How many more months?!

LOST was AMAZING tonight. I was in a trance for hours.

Some thoughts and questions:

• Sun and Jin have always been my favorites, and I have argued endlessly about whether he was dead or still alive on the island. The scene where the freighter blew up broke my heart
  
• I totally called who was in the casket! I knew all along that it was Locke! Although the events of this season did cause me to reconsider my initial guess, and I did think that is was Michael/Kevin for a while. So maybe not "all along."
  
• So they all have to go back to the island. Does that include Desmond? And now that Sun is supposedly in league with Widmore, how will that play out? Will she refuse to go with them and state her allegiance publicly? Or will she play along and then betray them?
• WHY do they have to go back to the island? Did their departure trigger some sort of cosmic rupture?
  
• What happened to Farraday and the others who were on that life raft on the way back to the freighter?
• What happened to the island? Where did it go?! And what happened after they left that was so bad that it sent Locke on a mission to the mainland?
• I think Kate is going to be convinced to take Aaron back to the island. She looked over him sleeping and said, "I'm sorry." That must mean that she's decided to do something that she thinks might not be in his best interest.

Amazing. And when does season five start? Not soon enough.

That's not a bomb she's hiding.

This is interesting.

MADRID: When she was appointed Spain's first female defense minister in April, the aspect of Carmé Chacón that drew the most public attention was not her gender, nor her rapid rise through the ranks of the governing Socialist party, but her prominent prenatal bump.

Chacón, who began leave Tuesday after giving birth to a boy, became an instant symbol of the Socialist government's commitment to gender parity in Spain, a traditionally macho society whose new equality laws are among the most progressive in Europe.

I don't know much about Spanish politics, but I can certainly buy the argument that this is a symbolic gesture meant to force a rethinking of what the military means or to signal a shift in the identity of the military. While I do have some hesitation about swallowing the idea of a pregnant woman being reduced only to her symbolic value as the creator of life, I can appreciate the effort to juxtapose concepts that we don't normally associate with each other. It also makes us question how we understand ideas of manliness and womanliness.

Women who have risen to positions of power elsewhere have assumed the mantle of "macho," whether they contribute to that image or not. In order to even attain that position, they certainly have to exhibit characteristics often associated with being a man: assertiveness, aggressiveness, confidence, independence. And here we have a woman who has presumably done all that, and she occupies one of the most typically aggressive positions in government -- but the fact that she is a woman is inescapable. Her baby bump is showing.

And this:

However, José Conde, president of the Association of Spanish Soldiers, a group composed mainly of retired military personnel, called the appointment of "a Catalan, pregnant, woman" an "insult" to the army. Catalonia, the semi-autonomous region where Chacón grew up, is viewed by conservatives as an enclave of anti-Spanish sentiment.

Which part is the "insult"? Catalan? Pregnant? Woman? All of the above? I think some people are feeling the itch of cognitive dissonance.

A love story.

Sometimes, I am overcome by the strength of my affection for Charlie. There are peaceful moments, when we sit together in silence. I am at the kitchen table, holding a cup of hot coffee between my hands, and he looks over at me with sleepy eyes and a handsome face. I remember all the times we've fallen asleep together watching TV, or the times he's waiting for me when I come home from work. Absentmindedly, I reach over and stroke his hair.

And then, this. In one moment, he's changed, and he turns his head to gnaw on my wrist, sinking his sharp teeth in and clawing at my arms. That's when I remember that he's a cat, and therefore a predator. If our roles were reversed, and he was my size and I was his size -- he would kill me. Without hesitation.

And then, just as quickly, he's ignoring me.

Eyes like a hawk.

I am currently in love with the song "No Air" with Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown. But check out the video about 4min20sec in -- Jordin's nose ring switches sides!

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on me.

You can't be neutral.

I just finished watching You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the biographical documentary about the life and ideas of Howard Zinn. It has inspired me to re-read A People's History of the United States... sometime very soon. My reading list has ballooned to a daunting number, so I might need to re-shuffle the order and move it closer to the top.

My first encounter with Howard Zinn was as a sophomore in high school. My US history teacher used A People's History as the basis for our entire year of instruction -- which in retrospect takes on more meaning for me than it did at the time. I was young enough not to understand that the picture of US history that my teacher was laying out for me was not the generally accepted standard in most textbooks. I may have had some grasp of the fact that it was the first time I was hearing a history that placed women, Black people, Indians, workers in the center of the picture.

