The Honorable Samantha Grace sent me birthday flowers in a matter of hours.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
another reason women are bitches
Apparently some women won't vote for a male candidate if they don't like his wife. The fact that women WHO AREN'T EVEN RUNNING FOR THE OFFICE IN QUESTION have to endure such scrutiny and measure up to unrealistic standards and hyprocrisy is just vile. A new series in Slate covers the "state of the unions" of presidential candidates.
This may be the most vomit inducing thing I have read this week:
Way to uphold the patriarchy, ya cunt.
This may be the most vomit inducing thing I have read this week:
Do presidential unions matter? Voters think they do. A recent survey found that fully one-third of women voters not only take the happiness of a presidential candidate's marriage into account, but cite it as a significant factor in their decision. In 2004, I argued against the notion that Teresa Heinz Kerry had hurt her husband's chances, but I was wrong. In interviews across the country for my book about what women really want in a president, I heard her perceived snootiness cited more often than I would ever have believed possible as the deciding factor against John Kerry. What these women didn't like about his wife reflected and intensified their reservations about the candidate himself. Just a few weeks after the election, a public health nurse in Illinois put it like this: "I'm a registered Democrat and I'm not for being in Iraq, but I'll tell you what, I voted for Bush. I don't know that Bush is totally truthful, and he's not the smartest person in the world. But Kerry, I really didn't like his wife, and that influenced me. She has a smart mouth and doesn't control it.''
Way to uphold the patriarchy, ya cunt.
A Very Moxie Birthday
Along with Phil Collins and Dick Cheney, marilynjean is celebrating a birthday today. Yeah, bitches. Here are pics from the birthday cake delivered last night by the G-o-d rents.
$400 haircuts aside
I'm really going to miss Edwards. I voted for him in the 2004 primary, and I was secretly thinking about doing it again. I thought he was "The Sleeper" of 2008. When you really look at it, he has done more and kept it more real. And it pisses me off to see him lose SC - his own fucking home state to a guy who sails on starlight and dreamdust.
I hope the Dem frontrunner entertains VP interest in him. I think a Obama/Edwards ticket would be the one to beat, actually. Attorney General Edwards doesn't sound so bad either....
I hope the Dem frontrunner entertains VP interest in him. I think a Obama/Edwards ticket would be the one to beat, actually. Attorney General Edwards doesn't sound so bad either....
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Quote of the Week (and it's only Tuesday)
"While it’s true that hope has always been the predicate for Black resistance, I’m deeply skeptical of the idea that an Obama victory represents resistance to anything except a legitimate Left-wing movement. Unlike slave revolts, where Black people used faith and hope to animate their escape from oppressive circumstances, the Obama campaign merely represents the opportunity to elect a Black man as boss of the plantation. "
~Marc Lamont Hill, Assistant Professor of Urban Education and American Studies - Temple University
~Marc Lamont Hill, Assistant Professor of Urban Education and American Studies - Temple University
Call me when Jesus decides on an endorsement
Endorsements are a strange thing. Consider this week's latest endorsements of Barama by Ted Kennedy and Toni Morrison.
I love Ted Kennedy, but he is a drunk bastard. Not to mention that if Barama mentions JFK one more time in a speech, he's likely to get assassinated in Dallas, TX. (Besides, why has Teddy avoided the Kennedy curse?)
But what really gets me is Ms. Morrison's endorsement. This woman, who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first Black President" has the audacity to make her opinion known once again with Barama. I lost a lot of respect for her because all of the things that she said made Clinton "Black" are often times considered derogatory and undesirable:
Yeah, because that's how I want mainstream culture to see Blacks. Barama couldn't be farther from the above description, yet she thinks he is the Great White Hope.
so. over. it.
I love Ted Kennedy, but he is a drunk bastard. Not to mention that if Barama mentions JFK one more time in a speech, he's likely to get assassinated in Dallas, TX. (Besides, why has Teddy avoided the Kennedy curse?)
But what really gets me is Ms. Morrison's endorsement. This woman, who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first Black President" has the audacity to make her opinion known once again with Barama. I lost a lot of respect for her because all of the things that she said made Clinton "Black" are often times considered derogatory and undesirable:
In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: "White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."
Yeah, because that's how I want mainstream culture to see Blacks. Barama couldn't be farther from the above description, yet she thinks he is the Great White Hope.
so. over. it.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Suicide is so muy caliente now
Crying Out For Help
Suicide Attempts Reveal Strains on Young Latinas
By Laura Sessions SteppWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 22, 2008; HE01
The second time Michelle, 16, swallowed sleeping pills, she collapsed on the living room floor.
