feminist blogs

Presently there is a petition available online, addressed to Virginia’s Superdelegates, noting, “Virginia spoke. Barack Obama won Virginia by 281,054 votes or 28.19% of the vote” [emphasis added] and saying in part:

The only way in which Hillary Clinton could secure the Democratic nomination is if you were to overturn the will of both Virginia’s and the nation’s elected pledged delegates. Continuing such a campaign until our convention in August will:

• Create major divisions within our party through August with little time to heal before the General election;
• Dishearten newcomers to the party by creating the impression that the important party decisions are controlled by longtime party insiders
• Waste tens of millions of dollars battling each other which should be focused on John McCain;
• Distract media attention from focusing upon our true objective - beating John McCain.

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I have, tonight, added my signature to this petition, with the following note:

As someone born in Virginia, and who has made this my permanent residence for the last ten years (voting for progressive and Democratic interests in nearly every election, including for smaller local races), I care deeply about the future of our Commonwealth, which will soon belong to my two daughters.

And I implore you, with all sincerity (and as someone who truly respects Senator Clinton’s service to this country, and wishes her no ill will whatsoever), to please give proper consideration for the will of Virginia’s voters, who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama in our Commonwealth’s primary.

To do otherwise would be to sabotage the interests of not only our state, but of Democracy itself.

In peace, and with greatest respect -

Victoria Marinelli
Henrico County, Virginia

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I would ask that those of you who also reside in Virginia consider adding your own names and (respectful) comments to this petition. Our Commonwealth’s - and our country’s - future is at stake.

Thank you for your consideration.

You know, I thought I was past the point of being shocked about the depths of corruption that have characterized this most recent Bush Administration.

Then I listened to this radio program, from This American Life (broadcast title: The Audacity of Government). Click on ‘full episode’ to stream from the website, or download as an mp3 - I’ve been listening to the mp3 in increments over the last two days, whenever walking my dog.

In “Act One: The Prez vs. The Commish,” hear what happens to a longtime Republican - and Bush loyalist, who worked hard in campaigning for Dubya both in 2000 and in 2004 - when he refuses to break international treaties, critical for the protection of our Borders - at the whim of the Department of Justice, and George W. Bush specifically. Think about the implications this story has for our future, the precedents that are being set. Remember too that Presidents who follow Shrub might use these same (abuses of) powers in ways that should put chills down the spines of any credible conservative, much less those of us who hail from the more liberal side of our nation’s political divide.

And listen, as well, to Acts Two and Three, which are just as astonishing.

Holy. Fucking. Crap.

Just go, please, and listen now (or download to listen later, whenever you have the time - you know that iPod is good for more than Radiohead, right?). Listen to the whole thing, whether in one sitting or in increments. Just PLEASE GO.

Recently at Reclusive Leftist, I cringed to read this (not only offensive, but bizarre) characterization of Obama supporters:

[emphasis added; why not use the actual words, which I’m sure were sufficiently sexist that they’d merit being criticized explicitly and specifically?]

Boo! Boo! And: wooga, wooga, indeed.

In the past, I’ve confronted statements like these on feminist blogs in a comparatively distanced way. But Violet, the blogger behind Reclusive Leftist, is someone I’ve been reading for years, and her words matter to me in a way that I can’t just dismiss. So, after letting some past statements (e.g., her call for “Obamabots” to, from within their so called “padded room[s]” for the “fucking insane” to “calm down, take a Xanax, shoot some smack,” etc.) go without a direct response, I finally had to leave this comment expressing my offense that “the entirety of my political consciousness [had] been reduced to cultist, robot-like utterances…” adding that I hoped after the general election, we (”whoever ‘we’ are at this point”) would “be able to move forward in some credibly progressive fashion,” following which time I hoped to be able to read her blog again, “without every other line feeling like the rhetorical equivalent of a knife twisting in my gut.”

She responded, in part:

I’m sorry, Victoria, but it’s kind of like we always say to the men who become irate whenever they see a post about men’s propensity to commit domestic violence or rape: if it doesn’t apply to you, then it doesn’t apply to you.

