Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Split Scene...




Every time Rosie O’Donnell would walk on stage during The View’s opening, she made a gesture of feigned shock that there were all these people wildly applauding for her. She would turn her hands upwards and furrow her brow in exaggerated confusion and then as she’d continue out towards the table (trailed by the other consistently waving co-hosts), her open Irish face would break into a bright wide smile. She was, it seemed from the very start, saying to everyone who watched: I am going to take you with me now, into the land of bright lights, quick touch-ups and major league pretend.

But doing that while still following the rest of the rules of network television proved ultimately an impossible balancing act for a woman who has remarkably balanced a great deal. Or rather a task whose compromises, not just of time away from her beloved family (a family, it can safely be said, she made a natural part of morning conversation despite the fact that it is unconventional by traditional — and it would seem now, in large part thanks to her — almost archaic standards) but of her fiercely held moral standards of what is right and what is real.

Television has taken almost every ounce of reality away from the very genre so named. We are all supposed to be in on the joke now — that everything we see is edited and manipulated to serve some larger narrative. To wit: the debauched kids on MTV’s Real World: The Moon! (Not really, but they’re seriously running out of places to house these drunken whores), the wrecked and weeping women riding away mascara-streaked in limousines after being dumped by the latest Bachelor, or the ever available desperados of afternoon talk shows. Jerry Springer is still perhaps the most extreme, and even he now has his own meta-show, The Springer Hustle where we see that guests are so heavily prepped by producers they’re actually told at what point to physically attack their cheating spouse (when the lie detector or DNA test comes back positive) or racist neighbor (when he or she inevitably and often gleefully uses the “n” word)

For Rosie what is real is synonymous with the truth and the truth is as precious a commodity as it is rare, at least in the realm of show business. On her heavily trafficked website, she often writes about things like feeding geese, befriending squirrels, baby birds hatching in a corner of her roof, her wife’s conservative family, her children’s small triumphs and the ordinary people she encounters’ various struggles to survive. She puts her money where her mouth is and consistently gives it away, threatening to fire her financial advisors should she ever wind up on a Richest Celeb list. But she’s also fully recognized and taken advantage of the national audience she regained by joining The View this year, speaking out and devoting whole hours to issues like depression, autism, and the devastating illnesses now ravaging the 9/11 first responders.

Then there is The War. Rosie has relentlessly, with unmistakable rage and palpable grief refused, despite Barbara Walter’s awkward discomfort with it, to stop speaking out about this criminal administration and the Iraq War it made up, dressed up, and sold to our nation. “WAKE UP, AMERICA!” Rosie has, for years now, commanded from within the sometimes-confusing typographical trenches of her blog. Despite the fact that the media’s manipulations drove her from the very show she reinvented, Rosie’s fights with Elisabeth Hasselbeck did nothing if they did not wake us up. They were riveting in their rawness and to the extent one side of them ever seemed prepped, Rosie made no attempt to hide her disgust with such executively borne machinations. On what O’Donnell has since called Nuclear Wednesday, Hasselbeck made an analogy about a deadline for pulling out of the war and a timed football pass. Nothing could have articulated more clearly what Rosie seemed to find so anathema about this woman’s politics and ultimately her personal comportment. While Elisabeth appeared to almost relish the supposed gamesmanship of their political throw downs — going off to do sound bytes for the nightly “entertainment” show after Wednesday’s meltdown and assuring the public she wasn’t “mad” and that they would most definitely remain friends, they wore Rosie O’Donnell so far down you could literally see it in her eyes. They grew distant long before that eventual (and perhaps inevitable) dénouement.

Rosie said it was the split screen that was the final nail in her View coffin. It makes sense. The split screen implied that these feelings and ideas Rosie holds so dear and was trying, so very hard it seemed, to communicate to Elisabeth (but also to anyone who had ever twisted her words to serve their personal agenda) about truth and justice and loyalty and humanity could be turned into an empty gesture of celluloid commercialism: Selling Rosie as the worst and most dishonest caricature of herself, one side of a two dimensional screen. Kind of like what the government has done to our nation. Every day veracity is under siege in America as the current administration tries to warp what’s actually happening while the vast majority of our mainstream media remains complicit with their systematic airbrushing of the bloody facts.

