Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

A Planet Called Hubris In A Galaxy Called Hypocrisy

The Dumbing Down By Saintorum Continues

Another day, another opportunity for the GOP wannabe, who stands ZERO chance of snagging the nom, to run his ignorant mouth.

Taking a break from his favorite topics - gay sex, and rape as a gift from God - Saint Rick turned his attention to higher education.

It's apparently bad for you.  Like eating rancid meat.  Or playing with knives.

Higher education will hurt this country - or at least Ricky's imagined version of our theocratic, God sanctioned, founded-by-fathers-perpetually-on-their-knees country.

College is a dangerous place because that's where kids get "indoctrinated."

Yes, there's another scary right wing word from their Word O' The Day toilet paper roll.  The same roll that brought you "socialism," "Marxist," and "death panels."

Of course this all spring boards off President Obama's desire to see every child have the opportunity to go to college.  And we all know by now that if Obama says it, it's baaaaaaaaad.

According to Rick, "It's no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college, the indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination."

I see.  As opposed to the samethink that is endorsed and taught in a religious university?

He continued, "Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it."

Gee, Rick - let's see - an 18 year old leaves home, goes out into the world, begins to rub up against new ideas, people of different cultures, those with open minds, actual WORLD views - and then he/she begins to notice that, contrary to what they have been INDOCTRINATED BY THEIR RELIGIONS to believe their whole lives, these people are not Satanic, bad, or evil.  Go figure that some of them begin to call bullshit on the fear they have been raised with.

I have two daughters at two universities.  They entered with open minds, they will exit with better educated open minds. 

I find it laughable that the right has chosen to use higher education as a dog whistle for their base - calling it elitist, dangerous.  Especially Santorum who happens to hold THREE, count 'em, THREE degrees - a BA, an MBA, and a JD.  From these secular, unholy indoctrination centers, no less. 

Hypocrite much, Rick?

You didn't seem to lose your religion, if anything, your mind is about as closed and filled with religious dogma as they come.

Higher education is NOT bad.  Increasingly out of reach for many Americans?  Absolutely.  Rudy and I know firsthand the costs and sacrifices which must be made to help a child pursue a degree. But we also have the desire to see our daughters be able to compete on the world job stage.

And as for indoctrinating?  Well, I guess he and I are guilty of that.  We have spent their lives indoctrinating them to believe in growth, thought, a love for learning, to not fear the unknown, to embrace differences, to try new things, to explore avenues of interest, to chase their dreams.

You know, all those bad things that get in the way of people like Rick being able to shove their religious shit down a person's throat.

Not Praying With A Full Deck

I saw the story this morning and I knew.  I knew she would find her way to her Facebook page and spew her ignorance like the middle school bully she is.

Alaska Airlines is discontinuing placing prayer cards on their meal trays in response to input from passengers.

Cue Sarah Palin.

She's shocked.  She's hurt.  She SO hopes it's not true.

She wrote, "It feels so odd that some may be offended by a little card with an encouraging non-denominational verse from the Psalms, but how often do we hear complaints about tawdry ads or billboard images flashing at us everywhere we turn?," Palin wrote. "People of faith and common decency just shrug and move on from the constant assault on their sensibilities; we don't call for censorship -- at least I don't."

Well, Sarah - since this is just another in a long laundry list of Things Sarah Palin Doesn't "GET" - we'll start at the start, ok?

Non-dom verse from the Psalms:  The Psalms being IN THE BIBLE.  The Bible being the Christian playbook.  Pretty sure Alaska Airlines serves customers of all religious stripes, or no religious stripes at all.

Complaints about tawdy ads?  Constantly.  Ask around.  People are very vocal about their dislikes, offenses taken, ass in a wad-edness.  I mean, come on, Sarah - YOUR favorite playground - FACEBOOK - is the largest depository for expressing discontent.  (See your latest rant.)

"People of faith and common decent just shrug and move on..."  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry, gotta catch my breath... (got stuck on your censorship remark.  You DO remember your fight with the Wasilla public librarian when you attempted to have books removed, don't you?)

OK, if that's truly how you feel then I propose this to Alaska Airlines on YOUR behalf:  Add to the deck of praying cards.  Include prayer cards for EVERY SINGLE RELIGION OUT THERE.  Shuffle the deck and place them at random on the meal trays.  Should Sarah get the Muslim prayer card, surely she'll just quietly, respectfully, put it to the side and move on to eating her overcooked salmon, right?  Right, Sarah?

(insert sound of crickets)

(Now, insert sound of trickling as logic makes Sarah's brain ooze out her ear.)

If Only His Mother Had Swallowed...

I know, I know - gross title, but one that comes to mind more and more each time I hear Rick Santorum open his sanctimonious mouth.

