Herban Sprawl

So conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is publicly acknowledging the inappropriate choice of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate, but now she’s calling on Sarah Palin to pull the plug for the good of the party. Am I the only one who sees the sexism in this request? Even hospitals use an ethics committee to help loved ones make those kinds of decisions! Oops. Republicans and ethics – big oil and water.

John McCain and his political operatives made a huge blunder, but the blunder is supposed to fix it for them?

Her swipe against Joe Biden as an inappropriate choice was ridiculous, to say the least. Biden may well suffer the same verbal issues as Bridget Jones, but the man knows his way around the Senate and has served his country with distinction and a great deal more honesty than either McCain or Palin. Senator Obama made a good choice in terms of giving himself an experienced running mate, rather than window dressing. Senator McCain played a pandering game and he’s holding a losing hand.

But the hockey mom is supposed to rescue them all by fixing the problem for them?

Kathleen, honey, I have news for you. Except in your rarified world, when the going gets tough, the first ones to be shown the door are the women in the company. And it’s almost never direct. It’s almost always by means of emotional games played with them to force them to resign. What this shows about you and your party is that you both mirror what is broken about our business and industry culture with regard to women. Businesses are so fearful of accepting responsibility for the blatant sexism that still exists that they will run off a woman because a direct firing can result in a huge lawsuit. Unfortunately for women, thanks to the Bush administration’s Supreme Court, it generally means women won’t win those suits. Just ask that lady who was paid less than her male peers at the tire company…

If you want to save the party from itself, then maybe what you need to do, Kathleen, is quit adopting the cowardly methods employed by manipulative men and just stand up and say you will not support John McCain in this election because you are offended by the miserable choice he made for a running mate and that his age and health are too dicey for you to take the chance. Show the rest of the women of this nation that at least one woman has the courage to call them on this most egregious decision.

Don’t expect another woman to fix the problem for you.

I finally went online and anted up for a bunch of Obama campaign stuff. The sign is going up in the yard as soon as I get one. Joe Biden’s my man. Obama is our only hope. The Republicans cheated me out of Al Gore, and my revenge is going to be to stoke up the people I know who have, to quote Martin Blank, “a certain moral ambiguity” when it comes to admitting out loud to their conservative neighbors that they intend to vote for a black man. Get some balls, people. It’s like using the f-bomb. The more you say it, the more comfortable you will become saying it:

I am going to vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden because John McCain has demonstrated his lack of moral compass by wanting to be president at any cost - even more than he wants this country to be prosperous and respected again. Why else would he agree to a vice presidential running mate who is so utterly ridiculous?

The debate on Friday is what stoked me up. John McCain’s body language and lack of eye contact with Sen. Obama showed his utter contempt for the man. If he isn’t having his own white supremacy moments, then he’s pandering to the stupid white males who buy into that tripe.

My theory, though, is that if more nice people will admit out loud what their intentions are, instead of just telling me in their not-so-subtle emails, where they rant about this situation, then maybe, just maybe, they will demonstrate the kind of leadership this country needs. We need the good people to show their goodness and to say out loud that in the twenty-first century, Barack Obama represents the face of America. Elderly white guys need to retire to Arizona to play golf and watch the Cubs in spring training -especially elderly white guys who cheated on their first wives and married rich trophy wives after discarding the ones who were faithfully waiting at home for them to return.

And before I leave this latest rant, I’m going to come clean and say the very unpopular thing that I’m hearing stated in whispers: I’m sick of John McCain playing his POW card over and over again. It isn’t that I haven’t felt bad for the fact that he had that experience, but after the 5000^th time of hearing him repeat it in his sad, poor me voice, I’ve had enough. This is the guy who refused to vote for veterans’ benefits. Maybe he hasn’t needed them, but there are plenty of guys sleeping under bridges who would beg to differ.

This one is dedicated to La Mia Sorella del Piatto: Maffa.

It was six in the morning when Maffa and I rolled out, had our coffee and Harris Teeter banana muffins and took off for Dish Mecca. We arrived at around 8:30 or so, and the place was already crowded, and there were already cars leaving!

