Butch PhD v Da Frum(p)

Score one for the girl. We're falling for her again, kids. Gonna have to start watching Rachel Maddow's show, even if we had sworn off the network that continues to provide a platform for the useless yammerings of Tweety and He Who Looks in the Mirror and Thinks He Sees Edward R. Murrow.

Just watch Rache disembowel GOP hack David Frum as he tries desperately to defend an utterly specious comparison between the smart but snarky style of Maddow's show and the crowds calling for Dem blood recently at McCain-Palin rallies. It is a thing of beauty and a joy to behold. Really. Watch every delicious second, and then go read Tristero's rapturous response over on Hullabaloo, which is where we picked this up.

Forgive us, but we are inordinately fond of smart girls who look as if they could bench-press a smarmy jerk as easily as they could demolish his logic. You go watch the vid. We are going to close our eyes and think of . . . um, whatever it is Moose is teaching tomorrow. Really.

Shut Up and Vote

From the Department of Finally It's All Clear to Me:

(Photo Credit: Picked up at Shakesville)

For some strange reason, the usually right-on-the-money Melissa McEwan included this Missouri billboard in her "Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch," but we thought it was an elegantly succinct argument in favor of Senator Obama, even if the portrait artist did get a little carried away in his depiction of the Democratic nominee's teeth. Still, we loves us some scare quotes 'round here, and the moms have been screaming for higher taxes for years. The election is three weeks from tomorrow, kids, so this billboard may be just what the gun-hatin', baby-killin', same-sex lovin' tax hikers of Roxie's World need to help them make up their minds. Stay tuned!

How're y'all doing? Sorry for the silence of the past few days. My typist has been ridiculously busy trying to finagle an extended period of time off to do nothing but sit in a chair and write, which sounds suspiciously to me like the life she already has, but what do I know? Meanwhile, out in the real world, polls are suddenly pointing toward an Obama landslide, stocks staged a monstrous rally, and Paul Krugman has won a Nobel fricking Prize.

Let us all pause for a moment and admit that life doesn't entirely suck. Change is comin', you betcha, and Roxie's World is ready for it.

(H/T to qta for inspiration on the post title. Pretty boy is ready to get this election over already!)

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

(Photo Credit: Lara Porzak; Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, 8/16/08)

We don't often blog on demand here in Roxie's World, valuing our independence as we do, but when Roving Reporter and BFF June Star phones in the middle of the week imploring us to post on something -- and promising to promote the post throughout the densely populated Garden State -- well, we listen. Besides, she wants us to help save same-sex marriage in California, which is on the ballot in November and is losing support in recent polls, so we've decided to mobilize my legions of loyal fans to help turn the tide. C'mon, people -- It's time to point, click, cough up some dough, and help assure that Ellen and Portia don't have to return that snazzy Crock-Pot they just unpacked.

Here's where you go to give, unless you'd rather go here. Both groups are trying to get ads on the air, so take your pick. Why should you be willing to part with some of your precious shekels in the midst of a presidential campaign and a global financial meltdown that has probably reduced your net worth by 50% in the time it has taken you to read this post? Why, indeed, especially if you are, say, in a committed heterosexual relationship on the other side of the country or in a committed queer relationship but sick and bloody tired of all the time, energy, and money the struggle for marriage equality has absorbed in the past few years?

Look, we know times are tough and you're all way too cool to succumb to the wedding-bell blues, but here are Five Excellent Reasons You Should Contribute to the Cause of Saving Same-Sex Marriage in California:

1. Because it will piss off the Mormons, who are spending huge sums of money in support of the ballot measure that would overturn same-sex marriage.

2. Because Brangelina can't do it all by themselves. Itselves. Wev. Pitch in.

3. Because Obama is already outspending McCain 3 to 1 on television advertising as the campaign moves into its final weeks. How much does he not need your money? Dude is outspending the Wild Bunch in Moose's home state of Indiana, which hasn't gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1964. Polls give McCain a slight edge, but it's a freaking miracle that the state is in play. Even the most Obamaniacal among you can relax and shake loose a couple of bucks for other good causes.

4. Because the bicoastal arrogance that gives coherence and meaning to the myth of progressive politics in this nation requires that at least two states situated on opposite sides of the country offer a haven for sexual deviants who wish to commit to stable, long-term perversion opportunities. In the privacy of their well-appointed homes.

5. Because you are a fighter for justice, and the very idea that a right finally achieved could be taken away offends you to the core of your precious soul. You are sick and tired of LGBT rights being subject to popular votes and losing. You long to strike a blow against the meanies, zealots, and hypocrites determined to write their narrow sexual code into law and impose it on consenting adults whose morality differs from their own.

