.

But no, we are not. Not unless you go to a frat party after drinking four shots of whisky and drinking two more of vodka and unknown quantities of beer and then go with a younger frat boy behind a dumpster, for that is who Ms. Doe is.

At the moment, she is an addict and possibly a sexual predator, most likely just wanting to get her kink on with a younger man. (The distance from 19 y.o. male freshman to a 22 y-o female graduate is great.)

The young man, Brock Turner, is nothing special in this regards, and neither is she. It is hardly the "night that ruined her life", as she began drinking her shots eyes wide open.

In reality, it will be the night that made her -- undeservedly -- something special in our culture of instantaneous stardom. She will possibly do the media rounds to capitalize and monetize her moment, and crocodile tears will be shed over the actions of the Big Bad Wolf.

She says she was "robbed of [her] worth", but she did that to herself before she went behind the dumpster to have sex with a frat boy three years her junior. (You didn't think they were going to read "Ulysses", did you?)

She calls herself "Everywoman", and why not? It's a heady moment for her. I suspect it is not her first rodeo, and an erstwhile skanky scene has been spit-polished into a story of true grit.

But she doesn't speak for me, not at any point in my life.

I don't care to talk of the young man, for he is a known quantity: 19 y-o male drinking heavily at a frat party. His role as an insecure and/or horny young male is to find the low-hanging fruit and schtup her; call it a night. He could be a necrophiliac in training, or maybe just a young American male getting ready for the sort of action he can anticipate after graduation when he marries a sorority girl.

But the female is the sticking point in this story, and we are not viewing it for what it actually is.

The obvious untold story is the substance abuse of the designated victim and her choice to be in a frat house party environment so drunk that she did not wake up for six hours after the act. The violence in this story is self-inflicted and issues from the same fonts which are now celebrating her victim-hood, who run flashy stories which depict drunken celebrity party-goers as having the time of their lives.

The violence may lie in having the misfortune to live an entitled and cosseted life as so many Santa Barbara residents do. In having a mother who would deposit you at a frat house party after you had already consumed four shots of whisky.

One subtext of this story is misogynistic. The press and politcoes are falling over the 12-page victim’s statement, but implicit in their surprise is that not all women who drink to the point of being comatose are illiterate hootchie mamas. In fact, they exist in number, but we are not interested. 

This is what passes for a "feel-good" story today. Predictably, we get up in arms. We act like we are shocked and outraged, like we actually care about the plight of women (and men for that matter.)

My guess is that the 12-page manifesto was either a compiled effort by a women's group who saw their moment in the sun, or the writer herself is a borderline personality, either of which was necessary to push this story into the spotlight, with a bump from social media. But beyond the uncovered substance abuse and misogyny lies yet another story, that of privilege.

This sort of thing happens every day of the week in most towns, but the participants are not often white frat boy potential future Olympians or UC-Santa Barbara grads. The privilege of the participants alone is what makes it newsworthy. It feeds our salacious desire to have the privileged white man atone, or for self-flagellation, depending upon your affiliation. 

The ultimate irony is that the outlets which are supposedly uber-sympathetic to this woman, couldn't give a damn that the same thing (and far worse) happens every day of the week to younger or older, non-white, non-Santa Barbara grads. What they dare not say is: those stories are ugly. This story is pretty, so it has legs.

We get to discharge more collective vitriol, hate the judge ("off with his head!"), and feel very smug, righteous and strac, for a bit.

Very probably, had the Swedish bicyclists not happened by the scene, we never would have heard about the matter; it wouldn’t look good for either party. (Wouldn't be prudent, as a Bush père might've said.)

What makes this a good story is that white male privilege gets a knock (and we will give a pass to the white female of privilege, ignoring the actual issues at hand.) Messy facts simply do not matter today.

The fact is, the press on this issue will change nothing, because the things which can be changed are not being addressed. But the folks on Capital Hill get some nice press and ensuing gravitas by leeching on to the non-story.

Here's a surprise: young men like sex, and if you put yourself in an extremely compromising position, you cannot cry wolf. For all our enlightenment, we may not re-engineer human brains or hormones. But what we could address is the culture of binge drinking, and to do so honestly would require both males and females to take responsibility for their actions.

