Date a geek today

Can I say it? I feel really sorry for people who are dating now.

A whole generation has gone by since I last shopped for males. (In November, we will celebrate our 24th anniversary.) And from the looks of things, it's gotten kinda ugly out there.

I think it must be terrible for people to look you up and down, talk to you for five minutes, then press the buzzer: NEXT. Back in the day, before the internet, things were slower. You usually didn't press the NEXT buzzer until you knew the person fairly well and were CERTAIN it was time to press the NEXT buzzer. And even then, you might keep that person around as a good friend, the way Chris Rock says women keep a man in the wings: "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass." (Yes, she admitted, head hung low, I did that for years. Because as Chris Rock says, you never know.)

This post was inspired by a geek-hating tirade, and I just had to say something.

As an old lady married to a geek, let me say, geeks are the greatest. AND the smartest. (I admit, being married to a genius is important to my self-image.) But I understand that not everyone feels that way. Big Blogdonia hoopla over this intended-humorous post over at Gizmodo. (I thought Gizmodo was a geeky-site, so I was surprised that they would run an anti-geek piece.) Trendy young woman dates a geek, and suffers extended apoplexy:

The next day I Googled my date and a wealth of information flowed into my browser. A Wikipedia page! Competition videos! Fanboy forums! This guy isn’t just some professional who dabbled in card games at a tender age. He’s widely revered in the game of Magic that he’s been immortalised in his own playing card.

Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles? But maybe it was a long time ago? We met for round two later that week.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. Eventually I even felt a little bit bad that I didn’t know shit about the game. Here was a guy who had dedicated a good chunk of his life to mastering Magic, on a date with a girl who can barely play Solitaire. This is what happens, I thought, when you lie in your online profile. I was lured on a date thinking I’d met a normal finance guy, only to realise he was a champion dweeb in hedge funder’s clothing.

I later found out that he infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers. Mothers, warn your daughters! This could happen to you. You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a world champion of nerds. Maybe I’m an OKCupid arsehole for calling it that way. Maybe I’m shallow for not being able to see past his world title. But if everyone stopped lying in their profiles, maybe there also wouldn’t be quite as many OKCupid horror stories to tell.

This post exploded onto several blogs, as the geeks and geek-defenders came out in force. Gizmodo even replied semi-officially and took the guy's name out of the piece. (But with the multitude of information the author has provided, it would be really easy to locate him and his name.) Sady Doyle takes up the charge and defends the initial poster and her account of the shitty date. (NOTE: Sady is far funnier.) Eventually THAT thread has to be closed down too. The whole thing has caused a near-riot in Blogdonia.

Meanwhile, I am rendered mute and remain utterly clueless about the whole thing. Really? A game? Really?

And what's wrong with goat cheese?

See there, I am already hopelessly uncool. I don't even understand the underlying premises of why this man is bad. As far as I can see, he didn't insult her or women in general, did not grab her tit or pinch her ass, was reasonably literate and dressed inoffensively. (She offhandedly says they discussed "normal stuff" and includes "college" as one of those "normal" things... obviously, a man who had not been to college at all would not have been regarded as "normal" or good enough, regardless of his interests or intelligence. In virtually all angry replies to the post, this casual elitism was unremarked upon.) Is it supposed to be bad or good to dress like a hedge fund guy? And why? Is capitalism considered an unbridled good by this person? If the guy had oodles of money (if his card-game-of-choice was the World Series of Poker rather than Magic: The Gathering), would she have been impressed?

Feminism is not just about women. Feminism is also about men. We cannot expect men to transcend their base desires and like us as people, if we are not willing to do the same to them. If we judge men solely by their wallets or their hobbies, we can hardly be angry when they judge us by our boobs or our weight.

