By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Friday, August 26, was Women’s Equality Day. Sadly, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Besides, how many people actually know what it is that the day celebrates? It surely is not equality. Women don’t have equality. Even I don’t have equality, and I am no pantywaist — but the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as men? Oh my goodness, no. Women, as a class, have not yet achieved any of that.

What we have is the right to be oppressed by ludicrous expectations for our gender, including that ever popular slut-mommy routine straight men are taught to favor; by mass media representations that tell the world what is most valuable about women are our breasts and penetrable orifices; and by the often unspoken yet screeching mantra to suck it all up for family, god and country.

As for responsibilities, women are burdened with an embarrassment of riches. While we have the responsibility of providing one of the pro forma two household incomes that keep everyone in the latest cell phones (if we’re not toting that bale as a single parent), the onus remains on us for the vast majority of household work and child rearing — along with maintaining extended family and friend networks, managing household finances, negotiating service provider contracts, and distributing the intangible benefits of our core competencies. It’s akin to leading a business, except only 28 of the Fortune 1000 corporations have female CEOs. That they are paid 8 to 25 percent less than their male counterparts should not be considered commentary on their job performances, but, rather, a reflection of their body parts.

And then, there is the cornucopia of opportunities that are showered upon women like sweet manna from heaven. Actually, I’d say they’re more like the ammonia swirling from a unkempt pissoir. Among many, there is the opportunity to be denigrated for our emotions, our bodily functions, our weight, our femininity and our lack thereof; the opportunity to be sidelined with the label “bitch” for characteristics that earn men promotions; the opportunity to fend off unwanted sexual advances by those who interpret the length of our skirts or size of our boosiasms as an invitation to pounce; and the opportunity to earn an average of 80¢ to each dollar a man earns — whether he’s average or a numskull.

So, what’s a woman to do? I suppose it helps to point out such peccadilloes, but I’ve been writing about them for way too many moons. Last year, it was the Woman’s Day advertising campaign that touted vagina deodorizing as a career advancement tactic. In 2009, it was the fear of feminism that inhabits conservative male rhetoric and inhibits progress toward equality. Before that, it was the shunning of the term “feminist” and on and on.

Just how long does it take for folks to recognize the inequity of inequality?

It’s been one full lifetime since the impetus for Women’s Equality Day. Still wondering what makes the date so special? It’s the day in 1920 that women in the United States were finally allowed — allowed! — to vote. It took a constitutional amendment, and what actually changed? Well, in 1919, Great Aunt Cappie was studying to be a surgeon, learning to cut folks open from stem to stern and work medical magic with their innards. But she couldn’t vote: She wasn’t deemed to have the temperament for such decisions. Then in 1920, her mental and emotional capabilities, formerly belittled by men who feared women’s suffrage, suddenly received a constitutional upgrade.

In fact, Aunt Cappie didn’t change; it was an attitude adjustment and the presumption that women’s votes could be added to their husbands’, a presumption that lingers in some backwater bedrooms to this day.

But for the rest of us, what has women’s suffrage produced? Of late, it’s the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who think deriding their political opponents just like the boys if not more so, opposing women’s and civil rights, and winking — or belatedly blinking — their mascaraed lashes make them prime female presidential fodder.

If only they respected themselves a bit more, but apparently one lifetime has not been enough. And I’m not sure which is the greater hindrance to equality: men who fear us or women who play us.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Pissoir image from affordablehousing.org.

California’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina died Saturday when her Retire Boxer Money Bomb exploded prematurely, killing Fiorina immediately and injuring a campaign aide. Fiorina, the infamously fired CEO of computer giant Hewlett Packard, was 56.

Distraught and slightly singed campaign manager, Marty Wilson, stood outside Fiorina’s Sacramento campaign headquarters as firefighters extinguished a small fire caused by the explosion.

“We don’t know what happened,” Wilson said. “Carly was getting ready to launch the money bomb email. She’d just put another million bucks into the campaign, but that was it; she wasn’t going to risk any more of her own money, so we really needed contributions. Anyway, the fuse must have been faulty. The thing went off in Carly’s face. It’s gotta be [U.S. Senator Barbara] Boxer’s fault. Or [President Barack] Obama’s. We demand an immediate investigation and an apology to Carly and the California voters, not only for this deliberate assault but for Boxer’s refusal to have an honest and serious debate about the issues during this crucial time for our nation!”

Paramedics treated Wilson on the scene for a minor head injury and first-degree burns.

The deadly explosion followed another life-threatening incident just two weeks ago at the Republican Party’s Hispanic 100 Awards Gala in Newport Beach. According to an event volunteer, Fiorina had been “slamming down tequila shots, trilling her tongue and shouting ‘Andale!’ in this really pathetic accent. Then she passed out. We thought she was dead at first. But, nope, she barfed and got up to dance.”

