And Another Thing....

Instead of Red State or Blue State think "Disco Ball"

This week's column posted here because---yep, too lazy to use iWeb.

    You've almost got to feel sorry for the Right.

    OK, not that sorry.

    But their situation has gotten so dire that an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week actually tried to spin gold out of hay by saying that all the conservative infighting is GOOD. Because it shows DIVERSITY! And FREEDOM OF THOUGHT!

    And the fact, according to editorialist and Hoover Institute fellow Peter Berkowitz, that Democrats are "increasingly untroubled by debate or dissent" just points out that they have lost their ability to grasp the complexities of the modern debate.

    The Right's internal dissention, on the other hand, shows nothing less than a steady intellectualism and is an example of how "defending liberty involves a delicate balancing act."

    Excuse me. I need to take a second to shake with laughter.

    OK.

    I'm back now.

    Basically, Berkowitz' is saying—without actually saying it—that walking in lockstep showed unity of purpose when conservatives were talking in tandem, but lack of nuance when Democrats present a united front.

    Good spin, Peter Berkowitz. That's why they pay you the big bucks.

    Of course, this is not what's actually happening. Democrats are as divided as they ever were—there is no consensus on gay marriage, despite what Berkowitz says in the op-ed; support for abortion rights isn't always clear; figuring out how to balance economic prosperity with stewardship of the earth is a deep debate.

    What's changed is not the Left. We might seem more unified, but that's because it's always easier to be the underdog. We're still fighting.

What's changed is the Right—which is now facing, as Berkowitz says, "uncertainty about George W. Bush's legacy and the reality of their own errors and excesses." It's as if they've suddenly woken up with a power hangover, and are now looking around in horror at the disaster they've made. Legalizing torture, screwing up the balance of power in the Middle East, practically institutionalizing corruption: that's the result of the Right's power-drunk binge.

More importantly, though, what's changed is the Center. Whereas for a while they were content to be painted as the dopey, NASCAR-watching, flag-waving patsies of conservative Christians, now they, too, have woken up. Conservatives tried to tell Middle America that Evangelical rule would keep the country safe from threats inside and out and lead us back to an imagined golden era of God and Country.

What Middle America realized, however, was that even though they like to think of themselves as Godly and flag-waving, what they actually are is a people who will do anything to get themselves on reality TV. The Center of America is not red—it is gaudy, star-spangled, fame-hungry, and far more quirky and untraditional than our American myths would have us believe. Forget red. Even forget purple. Think "disco ball."

America is not a land of traditional families and church-goers. They're there, of course, but they're a relatively small segment of society. America is a land of communes and cults, of single mothers and polyamorous families, of academics and cowboys and immigrants and celebrities and lawyers and Starbucks baristas. The diversity is what's normal.

Finally, the Center looked around, thought about what the Right is saying about them, and said, "Hey—what you're talking about has nothing to do with the way I live my life. I've been divorced; I haven't gone to church in 10 years; my brother is gay."

That doesn't mean that liberals are doing a better job of capturing our native idiosyncrasies. We're not, really. What we are doing is helping create a more expansive myth of American inclusion. We're broadening the tent. And so, in this cycle, more Centrists are turning leftward.

To their credit, it's good to see prominent conservatives from across the party publicly reflect on where their movement is and where it might have gone wrong. It's refreshing to see that they, too, are shocked to be known as the party of hate and narrow-minded paternalism. This is not where they wanted to be.
And it's a good lesson for liberals. Because the pendulum has swung back, and it's likely we will find ourselves in power in 2008. Will we become drunk on it, like the conservatives did, and rule with arrogance?

Or will we continue to keep the debate open, realizing that debate is, indeed, the cornerstone of democracy, that hearing all points of view is the only way we can try to encompass the great strangeness of America?

How we answer that question will decide whether Democrat '08 leads us up into prosperity – or down into the Bush-league.

Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. Her occasional blog is typepad.jennifervanasco.com; email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com

This week's column

Because I'm too lazy to put it up on my site....

Journals

                

   

   

The chain of events seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

My mom was moving, and the remainder of my childhood dietrus—my plastic horses, my kazoo, my favorite picture books—needed to be moved from their place in my childhood closet. So did my box of journals.

I’ve kept a journal since I was 6, when a friend of my grandmother gave me a small, white Hello Kitty diary as a present. I wasn’t sure what to write in it at first. I noted the weather. I explained what my parents had done that day, and who I played with and what we did.

At some point in elementary school, I read the “Diary of Anne Frank” and became obsessed with the idea of journaling as a historical record. I tried to be in my journal as I wished I were in life: a girl who sat up straight, spoke kindly to others, made her bed and studied hard.

That didn’t last long.

Eventually, my journals became the private “Room of My Own” that they become for most of us. It was the only place where I allowed myself to have rages, to take mental revenge, to record secret joys, to imagine a future so delicious I couldn’t bear to speak about it to others.