Does it shock you when I tell you I married AN UNEMPLOYED PERSON? Of course, now, he has had his job longer than everybody, but when I met him, this was certainly not the case. Sady says there is no such thing as the Frog turning into the Prince and sees this as propaganda for girls to accept Frogs and to be happy with them:

We get a lot of sexist narratives about love, but none of them are more pernicious and subtle than this: The Frog Prince story. You could call it “Beauty and the Beast,” too. Or you could call it “Twilight,” or “Knocked Up,” or “Rory Williams Won’t Stop Whining;” it’s always the same story, anyway. Girl meets guy. On the surface, this guy is unappealing! Because he’s a frog! Or he’s not sexually attractive to her, or he treats her badly, or he’s immature, or he’s Rory Williams and he won’t stop whining; all of these are frog-like states, generally considered unkissable. But only a bitch would think that frogs don’t deserve our sweet, sweet kisses, so the woman doesn’t leave. Instead, she looks for the guy’s good qualities. She lowers her standards; she changes her expectations. She gives up on her silly little “ideas” about “attractiveness” or “compatible lifestyles” or “having fun with her partner.” Finally, she loses touch with her own desires to the point that she winds up making out with a fucking frog. At which point he becomes a prince. Or a loving husband, or a responsible person, or a whiny little Roman Centurion; the point is, in these stories, once you give up on wanting things from men, men magically become what you want.

Here’s the secret, though, if you are the girl in this particular story: That guy never became a prince. At all. He’s still the same guy; he still possesses all those qualities you initially found unappealing, for all sorts of valid reasons. People don’t go from frog to mammal overnight, and they particularly don’t do so because you ask less of them; you are still making out with a frog, in the long run. The only reason he looks like a prince nowadays is that you lowered your standards to the point that you literally could not tell the difference between frog and mammal.

First of all, I was an alcoholic very active in AA when he met me, a single welfare mother with a three-year-old child, so I was not free of my own amphibian tendencies. And maybe those flaws are pretty glaring, but you know, everyone has them. Everyone. But because mine WERE so glaring, I could not lie about them or hide them, and had to face them up front. I was not a terrific bargain, and I did not present myself that way. Perhaps everyone should consider that? (Aside: Working-class and poor kids are frequently asked by their peers, Who do you think you are?, and I often wonder if the middle-and-upper-class kids are ever asked that question, because they sure don't act like it. But I digress.)

And second, I find it interesting Sady thinks the Frog tale is a propaganda story for women... when I think women wrote the story, out of personal experience.

In short, we SAW the prince emerge, so we know. For sure.

As one who has been married three times, let me share something crucial: you do not know who men are until the shit hits the fan. (Yes, I'm afraid the military is right about that one.) Our characters are forged in crisis. Will this man stand by you when you go to court with the ex? When you are sick? Been fired? Lost your mother? How will he respond? What kind of father will he be? You don't know any of this ahead of time, even if you think you do. One of the worst things that can ever happen, is finding out that you married someone who can't deal with emotions or reality, who subsumes himself in work or TV or porn. When you are young and carefree and everything is fun, you can easily handle things. But the first time something HAPPENS (i.e. somebody becomes an alcoholic, okay: ME) and this person can't deal? They will cut you loose and move on. It turns out they are not someone cut out for the long haul, and you had no clue. (How could you have had a clue? Nothing BAD had ever happened before.) You could go years and never know this about a man. And it happened to me.

What you want is a man who understands what true partnership means. These men are rare, so rare in fact, that you shouldn't turn them away just because they play the wrong game. Really, that is the least of it. (Some hints I can offer in retrospect: during the dating period, does he keep his distance when you are upset or yowling? Does he say, "call back when you have calmed down"? Move on. When you have children together, he will treat them like shit and refuse to deal. Because as you probably know, kids yowl all the time.)

The secret to being married a long time is: Your souls merge. Your MINDS merge. You may not like his games, but you will learn about them nonetheless. Even more than that: you will learn what traits he displays while playing said game, and why it makes him so happy. Similarly, he may not like your stuff either, but he will learn the lyrics of Who songs anyway. Eventually, you hear him tell someone else that the Who was great, and you privately preen. Just to yourself.

At this point, we finish each other sentences, or don't even bother with whole sentences.

Example: TV commercial comes on.

