Tucker Carlson: The Dance from Grace

Imagine my sick delight when I pick up a TV Guide in the checkout line of my grocery store and see a picture of Tucker Carlson, formerly of CNN's Crossfire, posing with a sequine wearing, orange skinned ballroom dancer. It was Christmas come early. It was sugary sweet, chocolate dipped irony. Oh, how the smug have fallen.

Sure, he is on the show with liberal mouthpiece Jerry Springer, (I know, I know, let that statement sink in a little bit) but I have come to expect a little bit of humiliating behavior from him. It's kind of his thing. But seeing Mr. Self Impressed Neo Con co-starring with Mario Lopez and doing the cha-cha does my heart some good.

Now if we can just get Ann Coulter on that show with Flava Flav, this country may just be on track.

Stop Buying Webcams for 13 year old Kids

I watch alot of news. On a typical day off I watch CNN all day while I read the news online. I would like to think that I am pretty well informed. As it turns out, I don't know crap.

I tuned into CSPAN tonight out of pure boredom, disgusted with badly written sitcoms and melodramas. I was just flipping through, when a headline caught my attention. It was apparently a committee hearing on child exploitation. There was a kid testifying (I say kid, he was nineteen years old) about a webcam business he ran from the time he was thirteen years old, until last year. Testifying with him was a reporter from the New York Times as well as his lawyer. The three of them told a story that left me frozen in my chair, unable to change the channel or focus on anything other than the speaker on the screen. It was a story about the ever growing scourge of child pornography via the internet, and the lack of movement by the Justice Department to end it.

I have to say, the testimony concerning the actual molestation wasn't the disturbing part. Sad and sick as it may seem, I am too desensitized by media and news stories to be shocked anymore. The part that made me nauseous was the lack of action by law enforcement once they had names, credit card numbers, addresses and contact information. They knew nine months ago where these people were, where the kids being raped were, where they continue to be and they did nothing.

I watched the testimony for hours. I got online and tried to learn everything I could about the case. What I found most frequently was the condemnation of self proclaimed pedophiles, or, as they had the audacity to call themselves "pedosexuals." Articulate and bold, they offered no apologies or excuses for their sexual predispositions. They called out Justin Berry as a traitor, a whore, a willing participant who used his age as an excuse to persecute his customers.

We spend millions of dollars in legislation, lobbying, protesting, boycotting and generally organizing to save the mass of cells growing in a women's womb, but we are too disturbed and uncomfortable to address the threat of child predators to actual living children. Kids can be beaten past the point of the claim of ignorance, they can be exploited and damaged by our neighbors and teachers and clergymen. This is allowed to happen by our own cowardice, and because children are so completely powerless in our society. They are no ones constituent. They have no dollars to pay for the kind of protection we enjoy.

So tonight I can't sleep. Justin Berry's testimony is still glaring back at me from the television, and I can't get past the feelings of shame at my national community for its inability to protect its babies from monsters.

GAH! What the hell?!?

When I read the post by "George Clooney" on Monday, I did a little dance. Sure, I was at work and people looked at me funny, but I danced anyway. Why? Because someone said it. Someone said all the things I have been muttering under my breath for roughly 6 years now: Democrats have become synonymous with backpeddling. We have become the party of the wishy washy, of the middle ground, of fighting like a sugared up retarded kid when it isn't important and caving like, well, a democrat when things get tough.

He said it! He said those things, with a public voice in a respected forum, he said it. And then he took it back.

Oh the irony! He waffled on an article about the evils of waffling! He caved under the public relations pressure of writing an article on the terrible results of caving under public relations pressure. Well color me shocked.

I am not a celebrity worship person. I couldn't give two shits about what who is wearing or who they are sleeping with. But I envy them their voice. They have an opportunity to say the things that they, as voters, as constituents, believe. Right or wrong, they can walk outside of their tricked out houses and there are fifteen reporters just waiting to record whatever it is they have to say. I though that George Clooney had actually done that.

But he took it back. He denied it, vilified the woman who interviewed him, and called himself abused. So he can make Syriana, and Good Night and Good Luck, call himself an edgy political filmmaker, and not be worried with the fact that he backed away from being both edgy and political.

Huffington Post took the article down, by the way. Try and google it. The only stories you will find are the ones about his vehement denials.

Defining Loss

Certain things are expected from war. We don’t want to hear about them, of course, unless it is in the form of hero-laden cinema, but we know they happen. We accept those losses, as well as we understand them, because of what we are told by bumper stickers and talking heads about freedom not being free. We accept them as if it is our sacrifice to make, as if it is out streets made into war zones, our neighbors terrified to leave their homes to buy bread. We assess, and we find it acceptable.