His latest contribution to Things-That-Make-My-Head-Throb?

Rape victims should be forced to have the babies should they become pregnant - you know,  "make the best out of a bad situation."

I am quoting.

MAKE THE BEST OUT OF A BAD SITUATION.

First of all, Rick - "bad" does not begin to touch the "situation" of a woman being raped.  Rape is an act of violence.  Rape is not misguided love, or an overzealous suitor who is overcome with lust.

IT. IS. AN. ACT. OF. VIOLENCE.

Making the best of that situation involves counseling, resolve, unlimited tears, time, justice.

And even with all those things on board, the rape doesn't go away.  It remains a part of the person's psyche forever.  It is a violation so deep and profound, it becomes a part of the person - a "situation" that is - even if unconsciously - used as a filter through which all of the person's life now passes.

Your, and your cohorts', goal of wanting to legislate a woman's body has crossed over from personal viewpoint into intrusive obsession.

We get it, you don't like abortion - although you sure grabbed at the CHOICE when a pregnancy threatened the life of your wife, huh, Ricky?  Seems to me that CHOICE component was pretty damned important to you then.

My uterus, my vagina, my sex life, my sex positions - are none of your goddamned business.  I don't care what you get up to in the bedroom, Rick.  Quite frankly, the mere thought of you naked and engorged makes my breakfast threaten to reappear.  But I also could not care less if you wear your wife's bra and thong, paint each other in latex, and hang from the f**king chandelier.  Whatever makes you two happy.  Go for it.

Santorum says he would counsel a pregnant rape victim to "accept this horribly created" baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a "broken" way.

A gift from God.

I see, so let's follow that "logic," shall we?

If the "horribly created" baby is a gift from God, then I guess God sent and sanctioned the rapist, right?  Cause we all know that God doesn't make mistakes, right?  That he is in charge of everything, right?

Mr. Santorum, here's the reality - you will never be President of the United States because you are not capable of even remotely understanding that you would be representing all the people of the United States.  Your views, all religion based, are fine - as long as they are kept in your church where they belong.

They do not, however, despite what you and your GOP brethren believe, belong in our governance.

You people who shout about smaller government only want it smaller so it can fit in my vagina.

How about we come up with some penis legislation?  Like, once you have cheated on 2 spouses, the law of the land dicktates that you are immediately castrated so you may not destroy family values and the sanctity of marriage any further?

I like that one.

Or, how about if a man impregnates a woman and she doesn't want the baby, he is required, by law, to take and raise the child to adulthood?

Ooo!  How about this one?  Since every sperm is precious and life giving, masturbation is immediately illegal, and a crime prosecutable as murder!  I like that one a lot!

What?  You don't like the idea of YOUR sex life being legislated, Rick?  I don't care.  I would still be allowed to masturbate because my eggs would not be in harm's way.  So the law wouldn't affect me at all, so why should I care how it affects you?

What's that?  Because it's not right for me to be able to legislate what goes on between you, your nudie magazine, and your choices?

Oh, I get it.  Double standard.

But back to the rape victims.  Let's say you get your way and all rape victims who become pregnant must carry and have those babies.  What happens when their rapist shows up demanding parental rights?  Which has happened.

Should the woman then be forced to marry the man because according to you a two parent hetero household is better?

Two words for you, Rick:  FUCK and YOU.

I have three daughters, and their bodies are not YOUR possessions.  I may have never chosen abortion for myself, but it is not up to me to make bodily choices for them or anyone else. 

But if I could?  I would start by rewinding the hands the time, holding a gun to your mother's head, and making sure she swallowed.

Being A Slave To Ignorance

Nothing makes my head threaten to explode faster than dealing with someone who turns their back on a FACT simply because it wrinkles their nose, puckers their sphincter, or simply doesn't play to their innner narrative.

Example:  Those who bang the "this country was founded as a Christian nation" drum as they continue their hypocritical campaign against Islam all the while attempting to instill their own theocracy here in the United States.

FACT:  This country's "founding fathers" - aka, the rich guys in charge - were actually largely deists.  That means they believed there was more to this earthly plane than they could understand or see, but they were not presumptive enough to name it or declare their absolute rightness about their opinion on the matter.

Example:  The many who declare President Obama - you know, the Muslim-socialist-Marxist-with the permanent tan - to have driven this country into a ditch since taking office.

FACT:  Despite what they so fervently want to cling to, history did not begin on January 20, 2009.  In January 2001, as Clinton was leaving office and Bush was entering, the Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012.

That bears repeating:  AVERAGE SURPLUS OF MORE THAN $800 BILLION A YEAR.

