I Got a Crush On...

Okay, I admit it. Reluctantly.

It's irrational, and probably unjustified. Which, I suppose, is what makes it a crush.

He voted for the border fence. He pussed out on that Iran vote. His health care plan was described by one expert (=activist I know) as "terrible." My expert did note, however, that his plan was "no worse than the other two."

So, okay. No worse than the other two is a start. If he's no worse than the other two on Issues, and has that early war opposition going for him, perhaps I can rationalize this by explaining why he wins the other event, Character.

First, this out of the way: Hillary Clinton is a politicobot and we all know it. What's more, I don't appreciate being a pawn in whatever sick hold-my-hand-through-Lewinsky-and-I'll-make-you-president pact this pair has going. Don't drag us into your twisted marriage.

The Clintons act like they get to appoint presidents. And I love how Bill Clinton, having apparently promised this appointment, can't quite seem to follow through. He keeps accidentally (subconsciously?) sabotaging her campaign with his little unscripted Bubba moments.

Oh, but she's a woman? You have to be kidding me. This is some great feminist victory, for the first female president to be a former first lady installed by her husband's political machine? I wash my hands of it.

This too: John Edwards is a weasel. His "populist message" is so much focus-grouped branding bullshit, and he has conveniently shifted that brand from "defender of the poor" to "defender of the middle class"--which, really, could mean anything. Freaking Lou Dobbs thinks he's "defending the middle class."

And however much I might agree that evil corporations are pulling the marionette strings of America, etc, this message is hardly fresh and exciting. Or even utmostly important, considering the many crucial questions we face about war, immigration, global warming, gay rights. He could have done this pseudo-populist shtick in any decade of the 20th century. Come on: this guy's clearly full of shit.

Great, that's out of the way.

Now: Character. This is quite a squirmy topic. I was raised in the kind of old-school lefty household in which Issues mattered and "character" was pretty much considered a made-up concept. (Needless to say, this posed problems beyond politics, but we shan't dally down that road.) My belief was, you vote for the guy whose positions are most correct. Period.

If I start talking about character, it seems inevitable that I'll spew crap like, Character is something you can't really explain, you just have to see it, hear it, feel it. Crap that calls into question one's seriousness and understanding of politics. That makes one sound like the kind of dumbshit who subconsciously chooses a candidate based on the symmetry of his teeth.

But...I must. Because he's got it. It's there in his biography, his experience (if Hillary Clinton hasn't trademarked that word yet.) It's there in his voice, which I could SO listen to for four to eight years.

Barack Obama is the realness.

I trust that he is not running for the presidency just to satisfy narcissistic urges, and that's a rare treat in and of itself. I trust him to show insight, integrity, and good judgment. I trust him to deliberate presidential decisions with probity. Scandalous and shameful though it may be, I think these things matter.



Philosopher-king.


And I relate to him. The other candidates seem to be from another planet (in Kucinich's case, Mars) never mind another generation.

I've only read one of the eight thousand biographies of Abraham Lincoln, and I've gleaned what I know about Obama from sources other than his memoirs (dreading that their politiciany tone would crush my crush), but I do see similarities between the two. They faced outward challenges and internal struggles as young men and they grappled, learning complex lessons that go beyond mere policy. Obama strikes me as capable of becoming a Lincolnesque philospher-king.

Notice I said "capable." He also seems capable of avoiding decisions so as not to disappoint any constituency. Those people-pleasing tendencies I talked about in an old post are a serious hazard. Then again, he also also seems capable of admitting mistakes (preferably using the phrase "bone-headed"), which is everyone's new favorite thing after seven years of Bush.

I never thought I would agree with Andrew Sullivan on anything--well, other than, "I like men"--but his article in the December Atlantic made an excellent point: Obama could help us "get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems." Amen.

Would Joe Biden care to be his running mate?

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Always Got the Hind Tit

BOOK REVIEW
Little Heathens




Just when this blog was aching for some white and WASPy subject matter, here comes Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, a memoir penned by my new imaginary grandma, Mildred Armstrong Kalish.

Little Heathens is deeply cute. And when I say something is cute, by no means am I calling it trivial or cloying. I take my cuteness quite seriously. This book is cute as in wholesome, heart-warming and earnest. It made me feel like I was curled up beside a fire eating fresh-baked cookies in a fuzzy bathrobe with a kitten in my lap.

Speaking of kittens, here's how Kalish and her younger sister bundled up on cold winter nights:

After placing a thick featherbed on the mattress, we covered it with a heavy flannel double-length blanket, which we tucked in at the foot of the bed, creating a snug sack...After donning our heavy wool nighties, we hopped into bed and pulled the blankets and quilts completely over our heads, then snuggled together like two spoons. We were permitted one or two kittens, which would find us on their own and snuggle at our feet near the warm stones.

