Shut Up Already

A Note on Emergencies in Our Area

Dear Mayor Williams,

I know it's been a while since we've spoken, but allow me to remind you of my earlier comments regarding emergency events here in the District of Columbia.  I just saw your statement in the wake of today's emergency alert/evacuation/complete freakout, and it's clear that you've forgotten the salient point of my earlier memo:  to wit, the Capitol Police and the Secret Service really don't care what happens to DC residents in the event of an emergency anywhere in the District. Step away from the curb when the SUV full of unpaid interns from Flat Red State comes flying by on its way to a secure location, because they will mow your ass down.  Every copy boy and girl in the Longworth House Office Building will be cooking pork and beans over a campstove in Greenbriar before those of us who own homes on Capitol Hill are advised to shut our windows to help screen out toxic particles.

Not that it will help.

I had the luck to be sitting in the same office I was in on 9/11 today, so close to the Capitol dome I could touch it and/or be crushed by debris if a plane hit it, when my mother called to tell me that the Capitol had been evacuated (my stepfather had called to ask her if she'd heard from us--first time they've spoken in a couple months.  I know we should call him or something, Tony, but it's awkward because I'm not sure how we're supposed to feel about this divorce and I'm not in therapy any more because I have no health insurance and...well, that's probably a topic for another time.)

Anyway, my very first thought when my mother called was There is no way I can run in these shoes.  What I'm saying is, the Emergency Evacuation Plan isn't really inspiring much confidence at this point, three years post 9/11, and judging by your remarks today on the teevee you're still waiting for some help from the Big Boys downtown.  Tony, I shouldn't have to tell you this, because I'm sure you're aware that we have no voting representatives in Congress, and you're the one who wears that bow tie into the subcommittee meeting every year to beg for our li'l budget--they just don't care.  The fact that you knew they were thinking about shooting a small plane down on top of your constituents only 41 minutes after the plane violated restricted airspace, after the fighter jets were scrambled and after the buildings were evacuated--well, that was probably ahead of schedule.  I'm just sayin'.

Chocolate City just can't get any respect, even though we totally have a baseball team and go-go now, and I don't have to tell you how much the senators and representatives love go-go.

In conclusion, let me just say, as I always do, please don't do anything to fuck up the property value of my house. 

Yours in urban pioneering in the post-9/11 era,

Cara

2004 Was Not A Bore

Ciao, 2004.  You weren't quite as bad as 2003, but you could certainly have been better.  Before I completely erase you from my memory for all eternity, let's recap.

January dawned cold and infectious.  I stayed home sick on New Year's Eve, which turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.  In fact 2004 can really be summed up as the year I lost my groove.  I started the year out by making some resolutions, which I failed to keep, as I do every year.   Of all my resolutions, I managed to hold true to two: read less, though that is due more to TiVo than my own strong will, and volunteer for the Democrats.  Fat lot of good that did.  I did not quit smoking, even though I attended the funeral of my uncle who died at 52 of lung cancer.  Must.  Quit.  Smoking.

Hate Mail!

THIS SITE IS OCCUPIED BY A MANIAC RELATED TO MICHAEL MOORE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. NOT ONLY IS THE LANGUAGE VULGAR, BUT THE THOUGHT PROCESSES SEEM...WELL, SPACED OUT, IRREVERANT, AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT! BYE.. I WILL NEVER GO LOOKING FOR THE GUY I HEARD HAD YOUR NAME AGAIN. I OBVIOUSLY FOUND THE WRONG SITE.

DO NOT RESPOND!!!!!!

I've been found out! I'm a liberal! More than a Democrat, I'm an actual leftist. I am not insulted by being compared to Michael Moore. Politically, at any rate.

What I don't get is why this person is so alarmed by that (poorly disguised) fact, and why he felt the need to warn everyone in that particular post. Maybe it's just comment spam, but I don't think so.

I do like the idea of occupying my site. Makes me feel like a superpower. And I always appreciate being called irreverent--it seems to often be paired with witty, and I am devastatingly funny, as you well know. Excessive reverence frightens me.

What I don't get is why right-wing trolls seem to have such questionable spelling. Or why the ALL CAPS ARE NECESSARY.

In any case, does receiving hate mail automatically make one famous?

This Land

Funniest thing I've seen in ages

Takes a minute to load but well worth it.

Red or Blue?