Fast forward to January 2009 as Bush was leaving and Obama was entering:  The CBO projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession.

YES, the deficit has continued to increase, as should be expected in trying to pull this country out of the morass into which we have been mired.  Has President Obama's administration done everything right?  Of course not.  But then, who among us (besides Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Doughboy-Cheater-Extraordinaire Gingrich) knows exactly what steps to take to insure 100% success?  Quite frankly, I wouldn't take the job if you promised to pay me $800 billion a year.

Today's example that has brought on this rant, however, does not have to do with the FACT vs FICTION fight over  government spending or religion, but on a certain segment of the populace intent on sticking its fingers in its ears and going la la la la la over this country's actual history in favor of making it much more palatable and white people friendly.

It seems a segment of the Tea Party in Tennessee is pushing an effort to get school textbooks rewritten so that our history of slave ownership is seen in a good light.

I take that back - that last line was far too generous.

What they are seeking is to delete references to slavery and FACTS regarding the country's founders being slave owners

Kind of a ServPro for the history books:  Like it never even happened.

Their bullshit justification?  Their mouthpiece, Hal Rounds, Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, says there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

Pssst, Hal.  Intruding?   Is that your delicate way of covering the FACT that we came upon these shores and annihilated the people who LIVED HERE FIRST? 

"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at."

Not all equally, instantly?

Yes, Hal - because the collective white WE looked down their noses at the dark skinned natives they stole from another land and brought here to do their bidding.  Those PEOPLE were not chained, stuffed in ships, and sold on platforms with the whispered promise of  "Just hang in there, buddy, we'll set you free eventually, just not instantly.  Now, turn around so I can whip your hide."

Of course, all this is spurred on, and these people emboldened by, the fact that my highly enlightened state approved a measure to distort school textbooks to better align with the highly conservative, woefully ignorant, and intellectually incurious mindset which is so prevalent here (see: Rick Perry).

They are calling on Tennessee lawmakers to amend textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership." 

"...obscure the experience of contributions of the Founding Fathers..."

THEY.  OWNED. SLAVES.

That is historical FACT, you 15 watt dimbulbs.  Like it or not, your precious founding fathers OWNED PEOPLE.  Deleting this information, hell, even obscuring it or rewriting it to a gentler tone, is to ignore both the imperfect origins of this country and the progress we have made as a people since.

Historical revisionism is a dangerous thing.  Making the unpalatable disappear is a huge disservice.  Those who would seek to rewrite history are making it woefully easier for future generations to repeat it as the lessons learned are obliterated.

But revisionism is their thing, I guess.

Those Bibles they cling to to back their bigoted, idiotic positions have been rewritten, revised, reversed, amended, altered, and redistributed countless times since the book's inception.

But it's hard to acknowledge that when your back is turned and your fingers are in your ears...  la la la la la la...

It's Jacqueline's Day!

It's Sharon's Day!

It's Kathy W's Day!

Time To Celebrate Leah!

Today I Met An Angel

I've said before that DGMS has grown into something that I never could have envisioned when I first sat down and set up this space as a form of pure self indulgence.  Opening a Typepad account was merely an outlet - a place where I did not have to meet deadlines, edit my work or see it edited, or go through a million drafts to please an editor.  It was simply a place I could write about whatever crossed my path and made me head for the keyboard.

It was the immediacy that I loved.  I still love that aspect.  Writing for publications means working on Christmas pieces in summer, writing about Easter while Christmas shopping.  It means being given a subject, word count, and angle.  Here, I was just able to indulge.

And somehow that opened a door.  And over the years, tens of thousands of people have walked through it.  Some have moved on, some stop by from time to time, and some have stayed.

And in staying, a true community has been built.  People from around the world who come for the sense of belonging, the conversations that start, the debates that sometimes rage, and the emotional connection that simply cannot be explained - it has to be experienced.

It has been my privilege to meet many of you throughout the years. Many more of you I "know" though the emails we routinely send back and forth, the Facebook connections, the confidences we share.

Being allowed to touch your lives is something I cherish.  I love the pictures you send me (even when the file sizes reach King Kongian proportions), the story links you want to make sure I don't miss, the updates on your lives.  There is trust, both ways, and I never take it for granted.

That trust has been humbling as you have allowed me to spearhead Christmas gifting for needy children for years; as I stood at Toni's memorial knowing you were all in your homes lighting a candle and reading what I was speaking; as I was told of Gin's passing and allowed to share it with you; and only a month ago when the briefest of Facebook updates told me something unfathomable had touched someone in our DGMS family.

It has been one month.  One month since Magda reached out and typed the words, "DGMS virtual friends, I just lost my precious 16 year old son, my Golden Boy!!! How do I go on???"