(So now I’m the election-year equivalent of defensive dudes saying “but I don’t personally rape women”? Okay…)

And while I vowed that I wasn’t going back there to read any new posts until after the general election (219 days from now! But who’s counting…), I did select the option to receive follow-up comments by email. So it was that tonight I got notice of my friend Lost Clown’s reply to the same thread:

I posted a link to the article [to which Violet had been responding] on my post [here], though with a long intro calling for people like you… to publicly call these people out, b/c everytime I say something about their rampant misogyny I am written off for being a Hillbot. Because you’re not one of the misogynist cultish followers like those Violet mentioned.

First, I want to say a very sincere thank you to Lost Clown. For the above and for so many other reasons (for instance, this hilarious comment), I will always have her back.

Second, I have since spent hours working on a comment in response to hers, until finally I acquiesced to the necessity of yet another election-themed blog post.

So here it is. Note that in this post’s title, my accentuating of “these people” in her call for “people like [me] to publicly call these people out,” my point is that I’m more than a little concerned about both Obama’s and Clinton’s supporters’ use of phrases like these in describing advocates for opposing candidates; we are all, indeed, “these people”; not one of us is immune to the divisive forces that are perniciously tearing us apart.

Obama himself characterized this situation best, back in 2004, when he said:

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America - there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats.

…So too, the pundits would like to see (and, sadly, are now seeing) women tearing each other apart, in this election season, within variously productive and destructive discourses of identity politics. So I would posit that we are all, indeed, “these people” - who must confront, and be confronted about, all the varieties of hatred that unnecessarily divide us from each other.

So, while the following reads like a letter to one particular pro-Clinton feminist, I mean it also as an open letter to all of us, feminists and progressives in particular, as we confront all the thorny matters of identity and ambition that lie at the heart of the Obama/Clinton divide.

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Dear Lost Clown,

Regarding your comment: “calling for people like you (and arbitrista) to publicly call these people out…

For the record, I’ve been doing that all along. From Yes We Can (do anything): On the elections, feminism, and our future (March 17, 2008):

When this primary season is over, the feminists and progressives I’ll be first to trust will be, among Obama supporters: those who explicitly, and without qualification, opposed this season’s sexist bias against Clinton, and, among Clinton supporters: those who just as adamantly protested racist bias against Obama. (Not clear on the horrific amount of bias directed at both candidates? These examples were collected from only one source, and only during the month of February, but are quite illustrative.)

From Nope, nothing to do with race/ethnicity at all (March 2, 2008):

This post is intended as complementary to, and not in contradiction with, Reclusive Leftist’s recent post, Nope, nothing to do with gender at all. Because the specifically racist and sexist bias, as evidenced in media coverage of both Senators Obama and Clinton respectively, has been enormous, and is seriously offensive to me, particularly given my burning desire to prevent, at all costs, the Bush-legacy-furthering travesty that would be a McCain presidency.

From On Clinton playing the “Terror Card” (January 9, 2008):

…There’s been a lot of discussion in the feminist blogosphere about the media’s sexist treatment of the candidate, and I’m quite glad for that. Because it is, of course, some seriously offensive bullshit, and while Clinton is not, at present, my first choice for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination, I’m damn sure not going to act like that’s okay…

Later in the same post, after expressing my criticism of Clinton’s invocation of an all-too-familiar Republican meme (namely, the less than subtle hint that “Al-Qaeda’s gonna getcha if you don’t vote for ____”), I refer to coverage of that story by Keith Olbermann:

…Who has not, alas, always been a beaming example of anti-sexist journalism (to say nothing of his asswipe colleague Chris Matthews; visit the fine folks at Tennessee Guerrilla Women for much, much more)…

And the above is, of course, just a drive-by sampling of criticisms I’ve made on my own blog ¹; I’ve been relentless in condemning the sexist attacks on Clinton not only online (on my blog and on others’), but also in my local community. And I’m hardly alone.

It seems to me that the characterization that I am more alone than not in taking this principled position, is part and parcel of the usual slander about disproportionate “cultishness” among Obama’s supporters. In fact, I’ve seen ridiculously offensive behavior on the part of both candidates’ supporters, arguably “cultish” in quality. I will neither lower myself to participate in it², nor pretend it isn’t happening, on both sides.

For every fool who points to all the nakedly obvious instances of racism in the campaign, as if that were evidence that the sexism of the same campaign is somehow non-existent or inconsequential, there is another fool on the opposite side, pointing to incidents of sexism in an effort to disprove the existence or significance of the racism (here’s one example; I could, of course, furnish hundreds more if I wanted to make that my full-time job). Either position is, of course, absurd; these are not mutually exclusive biases. Rather, these are systems of oppression that (obviously) serve to divide progressives from each other, in ways that break my heart more with each passing day.

