Multiple Personality

Did you see that clip of “Joe the Plumber,” who — in their newest piece of excellent, thoughtful campaign strategy — has been brought onto the McCain team to speak for them around the country? He was asked by a Real American if he didn’t agree that Obama would be the “death of Israel.” Joe the Plumber agreed. Joe the Plumber is one of the greater meshugginahs to come up in the McCainiac horde recently. (But, of course, I forget Tito the Builder. I’m not making this up…they now have a Tito the Builder.)

Anyway, since it’s better to light one Shabat candle than to curse the darkness (”oy, you fakakte darkness!”), here is a video that should be shown to everybody’s grandparents in swing-state Florida. I know there’s that fancy clip about Israelis supporting Obama, but wouldn’t you rather hear some bubbie’s singin’ about it? (I would love to have been a fly on the wall of whatever community center these mamalehs gathered to record this, apparently on a vintage cassette recorder.)

You know how hard it is to listen to the William Tell Overture and not think about the Lone Ranger? Well, here’s another challenge that I think is equally hard: Watch the following and keep love in your heart. (By the way, I have not posted this video to accentuate the hate or wage war against it. The only good reason to watch this is to try and see beyond it.)

It is clear to me that I will never understand a certain portion of my fellow Americans…but I sure would like to learn how to not get my hate on toward them. Somebody’s gotta reach across the…across the…blinding ignorance–sorry…across the table. (Hey, if it were easy to not get caught up in this — and to forgive it — we’d already have World Peace by now, okay?)

Utah has gotta lotta ’splainin’ to do. We won’t even go into how much they and their Mormony types from out of California have been bankrolling the Deny-Gay-People-Their-Rights Amendment (to the Constitution!). But let’s talk about a certain Salt Lake City movie multiplex, and its owner Larry Miller (not the comedian Larry Miller…this one is clearly filled with much more creamy Mormony goodness).

His movie theaters — which previously banned Brokeback Mountain because its cowpokes were doing the wrong kind of poking (I was gonna mention homo-on-the-range joke, but I opted for, um, subtlety) — are now refusing to show the new Kevin Smith movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. What I LOVE about the article by Jonathan Crow in which I learned about this is what the chain’s spokesman was asked: Why do you have problems with this film when you don’t have problems showing Saw V (which features beheadings and explicit self-mutilation)? The spokesdrone had no comment.

But I’m delighted that the conversation turns to this angle. There is no doubt in my feverish little mind that the violence of our torture porn is climactically more injurious to the minds and souls of our villagers than the sex of our make-believe sex romps…or even the sex of our hardcore shenanigans. But our more vociferous and judgmental religious sects are comfortable with violence; they’ve been perpetrating one form or another upon themselves and others since they figured out it got them stronger toeholds (and fuller coffers) than coming from that lovey-Jesusy angle.

As I said, however, I’m happy as a little girl that the sex-versus-violence comparison is being raised in polite (or, at least, journalistic) society. I could just kill those people who condone all that violence.

I was watching The View this morning…not because I expected to get any worthwhile commentary out of it (that expired the day Rosie O’Donnell walked off), but because Cloris Leachman would be the latest Bad Dance Show castoff featured. Seemed like it’d be good for a few Blücher laughs.

“Hot Topics” began, and Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy-Tool Elizabeth Hasslesplat (or whatever) started in on her exhausting, automaton, hate-attack on Obama. I’d yawn if it weren’t so annoying. Can one be bored and annoyed simultaneously? In any event, they began the show by plugging Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” And li’l Elizabeth — in the midst of the adulation over the “Thriller” video — suggested that perhaps that was the origin of the line dance.

Yes, Elizabeth. Forget about Texas Two-Step or the Disco Hustle. Or the Minuet or the Gavotte. Or the Bunny Hop. The “Thriller” video was the very first line dance known to Man. Ever. Now get back to your closed-minded but hopelessly open-mouthed rant against anything that isn’t Republican.

It’s impressive to see someone whose lack of intelligence and insight is not restricted to just one area.

Here are a couple cute PSAs (derivative, sure, but cute nonetheless):

And if you prefer your PSAs in Spanish, delivered by handsome, apparently gay, TV landscape designers:

Proposition 8 in California seeks to change our State constitution, with an amendment that will reduce a Californian’s ability to express love and devotion. I once wrote a Red State-Blue State play, in which several of the central characters were gay. Someone close to me — a heterosexual woman of intelligence and thoughtfulness — asked me why the play needed a gay slant. And it’s because homosexuality is the last sanctioned prejudice in our country.

