On endings

Okay, so I can get very possessive about my music. When I find a good band, particularly a relative unknown, playing small venues in college towns to crowds of the exact same people every time, cutting garage-band-demo-ish albums on tiny indie labels when they're feeling particularly hot, that band becomes mine, and I love it, and it’s mine, and no one will ever love it the way that I do.

Wednesday night, my first and best birthday present (compliments of big brother, of course) was tickets and companionship to Jump, Little Children's Last Hurrah at WorkPlay in Birmingham. It was significant, because the last time I'd seen them live was two years minus six days before, when I was newly single, broke, and miserable (now, of course, I'm no-longer-newly single, still broke, and considerably less miserable). It was also significant because this is JLC's last tour, after which they'll turn their attention to making babies and living like the grownups they somehow became when I wasn't looking.

When I bought the tickets two years ago, I completely underestimated the extent of the masochism involved in subjecting myself to an entire evening of "our" songs, songs that I shared with my ex, resulting in the one and only time I've ever cried during "Made it Fine." Outside of my own misery, the other thing I noticed was that JLC's fanbase seemed much changed since the release of Vertigo. The tiny space of Eddie's Attic was crammed with equal parts JLC's usual crowd, jeans-and-t-shirt-clad and shouting out names to obscure, unrecorded songs for the band to play; and this new, unfamiliar crowd of teenaged girls, all in Britney Spears-style cabbie caps and Ugg boots and skinny scarves, doing this weird clapping thing during the chorus of "Say Goodnight" that interrupted (and spoiled) a really beautiful and powerful melodic line. I didn't recognize these girls. I wondered where I'd been.

I began to realize that these girls somehow thought that the band was theirs. It was like finding out that your high school sweetheart was cheating on you the first week of college with some sorority bimbo. I love him; I've known him forever. Maybe you like the way he looks in those jeans, but you'll never know him or love him the way that I have, the way that I still do.

This band doesn't belong to you, Cabbie Cap Girls. I am Magazine and Licorice Tea Demos. I’ve shaken my ass to "Opium," fallen in love to "B-13," done I won't even tell you what to "Body Parts." I was there for four-hand guitar, for the Bobshevik Revolution tour ("I remember the day my father said to me, he said, 'Bobshevik, you are a doughnut.' And he was right"), for the Vertigo CD release party. I've seen them in Birmingham, in Athens, in a bar in Greenville that's impossible to find. I love the band, I am the band, they are mine and you can't have them.

In the months after, though, I began to notice more and more changes. JLC's sound was becoming more produced, more polished. They acquired a string section, started calling themselves "Jump," and some chick named Amanda started taking more and more prominence in their shows. The ultimate eye-opener, though, came one rainy night as I was driving through Midtown with the radio on.

They were on 99X.

JLC is not 99X. I’m 99X; I have a wallet card to that effect. But they aren't. They're Jay, brooding and taciturn; Jonny, the third-sexiest man ever to wear a vest and bowler hat, doing wonderful and unnatural things with his stand-up bass; Evan, sweating his ass off behind the drums and making "My Guitar" what it was; Ward, very possibly the first cellist ever to get undergarments thrown at him during a concert; and Matt, making love to his accordion, moistening panties throughout the audience with his beat poetry in spite of (or perhaps because of) his eyeliner and snakeskin pants. They can't be compressed into a mainstream radio station format or described using fewer than seven adjectives and several sound effects.

But that's the band that was mine. Even with the truest of love, people change, people grow. Sometimes they grow apart. If JLC wanted to explore, add new instruments, abandon old favorites in favor of new music styles, who was I to tell them they couldn't? Was it right for me to insist that they stay the same for my sake, when their hearts had obviously gone elsewhere? It's always painful, it always feels like a loss, but if I really loved this band, my band, I had to let them go.

When we got to WorkPlay on Wednesday night, Doug and I didn't stand in the middle to jump up and down to "Come Out Clean." We sat at a table at the edge, where I could see Jonny, Jay and part of Matt and pretend the string section wasn't there. The cabbie cap girls were now wearing peasant skirts and shrugs, their Uggs traded for furry Eskimo boots. I listened to the music, cheered where appropriate, laughed at their banter, closed my eyes during "Cathedrals" and pretended that I was listening to my band, the band that belonged to me. And at the end of the evening, I left the band to their Eskimo boot girls; it's their band now. My band, just five guys and their unlikely assortment of musical instruments, lives forever on my iPod, where I can yell, "15 Stories!" and they play "15 Stories," and if I yell, "Again!" they play it again.

They recorded their final album live at the show that night. When you listen to it, know that mine is the voice cheering the opening chords of "All Those Days Are Gone." And maybe they are. And maybe that's okay.

On people stupider than I

Okay, so you've asked for it in comments, and I do take requests (unlike a certain band which will remain nameless; when you come out for your encore and I shout "15 Stories," you play "15 Stories," dammit). The best requests, really, are the ones that are easy to satisfy, and Ann Coulter stupidity is always a sure bet.

Her most recent act of near-criminal asshattery occurred at UConn, where she managed to get about 15 minutes of her speech out before being overwhelmed with boos, jeers, and chants of, "You suck! You suck!" "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," Coulter said.

Which explains all those appearances on "Hannity & Colmes."

The problem with getting pissed at Ann for this, though, is that this about par for her deeply stupid course. It's not like she, say, called for a terrorist attack on the New York Times building, or advocated converting and/or killing all Muslims in the Middle East, or even proposed the death penalty for the guys who pied her at the University of Arizona. She's only guilty of making her usual stupid, intolerant, hate-filled rant, and of not recognizing when she's actually one of the "stupider" people in the room.

No, what makes me just laugh and laugh is the reaction by Coulter's flying monkeys, leaping to her defense at the slightest sign that someone might not approve of her message. My favorite one was The Conservative Voice, which declared that "Student Protesters Deny Ann Coulter Free Speech."

Maybe I'm just more sensitive to the whole First Amendment thing because I'm a journalist; it's important to know exactly what my rights are as far as freedom of speech and freedom of the press are concerned. I'm far from a constitutional scholar, but I do know for certain one thing about the aforementioned rights: they cannot be taken away by the government. Except under certain specific circumstances, the government can't keep me from expressing what I want to express.

A bunch of students at UConn aren't the government. They're a bunch of private citizens who think, and rightly so, that Ann Coulter is the most toxic and overexposed (and least talented) of the current crop of conservative commentators, and who shouted her the hell down. Buttercup, if you can't hold your own against a bunch of noisy college students, you're really not the cast-iron bitch that you make yourself out to be. Where's the backbone, honey? When met with opposition, do you seriously have nothing better to say than, "But - but - but - Shut up! You're stupid!"

She did actually say more than just that. She also said, "We're having a question and answer right now with the little crybabies."

Crybabies?! They're stupid, and they're crybabies? This coming from a woman who won't appear in public without her bodyguard for fear of airborne pastry reprisals, who couldn't even finish her speech because the nasty, mean ol' liberals were hurting her fee-fees, and she's throwing around words like crybabies? Christ in a rowboat.

The problem with Ann Coulter is that picking on her just isn't fun anymore. Once upon a time, she could be counted on to say the most venemous things, to incite the most rabid hatred, to spew the most outrageous lies without blinking. Conservatives thought she was the hot blonde who spoke her mind, liberals thought she was the poorly disguised plum-smuggler who said ridiculous, racist, sexist things because she thought it would make boys like her. Parsing her hate-filled, inane columns and speeches was like a magical treasurehunt of stupidity. The worst that could be said about her was that she was low-hanging fruit.

Now she's not any fun. Her schtick is old. Her hateful invective has been overshadowed by that of Pat Robertson, her aimless hysteria has been taken up by Alaskan senator Ted Stevens and "Mean Jean" Schmidt, Michelle Malkin has her for racism and sexism, and her basic lack of logic and poor writing skills can be matched by any conservative writer mocked by Sadly, No! or World O'Crap. She is an '86 IROC Camaro in a land of Shelby GT500s; once the inarguable shit, she is now old, rusted, underpowered, outdated, trashy and begging to be put up on blocks.

This is probably my farewell to Ann Coulter. Girlfriend has jumped the shark. Why UConn was willing to pay her $16,000 to come out and speak, I don't know; they had to have realized that her keg of outrageous and controversial statements was well and truly tapped and that they'd be shelling out for dregs like "stupider" and "crybaby." If she starts getting interesting again, if she goes back on her meds and gets downgraded from "raving loon" to "conservative shrill," I might just revisit her. Until then, I'll just leave her sitting on the floor in her darkened living room, licking a cheeseburger, chain-smoking Parliament menthols, muttering "Stupid crybabies, they'll get theirs" so softly that only her bodyguard can hear.

On Baton Dude

Okay, so the talk of Saturday's ACC championship, in our row at least, was FSU's male baton twirler. This was because discussing the game itself was too painful (what's up, Virginia Tech? Think you can go into halftime with the score tied 3-3 and then just, whoopsy, not play the rest of the game?).

