Roger gets his space ticket

MAD MEN gets it right again.

As I have written here before, LSD was originally the (legal) property of the drawing room and the elite types who visited psychiatrists, such as Henry and Claire Booth Luce, Cary Grant, RD Laing... and Roger Sterling and his wife Jane. Hippies did not widely partake until the Merry Pranksters decided to go cross-country, playing Johnny Appleseed and distributing it throughout the heartland. And THEN it was made illegal (in 1966), in response to their nefarious scheme to Enlighten the Masses.

In fact, where do you think the first hippies came from? Guys like Roger, transformed. I am curious what will happen to Roger now; the show closed with Roger informing the ever-beleaguered Don Draper, "It's a beautiful day!"

At this point in the show, it is likely Roger will tell Don about his acid-experience and 1) try to get Don to take it, or 2) Don will be sufficiently curious (after hearing Roger's description) to try it himself. And all of that childhood-trauma of Don's? Wow, that will be hairy. Because yes, those traumas really do come back in technicolor, they weren't joking about that. I would compare it to one of those 180-degree photographs, everything momentarily frozen so that you can go back and have a full-look at it, maybe start a conversation with someone else in the frame.

From Entertainment Weekly:

I could write 3,000 words just about what happened after Roger let a sugar cube of psychedelic chemicals dissolve on his tongue. So many of Roger's hallucinations fed right back into his horn-dog Peter Pan syndrome: The half-grey-half-black hair dye ad; the Beach Boys' "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" playing overtop a far older song I couldn't quite place; Roger cackling in the bathtub as the 1919 World Series unfolded in his head. It was a telling detail that Roger imagined Don to be his spiritual guide, but I ad0red so many of the small, silly details, too: The bombastic (possibly Russian?) opera that played after Roger uncorked a bottle of vodka; the cigarette that collapsed like an accordion the moment Roger began smoking it; the five dollar bill with Bert Cooper's face on it...

Although it never happened to me personally, paper-dollars with various faces on them was a pretty common LSD-hallucination. Also, the faces on the bills suddenly talking to you. George Washington talks! (I once got out a dollar-bill, hoping George would say something to me, but I guess money only talks to some people.)

And Roger and Jane finally get real:

Really, though, the long, strange trip was all about stripping away Roger's defenses -- his glib charm, his fragile ego -- and building up Jane's self-assurance and confidence so they could both admit to each other that their marriage was over. As Roger and Jane stared at the ceiling, the truth came gently tumbling out of them: "It's over." Their hostess wasn't Jane's friend, she was her therapist, who thinks Jane has been waiting for Roger to tell her their marriage is over so she won't have to. And although Jane's thought about having an affair, her love for Roger was real. But, Jane added, "I just know for a fact that you did not fall in love."

"So what was wrong again?" asked Roger.

"You don't like me."

"I did. I really did."

And their marriage is done.

~*~

As a lone six-year-old who had somehow blundered into the wrong place and time, I was once cornered in the doorway of an empty house by a cluster of (white female) teenage bullies. They had backed me into the proverbial corner and were slapping me, grabbing hair, kicking... all while laughing and laughing. I knew it was just the warm-up, because they were having too much fun. I was sick with fear.

I tried to say something cute, be charming or polite, all the things that had ever worked in the past; like a dog that rolls over and suddenly shows its underbelly in a fight, I was hollering uncle in a hundred ways. They correctly read my body-language of surrender and were emboldened and maliciously overjoyed by it, like a pack of wolves, circling. Exactly like that.

I turned, cupped my hand and peered through the small window on the door. "There's nobody in there," one said, threateningly. The words echoed and echoed through my psyche, and I could never remember what happened directly after. My mother said they had beaten me, but I could not remember it. Approaching that moment in my memory had always frightened me, more than the threat of nuclear weapons, more than drowning, more than snakes. I shut it down, pushed it back, thought of something else.

We all do this, and so do you.

But LSD goes straight for the house that has nobody inside (when it should have), straight for that thing you have repressed. And it can go several ways, from what I am told. But for me?

I was transported back to the sidewalk in front of the house (which I had passed many times) and saw the girls on the porch, who suddenly seemed so young. My goodness, I thought, they are only 14 or 15, aren't they? They aren't giants. They aren't adults. And as I ascended the porch stairs, one by one, they disappeared. I could never remember their faces anyway, but this made it official: they really did not exist any more. They were phantoms that had chased me. I realized, these girls had since grown up. I turned to one, just as she vanished, and asked her if she remembered. "Do you remember this?" I asked her.

She wrinkled her brow and shook her head, no. She was the blonde one, and she was the last to vanish.

I then saw my little six-year-old self, who had been beaten. I was wearing the same clothes I always remembered wearing. They had ripped my favorite shirt, with multicolored pockets on the front. I knew my grandmother (who had bought it for me) would be mad. I hoped she wouldn't be mad at me for straying too far from home, but of course, beaten or not, I thought she would be.

And then, the adult me embraced the six-year-old me. The little-me wept, while I soothed and comforted this little girl (me and not-me, all at once) and told her how strong she was for enduring this. I told her it would make her tough from this point onward, and as I said this, I realized: it had.

I told her everything would be okay, and she would grow up and the girls would vanish. Look, I said, they are gone already. I gestured, and showed her/me, that they were gone.

"They ARE gone!" the six-year-old me said, smiling through tears. Yes, they are.

And they were.

They never came back.

Here's hoping Roger fares as well. And Don, with his ghosts. They might vanish or they might return and kick his ass. It's all up to him.

Be nice to your old self; be charitable and kind to the younger-you. After all, you did the best you could.

Ben Masel 1954-2011

Lots of other people have memorialized Ben Masel, most of them far better writers than I am. But I was unsatisfied. There is a word missing in these obituaries, from Daily Kos, to NORML, to TalkLeft and everyone in between.

That word is YIPPIE.

Ben was a YIPPIE.

Why are the lefty honchos avoiding the word in the obits? Because the "serious" leftists never liked us, that's why. But they loved Ben, who was extremely lovable. So, they avoid the word. It's their way of being polite.

Ben would say, hey, you gonna mention that I was a Yippie?

I can hear him now. And my reply to him, is to write this.

He sure was. He was THE Yippie.

~*~

At times like this, I wish I had a scanner, and I wish I was more organized. Somewhere in all the detritus, I have several photos of Ben, including one of us together on a skanky old couch, looking particularly wide-eyed and paranoid. This photo has someone's thumb in the corner of it, and I remember: peyote and lots of it. We are looking at the camera, but not really. I was wearing a Jeff Beck t-shirt, and Ben is holding a cigarette. (Now that we know his cause of death was lung cancer, I dearly wish he wasn't holding it.)

Ben looked exactly like Cat Stevens when he was young, and I had a ferocious crush on him. He was witty as the dickens, and I loved provoking him to see what kinds of funny things he would say.

I have a couple of Ben-stories to add to the collection.

The first one involves an endless journey, and I am not quite sure where it began and ended, but it took us through most of the Midwest, Madison and on into the Dakotas, to the Black Hills Alliance Survival Gathering in 1979. I do remember a van breaking down in the dead of night, leaving us stranded in what seemed like a vacant moonscape, as we had just left the Badlands. We walked or hitchhiked (a little of both?) to the rest area, which was designed as a giant cement teepee, appearing quite formidable from a distance.

After using the restroom, I come out of the giant cement teepee, and some clean-cut fellow approaches me out of nowhere. "Hey!" says this strange person good-naturedly, "Ben is already in the van!" The van? Which van? And so I follow the stranger to a gleaming new van with Missouri plates, where Ben is already sitting in the passenger seat, holding forth, talking to the other passengers about the Black Hills Alliance.

Okay, what!? Who are these people?

