Fallbrookian 1: Have you heard the latest about Sarah Palin? She’s building a taller fence around her property so the journalist renting next door can’t spy on her.
Fallbrookian 2: But then she won’t be able to see Russia anymore, and there goes her foreign policy expertise!

Liberal Fallbrookian: I’m so surprised no one has left a bag of burning shit on our doorstep yet.
Conservative Fallbrookian: Only a damn liberal would think that’s an adequate response. I say shoot them all.

From Telling Our Tales writing workshop

Talking is my thinking, and sometimes that’ll get you in trouble.

Writing is like making salsa: You just start cutting up vegetables and adding things and then people say, “Oh, this is wonderful. How do you make it?” But I don’t know how I make it. I just write it.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

During the 2008 presidential campaign, a dear former colleague railed at me in rather frothy email verbiage when I took a written poke at Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Although he eventually calmed enough to offer a sort of apology, I never heard from him again. If he’d just given me an opportunity to explain, I could have, well, I don’t know, explained — explained the humor to him. Ye gods, the thing was titled “You Can Put Lipstick on a Fib”! You’d think that would be a dead giveaway to take what follows with a grain of giggle. Jeez!

What can I say? We Gressitts are prone to humor; it’s a powerful coping mechanism — the darker the better. When Mother was still driving, she joked about keeping Father’s ashes in the trunk in case she needed extra traction to get up her hill in the winter. It took the sting off her sorrow. Years ago, when I joked with the ER doc suturing my battered face (I suggested a bribe of homemade shortbread in exchange for his working some magic to prevent scarring), he joked right back. The levity got me through the procedure without grabbing a scalpel and preventing my now-former husband’s dick from having any more fun with jane. Although I have to admit, after recovering from the assault, I found the doc’s response really depressing and I was pissed with both of us — and I never made him that damn shortbread. We need to train ER staff not to enable victimhood. Right after we train women to duck faster.

See what I mean? It is unrelenting.

Just the other day, a friendly reader questioned the sincerity of true feminists joking about breast cancer. She was gracious, and her comment made me wonder how many folks might have taken offense at the joke I had published. But if you’ve never been close to cancer, you might not understand how fabulous a death-defying tool laughter can be — even a wise-ass smirk can prove useful. And I find California senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina (the subject of the joke) and her politicking in the realm of breast cancer as worthy of a one-liner or two as is staving off the angst of alien-possessed boobs. A breast cancer survivor herself, Fiorina used the Susan G. Komen for the Cure fund-raising page to make a pitch for her campaign for U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s seat (watch the video):

Cancer strengthened my faith. Cancer strengthened my family. And I come through all of this battle, not only with it behind me, but with a renewed determination to make the most of my life. And for me, now, that means to try and make a difference for the people of California, in Washington, D.C. My doctors have given me a clean bill of health. They’re actually extremely excited that I’m running for the Senate. I feel great. I’m raring to go. And the good news is, after chemotherapy, Barbara Boxer isn’t very scary anymore.

How deliciously crass! My feminist friend’s response to Fiorina’s play of the breast cancer card? “Maybe Barbara Boxer could have an iffy mammogram.” Spoken like the funny breast cancer survivor she is.

Albeit only one tool, humor can help sustain us through the most atrocious assaults on our sensibilities; for example, Arizona’s continuing effort to incarcerate, forcibly repatriate or otherwise excoriate anyone who isn’t, well, you know — sshhhh — one of us white folk.

Leaders of the erstwhile Barry Goldwater, Sr. state are afraid that public schools are vulnerable to the ravages of ethnic solidarity among the dark hordes — why, those heathens could rise up and vote them right out of power! But traditional social studies curricula were cleverly crafted to induct our young ones into the still-pervasive doctrine of Manifest Destiny, to keep white folk on top, literally and figuratively. Hence, alternate curricula — any study of perspectives other than that of the white landed gentry — threaten the status quo and, consequently, comprise what Arizona’s good old boys and gals fear: “courses or classes that either promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” Bear in mind that Arizona’s legislators had to strike “Caucasian” from an earlier version of that statement — at least in their minds, if not in print. That’s ethnic cleansing Arizona style.

