The Bush-McCain Challenge

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The Bush-McCain Challenge

A Quasi-Fictional Rumination Published in Notre Dame Review

To get away from what people generally call "politics" and "news," here's the piece I originally called "Interview with Self," revised as "A With/out Q With/out Self," published in audio with music by Don Meyer (my composing collaborator, Head of Music Dept., Lake Forest College)in the online edition of NDR (scroll down to the link to hear if you wish - Don is Q the bassoon & my voice is A the I). The text below is, of course, in print in NDR, meaning that nearly 100% of the planet's English reading population has never read it. (There is MUCH to be said of publishing on the Internet as well as off it.)

Comments welcome.

____________________

A WITH/OUT Q WITH/OUT SELF


A: It was at no point whatsoever at which I realized there was nothing else to do and that was that. Well, maybe it was that or that was that or this. I couldn’t be sure until I’d gone through the process. When I was four or five at the beach near my house, peering into the beach bags of bathers, finding banana skins and eggshells. I seem to remember an ovular moment . . . or oracular.

A: The first thing to think of after that was this. So with that in mind, I would naturally have to be the centerpiece of the allegory. Then I thought I could possibly relate the tiresome ontological metaphors, the isms and ologies and ohms and ohmygods, you know Being and Non-Being and it’s all the same and everything but not but no thing and illusions and all that and this in an innovative way, meaning by means of an interview with me, my Self, and that by so doing, I would be original.

Then of course there are so many possible audiences, a veritable cornucopia of ears. If you are performing in front of a Romanian audience, you don’t want to play Indian pop tunes, do you? Well, that’s the point precisely now, isn’t it?

A: That may be so, frequent fragility, I admit, and it could be vitamin deficiency during pregnancy, too many martinis, I’ll say Mother’s fault to be kind to you. But it was hard to find anyone else available off the bat and with time, people disappear, or in time they become lost. Oh oh there was this one and that one, and theoretically, I weep. Either way, scheduling is always a problem; then there’s the mortgage, much to lose, little to gain, though in truth of course property is a laden donkey, but on the other hand, there’s crème brulee. So to cut corners became critical and then of course money and also fame, objects of desire. The audience always takes bets: this one will be a winner, 10 to one; that one will place second, and so on. With the right agent, consider Self as syndicated in scarlet or lavender, black, teal, indigo, non-fat or 100% fat with anti-toxins. Sold! Voila! It’s a matter of flexibility. Mother told me I could become. But with money and fame would I strut about the globe blowing kisses from yachts and exhibiting my latest endangered species fur? I would be stealing the allegory of myself. Horrors!

A: Oh now you’re talking ideology and semantics. Your insistent literalism and exactitude is exasperating. You take all of this and that much too seriously and think the only people worthy of being interviewed can be found on amazon.com with five star reviews or viewed on talk or news shows. That tells me a lot about you. Frankly, your imagination has close walls.

A: I am most adamantly not a dog, chasing my tail. Simply let’s say childhood was okay as childhoods go, probably better than yours but maybe not. I’ve heard of worse. Nobody locked me in a cellar, shoveled dirt into my mouth or poked objects into my delicate overtures. Nobody told me I couldn’t eat ham if I didn’t first eat my peas. So I am very lucky to have gotten away with a tolerable childhood. Not the best but not the worst, no not by a long shot, even better than worst though lesser than best, if you get my drift, you understand, the occasional nagging and smothering, to be expected, and my head hurt when she brushed my hair.

Asleep during childhood, we can scarcely remember details, but emotional tones, themes, as in subtle transformations of the child in her own eyes, in kindergarten, first grade, summer camp, and so on, by means of humiliating experiences. Example one: two older boys tugging at her underpants, tearing them off. Example two: she forgets purposefully. So there are memories, tales and rumors, but you can never believe any of them completely. Take what you want and discard the rest I say. End of temporary reverie and on to the next.

A: Well, it’s a mark of maturity to realize that one’s most attentive audience is Self. But also one’s least attentive. And then one must ask what is Self, most often referred to as one’s self or my self, and that is where the amniotic fluid gets murky. We ourselves have wondered that so many times. But contentment?

Okay, I understand a diversion, though we are so tempted to try, say this or say Eastern methodology or phenomenology, to empty Self of self or resist self without resisting Self or become either a cathedral or gargoyle. So the question is: will you dance with me? But can one tell the dancer from the dance or know that one is not say, a butterfly? Unless one falls into a bucket full of collective shit, no question mark. So the bottom line is let us return to Exhibit “A.,” the dear forgotten womb, nostalgia of beginnings, terrifying tabula rasa.

A: Now it’s your time to listen, so listen. I have this to say. Picture a donkey with a cargo of bananas and hens. She is stumbling on stones through the night, smells a bewildering frenzy of unidentified flowers, somewhere under the shared sky of dim, far flung stars. She hears the voices of creatures she can neither smell nor see and trembles, feeling vulnerable to their genetic destinies. Inevitably, the donkey, exhausted, sits down by the roadside if she is allowed. Her nose longs for only one scent, her eyes for only one vision, and her ears for only one sound.

