So much happening today, so much to choose from, where to start!
Oh, let's begin with former Baptist Minister, former Arkansas Governor, former Big & Tall Shops fashion plate Mike Huckabee's astonishing rant on "The View" that basically implied that the GLBT minority in America hasn't been beaten, fire-hosed and killed enough -- yet -- to qualify for full citizenship's equal rights.
Then let's move on to California's Supreme Court today accepting to hear the legal challenges to Prop 8. Uh-oh.
Finally, in our third segment, let's close with 7-year-old child musical prodigy Emily Bear's appearance on "Ellen."
It's everything bigots hate: informed intelligence, talent, competence of a high order, creativity, sensitivity and the Younger Demographic who sees anti-gay bigots for what they are and, as soon as they're 18 and can vote, will send the fundie theocrats trying to Taliban America reeling.
The secret heart in every little girl yearns, someday, to be a princess.
When Becki Moore of Soirée phoned me in August my instant response was, “How did you get this number?”
I softened when she mentioned my very, very old very, very dear friend, Frances Buchanan. “We want to do a cover profile on you,” Becki said. “We’ve heard a lot of wonderful things about you since you moved here and we want an exclusive.”
“Me? You want ME? On the cover of Soirée?” May I confess: of all the fabulous moments in my life, this one rekindled the little girl in me! My recently adopted city was taking me in its arms!
An interview luncheon was arranged at the Country Club of Little Rock with Becki and her photographer extraordinaire Jason Masters. As she asked questions, he studied my planes.
Becki and Jason were enchanting, as, of course, was I. The interview went swimmingly. Finally, Becki perused her notes then glanced at Jason. “I’m thinking the December issue,” she stated. He nodded. “How do you see her?”
Jason’s piercing eyes caressed my face. “I see her like a tiny dancer. A ballerina. All shimmering grace and fantasy romance. Every girl’s dream . . . every man’s desire.”
How COULD he have known! It was as if Jason saw into my soul! Since I’m ten I’ve wanted to be a prima ballerina assoluta! My moment, magically, had arrived!
Everything was set. We would shoot under theatrical lighting on the Robinson Auditorium stage with one or two soft-focus ballerinas behind me.
The minute I got home I phoned Jamileh Kamran who, seriously, is right up there with Carolina Herrera, to design and construct my tutu for the shoot.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to play to a camera. Jason couldn’t have been more thrilled that afternoon. When we finished, he hugged me and whispered, “This is going to be one of the best covers we’ve ever done.”
He was right. The proofs he sent me for approval were fabulous.
Elated, I notified all my friends locally and around the world about my resurgent celebrity status in, of all places, Little Rock!
Toward the end of September, Soirée sent me a dummy proof of the cover (see below). Somehow I felt an uneasy potential for things to unravel.
Then, mid-October, I received a warm note from Becki that Soirée had “decided to go another direction for the December issue.”
Within days (Little Rock’s social grapevine is positively viral) I was told it was because of my new blog on the Arkansas Times.
Quelle horreur!
I checked into my usual room at Bridgeway where, thanks to the healing touch of my assigned therapist, buff Ben, and some miracle pharmaceuticals, I soon emerged renewed and more resilient than ever.
Totally OVER the heartbreak of Soiréeisis . . . yet still stuck with the tutu. (Where in God’s name does one donate a designer tutu?)
The world keeps shrinking since its birth 4.5 billion or 6,000 years ago (depending on whether you’re reality-based or faith-based) due to ever-increasing interconnection and communication.
First: the invention of the wheel and ships. Then the printing press. Now the internet.
First: isolated far-flung primitive tribes. Then religions, races, nation-states, hemispheres, now the entire globe.
(Where do YOU think things are headed, precious? World government? Or retro tribes?)
Interconnection and communication are immutably driven through centuries by commerce, self-interest, survival and growth.
And WAR, of course. Always war. Yet even war has been ever-driven by Gain: which is to say, commerce through violent conquest. Another tribe’s women, another religion’s influence and power, another state’s resources.
War’s great motivators? Fear of the other, ignorance, hate and dehumanization.
It’s hard to slaughter the nice Vietnamese family running the Hanoi Diamond Buffet down the block. Call ‘em Gooks, however, repeatedly slime them with lies, and suddenly it’s okay to napalm their hopeful family enterprise into oblivion (and, collaterally, a few surrounding blocks of “innocents”).
Unfortunately, with ever-increasing interconnection and communication, ever-increasing knowledge about and familiarity with “the other,” it becomes ever-more-difficult to convince troops to fight and kill.
Religious indoctrination and intimidation has been and still is the most powerful “rationale” humanity’s devised for marshalling troops and fighting wars.
