Author: Nada Gordon

Hillary = real fake

Obama = fake real

At least with Hillary, you know what you’re getting.

Fascinating.

Excuse me, but isn’t Obama kind of like Bill Clinton redux? I have this vision of the future Camelot III — him all entangled in an intern’s thong, Michelle running for president… history repeats itself.

If my vote for Hillary last Tuesday acted as even a miniscule counter to the misogynistic vitriol that is spewed all over the Internet like pea-green Linda-Blair vomit, I am satisfied.

In our glorious country where all men are equal, and speech is free, I found, on Facebook, the bellwether of our youth, the following groups thriving:

Hillary Clinton Has Gonorrhea

I Want To Hit Hillary Clinton In The Face With A Battle Axe

Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich

Hillary Clinton is a man and I won’t vote for him

Life’s a Bitch, Don’t vote for one.. Anti Hillary Clinton ’08

If Hillary cant satisfy her husband, how can she satisfy AMERICA!

Hillary Clinton is the Anti Christ, VOTE CONSERVATIVE

Hillary sucks…..But not like Monica!

Hillary Clinton is a man, and I will not vote for him.

Hillary can’t handle one man, how can she handle 150,000,000 of them?

A Vote For Hillary Is A Vote For Satan

and… Matthew Santarpia (St. Johns) wrote
at 5:06am on January 19th, 2008
i hope hilary gets a yeast infection

Obama is a charming dirigible, coasting on charisma and backlash, rife with autohagiography. I will be happy if he wins the party’s nomination, but he was not my first choice. Those of you who are hailing him our great savior (and indeed, he is eager to tell us that his name means “blessing” – ahem) may be interested to know that his voting record, according to govtrack.org places him in the category of “Rank and File Democrat,” whereas Hillary falls into the category of “Radical Democrat.” I find this interesting in light of how Obama gets positioned as the Youth Brand, the MTV candidate, Apple to HRC’s IBM. If you thought Bill Clinton was disappointingly centrist, imagine how Obama will be. At any rate, you can see their Senate voting records on thomas.gov, and there you can also observe how many totally meaningless, symbolic bills they both voted on. They both have poor records as bill sponsors, for neither one has been in the senate for very long.

I don’t understand why Howard Dean doesn’t get on the phone TODAY and tell them both to stop wasting money and slinging mud in each other’s eyes. Howard: please convince them both to swallow their hubris and run on a combined ticket, most likely in order of seniority… but come to think of it, who cares, as long as they start making nice with teamwork? Their agonistics are hurting the party, hurting our chances of healing our broken country – and since their platforms are almost identical, what difference could it possibly make? With their combined brilliance, her matri-power, and his way of getting people to shout hallelujah, if they didn’t fuck up, they could more or less guarantee a Democratic White House until 2024. 2024!

Hillary? Barack? Are you listening?

p.s. The two reasons I perhaps should not have voted for Hillary are, to my mind, her Iraq resolution vote and the “two-family dynasty” argument. The latter is unfortunate, but I liked Hillary’s response to that issue in the last debate: “In this country, we run on our own merit.” Her Iraq vote is another matter. I have tried to rationalize that, in the past, with a kind of pragmatics, thinking that she voted for the resolution as a masculinizing POTUS-positioning gesture. That’s admittedly a lame excuse. But you know what? Barbara Boxer is not running for president.

p.p.s. I often hear people say about Obama that they find him inspiring. I think I find him, as I mentioned, more charming than inspiring. At a friend’s insistence, I watched his ’04 convention speech on YouTube, and it reminded me of a few things: a preacher, an actor, a Coca-Cola commercial (the one where the little boy finally gets his horse), and a motivational self-help book filled with anecdotes to help people relate and identify. I think these are actually really great qualities in a leader, but I don’t personally at this stage of my life need my president to “send chills down my spine.” I am, however, admittedly inspired by seeing Hillary’s grace, preparation, and toughness in the debates.

p.p.p.s. There are a few policy differences that I believe are meaningful: Hillary’s health plan sounds better (i.e. more socialist — see “radical democrat” label above) (and I think the fact that she tried and failed at this once is actually in her favor as she knows where the pitfalls will be). Obama supports merit pay for teachers; Hillary rightly calls it “a bad idea,” and as a teacher with twenty years of experience I can only say that it would promote divisiveness and favoritism where there should only be teamwork. It’s fine to offer bonuses to teachers who agree to teach under adverse conditions, but that is very different from merit pay. To my ear, Hillary’s Iraq exit strategy sounds more cautious, less absolute (but not less resolved), and more willing to listen to advisers. There are some points where the candidates’ policies are disappointingly identical, such as the fact that they both voted against same-sex marriage. Phooey!

p.p.p.p.s. I think that Hillary’s argument that she is more experienced doesn’t really hold a lot of water. Obama’s experienced, too, perhaps slightly less, but in at least one crucial way he is a complete and utter greenhorn: he has never given birth. People, doesn’t that prospect blow your mind a little – the idea of a U.S. president who has given birth to a child? Think on that.

Who said this?