Let me tell you something about Baton Dude: Baton Dude rocks my ass. I know some jokes were made at his expense, and I know I made some of them. I mean, I'm sorry, if you're going to come out with three batons and light the suckers on fire, don't be surprised when the word "flaming" gets thrown around liberally. But the thing is, dude was twirling flaming batons. That's something that I can't do. He was twirling three of them at once, throwing them up in the air and doing all kinds of acrobatics before he caught them, twirling them around his neck - still on fire, mind you - and managing not to singe himself at all. That's fairly impressive.

And this is a man who has to be rock-solid confident in his sexuality. Now, it's not unlikely that his sexuality is male-oriented, and if it's not by preference, it's by process of elimination; I can't speak for all women, but I personally don't see myself gettin' down with a male baton twirler. I just don't see it. Accuse me of perpetuating gender stereotypes, and I'll cop to it in an instant. I tend to like 'em tall and bulky and covered in some kind of automotive schmutz, rather than lanky and Lycra-clad. But that's just me. There might well be a huge underground market out there of women just gagging to hit it with male baton twirlers, figure skaters, cheerleaders and flag boys. Baton Dude could be elbow-deep in it, for all I know. But I know that to get out on that field, to perform as well as he did in front of 70,000 people who all had the exact same thought in their heads, means that he must have been smuggling juevos of pure titanium in that spangled unitard.

So here's to you, Baton Dude. You rock that flaming baton. And the next time FSU plays Georgia Tech in Atlanta, you shoot me an e-mail; this football fan owes you a Mai Tai.

On how They see Us

Okay, so I've gotten a few suggestions from a few people about how to polish up my post on Democratic values, and I told them to get their own damn blog, if they thought they could do any better. No! That's not what I told them. I told them I'd take their suggestions under advisement and consider reviewing that post later on in the month.

But it did get me to thinking about the ways different people see the Democratic party, and government in general. A relative of mine (who shall remain nameless, because he' s in the kind of profession that discourages political statements made on the Internet) pointed out that when the first Congress was convened, it was made up of guys with actual jobs. They weren't going to waste their time on ridiculously porky legislation or laws determining who could marry whom, because they had a tobacco crop that had to come in before it got moldy and my idiot nephew is minding the till at the store and Mrs. Goodman down the street could go into labor at any minute. Party values were closer to actual societal values because legislators were actual members of society.

So here's the audience participation part: What do you consider to be your own personal values, and what do you consider to be the values of your party? I'd love to hear from Democrats and Republicans. And while you're being so introspective, I'd love to know what you consider to be the values of the opposing party. Are you a Republican who really thinks that Dems value the right to marry sheep? Let me know.

Unrelated sidenote: On the off chance that they manage to stumble across this blog, much thanks go out to I HOKIE for turning around and pulling over when you saw we were in trouble. That was a mighty decent thing to do, and it's nice to see that there are still people who look out for other people. Those are some values right there.

On what it means to be a Democrat - the rest of the story

Okay, so yesterday, we looked at Me-Too marketing and the way that the Democratic party will never get any respect or recognition unless it can define some values of its own, rather than trying to compete with the Republicans. Today, we’re going to look at Democratic values and figure out how to sell them to the American people.

SELLING THE HOLE
Again, people, not dirty. Gutter brains. Another common advertising saying is that people don’t want a 1/8-inch drill bit; they want a 1/8-inch hole. People don’t care so much about the details and features of a product as long as it performs the way they want it to. By that logic, Americans don’t want national security; they want a secure nation. So to differentiate ourselves from the Republican party and create our own, marketable identity, Democrats have to figure out what we want for the country and how it differs from what Republicans want.

In theory, we all want the same thing: a safe country and healthy families. That’s why politics is so damned complicated; as Laura Bush said on an episode of the short-lived That’s My Bush!, “Maybe you can’t unite pro-life and pro-choice activists, because in a way, they’re both right.” The difference really comes in what we don’t want for the country, or more accurately, how we define a safe country and healthy families.

Republicans want a happy and sparkly society on their terms. Those terms usually involve (and I certainly don’t mean to generalize for all Republicans here, but at least for those in the current administration) traditional, two-parents nuclear families; a powerful government that is feared throughout the world; a Christian foundation in all aspects of society; and an unrealistic standard of individual wealth. The Democrats have more malleable terms, ideally centering around the concept that your way might not be the same as my way, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not equally valid: strong families of a variety of permutations; a government that is respected throughout the world; a good foundation for society based on whatever moral code you support; and a standard of wealth sufficient for everyone to live comfortably.

At this point, I am going to have to refer back to something I pointed out yesterday: conservatives, particularly conservative Christians, see the Democratic party as intolerant of traditional values and feel that they’re being persecuted. Whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is the perception of persecution, and since perception really is reality in the end, we do have to make it very clear that one of the value structures we support is that of the traditional Christian worldview.

So how do we sell these holes to the American people? How do we take all of this information and boil it down from John Kerry to a less verbose, say, Harry Reid? How can we take our values, not just generic good-for--the-country values but specifically ours, and refine them into a bullet point that your average Kroger customer will embrace?

Democrats want strong families of a variety of permutations, whether they’re two-parent, single-parent, same-sex-parent, Christian, Muslim, pagan, take your pick. Strong families need societal support and a healthy environment. We want every child to have a safe and healthy environment in which to grow, and we want every parents to have the resources and opportunities to raise their children within their values.

Democrats want a government that’s respected throughout the world; fear only protects you as long as you’re powerful, but respect protects you all the time. We want a strong country that’s respected as a leader throughout the world, gaining the unconditional support of our allies and inspiring other nations to responsible government.

Democrats want a good foundation for society based on whatever moral code you support. Cooperative society is based on the idea that people don’t infringe on each others’ rights; my right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose, and so on. We want a society where people can live their lives and practice their beliefs without interference from the government or each other.

Democrats want a standard of wealth sufficient for everyone to live comfortably. It’s not realistic to expect everyone to be Bill Gates, but it’s also not right that responsible, hard-working people still aren’t always able to make ends meet. We want a country where hard-working people take home enough money to reap the benefits of their hard work, and where no one has to choose between family and financial solvency.

Those are all really, really good things. Now we have four sentences that can fit easily in the space between the lobby and the tenth floor. But what if you’re only going to the sixth? Even Harry Reid won’t do; we need Nancy Pelosi. Those five sentences are going to have to be refined into a few quick, memorable core values.

CORE VALUES

1. A healthy environment
2. A fair, effective educational system
3. A respectable, responsible government
4. Personal freedom
5. A strong economic foundation

It’s as simple as that.

THE BUMPER STICKER

I don’t actually put a lot of bumper stickers on my car. I like the look of it without. I have been known, from time to time, to stick one on a magnet that can be applied and removed without threatening the paint finish. But not every message has to go on a bumper sticker. It could go on a sign, a flyer, a banner, a t-shirt, an unusually large button. But regardless of the medium, the message has to be strong and quick and memorable. Goodbye, Nancy Pelosi; hello, Howard “Wildman” Dean.

My strength is copy, whether editorial or advertising; headlines and taglines tend to be more of a collaborative effort. But if I had to come up with a quick slogan that Howard Dean could bark in a hypercaffeinated state of ecstasy across a crowded convention hall, it might be something like this.

Strength, security, freedom. For all Americans.

Does it suck? Of course it does. I pulled it out of my butt between trips to the coffee maker. But the point is that it’s brief, it’s memorable, and it embodies the goals and ideals of the Democratic party. If you saw that on a bumper sticker, you wouldn’t expect it to be sitting next to a W sticker, and if someone said that to you, you’d be likely to agree with them. Most importantly, if a candidate told you that’s what he stands for, you’d be likely to vote for him.

Am I an advertising professional? I am not. There are plenty of people out there who have far more experience and far better ideas than I. Some of them, God willing, are employed by the Democratic party. But the fact is, they really aren’t doing the greatest job right now of getting out a simple, cohesive message. Until they do, until there’s an official party line that everyone can get behind and chant at political rallies and print on t-shirts, there’s this. Not great, but good enough.

Hey, there’s something for the Republicans now, too! A rallying cry for the 2006 midterm elections. I am such a political advisor, y’all, seriously.

Vote Republican 2006: Not great, but good enough.

I should totally get paid for this.

On Friday almost-Random Ten

Okay, so it's going to be a mad, mad, mad, mad weekend as I bust it down to Jacksonville for the ACC championships. I'm going to be rooting for the Hokies, which is a completely new experience for me and has required the purchase of a new football-watching wardrobe. I suppose I've gotten a bit spoiled, following a team with such universally flattering colors; red and black will never go out of style, while maroon and orange are quite the challenge to accessorize. On the off chance that ABC turns its cameras on the nosebleed section, I'l be the girl in the brick red (not maroon) hoodie and orange scarf, the only one not gobbling.

Incidentally, kickoff for the ACC game is at 8pm, a mere two hours after the start of the SEC game (and you know that if I could possibly afford tickets to that game, I wouldn't dream of leaving town on such a hallowed weekend; I'd probably be camped out by Gate B of the Georgia Dome, blogging from my cell phone and waiting for the fun to start). That inconvenient timing means that someone is going to have to text message me second-half highlights from the SEC game as they happen. You know who I'm talking to.

