A Child Is Born

(Photo Credit: White House [!!!]; Lynne and Vice President Darth Cheney with their sixth grandchild)

Paws up for Mary Cheney, kids. She finally popped her little bun out of the oven. Wa Po reports that Samuel David Cheney was born yesterday at Sibley Hospital in Washington. (Sardonic aside from Moose: What, wouldn't any of the hospitals in Cheney's home state of Virginia allow for same-sex spawning in their sacred delivery rooms?) (Sardonic aside from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann: The state of Virginia was named last night's Worst Person in the World for denying Cheney's partner, Heather Poe, parental rights to the child she and Cheney will be raising together.)

We've been racking our brains here in Roxie's World trying to decide how to commemorate this extraordinary occasion. We don't want to involve ourselves in all the crass speculation about how the child was conceived, though we did notice a fascinating story in the paper this week reporting evidence of reproduction through parthenogenesis in female sharks. When Moose saw the headline, "Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone, Researchers Find," she thought perhaps the story had something to do with Mary Cheney. Interestingly, news of Samuel's birth broke hours later. Coincidence? We think not!

Having grown up with two moms myself, I should probably offer little Samuel some free advice. Hmmm, let's see. If both moms are going through menopause at the same time, don't just leave the house -- Leave the planet. It ain't pretty. If you're lucky enough to have one mom who is a disciplinarian (or a "Moose," as in "Mussolini") and one mom who is a freedom schooler (or a "Goose," as in "Mother Goose"), then you're in for a lifetime of fun playing them off against each other. It's a great game, Sammy, and you're the winner every time! If the kids at school make fun of you for having two moms, just smile at them and say, "It's okay -- My grandpa's a huge Dick."

On that crude note, let's pause for a moment to imagine Baby Cheney's First Words. What will it be like for this child, growing up in a political family that has sold its soul to a party devoted to denying him the same set of rights, privileges, and legal protections that children born into other types of families have? What will little Samuel have to say when his tender mouth can finally form words? How about something like. . . :

• Wait, Grandpa, don't shoot!
• It's a free country! You can't send me off to Gitmo for refusing to eat my vegetables.
• Wow, Mama Heather has one heck of a pitching arm. I think those years as a forest ranger were good for her upper-body strength.
• Mother Mary, why won't Grandpa stop the war? Everybody says he started it.

Now, that is an excellent question, Samuel. Why won't Grandpa Cheney stop the war? Or, why, if he and the Bubble Boy president can't get out of their delusional states, won't someone else? Why can't anyone put out the fire that was lit by the lies and fear-mongering of this administration? Why can't Democrats stiffen their spines and figure out a way to do what the vast majority of the American people say they want done? (Latest Times/CBS poll reports that 76 percent say that the additional American troops sent to Iraq this year by Mr. Bush have either had no impact or are making things worse there.)

Memorial Day is this weekend, kids. In addition to pulling your white shoes out of the closet and coming up with your own witty contribution to the Baby Cheney's First Words Contest (sure, let's have one -- Why not?), Roxie's World urges you to read the following articles and to DO something that in some small way can move our nation toward peace. How much more blood can you stand to have on YOUR hands?

• Read this powerful story by Wa Po reporter Darragh Johnson on Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery, where 336 men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been buried. It's a touching analysis of how the rawness of the families' grief has transformed the subdued space of Arlington into a messier yet more deeply real space of living, communal sorrow. It brings the war home in vivid fashion.
• Check out my moms' colleague Marshall Grossman, holding forth in Huff Po on the Democrats' reluctance to put teeth in their opposition to the war.
• Keith Olbermann also had a "Special Comment" on last night's show calling Democrats to account for collaborating in prolonging the war. It's hard-hitting and righteous, as usual.
• Join in John Edwards' Memorial Day call to support the troops by ending the war. You can search for local actions going on in connection with this effort. Props are due to Edwards for his leadership on this issue, even if it is motivated by a desire to tack to the left of Clinton and Obama on the war.

That's all for now, folks. Happy grilling and happy hell-raising. If Molly Ivins were here this Memorial Day, she would remind you that citizenship is not a spectator sport. She's not here, so Roxie's World is proud to remind you for her. Peace out.

