And I thought by the time I got there she’d be off
She’d be off with the nearest truck driver she could find
Much to my surprise, there she was sittin in the corner
A little bleary, worse for wear and tear
Was the girl with the far away eyes
-Far Away Eyes
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)
They shouldn’t allow me to interact with the public. Tonight, I ran out of tobacco. It was kinda late, I was feeling kinda blue, so I dropped by the local tavern on the way back from the store. A couple of Stella Artois, a couple idle conversations about Monday Night Football, the juke box, and whatever comes up in hard working South Philly.
But sitting there, on the stool next to mine, was a girl with the far away eyes. Off her shift as a bartender/cocktail waitress making an average of six dollars an hour under the table with no benefits, we struck up a conversation. We were already vague acquaintances.
College educated and a skilled photographer, she began to spin out her tale of woe. Who tips? Who is a stiffer? What is it like to mix $7 martinis all night and get no appreciation, no gratuity.
What’s it like when everyone goes digital and no one can afford to print color prints in this city anymore?
How all her quarters go to laundromats and she has nothing but dimes, pennies, and nickles lying around the house.
Then we got more personal. Probably three out of four Americans between the ages of 15 and 49 have been infected with genital HPV in their lifetime.
And you know what? HPV can cause cervical cancer.
To prevent the development of cervical cancer women need to take regular pap tests and sometimes an intrusive colposcopy test. My friend had been diagnosed with HPV. Her ex-boyfriend called her up and asked her if he was going to give cervical cancer to every women he ever slept with for the rest of his life. She had no medical insurance and had to wait 8 months at great personal expense to get her colposcopy test. The bartender overheard this and said she too had been diagnosed with HPV and pre-cancerous cells in her cervix and had not been to the doctor for too long because her doctor had switched firms and she wasn’t eager to be examined by a stranger.
So, maybe it might be a good thing if these women could avoid being infected in the first place. Maybe they would benefit from a vaccination that prevents infection. What would the GOP say? What would Jeff Gannon’s GOPUSA say?
“We’re all for preventing cancer, but is this really the way to do it – by shooting this stuff into our kids?” he asked.
“What are the side effects in these young children? And are they told what the vaccine is for? I’d be interested to listen in on that discussion.”
Phelps said issues like the HPV vaccine were a reminder that “we do what we do [that is, promote abstinence] so that these types of ‘solutions’ will not be necessary.”
What this means in practice is that women must remain abstinent their entire lives or risk getting cervical cancer. The GOP opposes vaccinating people against HPV, they oppose sexual education, they oppose most forms of family planning, they oppose the distribution of contraceptives, they oppose the day-after Plan-B contraception, and they oppose Plan-C (abortion).
Add it all up and nothing could be clearer: the GOP wants women to get married at a young age and have children. To encourage them to do this they want to make sure that any sexual behavior is likely to result in either a sexually transmiited disease or a pregnancy that must be carried to term, or both.
So what is their advice?
Ten dollars to the church of the sacred bleeding heart of Jesus
Located somewhere in Los Angeles, California
And next week they’d say my prayer on the radio
And all my dreams would come true
So I did, the next week, I got a prayer with a girl
Well, you know what kind of eyes she got
She’s got no health insurance, no career prospects, she’s got HPV, and she’s got far away eyes. And now she knows: the GOP must be opposed with all her might.
the Long’s Drugs printout that came with this month’s birth control pills (the spouse just picked them up this afternoon) had information about HPV. He asked me about it, and I told him what I knew — that it was a leading cause of cervical cancer, that annual Pap smears were needed to catch the cancer early (fortunately I have to get an annual Pap — it’s required by our health insurance provider to get the annual BC prescription renewed). I also mentioned that a vaccine was on the horizon, but that the Religious Reich was opposing it because they were afraid that would give people permission to fuck their brains out (my precise words). He thought that sucked (his precise words).
A girl can “preserve” herself for her wedding night…but that’s no assurance that her future husband will. Not to mention what might happen after the ink is dry on the marriage license (the spouse and I are evidence of that)…
If someone came up with a vaccine against lung cancer, would these same people argue that such a vaccine would give people permission to smoke like chimneys?
“The wages of sin is death”…which is why the Religious Reich will forever oppose any measure that appears to prevent death caused by so-called “sinful” means…
Agreed, except to note that sinfulness is any act at odds with the supreme power of the Patriarch. Sin, and the wages of sin, are for chattel only.
Patriarchs engage in every behavior they denounce in their chattel: women (property) and young men (cannon fodder). But, because only Patriarchs can be sinned against, they themselves are exceedingly rarely deemed sinners – much less made to pay for their “transgressions.”
