Next Time

I awakened this morning to find that Barak Obama is still President-Elect. And now, we get to see whether he and his team can handle this Leviathan of which they’ve won ‘control.’ I have my doubts, but not because of any personal inadequacies he may have, which are doubtless as legion as everyone elses’. No, it’s more a belief in human inadequacies. The whale is just too big and too complex, so good enough would be my highest hopes. And we’ll see.

Nevertheless, when I was driving about in beautiful, downtown Point Roberts today, I was impressed to see that the International Market’s main sign, one of those changing digital signs, instead of saying, ‘Pork Chops, $3.89’ and then rolling to ‘’Apple Juice, 1 gal.,$2.99,’ this morning said, ‘YES, WE CAN’ before it went to the pork chops, and then returned to the ‘YES, WE CAN .’ I surely hope we can and if the groceries stores are going to do their part, maybe we actually can, although it still is not quite clear to me what it is that we are looking to do. A lot needs doing, certainly.

I was also reading in Harper’s this morning, by chance, about Ken Silverstein’s conversation with a North Carolina Democratic political operative, Gary Pearce. Silverstein asked him about how issues affect a campaign like the one we’ve just been through. “There ain’t no issues—that’s the great myth of politics. . . Basically it’s about who you trust. Where do you think the country is heading and how do you feel about these two guys.’”

That had a real ring of truth to it. So, here’s one of the things maybe we can do. We can knock off elections like the one we’ve just been through ($2 billion according to NPR’s business program), get rid of position papers (except for the policy wonks who like to read them) and TV ads, and tighten it up to a kind of serial, reality show (much more popular with Americans than politics, anyway) in which the candidates appear on TV over a short period of time in several discreet programs designed for us to figure out if we can trust them. ELECTION 2012: WHO DO YOU TRUST? Presumably, the audience already knows how it thinks the country is doing. On these shows, the candidates will talk to people and they’ll do things. We could vary the format from election to election, but here’s some possibilities:

1. A session in which each helps aMedicare recipient understand the bills that Medicare and secondary insurers have sent to them and explains what they should do next. Specific bills will be available for discussion.
2. A session in which they negotiate differences between two angry people.
3. A session in which each provides counselling to a family in foreclosure.
4. A session in which each discusses with someone like Joe the plumber whether he’s likely ever to become a successful entrepreneur; which is to say, what it would take as compared to where he is now.
5. A session in which they describe their funniest vacation, their best vacation, their worst vacation.
6. A session in which they help us to understand what a specific losing sports team should and could do to improve its hopes of a winning season; maybe the Cubs, since baseball is the American sport.
7. A session in which they explain their tax returns to us (their returns will be available for print-out via the net before the program so we can follow along with the discussion).
8. A session in which each tries to entertain, for fifteen minutes, a small child whom they did not previously know, and then engages in conversation with a (similarly unknown) first-time voter between the ages of 18 and 20 for the rest of the program’s time.
9. A session in which each spends fifteen minutes with Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, Jon Stewart, O’Reilly and O’Hannity, or someone of that sort with the ‘that sort’s’ job to be not to interview but to try to intimidate the candidate.
10. A session in which each describes how he and his wife and his children managed to pay their college tuition. This can be a very short session, of course, for some candidates.

Now, I’m sure there are other, better ideas for these sessions (although I do think ten is a nice number). The trouble with blogging is that you don’t get to sit and think about ideas for a week or two. But the concept is what I’m after here. No way this costs two billion. The TV time is free: the public owns the airwaves; the stations only lease them. Everybody is required to wear the same outfit each time so we can keep their identities straight, so no large clothing expenditures are required. Everyone will be required to get a $400 haircut, however. Even counting the haircut, the candidates can be expected to pay for this out of their pocket change, thus freeing the public of lobbyists. And since issues don’t matter, the public won’t have to be working to figure out things that they find difficult to keep track of. And, very best of all, it will eliminate all need for PUNDITS during the election season. They can go vacation in France and vote absentee, and the rest of us will be pundit-free for ten weeks. Excellent!