We took the handy two-wheeler that converts to a four-wheeler, hopped on the back of a golf cart and were shuttled to the Cathedral of China. There, in the paved parking lot, were rows and rows of cracked, chipped, broken and rejected pieces of china. We each paid $5 to enter, and $5 for a regulation box and that was the end of money changing hands – at least for the time being!

Maffa is a very, very thorough type. She combs through carefully, thinking of all the people she knows who would like this or that to add to their collections. I paint in broad strokes. I cruise the boxes, looking for signs of possible treasures in the dozen or so patterns that live at my house or my sister’s, or for those who sent me on a mission. You can develop a sense of what might be in a box, but not always.

It’s impossible to describe the hoards of people, the occasional sound of a box of china hitting the pavement, or the sense of wonder at so many patterns. As I have written in this space before, I am a dish freak – I never met a piece of Spode I couldn’t love. But even with my encyclopedic visual memory of patterns, the place never fails to simply astonish me. This year seemed heavy on rejects of those department store sets that became so popular several years back. None were open stock, so if you broke something, you were out of luck. My mother always advised “open stock – that’s the way to go.” Even so, dish patterns go extinct, and that’s what’s made a millionaire out of Bob Page!

We worked our way through the place, which got to be tough going. Between us, Maffa and I have one decent working body. We were getting achy, but we persevered and when her box was overflowing, she sat down and spread it all out to decide what to keep and what to dump. I took a picture. She was not happy. It was too good to pass up.

When we gave up on that part of it, we trudged back to the car, loaded the two heavy boxes and the two-wheeler and went back for lunch and more fun at the sidewalk sale. The thing about the yard sale is that the Replacements people are kind to the other local non-profits and let them set up the food concessions, as well as donating a percentage of their profit on the sale to those entities. It’s win-win for them. They unload their damaged wares, create a circus atmosphere, and it becomes an event that does some good. So we had hot dogs that benefited a group, wandered through the booths of vendors of other stuff and even got to see some kitties from the local shelter. (Replacements lets their employees bring their pets to work – they are dog people. I never see cats in their employee and pet of the month pictures!)

We went inside because Maffa had never taken the free tour. It’s incredible. I did this years ago with my sister and brother-in-law, who share the dish genes, so I was happy to do it again. Maffa was blown away, and I must admit to a certain amount of awe – They are adding another 500,000 square feet of warehouse space! We had also taken a quick hit at the highly discounted room, so when the tour was over, Maffa worked the overstocks and I went back to the 75% off room. I was having great success adding to a set I began with chipped pieces from yard sales of yore, Spode Florence.

Back outside, we hit the Lenox overstock sidewalk sale, which also included discarded silver chests and Pacific cloth flatware rolls. $5 got you a chest, or drawer liner, and $1 got you a piece of flannel impregnated with silver stuff that attracts tarnish. People were also crowded in there as they combed through bins of stainless flatware ($1 per piece) and the boxes of Lenox. I had a Chicago moment when I saw the unmistakable soft green, edged with dark green of flatware rolls from Marshall Field and Company. Needless to say, I culled them all from the boxes and then took home the nicest ones. (Some were pretty trashed.) In the old days, when you bought a piece of silver at Field’s, they put it into one of their flannel silver bags before they wrapped it for you. Each bag had a green ribbon sewn on a corner with the store’s name.

So what was the haul like? When I got home yesterday, I washed everything – a pair of Lenox Rutledge salad plates that I swear I cannot see why they were discarded – same for a pair of Pickard Malverns. A cup in my sister’s Wedgwood – where is the flaw? I can’t find it! And a whole host of other pieces that are chipped or cracked, but still serviceable. My neatest score is a plate in Spode Lancaster Cobalt that has a crack which would drop the center out if it managed to connect. What a glorious item – BK stretched the springs on a plate holder so that it wouldn’t put too much stress on it, and the plate went up on the wall in our dining room. It glitters like the queen’s jewels. There are a number of small plates and saucers that I will use as bases for pillar candles, and some cups that will be nice for tiny flower arrangements. We found an Arabia of Finland serving bowl that has a miniscule chip on it. I’m looking forward to using that for a long time. We even found a Ginori cream soup bowl decorated with sweet pea flowers, and its matching saucer that is decorated with green peas! Maffa will use that for dip, or a cup of soup.