Christianism embraces a vengful Father God (or God-father, if you will), whose earthly incarations are equally as likely to smite and smote if they feel threatened by their chattel. Hence the trope of God’s Wrath, for those things that inflict suffering on others. Or, in the case where suffering is not naturally forthcoming, their need to supply it.
HPV is not prevented by condom useage, as the lesions can be on the scrotum or anus, etc.
I used to have this argument all the time with gay men, who expected us lesbians (i.e. the women’s auxilary “half” of the gay movement) to be at every AIDS fundraiser, but had not a clue, nor any interest in learning, about the number of lesbians dying of cervical cancer.
I’d try tell them that men started preaching “safe-sex” when, and only when, men started dying from having sex. And that women had been dying, and continued to die, in obscene numbers from even “safe-sex,” and nobody, including the “safe-sex” crowd gave a damn.
One or two might have “got it,” but the treat of HPV never made it to the forefront of rallies or into the condom bedecked literature. And that was 20 years ago.
Which is exactly why the wingnuts don’t want a vaccine to prevent HPV.
Their ace in the hole when it comes to the evil of condoms is that they don’t prevent all diseases–like HPV. Take that away, and well … they have to come up with another scare tactic.
Kinda like Plan B or RU-486–approving it takes away a tactic.
But back to your main point–that sucks. Our lives never get around to being important.
Too bad it wasn’t widely known 20 years ago that HPV can be a contributory cause in certain cancers of the anus and penis as well, or that might have changed their attitudes.
I’m grateful that the gay men with whom I fought for equality side by side in the 80s & 90s weren’t like that.
Hi IndyLib, when you say “that the gay men with whom I fought for equality side by side in the 80s & 90s weren’t like that,” could you give me some examples. Such as gay men, as a group, prioritising anything that affected women or minorities first and foremost, and sticking with it, like we lesbians have done with AIDS, for decades.
The only gay men I knew who were critical of the “gay” rights movement, were men-of-color who were equally marginalized by the focus on getting more white-male priviledges for white-male-gays.
I grew up in California, btw, (at one point I knew the founders of the Log Cabin Club). I also worked for one of the equality non-profits in San Francisco in the 80’s – so you might say I’ve seen the whole spectrum.
I like a lot of gay men, and a lot of them like me, but as a group, they still embrace male priviledge to a mind-numbing degree.
Hey Keres, I don’t know if you’ll see this, I noticed your reply late and so am responding to what may be a dead thread already, sorry for that.
In general terms, I completely agree that male privilege is a problem within the queer rights movement just as much as it is outside of it. Along with all the rest of the typical hierarchical privilege categories.
But in personal terms, I grew up and came out primarily in South Florida, the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area, and apparently my experience was just much more sex/gender/+otherwise cohesive than many other people’s — at least, gauging from the stories I hear. All I know is my own experience, of course. And where I was, the majority of queer folks worked together in a wide variety of local organizations, focusing on men, women, all manners of transID, health issues, race issues, language issues (large Hispanic population) etc. Sure, there were problems with male privilege, just like there were with white privilege, wealth privilege, English privilege, able-bodied privilege, and all the rest, but that’s to be expected in any Western social movement and it didn’t pollute the whole movement where I was.
I am increasingly grateful for the experience I had as I get older and realize that it wasn’t altogether common for others who are our relative age.
I will say this, though: I’ve only visited NoCal, so I can’t have a real impression because my experience with it was limited, but I did not like the queer community I found there at all. It seemed polarized and fragmented to a degree that I wasn’t familiar with prior to visiting there. It seemed to lack a wholistic sense of community and the folks seemed tensely at odds due to identity differences. I was sniped at by gay men there, actually, on several different occasions in contexts that would never have happened in SoFla, and in one bar I was actually physically, purposefully shoved by one, hard. Nope, I didn’t much care for it there, and frankly, it wasn’t any more representative of American queer communities in general, I thought, than Miami was. SoFla seemed more blended than average, but NoCal seemed much less to me.
as opposed to “Christianity” interesting, because the Christ I know and love would never have denied anyone the chance at any sort of life-saving treatment, whether it was a vaccine against HPV or remedies based on stem-cell research. The One who scandalized the religious leaders of His day by healing on the Sabbath would, IMNSHO, be a bit more liberal than the religious leaders of our own day…
I use the term Chrisianism to emphasize that it’s an “ism” (doctrine, belief, practice). And to linguistically afford it equal footing with Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Zorroastrinism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Flying Spagetti Monsterism.
The suffix -ity is used to express a state, like normality. This English languaged based linguistic slight-of-hand made Europe’s main religion “exist” a priori, whereas all other religions linguistically exist only in the minds of their belivers.
