doubting thom

It’s obviously a rhetorical question, since there’s apparently no limit to the shamelessness of the party currently in power. But today’s article (“House GOP Protect Leader”) in the Washington Post, citing that the House is about to change the rules to allow members who have been indicted by state prosecutors–to wit, Tom DeLay, if there’s any justice in the world–to remain in a leadership post, plumbs new depths. The reason House Republicans want to allow Mr. DeLay to retain his leadership position, should he be indicted in Texas? Because “DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection”:

“That’s why this [proposed rule change] is going to pass…. because there is a tremendous recognition that Tom DeLay led on the issue to produce five more seats in our majority,” [chief deputy whip Rep. Eric I. (R-Va.)] Cantor said after emerging from a meeting in which the Republican Conference welcomed new members and reelected Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and DeLay as its top leaders.

So who cares if you’ve engaged in unethical or criminal activities; as long as they’re in pursuit of partisan political gain, you’re to be rewarded rather than held accountable. Note, too, that it was the House Republicans who set forth the rule in the first place, in 1993, requiring that indictment by any grand jury meant a party leader must surrender his/her seat.

Hypocrites.

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[Update 2004-11-17: And they don’t disappoint; today The Washington Post reports that they passed the rules change.]

Today is a somber day at work, now that it’s been announced that Condoleezza Rice has been nominated as our new boss.

• “Condoleezza Rice’s Credibility Gap” [Center for American Progress]
• “Condoleezza’s Crimes” [The Black Commentator]
• “GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Condoleezza Rice” [BuzzFlash.com, March 26, 2004]
• And, on a lighter note, “Condoleezza Rice’s testimony machine” [from America’s Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers]

[Tin Man] Jeff commented on and pointed to a cute article in Salon entitled “Short and Sweet: …Some reasons why smaller men rock”.

As a short man (~5'6") who has a fondness for other short men, I wholeheartedly endorse the article. Interestingly, I pretty much always reveled in my small stature (probably tied into the whole “elf” thing), and unlike many small men, who wish they were taller, I wouldn’t have minded if I were even a little shorter. While there certainly are times that not being able to see over the head of someone in front of me is frustrating, at the same time I’ve always felt that I’ve had an advantage in slipping easily and quickly through the gaps in crowds. Being relatively lightweight has its advantages, too, in terms of being able to be enfolded in a taller man’s arms or hugged tightly to his chest, or picked up and quite literally swept off my feet by someone bigger and stronger; back when I used to be active in partner dancing, it often was a visceral joy to be swung into the air by a taller partner.

Among the women and gay men profiled in the article who prefer short men, one even maintains a web site (Short Men of the Internet) for “gay admirers of men who stand 5'7" and under” (caution – not completely work safe) and is quoted as saying “I like the way short men fit in your arms. I like leaning down to kiss a guy–it just feels sexy holding a masculine little guy.” As a short man who’s been in that situation, amen. And as the one in my current relationship who gets to be the taller, bigger one (however slightly) for a change, I’m finding it a position to relish as well.

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff and I went to see the new Disney/Pixar animated film The Incredibles. What a treat! The action is terrific, the story is heartwarming, and the animation–hair and clothing move so realistically–is amazing.

A special bonus, for us, was the retro mid-century modern setting; the homes, including the one in which our protagonists live, have the look of an Eichler subdivision, complete with Eames furniture, Nelson clocks, Calder-like mobiles, and I could have sworn I even saw some vases in the Parrs’ home that had that idiosyncratic Eva Zeisel organic flair. Jeff and I turned to each other simultaneously mouthing “I want that house.” And Edna Mode, the diminutive Edith Head-like fashion designer to the supers who nearly steals the movie, dahling, has a stunning modern mansion, and even the villain’s lair has atomic and Tiki style, with its monorails and Easter Island heads. And the Michael Giacchino score skillfully evokes the same era, with the end credits (beautifully done, looking a bit like a 3-dimensional mobile themselves) sounding like something you’d hear from a 007 movie, The Avengers or The Saint.

And this movie not only is a big hit with the public, it even has pleased the critics, garnering an “incredible” 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with only 4 bad reviews out of 154 professional reviews tracked, and an average rating of 8.4/10.

Finally, the Pixar short played before the feature film, “Boundin’,” was sweetly funny and, to my ear and eye at least, subtly queer-positive. (I should be careful saying such; Falwell’s Tinky-Winky Brigade now will probably come out in force to denounce the piece.)

Two days later, I’m angry and sickened, still, and no more optimistic about the catastrophically negative effect this presidency will have on our country and the world for generations to come, but I’m no longer so functionally depressed. While Jeff has noted that he wouldn’t be averse to ratcheting up the timeframe for moving back to California, which he’d planned to do eventually anyway, he’s unsure about whether he could go to Canada. I’m just not so sure that anywhere in the U.S. is safe from this tide, though; Oregon just passed a Constitutional amendment banning recognition of gay marriage, and even California has passed a Defense of Marriage Act limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The so-called purple map to my eye looks fairly heavily shaded on the redder side of purple (or, as Rob Corrdry would say, “magurgundy”). I left my original hometown a long time ago when it became clear my values and beliefs were at odds with the norm there; I don’t know that leaving the country under similar circumstances would be any harder, really.

