GQ
An arcane communiqué written in the autobiographical mode,
pursuant to some esoteric aspiration, by an obvious idiot:
Today, I am one week sober.
Visiting family in Kentucky recently, I consumed my last meal at
Chick-Fil-A: one chicken sandwich, no pickle; eight nuggets of
tender white meat; and an order of salt-crusted waffle fries that
were so perfectly crisp, no dipping sauce was needed.
It was a private moment. I ate the sandwich first, knowing that
if I was truly full, the logical thing to sacrifice would be the
fries. As the salty-sweet crunch melted on my taste buds, I thought
about all the calories I had consumed over the years. There was
last Christmas in Austin, where my parents reside, when I drove
through the pick-up window for five consecutive meals. I felt sick
after the third. The next morning I waited 15 minutes for the doors
to open and then ordered two flaky, buttery chicken biscuits. There
were the frequent visits during middle school, a 30-minute drive to
the edge of town, where dinners were topped off with brownies à la
mode. It’s only clear now, 14 years wiser and 30 pounds lighter,
the pact I had made with myself: to eat the gay away.
Somewhere between the last nugget and my inaugural fry, I
started to fill up but pushed through—some weird, masochistic
homage to my former self. When I was finished, a polite woman with
bluntly chopped blond hair approached my table. She pulled her red
and white visor straight and reached for my tray. “Can I get you
anything else, darlin’?” she asked with a thick, Southern drawl and
smiled.
And my answer was simply, regretlessly, finally: No.
(August 3, 2012)
The Nation
A mob descends on Obama head-quarters:
On July 18, 111 days before the November election, Charlotte
Mayor Anthony Foxx arrived at Obama head-quarters for a special
announcement. Flanked by a dozen campaign volunteers, Foxx
explained how the upcoming Democratic National Convention in
Charlotte, the first in the state’s history, would boost the
president’s organizing efforts in this crucial battleground
state.
“From the day North Carolina was selected,” Foxx said, “it was
clear that the Obama campaign was committed to delivering the
Tarheel State for President Obama once again.”
(August 27/September 3, 2012)
New York Review of Books
One-worlder Russell Baker spots one of Our Country’s most
alarming distinguishing characteristics en route to traducing the
sainted Woodrow:
Fear of the evil foreigner seems to be an ever-present poison in
American politics, and it was running higher than usual in 1917
when young J. Edgar Hoover took his first job at the Justice
Department. It is a fear that flourishes most dangerously when
whooped up by politicians too highly reputed as statesmen to be
dismissed as demagogues, and the man whooping loudest in 1917 was
President Woodrow Wilson, the most pious statesman of the
day.
(August 16, 2012)
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Miss Sylvia Flores responds with equable stupidity to Mr.
Sam A. Westergren’s stirring call for Obamacare on the
Correspondence page of a great American gazette and
delicatessen:
Sam A. Westergren, you made my day! I agree with your letter 100
percent (“Benefits of health care act,” May 30).
Why can’t people understand the good in the affordable care act?
Imagine, they are turning down a health plan that lets their child
stay on their insurance plan until they are 26 years old and they
can’t be denied coverage if they have a pre-existing condition.
Empty minds make bad decisions! They are like sheep that follow
the other sheep into oblivion. Our president needs four more years
to undo the debacle he stepped into three-and-a-half years ago.
Sylvia Flores
(June 3, 2012)
The Progressive
The abuse of a young boy by columnist Kate Clinton, as her
“galpal” stands by and apparently does nothing:
In a breather from an epic good monster v. bad monster
tickle fight with my four-year-old across-the-hall neighbor, he
looked at me and asked, “Are you a boy?” I said, “No, Will. I’m a
girl.” My dear partner overheard our exchange, leaned in, and
explained, “She’s not a boy. She’s gender nonconforming.”
My galpal then went on to explain that people expect girls and
boys to wear certain clothes, play certain sports, and act certain
ways. When they don’t, it sometimes confuses people. She concluded,
“But Kate is definitely a girl.” Will seemed perplexed…
(June 2012)
Rolling Stone
A middle-aged guitarist from some moronic band called Rage
Against the Machine takes umbrage at one of Congressman Paul Ryan’s
sunny pleasantries and runs up his blood pressure in an op-ed
excursus of pishposh for a famous children’s magazine. Tsk,
tsk:
…Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the
Machine.
Ryan claims that he likes Rage’s sound, but not the lyrics.
Well, I don’t care for Paul Ryan’s sound or his lyrics. He
can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of
shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical
to the message of Rage.
I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where
we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting
American imperialism? Our cover of “F—k the Police”? Or is it the
one where we call on the people to seize the means of production?
So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican
meetings!
Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta
“rage” in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a
rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor,
a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s
not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling
in front of for campaign contributions. You see, the super rich
must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while
millions of children in the U.S. go to bed….”
(August 16, 2012)
New York Times
And that which AmSpec perceives as absurdity, the
columnist Miss Maureen Dowd envisions as a polemical thrust of
genius:
Tom Morello, the Grammy-winning, Harvard-educated guitarist for
the metal rap band Rage Against the Machine, punctured Paul Ryan’s
pretensions to cool in a Rolling Stone essay rejecting
R&R (Romney ’n’ Ryan) as R&R (rock ’n’ roll).
“He is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been
raging against for two decades,” Morello writes, adding: “I clearly
see that Ryan has a whole lotta ‘rage’ in him: A rage against
women….”
(August 19, 2012)
And there is more! The delusional Miss Dowd sees an army of
pregnant women threatening American national security from
Nicaragua:
Just as Cheney was always willing to cough up money to
guerrillas in Nicaragua and Angola but not to poor women whose
lives were endangered by their pregnancies, so Ryan helped pay for
W.’s endless wars….
(August 19, 2012)
NY Times Magazine
The threat of war swirls around the Middle East,
the act of war continues in Afghanistan, recession afflicts the
Western world, and neither the Mets nor the Yankees are doing very
well. So what does the inimitable Times feature in its
Sunday magazine? This:
The night before Susan and Rob allowed their son to go to
preschool in a dress, they sent an e-mail to parents of his
classmates. Alex, they wrote, “has been gender-fluid for as long as
we can remember, and at the moment he is equally passionate about
and identified with soccer players and princesses, superheroes and
ballerinas (not to mention lava and unicorns, dinosaurs and glitter
rainbows).” They explained that Alex had recently become
inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond
dress-up time. After consulting their pediatrician, a psychologist
and parents of other gender-nonconforming children, they concluded
that “the important thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of who
he feels he is.” Thus, the purple-pink-and-yellow-striped dress he
would be wearing that next morning. For good measure, their e-mail
included a link to information on gender-variant children.
(August 12, 2012)