Ten weeks at the most the final campaign will take and we will have to hear from them only for ten programs, which would be ten hours at the most. And we would surely be better able to figure out whether we could trust them from this, as compared to what we have just gone through which has largely made me want to trust neither of them. We can be easier on ourselves AND on the candidates. Yes, We Can. And that is change you can believe in, my friends. Or something.

Getting Dressed

I’m not sure what is the most depressing part about the current Palin hysteria: the fact that the campaign thought she needed all those designer clothes to run for VP, the fact that she herself seemed to think she needed all those clothes, or the fact that the press seems to think that having all those clothes was great, but either it wasn’t a good idea for her to have them because she’s running as a regular person, or it wasn’t a good idea for the Republican Party to pay for them because she should pay for them herself. Or worse.

Oh, feminism, where have we gotten to after all these tiring years? I read or hear some journalist or campaign person or both saying, ‘Well, of course, it’s a lot more expensive to dress a woman for a campaign.’ Really? Why would that be? Well, that would be, I guess, because they are objects to be adorned and they have to be adorned expensively and with great variety or we won’t really like them. We certainly aren’t going to like them for their ideas or for their ‘war hero’ qualities, I imagine. I wonder if Hillary Clinton feels she just didn’t spend enough on her clothes and that’s why she’s not running for president?

I am deeply saddened that after all this time, women, too, are still so profoundly committed to worrying about their attire: whether it’s sexy enough, flashy enough, fashionable enough, cute enough, expensive enough, glamorous enough; but never whether it’s comfortable enough, or whether it’s a match for the task the woman has at hand. You can’t go out to the world of commerce and see all those babes in high-heels without thinking about—and wincing in anticipation of--the back problems in their future. Or to the beach, where you can consider whether a future as a dermatological oncologist isn't a smart way to go for financial security.

Men, who have their own problems of failed maturity, at least seem better able to handle clothes. Virtually none of us--male or female--knows whether Obama has never worn the same suit twice, has only one suit, or has fifty suits that are all just alike. He comes out, he’s dressed, he looks suitable, and that’s good enough (suitable! What a great word in that context!). Ms. Palin looks okay to me, but I wouldn’t notice if she were wearing Valentino Originals or Liz Claiborne off the rack from a discount mall. But then I come from the rural northwest where Ms. Palin’s everyday Alaska clothes look perfectly fine and, except for those high heels and the Louis Vuitton bag (scroll down to October 22), genuinely appropriate (although the high heels may be necessary for ‘fancy beauty pageant walking').

My sympathies sort of go out to the Republican donors who didn’t think that was what they were buying with the earnest money they sent to their party. Would they have felt as bad if the money had been used to pay for bespoke suits for McCain? Is their unhappiness about its being used for expensive clothes? Or expensive clothes for women? The McCain Campaign says there are more important issues to discuss, but for myself, I think that why women have (1) to think of themselves as and/or (2) to be treated by others as Barbie dolls ought to be one of the top ten issues for the country. When I think of important female political leaders, my mind does not go to Cleopatra; I think about Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi—asexual, unfashionable beings for the most part (although I may not be a good judge of high fashion saris). If Americans ever do elect a women as President, she’ll doubtless look more like this than like Ms. Palin or Ms. Clinton, of course. We like our women to be glamorous and sexy, but if they rise to the bait, we don’t trust ‘em.


(Fabric Portrait, 9"x13", 2008)

Fall Events

Even though summer is over and we’re finished with tourist events, Saturday was an at-least 2-event day here on Point Roberts. Probably more events than that, but at least two that all the people were invited to attend. First, at 1 p.m., was the Obama Rally at the Community Center. I needed to go pick up a book at the library and get an envelope in the Saturday mail, so went off to attend at noon, unfortunately, having confused the time. On my way, I saw leaf piles burning here and there, smoke drifting through the air, reminding us all that fall is here—which the recent warm weather has belied--and that others are not committed to saving their leaves for compost. Arriving at the Community Center at 12:15, I took note that no one was attending the rally.