So, I go ahead and get in (glad they weren't serial killers or anything), and it comes together: these are friends of Ben's. Well, of course they are. But... damn, in the middle of South Dakota? He has friends at a rest stop in the middle of South Dakota????!!!

Yes, he did. Ben had friends everywhere, all over the place. When I told other Yippies this story, they just shrugged: "Ben knows everybody." And I think of all the other people I've known who supposedly "knew everybody"--and it usually meant they only knew a lot of people. I can't imagine them getting picked up by strangers at a rest stop in God-knows-where.

But Ben knew everybody. I mean, he really did.

~*~

Unfortunately, my next story is somewhat garbled, since the two principals are no longer with us.

I can't remember who was in jail, Steve Conliff or Ben. This was during the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in 1976, and one of the two (often known as the Glimmer Twins in Yippie parlance) was in jail for some silly traffic violation (and probable possession of marijuana) in Raytown, Missouri. If memory serves, it was Ben who was in jail, while Conliff took to local talk radio to threaten to bring a thousand Yippies to Raytown, to spring Ben. (Of course, there were never "a thousand Yippies"--which was the inside joke.)

"We aren't gonna let a punk town like Raytown get away with this!" Conliff bellowed over the airwaves.

And so, magically, the authorities let Ben go. That afternoon. And they specifically told him to tell his friend on the radio: "This is not a PUNK town!"

Ben assured them he would pass the word along. He then repeated the charge later that night to a reporter for the Kansas City Star: "I got busted last night in some punk town called RAYTOWN!" he pointedly said.

They quoted him, too.

~*~

A young photo of Ben; I told you he looked just like Cat Stevens!



And finally, THIS colorful and insane event, the Republican National Convention in 1980 in Detroit, wherein Ben was busted and Conliff miraculously avoided detection by shaving his head.

In the Detroit courtroom where about a dozen Yippies were arraigned, one Yippie was given 10 days for contempt of court. Ben spoke up: "Your honor, you have to give me 20 days, because I have twice as much contempt for your court as she has!"

They obliged.

Ben went to jail a lot, and sued them all later for arresting him. He won, too, frequently joking that it was a good living if you could wait forever to get paid.

~*~

This is the obit that gets quoted here on DEAD AIR, since it dares to use the dreaded word YIPPIE:

"Ben knew the laws better than the police did," explained his longtime friend Amy Gros-Louis, echoing a sentiment shared by judges, lawyers and the many police officers who came to regard Masel with a mix of frustration, awe and, eventually, respect.

So it was with Masel, whose death Saturday at age 56 robbed Madison, Wisconsin and the United States of one of the truest champions of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the founding faith that the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights are not just ideals; they are practical tools to be used on a daily basis to challenge the powerful, to offend the elites, to tip the balance toward some rough equivalent of justice.

These commitments made Masel a supreme annoyance to prickly policemen, prying prosecutors and pretenders to the presidency. Before he reached the age of 18, Masel made it onto the list of Nixon White House enemies, and he would later earn national headlines for mocking segregationist George Wallace and spitting at conservative Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who earned the wrath of Masel and his Yippie compatriots for his steady service to the military-industrial complex.

In later years, the exuberant agitator would express a measure of remorse for some of the more extreme acts of his youth. But he never apologized for exercising every right afforded a citizen.

No one pushed harder against the limits on dissent in what was supposed to be a free society. That pushing earned him dozens of court dates. But Bennett Masel, the New Jersey native who came to Madison as a UW undergrad and remained to become a local icon, was never merely a provocateur. He was, for all the theatrics, a serious believer in a left-libertarian analysis of the individual liberty that lawyers and judges came to understand as a credible extension of the thinking of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the longest-serving justice on the high court and a hero to 1970s radicals such as Masel.

Goodbye Ben, and thank you for teaching me to be a Yippie. It was the major lesson in civil disobedience that I never forgot.

~*~

More:

Ben Masel, an activist's activist

Activists and Visionarys

Ben Masel - Professional Activist

Ain't this boogie a mess?

I need some soundtrack to getting tarred and feathered over at Womanist Musings. Comments welcome, here or there.

I am told there is something... off... about the language of my post, according to one gentleman-commenter. I told him, it is likely because I use the language of his mother, rather than his friends.

And a story from the 70s gets translated into a story from NOW, and found weirdly wanting. Well, that was then and this is now, could be why. (I am very, very weary of today's standards being applied to the past. Yes, we all know better now, but that was not the point of the story.)

(sigh)

See, this is why I am so reluctant to guest-blog. HERE at DEAD AIR, yall know I am an old hippie, and I am not taken to task for calling someone ELSE a hippie. Jesus H.

If I recount a story from the 70s, some of yall can even REMEMBER the 70s. ;)

Anyway, speaking of old hippies, Frank on Friday to the rescue! What would I do without this show, centering me every Friday at noon?

This one contains one of those incomparable Zappa guitar solos... and of course, Frank's famous dissertation on the meaning of the apostrophe, containing today's blog post title. (It sure is!)

Frank Zappa - Stinkfoot

Review: The Labrys Reunion by Terry Wolverton

I had put off reading and reviewing The Labrys Reunion because I knew it was gonna get to me, big time. Flipping idly through the novel, I could see that Wolverton was attempting an authentic examination (even if in a fictional setting) of some of the tensions between second and third wave feminists, as well as a thoughtful look back at the halcyon days of the feminist movement; a time of collectives, feminist theory, direct action, brainstorming and art like The Dinner Party.

Ohhhh goodness mercy, I thought. Am I ready for this?

I wasn't.

And then, a few days ago (see humongous, unpleasant thread of a few days ago, not linking), I found myself in the mood. There I was, wondering (once again) what the hell had happened to feminism and why so many women are scared to identify with the word, or even worse, show actual hostility to the label.

I experience this phenomenon, always, as my hard work being rejected, all while the younger women benefiting from my work take full advantage of it. (I always want to say something exceptionally snarky, like--Next time, hope they make you ask your hubby's permission before you get a credit card!) They really have NO IDEA, I figured out some time ago. Civil Rights pioneers are frequently honored for their prescience; feminist pioneers are mostly shit on.

And this is one way we know how far we have to go.

I grabbed the book on my way out the door to get my car worked on this week--which is usually a several-hour affair. It was, and I buried myself in Wolverton's story, devouring it in one sitting. After being tarred and feathered by other women, I was in the perfect mood for it.

Loved it.

Yeah, she is telling our story, straight up. For example, this paragraph, which nobody could ever improve upon:

The antiwar movement was riddled with factions, but it was in the women's movement that she'd seen hand-to-hand combat. Down south, in that summer of 1965, no one had called her racist, because the pernicious face of racism had been only too clear, but at Labrys, white women who'd organized nothing more than their plane trips to get there felt free to level that charge against her. "Racist" because there were so few women of color at Labrys; "classist" because it cost money to go there; "anti-mother" because the child care facilities were seen as inadequate; "exploitative" because the child-care workers felt underpaid; "oppressive" whenever she took a stand that someone didn't like. It wasn't that she hadn't agreed with some of the charges; there was no more unanimity within the organizing collective than outside it. But how had the original purpose of Labrys--to train women in the skills of political organizing--become obliterated by the expectation that in the span of eight weeks Labrys would create a feminist utopia?

Indeed, what were we thinking?

Wolverton has reminded me.

In the story, Labrys was a 70s feminist school/collective, which could stand in for all of the feminist collectives that exploded into life during the 70s. Mine were radical feminist newspapers (which I mentioned here) and ostensibly feminist communes/households (and I briefly mentioned getting kicked out of mine here) ... for some feminists, there were dance collectives, music collectives, art collectives, teaching collectives, writer's workshops, you name it. Wolverton brings it all back. (What happened to all of that? Did all of us morph into feminist bloggers or Hillary Clinton?)