Reindeer Games

We dogs do wonder about you humans. Don't get me wrong. We know that you love us, and lord knows we love you. You feed us and rub our tummies and talk to us in goofy voices. You pull ticks off of us and towel us off when we come in from the rain. You rub our ears and tell us your troubles, as if we were bartenders or priests, and we take your secrets with us to our graves. It's a good thing for the most part, this companion species bargain we've struck with you. But what's up with the silly holiday costumes? Come to think of it, what's up with the silly holidays? Oh, well, anything to keep the fans happy. Here's a photo of me in my Christmas get-up. Go ahead. Print it out. Put it on your fridge. You know you want to.

The truth is, my moms haven't pulled the reindeer tiara out of the Christmas box yet this year. Our house looks about as festive as Karl Rove's office on the morning of November 8. It's partly that the moms have been preoccupied with the end of the semester, but they're also kind of disgusted with the whole tawdry spectacle. For the past couple of years, when asked what she wants for Christmas, Moose has replied, "World peace and the re-building of the Gulf Coast." She means it. Moose has always considered herself a member of the club described in an interesting piece by Randy Kennedy in last Sunday's New York Times, the "Atheists Who Kind of Don’t Object to Christmas Club." She likes cookies and celebrations and trees festooned with brightly colored lights as much as the next person and has never felt that such rituals had much to do with believing in the divinity of Jesus. "O Holy Night" is one of her favorite songs, particularly the version done by Rickie Lee Jones with the Chieftans, but she doesn't believe a word of it.

Still, Moose hasn't caught even her modified version of the Christmas spirit yet this year. She'll sometimes stand in front of the house trying to figure out how to make a peace sign out of lights for the front windows. She's consulted with Goose on the subject and tried several Google searches, but the front of the house is bare. She hasn't even gotten the extensive collection of Danbury Mint ornaments her mother has given her over the years out and up on the mantle.

I think the war has got her down. And Republican meanness. She can't stand that cheesy little interview the Bushes did with People magazine, where the prez disingenuated (also ought to be a word--and Bush probably thinks it is) on the subject of Mary Cheney's pregnancy and Laura made nasty little digs about Condoleezza Rice's marital status as an impediment to any presidential ambitions she might harbor. It apparently takes a village to run for president and Condi has spent so much time tending the village idiot in the White House for the past six years that she's neglected to have a life. Or so sweet Laura implies.

On a happier note: Roxie's World has made its first appearance ever on anybody's Best of anything list! This being our very first turn into a new year in the blogosphere, we are honored indeed that our pal Damion, the Official Ex-Smoker of Roxie's World and the genuis behind Queering the Apparatus, has given us his "Political/ Sports/ Canine/ Newcomer Award." We know that competition in this category must have been exceptionally keen, and we are grateful to Damion for the faith in us this award shows and shall always endeavor to be worthy of it, though we bow humbly before the awesome example of QTA's stunning mixture of wit, queer theory, and snarky/rapturous/spot-on film commentary. Get over there now, fans. I'm going to take Moose to bed and see if she wakes up in a cheerier mood tomorrow. She better, because she and Goose are going to pick up the new Prius in the morning. Photos to follow soon!

Roxie's Reading: Unleashed

Tempting as it is to try to bring eyeballs to Roxie's World by continuing to take potshots at public figures like lesbo vice-presidential daughter Mary Cheney or by making fart jokes, I know that my fans expect more of me. I am a dog, after all, not some snarky 23-year old blogging in his boxer shorts (though my typist often works in her bathrobe, it is true). We don't go for the lowest common denominator here at Roxie's World, and we don't engage in gratuitous personal attacks. We point out hypocrisy and meanness among the privileged and the powerful and cruelty to animals whenever and wherever we see it. The only serious grudge we have is against the basketball teams of Duke University, and there we do confess to harboring deep-seated vitriolic hatred. Devoted fans know the policy of our household: If Duke were playing the Taliban, we'd root for the Taliban. Thus, we refer to any team playing Duke as the Taliban and all gather in the great room to scream "Go, Taliban, go!" anytime Duke is on TV. We can't help it. We're Maryland fans.