Him: "That reminds me of..."

Me: "Yeah, but that was a different actor."

Him: "No, same guy."

Me: "You sure?"

Friends: stare at us dumbfounded, and we don't even know why, until they tell us.

And I like it that way. :)

So here I am, defending the geeks. Because I am happily married to one, and have been for a long time. And girls, if you overlook them as a category, you are cheating yourselves. You really are.

But then, I occasionally eat goat cheese too. You might want to disregard my opinion.

"Why the mainstream media are clueless about the religious right"

At left: Street preacher sign from Bele Chere. (Any questions?)











Suzan links AlterNet's interesting Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right by Adele M. Stan, which not surprisingly, offers some cluelessness of its own.



As I have said (so many times) before, as long as the language of religion is generally dissed by the mainstream media and the elite Left, you have allowed it to remain the language of the religious right, by default. And this highly-moral language is then used to talk to the masses, right over your heads.



If an exotic dialect is used only by one group, even if others understand it, it eventually becomes theirs.



And yes, religion is regarded by the media as some weird, exotic dialect from flyover country, which means the copious dog-whistles and covert winks offered by the Religious Right sail right past the well-paid hotshot media analysts and pundits, as in the famous "Obama is the antichrist" TV ad. They just MISSED it. (Antichrist? Who?)



In comments in this thread, I gave an example, and rather than type it all again, I am hereby quoting myself:

[Years ago], I watched Mother Theresa's funeral on late-night TV (India time), and several of the "official" commentators seemed totally ignorant of the derivation of the banner over her casket, which read "You did it to me"...and they all just seemed to go blank. They didn't seem to be able to look it up, either, since the KJV says something like "Ye have done it to me" if I'm not mistaken. (The quote would be from the RSV, which was favored by the Missionaries of Charity.)



They mumbled, they ummmed and they ahhhed, but you know, they just didn't seem to know. All of these hotshot commentators and none seemed to know. Finally, someone triumphantly announced it was from the New Testament (well duh) but they didn't seem to understand the reference or why it was the phrase hanging over her casket, and not some other phrase.



I listened to the entire commentary, as they didn't seem to have any idea why people STAND for the Gospel reading (really? Is it that hard to figure out?) or anything else about the Mass. That day, I realized how ignorant the media elites are of religion and religious traditions... even something as simple as standing for the Gospel reading. (I suddenly realized they didn't know the difference between that part of the Bible called "Gospel" and the rest of it.)

Then they trotted out that huge fan of Mother Theresa, Christopher Hitchens, author of a famous hit-piece on her. For her funeral. (I ask you, when was the last time the author of a hit-piece was invited to comment at their subject's funeral? A bit rude, maybe?)



This is what passes for knowledge of religion among the elites. Then they try to psychoanalyze people for whom religion is EVERYTHING. And they, um, invariably get it wrong, of course. How could they not? They don't know the dialect.



And Stan knows some of the dialect, but like an anthropologist studying the oddly-dressed natives (she compares some of the reporters to Margaret Mead, which IS funny), she isn't actually going to get down in the dirt with em either. Instead, she translates the dialect for the elites, or tries to.



For example, she attempts to analyze Ron Paul's fan base:

While mainstream media dismiss Paul as a quirky, secular libertarian, progressive reporters sometimes express a certain affection for Paul because of his anti-war stance. But Paul's anti-war position stems from his far-right isolationist views...

First of all, isolationism per se is not strictly left or right, and that explains the far-reaching appeal. In the Midwest, where I grew up, isolationism is its OWN thang, and often transcends traditional left/right definitions and categories. This is frequently my stance on this blog, likely because (as I have said many times), I was greatly influenced by my grandfather, a Christian Scientist and Taft Republican ("isolationism" barely describes it). To these folks, isolationism WAS the progressive position, since it kept the rest of the world from hating us so much. Isolationism insured peace, was the idea. Now, of course, the opposite view (which can be totally summed up in Orwell's phrase, 'War is Peace') is politically dominant.



