Category: I wish I’d said that!

From Chris Mohney comes this…

Continuing the chain of imaginary offensiveness to stereotypes, I plan to open a Babies R Us next to the gay bar next to the mosque next to Ground Zero. Next to the Babies R Us I will open a pornographic bookstore, and next to that I will open a police station. Next to the police station I will open a hip-hop recording studio, and next to that I will open an Applebees. Next to the Applebees I will open a TGI Fridays (those guys HATE each other) and next to the TGI Fridays I will open a methodone clinic. Next to the methodone clinic I will open a crack house, and finally, next to that, I will open a Catholic church adjoining a daycare center for attractive boys, adjacent to which i will just blow up whatever’s there so I can erect a memorial, and next to that memorial I will open a community center dedicated to a locally inconvenient ethnicity that I hired to blow up the original structure on the memorial site. Next to that I’m just going to put some condos.

From the Washington Post comes this…

The biggest day of her life: Elena Kagan, Chelsea, and Prop 8
By Alexandra Petri

It’s that day every little girl dreams of. It will mark the beginning of a new life as part of something bigger than herself. Centuries of tradition have determined what she’ll wear, what she’ll say. Some have objected, but they’ll hold their peace on the big day.

Forget Chelsea’s wedding! I’m talking about Elena Kagan’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.

Weddings, confirmation hearings — potato, potahto! They’re practically the same. Both are the focus of years of longing and preparation. People wear funny outfits and family members cry. If you’re lucky, Antonin Scalia is there! (Okay, maybe that’s just my dream wedding.)

Still, there was something in the above paragraph that probably made us think “wedding.” Why do people still see “little girl’s long-awaited big day” and think white gowns rather than black robes?

When Chelsea Clinton wed Marc Mezvinsky (I bet they were attracted to each other by their mutual alliteration), I was struck by many things: the dress, the fuss, the security officer who kept insisting that I leave. But what stuck with me most was the comment, from Bill Clinton to Ryan Seacrest, that “it’s the biggest day of her life, probably.”

This remark struck me as a straggler from another era, the way it would have if he’d said, “I’m giving them a Model T!” or “She’s spent the last decade furnishing her hope chest!” For me, the idea that a wedding is the biggest day of a little girl’s life falls somewhere between “I’m going clubbing-and-dragging-back-to-my-cave” and “I’m going clubbing!” I always thought that for my generation of women, sure, weddings were important, if only because they allowed you to put tiny scale models of yourself on cakes without people thinking you were some sort of weirdo, but they weren’t that important. If you didn’t marry and wound up becoming a Supreme Court justice instead — who cared! As long as you threw a nice reception with those toast things, wore something blue and invoked the Fifth a lot, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.

But I think I was wrong. There’s still something about marriage.

The news of Kagan’s confirmation followed on the heels of something else — the judge’s ruling that overturned Proposition 8. Somehow, the only objection to that I haven’t heard is “Not more weddings! Weddings aren’t important! No one cares about them!” Everyone, it seems, still puts a value on these things.

Perhaps that’s because, while only three in every 100 million of us will turn out to be Supreme Court justices (better than the odds of being killed by a shark, a fact I will attempt to use with the next shark that bothers me), the odds are pretty excellent we’ll get married, sometimes six or eight times. It’s one of those rituals we all go through at some point, like learning to drive or accidentally killing a hamster. Everyone cared about Chelsea’s big day because a wedding is something everyone can experience — from your neighbor who wants you to fly to a beach in Ontario to Bristol Palin (oh, wait).

It wasn’t just Chelsea. This day is big not because Bill doesn’t expect his daughter to lead a fulfilling and exciting life — but because it marks a special occasion that is qualitatively different from a professional milestone like being elected president, the kind that stands out even in a rich life. It is a celebration of finding the proverbial needle of love and commitment in the haystack of the singles scene. Johnson called second marriages “the triumph of hope over experience.” Given the divorce rate, so are first marriages. Yet we have them anyway. And with the Prop 8 ruling, more little girls can look forward to that special day — even two at a time!

Now we just have to see what happens when it gets to the Supreme Court. Talk about big days, probably.