Find out which one you are by taking this quiz from Slate. (Click on the letters of the answers themselves, not the corresponding bubble.) Inexplicably, there is no cutesy graphoc to reproduce here. When will bloggers get market power, I ask you?

I came out almost exactly in the middle. By rights, I should have been on the socialist end of the blue scale, but my Ohio roots tripped me up. Yes, I lived without a car for ten years, I know who Jed Bartlett is, and I lavish a lot of money on my dog, but on the other hand I was born knowing who Lee Greenwood is and, goddess preserve us, I know what a winged #3 represents. Though I did just learn it a year ago, on a trip home. (Apparently, all of that stuff about NASCAR being popular is really true. I thought it was only a rumor, like an urban legend but...country. A country legend, not like Merle Haggard, but...you know what I'm saying.)

Some suggestions for additional questions:

Do the schools in your area close for any portion of hunting season?
Yes
No

What is a caper?
An adventure
Brined or salted green flowerbuds
A type of fish

How many people in your family own a pick-up truck?
One
Every male over the age of 20*
I'd like to see them try to parallel park that here
* Bonus points if any have gun racks

How many times a year do you go out to brunch?
One
Approximately 52
In this house, we eat three meals a day, just like the Lord intended

I get most of my fruits and vegetables
From the backyard
From a local megamart
From a farmer's market

How many people do you know who are active military?
None
1-5
5-10
Tons

Most of the kids in this neighborhood go to school:
At the local public school, the only game in town
At a private school, so they're not exposed to poor people
In my living room, praise be to God

Who is Bob Edwards?
Long-time host of Morning Edition
John Edwards' brother

Let America Be America Again

Since my summer haiku were so pleasing (to me anyway, though I thought you guys might offer some of your own), I thought I'd let you know that this is the poem from which Kerry's campaign slogan, Let America be America Again, is taken.

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

A Vast, Winged Conspiracy

Ok, one thing I left out of my thoughtful and erudite post on Fahrenheit 9/11: I bought my tickets for the Friday night (11 p.m.) showing on Wednesday morning. It was the only show that wasn't sold out at the time, though it sold out shortly thereafter (I know because my personal design assistant, Kate, tried to score tix to accompany us). At the theater, many people were begging for tickets at the box office. And yet, during the actual movie, at least one-third of the seats were entirely empty.

What gives? Is it a vast right-wing conspiracy to keep people from hearing the truth? A vast left-wing conspiracy to inflate box office sales and make the Bushies scared and sad? A vast statement about a great party somewhere else that was too fun to leave (and that I wasn't invited to? Hello, Terry McAuliffe, don't make me tell you again.)

Did anyone else notice a suspicious number of empty seats in the theater when you saw the film?

Sing out, choir

Wearing its politics on its sleeve, the film runs the risk of preaching to the choir.

"I want to preach to the choir," counters Moore. "The choir in America are the people who don't vote. They're young, they're poor, they're black, they're single mothers and working-class people who have sunk into despair and cynicism. Look at the numbers. It's not the rich who don't vote.

As we sat down in our seats at the 11 p.m. screening of Fahrenheit 9/11, my friend E. commented that it was great to see a room full of "our people". And it was.

I've read Moore's books, and followed Craig Unger's reporting, so a lot of the information in the movie wasn't new to me. But I was shocked at how many details of the 2000 election debacle I'd forgotten: the Gore "victory in Florida" party, which caused the whol audience to groan in sympathy; the awful scene in the Congress when Gore presided over his nemesis' anointment, and nearly every Dem. House member of the Congressional Black Caucus got up to register an objection; the 10,000 protestors who forced Bush to forgo the traditional inaugural walk to the Capitol when he assumed office. And the point that cannot be stated enough these days; almost every independent investigation of what happened in Florida agrees that Gore really won. We're being governed by a usurper.

I was surprised at how viscerally this run-down affected me. I was, quite literally, flushed with rage. I wanted Gore to win, and I recall being angry at how things went down, but at the same time I thought that there wasn't much difference between the two parties. That seems comically ignorant now.

I still believe that two-party system is flawed, and that we need to develop viable third and fourth parties. But the difference between this band of Republicans and every band of Democrats is all too clear at this point.

Moore said today that the film is being embraced in Republican strongholds. I wonder if that's true? I don't know if seeing the film would change the minds of people who are planning to vote for the Chimp-in-Chief again. Probably not the ones who believe Bush is doing the Lord's work. But the ones, like my poor misguided family in Ohio, who vote Republican for fuzzy economic reasons (and don't care to grasp the finer details about Bush's economic policies, and how they betray his professed conservative ideals)? I don't think anything could change their minds, if living under this current administration, in a state that's lost 270,000 jobs, hasn't done the trick.