That said, I agree with you about “the Christ you know.” Unfortuately, the melding of his “new covenant” focus on human suffering, with the Old Testement focus on purity and taboo has created a diabolically dangerous religion.
Armed only with a patriarchally inspired list of do’s and don’t’s, evangelicals’ beliefs would be clearly out-of-step with more learned modern society. But tack on a Savior-Christ, with campassion as his main message, and you get compassionate conservitism, otherwise known “as we only hate you because we love you.” Or, we have to punish your bahavior to save your soul – and we’re only so adamant out of our (Christ’s) love for you. It’s all about you, and your own good, you see (not us).
and they’re going after it the old-fashioned way — have the men control the women, then those in power only have to control the men. For men to control women, women have to be dependent on men and for women to be dependent on men, they need to be constantly childbearing and childcaring. Women dying as a result of this strategy is just acceptable collateral damage.
You are so right. When viewed from this perspective, lots of things make sense.
Power over women is the booby prize the elite offers to wage slave men, and fear is the enforcer.
We can add fear of cancer to fear of rape, fear of domestic violence, fear of sexual harassment on the job, fear that the child support check will bounce again, fear of marginalization, discrimination and perpetual poverty, fear of pregnancy, fear of infertility, and fear of losing our children.
We live in a society that impels women to subordinate themselves to a male “protector”. Even if he’s the greatest guy in the world, dependency can make us bitter and resentful.
Many female mammals on the planet care for themselves and their offspring all on their own.
I’d like women to have the same rights and freedoms as a fox or a rabbit to provide food, shelter, and on the job training for their children.
Imagine a world where all women can choose to be with men simply because they love them. Imagine being a man who knows he’s genuinely loved and desired just the way he is.
my older daughter has hpv, lupus and fibromyalgia and has been sick for a long time….she has had the lesions scooped off her cervix twice in the last 18 months and has been told because of her immuno issues she will probably keep getting the lesions and lose her cervix eventually…and her medical insurance which her dad has carried while she finished college will end next summer….thats a lot of pressure for a college graduate 3 months past her graduation to find a job with benefits….this country is crazy…they dont want to help prevent a completely preventable disease because girls will have sex without a husband which will make jesus cry and they dont want universal heathcare because a few profit mongering assholes wont make millions of dollars and they will cry….this is the most unchristian nation i can imagine.
Come hell or high water I’m making sure my daughter gets this vaccine.
Thanks Booman. We need reminding of this bs.
Booman, does she really know? I keep wondering how many at risk people (and under Bush, most of us are at risk for some horrible thing or other) know how much of their risk could be prevented or controlled with more compassionate government.
A couple of weeks ago someone (I’m not saying who in case I’m totally wrong.) mentioned something about classic anarchy. And it got me thinking: I think the radical conservatives are actually anarchists. And while it sounded a little appealing as part of my “American Radicalism and Reform Class” back in 1973. I don’t think it’s working out so well in real life.
So, does she really, really know? Or was she humoring you?
I mentioned it if that’s who you were thinking but really there is nothing about radical conservatives beliefs or actions that has anything to do with anarchism, which is based on the belief that all human are completely interdependent that we must take care of each other to survive. Today’s conservatism is based entirely on unenlightened self-interest for the well-off and state control for the lumpenproletariat; it is just about as far from anarchism.
check out Food Not Bombs.
Exactly. And it sounds like an excellent organization.
And the last sentence in my post was supposed to be ” it is just about as far from anarchism as a political approach can get.”
seeing as there is a local chapter here in Rochester, NY, and I am a vegetarian. Of course, not sure how my employer, who works with government contracts, would like an employee of their’s to be associated with an anarchist group…
You could always just donate some money — if your employer is so intrusive as to check out your charitable donations, I’d say it’s time to look for a new job 😉
Well, that would explain why I didn’t get very far as a liberal arts major.
I think it actually explains why you didn’t become an anarchist.
I think this whole conversation goes back to my dizzyness — I’m not going to talk about anything serious until my head clears. I can’t possibly be as stupid as I feel today.
like the time when I asked my mom why the woman down the street had such a big belly. She told me, “She swallowed some watermelon seeds.” That was the extent of my sexual education by my mother.
When I was in school, I remember sex education well. A bunch of wise asses used to always ask, “How do homosexuals have sex?” And the teacher’s reply? “Mutual masturbation”!! No mention of anal or oral sex.
Of course, now it’s “Just say no.” And I hear they show nasty pictures of STD-infected genitals.