My journals were the place I first circled around the thought that I might be gay. They were where I tried to understand the feelings I was having for other girls, and eventually they were where I meticulously recorded the reactions my friends and family had to me as I came out.

I’m a writer. Writing isn’t just what I do—it’s who I am. Writing, and then reading and re-reading what I’ve written, is how I make sense of the world and how I create the story of myself that I tell to others.

When I lived in Chicago, my journals were scattered everywhere, in boxes and drawers and shelves and old backpacks. But right before I moved back home to New York, I collected all of them in one place. My Hello Kitty journal was there. So were my books of high school questioning and post-college resolution. They were so precious to me that I didn’t hand them over to the moving company; I walked them to my car and drove them across country.

They were the first thing I brought into my mother’s house when I came home. I left them there when I moved into Manhattan, figuring they’d be safer at home than in my new, tiny room.

But my mom was moving. So I got that box and the other boxes remaining at my mom’s and brought them to my apartment, where I left them on the landing while I decided what to do with them.
That weekend, we were having a party, and on a Wednesday night when I came home from work, my roommate said, “Hey, I moved those boxes of yours into the basement so they wouldn’t be in the way.”
OK, I said, and I admit I felt relieved. I didn’t have room for my box of journals. Not under my bed. Not in my closet. It wasn’t clear if we had storage in the basement of my building, but I figured they might as well stay there for a few days. Maybe I’d just leave them, accessible but not likely to be stumbled over in the middle of the night.

On Monday, I went to check that they weren’t getting damp—and they were gone. My other boxes were, too, but I didn’t worry about those.

Childhood books I could replace. My journals I could not. I knew that to lose my journals would be like losing the best friend that had known me from childhood, the friend who could oversee what she knew of my life and point out hidden patterns and forgotten revelations.

I called the super. He threw the boxes out, he told me. They were unlabeled; he thought that they were trash left by previous tenants. He reminded me, gently, that we had no storage.

My journals are gone.

I still can’t quite believe it. I look under my bed again and again, as if the situation might have changed somehow, as if they will magically appear if I just wish hard enough.

Those collected books were where I narrated my life. Losing them was losing the long line of words that kept my life together.

Philosophers sometimes talk about life as a river, how the river itself stays the same though each individual point is always rushing with new water, always changing.

Losing my journals is like hiking along that river and looking back to see that the entire bed behind me is dry.

What can I do but keep writing? I started a new journal yesterday. Its blank pages were a reprimand, a reminder, a warning. Whether it is a caution to keep better track of my written words or not write them down in fragile books at all, I don’t know.

Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist based in New York. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com. Her occasional blog is at jennifervanasco.typepad.com.

 

Jeff McCourt dead at 51

Jeff McCourt, founder of the Windy City Times, died last month at 51. Jeff was the first person to take a chance on me, a young writer, eventually giving me the column I still write.

Jeff was difficult, needy, an asshole, a bastard. He would storm through our windowless office sucking on cigarettes and booming out curses or praises, depending on his mood. I am grateful for his early support---and I wish I could be sorry  about his death.  When I was hired, he was already deep in decline, from drugs, from AIDS, from his pinwheeling narcissism. But it' thanks to him that the WCT---and eventually the Chicago Free Press--became the papers they did.

He was interesting. He was a personality. He will be remembered---not always well, but hey, remembered. And that's a hell of a lot more than most other people get.

Thugbians

The Village Voice has a story on thugbians---HipHop lesbians who take on the aggressive, misogynistic attitudes of the worst kind of masculinity.

I find this both disturbing—and hot.

Why are we attracted to things that are bad for us and for our community? I wouldn't want to be in a relationship like the one they describe, but I gotta admit, I would be into it for a few hours.

I think. Minus the actual physical violence part.

GLBT Expo

Gays and lesbians drink. A lot. Mostly top shelf alchohol that's sweeter than candy. Oh, and light beer. Cheap. Mostly Bud.

We also travel--either to New Jersey or Thailand. And we worry about our health. And we dig drag queens.

Oh, and did I mention we drink?

I just got back from the GLBT Expo at the Javitts Center, and it was such a strange collection of advertisers---and way more free alcohol than I've seen anywhere but a wedding.

Condi and Ann R.

Is Condoleezza Rice a lesbian?

Was Ann Richards?

The buzz was back about Condi last week when the NYT ran a story about a toothless flirtation between her and a male Canadian minister. My guess? She is one. The gossip surrounding her orientation seems both reliable and friendly.

And what about Ann Richards, former feisty governor of Texas who died last week?

I bet she wasn't. She appointed lesbians to prominent positions and was concerned with womens' issues---but calling her a lesbian was Rove's way of smearing her back in the day.

The sad thing is, being called a lesbian--or being one--is still a smear.

Why else wouldn't Condi come out?