It's an emotional movie; from stirring up all of my left-over manger from 2000, I was slapped in the face by footage from September 11. I was working in a building across the street from the Capitol that day, and the terror I felt when we heard that a plane was headed for the Capitol dome has made most of the remaining day kind of hazy. Film of people screaming and running and crying, and the later images of all of those flyers for the missing seem horribly new to me every time I see them.

And then all of the stuff about Bush's Saudo connections. I think Moore could have hit his points a little harder here; yes, connecting all of the dots between the Bushies and the House of Saud is interesting, but what's the larger point? I feel like he was torn here between his real passion, which is class warfare and telling us all to be wary of the rich, and making Bush look frighteningly incompetent. For my money, the real horror of the Bush administration is how they've used 9/11 as an excuse to hijack civil rights and invade a sovereign nation, how they lied to Congress and to us to push us into war with Iraq, how they've cut taxes for all their rich friends at the expense of all of us, and how much we'll all be paying for these mistakes in the years to come. Yes, the Saudis are given special privileges and they have an alarming amount of money invested in the U.S. economy, and yes, 15 of the 17 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. But what are we supposed to do about that? Invade, and sully the site of Islam's holy cities (further than we already have by stationing out troops there)? That would go over well.

So, it was a good movie. It left me feeling wrung out emotionally and yet energized. There are lots of funny little bits, and many images that are almost too horrible to look at; dead Iraqis, Iraqis burned by incendiary agents, dead U.S. soldiers, wailing women on both sides. I wish it had been a little more focused. I wish it had spelled things out a little bit more for people who were hearing that information for the first time. I wish there wasn't enough material about the avarice, deception, meanness of spirit, incompetence, and stupidity of the POTUS to fill an entire movie. But if wishes were horses, I'd be out somewhere riding my pony right now.

Bus me

I'm working on a post about my Brooklyn/Manhattan/Yonkers adventures, but meanwhile...

DC Introduces New Buslines (via Swamp City)

For 50 cents, riders will be able to catch a bus and travel between Union Station, the new Washington Convention Center and Georgetown, with stops along K Street. Or they could go along Seventh Street between the new Convention Center, part of the Mall and the Southwest waterfront...

The routes are designed to fill the gaps in existing bus and rail lines, which are oriented toward commuting patterns that get people in and out of Washington's center rather than connecting them to its attractions, retail centers and offices. Boosting that sort of travel would be a boon to economic development and a convenience to users, District business leaders and transportation officials said.

Have I told you yet that my new house in NE is fifteen blocks from the nearest metro, and that the bus lines nearby suck? I lived in the city without a car for ten years, back in my heady Northwest, no-dog days, and while it was annoying sometimes it was doable. No way I could do it in the new 'hood.

My new neighborhood is almost entirely residential and working class. My neighbors are DC residents who live and work and pay taxes in the city. Why do we have to put up with such shitty public transportation? Why should someone in Crystal City be able to zip from their high-rise to 14th and K in 15 minutes by train while my neighbors and I must wait for ages on nasty H Street for a bus that never has enough seats? I think it's because we're black.

OK, not me particularly but if you look at the Metro map it's easy to see that large swathes of ungentrified, residential areas in the city are vastly underserved, while commuters from the 'burbs barely have time to peruse the Style section as they're whisked door to door in air-conditioned comfort. I call bullshit.

This goes right along with my long-held theory that when there's a wait for tables in a restaurant, especially patio tables in the spring, those of us with DC addresses should be seated first. If people like Ballston and Bethesda, with their chain restaurants and responsive police departments and schools that "teach" enough to live there, then they should be there drinking crappy beer at Champs while I sip cocktails with the cool kids on 17th St.

Viva le urbanites!

To Do

Enter the Designs on the White House T-shirt design contest.

Categories:
Best Pro-Kerry Shirt (positive spin, no mention of Bush)
Best Anti-Bush Shirt (negative spin, must mention Bush)
Best Issue Shirt - Domestic
Best Issue Shirt - Foreign
Funniest Shirt
Best Retro Shirt
Best Get Out The Vote Shirt
Most stylish / Most likely to be featured on Queer Eye*

I already have my designer picked out, and we will be developing something fabulous and winning. Help me out with slogans or enter your ownself.