Oh no! Puritan military geek and a man his sidekicks say has never told a lie (yeah, sure, and Madonna was once a virgin) got the covers pulled off his extracurricular bed and son of a bitch, there's a babe in bed with him. "Johnny boy, are ye messin' with the whores again?" But, oh no, though John did like the whores when he was at Annapolis once he'd divorced his first wife--she couldn't help his political career--and married the Mariposa County beer distributor's daughter, the blonde dear he trots around with him on the old campaign trail, he settled down and became a faithful and true-blue husband (yeah, sure, just like Slick Willie Clinton did not have sex with that woman). John will deny, deny, deny; he's used to that unless you torture the truth out of him then he'll sing like a intoxicated canary. Put John on the waterboard and see if he'll admit to "fuckin'" around on his go-go boot-wearing Bud distributor's daughter. Hey, John was once in bed with Charles Keating, too, but that's not scandalous at all, even though Charles Keating was one of the biggest crooks to ever come out of Arizona, a right-wing state, with his savings & loan schemes that not only made Charlie filthy rich but thanks to Charlie's generous donations and political string pulling made John the Flyboy an Arizona politician.
And John's diddling a lobbyist whore! I mean, come on. I thought We the People provided all our male Congressmen with prostitutes--good times girls--whatever you care to call them--to keep those highly sexual men sexually gratified so they can do a better job of robbing us blind. I can't imagine hopping into the sack with Cap'n Johnny the Flyboy! Wonder if the Cong did anything to Cap'n John's genitals while they were torturing the shit out of him for 5 years? I can't imagine so perverse torturers not, can you?
When I was married I cheated on my wife--and she caught me several times--her punishment, to stay with me. But it didn't work; I couldn't resist other women, especially her best friends. Women love affairs as much as men do, I think, though I'm currently reading Rachel Duplessis on women writer's sexuality and I'm learning some interesting things about female sexuality--something most males are certainly dumb as oxen about. Like HD's concept of "desire begetting love."
Duplessis writes: "In a significant passage in 'Professions for Women', Virginia Woolf traces the repetitive struggle of the woman writer for the authority to write, that is, to transcend (and to mend the damage of) the feminine. One part of this struggle involves 'killing the angel in the house', a provocatively blasphemous conjuncture. The angel's maternal conservatism restricts boldness, judgement, and outspokenness. The repression of any desire want or need and the repression of sexualities are mutually buttressing substructures in the larger issues of female authority. As is well known, Woolf confesses that despite Orlando, she has had the most trouble achieving permission to depict sexuality in art." [p 102, H.D., 1986, Indiana U. Press.]
I never thought of women writing about sex--yes, I've read Anais Nin's sex book and found it if anything too feminine for me--and hell, that's it, that's what Duplessis is saying in the above paragraph. Women write about sex differently than men; yet, men demand women open up, "Come on, mamma, write it dirty," though women don't think "dirty" like men think dirty. Sex for women is oppositionally different to sex for men. Men love seduction and I assume women like being seduced--that's the "desire" H.D.'s talking about when she says "desire begets love"--while men would say, "desire begets sex." There's quite a difference there.
I try to think like a woman having sex sometimes but I can't; I always come back to the feelings in my male genitalia, the urges for spreading open the vestibule, comforting the woman to ready her for the moment of penetration, a big moment for a man, like being welcomed aboard a fine yacht--how gross of me, malely comparing a woman to a yacht. Very male, don't you think?
I'm getting into this. I'm very dumb to women's sensitivities. I find it very difficult to pick up their signals and codes and such. I think I know them then I bust a move and in return get my ass busted and rejected--wha' happened?, I'm asking as I'm like an full beer can thrown from a car going 70 mph to be left spinning totally out of control in the middle of a six-lane highway.
Don't worry too much, though. By the 5 o'clock news Britney and her Mother will be making a come back, fixing to throw John McCain's lightweight cheating on his wife off the top banners of our newspapers and teevee with more mother-daughter shenanigans--well, hell, you'll hear about Brit and her White Trash Mom on the 11 o'clock news, though I'll bet Johnny Boy's still up there battling for the headline of the day by then, still denying, denying, denying--at least the Staten Island wine-producing story has faded into a forgotten past now. Like thewomantrumpetplayer commented, her grandfather made wine on Staten Island decades ago--isn't Staten Island mostly Italian immigrants! Hell yeah they've been making wine on Staten Island since the Statue of Liberty was put up to welcome all these little old winemakers into this country. Before the Italians and French winemakers got to California, New York State was the largest wine-producing state. I used to love Taylor New York State champagne. New York's concord grapes used to be the finest in the world; Welch's grape juices and jellies were made with NY concord grapes at one time.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
HD Wrote
why must I write?
you would not care for this,
but She draws the veil aside,
unbinds my eyes,
commands,
write, write or die.
And Here's a Great Column by a Man Who If He Doesn't Read The Daily Growler Sure Does Write Like He Does. Here's Mark Morford's Column for Today:
You know what we don't really get enough of in American culture? Change.
No, not the bland politicalspeak Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton brand of broad sloganeering bumper-sticker change, the kind where part of your naive perky innocent unicorns-in-the-sky self really wants to believe it's all going to be hopeful and good and radically different, but yet you kind of know, deep down, when you peel back the masks and the rhetoric and the spin, that when all is said and done, pretty much the exact same jackals and demons and CEOs will run the bleak global circus, same as it ever was.