I digress. The point is that Roxie's World will not become a forum for bashing Mary Cheney, even though that is a lot of fun and we think she deserves it. It's hard to restrain ourselves from making holiday-themed jokes about the pregnant virgin Mary or publicly calling on Mary and her partner to consider moving to Canada, where she and Heather could legally wed and both moms could have equal legal rights to the child they are bringing into the world. (Canada wisely decided this week not to re-open the same-sex marriage question. Parliament voted down an effort to reinstate "traditional" definitions of marriage through legislation three years after Canada's supreme court ruled gays had the right to wed.) And it's really impossible to resist putting in a couple of links to Ruth Marcus's excellent column in the Post on the subject of Cheney's pregnancy and to Tom Toles's spot-on cartoon on the subject. Nonetheless, we shall restrain ourselves and not cynically endeavor to optimize our search engine placement by filling Roxie's World with hot-button keywords like Mary Cheney, lesbian motherhood, Republican sexual hypocrisy, and right-wing nuts go after veep for undermining "traditional" "family" "values."

Instead, we'll help you with your holiday shopping.

Here is a wonderful book for the dog lover and the lit critter on your shopping list. (A shout out to my Auntie Faye, the Official Radical Militant Librarian of Roxie's World and the Stephanie Miller Show, for sending me this book.) Unleashed is co-edited by Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard and is a collection of poems by writers' dogs. No, I am not among the canine versifiers included in this marvelous collection, but don't get your knickers in a wad. The book was originally published in 1995, which was several years before I started writing.

Moose and I love this book. It ranges from a hilarious parody of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" by Jill Ciment's dog Sadie ("Every puppy loves a dominatrix / The boot on the paw, the brutess / Lick the boot of a brute like you") to a heart-wrenching series of poems by deceased dogs called "Memento Mori." Moose can't get through that section of the book without crying. Here's one by Kate Clark Spencer's dog Bell called "When I Died on My Birthday":

My heart broke for you.
I nudged your face while you called my
name over and over and
cried no until there was no sound.
You couldn't feel it.

Strange seeing your own
body lying on the grass. My
eyes were slits, my ears
black triangles. And my long legs
were tan and smooth as

polished oak. Not moving. You were
desperate, so I
gave you butterflies, the symbol
of the soul and of
rebirth. I prompted Kim to buy

a book of butterflies, gemlike,
the microscopic
photographs, you said, dazzled you.
I got Max to grab
that tablecloth her mother made
embroidered in thread
with seven butterflies. Andy
made a cloth and wood
dog you used to show me. Yes, I
knew the dog was me.

Butterlies weaved into the silk
were rust-brown like me,
and iridescent. I was in
the canyon when a
butterfly followed

you along the creek where you found
my stone. And I watched
you press your cheek against the words
you had Kris sandblast:
BELL we will discuss butterflies.



I think this poem makes Moose cry because she doesn't believe in ghosts or angels, but she knows that dog is love and that someday when I am gone my love will find her and try to make her feel better.

Moose is right. Dog is love. Don't forget that, sweet, mortal humans. Dog is love.

Stink Bombs

(Photo by Charlie Neibergall - Associated Press)

From the Department of Rank Hypocrisy: Wa Po's "Reliable Source" column reports today that lesbo vice-presidential daughter Mary Cheney is with child. Read all about it here, but don't feel surprised if you feel a little burning in the back of your throat when you do. Cheney and her partner Heather Poe are due in late spring, which means the poster girls for right-wing sexual hypocrisy dutifully kept their mouths shut until after the mid-term elections. Can't you just hear the conversation down at Darth Vader's mansion? "Mom? Dad? We lost the House and Senate anyway, and this little critter is starting to make my tailored pants feel awfully snug. Okay if we go public with the glorious news?" "What? Oh, yeah, sure. And could you give the turkey baster back to George and Laura? They'll need it for Christmas dinner." Official word from the veep's office is, of course, that "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild."

Just to clarify: Roxie's World is totally down with the idea of gay families and lesbian motherhood. Where, after all, would I be without them? The hypocrisy here lies in the Cheney family actively campaigning for and being a part of the only presidential administration in American history to propose to amend the Constitution of the United States to enshrine bigotry toward a class of citizens. I don't care if they lamely acknowledged their "personal" opposition to the idea. They have sold their souls to a party and an administration that have consistently exploited homophobia for political gain. Roxie's World wishes great happiness for Cheney, Poe, and the child they are privileged enough to be able to bring into the world, but we consign them to the dog house for aiding and abetting sexual and familial inequality.