I immediately went to Magda's FB page and saw the postings coming in from those in her community, her family, her friends.  And I knew that "bad" was not a big enough word for what had happened.

Magda's and Mike's amazing son, Chris, was gone.

There simply are no words in our language, in any language, that adequately express the pain behind the incomprehensible loss of a child.  Saying goodbye to our parents, our grandparents, a peer - we expect these things in life.  Saying good bye to your child is a link completely out of place in the chain.

When it happened, I reached out to Magda to offer my condolences.  My heart tried to hold hers from 3 hours away.  And I did send flowers to Chris's service from our DGMS family. 

I knew I would eventually hear from Magda.  I also know, without knowing, that there is no timetable for grief, for coherence, for doing anything beyond simply getting from one day to the next.

A week ago Magda was there, in my inbox.  And her request touched my heart and left me again completely humbled by what has grown here, by how I am allowed to touch your lives.  She asked if we could meet so I could help her work on the thank you she and Mike want to give to the community, to her friends, family, Chris's classmates.

Today was that meeting.

In the two hours I was driving to our arranged spot, I was nervous.  Again, words are my stock in trade, but there ARE NONE that can make this better, less bad, undo what has been done.  I drove there with the guilt of knowing I would eventually have to excuse myself to head back to pick up my child from school - something that has been robbed from Magda.  I went there thinking I needed to consciously avoid talking about my daughters - somehow feeling their very existence would be akin to rubbing salt in a very open wound.

In getting out of my van, I finally resolved to do one thing.  Just let the meeting happen.  Let it flow where it would flow.

I walked into the restaurant and was immediately embraced by an angel.

Magda is the personification of grace, strength, humility, generosity of spirit, love.  It flows from her as easily as our tears flowed during our time together.

Her friend Karen had accompanied her (just in case I was actually a 70 year old cross dressing man with a shot glass collection), and I have to apologize to her because I know my head was turned towards Magda for much of our two hours.  (But I think you understand, Karen).

As we began to talk about that night, about the days since, and about who Chris was - something kept happening - I knew him - not him, him.  I never had the honor of meeting Chris.  But I knew him - his spirit.  Because one name kept coming up. 

Carson.

Magda and Mike have been blessed to have had the same rare spirit our family knows we have in Carson. 

Chris was his own person, not caring what the "crowd" thought.  Chris was comfortable in his own skin, he knew who he was - a very rare trait in a teenager.  He championed the underdog, reached out to those who others simply looked right through.  He was a leader not because he consciously led, but because others so consciously followed.

Chris was a gifted athlete, yet a very humble one.  Focused on the court, yet funny on the sideline.  Like Carson, he simply seemed to wake up each day knowing that life is for living, for doing, for touching other lives, and that there will never be anything good about making someone else feel bad. 

Chris and Carson belong to the Big Spoon Club.  That is what they eat life with.

While we spoke of Chris, Magda then pulled out a piece of notebook paper on which  she had copied down something that she had run across a while back, something that she immediately felt also described her son, something she shared with her son, something she wanted to share with me.  She wasn't quite sure where she had found it.

I started to read.  And I started to cry.  They are the words I had written about Carson at some point.  About how people love to simply be in her orbit.

That was Chris.  An accomplished, humble, focused, achieving, NICE human being.  The kind we lesser folk naturally gravitate towards, the kind that make us realize we could do better, be better. 

All children are special, they are.  But there are some, who simply shine more brightly, who leave a mark, who transform a moment just by being in it.

That was Chris.  That is his legacy.  He showed others what was possible, he showed others that self confidence is a quiet trait, not something that requires grandstanding, and he in his passing, just as in his living, has shown others that life is a gift.

I so wish he and Carson could have met.  I know they would have seen themselves reflected in the other.  Recognized immediately that which they cannot really name simply because they are, for the most part, unaware of what they do, what they mean, to those who are lucky enough to float into their orbits.

Magda and Mike have a path before them, one not of their choosing, one they never envisioned, one no parent ever wants to walk.  I know time will do what it brutally does - it will force them both forward.  Time is both unkind and miraculous that way.  And I know that in time, the hole that has been ripped in the fabric of their lives - while never truly mending - will be filled, buffeted by the millions of wonderful memories of their beautiful, compassionate, loving, giving, caring, talented son.

Looking into Magda's eyes, I know that day will come.  I also know it is such a long way off in the future. 

But I also know that the angel I met today will arrive at that place with all the grace, love, compassion, and warmth of spirit she gave to, and learned from, a remarkable young man named Chris.

I love you, Magda.  Thank you for sharing Chris with me and allowing me to share Carson with you.  And she said she would be honored if you could come watch her play soccer sometime.