In short, just as military-interventionism is now an equal-opportunity left/right ideology, so is isolationism.



Does Adele Stan know that Ron Paul ran for President as a Libertarian in the 70s, before he was ever in Congress? His views have changed little since Vietnam, and THIS is why progressives have respect for him: Ron Paul does not stick his finger in the air to test the political winds, and never has.



At left: Fundamentalists invade Bele Chere festival in Asheville, NC. Most people considered them just another part of the show, but a number of intrepid festival-goers engaged them in some intense debates and heated conversations.







Adele Stan's commentary in AlterNet advances the opinion that the overall media-dilemma is denial, rather than elitist ignorance, even though she mentions the elitism a few times:

The mainstream media -- and to an extent, the progressive media, as well -- are made up of elites, people who went to good schools, most of them raised on either the east or west coasts. To these elites, the thought of someone espousing the sort of frightening beliefs that Paul embodies having a serious impact on American politics is just too much to bear, so denial becomes the default position. It's not conscious -- not a deliberate attempt to cover something up, just something too weird and awful to be true, so the notion is simply dismissed. Yet if you look at Paul's positions and look at how successive GOP fields have moved closer to them (with the exception of the anti-war stance) over the last three election cycles, his impact is clear.

"With the exception of the anti-war stance"? Earth to Adele! Somebody does not keep up with the drug war, which is BANKRUPTING THE COUNTRY and decimating poor and minority communities. Maybe Adele doesn't know any teenagers whose lives have been ruined over a tiny and inconsequential puff on a joint, but poor people have plenty of examples to share with her. Ron Paul proposes to legalize and tax marijuana and end the super-expensive drug war altogether... and that is a damned radical position that no other Republican AND no other Democrat has dared take.



The unbridled destruction of poor communities and the mass-imprisonment of young minority men is a fucking SCANDAL; the drug charges that the privileged kids from good schools can safely giggle about years later ("Oh man, my dad was sure pissed!") are the very same drug charges that will get you locked up for life if you are too poor to afford a lawyer or your daddy doesn't know the right people.



Ending this VICIOUS ATTACK on the poor is a PROGRESSIVE POSITION and only Ron Paul will take it.



You know this, right Adele? That one out of four black men is in prison for some BULLSHIT? Aaaarghhh, don't even get me started.



The fact that you have ignored this point in your piece, Adele Stan, is rather clueless as well. The fact that you don't seem to know what is happening in minority communities? Marks you as one of the elite media that doesn't know what's going on out here in the fabled Heartland.



It's going to get ugly, as the traditional left/right categories topple to the ground. I made a prediction that Obama was a one-termer, but that was before I knew he had stashed away a billion dollars for his second coronation. I now believe he will win, but it will infuriate a lot of people and might lead to insurrection; the British riots light the way. Democracy has been supplanted by the wholesale purchase of political office. (This huge money-stash now marks Barack Obama as a member of the elite that he successfully challenged upon first entering politics; Ron Paul's plucky little "money bombs" are very small potatoes by comparison.)



Adele winds up:

As a nation, we've been headed down this path for more than 40 years. As the economic fortunes of the U.S. turn downward, we should expect the attraction of right-wing religion, especially its more charismatic and viscerally-felt forms, to expand. Anyone who doesn't just hasn't been paying attention.

Ya think? And how about you talk to some of US, the progressives who can speak the weird Biblical Ron Paul language? How about you even consider FUNDING SOME OF US out here, who might be able to help, since we are already wearing the clothes and speaking the dialect?



Ha, am I funny or what? As we already know, that ain't never gonna happen. After all, they know everything, don't they?

Dear Netroots Nation

Why did your fabulous, hoity-toity blogger conference cost $335 to attend (NOT including travel and lodging costs) when you are supposedly allied with the LEFT?

Do you see the irony here?

Is there some reason it has to be so expensive? Exactly where does all this money GO TO? You aren't paying rich people to give speeches, are you? As leftists, why aren't you paying poor people to give speeches instead? (PS: Do you know any? Do you need a list?)

