Getting it Done in the Capitol

   This is the most emotionally avoidant city on earth. It naturally attracts people who have been fleeing from their emotional lives and into their professional lives. 
              --David Brooks, New York Times columnist, on Washington D.C. 
                 Newsweek, Mar. 21 edition


   Hello, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, among many others.

Cinema Notes From All Over (Heterosexual Marriage Division)

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca.--Just Go With It, in theaters today and starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, is the kind of light Hollywood comedy that keeps the world safe for white heterosexuals by affirming family values and subtly marginalizing all others. 

   Oh, wait, do we sound "politically correct"? Is that opening paragraph enough to put you off already?

  If so, perhaps we should review the concept of "political correctness" before we decode the movie.  

   It is a cultural truism that s/he who names the group wields the influence; in language there is power. 

   When a dominant societal group names a marginalized one, the language often is oppressive and purposefully divisive: blacks are "niggers" and "coons," Hispanics "wetbacks" and "beaners," Asians "slants" and "gooks," women "girls," homosexuals "faggots" and "fairies," etc. 

   The counter-cultural shifts in nineteen-sixties and -seventies America emboldened marginalized groups to assert themselves. Many signaled this move to power by re-naming themselves.

   Blacks became "African-Americans," Hispanics "Latinos," Asians "Asian/Pacific Islanders," women, well, "women" rather than the reductive "girls," homosexuals "lesbians and gays." (Later, the ultra-inclusive gay communities expanded the nomenclature to "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender," occasionally adding "queer"--a reclamation of a slur--and the somewhat baffling "questioning.") 

   The dominant power structure at the time largely was composed of conservative white males. No dominant power structure passively brooks--not for long anyway--any claim to power by the theretofore powerless. So conservative think tanks did what they often do: flipped language on its head and sent the new linguistic virus into the mainstream cultural conversation. 

   Thus was born the idea of "political correctness," a notion that re-marginalized the groups trying to claim a place at the cultural and legislative table. Conservatives shifted the conversation away from a rational consideration of what it might mean for disenfranchised people to be equal to their fellows and steered it to the “reality” that these very groups were telling others how to speak and think.

   This was, of course, an absurd claim, given that those very groups had essentially been told how to think and speak for decades, sometimes centuries, by the very same power structure then averring they were doing it to others. 

   The clearest example of this kind of linguistic jujitsu arrived, in the eighties and early nineties, in the form of conservative radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh's bloviating. Women at the time were agitating for pay equal to men's, an end to gender discrimination and the right to make decisions about their own bodies.

   Limbaugh dubbed them "feminazis." He thus equated American citizens campaigning for equal rights to psychopathic killers who had decimated roughly six million marginalized people in a country halfway around the globe four decades prior.  

   George Herbert Walker Bush, an American president who served from 1988-1992, did the same thing. Members from the protest group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) demonstrated outside the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in the late eighties. They hoped to bring national attention to the Food and Drug Administration's foot-dragging on testing and approving potentially life-saving AIDS medications.   

   Mr. Bush said the protesters were using "Nazi tactics," an odd assertion to make about a group of Americans exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and peaceable assembly. 

   But this marginalized group--AIDS protesters agitating for sick and dying friends--was attempting to assert power. Mr. Bush, a representative of the conservative power structure, therefore equated them with--do you see a theme here?--psychopathic killers who had decimated roughly six million marginalized people in a country halfway around the globe four decades prior. (Victims included gays and lesbians, who were forced to wear identifying pink triangles in the concentration camps.)

   Now, then. Were some of the re-naming efforts by marginalized groups silly and fruitless? Sure. (Hello, “differently abled” and “height challenged” people.) And were some liberals humorless and insufferably self-righteous in the process of asserting power? Absolutely.

   But that only made it easier for conservatives to mock them as “politically correct.” This undermined the groups' legitimate claims to equality by ridiculing the groups as scolds, thus trivializing their drive to enjoy equal rights by likening them to junior high school assistant principles. 

    The vacuum of the "political correctness" argument is meant to leave no breathing room for actual conversation about the way people and groups appear and function in society. So for the moment why don't we suspend that intellectually lazy notion and see if we can't realistically dissect Just Go With It, which bears all kinds of culturally stereotyped characters. 

