I’ve been kind of out of it all week. Post-Inaugural ennui, worries, lots of appointments… whatever it was, it really sort of shut me up. But when I saw the Obama video I’ve posted just below here, I started thinking about all the creativity that the campaign, and this presidency, seem to have engendered.
Then a friend sent me this. I admit I’m a sucker for this kind of music, but it really is a combination of politics and joy that only such a campaign could have inspired.
And this, one of my favorites, just for the discipline.
I guess Les Miz must really resonate, because here’s another one.
Of course these are only examples; there are dozens, probably hundreds more – and if you count the images, posters and paintings, many many more. If this kind of creativity goes toward solving our problems, we’re in good hands. Either way, it’s exciting (at least to me) to realize how many vocabularies came together to speak for this new president in the long journey that got him here.
Beside him, Bruce Springsteen, a modern troubadour whose songs speak for many Americans whose opinions are never sought, whose voices are seldom heard.
As they stood together at the Lincoln Memorial in celebration of the Inauguration of Barack Obama, they represented, to me, all that I had believed and tried to help bring into being. To many, though, they were “the ultimate in subtly old-left populism.” Speaking about the concert early Sunday before it began, I kept talking about Bruce. A younger friend gently suggested that he was probably not the day’s headliner. That would be Beyonce Knowles, she said. I’m sure she’s right.
As one who was present the last time “the torch was passed to a new generation;” as a strongly defined Baby Boomer, it’s painful to hear anchormen celebrate the fact that “there will never be another Baby Boom President.” It’ s not that I mind the fact of that; it’s just painful that it seems to be something to celebrate. So many of us have tried so to be productive agents of change, have spent our lives working either full or part of the time to see that our country offers more to the least powerful, demands quality education, justice and maybe, even peace. So to hear Joe Scarborough revel in the fact that “16 horrible years of baby boomer presidents is over” really hurts. All my adult life we’ve been tarred by the brush of the least attractive of us while the work of the rest of us went unnoticed. For most campaigns, as I’vewritten before, we were the secret weapon of the right.
So as exciting as all this is, especially for one who has supported Obama for so long, it’s also bittersweet because I feel the shadow of the disdain in which so many of us are held. I really don’t know how to respond. If I were to try, it might be by offering some of the words to Si Kahn‘s They All Sang Bread and Roses. It’s better with the music, but it does the job.
They All Sang “Bread and Roses (Si Kahn, 1989,
1991)
Fair warning. I'm about to be contrarian, so if you're fond of Slumdog Millionaire, stop reading now. I've just come from the theater, disappointed and even angry. Granted, I don't read reviews before I see films; they give away so much that they spoil the impact of brilliant scenes and great dialogue. So it's my own fault that I didn't know about the torture scene and the one where the kid is blinded when molten lead is poured into his eyes. Just what you need in a fairy tale, right? I was with someone I'd leaned on to come, someone who is squeamish and subject to nightmares, and there we were, experiencing vivid and disturbing imagery in considerable detail.
Beyond that, even though, as far as I can tell, there aren't many who agree with me, there's much that seriously detracts from the enjoyment of this film. I'm going to risk my emotional and artistic credibility and describe some of it.
First, it's highly derivative, a mix of The Usual Suspects police station flashbacks and Oliver Twist. Especially Oliver Twist, complete with Fagin, street urchins in great numbers, mischief and loss. Beyond that, much of its emotional power leaches from political correctness. We always root for the underdog; that's fair, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a sucker for a fairy tale. But there was something manipulative about this story: an unimaginably poor, dark-skinned street urchin in one of the roughest cities in India, facing down the establishment.
Despite the rhapsodic descriptions of handheld camera work that brought the slums of Mumbai live into the theater, they did not feel real. I know much of the film was shot in the city, and some of the scenes were OK. But I've been in neighborhoods like these in other countries and no matter how colorful and alive, they are sadder and more dangerous than these. Oh, and everyone had very good teeth. Not possible.
So why, on the eve of the most momentous Inauguration in the history of this country, am I complaining about a movie a couple of months old that will probably win many awards? I'm not sure. Like everyone else, I'm full of wonder at what is coming on Tuesday. It will dominate this space for some time. Today though, as we await the climax of this real story of triumph and ideals, the not-so-credible tale that is this film was a poor substitute.
