Don’t Look Down

Duh. Right-wingers Like Pregnant Teenagers

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:19:08 -0400

School started and ate my life. But I’m still here, still full of opinions.

So people seem surprised that conservatives aren’t pissed about the news that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. Their surprise reveals a profound and undeserved generosity toward cultural conservatives, namely the generous interpretation that they believe what they preach.

It’s good to be nice. Often, it’s the best thing. I believe--I really do--that kindness is the highest of all virtues. But sometimes, for example in politics, it’s better to be smart, and even a little cynical. (Just ask John McCain. Palin was the most cynical VP pick of our lifetime.)

And if you’re smart and a little cynical, you recognize that cultural conservatism has very little to do with the values it presents as its core. Those values are a power-grabbing tool, a way to manipulate the everyday voters who don’t spend their lives obsessing about this shit and who misremember the distant past with nostalgia and longing and think it might be a good thing to return to it. In a certain sense, who can blame them, when Tila Tequila has a career?*

In the effort to keep a certain cabal of rich, entrenched men in power in America, pregnant teenagers are great. That’s one more woman with a statistically miniscule chance of getting an education and having a career, one more person likely to drop out of high school, start a bad marriage too young, run up credit card debt to buy shit to fill the emptiness inside, raise their child in a bad neighborhood, and reduce the child’s chances of being an informed, educated citizen. While Bristol** Pailn may not enact this particular sequence of behaviors, she now very publicly represents a huge number of girls who will.

Why are these good things for the GOP? Because an uneducated populace is easier to control, which also explains Bush’s sad excuse for an education policy. Because divorce is sad and lonely and depressing, and everyone knows it, so it makes a great talking point to rile up all those nostalgic voters. Because everyone profits from credit card debt except the consumer. Because the longer the cycle continues, the more money and power flow upward. And most of all, because one less woman in the workplace is one less threat to the corporate power structure that really runs the planet.

GOP opposition to abortion and contraception and insistence on abstinence-only education have been brilliant additions to the party platform because they are issues about which a certain set of people can’t be rational or logical. These people are called Pro-Life, in polite terms. I called them “fucking bitches” when I drove past them picketing the clinic next to the bank today. And I can probably do better, if I’m feeling creative.

Of course, it has nothing to do with actual conservatism, which used to think it was best to keep the government’s intervention in our lives as limited as possible. And it has nothing to do with the goals and policies of the leaders who preach it, in and out of government. It’s simply a way to keep us under thumbs.

My last, best hope for an entertaining election is a hormone-fueled Bristol rebellion. And I don’t mean abortion, because they would just call it a miscarriage and we’d all get asked to pray for her. I mean a full-bore, public tantrum or three. Wouldn’t you be pissed if you were already dealing with the bullshit of being a pregnant teenager, knocked-up by a boy who refers to himself as a “fucking redneck” on his MySpace page, and says hanging out with his boys is the most important thing in the world, and your mom decided to take your story international? I mean, it was already disgusting that the GOP was willing to use her Downs Syndrome baby as a fucking talking point. If I have to read about how she really “walks the walk” one more time I’m going to freak out. If people thought Hillary was ambitious, they hadn’t seen anything yet. I’d be so ready to go on Ellen and dish like crazy if that bitch was my mom.

*Well, okay, I blame them, because it’s their responsibility to be smarter than that and to actually care, and if you don’t care, then don’t drive on our public roads or flush your toilet or put your garbage out for collection or any of the other things that elected officials are in charge of. But I think that’s a different rant.

**And while we’re at it, what the hell kind of name is Bristol?

Joe Biden wants to be Vice President. Literally.

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:10:07 -0400

Well, shit. I mean, there’s a lot to like about Joe Biden, especially when he’s in attack-dog mode, which appears likely to be his role in the coming campaign. His assertion that nothing ever comes out of Rudy Guiliani’s mouth but a noun, verb, and 9/11 was both accurate and hilarious, and has become my favorite quote from this or maybe any election cycle.

