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." 

Crime of the Century (Criminal Politesse Division)

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- A man walked into a branch of the Wachovia bank here Tuesday and handed a teller a note saying he was there to rob the place. He asked for $30,000. When told, however, that the teller hadn't the money in her cash drawer he left, but not without first telling the teller "thank you."
   This man is one of the last of a dying breed: mannerly Americans. A Sept. 13 Associated Press story neglects to say whether the man, Melvin Jesse Blain, thirty-one, has ever attended etiquette classes. Plainly, however, he was an infant so nice his folks named him thrice, and from there they sure done raised him right.
   Under influences as disparate as politically-oriented shouting-heads talk shows, video games, reality TV, Tea Party rallies and the dispiriting artistic decay of Lindsay Lohan, Americans more and more appear to believe that good manners are a thing of the past and therefore are to be eschewed. That a man who allegedly planned to rob a bank showed better manners than do most drivers on American roads sounds a clarion call to his countryfellows: it's time to shape up... please.
   Mr. Bain didn't get far after leaving the bank: police officers discovered him walking near it. This suggests, although the AP does not confirm it, that Mr. Bain's mannerliness derives from a leisurely approach to life. How many would-be bank robbers take casual strolls near the banks they almost rob?
   The eminently polite Mr. Bain told police he had only recently been released from prison after spending almost four years there on a bank robbery charge. He added, according to the AP story, that he "didn't want to go back."
   Well, of course not. Politesse only gets you so far; one imagines that in prison that's not very far at all.
  Perhaps the judge in Mr. Bain's imminent case will recognize in him a thoughtful soul and will sentence him to perform community service in the guise of offering etiquette classes to the public. No doubt were the judge to hand down such a sentence he would receive from Mr. Bain a heartfelt "thank you," likely more than he receives from the bulk of the vulgarians appearing before him.
   As it happens, issues of fading politesse, though distressingly acute in America, can be international in scope. We now join the case, in Lisbon, Portugal, of an aide to the mayor of a suburb called Oeiras. The aide, insulted that a young police officer addressed him employing the informal form of "you" without adding the honorific "sir," bit one of the officer's colleagues on the arm, necessitating for that officer a hospital trip.
   A Sept. 13 Reuters story, forwarded to us by a regular reader who is a legal eagle and therefore has an eye for these sorts of things, reports that Esequiel Lino (no age given) had gone to the police station angry about officers having recently towed his daughter's car.

   Reuters quotes a police spokeswoman as saying that Mr. Lino "started verbally abusing the officers, kicking the desk and was warned several times, but it didn't stop him."
   Now, no one likes having one's offspring's car towed. Yet even from a standpoint of enlightened self-interest, Mr. Lino shot himself in the foot (bit himself in the arm?) by baiting police officers in their own "house."
   In the end, the incident demonstrates that rudeness always comes a-cropper.
   It is not without irony that, as Reuters flatly reports, "Lino's responsibilities in the mayor's administration include [maintaining] links with the police." These links, it is safe to assume, do not include gnawing on officers' arms, a notion which the kindly Melvin Jesse Bain, in his community service etiquette classes, would no doubt stress.

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.