   We’ll first note this: in one format or another, First of All has been tracking and commenting upon these sorts of character-based media misrepresentations for twenty-five years. We are as tired of doing it as you may be of hearing it. Once-disenfranchised groups have made too many advancements for this sort of thing to much stir us. 

   That said, there is an inexplicable level of white, heterosexual hegemony in Just Go With It. This is odd when, for example, in California, ethnic minorities, taken together, comprise the state's majority. Or maybe it’s not so odd: the ethnic makeup of America is shifting rapidly--indeed, we have an African-American president--and a film such as this one soothes frayed Caucasian nerves by creating a white-dominant fantasy world.

   The only black character is an effeminate and sassy hairstylist. (That's a two-fer.) The other “gay” character is an effeminate hotel staffer. Then there are the videogame addicted Latina nanny and an overweight Hawaiian babysitter who passes out after eating too much food. (You know those female people of color: great for menial work but terrible at anything requiring maternal focus.)

  Even the lead character’s  ethnicity seems to be treated questionably. Mr. Sandler plays a Jewish plastic surgeon. As a young man he has a huge and ugly nose and is considered a schlump by his wife-to-be. In voiceover he notes that he later "got rid of the schnozz" with plastic surgery; we see him as a successful surgeon who is a sexual hit with young women (to whom he lies about being married in order to get laid, the concept that sets up the comedic engine of the film). 

   Doesn’t this imply that the way for the ugly duckling Jewish kid to become the hot adult swan is to surgically alter ethnically endemic features that also happen to the one root of the stereotype about his group? 

   As to the movie itself: it’s marginally cute. It has the sitcom-requisite smart, snotty and scheming kids. Mr. Sandler's character is charming. Ms. Aniston, whose movies we normally avoid, is completely likable. Nicole Kidman, in a role not credited on the movie's posters, shines as a domineering one-time sorority sister to Ms. Aniston's character. 

   Incidentally, with her surgically altered/destroyed face, Ms. Kidman now looks like an ancillary "Ren and Stimpy" character. There is a subtextual joke about this in the movie, and one wonders if Ms. Kidman was in on it. 

   Ms. Kidman the actress has denied having any cosmetic surgery save Botox injections. In one of the film’s scenes, her character asks Mr. Sandler's--the plastic surgeon--what, if anything, he'd do to cosmetically enhance her. He says "nothing," adding that she's perfect. 

   In fact, her face looks like a late-period Picasso. That a plastic surgeon should state that he'd do "nothing" to enhance her looks implies that enough has been done already. But this is never said. Instead, Mr. Sandler's character, getting in a dig to win Ms. Aniston's character's approval, zings Ms. Kidman's character by suggesting that "they"--a reference to her plastic surgeon/s-- took too much fat out of her arms. Her face, however, save that it is "perfect," goes uncommented upon, even as it appears as expressive as a Noh mask.

   Just Go With It is a purposefully frivolous film in which man gets—and marries—woman in the end as the fantasy world’s marginalized people look on and cheer. (The black and presumably gay hairstylist makes Ms. Aniston’s character look fabulous so that she can perpetuate a ruse that unintentionally winds up with her marrying Mr. Sandler’s character. The hairstylist no doubt does it with the stark and dispiriting knowledge that in most American states he cannot legally marry his boyfriend.)

   The movie is a cultural warm bath for the dominant power structure and its aspirational admirers that passes itself off as a comedy. 
   Is it funny? 

   We laughed once.

Queer Notes From All Over (Gay Teens Kill Selves Division)

AMERICA - You've no doubt heard about the gay teen suicides - responses to bullying - that have clotted the cosmos (and this country) in the past few weeks. In their reporting, the media have rightly focused on the nature of bullying and the need to address it in schools and homes. 
   Plenty of pubic figures have had their say, too. Among them are the comedian Kathy Griffin, who spoke to teens in a "message from" video; the writer Dan Savage, who founded the It Gets Better Project, which has a Web site and YouTube page (on the latter, folks post vids telling their stories of being bullied and offering hope to kids currently in a similar situation); and Lance Bass, former boy-band member, who appeared on Larry King Live Oct. 4 to decry bullying and share his experiences as a (now) openly gay man. 
   Lesser known figures have contributed to the dialogue, too. Over at the music blog The Popsucker, Jared Stearns bravely and brilliantly wrote about his experience as a gay teenager who was bullied in high school. The Good Men Project, a Web magazine, ran Jared's blog post and a companion piece about what makes a bully and what solutions to the problem might be workable. 
   It is with this in mind that we now turn our attention to a man with the refreshing name of Jim DeMint. Would that his outlook on gays and lesbians were as bracing as his name. 
   Mr. DeMint (pictured below) is a Republican Senator from South Carolina. Recent press reports noted that at an Oct. 1 rally, held at a Spartanburg, South Carolina church, Mr. Senator DeMint said that those who are openly gay and lesbian shouldn't teach in public schools. 