From Andrew Sullivan comes this:

Walker’s critical point (and beautifully put):

The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to choose a spouse and, with mutual consent, join together and form a household. Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage during eras of race and gender inequality, but such restrictions were never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage. Today, gender is not relevant to the state in determining spouses’ obligations to each other and to their dependents. Relative gender composition aside, same-sex couples are situated identically to opposite-sex couples in terms of their ability to perform the rights and obligations of marriage under California law. Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.

Plaintiffs seek to have the state recognize their committed relationships, and plaintiffs’ relationships are consistent with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in the United States. Perry and Stier seek to be spouses;they seek the mutual obligation and honor that attend marriage, Zarrillo and Katami seek recognition from the state that their union is “a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.” Griswold, 381 US at 486. Plaintiffs’ unions encompass the historical purpose and form of marriage. Only the plaintiffs’ genders relative to one another prevent California from giving their relationships due recognition.

Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize plaintiffs’ objective as “the right to same-sex marriage” would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy —— namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages.

From Andrew Sullivan comes this…

From his article on the subject:

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them?

Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Before I Die . . . ‘As in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow.’ by Edmund N. Carpenter, II

The following essay was written by Edmund N. Carpenter, age 17, in June 1938 while he was a student in Lawrenceville, N.J. Carpenter would go on to win the Bronze Star for his service in World War II and to a civilian career as an attorney. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he became president of Richards, Layton & Finger, a law firm. He died on Dec. 19, 2008 at age 87 and is survived by six children and 15 grandchildren:

It may seem very strange to the reader that one of my tender age should already be thinking about that inevitable end to which even the paths of glory lead. However, this essay is not really concerned with death, but rather with life, my future life. I have set down here the things which I, at this age, believe essential to happiness and complete enjoyment of life. Some of them will doubtless seem very odd to the reader; others will perhaps be completely in accord with his own wishes. At any rate, they compose a synopsis of the things which I sincerely desire to have done before I leave this world and pass on to the life hereafter or to oblivion.

Before I die I want to know that I have done something truly great, that I have accomplished some glorious achievement the credit for which belongs solely to me. I do not aspire to become as famous as a Napoleon and conquer many nations; but I do want, almost above all else, to feel that I have been an addition to this world of ours. I should like the world, or at least my native land, to be proud of me and to sit up and take notice when my name is pronounced and say, “There is a man who has done a great thing.” I do not want to have passed through life as just another speck of humanity, just another cog in a tremendous machine. I want to be something greater, far greater than that. My desire is not so much for immortality as for distinction while I am alive. When I leave this world, I want to know that my life has not been in vain, but that I have, in the course of my existence, done something of which I am rightfully very proud.

Before I die I want to know that during my life I have brought great happiness to others. Friendship, we all agree, is one of the best things in the world, and I want to have many friends. But I could never die fully contented unless I knew that those with whom I had been intimate had gained real happiness from their friendship with me. Moreover, I feel there is a really sincere pleasure to be found in pleasing others, a kind of pleasure that can not be gained from anything else. We all want much happiness in our lives, and giving it to others is one of the surest ways to achieve it for ourselves.

Before I die I want to have visited a large portion of the globe and to have actually lived with several foreign races in their own environment. By traveling in countries other than my own I hope to broaden and improve my outlook on life so that I can get a deeper, and more complete satisfaction from living. By mixing the weighty philosophy of China with the hard practicalism of America, I hope to make my life fuller. By blending the rigid discipline of Germany with the great liberty in our own nation I hope to more completely enjoy my years on this earth. These are but two examples of the many things which I expect to achieve by traveling and thus have a greater appreciation of life.

Before I die there is another great desire I must fulfill, and that is to have felt a truly great love. At my young age I know that love, other than some filial affection, is probably far beyond my ken. Yet, young as I may be, I believe I have had enough inkling of the subject to know that he who has not loved has not really lived. Nor will I feel my life is complete until I have actually experienced that burning flame and know that I am at last in love, truly in love. I want to feel that my whole heart and soul are set on one girl whom I wish to be a perfect angel in my eyes. I want to feel a love that will far surpass any other emotion that I have ever felt. I know that when I am at last really in love then I will start living a different, better life, filled with new pleasures that I never knew existed.

