Rielle Hunter Is The Perfect Woman

Have you read the interview with Rielle Hunter in GQ? Wow, she's like the perfect babe. First of all, she did the whole interview with no pants on (at least that's how it appears in the pictures). Secondly, she explicates her philosophy of male-female relationships, which is essentially that a woman's role is to put the man front and center, always defer to him, always walk two steps behind him, cool stuff like that. For instance, when asked about why she didn't put more pressure on John Edwards to tell the truth about their relationship, she said she wanted to be sensitive to his needs and not force him to do something he really did not want to do out of fear of possibly "emasculating" him (her word). What a sweetie!

Actually, what a bunch of bunkum. Rielle Hunter is an annoying fem-bot, a willing Stepford wife whose philosophy would return adult relationships to the Victorian era. She tries to dress up her retrograde worldview in all sort of new-age hooey but at its essence it's clear what sort of relationship she's been searching for all her life: she wants to be taken care of; she wants to have someone come into her life and make everything peachy-keen and, you know, less hard. She's willing to subvert her own identity in order to be personal assistant-concubine to the stars--she's willing to be something less than herself in exchange for a life of luxury and ease. Beware answered prayers, Rielle, at some point you may grow tired of your golden cage.

In her own wheezy breezy way the air-headed (great name for a band, BTW) Miss Hunter gives voice to what is an inchoate longing across great swaths of our society. What most people are seeking today--in relationships, in careers, in life--is to be taken care of, to be rescued from their misery and swept away to Happy Land. They chase a chimera, a will-o'-the wisp--they worship a popcorn fart--all the while wondering as to the cause of their unhappiness.

Let's be frank: life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Hobbes). The modern era may have provided us with a bit more material comfort--and lengthened our lifespan by a small increment or two--but overall things are not much different than they were in Hobbes' time. Indeed, in some ways they may even be worse: people fly planes into buildings (on purpose!); shoot others at random; lie, cheat, and steal; and just generally do mean and evil things to each other, often for no discernible reason. And of course there's always nature, with a hurricane or tornado or other manifestation of global climate change, to remind us just how insignificant we really are in the big scheme of things. If we survive all of that we get to watch ourselves age into oblivion while fighting--with all due pain and suffering--various physical maladies.

In other words, our lives are circumscribed by brutality and chaos, so it's no wonder most people want to be rescued, but in seeking rescue they waste the only chance they have at real meaning: grace, relationships, and love. Out of a desperate desire for redemption at any cost too many people are willing to obliterate the only identity they will ever have. Rielle Hunter may very well be the poster child for the deluded, misguided, incompetent narcissism of the modern age.

Baby Fatt's been around the block a time or two (understatement), and let me tell you the wonderful world of middle-aged dating is nothing if not harsh. People today don't have baggage they have cargo containers full of bitter exes, sullen children, crappy credit scores, and a lifetime of PTSD issues. And whether you're gay or straight, seeking women or men (or whatever--once again, no one cares), most folks are seeking the same, sick sort of redemption through interpersonal relationships as Miss Hunter (from which behavior comes even more bitter exes, sullen children, crappy credit scores, and PTSD issues).

Thing is, even in this crazy "mixed up muddled up shook up world" (Kinks) there are still people who are grounded in reality and who want relationships that are mutually affirmative, positive, and constructive. Lots of folks are looking for someone who wants to help pull the wagon, not just someone who just wants to ride in the back eating bonbons--they seek a helpmate, companion, fuck buddy, and friend (who says the romance is dead?). You can find these people, you really can (I have--the exquisite Lady Eleanor, La Reyna De La Nuevo Mexico) you just have to let go of certain delusions of romance. You have to quit chasing clouds and rainbows. You have to be willing to be co-equal, which means asserting yourself and also allowing the other person to assert him or herself all the while being civil and respectful. Tough stuff, admittedly, but consider the alternative (which is death by loneliness).

With regard to emasculation, it has been my pleasure and opportunity to experience a lifetime of women--from two tough, strong grandmothers, to my mother and my sister, to serial paramours--who never had any compunction about "emasculating" me when it came to telling me the truth, and I am the better man for it. It's absurd for Rielle Hunter to think that she has to subsume her identity to the ego of her well-coifed out of a boyfriend just to find happiness. Both she and he could use a "heaping helping" (Henning, Flatt, Scruggs) of unvarnished truth.

John Edwards is a heel and a cad. He is the exact opposite of a gentleman, most especially he is the absolute antithesis of a "fine Southern gentleman" (the distinctive characteristic of which is a respect for women). I know progressives who supported him because at the time he seemed to speak with passion about the lives of working people and he had a compelling life story. It was all just a sham, a well-scripted commercial for an empty-suited pompadoured boor. He and Rielle Hunter seem made for each other--two desperate empty people struggling to scrape up a soul between them. I pity them, and I feel for their children.