From the Department of Just Plain Rank: I pass along the full text of Wa Po's report on the plane brought down yesterday by a fart. No kidding, fans. You humans just slay me. Sometimes the truth is the funniest thing of all:

A jetliner from Washington made an emergency landing Monday in Nashville after passengers smelled matches being struck, a Nashville airport spokeswoman said.

Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for Nashville International Airport, said that a passenger on the Dallas-bound flight, which had originated at Reagan National Airport, had been striking matches to mask evidence of a troubled digestive system.

Lowrance said the pilot of American Airlines Flight 1053 asked at 6:25 a.m. Central time to make an emergency landing in response to passengers' concerns about the matches.

Lighting matches on a plane is prohibited, Lowrance said.

After landing, the 99 passengers and five crewmembers left the plane. Luggage was placed on the ground for dogs to sniff. In one part of the cabin, searchers found signs that matches had been lit.

Under "lengthy questioning" by the FBI, the passenger "did say she had some type of medical condition" that embarrassed her, Lowrance said. "She did admit to striking matches to conceal the odor." The woman was released but was not permitted to reboard the flight, Lowrance said.

The woman, who lives in Texas, was trying to get on another flight and apparently did, Lowrance said.

The woman was not identified.

Next time, m'am, leave the matches at home and put the Gas-X in your carry-on!

Roxie's Reading: Sisters

Our house is full of books. That's one of the occupational hazards of having two English professors in the family. We have old books, new books, poetry books, political books, books on continental philosophy, books on home repair, books about books, books about food, books about DOGS, and lots of books about gays, lesbians, and other happy people. We also have some trashy books that have been disowned by their own authors, such as the 1981 novel, Sisters, written by super-RightWing Satan Girl and Second "Lady" of the United States, Lynne Cheney.

Cheney's frontier boddice-ripper, which traffics in incest, prostitution, near-rape, something like murder, and steamy but apparently non-sexual Sapphism, is suddenly back in the news because desperate Republicans have decided to go after Democrats not for their policies or platforms but for the parties they've attended and the novels they've written. Why not? Most Republican policies these days are woven out of fiction anyway, so why not pull a few lurid passages out of a novel and use them to tar your opponent as a misogynist who is not fit for office? It beats hell out of trying to justify your support for a useless war that has led to the deaths of more than 2800 Americans and god knows how many Iraqis. (Read about Senator George Allen's scurrilous attacks on James Webb's writings here.)


Which brings us back to Sisters. Everybody knows the Cheneys have never been as strenuously homophobic as Republicans are supposed to be, at least publicly. Their lesbian daughter, Mary, has earned them a pass in the paroxysms of gay panic that regularly (one might say strategically) seize the GOP. In the 2004 campaign, Vice President Darth Vader even acknowledged that he was opposed to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, though he mostly kept his mouth shut as his party exploited the issue to whip its evangelical base up into a frenzy. Still, it's a little surprising to pick up Sisters and see the queen of the culture wars, who has made a career out of denouncing feminist and multicultural scholarship, celebrating female friendship as an alternative to marriage. In the book's acknowledgements, Cheney credits feminist historians Linda Gordon and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg with helping her to understand the daily, personal lives of 19th-century women and even singles out Smith-Rosenberg's famous article of 1975, "The Female World of Love and Ritual," for "guid[ing] [her] thinking."

Cheney got testy with CNN's Wolf Blitzer for bringing up Webb's response to the attacks on his work, because Webb dares to mention Sisters, Sapphistry, and Cheney's 1988 novel, The Body Politic, which features a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress. (You can see an excerpt from the interview with Blitzer here.) According to the indignant Mrs. Cheney, the difference between being American Grandmother of the Year (her) and Left-Wing Moonbat Sex Perv of the Century (Webb) is the difference between being sexually implicit (about rape, incest, and lesbianism) and being sexually explicit. As she puts it to Blitzer:

Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexual (sic) explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references -- well, you know, I just don't want my grandchildren to turn on the television set.

Per usual, fans of Roxie's World, we want you to judge for yourselves. You can check out a pdf version of Sisters here. Or, if you want to stay right where you are, here's one of our favorite Sapphic morsels from Sisters. Most of the Sapphistry in the novel occurs off-stage and retrospectively. The protagonist, Sophie Dymond (nice touch with the allegorical naming, Lynne!), discovers that her late sister, Helen (married, with children), has had a passionate friendship with the schoolteacher, Amy Travers. Sophie comes across a parcel of letters from Amy to Helen. Among them is this seductive invitation:

Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl. . . .

