or when they are on the radio, which takes real effort,
or when they wrote a novel in the eighteenth century,
or when they are a character in an ongoing fantasy epic, or when someone wants to put them on currency,
or on Thursdays?
Except for these scant few contexts, I will have nothing! The swimsuit contest must be saved.
Already, this has gone too far.
June 5, 2018
I’m Fine with Women in Power, Just Not This One Specific Woman Currently in Power
The first thing I need to make clear is that I love and support women. I am eager to see more women rise to positions of power. Hashtag #pinkwave! Hashtag #pinkhat!
But I have to say, I’m a little frustrated that we keep putting forward this specific woman who really grinds my gears. Not because she’s a woman. I would know if that was why. It is not that. It’s just—ugh, her, you know? She just doesn’t excite me, and I feel that she is too compromised. That’s not a woman thing, though. It’s just a her thing. I would have that issue with anyone who had her baggage, that same difficult-to-pin-down sense that something about her was fundamentally tainted.
But it is just this one woman in particular. And can I say how glad I am that we are at a point when we are able to judge women on their merits, as people, and find them inexplicably, inevitably wanting, as people? But definitely all women do not do this. There are plenty of women who do not make my teeth go on edge in the way this one lady does. My mother, for instance. My daughter, for another instance. And others I could name! Oprah, in her current capacity, though I hope she stays in her lane.
In general, I am excited to vote for a woman, maybe even in 2020, though I do, I have to say, worry that maybe other Americans are not so ready, and we wouldn’t want to make that mistake in a year with such high stakes. Not me—I was born ready! I was given birth to by a woman. So it’s clear where I stand.
That is why I am so frustrated with the specific women who keep being put forward. Like, Nancy Pelosi? I want women to lead everything! I want them to stare down charging bulls on Wall Street, and I can’t imagine anyone other than a lady being Wonder Woman, but—this is the House we’re talking about, and . . . ugh, Nancy Pelosi.
You see what I’m saying here. I am flabbergasted and upset that each and every one of the women being talked about as front-runners are the specific women who have already alienated me. I am as frustrated by this terrible coincidence as you are, believe me! Believe, women!
What I want is not impossible! I want someone who is not tainted by polarizing choices in the past, but who also has experience, who is knowledgeable but doesn’t sound like she is lecturing, someone vibrant but not green, someone dignified but not dowdy, passionate but not a yeller, precise but not mechanical, someone lacking in off-putting ambition but capable of asking for what she wants, not accompanied but not alone, in a day but not in a month or a year, when the moon is neither waxing nor waning, carrying a sieve full of water and a hen’s tooth. Easy!
That’s why I’m so worried about our current slate of choices. A woman, sure, but—Kamala Harris? Elizabeth Warren? Kirsten Gillibrand? There are specific problems with each of them, entirely personal to each of them, all insurmountable. We need someone fresh. Someone without baggage. Joe Biden, maybe. But female! If you see.
I can’t wait to vote for a woman in 2020. A nameless, shapeless, faceless woman I know nothing about who will surely be perfect.
November 18, 2018
I Am in Favor of Confederate Statues. I Am Definitely Not a Pigeon.
TWO REASONS I AM DEFINITELY not here protesting the removal of this Confederate statue: because I am a white supremacist who wants to protect a racist legacy, or because I am a pigeon who has laid an egg on this statue somewhere.
Listen, like you, I am a human being. I have zero feathers but many gangly appendages covered in skin, and I am flightless. Yet in spite of this, I love these statues, and not because their little metal hats are great places in which to build a foundation of carefully selected twigs, twine, and assorted debris, then lay a warm, beautiful egg that will someday hatch into a magnificent, glorious bird, the king of the air.
I am one of the “very fine people” whom President Trump was talking about, definitely a person, who was there to protest the taking down of the statue for human reasons that had nothing to do with racism or the nest of vulnerable white eggs currently exposed in that Confederate general’s hat.
I am a human being like you, a featherless biped with hairs all over my epidermis. And I am not a racist. I don’t know what the word “racism” means. Also, I don’t see color. I perceive light on the ultraviolet spectrum. As everyone here does, I hope. That is how we humans perceive light, I am pretty sure.
Getting rid of these statues would be for the birds, an expression I use in its derogatory sense, as we humans often do.
Like so many of us here, I do not have a racist bone in my body, though if I did that racist bone would definitely be dense and not hollow. I just want to protect my nest egg—NOT a literal egg in a nest, of course, but one of those metaphorical nest eggs we human beings are always so upset