And Arizona’s recent purge of teachers with heavy accents or bad English grammar strikes another blow, but to an unexpected target — the South. Those damn Yankees are at it again! This prejudicial policy renders teaching positions in Arizona unattainable to any progeny of my paternal ancestral home, Gressitt, Virginia. In this kudzu-creeping hamlet of clamdiggers, crabbers and valiant volunteer firefighters, one might hear the likes of, “Aah juss mahoov mah deeah suhee mama eeanduh reeuhl naahs dubahwahd.” For those unschooled in Virginia Backwaterese, that translates as “I just moved my dear, sweet mama into a real nice doublewide.”

After a good laugh, I’ll shed a tear for Arizona’s lost opportunity for cultural exchange with the unabashed South and hope that the state’s educators are devious enough to do some fast “Find and Replace” in their curricular materials, to pacify the ethnic-phobic.

Thank the goddess there is enough idiocy out there to keep us endlessly entertained, which is a nice segue to Sarah Palin.

She’s ever rich fodder for comedy, but I’m not sure who is more laughable — Palin, for assuming the title of feminist at an anti-abortion gathering, or the feminists who jumped through various and contorted rationales to lend it to her. God forbid they should deny the nomenclature to a powerful woman and thereby risk their own standing in the Sisterhood! What they fail to recognize is that power, position and number of Facebook fans do not a true feminist make, any more than poofy sleeves, a calico Bible cover and “God Hates Fags” signs stacked in the garage make you a true Christian.

Now, what Palin doesn’t understand is that no feminist would advocate putting women’s reproductive decision-making in anyone’s hands but the women’s. We’re good with our hands; we don’t need any help down there from no guhmint.

Yeayah. … That doesn’t really translate.

Love,
K-B

Want to learn more about immigration?

Read “The Devil’s Highway” by Luis Alberto Urrea (2004, Little Brown and Company) and watch “Lone Star,” written and directed by John Sayles and featuring Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Peña.

— My thanks to Professor Silverio Haro, CalState San Marcos and Palomar College, for the great recommendations.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Questionable things said in Fallbrook this week

Some men like big thighs.
I hope my husband is one of them.
You should have married an African-American.
Hmmm, is that racist?

I always say to Obama haters, you should only half hate him — he’s only half black.

I could have danced all night.
That’s what the pregnant ballerina said.

Sarah Palin has more power than anyone: She got Oprah to give up her show.

Fallbrook is dying. We’re moving to Oceanside.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Poor Sarah Palin, erstwhile GOP vice presidential candidate and soon-to-be former governor of Alaska. We’ve been mean to her. Our hostility likely pushed her right out of her gubernatorial seat. What’s the poor thing going to do with herself now?

Um, write.

Indeed, Palin signed a contract in May with HarperCollins Publishers for the next public-figure-reveals-true-and-endearing-essence-of-self blockbuster, due in 2010 with some help from a ghostwriter. And Tuesday, she had an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post, “The Cap and Tax Dead End.”

I, myself, a lover of our wonderful nation of ours, and a benefitter of the energy-rich state of Palin’s hometown Alaska that could feed the many hungry markets of the lower forty-eight, would Alaska just get the go-ahead from Washington bureaucrats to start up those drills in that tiny corner up there of the wildlife refuge, because it is our patriotic duty to use the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil and, um … Where was that sentence going?

Oh, was that mean? OK, sorry, Sarah. It could be that I’m jealous: I don’t have a book deal with HarperCollins and I can write a proper sentence without a ghostwriter’s assistance. Neither has The Washington Post seen fit to publish my considered opinions, and I have plenty of them.