But I am very thankful to my history teacher, and maybe to my own naivete. Because this understanding of history was laid as a foundation, and I didn't understand it to be "alternative." And the absences in many other versions of US history that I have encountered since then have seemed glaring and sometimes ridiculous. And dangerous, in that they deceive people into believing that the intentions and actions of US governments have always been honorable, which make it impossible for us to see the follies and abuses that are entirely too commonplace.

I was very sad to see that Roslyn Zinn passed away recently. This obituary describes her as the "unseen hand" in her husband's work, as I've noticed is often the case in such long marriages. They were married for more than sixty years.

Thinking about the election gets me really thinking.

Let me start off by saying that I have supported Barack Obama since the beginning of this whole election process. The first time I found out who he was -- with his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention -- I was intrigued. I kept tabs on him every now and then, and I read first his book Dreams from my Father and then The Audacity of Hope. (I was much more impressed by the former.) He has always been my preferred candidate, largely because I see something of myself in him and in his ideas. His foreign policy has been the clincher for me, especially when others were saying that he was "naive" or willing to speak to our "enemies." I saw someone who looked at the rest of the world and understood the notion of a global community and the necessity of diplomacy. I identified with his international experience, and I was encouraged by it. I identified with him as an internationalist, which is not a four-letter word.

And these ideas are basic. These should be fundamentals.

I didn't see that in Hillary Clinton. So I chose Obama as an alternative. I've been thinking about that choice a lot lately. It is decidedly not that I determined that racism was a worse cross to bear than sexism. In conversations with other Obama supporters, I have sometimes been the one to say "not-cool" when it comes to sexist and totally unnecessary comments about Clinton.

I am a feminist. Now that it seems more and more that Clinton will be bowing out, there is a part of me that is disappointed. But I have not identified with the feminism that seems to be solely concerned with "breaking the glass ceiling." For feminism to mean anything, we need to broaden the definition. For example, the feminism I believe would look at the war in Iraq, the situation for women, the role that US militarism and occupation has played in creating this situation -- and address that as a feminist issue. I have been heartened to find places and learn from people who are insisting on a feminism that means more.

I'm not at all dismissing the "glass ceiling." Because of some lucky choices that I made and the organizations I have been able to work for, I have rarely felt held back because of my race or because of my gender. But narrow and exclusionary definitions of feminism have put a bitter taste in my mouth regarding the Clinton campaign.

Random thought of the day.

Do you know what really sucks? If you get that notification email from Netflix saying, "Thanks, we received Movie X on this date." And then you have the thought, "Hey, I don't remember what's next on my queue. I hope that it doesn't suck." But you don't take the time to log into Netflix to make sure that Movie Y doesn't suck and that you don't need to maybe switch it to Movie Z.

And then a few hours later, you get the email that says, "Movie Y has shipped on this date." And you realize that Movie Y does suck, and you should have switched to Movie Z.

That's not what happened to me today. In fact, I got the email that Angels in America is on its way, and I got really excited. But it did make me remember the value of heavily policing your Netflix list. Or else, that random movie that some friend said you needed to see worms its way to the top, and you find yourself with a Ken Burns civil war documentary* in your mailbox.

*I have not seen this series. It is on my Netflix list, but I keep demoting it because I'm never in the mood. Which only proves my point.

Sex in Hollywood.

So yes, this is a little behind schedule. But I do have something to say about The Real World: Hollywood, which I have indeed been keeping up with.

What is up with the girls in that house? Yes, I'm talking about you, Kim and Sarah. And I'm not even talking about "Ghetto"-gate from a couple of weeks ago. It seems that on every episode, they have something mean and judgmental and snarky to say about Brianna. And it's always in reference to Brianna having sex or who she takes home or how she acts when they're out or what she wears.

Of course, Kim and Sarah always couch their criticism in concern (or condemnation) for Brianna's level of self-respect. They presume that her choices, like to be an exotic dancer, come from self-hatred or a lack of self-esteem. And maybe there is some truth to that, but who's to know? They presume to know Brianna's reasons and to know her mind.

I have an agenda. Does that make me an Agenda Girl?