The question people ask me is what I will do with more china. Admittedly, I need another stray pair of salad plates like the nation needs more debt, but I always manage to find uses. I’m at the point where I like to set the table for Kitty and myself with something more than the everyday Emile Henry and Betty Crocker Oneida. The flatware rolls enable to me keep two place settings and a few serving pieces handy so I can do it in style. Don’t save it for good. China benefits from getting a bath. It hates dry and prefers a little humidity to keep it from becoming too brittle. And don’t use the same pieces over and over. If you have twelve and routinely use four, rotate which four you use, and enjoy your toys!

Yesterday I received an email from a retired colleague of mine. For some reason, I missed the point of her message and thought the opposite of what she was trying to convey. In any case, in an effort to state my own position and then enable her to state hers so that we could, once again, find common ground and feel comfortable, I sent her the following. The best part is that she wrote back and affirmed that we were indeed on the same side of the fence and she was even more vociferous about her positions than I, which is just the way it has always been with us! What a relief because she is one of the most formidable women I have ever met when it comes to fighting for justice! Certain chemistry between like-minded people just ought never to be changed!

The reason I oppose Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate has more to do with the fact that I don’t believe John McCain is smart enough to lead this country. The worry I have is that his health has been compromised by recurring bouts of cancer as well as the toll being a POW took on him, both mentally and physically. When you combine that with his age, the likelihood of his passing away in office is raised, and since many don’t believe Sarah Palin is in any way qualified to lead our great nation - particularly during its current financial crises, then her candidacy must be examined more carefully.

Now, that’s the practical part of my position. It’s pretty logical and not ‘out there.’

What worries me is that Sarah Palin represents a backward step for women in terms of her attitudes and her brazen disregard for differences of opinion. For example, the idea that a woman should be forced to carry to term a child conceived through rape or incest is particularly offensive to me. I have been a victim of rape and I know the fear, the anxiety and the emotional roller-coaster that occurs afterward. If I had gotten pregnant on top of all that, I think I would have gone over the edge. A victim of a violent crime such as rape or incest deserves the right to choose. I know a woman who got pregnant after a rape. She doesn’t believe in abortion and she had the child. She kept the child. Under our legal system, she had that right, just as she had the right to not have the child if she so chose. I admire her and I know I could not have raised a child with the kind of love she has for it were it me in her shoes. I just don’t have it in me and I’m wise enough to know my limitations.

I also am fearful of the fact that Sarah Palin represents a fringe group of society that seeks to inject religion into all aspects of our lives, whether we want it or not. That is in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution. By the same token, under the U.S. Constitution, she has the right to practice whatever religion she chooses, so long as none of it breaks any civil laws. So do I, and thanks to our forefathers, who were decidedly not necessarily Christian as defined by modern society (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were Unitarians, as am I.), we are all guaranteed the right of freedom OF religion, as well as freedom FROM religion. It’s an important distinction that allows each of us to practice religion, or not. Since you know me pretty well, you know I don’t bow my head and pray to Jesus, but you also know I am an ethical person and that I try to live my life in way that doesn’t break laws or cause unnecessary hardship to those around me. (Well, except for those people in REA when we had to raise hell or else!) So, you know that in a pinch, you can count on me to try my best to do the right thing. I’m sure Jesus would approve of most of what I do, and he’d probably be scratching his head over other stuff!

And the last thing I don’t like about Sarah Palin has more to do with the idea that the Republican party picked her because she would appeal to the right-wing that they were losing because of John McCain’s general laissez-faire attitude about a lot of their pet issues. She wasn’t chosen for her ability to lead, just in case. She was chosen to appeal to the stone-broke, under-employed white American males who were showing signs of breaking down and voting for a black guy because they were so desperate to keep it together with this rotten economy. That, in my estimation, was an insult to those men, but men are pretty dumb, so they’re busy thinkin’ “babe” instead of “can she fix this economy or is she going to rely on all the same people Bush used?”

