We Were All New Yorkers On September 12. We're Not All Republicans Now

Upon reading transcripts from last night's RNC kickoff, I remarked, "Rudy Giuliani is going to be assassinated by a 9/11 widow by the end of the week."

Yeah. My FBI file just got that much bigger. Eat me, John Ashcroft.

Read this speech and tell me we were wrong to suspect that the RNC was yet again (ab)using 9/11 for its own political gain by holding its convention in New York.

Or let me read the best parts for you.

Thank you. Welcome to the capital of the world.
Hate to break it to you, Rudy, but New York City isn't even the capital of the state. (Oh, if I can't start off snide...)

And it was here in 2001, in the same lower Manhattan, that President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, and he said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, "They will hear from us." Well, they heard from us. They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban. They heard from us in Iraq, and we ended Saddam Hussein's reign of terror."
Yes! Saddam Hussein blew up the World Trade Center! Keep telling yourself that.

For the record, he brought up 9/11 less than 50 words into the speech.

Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki, all of you that worked so hard in bringing this convention to New York, our president and the party that decided they'd have it here, above and beyond everything else, it's a statement, it's a strong statement that New York City and America are open for business, and we are stronger than ever.
A statement, a strong statement, that I'm going to throw up if Republicans keep trying to make hay out of September 11.

You know, we're just not going to let the terrorists determine where we have political conventions, where we go, how we travel.
Unless Tom Ridge changes the color of the alert.

From the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, to President George W. Bush, our party's great contribution is to expand freedom in our own land and all over the world.
BAHAHAHAHA*PatriotAct*HAHAHAHA!

For me, when I arrived there and I stood below the north tower and I looked up, and seeing the flames of hell emanating from those buildings, and realizing that what I was actually seeing was a human being on the 101st, 102nd floor, that was jumping out of the building, I stood there, it probably took five or six seconds, it seemed to me that it took 20 or 30 minutes, and I was stunned.[...]At the time, we believed that we would be attacked many more times that day and in the days that followed. Without really thinking, based on just emotion, spontaneous, I grabbed the arm of then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and I said to him, "Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president."
You fucking bastard. You'd better be lying.

President George W. Bush already has earned a place in history as a great American president.
If history is written by alcoholic Texans with learning disabilities.

The attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics was in 1972. That's a long time ago[...]The three surviving terrorists were arrested. And then within just three months, the terrorists who slaughtered the Israeli athletes were released by the German government -- set free.
Jews good! Germans baaaad!
(Hey, I'm German and Jewish. I can say that sort of thing.)

In 1985, terrorists attacked the Achille Lauro. And they murdered an American citizen who was in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer. They marked him for murder solely because he was Jewish. Some of those terrorists were released, and some of the remaining terrorists -- they were allowed to escape by the Italian government because of fear of reprisals from the terrorists.
Jews good! Americans good! Italians baaaad!

So terrorists learned they could intimidate the world community, and too often the response, particularly in Europe
Fuck Europe! These Euro wimps like to have trials instead of sodomizing prisoners. Let's just toss a few grenades into the UN and do our own thing!

Before September 11, we were living with an unrealistic view of our world, much like observing Europe appease Hitler...
Oh, Christ.
Okay, with this much of the speech devoted to demonizing Europe, I can't help but wonder if that's the next stop on the Imperialist Express if Bush gets a second term. If we just take over the EU, we won't have to worry about their opinions...

The president announced the Bush Doctrine, when he said, "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." And since September 11, President Bush has remained rock solid.
Except when he said "I don't think you can win" the war on terror...then came back a day later and said "we will win." And wait, didn't we already declare "mission accomplished" on this thing?

Jeez, what a flip-flopper...I don't think I can vote for him now...plus he looks kinda German...

They ridiculed Winston Churchill. They belittled Ronald Reagan. But like President Bush, they were optimists.
If Bush thinks our glass is half full at this point, it's only because he doesn't understand fractions.