You don’t get to wave the red flag in front of the bull and not elicit a reaction, or claim naivete when you do. (Drinking' til you're trashed does not provide plausible deniability.)  You may re-educate, but that training will go by the wayside once one’s executive functions have been overridden with booze.

Lesson: Everyone must be responsible. If you want to get wasted, have a designated escort to watch over you; better yet, do it at home, or among a group of trusted, platonic friends. Best -- don’t get that wasted, and choose your environments wisely.

Ms. Doe should not be book-worthy until she enters and successfully completes a course of rehab, and stays clean and sober for six months. She can then write from a position of understanding a cautionary "life of an addict" book, and it will be one of much too many.


Next: A Year of Inanity

Out on the Op- LP: Mediocrity All 'Round

Brainwashed by the military
Brainwashed under duress
Brainwashed by the media
You're brainwashed by the press
Brainwashed by computer
Brainwashed by mobile phones
Brainwashed by the satellite
Brainwashed to the bone 
--Brainwashed, George Harrison 

Don't be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it
--Single Lady, Beyonce 

She rocked out to Wham
Not a big Limp Bizkit fan
Thought she’d get a hand
On a member of Duran Duran 
--1985, Bowling for Soup
 _____________________

Happy Sunday and welcome to RangerAgainstWar's occasional feature, Out on the OP - LP.  Like we said, the concept is that this is a free-fire zone.  We welcome any and all comers to express what's on your mind, and feel free to ask for advice, forgiveness, whatever.  We'll do our best.

We will kick-start this with a question about values and mores:

According to Gallup polls, Hillary Clinton is the Most Admired Woman in History.  Her husband and former President Bill Clinton was named Father of the Year for 2013. Exactly what is it about the sly Hillary or the adulterous Bill that should garner such admiration? 

First Lady Michelle Obama is #2 on the Most Admired list.  Granted, she can do the Dougie, yes, but what else beyond sporting designer dresses whilst on European holidays? And yes, First Ladies like Jacqueline Kennedy also sported fine duds, but she did NOT do The Watusi; there was a certain decorum. Call me old fashioned, but can we not think back past our current year to find exemplars? 

Upon whose head can we rest these fetid laurels of ushering in our current mediocrity?  Surely President Reagan was the triumph of veneer over substance.  Before him, President Nixon's stating that he was "not a crook" despite evidence to the contrary was a hard dosage of collective cognitive dissonance.  Certainly President Clinton's saxophone playing on Arsenio Hall was an unnecessary plea to cool in a job which did not demand that quality. Perhaps the office of the President is not the only place to look for the genesis of our current state.

Moving from Most Admired to Most Ogled, Beyonce Knowles has been voted by Gentleman's Quarterly as "Sexiest Woman of the Century" (of course, with another 87 years to go in the century, she may not be able to maintain her hold.)  The singer is all about being "fierce, a term co-opted from the gay community associated with attitude. 

Beyonce, who was chosen to perform for the plum Super Bowl 2013 halftime show, is quoted as saying she works very hard on her craft, but her craft is not songwriting; it IS shaking her moneymaker, in ways that would make a pole dancer blush. She says, "And one thing about me: I practice ’till my feet bleed," admitting she is basically a hoofer.

So we choose to admire this women whose seductive-nee-salacious moves would be considered ghetto whore type stuff a few years back, and yet she serves as a model for many a young girls today. Christine Aguilera's belly-baring get-ups and Madonna's faux-Monroe, Like a Virgin poses are tame compared to Beyonce, who is consistently working her thing in every video and performance.  This stuff would have been labeled "pornography" a decade or so ago.

Beyonce's progenitors, like Britney Spears, certainly worked it, too, but their performances at least had some variety in terms of costuming and coverage.  For Beyonce, it is full-on lack of nuance crotch shots all the time.

In other entertainment, we love our brutal films, yet decry the violence in our society.  Can there be no valid linkage made without being dismissed as hopelessly Old School?

And what is it with "reality" television programs like "Honey Boo Boo"? Being in the South, we can understand the unfortunate necessity of listening to such people should one have the grave misfortune to live in rural McIntyre, Georgia.  But for the rest of us?  What is the excuse?  There are magazines and books to read, good films and documentaries at the library ... What's up with that?