As far as the average American spectator is concerned, we have not yet passed the line of what is acceptable. Sure we see the young men and women dying far from home, far from their mothers, far from long lives and grandchildren, but we again find that a worthy price to pay. Again, not too much. Again, as if it is our sacrifice, our blood on the ground. We call them patriots. We don’t call them lambs.

Today, buried among the reports of NCAA office pool picks and Kevin Federline, the American spectator may find the report out of Balad, Iraq giving the sketchy yet disturbing details of a raid on the house of a suspected Al-Qaeda insurgent. Dig a little deeper, take a look at the European press, and you may find Associated Press pictures of the bodies of the people living in that house, of the at least four children and two women shot in the head, hands bound. You may even discover that the youngest occupant of what is now a pile of rubble was only seven months old.

Should you read these articles, you may brush it off as propaganda, you may disregard the reports from neutral press outlets telling of the wailing in the streets, the women rubbing ash in their hair, of tiny coffins and outraged citizens. You may be able to look past this. This too may seem acceptable.

No one is calling our servicemen and women monsters. They aren’t, as a whole, murderers or madmen. They are normal people in an impossible situation trying to make it from dawn to dusk in one piece.

What we are asking, what I am asking, is when are these losses no longer acceptable. At what point do we stop tolerating dead troops, dead civilians, dead mothers found still holding their dead children. When is the loss no longer acceptable, when does it become simply a loss? When do we learn the long hard lesson that revolution, democracy, social change itself must come from the very people expected to make that change?

In war, people die. Good people, bad people, bystanders and insurgents, they all are in the ever widening line of fire. But the thing that makes the biggest dent in the very core of the sort of dangerous fundamentalism that makes people strap bombs to their chest is when society defines what is acceptable. Our job as a world power is to make that distinction, to spell out what it is that we will and will not do in the name of any cause.

No, freedom is not free. But freedom is unachievable if it is bought with the souls and principles of the very people who are charged with delivering it.

The First Lady of Civil Rights

As everyone knows, Coretta Scott King died on January 30th from ovarian cancer. I saw people mourning around me; in the grocery stores, gas stations, every day people weeping over a woman they had never met. It made me think of when President Reagan died, and how unaffected I and the general population seemed: it was sad, but expected, and I didn't think of legacy then.

I live in Atlanta. The MLK memorial is about five minutes from my door, as is Ebeneezer Baptist church, the church where Dr. King gave stirring speech from behind the pulpit. His history is everywhere here, and it is one of the things that makes me proud to live in this city, to work here, to learn here. The movement for freedom and equality is the pumping heart of this place, beneath all that is cosmopolitan and trivial.

Driving home monday night, I saw road blocks and everyday citizens walking a country mile through the cold rain to reach Ebeneezer Baptist church. It was a mass of humanity dressed in black; black faces, white faces, every shade in between making their way to the memorial service. I had a moment of irritation; it was late, I was hungry and the day had been long. After I navigated my way through the detour, I sat at a stoplight and felt like an ass. I live here. Everyday I drive past the memorial and think about how lucky I am to have that constant reminder of such amazing struggle in front of me. I live minutes from where they where honoring this woman, minutes from this moment in history, and I didn't go.

I watched the services on tv instead, and all day just felt like I was missing something, like there was someplace I was supposed to be. I should have been there. I have a new regret to add to the others.

We live in an era where battles like the ones that Dr. and Mrs. King fought are rare. Real protest, real public outcry doesn't happen anymore. It's all scripted, disengenuous, a made for tv movie. The outrage is gone. As a nation, we fail to name our greivances and join together to end them. There are no leaders to lead us.

I had my own little memorial yesterday, glued to tv, listening to people speak lovingly and reverently of a woman who gave everything to make others free. I can't wrap my head around that kind of sacrifice. All I can feel is awe.

I am amazed by her, by people like her, who faced such hatred every day and never faultered. I don't know if I would have that kind of strength. Is there anything that we can say we would willingly die for? We want to save Tibet, the spotted owl, we talk about womans rights, gay rights, the rights of minorities. But never since that time 40 years ago has so much ground been broken in the name of progress. Her legacy has to be that call to arms. That call to outrage. Her legacy is sacrifice for the common good, and the belief in the rights and will of the people. Her legacy is stoicism and nobility, grace and purpose. It's quite a legacy.