   Dear Mr. Senator DeMint: We'd like you to meet a former California politician named John Briggs. Back in the day he sponsored Proposition 6, aka The Briggs Initiative, which set out to remove gay/lesbian employees (including, obviously, teachers) from the state's schools. The measure did not pass, not least because a man named Harvey Milk bested Mr. Briggs in a series of high-profile debates. This was in 1978. 
   Nineteen seventy-eight. Either you're a time traveler, Mr. Senator DeMint, or a nostalgist, or a Capricorn. Or you are cynical beyond compare, a possibility that wins our vote. 
   At least Mr. Senator DeMint sticks to his guns. During a televised Senate-race debate way back in 2004 (but not 1978), Mr. DeMint said more or less the same thing. 
   An Oct. 4, 2004 story (yes, 2004; now we are time traveling) posted on the Web site of WIS-TV, which is located in  Columbia, S.C., reported that during the debate Mr. Senator DeMint and his opponent were questioned about their stance regarding a state Republican party platform stating that gays and lesbians should not teach in schools. The WIS-TV story noted that "[Mr. Senator] DeMint says he supports that because government should not endorse particular behaviors." 

   Mr. Senator DeMint later walked the comment back after an outcry from queer and other groups, saying, oddly, that it was "something as a dad I shouldn't have said." 
   Later that month, the minty-fresh Senator appeared on Meet the Press, where then-host Tim Russert pressed him on the comments. 
   As any political junkie knows, high profile politicians are handed (by staff or their party bosses) "talking points" with which to smooth over dopey off-the-cuff comments. Mr. Senator DeMint's Meet the Press talking points involved referring the gay-teachers issue  to local school boards, and "apologizing" not for his comments about said teachers but for "distracting from the debate." 
   How do we know this? Because the other day the Huffington Post printed a transcript of the conversation, which here we selectively excerpt. Each of the ellipses represents a question Mr. Russert asked:  


Mr. Russert: Blah blah gays should not teach in schools blah blah?
Mr. Senator DeMint: I believe that's a local school board issue. And, Tim, I was answering as a dad who's put lots of children in the hands of teachers and I answered with my heart. [Editor's note: Huh?] And I should just say, again, I apologize that distracted from the real debate. 
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: ...I am apologizing for talking about a local school board issue when the voters want us to talk about blah blah blah. 
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: Listen, I have my personal beliefs, Tim, but I honestly believe that the teachers should be hired by local school districts. They [the school districts] should be making the decisions on who should be in the classroom. 
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: I apologized for answering a local school board question. 
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: I think the local school board should make that issue, not Senate can - I mean, make that decision.  [Editor's note: Heh. Senate can.]
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: And I apologize for that, Tim.
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: Yeah, for distracting from the real thing.
...
Mr. Senator DeMint: Tim, who hires teachers should be decided by school boards. 


The Tally: 
   *Apologizing/distracting: 5
   *It's a school board issue: 6
   *A dad putting children in the hands of teachers: 1, but a very weird 1.


   This type of circular, not to say dizzying, conversation is typical of obfuscating politicians. 
   But the time has run out on these shenanigans. The proper answer to the Mr. Senator DeMints of the world is: 
   "It's because of people like you and your stance on gays teaching in schools that America's gay kids are killing themselves." 
   If you are of the mindset and temperament, you may add, "So go fuck yourself, you self-serving sack of shit," which, while not actually elevating the debate, would have the salutary effect of adding the words "fuck" and "shit" to the conversation, always a fine thing. 