So this time around, I’m supporting a guy with a good education who acknowledged he needed help with foreign policy and he picked someone with really good credentials in that area. That he was able to lead community groups in areas of Chicago that had dangerously high rates of unemployment and despair tells me that he isn’t afraid to tackle thorny, and often emotionally charged, issues. He reminds me of the bale of straw we had in my first college art class. We had to draw that bale the entire term. But we learned to look at that bale and find the details. We saw the negative space and the positive space. We saw the shades and we saw the edges. Ultimately, we all went away from the experience unafraid to tackle a difficult subject.

As I continue to follow, with dismay, all the shenanigans on Wall Street, I am heartened by only one idea and that is how it has enabled Sen. Obama to be heard above all the din about the saracuda. Finally we can get back to what matters here: the economy and the war and the trillions of dollars of debt load that is falling on the backs of the taxpayers.

And, along with that, we can put the argument about the Republican ticket into its proper context – if the old guy is elected, and if he kicks the bucket then we have trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Perilous – or Palin – take your pick – they’re synonymous.

To quote Cecile Richards, “About the McCain-Palin ticket: I believe my late mother, Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, would have said “women voting for this ticket is just like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.” Pass it on!”

Early this summer, I delivered to BGF a half dozen tomato plants of the Park’s Whopper variety, as recommended by the late Mr. Walters of herb greenhouse fame. BGF passed tomato growing, while I, with the correct genetics, have failed consistently from year to year.

Anyway, I wanted to make a recipe for tomato basil soup that I’d made years ago from an old copy of Bon Appetit. The thing even had crabmeat ravioli to go with, but I didn’t bother with those. The soup itself was pretty yummy to me. Big Kitty is not a soupaholic like I am, so he ate it, but not enthusiastically. I know I didn’t get rid of that recipe, but a two day search of my recipe files (and there are way too many for comfort) has unearthed nothing. And, needless to say, their piece of Epicurious doesn’t go back that far.

I have sent them an email in hopes that someone will check in their library and find the thing.

Meanwhile, I have made okra and tomatoes, a southern staple of summer, and we’ve been eating a lot of salad Caprese, or just plain old sliced maters. BGF gladly antes up lunch when I am there to tutor his firstborn, so I have also consumed my fair share of tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches.

I wish I could say I am as happy with this variety as Mr. Walters was, but to me it’s pretty much like most all hybrid tomatoes. It has had a propensity for some hard as a rock yellow spots near the shoulders of the fruit, but other than that, it hasn’t been bad. I’m thinking that next year we are going to have to try San Marzano tomatoes which may entail a trip to Riverside Nursery - oh, break my arm! They grow quite a few heirloom varieties, which could make for some interesting tasting and cooking.

September also means cooler nights, so I know we’re going to have to figure out the quintessential southern treat, fried green tomatoes. Like any of us needs fried food… meanwhile, I’m thinking another batch of okry ‘n maters is in order. It’s awfully Italian, actually -

For the uninitiated, you can do this with chopped frozen okra, and it works just fine. It’s also a lot less work. So, chop up an onion that’s bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball. Mince a huge clove of garlic, or two medium ones. Dice up about three or four hefty tomatoes, and have your package of okra ready to roll. Saute the onions and garlic until the lovelies are nice and translucent - like dirty eyeglasses. Dump in the tomatoes and the okra and stir it up. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Now, you can choose to jazz it up thusly, or not - shake in some hot pepper flakes - maybe a 1/4 teaspoon or so, and perhaps 1/2 teaspoon oregano. Put a lid on this and let it simmer, coming back to give it the perfunctory stir just to see that everything is getting mushy and the flavors are getting melded. My best guess is about 30 minutes of this kind of treatment, but longer if you like it really gooey. Just make sure it doesn’t dry out.

Now, there. An ear of YELLOW corn (not that anemic white crap), O&T, and that’s enough for me. The rest of you are on your own!