Nonetheless, that caveat offered, what I really meant to write was that I had no idea Palin could actually, well, write. Who knew?

Should I have deduced it from her self-description in a report on her book deal?

Being a voracious reader, I read a lot today and have read a lot growing up. And having that journalism degree, all of that, will be a great assistance for me in writing this book, talking about the challenges and the joys, balancing the work and parenting, and, in my case, work means running the state. … I’ve read a variety of books, and that helps shape my opinions and my views.

Her opinions and her views, hmm. How does she distinguish the two? And that journalism degree is actually in communications, with an emphasis on journalism. Such degrees are often a get-me-the-hell-out-of-college route for students with mediocre intellectual gifts or an abundance of distractions — in her case, perhaps both.

Oops, that was mean. I knew it as the letters appeared on my screen. Sorry, Sarah.

Anyway, I figured her op-ed piece would surely reveal her writing skills, her ability to grasp a complex concept, explain it to the average newspaper reader, and offer her studied opinion about its cause or a possible resolution. So I took a look at the piece.

She first tells us how worrisome the economy and unemployment are, and that the federal government continues to misbehave — ¡qué sorpresa!

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, she never explains what she means by that last sentence, which left me imagining the government’s long arm up one of those short skirts of hers, but I figured her husband had already set that precedent.

Ooo, I know — mean, mean, mean! Sorry, Sarah!

Next, she repeats her complaint that the media attack her when they should be focusing on the grave challenges of our day, but then I questioned why she keeps bringing it up — maybe she’s being coy?

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy.

I had to give her negative points for revisiting her standard social slur, class, but I was encouraged that she was poised to explain the concept of cap-and-trade policy for pollution management and how it could threaten us.

It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage. … [I]n Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

So, she tells us the Obama policy is a threat because it will damage us, she touts Alaska — a favorite non sequitor of hers — and then she repeats her accusation sans substantiation. Alas, she explains nothing.*

Uh-oh, I guess that was mean, too. Again, sorry, Sarah.

She goes on to write that Obama’s plan would create job loss and higher prices for just about everything, but she doesn’t say how, she doesn’t cite any analyses, she doesn’t say nada, although she does deliver a divisive little wedge into the festering gap between liberals and conservatives:

The ironic beauty in [Obama’s energy] plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

Of course, Palin has not demonstrated any understanding of economics — and I think she’s being a little mean to liberals. Nonetheless, I read a bit more, looking for her fix for the disaster she foresees.

We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. … In Alaska … our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

And then I got it!

It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t draw a path to her new direction, that she doesn’t explain how we can safely drill offshore as our weather becomes more extreme, that she offers no recipe for responsibly devouring all the coal and gas and oil God planted right under our ripe feet, that she fails to address the realities of permitting and developing fifty prospective nuclear power plants; none of that matters, because what she’s actually trying to do here is comedy!

Yep, it is absolutely clear that Sarah confused The Washington Post with The Capitol Steps, and sent off her satire to the wrong recipient.

Hmm, was that mean? I don’t think so. Being a voracious reader, I’ve read a variety of things about Sarah, and that helps shape my opinions and my views of her. And, like Sarah, I’m OK with that.

Love,
K-B

* “Cap-and-trade” policies establish pollutant caps (limits) and allow a polluting business that reduces its emission of a pollutant below the cap to sell (trade) the difference (credit) to another company, which then factors the credit into its effort to achieve the cap.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

It is summer in Fallbrook.

I know this because the blue jays have stopped attacking other birds’ nests; no more freshly desecrated eggs stop me along the path to the laundry shed, to wonder at the efficiency of the swarming ant waste haulers. Instead, the ants now attempt to haul away the contents of my kitchen.

I know it is summer, because the brilliant fragrance of our spring has faded into the organic rot of drops beneath our trees.

A Fallbrook lychee

Exotic fruits from our microclimates abound, while we are admonished to conserve water, from which we filter the resentment of distant rivers that nurture our arid land.