Before I die I want to feel a great sorrow. This, perhaps, of all my wishes will seem the strangest to the reader. Yet, is it unusual that I should wish to have had a complete life? I want to have lived fully, and certainly sorrow is a part of life. It is my belief that, as in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow. It molds us and teaches us that there is a far deeper significance to life than might be supposed if one passed through this world forever happy and carefree. Moreover, once the pangs of sorrow have slackened, for I do not believe it to be a permanent emotion, its dregs often leave us a better knowledge of this world of ours and a better understanding of humanity. Yes, strange as it may seem, I really want to feel a great sorrow.

With this last wish I complete the synopsis of the things I want to do before I die. Irrational as they may seem to the reader, nevertheless they comprise a sincere summary of what I truthfully now believe to be the things most essential to a fully satisfactory and happy life. As I stand here on the threshold of my future, these are the things which to me seem the most valuable. Perhaps in fifty years I will think that they are extremely silly. Perhaps I will wonder, for instance, why I did not include a wish for continued happiness. Yet, right now, I do not desire my life to be a bed of roses. I want it to be something much more than that. I want it to be a truly great adventure, never dull, always exciting and engrossing; not sickly sweet, yet not unhappy. And I believe it will be all I wish if I do these things before I die.

As for death itself, I do not believe that it will be such a disagreeable thing providing my life has been successful. I have always considered life and death as two cups of wine. Of the first cup, containing the wine of life, we can learn a little from literature and from those who have drunk it, but only a little. In order to get the full flavor we must drink deeply of it for ourselves. I believe that after I have quaffed the cup containing the wine of life, emptied it to its last dregs, then I will not fear to turn to that other cup, the one whose contents can be designated only by X, an unknown, and a thing about which we can gain no knowledge at all until we drink for ourselves. Will it be sweet, or sour, or tasteless? Who can tell? Surely none of us like to think of death as the end of everything. Yet is it? That is a question that for all of us will one day be answered when we, having witnessed the drama of life, come to the final curtain. Probably we will all regret to leave this world, yet I believe that after I have drained the first cup, and have possibly grown a bit weary of its flavor, I will then turn not unwillingly to the second cup and to the new and thrilling experience of exploring the unknown.

From Ta-nehisi Coates comes this:

I Just Remembered Chris Matthews Was White, posted 28 Jan 2010 10:30 am

Here’s Matthews on Obama:

I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It’s interesting; he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two. I mean it’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of the discussion, it was so broad ranging, so in tune with so many problems and aspects and aspects of American life. That you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism and the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard, a very subtle fact. It’s so hard to even talk about it. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I am.

I think it’s worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn’t trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it’s worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he’s done for race relations. (See Matthews’ clarification here.) But I think it’s most worth noting that “I forgot Obama was black”–in all its iterations–is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it’s really dishonest.

One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we’ve been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We’ve also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you’ll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, “Wow, I forgot you were a woman.” Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.

The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one’s “woman-ness.” So if football and beer don’t fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim “I forgot you were a woman,” as opposed to “I just realized my invented truth was wrong.”

Ditto for Chris Matthews. The “I forgot Obama was black” sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance–you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don’t know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn’t forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

I’m put back in the mind of the The Wire, when Slim Charles tells Avon that it really doesn’t matter that our wars are based on a lie. Once we’re fighting, we fight on that lie until the end. I would submit that a significant number of white people in this country, can not stop fighting on the lie. They can’t cop to the fact that they really have no standing to speak on Obama’s relationship to blackness, because they know so little about black people. It’s always hard to say, “I don’t know.” But no one else can say it for you.

This is why Obama will never be postracial–he can’t make white people face the lie of their ignorance, anymore than Jimmy Baldwin could make black people face the lie of our homophobia. It’s white people’s responsibility to make themselves postracial, not the president’s. Whatever my disagreements with him, the fact is that he is brilliant. That he is black and brilliant is pleasant but unsurprising to me. I’ve known very brilliant, very black people all my life. At some point that number of white people who still can’t their head around our humanity will have to accept the truth: the president is black, and even if you don’t quite know what that means.