We’re on a slippery slope of an epidemic of STDs and unwanted pregnancies in this country if the Talibornagains get their way…Of course happenings such as Dover, PA wiping out their fundamentalist school board give one hope…
im actually all for showing pictures of nasty green pus oozing genital sores if it will get kids (and grownups) to use condoms…i showed them to my daughters and hopefully scared the crap out of them….the idea it will stop anyone from actually having sex is silly but it may get them to suit up before they go in.
we had a talk this weekend about dental dams….my daughter and her boyfriend are the only people i know who use them….even i dont use them….its like we all got the message we need to use condoms and we would never think of having casual sex with anyone but our fluid bonded partners without condoms…but none of us and almost no one i know uses dental dams or condoms for oral sex with their casual sex partners….i know the risks are low…but they are still there….sometimes i feel like a hypocrite on this issue….i preach safer sex all the time but i hate dental dams and im not going to use them ….and i wonder, for those of us actually giving the safe sex talks to our kids, if we are promoting safe oral sex also? both of my daughters identify themselves as bisexual….probably a lot of our kids are at least experimenting with bisexuality and according to studies they are comfortable with oral sex….but are they thinking in their heads that its safer sex? im not so sure thats a good thing.
Now if this wingnut said:
We’re all for preventing polio, but is this really the way to do it – by shooting this stuff into our kids?
Then that asshole would be laughed out the room.
He still should be laughed out the room.
We want to save lives. They want to save their talking points. Tell me who the evildoers are again?
But we already knew that.
when it comes to HPV.
When I was 15, I got gential warts (and although I didn’t know it until about 15 years later, a couple of not-nice strains of HPV) from borrowing a pair of jeans froma friend of mine. Her boyfriend had to get his anal warts cauterized….ick. Fortunately for me, there was Planned Parenthood, but the solution then was a kind of acidy compound that if you didn’t wash it off completely, exactly when they told you to, would basically eat through your skin….I was waiting tables at Red Lobster then and ended up with SEVERE “burns” all over my vulva…very nice.
I had never been taught about HPV — all kinds of other STDs, but no mention of HPV AT ALL.
And I love the wingnuts’ argument — “this will give them free reign to engage in activities that they most likely will anyway!!” What fools! We give kids vaccines of ALL kinds and you don’t see them running off and engaging in self-destructive behavior (ok, well, at least not because of the vaccines!) You don’t want the vaccine for your kid, fine, don’t get it, but to yabber on about not making it available? PLEASE!
But first, education, you are right — what most people (people who have even heard of it in the first place) don’t know about HPV is that it is HIGHLY transmissible (why condoms do not always work) and DOES NOT require sexual contact — the virus can stay alive for a while outside of the body. Also, little known is that there are over 800 different strands of the virus and someone may have it hanging out on them with no symptoms or reaction at all, but when you come along — BOOM, there it is. MOST people carry around one strain of HPV or another (or 7) with no problems, but it’s always out there (or in there, sorry to be crude) somewhere.
When I was 30 and 31, I went through an almost 2 year battle with HPV — started with an abnormal pap, went through colposcopies galore, biopsies, outpatient surgery (in which they lasered 7 malignant spots and excised 2 — yes, childbirth hurts, but right up there on the pain extreme is getting stiches out of your vulva without anethesia because it would cause swelling and keep the doc from getting the stiches out without tearing….).
After all of that, it came back. Because of the nightmare of modern health insurance I ended up driving to San Antonio with my cells on slides in a cooler in the back of my car in July (no AC) only to be confronted with an asshole doctor who says, “So, what can we do for you today?” and then he performs another biopsy (and then I had to drive home….) My OBGYN then had it out with the insurance company and got me an appointment at MD Anderson (where she wanted me to go int he first place…). It’s a long ass fucking story and this post is already too long — suffice it to say, that the MOMENT I can, I will be getting these vaccines for my sons and recommending to thier goddessmother who has two daughters (12 and 14) that she get them for them also.
Stupid, stupid fucks, I despise their weaponized ignorance beyond words.
when you’re dowright distgusted, and life ain’t worth a damn, find a girl with far away eyes….
Beautiful diary, Boo, not only should you be allowed to interact with the public, it should be a fucking requirement! 😉
Surely you are being punished for SOMETHING. Oh–you shouldn’t borrow clothes from your slutty friends. That’s it!
And we tell you this because we love you.
This is utter, utter, insanity.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to deal with any wingnuts during my ordeal, but it was pretty much hell anyway — I did all sorts of numbers on myself, imagining worst-case scenarios and such…at one point I was CONVINCED that I would have to have a vulvectomy (do NOT look this up unless you have a very strong stomach) … the worst my cell clusters got were a stage 4 (which is one step away from actual cancer), but the whole thing is absolutely terrifying — its been almost 8 years with no problems, but the fact that it might pop up again at any time is a nagging uncertainty … it is one (of many) that I have lerned to live with, but, why, for fuck’s sake, should ANYone have to if they don’t have to???!
