Thursday, December 23, 2010

An Open Letter to NOM (National Organization for Marriage)

Dear Mr. Brown, President & Ms. Gallagher, Chairman National Organization for Marriage:

I wanted to thank you for all of your efforts protecting marriage.  I also wanted to especially thank you for your efforts now to protect children.

I see that you have launched a new effort to protect children from foul language.  It seems that some activists have decided to use children for shock value in their latest Internet ad campaign to promote marriage equality.  While exploiting children is nothing new--look whom I am telling--using them to spout filthy adult language is.  I mean, have you ever heard children on a playground?  Their angelic voices never use foul words.  They only use the purest and most innocent of language, that is if you consider most of the words used by Chris Rock on an HBO special chaste and uncontaminated.

With all the money you spent in 2008, 2009, and 2010 to defeat gay marriage, gay everything-but-marriage, and simply gay rights of any kind, how much did you spend on children?  Have you always had a soft spot in your hearts for children, or is this a newly found obsession?  I mean given both of your predilections, I would think you would steer clear of children altogether, lest you find yourself in some sort of situation, which you cannot control.

With all the millions you, and your cohorts, like the Mormon and Catholic Churches, spent protecting marriage from the gay, how much did you actually spend protecting existing marriages?  How much money did you give to a struggling family, looking for work, housing, or food?  How much of that Christian money did you actuallly spend on Christian charity?

And how much money did you spend protecting children back then?  How many millions did you fork over to provide free meals to underprivileged children or textbooks to kids without any?  How much did you spend helping a special needs child pass a difficult subject, so he or she was able to continue with school and get the education, which would be needed to get a better job?  How much did you really care about the kids, when you get down to it?

I also would like to ask why you continually pick on single parent households.  I hear you want to provide every child with a father and mother, as if a mother- or father-only household is an anathema.  My brother and I, having both grown up in a single-parent home, find your attack on children of divorce and death most distasteful.

If you wish to protect children, might I suggest you use your considerable talents and resources to stop the real threats to children in this world:  land mines, famine, war, pestilence, child trafficking, child labor, and poverty.  Of course, to attack any of these real problems, you would have to change your focus from an abstract boogey man, and focus instead on tangible issues, which you, as consumers and shareholders, have contributed to over the last century.

I guess if you decided to really work to protect children, you would have to stop pretending to be Christian, and actually be Christian.  After all, we all know how much Jesus devoted to proecting marriage, stopping abortion, and persecuting the gays in his ministry.  And all that junk he said over and over again about rich people paying their fair share, helping others, and loving one another were just window dressing so he could promote his real agenda.

Bilking people out of millions by exploiting their irrational fears and prejudices in order to line your pockets.

I believe I speak for Jesus when I say "fuck you."

Sincerely,

The Angry Peasant

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Philadelphia Story

This evening we went to our second holiday party, driving to the nearby Cheltenham suburb of Philadelphia to meet up with a long lost friend.

The party was quite the event. It was a who's who of holiday cheer. There was Danny Bonaduce, or at least a guy who looked like a much less rough version of the "Partridge Family" child star. There was Larry Flynt, or at least a much more mobile, less morbidly-obese version of the porn kingpin. And finally there was someone, who looked like someone I used to know, or someone really famous, although I couldn't quite put my finger on who that was. So after very little debate, I just settled on Bill Frist as the original to his Doppelgänger.

Aside from the two hosts and another friend, whom I hadn't seen in many years, I knew no one at the very crowded and very smokey party--shortly after we had arrived, a log fell from the fire, and filled the living room with wood smoke. I spent much of the party rotating from table to table, eating cheese, dips, pigs in a blanket, and whatever else I could stuff my face with. I couldn't drink, because I was driving. Have you ever tried a holiday party without liquor? It was painful.

Although I may have been bored, finding myself clinging to one of the three friends I knew, spending much of the evening listening to the antics of Kate Plus Eight and my friend's lack of a love life, my partner had no problem mingling. He worked the room, talking to people I barely noticed, let alone could hold captive for a long conversation. By the end of the evening it seemed he had learned the life stories of most of the guests. I always feel like a wall flower in comparison to him.

My husband is too gregarious. Earlier in the evening he disappeared in a liquor store while I was shopping for Tanqueray. When I finally found him, he had turned into some kind of discount sommelier for a low-end state store, giving free advice to a stranger on a white wine pairing for a Chicken McNugget dinner.

By the end of the evening, we were visited by Kris Kringle, who ho ho'ed his way through the party, and a 10-year-old single malt. Suddenly every terrible Christmas memory of my childhood was explained. Santa stumbled his way home to rescue Mrs. Claus from her paramour elves as we made our way home.

And as I sit here writing this, the cats are in front of the fire, and I am finally having my Christmas martini.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a good night.