   UPDATE: An Oct. 7 Huffington Post report noted that gay/lesbian and women's groups roundly hissed Mr. Senator DeMint's ill-advised (and super dumb) comments. So did two of the nation's largest and most powerful teachers' unions. No surprise there. 
   No surprise here, either: Mr. Senator DeMint's communications director, a man named Wesley Denton, told the Huffington Post that "[Mr.] Senator DeMint believes that hiring decisions at local schools are a local school board issue, not a federal issue." 
   That bumps the above "It's a school board issue" tally to a whopping seven (well, six in one interview and a seventh free-standing). This makes clear that Mr. Senator DeMint is the type of person who offers passionate opinions the fallout from which he then skedaddles away from as fast as his little legs will carry him. Sometimes he even hides under the skirts of his undoubtedly  unfailingly dependable communications communicator. 
   In grown-up land, this sort of behavior is considered, and therefore called,  "craven and cowardly." In politics, it is called, alas, "campaigning." 

Queer Notes from All Over (AZ. Politician Says Same-Gender Marriage = Horse Love)

SOMEWHERE IN ARIZONA, Arizona, March 18 -- A former six-term Arizona congressman (1994-2006) said recently that the November 2003 Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court decision allowing same-gender marriage could lead to a man being legally allowed to marry his horse, Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein noted Monday. 

   The apparently very strange man, who is named J.D. Hayworth, has unfairly overlooked all kinds of animals, and this is sad. One would, if one could, marry one's cat, Comma, but only, one admits, for the tax breaks and the veterinary hospital visitation rights. 

  Perhaps, to be fair, Hayworth agrees. Stein quoted the Orlando radio station WORL as quoting Hayworth. Do you see? It's like a game of telephone. It is possible that Hayworth originally said "man-cat marriage," and a WORL reporter, one who favors horses, changed the quote. It's hard to say.

   Either way, Hayworth said, according to Stein---->WORL, that in its decision, the Mass. Supreme Court defined marriage as "now get this - it defined marriage as simply, quote, 'the establishment of intimacy.'"


          "The Voluntary Union Of"


   The HuffPo's Stein points out in a followup piece there is no such provision in the decision, which defines marriage as "the voluntary union of spouses, to the exclusion of all others." 
   When MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow asked Hayworth about the discrepancy the next day, he said, "You and I can have a disagreement about that," and closed down the interview - not a response to inspire confidence in the man's confidence in his comments. 
    Intimacy, voluntary union of spouses - feh. These are mere details, and Hayworth, like all politicians and crazy people (redundancy), wasn't about to let them stand in the way of a good barnyard yarn the day he spoke to WORL. 

   "I mean," he went on, "I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point - I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse."

   This is a syllogism long favored by far-rightist lawmakers and religionists eager to demonize homosexuals. They link homosexuality with pedophilia, incest and bestiality ("I guess you could marry your horse"). Of course, homosexuality - and its open-hearted manifestation, gay and lesbianism - has naught to do with any of those categories. 
   Hayworth concluded: "It's the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal amendment that I support." 
   It should be noted that Hayworth, a Republican, is challenging John McCain for his Senate seat. The comments, then, were uttered in the context of an Arizona political campaign, and are therefore calculated to harm Hayworth's opponent. By saying he "supports" marriage legislation, Hayworth corners McCain: if the sitting Senator does not say he "supports" marriage legislation - in this case in the form of a constitutional amendment legislatively defining marriage, a loathsome concept to some who revere the Constitution in its present, quite workable form - he stands to lose votes on the right-wing fringe. 


    Statement Clarified Comments? No


   Hayworth released a statement the following day clarifying his man-horse-nuptials comments. Oh, wait: no he didn't. He issued a statement standing by the comments, and he did it using every cliched talking point from the Republican playbook. The statement is a case study in the calculated uses of repetition and coded language. Orwell would be proud. Let's have a look. (Cliches are in bold, translation in italics.)
   "[S]adly, the liberal media [Rachel Maddow is a dyke] intent on defending the ultra-leftist, progressive [caring] politicians in Massachusetts [gay], are attacking me [I am running for the Senate] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] once again for family values [vote for me] and for rejecting this absurd court ruling. 
   "But they don't intimidate me at all. [My campaign chest runneth over.] I know right from wrong [I plan to win] and as a staunch defender of marriage [politician who needs votes] I know I can count of millions of supporters [voters] across America [Arizona] to stand with me [vote for me] when our values are under attack [I am down in the polls] and when I am under attack [I am down in the polls] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] to defend those values [hustle for votes]."
   The tally: 
   *Liberal media - 1
   *Ultra-leftist, progressive - 1
   *Attacking me/under attack - 3
   *Values - 3
   *Standing (up, with me, etc.) - 3
   So you see, repetition gets a message across. And Hayworth, a craven nacissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that.