Republican Party insiders had purportedly been concerned about Fiorina’s “self-sabotaging behaviors” since she became an economic advisor to the 2008 McCain-Palin presidential campaign, which made Wall Street and CEO compensation reform key platform issues. Skydiving into a campaign event, Fiorina had become entangled in the lines of her golden parachute, preventing the chute from fully opening. Skydive experts at the time said she would have plunged to her death had she not had the presence of mind to pull the cord on her bonus chute. Still, she made a hard landing when she said Sarah Palin was unqualified to run a corporation, and the campaign fired her from the media circuit.

Although Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett Packard was longer lived than her time on McCain’s campaign, she suffered a more devastating crash from HP and was eventually ranked by Portfolio magazine as one of the 20 worst CEOs ever:

“A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005. THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.”

Despite her very public HP failure — or perhaps because of it — Fiorina was determined to prove herself in the public arena, and Boxer’s senate seat became her next target. She reconciled with Palin, who endorsed her in the primary, when Fiorina depended on the conservative Republican vote to topple moderate Republican Tom Campbell.

But just last weekend, noting Palin’s sagging polling numbers, Fiorina declined to appear with her at a Republican event in California. Palin’s husband, Todd, subsequently leaked a scathing email:

“Sarah put her ass on the line for you, Curly [sic]. She thought you were the real deal. But you and me both know you’re no Joe Sixpack. All that crap about starting as a secretary. You pulled yourself up with your family’s gold plated bootstraps. And now you can’t answer a simple invitation with a yes? Please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided, cuz if so, you don’t have a wolf’s chance in Wasilla of getting a cabinet seat in Sarah’s administration. You think you can throw a punch, but my Sarah can take you out in one shot! From a helicopter!”

Fiorina’s past job performance was not her only weakness on the campaign trail. She was A-rated pro-life in a pro-choice state. She supported offshore drilling in an anti-drilling state. She supported Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law in a state where 71 percent of Latino voters oppose it. And, in her op-ed piece announcing her campaign she highlighted her failure to exercise her right to vote: “Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been.”

One of the few votes Fiorina reported casting was for California’s anti-same-sex marriage ballot measure, Proposition 8. That revelation, apparently intended to woo conservative voters, attracted the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay lobbying organization, which invested in anti-gay, pro-Fiorina advertising targeting Latino voters.

“Wouldn’t you know it!” said Juan Bautista, an independent gay voter, who was passing by Fiorina headquarters when the money bomb exploded. “One of the few times Fiorina bothered to vote, and it was for Prop. 8. What a poop she is, er, was. And the NOM ad, have you seen it? It’s pure manipulation. At least it’s not as bad as that pissy Sharron Angle ad telling Arizona Latinos not to vote at all. ¡Pendejos racistas!”

Most daunting of all Fiorina’s political challenges was her claim to be a jobs champion, which was contradicted by her corporate experience, noted for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas, strategies that have not been forgotten by California’s workforce.

Pedicab driver Bobby Sneed, who dropped off a fare just before the explosion, had little faith in Fiorina’s commitment to creating jobs for Californians.

“She laid me off from HP, shipped thousands of jobs overseas, and got a $45 million boot out the door. Now I’m essentially unemployed, she’s worth $120 million, and she was asking voters to give her money? Good lord! She wanted the senate badly enough, she should’ve just sucked it up and bought it, like Meg Whitman. Look, Fiorina soared to the corporate heights by whatever means she had at her disposal — and her dad’s telling her she’d never amount to anything surely motivated her — but she lacked the ability to translate her personal ambitions into a vision that captured the voter’s heart. And, I know it’s petty, but I couldn’t get beyond that snarl she was always trying to hide.”

Perhaps feminist activist Gloria Steinem captured the tormented essence of Carly Fiorina best, after Fiorina committed a live microphone faux pas in June:

“We had the prospective joy of two powerful women competing for a U.S. Senate seat. And in a moment of unintended, unedited honesty, what did we get from Fiorina? A pearl of wisdom? A poignant revelation? No. We got a snarky comment about Senator Boxer’s hair. That, Sweetie, is not feminism.”