Here's a sample of what I'll be listening to on the drive down, taken from my Road Trip playlist:

1. Queen, "Fat Bottomed Girls"
2. The Beatles, "All You Need Is Love"
3. The Rolling Stones, "Paint It, Black"
4. U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
5. Guster, "Mona Lisa"
6. U2, "With Or Without You"
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Scar Tissue"
8. Guster, "Great Escape"
9. U2, "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
10. Jack Johnson, "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing"

Yours go in comments below.

On what it means to be a Democrat

Okay, so one of the biggest complaints I hear about the Democratic party - and this comes from righties and lefties alike - is that no one really knows what we’re about. The right has it down. They know their values, they know their platforms, and they can recite it all from memory if they can pin you down long enough at a cocktail party. The left has values, I promise, but no one in any position of authority has made the effort to really boil it all down to a few memorable bullet points that can pulled out in answer to the question, "Well, what do Democrats believe in?"

One piece of common advice for job seekers is to have an elevator resume. That’s just a basic rundown of your skills, talents and strong points that can be thrown out in the space of a thirty-second elevator ride. The GOP has it down; ask in the lobby what the Republican party stands for, and by the eighth floor you’ll know that they’re all about national security, entrepreneurship, strengthening our communities and protecting our families. They might not know how the GOP intends to do it, beyond Staying The Course and Fighting For Traditional Marriage, but by God do they know their talking points.

The DNC has talking points, too. Per the 2004 party platform [pdf], we’re all about “a strong, respected America,” “a strong, growing economy,” “strong, healthy families,” and “a strong American community.” These are all good things. So why don’t we ever hear them? Why can Republicans stand up and speak loudly and claim to be the party of national security and family values, when the Democrats support the same thing?



Marketing!

Seriously, that’s all it is. It’s not that we don’t know what we stand for; we all do. And it’s not that the party doesn’t have it organized into the same memorable talking points that the Republicans have; it’s right there on the web site. The difference is that the GOP puts a ridiculous amount of effort into making sure that Republicans are able to spew their official party values in their sleep, while the Democratic Party send John Kerry to blather pedantically for half an hour, bore his audience into a coma and never really land solidly on any of the points he was supposed to make (John, love you, voted for you, but please get a speech coach. We’re thinking clear and succinct, poodle).

One of the challenges with bullet-point-ifying the Democratic party platform is that ours is a party that recognizes (dare I say it) nuances, whereas the GOP is all about black and white. That makes it really, really easy for them. Their goal is to protect our country, so dammit, they’re going to do it at any cost; the Democrats want to protect our country while respecting the rights of our people and the sovereignty of our allies, and that just doesn’t fit as well on a bumper sticker. A reasonable, moderate position takes a lot longer to explain, and that’s why it’s important to boil it down to the most important points.

I won’t pretend to be a marketing or advertising professional. I was an advertising major in college, which I’ll freely admit is a completely different thing; I have little to no real-world advertising experience outside of a couple of low-visibility internships. But even in your basic 3000-level message strategy courses, you learn a lot about reaching people and communicating your message effectively. And since this is my blog, and I can do what I damn well want to, I’m going to take the opportunity to throw down my amateur advertising genius, after which I’ll begin to identify myself as a consultant for the DNC.

ME-TOO MARKETING

Who was it who came up with the idea of a USP? I don’t remember; it’s in my class notes. Every product or service needs to have a unique selling proposition, something that they can claim in their ads that no one else can (or, at least, has). If Colgate whitens with baking soda, then Crest had better whiten while you sleep, or else they have no reason to advertise. If your competitor says, “Our brand burns fat in the shower!” and you follow up with, “Ooh, we do, too! We burn fat in the shower,” then you’re not going to get a lot of work out of your ad campaign.

The GOP has done an awesome job of establishing themselves as the party of national security and family values. We simply can’t jump on that bandwagon, because they got there first. Our only options are to find our own political niche and/or to attack and disprove the GOP’s claims, at which point we can take their place.

Me-Too national security

The GOP says they’re all for keeping the country safe. That’s arguable; if you’re identifying “the country” as the land between the coast of Maine and the coast of California, plus the two little boxes at the bottom of the map, I’ll admit that none of the land or buildings in the US have blown up due to terrorist attack since September 11. But if you identify “the country” as the people who live in it, contribute to its success and depend on it for protection, then I’d say it’s doing a fairly crappy job; sending Americans over to Iraq to fight an ill-conceived, poorly planned war is a lousy way of keeping them safe, as is trying to take away the rights of the people at home.

The Democratic party, on the other hand, says they stand for a strong, respected America. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea; keep America strong so it’s able to defend itself, and try to develop allies instead of enemies so it doesn’t have to. So why isn’t this immediately identifiable with the party? Well, for one, because it takes them thirteen freaking pages in the platform to lay it all out. But also because their strategies for reaching that goal are all Me-Too: Defeat terrorism. Promote diplomacy, peace, and security. Strengthen our military. Achieve energy independence. Strengthen homeland security. Any Republican will tell you that that’s what the administration is doing right now (they’d be deluded, but it’s what they’d tell you).

If we want people to believe that the Democrats are better at defeating terrorism, we need a better plan to do that. We need to show the country that we recognize the real challenges of the war in Iraq. Defeat terrorism? What the hell is that? “Terrorism” is a noun. It isn’t even a concrete noun; it’s abstract. It’s like trying to defeat loneliness or obesity. The Democratic party needs to be the one that will defeat the terrorists and keep new ones from cropping up. That’s the difference; Bush’s strategy is to blow up one terrorist and watch three pop up in his wake. One of our Not-Me strategies for national security has to be defeating the terrorists and stopping the spread of terrorism.

From that point, we can move on to diplomacy, because that’s really the only way to minimize the spread of terrorism. The Bush administration likes to characterize these people as evil and crazy, and there are some of them out there. The fact is, though, the majority of today’s “insurgents” are regular people who are pissed off in an environment that offers them no support, no guidance and no alternative to violence. Desperate people reach out for any support system they can find, and what they find is al-Qaeda standing like crows on a powerline, looking for vulnerable people to exploit. People who feel safe and who feel like they have a realistic opportunity to contribute to their own governance and security don’t blow themselves up in hotel lobbies. Training an army and a police force in Iraq is only a tiny, tiny part of it; empower the Iraqis to govern themselves and give them a sense of security, and the real terrorists will starve. An al-Qaeda operative standing alone is a lot easier to take out than one surrounded by Iraqis who may or may not be insurgents. But self-governance doesn’t mean inserting our own America-friendly politicians or electing a slate of the same guys who were intimidating and overpowering the people before; the people have to be able to trust the people governing them. That’s why another Not-Me strategy should be empowering the Iraqis to govern themselves and take their own stand against terrorism.

Obviously, homeland security is a big issue. The Republicans have grabbed ahold of it and tried to convince us that the only way to keep us safe is to keep us in individual Redi-Kennels with 24-hour closed-circuit monitoring. I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t feel awfully secure that way. Before the government wants to legislate itself the right to spy on its own people, it needs to organize its own intelligence community and find out what information is has already. The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to oversee the various government agencies responsible for our safety and coordinate their efforts; instead, it’s become a day care center where safety officials come and play dress-up and put on puppet shows but never actually cooperate. If your goal is a country that is strong and respected, it has to have people who feel safe and have respect for their government. So another Not-Me strategy has to be organizing intelligence efforts while respecting the rights of Americans.

Me-Too family values

This one is huuuuge for today’s uber-conservatives. They are all about family values, as long as we’re talking about traditional, upper-middle-class, Christian families. Take a step back to, say, a single mother, or a married couple not interested in having kids, or two working parents, and you’re on shaky ground. Another step back into gay-man’s land and you can forget about it.

One thing that I’ve always loved about the Democratic party is that it supports values for all families. Democrats recognize that not everyone lives in the Leave-It-To-Beaver-esque new-cue-lar family, that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to do so, and that people living in “nontraditional” families have the same needs and values as everyone else. To most liberals, a couple raising kids is a couple raising kids, and the success of the family requires the same support whether the couple is gay or straight. Families need health care and education and a safe place to grow, and that doesn’t change with the number of children or the demographics of the parents.

The Democrats have room for improvement, though, when it comes to tolerance. The joke is that “I absolutely cannot tolerate intolerance,” and Dems have been accused of being intolerant of Hypertraditionalist-Americans who want to impose their ultraconservative values on the counry. I guess there might be something to that; I claim to be tolerant, but if you’re going to try and discriminate against a group of people who have exactly the same rights that you do, I won’t tolerate it. Regardless, the issue isn’t whether or not the Dems are intolerant, but whether or not there is a perception of intolerance. And since there kind of is, we need to make it perfectly clear that we support all families, from the white, Christian suburbanites with Dad, stay-at-home Mom and three little kiddles to the black, Wiccan cityfolk with two working parents. So you could say our Not-Me strategy might be meeting the needs of all families to help them grow strong.

Interestingly enough, Democrats have it easy here, in terms of avoiding Me-Too strategies. The Republicans don’t even see these things as necessary to strong family life. If Democrats want to stand up for families by reforming health care, improving education, and protecting our environment, they can go ahead.

