For those who may have missed it, President Bush has enraged much of the nation of India, by appearing to blame its growing middle class for rising food prices.
In addition to a series of articles on this subject, WORLDMEETS.US just posted this tongue-in-cheek warning to President Bush, about the growing demand for pet food among new members of India’s middle class.
U.S. President George W Bush should be a worried man. Not only are Indians eating more and better and driving up food prices, their dogs and cats are eating better, too … Read the rest of this entry »
Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann (D), who, during his race for AG in 2006 named Eliot Spitzer as his role model, has refused twice to acquiesce to multiple calls to step down in the wake of admitting last week that he had a romantic relationship with his former scheduler (Dann is married with three children) and firing two of his top aides.
As a result of this refusal, the Ohio Democratic Party has made their intentions to force Dann out extremely clear. From the Columbus Dispatch:
The Ohio Democratic Party, which strongly backed Dann’s come-from-behind campaign in 2006, is preparing to sever its ties with Dann. Chairman Chris Redfern said he expects the party’s executive committee to rescind its 2006 endorsement of Dann when it meets Saturday, which Redfern said would make Dann an independent officeholder. Democrats also are prepared to lead the impeachment drive, Redfern said.
“Pending Saturday’s events, he’ll be holding office as an independent who was elected as a Democrat,” Redfern said. “We will distance ourselves both figuratively and literally from Marc Dann until he makes the right decision, which is to step down.”
Ohio Daily Blog reports that one of Dann’s hometown papers says that the Ohio House Democratic Caucus had a conference call this afternoon and will begin impeachment proceedings tomorrow if Dann doesn’t step down tonight.
Plunderbund writes about the removal of information about Dann from the ODP website and also has a video of Gov. Strickland in which he says that they’ll use “whatever action is necessary” to remove Dann.
Pho writes about the legal provisions related to replacing Dann.
This article from ePluribus Media includes most of the key information from today and last week, but the situation is developing minute by minute, as it has been all day today. And it’s been exhausting.
I’m somewhat restricted from saying too much (code words on my blog entries are “mmmumbble mummmble damn packing tape”) because my SO is in the same law firm as an attorney whom Dann has asked to help clean up the AG’s office. Although it’s a voluntary role, and I’ve been told my right to express myself is being respected, I don’t feel comfortable writing about this situation in as an unbridled manner as I might.
I can say that I’ve had off the record conversations with the Ohio Democratic Party stating my intense upsetment about the hostile work environment that came to exist in the AG’s office and my belief that it must not be tolerated, not only because of the women who were subordinates but for the sake of the entire 1400 person “law office” that is an AG’s office.
Obviously, I wasn’t and still am not the only one saying that this is an intolerable situation that demands dramatic and obvious attention.
But as a Democrat in Ohio, who wanted to believe in Marc Dann, even when I wasn’t the most certain, it’s also just a very very, as another Democrat expressed to me, profoundly sad experience.
If one wanted to know the difference between being an American and being a European, this article from France’s Le Figaro newspaper would be a very good place to start.
From Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to client number nine Eliot Spitzer and ‘Kristan,’ Europeans have looked at the effect that sex has on American politics with a collective shake of the head. Read the rest of this entry »
Because of the Big Three, 550 American baseball games a year are broadcast on television here. About 300 of them are carried without commercial interruption, allowing Japanese viewers to gaze between innings at their beloved stars as they sit quietly in the dugout or stand around on the field. These players, unlike their American counterparts, are rarely caught on camera spitting, picking their noses or scratching themselves in manly places.
Sigh. How many times do we have to pray that we get a president smarter than George Bush? No. Really. Talk about a God who works in mysterious ways.
What did Republican candidate for president and Arizona Senator John “I’m so experienced in foreign policy” McCain say this time? (You know I find something outrageous when I’m at this level of snark.)
Oh - just this little tidbit, covered by MSNBC, Huffington Post and JTA, among others. From JTA:
U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Purim is the Jewish version of Halloween during his Israel visit.
McCain was corrected by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the Republican presidential nominee’s chief supporters who accompanied him on the trip, according to MSNBC.
In a news conference Wednesday with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak following a tour of the besieged southern Israeli city of Sderot, McCain had noted the impact of continued rocket fire on the city’s children.
“As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety,” McCain said. “That’s not a way for people to live obviously.”