Big Kitty and I were honorary Greeks this weekend, volunteering at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church’s annual Greek Festival. We were on the buffet line, serving Greek green beans, pilaf, souvlaki, spanokopita and tiropita on Friday evening and Saturday for the lunch crowd. Needless to say, we had a ball, dancing around behind the line during the lull and hollering Opa! When the lines got busy, we were all business, yelling for Bob when we needed a new supply of whatever dish we’d been assigned to.

It all started last year when we spent a few minutes with our friend Basil Grapsas who is in his second and last year as the congregation’s president. He commented that it took a lot of volunteers, and, being the soft-hearted souls we are, we said we’d help. He didn’t forget and I got an email a week or so before the festival.

The only hitch in the whole business was that it coincided with AAUW’s annual used book sale and I needed to be there, as well. So we worked out a schedule and that was that.

One of the things I observed about this group is that the sense of community is tremendous. That isn’t to say there isn’t some sniping, but to have an entire church turn out and take up their various volunteer tasks is an important testament to the cohesiveness of the group. Even the youngsters had things to do, and even the older children who live elsewhere came back to help out. Nevertheless, as the Star City shrinks in terms of opportunities, the young people of Holy Trinity, who are expected to excel in school, have left home and the church has experienced the same membership drain that other churches do.

It was delightful to hear people converse in Greek, and I learned that not a few Russian immigrants attend the church because it is the closest thing to their own Orthodox upbringing. This particular church has been around since the late 1920s, so it continues to serve as the center of the Greek community at large. Basil, for example, lives in Radford.

One of his projects has been bringing in an icon painter to complete the decorative walls of the sanctuary. The building is 1950s modern, so the sanctuary bears witness to both the ornate past of the Greek Church, as well as the vintage ‘contemporary’ twist one finds in a fifty-year-old building. There are still some areas that need painting, but the largest pieces have been completed and it is an awesome example of art. The painter matched the original paintings, touched them up and repaired bits here and there so that everything would blend, and he did a marvelous job.

I mentioned this to an acquaintance from the Unitarian Universalist church, and she was dismissive. She is a recovering Catholic, so to speak, and is very comfortable with the intellectual stimulation provided by being a part of the UU group. What startled me, however, was the rather narrow-minded response to my declaration of the beauty of the sanctuary. She blew it off because of the nature of the religious pictures.

Here is where I part company with people of her mindset. To me, the beauty lies in the interpretation of the subject matter. Not having been raised Catholic, I don’t carry the kind of prejudices she does. Mine come from having been discriminated against as a minority Protestant in a predominantly Catholic community. However, I went to mass with my Catholic girlfriend when I was in high school – back when mass was in Latin – and I have a great appreciation for religious art. Granted, I can be pretty irreverent, as when I told Annalisa that Leonardo’s Mary in his depiction of the annunciation looked as though she was thinking, “Oh, crud, how am I going to explain this to my mother?!” And, to be sure, she looked to be about thirteen or fourteen in the painting, which would mirror the age a nice Jewish girl would be when she was married off.

The paintings at Holy Trinity reflect the orthodox tradition of sanctuary art, and with the sun streaming in, the scent of incense and the gloriously ornate altar accoutrements, it makes for a very inspiring place of worship. And that is the whole purpose of the icons… to inspire the believers to live a life that is steeped in the traditions of a strong family constellation, service to the community and to bear witness to the religious life of the fellow communicants. If I were not such a perfect example of Josie UU, it would be a place where I could worship and gain the sense of community that is so important to the fuller experience of a religious life. Alas, I will instead accept it annually as a schlepper of spanokopita and tiropita, or Greek green beans and pilaf! It is the least I can do to help them sock away enough money to complete their capital projects!

And, by next September, I hope I will have mastered baklava! Opa!

This one is dedicated to Kay Shannon, whose lack of sleep from her blog addiction is a testament to just exactly how outraged thinking American women are at McCain’s Red Herring from Alaska.

Today I received an email from another Kay, a feisty and with it grandma in her 70s. It had to do with the blog Women Against Sarah Palin.