No, I mean the kind of deep, cathartic change that can only come through, say, death, or explosive upheaval, or mind-shattering discovery (Jesus was a woman!), or, you know, "the end of an era."
Fidel Castro retired. That was, apparently, a big one, albeit a bit anticlimactic, given how Castro's end didn't come as everyone expected, by way of him suddenly keeling over and dying in a crumpled heap of smoky rage with a cigar in one hand and a bottle of Havana Club in the other, wearing a bright red Adidas tracksuit and stabbing his finger at the sky as he called for a people's revolution as not a single one of his handlers had the nerve to tell him it was no longer 1968 and the revolution had already passed by and oh, by the way, the revolution actually was televised, but the ratings stunk and hence it quickly replaced by all-new episodes of "The Bachelorette."
No, Castro merely stepped (gingerly) down, at 81, to enjoy his final doddering years writing political editorials from the hammock, reveling in how he outlived them all, from Eisenhower to Nixon to Reagan, never backed down and stood the test of time and survived assassination attempts and CIA coup attempts and was an icon of rebellion and socialism and radical politics and you have to admit, it was quite a run. Quite a record. Quite a man. Quite a legacy and quite a ... oh, to hell with it. Get out, would you please, Fidel? I mean, basta already.
Yes, the headlines were right. Castro's retirement really was "the end of an era." And let's just say it outright: It's about goddamn time. If Castro indeed represented the last, wretched dog of the Cold War period, with all its saber-rattling and warmongering and pseudo-macho preening, its clenched old white men stroking each other's egos behind closed doors and its flagrant misogyny and the giant disastrous myth of the nuclear family, well, that particular era could not end soon enough.
No, not because it's all bad. Not because there is nothing of beauty to be mined from all those years and nothing to be learned from the plentiful mistakes therein, but because the era in question hung around well past its expiration date, started reeking up the fridge of the culture about, oh, two decades ago.
See, this seems to be the problem with most noteworthy eras: They go on far too damn long. From the Cold War to the petroleum economy to jungle-themed restaurants, they just refuse to see the signs. The internal combustion engine? That era should've died years ago, replaced by technology we've already developed. Smoking? Oh my God. Really? Still? Should've passed with hula hoops and '70s disaster flicks. And then there's Christianity. Talk about your interminable eras. A good 1,500 years too long, at least.
Ah, but does the moment not seem ripe for a good, raucous round of real change? Does it not feel like we are on the verge of finally letting go of a whole slew of pointless, hoary old eras we no longer need, eras that we've been reading and hearing about for just about ever and that have seemed to define us and hold us bound up in their limited worldviews? You bet it does.
Here's one: It's approaching the end of an era for analog televisions. Does that count? Is there anything noteworthy there? Because you have exactly one year to switch to a television that can handle the new, government-mandated all-digital signal, or you're stuck staring at the radio, which I'm not even sure they make anymore. But fear not, because the U.S. government is offering $40 vouchers to help millions of unprepared Americans rush out and buy a converter box so as not to miss a single episode of "Two and a Half Men." This is important. This is mandatory. They can't have you, you know, reading books or something.
Not good enough? Fine. Then how about this: It's fast approaching the end of the Bush era, 12 combined years of miserable, silver-spoon governorship by one of the lumpiest, dorkiest, least appealing clans of desperately shrill powermongers in the world, Barb and Jeb and George and George Jr., Laura and Barb Jr. and Jenna and beer bongs and fake IDs and old coke habits and running AWOL from the Air National Guard and it's all felt like a particularly insufferable episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies," wherein the Clampetts go to Washington and screw three generations out of any sense of hope or environmental protections while getting the world to despise us for everything we used to stand for. Wacky!
The Bush era cannot end soon enough. Hell, I have politically conscious, attuned friends in their 20s and early 30s who have never known a president other than a Bush or, to a lesser degree, a Clinton, in their adult lives, have never known any leadership other than these two very lukewarm, mealy political families. (Which, by the way, very much explains the desperate appeal of Obama.)
Eras like these need to end. And when they refuse, we often need to shove them out the door like a 35-year-old stoner computer geek who still lives at home with his mom. Because people need to feel a part of a change, the shift, to say we were once there and now we're here and oh my God what a difference an era makes. Hell, I think the only eras my friends have lived through were the end of cassette tapes and tolerable Tom Cruise movies and lame sex on 'The O.C.' ("Tyler finally hooked up with Brianna in the hot tub? Wow, that's the end of an era!")
Good news is, there are plenty of other eras slated for death in the next decade or so, perhaps more eras than in the past 50 years combined. Print newspapers (ahem). Full-sized SUVs. Fox News. Music CDs. Record labels. Megachurches. Ann Coulter. Pennies. Pat Roberston, who will finally join Jerry Falwell scrubbing toilets in Hell. Won't that be refreshing? Even if it all now feels deeply unstable, unpredictable, just a little too warm up around the ice caps for our own good? You bet it does.
Truth is, for far too long we believed we had it all figured out, how the planet worked, that we could stomp and rule and abuse and suck the place dry, forever and ever, and get away with it, with zero consequences or future implications. Our arrogance knew no bounds. How very wrong we were. Is it not long past time to say farewell — and good riddance — to that disastrous mind-set? End of an era, really.
Mark Morford Writes a Column for the San Francisco Chronicle
1 comment:
Great post -- I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Well-stoked indignation is a glorious thing.
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