News Flash

NBC newsman Tim Russert died in his Washington office this afternoon of a heart attack at the age of 58. Roxie's World expresses its condolences to the Russert family. In his memory, Moose has decided to go on a diet to try to lose the twenty pounds she has gained in two years of typing for America's most famous dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball. She thinks Tim would want her to.

[Respectful pause to honor the man we almost never snarkily referred to as "Little Timmy," unlike some of our fellow/sister bloggers. You know who you are.]

We are working on a major post here at headquarters that will likely shake up the whole blogosphere and the dynamics of the presidential race, but we don't have time to finish it before the moms take off for the first live music event of the summer season, Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, touring their fabulous record, Raising Sand, which, the devoted among you will recall, was 2007's Album of the Year in Roxie's World. We'll let you know how the show goes. Meantime, get out your go-go boots and enjoy this vid of the Everly Brothers doing the original of our absolute favorite cut from Raising Sand, "Gone, Gone, Gone." Rock out, dudes. See you soon.

An Affair to Remember

(Photo Credit: Barbara Kinney, Hillary Clinton for President)

It’s over and you know it, but you’re having a hard time letting go. She couldn’t have been any clearer. She was hurt, too – reluctant, disappointed, honest about her mistakes – but in the end she insisted it was time to move on. She begged you to make a clean break and not waste time looking back, wondering what might have been. “Life is too short,” she gently reminded you, “time is too precious.” She even tried to push you into the arms of someone else, someone with whom, she was convinced, you could do great and important things. Meanwhile, everyone around you is high on consolation and full of advice about what you should do now, claiming she was never right for you anyway. “This other guy,” they say, “really, he’s the one.”

But your broken heart is stubborn and slow to change. For months, you felt as close to her as the tick is to the dog, and you rode the roller coaster of her shifting fortunes. When she was up, you were high as a kite, giddy with possibility. When she was down, you crashed to the ground, convinced the world was ending. Now that it’s over, she still haunts you. You remember all the little things about her you found so captivating – her laughter, her tears, her feistiness, her – yes – feet. You wonder how she is, what she’s doing and feeling. You search for examples of others who are suffering as you are to see how they are coping. You take comfort in the words of praise being showered upon her, even from those who once criticized her and always thought you should be with the guy. You get satisfaction out of the murmurs of criticism suddenly being aimed at the dream guy, as closer scrutiny reveals he may be mortal after all. “Told ya so,” you churlishly mutter.

How can you mend a broken heart? You try shopping, but the new gadget you want won’t be available for a month and the furniture you ordered won’t be in until fall. Clothes shopping is no good because every pantsuit reminds you of her. “I bet she’d like this one,” you catch yourself thinking. “It’s just the right combination of elegance and practicality.” You hit the gym for the first time in months, thinking exercise would be a healthy distraction, but even your iPod is an instrument of torture, as cheesy Madonna lyrics manage to summon up her image: “You always love me more, miles away / I hear it in your voice, we’re miles away.” You’ve got a business trip/vacation coming up, so you could be planning an Arctic adventure, and there’s a long list of movies you didn’t see and books you didn’t read while you were sitting on the couch all those months, waiting to see how things would work out with/for her. Still, nothing feels quite right yet. Nothing really satisfies. A certain bitterness lingers.

Come on now! Get up! Get out! Move on! She wouldn’t want you pouting! Remember what she said as she was leaving?

[I]t would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.

Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on.

Hear that? Get right back up, she said! There's work to be done, dreams to be realized, new worlds to be conquered and new love to be made.

Right, yeah, sure, be right with you . . . .

I'm like a fish out of water
a cat in a tree . . .

I got a big chain around my neck
And I'm broken down like a train wreck
Well it's over I know it but I can't let go
Well it's over I know it but I can't let go
Well it's over I know it but I can't let go
Well it's over I know it but I can't let go

Roxie Endorses. . .the ABBA Fan!

(Photo Credit: Ricky Carioti, Washington Post; Hillary Clinton and supporters at the National Building Museum, 6/7/08)

(Please Note: The photo above has no particular relevance to this post. We found it, liked it, and wanted to pass it along before we forgot about it.)

Dear Senator Clinton,

I know you told us yesterday that we should throw our support to your erstwhile opponent in the primary race, Senator Barack Obama, on account of it's really important to elect a Democratic president this year to accomplish all that fabulous stuff that you and we really want to see happen -- you know, achieving universal (or maybe universal-lite, which is what your opponent has proposed) health care, ending the war in Iraq, expanding economic opportunity, protecting the environment, restoring America's standing in the world. We agree with you that those goals are like super-duper crucial, and we spent the whole weekend licking our political wounds and reflecting on your call to us to work as hard for him as we had hoped and planned to work for you.