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

I read the testimonies and rants of women from all over the country and I was awestruck at the common theme: let that woman anywhere near the White House and there goes everything our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for. So I am not alone and I am grateful because I was beginning to feel like a one-topic writer, here.

The bottom line is that McCain has succeeded in taking the attention off his own ineptitude and focused it on a red herring named Sarah. The blubbering old fool can’t compete with Barack Obama for smarts and the Obama juggernaut was getting scary to the pocketbooks of the very rich Republicans who needed McCain to find a way to appeal to that vast swath of white American males who think with their dicks. All those out-of-work, foreclosure-threatened family men were likely to start listening to the man with the message that said, “Guys, I get it and I want to help.”

This had nothing to do with attracting the Hillary vote – just read that blog and you will know what I do – American women know what’s at stake and they aren’t about to cede their rights to a pistol-packin’ beauty queen from a Podunk town in sparsely populated Alaska, for gawd’s sake. I think even John McCain’s advisors knew that. The Republican women who supported Hillary Clinton were intelligent and well educated, i.e. not easily fooled. The Republican women who say they supported Hillary, but have returned to the party-that-is-really-really-threatened-by-women, weren’t going to pull that lever for her – who do they think they’re kidding?

This had everything to do with drawing Obama off message. Deflection of the highest order, if you will – So, the Grand Old (emphasis on the word OLD) Party brought in a babe to get the juices running, and every dickhead – (Did I really say that? Yes, I did and I meant it, too!) is grinning sheepishly and thinking to himself, “Oh, yeah, lemme at ‘er. Let’s go huntin’, Sweet Thang.”

Here is my challenge to my men friends and family, most of whom are guilty as hell of engaging in the above sort of mental masturbation: she ain’t Barbie Benton, boys. She’d be a heart attack away from running your country. You know in your heart of hearts you can’t vote for McCain because at the end of the day, you know he’s another train wreck waiting in the wings. Let me see you putting Obama stickers on your cars. Let me see you support the women in your lives in a way that will mean far more than a bouquet of roses. (Notice I didn’t say chocolate –) Let me see you standing up for us in a way that shows the world how much you value the women in your life. And after that, when the dickheads razz you, let me hear you say, “I loved looking at Barbie Benton, but that doesn’t mean she’s qualified to run for Vice President. And if she isn’t qualified, why are we even having this conversation? Isn’t your portfolio flat enough, yet? Haven’t we had to bail out enough banks? Isn’t it time to zip our pants and protect our women from men who have so little respect for them that they’d pull a political stunt like this?”

Come on, guys. Do it for us. Please?

This morning’s paper is full of speculation about the Hillary supporters and which way they will vote in November. Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time knows I have immense respect for Hillary Clinton and those who know me personally know that I would have voted for her for president. But Hillary couldn’t win the top job.

For one thing, she brings out the absolute worst in the insecure white males who inhabit this country. They are so utterly threatened by her that it makes me want to send them back to kindergarten to learn how to play nice, and back to Sunday school to learn how to be the good Christians they claim to be.

Now here is where my inbred Tuscan cynicism comes in - the cyncism honed by centuries of skeptics and non-believers -  I honestly believe that the women who supported Hillary in the primaries, and who are going to vote for McCain now, never intended to support her in the national election anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered who the Democrats nominated, they wouldn’t have voted for that candidate anyway.

Any woman who believes in the sanctity of her body, and the privacy guaranteed in her doctor’s office, wouldn’t be caught dead voting for these Republicans because they are too indebted to the religious wrong. Any woman who believes that universal health care is the only way to take care of the needs of American families wouldn’t be caught dead voting for any Republican because they are too indebted to the insurance industry. (Not that a great many Democrats aren’t, but they’re more likely to have a heart for their constituents!)

In terms of the economy, well, Hillary wasn’t too far away when the NAFTA agreements were signed. On the other hand, there is that teeny, weeny matter of the fact that we just hit a 6% jobless rate and Hillary’s pragmatism with regard to these things -aka The Flipflop Factor - would have been enough to make Republican business interests reach for the nitroglycerin.

