Well played, Brave Sir John

Bravo, Sen. McCain. Is this the first time in American history that a major party presidential candidate has threatened to refuse to engage in a public debate? It's got to be unprecedented. Here's my theory: McCain is terrified of how decrepit he will look on TV standing next to Barack Obama. When I was in journalism school, we had extensive lectures on the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debate. When people watched John F. Kennedy debate Richard Nixon on live TV, it was a blowout. Nixon was clammy and sweaty and jowly and Kennedy radiated youth and confidence. Game over.

John McCain makes Richard Nixon, circa 1960, look like Brad Pitt, circa 1997. Game over once again. Brave indeed.

What happens when government doesn't regulate industry

This is what happens. If the Republicans retain control of the government, look for headlines like this--"Toxic Milk Poisons Thousands of Children"--to become commonplace in the U.S.

UPDATE: Mmmm, Republican laissez-faire economics--tastes like rocket fuel!

What we're up against

This.

When I was a newspaper reporter back in the mid-1990s I covered this very town. Hung out with the cops and the firemen, chatted up the school board, sat through God knows how many hours of planning board meetings. It's hard for me to believe this kind of blatant racism will be tolerated there, but who knows. Fear combined with ignorance makes people do spectacularly stupid things, like voting against their own self-interest.

Did you know that under John McCain's health care plan, 158 million Americans risk losing their employer-provided health insurance? If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you're not paying attention. And this is just one of the many, many things McCain and the Republicans will do, if elected, to further drive this country into the ground. But only if we let them. Do you think the guy who can't remember how many houses he owns--the guy who owns 13 cars--will fight for your middle-class interests? Please.

You have a choice, America. You can give in to your lizard-brain fears of the guy who looks different from you, or you can take a chance on real change. It's up to you.

Awkward

We recently picked up a bargain bin copy of the Madagascar DVD, and it's been in heavy rotation in our house these days. The Peanut loves it--especially Mort the mouse lemur. I think the penguins are by far the funniest thing in the movie, though.

So I've been walking around for days saying, "We're gonna blow this dump!"--quoting the main penguin, "The Skipper." This cracks the Peanut up to no end. Thus it was awkward when, as we packed up to go home from a playdate at a friend's house yesterday, the Peanut declared, "We're gonna blow this dump!" which prompted a blank stare from the other kid's mommy, who of course had not seen "Madagascar" and simply thought the Peanut was calling her house a dump.

The princess and the superhero

Lately around our house the subject of Halloween is coming up almost as often as the subject of the Peanut's impending 4th birthday. ("Is it my birthday yet?" Is it my birthday NOW?") She keeps going back and forth between her original idea, some kind of superhero costume, and Princess Jasmine, who she simply LOVES. It looks at this point as if Jasmine will emerge victorious, which makes me sigh because I've been railing for so long against the insidious impact of the Disney princess narrative. She's seen bits and pieces of the "Aladdin" movie, which I have to admit I do love even in spite of its being a Disney princess movie, and ever since then I swear to God she has been talking about getting married. Allow me to repeat: SHE IS 3. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Anyway, I loved the idea of her being, as she put it, a "purple superhero." Using her powers of near-supernatural cuteness only for good. Fighting bad guys by shooting adorability rays out from between her unbelievably long eyelashes. Etc. But it seems it is not to be, at least not this Halloween. There's always next year!

The ad the Obama campaign should have made

THIS is what they should be doing in their advertising. Fighting back HARD against the disgusting McCain ad that says Obama wants to "teach sex ed in kindergarten" when the real intent of the law the ad references was to talk to young children about avoiding "stranger danger."

Where is the campaign? What the hell are they doing?? We the voters want them to bring a goddamn nuclear bomb to this knife fight. So far they've come with water balloons. Even though I have been very confident so far that Obama can win the election, I think he's in danger of blowing it if he doesn't prove he's tough enough to win. Ads that go nuclear would be an excellent place to start.

UPDATE: OK, it appears they're on top of it. Freakout over for the moment anyway.

Seven years

Where's Osama bin Laden? Oh, that's right, we can't find him. Oh well.

To understand the significance of this, let's play my favorite game: "Imagine if (fill-in-the-blank) was said/done by a Democrat." Imagine for a moment that the worst-ever terrorist attack on American soil had occurred on the watch of a Democratic president. Then imagine said president not being forced to resign immediately in disgrace. Try not to snort coffee on your keyboard laughing at this premise.