What an ugly, thoroughly modern, cautionary tale. Put your pants back on, Rielle.

Want Me To De-Friend You From Facebook? Just Post A Bible Verse

If you want me to de-friend you from Facebook, it's quite easy: just post a bible verse. I'll put up with a lot of crap from a lot of different folks--some of whom I have not seen since high school--but I'm not taking any crap in the form of a bible verse.

One of the interesting things about Facebook is that it allows one to connect with so many people from the past: high school and college chums, former work colleagues, former girlfriends, lots of people one never imagined one would have contact with again. I do enjoy it for that reason. Sometimes, however, it can all become a bit too tedious.

I don't mind the videos of cute kittens (those are kind of nice) or links to funny bits in the news (love those), or the ongoing updates about someone's vacation or how someone did on his favorite video game last night. Hell, even the occasional anti-Obama rant I can take (though there's a limit with that too). But bible verses? Give me a break.

It's not that I lack familiarity with bible verses--far from it. I grew up in Abilene Texas, sometimes referred to as "the buckle on the bible belt. Abilene is a virtual theocracy in which three primary religious groups are constantly at war over the issue of eternal salvation: the Southern Baptists, the Church or Christ believers (not the liberal version of the Church of Christ, but the sect that came out of the Restoration Movement associated with Alexander Campbell, or those we refer to in Abilene as 'Campbellites'--I realize this this is an obscure theological point to most but believe me, in Abilene everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about), and the Methodists. The Methodists counted for much less than the Baptists or the Campbellites because the Methodists were something less than fundamentalists, and in religious wars it is always the fundamentalists who win, and so the real battle was between the Baptists and the Campbellites.

Both the Baptists and the Campbellites each believed that everyone but their own group was headed straight to hell. Families like mine, which were Methodists, were believed to be headed for the hottest most uncomfortable part of hell because Methodists had the temerity to believe that it was possible to drink or dance and still make it to heaven (not that drinking and dancing were good things--heavens no!--just that it might be possible to do them and not be absolutely precluded from heaven). And so growing up in Abilene one was constantly bombarded by proselytizing by the competing fundamentalist factions.

Suffice it to say that I ran from Abilene as one might escape a burning building the day after I graduated from high school. I moved to Austin to go to college and never looked back. Now, on Facebook, some of the old gang from Abilene have reached out to me and I've included them on my friends list. So for, so good, but believe me brothers and sisters once you post that first bible verse I'm done with you.

Maybe it's PTSD. Maybe it's that I've spent my adult life making sure to associate only with progressive, free-thinking, non-cultish, life affirming people who do not take as a holy cause making others feel badly about about themselves because of lack of some idiotic religious belief (which is to say: pretty much any religious belief).

Nietzsche was right about Christianity: it is nihilism par excellence. It denigrates life as it is--the only life there is--and values instead an imagined life that will never be. Christianity arises out of weakness and fear--fear of living life and facing up to reality. Out of fear Christians posit an imaginary eternity ruled over by Space Jesus in order to cure their anxiety about the present.

Christians then use their imagined eternity with Space Jesus to gloat and raise themselves above those of us who live in the here and now (what Republicans refer to derisively as 'the reality-based community'). The truth is christians are just sad--sad and boring.

So if you believe in Space Jesus please keep your sad old boring faith to yourself. I don't have the time to deal with your pitiable, crippled spirituality. Leave me alone with that shit.

Death to Daylight Saving Time--And Why The Tea Party Sucks

There are few modern cultural phenomena that are as completely useless, pernicious, ineffective, and yet resistant to change as daylight saving time. It makes no sense whatsoever. It disrupts sleep cycles (leading, or so the medical data suggest, to increased rates of heart attacks and suicides); it causes enormous personal disruption--at work and at home--while people try to adjust to it; and it brings no real positive advantage to anyone (or at least almost anyone). So why does it persist.

Easy: because the Chamber of Commerce wants it to. Business believes that the more daylight people have after work the more likely they are to go out and buy useless crap. This may or may not be true--the data are contradictory on this point--but what is true is that any extra money made by businesses is not nearly sufficient enough to outweigh all the negative costs associated with DST. It makes no difference how unhappy DST makes the public, so long as the business community believes it to be advantageous to its profit margin, it ain't goin' nowhere.

This speaks once again to the utter speciousness--the facile shallow understanding of all things political--of the so-called "Tea Party". If the tea baggers really wanted to rally the populace around an issue that would crystallize public outrage and establish a political base across a great swath of Americans, it would use an issue like DST to organize. Rather, of what does the tea baggers' platform consist? A general hatred of all forms of government, always protested vigorously after, of course getting to the tea bag rally using the publicly financed infrastructure (roads, bridges) graciously provided by the taxpayers, and after duly checking one's bank account to make sure the Social Security check has been deposited on time and automatically by those mindless public employees tea baggers so love to hate.