Lieberman at the news conference said the fault was his, as he had compared the two holidays in explaining its significance to McCain.
Lieberman reinforces just how little McCain’s foreign policy experiences matters with the fact that rather than describe the holiday as it actually is, he figured that McCain would only be able to absorb or “get it” if he (Lieberman) used the Halloween analogy.
As a Jew, I’ve mentioned how kids dress up for Purim like kids dress up at Halloween. But I have never told anyone that the holiday is the Jewish version of Halloween.
The only reason anyone would describe the holiday that way is because they don’t think the listener has the capacity to understand the holiday in any other terms.
Remember the British teacher in Sudan who was jailed for letting the kids name a teddy bear Mohammed? When it was obviously a simple cultural mistake? And thousands of the country’s citizens rioted and wanted her killed?
I’m really not wanting our next president to be neutralized that way.
PS - I want to add that if he or any of his staff or volunteers had been reading my blog posts about Purim, they would never have made such a mistake.
VSAS: 8 [For readers unfamiliar with Writes Like She Talks, VSAS is the Vessels Sarcasm Alert Scale, named in honor of blogger Eric Vessels of Plunderbund. Eric is an Ohio blogging buddy who once thought I was being serious when in fact I was being completely lowball in relation to what some very conservative Ohio GOP blog was trying to do. He suggested that I give a warning whenever I was using humor because most of my regular readers just don’t expect that kind of underhanded post from me. Thus was born the VSAS.]
Was there something beyond Eliot Spitzer’s ungoverned libido behind his breathtaking downfall? Andrei Fedyashin writes for Russia’s Novosti news service, ‘Spitzer had his career and family life taken down by the forces of political retribution … Only the naive can doubt that this was a pre-arranged “sex scandal.”‘ Pointing out that most of his Wall Street enemies were Republican, Fedyashin asks, ‘Who better to bring down, if not a Democrat and personal friend of Hillary Clinton, who had formally pledged to support her at the upcoming Democratic convention? As a governor, Spitzer is among one of about 800 so-called super-delegates, who may well decide which candidate will lead the party’s fight for the White House - Clinton or Barack Obama … Perhaps the explanation is that Hillary frightens Republicans far more than her party-comrade, Barack Obama?’
By Political Columnist Andrei Fedyashin
Translated By Igor Medvedev
March 14, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
MOSCOW: Less than a week after a “sex scandal” erupted around the Governor of the State of New York on March 13, Democrat Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation on March 17.
Unofficially, on the day that The New York Times published the spicy details of his phone order for a “short brunette,” it was clear that Spitzer, who two years ago was thought to have a promising future as a likely Democratic candidate for the White House - had destroyed his political career and probably his family. She [the brunette] was “delivered” to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where the 48-year-old Spitzer spent the night before testifying to Congress. How badly everything turned out! Bad from a purely moral point of view and doubly bad in a U.S. presidential election year.
It later transpired that Spitzer had used the services of this brunette and other call girls through a certain company called the Emperor’s Club VIP, and over the last ten years had paid it over $80,000. And considering that he allegedly paid $1,000 for this one brunette, one concludes that he must have had 80 of them during this time. This is quite a propensity for variety - even in ten years.
In a nutshell, this is the tale of the downfall of the now-former governor of America’s third-largest state. And now, apart from having to completely quit politics, he stands accused of the “illegal promotion of prostitution,” since the call girl was dispatched from New York to Metropolitan Washington D.C. According to the laws of the United States, transporting someone across state lines to procure sex is an even greater offense than prostitution itself. Moreover, he may also be deprived of his right to practice law. Simply put, when it rains it pours.
If you are unfamiliar with Spitzer’s record and fail to take account of his backround, you might get the impression that these charges of “illegal sex” came like a bolt from the blue. Sex scandals in America, of course, are nothing new: Almost every second U.S. President has committed adultery, with John F. Kennedy - given his record of such transgressions - mastering his White House rivals. That’s to say nothing of Senators, House members and other governors.
But these scandals do differ. Some are more moderate while others hit like a thunder-clap. The Spitzer story is of the latter category. Since this is a presidential year it couldn’t have been otherwise. It’s embarrassing again to speak here of political hypocrisy in the United States. It’s so unfortunate to devalue this meaningful notion through such frequent repetition.