But since we're in the realm of fantasy, let's just say that this theoretical Democratic president not only was able to stay in office but later "elected" to a second term with the help of illegal voter list purging in Ohio, among other dirty tricks. Then let's say that several MORE years had gone by with no progress in apprehending the alleged foreign mastermind of the attacks. Try to imagine what they'd be screaming about in the bought-and-paid-for corporate media on the 7th anniversary of the event. Methinks it would be something other than this (the lead story on CNN at lunchtime today).

Do other people's kids talk like this?

The Peanut has developed a very distinctive speech pattern where she puts a lot of emphasis on certain words. I keep trying to figure out where this comes from, and I now suspect she is imitating us when we speak to her and, without meaning to, emphasize certain words she's having trouble pronouncing or whatever. This weird emphasis thing, combined with the usual 3-year-old tendency to jump very quickly from topic to topic, is a scream when she goes off on a monologue, as she often does when we're in the car. Also she says "Mama?" after practically every sentence to make sure I'm still listening. So she sounds like this:

I wish we could just FLY to school because then we'd get there faster. I wish the car had WINGS. But we'd have to be careful not to make too many turns or I'll BARF again. I hate it when I BARF in the car. Mama? Did you know people can SHRINK? Yesterday Owen said when he and his cousin went in the ocean when they were on vacation, they went all the way to the bottom and they SHRINKED! For REAL, Mama! And then when they came out of the water they UNSHRINKED! I wonder how they did that? Mama?

I don't like pink anymore. Now my favorite colors are purple and teal and KUR-QUOISE. Kur-twoise? Quor-quoise? That's a hard word to say. Maybe we can find me a superhero Halloween costume with ALL my favorite colors in it, even QUOR-TOO-QUOISE. Maybe we can get a little superhero costume for Mainey (the Peanut's teddy bear--full name: Main Teddy. It's a long story). She can have a little cape and we can FIGHT BAD GUYS! Mama? Can you make Mainey a little tiny superhero cape? That would be SO CUTE!

Mama? At my birthday party I get the PRESENTS, right Mama? And everybody else gets the GOODIES? Do we have goodie bags for the party yet, Mama? Is it October yet? It's my birthday SOON, right? Mama?

This is why I love the English...

...They have such a highly-developed sense of the ridiculous. They're having some kind of street theater festival in Liverpool, during which a 50-foot mechanical spider which is currently perched on the side of a building, will be let loose to roam the streets as part of the festivities. Good times. I can just imagine walking around the city with the Peanut, checking out the art exhibits, maybe getting a snack, enjoying the overall vibe as we did in London a few weeks ago, and then we turn a corner and come upon a spider the size of a house.

Likely Peanut reaction: AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! MOMMY -- MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!!! AAAAAAAIIIIIIGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

Also, best comment from the above Huffington Post story:

To see that thing crash the Republic National Convention with an Obama sticker on it would have been cool. Nothing suits me better than a bunch of terrified racists.

All over but the shouting

So, what a crazy couple of weeks. I’ve had about 65 moments of witnessing some Republican atrocity on TV and spluttering with rage while simultaneously realizing what a great blog post it would make, yet I’ve been way too busy to post. I’m really glad this train wreck of a convention is over now so I can finally collect my thoughts on it. I’ve been going back and forth on the significance of Sarah Palin and the overall meaning of the hard-right tack taken by the McCain campaign, but today, after the old man’s acceptance speech last night, I’m actually feeling pretty confident. What do the Republicans have to offer middle-class America? A big fat pile of nothing. With a generous side order of hypocrisy.

Good Christ on a bike (as a friend of mine used to say) it simply cannot be possible that the country will be taken in by this pile of crapola AGAIN. Right? Please tell me that’s not possible. I mean, really…Obama bases his entire campaign on the theme of “change.” The last eight years have sucked for everyone but the uber-wealthy. This is beyond dispute. So what does McCain come back with? What’s his response to Obama’s message of reform? Two messages: “Vote for us and we’ll put ultra-right-wing theocrats in charge of everything,” coupled with “We’re going to clean up this mess around here.” And there you sit in your living room, listening to this clamor for “reform” from the political equivalent of the Gambino crime family, wondering whether you’ve slipped down some wormhole in the space-time continuum where GEORGE BUSH AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DIDN’T CONTROL THE WHITE HOUSE, THE CONGRESS AND THE COURTS FOR THE LAST EIGHT YEARS. Does nobody see the problem with this? The Republicans’ whole bid for four more years of executive power is that they’re going to fix the mess made over the last eight years by, well, pretty much all the same Republicans, enacting pretty much the same policies they are currently promoting. OK then. No cognitive dissonance there.