The Labrys women's "reunion" is somewhat contrived: someone has died. (NOTE: "The Big Chill" has already been done.) One of the feminist-powerhouse types has lost her daughter, a feminist-artist protege, to rape and murder. The women return in "reunion" mode to support her during this difficult time:

She'd wanted witnesses. She hadn't been able to live with the idea that her daughter's death might go unnoticed, unmourned, that Emma might pass from this world as if she'd never been. That's why, Dana reminded herself, she'd invited all these people. That's why she found herself sitting with them after all these years in a loft on the Lower East Side.

In her acknowledgments, Wolverton admits that Charlotte Sheedy told her to "put a murder in it"--and unfortunately, it does read that way, like a murder was DROPPED into the story. I would have preferred a setting like the Democratic convention, or some other progressive event where the women might have run into each other, then set up a "reunion party" of sorts. But of course, this would not have the purpose of bringing the most radical women into the story-setting, which helps to provide the fireworks.

Those of you who saw my recent Feministing comment (I do not know how to link to just one comment in a big long-ass thread, she admitted, embarrassed)--in which I became angry when a young woman wrote off GIRDLES as no big feminist issue (and I wonder how many times she had her young body crushed by one?)--will appreciate how much I identified with the older character of Peg, who rips young Kendra a new one when Kendra haughtily instructs Peg to "move on":

"You think because you're twenty-four years old you know everything?" Peg spat the words into the girl's sneer. "What do you know? Nothing! Your generation got liberation handed to you on a platter--choices, opportunities, lifestyles. When I was your age there was just one choice--marriage and motherhood, that was it. And if you didn't want that, if you had a brain and wanted your independence, you were a freak, and it was too damn bad."

Pouches of flesh swayed beneath her arms as she translated her rage into gesture. "The happiest day of my life was the day I threw away my girdle. Twenty years I wore it, every day, even if all I was doing was cleaning the house. My mother told me it was indecent not to wear it. And now I open up the pages of the newspaper, and once again they're being sold to women. 'Bodyshapers!' It's like we're going back in time!"

She hovered in front of Kendra's chair, commanding the young woman's eyes to meet hers. "And your generation says, 'What's the big deal? If we wanna wear girdles or push-up bras or lipstick--we're free to choose.' How am I supposed to feel when you celebrate the things that kept me in slavery? You spit on the symbols of my liberation! And then you tell me I'm humorless."

As determined as Kendra had been to keep the defiant smirk plastered to her lips, she could no longer maintain it in the face of Peg's outraged lamentation. She could not recall ever having felt so fervently about anything, and she felt a bit embarrassed for the older woman at the same time as she envied that intensity.

Oh wow. Ohhhh my goodness! Wolverton has been picking through my idle thoughts; how did she DO that?

And just when you think she can't get any more accurate, holy shit, she has one of them going to AA.

The sizable feminist defection to AA/NA (Narcotics Anonymous) in the 80s, was remarked upon in several feminist books, as well as (see link above) the once-indispensable Off Our Backs, but has otherwise been mostly forgotten. Wolverton, again, reminds us--and she is dead-on:

One hundred voices were already midway through the Serenity Prayer as she clattered down the steps into the musty basement that housed the AA meeting. A cluttered room crowded with folding chairs under the greenish glare of fluorescent bulbs: it felt like home.

[...]

The room held an assortment of people who would come together for no other reason: men in exquisitely tailored suits sat elbow to elbow with punk girls in skull earrings and black tights full of runs. Women with elaborate coiffures and perfect aerobicized figures applauded the stories of grizzled guys with trembling hands.

There, no one cared what she looked like, if her hair was lank with rain, her shoes waterlogged. No one judged if her politics were imperfect, or what the Senator from North Carolina thought of her artwork. No one minded how crazy or scared she felt--they'd all been there.

[...]

When Gwen had first come into these rooms, she'd fought so hard against the notion of being "powerless." She had already been a feminist for a decade, had dedicated herself to overturning women's conditioned and enforced passivity and helplessness. She remembered speaking up at one meeting early on, "I am goddamn well not going to admit that I am powerless. And don't even get me started on that God 'he' thing!" She'd had enough youth and enough arrogance to think she would bring the feminist revolution to AA. Everyone had just smiled and urged her to "keep coming back," which only pissed Gwen off more.

But she had kept coming back because she'd grown tired of waking up every morning with her eyeballs aching; she didn't know how else to stop drinking. It took her more than a year to understand that "powerless" didn't mean defenseless and victimized, but was a recognition that there were things that she could not control or will away.

These are the perfect tiny snapshots and vignettes that make this book worthwhile and wonderful. I don't want to ruin the "mystery" of the murder-plot--but it is interesting (while not entirely unexpected). As always, the women argue all through the novel, validating and not-validating each other. As feminists always have.

Don't miss this one, particularly all you feminists over 40. Certainly, one of these carefully-and-lovingly-drawn heroines is you.

The Labrys Reunion by Terry Wolverton, Spinsters Ink, 235 pp.

~*~

Note: This review is dedicated to the feminist who saved my life, Kathy. I wish she could have read it... I kept thinking how much she would have enjoyed it.

I miss you so much, dear one.

My radical history, continued

Photo of the first-year commemoration of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Your humble narrator is at the top right of the photo. The guy in the white shirt standing next to me is Mike Gruber, and I think the guy in the hat was David Breithaupt. I regret to say the names of the other activists have since fizzled in my memory.

If you can read the teeny-tiny print, you know that we stood out there from 3:15am until 3:56am, which was the exact time of the accident. I mostly remember the eerie quiet around the Ohio Statehouse at that hour of the early morning.

In Every Dream Home a Heartache

My Sacred Heart of Jesus vigil candle is from my Flickr page.





Redemptorists? Did they say Redemptorists?

Watching Ted Kennedy's funeral, with all the ex-Presidents and Obama and Michelle and everybody else in attendance, I heard the priest announce that the Church they are in, the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, is run by the Redemptorists. That is to say, the order founded by one St Alphonsus de Liguori, an Opus Dei pin-up, major dogmatic hard-ass and Doctor of the Church, who is probably spinning madly in his grave.

I suddenly get a flash of one of Fellini's priests, reaching through the flimsy confessional screen and whacking young Teddy in disdain: You're a bad, bad boy, Ted Kennedy! (Yes, the priests in my Fellini fantasy have Irish accents, which I realize doesn't quite mesh, but they all acted the same: WHACK, upside the head.)

Again, rules are suspended for some people and not others.

I've been thinking about the matter of Ted, and similar men, who are littered throughout the Left and the Democratic Party. Men who do "the right thing" politically, yet abuse women and treat them like their personal blow-up dolls.*

I realize that Ted Kennedy's death has 'triggered' me, as the young bloggers say, and I am reacting to all the guys I have known throughout my life, who have been good political comrades, but also: constantly cheated on their partners; beat their wives (then usually known as the more benevolent "smacking around"); told women to shut up or called them stupid in meetings; would not pay child support; sexually harassed women with whom they worked on political events and campaigns; rewarded women who slept with them with high positions of authority, etc etc etc. And yet, we would rarely challenge these men, because they were savvy enough to do the right thing politically, even heroically. These men would stand up to even more dangerous men, men who would deny women's rights.

The juxtaposition of these men would sometimes make me dizzy --which one is the good guy?--I once thought, as I saw two local politicos debating on TV. The lefty, named Eric, had once physically-shaken me very hard (as you would a toddler) during a heated conversation. To make it worse, the supposedly-feminist lefties who witnessed this act, including my first husband, obediently stated that Eric was "out of line"--but of course, would not confront him or tell him his actions were violent. And there he was on TV, Mr Peacenik! (FUCK YOU, I thought.)