Yet even religions’ power fades year-by-year as more and more people inform themselves of religious origins in ancient myths, and the truths of current religious finances and actions. Zeus? Thor, anybody?
In the West, less than one-third of populations attends church weekly. In Europe, it’s more like 22%.
It’s no longer “cool” among the majority, to hate and deride other nationalities and races: especially since they manufacture the cars, TVs, electronics and other oh-so-necessary crap we buy at bargain prices at Wal-Mart.
No longer “cool” in polite society to refer to chinks, gooks, slant-eyes, niggers, russkies, frogs, kikes, papists, wetbacks, retards, towel-heads, apes, coons, Aunt Jemimas, jungle bunnies, macacas, sambos, tar babies, japs, crackers, gringos, honkies, ofays, roundeyes, dagos, wops, krauts, greasers, hymies, yids, et al.
Even Sarah Palin shops Neiman-Marcus and Saks (on the RNC dime) despite those retail outlets’ Jewish origins and all their gay designers – bless Sarah’s heart.
The only remaining socially acceptable worldwide targets for hate, ignorance and bigotry? Dykes and faggots, my darlings.
Thank God.
And by “God,” one cites the most recent voluminous scientific documentation of presumably God-created same-sex activity and life-long pairings throughout the entire animal kingdom: Dr. Bruce Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance,” available at your local library.
Homosexuality, contrary to “faith” dogma, it turns out, is as natural as heterosexuality. Unless, I guess, you believe God created “evil” elephants, whales and giraffes.
Where would Religions and Politics BE without the last remaining scapegoat group – homosexuals -- to target with “faith’s” undying ignorance, fear and hate?
Hunkered down in Cleveland. Yes, Cleveland.
Frank Rich, regarding the Nov. 4th Presidential election, says in the NYT:
“The second most persistent assumption by both pundits and the McCain campaign this year — after the likely triumph of racism — was that the culture war battlegrounds from 2000 and 2004 would remain intact.
This is true in exactly one instance: gay civil rights. Though Rove’s promised ‘permanent Republican majority’ lies in humiliating ruins, his and Bush’s one secure legacy will be their demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives [West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas] banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.”
Yeppers: niggers hate faggots.
(You’ve got to have SOMEBODY “beneath” you to hate, it seems.)
Bigotry, ignorance and hate roll on like ol’ man river around the world. But those long-outdated primitive tribal sledgehammers have steadily declined, slowly but surely, everywhere for eons, thanks to the “information age” that began with the wheel and has (so far) culminated with the internet.
Whom do same-sex Americans “hate,” then? Who is “beneath” THEM?
Nobody, as far as I can tell. They don’t hate straights, they don’t hate marriage, they don’t hate children, they don’t hate religions . . . .
They are AGAINST ignorance, bigotry, civil inequality, hatred itself. But actively and vocally confronting those traits with Truths doesn’t constitute Hate.
Love of Truth isn’t Hate.
Love of Lies is.
Frankly, the gays and lesbians I’ve known all of my chic sophisticated life in major metropolitan cities are too busy enjoying existence, being creative, contributing to society and having fun to bother with Hate. Plus, the men are WONDERFUL escorts and dancers!
Thank God for gays and lesbians; the Last Scapegoats for everything from catastrophic weather to the decline of Civilization.
They just keep rollin’ along.
Let’s get down, Razorbacks: Fabulosity conquers All.
Evolve, my darlings. It’s the Real World. Get used to it.
CONGRATULATIONS CammackLife! Your caption's the winnah by a nose! And thank you, everybody else for some truly, uh, aromatic entries.
(Your magnificent engraved trophy, to be cherished for generations, will be sent to you next week, CammackLife! Email Max your shipping information – it will remain private.)
Oh, honeys, this is so rich! Like ME, come to think of it!
I am, as I know most of you are, incurably romantic.
I mean, I’m fanatic and everything about not contracting STD’s and stuff on my designer duds and within my person, but let’s face it: love makes the world go ‘round, Razorbacks!
Except, evidently and oddly, in the case of John and Cindy McCain.
Here are just TWO of many captured stills of the rapturous (and obviously loving and aroused) Obamas and the McCains (obviously NOT rapturous, loving or aroused) side-by-side onstage immediately after the final debate, followed by a link to my very, very dear very, very old friends -- couples counselors Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks’ (please: no obvious puns on his name) -- interpreting the Presidential Couples’ body language on HUFFPO. (With MORE delicious pix of the candidates' precious political pa de deux.)
The Hendricks brilliantly dissect these visuals of “a marriage between a recovering drug addict and a deeply traumatized veteran.” Therefore, its Presidential implications for America.