Meanwhile the Republican party has suddenly discovered feminism, which is highly amusing on a number of levels. They made Hilary Clinton out to have horns and cloven hooves, and excoriated her mercilessly when she cried sexism (rightly or wrongly) during her presidential bid. Yet their new standard bearer, AK-47 Moose-Murdering Barbie, no one may dare criticize, lest the entire Republican establishment simultaneously explode with righteous rage. How dare the press try to ask her questions about her professional and political background, just because she aspires to be the second most powerful person in the world? How dare they print stories about her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, after the McCain campaign itself announced the girl was pregnant? For the record I agree the whole teen pregnancy thing should be out of bounds in the media coverage of the campaign. It has no relevance either to Palin’s experience or to her qualifications. That said—they put out a freeeeking press release about it. They didn’t expect anyone to run a story? Are these people living on Mars?

It’s also quite fun to see how the Republicans are suddenly leaping to the defense of working mothers. All these years they’ve been demonizing ordinary women who have babies and then go back to work out of economic necessity, yet when Sarah Palin launches a vice presidential bid four months after giving birth to a special needs infant, all they have is praise for her. Imagine, just imagine, if Michelle Obama was the one who had recently had the Down syndrome baby. All we’d hear 24/7 is how scandalous it is that she left the side of the newborn baby to go off campaigning. Also, needless to say, just imagine the shitstorm if it was the Obamas who had the pregnant teenage daughter, by the way. The script they would follow writes itself: “Don’t these blacks know how to raise their kids right?”

And am I the only one who thinks McCain just looks tired? He looks like he wants to go home. I don’t think his heart is in this anymore. I’m actually starting to feel sorry for him. He had his moment, eight years ago, but it’s slipping out of his grasp and I think he knows it. He looks defeated. He has had a hard life, and he deserves to sit on the porch with a drink in his hand, watching his grandkids (does he have any grandkids yet? Presumably he will soon enough) playing. He should go on a long vacation and spend some more of Cindy’s money. Maybe take a nice cruise.

Because after that ginormous clusterf*!k of a convention—they are so clueless, they couldn’t even keep the protestors out of the building! They’re so inept, they Google-searched for a photo of Walter Reed Medical Center and came up with some elementary school with Walter Reed in the name, and nobody caught the mistake!—it’s all over but the celebrations on the day we inaugurate President Barack Obama.

UPDATE: I almost forgot: how hilarious was it when, at the end of McCain's speech, they put up a video of fireworks on that giant screen behind the stage? Take that, Obama campaign. You guys had real fireworks but we had, uh, really nice pictures of fireworks!

If that doesn't sum up this whole presidential race I don't know what does.

Un-patient

The Peanut, first thing this morning when I went in her room to wake her up: "Is it Oct. 1st yet?"

Me: "No, sweetie, not yet."

Peanut: "I want my birthday to come. I'm un-patient."

Politics and race: Why the Boston Globe sucks, part nine million and seventy-three

So this morning in the hack-tastic Boston Globe we read this:

One convention priority, according to strategists, will be to recast Obama's life story to serve as a rejoinder to rumors about his patriotism and religion that have preyed on his exotic origins. Those worldly immigrant roots figured prominently in his 2004 speech, but many Democrats say that this year he should put greater emphasis on biographical elements that highlight elements of middle-class, all-Americanness.

Which just proves my point about how much the Globe (and the corporate media in general) sucks. What I want to know is, when will people finally wise up to the immense stupidity of the right-wing canard that anyone with "worldly immigrant roots" isn't really an American? I hate to break it to the Globe, but pretty much everyone in the entire country came from immigrant roots. Maybe your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents were born on U.S. soil, but chances are your great-great-grandparents were born somewhere else. Interesting too how those of northern European descent get a pass on this criticism. If your forebears came to the U.S. from Germany or some similarly lily-white place, all of a sudden you're not so exotic.

My ancestors, in the relatively recent past, spent all day working in the broiling Sicilian sun and probably had darker skin than Barack Obama. Am I, as an Italian-American whose American-born roots only stretch back as far as my own parents (my grandparents were born on Italian soil) "exotic" too? What is my daughter, with her mix of Asian and European genes? Mighty "exotic," I'd wager, at least according to the nearsighted fools who pass for professional journalists these days.