There’s a lot not to like about him, too, but I’m trying not to think too much about that now. Except I can’t quite push out of my mind the selection of an apt candidate for the old, male white-off that unfortunately is national electoral politics. And if he’s going to give any more speeches outdoors, he must get a haircut.

My problem right now is that those speeches today just weren’t very good. Andrew noted the first time Obama started to say President instead of Vice President talking about Biden: “He’s so used to talking about the presidency that he almost missed it.” And then a few minutes later he did.

I may have mentioned here in the past (can’t tell, old posts in a self-storage facility in Floyds Knobs), politics often does for me what church does for religious people. Sit me down during mass, which I attended pretty regularly growing up, and I don’t feel a thing. Park my ass in front of a stirring speech and I get goose bumps, my heart goes aflutter, and I tear up without really knowing why. I love this about Obama, even though I still think Hillary Clinton was a better choice. So the numerous slips and the annoying podium-tapping today was pretty disappointing.

And then came Biden. The first time he used the word “literally,” used it right and proper unlike almost everyone I know, I got all excited. I said something like, “This is going to be the most articulate ticket during our lifetime, anyway.” Then he used it again, and again, and again. (You had me at “Hello.” But lost me the eighth time you said “hello” in fifteen minutes. I don’t date parrots.) And to top it off, he made what was supposedly a joke about his wife’s PhD being a problem, and referred to his two sons and one daughter as “my sons.”

Now, I know Biden has worked pretty hard to secure equal wages (and failed) and helped make great strides against domestic violence, and is probably a kind of great guy in that way. But this is the problem with the contest to see who can be the oldest, whitest man: If you’re over a certain age and not a member of any minority community, or if you’re a redneck, or if you run a radio station, you think minimizing the accomplishments of and/or objectifying and/or linguistically neutering women is funny. We’re way past the point in our culture where it’s offensive. But it isn’t funny. It’s the oldest, least original shit in the book, the cheapest, easiest laugh. And how in the world did it make it into one of the most important speeches Biden will ever give?

Um, Excuse Me?

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:42:49 -0400

Today someone asked me if I was Robyn’s mother. No, not Alice’s mother. Robyn’s.

If I had a sense of humor, I would have said something clever like, “Yeah. Wow, it was rough being a pregnant 4-year-old. But once I got past the morning sickness and could hold down my cookies and milk for the rest of morning kindergarten, it really was fine.”

Or, “What’s up with the ugliest tattoo on the planet landing on your shoulder? I mean, I know everybody gets drunk now and then, but jeez, put on a shirt with sleeves, man.” (Block-letters, USA, filled in with stars and stripes. Big.)

But, being flabbergasted, I mumbled something about only being five years older than Robyn. Then, because I’m insane, I worried for a few minutes that I might have offended him by not responding more graciously. I really do need therapy.

Since We Last Met Our Heroes...

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:16:34 -0400

Well, some shit has gone down. First off, what is with the barrage of pro-barefoot-and-pregnant news? On Friday, we had a Yahoo! News top story headlined BIRTH CONTROL PILL MAKES WOMEN CHOOSE BAD MATES. I am apparently not the only person this pissed off, seeing how every version of the article I can now find online has a less offensive title. The general premise is that one study says that if you take oral contraceptives, you might be less apt to smell your boyfriend’s armpit accurately and recognize a good match. Because that’s how we primates mate, you know. Of course, anybody who has much dating history knows that simple magnetism has exactly nothing to do with being a good partner. In fact, we’ve probably all had beaux to whom we were freakishly attracted turn out to be the worst possible life-mate prospects. But we can have a Yahoo! News top story headline asserting that pregnancy protection will fuck us up for the rest of our lives. Seems a little contrary to logic, no?