So of course it’s INCUMBENT on me, and I mean that in a political way, to share with my very, very dear very, very old friends – you wonderful A-T bloggers!
Oh, my darlings, I know this will be like learning there is no Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy is actually your dysfunctional parents slipping their spare change under your pillow whilst you’re sacked out in Dreamland.
But I must.
Rarely am I invited to a party for which I literally have nothing to wear, but this party is it.
I mean, the robe is scrumptious – if, finally, an embarrassingly-self-important muumuu better reworked as upholstery fabric for the settee in a Confessional booth.
But this ISN’T a confessional booth, pumpkin. Nor, tragically, is it a childhood fairy tale. Though it is indeed Grimm.
It’s the 2008 American Presidential election and I must quickly awaken you because the house is afire and we must flee to safety. Facts, truths and rationality, my children.
Santa and the Tooth Fairy be damned.
My very very dear, very very old friend AMY GOODWIN lays it all out for you, in fabulously frightening detail.
Of course, her article requires actual READING. That, in a state where 25% of the population struggles to finish “My Pet Goat.”
Her piece not only details, factually, the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections, the methods, names and tactics . . . but the underlying motives BEHIND those thefts.
Which turn out to be RELIGIONISTS, my Blogger Babies. Amy spells out the names, affiliations and networks, thanks to voluminous research.
Moreover, she documents the tactics of intimidation and vote-rigging already in evidence in early voting.
Education is a wonderful thing.
Don’t you DARE comment here unless you’ve READ IT first.
This Presidential election is all about ME, of course.
America (hence the World) is at a crossroads that either threatens my fabulous life or enhances it. Just like this election threatens or enhances YOUR lives: the little people who adore / deplore my storied existence.
Still, it’s all about Norma, Hogs.
Elections are CHOICES (or used to be before they were shoplifted).
Winona Ryder (Palinesque, no?) is a very very dear, very very old friend of mine, so I totally understand the neurotic syndrome that is theft.
Parlayed to NATIONAL popular and electoral college levels, however, as I told Winie a coupla years ago, “You can’t just bag everything you want at Neiman’s and Saks and walk out without PAYING, sugarplum!” She didn’t listen.
Since I was a Brownie, I’ve been taught to always be forthright and truthful and sell those cookies.
TMI, but that’s how I married and divorced three powerful Christian fundamentalist ministers on my faith journey toward spiritual enlightenment and financial freedom. Ringing random doorbells and, uh, selling my cookies.
That, plus my inerrant fashion sense which urged me to comply when, as a voluptuously developed sexually uninhibited woman, my husbands encouraged me to dress as a Brownie or Catholic schoolgirl for “playtime.”
Fashion, again. ALWAYS fashion.
Choice = Consequence. I’ve made careful choices, armed with research and facts rather than parroting second-hand knee-jerk reactions. Thus (modestly) my enviable / reviled glimmering diva-inity.
You?
The choice is yours unless They (You) keep voting to take it all away like the last eight years. (I actually dated a guy, once, named Bill Wrights.)
As with fashion, so goes politics. So goes American government. Choose to dress like trash, get governed by trash. Vote for plumbers and moose-hunters with shaky educations, shady past records and legally tricky current evasions for President and . . .
You’re smart. You catch on.
CHOICE = FREEDOM.
ANTI-CHOICE = FASCISM.
Life at its core, Hogs, really is that simple.
Though I LOVE the choices I’ve made in life and their breathtaking consequences, I wish the same freedom of choice for you and all diverse Americans, whatever color and race, whatever religion or not, whatever gender or sexual orientation, whatever economic or educational level.
Like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music.”
Forget “fashion,” finally.
Though I sleep au natural, even then I dream about Truth, Justice and the American Way for all.
David and Sondra Mack of Long Island are very, very dear . . . very, very old . . .very, very fabulous friends of mine.
So let’s DISH. They’ve invited me and I’m inviting YOU - to join me and the Macks Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. CDT for the debate! But you must understand the social terrain involving Hempstead and Hofstra University.
This is not a tailgate kegger at War Memorial or Fayetteville, Hoggers.
First, the Macks know me by a name other than Norma Bates and they’ve never heard of the Arkansas Times or blogs and they will never see this.
Second, let’s ROMP bloggers.
“D.D.” and “Sunshine,” as I affectionately call the Macks, assume I’m Republican by my couture and because I’ll suck up and flat-out lie to ANYBODY for comps. You know: like a Republican.
They’ve a magnificent home on Long Island and every morning their formal butler leaves a single rose in a Baccarat crystal bud-vase on a small silver tray positioned on your nightstand, with a small hand-written hand-folded parchment card welcoming you to the new day and announcing breakfast hours.
