A place in Hell.

There is a place in Hell for women who do not help other women. – Madeline Albright

I thought I’d read just about every angle on the Presidential campaign, but apparently I missed this one:

Hillary Clinton Forum

Yes, here at last is that Mysterious Island of Pissed-Off Women that I didn’t think really existed: the liberal female voters so completely consumed with rage at the Democratic failure to nominate Hillary for President that THEY ARE VOTING REPUBLICAN TO SUPPORT SARAH PALIN.

For the first time in my life, I’m truly ashamed of my sister Vaginal-Americans.

Consider some of the hateful anger against Obama and the Democrats spewed on the Hillary Clinton forum when Sarah Palin was chosen (and this is a representative, if not underrepresentative, sampling of the posts there):

Buuuuurn Obama Buuuurn! What a slap in the face. If it’s Palin, I will put blood and sweat into campaigning for that team.

I am THRILLED if this is true. It will make it easier for me to vote McCain (which I would have done anyway). Now I’m excited! It’s not Hillary (she’ll be President in ‘12)…. but it’s exciting none the less!

McCain has picked PALIN!!! I am THRILLED! AS for the Dums whining that she doens’t have experience running things–SHE HAS FIVE KIDS!! TRUST ME! SHE KNOWS HOW TO RUN THINGS! GOD BLESS MCCAIN/PALIN!!!

now you know I will be backing my girl. I admire Sarah and I think it is toooo cool that we were born the same year.

Well this lifelong Democrat is most certainly advocating a Republican vote!!!!

A woman VP is VERY exciting and it makes me advocate a Republican vote even more since Obama refused to allow the Democratic party, especially the women, the opportunity to make this history!!! Obama’s actions should be taken as absolute proof that he is a woman hater. Never did come to terms with all those unresolved abandonment issues.

Talk about cutting the baby in half and then throwing it out with the bathwater. Here’s a group of women so furious that they are willing to sell out all of their own – and their preferred candidate’s – hard-fought visions and ideals in order to vote for someone with the right working parts between her legs. How is supporting a woman who does not support women “supporting women”? If the cognitive dissonance doesn’t cause your brain to implode, the irony is enough to knock you senseless. As my father would say, “Grow up.” These comments – “my girl Sarah”? – sound like jilted vengeful prom dates, not adult women with their faculties intact.

Before anyone claws my eyes out, let me say that I have some solid feminist credentials. Went to a women’s college, marched a whole lot, read (and can still quote) Mary Daly. I still have my 20-something year old T-shirt from my college’s 100th anniversary celebration that proudly proclaimed us “100 years of castrating bitches.” I understand disenfranchised and disaffected and just plain dissed.

Believe me, I would love nothing more than to see Senator Clinton or another intelligent, educated, competent woman elected into office. But not just any woman, and certainly not an ultra-conservative right-wing Republican woman who will set women’s rights back at least 50 years if, say, she has the chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice.

Send me straight to Hell now, but how is changing your vote from Hillary to Sarah any different than saying that I am randomly interchangeable with Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer-prize winning Indian woman writer? That would be offensive (at least to Ms. Lahiri) and, I think most would agree, racist.

Similarly, it’s not ONLY offensive, it’s just plain sexist to claim that any white woman politician, let alone a right-wing Republican, can be substituted for Hillary Clinton with equal effect. That’s right, you crossover Hillary voters. YOU. ARE. SEXIST.

I’m going to hazard a guess that most of these women are white, because otherwise, they would understand that identity stems from many sources. I’m a working woman, but I’m also a minority. Throw in Alaskan, environmentalist, pro-choice, liberal, and you have an amalgam of issues, all of which are important and complex and intertwined. I’m not going to vote to support a crazy old ultra-conservative and his nutty sidekick just because she’s female, any more than I’m going to vote for a jerk like Dinesh D’Souza just because he’s Indian.

There’s still a lot of people out there who subscribe to the notion that women are too emotional to think rationally in a time of crisis. Sadly, some women really are.

Requiem for a dog.

Last Wednesday morning, as we always do, the Bug and I tied the dog outside on the deck before leaving the house. That evening, my husband, who had gotten home before us, called to say she was acting strange. She wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t jump up and run in circles barking at the mention of a ride or a walk. She just lay on the floor, looking guilty.

Had she eaten a shrew or a squirrel, perhaps a dead bird? Had she jumped and pulled a muscle? Eaten gravel, which she had done a few weeks ago? The last time she acted odd, we took her to Pet Emergency, where they charged us a fortune to tell us she had indigestion. So we decided to wait till morning before acting.