Incidentally, if you know of any ardent Clinton supporters who have persistently and passionately maintained a specific awareness of the extent of the racism in this campaign - not as something secondary to the sexism against Clinton, but as something equally pernicious - kindly point me to them. I’m assuming such supporters do exist; when I find them, I’d like to start a joint petition of Obama and Clinton supporters “explicitly and without qualification” opposing both the sexism and the racism we have seen against both candidates. Please note that I am completely sincere in this; for all I know someone is already doing this, and I simply have yet to be connected with them.

Because I am nothing if not a hopeful feminist.

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¹ Could I have done more? Obviously, but: (a) I am a human being with finite resources and time, and (b) I never intended that my blog should become entirely engulfed by political matters. Each post I write on the election, I die a little, which is to say that the book I am supposed to be working on right now is not getting done, and my daughters get less attention from me than is optimal, even if we do have viable teaching moments (e.g. this rally, where one of my daughters carried signs for Hillary, and the other wore her shirt in support of Obama) along the way.

² Which is not to say that I haven’t had my own less-than-angelic moments during this season, in which I have, indeed, generated more heat than light.

I have been waiting impatiently for the video for OTEP’s Confrontation to come out - and it’s a fire-hot, unapologetically political follow-up to 2004’s Warhead. (Did you not catch that when it first came out? Hit that previous link; I’ll wait here while you listen and watch.)

Again, it hardly matters if you’re into metal or not (or, if you are into metal, if you’re possessed with some weird idea that women are not capable of fully owning the genre); this is just some really powerful music. (But do know that I’ve been listening to this album for months now, so my perceptions are based on that more than the video per se; between Confrontation and Warhead, the video for the latter packs a different sort of punch; Confrontation leaves the viewer a little uncomfortable, I think - which, quite possibly, is the point.)

And the album from which Confrontation is drawn, The Ascension, is unbelievable, lyrically and otherwise¹.

Eet the children, for example, is like an anthem both for abused children and those deemed mentally ill as a result of such abuse. It begins with these haunting, almost whispered lines:

Hush little baby
Don’t make a sound

This is gonna hurt
Me more than you…

Following which there is a kind of aural explosion, vocalist Otep Shamaya’s lyrics continuing with these lines:

If I’m a danger to myself
Just think what I would do to you…

Really, listening to that track is for me like the auditory equivalent of reading certain of flawedplan’s posts in the ‘child abuse’ category at Writhe Safely. (Even though punk is more her thing than metal, but I’ll tell ya, Otep’s music transcends a lot of boundaries.)

But back to Confrontation.

Here are some of the lyrics, followed by the video.

More capitalist crimes,
More enemies than allies

No WMD’s, who gives a fuck
If they die

Just kill em all, watch em fall
Skin the world with their lies

Its a rich man’s war
But it’s the poor that fight

Stand up
Speak out
Strike back…

They don’t know
What they started

CONFRONTATION…

(Note: Further lyrics include those that inspired the title of this post; listen via the link below.)

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¹ The album is also available for (legal!) download from Amazon and iTunes (in its DRM-free “iTunes Plus” format).

My then-six year old, adorably gap-toothed daughter with her pal Neziah (whose little sister is at left), World March of Women, Washington D.C., October 15, 2000.

For the last several days I’ve been struggling with how to approach certain issues in the present election season, finding myself even more reluctant than usual. Why? Because the feminist blogosphere is experiencing an incredible rift. My last serious post on the subject was almost two weeks ago; titling it Heat vs. Light, I was struggling to get at my primary (no pun intended!) concerns as a feminist.

And among those concerns is: Once the Democratic Party’s nomination is a sure thing for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, will we be able to speak with a modicum of civility toward each other? Will we be trust each other, and ready to engage in collaborative activism on issues of crucial importance to women and children? And, most importantly (at least in the short term), will we be able to defeat John McCain?

When this primary season is over, the feminists and progressives I’ll be first to trust will be, among Obama supporters: those who explicitly, and without qualification, opposed this season’s sexist bias against Clinton, and, among Clinton supporters: those who just as adamantly protested racist bias against Obama. (Not clear on the horrific amount of bias directed at both candidates? These examples were collected from only one source, and only during the month of February, but are quite illustrative.)