It was late at night, and her mom, Maribel, jumped up from her chair, managed to pick up her skinny, 5-foot-10-inch eldest daughter, slapped her a couple of times hoping to bring her back to consciousness, and let go. Michelle fell down again and her eyes rolled back.
Maribel, who's from Puerto Rico, says she thought Michelle was drunk. She grabbed a blanket and a pillow and lay down next to Michelle, thinking her daughter would eventually wake up.
A few hours later, the sun rose over their small home in a working-class section of New York City and, unable to rouse Michelle, Maribel yelled at someone in the house to call 911.
An ambulance arrived along with a couple of police officers, one of whom suggested Michelle was faking unconsciousness. "You're daughter's probably just joking," he told her.
It was no joke. Michelle had swallowed an entire bottle of Ambien and didn't wake until she had been checked into a nearby hospital in the Bronx. She spent two days there. She then was transferred to a psychiatric unit inManhattan -- one young Latina among approximately 2 million in the United States who have attempted suicide.
Latinas ages 12 to 17 are the largest minority group of girls in the country, and growing. They are more likely to try to take their lives than any other racial or ethnic group their age. Twenty-five percent say they've thought about suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 15 percent attempt it, compared with approximately 10 percent of white and black teen girls. Other studies put the proportion of attempters at 20 percent -- slightly less than the fraction who smoke cigarettes.
In most cases, a girl swallows pills at home, according to Luis Zayas, a psychologist and professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Zayas is in the middle of a five-year study of more than 150 young Latina girls who have attempted suicide. He says cutting is also finding a following among Latinas.
The physical pain of cutting helps to mask their emotional pain, says Carolina Hausman, a social worker who assists Zayas. "These adolescents have intense emotions and no tools to process them," she adds. "Their body has to be calmed down somehow. They talk about seeing blood go down their wrist as a release."
Suicide attempts can spread like a virus, from girlfriend to girlfriend. Michelle -- whose last name, like some others in this article, has been withheld to protect her privacy -- says she knew of two girls who had made attempts before she did. A friend of one girl Hausman works with not only told the girl how to cut herself but advised her to minimize the pain by putting Vaselineon the area.
Zayas and other experts suggest that suicide attempts like these are more a cry for help than evidence of a will to die. Were these girls living in the countries they or their parents were born in -- where they might enjoy strong ties to relatives, communities and familiar customs -- there's a good chance they wouldn't feel a need to act out, Zayas says. But here they struggle with feelings of powerlessness and frustration, torn between an American popular culture that encourages them to be sexy and assertive, and family expectations that they be modest and submissive.
Add to that the isolation they may feel in school and you get some pretty depressed teenagers, Zayas says. They rarely seek help partly because they and their parents are suspicious of mental health services and believe in keeping family troubles in the family.
"Crossing the border," Zayas says, "can be hazardous to Latinas' health. Until we understand the cultural conflict, we will not be able to prevent this."
* * *
Jocelyn Garay's parents, who fled the war in El Salvador in the early 1980s, always demanded a lot of their bubbly, dark-haired daughter: that she excel in school, help out with housework, be attentive to her younger sister and attend church. Her father, who, true to Hispanic custom, considered himself the boss of the family, had a hard time understanding why she wanted to do anything else. He considered some common teen social activities to be unnecessary, even dangerous. She says he forbade her from going to sleepovers at her friends' houses until she was 18. He said no when she asked to try out for the cheerleading team. He opposed dance lessons and put her in taekwondo instead, wanting her to learn to defend herself in what seemed to him (though not to his daughter, who was born here) a strange land.
The high school senior in Northern Virginia says has never tried to kill herself. But she has thought about it.
Washington psychologist Lillian Comas-Diaz, who counsels immigrants, says parents often don't understand that for many adolescents here, social success inspires motivation and academic success.
What parents do know is that by moving to the United States they left behind the relatives, friends and neighbors who would have watched out for their daughter. They may be more rigid than they would have been back home -- and meanwhile their daughter is hearing from her non-Latino friends, "Think about yourself and what you want. Forget your parents."'
The daughter, then, tries to be dutiful at home and to fit in at school, what Comas-Diaz calls being "of the divided heart."
The phrase describes Jocelyn in middle school and early high school. She spent much of that time being angry both at her father for having what she considered unrealistically high academic expectations and at herself for failing to meet them.
She joined a Hispanic gang in seventh grade and alienated her white friends. In the spring of ninth grade, her father finally let go of his opposition to cheerleading and she made the team, only to be chastised by her Hispanic friends as being "whitewashed. "
"I don't want to live anymore," she remembers telling her younger sister. "If I'm not comfortable at home or school, what's the point?"