But the guy he was debating on TV? One of those "Drop the bomb and let God sort em out!" kinda Republicans that grow like corn in the Midwest. Certainly, I knew Eric was better... wasn't he? Wasn't he?

I realized, watching Eric run his arrogant mouth on TV, that I didn't know how the right-winger treated his wife. And he might be nicer to women in his personal life and one-to-one interactions, than Eric was. The thought crept into my head without my consent, shocking me.

If the personal is political, I thought, shouldn't that matter?

I thought of this yet again when video clips of Kennedy's speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention were shown on CNN the other night. The speech included the now-famous "Where was George?" refrain (referring to Bush senior). Blah blah blah happened, and WHERE WAS GEORGE? Blah blah blah happened, and WHERE WAS GEORGE? They keep showing it, to show what a great fighter Teddy was.

Am I the only one who remembers George Bush Senior's response to that question, which he delivered at the Republican Convention the following month?

"Where was George? In bed with his wife!" --he said, to Republican cheers and screams.

I am pretty sure a woman, Peggy Noonan, wrote that line.


~*~

My other posts on Ted Kennedy are here: Mary Jo Kopechne 1940-1969 and More on Ted Kennedy.

...

* And when I think of blow-up dolls, I think of the Roxy Music song that is the title of this post. I wish Lester Bangs had not been so nasty to Bryan Ferry, but yes, that's another post.

Desperately trying to learn not to DIGRESS so badly...

In Every Dream Home a Heartache - Roxy Music

Eighth Annual California Wildflower Show poster

This is a poster from 1977, which I look at every day, in my spare room. As you all know, I love flowers, and I find the mandala of flowers to be very calming, comforting and centering.

I don't know who made the poster. There is no credit. Down in the lower right-hand corner, it has a logo of a waterfall that says (upon close inspection) "Conserve Water"... but that's it.

The California Wildflower Show is still happening every year at the Oakland museum, now in its 40th year. We have the internet now and no need for mad-postering all over town, which was one way some of us picked up a few bucks.

I often wonder who designed the lovely poster that is part of my daily life, and if they even remember making it.

We forget the tasks we perform, the creative projects we are part of, the various things we make, craft and write. As I approach my 52nd year, I am stunned by all I have done, and yet I also worry it will all be forgotten. As I search online for old photos of pop-culture events and political demonstrations, I have a hard time finding them. So much of history, before the net, is simply forgotten. And now, with the advent of the net, we are threatened with a veritable deluge of ephemera and drivel, drowning out the important news, the crucial history.

I find myself deliberating about this stuff more and more as I age, particularly when I blog about the past.

And then, I see the poster.

The person who made this poster probably does not remember making it, or perhaps only thinks of it now and then... but it is part of my daily life. Their consciousness, their artistic vision and work, is part of my home.

What have I done, what have I said, that is now part of someone else's daily life? And I would never know it. A photo, a gift, a kind word, a wrong word? Maybe something I wrote a long time ago and cannot even recall now. Maybe a comment in an AA meeting that I addressed to them, or something I wrote in an online debate.

The poster reminds me that there is so much we leave behind. Beauty AND ugliness.

It is a good reason to remember, always, the line from Plato: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Or as Bill and Ted said: Be excellent to each other.

(And as always, keep making pretty things. Preferably with flowers.)

Stubborn old goats

No matter what I did, they resolutely refused to look at the camera.




My post on women going shirtless got major hits from Reddit, StumbleUpon and other link-sites. I think I hit a nerve, particularly in this kind of heat.

This also means, if I may borrow a line from Rancid: And out come the wolves. Trolls, trolls, everywhere. As I've said before, I used to be jealous of the Big Bloggers, until I fully understood what-all they have to put up with. Yech.

Highly amusing was watching the anti-feminist trolls try to figure out what they should be fussing about. Ordinarily, men are lusting for women to be naked, so....what exactly is the issue? Unfortunately, the thread's Head Troll has deleted all of his convoluted comments in a huff, or you could chortle at the logic: We shouldn't be showing our breasts because.... men like breasts. In other words, they might see some breasts they don't like! Another fascinating argument was all about hard-ons: Men have involuntary reactions to breasts! And of course, this means women should live their lives to make men's penises more comfortable at all times. When they want hard-ons, we should be stripping. When they don't, we shouldn't.

That seems easy enough to figure out, huh?

Meanwhile, let's hope some hearty gals out there start organizing some shirtless-days for women... as several posters noted on Reddit, they can't arrest everyone. This is the same way women started wearing pants: en masse. The only way.

It was the 8th grade. The note was passed: JEANS ON FRIDAY. That was all it said. We all knew, yes. Jeans on Friday. Only a couple of goodie-goodies primly preferred to continue "dressing as ladies"--although I noticed that a few years later, they were wearing jeans with the rest of us.

And so, we wore the jeans on Friday. Fat, thin, middle-class and poor. Rich jeans, poor jeans. And I remember that day very well, because all the girls grinned at each other: haha, look at us!

We just kept wearing them. We didn't stop.

About a month later, an official school announcement was read: Girls can wear pants now! We laughed our blue-jean-clad butts off; we were already wearing them! And then we learned something important (also applicable to laws like jay-walking and pot-smoking): Your "law" means shit if nobody follows it. [1]

We might do the same with the laws governing the exposure of women's chests. Can they arrest hundreds of women on a beach at the same time?

Actually, that might turn into quite a party!

~*~

Speaking of pot-smoking, the New York Times ran a big Reefer Madness pot addiction story last week. We were even warned that legal ganja would result in a rise in "fatalities"--and silly me, I wasn't aware there was ever ONE fatality from marijuana-overdose in the entire history of the known world.

For those of us who know from addiction, the NYT article was like the proverbial fun-house mirror, as they offered the example of someone who kept a residence, job and dog for 20 years as an "addict"... say what?

Can somebody say raise the bar?

One of the problems with AA turning everybody into an alcoholic in the late 80s (no, everyone isn't, even if you were barfing into the toilet a few more times than you intended), is this kind of nonsense. Addiction is something very specific, and there are signposts. When you are homeless (I was), can't keep a job (I couldn't), systematically drive away everyone who cares about you (I did), start getting sick all the time (oh dear God)--then you got trouble. [2]

Just being extremely bummed out? No. That is called depression, and self-medicating is a symptom.

I have no college degree and nevertheless, I understand this distinction. As they say, it isn't rocket science.

What it is: AA was colonized by the middle classes in the late 80s/early 90s. In these suburban enclaves, if someone dared to speak honestly about something like sleeping in their car for months at a time, or jacking mama's last 3 bucks, the middle-class, still-gainfully-employed types would shift uncomfortably in their seats. [3] If you wanted gritty reality, you had to go to the meetings with names like Darkness on the Edge of Town (apologies to The Boss). Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-Steps became transformed into a lifestyle-thing, rather like eating organic.

For some reason, the 12-Steps seemed tailor-made for the narcissism of the affluent. They jumped into the process with aplomb, as if it was psychoanalysis. And in the meantime, you couldn't get a genuine addict or alcoholic to even read the 12-Steps out loud without pausing to argue with you about them.

And the 12-Steps changed, and AA changed... and someday, I will attempt to grapple with the whole subject, and my feelings about that. And why I stopped being an active member, as my beloved late sponsor also did (for religious reasons of her own).

I heartily recommend Elayne Rapping's book, The Culture of Recovery, Making Sense of the Self-Help Movement in Women's Lives, a feminist reading of this whole phenomenon. And I hope to revisit the topic at a future date.

~*~



[1] William F Buckley was (believe it or not) in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana for that reason. He believed marijuana laws turned regular, law-abiding people into criminals. He said law served people, people do not serve law, and if a majority of people want pot, keeping it illegal eroded respect for authority and law. (Ya think?)