That's way more than five reasons and they are all really, really good, so what are you waiting for? Click here, or click here. Don't do it because June Star and I told you to. Do it because you know it's the right thing to do. Do it because you forgot to get Ellen and Portia a wedding present. Do it because you would like to honor the memory of Del Martin and protect the widowhood of Phyllis Lyon. It doesn't really matter why, kids. Just do it.

Peace out, and here's a vid of one of the No on 8 ads:

Why We Drink (Tuesday Edition)

We think it's possible John McCain's jaw may well explode within the next hour, and so we will drink.

We can't stand that Barack Obama is now dropping "g"s off the end of his words, in a blatant attempt to be as folksy as the moose-hunting former mayor of Wasilla, and so we will drink.

We suspect that what is left of our retirement income will be gone by the end of the week, and so we will drink.

We are reasonably certain that a perfect Tom Brokaw imitation will get Moose through tomorrow's lecture on Three Guineas, because perfect imitations of George Bush and Sarah Palin got her through Monday's lecture, and so we will drink.

Join us, children. Bartender Peter Coffin is serving up a fine bordeaux here at Ishmael's, the cozy yet seedy bar around the corner from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. Come drown your sorrows or celebrate the chope and hange that will soon be unleashed upon our broke and broken-hearted land. What else could you possibly be planning to do?

Special Note from the Department of Say Something Nice: Obama is wearing a gorgeous suit, and Goose, who is something of an expert on such matters, wholeheartedly approves of his tie.

Thought for the Day

From the Gospel According to James Wolcott:

I harbor no grand illusions about Obama, he isn't my messiah (I don't have a messiah, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson supplying more than enough transcendence to last a lifetime), and I'm still not sure how much he comprehends how gravely this country has been gutted over the last decade. My rooting interest is less about Obama himself than about how big a hurt he can put to the Republican Party. I don't want the Republican Party simply defeated in November, I want to see it smashed beyond all recognition, in such wriggling, writhing, anguished disarray that it can barely reconstitute itself, so desperate for answers that it looks to Newt Gingrich for visionary guidance, his wisdom and insight providing the perfect cup of hemlock to finish off the conservative movement for good so that it can rot in the salted earth of memory unmissed and unmourned in toxic obscurity.

Even for the unaligned and unexcited Dems of Roxie's World, that last sentence's Dantesque vision of the electoral hell Republicans will likely face on November 4 is pleasing to contemplate. And it's nice to have something to look forward to as the grim realities of Great Depression 2.0 become clearer every time a stock market opens -- with a crash -- somewhere around the world. The moms went to a block party last night and were joking with the neighbors that we'll all lose our shirts and be working into our nineties -- but, hey, at least Democrats will be in charge for the rest of our miserable lives.

Hillary in 2016! Chelsea in 2024! Sasha Obama in 2036 (when she will be 35 years old). Perhaps sister Malia will want a term when Chelsea is finished in 2032, or maybe one of Pelosi's granddaughters. Who cares, as long as the hideous progeny of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Grover Norquist will never get their hands on the ship of state?

It's pretty to think so, isn't it, lovelies? Here's to seeing all these bastards unmissed, unmourned, and unemployed.

Oh, and if Obama is upset that he still hasn't earned the endorsement of America's favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball, he can console himself at having gotten the nod from a publication whose audience is about the same size as ours and very nearly as sophisticated. Take heart, Senator. Somebody loves you, and we may learn to yet.

Sarah-tonin

For Goose, who is still crushing on Piper Palin:

(Photo Credit: James Estrin, New York Times; Sarah Palin and Joe Biden chat at the conclusion of the vice-presidential debate -- or fight over who gets custody of Palin's adorable daughter Piper, 10/2/08.)

Weekend Updated: Scroll down for SNL debate parody, featuring Queen Latifah as moderator Gwen Ifill.

You have to admit she’s perky. Spunky. Fetching. Winsome. Winning. Plucky. Chipper. Pick pretty much any adjective that roughly translates to “assertive but in a friendly, girlie kind of way designed not to threaten, um, patriarchy,” and it applies to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who calmed Republican nerves and surprised a lot of caricature artists by not catastrophically failing in her debate against Senator Joe Biden on Thursday. (Transcript and video here.) It’s true she didn’t actually answer most of the questions that were put to her and that Biden was far more effective in performing the veep nominee’s job of using the debate to demolish the opposing team’s arguments on behalf of itself. Nonetheless, The Sarah and Joe Show made for 90 minutes of excellent television – far more compelling than the soporific John and Barack-athon of the previous week – because Palin and Biden played well together. They were relaxed, at ease, at some moments even genuine in their looks at and responses to one another.