I saw this little beauty at a Barnes & Noble today. I'm looking over the table with all the new non-fiction, and this title jumped out at me. I don't know if it was the bright pink or the jaw-dropping misogyny. Don't Be That Girl. Which girl, exactly? The author proceeds -- as far as I can tell -- to list out all of the "typical" behaviors of women that he finds pathetic and unappealing. And judging by this cover, he means women who let their makeup run, drink too much, and throw themselves at men. The level of disdain and condescension is staggering.

I read the first few pages in the store. He tells the story -- and I paraphrase, of course -- of working late at night in the ER. Yes, he is a doctor. A woman comes in with a badly swollen black eye. As he treats her injury, he asks her how she got hurt. She says she fell down the stairs. But, oh no, he knows something is up. He asks her what really happened. She confesses that actually her boyfriend hit her in the face with a shoe.

But why does he tell this story? What is he trying to convey? He explains that he was compelled to write this book because women are too insecure and they lack confidence -- and they allow themselves to be abused. He reasons, "if I could just show women how to be less pathetic, I would be doing them a service!" (Again, I paraphrase.)

"Don't Be That Girl cuts to the heart of what makes a woman cross into that girl territory and the red flags that tip guys off to the possibility that, yikes, they may be dating that girl. So who is that girl, exactly? She defies a simple definition. She may be the chameleon who turns into a completely different person the second a guy walks into the room. She could be the girl with the ironclad agenda that she's held to dearly since her first encounter with Modern Bride (and she'll do anything to make sure her plan materializes). Or she's the consummate "yes" girl who is always going along with his every wish. If she's not saying yes, she might very well be a drama queen who is always saying no because she can't seem to live without conflict. Then again, she might not be dramatic at all, just miserable inside, wearing her anger and bitterness as a badge of honor. In short, she's the girl who's trying fruitlessly to be someone she's not -- who's falling victim to the common pitfalls and patterns that lead to that girl behavior -- rather than believing in herself, following her passions, and maintaining healthy priorities." (from product description on Amazon.com)

But the icing on this cake is who the author turns out to be. I looked at the book and thought that the name looked familiar. Travis L. Stork, aka The Bachelor. I kid you not. I've spent my fair share of (wasted) time watching reality TV, and the Bachelor was one of my (extremely) guilty pleasures a few years ago. But like some sickly sweet candy that you gorge yourself on, ignoring everything you know about the evils of what you're consuming, until it becomes too much and you're left with nothing but a vomitous aftertaste -- I grew tired of the Bachelor a few seasons ago. But not before I saw this guy in action.

It is beyond ludicrous that Travis Stork -- the guy who went on a trashy reality TV show to "find love" -- is telling women how to behave rationally and develop mature relationships. And I've already spent too much time thinking about this.

I heard from a friend today.

Look, it's the CSI guy!

Or "How Feminism Made Alice Walker a Bad Mother"

I saw this article today from the Times in the UK, listed on Racialicious. I have renamed it, because that seems to be what the writer is going for -- so why not make it clear. And maybe that's what Rebecca Walker is trying to say as well -- she obviously harbors resentment for her mother's choices and statements. But the author certainly has some strong definitions of an earlier generation of feminists.

The so-called “first wave” feminists believed that housework was another form of slavery and that women did not have an innate need to nurture but had been conditioned into their subordinate role as wives and mothers through centuries of patriarchy.

This is a popular perception, and that's definitely the understanding of feminism that I had for a long time -- which deterred me from identifying as such. But I suspect that it's not an accurate description in the first place...

I obviously know nothing about the personal relationship between these two women, so I won't even comment on that. My issue is more with the implicit link that is made between Alice Walker and the de facto position of all feminists of an older generation: that they're all about Hillary Clinton and will not tolerate younger women saying different.

"[M]y mother and her friends, they see [feminism] as truth; they don’t see it as an experiment.

“So that creates quite a problem. You’ve got young women saying, ‘That didn’t really work for me’ and the older ones saying, ‘Tough, because that’s how it should be’.”

The debate goes on: Rebecca, who lives in Hawaii with Tenzin and Glen, his Buddhist-teacher father, recently wrote about why she was supporting Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton — and immediately came under fire.

“The response from older feminists was that I, and other young women, were naive in thinking Obama could ever truly represent us, and we should be supporting the female candidate. The belief is that women become more radical as they get older, that we’re naive and we’ll ‘get it’ later on.”

