Citizen Mom

TODD AKIN: It's not the gaffe, it's the stupidity

With all due respect to Cindy McCain, "rape is rape" is not enough.

Todd Akin didn't mis-speak, he mis-believes. He didn't mis-state, he mis-thinks, and he uses untruths as a basis for his politics. His claim that womens' bodies have a magical ability to prevent pregnancy after a "legitimate" rape wasnt a gaffe, it was an honest characterization of the willfully erroneous thinking behind personhood laws and attempts to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Think about it: "If You Get Pregnant, It Wasn't Really Rape" is just the natural next single on a Republican Hit Parade that also includes "Put A Bayer Aspirin Between Your Knees," "Just Close Your Eyes," and "That Cluster of Cells Has the Same Rights As You." It's the sexual politics of either a 14-year-old boy or my octogenarian Dad.

But what else can we really expect from a party whose members of Congress traveled to the Holy Land and went around drunk and naked like it was Senior Week in North Wildwood?

But WAIT, one "rational Republican" said to me -- it's not really about the misogyny, its about the direction this country is going in! And with that I couldn't agree more, because Akin is a walking illustration of exactly where our country is going. And that's what scares the hell out of me.

So I don't want to hear the "rational Republicans" in my life (and there are some) disavow Akin's words. I want them to disavow the lies, and the laws that are the end result of Akin's way of thinking. I want them to turn away from political stances that come from fanciful mischaracterization of female biology and a distrust of women to make reproductive decisions without government intervention.

Tom Morello called Paul Ryan the embodiment of the machine his band's been raging against all these years. I say Ryan is the avatar of the Republican war on women. He and Mitt Romney are now the figureheads of a party which has at its core an utter ignorance of 7th grade science coupled with a fear of women and a deep desire to control us.

The frightening thing about Akin isn't what he said. It's that if he said it, it means there are other people who must believe it. This is the same mentality that says if you give a girl a cancer vaccination it'll turn her into the town tramp.

The national GOP is pulling the $5 million it was going to spend on the Akin race, though he'll likely raise more than that in "grassroots" money from people whose knowledge of basic biology is as good as his. Sounds like that $5 million would be better spent sending Congressional Republicans to an 11th grade sex-Ed class.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Thoughts of AnyK

Shorter Sister Pat: Don't Even Step

This, from Sister Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the vice president of the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, Iowa: 

And if those issues become points of conflict, it's because Women Religious stand in very close proximity to people at the margins, to people with very painful, difficult situations in their lives. That is our gift to the church. Our gift to the church is to be with those who have been made poorer, with those on the margins. Questions there are much less black and white because human realities are much less black and white. That's where we spend our days."

The Vatican is sending a team of bishops -- I'm imagining the long, slow-mo tracking shot of them walking down a hallway toward an interrogation room -- to put the sisters back in line on social issues like sexuality and reproductive rights. That's gonna go well. 

FRESH AIR: Interview with Sister Pat

(via Melody Kramer's FB page...)

Vintage Olympic Fashion Multiple Choice

via sportsillustrated.cnn.com

The one on the right is pissed because:

a.) She forgot her flag
b.) Her shoes got muddy and there wasn't time to clean them off before the photo
c.) She's really Jack Lemmon in drag

Check out SI.com's gallery of Olympic Fashion Through The Years, including the fly ladies of 1920, above. They're not all medal-worthy looks [Aside to Hungary '80: Look in the mirror and remove one accessory, dear] but damn, those Lithuanians knew how to party back in the 9-2.

SHORE THING: Oh, Those Wildwood Days

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of my dear friend and Jersey Shore defender Jen A. Miller's latest book, put it
on your list of essentials. The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May isn't just an updated version of the one she wrote a few years back, it's a total overhaul, stuffed nearly to bursting with planning tips, reviews and Shore secrets that only she could pull together.

It's not only a good read (and it is), the book is a must-have if you're planning a trip to the South Jersey Shore. I'm proud of her, and was flattered to be asked to write an essay about the Wildwoods for it, which I'll share with Citizen Mom readers here. Enjoy my essay, then buy the whole book!

My Wildwoods

 By Amy Z. Quinn

If a resort city’s streets could talk, you’d hear Wildwood’s sassy mouth a mile away.  

If you’re about to get in a bar fight, North Wildwood is the chick you want at your back, because she always brings friends. West Wildwood’s the quiet type, not so much ignored as she is happy to be left alone.

In fact, if we’re imagining the Wildwoods as a quartet of sisters, the Crest is the one who left Senior Week behind and settled down with a family. But every now and again, even a grown-up lady likes to party.