Waffle House this is not. Embassy Suites this is not. Even Ritz-Carltons don't do THIS!
That’s where I’m guesting.
But, about my dear friends the Macks.
Two more supercilious self-important insincere people you’ve never met, bless their hearts.
Here’s D.D. (Sondra prefers not to be shown at this time: a recent unfortunate Botox incident.)
Of COURSE he's much older than I. Why do you ask?
Remember when D.D. threatened to start commuting to his lucrative Manhattan real estate gig in his limo when the MTA moved to revoke his and other politicians’ free lifetime subway passes?
No, you don’t. But I do.
What crybabies, those Macks. Yet, so generous to moi. And to Hofstra.
When the Macks learned of my close acquaintance with Carly Fiorina from the RNC, they renewed our long friendship and invited me to stay with them for the final Presidential Debate between McCain and Obama at D.D.'s alma mater (Hofstra) in the Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center, North Campus Wednesay night.
D.D. and Sunshine are Long Island’s answer to Arkansas’ Waltons.
Only without the Walton's REAL money. The Deliciousness? The Macks know that I know that they know that I know. So they're trying even harder to impress me.
For these Precious Moments I live.
D.D., the darling, wangled a PressPass for me. So I’ll be live-blogging with the biggies. But let me say this about that: I’ll be the only one there wearing Graeme Black.
HERE’S the Beauty Part: YOU are welcome to join in!
Plus (I don’t understand this techie part) the Press Room bloggers are supposed to all be interlinked so the blogs and comments are somehow immediately (or within a day or two) connected.
Whatever.
Let’s face it, A-T bloggers. This is our last chance for raw meat in the debates. McCain's already promised to bring up Ayers. Risky? You betcha!
This is for us women only. You guys, pop another Milwaukee’s Light, clip your toenails, scratch yourselves, belch, fart, rerun the Oklahoma / Texas game and play like you don’t know who wins.
Because this is the first of rare but promised “Fashion Forward Forecasts.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
It WOULD involve Sarah Palin. Who becomes increasing annoying on SO many levels with her ever-expanding media exposure.
She should never have exposed THIS.
Tinker Bell meets Trollop.
We must first point out that NONE of the children behind Sarah are hers. (What else is new?)
Still, this glittery red-carpet number at a recent McCain-Palin rally derails so tragically.
I appreciate her handlers reimaging Sarah’s brand for the Inauguration Ball. But there are makeovers and there is train wreck sabotage.
Shall we begin with Sarah’s wig or the shoes?
Fine. Dynel is for 12” plastic dolls named Barbie. That thing on Sarah's head is not extensions. It’s a limp doormat Tyra Banks dry-cleaned and threw out in 2007 to eliminate evidence in her arrest.
The shoulders on Sarah’s dress begin nicely. Sewn by loving hands at home for little Janie’s first stage appearance as a fairy princess in the Grant Grade School Christmas production of “The Nutcracker.” Or Julia Roberts as Tink in “Hook.” But moving south we enter Beadland. Floor-length (more appropriate for Inaugural Balls), this might have worked. In a mid-thigh beaded mini on a middle aged former beauty pageant runner-up it revisits aisle 18 at Hobby Lobby.
Plus when you don’t really have a waistline, how RUDE to call it to our attention.
Then we hit Sarah’s fabulous legs. And they ARE fabulous! (Though her stance is a tad wide for a VEEP, if not the Senate.)
Unhappily, those legs transport us down to those shoes. Correct size, they’d at least compliment the I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M A RITZ-CARLTON HOOKER WHO’S AMERICA’S VICE-PRESIDENT look. But her handlers dictated her shoes be three sizes too large so her feet look smaller.
My favorite fashion touch here? The Prada “Hanging Chad” clutch.
It’s impossible to know how much sway Pastor Conrad of Davenport, Iowa’s Evangelical Free Church has over Jesus. But it’s a sure bet, racetrack casino fans, we’re about to find out.
Below is the pastor’s invocation at a McCain event in Davenport. He threatens the Son of God’s reputation if Obama wins. Like, you know, people are going to start dissing the Big Guy, stop tithing and bend over for Xenu.
That's not a candid capture (above) of a wingnut at a McCain rally. It’s JC. But again it’s impossible to know if He’s angry at Obama, McCain, or Pastor Conrad for threatening His rep.
“I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day. In Jesus’ name.”
Whatever else, Pastor Conrad’s got humongous cojones.
A Damsel in Distress
with Becki and her photographer extraordinaire Jason Masters. As she asked questions, he studied my planes.