We do have to be careful, though, not to let Republicans claim the mantle of Party of Family Values simply by defining family values in their own favor. They take a more ideological tack, concentrating promoting healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, promoting healthy choices (including abstinence), protecting the educational rights of parents and students, and promoting a culture of life. Beyond the obvious fact that, as with national security, the Republican party has done a dead lousy job of actually supporting these values, they do sound like really good things. So how do we defend the Democratic party against Republicans who claim those values for themselves?

We make our own. A strong, successful party can’t define itself in terms of other parties; it has to have its own definition. And, as I mentioned before, we’ve got it all over the Republicans in terms of their very own values. You want to promote healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood? Great. Why not make it easier for families to spend quality time together by giving workers a living wage and guaranteeing health care, so that mothers and fathers don’t have to spend all of their time at work to support the family? Why not make birth control and sex education easy and accessible so that couples - married or unmarried - don’t become parents before they’re ready to accept that responsibility? Democrats are certainly in favor of giving parents the tools they need to raise healthy families.

What if you want to promote healthy life choices, including abstinence, and protect educational rights? You don’t do that by watering down a child’s education in order to avoid offending people, or by teaching a restrictive curriculum that gives them the answers to test questions but not to life challenges. Why not give students all of the information they need so they can make healthy life choices? Why not teach them science that’s backed up by scientists, and protect their parents’ rights to give them religious training at home? Why not make sure that all children have access to well-funded public schools, rather than yanking funding out to send them to expensive private schools? It could be argued that we’re all about guaranteeing children an education that will help them face the demands of adult life, and guaranteeing parents the right to teach their own children their own values.

How about a culture of life? Life is precious. So precious, in fact, that it shouldn’t be used to punish a teenager for having premarital sex, or to punish a woman for being stupid enough to get herself raped, or to punish a couple for conceiving an anencephalic baby. All life is precious, including the life of the mother. Life is so precious, in fact, that we should be working hard to make sure that every baby is conceived on purpose, that no woman (or couple) is surprised by a pregnancy that she didn’t expect and can’t support, and that women and men have the knowledge and access to the tools necessary to protect themselves. Democrats believe in respecting all life and guaranteeing that every child is wanted and loved.

What’s next

This is all well and good, but it’s still not an elevator resume. This still requires a lot of talking to explain some fairly basic values. Tomorrow, we’ll look at more advertising message strategy with Selling the Hole (oh, stop that, it’s not dirty), we’ll boil it down to a few core values that Democrats support, and then we’ll look at ways to fit the entire damn thing onto a bumper sticker. Stay tuned.

On war for me, but not for thee

Okay, so I know these have all been posted elsewhere, but I thought I'd put them up for anyone who hasn't run across them yet. Besides, you might need them in the future, and now you know just where to look.

"You can support the troops but not the president." -Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

"[The] President... is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy." Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.” Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.” Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.” Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years” Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today” Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.” Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

“This is President Clinton’s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.” Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.” Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

Quotes cribbed from Sadly, No!, The Poor Man, Republic of Dogs and others.

On shifting goals

Okay, so yesterday at the This Week roundtable, George Stephanopoulos raised the question of whether or not President Bush should admit that he's made a mistake in the prosecution of the Iraq war. Jay Carney of TIME magazine made the valid point that since the administration keeps rounding the corners off the ultimate objective, Bush will never need to apologize. If he can convince people that where we are is where we wanted to be in the first place, he won't have to apologize for not being where he actually said we would be.

For the record, I don't think that George Bush should admit to making a mistake, and I've got three reasons. One is that I think it would be bad for the war effort. I know, that sounds exactly like what the wacky neocons keep saying as a defense against any criticism lobbed their way, and what makes it worse is that I can't even defend my position on this one. It's literally a gut feeling; I think about George Bush getting on national TV and admitting to having made a mistake, and my stomach goes all squidgy. Of course, every time Bush speaks publicly, I get that squidgy-stomach feeling, usually in response to some dumbass thing he's said or another.

The second reason is that I don't think it would actually help anything. Think about it: He admits he made a mistake. The neocons wig out, which I'll admit would be amusing, but not terribly productive. The Dems point fingers and shout, "I told you!" Rove spins the story like a top until it looks like Bush was actually nobly taking the fall for someone else's mistake. Thirty-six percent of Americans continue to believe Bush can do no wrong. Dick Cheney eats a baby. The government is in chaos (more than usual, I mean), and nothing has been accomplished because having said the words, Bush would think he'd done quite enough. Saying it doesn't change anything.

The third reason is that he could look me square in the eye and say the words to me, and I still wouldn't believe he really meant them.

Here's what I would like to hear from Bush, and I mean from his mouth, not through some press release or some other member of the administration: "The time has come to change directions." Doesn't that sound like a nice, safe, everybody-wins phrase? "The time has come to change directions." It doesn't come out and say that yes, I screwed up, which is why we were going in the wrong direction in the first place. It just says that we were going one way, and to reach our goal, we have to now go a different way, so we're going to do that.

I had a really great metaphor here involving stairs, but I tried it out on my dad and he just pooh-poohed it and accused me of talkin' semantics. For the record, I hate that; people talk about semantics like they're little nit-picky things, insignificant details that people pound on when they have no other point to make, but y'all, semantics are important. Particularly when it comes to things like politics, where most of the hard work involves talking things out for hours and hours on end, semantics is all you've got. So if you're going to pooh-pooh my argument, pooh away, but don't do it on the basis of semantics.

Here's my second-string metaphor: Say you're in Buckhead, and you want to go to O'Terrill's. You check your map and realize that all you have to do is jump on Piedmont and head south until you cross North Avenue. So you hop in your Prius and away you go, right?

Wrong, Beverly. What your map doesn't tell you is that Piedmont turns one-way at 14th Street. You head on down and find yourself facing oncoming traffic. Whatever shall you do?

Well, you could find a parking space on 14th, go into the Prince of Wales, find a table and declare, "My goal was to eat dinner, and now I have reached my goal!" But you shouldn't do that, because you'd be lying, and lying is wrong. Your goal was to eat dinner at O'Terrill's.

How do you find out how to get there? You could consult your map again, but obviously it can only help you so much. Your best bet is probably to ask someone how to get there.

Once you've gotten directions, though, the important thing is to follow them. It's no good trying to go against traffic to get where you're going, and it's no good sitting in the Prince of Wales and pretending that's where you wanted to go from the beginning. You have to be willing to say, "The time has come to change directions," specifically a right onto 14th, a left onto Juniper, a left onto Pine, and another left will put you back on Piedmont, facing in the right direction.

It's not necessary to decide who was responsible for the misdirection (although it's useful, so you don't go there for directions again). It's not necessary to declare publicly, "I have made a mistake! I thought I could take Piedmont all the way down, and I was so wrong!" It's not necessary to try to push through oncoming traffic to get to your destination. It is neither necessary nor acceptable to pretend that you've reached your destination already.

All you have to do is be willing to say, "The time has come to change directions," and then make that right-hand turn. No one's saying you can't get where you want to go, but you sure as hell can't get there going the way you're going.

On gratitude

Okay, so yeah, I'm about three days late with the official Thanksgiving giving of thanks. I'll have to chalk that up to a serious bout of turkey coma, followed by a Saturday of football that was not to be disturbed for the sake of blogging.

But last night, as my brother and I were driving home from the game and I was in a particularly thankful mood, I settled down to think about the whole gratitude thing. It's really easy to slap down the usual Thanksgiving dreck about being grateful for family and health and prosperity. Not that that sort of thing doesn't count, mind you - my family is precious to me beyond the telling of it, I really am grateful for my health (particularly when I'm doped up to the point that I'm actually feeling healthy), and while my prosperity is still really at the how-many-ways-can-I-prepare-ramen stage (so much for that whole "grownup with a job" thing), I appreciate the fact that there are people living sub-ramen lifestyles, people for whom a leak-free one-bedroom apartment with electric heat and a stove for cooking ramen would be like a day at the Ritz. But those aren't once-a-year graces. If you're only giving thanks for those things one day out of the year, you're missing out, because they're real and crucial, and you should be thanking whatever power you recognize for the blessings you have.

What about the stuff that's not mentioned in your average ABC Thanksgiving special? It can be hard to dig up. Not to slap a great big downer into the middle of what could be an entirely uplifting post, but the spirit of our country right now is absolute shite. Disasters take place, and the voices of people who want to help actually have to fight to be heard over the voices of people who want to blame and/or abandon the victims. Our government is currently debating whether or not it's okay to torture people as a matter of policy. Politicians and their loony mindless followers stand up to loudly profess their love of Jesus Christ, then turn around and berate the poor for not having the initiative to get themselves rich. I find myself wondering sometimes - on a national and/or global scale, what in God's name do we have to be thankful for?

And then I come home for a long weekend. My mom, in case you haven't picked up from earlier posts, is my best friend and my inspiration. She donates everything from her money to her possessions to her own personal blood to those who need them, she gives her time to deliver Meals On Wheels or administer communion to shut-ins, and when she's not doing that, she's looking for something else to do for someone else. Mom is how I ended up at Miss Mattie's house on Friday, helping my parents and my brother staple contractor's plastic around her screened porch to keep the heat in.