Sere heat ripples the winding road ahead, browning our verdant hills and valleys, and summer is indeed upon us.

Our little Main Street plays host on hot Friday nights to appropriately-aged tipplers and classic cars, tasty tidbits from the kitchens of local eateries, chilis competing to produce the most fiery reaction (to hell with the County that rules our unincorporated land with disregard, insisting it’s all happening on Main “Avenue”).

We have poolside barbeques and enjoy the fruits of Mexico’s cheap labor in our primly landscaped yards, while we spout unpruned slurs at those who dare drop brown babies in our fields — “invasion by birth canal,” one local yokel dubs it, surely afflicted by the delusion of sunstroke.

We hose the season’s dust from our air-conditioned vehicles, as large and as greedy as our wishes, while we decry the raucous herd of military helicopters overhead that prepare to battle terrorists — so we can feed our cars and have our apple pie, too.

The Citizens Crime Prevention Committee takes a break from hosting meetings of mostly white citizens who believe criminals are mostly brown aliens.

Unlicensed adolescents bemoan our boring-ass-redneck-nothing-to-do-town, while the Youth Prevention Group advises adults not to let our jaded teens take to drink. (Do you suppose they indeed want to prevent youth, with all its dratted problems — those darned hickeys, acne, toilet-papering the latest heartthrob’s front yard?)

Yes, I know it is summer in Fallbrook, when our overheated grove dogs chase their fleas with frenzied abandon, because it is campaign season for our honorary mayor, a thirty-six year staple in the Chamber of Commerce’s bag of fund-raising tricks, and the boldest of our local business owners step up to chase votes in the form of dollars. Politicians nationwide might give heed to Fallbrook’s electoral process.

The Chamber declares it a “pure and clean system: The person who turns in the most money to the organization wins.”

But our candidates stand no chance of claiming a seat among an august body of decision makers. Instead, they vie for the opportunity to represent the Chamber at every ribbon cutting and mixer, every dedication and grand opening in town; they compete for voters’ dollars to lend their mayoral lips to every new concoction whipped up to heal or thin or moisten or calm or simply sate with the essential bounty of our groves; they eagerly sell votes to friends, family and countryfolk — $1 each or 6 for $5 — to secure an honorary ride in a parading car, with smile in tow and those little sideways beauty queen waves. And they do it all with passion, making not a single vaporous promise, but pitching their civic assets — and cleavage assets when they’re available.

The honesty of Fallbrook’s system is refreshing. If only our candidates for elected office would be so forthright — just write a check for the seat of choice, and the biggest contribution wins. We couldn’t do any worse than the crop of rotting incumbents who serve us now, and it would help pay down the nation’s deficit.

From Mark Sanford, the unfaithful governor of South Carolina, who repeatedly practices his mea culpa press conference — with cameras rolling — to Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, who would be presidential except even in her quitter’s speech she can’t embrace coherence, to Marion Barry, the former mayor and current Washington D.C. councilman, who awards a contract to his lover and tries to rescind it when she dumps him, to Pedro Espada, the New York State Senator, who sells his party affiliation to the highest bidder (if he’d just apply the concept to getting into office!).

So how about it? Transfer all those brimming campaign coffers right to the U.S. Treasury; scrap all the consultants and pollsters, all the phone banks and direct mail houses; and just give us the candidate with check in hand — décolletage, a nice bonus — and get on with the business of governing.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

President-elect Barack Obama is naming names — well, no, someone is deftly leaking them. Regardless, given the brilliant and well-accoutered rivals, intimates and mutual admiration society members from whom he’s selecting his cabinet nominees, the country is likely to enjoy the perks and quirks of some very interesting minds.