[2] Notice the very dramatic addiction-themed TV show Intervention doesn't bother with "marijuana addicts"--which as one of my friends said, would consist of an entire hour of potheads watching TV and eating bags of Cheetos. (The "intervention" would be someone's kids complaining that they had to change the kitty litter: Do you ever think of MY feelings?!?)

Not exactly cutting-edge reality TV. And the proof is in the pudding.

[3] An AA friend once told me about attending a "rich" AA meeting in Hollywood. One woman's idea of "hitting rock bottom" was the day she was forced to take the kids to McDonalds for supper. (People shook their heads, wow, that is terrible.)

Lord have mercy, can you believe anybody would FALL SO FAR?

Women should have the right to be shirtless!

Photo of topless men from Legal Juice.[1]





I saw what I initially believed was a topless old woman walking a dog outside the apartment building across the way... Looking closely, I saw that the person was bald. But still, mincing along in his pajama bottoms, waiting for the dog to poop, you could clearly see that he had breasts. Like, pretty big ones. It is impossible to guess his age, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were over 80 or so.

Shouldn't he cover his boobs? Oh wait, he's a man, so he is allowed to have big old naked boobs.

So, why can't I?

~*~

I used to write for an alternative youth newspaper called Subversive Scholastic, and one of my first diatribes for said publication was all about how women are not legally allowed to go shirtless and men are. It still infuriates me, decades after I first wrote that.

It is one of the most sexist cultural conventions IN THE WORLD.

Women's breasts, originally intended to nourish babies, are greatly fetishized by men. In a patriarchal culture, this makes them sacrosanct, so they must be covered up as something dirty. Dirty = arousing to men. (Men's chests might be similarly arousing to women, but in a patriarchal culture, what is arousing to women is regarded as being of no real importance unless it suits male fantasy.)

Of course, as fetishized objects, boobs must also be made into ornaments (just like cars, also fetishized by men). So, they are primped and prodded, alternately bound and pumped up, displayed like prize ponies. Even if you don't want to. (Have you tried to buy a non-wire bra recently that didn't look like a Playtex Cross-your-heart? Good luck with that.)

When I first wrote the Subversive Scholastic essay, I got a lot of reactions from males who said, basically: You wanna take off your shirt? Hey alriiiight! Do it, babeeeeeee!

No, no and no.

If I should take off my shirt, I want you to be as lackadaisical about that as if your best male friend took off his shirt. Are you saying Hey alriiiight! to your best male friend and encouraging him to take off his shirt? Then I don't want that either. Optimally, it would be nice if you didn't even NOTICE.

Hey, says authoritative male voice, you can't expect guys not to even notice, okay?

Question: Do women act like asses when men shed their tops? You know, we might be as excited about that as you are, has that ever occurred to you? But we have learned to behave ourselves. I am utterly confident that men could learn the same, if expected to.

~*~

Now that I am older, I realize there is another reason women won't shed their tops. Not just a dislike of salaciousness, but a genuine fear of male ridicule. As I watched my old neighbor waiting good-naturedly for his dog to pee, I realized that he has never had that fear, and of course, does not have it now. He has boobs and doesn't care. By contrast, I would now be too afraid to take my shirt off, even if my boobs look better than his. Mine would be considered far more offensive that his [2] even though his are more unexpected and startling (and many would say unattractive and/or grotesque), since he is a man. I would still get arrested, and yet he is allowed to walk outside in the stifling heat, topless, without comment.

It's not fair.

But what would the world be like if the law were changed and women could go topless? Would only attractive women take advantage of this, as seems to be the case on various topless and/or nude beaches? Because if so, that will mean nothing... only when the whole group of us, every single one, takes off the shirt simultaneously, from 15 to 100 years of age, all colors, all body types, the fattest and the skinniest and the disabled and the one-breasted and former-breasted and everything in between... just like the men... only then will we be free of this SEXIST, FETISHIZING BULLSHIT, that keeps our sweaty boobies swathed in fabric as we swelter in 90 degree heat and pine for the sensation of ice-cold chlorinated pool-water on our nipples. Nobody should pay any damn attention... but of course, they do, we do, and it seems an impossible Daisy-dream, one I've had since I was a mere kid, back when I had pretty, perky boobs. Now, I am old, and mine tend to look like the dog-walking neighbor, but you know what? I feel the same. I still want it. I still want the freedom. Nothing has changed.

And I repeat, nothing has changed. We are still covering up them all-sacred titties.

I keep hearing we live in a post-feminist society, blah blah blah. And yet, one gender can shed fully half of their clothes outside, while another doesn't have that right, enshrined by LAW. All because one gender is the subject, while the second is the object; one gender makes the rules and defines the sensibility, while the other must live by those standards. [3]

...


[1] Ironically, Legal Juice (the blog I got this graphic from) mentions the fact that the town of Easton, Maryland, has made it illegal for any person (including men, children and babies) to go topless. This was considered weird enough to rate comment.

[2] Looking for graphics for this post, I found one guys' insulting, indignant blog post titled "Why do fat old women go topless?" Apparently, it has never once occurred to this fellow that we might do this for ourselves, and not for him or other men. God forbid! (Imagine the title "Why do fat old men go topless?")

[3] Paraphrasing Simone de Beauvoir.

[4] Nikki Craft and other radical feminists briefly took up this call in the 80s, but later abandoned it due to increasing co-optation by various unsavory profiteers. Craft was arrested in June 1986 in Rochester, NY, as one of the Rochester Topfree Seven. Interviewed later in Off Our Backs, I can still remember Craft's correction of a male reporter's coverage of the event, about "the right of women to appear topless"; Craft said she was supporting the right of women to BE topless, not to APPEAR topless, and to note the difference.

And I always have.

Surfwise

Interesting that this illustration gives Dorian a big heart and I didn't see him that way at all.



I just saw Surfwise (2007), a documentary about Dorian Paskowitz, who raised 9 children in decidedly gonzo fashion, traveling around the coasts of the Western Hemisphere and constantly surfing, surfing, surfing. Even the littlest babies surfed. They did not attend school. They lived on the barest essentials. I was amazed. From the New York Times review:

There are many different ways to drop off the grid, but few dropped off with such style and urgency as Dorian Paskowitz, the paterfamilias of what is lovingly and at times enviably described as the first family of surfing. It was an intensity in part born of his passionately felt engagement with history as a Jew, which took him from Stanford Medical School in the 1940s to button-down respectability in the 1950s and, thereafter, on the road and into the blue yonder with a devoted wife, nine children, a succession of battered campers and the surfboards that were by turns the family’s cradles, playpens, lifelines and shields.

The button-down 50s did not suit Dorian, and he rebelled with a fury. The term bohemian barely covers the incredible Paskowitz family lifestyle:

Once Doc’s origin story has been told (the movie says he introduced surfing to Israel), the story moves into its most fascinating phase, namely that stretch in the 1960s and ’70s when he and his wife, Juliette, a Mexican-American looker with an apparently sturdy constitution, raised, with next to no money, eight boys and one girl — David, Jonathan, Abraham, Israel, Moses, Adam, Salvador Daniel, Navah and Joshua — in a 24-foot camper. A few family members repeat the number 24 as if they still can’t believe it; I’m more wowed by the number 9.

Doc, one of his sons explains with a mirthless laugh, was trying to repopulate the world with Jews. Certainly Doc’s sense of himself as a Jew who had escaped the Holocaust only by an accident of birth, by growing up in Southern California, hit him hard and kept hitting him. After two unhappy marriages and an unsatisfying professional stint in Hawaii, where he had settled after Stanford, Doc shed his worldly belongings and old ways, discovered the joys of sex (he’s hilariously ribald on the specifics of that joy) and dedicated himself to uncompromised, uncompromising freedom, embracing the road like Jack Kerouac, one difference being that this dharma bum had a ready-made commune. He fled the greater world, creating a smaller, manageable one in its place.