The letters repeatedly invoke the Ladies of Langollen, common 19th-century signifiers of women's romantic friendships, as Cheney no doubt learned from her reading in Smith-Rosenberg. Technically, of course, Cheney is correct that she stays on the "right" side of the line between implicit and explicit depictions of sexuality, but one wonders if foaming-at-the-mouth homophobes will be satisfied with Cheney's insistence that there's nothing sexual in this fantasy of 24/7 girl-on-girl intimacy. I mean, heck, cross-stitching involves needles, doesn't it, and that's clearly some tawdry allusion to a sexual apparatus. Then there's that "bed, our bed, my dearest girl. . . ." (ellipses in original).

It's a tricky business, Mrs. Cheney, pinning down the line between the implicit and the explicit, the erotic but non-sexual and full-on genital action. We here at Roxie's World think that if you can't stand the heat you'd better stay out of the boudoir. Lesbianism ain't for sissies, "sister."

Right-Wing Satan Girls

Moose took me in to the vet today for a quick blood test to check on the diabetes possibility, but enough about me and my woes; let's get back to politics.

While I've been sick, a group of women whom I like to call the Right-Wing Satan Girls has been very, very busy doing their usual nasty toxic stuff in the name of their cause--which is, of course, promoting themselves. Who do I have in mind when I invoke the phrase "Right-Wing Satan Girls"? Oh, gosh, it's such a long list, headed by Satan's queen herself, Laura Bush. It's no wonder to me that Mrs. Bush is a closet smoker and drinker of bourbon. Being considerably smarter than her husband, she no doubt needs to anesthetize herself in order to go on about the business of promoting and defending the many acts of duplicity and incompetence perpetrated by his administration. My moms love it when they do things like send her off to Afghanistan to pretend that the war there was all about liberating Afghani women or stand her up at the Republican convention to paint quaint little domestic tableaus of an engaged leader reluctantly leading the nation into war. Fortunately, her sugary sweet image gets deservedly demolished every day out in the rough-and-tumble world of the internets. Check out what America's best Christian, Betty Bowers, has to say about Mrs. Bush, for example. She has an extensive collection of interviews and features related to the First Lady, including her invaluable tips on raising Christian young ladies when "you only have twenty minutes and two shot glasses." Another great resource along these lines are the wise guys (and gals) at White House.org, which also has a wickedly witty set of First Lady links. We at Roxie's World think she deserves everything she gets in the way of parody. Just think of all the Iraqi women who have been "liberated" to death by the violence unleashed in the course of her husband's unnecessary war.

Like I said, though, there are a lot of Right-Wing Satan Girls out there, women who have sold their souls to a mean-spirited conservatism that is eroding women's rights and civil rights while systematically redistributing wealth upward. Not to mention ruining America's reputation in the eyes of the world. Oh, yeah, and destroying the planet by feeding our addiction to fossil fuels. My favorite Satan Girl is Ann Coulter, who is famous for nothing but spewing a lot of toxic waste about liberals and liberalism. Progressive radio talk goddess Stephanie Miller always refers to Coulter as "noted transsexual plagiarist Ann Coulter," which makes Moose laugh and feel slightly guilty because she doesn't approve of mocking or insulting transsexuals. She decided it was okay to laugh when she realized that Coulter was the butt of the joke. As an English professor, she is deeply opposed to plagiarism, and Coulter has been accused for years of stealing words and ideas from others and passing them off as her own. The Satan-Coulter link is nicely literalized in this bit from Huffington Post's Contagious Festival.

Actually, the Contagious Festival is a treasure trove of brilliant send-ups of Right-Wing Satan Girls. See also the fabulous "Who Will Cry for Mary Cheney?" as well as the pants-wetting "Rejected Katherine Harris Campaign Video." What are these girls thinking? What motivates them to embrace all these awful ideas, not to mention the truly hideous hairstyles? And more importantly, who are your favorite Right-Wing Satan Girls, and where are they getting trashed out on the internets? Roxie's World wants to know.

We ain't dead yet, and the blogosphere has gone to the dogs, so keep barking and stay in touch.