Being of the female persuasion, I’m particularly keen on the minds of women whose names are making it up the flagpole.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) as Secretary of State is a nice plug to chaw: The thrill of her former presidential campaign supporters is surely matched by the horror of those who would have voted for anyone but Clinton for president had she won the primaries — even Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who tripped through the campaign on her syntax.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security is really satisfying. Dang it — a woman in charge of security! Although I can hear it already: Those who despise her for representing Anita Hill during U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing, along with those who despise her for her gender (juxtaposed with her accomplishments), will have a rip-roaring time delineating various imagined security shortcomings they believe inherent in her body parts and apparel. Tucker Carlson, Marc Rudov, Mort Kondracke, Sean Hannity, Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly all come to mind, with their penchant for misogyny posing as punditry.

Napolitano, Clinton and all other female nominees had best gird their loins for the onslaught of PMS, nagging wives, witches and bitches, cosmetics, cleavage, vaginas, aging and ball-buster slurs masquerading as political commentary.

I know it would be equally unprofessional and sophomoric, but what a lesson for those boys (and the girls who try to win by foolishly playing their game), were they to be similarly critiqued for their prostate problems, midlife crisis acquisitions, erectile dysfunction, increasingly hairy ears, comb-overs, male hair dye, androgen deficiencies and those little dribble spots on the crotches of their designer slacks. Think I’m being mean? Check out the video compilation by the Women’s Media Center.

Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker escaped the sexist critique: Although her name was briefly floated for Secretary of Commerce, it dropped like a sinner to her knees. She was quite successful as Obama’s national campaign finance chair, but she withdrew her own name from cabinet consideration — perhaps due to her historical subprime lending involvement.

Still in the running for targets of pundit prurience are Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, one of a multitude of pro-choice Catholics I’d like to point out to Father Jay Scott Newman, and economist and professor Laura D’Andrea Tyson, President Bill Clinton’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (the first female in that position). They are both on media shortlists for a variety of cabinet nominations yet to be claimed.

And then there’s … um, ah … hmmm, either a dearth of leaks or a dearth of women in contention for Obama cabinet posts. If the mass inside the Beltway were not so prone to verbal vomitus, we could believe the lack of names of additional women being seriously considered is a failure to disgorge. Sadly, that’s a tough one to swallow.

So, while we wait, perhaps fruitlessly, for additional female nominees’ names to leak forth, I’d like to get back to Alaska’s Governor Palin for a moment. Because we’re in nomination mode and because Palin is in “What’s next for me?” mode and because she apparently doesn’t read much and, hence, is unlikely to read this, how about congressional Republicans create a special position just for a Palin nomination, that of Minority Mascot? It puts her safely out of the running for president (I could find nary a mascot who succeeded a team leader); it will save the Republican Party from untold embarrassment; it panders to those who take Palin seriously; it feeds her craving for on-camera face time, as long as she declines the mascot head gear; and it gives the William Morris Agency, one of her suitors, a nice opportunity to gauge her ability to speak extemporaneously.

Extemporaneously, that’s like when the speaking of things that is, which people who love this great country of ours, when they are finding themself wanting to hear the hopefulness that we all hope to feel also, is the way to say those things of importance that which they hope to hear, there, without a teleprompter. Yeah, OK!

I’m sure the other nominees will know what it is.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photos by Theresa Thompson and smiteme, Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.)

We felt cocky enough to bring two bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne to election night dinner at the new Royal Thai restaurant in Atlantic Highlands, my mother’s town. The Jersey Shore community is home to Republicans and Democrats adequately civil to hold simultaneous events in adjacent rooms at The Shore Casino. It is where Mother and Father settled in for the last legs of their careers; where he retired and she refused to; where he keeled over in the kitchen one afternoon and she sat on the stairs and wept; where she has spent the last twelve years missing him; where I was visiting from California to help prepare her for the move into my sister’s home; where it occurred to me, sitting at the restaurant table with family and friends and their new baby, achingly eager but still afraid to celebrate, that Mother and the nation were both in the throes of a momentous transition.