From Andrew Sullivan comes this … Unrepresentative Democracy, Ctd

Fallows adds to his earlier post about the disproportionate power of 41 GOP senators:

Five Justices of the Supreme Court, outvoting their four colleagues, can work a fundamental change in election law that goes far beyond the issues presented by the parties to the case. Courts always have the option of deciding cases narrowly or broadly. The breadth of this one, reaching far beyond the merits of the case so as to enact the majority Justices’ views, is staggering even to a non-lawyer like me. A one-person margin* is enough for a change of this magnitude. In the least accountable branch of government, the narrowest margin prevails; in our elected legislative branch, substantial majorities are neutered

.

Carrie Newcomer posted in FB and it applies to me:

In the movie “Up” there is a great dog character named Doug. I love this dog. . .he is talking away and then abruptly stops, swings his head to the side and goes “squirrel!” Then he returns to the conversation without skipping a beat. I think this is the way my artist mind works. . .so much to notice, so much to ponder. . .so many squirrels!

ABC’s still spanking Adam Lambert for risqué performance, By Lisa de Moraes, Friday, December 4, 2009

ABC is developing a new reality series called “Sanctimoniously Dumping Adam Lambert.”

In this week’s episode, the network dumps the “American Idol” runner-up from not one but two more programs: “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and its “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” while batting its eyes coyly. It declined primly to comment on either decision.

“Dumping Adam” debuted last month when the network yanked a scheduled appearance and performance by Lambert on its infotainment show “Good Morning America” — which was strange because Lambert had made, you know, news when he’d performed a few days earlier at the American Music Awards, also on ABC.

On Sunday, Nov. 22, Lambert brought down the house at the AMAs, and gave ABC the vapors with a highly choreographed performance that included a male-dancer-shoves-face-in-Lambert-crotch move, and a Lambert-kisses-dude stunt. The Lambert-walks-shirtless-leather-chapped-guys-on-leash bit? ABC was totally fine with that.

Note to ABC: Airing music trophy shows is not for the faint of heart. And, when an artist is performing surrounded by chicks dressed like pre-World War II Berlin hookers hanging from stripper poles, and guys are being walked on all fours like dogs, and the tune’s lyrics go like this:

Imma hurt you real good baby

Let’s go, it’s my show, baby, do what I say . . .

I told ya, Imma hold ya down until you’re amazed

Give it to ya til you’re screamin’ my name

. . . sometimes things are going to happen.

Anyway, two days later, ABC yanked Lambert from “GMA” after reporting it had received 1,500 complaints, explaining that “given his controversial American Music Awards performance, we were concerned about airing a similar concert so early in the morning.”

On the other hand, ABC also boasted that the AMA broadcast, in which Lambert was the closing and most highly anticipated act, had attracted its biggest audience in seven years with an impressive 2 million more viewers than last year’s show.

Can a network be happily mortified?

Since then, Lambert has gone on Ellen DeGeneres’s syndicated talk show and said, of his AMA performance: “I think in hindsight, I look back and I go, ‘Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best first impression to make.’ I had fun up there. I had a good time. . . . But you know what, I respect people and I feel like people walked away from that feeling disrespected, and I would never intend to disrespect anybody. So that was not my intention.”

Even so, ABC decided Lambert is now so radioactive it needs to get out of the Adam business altogether. So it’s pulled his scheduled Dec. 17 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” — the ABC late-night show best known for its “I’m [shagging] Matt Damon”/”I’m [shagging] Ben Affleck” videos.

He’s also been barred from performing on ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” even though his old pal “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest is executive producer.

“Yes, sadly friends, ABC has cancelled my appearances on Kimmel and NYE. ” Lambert tweeted Thursday, adding, “Don’t blame them. It’s the FCC heat.”

We called the Federal Communications Commission to ask about Lambert’s AMA performance. A spokesman could not say how many complaints have been received about the incident.

Of course, FCC indecency regs do not apply to late-night TV — or, for that matter, the 10:55 p.m. spot when Lambert gave his now-infamous AMA performance.

But ABC is not out of the Adam Lambert business altogether. He’s still scheduled to be among those 10 Most Fascinating People that Babs Walters cozies up to in her annual taped special, airing Wednesday.