Since they lump Alice Walker in with all the other "older feminists," the presumption from this article would be that, of course, she's a Clinton supporter. But I distinctly remember reading this, which says quite different (and which is very much worth reading in its entirety).

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

Yeah, that last quote is Alice Walker, so there's at least one thing that mother and daughter can still agree on. Not sure why that point was obscured so neatly in this article.

Quotable quotes.

This blog post is at the request of Stonewall.

"Politics is not a team sport." -Chris Matthews, May 6, 2008.

For some people, it's all about the ego.

UPDATE:

"Regular people want to know that you share their enemies." -Chris Matthews, May 6, 2008.

Who are my enemies...? I must not be a regular person.

Primary madness.

Another big primary night, and I'm thinking about skipping the TV coverage and going out to dinner with Stonewall instead. But I'm watching now.

Chris Matthews just asked someone about whether the Jeremiah Wright issue didn't have as much impact as "some people would have hoped." Yeah, like you, Chris?

And speaking of Jeremiah Wright, I caught his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS last weekend. I had first heard of Jeremiah Wright in the context of reading about the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., so my first introduction to him was not through the relentlessly repeated 5-second sound bites on TV or on the internet. It was refreshing to be reintroduced to that man. It was especially refreshing to be able to watch full-length clips of the sermons in question, so you could see the entire point that he was making -- and not just a disjointed climax. Watch the video here.

I can't say that I'm a regular Bill Moyers viewer, but I might be a fan. Imagine this: a conversation between two people, relatively uninterrupted, non-combative, in which each side is allowed to express an idea. Revolutionary.

And this was also interesting: Was It Really What Jeremiah Wright Said, Or Was It Because He's Black?

Scary TV.

I watch Grey's Anatomy, and I'm not going to lie, it's one of my favorite guilty pleasures. But I just caught up on last week's episode ("Piece of My Heart") and there was a line that jumped out at me. When Izzy is talking to the HIV+ woman who has just found out that she's pregnant and wants an abortion. And yes, the point is that Izzy does a terrible job of explaining to the woman that with treatment, her child could be born free of HIV, and the moral of the story is that Izzy realizes this and provides the woman with this information. But in the middle of it all, she throws in this line: "If you want to have an abortion because you want to have an abortion, then that's between you and whatever God you believe in."

I recognize that logic. "Sin if you will, it's not my problem. That's between you and God. But I think I know what he might have to say about that." So Izzy says that she's not pushing an agenda, but there's still judgment and shaming involved. It was chilling coming from a doctor. Even if it's only a doctor of the perpetually-distracted-by-personal-drama-during-surgery, knockin'-boots-in-the-on-call-room, cutting-Denny's-LVAD-wire variety.

Shot like an arrow through my heart.

For a little fun and nostalgia:

Hero complexes.

Watching a segment on Paul Farmer on 60 Minutes... Since reading Mountains Beyond Mountains a few years ago, my first reaction to anything having to do with Paul Farmer is always positive. But I'm instinctively suspicious of how 60 Minutes might decide to portray him and his work and the issues.

...pause to finish watching the segment...

My first thought is that I sorta want to read Mountains Beyond Mountains again. Because when I read it the first time, I was so fundamentally moved and inspired. Not only by his vision and his understanding of what the right to health means (that no one should be denied the right to health care because of the poverty that results from the accident of their birth) but the network of people that were attracted to that vision and who helped him to build it.

And Paul Farmer is an inspiring person, if only because of his strategy for building his organization or for making it possible to deliver health care. In the 60 Minutes segment, they talk about how Partners in Health, the organization he co-founded, will survive after he is gone because it is run by Haitian physicians in Haiti and Rwandan physicians in Rwanda and so on. PIH depends on community health workers to reach out to patients living in rural or difficult-to-reach areas. So in the end, it's not really about Paul Farmer. His vision would never have come about if there wasn't an army of people equally committed to that vision.

But we can never talk about it that way. By "it," I suppose that I mean Changing the World or however we might put it. It's why we talk about any great change in terms of the great people who represented that change. So Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a stand-in for the civil rights movement, or Mandela for the anti-apartheid movement, or Gandhi for the independence movement. And we forget that the change they represent would have meant nothing without a mass movement of people who believed in the same ideas.

It's more exciting to tell a "hero" story, though. About the strength of an individual who changes the course of history. And the reality is not quite as "sellable." That change comes about in usually mundane ways, created by people who will be generally forgotten.