I gave up my alma mater, THE TODAY SHOW, for C-SPAN's Washington Journal. But no more – nope. Now I'm strictly a Morning Joe girl. My insomniac husband and I start our day with these characters, and there's good reason. They're smart, they're funny, they have real personalities, and they think and react. Both they and their guests deftly provide more information and perspective, than anywhere else you can go in the morning.
When I started at TODAY the theory was that people felt as if we were in their bedrooms. That Deborah Norville failed at replacing Jane Pauley (as if anyone could) because she was so perfect, so slick, that she was intrusive. TV was still one-way then; we produced the show, trying to make it as accessible as possible, but still, we were sending it to the audience, not talking with them.
At Morning Joe – the perfect Millennial programming, Scarborough, (former Congressman) the shredding (den mother? Zen master? daughter of Zbigniew) Mika Brzezinski, wise-cracking Willie Geist (former Tucker Carlson producer, son of CBS News Sunday Morning contributor Bill Geist) and the rest of the crew are not in our bedrooms, we're in the studio with them. There's no "third wall" (I always wanted to produce a show like that,) you see
the cameras, the cardboard Starbucks cups and even the
producers. We're all in it together. Conversations with their (very well-booked) guests are smart, sassy and collegial; lots of information emerges but from conversation, not inquisition. There is very little distance between the audience and the studio – bluster is deflated and humor is the tool of choice. ALL with considerable elan, explication, foresight and accessibility.
I almost forgot the music. Most commercial breaks are punctuated with music – often Bruce Springsteen, always connected to the last topic of conversation. During the campaign, of course, Born to Run and Jackson Browne's Running on Empty were favorites. It's another way of communicating with the audience – fun and usually spot on. When it's not music, it's clips from late night comedy or other relevant but irreverent television.
I'm not alone in this – didn't invent a new wheel. The New York Times has called the show "oddly addicting" (my experience exactly); the Washington Post described it as "a provocative, alternate-universe newstalk show." From six to nine AM Twitter is full of Joe sightings.
I spent many years in broadcast news, nine of them at the TODAY SHOW, and I've mourned its transformation from the informative show I knew to what seemed to me to be an undisciplined mush called, by many production alums, "Friends in the morning." It's wildly popular so I'm not condemning it – just saying that it isn't the show I worked for. Now, after a long, sad period of missing what TODAY was, I see in Morning Joe what it could have (and should have) become.
Welcome to Tuesday Tours. There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love. It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.
One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins. Both are worth reading. The first: advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School. It's just fun. The second is a serious post with a serious question: When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
?
Concerned about what's going on in Israel? Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web. Here's a sample.
The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)
Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008. Well, Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln.
Beth Kanter is a legend. Rightfully so. So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.
Two of my favorite moms have something special too: I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless. Some kids are just strong strong little people.
Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old. She never misses, that one.
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss. It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Me too.
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process. Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation. Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.
Here's what's hard though. Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret. Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence. In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers.
Look at us now. On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry. Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.
Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption. Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays. Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory." Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers. Get the wrong judge and you're toast. Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.
To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw. She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can.
But to a pop culture vulture like me, it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.
ADD: I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman. A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere. Translated into 20 languages and now a film, with even a Twilight Moms site for, well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon." It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade…So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller. All before I even got to read it. There would have been a time… ah well. At least it's fun now.
And in a way, embarrassing. After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent. It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad. There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like. I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge. When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.
Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen. He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz. We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours. When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours. Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected. It was a beautiful time. There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then. He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen. As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant. He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back. There's more than one way to be free.
In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible. Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human. There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it. The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.
I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was. When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either. Sex was private, and for grownups. Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values. There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.
I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight. Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go. And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes. The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them. Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way? Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?
The Boomers are blogging again, this time at So Baby Boomer. There's lots of holiday stuff, clues on social networking, avoiding holiday weight gain, sentimental family time with grown kids, midlife dating and even — Lizzie Borden, among others. Don't miss it!
I missed this one* so figure maybe you did too. I promise to be back with a "real" post soon but it's pretty provocative so wanted to share it. (Read more about the battle over Proposition 8 here.) There are a lot of comments on the original page that call it blasphemous and it's certainly edgy – but well – what do you think?