There is a story that I frequently remember, when my life is moving slower than I would like.
Jermaine Jackson tells this story, and I heard him tell it around the time I was doing work in ‘write it down, and make it happen.’
Michael Jackson wrote a note to himself that read, “I will record the best-selling album of all time,” and he placed this on his bathroom mirror, where he read it every morning.
With time, Michael eventually released that album. “Thriller” remains to this day the best selling album of all time, the closest runners up lagging behind by over 45,000,000 albums. No other recording artist or groups comes close.
Unfortunately, the YouTube video I originally posted was pulled. I had two update choices: a live performance with an introductory note that I’d prefer not to see, or the official MJ YouTube upload that includes no video of Michael. I decided to embed the former with its personal dedication, but I’ve included a link to the latter. Both have their merits, for reasons that seem to me obvious.
I start up in the north
I grow from special seed
I sprinkle it with sensibility
From French and Hungarian snow
I linger in the sprouting
Until my engine’s full.
Then I move across the sea
To European bliss
To language of poets
As I cut the cord of home
I kiss my mother’s mother
Look to the horizon.
Wide eyed, new ground
Humbled by my new surroundings . . .
I am a citizen of the planet
My president is Kwan Yin
My frontier is on an airplane
My prison’s homes for rehabilitating.
Then I fly back to my nest
I fly back with my nuclear
But everything is different
So I wait
My yearn for home is broadened
Patriotism expanded
By callings from beyond.
So I pack my things
Nothing precious
All things sacred.
I am a citizen of the planet
My laws are all of attraction
My punishments are consequences
Separating from source the original sin.
I am a citizen of the planet
Democracy’s kids are sovereign
Where the teachers are the sages
And pedestals filled with every parent.
And so the next few years are blurry
The next decade’s a flurry
Of smells and tastes unknown
Threads sewn straight through this fabric
Through fields of every color
One culture to another.
And I come alive
And I get giddy
And I am taken and globally naturalized.
I am a citizen of the planet
From simple roots through high vision
I am guarded by the angels
And my body guides the direction I go in.
I am a citizen of the planet
My favorite pastime edge stretching
Besotten with human condition
These ideals are born from my deepest within.
Quan Yin: Anonymous, 14th Century Japanese Painting
I have said similar as Charlie Brooker to friends.
Male and female.
I’ve even touted legislation for the past years years that I call “affirmative action voting.” It’s a kind of compromise between those who believe in “voter testing” and actually having womyn’s voices and lives represented in the law of the land.
For something like a hundred years, womyn were denied the right to vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were literally laughed out of Congress (read: white men) when they first presented the Constitutional amendment giving womyn the right to vote to that ‘noble body’ (read: male body, writ into the law).
Over forty years later, after the death of both womyn, the amendment written by Ms. Stanton was finally ratified.
As a corrective to those years, I’ve proposed “affirmative action voting.” This voting test requires a physician’s statement of biological gender. Have a penis? Sorry, outta luck for a few decades. (And guess what, size won’t make a bit of difference.) Take a number and wait your turn.
Silly?
No sillier than the presumptions that governed this country for over a hundred years, and it is in fact the precise standard that was applied in denying the womyn the right to vote.
Perhaps not so silly as it sounds. Or perhaps it is only silly if a womyn proposes the standard be applied to men.
I think it more than fair to employ a little affirmative action voting for a few decades, making everything the way it should be, evening things up a bit, giving the little ladies the reigns for a few years.
Let’s see what happens after a decade or two.
I am so glad Charlie Brooker wrote this column.
So much better coming from a man.
Honesty, you gotta love it.
Though I doubt many American men are ready for this strong a dose of it. Honesty, that is. G-d bless them, it’s a hard habit to develop, and there is certainly little in this testosterone driven culture compelling to behave so.
I try to steer clear of the obvious, and I give few of my life minutes to people like Limbaugh and his ilk.
But Timothy Egan’s piece in the Times today warrants this short entry. Mr. Egan makes excellent points that go beyond the usual diatribes against Limbaugh, and his column today is insightful and well written.