For a time, the world Doc made fit neatly into that 24-foot camper. Nut brown and slender, the Paskowitz children were beautiful, ideal subjects for an exhilarating, persuasively liberating experiment. But they were also somewhat like lab rats, given to little nips that, in time, as childish energy morphed into adolescent aggression, evolved into violence bordering on the pathological. “I loved supporting the Reich,” says David, the eldest son, who became the captain in an increasingly authoritarian regime. David’s choice of words is pretty startling, particularly given that this is an observant Jewish family.

Indeed, Dorian ruled the family with an iron hand, and it is fairly obvious that no dissent was permitted. His treatment of Juliette enraged me. Like many hippies of the day, Dorian would drive and drive and drive until a locale "felt right"--Juliette's input was not sought or required. She was pregnant and/or breastfeeding, she said, for 10 solid years. "I've blocked a lot of it out," she reports. I would imagine so.

Juliette was not an active part of the surfing fun, the whole raison d'être for the family lifestyle. Instead, she kept the whole enterprise going; the cooking, the cleaning, the continuous and non-stop settling of endless squabbling in a family of 8 boys (all intensely competitive for the attention of Dorian) and 1 girl... all huddled into the now-legendary 24-foot camper.

The children slept, apparently, stacked like cordwood. Their father and mother had sex every night and the kids saw everything (one remarks "and they weren't quiet!") Early in the movie, Dorian tells us straight-faced that his life changed when he learned how to eat pussy. He then went scouting for a woman to match his high sexual appetites, grading them as in a final exam. Juliette registered an admirable 93% and he told her, you will be the mother of my seven sons.

The kids lived on gruel, as in OLIVER TWIST, but they were mostly in excellent health, which was sheer luck. There was one nasty surfing accident that befell one son and his recovery took a whole year. (It isn't very clear from the film, but I think he was left behind while the others moved on.) And there were countless other surfing-related scrapes and nasty-knocks-on-the-head, but the kids quickly adapted and learned to roll with it.

I came away from the movie remembering various rural communes and back-to-the-land experiments I visited in my youth... always upset because it seemed to me that their much-coveted, newly found "freedom" always belonged to men, and women were more enslaved that ever before. (Washing machines, after all, helped women, not men.) Consequently, whenever I hear about men deciding to jettison 'modern conveniences'--I reach for my gun.

It's interesting that a vehicle is never one of those things they choose to do without... and they will invariably be the one driving it, too.

Check out the movie for an interesting look at a fascinating family.

~*~

Trailer--

They call it Stormy Monday...

...but Tuesday's just as bad.

Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's oh so sad.

It's storming, and these are my favorite stormy songs.

First, Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan in Hamilton, Ontario, recorded on December 6, 1983. (The song was originally written by T-Bone Walker.) Some of the video isn't quite synchronized to the action, but honestly, does anyone care?

Awesomeness.

~*~

Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan - Stormy Monday



I first heard this version of STORMY when I was down and out on the West Coast...and it got me through a whole month, in which I played it virtually non-stop, even as I got evicted from my commune.

Yes, someday I will tell the whole story, but I don't fare so well in the telling. ;)

This will probably get pulled by the evilllll powers-that-be (yes, I'm lookin at you, Warner Music Group!) --so have a listen now. The vocals were swapped out constantly on old Santana records, so I am sorry to say I have no idea which singer this is, but he's fabulous.

But it's Carlos who really cooks, and takes us into some special, safe place where the storms can't touch us.

Santana - Stormy

My radical history, continued

I am in the photo on the right, wearing a hat labeled "Reagan for Shah"--which was the forerunner of the Berkeley guerilla-theatre/radical comedy troupe "Ladies Against Women"... it was given to me personally by Mr A. Tad Slick, one of the founders of the troupe, when we protested at the Republican convention in Detroit in 1980. The person in the photo with me is Patrick Thornton, now a male midwife. I don't know if he wants to be identified as standing next to me, playing a kazoo, but there it is. (HI PAT!) The occasion was the 10th anniversary of the Columbus Free Press (founded 1970), where I got my radical training wheels in 1975. I continued writing for the FP on and off, until 1987. In the lower left photo, Steve Abbott and Paul Volker carry the official birthday cake. (HI YOU GUYS!)

Thanks to the ever-intrepid Ramone Smith, for scanning this photo...as well as taking on the daunting task of preserving every Free Press ever published!

Marilyn French 1929-2009

Marilyn French has died at age 79. Her novel, The Women's Room (1977) was a major bestselling sensation. We all read it, even my grandmother. It was like the radical feminist Peyton Place, finally assigning the blame where it belongs.

The first part of the amazing novel mirrors accounts by male writers such as John Updike and John Cheever. They wrote about suburban New England life from the affluent white male perspective. French's protagonist Mira, it seemed, could be one of their wives, writing about what the women were doing while the men were away in their offices, on the golf courses, with their mistresses, in the city. This was the other half of the story, the one we didn't get. The women's version. (And in the telling, we suddenly realized: there has always been a women's version that we have not heard, a mute reflection throughout history.)

The second part of the novel concerns Mira's feminist awakening, which is electrifying. She returns to college (Harvard, where French obtained her Ph.D.) and sees that female students have scratched out "Ladies Room" on the restroom door, and have written instead THE WOMEN'S ROOM. Mira stares at the sign, considering the changed meaning, and knows that everything will now be very different for her. As it was for all of us.

In the late 70s, it was not uncommon to see the word "Ladies" scratched out on various bathroom doors, from New York to Berkeley, and the word WOMEN'S in its place. (Who you callin a lady? The hell with that shit.) It was a special welcome, extended to feminists: other feminists have been here before you.

I remember how happy I was, whenever I saw the words.

The Women's Room was made into a bad TV movie in 1980, starring Lee Remick as Mira. There was undue emphasis on Mira's love affair with the younger man, regarded as pretty hot stuff back then. But even so, feminism was present and centered. I can still remember that I was living in a small duplex on a crowded street, in which I could hear the conservative born-again neighbors sneeze on the porch next door, and I could hear that they were watching the movie, too. What would be the reaction, I wondered. Even as a bad movie, it was powerful for its time.

After the scene in which Mira gives birth to her baby, I heard the women and men arguing on the porch next door: A man couldn't handle that, he'd be complaining to high heaven at the very first labor pain! I heard the men defending themselves, and I was surprised at how forceful the argument became. I was impressed: even at a remove, even the soapy-Hollywood version of The Women's Room, had the power to make women speak. I remember sitting inside, listening to them argue, feeling such pride in Marilyn French, and in feminism.

Who else among us had such ability, such storytelling power?

Resquiat in pace, dear Marilyn French, who prompted women to scrawl on bathroom doors, and argue with Baptist husbands. We love you.

Miss California is still a myth

Carrie Prejean, the reigning Miss California-USA. (Photo unabashedly stolen from Perez Hilton, the pageant judge who started all of this with an innocent question.)


I was working at Plexus feminist newspaper in the Bay Area in 1981, when Nikki Craft and the Preying Mantis Brigade protested the Miss California pageant in delightful Yippiefied fashion. They dressed in bathrobes, with hair in curlers and such, and gave themselves titles: Miss Used, Miss Informed, Miss Understood, etc...Nikki herself was all done up as Myth California. She made the cover that month, if memory serves, waving from a "float" that was similarly amusingly decorated.

And so, I have thought of "Myth California" ever since. And particularly this week, as we consider the sordid news of Miss California's incomprehensible blather over "same sex" vs. "opposite marriage"--when asked The Big Question during the pageant. (I agree wholeheartedly with Michael Musto, they really shouldn't expect them to ANSWER QUESTIONS! I mean, WHY?! Do we CARE?!)