For me, it’s impossible to think of that clutch of towns along the 5-mile island near New Jersey’s southern tip as anything but members of a family, with similar features -- the broad, ever-growing beaches connected by that great spine of a Boardwalk -- yet each a somehow distinct, unique version of the other. It’s a collection of flirts and matriarchs, of immigrants and visionaries, living in a world of both grit and luxury.

And always, of possibility.

In the early 1970s, my parents, an industrious blue-collar couple from Philly, saw possibility in a rambling, Depression-era Dutch colonial up the block from the Firehouse Tavern on Pine Avenue. Behind this big house, ringing a cement courtyard, stood three small cottages, which my parents -- their creativity tapped out after selecting names for their six children -- dubbed A, B and C.

For nearly 30 years, they rented the cottages to a rotating cast of characters, usually young people, some looking for a vacation place and others who stayed the summer, working on the boardwalk spinning prize wheels or twisting custard cones. My older sisters, already teenagers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, each took their turn living and working in Wildwood, tasting independence for the first time even as my Dad hovered protectively nearby.

For part of each year, my mother would install herself in the Big House, her cooking sending the smell of spaghetti sauce wafting through the wrought-iron air vents. She’d spend her days sprucing up the cottages or shopping along Pacific Avenue, leaving my brother and I just enough freedom to roam the neighborhood, which forever smelled of burnt toast owing to the bakery a few blocks away.

In the evenings, we’d all sit on the front porch, bodies sunken into aged red-painted wicker rockers, beholding a predictable yet ever-changing parade of people making their way along Pine Avenue toward the beach and Boardwalk.  

As dusk fell, it would be parents pushing strollers or holding the hands of little ones impatient for that moment when the Tilt-a-Whirl makes its first furious spin. Next would come teenagers, hair-sprayed girls dressed to impress the boys in gold chains who’d have to be home by curfew. Still later, the strollers came back bearing toddlers overtired and cranky or already sound asleep, and young adults would head out for the night, bound for Kelly’s Cafe or the Stardust or the old Penalty Box, where the bartenders wore striped shirts and whistles like NHL linesmen.

Of course, everyone knows the island’s more recent story, how through a mixture of poor planning, mismanagement and changing tastes, the good times waned in the Wildwoods. Like an aging party girl, things along the Boardwalk became less fun and more tawdry, and Pacific Avenue’s charms fell away like flakes of sunburned skin.

These days, I’m happy to say, the things are coming around again in the Wildwoods. Simple economics have led many people back to the island, though of course keeping them there is always the trick.

It surely sounds overly simplistic to say things just feel good again in Wildwood, but there it is. I catch the expectant, excited look on my son’s face each time we cross that bridge into town and the giant Ferris wheel comes into view, and I know. I see the young couples touring condos for sale, and families pouring out of minivans into neon-lit hotels, and I feel it.

Like I said, possibility.

Happy Birthday From The Best Ass In U.S. History (No, Not Mine)

via www.youtube.com

Three years ago today, I signed up for Twitter, beginning a love affair that now involves 2,368 people directly (952 I follow and my 1,416 charming, smart and gorgeous followers) and thousands more by association. For this, you can either thank or blame the editor who sent me a link to Ana Marie Cox's then brand-new feed and said something to the effect of, "I think you'd be good at this."

I'm certainly not as popular as Ana Marie, but I tend to my Twitter counts like an old man with his tomato plants, and have a very low "block" threshold. Also I can't bear to think about politics, cats or my pants quite that much. So it's all good.

This week also marks six years since I launched this blog, which has slowed somewhat but (like the blog world itself) definitely grown and changed because of Teh Twitter. There's so much more quick-hit posting because of the increase in mobile, plus microblogging/sharing sites like Twitter and Tumblr, and Facebook's ability to easily link from almost everywhere. So while it's meant not spending entire days sitting in front of my computer working on the blog, it's also meant I need to be more disciplined and focused on actually making time to think and write. I'm working on that.

Trust the process, I guess.

We Could Be Heroes, Just For One Day

HOLD ON NOW: Jenny the Whiteboard Chick might be a publicity stunt. Wouldn't be surprising.

On the one hand, you have the JetBlue flight attendant who made the kind of spectacular exit everyone  fantasizes about when he told off the cabin, popped the emergency slide and peaced a 28-year career. Frankly, my favorite part of this isn't that he grabbed a few beer from the beverage cart on his way out the door, but that when the cops showed up to arrest him he was in flagrante delicto:

Slater was later arrested at his home in Belle Harbor by Port Authority officials.  Police sources said that when authorities found Slater he seemed to be in the midst having sexual relations. (via NBC New York)

You gotta figure he knew he'd be going away for a little while, at least, and wanted to get his ya-yas out one last time. Dammit, that shows just the kind of clear-thinking you want during an in-flight emergency!