If the RightOnline conference is in the same venue, how come they could charge $49 for their conference? Why does the right wing understand that these are harsh economic times, but you don't?

Do you see the irony here?

And yes, I realize there are "scholarships"* for us unfortunate poor schlubs who can't afford your exclusive, cool-kids conference. (Do we have to officially certify our poverty, as when applying for welfare?) My question: Why can't you charge $49 so you won't need to peddle "scholarships" in the first place?

Do you understand there is a very serious problem, when LEFTISTS (who supposedly care about the poor) cannot afford to attend a leftist conference of elitists who have deliberately closed them out? Do you understand there is a very serious problem, when the RightOnline conference WANTS to include the poor people that you have deliberately excluded? What do you make of that?

What does it mean that I can afford the RightOnline conference and not Netroots Nation? It means they care about me and welcome me, and you don't.

Why don't you? And where do you get off calling yourselves progressive, when in reality, you are exclusionary, exclusive elitists?

THIS is why the Tea Party is winning. THIS. IS. WHY.

And when they say the Left does not care about regular Americans? When they say that you only care about identity politics and theory? What is your answer to them? Your answer is: The difference between $335 and $49, which to you probably doesn't amount to much, so you don't get it. Its the difference between Banana Republic and Walmart. Your conference attendees will wear the first brand, the RightOnline attendees will wear the second.

And you still think you are the compassionate ones.

~*~


(*) Who thought up this offensive terminology? "Scholarships" are for kids going to school. The juvenile term "scholarship" reduces the seeker of charity to being a child. Why don't you just call it a voucher and show poor folks a wee bit o' respect? (Of course, true respect would be to make it affordable and accessible to everyone, and I think we know you have no such intention.)

Yes, I've written about this before. (sigh)

South Carolina as viewed from Charleston

Thanks to Cedar Posts for the map!

Joe Bageant 1946-2011

I'm so behind in my reading, I didn't know Joe Bageant, patron saint of rednecks, had passed. (on March 26)

I can't improve on what others have already written about the amazing author of Deer Hunting with Jesus and Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, so I will quote from them.

From Michael Loughnane:

"Poet", "prophet", "hillbilly revolutionary", "progressive redneck with a conscience" — these are some of the descriptive terms that have been conferred on Joe Bageant who died on March 26. Steve Austin of the Australian Broadcasting Company called him "The Woody Guthrie of the typewriter" for he championed the cause of the "redneck", a social group he saw as being one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised in America.

From Gary Coseri:

Deer Hunting is an excellent book. Rainbow Pie is even better. Rainbow Pie is about now; Deer Hunting laid the groundwork, sowed seeds of memory for this West Virginia-born sui generis intellectual. Rainbow Pie brings those seeds to fruition amidst our present devastation — the “financialization” of the “transactional economy.” Translation: outsourced jobs; debt and desperation in the homeland.

Before he died last month at age 64, Bageant’s witnessing was astute and acute; he had been there.

And now, I quote directly and at length from Joe's own introduction to Rainbow Pie, A Redneck Memoir:

The United States has always maintained a white underclass — citizens whose role in the greater scheme of things has been to cushion national economic shocks through the disposability of their labor, with occasional time off to serve as bullet magnets in defense of the Empire. Until the post-World War II era, the existence of such an underclass was widely acknowledged. During the Civil War, for instance, many northern abolitionists also called for the liberation of “four million miserable white southerners held in bondage by the wealthy planter class”. Planter elites, who often held several large plantations which, together, constituted much or most of a county’s economy, saw to it that poor whites got no schooling, money, or political power. Poll taxes and literacy requirements kept white subsistence farmers and poor laborers from entering voting booths. Often accounting for up to 70 percent of many deep-Southern counties, they could not vote, and thus could never challenge the status quo.

Today, almost nobody in the social sciences seems willing to touch the subject of America’s large white underclass; or, being firmly placed in the true middle class themselves, can even agree that such a thing exists. Apparently, you can’t smell the rabble from the putting green.