At the end of the day, isn't this simply racism? "Exotic origins" my ass--Obama was born in Hawaii, which, the last time I checked, was part of the United States. But, you know, a bunch of swarthy-looking types live there, or so the "low-information voter" types the Globe is evidently written for seem to believe, so Hawaii is somehow suspect. Not only that, but half Obama's background is lily-whitey-white, which interestingly never seems to come up in absurd news stories like this one. His mother's maiden name was "Dunham." Doesn't get much whiter than that. But the Kenyan father cancels out the WASP portion of Obama's backround in the nearly fact-free corporate media narrative about his life.

Which also brings up another point, which is how absurd it is to parse these racial details to such an extent. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you go far enough back in your own history, you'll find all kinds of colors, races and religions. Anyone who thinks "Well, we're Irish Catholic today, we were in my grandparents' time, and we always have been" chances are is speaking in blissful ignorance of some long-ago dalliance between a forebear and some dark-skinned slave girl.

If this country is ever going to move forward, we're going to have to get over our juvenile obsession with race (which I know sounds like an enormous cliche, but it's still true). When I was home on maternity leave with the Peanut, I stumbled across a snippet of an old movie on TV that was amazingly eye-opening. Here I was having recently given birth to a baby with a perfect mix of Asian and European features, and across my TV screen flashed a scene of pandemonium in a hospital maternity ward. The dialogue-free scene showed three new mothers--white, black and Asian--each being handed a baby wrapped tightly in blankets. One after the other they unwrapped the bundles to find a baby of a different race! The white mother held an Asian baby, the Asian mother held a black baby, the black mother held a white baby. Against a backdrop of music appropriate for a light comedy, they rang their bedside alarm bells and gesticulated wildly, calling for help.

The movie appeared to date from about the early 1960s, but as we can see from the kind of bullshit being spewed in our "mainstream" press these days, this attitude of rigid racial divisions still prevails. I had to laugh as I sat in my living room, clothing covered in spit-up, breast-pump at my side, piles of unfolded laundry everywhere, and thought about my own situation and that of my new multiracial baby. In a movie produced not even a decade before I was born, the idea of a multiracial couple was preposterous, obscene. But it was my life in 2004. I'm far from the only one. There's a kid we see on our local playground from time to time whose hair is light brown and her perfectly Asian-shaped eyes are grayish blue. "Exotic" in some ways perhaps, but thankfully ordinary enough, at least in our neck of the woods.

How silly our corporate media is going to look when America looks beyond the media's tired old stereotypes to elect its first multiracial president. It's a moment I hope the Peanut will look back on fondly as she grows up.

Random Friday thoughts

In no particular order:

-- In a little over five weeks the Peanut will turn 4. Hour by hour she is shedding the babyish aspects of her personality and becoming more fully a kid. She speaks more articulately than George W. Bush (not that that sets the bar too high) and she is suddenly full of attitude. Which scares me just a teeny bit. There are moments lately when a latent 13-year-old jumps out of the three-and-three-quarters-year-old, and it's hard to know how to respond to that. Luckily these little eruptions of teenager-like attitude are interspersed with her more usual sweetness and overwhelming overall cuteitude.

-- The Peanut has announced that she wants to be a "purple superhero" for Halloween. I have no idea what this means, except I suspect it will involve me heading to a craft store and searching for cheap purple fabric to make into a cape. (NOTE: I am not in any sense crafty. This is going to be one crappy-looking Halloween costume...)

-- Of all the aspects of the whole "John McCain is so rich he can't remember how many houses he owns" controversy, the one that amuses me the most is the thing about the 9-car Starbucks run. Nothing says you're a man of the people like heading out for your morning cup-o-joe in a platoon of armored limousines. I realize the guy has to have a security detail and everything, but sending nine cars to get him one cup of coffee? Really? So environmentally-sensitive of him. As I've said before, you almost have to wonder whether there's an Obama mole inside the McCain campaign. The mistakes they're making are taking on epic proportions now.

-- I am incredibly psyched for the Olympic closing ceremonies. You wonder how they'll top the opening events.

-- And I'm incredibly annoyed about the delay in release of the Harry Potter "Half-Blood Prince" movie. The idea that the studio will make more money by holding onto it until next summer, instead of releasing it this November as originally planned, is preposterous. If the release date was a Wednesday in February, the Potter fans would be there with bells on. With this franchise it doesn't matter at all when they release it. Very aggravating development, although I guess this will give the Potter fan blogs something to talk about for the next several months.