Mom doesn't look for recognition for the things she does; she thinks it cheapens the act (so don't go telling her I've posted about it). All she really wants is for other people to look around, to be aware of all of the things that can be done and the people who need help, and then take the time to do it. She's told me that what she really wants is for fortunate people, people like us who have even a little bit, to judge people not on what they've done but on what they need, to look beyond the reason for a person's situation and see a solution to it. Jesus, Mom says, never turned anyone away who sincerely wanted help, regardless of their situation, and if we're going to claim to be Christians, we're obliged to follow His lead.

The very existence of people like my mother - and my father, who takes in probably more low-income patients than he can afford, and my brother, who would be embarrassed if I started going on about his good deeds and claims to do them out of Catholic guilt anyway, and so many friends and acquaintances - steadies me when I start to really freak out about the condition of the world. No matter what is going on out there, there are at least a few, more than a few, people in here who actually want to do good for other people, and beyond that want to entice other people to do good for other people. Nothing we do today can ruin what we have the potential to do in the future, as long as there are people around who think about more than themselves and who make the rest of us do the same. As long as there's one person realizing that a world exists outside of herself, then there's hope. And if all you have is hope, you have a lot to be thankful for.

On a helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva interception on second and goal

Okay, so I've gotta give it to Georgia Tech: they make for a good football game. Especially since the best football games are the ones we win! Dayum! And their defense was absolutely en fuego last night, holding us to only 14 points, one touchdown per half. Which was still seven points too many for them! Snap! And they really did have a great sense of humor in the week leading up to the big game, which shows real class. I bet they're regretting that right about now! Ouch! Also, being the proud owner of a ticket to the ACC championships in Jacksonville on December 3, I'm grateful to GT for their victory over Miami, which launched Virginia Tech into their championship seat. Sorry you won't be there yourselves, suckers! Punked!

Enough of all that. My parents raised me well, and they taught me that being a good winner is just as important as being a good loser. To that end, my gift to Georgia Tech, a poem by Sean Connery on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy.

"Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I can't remember the rest, but your mother's a whore.

Suck it, Trebek."

On getting what you voted for

Okay, so the most recent scandalicious scandal in the House of Representatives has to be Rep. Jean "Mean Jean" Schmidt and her complete inability to think before she lets the words out of her mouth. Rep. John P. Murtha, retired Marine and veteran of Korea and Vietnam, suggested that maybe withdrawing our troops from Iraq might keep them from getting killed all the time. Mean Jean had this to say in response:

A few minutes ago, I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

Daaaaaamn.

If you didn't get to watch it on the news, you missed out. The noises coming out of that chamber were more British Parliament than House of Representatives. Mean Jean was forced to strike her own comments from the congressional record and write an "I'm sorry I'm a bitch" note to Murtha.

But dagnabbit, that's just not enough for some people. She said she wasn't trying to impugn his character, didn't she? Jeez. And yet the e-mails and phone calls keep pouring in. Mean Jean had this to say in response:

I am quite willing to suffer those attacks if in the end that policy I so strongly oppose is exposed as unsound. First and foremost, I support the troops. They dodge bullets and bombs while I duck only hateful words.

Sniff, sniff. Yes, Jean, you will endeavor to persevere. You're a rock. A rock! You go ahead and support those troops, with their bullet-dodging and their bomb-ducking, and screw that coward who wanted to take them away from, um, the bullets. And the bombs.

Of course, at least the troops have their buddies out their dodging the bullets and bombs along with them. Mean Jean only has Danny Bubp, who was the one who actually called Murtha a coward.

Except for the not calling him a coward part:

The comments and concerns I shared with Congresswoman Schmidt were never meant as a personal reference to Mr. Murtha. . . . We never discussed anyone by name and there was no intent to ever disparage the congressman or his distinguished record of service for our nation.

Gettin' cold out there, Jean?

Well-known blogger and former Matt Damon paramour ACG had this to say in response:

Paul Hackett, y'all. You did this to yourselves.

On blaming the victim

Okay, so I hate to get all serious when there's a holiday and a good football rivalry coming up, but sometimes, it's unavoidable. Courtesy of a bunch of different news sources, it appears that rape is still the woman's fault in some people's minds:

One in three Britons believes a woman who flirts is partly or totally responsible if she is raped, a "shocking" opinion poll showed on Monday.

Between a third and a quarter of respondents also put part or all of the blame on the woman if she fails to say "no" clearly to the man, wears sexy clothes, drinks too much, has many sexual partners and walks alone in a deserted area.

I guess the point of an anonymous opinion poll is that people are comfortable being completely honest, but you'd think that this is another one of those questions where you know better than to actually say it, even if you feel that way. It's like hearing that one-quarter of Americans support the wholesale stomping of puppies; sure, some people stomp puppies, but do you actually admit to it?

I almost feel like I don't have to go into all of the reasons that a woman isn't responsible for rape, since it seems so obvious and I know I've gone into it a dozen times before. But maybe it isn't that obvious. It isn't obvious to 34% of Britons, apparently, and I'm sure they have an equal number of American counterparts. So here goes:

Men, keep your penises to yourselves.

Should be as far as anyone has to go, really. If every man took that as personal policy, then man-on-woman rape would drop 100%. Drunk or sober, dressed like a stripper or like a nun, any woman would be safe from the threat of rape if men wouldn't feel entitled to stick Willie where he isn't welcome. My favorite rant is The One About Entitlement Complexes, and I'll save it for another post, but that'll certainly be part of it: men, you are not entitled to have sex with me without my permission. I don't care if I'm wearing crotchless panties with a bullseye painted on the back.

Do women have the obligation to look out for ourselves? Sure we do, as much as anyone has the obligation to look both ways before crossing the street and wear a coat when it's cold out. But if, for whatever reason, we don't take that precaution, any resulting violence isn't automatically our fault. If I cross the street on green in a crosswalk, I should expect to do so safely; if, in the process I get pasted by a truck running a red light, the driver of the truck is completely at fault, whether or not I look both ways.

I hate to take this to a Pandagon kind of place, but the issue here is men who view women as nothing more than a walking sperm receptacle. Let me take a moment to speak to them directly: A woman walks into a bar in a short skirt and tall shoes, she lets you buy her a drink and makes flirty conversation with you, and your automatic assumption is that she's absolutely gagging for it. And if she isn't, she ought to be. And if she doesn't want it when you do, you'll take it anyway. Sex isn't something you do with a woman, it's something you do to a woman, something you take from a woman, and a little bit of cleavage or a little bit of conversation is just a billboard advertising what she has to offer. If she has a little bit to drink, rendering herself unable to fight off your advances, that just means that she doesn't want to fight them off, right? Otherwise, she wouldn't drink, right?

Jesus, God.

To bring Pandagon into this anyway, one commenter on a recent post brought up the old Chris Rock joke about how "if you run up to someone dressed up in a police costume asking for help, he has no right to be offended. The woman dressed in the midriff has no right to be offended when people come up to her with a certain set of expectations about her character." And everyone was hella offended, which was pretty much the reaction that Chris Rock is going for in any of his comedy routines. That's why he's so funny. But the best way to strip the funny right out of any joke is to analyse it, and that's just what I did, coming to this conclusion:

Against his better judgment, though, I think he did have a little bit of a point. If you're having chest pains, you look for a guy dressed like a doctor. If he says, "Sorry, I'm not a doctor, I'm an off-duty stripper," you apologize for bothering him and go in search of a doctor. If want to see a stripper, you look for the girl in the butt-cheek-baring miniskirt and Velcro bustier. If she says, "Sorry, I'm not a stripper, I'm an off-duty doctor," you apologize and go in search of a stripper.

The difference is that just because the woman is dressed like a stripper, you can't automatically expect her to strip for you if she doesn't want to. For better or for worse, people will assume things about you if you go out dressed in certain things. But that's where it has to end; a guy can make all the assumptions he wants if you're going to the mall in a droopy tube top and exposed thong, but if he actually touches you, he's absolutely, 100% in the wrong.

When I'm at a bar (or at a tailgate, for that matter) and I see a woman walking in busting with cleavage or sporting a two-inches-shy-of-being-a-belt skirt, I automatically make assumptions about her. I usually think, "Wow, she has no class whatsoever" or "Well, there's a girl who doesn't care what people think about her." If I went out dressed like that, I'd expect people to be making similar assumptions. It wouldn't be a shock, I'm sure, to learn that guys were assuming that I was easy or always up for it. And they can go ahead and assume. But the moment they act on those assumptions, they're absolutely and unequivocally in the wrong.

I recall one of the three occasions when I've gotten irresponsibly drunk ("irresponsibly drunK" defined as "too drunk to look out for myself, in the presence of people who can't be depended on to look out for me"). It was an evening that involved Long Island Ice Teas that didn't stay down and kind roommates who packed me into a cab along with five Marines from the nearby Supply School. Was the drunk girl in the little black going-out dress a recipe for a fun night? Very possibly; I was certainly incapable of defending myself against five guys. But I didn't have to, because they didn't take my drunken helplessness as an invitation.