Public discussion of this class remains off limits, deemed hyperbole and the stuff of dangerous radical leftists. And besides, as everyone agrees, white people cannot be an underclass. We’re the majority, dammit. You must be at least one shade darker than a paper bag to officially qualify as a member of any underclass. The middle and upper classes generally agree, openly or tacitly, that white Americans have always had an advantage (which has certainly been the middle- and upper-class experience). Thus, in politically correct circles, either liberal or conservative, the term “white underclass” is an oxymoron. Sure, there are working-poor whites, but not that many, and definitely not enough to be called a white underclass, much less an American peasantry.

Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote against advances in health and education, and even more easily mustered in support of any proposed military conflict, aggressive or otherwise. One-third of their children are born out of wedlock, and are unemployable by any contemporary industrialized-world standard. Even if we were to bring back their jobs from China and elsewhere — a damned unlikely scenario — they would be competing at a wage scale that would not meet even their basic needs. Low skilled, and with little understanding of the world beyond either what is presented to them by kitschy and simplistic television, movie, and other media entertainments, or their experience as armed grunts in foreign combat, the future of the white underclass not only looks grim, but permanent.

Meanwhile, the underclass, “America’s flexible labor force” (one must be pretty flexible to get screwed in some of the positions we are asked to), or whatever you choose to call the unwashed throngs mucking around down here at the bottom of the national labor tier, are nevertheless politically potent, if sufficiently taunted and fed enough bullshit. Just look at the way we showed up in force during the 2000 elections, hyped up on inchoate anger and ready to be deployed as liberal-ripping pit bulls by America’s ultra-conservative political machinery. Snug middle-class liberals were stunned. Could that many people actually be supporting Anne Coulter’s call for the jailing of liberals, or Rush Limbaugh’s demand for the massive, forced psychiatric detention of Democrats? Or, more recently, could they honestly believe President Obama’s proposed public healthcare plan would employ “death panels” to decide who lives and who dies? Conservatives cackled with glee, and dubbed them the only real Americans.

But back in 2000, before the American economic implosion, middle-class people of both stripes could still have confidence in their 401(k)s and retirement stock portfolios, with no small thanks to the cheap labor costs provided by the rabble out there. And they could take comfort in the knowledge that millions of other middle-class folks just like themselves were keeping the gears of American finance well oiled and humming. Our economy had become fat through financialization. Who needed manufacturing? We were now a post-industrial nation of investors, a “transactional economy”. Dirty work was for ... well ... Asians. In this much-ballyhooed “sweat-free economy”, the white underclass swelled with every injection mould and drill press shipped across the Pacific.

Ten years later, with the US economy as skinny as the running gears of a praying mantis, the middle class — what’s left of it now — is having doubts about its traditional class security. Every day it gets a bit harder not to notice some fifty or sixty million people scratching around for any kind of a job, or working more hours than ever in a sweating, white-knuckled effort to hang onto the jobs they do have. With credit cards melting down and middle-class jobs evaporating, there is the distinct possibility of them slipping into the classes below them. And who are they anyway — those people wiping out the ramen noodle shelf at the supermarket, and looking rather surly as they are moved out of their repossessed houses?

True, with the right selection of lefty internet bookmarks, you can find discussions of the white underclass, and occasionally even a brief article in the New York Times about some scholarly book that asks, “Does a white underclass exist in America?” But most of the shrinking middle class pulls its blinds shut, hoping that if they don’t see bad fortune, perhaps bad fortune can’t see them and will not find their doors. Behind those doors, however, some privately wonder how the ranks of desperate and near-desperate American whites ever became so numerous. Where did all those crass people with their bad grammar and worse luck suddenly come from?

Seldom are such developments sudden, of course. It’s only the realization of them that happens overnight. The foundation of today’s white underclass was laid down in the years following World War II. I was there, I grew up during its construction, and spent half my life trapped in it.