What is it about Eliot Spitzer’s downfall that has attracted the attention of people around the world? Is it the power, the sex, the hypocrisy? According to the editorial board of Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, the tale of Eliot Spitzer follows a pattern that never really goes out of style. According to Nachrichten, ‘American politics without sex scandals is almost unthinkable. The fallen sinners are almost equally divided between the two major parties. … Elmer Gantry, the amoral preacher of morality depicted by Sinclair Lewis, is the pattern of a story that never really gets old.’
EDITORIAL
Translated By James Jacobson
March 11, 2008
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Home Page (German)
The rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer is an American success story of a very particular kind. The Democratic governor of New York State was a fierce dog, who as a public prosecutor walked on the dead to expose all kinds of corruption, organized crime and prostitution. He destroyed the reputations of many well-known and lesser-known business and political opponents in a way that left behind many enemies.
The fact that he now had to admit to being involved in a prostitution ring is not in itself unusual for an American politician. American politics without sex scandals is almost unthinkable. The fallen sinners are almost equally divided between the two major parties.
Older students recall the case Wilbur Mills, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who in 1974 was brought down due to his involvement with a stripper named Fanne Foxe. When a policeman stopped the politician’s car, this beautiful woman in the dead of night jumped into the freezing water of the Washington Tidal Basin, next to the Jefferson Memorial, thereby setting his fall in motion. Before that, these things only went on under the table, the escapades of President John F. Kennedy being the most well-known example.
Now those attracted by the Mills story have something even bigger. Since then a lot has happened, and many politicians have fallen from their pedestals. But the way Spitzer of all people has fallen into the clutches of law enforcement authorities has almost a literary quality. Elmer Gantry , the amoral preacher of morality depicted by Sinclair Lewis, is the pattern of a story that never really gets old.
You know, people say they are stunned, shocked. On and on. A close personal friend of mine who is a lawyer in NYC responded to an e-mail I wrote asking for an opinion on Eliot Spitzer’s alleged dalliances like this, “A topic better discussed off-line.” No doubt. No doubt.
How many times do I have to write about how “rising star” is the kiss of death? About how expectations outgrow human nature, as does our fantastical desire for there to be a mortal we can call perfect?
The rising stars fall not because our expectations are too high or because they lack the ability to rise as high as we need them to or wish they will or think they can.
Rising stars fall because no one, no thing, can rise indefinitely. And the plateau or the fall or decline is all relative. But it is also inevitable. And people just refuse to remember this and adjust their hopes and expectations accordingly.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have hope or hope for hope or believe in hope. It only means that you shouldn’t walk around saying how shocked and betrayed you feel. You snowed yourself if you thought it wasn’t possible.
Rich Harwood writes about this in a similar way here in this piece about Spitzer, leaders and leadership.
On one level, Spitzer’s story is similar to that of many leaders in our society. We become infatuated with them, even begin to worship them, believe they can do no wrong, assigning them qualities and expectations that too often are not humanly possible to fulfill. Meantime, the leaders themselves, mere mortals, begin to believe they actually hold mythic powers, at times exercising them with abandonment and hubris, often leading to their own demise. All this reminds me of sundry fables about young wizards, who when they finally embrace their own individual power, fail to understand its true use, and especially its limitations.
On another level, the Spitzer saga makes me think about notions of “imperfection.” I often think that in our desire to ascribe mythic qualities to leaders, we forget — indeed, I think we actually seek to deny — the reality that we all, including our leaders, are imperfect. Thus when imperfections arise, we are ill-equipped to discern their true meaning to us. We want people to grovel or put forth false modesty when caught, or we want their heads. Room to gauge our failings gets squeezed out; we try to ignore the reality that human imperfection exists, until once more it is staring us right in the face and cannot be escaped.
Now, if Ohio Governor Ted Strickland were revealed to have used the Emperor’s Club, that would shock me. Because his personality and Spitzer’s could not be more different.
Frankly, Spitzer fits the profile of someone who did what he’s alleged to have done and got caught precisely.
Here are some experts on that, thrown in with some other commentary that has stood out to me:
Why does someone in such a visible and responsible position act in this way? Over the next few days you’ll hear plenty of psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals give their sage perspectives.
But for all intents and purposes, no one can know why Governor Spitzer acted as he did, except the governor himself. As a matter of fact, it is against my code of ethics to state what the governor’s problem might be.
That’s because the reason that people stray away from their marriages are complex. One person may use extramarital sex to get back at a partner, another to escape obligations, a third to experience a thrill.