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Note: Carly Fiorina image from Carly for California campaign ad; Carly punch, from Californians Opposed to Carly Fiorina Facebook page; Carly Out of Control from Carly for CA website.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I was preparing for my little ritual last week, the one I practice every August 26, Women’s Equality Day, to celebrate our right to vote. … Well, not really to celebrate, but to at least recognize the Constitution’s 19th Amendment, declaring women’s suffrage. Hmmm, nope, not even to recognize it, no, more like to contemplate the 1920 passage of the amendment, because— . Well, I suppose, actually, to rant about it would be more accurate. In fact, to complain bitterly is what I mean. Yep, bitterly — because it took so damn long, and in the end, we had won the vote but we still didn’t have equal rights. And we still don’t have equal rights today.

Instead, we now have the likes of Sarah Palin, with the wit of a nit, pretending to be feminists yet advocating for our male-dominated Congress to make personal decisions for us; and young women, the likes of my own kiddo, bobbing to iPods in the wake of the women’s civil rights movement as those rights are rippling away; and senatorial wannabes, the likes of Carly Fiorina, sniping at her opponent’s hair — her hair, not economic recovery policy or Pacific Rim business alliances or the state of California’s schools, but sniping at Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair, her hair! Ye gods!

Yeah, so, I was gearing up for my little ritual, my deep, dark mourning for our failure to perpetuate the women’s civil rights movement and achieve true equality — you know, the enjoyment of equal rights and access to all the goodies Sarah Palin’s great nation of ours has to offer those willing to work harder for them than men do — when I stumbled upon an online story that exemplified our failure in the most putrid of terms, a story about an ad in Woman’s Day magazine.

Now, it is important to consider the context. Woman’s Day, launched in 1931, has evolved from a grocery store publication for housewives to a magazine for women who might work outside of the house but still spend a lot of time in it — parenting, cleaning, cooking, boinking and trying to lose their saddlebags. The magazine’s folks write that each issue “captivates 21 million readers by inspiring them to Live Well Every Day. Woman’s Day is designed for how we live now — with a strong voice that serves up simple, but sound ideas about health, food, family, relationships, home and style. A streamlined look and integrated media capabilities reflect both the sensibility of our readers and our editorial commitment to fresh thinking. Woman’s Day is truly an indispensable guide to living the best day possible.”

And on the day honoring the enfranchisement of women, what showed up in the new Woman’s Day? An advertisement explaining “Confidence at Work: How to Ask for a Raise.”

Sounds good, right? Eight “simple steps” to “asking a boss for the money we deserve.” It seems a nice complement to Women’s Equality Day.

Except it’s not. And it’s not a compliment to women at all. Take a look at the ad:

In essence, this Summer’s Eve ad is telling Woman’s Day readers that if they want to get a raise, they need to deodorize their vaginas.

That’s the best Fleet Laboratories’ Summer’s Eve and Woman’s Day have to offer us? That’s their idea of “fresh thinking,” of “indispensable guidance,” because “staying fresh isn’t always simple”; because, oh no, you have to skulk over to the feminine hygiene products aisle and hide your Summer’s Eve Feminine Wash and Cleansing Cloths between the bananas and the rutabagas so you can kill all the naturally occurring bacteria in your crotch before you ask for the raise that still won’t bring you up to pay equity with the man who has the same job you have, but who has always been paid more, and who has never been told to scrub his scrotum before he asks for a raise.

Do you see? Do you see why I mourn when we should be celebrating?

What were they thinking?

Maybe it’s just a big rightwing ploy to screw with us. It’s plausible. Fleet Labs is based in Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell’s bastion of misogynistic academagoguery, Liberty University, where you receive six reprimands and a $25 fine for attending a dance or wearing a two-piece bathing suit; twelve reprimands and a $50 fine for watching an R-rated film; thirty reprimands, a $500 fine, thirty hours of disciplinary community service and possible administrative withdrawal for having an abortion — which, by the way, would not be necessary if the students dumped the purity pledges they don’t honor and tried birth control instead, a method more effective than withdrawal.

Anyway, when I trotted to Major Market to buy Woman’s Day and opened it to the offending page, lo and behold, there was actually a two-page spread: confidence via crotch cleansing on the left and “nurturing” your courage “with a little extra care down there” on the right (emphasis, mine):

So, come on, get it? If you didn’t get it before, do you get it now? Do you see? Do you understand why suffrage is just not enough? Fleet Laboratories paid somewhere in the range of $519,920 for two full-page, four-color ads telling women they stink.

Happy Women’s Equality Day? Pshaw!

I’ll stop demanding equal rights the day Fleet Laboratories stops telling women their crotches smell bad, the day breasts are no longer a marketing strategy, the day we are paid the same as male executives and they stop sharing twat jokes on their Blackberries at board meetings. And, oh, the day Fleet dumps their idiotic ad campaigns and puts the money into a scholarship fund for young women who embrace every bit of themselves, including their vaginas. Yep, that’ll be the day.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and The Progressive Post.

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