President Bush will make certain that we are combating terrorism at the source, beyond our shores, so we don't have to confront it, or we reduce of confronting it here in New York City, or in Chicago or in Los Angeles or in Miami or in the rural areas of America.
Like Oklahoma City? Oh, wait, that wasn't the Taliban or the Iraqis...or WAS IT? (Yes, the Defense Department is insane.)


Not a word about jobs, health care, homelessness, poverty, education -- except to say that Middle Eastern governments don't address some of these things very well:
Rather than trying to grant more freedom, or create more income, or improve education and basic health care, these governments deflect their own failures by pointing to America and to Israel and to other external scapegoats
Can WE get some more freedom, more income, better education, and basic health care? Giuliani's whole vision for America is avenging 9/11 by taking over every country with an even worse government than ours. And this is supposed to be the party of optimists?

America can do better. I'm not sure help is on the way, though.

In all seriousness. If anyone should respect the memory of 9/11 victims enough to not turn them into a political talking point, it's Giuliani. He was there. He saw it all. He should know this is a matter not to be trifled with.

Look, I'm from the New York area. Several in my life were affected by September 11, some more tragically than others. And none of them are voting for Bush (Even my most conservative family member, who evacuated lower Manhattan that day and hates the hell out of Kerry, is going to vote Nader or stay home). So let's not tell the rest of the country that Bush owns 9/11. When the people of New York City vote for the dumb prick instead of protesting him en masse, then we can talk.

And don't get me started on having to look at the Bush twins...

I watched the MTV Video Music Awards last night. I admit it. I've missed a few over the years, but watching the Cure perform "Just Like Heaven" in 1989 forever sealed my off-kilter taste in music (and, let's face it, men) and for that the dumbass show has a place in my heart. It always seemed to air the night before my first day of school, officially putting a seal on the end of summer.

Now, I haven't had a first day of school in 8 years, and the VMAs are pretty much devoid of those moments that made it worth sitting through the whole 3 1/2 hour fiasco. I guess this was true last year, too. I could tell before it happened that Brittney and Madonna were going to do some fake-lesbian antics in a sad attempt to stay in the headlines. This year, there were performances that were pleasant and all (Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder?) but nothing that rocked my world. And dammit, you'd think only 10 songs came out this year, all of them lame.

(Nostalgia alert: Look at 1989's nominees/winners. There was a fair share of dancey mainstream crap, but also Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Tracy Chapman, Tanita Tikaram (?!), Living Colour, the last good Metallica song, and so on. Rap wasn't yet getting much recognition, but let's be real...good rap isn't getting much recognition now. And instead of the incredibly weak "MTV2" awards category, we had the poorly named but much better "best postmodern video" category, proof that Siouxie and the Banshees were on MTV once.)

Plus, the bland Americanness of the whole thing was really putting me off. The constant editing for language. The robotic urging of the young audience to vote (yet the night was so free of partisanship that I know "no Bush bashing" must have been a rule. One of the Beastie Boys silently showed the audience an anti-Bush patch on his weird green jumpsuit, and that was it.) Even the scarcity of skanky outfits smacked of a post-Janet Jackson crackdown. The whole show had as much edge as the front page of the Boston Globe, and yet they seemed to be aiming it squarely at teenagers.

I mean, hello: a new category for best video game soundtrack?

Compare it to the European VMAs where girl-on-girl action makes absolutely no headlines, swear words don't ruffle any feathers, the band I got sick of hearing from was Gorillaz as opposed to freakin' Usher (zzz), and they let Rammstein perform with flamethrowers. It was still absolutely inane, but there was a wider variety of acts nominated and you could tell the target audience was slightly older than JoJo.

MTV gave one sad little nod to acts outside the top 10, by having the cult...er, band...Polyphonic Spree perform. If that was their attempt to capture the alternative market, then today's disgruntled youth must be drowning their angst in massive doses of E. As I said to Rick, "I'll take my joyous bombast from Queen instead."

I think Outkast summed it up best when they said, during the evening's final performance, "For the millionth time...'Hey Ya,' goddammit."

Even the Grammys were more fun.

I'm officially a grown-up. Bring on the orthopedic shoes.