Random photos of the Peanut

Old ones and a new one on top...just because.

More on "Miss Buffalo Chip"

Seriously, is there an Obama mole within the McCain campaign who arranged for him to appear at this thing? Get a load of this description of the event from a commenter on Talking Points Memo:

I grew up in Western South Dakota, and can tell you that "topless, and occasionally bottomless" barely scratches the surface on Miss Buffalo Chip. There were always rumors about underage contestants and on-stage sex--that was simply what Buffalo Chip stood for in the collective unconscious of teenage boys in the Rapid City area. This amounts to John McCain volunteering his wife for a Girls Gone Wild video. Quite a lady's man, that McCain...

McCain speaks at wacko topless biker rally

I heard about this on Air America the other day and I assumed it was part of a comedy skit. "They couldn't possibly be that stupid, could they?" I asked Mr. Fraulein about McCain's campaign managers.

Turns out they are that stupid. Family values party indeed.

Indeed, McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally’s traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that’s been known to feature topless women.

Princess Chunk update

The 44-pound cat is actually a boy, and his real name is "Powder." He is a victim of the Bush economy. His owner let him loose because her house was foreclosed. (Presumably he ate them out of house and home -- literally!)

44-pound cat found in New Jersey

I'm glad this giant beastie wasn't found wandering in north Jersey, because if it was, my mother, the cat lady, would have found a way to take it in.

I have to say, though, this is a bit hard to believe. A 44-pound housecat? Really? If the story is true, this animal weighs more than the Peanut.

Uppity

When the hacks who have a stranglehold on our broken, oh so broken media call Obama "presumptuous," what they mean is "uppity." As in, "uppity negro." And don't think they're above doctoring quotes for their own purposes, as the consistently-sharp Bob Cesca shows here. The Washington Post is happy to use half-quotes from Barack Obama to make him sound arrogant. That's just standard operating procedure.

But meanwhile, does anyone care to place bets on whether the Post will find time to report on the salt-of-the-earth, very non-elitist John McCain's choice of footwear (as they would do in about three seconds if Obama went around wearing $500+ shoes)? I suspect not. They need to devote those column inches to making sure black politicians know their proper place.

Not dead, just insanely busy

This poor blog has been shamefully neglected lately...I actually have a whole running list of things I want to write about if I ever manage to find the time. I'm a list maker. Always have been. The problem is that most of the time instead of getting accomplished, the items on my list languish there for months as it (the list) sits crumpled at the bottom of my purse. How sad is that?

Meanwhile there is the Peanut's lively social schedule, which Mr. Fraulein and I spend much of our weekends attending to. I've lost count of how many children's birthday parties we've gone to so far this summer. If you need information about any kids' party venue and/or birthday cake baker in the greater Boston area, I'm your girl, as I am now intimately acquainted with all of them. It's by turns touching and hilarious how excited a 3- or 4-year-old kid can get about another kid's birthday. (It would be nice if this sense of empathy could stay with them when they grow up. ) Today for example one of the kids at the Peanut's preschool is having an after-school birthday party at his house, complete with backyard water slide, pizza and cake. The teachers are driving the kids to these people's house in the school mini-bus. This will be the first time the Peanut has ever ridden in a school-bus type vehicle. She's been talking about it for days.

"I'm going to sit next to C. on the bus and we can talk on the ride," she said this morning, her voice quivering with excitement. I had an immediate vision of the Peanut at age 17, decked out in a floor-length gown, waiting for C. (her best buddy) to arrive to take her to the prom. She seemed so much like a teenager in love at that moment, I had to grip the bathroom sink for support. (She is, mind you, 3 years old.)

And even aside from the parties, just the sheer number of activities this kid packs into a single weekend, continues to astound me. The tricycle riding with the neighbors' kids in front of the house! The multiple trips to the playground! The production of highly elaborate marker and crayon drawings on her easel, often signed in her preschool hand, with the E's in our last name carefully marked with about five little horizontal lines. The doll and teddy bear tea parties in the living room. Etc. There are very few moments of simply vegging in front of the TV, even when the TV is on, which we feel is a good sign. She often uses the TV as background noise for whatever make-believe she is cooking up on the living room rug. And the things that come out of her mouth are still hilarious.

"I love you and Daddy more than chocolate milk," she said this weekend. That's a lot!