Fear of Flying

First it was a mechanical problem, which forced us to change planes.  Then it was air traffic control, holding us because of volume and weather.  Then a passenger with a panic attack forced a return to the gate.  Finally, another delay by air traffic control had us sit again with engines stooped on the tarmac.

You may have hears that "Gilligan's Island" was a metaphor for Dante's Inferno.  You may also know that Sweeney Todd was a treatise on the nineteenth English class system.  But tonight's flight was an allegory for the current American political system.

From the guy in first who would stop futzing with his iPad prior to takeoff, to the woman who wouldn't shut off her phone when told, first class is filled with those who bought themselves the privilege, those who had connections with those who had the status, and those of us who paid our dues by flying a quarter million miles in a year.

Tea baggers will find themselves in the halls of Congress come January, due mostly to their inexperience and the electorates incompetence.  And like this flight tonight, the will be nothing but delays, ground stops, and aborted take offs and landings.

Of course many of the Lipton Crew will have nothing to do with abortions, because their insides are a dry as Hills Like White Elephants.

The calls to shutdown the government, slash spending, and "save" social security are already echoing through the marble hallways, even before Eric Cantor and John Boehner have taken the gavel and whip from Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  You know, with all those closeted homosexuals in the Republican Party, that whip will spend a record short time in the hands of Mr. Cantor, and an exceedingly long time at the House on C Street.

And just like this flight, it will be a painful journey, with a brief payoff.  The flying time is just one hour tonight. The time spent on the tarmac was almost three.

Come October, most will regret the imbeciles put in control, just like most on this flight regret the idiot who decided to fly, even though he has claustrophobia.

And then the real fun will begin.  Because unlike this flight, you will not be getting free peanuts and Coke.  You will be dining on Friskies and freezing by the candle light.

I raise my first class glass to Michele Bachmann and her merry band of nut jobs.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Baby on Board

Well, I've survived another round with the TSA on my way home from Seattle, and for the third time there has been what appears to be a Festivus Miracle while waiting in line for our groping.

Just before I was to enter the backscatter X-ray scanner, the little Filipina tea bagger in front of me broke the machine.  Now in all fairness, I certainly don't know for sure that she was a tea bagger, or that she was Filipina, but making her out to be some liberal Pacific Islander doesn't help my narrative.

While standing in line waiting to be scanned and probed like a hillbilly abducted by aliens, the two of us exchanged friendly banter on how we deplore the invasive technology being employed today by the folks entrusted with our air safety. By the tone and content of her remarks, it seemed her displeasure was with the cost and taxes involved--hence my labeling her with the Mark of Tetley.  We both agreed the machines were expensive and worthless, and were slowing down the line.  Those going through the traditional metal detector were proceeding at a much faster pace.

But when it came her turn to enter the dragon--just go with me and my Asian metaphor--the Refusnik refused to refuse.  Instead of opting out, she blindly obliged and enter the scanner.  Well, it was either my evil super powers focusing my rage on Michael Chertoff, or her over powering perfume, but the machine broke as soon as she exited the stupid contraption.

So for the third time when presented with the Super Duper TSA Pornography Machine, I was spared the choice of either submitting or opting out.  It was truly a Festivus miracle.

So here we sit on another Delta flight, stuck in back with the hoi paloi like a frequent flyer refugee.  While the more corpulent asses sit in first, I am back here with crying children and a barking dog.  Oh the humanity.

But at least I was spared the insult of having my privates made public--not that I haven't enjoyed a little exhibitionism in the past, but at my age, it is not so much peepshow as it is medical examination.

So it is off to home, for a holiday visit, and then another trip, as the year winds down, and I continue the annual tradition of stuffing as many miles I can in before midnight on December 31.

So until Christmas Eve, when I find myself once again on the Homeland Security Casting Couch, I can sit back and relax.

At last as much as I can back here in steerage.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Sleepless in Seattle

I am gathering once again with friends in the Northwest, enjoying the sights and splendors of the Cascades.

We had a lovely time at a party on Saturday, exchanging gifts and eating Mexican.  Yes, nothing says "Christmas" like margaritas and gas.

Tomorrow we leave, flying back home.  Any pithy remarks I might have had for our journey home have been dashed upon the rocks, as we are flying home coach.  Yes, coach.  There is something wrong in the world when someone with nearly a quarter million miles this year alone can't get bumped up front.

I could be like Susan Smith and blame the black guy and just say it's all Obama's fault, but I don't feel like being a tea bagging butt hole tonight.

I would write more, but my friends have Clear, which is by far the worst Internet connection I have ever seen.  And I have been to Asia and New Zealand, where speeds are abysmal.  It's taken more than half an hour just to upload that crappy picture of the Christmas tree you see here.

They are switching to Comcast on Wednesday.