Unless, of course, that broadcast becomes the season finale of “Sanctimoniously Dumping Adam Lambert.”

Adam Lambert - For Your Entertainment

It wasn’t really the man-on-man kiss or the simulated oral sex that marked Adam Lambert’s performance on the American Music Awards on Sunday as shocking. Mostly it was ABC’s reaction. By rescinding Mr. Lambert’s invitation to sing on “Good Morning America,” ABC self-protectively drew a line that networks usually prefer to keep blurred.

Or as Mr. Lambert said Wednesday morning on “The Early Show” on CBS, “There’s a lot of very adult material on the A.M.A.’s this year, and I know I wasn’t the only one.” Mr. Lambert, runner-up on this year’s “American Idol,” was referring to other risqué performances Sunday night, including Lady Gaga smashing whiskey bottles, Janet Jackson grabbing a male dancer’s crotch and Eminem talking about his character Slim Shady’s rap sheet of rape, assault and murder.

There is a lot of very adult material on television all the time, and mostly it flows unchecked and unpunished, except when it comes as a surprise and hits a nerve. Community standards are mutable and vague; lots of people don’t know obscenity until someone else sees it. Ms. Jackson transgressed during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show because she exposed a nipple, which is one thing that network television normally doesn’t show. Mr. Lambert, who just released his first album, startled viewers because he did things akin to what outré rappers and female pop stars have performed onstage to get attention, only he did it as a gay man.

CBS, which eagerly invited Mr. Lambert to its morning show after ABC canceled, savored its rival’s discomfort. CBS is still fighting a $550,000 Federal Communications Commission fine in the Jackson “wardrobe malfunction,” but at the time it wasn’t any braver than ABC about defending a suddenly controversial star. After the incident CBS disinvited Ms. Jackson from the Grammy Awards that followed, even though it allowed her Super Bowl bodice ripper, Justin Timberlake, to attend.

The Jackson case showed that indecency lies in the context. People complained that children were watching during the Super Bowl halftime show; viewers normally don’t expect to see soft-core pornography until the commercials.

Mr. Lambert’s context was different, mostly because he is gay and his song “For Your Entertainment” is graphically sexual, with intimations of sadomasochism and oral sex. Straight sadomasochism is suggested all the time in music videos, and early this season Courteney Cox’s character on the ABC sitcom “Cougar Town” was coyly depicted performing oral sex on a younger man.

Television has embraced openly gay male entertainers like Neil Patrick Harris, and gay characters are on soap operas, sitcoms and dramas, notably two men who’ve adopted a baby on ABC’s new hit “Modern Family.” But while gay sexuality is discussed and joked about plenty, rarely are the gay characters shown having sex or kissing passionately. The joke in “Modern Family” is that the gay couple’s relationship is as bourgeois and unlibidinous as that of any long-married suburban couple. (“Oz,” a stark and explicit drama about men in prison, was shown on HBO, a pay cable network.) Women kissing women is far more common, probably because it doesn’t offend: for many viewers, two women romping together in bed registers less as lesbianism than as an extracurricular turn-on for men. Girl-on-girl action is a standing salacious joke on prime-time sitcoms like CBS’s “Two and a Half Men.” And respectful depictions of lesbian love are on shows like ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Madonna’s infamous smooch with Britney Spears at the 2003 Video Music Awards was a hot topic, so to speak, but no network blackballed them as a result. Mr. Lambert had a point when he complained on “The Early Show” about a double standard.

“Good Morning America” justified its censure of Mr. Lambert by stating that his performance on Sunday went beyond anything he did in rehearsal (true), and ABC didn’t want to risk exposing its viewers to a spectacle of similar debauchery first thing in the morning (not very likely). Instead “Good Morning America” hosts lavished attention on squeaky clean Donny Osmond, the winner of “Dancing With the Stars.” Mr. Lambert acknowledged that he got carried away in the live performance but said that if he could do it over, he would do only one thing differently. “I would sing it a little bit better.”

It wasn’t the best musical performance by any means, but it wasn’t the worst display of sexual debauchery either. Mostly it was a reminder of television’s policy regarding gay men: Do tell, just don’t show.