2004

2004 Archives


4/26/2004: March for Women's Lives!

Nothing gets a day started like marching against history's tide! The march was an intense million-woman show of girl power that even abated my Washingtonian jadedness for a bit.

If even a fraction of these women show up at the polls in November, everything will right itself!


12/20/2004: Isn't It Supposed to be THE News?

I just had a realization about Ricky Williams after a friend described to me his 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace. I must credit the late comedian Bill Hicks with inspiring it, but here goes: the reason why Ricky Williams' NFL-not-quite-flameout story is so unfathomable to the likes of Mike Wallace and his ilk is this: It is, essentially, a positive drug story.

And we can't have positive drug stories—it would knock the earth off its axis, sending Australians flying everywhere!

One man's love of herb changes his life. He decides he'd rather be in a position to enjoy it whenever he likes and open himself to evolution than become a materialistic, self-centered jackass showing off his big house and antique car collection on MTV'sCribs: The Sports Edition.

His drug use has had a positive effect and he's a better, happier and more positive person than he would have been if he stayed, pot-free, in football. To top it off, he hasn't yet wound up a poor, homeless crack addict, which, of course, is supposed to happen if you are ever near a room where pot is consumed.

What type of message does a content Ricky Williams send to the kids of this country?

Do you understand how much the existence and happiness of Ricky Williams subverts the paradigm? If Ricky Williams continues to be allowed to follow his own herb-inspired path, it will mean that everything we've ever been told about drugs is a lie! We might be awakened from our media-inspired brainwashed torpor and might start, oh, I don't know, becoming nonconformists. Anarchy is right around the corner!

So it was Mike Wallace's job to somehow make Ricky Williams' very positive story as negative as possible, because God forbid he'd be an inspiration to anyone! God forbid he'd open someone's door to enlightenment and evolution! God forbid another potential role model smokes pot and doesn't lose his partner, his car and his job. Or a third, because, as Arlo Guthrie once said, three people make a movement!

And this pot-smoking, happy, peaceful, positive, non-materialistic experience can never, ever become a movement again!



12/29/2004

Call me jaded, but I think honestly this "endangered Christmas" thing is another one of those crises conservatives have pulled out of their behinds to justify their existence. They're in charge of everything and they have to be irate about something, so this month it is Christmas. Next month it'll be something else.

I mean, I know that now that the Republicans remain in charge I have to curb my condescension towards the red-state portion of the nation in order to save the law of gravity, but damn it, the least they can do is make it easier. Don't be so easy to mock!

The most amusing thing about this Bill O'Reilly's Christmas crusade is whenever he talks about the endangerment of Christmas, he somehow feels compelled to evoke Santa Claus—he dons a Santa hat, reads "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," things that are relatively recent manifestations of the secularization of the holiday. He's not spending as much of his time defending nativity scenes as wearing Santa hats!

I can't take any of it seriously. I've tried and I can't. Bill in a Santa hat, the embodiment of a family values Christmas despite his recent sexual harassment woes, is an irony I normally savor, but that he's utterly serious and his fans have no sense of irony whatsoever just pushes it over the edge to ludicrous. I'm starting to wonder if there is a ledge over that edge and Bill O’Reilly has managed to land on it!

I guess pointing out its utter silliness to his gullible minions, many of whom somehow believe that he's defending the Christian aspect of the holiday, would brand me an Intellectually Elitist Easterner—as if it's a bad thing and I didn't spend a large portion of my life not in large East Coast cities but in podunk Virginia among these people. At least I know what I'm mocking. It's uncomfortably familiar.

If his point was about the secularization of Christmas, I would be the first to agree with him--the modern Christmas really has nothing at all to do with Jesus, but even if Bill O'Reilly used a brain cell to make that salient point, he's about a century too late to stuff that genie back in the bottle.

And if fans of Christmas nativity scenes calmed down for about five minutes, they'd perhaps work out for themselves that it isn't the scenes that are the issue, it's their placement.

The Constitution offers a huge loophole: if you want a nativity scene, set it up at home—in your window or in your yard. You can even set it up at your church, which is still private property. If you want Creationism/ Intelligent Design, biblical stories and Judeo-Christian values taught to your kids, that's why parochial schools exist. If you don't have the cash to send your children to parochial school, well, as my grandmother once told my mother, who made the same complaint, if you can't afford to send your child to parochial school, then you can't afford to have a child. Needless to say, I have nine years of parochial school under my belt. Now the option exists of educating children at home if you don’t want them to handle what they’ll be exposed to outside of it.

If setting religious scenes on private property, sending your children to parochial school or educating them yourself just isn't your cup of tea, then deal with the consequences, like the rest of us. I have no sympathy and the more you press your case, the less sympathy I have. I’m going to tell you to use the loophole or shut up.

And I actually embrace the secularization of Christmas. Its origins, after all, are pagan. The secularized holiday, warts and all, is actually closer to its original intent. Now, if we can put more focus on libations and lewd behavior and nix the carols, that family thing and the gift giving—the stuff that's guaranteed to drive us insane every year, anyway—I think the holiday season would be much more pleasant.

Christmas, however, isn't in danger. The only danger involving Christmas is the season starting in July instead of something reasonable like the day after Thanksgiving. I'm hearing carols and seeing Christmas displays earlier and earlier every year. I used to draw the line at mid-November, but now I see and hear it before my late October birthday and that's just wrong!!!

One of my co-workers called me a Scrooge because I insisted he wait until December 1 to set up his Christmas decorations. I replied that I wasn't a Scrooge, I just believe in celebrating a more compact holiday, because who can be pleasantly imbued with the Christmas spirit for more than a month? That's exactly what makes people crazy!

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