We'd love to hear your thoughts on any of it.  (I'm going out now to shake this off of me, yet my chores entail a trip to Costco, where I shall be exposed to even more of it.  If you can assist in expunging the above infestations, I'd be much obliged.)

It looks like Lucy is seeking counsel, herself.

Holy Cow

Never loved you enough to trust you,
We just met and I just fucked you,
--Superman, Eminem

You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
--Fever, Peggy Lee

Well aren't you Miss America
Don't you Miss America
Won't you Miss America
Our love
--Miss America, Styx

There she is, Miss America
There she is, your ideal
The dreams of a million girls
Who are more than pretty
--There She Is, Miss America,
Wayne Bernie

She’s a very kinky girl,
the kind you don’t take home to mother.
She will never let your spirits down,
once you get her off the street
--Superfreak, Rick James

I'm a slave for you. I cannot hold it;
I cannot control it. I'm a slave for you.
I won't deny it; I'm not trying to hide it.
--I'm a slave 4 U, Britney Spears
________________

Sunday homily: Redemption and penance

This is the part II of debunking the myth of parity for women, or "Why We're NOT in Afghanistan" [Everyday Housewife was Pt. I.]

Allow me to re-visit the arc of last year's improbable diva, Susan Boyle. I feel it encapsulates nicely why we are not the ones to show the world the way to treat our distaff side.

For those who say, "WTF does this have to do with war?" -- I beg your indulgence. It has to do with societal lies and willing suspension of disbelief, the behaviors which allow for your current wars.

Homely and hirsute, 47-year old "never-kissed" songbird Boyle encapsulates every trope used when we think of women (and underdogs, in general). Boyle, slow-witted and frowsy, harrumphed onto"Britain's Got Talent" stage and won acclaim for staying on-note singing wistful tunes of a life that might have been (I Dreamed a Dream, Memories) and audiences swooned on key.

Ms. Boyle prostrated her shapeless self before a reality-show audience, only to be met with the predictable howls of execration when she wagged her over-sized female bits in an attempt at sauciness. Before the first strains began, she was pilloried, and the circus delighted in her pro forma humiliation.

Moments later came redemption for Boyle as she stayed on key and did not provide the expected embarrassment of matching a homely voice to her homely exterior. The erstwhile executioners sought insta-penance via their leader, judge Simon Colwell, who allowed, "You are one special lady, I have to say, you really are." Why special? Because you're such a loser, and you took our ridicule, and you actually did what you came to do, despite all the rotten fruit we threw at you. You beat the odds. Brava!

Brave because when you are a women past your gravidity and have sprouted a moustache, you should remain safely ensconced behind your council house door with your cats and clean the chancery in quiet, when others have left and need not be exposed to your doughty self. And that is what it is to be a Susan Boyle: One stays in her hermitage or risks diminution every day of her life.

If you're a train wreck and sing a melancholy self-deprecating tune while we heckle you, we might throw you some fish. It was modern minstrelsy, so apt was face to tune. We will accept you because you are operating within your metier, and are the perfect exemplar of what our society will allow for women of your station.

In the ultimate and yet predictable deliverance and penitence, Ms. Boyle's Christmas album became the best-selling debut for a female artist of all time [Boyle: 4th Week #1 (Guardian), Susan Boyle, Top Seller, Shakes Up U.S. CD Trends (NYT)]. The heavily Photoshopped cover says it all, really, for who would wish to open a box and see the actual frowzy Susan staring at them?

Packaging sells, and so the face we see is divested of its double chins, facial hair and Don King hairdo. The non-real Susan looks a bit coquettish, even minx-like!

This is what we like from our women. Showered with a little positive regard, the once-hulking, androgynous Susan has blossomed, such is the mythology of the collective ego we enjoin. All a woman needs is a bit of love, and the glow of being transformed into a member of the group of -- as a male associate once crudely put it -- "well-laid women" will show in the blush on her cheeks.