By the time I realized that I was early (not late), I had run out of time and thus left before the rally started. I talked later to someone who said that it was thinly attended, but if a city the size of Salt Lake could drum up only 1,000 people for a rally, how many people would you get in Point Roberts where there are maybe 800 voters (of whom perhaps one-third will vote for Bob Barr)? About 1.3? There were, at least, more than that: another friend drove by at 3 p.m. and reported to me that there were 16 cars in the parking lot at that time, although some of them would be people going to the library. Bumper stickers were available, I was also told.

I don’t know; my idea of a rally is when you go out and yell, ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’ or ‘Down with the plutocrats!’ or something like that. My sense of rallies (too much sixties, I suppose) is that their purpose is to show opposition to someone/thing who seems to have a lot more power than you do and joining together gives you the (momentary) illusion that you just might be in charge of things. I don’t really think there’s a giant McCain majority out there, working to oppress us, given the massive opposition to the current administration and the lack of difference between it and the McCainites.

The second event was the Art Opening at the Blue Heron. The Blue Heron is a long-standing art and craft gallery, run by Kitty and Paul Doyle. Both residents and visitors shop there and many of the items are made by local artisans and artists. Each month, a different local artist is featured, and yesterday was the opening of a new show of fiber art. It’s a tiny little gallery, so work has to be fairly small to be shown, but each month something new and interesting is on display—painting, jewelry, glass work, photography, weaving, wall quilts, ceramics, etc.—and I go to celebrate its arrival. The quality of the work is very high. Also, in addition to the show, there are drinks and desserts. Nice way to wrap up a windy Saturday. Photos of the current exhibit (Artist: Joyce Wensley) are here.

Up, then Down

What a difficult week this has been. Between the endless Palin hysteria (I can scarcely believe that Frank Rich has concluded that this is a right wing conservative ‘Manchurian Candidate’ plot: where is Frank Sinatra when we need him?), the financial meltdown, the ricocheting market, and the beginning of fall—the psychologically dark season—it’s hard to know how—or whether-- to lift one’s head off the pillow in the early morning. Of course, it is somewhat easier up here, whether in the isolated exclave or in British Columbia. In either place, I am free from newspapers and U.S. television, but not, of course, from the falling leaves nor the internet.

Fall always starts in early September up here with a great uplifting feeling: it’s crisp, blue-skied, windy, and beautiful, and that sense of everything beginning again will return. But at the moment, we’re in the other part of fall’s beginning: the part in which the skies turn gray and the temperature rises very little during the day, given the absence of the sun, and the house is cold because you are trying to put off lighting the pilot. This is the first reminder of the coming of seasonal affective disorder. How funny is it that they managed to find a phrase with the acronym SAD? If women who spend long period of times alone with their young children without any support from other adults were deemed to have a psychological disorder, we could call it MAD (motherhood affective disorder); or perhaps young boys who are overexposed to violence could have boyhood affective disorder (yes, BAD). We could go on here with CAD, DAD, FAD, GAD, etc., but we won’t.

The various quilting groups that I belong to are planning their goals for the year, looking at new possibilities for exhibits and community works. In Point Roberts, we need to finish the two quilts we are making for the local library’s walls, pieces that have been too long in the making; in B.C., we are thinking of taking on the challenge of wearable art, a move to the left (or right) from quilting, since wearable art does not need to have the heavy batting and stitched quilting that defines a quilt. In both these groups, it is clearly the fall that is bringing us to reassess where we are and where we are going.

This planning and reassessment task brought by fall may have made the world’s events much more difficult this past week: how do you think about where you are going when disaster seems to be right in front of you. Where you are going seems to be like some kind of crash immediately ahead. Where you are going doesn’t seem to be a question you really want to ask.

Today, the gray skies have turned into rain showers; tomorrow, they will themselves have decided where they’re going and will turn into more serious rain. But I am reminding myself, regularly, that all this, too, will pass and that the day will come when we will be asking whatever happened to Sarah Palin in the same way that we might ask whatever happened to Dan Quayle if we cared enough to ask.

Those whom the Gods would destroy, I remind myself, first they raise high. This is the end of the ‘raise high’ part, I think. The tree leaves, the summer flowers, the long summer nights, Sarah Palin, Wall Street wizards…all on their way down. Good-bye!