When World War II began, 44 percent of Americans were rural, and over half of them farmed for a living. By 1970, only 5 percent were on farms. Altogether, more than twenty-two million migrated to urban areas during the postwar period. If that migration were to happen in reverse today, it would be the equivalent of the present populations of New York City, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, and Saint Louis moving out into the countryside at a time when the US population was half of its present size.

In the great swim upstream toward what was being heralded as a new American prosperity, most of these twenty-two million never made it to the first fish ladder. Stuck socially, economically, and educationally at or near the bottom of the dam, they raised children and grandchildren who added another forty million to the swarm.

These uneducated rural whites became the foundation of our permanent white underclass. Their children and grandchildren have added to the numbers of this underclass, probably in the neighborhood of 50 or 60 million people now. They outnumber all other poor and working-poor groups — black, Hispanics, immigrants.

Even as the white underclass was accumulating, it was being hidden, buried under a narrative proclaiming otherwise. The popular imagination was swamped with images that remain today as the national memory of that era. Nearly all of these images were products of advertising. In the standard depiction, our warriors returned to the land kept free by their valor, exhilarated by victory, and ready to raise families. They purchased little white cottages and Buick Roadmaster sedans, and then drove off into the unlimited horizons of the “land of happy motoring”. A government brochure of the time assured everyone that “An onrushing new age of opportunity, prosperity, convenience and comfort has arrived for all Americans.” I quoted this to an old World War II veteran named Ernie over an egg sandwich at the Twilight Zone Grill near my home in town. Ernie answered, “I wish somebody had told me; I would have waved at the prosperity as it went by.”

According to this officially sanctioned story of the great postwar migration, these people abandoned farm life in such droves because the money, excitement, and allure of America’s cities and large towns was just too great to resist. Why would anyone stay down on the farm when he or she could be “wearing ten-dollar shoes and eating rainbow pie”? One catches a whiff of urban-biased perception here; but then, the official version of all life and culture in America is written by city people. Our dominant history, analysis, and images of America are generated in the urban centers. Social-research institutions, major universities, and the media — such as ABC, HBO, PBS, and the Harvard University sociology department — are not located in Keokuk, Iowa; Fisher, Illinois; Winchester, Virginia; or Lubbock, Texas.

I grew up hard by the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, and am a product of that out-migration; and, as I said, grew up watching it happen around me. I’m here to tell you, dear hearts, that while all those university professors may have their sociological data and industrial statistics verified and well indexed, they’re way off-base; they’ve entirely overshot the on-the-ground experience. In fact, they don’t even deal with it. You won’t be surprised to hear that the media representation of the postwar era — and, let’s face it, more people watch The History Channel than read social history texts — it is as full of crap as an overfed Christmas goose.

My contemporaries of that rural out-migration, now in their late fifties and mid sixties, are still marked by the journey. Their children and grandchildren have inherited the same pathway. The class competition along that road is more brutal than ever. But the sell job goes on that we are a classless society with roughly equal opportunity for all. Given the terrible polarization of wealth and power in this country (the top 1 percent hold more wealth than the bottom 45 percent combined, and their take is still rising), we can no longer even claim equal opportunity for a majority. Opportunity for the majority to do what? Pluck chickens, and telemarket to the ever-dwindling middle class?

Ohhh my. When he pauses to say "dear hearts"--it takes my breath away. My mother's family, also from West Virginia, used that term in conversation in just that fashion. Thus, it's like a member of my family passing.

Who will say these things now? Who will write about us? (sobs) We have lost one of our precious scribes.

Goodbye Joe, and rest in peace.

On Roe (Norma McCorvey)

Norma McCorvey (on left) aka ROE of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision (which made abortion legal in 1973), with her attorney Gloria Allred, at a pro-choice demonstration in Washington DC during the early 90s. (Photo from PBS)


NOTE: I first wrote this in July 2009, after Norma was arrested at a pro-life demonstration. I am re-running it here this weekend, the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.--DD.


Jovan reported that Norma McCorvey was arrested for demonstrating during Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. Once pro-choice, McCorvey met up with the Operation Rescue people while defending a women's clinic and started attending church with some of their members. She was subsequently baptized in 1995 and now strongly identifies as pro-life.