What’s more, the past four years I could delude myself that the rest of the world could separate the beliefs of individual American citizens from those guiding George W. Bush; after all, there was always the sense that his presidency wasn’t really quite legitimate, and that we Americans were, in fact, embarrassed by our cowboy president. But now any actions taken by him and his administration will be seen as reflecting the “will of the people,” as he himself already has declared. I’m no longer just embarrassed by the president, I’m now embarrassed by–and, more, somewhat frightened of–51% of my fellow Americans. An idealist most of my life, and a political activist for many of my younger years, part of me now wants to be selfish, and just live my life in a country where I won’t automatically be suspect, denigrated or punished for my progressive political beliefs and moral values or for my sexual orientation.

One silver lining to the election being over, though, whatever the outcome, is that now I can stop (or at least dramatically cut back) obsessively following every entry in every progressive political blog, every campaign-related article in every major newspaper, and every news item on NPR, thereby getting a huge chunk of time back out of each day.

Just now, Jeff was saying something about a dustpan, and I could have sworn he said “breast cam.”

Yes, in his press conference today the president gave lip service to principles of unity and bilateralism. But he also said this:

And it’s one of the wonderful — it’s like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That’s what happened in the — after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I’ve earned capital in this election — and I’m going to spend it for what I told the people I’d spend it on, which is — you’ve heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

If he thinks he won “political capital” after the 2000 “election,” and his autocratic style of governing reflected it, I can’t even imagine what he’ll be like with the “capital” to which he thinks a 1% majority entitles him.

Bad as Kerry’s position on gay marriage was (while against a federal constitutional amendment, true, he personally is against gay marriage and supported a Massachusetts state constitutional amendment that would ban it in that state), it actually could have been worse, Slate reports, had he taken Bill Clinton’s advice:

First, for any of us tempted to be nostalgic for the Clinton years–and there’s probably a lot of that going on this week as Republicans further tighten their grip on government, here’s something to temper our longing for the 90s. “Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the Red States, former President Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the Senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, ‘I’m not going to ever do that.'” Being more Clintonesque on gay marriage may have won Kerry some swing votes, but that comes with a price, and one Kerry wasn’t willing to pay.

Yeah, Bill, you’ve really got the high ground when it comes to talking about marriage. You fucking hypocrite.

I followed the election returns until 1:30 this morning, and then made myself go to bed, suspecting nothing would be known before morning at the earliest. But waking up from a restive sleep at 4:30 I checked the returns again, and realized then that it was all but over. I had to go to a conference today, so wasn’t at work nor near any media, so I was able largely not to have to think about it much during the day. I came home this afternoon, though, to the radio, which we leave on during the day for the cat, walking in to hear Bush speak about having “one country, one Constitution,” and I found myself screaming, sickened by the words of this man who has shown himself only too willing to poison that Constitution for his own political gain, and whose positions and party led to the unconscionable, uncharitable and, yes, unchristian sullying of eleven state constitutions last night.

How do I feel? Numb, betrayed, hated, hopeless, powerless, adrift. I keep spontaneously breaking into tears, and–while I’m not suicidal–I keep thinking about death. Only my father’s death last year has caused me to despair as much as the result of this election, and that at least was tempered by knowing that he finally was suffering no longer; I have no such solace this time, as our country’s suffering is likely only just beginning. Its people, and especially its youth, will be paying the terrible prices for this man’s and his administration’s actions for decades and generations to come.

This morning I told Jeff–the man I love in a relationship not only legally meaningless in our own state, as well as many others, but that now also has been given a constitutional stamp of disapprobation in eleven states, the tip of an approaching iceberg–that I feel as though we’ve lived at a monumentally horrific point of history, in which we’ve personally seen our country’s greatness crest and begin to ebb; never again in my life, likely, will the U.S. be considered as respected, as trustworthy, as democratic, as peaceful, as neighborly, as wealthy, as powerful a force for liberty, freedom and good as it was just three years ago September. We lived at the time of the beginning of the fall of the American Empire; a new American government of theocracy and oligarchy/plutocracy is arising, with suspicion, persecution and greed taking the place of liberty, tolerance and compassion.

I feel very tired and, for the first time in my life, very, very old.

This morning, Jeff and I cast our votes, his first as a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We waited on line a little over two hours to do so. I was musing at one point with the guy behind me that I should make up shirts to sell on CafePress tomorrow with the wording “I stood in line two hours to vote, and all I got was this lousy President”–given the closeness of this election, whatever the outcome nearly half the country would be potential customers.

Despite the minor frustrations–a line for “A-K” last names that moved about four people for every one from our “L-Z” line; two broken touchscreen voting machines out of five until just as we reached the front of the line anyway; a guy behind us who couldn’t stop talking for five minutes; discovering that nearly everyone around me working for private industry was getting two hours off to vote while my employer, the federal government, was giving just 45 minutes–I was elated to see the heavy turnout, which stretched just as far out the door at 10:30 when we left as it had at 8:10 when we arrived. It was also nice to see a huge number of young twenty-somethings there to vote, though I was a little dismayed to see so many of them with the yellow GOP sample ballots (Arlington is perhaps the most liberal, Democratic county in the state), though many of them, to be fair, seemed to be picking up the materials from both parties as they arrived. On the other hand, while at the polling center, I did see five other gay men from my condo building, including my ex and his partner.

So I’ve done my civic duty. Now I bite my nails and wait. A Kerry win means I don’t have to leave the country; I hope that the fact that I didn’t get around to renewing my passport earlier this year doesn’t come back to haunt me.