We were thinking about it, really, in between glasses of wine and steaks on the grill and trips to the furniture store to unload the disposable income we had been planning to invest in your campaign. We were slowly coming around to the idea that in this election we might be the kind of voters who would hold our noses and pull the lever (or punch the card) for the lesser of two evils, especially if Lesser* had the wisdom to put you on the ticket as his choice for vice-president. We were getting there, Senator Clinton, I swear, though Goose was still pretty grouchy about the whole damn primary mess, but then Moose was out doing some late Sunday night internets-trolling and stumbled (by way of TalkLeft) across this weird bit of news about

John Fricking McCain being a goldurned ABBA fan,

and I'm afraid that just threw a monkey wrench into the whole works. We immediately dispatched a team to Ishmael's, the bar around the corner from Roxie's World's corporate headquarters, to get Mark Twain and the whole political division back into the office to consider how we should respond to this astonishing development. (They'd been in the bar for several days, drowning their sorrows over your loss.) We knew McCain intended to make a play for your supporters and had already alerted our legions of loyal readers to his nefarious plans, but we had no idea that the senior (and we do mean senior) senator from Arizona would be so cunning, so resourceful, so diabolical in his efforts to lure disappointed Clintonistas into the Republican fold.

We're terribly sorry, Senator Clinton, but (knowing me, knowing you) there is really nothing we can do. McCain has found an iron-clad way to appeal to three of Roxie's World's major, if heavily overlapping, demographic groups: women, disco fans, and the group formerly known as Pretty Boys for Hillary. How can we resist a war hero who pumps himself up for campaign speeches by listening to ABBA's immortal "Take A Chance on Me?"


McCain's campaign blog is even pushing the story, with a brazen appeal to "disaffected Hillary supporters." Please try to understand, Chiquitita, that we had every intention of doing what you implored us to do yesterday. You have, after all, been a total Super Trouper throughout this campaign, and you are and ever shall be top dog and Dancing Queen of our hearts here in Roxie's World. And we really, really get that there are vital issues at stake in this election and that a lot of people will be like totally screwed if Republicans have control of a single branch -- heck, of a single twig -- of government. But, you know, Hill, now that you've been kicked in the teeth in this dirty little game called politics, perhaps you'll understand that we have to follow the guy who shares our twisted musical taste, because, you know, without a song or a dance what are we? Don't worry about the war or health care or the Supreme Court or any of that other bumming stuff. McCain may be an old codger who sold his soul to the re-(s)election of George W. Bush, but he gets that the night is young and the music's high.

Everything will be fine, Hillary, as long as we can dance. Take my hand, Hillary. The sky is blue, why should you be, too? Let the ABBA fan rule the world!

*Lesser shall henceforth be the name by which Senator Obama is known in Roxie's World. We've had fun calling him the Precious and His Hopeness, but we borrowed those terms from, respectively, the brilliant Anglachel and the only sporadically insightful from a conservative perspective David Brooks. Our preference is always for names we make up all by ourselves, and we think we're the first ones to slap this label on the presumptive Democratic nominee. He stands elected to that term in these precincts, so that is that.

Note to Readers: All comments on this post must contain at least one ABBA reference. Them's Teh Rulz of the game, kids, even if we don't know what the name of the game is. (Get it?) Play on.

Hillary's Grace

(Photo Credits [except for the bottom one]: Moose; Senator Hillary Clinton announces suspension of her presidential campaign, National Building Museum, Washington, DC, 6/7/08)

Roxie’s World had three sets of eyes on the scene this afternoon for Hillary Clinton’s incredibly graceful exit from her history-making presidential campaign. Through fortunate timing and clever reading of the situation, Moose, Goose, and Candy Man ended up on the main floor of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, probably about 20 feet from the podium where Clinton spoke. The floor was packed, and heart-broken but enthusiastic supporters lined two tiers of balconies overlooking the stage in the middle of the magnificent late-Victorian building. They gathered on a searingly hot day to honor and to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishment of the first woman in American history to contend seriously for a major-party presidential nomination. They gathered to mourn the fact that her gutsy effort ultimately fell short and to hear the former candidate exhort them not to give up – on this election, the Democratic Party, or their own dreams.