In the morning she was no better, so we brought her to our vet. They ran tests, took x-rays, rehydrated her. She was “blocked up”, they said, but they didn’t know why. By evening, they suggested we take her to Pet Emergency for possible surgery, but the vet there hesitated to operate. We decided to give her another day to see what happened.

So there we were, basically waiting for the dog to take a shit. We joked about bringing her some prunes, or maybe Metamucil. At least the vet would have to do the clean-up, and we’d have her home by the weekend.

And then the vet called. She had a feeling something more was going on. She wanted to do an ultrasound. My husband and I consulted nervously. Our first dog, Kia, had an ultrasound and it turned out to be stomach cancer. Okay, we agreed, trying not to think how much it was all costing. What choice did we have?

That evening, the Bug and I stopped by the clinic to visit. Kiska lay in her kennel, an I.V. through her front leg. She gazed at us sorrowfully, not getting up. A bright orange sign hung on her door: MAY BITE.

Bite? Our sweet gentle girl who let the Bug do just about anything to her, bite? Then the vet called me in, and I could tell by her face she did not have good news. It was a mass, she said, in her small intestine. A mass? I asked. You mean a tumor? She nodded. They could try to remove it surgically, but if the cancer had spread, chances were it wouldn’t matter. Besides, she’s an old dog, and even if she survived the surgery, she might not make it through the recovery.

We wanted to know how much time she had, especially after we took her outside and she became lively and bouncy again. Could we take her home for the weekend? my husband asked. No, but we could probably bring her home for the night. The vet gave her a dose of pain medication to keep her comfortable while we called a close friend, also a vet, who said she could come to the house in the morning to put Kiska down. At least we’d have a little time to say goodbye.

But after a couple of hours at the house, it was obvious she wasn’t going to make it. She couldn’t settle down, wouldn’t touch food. Once she let out a whine that sent chills right down my back. The Bug worked on a puzzle next to her. The cat came over and rubbed against her, purring. We pet her and kissed her and told her how much we loved her. We cried until we couldn’t breathe. Then my husband took her back to the clinic. Later he told me she licked the vet’s face as the anesthetic was going in.

We’ve had at least one dog in our family for the last fifteen years. Now the house seems empty and quiet, with only a few visual reminders of her absence – tufts of the white fluff she was eternally shedding, her disgusting half-eaten rawhide. I listen for her irritating high-pitched bark at the back door, her cat-like lapping of water, or her tags jingling in the morning. Still, I reflexively put leftovers on the floor for her. As we enjoy the crisp cold sunny days that presage winter snow, I keep thinking we need to take her for a walk. Out of the corner of my eye I catch false glimpes of her, snoozing at the foot of the Bug’s bed, or more likely, with her head on his extra pillow.

She was such a part of our daily routine, one we didn’t realize was so important to the fabric of our days until now, when she’s no longer here. This was a dog who was young at heart until her very last day; we joked that if she had only one leg left, she’d run away on it. Of course we knew this day would come. We just didn’t know it would be so soon.

This morning, the Bug said it made him feel sad not to have her leaping at the door to come for a ride when we left. “Who will guard me at night?” he demanded.

Don’t worry, I told him. Kiska’s still guarding you, and she can see a whole lot better from where she is now.

Faux-thenticity.

Pssst. Want to know something? I heard directly from someone in the know here that Sarah Palin’s trademark eyeglasses are not actually prescription but just for show. Yep, the specs are a prop, a sham, an accessory – in other words, FAKE. I wasn’t all that surprised; it’s just the kind of little lie I would expect a politician to use to curry a favorable public image.

And yet, today, while engaging in my current favorite activity – clicking fiendishly on link after link about the upcoming election until my eyeballs rupture – I happened upon this blog supporting Sarah Palin. Here is the blogger’s logic as to why Sarah would make a fab President, in a nutshell (emphasis on NUT):

Authenticity

According to this awestruck fan, Palin has that indefinable quality known as “authenticity”; she’s warm, genuine, and above all, not too smart or educated for her own good or ours. In the blogger’s words, she’s someone that “We the People can relate to!” (For instance, she leaves prepositions at the end of sentences, just like us!) It doesn’t hurt that she comes in a pretty package, either, as can be seen from some of the admiring comments accompanying her photos. There’s more: check out the link to an article on a British website claiming Sarah is the Princess American Di. And finally, the crowning glory of her credentials: “she is not a Lawyer!”