No More Wire Hangers

Happy birthday abortion! So January 23rd is the day when women all over America heaved a collective sigh of relief and unclenched their knees. 33 years ago, Roe v. Wade was decided, making abortion legal. It was a landmark case that allowed women the freedom to do with their bodies whatever they wanted to. It also inspired endless debate on the right to privacy related to minors and married women. And on this anniversary we are bombarded by the religious right in their attempt to tell all of us "pro choice crazies" how very close to hell we are.

Activities for the day included protesters on both sides of the argument showing up in Washington in order to lobby in the oh-so-effective manner of posterboard and magic markers.
President Bush made phone calls to protest sites (much like he did last year) to tell the marching zealots to keep fighting the good fight. Much like every other campaign in the country, it looks as if they didn't want him out stumping for them, either. Regardless, he made the call and made his point, flacid as it may be.

So today, I am not going to reflect on the bizarre dichotomy of people preaching the right to life all the while blowing up abortion clinics, I am not going to dwell on the ridiculousness of persecution by people of a faith that preaches "judge not lest ye be judged." Instead, I am going to stay home and crack a beer in honor of not having to throw myself down a flight of stairs should I find myself in an ill timed "family way."

Open Letter to Millionares

Dear Mr or Ms 1% of the Population,

Consider this the mother of all grant proposals, the grandpapa of all scholarship essays, the big enchilada of investment requests. I am a member of the between the cracks part of my generation, the twenty-somethings working crap jobs with barely running cars and massive student loans with no end in sight. We are the teetering on oblivion, the mac and cheese people with fifteen bucks in the bank and a week until payday. We are the ones with no stock but potential, no parents to bankroll us, no connections with the right people or the right places. We are dreaming. We are scheming. But our light bill is late and we are not sure if we are going to make rent.

My parents live in a motel 6 in rural Georgia. I myself live with my husband and my cat in an apartment the size of my thumb in Atlanta. My grandmother still works at 72 years old; my brother lives and breathes music on the other side of the country in his house with fourteen other people no car. In my teenage years my parents were four states away and my grandmother and I lived in a little green HUD home, we bought our groceries with food stamps. I have moved twenty six times. I am twenty-four.

I dream big. One day, I will work in the White House. I will write speeches that move people, that stun people with the weight of my words, with the implication of my dramatic pauses. Audiences will weep at the way I string letters together in such a way that makes music out of policy initiatives, poetry of budget reports. Today I will figure out how to make hamburger helper with no hamburger.

The point is this: I have slowly inched my way through college, paying my own way as I go, scrimping and worrying my away through because that is the only way I know how. I have years to go, attending part time as I do out of the sheer necessity to work full time and not pay extortion rates in tuition. I do not belong to any subgroup special enough to warrant lots of scholarship money, my parents are not Eskimos; I am not a daughter of any revolution of any kind. I have written the essays; I have begged all the correct people. But regardless, no letters of “congratulations and here is your check” ever come. In short, I’m screwed.

So rich folk, here is my proposal. I would have put it in a nice folder with graphs and charts for you, but Kinko’s is expensive and as you may have gathered, I’m on a budget. I need funding. I need tuition and books, a new car, some financial security and shoes without holes in them. Every day we are bombarded with media dedicated to spelling out for us the ways in which the obscenely wealthy blow their money. They invest in nightclubs, they buy restaurants that fail, and that’s the sane ones. Others will spend 5,000.00 on a belt or spa treatment for their dogs. Faced with this galling waste of funds, I have come up with something valid for you to do with this excess: give it to me. Not all of it mind you, just a fraction. I am a simple girl.
Think of it as a long-term investment on your quality of life. A patriotic duty you can do for your fellow American. Investing in people, as I believe the phrase goes. I promise to do good things with my education, as is proof from my past volunteer experience and work with various human rights organizations. I will not blow it on drugs, booze or overpriced clothing. My modestly priced, fuel efficient car will be used for driving to school and work and, god willing, any internships I am able to get. Think of me as the daughter you never knew you had. In return I will spend my life working hard and contributing to society as a whole.

This, in my opinion, is an excellent opportunity for the both of us. All you have to do, instead of spending the money on that new pair of shoes or night on the town, is help me get through this particularly difficult part of my evolution. Try staying in, renting movies, or buying shoes from Target. They have great stuff.

In closing, I would just like to say that I am sure you get requests for your money daily. I am also aware that this sort of request is unorthodox somewhat forward. But myself and the rest of the between the cracks tax bracket don’t have time for polite pandering anymore. We are running out of determination and ramen noodles. We need your help.

Sincerely and with great affection,
Kristina Cates
Not so gentlewoman and would be scholar