But Ms. Boyle's glow was created by retouching, and her adulation was shallow, as it hung or fell on the Next Big Performance. When she showed herself a bit addled on a You Tube (Foiled by You Tube), the mediocre Regis Philbin, himself the champion of mediocrity, was quick to gambol about in a Halloween costume crucifixtion of the underling's one-time darling.

We loved her for what we perceived as her facing down of our relentless condemnation of an ugly woman who dared to make us listen. We are intrigued when our perceived lessers attempt to transcend their societally-constructed bounds, as we anticipate their tragic fall.

The news saturation was complete, from the Wall Street Journal to the entertainment rags. Every major news outlet gushed with admiration at the heroic march (Desperately Seeking Susan (NYT); Dream Over: Boyle Finishes Second in Talent Contest (abc); Improbable Star Falls Just Shy of Apex (WaPo); "Susan Stuns Again with 'Memory'" (Reuters) ...)

Reader "Cheron" left the following late-night comment on HuffPo's, "The Untold Susan Boyle Story":

"It's 2am here in Saskatoon Canada and I happened upon this video....feelin g all down and freaken sad because its my 59th birthday this day I heard Susan Boyles audition and I smiled the hugest smile....life has hope again because one lady out of nowhere had a dream come true!!" [sic]

Sorry, Cheron -- but your life will be no better just because Ms. Boyle stayed on key. You are still 59 and alone on your birthday in Saskatoon -- Susan Boyle will not save you from your facticity.

Society will not be any kinder to you when you develop your double chin and turkey skin neck (see Ephron's, I Feel Bad About My Neck). You will have lost your value in the marketplace of appletinis.

Susan is a joke, but we feel magnanimously toward her. We are implicated in the misogyny which is the subtext of her accolades. "Wow -- a dowdy sow like that can sing?" What an amazing surprise.

I resent the pretense of our adulation, because Ms. Boyle is really NOT fine as she is; she could be better. Susan is, what the mountain people might call, a bit "quare". Deprived of oxygen upon birth, she is a "slow learner" according to her brother. And this may be the reason she presses on in the face of otherwise insurmountable odds and humiliation.

If Ms. Boyle were instead some pneumatic and tanned Malibu surfer, we might say, "Eh, nice voice." But stupendous, rock-my-world outstanding? Meh. As Simon would say, "Next." Because no one believes that her better days are behind her, whereas everyone believes that Ms. Boyle has seen better days; probably never even had them. And we share a conspiratorial collective guilt in her marginalization. Our hypocrisy and our schadenfreude roars. She was good, but not that good.

Susan's flip-side is no less the object of derision -- the Baby-Boomer Cougar, whose every plastic need is catered to by a booming cosmetics industry. But you know what you are: An old broad who can afford the nips and tucks, and who is no better than your sugar daddy contemporary.

In fact, you have it worse, 'cause you need to get the wrinkles between your augmented breasts ironed out every four months. We all know how he gets the arm candy, and you, too. Did you think Trump got Ms. Maples because of his boundless good looks and coiffure? Not.

Oh, and war.

Well, marketing is king. We are told Afghanistan is about liberating women being trampled upon. Meanwhile, over 1,000 women are murdered in domestic violence scenarios annually in the U.S., and over 200,000 are raped (according to latest NOW statistics).

In the Army itself, 3,000 female troops were raped last year by their fellows. From Time this month:

"The Pentagon's latest figures show that nearly 3,000 women were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2008, up 9% from the year before; among women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number rose 25%. When you look at the entire universe of female veterans, close to a third say they were victims of rape or assault while they were serving — twice the rate in the civilian population (Sexual Assaults on Female Soldiers: Don't Ask, Don't Tell.)

The WaPo's opinion writer Parker exemplifies our hypocrisy. In A Revolution Named Zahra, Parker writes, "[I]n Iran as elsewhere in the Muslim world, violence against women -- as well as against homosexuals and others considered inferior according to the mullahs' masculinist standards -- isn't only permitted but justified with religious doctrine." Our patriarchy doesn't do much better.

We are not being honest with ourselves. See Susan on the street, you would think, poor broad -- chunky, doughty -- not gonna find a man. Sturdy, a good charwoman, perhaps. We don't believe that humans are equal. We would not have jeered and then guiltily bent over backwards singing her praises if we did.