Moose cried, but the woman of the hour did not. Far from it. She took the stage shortly after 12:30, accompanied by her husband, daughter, and mother, and calmly took command of the occasion. Every word and every gesture made it clear that the formal suspension of her campaign will be but a brief pause in her remarkable journey and that she is by no means exiting the stage of American political life.

To which Roxie’s World says: Thank dog.

Clinton beautifully demonstrated today what the nation will miss if it never has her in the Oval Office. From her opening line, which so gently acknowledged her own defeat and disappointment, Clinton went out of her way to honor and console her supporters. “Well,” she deadpanned when the thunderous cheers that greeted her had died down, “this isn’t exactly the party I’d planned, but I sure like the company.”

Her supporters were weepy; she was serene.

Her supporters were reluctant to embrace the opponent who barely beat her; she was emphatic and enthusiastic, even borrowing his signature “Yes, we can” line to underscore a point she often made on the campaign trail about restoring America’s can-do spirit.

Her supporters were still looking back, still wondering what might have been; she urged them to look and to move forward. “Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward,” she reminded them. “Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.”

Some came with heavy hearts, and her optimistic, encouraging words lightened them. Some came with bitterness toward her opponent or the often misogynistic media, and she exhibited a determination to root out the remaining barriers and biases that impede the full equality of women.

She was motherly, yes, but she showed that maternal empathy or solicitude is in no way at odds with strength, with self-possession, with the capacity to lead. Perhaps in time we will all realize that the great accomplishment of Clinton’s campaign is the incontrovertible evidence she offered that the traditional roles of mother, daughter, and wife are wholly compatible with the duties and demands of the nation’s highest office. She opened our eyes to the possibility that a woman might in some ways approach the office differently, but thanks to her many of us can see that those differences might be assets rather than liabilities.

In the days to come, Roxie’s World will let you know if we’ve decided to heed Senator Clinton’s call to support and campaign for her erstwhile opponent. For now, we pass along a link to the transcript of her marvelous speech, a few photos Moose snapped before her camera battery died, and our heartfelt thanks to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton – for moving us, teaching us, inspiring us, and expanding the political horizons of our nation.

Godspeed, Senator – We look forward to working with you again soon to realize the dream of a better world.

Update: Video of the speech is here. If you haven't seen it, you must.

(Photo Credit [bottom]: Reuters)

What's Wrong With This Picture?

(Photo Credit: Richard A. Lipski, Washington Post; Senator Barack Obama, flanked by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and Senator James Webb, at a post-primary campaign rally in northern Virginia, 6/5/08.)

Dear Pudd'nheads*,

You are so not getting it. The candidate to whom you handed the nomination, via superdelegates who were strong-armed into supporting him over the candidate who actually won the popular vote, faces serious resistance from voters who feel the woman candidate was battered, bullied, betrayed, and disrespected by the party she and her husband had worked tirelessly to build. So what do you do the day after he "clinches" the nomination through an allegedly "new" politics that to a lot of us looks, feels, and smells an awful lot like the old (boys') politics? Do you go out of your way to assure that the words and images that open the general election campaign are as conciliatory and inclusive and affirming of those voters and their issues as they possibly can be? Nah. Nope. Not you. You arrange things so that the nation's political rag of record, The Washington Post, can splash a tableau of three smiling goodfellas on its front page to let the world know that the boys are back in charge. Fear not, America. The change you can believe in is, by some measures, no change at all.

Go ahead and blame it on Hillary Clinton for not conceding on Tuesday night. "She could have been up on that stage," you can righteously sniff, "if she had been a good girl and formally admitted defeat. Instead, she selfishly chose to try to steal his thunder by publicly declaring she needed time to think." Good lord, the temerity! the chutzpah! the rank selfishness of the evil, power-grabbing bitch! That's right, boys. You go ahead and get in a few last licks. You won't have your incredibly convenient and satisfying punching bag around too much longer. Tomorrow at high noon at the National Building Museum in Washington, Senator Clinton will announce that the last dog has died.** She will concede, declare her support for the Precious, and pledge to work her butt off for the man who once declared her "likable enough." She will try to convince skeptics he is "prepared enough" to lead the most powerful nation on earth. She will do that because, when push comes to shove and contrary to so much that has been said or implied, at heart she is a good girl, a loyal trooper, a party animal who will put the interests of the group above her own self-interest. Perhaps many of us who feel such loyalty to her and such anger on her behalf will listen when she urges us to swallow the hurt and focus on electing a Democratic president.