           Knowledge is Power

   Back, for a moment, to the man-horse business. One idly wonders why far-rightist heterosexual lawmakers and religionists show such a wide-ranging and intimate knowledge of pedophilia, incest and bestiality. Is it because these are the hallmarks of the "family unit," which these lawmakers and God-talkers so deeply revere? Alas, we shall never know. 

   One is less surprised at talk of a Constitutional "marriage" amendment. Heterosexuals evidently have so little faith in the institution of marriage that some feel the need to legislate "protection" of it. This does not inspire a deep sense of trust either in them or in their hallowed tradition. 

   Gays and lesbians enthused about getting hitched should take note. 

Karl Rove, Douchebag, is "Proud" of Waterboarding

LONDON, England (The Home of Carnaby Street in the Swingin' Sixties), March 12 - Karl Rove, a former senior Bush administration advisor, told the BBC today that he is "proud" of the U.S. military's and intelligence agencies' use of waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists, and said he did not consider the technique torture. 
   This would defy belief if it weren't for the fact that between 2000 and nearly eight years after that Mr. Rove lied and lied and lied and lied again to the American people, often through the mouth of George W. Bush, a man said to have been president at the time. 
   Like a willing circus monkey, Mr. Rove is currently swinging through the branches of the talk show jungle. He is pimping his new book, which will remain unnamed here; unless Mr. Rove is willing to share royalties, First of All sees no point a'tall in selling his snake-oil for him. 
   As to his claim that waterboarding is not torture, we do hope that Mr. Rove either has had the technique tested on him--to ensure its safety--or is willing to do so. 
   It would make a wonderful interlude on, say, Regis and Kelly:


   REGIS: YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP!
   KELLY: YIP YIP YIP YIP!
   ROVE: As I told the BBC, I am proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists. 
   REGIS: YAP YAP YAP YAP WATERBOARDING! 
   KELLY: OH MY GOD! YIP YIP YIP YIP LET'S TRY IT OUT!
   ROVE: GLUG GLUG GLUG. (Whoa. This sucks.)

Queer Notes From all Over (Equal Rights for All Excepting Bisexuals, But They Don't Count Division)

RICHMOND, Virginia, March 11 - The governor of the great state of Virginia has shown that, when it comes to equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people, he is, well, all for equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people. 
   There was no mention made of bisexuals, who, as usual, got the short end of the stick, but who, being attracted to persons of both genders, have twice the chance of getting a date on Saturday night, according to filmmaker and former comic Woody Allen, who made that joke, like, seven hundred years ago.
   Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday directed state agencies of all sizes, stripes and orientations not to discriminate against gays and lesbians, the Associated Press reported today. 
   State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who, not that this matters, is a Republican, sent a letter last week to state colleges saying they lack authority to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered them to rescind any anti-discrimination that include protections for gays and lesbians. 
   It is admirable that Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli sent a letter. Letter-writing is, alas, a lost art, what with emails, texting, Twitter and the general decline of literacy in America, not to mention the fact that the U.S. postal service is considering stopping Saturday service as a cost-cutting measure. 
   That said, it is the content of the letter with which we must concern ourselves, and that content is, in a word, stupid. 
   Apparently, Gov. McDonnell agreed, in essence if not in word, and that is why he issued his directive. His directive trumped that of the Atty. Gen., because he - the Gov. - has much more power. 
   Before the Gov.'s directive reached far and wide into the psyches of Virginians everywhere, the Atty. Gen.'s letter had occasioned no little amount of agitation among, predictably, gay rights groups and, predictably, Democrats. 
   College students - who, by dint of their youth, vitality and idealism, are the Hope for the Future - rallied, but in a very modern, by which one means troublingly virtual, way. 
   The Washington Post, quoted in the Associated Press report, which was run on the Huffington Post news site - one apologizes, but one is simply too tired, at the moment, to track down original sources - reported that 3,000 people joined a Facebook page titled, "WE DON'T WANT DISCRIMINATION IN OUR STATE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES!" 
   While that sentiment is to be applauded, the use of all capital letters and an exclamation point is not. 
   The Post further reported, according to the AP by way of the Huffington Post, that one protest was organized by a group at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, Va., the second oldest college in America, the motto of which is: "We're different, and we like it that way."
   The group, called Queer & Allied Activism, launched a social media campaign, the Post wrote, "urging students to protest on Cuccinelli's Facebook and Twitter pages, and to sign a petition organized by the group Equality Virginia." 
   The group's acronym - QAA - has no meaning, and therefore cannot be called, even by a stretch, clever, but its use of an ampersand is alluring. 
   One certainly applauds the students' efforts, but one is alarmed to hear that students are now protesting from the safety of their laptops while, perhaps, sitting around their dorms or frat houses in their pajamas. One is all for lounging in sleepwear, but one also remembers the days when students actually ventured out of doors to protest injustices. 
   Alas, it is a new day. The thought occurs that maybe the weather was bad. Protesting in the snow, while offering the opportunities, during dull moments, to create snowmen, or even snow penises, can be trying.           
   But recent weather reports, you see, say temperatures have been in the high fifties and low sixties. 
   That's practically balmy for Virginia winters, or seems like it should be. One doesn't know; one has never been to Virginia in the winter or even in the spring, summer or fall, if memory serves, which it generally does not. 
                       --30--

