4 posts tagged “2008”

i had a whole post and it spontaneously disappeared. argh.

Union Square 62608

on the way to Williamsburg this morning, i really had to pee, so i took a detour at the Whole Foods in Union Square, only to be greeted with this when coming up from the train station. i'm not really sure what's going on here; is it a homeless woman sleeping at the foot of the Square while it rains? or maybe it was some street theater because there's a bed, a night stand with a fish bowl - goldfish present too - and a man crouching next to her with an umbrella texting on his blackberry. just thought it'd merit a picture from the Treo.

i've been out of commission from Vox for a while now, which kind of defeats the purpose of that whole new year's resolution to stick to something and write in it.

i was browsing through some older blog entries from a year ago, to note that i'd sometimes update several times a day. i remember writing about writing, and how most of us do it (well at that too) because there was some fundamental part of our lives that we were unsatisfied with.

a lot has happened in the past year. i've been having a lot of fun while out with friends, remembering what it was like to be young and wreckless and i get some reading when i'm alone. i may not be melancholy or contemplative today, tonight, but i'll still remember what it's like to be lonely (ha! counting crows' colorblind just came on my itunes' shuffle), to feel the nerve-endings of nostalgia upon hearing a red hot chili peppers song. but that's okay, because it keeps me grounded, appreciative.

teaching has been, to say the least, a pain in the ass. i think this is the first part of the "i hated my first year of teaching but now i love it" stage. hopefully i'll go through the truncated version. i know i'm doing it effectively and have no real qualms about public speaking, but it's just been difficult. i met with a professor and fellow grad student in Williamsburg today to discuss raising awareness and a project for us to work on, which itself it going to be a large undertaking. both unpaid, but that's not a huge concern for me at the moment.

we talked about how these are conservative times, because, really, they are. and how obama has done an amazing thing by engaging our country's youth and getting them to be vocal and participatory. and how if (or when) he fails to deliver on what he's promised, if we're going to stew around in cynicism or get radical. because "we" got radical when that happened with lbj.

i've been reading gabriel garcia marquez' one hundred years of solitude. the family and i are going to vancouver for a week at the end of august. it was supposed to be another west coast thing in the US like eight summers ago, but my mom picked vancouver. besides the 2010 winter olympics, what's in vancouver? below is a collage of sorts. coney island, augusten burroughs, union square, bars in brooklyn, etc.

how are you? 

With all the jeering, nasty factions, and millions being expended, sometimes I fear that this election is just a phony display of spatial images. Where's the horse-blood in a bucket? This is why the U.S. loses credibility. Sigh.

May 13, 2008

Clinton Campaign Brought Sexism Out of Hiding

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON -- As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which the liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big f---in' whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White B---- Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, be gone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mockup of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons why Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

mariecocco@washpost.com

Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/clinton_campaign_brought_sexis.html at May 14, 2008 - 07:05:18 AM PDT

DM and i were doing the usual introspection over pumpkin spiced muffins earlier tonight. and of the seven years we've known each other, we got to gauge how good - or not so good - of a year 2007 was for us. she gave '07 a rating of 6 out of 10. not too bad; not average, not mundane, but not good enough to make it to lucky 7.

i gave my year an overly generous 8.5. because despite how it was peppered with a lot of shitty experiences and equally shitty people, it just so happened to magnify the opposite when fixed in juxtaposition - i did have an amazing summer. because it was a year full of many, many firsts - many of which i don't care to broadcast.

there's a method to this madness of clean slate - tabula rasa. because as much as we'd like to believe we can crash and burn for the next three days - by indulging in our vices, eating an exorbitant amount of chocolate truffles, procrastinating and hence fucking yourself over (and cursing ad nauseam, too) - we can say, 'oh, i'll stop cold turkey after that clock hits 12.'

i've learned that you can't escape your past, and that there is no thin line between 2007 and 2008, no slate wiped clean. there are crumbs, always. but try as we might, we'll part the ocean, and try our darnedest to believe that that line exists so that we can testify to the possibility of new beginnings.

either way, 2007 was great and good, but i can't wait for it to be over.

how would you rate your 2007?