Some of us will listen to her, but some of us will not -- because some of us are already convinced that you are not listening to us. Here's the thing, Pudd'nheads. You got this far without us (and by "us" I mean women, particularly those over 45, and the so-called lunch-bucket Dems [or, as His Hopeness calls them, bitter, gun-toting Jesus freaks] who tend to swing presidential elections), and you made it pretty clear you didn't feel you needed us. Your drank the kool-aid for the new messiah of American politics and didn't seem to notice that he limped across the finish line after a string of defeats that should have caused concern, or at least some serious humility. Instead, your chief strategist is still touting the glories of the new coalition you supposedly forged to win the nomination, which may be why your sudden overtures to us feel and sound -- how shall we put this? -- insincere? hollow? perfunctory? half-hearted? condescending? It may be slowly dawning on you that you are going to need us to defeat a Republican war hero with a reputation for independence that he doesn't deserve, but a lot of us still feel that you don't really want us. So far, it seems you are holding your noses and ordering us to get up on our unity ponies and join in the parade rather than making a sincere effort to convince us we should support and work toward the election of your guy. So far, your courting of us feels about as warm and comfortable as what you see in this cartoon (from the Horizontal World by way of Hillary 1000):

John McCain is listening, Pudd'nheads. He is carefully positioning himself to make a move for disaffected Clinton voters. He has given former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina a prominent role in his campaign on economic issues and encouraged speculation that he might choose her as his running mate.

We've done some polling here in Roxie's World, and so far things aren't looking too good for the Pudd'nhead Party. Obama is doing okay among the group formerly known as the Pretty Boys for Hillary Caucus, but he's faring badly among Moosians and Goosians. Some of the Texas Goosians have already declared they'll vote for McCain -- and they are Yellow-Dog Dems from way back, y'all! There is concern that the newly minted Dems among the Moosians will revert back to the party they were born and raised in, even if it's not nearly as grand as it was in the good old days of leave-folks-alone Republicanism. Meanwhile, here at corporate HQ, Moose and Goose can't even agree on whether Clinton should accept the veep slot if it is offered to her, and Moose has resorted to humming bad 60s pop tunes every time Goose declares that she has divorced herself from the Democratic Party.

And yet, alone in the big red chair where she does most of the typing for Roxie's World, Moose sometimes thinks Riverdaughter hasn't gone far enough in proposing that Clinton supporters join her new PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement. She harbors a fantasy of a rabidly feminist watch-dog group she'd call CUNT (Call Us Next Time) that would dedicate itself to hounding the Democratic party for its sordid history of selective attention to women voters and women's issues. (By the way, CUNT would also insist on an intersectional approach to issues and analysis, so that gender and race wouldn't be crudely pitted against one another as they so often tend to be in American politics and media.) Fortunately, the vigilant Department of Standards and Practices here in Roxie's World has prevented her from launching such a crudely, if cleverly, named effort, but we've brought in a team of experts in bitterness management to make sure she doesn't hack into the computer overnight and turn it loose while the rest of us are sleeping. Moose's fondness for colorful Anglo-Saxonisms is one of the main reasons she is not in charge of Roxie's World.

So, do you get it, guys? Do you begin to understand the scale of the task before you? We've told you before that unity, if it is to be achieved at all, has to be earned. We've tried to explain that for many of us our investment in Senator Clinton was as principled, as passionate, and as rooted in a dream of social justice and transformation as the investment Senator Obama's supporters have had in him (a point Senator Obama seemed to acknowledge in his victory speech on Tuesday night). We have not yet been convinced that you truly see the people and the issues whom Senator Clinton so eloquently embraced in the course of her campaign and in her speech when she said, "None of you is invisible to me. You never have been. I see you, and I know how hardworking you are." You can be cynical about her embrace of the downtrodden and the forgotten if you like, but you'd be wise not to ignore those of us who were moved by her calls to a renewed commitment to taking care of the less fortunate. For some of us, that is the sum and substance of the change we fervently hope to realize in this country.

Some of us are persuadable, Pudd'nheads, but you'd better start talking and listening soon. November will be here before you know it, and once you're elected a Pudd'nhead, you can't overturn the results of the election as easily as y'all managed to do in Michigan. Just ask our pal Mark Twain.

Yours sincerely,
Roxie

*Pudd'nheads is Roxie-speak for the leadership of the Democratic Party and the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama. The precise meaning and etymology of the term is explained here.