We who compulsively tuned into the video blog she began a few weeks ago with her quirky long time producer-cum-mustache artist and giant-turkey-wing-eating hair stylist saw that Rosie was clearly far more at ease back stage, behind closed doors with a face naked of all concealers, singing along to Amy Winehouse or Tina Turner and answering some of the thousands of questions she gets daily than she ever would be out on that carefully orchestrated studio set.

I am confident, however, that Rosie will return. Not to The View, but to the unmatched power that is television. She’ll don the necessary war paint and head out under the hot white lights and blinking audience signs. She may act more or less surprised that people still love her, despite and because of her rage. The fact is this: A steadfast quest to reveal what is really real requires Rosie stay out here, on the front lines of truth.

By Amanda Guinzburg

Friday, May 18, 2007

In repair...




Too many shadows in my room
Too many hours in this midnight
Too many corners in my mind
So much to do to set my heart right
Oh it's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready
Oh but if I take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
I am in repair, I am in repair

Stood on the corner for a while
To wait for the wind to blow down on me
Hoping it takes with it my old ways
And brings some brand new look upon me
Oh it's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready
Oh but if i take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
I am in repair, I am in repair

And now I'm walking in the park
All of the birds they dance below me
Maybe when things turn green again
It will be good to say you know me

Oh it's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready
Oh but if I take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unready
Oh I'm never really ready, I'm never really ready
I'm in repair, I'm not together but I'm getting there

Reeeeeeemix!!!

lawd help ma abs!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Penis Power...

Ooooh LAWD chile.

Farewell Falwell...

From the Charlotte Observer:

A prayer for Falwell: Let his era pass with him
He drove a wedge sharp as a serpent's tooth into politics and culture
MARY C. SCHULKEN

Merciful Father, hear our prayer: Please let the death of your wayward servant the Rev. Jerry Falwell be a sign that an era has ended, and a new one has begun.

Please.

We know it's up to you to grant forgiveness. We know we need to turn the other cheek. We know (especially here in the South) it's poor form to speak ill of the dead.

But so help me, on the occasion of Falwell's death, I have to confess: I'm having a hard time living up to those ideals.

I know I should try harder. But it would help if we knew that the passing of this fallen man also signals the end of an era when your word was used to divide, blame and demonize on behalf of an agenda found in no book your hand ever wrote.

Whip up fear with blame

"I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle ... all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say `You helped this happen.' "Those are the kinds of words I'm talking about, Lord.

After terrorists felled the World Trade Center, smote the Pentagon and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania, killing thousands on Sept. 11, 2001, your wayward servant blamed that attack on his hand-picked scapegoats.

The spite slithering out of those words is bad enough.

But even worse, Lord, this man, an ordained minister, has said such things in your name. How can you turn the other cheek to that?

Or this?

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

You and I both know that's not true. You are not vengeful, you are merciful.

It's just one fallen man's devilish game, played to the emotions of those who are ignorant, afraid or both: Demonize people you disagree with and blame them to whip up people's fears.

He's not the only one, but Falwell made quite a splash doing that sort of thing. His movement, the Moral Majority, colored the landscape of conservative Christian politics with a deep hue of intolerance -- an abomination in your name.

Nothing moral about lies

There's nothing wrong with political activism. I figure that's why you gave us brains, Lord. I hope I'm right.

But there's nothing moral about throwing around scary stories at the expense of charity and understanding. There's nothing moral about telling flat-out lies. There's nothing moral about using religion as a weapon against people who don't think the way you do.

Those tactics have driven a wedge as sharp as a serpent's tooth into our political and spiritual life. They've left us arguing about abortion instead of trying to care for unwanted children. They've left us condemning sexuality instead of fighting a global AIDS explosion.

They've left us divided, and pointing fingers, when we ought to be sorting out differences together.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved." Falwell said that in 1987 when he stepped down as leader of the Moral Majority.

Yes, and many Christians shudder at where the country is thanks to snakehandlers like Falwell.

We commend to you, Lord, the soul of your wayward servant. He had a profound influence on politics and culture in the past two decades. But he led us by dividing us, and invoked your name to do it.

Please, let that era be over. It needs to pass into dust.

Mary C.