Every time I think back on what could have happened, I shudder. I acted stupidly that night (and way to look out for your friend, roomies, btw), and it's not behavior that I've repeated. But if my cabmates had been less honorable than they were, that would have been their fault. The only reason that a drunken girl wouldn't make it safely home in a cab is that someone would decide to take advantage of her.

(The pleasant coda to that story, by the way, is that when we pulled over at Firehouse, one of the guys slipped the cab driver a twenty and said to me, very carefully and distinctly, "We've got your cab fare, okay? Take care of yourself." They then went into the bar without laying a hand on me. Thanks for that, guys)

This blame-the-victim mentality isn't generally applied to other crimes. If a man is walking through downtown Atlanta after a show at the Fox, and he gets robbed at gunpoint, no one ever says, "He was asking for it! He was walking in downtown Atlanta in a damn tuxedo!" If someone's car gets stolen out of their driveway, no one says, "Well, parking a BMW on the street, what did he expect to happen?" Yet "that halter top just screamed 'do me'" is acceptable after a rape.

That reaction is nothing more than men abrogating their responsiblity to freaking control themselves. These men would have women walk around in bulky turtlenecks and riding skirts, sipping on club soda, just so they're never faced with temptation that they might have to tamp down. "I have no self-control! I can't resist the urge to do bad things! You can't dress the way you want or drink alcohol because deep down, I'm a raging beast!" is not an acceptable defense for rape.

I'd like to know what y'all think. Throw down in comments, and feel free to comment anonymously, if you think your opinions might be flameworthy; I really want to know how you honestly feel about this. Can a woman really be held responsible for a man's lack of self-control? Do a short skirt and/or excessive consumption of alcohol lay any blame on a rape victim?

On Friday Random Ten

Okay, so is it a goal of the producers of ER to have every woman on the show sleep with Dr. Kovac before the end of this season? Not that I can blame them, of course. But if it is, in fact, an official policy, I need to see about getting cast as an extra. Maybe a nurse on her first day, overwhelmed and in desperate need of comfort?


Oh, my. I... I find myself feeling faint...

Actually, funny story there: the excitement du jour yesterday involved blood donation and, apparently, not enough juice afterwards. I've just donated (my eighteenth pint, for the record), I'm stopping off at Subway for a six-inch oven-roasted chicken (no cheese), and I start to feel woozy. By the time I've paid, I'm feeling seriously woozy, and the last thing I remember as I put the change in my purse is my vision going tunnely and a little voice in the back of my head saying, "You seem tired. You should really go to sleep... rightnow."

The next thing I know, I'm waking up and staring at the ceiling as a dozen people around me freak out. They very kindly picked me up, put me in a chair, and got me water. The manager even gave me a free cookie ("The sugar, is good for you, make you feel better," he said in his charming ethnic way). I'm just kind of ticked off because the guy in front of me had left already. Dude, the time to order five foot-long subs with everything is on the phone before you get there. If you'd ordered a six-inch turkey sub, I might have made it back to my office.

I've got the whole weekend to recover, though. I'll be blowing off work half a day early to spent the weekend in Alabama with the Alabama relatives, the parents, and this other guy. The fun will certainly be in the watching of Daddy and his baby sis in the throes of football rivalry, but UVA football wouldn't be UVA football without Mom doing the Wahoo Dance. Love ya, Aunt B, but I've never seen you shake it like that after a touchdown. And what am I going to be listening to on the ride over? Here's a random sampling of, oh, let's say ten tracks:

1. Diana Krall, "I Love Being Here With You"
2. Dusty Springfield, "Son of a Preacher Man"
3. Monteverdi, "Ecco pur c'a voi ritorno" fom "L'Orfeo, Favola in Musica"
4. Garth Brooks, "Rodeo"
5. Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"
6. George Harrison, "I've Got My Mind Set on You"
7. Kay Starr, "(I Would Do) Anything For You"
8. Diana Krall, "All or Nothing At All"
9. Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"
10. Shakira, "The One"

On the fat suit: fall's new hot trend

Okay, so Katie Couric must have been wicked pissed when she saw that Entertainment Tonight had scooped them on their newest make-America-aware ploy: dress a skinny chick up in a fat suit and put it on TV.

I won't even go into how insulting and patronizing it must be for a heavy person to watch 125-pound Vanessa Minnillo shuck her fat suit and say, "I had no idea how hard it is to be fat! People, like, stare at you. I have so much sympathy for fat people now. I'm so glad I'm skinny again." I just wanted to address the insane lack of self-awareness apparent in the Today Show's model-turned-fat-girl, who said, "I just had no idea that the world is so superficial, that people would treat me that differently because of the way I looked."

My educational moment of the day: Buttercup, you are a model. Maybe the agency didn't tell you this when you signed up, but people hire you based on the way you look. This is coming from one of the people responsible for hiring people like you: do you honestly think we're looking at your abilities? Your ability to fit into the samples, sure. Your ability to pose is good, and your ability to look sultry, happy, angry or bored on command. Stylists aren't looking to hire smart girls. Why? Smart girls tend to have ideas, which is bad. We like our models just smart enough to follow instructions without asking a lot of questions. So yeah, you're treated differently because of the way you look.

And That's One to Grow On.

I'm still confused, though, as to how these exercises in temporary obesity are supposed to help people. Katie's version was part of a series called "How Does It Feel?" where they put people in sinking cars or houses aflame so they know what it feels like. Apparently, their research didn't reach deeply enough to learn that a good two-thirds of Americans already know what it feels like to be overweight. It doesn't even really help in terms of self-awareness; Vanessa Minnillo did make a connection between the discrimination she experienced during her fatness and the discrimination she experienced as a racial minority growing up, but the Today Show's model really just seemed to learn that she, like, totally prefers being skinny. It is, it would seem, bitchin'.

Could it be that the road to acceptance and sympathy (and I'm not saying that someone at an unhealthy weight shouldn't work to lose or gain to a healthy weight, but there's no need to be mean about it) might just be paved with more than a waif in a bulky, awkward fat suit? I kept holding out for this deeper message, something about the growing obesity epidemic and ways to address it, or size discrimination, or even dressing to flatter your shape or something. But all we got was cute lil' Vanessa saying that she got hit on when she was skinny but not when she was fat. Wow. Let me find a suitable container for my shock.

I guess another thing that bugged me was the fact that, as a quasi-respectable news personality, Katie Couric should have known better. Sure, she's no Peter Jennings, but she is a) a woman, b) working in broadcast, and c) expected to be fairly aware of the world around her, so more than anyone she should be able to make the connection between media and body image. The women working in the entertainment industry are exposed to nothing but an unnatural standard of beauty that says that Nicole Kidman + wife-beater tank top + cigarette * bad Maine accent = homely. Katie gets to see the real world. Katie should be able to say, "Part of the reason the cameras are pointed at me is that I'm tiny and pretty, and I recognize that if I were as smart as I am and looked like Rosie O'Donnell, I'd be editing copy for Wake Up Charlottesville right now." But instead, she sat aghast to hear a waifish redhead tell her that when she's skinny, she gets catcalls, and when she was fat, they were yelling other things.

All of this is one reason that I'm scrambling and clawing to find a job outside of the fashion industry. I actually had to sit down with our stylist a few weeks ago and ask that she hire older models for our photo shoots (in our world, "older" means "up to 25;" any older than that and you're looking at "mature"). It seems that our last shoot included a 13-year-old girl who, when shot in capri pants and a halter top, looked very much like a 13-year-old in capri pants and a halter top; and two flat-chested 16-year-olds modeling bras. Our darling, adorable, petite stylist blinked at me a couple of times and said, "Are you sure? Their skin doesn't usually shoot as well as the younger girls."

There you have it. Women my age are nigh-on unhireable because we don't have the skin of a prepubescent girl. That, however, wasn't too much of a surprise to me when I started at this job. What was a surprise was the fact that I, as a writer, as one who would never appear in a photo shoot or represent any kind of fashion line in any way, would be held to similar standards. Now, I happen to come equipped with boobs and a butt, tamed through diet and exercise to look pretty good in a pair of jeans and avoid the threat of the dreaded "overweight." But a recent awards ceremony found me in need of an evening gown, which is easy enough to borrow from a designer if you happen to be sample size. Which is pretty much expected. Which I am, on a good day, after a lengthy illness, before lunch, in certain designers. After a particularly complimentary article, designers have been known to send a top or a nice pair of pricey jeans with a thank-you note; when I say "size medium" and receive a shirt that a Cabbage Patch Kid would find clingy, something isn't right.

The effort to find some kind of reasonable perspective when it comes to body image is going to take the cooperation of, well, everybody. The fashion and entertainment industries have their work cut out for them; glamorizing a certain body type is to be expected, but they (okay, we) have gotten to the point where any body type other than that of an underweight 25-year-old working out for four hours a day and eating pre-packaged Zone meals is presented as the norm. I was chuffed to see a pleasant, slightly plump Renee Zellweger in a movie trailer until I discovered that she was supposed to be the chubby-beyond-belief Bridget Jones. Hollywood puts an average-sized woman on the big screen and tell all of the average-sized women in the audience, "By, the way, she's fat to the point of neurosis" and then wonders why women have body image issues?