**Attention, pro-Hillary fem bloggers: Roxie's World will be at Saturday's last Clinton campaign event. Let your readers know where they can come for photos and eyewitness reports! No live-blogging, alas, but we'll have something up by supper time, we promise. Thanks in advance to Donna Darko and all the gang at Hillary 1000, Historiann, and the righteous Red Queen.

I Don't Want to Talk

. . . but feel free to hold forth in comments, kids. Meantime, Moose and I are taking refuge in disco kitsch. Hum along if you know it, and we know you do:


The world is still spinning on its axis. The girl has not conceded yet. The big blogs all are holding public displays of thoughts, reactions, feelings, and future possibilities. See especially Melissa McEwan's spot-on piece on Shakesville. A few too many not especially gracious in victory Obamaniacs mucking up the comment thread, but there you are.

Wa Po's second-coming headline this a.m. was almost more than we could bear. Then of course there's the tick-tock piece on our very own Maryland state delegate -- and friend -- Heather Mizeur, who until late yesterday was an uncommitted superdelegate, finally flipping for Obama when the pressure was on.

What does Hillary want? Whatever it is, we will work like hell to help her get it. Peace out.

The Last Tuesday

It's the last Tuesday of the long primary campaign, and I feel you out there, feverishly waiting for your favorite dog blogger to tell you what to feel, think, or say as we await returns from Montana and South Dakota, as we puzzle through the rumors of concessions, of deals, of incendiary videotapes of the opponent's wife that may or may not exist. It's a hard day in Roxie's World, which is why Mark Twain is already on his favorite barstool at Ishmael's, the bar around the corner from the headquarters of our global empire, and why I am off at the groomer's, and why Moose spent part of the afternoon power-walking on the trail with the new Madonna pounding in her ears. (Her verdict on the album? Thin voice, thinner lyrics, excellent beat. Thanks to the Candy Man for sharing Hard Candy.) Goose has been writing. And grocery-shopping.

Meantime, we feel pain and uncertainty reaching us from the far corners of Roxie's World -- from devoted lurkers who write to declare, "If McCain puts a moderate woman on his ticket, I will vote for him," or to complain bitterly about Obama's tepid response to the vicious attack on Hillary Clinton that precipitated his resignation, finally, from the Trinity United Church of Christ. She notes his failure to condemn Rev. Michael Pfleger's words as "utterly inappropriate and demeaning of an important public servant and presidential candidate who deserves the respect of every American," and rightly connects that failure to Obama's tendency throughout the campaign to take advantage of the misogyny that has been directed at Senator Clinton.

We are taking it all in, my dearly beloveds, and we are waiting along with you to see what happens over the next few days. As we wait, we are reminded of one of the finest paragraphs we think we ever produced here in Roxie's World, even if it was in a post that ultimately embarrassed us because it revealed our profound limitations as political prognosticators. It's from the post, "Hillary: A Valediction," which we published the day before the Texas and Ohio primaries in March, worried that Hillary would either lose or not win big enough to justify staying in the race. Here is the paragraph that is on our minds today, as we wait to see what the future holds for Hillary Clinton -- and for all of us:

Yes, when women of a certain age and class look at Hillary we see a lot of our selves -- the tests we took, the dreams we had and have, the hard bargains we struck with life, the moments when our best efforts fell short. As we watch what feels like the end of one part of her amazing journey, Clinton achingly reminds us of all the smart girls who never felt pretty enough, all the pretty girls who still thought their ankles were fat, all the good girls who colored inside the lines and stayed late to help clean up. All true, all valid emotionally, but that’s not all. We have been looking at her for sixteen years, and now perhaps we can finally see her – Hillary Clinton is the unfinished work of feminism. If we don’t do it, who will?

Think about that, my sweet, uncertain humans, as things unfold over the next few days and you consider whether you could support an Obama/Clinton ticket or whether you could live with all the pressure to vote Democratic, no matter what, or the lifetime of crap you will take if you don't vote and McCain wins. Think about it, and stay close to Roxie's World, where you know you are loved and where you will always find a passionate fighter for justice or two to hang out with. And because I know a pretty song and a bit of pro-Hillary eye candy will make everything easier to take, click on the vid at the end of this post, which we picked up over at the Confluence. Then, go read this longer post, also from the Confluence, "An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton," by the Boston Boomer. It's the kind of thing we might have written today if we weren't greeting the next round of houseguests later this evening.

Love you, lovelies. Mean it.