But Carrie Prejean's reply got her a pretty good gig, and yes, the horrible Maggie Gallagher has come calling:

Miss California appears in anti-gay marriage ad
Fri May 1, 2009 2:27am BST
By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After failing to stop recent gay marriage approvals in several states, opponents have found an attractive, telegenic poster woman in Miss California, a move reminiscent of beauty queen Anita Bryant's 1970s crusade against gay rights.

Miss California, a Christian college student named Carrie Prejean, joined in a television ad campaign against gay marriage this week, upsetting homosexual rights advocates, including a head of the Miss California pageant.

In the commercial from the National Organization for Marriage, Prejean is shown at the Miss USA competition last month where she answered a question about same-sex marriage by saying she opposed it, drawing both boos and cheers and setting off a raucous debate.

After providing that answer, Prejean was named runner-up to Miss USA. She later said her view on marriage cost her the crown.

As gay marriage opponents have rallied around Miss California, they have also lost key battles in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, New Hampshire's Senate passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage and if the governor signs it, the state could become the fifth to legalize gay weddings.

Last month, Iowa became the first Midwest state to allow gay marriage, and Vermont became the first to legalize it through legislative action.

Craig Rimmerman, co-editor of "The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage," said Prejean's rise to prominence comes as gay marriage opponents are on the defensive.

"The conservative right is wondering if same-sex marriage is as potent an issue politically as it was in the past," he said. "So for them to have a different spokeswoman who comes at this from a different background, they probably see this as a really positive development."

GIRL FROM VISTA

California is often characterized as a liberal state for politics in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but Prejean comes from a small town, Vista, in conservative San Diego County.

The 21-year-old is not a permanent spokeswoman for the National Organization for Marriage, but in recent weeks she has appeared on TV shows reaffirming her views on gay marriage, and on Thursday she joined the group to launch the TV ad.

"I think that Carrie's story is resonating incredibly," said Maggie Gallagher, the group's president. "Because she comes across as what she is, she's just a genuine, decent, honest person who stood up for truth and gave up the tiara."

~*~

Just call him doctor Love!



And what I'll betcha didn't know is, the Alabama House of Representatives voted on a resolution saying they officially LOVE Carrie Prejean. In fact, the resolution was suitably written by a star-struck young politician named LOVE:

Alabama House Votes Support of Miss California
April 28th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
by Josh Gross

Alabama Legislators found a puzzling balance last week when they voted to include sexual orientation under hate crime legislation, then voted on a bill of support Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for “standing true to her beliefs and her faith while representing her state in the Miss USA Pageant.”

The resolution, introduced by Subway franchise owner and Republican House Member Jay Love, also lauds her charity work and her academic career at San Diego Christian College.

The full text of the resolution can be read here, but I’m warning you now, it’s creepy.

Indeed it is, as Congressman Love is obviously beside himself in lusty admiration for the "Christian values" of Carrie Prejean, who would ordinarily never even give a nerdy southern Christian fundamentalist like him, the time of day.

Well, you know what they say: strange bedfellows.

David Duke busted in Czech Republic

As promised, part of Daisy's radical history! At left, video capture from the History Channel, in which I look like a fabulous 19-year-old and scream at the ku klux klan. See video below for the whole sequence, which got me a subpoena for the ensuing riot (since as you can see, I was standing about 10 feet from the action). During said riot, the intrepid Progressive Labor Party distinguished itself by pounding the Ohio Imperial Wizard (his name escapes me) into a lil greasy spot. (Of course, at the time, my memory failed me and I couldn't rightly remember who did it! Funny how that happens! :P )

This event occurred at the Ohio Statehouse, Labor Day, 1977. I chose it to go with the news of David Duke's bust (he also figures prominently in the video below).

~*~

David Duke reportedly arrested in Czech Republic
Southern Poverty Law Center/Hatewatch
by David Holthouse, April 24, 2009

Czech Republic media outlets are reporting that infamous U.S. white supremacist leader David Duke was arrested in Prague earlier today on suspicion of denying the Holocaust and promoting the neo-Nazi movement, crimes punishable by up to three years in prison in the Czech Republic.

According to a Prague newspaper, Duke was taken into custody at the Black Eagle, a Prague restaurant, shortly after arriving in the country at the invitation of Czech neo-Nazis. The newspaper reported that 30 law enforcement officers wearing ski masks surrounded Duke, who was scheduled to deliver lectures in Prague and Brno. A third lecture scheduled at Prague’s Charles University was called off earlier this week because the university banned it.

According to an Internet post by the Czech Republic neo-Nazi group National Resistance, Duke was in Czech Republic to promote his book My Awakening.

“Mr. Duke was arrested after previous approval [from the] state deputy for suspicion for committing the crime of supporting and promoting movements which are trying to suppress human rights and freedoms,” read a translated statement from Prague police spokesperson Jan Mikulovsky.

News of Duke’s reported arrest spread rapidly throughout the right-wing extremist online community. A “Free David Duke” discussion thread on Stormfront, a major white nationalist discussion forum, was fast-approaching 300 posts at 5 p.m. EST.

Discussion at Vanguard News Network was equally intense. “Though in the past I have disagreed with David Duke as being too moderate, I must say that this arrest is outrageous and must be protested, vigorously,” wrote EireanGoddess. “Damn the jews.”

David Duke too moderate? Saints preserve us.

~*~

The Ohio Statehouse-riot described above is in this video (jump to 3:18-40), which as I recall, was a law enforcement video. The show is a three-hour documentary titled The Ku Klux Klan, A Secret History.

Warning: violence, very disturbing...but Duke makes his appearance here as the face of the "new klan"--the klan's much-heralded 70s makeover. If not for Duke, I am confident the kkk would have died out completely.

Feminists on High Horses, pt. 1

Way back in the day, I belonged to a very rigorous political collective, which contained several Marxists. They policed everyone, as Marxists are wont to do, proclaiming themselves the keepers of Advanced Political Thought and Revolutionary Consciousness, also known as Class Consciousness. I actually bought this for awhile. I was young and stupid.

And then, I found out several of these people were rich kids. Kids of privilege. Kids who were basically slumming. I had been utterly fooled by the boho, hippie lifestyle, the fashionable thinness that I had mistaken for semi-starvation, and the gung-ho talk of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the government. I had never met people OF the class they wanted to overthrow; it made no sense to me. I was stunned. And: Class consciousness? I asked them (during one of their interminable meetings), wasn't it impossible for rich kids to have the proper class consciousness? Aren't you irreparably tainted? After all, one of their heroes, Chairman Mao, thought so, and sent the grown children of the rich to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.

Rather than answer me, they kicked me out of the collective for other manifestations of political incorrectness.

Why, you ask, is she telling us this?

Because it was one of the turning points of my life, the moment I Got It: The reason these people thought they could be the Best Marxists of Them All, was because they came from families who communicated to them from the time of their birth, that they were the best, always right, the people who should be in charge. Thus, when they entered the Left, they took charge of that too, not missing a beat. Of course they did. You didn't really expect them to let poor or working class people lead them, didya? They know best, they are educated, they can quote Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci at you. They looked down on me, rather as rich kids had always looked down on me. Of course they did.

I was reminded of this nasty episode recently, reading Twisty's feminist blog, I Blame the Patriarchy. Twisty is preaching, once again, about what other women should do. And this is where I start scratching my head. What does Twisty do for a living, again? Why is she the one telling the rest of us what we should be doing? Ahh, yes. Deja vu all over again.