The new politics can take a leaf from the very old tonight at the 21st Democratic debate. Just as Richard Nixon saved his vice-presidential candidacy in 1952 from news of a secret political slush fund, Barack Obama has to explain away Antoin Rezko as an obstacle to his campaign’s momentum.
For weeks now, the darker side of the Clinton machine has been hammering him with accusations about the Chicago slumlord, and the Former First Lady herself invoked the dreaded name during the last debate.
Yesterday there was another drip of Rezko bad news as Obama’s campaign upped the amount of contributions being given to charity to almost $150,000.
Obama’s style precludes maudlin Nixon props like his wife’s cloth coat and the family dog, but he would be well-advised to prepare his own one-minute version of the Checkers speech to unload the Rezko albatross.
December 21st, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
NOTE: The Moderate Voice from time to time runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have their own websites or some people who who want to present their viewpoint or just another perspective to TMV’s highly diverse readership. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
This Guest Voice column is by Bloomsburg University journalism professor Walter Brasch.
Oops! The Media Did It Again
by Walter Brasch
Ever vigilant, the mass media dug into a critical social issue and rooted out the information in their never-ending quest to guarantee the people’s right to know.
The people’s right to know, they decided, was that 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101,” is pregnant. Jamie Lynn is the younger sister of Britney Spears, the former Mouseketeer who has combined a chart-topping career as a singer/dancer with being America’s Celebrity Super-Skank.
The National Enquirer first broke the story about Jamie Lynn in its July 28 issue. Unfortunately, Jamie Lynn wasn’t pregnant at the time. This prompted her horde of lawyers to notify the nation’s largest newspaper that their client is “a devout Christian with a spotless reputation, who lives in accordance with the highest moral and ethical standards in accordance with her faith.” They demanded a retraction, pending an all-out legal assault to defend Jamie Lynn’s good name.
Shortly after the Enquirer’s story appeared, and thousands of bloggers became sexually active, Jamie Lynn’s “good name” became semen-stained when she became pregnant, probably in September. The father is 19-year-old Casey Aldridge, who lived with Jamie Lynn and her mother in an L.A. condo, and followed the teen mini-star to the “Zoey 101” set almost every day. So far, no one is filing any statutory rape charges.
True to the ethics and business practices of tween celebs, Jamie Lynn hid the news until she could find a price high enough. High enough to run the story was OK! magazine, which put Jamie Lynn and a mega-hype teaser on its cover, and trumpeted the six-page in-depth investigation as a “world exclusive.”
The magazine’s hyperventilating publicist told the media and the public if they wanted to get all the details of this breaking news interview with Jamie Lynn and her mother, they needed to “pick up the new issue of OK!—on newsstands everywhere.” In true media tradition, the “news” was released a day before the magazine appeared on the shelves, Dec. 19, two weeks before its cover date. Circulation was expected to rise faster than a pubescent boy’s hormones.
Naturally, the rest of the messed-up mainstream and alternative media also had to jump onto the story.
OK!’s not-so-hard news interview led off the news segments of the network morning shows, was discussed thoroughly by the mid-morning and afternoon talk shows, and was featured by CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News—which paused just long enough to report about a fire in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, a chemical plant explosion in Jacksonville, Fla., that killed three and injured 14, and the President signing an Energy Bill. Radio, the Blogosphere, and the internet-based newspapers wasted no time polluting the airwaves and the world’s bandwidths; print newspapers were caught in the wrong news cycle and had to publish “day after” not-so-investigative stories.
Underreported, or not reported at all by most of the media, was that in four separate instances in Iraq, seven civilians were killed and 27 wounded. Nevertheless, enquiring American minds wanted to know all there was about Jamie Lynn; within a day, Google recorded more than 150,000 separate stories and blogger comments. Read the rest of this entry »
December 21st, 2007 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
This just in: Teenaged girls have sex. And sometimes they get pregnant.
Don’t tell the abstinence-only crowd at the White House, but these disturbing realities led to serial embarrassments this week for the family of Mother of the Year contender Britney Spears.
First, it was revealed that the pop tart’s scandal-free 16-year old sister Jamie Lynn, the star of Nickelodeon’s hit “Zoey 101″ show, is three months pregnant.
Father-to-be Casey Aldridge, 19, could face a statutory rape charge because knocking up anyone under 17 is considered “felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile” in their home state of Louisiana.