It is this kind of “thinking” that I just have NO patience for. Insanity doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
Your humanity is showing! This is really a powerful post. Thanks. Our right wing friends, a bit confused with their brand of conservatism that creates record budget deficits, turns instead to preserving things that never were. Human beings, at least healthy ones, are sexual creatures.
Thanks for posting this Boo. A couple other items for consideration:
Following are reasons why it is so critical for women to make the time to get annual exams and STD testing:
Source: http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_index.php?idx=home
One more thing: I heard a piece on the radio yesterday about folks who work but don’t have health insurance b/c they can’t afford it, and I do believe they talked to a waitress who found herself +$2000 in debt to the hospital b/c she had biking accident. After charging her for everything, including ambulance fees, the hospital staff told her to go home and ice her injury.
I immediately thought about her reading what you wrote.
This is insanity. Our health care system is lorded over by greedy bastards and wingnut power-mongers.
Serious question for Democratic Party Partisans: How do you expect to get this woman’s vote when you’re running candidates who want to screw over her life in exactly the same way?
Now that’s a good question…shall we ask Chuck Schumer?
Oh wait, I already know the answer…her vote isn’t “moral” enough to win an election with, so the Dems are chasing the Republicans’ so-called “values” voters instead…
tsk tsk….
You just don’t get it.
Electing Democrats that are as vile as Republicans is good for women because they will magically legislate in favor of women’s reproductive rights once Dems become the majority…. but until then they will vote in league with the Devil on women’s issues.
We have a lot of these guys in our state lege in Texas. One of them is our state representative, who Mr. dks has announced he is running against. For more, see here, and here.
Now for the question.
Will she bother to vote?
will there be anyone to vote for? Espcially on this issue, I am still looking around and seeing a barren field.
I have execised my right/duty to vote since I became of legal age, I have lawys taken the time to inform myself, as voting while ignorant (VWI) seems to me just as wrong as drivning while intoxicated (DWI) but, as I get older, and find new and more thorough ways to inform myself, the people worth voting for get fewer and far-er in between….
What are you going to give her to vote for?
I just sent you an email. Will you be able to go check out Ted Ankrum for us at the DFT meeting tomorrow night?
My experience has been that the people who don’t bother to vote will often excuse themselves by saying there is no one to vote for. Using that excuse, they simply don’t bother to investigate and try to influence the election for the better of the various evils running.
The people who don’t bother to vote are in fact the same people who are most hurt by having Republicans in office.
You may not think much of the candidates (do you know them, or are you just going by rumors and things bad enough to write a new story about?) but you can still vote for the Party that is closer to your policies.
There is no excuse for not voting outside being prevented by police from getting to the polls or sudden, unplanned severe illness or accident.
Will she bother to vote?
… for who… Casey???
I never expected this criticism. Some people are hard to please.
So you shouldn’t talk about the fact that women are usually on the lower end of the economic scale than men, and thus have less access to care? Or that women are the only people who get cervical cancer, and that a vaccine that could reduce the incidence of that cancer by 50% is under fire from religious nuts? Because you’re portraying women as victims?
Sheesh…guess you should just talk to old men about their prostates when you go to the bar, Boo…
I’m struggling to understand how my diary is paternalistic. I mean, it discusses the fact that our society is paternalistic and that the GOP is responsible for making it more so, but what did I do? I had a beer with a woman and wrote about it.
Well, just stop it. That person is NOT worth it. For the rest, see my post above.
Fwiw, I don’t think your essay is paternalistic. I actually think it’s one of the better pieces you’ve written on the general subject of gender issues since I’ve been reading you, which goes back to your posts at dKos before you started this blog. From my pov you’ve shown a great deal of learning and growth about gender issues during that time, and that’s just one of the reasons why I keep reading your essays.
It’s not paternalistic at all. It’s great, and it reflects reality.
BTW, your pieces with a slice of South Philly in them are always my favorites.
GOP is responsible for making it more so
…aided and abetted by the current Democratic leadership…
I take it that this the girl with the eyes lives in Philly… so politically speaking she is in a lose/lose situation Sanatorum v. Casey la même merde.
Democrats can not profess to be holier and more progressive than the GOP at the same time insisting on running the same vile characters on a cloaked in bs excuses about electablity….
you’ll learn to consider yourself a democrat, and most of us here democrats, and stop characterizing the Democrats by what Chuck Schumer does.