"Don't do it," she recalls her sister saying. "Please, don't leave me alone."
Jocelyn never acted on her thoughts. Her mother has an intuitive sense of the pull between family and classmates, Jocelyn says, and helped her navigate her father's demands. Last year, Jocelyn joined a Girl Scout troop, where she found encouraging adults and new, upbeat friends. She now considers her father her biggest champion and her mom her closest friend.
* * *
Hispanics have the highest unmarried birth rate in the country, according to the CDC, and experts say many youths who have attempted suicide have witnessed a parade of boyfriends move in and out of their homes. Abuse is not infrequent and can contribute to feelings of worthlessness, as Yadasmarie knows.
Yadasmarie, 17, is a blond, blue-eyed Puerto Rican living in New York . She has never met her father, who she says is in prison, and rarely sees her mother anymore. In her early years, she lived with her mother, her mother's children by another man and her mother's boyfriend. Her mother and the boyfriend fought regularly, she says. The boyfriend would occasionally turn on Yadasmarie; once, when he caught her biting her nails, he punished her by putting her hand on the hot burner of the kitchen stove.
She got along well with her mom's next boyfriend, whom she called "Dad," and when Mom decided to leave that man a year ago, Yadasmarie insisted on staying with him. The man's father was bothered that Yadasmarie was living with his unmarried son, though. "It looks bad," he told Yadasmarie's mother, who then insisted that she live with this "grandfather" and his wife. "Dad" was told not to contact her.
A year ago, Yadasmarie cut her right arm with a razor blade. She is now in therapy and living with the "grandparents. " She rarely sees her mother and wishes she could move back with her "dad."
"I'm basically by myself right now," she says.
* * *
A Latina 's relationship with her mother is the single biggest factor in whether that girl copes well with stress, according to a study published by Fordham University 's Graduate School of Social Service. "It's not just being loved, but knowing they're loved," says Edgardo Menvielle, a psychiatrist at Washington 's Children's Hospital who also works at the Cliniqua de Pueblo in Adams Morgan.
Zayas can spot the difference quickly by listening to a girl talk. "It's the difference between 'My mother doesn't understand' and 'My mother is old-fashioned but she listens.' "
Some Latina mothers -- exhausted by fighting with boyfriends, raising children and working several jobs, or burdened by their own emotional problems -- have trouble showing mother love. Paula, a petite high school senior with curly black hair and a big smile, says her mother used to be that way.
The two of them immigrated to New York from Ecuador four years ago, in part to escape Paula's violent father. Paula's relationship with her mother was strained after their arrival, and she believed her aunt, whose home they moved into, resented her presence.
Paula knew no English as she started high school. At home, she was expected to keep her aunt's house clean, wash the dishes and do the laundry. Overwhelmed early one evening that first year, she sought out a bottle of high-dose Motrin, a painkiller, and took one pill. This past September, it was two pills. She was looking at the bottle, wondering whether to take more, when a good friend called and she told him what she was doing. The friend came over, took her to the emergency room and stayed with her until her mom arrived.
Therapists see this pattern frequently: A girl chooses something a parent wouldn't notice -- a pill or two, a light scratch with a sharp instrument. The next time it's two or three pills or a deeper cut, then more. With each attempt, the girl is more likely to die, which is why early intervention is critical.
Though not foolproof.
Paula found a counselor early. Her mother and aunt made efforts to talk to her more. Her boyfriend, currently a student at Montgomery Community College , started visiting more often and has plans to move to New York in June. Yet like the other girls, Paula remains very aware of her own vulnerabilities.
* * *
Social worker Hausman, herself a Latina , worries about girls like Paula who come from lower-income homes. She wonders about their mental health long-term, given the continuing conflict in their families and lack of outside resources. Their schools and neighborhoods need preventive mental health services more attuned to Hispanic culture, she says -- starting with parenting classes.
"In middle- and upper-class families, success is expected," she says. "If a child's mental health interferes with success, it tends to be noticed earlier. Low-income parents don't expect anything of their girls. Every middle-class mother tells me she wants her daughter to be a professional at 24, married with three children. These mothers want their girls to do the laundry." ¿
News researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. Comments:steppl@washpost. com.
Suicide Attempts Reveal Strains on Young Latinas
By Laura Sessions SteppWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 22, 2008; HE01
The second time Michelle, 16, swallowed sleeping pills, she collapsed on the living room floor.