But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves. To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action, and here again is where we ask ourselves, as we have asked our parents and our teachers, questions about integrity, trust, and respect. Those three words mean different things to all of us. Some of the things they can mean, for instance: Integrity, the courage to be whole, to try to mold an entire person in this particular context, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence.

*Hillary Clinton, in 1969, at age 21

Read the full speech here.

And Robin Morgan’s impassioned essay, Goodbye to All That #2, here.

Now Gary has the flu, too.

The last couple of weeks have been almost laughably disastrous:

I spent my birthday evening at small claims court in the Bronx because my doctor’s crooked ex-partner is trying to sue me for money he fraudulently says I owe. The court was adjourned because the slimy plaintiff and I have — duh — conflicting testimony. Unbelievably, I will have to go back. I oddly enjoyed going to the Bronx and hearing the ruggedly exotic Bronx accents; truly otherworldy.

On Sunday an amazing birthday party for me and Kim and Brenda last Sunday, generously DJ’d by Marc Nasdor. This was not disastrous, but a very joyous little respite from what was to come the next day: I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching Pan’s Labyrinth and shuddering, commenting on how gory it was. Gary was sitting at his drawing table organizing his pens, and said a little snidely, “It’s magic realism.” (A genre we have both expressed annoyance with in the past).

I don’t remember exactly how long after he said that — maybe fifteen seconds, maybe two minutes, but certainly not very long after, he let out a horrific AUUGGGHH and I saw a calligraphy pen stuck in the back of his hand like an arrow. He pulled it out. There was blood everywhere. We rushed to the kitchen sink and applied pressure, which helped the bleeding stop, and then got a car service to the E.R., where we waited for hours and Mitch came to distract us for a while. An x-ray revealed that the tip of the pen nib, an malevolent little barbed thing, was stuck deep in Gary’s hand. There was a hand surgeon on duty and he made an incision but couldn’t get it out, so on Wednesday poor Gary had to have real surgery with total anaesthesia. He’s now healing nicely

but in the meantime, I caught a terrible cold. It feels very strange as I haven’t had a cold for about five years. I thought I was above such things. Guess not.

Why was there not more uproar over Hillary’s heckler who yelled at her, “Iron my shirt!”?

What if a heckler had shouted at Obama, “Shine my shoes!”?

Just wondering.

I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help myself: I send people messages on eBay correcting their grammar and spelling mistakes and mistakes I notice on their listings (if, for example, they describe an Indian dress as “Mexican”, or they advertise “flair” pants instead of “flare” pants).

Recently, a garnet ring and earrings set was described as “hugh.” I wrote in saying “‘Hugh’ is a man’s name pronounced like ‘hue’ or ‘hew’; I think you mean ‘huge’.”

I confess that I am completely insane. Is there a word for this particular disorder? (I mean a publishable word — don’t everyone write in saying “asshole.”)

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might
like a syrupy, chirping walrus queen
who draws ornate monsters with her eyeliner
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the whisk haven clasp sling stint
urges champ piety chirp pleat posse sunup night.

Sitting on a cornflake,
addicted to eyeliner and pineapples,
a little green puppy with tea-leaf ears
named ryoku was singing oh it’s winter
the sky is clear blue
there are birds chirping and floes melting
goo goo g’joob…

The sea was wet as wet could be.
The pornographic priestess
could not see a cloud, because
of too much eyeliner and the metalocalypse,
Ferrets were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the syrupy categorizable imperatively
neutralist ineffectually phallocentric myrrh
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
the media art, space diapers, gorno, permanent eyeliners,
hairy teen barmaids, super nudist sodapop, such nice scorpions,
and spectacular nonviolent science

“If seven hairy teen barmaids maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear? Or at least free of chili, chimes, china, chirps,
psalms, puffy pulses, punky puppies, spunky puppies, and slappy pussy syrup?”
“Peace is shaped like the wind,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

“O baby Puffalump puppy, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach.”
The syrupy pooch had a synapse-blasting effect
like microwave-heated syrup topping on the oyster cake.
He chirped nonsense into their audio receptors, until the
portable soda fountains that run on syrup cartridges
and mockingbird chirps overflowed instead with saline walrus tears.

Oh tawny radiator of tablespoon walrus, synth-pop hip-shaker,
postal service, bambi, husky tuskers, succubus nincompoop stringcheese,
stress puppies, and walrus soulmates, my personality is like a chirping bird!.
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
prairie dogging like a mouse potato in a cube farm:
The eldest Oyster winked the yellow matter custard from his eye,
climbing up the Eiffel Tower in a coat of napalm syrup.
Global weirding textperts with baby antlers made of sauerkraut, chili,
and hot pepper hurried up,
All eager for the treat – syrupy astral space doom!
post-kinetic environments!–
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax—
corporation t-shirts, wide stances, percussive maintenance,
unwritten laws, velociraptors, vervets, irritainments, vicunas,
vipers, coles, vultures, wagtails, walking fish, wallabies,
fauxhawks, wallarooes, walruses – walri?–
Of cauliflower–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And why the sea is boiling hot—
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And why the sea is boiling hot—
Goo goo g’joob Goo goo g’joob
Goo goo g’joob
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And why the sea is boiling hotttttttttttttttttttttt–