Crime of the Century (There's No Art Like Snow Art Division)

   Snow art, it is plain, simply is not appreciated by the keepers of society's mores, be they bluenoses or bluecoats. 
   First there was the snow-penis kerfuffle. Now comes a high-art contretemps. 
   Elisa Gonzalez, obviously a creative, well-rounded individual, recently took it upon herself to carve, on the front lawn of her Rahway, New Jersey home, a snow replica of the Venus de Milo, according to a March 4 Associated Press story. 
   This, really, is so much more inspired than is making, for example, a snowman (although these, at this point in history, can be considered "classics"), or a snow statue that resembles, say, Rush Limbaugh. 
   Quite frankly, you're better off making a scarecrow that resembles Rush Limbaugh. The similarities are eerie: a scarecrow is a straw man; Rush Limbaugh sets up straw-man arguments. A scarecrow scares birds; Rush Limbaugh scares all sentient beings, as well as some of your more concentrated collections of star dust. A scarecrow is brainless; Rush Limbaugh... well, point made. 
   The Venus de Milo (photo, left), an ancient Greek sculpture, is credited to an artist named Alexandros of Antioch. At least so says Wikipedia, the resource of dubiously-sourced information for researchers too lazy to visit all links but the first in any Google search.
   The statue's subject is Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. (The Romans called her Venus; contrary folk that they were, they simply felt compelled to invent their own name for her. This was sort of a goddess-appellation version of how dogs make fire hydrants their very own.) 
   Beauty, sadly, has its comeuppances; time is not always kind to it. Somewhere along the way, the Venus de Milo's arms were severed at the biceps (right) and shoulder (left). Her statuesque (sorry) breasts, however, all the more wondrous for not having been surgically enhanced in her lifetime or any other, have remained on dazzling display all throughout history. 
   And so they did on Ms. Gonzalez's snow statue. In other ways, however, the appropriately armless snow version veered slightly from the original. For example, it had no head. Comparing the two, the AP helpfully noted, "The original Venus de Milo, which is housed in Paris' Louvre museum... is also without arms, although her head is intact."  
   Disparities aside, Ms. Gonzalez, who is forty-four, was rightly pleased with her artwork. 
   "It looked very beautiful," she told the AP. "We got a lot of attention from people in the neighborhood. Some of them got out and took pictures and spoke to us."
   You see? Art not only soothes the savage, ugly, heinous, destructive, wanton, debauched, decadent, lying, manipulative, Machiavellian and porcine inner beast (the, as it were, inner Rush Limbaugh), but it also creates instant community. Just ask anyone trying to hook up with an art-lover at a museum. It's like harpooning whales in a barrel. 
   Alas, not everyone agrees. The idea of "art," especially when it includes a naked snow rack, is in the sometimes bedeviled eye of the beholder. A Gonzalez neighbor, shocked, absolutely shocked by the statue, alerted the local gendarmerie. They, in turn, gave Ms. Gonzalez the choice of knocking it down or concealing the lovely parts. 
   "We didn't want to have any problem with the police, so we covered it up," Ms. G. quite sensibly said. The photo below shows that Ms. G. ingeniously covered the Venus de Milo's historic breasts with a bikini top, cleverly turning her into an ancient Greek, and headless, beach bunny. 