It was late at night, and her mom, Maribel, jumped up from her chair, managed to pick up her skinny, 5-foot-10-inch eldest daughter, slapped her a couple of times hoping to bring her back to consciousness, and let go. Michelle fell down again and her eyes rolled back.
Maribel, who's from Puerto Rico, says she thought Michelle was drunk. She grabbed a blanket and a pillow and lay down next to Michelle, thinking her daughter would eventually wake up.
A few hours later, the sun rose over their small home in a working-class section of New York City and, unable to rouse Michelle, Maribel yelled at someone in the house to call 911.
An ambulance arrived along with a couple of police officers, one of whom suggested Michelle was faking unconsciousness. "You're daughter's probably just joking," he told her.
It was no joke. Michelle had swallowed an entire bottle of Ambien and didn't wake until she had been checked into a nearby hospital in the Bronx. She spent two days there. She then was transferred to a psychiatric unit inManhattan -- one young Latina among approximately 2 million in the United States who have attempted suicide.
Latinas ages 12 to 17 are the largest minority group of girls in the country, and growing. They are more likely to try to take their lives than any other racial or ethnic group their age. Twenty-five percent say they've thought about suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 15 percent attempt it, compared with approximately 10 percent of white and black teen girls. Other studies put the proportion of attempters at 20 percent -- slightly less than the fraction who smoke cigarettes.
In most cases, a girl swallows pills at home, according to Luis Zayas, a psychologist and professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Zayas is in the middle of a five-year study of more than 150 young Latina girls who have attempted suicide. He says cutting is also finding a following among Latinas.
The physical pain of cutting helps to mask their emotional pain, says Carolina Hausman, a social worker who assists Zayas. "These adolescents have intense emotions and no tools to process them," she adds. "Their body has to be calmed down somehow. They talk about seeing blood go down their wrist as a release."
Suicide attempts can spread like a virus, from girlfriend to girlfriend. Michelle -- whose last name, like some others in this article, has been withheld to protect her privacy -- says she knew of two girls who had made attempts before she did. A friend of one girl Hausman works with not only told the girl how to cut herself but advised her to minimize the pain by putting Vaselineon the area.
Zayas and other experts suggest that suicide attempts like these are more a cry for help than evidence of a will to die. Were these girls living in the countries they or their parents were born in -- where they might enjoy strong ties to relatives, communities and familiar customs -- there's a good chance they wouldn't feel a need to act out, Zayas says. But here they struggle with feelings of powerlessness and frustration, torn between an American popular culture that encourages them to be sexy and assertive, and family expectations that they be modest and submissive.
Add to that the isolation they may feel in school and you get some pretty depressed teenagers, Zayas says. They rarely seek help partly because they and their parents are suspicious of mental health services and believe in keeping family troubles in the family.
"Crossing the border," Zayas says, "can be hazardous to Latinas' health. Until we understand the cultural conflict, we will not be able to prevent this."
* * *
Jocelyn Garay's parents, who fled the war in El Salvador in the early 1980s, always demanded a lot of their bubbly, dark-haired daughter: that she excel in school, help out with housework, be attentive to her younger sister and attend church. Her father, who, true to Hispanic custom, considered himself the boss of the family, had a hard time understanding why she wanted to do anything else. He considered some common teen social activities to be unnecessary, even dangerous. She says he forbade her from going to sleepovers at her friends' houses until she was 18. He said no when she asked to try out for the cheerleading team. He opposed dance lessons and put her in taekwondo instead, wanting her to learn to defend herself in what seemed to him (though not to his daughter, who was born here) a strange land.
The high school senior in Northern Virginia says has never tried to kill herself. But she has thought about it.
Washington psychologist Lillian Comas-Diaz, who counsels immigrants, says parents often don't understand that for many adolescents here, social success inspires motivation and academic success.
What parents do know is that by moving to the United States they left behind the relatives, friends and neighbors who would have watched out for their daughter. They may be more rigid than they would have been back home -- and meanwhile their daughter is hearing from her non-Latino friends, "Think about yourself and what you want. Forget your parents."'
The daughter, then, tries to be dutiful at home and to fit in at school, what Comas-Diaz calls being "of the divided heart."
The phrase describes Jocelyn in middle school and early high school. She spent much of that time being angry both at her father for having what she considered unrealistically high academic expectations and at herself for failing to meet them.
She joined a Hispanic gang in seventh grade and alienated her white friends. In the spring of ninth grade, her father finally let go of his opposition to cheerleading and she made the team, only to be chastised by her Hispanic friends as being "whitewashed. "
"I don't want to live anymore," she remembers telling her younger sister. "If I'm not comfortable at home or school, what's the point?"