Not So Vite!

The U.S. election is tragedy and although the Canadian election is not farce, it certainly has its humorous aspects when seen from the outside. Yesterday, I mentioned the Sunshine Coast Green Party candidate who only two years ago was the Sunshine Coast Liberal Party candidate, but who migrated parties as a result of alleged election finance improprieties. Today, I find that the Sunshine Coast NDP (most left party) candidate was, fairly recently, the Sunshine Coast Marijuana Party candidate (even farther than 'most left', I guess). Not so much of a problem there, but this candidate’s recent association with a company selling coca plants does threaten to interfere with the proper level of campaign seriousness, so he has dropped out leaving the NDP temporarily candidate-less with three weeks of campaigning yet to go. I suppose by next week, it will turn out that the Conservative Party’s candidate is a secret cross dresser or perhaps just a former member of the Canadian Natural Law Party which planned to introduce Yogic Flying as an integral part of government when last it was heard from. I am forced to conclude that party allegiance here is much more arbitrary than in the U.S. I mean, is there anything that will finally and completely separate Joe Lieberman from the Democratic Party other than the death of one or the other?

Additionally, it turns out that at the B.C. provincial level, Premier Campbell (a member of the Liberal Party who, nevertheless, seems very much like a business-oriented Republican to me) gave senior government managers very sizable salary increases (double digits!)—which he announced on a Friday afternoon during the Olympics—and then cancelled the fall session of the provincial Legislative Assembly on the grounds that there was nothing for the MLA’s to do. He thought it would be better if they spent their time in their home ridings talking to their constituents. Better than messing with him, anyway. A bunch of them had been planning to talk quite publicly with him about these pay raises as well as the Premier’s decision to fly to the Beijing Olympics in a private jet with a developer who does business with the province, as well as a few other things. The Legislative Assembly has been in session only 47 days this year, I am told. Oh, if only Bush could so easily get rid of the Congress, although he has found ways of having them around without their being much of a problem. ‘They have questions? Tell them no, okay?’ This is government that could be the basis of a TV show, I think. At the very least, it certainly gives Ms. Palin a run for her money in the category, ‘You Did What?’ And the possibility of yogic flying or even national levitation is certainly an inspiring thought.

Vite!

Perhaps Canada has simply succumbed to election fever by proximity. Last week, the Progressive Conservative (read, very conservative) Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called for a new election, barely two years after the last national election. Or maybe he just became incredibly envious of the Americans' enthusiasm for their upcoming election. Maybe a choice, maybe an echo, maybe a disease: regardless, the federal Canadian politicians are all off their starting blocks because they have only until October 14 before the election is all done. Just think of that. The beginning and the end of a national election in a five week period. Wow! Feel the envy!

At the moment, the Progressive Conservatives are presiding over a minority government because they don’t have a majority in parliament. But they have enough members to cobble together some kind of majority with others, but it hasn’t lasted very long. Things are looking good for the PC’s though as their brand of politics seems to be catching on. The PC are a mix of social conservatives and neocons, from my view, but they may be better (or worse) than that. They are up against the Bloc Quebecois, a sort of center left party that espouses Quebec’s departure from Canada; the Liberals, a sort of center left party that prefers Quebec to stay in Canada and is otherwise noted for its undistinguished leader--a Quebecer whose French is significantly better than his English—and its earlier-in-this-decade financial scandals; the NDP, the most left party, whose leader is a man, following a decade of women as party leaders; and the Greens, the environmental party which holds one seat in Parliament, but only as a result of strange events. The PC's Harper is something of a George Bush fan. To his credit, I should note that Harper, whose native tongue is English, is said to speak better French than the Liberal Leader speaks English. I’ve heard Harper’s French; it’s not that good. We get quite a bit of mail from Mr. Harper, assuring us, in English, that he is going to do the right thing for us and that the liberals are (have I heard this before?) nothing more than ‘tax and spend’ guys. Somehow, I doubt that, but maybe his message is more successful in Quebec.