Jamie Lynn’s father is “furious” that she sold the story of her pregnancy to OK! magazine, while Britney is “frantic” about the whole mess and not at all pleased that Kevin “Fed Ex” Federline, her former husband, was told first.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there is the beyond crushing news that mother Lynne Spears’ forthcoming book on parenting, Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World, has been put on ice by Thomas Nelson, who publishes inspirational books and Bibles.
Janice Min, veteran celebrity watcher and editor of US Weekly, huffed: “To have a woman preparing to write a book about how to raise daughters when her own two daughters are imploding reeks of incredible denial and a lack of self-awareness.”
November 21st, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
This was waiting to happen in any part of the world…The British Government is now reeling under a major data security crisis. Two discs containing the details of all child benefit recipients, records for 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families have been lost.
“The records included the recipient’s name and those of their children, their addresses and dates of birth, child benefit numbers, national insurance numbers and, where relevant, bank or building society account details – all the facts that fraudsters need to illegally remove money from banks”, reports The Independent.
“They are the details that families are regularly being warned by the Government not to reveal to potential fraudsters. And they would be worth a fortune on the black market.
“Seven million families are having to make urgent checks on their bank accounts today after the biggest security blunder in history led to the personal details of 25 million fathers, mothers and children being lost by the Whitehall department responsible for all tax and benefits.”
1. I opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. But we are there now so we have to deal with it.
2. I only have a few members in my family that have served in the military.
3. I haven’t nor will I enlist in military service. My reason: I’m not a soldier but I’m a fighter. Big difference.
With all that being said, I submit that our government, from political sea to shining political sea is unpatriotic since veterans (soldiers) are treated flat out wrong. Doesn’t matter if they volunteered for one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. They did and they deserve the bank and more for putting themselves into harm’s way on orders from our Commander-In-Chief. I know two soldiers who are home from Iraq. Both were wounded but have recovered well physically from their injuries. But mentally, they are having difficulty. They had to kill. Plain and simple. They saw killing. Plain and simple. They are deeply affected. Plain and simple. And they are catching hell just trying to make ends meet with their families back home. WHY?!?!
They are soldiers. They deserve much better. And every day that they aren’t treated like Hollywood stars by our government, is another day of unpatriotic rule by our government.
NOTE: I emphasize government. While I have problems with unpatriotic citizens regarding this subject, the government, our political leadership, are in the positions to fix this immediately. Yes, there are those Representatives and Senators (state and federal) who are fighting “the good fight” regarding veteran’s benefits and compensation. But the fact that they have to fight “the good fight” in the first place sickens me even more. It’s common sense to treat veterans (soldiers) right to the infinite degree. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Does Barack Obama want to portray himself as either P.C. or consistent? He appears to have got himself into a situation where he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
If Republicans follow through on their threats, some time this month six United States Senators will gather in a hearing room to study and debate urgent questions about a men’s room stall in the Minneapolis-St. Paul air terminal.
Ending the war in Iraq, starting one in Iran and health care for poor children will have to wait while the Senate Ethics Committee considers charges against Larry Craig, brought by the Republican leadership to embarrass him into resigning his seat, as he had promised to by the end of September but now shows no sign of doing.
Senators would publicly examine such weighty matters as the original allegation against Craig of “interference with privacy” for peeping into the stall occupied by an undercover police officer as well as witnesses and documents.
The committee could also spend time looking for “a pattern of conduct” by combing court records elsewhere to find out if Craig has had prior arrests.
To unsophisticated taxpayers, this may look like burning down the barn to get rid of a field mouse, but Senate leaders will do anything to keep the place squeaky clean.
I was listening to the testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker on NPR while running errands. Several times I heard interruptions by spoiled, bratty girls masquerading as responsible adults. I’m appalled to think that I might actually have once been friends with some of them. You know who you are, and you bring only shame to this lesbian feminist.
July 31st, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
What a warmth of feeling and intellectual support can be found in a discussion of human sexuality, once we can all shake out the last of whatever holds us to the same old water mark in cultural discussions of same so we can never progress beyond ‘first reactions’: discomfort, sniggering, and various other ego resistances.
Yet, I just know the editorial cartoonists, who are magicians of the universe with their pithy images and few words, are just sharpening their ink nibs about this study… and I have no doubt before the day is out, there will be a book proposal at Bertelsmann for “2,370 Really Good Reasons to Have Sex,” and its companion volume, “2,370 Really Good Reasons Not to Have Sex.” (237 reasons might make too short a book for the accounting goblins’ desires.)