The rest of the effort, though, is on the rest of us. Men, in particular, need to make sure that they have realistic expectations for the female form. Lusting after celebrities is to be expected; Angelina Jolie wouldn't wear a vinyl bustier in a movie if she didn't want audience members to drool. Hell, I thought that was hot, and I'm straight. But if you're expecting every woman out there to have a figure as solid as Angelina Jolie's, you're going to be a sad, sad, lonely man.

Finally, women. We are such bitches. Fat Suit Exposes tend to focus on male reactions to the faux-obesity, but the fact is, women are tougher critics than any man out there. I'm not likely to find a date at any work event I attend; the fashion industry isn't exactly busting with heterosexual men. But I'll spend hour figuring out what to wear, because I know that these women will tear me to pieces and that, as a journalist, I can even lose access to certain contacts who don't feel that I'd "really have appropriate appreciation for the line." Jesus. Ladies, next time you're nit-picking another woman, you think back to the Tuesday underpants you put on this morning and wonder why you're feeling all superior.

Sidenote: This is as good a time as any to kick off what I'm calling Operation: Find ACG A Non-Sucky Job. At least, that's what I'm calling it until I can find some really kicky acronym. All I'm looking for is a job that exercises my writing talents, pays the bills and doesn't require me to throw up my food or disguise my contempt for Tom Ford. Keep me posted, y'all.

On happy holiday memories

Okay, so I cannot express how chuffed I was to find an MSN search for slovak crescent nut filled cookies pointing to my blog. I just find it interesting, because while I've never actually posted about "slovak crescent nut filled cookies" before, this is the perfect place to end up, 'cause I happen to know exactly what Slovak Cookie Searcher From Ontario was looking for.

The cookies are called Kolacky, my aunt and mother make them by the bucketload every Christmas, and I absolutely despise them. The cookies, I mean. Mom always makes them with minced nuts, and the end result (through no fault of her own; it's inherent in the cookie) is a pastry so dry that a glass of milk is required for swallowing purposes. I'm thinking of suggesting poppyseeds or apricots this year.

Regardless of the aridity of the cookies, however, I eat them just as fast as Mom can make themm because to me, dry-ass kolacky is the taste of Christmas. Thus I share with you, dear reader(s), and you, Slovak Cookie Searcher From Ontario, my recipe for kolacky. Mom, Aunt G., feel free to correct anything in need of correction; your mileage may vary.

Kolacky: The Filling
* 2 1/2 lb. chopped nuts (walnuts or other)
* 1 1/2 box powdered sugar
* 8 egg whites
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 tablespoon cinnamon
* milk, enough to make the filling spread easily

Mix all ingredients well in bowl.

Kolacky: The Pastry
*2 pkg. active dry yeast
*1/4 c. warm water
*7 c. flour
*1 tsp. salt
*2 c. butter, soft
*4 eggs, beaten
*2 c. whipping cream

In small bowl, dissovle yeast in warm water. In large bowl, combine flour and salt; cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in yeast, egg and whipping cream. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; knead until smooth. Place in greased bowl; turn greased side up. Cover; refrigerate until firm, 6 hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out dough on sugared surface to 1/8 inch thickness. Cut into 3 inch squares. Spoon 1 teaspoon filling in center of each square. Bring up two opposite corners to center; pinch together tightly to seal. Fold sealed tip to one side; pinch to seal. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Serve with milk, coffee, cocoa, or a nice glass of sherry. Don't say I never gave you anything.

On petty, vindictive little fun-fun-fun

Okay, so how did I miss this? Skippy the Bush Kangaroo has news about a Google bomb attack on Bill O'Reilly following his suggestion that al Qaeda blow up San Francisco.

Was it just the usual harmless stupidity that so freely flows from the gaping and profane maw of Bill O'Reilly? Sure it was. But I've never missed an opportunity to point out what a tool the man is, and I'm not about to start now. That's why I'm so utterly chuffed that he's finally recognized by Google as a terrorist sympathizer.

"A terrorist sympathizer?!" you say. Yes, a terrorist sympathizer.

The big question, of course, is why I feel the need to jump on the train now that the Google bomb has already effectively labeled O'Reilly as a terrorist sympathizer. And the answer is that he's making a list. Bill O'Reilly is making a list of all the blogs that have "launched a campaign to get [him] fired over [his] point of view." He calls them anti-military smear merchants and guttersnipes, and I want on that list. I want on that list. From the darkest depths of my soul, I want it.

I mean, I can't think of a great compliment than to be an official enemy of an inane, loudmouth, intolerant, blowhard, conceited, self-important falafelling terrorist sympathizer.

Update: What was I thinking? Must have been the medication. What I meant to say was, "Plesae, oh please, Mr. O'Reilly, leave me off your scary list. I'm begging you, Mr. O'Reilly, don't throw me in that briar patch."

On your religious beliefs vs. my uterus

Okay, so I addressed this topic about five months ago, and at the time, I was kind of fence-straddley on the whole issue. My position has solidified quite a bit since then. Just in time, too, because as John tells us at AmericaBlog, Target is now allowing its pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan B emergency contraception. For those who don’t know, Plan B isn’t an abortion pill; it simply a more concentrated dose of the same hormone found in many birth control pills; it stops ovulation or, when ovulation has already occurred, prevents the egg from becoming fertilized or, when fertilization has already occurred, prevents the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, which only happens fifty percent of the time anyway.

Just in case anyone was wondering: pro-lifers make lousy abortion doctors. Quadruplegics aren’t the greatest construction workers. Vegetarians make bad butchers, Quakers aren’t the best soldiers, agoraphobics tend to be poor bus drivers, and someone needs to tell Donald Trump not to be a sex therapist. If your religious beliefs prohibit you from filling prescriptions, maybe pharmacy isn’t the job for you. And if a girl comes in who was raped the night before and has this prescription for emergency contraception from her physician, and you’d rather self-righteously accuse her of wanting to kill that precious gift from God! Horrors! than fill her prescription, then pharmacy definitely isn’t the job for you.

Demure and deferential as I am, I felt the need to express the same feelings to Bob Ulrich, chairman and CEO of Target:

Dear Mr. Ulrich:

I was very disturbed to see that your company is now allowing your pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan B emergency contraceptive. It’s a tough decision on your part to make, I know; I personally feel that a person’s religious beliefs shouldn’t prevent them from finding employment.

However, this issue goes farther than that, and I’m afraid it may go all the way to “if you don’t believe in distributing certain medications, don’t become a pharmacist.” It sounds kind of crass, I know, but that’s what it comes down to. Just as a person’s right to swing his fist ends at the tip of my nose, a pharmacist’s right to fill only those prescriptions that fit within his religious beliefs ends at my uterus. God forbid I should ever be the victim of rape, the last thing I’d need is a self-righteous pharmacist refusing me emergency contraception.

How far are you willing to go with Title VII? Will you allow a Catholic pharmacist to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills? Will a Scientologist pharmacist be allowed to refuse prescriptions for antidepressants? Can a Hindu clerk refuse to scan beef jerky, or can a Mormon clerk sell only caffeine-free Coke?

I have the greatest respect for the religious beliefs of others. I think that one of the strengths of this country is the fact that freedom of religion is built into its very foundation. But religious freedom, as codified in the Bill of Rights and in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, means that I will be free to practice my religion and honor my own religious beliefs; none of that gives me the right to impose my beliefs on other people.

You say that your policy “requires [your] pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest's prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.” The effort is appreciated, but it’s not good enough. I want a guarantee that any prescription I bring in to a Target pharmacy will be filled immediately and at that location. If you have one pharmacist who won’t fill a prescription, you should have another one available, immediately and on site, who will. Another person’s religious beliefs should not force me to wait any length of time or go to another pharmacy to get the medication a physician has decided that I need.

I hate to say it, because I love shopping at Target, but you’ve really screwed the pooch on this one. A lot of people share my feelings on this, and a lot of them are talking about a boycott. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you made an honest mistake and are willing to rectify it. I encourage you to respect your employees’ religious beliefs, but you can only do so to the point that it interferes with my personal needs. If I can’t be sure that my prescriptions will be filled at my local Target, at the time that I visit, I’ll be forced to take my prescription, and the rest of my business, elsewhere.

A reply would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
ACG

Whether or not you plan to actually boycott Target, nothing will be accomplished if they don’t actually know how many people are, aherm, greatly displeased with their policy. Send a (thoughtful, respectful, sincere but passionate) message to CEO Robert Ulrich someone helpful, God willing at robert.ulrich@target.com guest.relations@target.com or

Target Corporation
Attn: Robert Ulrich
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403-2005

The first person to get a reply that’s more than your basic form letter wins, no kidding, a crisp $20 and a great big thank-you from Practically Harmless.

Update: Thanks to J of Red State for a Blue Girl for explaining the e-mail bounce-back mystery. As a high corporate muckety-muck, Bob Ulrich can't be contacted by the peons upon whom he depends for his salary. J suggests guest.relations@target.com as an alternative until I can find a way over/under/around/through to get to Bob directly.

On a crappy Monday Morning Random Ten

Okay, so blogging is going to be light this week because I'm bound to be drugged within an inch of incoherence. That's what kept me from my Random Ten on Friday; most of the day was spent in the doctor's office (and unless I'm just woefully ignorant of the newest patient care techniques, one hour spent on a hard wooden chair in the waiting room seems like a right lousy way to address back spasms), and the rest was spent doped up on enough Flexeril to make my eyes cross.