Schulken
Mary C. Schulken is an Observer associate editor. Write her at P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308, or e-mail her at mschulken@charlotteobserver.com.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Belief...




by john mayer from his song "belief"...

is there anyone who ever remembers
changing their mind from the paint on a sign?
is there anyone who really recalls
ever breaking rank at all
for something someone yelled real loud one time?
oh, everyone believes
in how they think it oughta be
oh, everyone believes
and they're not going easily

belief is a beautiful armor
and makes for the heaviest sword
like punching underwater
you never can hit who you're trying for
some need the exhibition
and some have to know they tried
it's the chemical weapon
for the war that's raging on inside
oh, everyone believes
from emptiness to everything
oh, everyone believes
and no one's going quietly

we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this
if belief is what we're fighting for

we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this
if belief is what we're fighting for
is there anyone who can remember
ever surrender with their life on the line?

we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this
if belief is what we're fighting for

we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this
if belief is what we're
if belief is what we're fighting for

what puts a hundred thousand children in the sand?
belief can, belief can
what puts a folded flag inside his mother's hand?

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Sanctity of Life...

GOP is pro-life in the womb, not necessarily after

By Roland S. Martin

Editor's note: Roland S. Martin is a CNN contributor and a talk-show host for WVON-AM in Chicago.

Aside from Rudy Giuliani's torturous explanation of his views on abortion, it was easy to discern after Thursday's debate that the candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination are staunch advocates of life, namely when it comes to abortion.

In fact, they were passionate on the issue, and some made it clear that nothing is more important than life itself.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: "Well, I've always been personally pro-life."

When asked about the Terri Schiavo case, he replied: "I think the Congress's job is to make sure that laws are respecting the sanctity of life."

California Rep. Duncan Hunter evoked the memory of a late president to explain his position: "Ronald Reagan said, on the question of life, 'When there's a question, err on the side of life.' "

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback was the most eloquent on the subject: "I believe life is one of the central issues of our day, and I believe that every human life at every phase is unique, is beautiful, is a child of a loving God, period."

He later added: "Her life is sacred. Even if it's in that difficult moment that she's in at that point in time, that life is sacred, and we should stand for life in all its circumstances."

On stem cell research, Brownback said, "It is not necessary to kill a human life for us to heal people."

That last line caught my attention because that is often something we hear from victims rights groups, law enforcement and prosecutors when someone is put to death for committing a crime.

But if you take the candidates at face value, then why hold the same view when it comes to the death penalty?

Now, for the purposes of getting everything out in the open: I'm pro-choice. Does that mean I'm marching in the streets advocating abortion? No. For me, it comes down to a woman choosing. And just like Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, I hate abortion and prefer for women not to make that choice. Will some suggest that this is counter to my Christian faith? Absolutely. But it is a difficult position, and one that I have wrestled with and continue to do so.

Yet I also support the death penalty. There are individuals who should lose their life for committing heinous crimes. And yes, I have struggled mightily, and would certainly say that my position has softened on this issue, just like it has on being pro-choice.

But even with all that, it's still important to at least philosophically explore the issue of being a staunch pro-life advocate, yet stop the moment the child is born.

"I believe that every human life at every phase is unique, is beautiful, is a child of a loving God, period." Those are the words of Brownback, but does not that person -- even that hardened criminal -- fall under the same banner?

Folks, it's hard to say on one hand that every life -- at every phase -- is important, but then say, "Send them to the death chamber!" Those two are diametrically opposed to each other.

And I'll be the first to tell you that many Christians -- especially right-wing conservatives -- are staunch anti-abortion advocates on Monday. And on Tuesday, if there is an execution, they are right there supporting that one as well.

It would have been nice had debate moderator Chris Matthews forced the candidates to deal with this issue.

But let's also expand the pro-life dialogue. Where do the Republican candidates stand on funding Head Start for children? Is that not part of the development of human life? Are we going to see Republican candidates seek to change Medicaid laws to allow dentists to better care for those who get government assistance? Or are we willing to see another case like Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died because his family lost their Medicaid, and the boy's abscess, which might have been cured with an $80 tooth extraction, led to his brain becoming infected?

Are the Republican candidates going to vigorously fight for expanded pre-natal care for mothers in many inner cities around America, where the infant mortality rate rivals that of some Third World countries?

What is needed -- on both sides -- is a full-scale discussion on what it really means to be pro-life.

Life is indeed precious. And just as I have tussled with my personal views on being pro-choice and supportive of the death penalty, the pro-lifers should really examine whether they are as passionate about life beyond the womb.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Jess' Bachelorette Partay...


Jess, the girls and the big scary drag queen at Club One.

Unconditional Support...


we might not agree with why they are there, but they are just following orders. they are brave. they are patriots. they deserve our support... no matter what.