That was my great flash of awareness at a previous campaign’s Republican National Convention, as I heard the vitriol and apparent glee with which gay people were –dare I say? — liberally attacked and condemned. This year the condemnation has become more veiled (”We accept them, but not their right to marry.”) but its just as entrenched and organic to one faction’s core ethos. It’s funny to think that there’s a group of people who gain a part of their identity by hating a part of mine. And while it’s no longer (openly) sanctioned to target African-Americans and Jews, Klansmen and Neo-Nazis still gather. There will always be someone out there to hate something about all of us.

The interesting thing about America — at least, up until the Bush Administration’s “Patriot Act”ivities started reducing our rights — is that we are a country founded on disobedience. And while I don’t criticize how my forefathers expressed their disobedience — rather, I am filled with admiration — I sense it’s time to modify the approach. Not to get too “California” about this, but similar vibrations attract to each other. And if you hate something hateful, on the subtler lever you’re contributing to the hate-cause; it’s only the contrasting energy that can actually create a real difference.

So what does that mean regarding Prop 8? Of course energy should get focused toward its vanquishment, and disobedience toward manifestos of hate should be encouraged. However, I am suggesting an intangible-seeming shift in the “attack.” I heard several election-years ago that same-sex marriage was a foregone conclusion — that it would unquestionably be a reality eventually. That was my moment of exhale. And I am willing to allow grace to replace red-in-the-face in my actions toward that goal.

No one who knows me — or has read me — would argue that I don’t know how to rant. But — in my saner moments — I know it’s an indulgence rather than a tool. I started this post by describing Proposition 8 as intending to reduce the ability to express love and devotion. But that was inflammatory, just as most everything that comes out of the Palin/McCain mouth is inflammatory. The quieter, authentic truth is that no one and nothing can reduce or impinge anyone’s ability to express love and devotion. How will you disobey those who think they can?

Gabriel over at Modern Fabulousity has written an eloquent and beautiful post about same-sex marriage, and voting No on Prop 8 (even though he’s a New Yorker for whom it’s not even applicable). I urge you to click on the linkiness under “eloquent and beautiful” in the previous sentence at your earliest convenience. In the meantime, here’s a passage from what he wrote:

You can decide for yourself whether my marriage has any meaning for you or not, and how you feel about it morally…that’s your right, as an American. . . . You can imagine that my love isn’t the same as yours, that my faith is different from yours, that the houses of religion should bolt the door when they see me coming. You can judge me and my husband, and you can hate us the way homosexuals have been hated for a thousand years. (For that’s all this debate is about, in the end…how much you hate us.) [. . .]

But what you CANNOT continue to do is deny the LEGAL protections that every American deserves. Especially if you believe that America should be the land of the free, that all men are created equal, that we all have a right (protected in the Constitution) to pursue happiness. You want to deny me morally, fine. You cannot deny me legally any more. Period.

Writitude is an occasional list of writing for which I am grateful.

3. Mad Men. Not exactly metaphysical/spiritual, except for the way it melts time and finds a deeper truth. It is said that those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it. This show not only reexamines the past — the post-Eisenhower, beginning-of-the-end years — with the clear lens of the present, it reexamines the present via a bracingly unembellished understanding of the past. If we can take the blinders off about how non-Leave it to Beaver our past was, then perhaps we can heal our present, with all its unchecked baggage.

2. Life on Mars. Another show that transports us back to a previous decade, with a contemporary perspective. But the twist here is that our hero — mysteriously thrown back to 1973 from his “real” home in 2008 — may actually be imagining the whole thing while he lies in a modern-day coma. Or perhaps 2008 was the illusion and he’s awakened to his reality in the time of wide collars. Or maybe it’s all an illusion and reality lies somewhere else altogether. Where else is network television pondering such things?

1. Eli Stone. At the risk of sounding grand, the world is a better place because this show is on the air. While nobody was paying attention, a series was green-lit — and renewed for a second season! — that unabashedly examines the Divine. But not the Falwellian version; rather, the kind that is inexplicable, and juicy, and life-changing, and joyous/daunting. And while the topic is raised zealously, it is laden more with thought-provoking irreverence than stultifying reverence. Who better to have been thunderstruck with visions than a corporate lawyer? And how better to portray our collective struggle to embrace Spirit while maneuvering the Earthbound than to watch a sheepish ersatz-messiah allow himself to be guided through — and perhaps beyond — the bureaucratic and patriarchal legal system.

The unconditional love we are capable of fractures me:

I’m not the kind to indiscriminately drool over politicians (though I do remember a group of “festive” friends in the ‘92 campaign shouting “Al Gore-gous!” every time the once-hubba-hubba half of double-bubba came on the tee vee).  I’ve appreciated Sen. Obama’s demeanor and put-together-ness. But it’s never been a visceral, Naked-Came-the-Candidate kind of thing for me. But it’s interesting what happens when the Kennedy suit comes off and the windbreaker goes on. Methinks there’s a little “Yes, Mr. President” thing happening.

Watch where you point that thing, is all I’m sayin’.