I cannot separate¹ my profound objections to any system of bigotry; they are interdependent, and serve to keep progressives needlessly divided against one another, when we could be working - as individuals, communities, and in coalitions - against common foes. (A necessity which, of course, must extend, both now and in the future, well beyond this election season, as Aurora Levins Morales rightly reminds us.)

My feminism is, and since 1991, has been, rooted in Bernice Johnson Reagon’s Coalition Politics: Turning the Century (from her speech delivered in 1981). This feminism comprises the root system of my political consciousness. Consequently, where racist narratives have wormed their way into (allegedly) feminist discourse concerning the elections, I’m as angered on behalf of Barack Obama, to whom (along with many of his supporters) that racism is directed, as I am outraged on behalf of feminism itself.

Like many other feminists, I have chosen to support Obama’s candidacy; this choice is congruent with (not despite) my feminism; I’ll elaborate on this theme further in the coming weeks.

For now, though, I want to take a moment to address one (apparently quite earnest) concern raised by supporters of Hillary Clinton:

All I know is if Hillary Clinton cannot win the presidency, then face it ladies, there will NEVER BE A WOMAN PRESIDENT!! [link]

Really? Never?

As the thirty-seven year old mother of two incredible daughters, I’m generationally sandwiched between younger and older women voters, who lean toward Obama and Clinton respectively.

That we haven’t had a female President yet is a problem; of course I get that. (This is all the more disturbing, when the U.S. ranks 68th in the world for its level of female representation within national legislative bodies.)

I’m old enough that I do not, for one second, take for granted the brave work of second-wave (and earlier) feminists, nor the rights I enjoy because of those labors. And I’m young enough that the first election I voted in was the so-called Year of the Woman, in which a “whopping” total of four women were elected to the U.S. Senate in one season. (As I lived in Seattle at the time, it was also my privilege to vote for the now-Senior Senator Patty Murray, who ran on a very down-to-earth “mom in tennis shoes” platform.)

I had watched, the year before, the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, wherein Anita Hill was crudely slandered before a committee of exclusively white men. And I felt, then, a deep rage building: not only about Hill’s treatment (read her 2007 Op-Ed for the New York Times looking back on the experience), but also about the gross underrepresentation of women and people of color among our elected officials.

Now a total of fourteen women are serving in the Senate: a marked improvement, in terms of gender balance, from when I was first watching those rage-inducing Clarence Thomas hearings. Is fourteen a sufficient number? Obviously not. (Then again, for an increasing number of feminist voters, there is no vagina litmus test. We vote on issues.)

But I see no reason to believe this momentum won’t continue to build (which is not to say we won’t have setbacks, or that sexist bias won’t continue to be an impeding factor - far from it). I’m fairly sure a woman President will happen in my lifetime (Janet Napolitano, maybe?), and I’m certain it will happen in my daughters’ lifetime.

Just try selling the line that, if Hillary Clinton does not win in 2008, that we will never have a woman president, to my teenager, who was chanting this (at her own initiation, mind you!) at the age of six:

…or to my daughter Annalisa, who was an infant when she met then-President of NOW, Patricia Ireland. (For that matter, I was two days shy of Annalisa’s due date when I was a speaker at Virginia’s Pro-Choice Lobby day in 2000, at which time I met the current President of NOW, Kim Gandy. Alas, I’m unable to dig up those pictures tonight.)

Annalisa meets Patricia Ireland, May 6, 2000, Mid-Atlantic Feminist Conference.

And see, too, both my girls at this recent Democratic rally, where, with my sincerest blessing, the infant shown above (now eight years old) held signs for Hillary, and my now-thirteen year old expressed her support for Obama (seeing no contradiction between this and her earlier “Girls Can Do Anything” chant - because, of course, there was no contradiction).

For these girls, feminism is alive and well (Jessica Valenti, if you’re reading this, please know my teenager passed her copy of Full Frontal Feminism around her Middle School until it was dogeared) - still very relevant. But their notions about what is possible for them, relative to possibilities open to me and to generations of women before us - are far more expansive.

So, do I want to see a woman President? You’re damned right I do. But after a long, painstaking study of each candidate’s positions on a range of foreign and domestic policy issues, I have decided to support Barack Obama. Should Obama fail to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton will have my full support, because she is, by far, a better candidate than John McCain, and I will not sit idly by and allow another right-wing administration to suck even more of the life from our very democracy, if I can help it.