Two points which struck me, impressively written by Mr. Egan:
As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.
(bold face added)
We again see why Barack Obama is the man for this job at this time: we need leadership skilled enough to deflate those self-aggrandizing toxic hot air balloons that have floated too long over the land.
And it was this paragraph which I thought brilliantly summarized our current economic state of affairs, and crystallized reality as few have to date:
But therein lies the main tactic of Limbaugh, an old demagogue technique: create a straw man, then tear it down. The latest example was Saturday, when Limbaugh presented himself as the defender of capitalism, liberty and unfettered free markets. Obama, he has said since, is waging a “war on capitalism.”
There is a war, all right. We are witnessing the worst debacle of unfettered capitalism in our lifetime brought on by — you got it, capitalism at its worst. It cannibalized itself. Government, sad to say, had nothing to do with it — except for criminal neglect of oversight.
Now that government has been forced to the rescue, just who is insisting on taxpayer bailouts? Who is in line for handouts? Who is saying that only government can save capitalism? The very leaders of unregulated markets who injected this poison into the economy, the very plutocrats that Limbaugh celebrates.
(bold face added)
Capitalism cannibalizing itself. Perhaps the most succinct summary of the global economic meltdown yet articulated.
The corrective will be a cannibal like swing to government regulation and nationalization, until the equilibrium is restored.
In my 8 November 2009 entry, “Never Doubt It: The Enduring Double Standard,” I predicted that Michelle Obama would become our First Lady of Fashion, and the indigestible political pablum that such a cultural preoccupation would create.
Although I’ve regretted a couple of my predictions in that entry (“the almost certain glaringly homogeneous cabinet”), not fully appreciating Obama’s agenda at the time, on this one I have been validated repeatedly. And once again, today.
Probably because it was tethered to a general truth of gender and identity in America, rather than the specifics of Obama’s game plan.
On the front of the on-line edition of the New York Times today, readers were greeted with the following bit of reverence given to Ms. Obama: Michelle Obama Goes Sleeveless, Again.
There are moments of notable parsing about the strength and sculpting of the First Lady’s arms, and what her arms mean to all of us.
Too predictable.
Too depressing.
Too much tripe in a time when we should be focusing on problems of substance, and the intellectual power driving Ms. Obama’s rise to the top.
To her credit, she does nothing deliberate to fuel such ruminating–or if she does, it is with an awareness that style’s language is powerful and persuasive.
Rather, it seems to me simply rank and file ignorance dictating such “observations,” ones grounded in a universal, unconscious sexism and a continued preoccupation with the woman’s body, by both men and women.
Still an object to be evaluated, regardless of what lies between the ears. All that brain matter is nice, after the fact, but get a load of the Gap dress and those well developed biceps.
The most well educated First Lady in American history.
In 1978, The Patti Smith Group released a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s (click for explanation) recorded “Because the Night” for the album Easter.
Not only did she make the song hers, the single put the fringe CBGB punk band into rock’s mainstream.
These thirty years haven’t been always been kind to Patti–she’s suffered losses that would have sent any sane person to a ward. But she’s always remained true to herself, her artistic vision, and her voice.
Thirty years. A lot happens.
Some voices crack. And some reach an ethereal fullness, as though some strange angel’s reached in and stroked the chords with an eerie grace.
In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, taking her place beside T. S. Eliot, Bob Dylan, Marcel Marceau, and Nadine Gordimer, among others.
This performance reveals a mature artist who has achieved emotional nuance, power, and rare beauty.
It’s my YouTube Find Of The Week.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Because The Night
Take me now baby here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed.
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I’m in your hands
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now.
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to love . . .
Have I doubt when I’m alone
Love is a ring, the telephone
Love is an angel disguised as lust
Here in my bed until the morning comes.
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel under when I’m in your hand
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now.
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to love . . .
And though we’re filled with doubt the vicious circle
Turns and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it’s time, to feel, be real
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now.
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to love . . .
‘Cause we believe in the night we’re lovers
‘Cause we believe in the night we trust
Because the night belongs to lovers
While editing my Hero of the Week entry this morning and adding a few links, I happened to read about the recent brouhaha between Ashley Judd and Governor Sarah Palin.