The champagne on ice, awaiting absolute confirmation of an Obama-Biden win, we looked along the restaurant’s rich, red walls, through the front window and across First Avenue to the local Republican Headquarters. McCain-Palin supporters were gathering in the storefront, waiting for the first polls to close, sipping drinks, and I wished I’d brought Father’s binoculars. Not to spy, but, come eight o’clock or so, to see what their faces would surely reveal. We joked cavalierly, at Republicans’ expense, proposing a Tina Fey v. Sarah Palin contest in 2012. We fretted the fate of same-sex marriage, twisting in the winds of three states’ ballot measures. Marriage is a human right, we argued with absent opponents. Are homosexuals the twenty-first century niggers?

Still we waited, waited to know for sure, distracting our lust for resolution with the exotic flavors of a country that has survived its own history of transitions and avoidance thereof. We introduced Mother to the pleasures of Thai food — the savory curries and warm coconut milk, the spicy peanut sauce and sweet noodles — while she worried about making creamed chipped beef in an unfamiliar kitchen. We delighted in the wonderment of the baby and turned silent on the pending angst of her parents, two men who know intimately the slings of fearful hatred.

And then Barack Obama won.

We drank the Clicquot, wept for the joy of revived hope, for the sorrow of Mother’s fading independence, for the cruel rejection of our friends’ humanity, for the evolving wisdom of our nation.

The next day, Mother said, “I don’t want to give up my home,” and I abandoned her to her mourning, counting between sobs the Obama bumper stickers on the Garden State Parkway.

At Newark Airport, the rental car return agent held my door and asked how I was doing. “Happy,” I decided, “happy that Obama has won.” She hugged me.

I landed in San Diego in time to drive north to Fallbrook, jump into a gown and drive on to a Marine Corps Birthday Ball, where a four-star general explained to my husband why he voted for Obama. I dared mention it at our table, and the other guests looked uncomfortable and had no comment.

The next morning, one of the coffee and muffin regulars at the old soda fountain counter-cum-café said the general was an idiot, lambasted Obama as an inarticulate incompetent and stormed out, the new government more than he could publicly bear.

That evening, Mother called to say she would certainly stay at my sister’s only until the summer, when she would return to her own home, with stairs she can no longer climb and Father’s books slowly disintegrating and rooms gathering dust and losing memories, the permanent departure from the house in which they grew old together more than she can bear without him.

Sunday, I drove to the gate at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and watched the sentry’s eyes land on the Obama sticker, still centered on my windshield. He smiled, asked, “How are you today, Ma’am?”

“Happy, happy that Obama won.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” he said.

I could have hugged him.

Instead, I drove to the ocean, inhaling the spray of Santa Ana-swept crests, wondering how we will rid the state of a constitutional amendment that denies people the right to marriage, wondering how it would feel to live on without a spouse of fifty years, wondering what successes Obama will give us as his enemies decry him, how profound will be the moment when one of my own — when a woman — is elected president, if Mother will live to see it, wondering how many more of our warriors and those they would help will be shattered before we know some peace, how the world got to be so huge and so intimate and so chaotic, how cool it would be to just plop in the white Pacific sand with one of those frou-frou drinks in a coconut shell and not a thought of anything but my navel.

I laughed and cried and kept driving, and imagined the young and newly widowed Madame Clicquot having said in 1805, with more gravitas than typically afforded the phrase, “C’est la vie.”

This is life.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

My husband received a letter from Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin Wednesday. I was interested because we hadn’t previously received anything from Palin, and, after her rather vitriolic campaign speeches to the converted, I was particularly curious about what she would have to say to a bipartisan household such as ours.

Imagine my disappointment when I learned from Palin that I — along with all Democrats — possess a “fearful and pessimistic mentality.” She also suggested I don’t share the “spirit, courage and strength” of my Republican husband.

Wowy, I guess I suck! How could I have not known this? How has Steve put up with me all these years?!