A: The first aroma: the one that assaulted and tempted all of her senses as she emerged from womb, warm, sloppy scent of milk in the breast or could be roses tossed by an appreciative audience, as in congratulations, happy birthday, cherished miracle! The first vision: through fog, breast and light. And the first voice: well, one might ask if it’s the mother or midwife or father in the labor room. Or is it the infant’s own voice? Or the hollow black hungry sound of the cosmos? Or is the sound-vision of the cosmos merely a mirror reflecting our reckless, dull mirrors? Not to mention the taste of custom-made milk and the feel of attending mother breast and hands, sound of hands clapping.

A: My dear pathetic Self, you are so distraught with my distractions you’ve forgotten your questions. My audience is you, my Self, or not mine, as I can’t own Self. Self is not as it would be or I would wish it to be, would wish I to be, heroic and coherent, glorious and true. It is frequently breathless and comes in a cacophony of colors, nuances of light, sweet and bitter aromas and tastes. Naturally, Self is subject to the effects of negligent parenting, Bombay Sapphire, nasty people, broken clocks and hurricanes; sometimes goes on vacations, threatens suicide, and believes it loves another Self, and then it sometimes propagates its self. That is who is interviewing me or we. And that is what we have to say to the audience. Are you my audience? Are you listening?

A: Tell me where you are and who you are. Please do. I have a tale to tell, no time to waste, no time.

CUT.

Tuesday Shorts - Home

well, folks --- here's my best work yet, cept it needs revision: "and hear a man and woman talking and the" should read: "and a man says to a woman . . ." which would eliminate a few extraneous words and really, there shouldn't be the word "hear" repeated in a story amounting to 46 words anyway. but otherwise it's perfect, don't you thank?

Cows
by Carol Novack
46 words



So I'm in The Food Emporium and hear a man and woman talking and the man says to the woman, "Hey, I hear you've been working with wolves; that must be fascinating!" And the woman replies, "Yes, it is!" This was in the dairy section.

See the site with bio:

Tuesday Shorts - Home

Misogyny I Won't Misss

from The Washington Post: MISOGYNY

Thanks, Marie! I've been ranting and raving about this from the get-go. Keep scrolling down and you'll see!

Misogyny I Won't Miss

By Marie Cocco
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Marie Cocco is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.

Mexican donkey jailed for ornery behavior on Yahoo! News

HEE HAW HEE HAW!


Print Story: Mexican donkey jailed for ornery behavior on Yahoo! News

ACLU Blog: BLOG OF RIGHTS

ACLU Blog

Immigration agency plans new family detention centers - Los Angeles Times

& here we go: future headline: Nine-year old Iranian Girl
Victim of Water Torture. No, I'm not kidding. - CN

Immigration agency plans new family detention centers - Los Angeles Times

This house, a mansion of the 1890's, was evacuated on May 19, 1942, by a farming family in this agricultural area in Yolo County,

Thanks to Dean Perchik, publisher of The Symzonia Review, SYMZONIA, I got the sudden urge to google "May 19, 1890." So I found this news report from May 19, 1942.


This house, a mansion of the 1890's, was evacuated on May 19, 1942, by a farming family in this agricultural area in Yolo County, four miles from Woodland. Farmers and other evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be given opportunities to follow their callings at War Relocation Authority centers where they will spend the duration. Photographer: Lange, Dorothea Woodland, California. 5/20/42


In case you haven't heard about Homeland Insecurity's raid on "illegal immigrants" in Iowa last week (and apparently ongoing atrocities to keep America safe for the "Americans"), you might want to check out the Des Moines Register: RAID. Not quite a parallel but close enough to be more than slightly disturbing. Whom are the Feds going to target next?

Good News in the Fight against Big Bad Corporate Media

Just moments ago, by a near-unanimous vote, the Senate stood up to Big Media. They voted to throw out the FCC decision to let the largest media companies swallow up even more local media.

This is simply an astounding victory, and it would not have happened without the massive grassroots effort by thousands who called their senators, sent more than a quarter million letters, posted thousands of pictures and stories on StopBigMedia.com, and testified at public hearings held by the FCC.

Today was a huge step forward, but there is still much to do. The fight against the FCC now moves to the House, where our elected representatives need to hear from us.

President Bush has promised that he will try to veto this bill. But tonight the Senate and the American people have spoken with one voice. This historic vote sends a clear message that the only people who support more media consolidation are Big Media lobbyists and the White House.

We are in this struggle to bring more minority ownership, diverse perspectives and independent voices to the media. We need to make media consolidation an election-year issue. And we need to start talking about how to break up the giant conglomerates.

Corporate news today -- with its propaganda pundits, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip -- undermines our democracy. We must continue to speak out and demand that the public airwaves be used to actually serve the public.

In just three weeks, thousands of people will be gathering together in Minnesota to build the movement for better media. You can join them at the National Conference for Media Reform, just visit www.freepress.net/conference.