At the moment, the secessionist Bloc Quebecois is doing poorly in Quebec. Perhaps those folks have grown tired of the idea of secession and have decided just to slog on with the rest of the country, even if in a different language. However, the lagging Bloc support is going not to the liberals, where one might expect it to go but instead to the PC, improving their chances of getting an actual majority. Harper’s French, again, perhaps.

Here in our own riding, we have the one and only Green Party member currently sitting in Parliament. We didn’t elect him, though (that’s the royal We since we at our house do not vote, of course). Two years ago, the Sunshine Coast elected Blair Wilson, who was a member of the Liberal Party. But in the intervening short period of time, Mr. Wilson got in a little bit of scandal himself (election money, not sex) and was thrown out by the Liberals. Still, he had been elected. He sat as an independent for a bit, but then crossed over to the Green Party. This gave the Greens a presence in Parliament, and now gives them the opportunity to have their party leader (not Blair Wilson, of course: he is simply their only Parliamentary member) appear in the national debates that will be occurring in the coming months.

Given all the complexity, I almost wish I could vote, but on the other hand….well…maybe not. The Sunshine Coast has a big Green Party presence; there are lots of very progressive environmentalist types here. But if the Green Party candidate’s most notable commitment to the Green Party’s values and policies is that he came inside when the Greens offered him a place to sit down? Well, other peoples’ elections are probably never very clear to an outsider. But, at least in Canada, they don't drag on forever.

All Alone?

It is possible that by the end of this campaign season, I’ll be standing all alone: no friends left. I am trying to stay away from it, for the most part, noting only headlines and their sources. An acquaintance, a self-described independent, reports that he is watching the news carefully to determine where he stands in this race, which of the candidates he judges will be best for the country. I am stunned to think that there are people in this country who think that the TV, newspaper, and internet versions of the ‘campaign’ are being run by Emmanuel Kant (or even by Will and Ariel Durant), intellectual masters who are serving up a feast of ideas that we can all look over and consider carefully. The closest connection I get to the ‘pig in lipstick’ comment is that we are generally being served swill and, worse yet, are lining up to consume it.

Very mysterious.

The last day or so, I have received several opportunities to vent my spleen on a website called womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com. As a long-time reader of George Lakoff (Metaphors We Live By, Don’t Think about an Elephant, etc.), a former English/writing teacher, and a garden-variety over-educated elite member, I’d like to say a few words about why I find this language offensive. The website explains how the women in charge wrote to forty of their friends asking them to write about why they opposed Sarah Palin’s entry into the presidential campaign. Those forty then sent it out to their many friends, and now they have over 140,000 women writing about why they oppose Sarah Palin.

Fine. I’m cool with that. I didn’t join the fray, despite these invitations from long-time friends, because I am not a woman against Sarah Palin. I am a woman, and I would never vote for Sarah Palin for anything I can think of (animal control officer?), but I am not in any way, shape or form uninclined to vote for Sarah Palin because either she or I are women.

This group makes me embarrassed for the political left just as I have become profoundly embarrassed for the political right. I fear that the political left is just getting its sea legs in making the whirling descent down the hole to the bottom where we just grunt at one another, hurl insults, and brandish weapons, where language, ideas, and discussion is lost in the maelstrom; where, at the end, we ascend bloody and beaten all, pompously congratulating ourselves on “our democracy.”.

Okay, so what’s wrong with ‘women against Sarah Palin’? Let me pose this. If you ran into a group titled ‘Progressives Against Sarah Palin’ or ‘Liberals Against Sarah Palin’ or ‘Pro-Choice Advocates Against Sarah Palin,’ or ‘Pacificists Against Sarah Palin’ or even ‘Moose Against Sarah Palin,’ you wouldn’t bat an eye, nor would I. The meaning and message of all of those groups is clear: Sarah Palin does not share the values of those who are opposed to her, she is being excluded from those groups. ‘Woman Against Sarah Palin’ is absolutely different: exactly what are the values of ‘WOMEN’ as a group that Sarah Palin doesn’t share? How can she be excluded from the group 'women'? It is clear in the letters posted to the website what values THESE women don’t share with Sarah Palin, but THESE WOMEN do not, now or ever, constitute the group WOMEN. Just how arrogant is that? The group, the category ‘WOMEN’ IS a vastly larger group. By trying to appropriate the larger group as their own identifier, these particular women are simply gutting the language further as well as indulging a colossal degree of narcissism.