Meanwhile, the tea baggers allow themselves to be punked and punked again by big business and the Republican party. If tea baggers really had the courage of their so-called convictions they would eschew all forms of government (for instance, they would walk everywhere and send back those socialist Social Security checks or Medicare benefits). As it is they will instead continue to allow themselves to be tools of the oligarchy that runs this country--that has always run this country and that always will run this country so long as citizens allow manufactured outrage over sundry social issues or big guv'ment to split them from one another and from facing the things that really do ruin our quality of life. Things like daylight saving time.

God I hate daylight saving time.

Dennis Kucinich--Follow Him At Your Peril

Dennis Kucinich hates working people. Dennis Kucinich cares about political and ideological purity as defined by Dennis Kucinich. He talks a good game, but when it comes to an opportunity to actually affect the lives of millions upon millions of working people for the better, well, Dennis Kucinich is more concerned about what is pure and perfect and correct than with what is practical and doable. How dare you Dennis Kucinich. For the good of humankind get together with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and just go away.

Dennis Kucinich has no conscience and is just another old time pol trying to get on TV. While the Democrats of Congress are working diligently toward compromise on healthcare reform--something akin to sausage-making--demagogues like Dennis Kucinich use faux resistance to the political system (imagine that politicians make deals with various constituencies and interest groups in order to produce legislation--oh the horror, the horror!) to assert that somehow the system is corrupt (no kidding) and that the only one who could lead us out of this terrible morass would be... well ... Dennis Kucinich.

With regard to healthcare reform, Dennis Kucinich has now stated publicly (after inquiring about the location of the camera) that he will oppose any version of a healthcare reform bill that does not meet his own standards of acceptability. Hell, I oppose, on political and philosophical grounds, any version of healthcare reform but my own (by the way, I cannot understand why the American people are not clamoring, shouting from the rooftops, 'but Baby Fatt what do you think about how we should solve this problem? Please, please lead us; please tell everyone about the public option. Also, where's the keg?'). Once again, the American people have let me down.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, without healthcare reform another forty five thousand people will die this year for lack of health insurance (the stain of each of their souls poisons the being of each and every person who has ever voted for a Republican). But Dennis Kucinich holds out for perfection--perfection and face time.

No one cares Dennis. Go away. Take Ralph Nader with you.

Rum, Buggery, and Eric Massa

"The real traditions of the British Navy are rum, buggery and the lash."

--Winston Churchill

Nothing's been quite so entertaining of late than the spectacle of Eric Massa, recently resigned congressman from New York, trying to run away from his pitiably repressed sexuality. Massa, an apparent serial groper of unwilling men, has been all over cable television detailing his long history "in the navy" and how normal it is for "a salty old sailor" to get drunk and find a guy to grope. But of course, as he continues to insist, this does not mean that he's gay--nothing like that. He just a prankster, a jokester, a fun guy. Come on America, where's your sense of humor?

Well, Eric, first of all, when you grope someone who doesn't want to be groped, the legal term for that is sexual harassment (and if you're not sure whether or not the other person wants to be groped, you really should ask first). Secondly, if the target of all your groping is your same gender, then you're gay--not that there's anything wrong with that, but wake up and smell the poppers.

Also, quit blaming the Navy. Poor Navy: just as those folks finally start to live down a Village People song, Mr. Massa has to go on Glenn Beck and Larry King and explain how the Navy is really one big naked oiled-up sweaty tickle party. With lots of wrestlin' and drinking and manly men doing manly things to each other and... well... you get the idea. Leave the Navy out of it, Eric, you're just a hideously, sadly oppressed jerk (off) idiot who wouldn't know "insight" if you sat on it.

Of course one really has to feel sorry of Massa's family. Apparently he's happily married and with kids. Wow, that's gonna make for some awkward times on the old playground--"how many men did your daddy tickle nekkid this week, huh?"

But what really fascinates me is that fact that Massa is a Democrat. Usually these repressed gay homophobes with plushly appointed closets who love to get naked with other men are Republicans. Republicans hate gay people, so if you're gay and love Jesus but don't believe in government you have to make a deal with the devil and deny yourself to yourself in order to get to congress. The nice thing (one of many) about being a liberal Democrat is that we love the gays, and if you come out of the closet you might even get more votes. Why go to all the trouble of being liberal politically but in the closet sexually? It just doesn't get any more weird than that. Weird and sad.

How well, one suspects we've only seen the beginning of Mr. Massa--the camera loves him too much