I’ve skated through adulthood thinking the occasional lows were just that; assuming when I strode into a new challenge it was my confidence and courage boldly leading me; believing no matter how many hurdles crossed my path, my spirit and strength would see me over them.

Apparently, it’s all a fantasy and I’ve actually been face down in the mud, my trepid tokhes in the air and my gloomy legs ensnared in the hurdle’s bar. How could I have so misread my disposition? Have all Democrats been engaged in a vast conspiracy to deny this ugly secret to each other, to ourselves, or am I’m the only Democrat unaware of just how lousy we are?

And lousy isn’t the half of it! According to Palin, my fellow Democrats and I are raising $1 billion to “relentlessly flood America’s airwaves with [our] negative and false attacks.”

Ye gods, just kill me now! I had no idea the depths of my masked malevolence. I thought the evil twin sister line was just a stale joke. Perhaps Democrats all suffer an exotic personality disorder only Republicans have the wisdom to discern.

I grabbed the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to name my psychosis and determine its severity, but I could find not a single condition that affects only Democrats.

Desperate for recovery, I returned to the letter and read on in search of helpful guidance from Palin to regain my sense of self, my sound mind and good character. And her letter lifted a corner of the dark and dismal fog enshrouding me: I could heal myself by helping “battle back against Democrats and their same old tired-and-failed policies of the past … by joining the Republican National Committee with a 2008 campaign contribution of $2,000, $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $35.”

This advice gave me hope: My will to survive had not yet succumbed to the debilitating mental disorder of being a Democrat. I struggled to swim through the miasma of my wretched disease, franticly doggy-paddling toward lucidity, my lungs aching for mental health. I had a vision — an addled vision of eight years of Republican tired-and-failed policies bringing the nation to its knees before a dismayed populace and a disdainful international community. The thought of a lifetime of anti-hallucinogens and their disfiguring side effects flitted through my dwindling consciousness — and then I saw the light!

I burst to the surface with a gasp of clarity: My vision was not an hallucination; it was reality. Palin wasn’t writing about Democrats; it was the Bush tenure she was describing. It must have been a typo.

I breathed a sigh of sweet relief and tried to finish the letter, but when I got to “Working together we will work tirelessly,” I gave up and turned back to the DSM. It’s much better reading, and I noticed a few diagnoses that rang true.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I’ve been accused of picking on Sarah Palin. Apparently many Sarah fans would prefer we all be gentle with the little lady, tone down the challenging language (despite her rabble-rousing ugly language in others), maybe hold the door for her (OK, I like this one, too).

One friend even suggested that were Palin pro-choice, our common body parts would have precluded my writing about her as I have (read You Can Put Lipstick On a Fib and On Sarah Palin).

Pshaw! (There, that was toned-down language.) As I’ve written before, body parts do not a feminist make, and Sarah Palin is no feminist; paltry is more like it.

However, I have pretty much had enough of her, but in deference to the last week of the campaign, I’d like to draw attention to three of my favorite picks from other Palin pickers along the campaign trail:

Flirting Her Way to Victory
Sarah Palin’s farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and U.S. political discourse

By Michelle Goldberg
guardian.co.uk, Friday October 03 2008

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night. Read more…

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin:

The VP presidential debate

The Katie Couric interview

A message from Gov. Palin and Sen. Clinton

And, in the penultimate slot, the most ridiculous and thus entertaining late at night:

Visit Palin As President and click on things in the picture to learn more about a potential Palin presidency. Some items provide a new surprise each time you click on them. Enjoy!

Please don’t deny the right to marry to ten percent of our population.

And please don’t amend the California Constitution to force pregnant teens to turn to parents and guardians they don’t trust.

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Lying is a bad thing. From children, who’ve barely acquired enough language to do so, to the president and members of his administration commonly accused of it as prelude to the Iraq War, we all know we’re not supposed to lie.