I’m sorry to see these women doing this. If all of this seems tiresomely fine-pointed, consider the fact that you have never heard of the following groups: Men Against McCain, Men Against Obama, Black People Against Clarence Thomas. Or, how about ‘Tall People Against Bill Bradley,’ to reach back to an earlier and simpler time. And that’s because there are no such groups, even though lots of men don’t like McCain for President and lots of other men don’t like Obama for President. I’m pretty sure that Jesse Jackson was no fan of Clarence Thomas but Jesse Jackson knew better than to name a group ostensibly speaking for Blacks against a Black candidate for office, a suggestion that Clarence Thomas wasn’t really a Black man. Anybody can attack Sarah Palin’s ideas all they want. That is what freedom of speech is all about, of course. But nobody gets to say that WOMEN reject Sarah Palin because she does not share the values of women, or even that WOMEN is a category that contains specific values. And also, those tall people who were against Bill Bradley: what was their story?

Political Steroids

Up here in Canada, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives (or whatever they’re currently called) are both threatening to make an election happen. So strange to have it not be a regular kind of thing. On the other hand, so wonderful to have it occur of a sudden with only a relatively few weeks allowed for the campaign. So unlike the current and dreadful election in the U.S, which seems to have been going on for most of my adult life.

This week is really one of the times I’m particularly grateful to have broken the TV habit. I actually do have a TV set in the Canada house, but I never think to turn it on to TV: it’s just there as a way to watch DVD’s. So, I am managing to miss both the Olympics and the Democratic Party Convention. Two of a kind: Did the U.S. win? Did the Chinese win? Do I care? I’m actually pretty enthusiastic when some Somali or Jamaican runner wipes everyone out. Just what the big nations deserve, I’d say. Bob Barr is looking interesting; even Ralph Nader is beginning to come in for some sympathy.

The Olympics, I guess is actually over now, but the Democrats are just beginning so I could give it a try yet. But, but, but…I imagine turning on, say, NBC (our basic cable does not offer CNN), and I can know only too well what I’d be seeing and it wouldn’t be Adlai Stevenson giving a smart, funny, and informative speech that made you understand what politics was about and why you ought to be paying attention to it. Instead, whoever is giving whatever speech will (on Monday afternoon) be far away in the background while some brag of pundits maunder on about the kinds of things that the rest of us quit thinking and talking about when we got out of high school.

Pundits! Did we used to have that word? Let alone have those tiresome people with their repetitive thought syndrome? Do they ever appear alone, or are they always in groups? What is their attraction and why do they breed so rapidly without having attraction? It will only be minutes before they start discussing what Hillary is wearing and whether it means Too Much Hillary or Not Enough Hillary. Or, I guess, because it’s Monday, they will be discussing what Michelle is wearing and what it really truly tells us about just how angry she is. I, myself, appear almost always in black slacks, black turtle neck, and red silk shirt, and if that tells you just how angry I am, then my message is getting across. I hope Michelle will be wearing black and red. She deserves to be angry for the way in which she is being trivialized by this process.

It seems to me that the political class (which includes the politicians, their managers, their hangers-on, the sycophantic press, the pollsters, the pundits, and lobbyists) has finally achieved what I would have thought impossible. They have turned me off politics. They can have it all to themselves, as far as I am concerned. Maybe that’s what they always wanted, of course. So, I’ll keep watching them if only from a greater and greater distance. Surely I won’t be watching their faux competitions, but I will be wondering why anyone else is.

Modern politics in the U.S. is a true rival for the Disneyland pageantry of the Olympics: if only there were rules about the use of steroids or the political equivalent thereof, we could have regular truth tests, or even brain cell testing, and thought specimens would be collected after every race. And then there would be hearings in Congress where last week’s winner could swear he only played by the rules, never took those political steroids. But we’d know better. They’re all on political steroids.