On the other hand, you have Jenny the Whiteboard Girl, who exposed a creepy boss's Farmville addiction in a series of photos she emailed to the whole office and whoops! it got on the Internets.

Already, some who know the fed up flight attendant are describing him as just the kind of short-tempered jerk who would eventually snap. Give the guy points for doing the least violent thing, I guess?

As for Jenny, that's the best use of company office supplies since people start stealing rolls of toilet paper to take home. I hope the Expo Marker people are on the phone offering her a job right now. The kid's got moxie.

When You Know You've Made It

You all know by now how much I love the Wendy Williams TV show, right? Not only does she have the best audience around -- and by "best" I mean a big ol' bowl of crazyflakes drenched in awesomesauce -- but Wendy is even more fun, likable and authentic on TV than on the radio. OK the hair's not authentic, but the wigs are half the fun.

One of these days I'm going to get up there to visit the show and write about it, but for now, enjoy what has to be the highlight of anybody's life: A song from Elmo.

We can retire the AutoTune now, Elmo done broke it.

(How you doin' Shakeitha?)

Love Me With A Feeling: The Queen Bee, Tonya Browne, Is Still A Buzz

Photo by Gary Korman

The in-between season, while the kid and husband are home on winter break, is always a slow time for me, but I have a piece in this month's Penn Stater Magazine about how live music -- Queen Bee and the Blue Hornet Band in particular -- got me through a long winter before graduation.

A .pdf of the story

The idea came from finding a bunch of Queen Bee clips on YouTube, at very, very long last. Here's Tonya Browne singing, and an early incarnation of the band playing, "Every Night About This Time" in 1990. I love how Mark Ross just kind of sways back and forth, the metronome keeping everyone in time. 

By the time I came around about a few years later, her voice had both strengthened and refined (Their MySpace Player has a few good clips from that time, especially "Let Me Tell You What Love Is.") and the band had changed up a little bit to include Rene Witzke and Doug Bernstein, who later split for Nashville. Through the wonders of Facebook I've got back in touch with Rene and am happy to find him -- and his beautiful, multi-talented wife, singer Molly Countermine, of Pure Cane Sugar, Maxwell Strait etc. -- living, playing and raising a family in the State College area. Mark Ross's son is now old enough that he played with the band on a recent reunion gig (Ryan Jones blogged about it for the Penn Stater here), and "Sleepy" Jack Wilkinson is still banging away, God love him.

Longtime Citizen Mom readers know about Tonya Browne. From '06:

. . . am fondly remembering sneaking up to an apartment above the Shire in Cape May with Tonya and a few others, and getting completely hammered during the drum solo in "Too Tall To Mambo."

During the next song, three hoochies and a large bouncer-looking dude from the (now bulldozed) Wildwood strip club C.R. Fannie's come in. The girls start busting moves on the dance floor -- not stripping, though they were wearing assless jeans and the CR Fannie's logo was painted on their buttcheeks. Such helpful girls, bless their hearts.

After they left, we were all so loaded we just looked at each other like "did that just happen?"

The Blue Hornet Band, with Tonya out front, accomplished a lot: Not just regular regional gigs, several CDs and a large and loyal group of fans, but European dates and opening for B.B. King -- who was said to have been drawn out of his dressing room by the sound of Tonya's voice. Every band needs its legends, and that one is beloved.

My own personal legend is about the night we finally graduated, and both my parents and Pop Cesspool's folks sat around a table at Cafe 210West, toasting themselves on their accomplishment and rocking out to the Queen Bee. There couldn't have been more happy people in State College that night.

I'm grateful to Tina Hay and the Penn Stater for publishing the piece -- I was hoping it might be a catalyst for Queen Bee fans to find each other, and the music, again. Cue social media! 

I have plenty for which to thank Tonya, Mark, Rene and Jack -- and not just New Year's Eve '93 and '94 at the North Star Bar, though that alone would be plenty -- but the biggest may be that those shows ignited my love of live music and appreciation for the people who make it. Keep rocking.

For The Record: The version of "My Baby Loves The Way," on the MySpace Player, is my all-time favorite.

DAILY COLLEGIAN: Singing the blues, April 4, 1994

I Knew The Bride When She Used To Wield A Knife

A few weeks back, Natalie Pompilio was looking for sites to include in a story she did about mocking websites, ala Albert Yee's SeptaFail, Lamebook.com and the instant-classic PeopleOfWalmart.com.

I only wish I'd known about Wedinator.com -- where "Trashing your special day is our prime directive" -- in time to pass along for the story. Enjoy.

TONIGHT: Gonna Use My, My, My Imagination

Pretenders at the Electric Factory. Give it to me!