But on a serious note too, before you read the list, for an x-ray perhaps of your own sexual nature, I’d ask you to write down a dozen, not ‘reasons’ why to ‘have sex,’ but knowings about how the phenomenal resource you’ve been given, that incandescent talent under the broad term, ’sexuality’… teaches, tells, shows you… whatever of spirit and psychological depth you’ve learned, touched, realized, beheld, understood, seen, effected … that may not be grasped or graspable any other way.
I’ve an eccentric experience in this area: For several years, I taught a psych course called simply ‘Human Sexuality,’ to men and women in locked facilities and prisons. The syllabus looked ‘normal,’ but the teaching I did, was considered subversive; it wasn’t about condoms on bananas and diagrams of reproductive systems. It was about the spirit, the life force inside the sexual nature.
Thus, the purposely meandering question I gave you above, was the first week’s assignment to my students. The same question was also every week’s assignment thereafter, as I asked my students to think more deeply and more deeply yet, past the ego’s and the culture’s fences and defenses.
I know it sounds funny, but if you meet a former felon who knows themselves and their sexual nature, far beyond the usual, they may have been one of my students. I shake my head and am smiling as I write that; this world’s junctures of living circuitry that holds strangers to one another in meaningful ways, are so rare, and at least to the ego are so unsettling, but to the wiser spirit and soul, more often protected and cherished.
I would suggest then, as now, that for those who answer truthfully in depth my open question, being able to drive past the first funny or silly responses, past the polite ones, past injured ones, past learned ones, past the rote ones… they might eventually come into the mother lode of the sexual psyche finally.
There’s a transformative place in the psyche where spirit and sexuality meet and share common arteries, injuries, as well as intelligences … answers at that level about, not ‘reasons for having sex,’ but how one understands and learns and unfolds layer after layer of one’s own sexuality, give quite a different picture of human sexuality, one that draws out a truer human.
There is a truer human in every person, one that is not falsified by persona, despite a mainstream culture daily trying to bury this vital being in each of us, despite so much of culture trying to obliterate signs of literacy about sexuality, which contains such life-giving gifts born into each person, each in his or her own way…
The authors of the study below grouped the responses into four categories. At the point I saw the poll, I saw that literally thousands of categorizations are missing, such as violent/criminal acts (I’d think these most usefully not be grouped with consensual ones).
Also missing are drives for surrender and for mastery. Missing too are all the fetishes and paraphilias, most of the drives toward specific sensory acts, the sharing of fantasies by type, various kinds of theatrical play, giving specific healing, receiving healing… and the long lists of sexual generosities, the desire to praise, to adore, to push, to take are missing also, save those of ego desire to feel an evanescent something. Read the rest of this entry »
July 30th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I have been thinking about Elizabeth Edwards’ breasts, about her bold life force, about her truly living each day. As I think about her holding her life above the cancer, I think about other heroic women I’ve known who have also, and do also live strong and womanly… with breast cancer.
This is a photograph of my friend, Deena Metzger: she is a healer who lives in California. This picture was taken of her in 1978. It is the first photograph most of my generation ever saw of a woman in a glory of life who’d had a breast removed because of breast cancer. The name of the photo is “Tree” because she had a flowering branch tattooed across her mastectomy scar. She is now a beautiful sensual old woman, this being nearly 30 years later; her tattoo holds, as does her huge womanly spirit.
Thirty years earlier than Deena, people with breast cancer were treated as trees were treated, but in a bad way. Gouge out whatever part is sick. If the patient lives, good enough.
The first woman patient I’d ever seen who’d had a mastectomy, had had one back in the 1950s when the surgeons, I don’t know what they were thinking…. she looked as though she’d been opened by a chainsaw and sewed back together with railroad track lumber. She was my patient when I was a volunteer shrink at the local hospital in the early 70s and that scar on her body, definitely a crater rather than a drawn line, was then over twenty years old. She was in the hospital for a completely unrelated condition
…but seeing this grave wound to her body, I saw that, whomsoever had removed her breast, had sawed away her ribs there and took those out and did not put them back; they had excised all the muscle and thrown it away. All that was left where her breast had been was a huge sunken teardrop about 7 x 5 inches across. I could see her entire heart beating a mere nick away under her thin skin. Her heart had no other covering. Up, then up more went her skin as her heart beat, literally her skin throbbed with the diastole and the systole, up up and then down. Up, then up some more, then down. It was, like many a scar is that has a wild story contained in the scar itself, wondrous, horrifying and awe striking all at once.