These women wanted Hillary to run because they knew she couldn’t win. They are as misguided as their insecure and illogical misogynist males, but what can you do? If they really and truly have one iota of feminism in their souls, they have to look at the trophy veep choice for the Republicans and cringe. Talk about the stand on abstinence-only turning around and biting that mom in the hind end… Talk about marginalizing women’s intelligence… talk about mobilizing mindless men who are wondering what she looked like in the swimsuit competition… she might as well have been wearing one when she gave that speech of distortions and downright lies.

Nope. Hillary, my fellow-Illinoisan, you dodged a bullet. It may not feel like it right now, but Barack’s got a huge headache with this economy, and if he brings home a passel of service people, he’s gotta find jobs for them. You, my esteemed fellow former Goldwater Girl, have the power to give the party its greatest gift - you are in line to own the Senate. I rather doubt Uncle Teddie could cede it to a less deserving public servant. We Americans need you there. Badly.

As to President Clinton, well, Hon, you didn’t get to trade places with your partner in life, but you still are a powerhouse, so don’t let it go to waste. Barack needs you, too, and there is no point in either of you standing on ceremony. Just roll up your sleeves and get out there and do what you do best.

You women who supported Hillary and are now going to vote for McCain: blow it out your ears, ladies. You weren’t really with us anyway, so buzz off and quit trying to flirt with the media. The story is now old, cold and the rest of us are moving on.

The news over Labor Day weekend was that the vice Presidential nominee for the Republicans has an unwed, pregnant, teen daughter. Furthermore, there is no word on the father of the child, only that Bristol and Levi will marry and that she’s due in December.

I agree with Sen. Obama in that this is not a topic his campaign should discuss – families, and especially children, are off-limits. He shows a streak of decency we don’t often see in politicians. However, that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t comment on the issue, because for a party that claims to champion family values, it smacks of hypocrisy.

In a conservative family, with “traditional” values, one isn’t supposed to have a teenager who has sex. Use of a condom, in the olden days, meant that a prepared girl had lower moral values than a girl who would, but, gosh, because she was a “good girl” she wouldn’t dream of having a condom handy because, well, she wasn’t planning on doing it. Somehow being prepared and not being prepared differentiated between good girls and bad girls.

Notice how in the above argument there is zero responsibility placed on boys who should be keeping it in their pants anyway.

Evidently Bristol Palin didn’t get the memo about how Republican governors’ daughters are supposed to behave themselves and not put their ambitious mommies in the spotlight for their parental failings. The unfortunate part of this for the hate radio mongers is that it happened in a Republican family, so the spin is now on how admirable it is that this family respects life so much it will force the teenager to have a baby. The kink is that most girls would be pressured to give up the baby for adoption, but in this case, the political fortunes of the grandma-to-be are such that the teenager is now expected to undergo a shotgun marriage. In Alaska, with parents who hunt, the shotgun approach isn’t so metaphorical!

If this happened to be the daughter of a prominent Democrat, the hate radio mongers would be calling the girl a slut and condemning her parents for allowing their child to have rampant sex. True or not, hate radio has to have its trumped up issues or they couldn’t keep up their ratings.

In any case, it’s shaping up to be a Jerry Springer sort of convention for the Republicans – the former beauty queen-mayor-governor’s daughter got knocked up and everyone’s got an opinion. The true-red Republicans are blowing it off (they sure as hell wouldn’t have if it had been Chelsea Clinton!), and the rest of us are shaking ours heads. John McCain, had a big, fat affair, divorced his wife and married a rich one. No one’s talking about his loose trousers, but it was enough to cause Nancy and Ronnie to cut him from their A List.

And this from a party that couldn’t let go of the fact that Bill Clinton continued an American presidential tradition, poor as it may be, of having a fling while in office.

For my part, I’m sorry the kid is knocked up. She’s too young for all this. I’m especially sorry that thanks to her mother’s public situation, she’s getting married off. Who knows if that’s what she really wants – that kind of information really is off-limits unless she sneaks onto Jerry Springer’s show – The fact remains, the sperm donor now has his cojones in a vice grip and his life will never be the same. Bet he wasn’t counting on that during that fleeting fountain of glory!