Christianity implies equality and brotherly love. But if anyone believed it, bias and hatred and violence would go out the window. Because a God who understands the essential equality of living beings could not countenance such foolishness on any grounds.

I'm not saying ugly women get stoned, but they do get marginalized, ridiculed and abused. Even the pretty ones meet with abuse, so it is the fact of being female that allows for the abuses of paternalism.

We are the second sex still, and though there are some wonderfully evolved people in every society, I do not buy that we in the U.S. have the moral cachet to export a healthy acceptance of women to any society.

Nope -- our passion for liberating women is not justification for our presence in Afghanistan, despite the claims of many members of the military.

[Cross-posted at Milpub.]

Sojourner Obama

Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung

I look all white,
but my dad was black
--Substitute, the Who

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
--Happy Days are Here Again,
Ager & Yellen

If women want any rights more than they's got,
why don't they just take them,
and not be talking about it
--Sojourner Truth
_____________

You may call this a bit of piffle, but it is piffle with an edge. Again, this is not about Obama per se, but about the media's take.

In his Bumpy Road Ahead for a Traveller, the WaPo's David Ignatius likens Barack Obama to Sojourner Truth, and finds his sassy wife, "comforting'. "Obama has been the sojourner" he says, finally finding his proper manifestation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Quoting from Obama's recent 60 Minutes interview,

"Obama's reality check will come from his wife, Michelle. When he told Kroft that she had asked him on election night if he was going to take the kids to school the next day, she broke in: "I didn't say that." When he claimed that he liked washing the dishes, she interjected: "You? Since when was it ever soothing for you to wash the dishes?"

You've got to like that. And you have to believe that a man who can smile while his wife lovingly, genially puts him in his place is a pretty sane guy. In this transition time, when the traveler is finally about to reach his destination, that's reassuring.

What silly rhetoric. A man who can smile during this harangue might be sane, or might not. He could be a wife-abuser, just waiting until he gets behind closed doors. I am not saying he is; wife Michelle looks like she can take care of herself. It is just more inane supposition, and a double-standard compared to the press's treatment of women in the recent past.

In Ignatius's reverie, Sojourner Obama is arriving at his destiny on the loving wings of his partner. But another way to see this is through a Clintonian lens: this is a woman who's "Not gonna stand by her man." To see cracks in the veneer in a snide challenge. When Hillary took this stance, she was severely chided for being a shrewish harpy.

Perhaps Mrs. Obama is a woman like French PM Sarkozy's former wife, Cecilia, who will do as she pleases, absenting herself from onerous State functions, and perhaps even walking off.

Alas, the latter is probably too French. Still -- must a woman's power always originate from the fringes, from her subtle digs and keeping her big male ship afloat? Has our progress been to accept such behavior, patronizingly viewing it as endearing versus attacking it as an untenable male challenge?

If 20 years has wrought that change, let us see if it adheres across the board.

The Great White Hope

Gamble, Florida Times-Union

Girl you're every woman in the world to me
You're my fantasy, you're my reality
--Every Woman in the World, Air Supply

Keep you doped with religion and sex and tv
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
--Working Class Hero, John Lennon

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers
of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining
to a higher eminence,
in whatever he takes up, than can woman
--Charles Darwin

__________

This is a post on confusion: why are the actual political issues in this campaign being skirted in favor of a cult of celebrity, and where did women go in our society's ostensible march to inclusivity?

Presidential candidate Obama is a rock star without music. He fills stadiums in 10° degree weather, with groupies strung around the building at 7 a.m. for the 10 a.m. show. He has earned Oprah's imprimatur, which usually goes to self-help gurus who help her and her audience feel better, folks like the elfin Eckhart Tolle and Marianne Williamson, Andrew Vachss and Dr. Phil. Former addicts, or street people, or tough-love advocates.

If you believe that Oprah's got The Secret, then O politics wins. In this age of wanting to feel good about oneself -- the spa-entitlement age -- Obama's slot, like that of a good pastor, is to make you feel good. To give you hope in your wretched life for a new day. We want to get pumped up over something, and have a sneaking suspicion that it ought to be about something other than ourselves.