Credit Palin for setting a congenial tone with her opening “Hey, can I call you Joe?” to Biden as the two shook hands at center stage. Even if the move was designed to tempt Biden to use an informal mode of address that would no doubt have been interpreted as sexist and condescending, it broke the ice and established a friendliness that never really dissipated. If Palin’s energy and aura of breezy self-assurance could be bottled, the proceeds from the sales of the drug could bail out the financial industry, pay for all the wars George Bush has started, and build all the bridges to nowhere we could possibly want. Whether it can get John McCain into the White House is, of course, another question. Palin saved herself from complete ignominy on Thursday night, but polls show Biden won the debate and that voters are continuing to move toward the Democratic ticket. It could be Dems will win – even without the coveted endorsement of America’s favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball.

The resurgent Palin finally has an explanation for why she failed so stupendously in her pre-debate interviews with Katie Couric. She was “annoyed.” But how could this be? What flapped the unflappable mighty huntress? What bugged the unbuggable VP nominee? Oh, you know, that a pesky reporter was daring to ask follow-up questions designed to get her off her talking points and offer something more than folksy platitudes about kitchen tables and soccer games and tax cuts and mavericks. According to a Wa Po report on a less annoying interview Palin did with Fox News, Palin was annoyed in the CBS interviews because she felt she was going to "get clobbered" no matter what she said in response to the also perky and winsome Couric:

"In those Katie Couric interviews," Palin said, "I did feel that there were lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are, represented in our ticket." Those subjects, Palin said, included Barack Obama's positions on taxes, spending and Afghanistan. "So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside the Washington elite, outside of the media elite, also," Palin said. "I just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter and let them know what we stand for."

Democracy – Yeah, it’s annoying. That’s why George Bush has on occasion expressed a desire to be a dictator. That’s why Dick Cheney has operated pretty much as a dictator for the last eight years, which makes Palin’s creepy hat tip to the current vice president’s theory of his office on Thursday night deeply annoying to anyone concerned about the dangerous expansion of executive power that has occurred during the reign of Shrub and Darth. She may be a Washington outsider (you picked up on that, didn’t you?), but apparently the governor has a copy of the Constitution in her kitchen drawer up there in Wasilla, along with a copy of the collected sermons of noted Puritan divine Ronald Reagan (you remember him, right – the guy who first declared [according to Palin’s attribution in the debate] that America would be “as a city upon a hill?”). In an effort to prove that she does in fact understand what the vice president does, Palin indicated she was “thankful” that “the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” Moderator Gwen Ifill followed up with a question about whether Palin agreed with Cheney that the executive branch may not entirely control the office of the vice president because it resides partly in the legislative branch. Palin offered one of her more expansive and, um, responsive responses of the evening to this question:

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Roxie’s World has a question for Gov. Palin: Is there a “there” there? By which we mean: What exactly is it you are trying to do with the word “there,” which pops up in your speech as frequently as moose poop on a forest trail? As in, “I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, DC.” And, at the risk of annoying you, we have a follow-up question with regard to the word “that.” What’s up with “that,” Governor, another favorite term in your lexicon? As in, “that world view that John McCain and I share.” We have a hunch that such placeholder words, such vague non-referential referents, are signs not of ignorance but of obfuscation, of a conscious effort to say as little possible in an effort to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. They are the rhetorical equivalents of those cute little winks you kept flashing to the camera. A cynic might say the vagueness is an effort to conceal the far right wing nature of the program Palin would seek to enact, but there are no cynics here in Roxie’s World, just an old dog with her ear to the ground and a couple of grouchy English profs who have spent decades crusading against vagueness in the margins of their students’ papers.

One more point to make about Thursday’s debate. Ifill brought up the subject of “granting same-sex benefits to couples.” (Speaking of vagueness, one could argue there is a fair amount of that there in Ifill’s question. Is she asking the candidates to weigh in on whether all couples should be afforded the benefits of being of the same sex? Hmmm, is Ifill calling for a program of mass sex-reassignment? Hey, why not?) Anyway, perhaps flummoxed by the fuzziness of the question, Biden launched into a murky response that momentarily sounded as if the Democratic ticket supported a right to same-sex marriage:

We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

When Ifill came back to him later and asked directly about support for same-sex marriage, Biden was emphatic but still not much clearer: “No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.” Huh? And they say Palin verges on incoherent at times? For her part, Palin claimed she and McCain would support traditional marriage but would do nothing to prevent same-sex couples from having hospital visitation rights and the right to set up contractual agreements around property and insurance – exactly the kind of rights Biden had focused on in his torturously nuanced response. Go read the transcript. This post is already getting too long.