*insert mandatory shark-related lawyer joke here*

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. I’m a lawyer, and you know what I do for a living? I help old people, the most vulnerable and unprotected of our society. Sometimes, because they are too frail or frightened to drive to my office, I go to their houses, where I pick up their newspaper or feed their cat or eat things I never knew about like ox-tail soup, which no Hindu person should ever consume, so I can hear about their legal problems – their husband’s mental deterioration from Alzheimer’s, their son taking money out of their bank account, the mortgage they can no longer pay, the seemingly inevitable nursing home placement – and hopefully try to make it all better.

And for THAT – for being someone who spent NINETEEN YEARS of her life bothering to get an education in the hopes of making this a better world, my “elite” profession is maligned and scoffed at by some of the most curmudgeonly, mean-spirited, narrow-minded people imaginable. I’m too educated, too brown, too progressive; I’m a threat, a scourge, an affliction.

People like me, the oldest child of immigrant parents, TOO educated? I could go to school for the rest of my life and not feel I had learned enough about all the things I’d like to know. Theology, philosophy, psychology… I wouldn’t mind understanding organic chemistry either; all I ever managed to do was make jewelry out of my plastic molecule set.

And yet there are all these people out there who have NO intellectual curiousity or desire to know more about the world, and these people somehow consider themselves not only to know enough, but enough to RUN THE COUNTRY. Because Sarah Palin is ‘just like them”, and apparently she knows enough to be President. Here’s how one proud Sarah supporter described it: Sarah represents The People because there are way more parents of pregnant teenagers than parents of children with Harvard degrees.

That is sad on so many levels it would give Einstein a migraine thinking about it. My father begged and pleaded for me to apply to Harvard; why else did he come to this country with nothing but the clothes on his back, weighing 84 pounds, swimming and walking to get here from India, and work his fingers to the bone? At the time I refused to apply; I wanted to go to college outside of Boston. That I WOULD go to college, though, was never in question. Is that something to scorn in this new era of The People?

In fact, the whole attitude is really a remarkable display of overinflated self-esteem. I read about a study showing the more incompetent someone was as judged by their peers, the more likely that person was to view themselves as highly competent. In other words, one of the main traits of incompetent people is lack of judgment as to their own incompentency.

Well, the whole “dumb is the new smart” thing is getting really old and tired, folks. Want some plain talk? Here you go: wake up and smell the dog shit, as We the People say in Alaska. Sarah Palin is not “authentic”, any more than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or any politician is “authentic.” Check it out: “authenticity” can be bought, for a price; it’s a marketing tool, for fuck’s sake.

What Palin IS doing is feeding an enormous desire of certain folks in this country to feel somehow in control in a time when the world appears to be spiraling out of our control. By putting someone “like us” in the White House, we’d be taking back our government! Showing them who’s boss! Rah rah rah. Meanwhile, she’s sold Alaskans down the river, leaving the McCain people to rampage and wreak further havoc in the mess of subpoenas and investigations she’s left us.

Just as lofty speech and an aristocratic pedigree isn’t a fool-proof indication of intelligence, neither is plain talk and a folksy manner a sure sign of being “one of us”. As I recall, people lauded the current White House occupant for his plain speech and down-to-earth manner. Too bad it turned out that he was really just dumb as a block of ice. Maybe dumber.

Politicians of all people should be judged on their merit, not on their ability to appear to have merit. And if Americans can’t see that, maybe it’s time for some new prescription glasses.

Ska-toosh!

“Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend.”

I finally saw “Kung Fu Panda” this weekend, which leads me to ask the inevitable question: is it so wrong for a woman to love a red panda? Because I am STONE IN LOVE with Master Shifu. He’s so stern, so tragic – and yet so cute and cuddly. And that happened even before I found out that his character is voiced by Dustin Hoffman.

For many reasons, I was totally against the Bug seeing this movie when it was released. It’s not like he needs more inspiration to run face-first into a brick wall, swing from the ceiling fan, or roundhouse-kick the refrigerator door closed. He and his little posse at pre-school are regularly separated from each other at least once a day for various pre-school infractions, like pretending to be cheetahs and hunting down innocent toddlers, or scaling the chain-link fence in a miniature version of “Prison Break”. The last time it happened, the Bug informed me quite seriously that he and his best friend DinoBoy were forbidden from playing with each other “FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!”

Plus, it’s clear that the majority of kid’s movies and television shows are nothing but a marketing vehicle for cheap plastic stuff that reproduces exponentially as soon as it reaches our living room and makes me despair for the future of our planet. Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ve heard it all before. That’s just the kind of mean old hard-ass mom I am.