Friday afternoon musings

My cat, like most cats, loves tuna. She'll even settle, gleefully, for the water we drain out of the can. However, she won't touch the tuna water from our current stock of Costco tuna. I offered her an actual chunk of fish from it on Wednesday, and she still wouldn't eat it.

This begs the question: what the hell noxious preservative/fungicide/urine is Costco putting in its tuna that makes even a fat housecat turn it down?

***

I was driving home from Hollywood today through the nebulous part of La Brea Ave that I think is called "Mid-City." It's not The Ghetto, but it's urban and definitely not pretty. And what do I see, but an LAPD officer mounting a horse.

The cop and his horse then stood patiently at a busy intersection, in front of a chain link fence covered in fliers advertising hip-hop CDs, gazing in the direction of a strip mall. It was one of those moments I wonder if I'm having an acid flashback, until I remember I've never taken acid.

***

I was at a free concert last night, and since it gets semi-chilly on the oceanfront at night, I was wearing a sweater. Specifically, a purple turtleneck from the first Bush administration. The friend I was with pointed out that I wasn't getting many handouts (people always troll these concerts passing out flier for club dates, poetry readings, political protests, etc.) The flier people passed me by, I figured, because I looked like a tool. Meanwhile, my friend got handouts for a strip club, and griped that he seems to get more of those than other men. (Because he looks like a fratboy.)

Later, we discussed how the jeans-'n'-tshirt, "As long as I'm comfortable I don't care" philosophy was getting harder to maintain. Physically comfortable is beginning to sometimes equal socially uncomfortable, he pointed out. (Or, as another friend once observed, "There's a line between 'casual' and 'hobo.'") He chalked this up to us being in our late 20s and feeling pressure to look/act "adult." Or, we might want to blame LA, the most superficial city in the US.

I've been wondering lately whether I'm growing up/old gracefully enough. I want to be a cool old lady someday, but I don't want to be this guy. Regardless, maybe it's time to get rid of any clothes I wore in high school.

But, to the guy in the bar on Wednesday who told me to "lose the polo shirt:" no freakin' way I'm taking fashion advice from a grown man in red velour.

Does anybody want a Gmail invitation? I've got five now for some reason. I suppose I could use all of them myself and have 6 gigs of storage...

Blah blah, politics, blah, rude language, Bush bashing, blah

There isn't a whole lot I can say about this whole Not So Swift Boat circle jerk that's been dominating the media lately. Nothing that hasn't been said by a million left-wing blogger monkeys at a million laptops, anyway. I'll just join the hordes and echo that I can't belive we're talking about bullshit like the origin of the shrapnel in Kerry's leg when our "war president" probably still can't find Vietnam on a map. A labeled map.

I am not, as George Carlin put it, a warlike people. I'm what military types probably refer to as a bleeding heart commie liberal pussy, in fact. But Christ on a pogo stick, if we're going to make national defense the big issue of the campaign, can we talk about Bush's (lack of) military record a bit more -- including the pages that went into the Memory Hole? And shame on the Democrats for not yelling louder about this, after all their work to make Kerry's war service his major qualification, at the expense of better candidates. And, Kerry, learn from Gore's mistakes and get a spine -- for your country's sake, if not your own.

Worse comes to worse, for Kerry: it's all true, he was a lousy soldier and he blew himself up just to get a purple heart. WHATEVER. Is it worse than anything Dubya or Cheney or Ashcroft or Rumsfeld get up to on any random Thursday? No. I don't even like Kerry that much, I've never seen the Swift Boat ads, and I'm ignoring most of the media coverage -- and I'm still sick to death of this.

This rant has been brought to you by four hours of sleep. And an incredible, mostly-repressed fear that outright lies and America's trademark lack of prioritization (health care? jobs? civil rights?) are going to alter the course of this election enough that we're stuck with another four years of Bush taking this once-great nation years backwards.

Why yes, I am a bankruptcy demon. Slay me.

Goddamn, even education companies go out of business within a year of hiring me.

By popular demand -- okay, by Rick's demand -- here's 101 in 1001.