Bottom line? Dems may offer somewhat broader rights and protections to same-sex couples, but their nervousness about the issue and their refusal to speak the M-word opens up space for Republicans to claim they are being “tolerant” as long as they’re not quoting Leviticus and chasing queers out of town with pitchforks. It’s a gutless position, and it won’t pick up a single vote – or the coveted endorsement of America’s favorite dog blog devoted to politics, pop culture, and basketball.

Peace out.

Update: Because we love you and know you want it, here is the SNL debate parody that opened last night's show. It's long and not as hilarious as some of the previous Palin-odes, but the writers seem to share our view of the discussion of benefits for same-sex couples. It's around the 8-minute mark:

Pre-VP Debate Pub Crawl

Huge pre-debate crowd this evening at Ishmael's, the cozy yet seedy bar just around the corner from the global headquarters of RW Enterprises, LLC. Innkeeper Peter Coffin has Depression-era cocktails on half-price special tonight, his clever effort to capitalize on the crisis in the financial markets. There's (Half-)Baked Alaska on the dessert menu in honor of Governor Sarah Palin, and if our crack team of culinary researchers had been able to turn up any evidence that Senator Biden's home state of Delaware had ever contributed anything worth eating, we'd have put it on the appetizer menu. Best we could come up with was the winner of a 1997 contest for the best crab cake recipe, but that won't do. Roxie's World is in Maryland, people. We ain't puttin' no damn Delaware crab cakes on the bar menu!

The crowd is settling in. Peter's got the new plasma TVs turned on to Ugly Betty because none of the regulars can stand Keith Olbermann. There's a lot going on. One group is huddled around a laptop playing a lively game of Palin Bingo:

(Image Credit: palinbingo.com, via GlassPen)

In the back room, where there's a rickety old stage, a bunch of grad students (the moody kids in dark glasses, as Peter thinks of them) are holding a poetry slam. They are doing choral readings of The Poetry of Sarah Palin, a stunning new collection put together by noted literary scholar Hart Seely and published just yesterday in Slate (H/T to Eitan). Seely pored over the transcripts of Palin's recent interviews and discovered therein some of the most extraordinary found poetry since somebody opened Emily Dickinson's desk drawer. (Goose would object to this comparison, but she is out of town tonight, so there.) The grad students don't have Tina Fey's gift for mimicking Palin's voice, but they've got a feeling for the poetry and a teacher's passion for reading aloud, so imagine their stirring performances of Palin's "poems" (as compiled by Seely):

"On Good and Evil"

It is obvious to me
Who the good guys are in this one
And who the bad guys are.
The bad guys are the ones
Who say Israel is a stinking corpse,
And should be wiped off
The face of the earth.

That's not a good guy.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

"You Can't Blink"

You can't blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we're on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can't blink.

So I didn't blink.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

You really must run over to Slate and read the rest of Palin's poems. "Small Mayors" will make you weep from the intensity of compressed emotion and meaning. I defy you to get through it without shedding a tear. Moose is going to try to talk Goose and the Candy Man into doing a special seminar on the collection once the election is over.

Finally, Moose and Mark Twain are deep in conversation at the bar, trying to formulate rules for the drinking game they'll be running during the debate. They've come up with a few, but we invite you all to add more in comments. Consider this an open thread, kids. We're not clever enough to live-blog, but if we all hang out here together, won't that amount to pretty much the same thing?

Rules of the VP Debate Drinking Game:

1. Every time Palin drops a "g" on the end of a word, drink -- but just take a tiny sip or you will end up with alcohol poisonin' before all is said and done.

2. Every time somebody says "Hillary Clinton," take a healthy swig and raise your glass to the girl who almost made it.

3. Every time Joe Biden smiles so big you think his face is going to crack right open, take two drinks and tell Peter you really wish he had crab cakes on the menu.

4. Every time somebody mentions George Bush in a positive context, take the biggest drink of your life, because it may be your only chance.

5. Every time somebody mentions feeling the pain of single moms and middle-class homeowners and parents trying to get their kids through college, use one hand to raise your glass and another to cover your wallet, because you'll be the one paying for that bailout. Even if you'd rather say "thanks, but no thanks" to it.

Your turn, kids. Send us your rules, and tell us what your drinkin'. Peter is ready to serve.