Tennessee Guerilla Women, back in June of 2007, put it best, in writing about Hillary Clinton (though they would later go on to endorse her, and are presently waging what can only be described as an all-out war on the Obama campaign, rife with distortions):

We want a woman to be president, but not a rightwing woman and not a centrist woman. What we want is a progressive president!

And that’s what it comes down to, for me: Hillary Clinton’s habit of erring, when in doubt (which, I am troubled to note, is quite often) with conservatives on issues of critical importance to our country (not least of all, the war in Iraq). And that’s why, though it may seem counterintuitive, many people are presently regarding Obama as not only an acceptable choice, but as the better choice for feminists.

But to return to what had been troubling me so deeply at the start of this post - about the divisions between us.

There is no question but that some of us will carry scars from our internecine skirmishes. I’ve been so bothered about this issue recently, I couldn’t bring myself to express it here; I had to go to a friend’s blog, and let it pour out of me in comments. (That friend being, incidentally, a Clinton supporter, who has been exceptionally fair minded about the present debates among us.)

But there are also real signs of hope (beyond the anecdotal evidence of my own daughters). For instance, in this editorial at the Washington Post, co-authored by two feminists: one of whom backs Obama, while the other backs Clinton. And in at least one writer’s suggestion that when all this electoral infighting is done with, Democrats just might be a stronger collective force for it.

To my sister feminists supporting Hillary Clinton, I promise that, should she secure the nomination, I will vote for her in the general election (and will passionately encourage everyone I know to do the same), even while I am actively (and unapologetically) supporting Obama’s candidacy right now. I also promise you that neither candidate will ever get a “free pass” from me; now and in the future, I will hold them accountable and be forthright in my criticisms as appropriate. Finally, I promise this: That I won’t let my daughters lose sight of the tremendous efforts of women who paved the way for us, that has made possible their completely realistic belief that they will see a woman President in their lifetime - if not in Hillary Clinton, then in another candidate, not far down the path from where we stand today.

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h/t Faux Real and Meta Water Shed for some of these links.

¹ This is not to say there aren’t distinctions among them, only that they are mutually reinforcing in a profoundly poisonous way.

Go ahead and call me a member of a cult. I will laugh. Go ahead and call me a traitor to feminism. You might make me cry. But whatever else you say about me, say that, to paraphrase Dr. King, I really was a drum major for peace. [via: NOLA radfem blog]

An incredible post from a kick-ass radical feminist, on her support for the candidacy of Barack Obama. Please go read the whole thing.

Those who seem to think you’ll get about equivalent sexism from Obama or McCain I think are smoking something pretty strong (and probably illegal, not that it should be).

Courtesy of Disgusted Beyond Belief.

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* I know I don’t actually post de-contextualized quotes often, much less on a daily basis, but perhaps tonight’s as good as any for my taking up such a habit.

Following up from my earlier post, Nope, nothing to do with race/ethnicity at all, I would like to recommend this post over at Culture Kitchen: Matt Yglesias calls “The Racist Vote” for Clinton.

I would also like to call your attention to this quote from Rachel Maddow, last night (concerning Hillary Clinton’s recent exercise in party treason):

That’s what you say when you want to be John McCain’s vice presidential choice, that’s not what you say when you’re trying to become the Democratic nominee for president. [link]

So, is this post “heat?” or “light”?

Unfortunately, being gracious even in defeat doesn’t always carry the day; deceiving and scaring voters, and appealing to their most base instincts, however, is a time-honored successful tactic, as has been made especially clear tonight. It doesn’t seem right that the “gracious” response to the racism we are seeing in this election cycle (the flip side of which is, of course, the indignant denial on the part of Clinton’s older, white, and less educated base of support, that racism has any role at all) should simply be silence and acquiescence.

There is, here, a fight that is worth fighting - but not by lowering ourselves to these despicable tactics.

We must, however, call out these truths for what they are.

I think Former President Bill Clinton said it best:

If one candidate’s trying to scare you, and the other one’s trying to get you to think; if one candidate’s appealing to your fears, and the other one’s appealing to your hopes; you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.

I, for one, still believe it.