I never understand that. We are trying to get progressive Democrats, pro-choice democrats elected to office here in PA. Join the fun if you like, but stop saying I don’t have the right to say what I am fighting against.
Your mentality is to be a witness, a passive witness. The Party is shaped and funded. Shape and fund it, or watch others do it for you.
Boo-hoo that Bob Casey is running for Governor. I’ll be voting for Pennacchio. And I’ll be voting for a Chaka Fattah. And I’ll be helping 5 other
southeastern congressional candidates (all pro-choice) all running against lifers.
There is a lot to do beyond constant complaining. Either you are in the party or you are just an idle witness and commentator.
Boo-hoo that Bob Casey is running for <s>Governor</s> Senate.
So, what is this diary about…?
I think it is wonderful that you are able to empathize with this woman… however, she really will “Boo-hoo” if Casey is elected… then what…? How does one then look into her eyes and rationalize Democrats backing Casey?
This is not personal… but I am constantly perplex at the disconnect between stratergie and reality. Here is a perfect example of the current Democratic strategerie in action. The very same strategerie touted and promoted throughout the blogosphere… and all you can say is “Boo Hoo”…
Well that is what I have been saying all along… yeah… we should be crying because the strategy sucks and will only HURT, MAIM and KILL people like this girl. ONLY DEMOCRATS can provide a viable alternative to the GOP…and we fail as Democrats when the stratgerie dictates that Dems run the same candidates as the GOP.
What you consider “non democratic behavior” I consider “shaping” as you put it. Just as you try to enlighten (ie shape) folks on what you believe to be the best for the party …. so do I. However, I believe that there is nothing empowering about just pinning the blame on the GOP. It is just restating the obvious…. Democrats need to “HEAL THYSELF” (Circle of influence) before, during and after diagnosing the GOP.
Blaming the GOP just continues the Kerry campaign… not giving people a reason to vote for Democrats just a reason notto vote for the GOP.
I think and speak therefore… I shape
but I am a democrat, I am the party too. I can’t do a whole lot about Casey other than make some noise about how I don’t like him, or how he was selected. But if I stop and stare at Casey I won’t be able to do anything else. Move on, Parker. Forget what has already been done. Am I supposed to tell that woman that there is no answer because no one will fight for her, or am I supposed to explain that I will fight for her, and that she can fight for herself, and here’s how.
Until you put your mind inside the party you are just like a film critic, rather than the director, producer, or one of the editors. Always looking in and saying democrats do this, democrats do that. Democrats also do the other, and they so the other most of the time.
Don’t try to “frame” me…as an “outsider”…
I am in and I see perfectly clear what others would prefer to blind themselves to. I prefer my actions not to be “directed” from the GOP funded DLC/NDN Think Tanks that keep coming up with this garbage.
Forget what has already been done.
Who said it was over… ???
This leadership counts on the base holding their nose and voting for these revolting candidates. You yourself have already pledge to vote for Casey in the general… so what motivation does that give to the leadership to atleast attempt to find a Democrat not in name only to run…
I vote. I don’t leave shit blank. You give me a chance to vote against Santorum and I can’t pass it up. That’s me. I want a clean sweep: Frist, DeLay, Hastert, Santorum. Take out the whole leadership. Bam!! There. See?
Casey hasn’t won, and it’s not over. But Casey is running. That is decided. Get over it. Write Chuck a check. Tell Schumer how pissed you are. But at the end of the day, find candidates you can support.
I don’t leave shit blank.
I don’t vote for shit…
Of course the young woman should have hope. And she probably does, in her own way. Maybe she hopes to be discovered by a wealthy businessperson who will be impressed with her and offer her a better job so that she will have money to give to the insurance companies. Or maybe she hopes to marry an affluent man who will be able to purchase medical treatment for her. Or maybe she is religious, and prays for a deity to cure her. Or maybe she will like BooMan’s idea, and hope that if she becomes a devotee of this or that politician, that he or she will rise up and revolt against their corporate sponsors, and those sponsors will meekly acquiesce and agree to forgo the revenue generated by her not having medical treatment, or a living wage, or much of a future.
Hope is a very individual thing, and it is almost impossible, especially for young folks, to maintain the balance between hope and reality contact. And in some cases, maybe the reality contact is not the best thing.
The bleak reality is that the young woman does not enjoy good prospects. She is quite fortunate that she has not yet been priced out of housing, but as is the case with her health problem, that is just a question of time. That does not mean, however, that she should not hope for a miracle, any miracle that makes it a little easier for her to get from day to day.
Events will unfold, history assures us that they will, but history also assures us that the correction will not be pleasant, nor will it produce a Utopia, and whether this one young woman will survive long enough to receive the benefits is an open question that no one can answer definitively.