Of course, we all know that birth control is responsible for getting women into the workplace. So it was interesting to learn yesterday that CAREER WOMEN ARE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES, because a book called "The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance" presents study data that women maintain the glass ceiling by being unwilling to promote themselves in the workplace. So hurry up girls! Quit your jobs! Working is ruining your life, too! Just get in that kitchen and take off your shoes and let that man control the budget! Now, in my experience, being called an aggressive bitch when I celebrate my achievements as any guy would isn’t much of a deterrent. But I’m an aggressive bitch; I can see it putting off some other people. But don’t worry. It’s my own fault. I’m my own worst enemy. And thank God, by the way, that I’m not in sales. I’d rather shovel shit than work in sales, unless waiting tables qualifies as sales (I actually liked that job). Not that the article clarifies in any way that this book is specific to the sales field, except in burying the title in the middle of a paragraph; nor does it note that women are almost entirely unwelcome in most areas of sales, as the industry is such an old boys’ club. It just wants to be sure we know that if we work, we’re self-destructive, so we better just knock that whole personal achievement and ambition thing off right now and go stand in front of the oven.

Also, Bigfoot was really just a frozen gorilla suit. I still want to know why those two dudes sent in DNA samples from a human and a possum and thought they’d get away with it. And who extracted the DNA from the possum. Now if we could just debunk some of the myths about working women...

Just Like Starting Over

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:59:41 -0400

Well, here we are again. It’s been a rough few weeks. First, Apple botched the transition to the new service. For a while, you couldn’t read Don’t Look Down. Then you couldn’t comment. Which defeated the whole purpose, seeing how nine-tenths of what I write here is designed to make you say something back.

Meanwhile, as you may remember, my iPod had a really bad day, and I did every imaginable thing to try to fix the unfixable blog comment problem, including pretty much destroying Don’t Look Down in its normal form. Which didn’t help at all. And since Apple had announced a new special to get a free iPod with a new computer, and my computer was more than four years old anyway, I decided to take the plunge.

I ordered my stuff last Monday, including a new laptop as souped-up as I could make it and the incredibly delicious iPod Touch, which is my favorite non-breathing object ever. My iPod arrived in two days, my new printer in three, and I was all ready for the computer. Chomping at the bit, in fact. But it got hung up in China, where Apple apparently fully manufactures now--my computer was Shanghaied!--and took a whole week to get here. So on Monday it arrived. And in my impatience to get it up and running I completely melted my old computer’s hard drive. Destroyed it. Lost almost everything. If I turn it on now, a little gnome pops up and asks me what the fuck I think I’m doing.

Now, I’m no dummy about this stuff. I know how to work a computer and I know not to pull cables out of ports without proper preparation, etcetera, but something was going weirdly wrong with my data transfer, and I decided to stop the process, partly because I was impatient, and too, because I didn’t want whatever cocktail of viruses had been making my old computer doggy to end up on the new one, and I couldn’t get it to stop, so I yanked. And that’s the last I’ve seen of my old computer’s contents.

For the most part, everything was backed up. And I didn’t have that much music on it, anyway, because compared to the machines we’re all using now, both the computer and iPod had a miniscule amount of storage. I lost the pages I’d written of my next novel, but I never throw that shit away; I’ll just have to retype. So, mostly, I’m sick to death over doing something so stupid, and also over wasting a workable machine that somebody could have put to use. Large-scale waste makes me lose sleep.

And while the previous incarnations of my web stuff aren’t lost forever (I downloaded and stored them), they’re gone from readers’ sight. Which turns out to be surprisingly liberating. Because it means you get victoriabarrett.net and Don’t Look Down all fresh and new. And girly, besides. If there are any posts you can’t live without, I can recreate and archive them for you, of course. Maybe from time to time I’ll drop you a rerun just for fun. Oh, and you still can’t comment, so I’ve taken off the link so you don’t feel taunted. Hopefully, that’ll be fixed soon. I’ll keep you updated. And if it’s pressing, you can always e-mail me.

Here’s the thing about all this struggle the week before I go back to school to teach an overwhelming course load (extra class for me, yikes) and have to get ready: Today while I was outside in the sun listening to my seemingly-straight neighbor’s 45-minute loop of dance club music, which he listens to when he works outdoors, my ears perked up every time I heard a car door close. Andrew was away at a second teaching gig, and wasn’t due back for three more hours. And I realized, sitting there, that no matter how bad the day, no matter how grouchy we both are or what’s going on, if I’m home alone and hear a car approach, I always hope it’s him. Which is pretty much all that matters, after all.