I’ve deliberately back-burned the essay I had been working on for days (despite the fact that I would have had the opportunity to cross-post it to an extremely high-traffic site), because I feel like anything I say at this point, especially during the tense period while we await for tonight’s election results, is going to contribute (no matter what my benevolent and earnest intentions) more to an atmosphere of acrimony within circles of feminists who are at war with each other over Clinton v. Obama than it could possibly contribute to honest and productive dialogue.

Thing is, I didn’t sign up for any damned war. I started out backing one candidate, carefully considered each individual’s policy positions, voting records, employment history prior to elected office, and prospects for winning in the general election, and moved without any regret whatsoever to backing another candidate.

This strikes me as a different approach from that I’ve seen many others take: namely, deciding on one candidate and then deliberately blocking out all information that didn’t favor their candidate and/or make the opposite candidate look like crap, while sticking proverbial fingers in ears and hollering la la la la la I can’t hear you whenever confronted with cogent thought patterns. (I’ve seen this happening, needless to say, on all sides. And no, I have not been entirely immune to the same destructive impulses.)

Despite the fact that I would have had a considerable audience for the essay in question, I was also under no illusion that I’d have the power to sway many people in advance of the elections that are now happening in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont; even if I did have such powers, it didn’t seem worth it to contribute further to the acrimony.

I’m reasonably confident that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. (Hopefully, incidents like this one, which at best demonstrate hubris and short-sightedness, and at worst constitute brazenly forthright party treason, haven’t already doomed the Democratic party’s prospects in the general election.) I could use this space (and other spaces) to enunciate the myriad reasons I chose to support Obama’s candidacy over Clinton’s; people who have already made up their minds to support Obama might then cheer me on, while Clinton’s supporters would either refuse to engage, or would characterize me as one of those pathetic and lamentable (but actually apocryphal)

…self-described feminists [who] …find it easier to root for an empty suit than a smart woman as long as the suit’s draped on a good-looking man. [link]

But I see no use in adding more fuel to the various fires. I’m tired and sick, done with alternating between “preaching to the choir” and fruitless - absolutely fruitless - efforts to engage. Last night’s post, in a far more irreverent and humorous vein, was intended to break up some of the existing tension over all this, but appears to have gone over like a lead balloon. Perhaps there’s nothing I can say, here, that is whatsoever useful.

So I’ll figure out what to do with the essay once the nomination is clearly wrapped up for one candidate or the other. At which time I will be supporting that candidate with all my might, be that Senator Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. And also trying to figure out how to help bring feminists back together, after the tremendous and unnecessary fissures between us.

They don’t call the tactic “divide and conquer” for nothing, people.

Also? We’re so much better than that.

[See note re: problem w/ text size*.]

In lieu of the still-unfinished essay referenced yesterday, I give you this**.

My mother with Barack Obama, December 16, 2004, Honolulu, HI.

Someday I’ll find, and post, the one with my maternal grandmother and her hero, Oliver North. (Because I’m nothing if not fair and balanced.)

Plus the ones of my paternal grandpa (who raised me on C-SPAN, God bless him) with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ford.

For more goofiness, see this old post with pics of the late, great Senator Paul Wellstone, who went to high school with my dad; Wellstone’s mom and my grandmother also worked together in the cafeteria; the families also got together, on occasion, outside of school functions. (Did I mention the young Mr. Wellstone - for whom, years later - I did in fact vote, when I lived in Minnesota - looks quite fetching in a skirt?)

For better and for worse, the political thing has always been in the blood.

Not to worry though, the chances of my running for office are pretty much nil. Not only did I experiment with some blow while I was a teenager in Hawaiʻi, I also have an arrest record.

Ironically, the Olympia, Washington cop thought I had cocaine on me at the time; I didn’t. Rather, I had unlabeled capsules of another white powder in an unlabeled plastic baggie. Somehow he didn’t believe that the capsules contained boric acid: a homeopathic remedy for yeast infections. So they kept me locked up until they’d tested every last one of them. Following which he sheepishly emerged from the lab, asking whether I had any more capsules back at my dorm, so I could take care of my, ahem, “little problem.”

Needless to say, I was itching to get out of there.

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* Tech note: WordPress is doing something weird with text size, which renders the individual post with too large text, and the post as it appears on main page of blog with size of title’s text too small. No idea why, trying to figure that out now. Will delete this note after troubleshooting.

** Intended also as a follow-up to a conversation that started here. Because this is the fun response, and I’ve given plenty of energy in recent times to political discourse that is, necessarily, painfully serious.