We can, however, hope.
And it is no small thing that BooMan, or any other human being, feels empathy and compassion for another.
That in itself is a very hopeful sign.
you know, universal health care is not a hopeless dream Ductape. It’s attainable. Vaccinating young people against HPV can become a funded policy. It’s not a cult, it’s a process.
the correction will be that, and in my opinion, it is quite likely, as I believe that this will be a large factor in the catalysm of that correction.
Yes, the window for a political solution has closed, but as the old saying goes, when one door closes, another opens.
I do not think that generally speaking, there is a sense of the impact of the coming Medicare donut death wave.
I actually want to write a diary about the medicare donut and what it means for all involved…but can’t until I finish my current run of classes..grr.
… we’ll realize that without beliefs, without standards, then the Party is nothing more than a club, a fraternity, a team who’s jerseys you wear on Sundays:
Partisan War Syndrome
All of this “get with the team” that we keep hearing over and over is KILLING us.
But that is precisely my point. Be a democrat and fight for your issues. Shape the party, pressure the party, get some leverage in the party, push back.
Don’t look at other democrats that don’t agree with you about x,y, or z and declare that you are no longer a democrat. No one can do that to you. Better they look around one day and feel like leaving.
Everytime someone says something negative about ‘the Democrats’ I take it as a personal insult. Chuck Schumer doesn’t speak for me and he doesn’t own this party. The party must coordinate many different movements and it is never defined by any single one of them, despite the efforts of the GOP.
Get to work. And trust me on one thing. Give us subpoena power and things will change in this country. For the better.
you get it backward.
If you declare yourself “one of them” BEFORE you’ve driven home the standards you require, you’ve already lost.
And don’t you dare tell me to “get to work” implying that ONLY work within the party “counts”. Again, we have DECADES of proof on how well that works.
The party is PLAYING you, and they will ONLY listen if you threaten to withhold your votes, withhold your money and/or THREATEN TO LEAVE.
Then you have to leave when they tell you you have no other choice. I plan on withholding my votes if the national candidate is someone like Biden or Bayh. I encourage everyone else who gives a fuck about liberal values to do the same.
People need to start putting their vote where their mouth is…
have to debate the way power is divvied up in our federal system. At the root of it, in my opinion it is never better to lose a federal election. In theory, it is sometimes better to lose very badly than to lose narrowly. But it is always better to win. I would never consider voting outside the 2-party system in a federal election because power only exists within them and there is always a better of two choices.
Give me a Republican that is better than Bayh and Biden and I might vote for the Republican. But in reality we don’t vote for a person, but for a gang and for thousands of jobs for our activists all over the bureaucracy where they can make a real difference. Naw, the only way I’d vote against the Dems is if I knew they were going to get killed and I just wanted to make it worse so they would learn their lesson.
….
Yes I think we can all agree that it is better to win than lose.
But that is not the debate … now is it?
The debate is whether it is better to elect a “Democrat” that will NOT represent the Democratic base in Washington.
That is the reality… we do not vote for activists and political consultants.
that is exactly what we vote for. In a Presidential election we are voting for countless jobs, for lawyers and judges, and environmentalists, and educators, and labor leaders, and scientists, and inteligence operatives, and the state department, and advocates for the homeless and the poorly housed, and for trade representatives, and on and on and on.
That is why Kerry sold us out. It wasn’t his decision to quit. It was all of ours who bled for him and deserved our reward. We vote for ourselves. We vote for whatever the left has managed to become at any period in time. Or we enable our enemies to infest the government and run it into the shoals.
to follow that logic the suffragists should have never taken to the streets, the labor movement should have never gone on strike and the peace movement should have just shown up for their draft boards.
FWIW, if the candidate is Hillary, then I’m voting for the Green candidate…that can extend to Biden and Bayh as well.
I want a female candidate that doesn’t think that she has to be a hawk to prove she’s butch enough to be President…
Everytime someone says something negative about ‘the Democrats’ I take it as a personal insult.
You must feel insulted constantly…
Well… I don’t make blanket judgments. If the negative statement is a LIE…then I am insulted.
If the negative statement is the TRUTH then I consider it Freedom of Speech ..I find it difficult to be insulted by the truth. Perhaps that is where we differ… there is not one shread of negative truth about Casey that could make me feel personally insulted.
you make more blanket judgments than anyone on here.
If a decision was made to run Casey, ‘the Democrats’ did it. No, they didn’t. I didn’t. You didn’t. Specific people made that decision. Not ‘the democrats’. Likewise, I believe in something, so you can’t say ‘the Democrats’ don’t believe in anything.