"Don't do it," she recalls her sister saying. "Please, don't leave me alone."
Jocelyn never acted on her thoughts. Her mother has an intuitive sense of the pull between family and classmates, Jocelyn says, and helped her navigate her father's demands. Last year, Jocelyn joined a Girl Scout troop, where she found encouraging adults and new, upbeat friends. She now considers her father her biggest champion and her mom her closest friend.
* * *
Hispanics have the highest unmarried birth rate in the country, according to the CDC, and experts say many youths who have attempted suicide have witnessed a parade of boyfriends move in and out of their homes. Abuse is not infrequent and can contribute to feelings of worthlessness, as Yadasmarie knows.
Yadasmarie, 17, is a blond, blue-eyed Puerto Rican living in New York . She has never met her father, who she says is in prison, and rarely sees her mother anymore. In her early years, she lived with her mother, her mother's children by another man and her mother's boyfriend. Her mother and the boyfriend fought regularly, she says. The boyfriend would occasionally turn on Yadasmarie; once, when he caught her biting her nails, he punished her by putting her hand on the hot burner of the kitchen stove.
She got along well with her mom's next boyfriend, whom she called "Dad," and when Mom decided to leave that man a year ago, Yadasmarie insisted on staying with him. The man's father was bothered that Yadasmarie was living with his unmarried son, though. "It looks bad," he told Yadasmarie's mother, who then insisted that she live with this "grandfather" and his wife. "Dad" was told not to contact her.
A year ago, Yadasmarie cut her right arm with a razor blade. She is now in therapy and living with the "grandparents. " She rarely sees her mother and wishes she could move back with her "dad."
"I'm basically by myself right now," she says.
* * *
A Latina 's relationship with her mother is the single biggest factor in whether that girl copes well with stress, according to a study published by Fordham University 's Graduate School of Social Service. "It's not just being loved, but knowing they're loved," says Edgardo Menvielle, a psychiatrist at Washington 's Children's Hospital who also works at the Cliniqua de Pueblo in Adams Morgan.
Zayas can spot the difference quickly by listening to a girl talk. "It's the difference between 'My mother doesn't understand' and 'My mother is old-fashioned but she listens.' "
Some Latina mothers -- exhausted by fighting with boyfriends, raising children and working several jobs, or burdened by their own emotional problems -- have trouble showing mother love. Paula, a petite high school senior with curly black hair and a big smile, says her mother used to be that way.
The two of them immigrated to New York from Ecuador four years ago, in part to escape Paula's violent father. Paula's relationship with her mother was strained after their arrival, and she believed her aunt, whose home they moved into, resented her presence.
Paula knew no English as she started high school. At home, she was expected to keep her aunt's house clean, wash the dishes and do the laundry. Overwhelmed early one evening that first year, she sought out a bottle of high-dose Motrin, a painkiller, and took one pill. This past September, it was two pills. She was looking at the bottle, wondering whether to take more, when a good friend called and she told him what she was doing. The friend came over, took her to the emergency room and stayed with her until her mom arrived.
Therapists see this pattern frequently: A girl chooses something a parent wouldn't notice -- a pill or two, a light scratch with a sharp instrument. The next time it's two or three pills or a deeper cut, then more. With each attempt, the girl is more likely to die, which is why early intervention is critical.
Though not foolproof.
Paula found a counselor early. Her mother and aunt made efforts to talk to her more. Her boyfriend, currently a student at Montgomery Community College , started visiting more often and has plans to move to New York in June. Yet like the other girls, Paula remains very aware of her own vulnerabilities.
* * *
Social worker Hausman, herself a Latina , worries about girls like Paula who come from lower-income homes. She wonders about their mental health long-term, given the continuing conflict in their families and lack of outside resources. Their schools and neighborhoods need preventive mental health services more attuned to Hispanic culture, she says -- starting with parenting classes.
"In middle- and upper-class families, success is expected," she says. "If a child's mental health interferes with success, it tends to be noticed earlier. Low-income parents don't expect anything of their girls. Every middle-class mother tells me she wants her daughter to be a professional at 24, married with three children. These mothers want their girls to do the laundry." ¿
News researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. Comments:steppl@washpost. com.
Reality Check of the Month
Goes to Barack Obama for calling hoes out at a Black church over gays, Jews and immigrants. Check, check, reality check, check one:
"For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation."
Friday, January 25, 2008
Quote of the Month
"It is hard to vote your interests if you can't judge your circumstances."
~Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African-American studies -Princeton University
~Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African-American studies -Princeton University
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