Still, no matter how much I try to stop him from seeing the relentless commercial drivel aimed at marketing garbage to kids, he somehow finds out about it. “Captain Jack Sparrow!” he crows in the cereal aisle. “Darth Vader! Power Rangers!” It drives me crazy, and I vow on a daily basis that I am not going to let my child be sucked into anything that is created entirely to perpetuate Happy Meals.

And then I made the mistake of going out with some friends for a single afternoon, and my husband took him to see “Kung Fu Panda” without a second thought. See what happens? You let down your guard for a split-second, and the terrorists have their way.

From that day forth, I’ve had to listen to endless discussions about Master Shifu and Tai Lung and the one-hundred-twenty-fifty-four rhinos he massacred, and above all, Master Tigress, because apparently Angelina Jolie’s voice alone is enough to seduce a four and three-quarters year old into worshipping her. I’ve witnessed countless demonstrations of kung fu poses and heard the word “Skatoosh!” more times than I’ve heard Sarah Palin say “Thanks but no thanks.”

So this weekend, our local theater-pub was showing a second run of “Kung Fu Panda” and the Bug, with his sixth sense for cartoon features, somehow found out, and suddenly I was engaged in a vicious conspiracy to see this movie with him and BFF DinoBoy and DinoBoy’s little sister and their mom. And off we went, but not before stopping in at Value Village to find a Master Tigress and Master Monkey for DinoBoy.

We got to the theater, where the Bug and DinoBoy greeted each other as if they hadn’t seen each other since the Pleistocene, rather than 18 hours earlier at pre-school; in other words, they started talking loudly and simultaneously about totally different things. Plastic Masters were distributed, kids were settled in their seats, and the movie began.

And I was hooked. It’s been a while since I’ve loved a kid’s movie the way I enjoy some of the old Disney movies. I liked “Ratatouille” and “WALL-E”, but seeing them with an actual child made me realize how much kid’s movies are directed toward adults these days. And if not, they seem dumbed-down or facile, underestimating what kids can and can’t handle. It really is hard to strike just the right note in an animated film, which would be somewhere between snarky and sappy. “Toy Story” did it, I think. So does “The Lion King”, “Ice Age”, and “Aladdin”. Another favorite of mine is the little-known “The Iron Giant”. I thought “The Wild” was terrible, like “Madagascar” on a bad acid trip. And some movies, like “Cars” – possibly the most boring movie ever after “The English Patient” – aren’t interesting for kids OR adults.

But “Kung Fu Panda” met all of my inner child’s requirements in spades, and most of my adult ones too. It was like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Panda”, hitting all the right notes at the right moments, and some of the animation was downright stunning. It’s not brilliant or new, but kids don’t want innovation; it’s their bored parents that need it. All my son really wants to see is some animals doing crazy shit. And if a big fat panda can become a Dragon Warrior, surely I can drag my sorry ass to a Pilates class once a week.

I left the theater yelling “SKATOOSH!” with DinoBoy and the Bug and feeling like a kid again. “Isn’t that the bestest movie ever?” the Bug demanded on the way home, clearly thrilled that his mother had done the unthinkable: changed her mind.

I just shouldn’t have tried that split-kick in the parking lot.

Blargh.

It’s one of those days today. Everyone I know is out of sorts and grumpy and just wants to go back to bed. Maybe it’s the political climate, maybe it’s the non-stop dreary weather (I just heard it might SNOW in Talkeetna tomorrow), or maybe some Divine Other is screwing with us. I don’t know and I don’t care. I just want it to stop.

This morning I got up feeling like my head was about to explode thinking of all the things I have to do. The tub was full of freezing cold water and half a million toy animals from the Bug’s bath last night. Nothing wakes you up in the morning like sticking your hand in icy old bathwater to fish a kimodo dragon out of the drain.

The Bug needs to get his annual check-up for school. I need to call his drum teacher about resuming lessons. The dog needs her prescription filled. The cat kept me awake by meowing all night because his water bowl was empty. The kitchen sink is full of unwashed dishes. The recycling needs its own apartment.

There’s more. A lightbulb in the bedroom is out, and because my husband’s out of town and I can’t reach it myself without a ladder, I got dressed in the dark and came to work wearing a shirt which I thought was black but actually turned out to be purple. And let’s not even talk about my office, which looks like Hurricane Ike made a pit stop in downtown Anchorage.

I know these are petty irritations compared to the larger demons out there in the world, but they all add up to the mental equivalent of a giant hairball. I just want to cough it all out of my brain somehow.

Hack, hack.