   Well, concessions must be made. Perhaps Ms. G. was aware that, just a few years earlier, police in nearby New York had used shovels to pummel a snow-penis into powder. Would any true artist wish to inflict such a heartbreaking fate upon the Venus de Milo? Of course not.
   This, however, must be said: it is a dark day in America when boors incapable even of rudimentary art appreciation take it upon themselves to set community-wide artistic standards. They're better off doing what they do best: finding fault with the joy and creative expression of others, gossiping about those of whom they're paralyzingly envious, and spending their afternoons immersed in the risible chatter of Rush Limbaugh, right wing scarecrow. 

Republican Lawmaker: Male-Male Anal Sex = Penile "Wriggling"

   Anti-gay politicians and "preachers" are always good for a laugh. Back in the Eighties, when gay men were dying of AIDS by the bucketsful, gay-loathing (and attitude-manipulating) lawmakers and religionists talked about AIDS being "God's wrath" against gays.
   One of them was the "preacher" Pat Robertson, who, judging from his comments over the years, appears a beacon of sane humanitarian compassion. 

   On January 13 of this year, on his television show "The 700 Club," Robertson thoughtfully characterized the Haiti earthquake as God's payback for the country having made "a pact with the devil" by booting out the French so very many years ago. He said the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were God's way of expressing dismay at America's moral decay, proof of which existed in the presence of, among other things, feminists, gays and lesbians, and the ACLU. 
   Hurricane Katrina? That, Robertson said, was God showing anger at anti-abortion laws. (Hello?) And, in a 1992 Iowa fundraising letter, Robertson intelligently wrote: "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians," all of which sounds, upon close examination, just dandy. 
   (There is a link, below, to a page full of kooky Robertson quotes.)
   Anyway, back in the day, the fringe religionists cleverly - and, of course, wrongly - linked homosexuality with bestiality, child-molestation, incest, and other enchantments of the irrevocably damaged. They also released videos asserting that gay sex involved, among other sensual delights, "feces play."  

   Indeed, over time it began to appear that the fringe religionists - and their cohorts in lawmaking-ville - had a peculiar fascination with all things anal, which makes sense: isn't it the co-mingling of fear and fetishism that makes sex hot?

   Now, just when one sighs about the good old days being so crazy and funny and, alas, long gone, comes New Hampshire State Rep. Nancy Elliott (left) to stoke the fires of butt-sex-related terror. (Huffington Post story and YouTube clip links are below.) Discussing HB 1590, a bill to repeal same-sex marriage laws, at a recent legislative executive session, Elliott had this to say about the ways in which gay sex is "not normal":
   "We're talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement. And you know, I have to think, I'm not sure, would I allow that to be done to me? All of us gathered here - would you let that happen to you? Is that normal?"
   She went on: "They are now teaching it in the public school. They are showing our fifth graders how they can actually perform this kind of sex.... They are saying this is something that you, a fifth grader, may want to try."
   You know, I have to think, I'm not sure, but is Ms. Elliott, well, gum-gnashing, toenail-pulling, face-clawing, batshit crazy? Yeah: like a fox. It's best to take the helicopter view of this blather: not to assess whether it makes sense (wriggling it around in excrement?), but to understand why it's propagated. 
   That much is simple. Conservative lawmakers such as Ms. Elliott - who, incidentally, in their oddball convictions remain well outside of what are now mainstream American same-sex-marriage attitudes - use graphic images of gay sex to play on some voters' squeamishness not only with gay sex, but with sex itself. (One wonders what Ms. Elliott has to say about heterosexual couples who enjoy, er, wriggling the man's penis around in the woman's excrement-lined, uh, anal...pipe? Tube? Duct?) 
     These lawmakers and religionists do so because they cannot muster a decent argument against why two people of the same gender should be joined in holy matrimony, excrement-based-penis-wriggling-oriented or not.
     In the end it is best, I think, simply to enjoy the Ms. Elliotts of the world, as they are a dying breed. Not only are they doing us the favor of hilariously echoing bigots who, in most cases, are long-gone, but they are also returning us, for a brief and shining moment, to a time of asymmetrical haircuts, parachute pants, John Hughes movies and Cure singles.
     The Eighties are back!
     (And less bigoted than ever.)

The Huffingpost story is here
The YouTube video clip is here  
A fun link to Pat Robertson Krazy Kwotes is here