Permitted one or two kittens. To think, I permit myself one or two kittens regularly.

Harsh Iowa winters are only the beginning. Kalish and her siblings and cousins--the "little heathens" of the title--survive endless chores, lash-enforced rules, a scarcity of modern medicine and mind-boggling levels of thrift. (Scrape insides of eggshells with your finger so as not to miss any precious egg whites.) Kalish's family leaps high hurdles to fulfill basic needs. Just to get dinner on the table, the pig has to be slaughtered, the water pumped, the wood gathered, the fire started, the eggs collected, the vegetables picked, the bread baked.

Oh yeah, and it's the Great Depression.

But the book is written from a child's perspective, and it's really about the best kind of kid stuff: running ecstatically through a rainstorm, picking sun-warmed strawberries, inhaling the sweet smell of a lamb's fur, and tagging along after the Big Kids. The Little Kids, among whom eighty-four year-old Kalish counts herself, are always "getting the hind tit." (Among barnyard litters, the runts settle for the less milky, rearward mammary glands.)

The country pleasures in this book are made all the sweeter by the fact that you get to read with curiosity about the frigid outhouses and entire tedious days spent on laundry without having to experience either.

After one Iowa winter too many, Kalish eventually moved to California. "I prefer to sit by an open fire and listen to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing songs about the ice and the cold and the snow," she writes, "rather than experiencing them firsthand."

Likewise, Little Heathens is the best way to experience, secondhand, childhood on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression.

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Superhead, Meet Supercleb

BOOK REVIEW
Confessions of a Video Vixen



Got a chick named Super-head
She give super-head
Just moved in the buildin, even gave the super head
Jadakiss, "Blood Pressure"

So begins the story of the most hated woman in hip hop. Well, not with the super getting head, but with Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. compatriots re-gifting the nickname Jadakiss had originally bestowed on the generous lady friend in the song.

Karrine Steffans, hip hop groupie, "video vixen" was the recipient.

I was finally able to get my grubby little hands on her 2005 memoir sans the shame of having to admit I was buying it (great Hannukkah present, Bri, thanks!) and devoured it within seventeen hours of arrival. That the book discussed the respective endowments of Shaq and Vin Diesel had nothing to do with my reading pace.

Want the rest of the list? Kool G Rap, Ice T, Ja Rule, Irv Gotti, "Papa" (=Method Man, according to Crim & Assoc.), Puffy, Ray J, Fred Durst (random!), Xzibit, DMX, Bobby Brown, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Usher, probably hundreds of unnamed athletes and music industry execs.

Sup, you could do with some editing. Of those, only Method Man, Vin Diesel and maybe Xzibit actually seem sexy when you think about it. And when you read about it.

Don't read this book unless you're prepared to have a big shit taken on your sexual fantasies about rappers. Kool G Rap beats her, Irv Gotti pimps her. Most of the rest take their fellatio apportionment with bizarre matter-of-factness, buy her some shit and move on.

And she doles out the apportionments in kind, with skillful efficiency. There are actual torrid affairs with a few of the aforementioned, but what takes place with most is a weird, sterile transaction in which both parties seem to know they have to do this, so they get on with it, already. The more famous the man, the less pleasant the sex: witness her mediocre fifteen minutes with Puffy (p. 149), gross baths in Shaq's copious sweat (p. 144) and grimy, late-night hotel encounter with Dr. Dre before he started working out (p. 115).

But the book never really tries to explain why. Readers get to see her being cruelly abused as a child and raped at age thirteen; we generally gather that she has a great gaping void which must be filled with famous cock. She does explain that, through all of it, she is miserable, addicted to fame, money and drugs.

But with her standing right there at the crossroads of so many fascinating social forces--race, fame, sex, gender, hip hop--I couldn't help wanting her to apply more of that fellatistic ambition to her writing, to give me not just the wheres and the hows and what they ordered from room service, but the WHY DID YOU DO THIS?

Maybe it's unfair of me to expect so much in the way of analytical skills from Sup. Although she does reclaim her by-then-shameful nickname at the end of the book's journey, explaining that in England "superhead" means something like "brainiac."

Gripes aside, I like Sup. She certainly does keep it real. It's no fun having the great army of hip hop ready to kill you with its bare hands. She broke the unspoken code and infuriated rappers and their followings, which says a lot about who the code hurt and helped in the first place.

They didn't see it coming, which is kind of delicious. You just get the feeling that all those guys thought they were in the warm mouth of a pleasure robot, not a living woman who just might fuck and tell.

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