I vote for shit all the time. I don’t leave shit blank. Some shit stinks worse than other shit.
I don’t care how you vote. I’m just fatigued from your negativity.
Negativity…
If you call stating truths about Democrats negative… so be it.
I once tried to create a positive discussion about “framing”…
here’s my point. What is more offensive?
That Casey is running for office or that he had the deck cleared for him?
The Democrats didn’t get a fair shot at picking the candidate they wanted because some losers intervened in the process.
If Casey had run on a level playing field and won, then the Democrats of Pennsylvania would be getting the representation they want. What we agree about is that it is wrong to shortcircuit that process.
You want to know a dirty little secret? Casey probably would have won anyway. He would have won on name recognition in a low turnout primary. I wish people were a lot more savvy and lot more involved, but they are not. The appalling thing is that they didn’t give us a chance to get a Senator that really represented us.
But ‘they’ are Rendell and Schumer. Two people. Two important people. Two good Democrats that did something wrong.
Casey probably would have won anyway.
pure conjecture… just like after Kerry lost the “dirty secret” was the Dean would have lost also…
The only truth is as you pointed out that the Dem Party has a habit of over turning the wishes of it’s base for their own personal greedy rewards… Casey is not a one off event… they pushed out Mike Miles for Salazar… Dean for ABB (aka Kerry)… even as we speak it is happening to Hackett for Brown and Celgelis for Duckworthy… and cautiously pushing out Mfume (not wanting another Ferrer debacle).
Sorry but I can not isolate this as “a few bad apples” it is rife and rampant throughout the entire Democratic party….
And trust me on one thing. Give us subpoena power and things will change in this country.
I am wondering where your optimism and confidence stems from on this?
Yesterday, Mark Warner announced his war view, which is essentially identical to Clinton’s from a policy standpoint — but he also added that we should avoid “debating the past”. That sounds an awful lot like let’s avoid discussing what got us here in the first place.
Before you say that MW or HC don’t own the Democrats, just as Chuck Schumer doesn’t own the Democrats (but he does own the Senate races), or Casey doesn’t own, etc. reconsider in terms of how some here might feel about the fact that we find ourselves striking a heck of a lot of high profile Democrats from our lists. At the end of the day, if you’re rejecting a number of ‘star’ members of your “own” party — are you really a Democrat? I don’t mean the fanciful conjectures of “what/who a Democrat is” that I read online, on almost a daily basis, but rather, do you identify with the influential members who set the agenda of the party that you pledge your loyalty to?
It is completely understandable and reasonable to me that you might feel personally offended if your party identification is someting you feel strongly about. I don’t think it’s anyone’s intention to insult or attack you personally — I don’t sense that. Perhaps what you need to think about is what is more important to you: activism for your party vs the online presence you are building.
If the former is more important, then you might consider an editorial policy re: criticism of Democrats. It is well within your control to shape the site as you best see fit, in agreement with your ideals and (end) goals. If the latter is your priority, then you must accept diverging views on the state of the party and its future evolution, and most importantly, accept that these diverging views are not an attack against the site’s proprietor.
Paternalistic, eh? Fuck that.
I am tempted to go over there and open a big ole can of brinn-whup-ass, but I won’t. No. I resisted it too, when hrh bitched about how you turned this woman into a “poster child for HPV” without fully developing her “character”. Or the other one (can’t remember the poster’s name) who said that getting HPV was not the end of the world. Well, no shit, asshat, only the end of the wrold is the end of the world, and even then, maybe it isn’t, but I hope that you can be so dismissive of the entire thing after you get laser shots into your vulva and/or testicles, and yeah, the whole stitches out without anethesia would be good too. Again, I say, fuck that.
Paternalistic is NOT a “dirty” word — there a LOT of good things about paters (and yes, I’m fully aware, thank you, of oppresive societal structures, etc. etc.), the diary that Boo wrote, the experience that he had, and his communication thereof DOES NOT CONSITUTE PATERNALISM. Sorry for yelling, but I swear, these people who have an opinion about everything, but an experience of nothing and lack the ability to tell the difference, just really piss me off.
Rock on, Boo.
it’s because you put it all in the context of a song about hooking up, and a conversation with a girl you met in a bar? Imagine if I wrote up a post about seeing a Chippendales show and using it as a touchstone to speculate on the practice of circumcision in America.
I’m glad you took up the cause of the HPV vaccine. (And what will these same wingnuts say when there’s finally a vaccine for HIV/AIDS?) But I confess I was a bit confused by the context you set.
Not your problem. Your story was good, and that person has a burr under his/her saddle and chose your story to complain about.
I rated them “2” while I was over there. Quite a marginal post, in my opinion.