Her husband, she said, would never touch her there in that so wounded place. I was young and beside myself about what she’d said. What did she mean, he wouldn’t touch her? Her husband, I’d met him. He was kind and deeply concerned about his wife’s welfare and sat beside her nearly the whole night every night just like a huge sorrowing watch-over-you dog. One evening when he arrived for his love vigil, I just blurted it all out, immediately embarrassed at the situation, at my own lack of finesse: “She says you wont touch her ‘there’.”
He mumbled the way men do when they are afraid of being judged. There was no judgment here. I got tears. He got tears. She got tears. I don’t know if it was sexual or spiritual or both or neither. I don’t know if a third person is supposed to be involved in such intimacy between two people like them.
But, I took my hand and gently pulled away her gown and said he could put his hand on mine as I touched her. Just like that; I did touch this great concave valley of her body, where I could still feel the breast, the spirit of her breast: warm, replying, deep. I did feel a dizziness to know this, palpably feel the womanliness of her. And her husband, he laid his big hand over mine. I remember feeling baptized in flesh, from the Greek baptizein, meaning, to be buried into… my hand feeling the warmth of her body under my palm and the warmth of his hand over mine.
I did slide my hand out from under his, and he was touching her then, all by himself. You know there are moments between two people that give off such shine you cannot stand to look. This time was one of those. I slipped away. I hoped it wasn’t because I was a coward. I hope it was out of respect. I only knew that he was now somehow, and in some way experiencing what I’d just understood… that literally holding a woman’s heart in your hand, a woman’s beating heart right in your hand, breast or no breast, puts you closer to a woman and what is womanly about her, than you have ever been, can ever hope to be, in all the days of your whole entire life.
Radiant lovers. That was one of my thoughts.
As I was thinking about Elizabeth Edwards’ breasts as I write, I’m recalling another female, a famous one, who still has both breasts; Ann. I thought about the highly unusual and brave call to Chris Matthews’ show by Mrs. Edwards regarding Ann’s remarks about John Edwards. I thought the call was off the wall brave. But more, it was one of the clearest displays that having breasts has nothing to do with being yielding, loving, feminine in the deepest ways. That the breast does not define the depth of womanliness.
Live long and thrive Elizabeth Edwards and all our sisters and brothers who are crossing the water, holding their lives above the currents… Some will say Elizabeth Edwards was making political statements when she called to confront Ann, and that EE was out of her tree… I’d say, Yes. Tree is right. But, ‘out of’ is wrong. Elizabeth Edwards is in just the right tree. In just her right mind.
Tree
I am no longer afraid of mirrors
where I see the sign of the amazon,
the one who shoots arrows.
There was a fine red line across my chest
where a knife entered,
but now a branch winds about the scar
and travels from arm to heart.
Green leaves cover the branch,
grapes hang there and a bird appears.
What grows in me now is vital
and does not cause me harm.
I think the bird is singing.
I have relinquished some of the scars.
I have designed my chest with the care
given to an illuminated manuscript.
I am no longer ashamed to make love.
Love is a battle I can win.
I have the body of a warrior
who does not kill or wound.
On the book of my body,
I have permanently inscribed a tree.
At first, it just seemed like an indiscretion, a couple of $400 haircuts while he was away from home. But John Edwards’ passion for his hair is now a full-blown campaign issue with his Beverly Hills stylist telling all today to the Washington Post.
It started, as these things often do, with a few casual trims in 2003 and 2004 and no money changing hands. The stylist Joseph Torreneuva waived his usual $175 fee. “I was just doing it because I’m a Democrat,” he recalled.
But since then it has gone on to expensive trysts in California hotels, Washington, Ohio and a $1250 session in Atlanta.
How will the affair of the hair affect Edwards’ presidential hopes? As always, it may be less about what actually happened than Edwards’ attempt to cover it up. When the $400 do’s went public, the candidate claimed his staff had arranged for them and he didn’t know how much they cost.
So far in all this, there is no suggestion of Edwards lying under oath, but it’s clear he is going to have a bad hair year.