Of course we do it anyway. But the boldfaced lie (BFL) seems a thing of the past. I miss its clear and direct nature, its economy of deceit and relative ease of exposure. Instead of the BFL, liars now machinate their ways around the malevolence of lying via euphemism: Lying isn’t quite so despicable when it’s thought of as fibbing, dissembling, bluffing or the contemporary classics perfected by our leaders: misspeaking and having no recollection of a particular thing.

We further confuse the issue by embracing gradations of situational contrivances to lighten the load of lying. On the lighter side, the little white lie (LWL) is a time-honored act of social kindness that has a well-worn page in every caring person’s repertoire. Who hasn’t uttered the likes of “Oh, you brought your nonfat, sugar-free, gluten-free cookies. Yummy!” or “Darling, that gown is devastating; it wraps your vast, uh, beauty in a swath of silken loveliness”?

But the LWL grows heavy with darker intent when its purpose is the liar’s benefit.

Bush Pants On Fire Doll

There’s the procrastinator’s prevarication: “Oh ye gods, my hard drive crashed! Can you believe it? I’ve contacted I.T. and they’re on the job — aren’t those guys great! So, I’ll get that report to you tomorrow.”

And then there’s the salacious swill of the sycophant: “It is such an honor to meet you. I admire you so much! Your last piece in The Atlantic was so powerful, so masterful: It thrusts the reader into the depths of your soul — again and again!”

This might lead to the opportunism of the engorged oaf: “Do I love you? Oh baby, you know how I feel about you, you’re the only one for me, baby, oh baby, can I put it in now?”

The LWL’s meanderings through the intermediate shades between black and white do little damage but to pull snags in the moral fiber of the fabricator. The objects of such duplicity either recognize the reprobates for what they are or they like hearing that trash, in which case liar and victim deserve each other.

Lies of omission (LOO) have a somewhat more sinister and utilitarian character in the hands of the great deceivers of our time who have come to know and intimately practice the school of “If one is not asked, don’t offer — and never remember, recall or recollect.” Imagine what juicy tidbits we’d have gleaned from President Ronald Reagan or President Bill Clinton or Vice President Dick Cheney or Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or even Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North if we had queried them before LOOs became all the rage in D.C. — Washington National Airport might have remained just that.

Yes, the methods of equivocation are as diverse as the mouths from which they emanate, but it is the fear of being caught in a lie that puckers the fannies of even the most practiced in the ranks of liars. This might account for the stunning absence of stately men and women grandly standing before the cameras in pursuit of President George W. Bush and Cheney for their scheming hearts and lying ways. We, the people who pay for their wars, have not been subjected to the persistent nightly news babblings about Bush and Cheney’s deceptions, deadly though they are, that historically drove President Clinton to prayer and a House vote to impeach for lying about diddling an intern. Perhaps the collective congressional deaf ear turned to the lonely calls to impeach Bush and Cheney from the likes of Representative Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney (who formerly represented congressional districts in Georgia and now heads the Green Party ticket for president) was at least in part a function of the don’t-do-unto-others-what-you-wouldn’t-have-them-do-unto-you school of thought.

Today, our decline to a commonly-tolerated state of deception has the very people who debate before the nation, eager to replace the Bush-Cheney den of thieves, subject to review by such lie-o-meters as factcheck.org, which measures the veracity of their proclamations, the extent of their hyperbole. Have we truly sunk so far that the men and women who would be king cannot be trusted to be true and that a lie is not a lie but an exaggeration?

I’d prefer the leader who can say, “I cannot tell a lie.” Instead, we’re dragged from Sarah Palin’s Joe Six-pack of exaggeration to John McCain and Barack Obama’s Joe the Plumber, with whom they attempted to TKO each other in the final presidential debate — and who, it turns out, has been snaking customer’s bowels without the required license.

Are we inured to lying? Is boldfaced honesty passé?

Oh, Joe, say it ain’t so! (Thanks, Sarah — may I call you Sarah?)

Love,
K-B

©2008 Kit-Bacon Gressitt