News of McCorvey's recent arrest sent me looking for an incisive article I once read about her in the Village Voice, written right after her conversion to the pro-life side...which of course, I can't find now. The author made the case that the pro-choice, feminist movement had systematically dissed McCorvey as a low-class white-trash embarrassment, sending her over to the pro-life side, which welcomed her and feted her. She was in the widely-viewed pro-life documentary titled I Was Wrong (2007). She speaks to pro-life groups throughout the country, and tells them she feels used.

Was she used?

The article pointed out that Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued Roe, went and got her own abortion while the case was going on, while McCorvey was forced to go ahead and give birth. Why didn't Weddington use herself as "Roe"?

McCorvey and Weddington comprise the tale of two pregnant women, one from the elite class, one from poverty. One argues Roe v. Wade and becomes internationally famous, the youngest lawyer to win a Supreme Court case. She writes books, holds elected office, teaches at UT Austin, and now has her own Weddington Center. By contrast, McCorvey earns her keep by traveling the church-chicken-supper circuit, telling people that Weddington used her for her own political and professional ends.

Did she?

I think so.

As one who has also been repeatedly dissed, let me say, I know the feeling. Feminism often has the unfortunate appearance of a high-class country club, filled with educated, affluent, snooty white people. This is one reason activists like Renee call themselves womanists. This is why many working-class women say "I'm not a feminist, but..." Feminism is often seen as the territory of highly-educated, elite women. When one of these influential feminists disses you and acts like you don't know any better (especially if you are my age, or Norma's age), it can be deeply humiliating. And confusing. I can remember one of the huge pro-choice rallies in Washington, DC in the early 90s (see photo above, McCorvey and Allred) during which McCorvey was not permitted to speak--an incident also mentioned in the Village Voice piece. Why wasn't she? Too redneck and uneducated? Good Lord, people, the damn SCOTUS ruling was named after her!

I can just imagine Norma tearfully wiping away tears in some fast-food restroom somewhere, after the rally, wondering why they would not allow the person whose life was necessary for the ruling, to speak to a crowd of women celebrating said ruling.

Or maybe she did know why. I mean, I immediately knew why. And if you have ever listened to McCorvey, you know she is pretty intelligent.

And now, I echo the Village Voice author, whose name I can not remember (and therefore can not properly credit), who suggested there was an element of "I'll show you bitches!" involved in Norma McCorvey's defection.

And there is also the matter of basic respect for who she is, in a culture of symbols.

It is no mere coincidence Norma eventually converted to Catholicism under the auspices of the head of Priests for Life, Father Frank Pavone. Catholics understand martyrdom and sainthood. Norma being USED by the pro-choice side became a form of martyrdom. Every time the words Roe v. Wade are used by the mass media, Norma is martyred once again. She is used by a group of people, so the story goes, who needed a pregnant, poverty-stricken stooge who could not afford an illegal abortion. Her own lawyer sure could afford one, and didn't waste time procuring one. Why didn't she do the same for Norma?

She needed Norma. Norma was Roe.

~*~

This whole story makes me cringe; I am typing it in perpetual-cringe position. But I think I know why Norma turned to the other side, where she is a pretty good fundraiser, the Catholic pro-lifers tell me. Most have heard her speak at the aforementioned chicken-suppers. She is a very good speaker, intelligent and earnest. Regular folks. She makes an impact. And when she talks about being used? Home run. Every time. The deep pockets open up and the collection plate is full-to-overflowing.

What does it mean for feminism that one of our heroines, a woman we should have honored and given a place of respect, has jumped ship? A woman who was a lesbian (I am not sure if she still identifies this way, but at one time was in a long-term relationship with a woman and called herself lesbian) and should have seen us as the allies, and not them?

I consider the case of Roe, Norma McCorvey, our own failure. It's on us.

Can we please have some class awareness in feminism? Can we stop exploiting each other? Will this ever happen?

And meanwhile, let me guess....who bailed Norma out of jail?