I commented on this state of affairs briefly on Christmas Eve (comments section), when I was rushed, exhausted and sniped that Twisty lives on her dead daddy's money, and offered my handy-dandy definition of PATRIARCHY = rule of the FATHERS. In a surprisingly rapid response (PS: I want me some dedicated groupies, like Twisty has!), I got an indignant email pointedly asking me why that is your business or anyone else's?????

Ohhh, I assure you, dear reader, it ISN'T my business. As is the motherhood or nonmotherhood of other women and other feminists. That is a personal choice, or as feminists have always said, should be. That is entirely my point. And why don't you get it?

Why does Twisty think she has the right to proclaim which women are patriarchy-collaborators? We all collaborate with the Evil System in some way, don't we?

I sincerely hope I will be able to leave something to my daughter and granddaughter when I depart the planet--I don't have anything against that. But if I do, I will not kid myself--this will be dirty capitalist money, dirty patriarchal money. There is currently no way to opt out of our economic system, as Twisty acknowledges in her post; capitalism is the air we breathe and the regime we live under.

As the Apostle Paul once said, there is not one righteous, no, not one.

If one believes we live in a patriarchy, as Twisty says we do (check the name of her blog), then we are all part of it. And living on money that was accumulated by your admittedly sexist Texas daddy who hunted and acted like a typical Texas Patriarch, well... how is that not directly benefiting from the patriarchy? And why isn't anyone supposed to point that out, when she can self-righteously point her finger at mothers for breeding?

These are equally personal choices, and equally nobody's business. Twisty proclaims, in a post she claims is "pro-mothers" (!):

We want women to reject marriage and the nuclear family. We want women to not have kids in the first place.

We do? First, as in the punchline of the old joke, whatcha mean "we"?

How about a fun rewrite: We want women to reject the nuclear family, including their daddies. The possibility of inheritance unconsciously pressures daughters to behave and not rebel, so they won't offend papa and get cut out of the will. We want women not to appease their fathers.

Now, how does that sound? (NOTE: I believe someone like Julia Penelope or Marilyn Frye has actually written that before. It isn't an original feminist concept of mine.)

In addition, Twisty calls herself a "spinster aunt", which I think means someone in her family has had a child that she takes some personal delight in, doesn't it? To the extent that she actually defines herself this way, as the rest of us call ourselves mothers and grandmothers. Does she understand that many people have their own children for the same reason that she participates in Aunthood? She even has a child's photo (I assume a niece) on the header of her blog, while letting us know we shouldn't be having children. Huh?

Twisty comments:

Post-revolution, things’ll be different, but currently in our culture motherhood is not just a matter of pregnancy followed by childbirth. It is a big ole set of behaviors and expectations and consequences and connotations and allusions and obligations and dogma — what I think of as nuclear motherhood — that is so deeply entwined with patriarchal praxis it is almost impossible to see the forest for the trees.

Ya think? Can't see the forest for the trees? Guess what: I think the same about being one's father's daughter, which I renounced and rejected.

Otherwise, you know, I might have inherited a little something too. But I made a choice.

And that is my point here. We all make choices, and pay the price for those choices. As feminists, we need to talk about the numerous highly-charged, emotional reasons for these choices, while trying to understand why someone else made the opposite choice.

There is not one righteous, no, not one.

~*~

One of the axioms of second-wave feminism was "The personal is political"--a phrase credited to Carol Hanisch of the Redstockings, if memory serves. This was a statement meant to radicalize women in a particular way. Until feminism, politics was politics--elections, economics, committees, laws. Not motherhood, dishes, laundry, abortion. Feminism sought to expand this awareness, that women's lives had been circumscribed by what men had relegated to the personal sphere. A good way to sum this up is in the title of a book by Jean Bethke Elshtain: Public Man, Private Woman. Women were about the home, while men owned the public square. "The personal is political" was an expression intended to bring this situation into stark relief, and radically change it.

Unfortunately, what started as descriptive rapidly became prescriptive. Feminists in the 70s began to police each other. In the political group I described above, all of the women defined themselves as feminists, some as radical feminists and some as lesbian feminists. And yet, and yet...living off daddy's money, as several were, was never questioned as politically suspect. Why not? Why was my decision to work for an organization such as the Salvation Army considered wrong (due to their Christian base and origins), but being financially able to NOT work AT ALL, wasn't? Well, obviously, because of the intellectual and verbal acuity of the very people we are talking about; the self-evident superiority and stylistic cool of the women living that way make the rest of us (scrambling to make ends meet) look frazzled, poor, inferior and stupid.

In the Women's Movement, feminists with the ability to calmly reflect and never lose their cool (bourgeois, white yankee manners are still considered the mark of "maturity" in the political sphere) are the ones who make proclamations and announcements, while the rest of us simply react. They have set the agenda and the rest of us abide by it. Feminist theory is made by women with advanced degrees, and the considerable time and funds to attain them. And lots of these women, like Catharine MacKinnon, were the daughters of pretty important men (MacKinnon's father was a congressman and judge, for example). And they make no apologies for that, yet expect other women to apologize for their connections to men, as well as apologize for sex work, for motherhood, for stripping, for high heels, for dresses, for marriage, for religion, for rock music, for the Salvation Army, for whatever it is.

I don't get it. On the other hand, of course I do: The affluent and the privileged do not have to explain their choices, and never have. That is what classism IS. Thus, living off daddy's money, owning daddy's land, attaining highfalutin advanced degrees with daddy's money, all of that is a given. I have read so few feminist essays counseling women that they should not accept inheritance from fathers (as stated above), that I can't even remember who wrote them or the last time I read one....on the flip side: I have read hundreds of essays and posts trashing motherhood as unfeminist.

Why do you suppose that is?

If I am expected to explain my personal choices, my motherhood, my work for the Salvation Army and my fondness for the Grateful Dead or Rolling Stones, so are you. And you do not get a free ride just because you were born with bucks, just as the people who threw me out of the collective did not. I will ASK and EXPECT a reply to the pertinent question: How can someone live off their wealthy daddy's money and purport to be this big revolutionary? Do you see any contradiction here?

Of course, there are plenty of political/feminist contradictions in my life too--and feminists like Twisty have wasted no time in pointing them out to me. For instance, in the thread in question, Twisty comments:

As for not having children, it is a political decision I advocate based on the current state of global overpopulation and the rate at which H. sapiens is hurtling toward a major die-off due to the earth’s inability to sustain us in these numbers. The emotional fulfillment one seeks through reproduction can be found in countless other, less privilege-weilding ways. If reproduction is to be used to bolster a wobbly relationship, or to provide a sibling for the one you already have, or to create built-in caregivers for your old age, or to gift the world with your irreplacable genes, or to create an adorable mini-me to mold, or indeed for any purpose, it is an irresponsible act.

As coincidence would have it, my daughter lives in the Texas Hill Country, right in Twisty's expensive backyard. I know how much the land is worth and how much it costs to live there. The gasoline expense ALONE can be staggering, since everything is miles and miles apart. Twisty used to tell us in her blog bio that she "divided her time between Austin and the Texas Hill Country"--but has since modified this statement. (She still calls herself a "gentleman farmer"--which I assume means she is still living part-time in the Hill Country.) I have to ask--what about all that gasoline? What about maintaining two residences? Is that good for the earth and the beleaguered H. sapiens? Why is it politically acceptable to have two residences (that one must travel back and forth to, in vehicles that require oodles of gasoline)--but not two children? I figure, as far as the environment goes, it's probably a wash. But see: land-owning is a given, having children is something the low-classes do. (Except when it's your own family, and you can call yourself an aunt.)

I will not listen to affluent people, any affluent people, feminists or not, tell me shit about how I am propping up capitalism and/or the patriarchy.

However, I will ask them to please show some political consciousness--and when they donate everything they have to the poor, pick up their cross and follow the Movement, I will then grant them the sainthood they are claiming is already theirs.

(Part two picks up tomorrow.)