Doped up and incoherent, however, is a great way to be on a morning like this, 'cause the weekend held absolutely nothing more redeeming than two really impressive shots in pool and a Sunday night SNL retrospective. I'll send you over to Hey Jenny Slater for the complete recap, 'cause I don't feel like remembering it all myself, but here's the Cliffs Notes version:

1. Friday. Like, the whole day.
2. $80 + 1 faux football ticket = listening to the game from a table outside Between The Hedges
3. Fourth and long, comma, inability to defend
4. Third and long, comma, inability to convert
5. Sunday morning steak burrito, comma, inability to digest
6. Tampa Bay over Washington, 36-35
7. Green Bay over Atlanta, 33-25
8. Global warming
9. Man's inhumanity to man
10. Gauchos

For the record, ladies, those pants aren't flattering on anyone. You could be built like Paris Hilton, but you're still going to look like a wayward cast member from Pirates of the Caribbean in those stupid-ass pants. And while I can't exactly call them a style, since that would indicate that they're in some way stylish, I can say that they're a trend that's guaranteed to last no longer than one season. So if you've dropped $60 on a pair of pirate pants, you'd better wear 'em like they're going out of style, because they are. And if you've got a pair hanging in your closet with the tags still on them, hurry and trade them in for a pair of real pants that would never be worn by a waiter at a Brazilian steak house.

But I digress.

My point, and I do have one, is... Hold on. I was just saying that... No. Hold on. Back spasms, fake tickets, humiliating football loss, indigestion, more football losses, gauchos... Whatever. Just don't look for me to be blogging like mad for a coupla days. And would someone please tell that monkey to get out of my coffee cup. Damn tiny monkey. What are you doing in there anyway?

On the sanctity of marriage between one closeted gay man and one woman in search of a green card

Okay, so here's a quickie for a Thursday afternoon. The charming and amusing TBogg gives us 10 reasons why gay marriage should be illegal:

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

So funny! So funny like I coulda written it myself. Funny!

On HBO shows never shot in my apartment

Okay, so the life of a fashion writer is truly glamorous and exotic. I'm sure I just missed the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie stayed in on a Saturday night and bleached her grout,* right? Right?

*not a euphemism

On Friday Random Ten

Okay, so Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. I do my Christmas shopping online, then I go to the mall to absorb the Christmassy atmosphere while sipping Starbucks's newest holiday-themed coffee drink and thanking God I don't have to do any actual shopping. I break out the mulled-cider-scented candles in November. I don't, however, allow myself to start decorating for Christmas or listening to Christmas music before December 1, but thanks to TBogg, I'm going to be loading this one onto my iPod in preparation for cold weather and the deep-south distinct lack of snow:


Now, I think that her pose on the cover there perfectly expresses my feelings about the holiday season, but judging from her reviews on Amazon, some of her fans don't agree. My favorite?

Come on, Diana: It's a CHRISTMAS album! What's with the legs spread, high heels, head thrown back? Hey, if this album was called, "Love After Midnight" or "Exotic Standards" or "I Just Did Four Guys and I'm Exhausted," believe me, I'd be all over it. But it's a CHRISTMAS album.

I hope that commenter doesn't mind, but I have to steal that title for my own debut jazz album. Keep an eye out for it, I Just Did Four Guys and I'm Exhausted, online and in music stores near you in the fall of 2006.

Some of the highlights:

1. Diana Krall, "The Look of Love"
2. Hank Jones and Abbey Lincoln, "First Came Woman"
3. Kent, "747"
4. WorldScapes, "Paris Canaille"
5. Semisonic, "FNT"
6. Lenny Kravitz, "If I Could Fall In Love"
7. Jet, "Look What You've Done"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Block Rockin' Beats"
9. Ella Fitzgerald, "Slap That Bass"
10. Guster, "Love For Me"

On treating the disease

Okay, so Sadly, No! points us to a somewhat underrecognized debate over the new cervical cancer vaccine. While the vaccine appears to be nearly 100% effective against HPV, which causes all kinds of fun cancerous lesions on the cervix and kills 3,700 women a year, fundies are getting their (respectable, white cotton, high-waisted granny-)panties in a wad because such protection against HPV will give teenagers enough confidence to scrog up a storm.

Normally, I'd take this opportunity to make some kind of a snarky comment about how kids these days are so pure and chaste and Pleasantville-ish, and how dare anyone threaten that innocence with a potentially life-saving vaccine, but PZ Meyers had to go and put it better than I ever could:

Here's a disease that kills about a third of the women who get it. It turns their reproductive tract into a nest of tumors that can spread and shut down the kidneys, metastasize to the lungs, the gut, everywhere, that sterilizes them and can cause horrible agony. The treatment involves radical hysterectomy, bilateral adnexectomy and lymphadenectomy, words I'd rather my family never even have to learn.

And it's preventable.

Yet these sick, evil people want to be able to hold this horrible disease as a threat to their daughters, their friends' daughters, their neighbors' daughters—they want to be able to say to their kids, "If you don't obey my rules, your womb will rot and dribble out your private parts, and you'll thrash in pain for a while before you die and go to hell." They like the idea of a disease that they can say is not prevented by condoms, so they can continue to preach abstinence with threats.

So there's that.

My question is this: what is this obsession with treating the symptoms of teen sex? It's not just fundie wingnut parents who want their kids to hold off on the sex. My wholly moderate parents gave me the big abstinence talk all throughout my youth, not just because we're Catholic and Catholics are supposed to wait but because a thirteen-year-old girl doesn't have the emotional and logical capacity to make reasonable decisions about things as potentially life-changing as sex. I understand all of this now, but at the time, it was just a "because I said so" rule that I followed because I respected, trusted, and, yeah, feared my parents (just a bit).

They did something else, though - they hedged their bets and taught me the rest of the lesson. I got the block-rockingest pop-up book when I was about five that taught me all about how babies were made (move the little tab and the sperm fertilizes the egg, then turn the wheel to watch the fetus develop...), and when I was older I got the lecture on the various methods of birth control. I also got the stern warning that if I ever did think about getting groiny with a guy, I should only do it with someone I'd want to raise a kid with, 'cause that sort of thing can happen whether you want it to or not.

When I was a teenager, the temptation was all over the place. Between kids my age who were itching to try it out and older kids who had tried it out and were itching to do it some more, sex was everywhere. My junior year of high school, we had three baby showers in homeroom. I managed to avoid the indignity of stretch marks and the cost of a new wardrobe not because my parents had completely sheltered my from sex, but because they had adequately removed the mystery from it. I didn't need to explore; I'd read the book, I'd talked openly with my parents, and the whole thing just didn't seem that impressive.

And yet some parents think that they can make teen sex go away by making it horrible and dangerous. Kids are only doing it because they think they can get away with it, right? So if we make sure the consequences are unavoidable, they'll stop, right? If we can keep them completely in the dark about birth control, completely unprotected from STDs, completely unable to do anything about an unplanned pregnancy (from consensual or nonconsensual sex), they won't do it, right? Because thirteen-year-olds tend to be logical and think through the potential consequences of their actions.

Parents, here's the solution to teen sex: be parents. Love your kids enough to want them to be safe no matter what. You make them use their seatbelts whether or not you expect to get into a car accident, so why would you send them out into an increasingly sexualized world without the slightest clue about how to protect themselves? When you were a kid, sex was a mystery and only the naughty kids did it; these days, it's a sport. It's an after-school activity after the Xbox gets boring. Do you really, seriously think that little Aschleeigh is going to say, "You know what? I don't think that douching with Coke does prevent pregnancy, so I'm going to hold off. Who's up for Scrabble?"

And Jesus, God, people, be there for your kids. Condoms don't cause teen sex; two fifteen-year-olds with nothing to do for three hours after school causes teen sex. Four thirteen-year-old girls in Playboy bunny tank tops and ass shorts unsupervised at the Hollywood Connection cause teen sex. A sixteen-year-old girl with a fake ID and the body of a 25-year-old causes teen sex. A girl of any age who doesn't know that the answer to "If you love me, baby, you'll do it" is a swift kick to the nads causes teen sex. A seventeen-year-old guy with nothing better to do after school than troll the mall for chicks causes teen sex, and a guy who doesn't respect women enough to take "no" for an answer causes teen sex. A girl whose boyfriend is pressuring her for sex, but who doesn't feel comfortable talking to her mother about it? That causes teen sex, too.

Wingnuts love to complain about the government trying to run their lives, but they're quick to delegate child-rearing responsibility to anti-sex ed, anti-abortion and anti-birth control legislation. Here's my message to them: if you want to make kids, you should only do it if you're prepared to raise them. Poking holes in a kid's water wings and throwing him out in the deep end is no way to keep a kid from drowning; you have to teach him to swim. And then for God's sake, keep an eye on him to make sure he knows what he's doing. This isn't the kiddie pool of your youth; your kids are swimming in the wave pool at Six Flags, and whether they'll tell you or not, they're worried about whether or not they know how to handle it.