Obama's soaring rhetoric accomplishes this nicely. His is the role of the self-help guru, a genre which is bursting with titles at your local bookstore. Thousands of tracts promise to show you how to navigate your wretched spouse/parents/children. The Calgon moment has never been bested as the prescription, and Obama is the one who will take you away.

As William Kristol said Sunday in the NYT,

"So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.

"John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.

". . . Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for ("It's All About Him")."

Obama is like O[prah]-guru Tolle, who promises in his latest bestseller to midwife you along to your best you in the modestly titled, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. That is, presuming there is one for you. How could there not be, after all? Aren't you the one who felt so good after all the hot rocks were aligned on your back, while ylang-ylang and chrysanthemum were wafted in the air?

We, the scions of the Me generation, seek aggrandizement of the self via Facebook and MySpace, not even shuddering from the possibility of egocentrism as a negative. For her part, Oprah is there to salve any nagging fears we might have on the matter.

She is on the daily menu for a large number of your cohorts, maybe even you yourself. While there are the crazies who let it all hang out, like Jerry Springer's guests, there is Oprah to lead you to your higher self.

But for all her wealth, Oprah struggles. Her weight drops, only to be packed back on. She has an on-again, off-again relationship with her stately, light-skinned lover Steadman, but always the affection of her steadfast girlfriend and dogs. Oprah owns this niche; she is Black Like Me. She is everywoman, as Obama is everyman.

This is not a racial screed. It is a lament for a society which disallows honest, non-racist, non-sexist consideration of the very real political topics at hand. It is a lament for a provincial society stuck in its -isms, which harbors a real and barely latent disdain for anything other. A society that wishes to feel good by covering up these tendencies and gloating about how inclusive it has become by fronting a non-musician rock star for president.

It is odd to see Hillary's all-but-inevitable moment be so cruelly quashed. It seems women are denied the parabolic peak. Their ascent looks like a mined West Virginia mountaintop--flat. A good place for a golf course.

The first female candidate for president was Victoria Woodhull in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket, with a black man, Frederick Douglass (Up From Slavery) as her running mate. Race is again on the table today, but it seems gender is the more onerous issue.

White women have written many of the seminal tracts in the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Freiden, Irigaray, Klein and Horney and many others have all written grounbreaking works on the stature of women in society. We still go to white women for financial advice (Suze Orman, Maria Bartiromo et. al.), presumably because they can do the heavy lifting on boring fiduciary matters.

Geraldine Ferraro had a run at VP and we all knew she wouldn't make it, but felt it was only a matter of time. It seemed for a time Condoleeza Rice was on the fast track, being groomed as a possible presidential contender. But her star has fallen, and recently she was consigned to introducing a display explaining the obtuse symbolism on the back of the dollar bill.

One wonders why Hillary is so suspect, why her detractors so viscerally despise her. I have spoken with numerous people who admit they cannot put their finger on the reason why; they simply hate her.

What has this admittedly wanting-for-charisma woman tapped in the national psyche? It appears that even her husband, former President Bill, sabotaged her efforts early on with some notably non-charismatic additions. Hillary stood by her man, but he has not stood by her.

It is not that she is part of a "Clinton dynasty" as the press is hectoring. If that were so, democrats who were pleased with Bill would be pleased with Hillary. And political dynasties are nothing new to U.S. politics.

Presidents, no matter how high-minded, have only limited power to bring about change. They may encounter not only inertia but, more often, its exact opposite: an active, self-interested opposition, frequently fronting a broad constituency. Seeing this reality, one should choose a conciliator for president, not a firebrand, if change is what is actually sought.

I have heard well-intentioned liberals discuss the fact that Obama will make a fine role model for young black males if elected. But that is not the reason we elect someone president. That is the reason to join your local Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Obama has been successfully branded -- he is hot, and he is cool, while Hillary is not. She is just another politician, who tends to spreadsheets and fiscal data, nothing that makes you want to get up and scream; she possesses nothing like Obamania.

Hillary simply doesn't rock, and we want someone to rock our world. Just look at who can run for president -- little Ray-Ray from the Chicago hood, who made it through his AA at community college.

Well, not actually.
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correction: Frederick Douglass's autobiography is, A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom. Thanks to vigilant reader Minstrel Boy.