Photo pilfered from the Huffington Post article, linked below.
Apparently, Ms. Judd has spoken in “an ad campaign accusing the Alaska governor of supporting the aerial slaughter of wolves and bears.”
Okay.
Ms. Palin responded that the “ad campaign by this extreme fringe group (italics added), as Alaskans have witnessed over the last several years, distorts the facts about Alaska’s wildlife management programs. These audacious fundraising attempts misrepresent what goes on in Alaska, and I encourage people to learn the facts about Alaska’s positive record of managing wildlife for abundance.”
And what ‘extreme fringe group’ might this be? (more…)
It goes without saying that Mr. Rich is more nuanced and thorough than yours truly. And, of course, he eschews the “creative phraseology” that I relied on.
His must read essay persuasively defends President Obama’s less than enthusiastically embraced Inaugural address. In so doing, he portrays a Republic in need of psychic repair as much as economic recovery.
On the subject of defending the Inaugural address, Stanley Fish’s column this week adroitly examines Obama’s rhetoric in Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Another good read, informative and engaging.
With Obama’s inauguration and the end of an error, I got to thinking this past week about how easy it is now for so many to trash and thrash George and Dick.
But who is really to blame for eight years of madness?
Notwithstanding Diebold, voter disenfranchisement, hanging chads, and the rest, the fact is no real revolt took place over the Republic’s rapid demise among vast numbers of its citizens, until the economy tanked.
For the most part, America just rolled over and allowed itself to be sodomized for eight years, thinking that the backdoor raping of its Constitution and values were necessary for “safety’s sake.” (Yes eight years, not six and a half, because nothing really changed after 9/11. For the same cynical, unquestioning pragmatism that allowed We The People to let the Supreme Court pick our President, allowed us to led by the nose into Iraq.)
But when the pimps quit paying the bills, things changed. Suddenly, sodomy became intolerable.
Individuals sometimes have to hit rock bottom before they are willing to take on the responsibility for change. Seems the same holds true for nations.
Change has come. And We The People are that change.
It’s “Nobody’s Fault But Ours.” Let’s give the Devils their due.
I discovered a YouTube upload of Nina Simone’s version of the classic “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” this past week. Incomparable.
Honesty, You Gotta Love It . . .
June 1, 2009 · 10 Comments
I have said similar as Charlie Brooker to friends.
Male and female.
I’ve even touted legislation for the past years years that I call “affirmative action voting.” It’s a kind of compromise between those who believe in “voter testing” and actually having womyn’s voices and lives represented in the law of the land.
For something like a hundred years, womyn were denied the right to vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were literally laughed out of Congress (read: white men) when they first presented the Constitutional amendment giving womyn the right to vote to that ‘noble body’ (read: male body, writ into the law).
Over forty years later, after the death of both womyn, the amendment written by Ms. Stanton was finally ratified.
As a corrective to those years, I’ve proposed “affirmative action voting.” This voting test requires a physician’s statement of biological gender. Have a penis? Sorry, outta luck for a few decades. (And guess what, size won’t make a bit of difference.) Take a number and wait your turn.
Silly?
No sillier than the presumptions that governed this country for over a hundred years, and it is in fact the precise standard that was applied in denying the womyn the right to vote.
Perhaps not so silly as it sounds. Or perhaps it is only silly if a womyn proposes the standard be applied to men.
I think it more than fair to employ a little affirmative action voting for a few decades, making everything the way it should be, evening things up a bit, giving the little ladies the reigns for a few years.
Let’s see what happens after a decade or two.
I am so glad Charlie Brooker wrote this column.
So much better coming from a man.
Honesty, you gotta love it.
Though I doubt many American men are ready for this strong a dose of it. Honesty, that is. G-d bless them, it’s a hard habit to develop, and there is certainly little in this testosterone driven culture compelling to behave so.
This week’s must read opinion, because instead of bantering about the specifics, let’s start getting a good look at the forest amid the trees.
Gaurdian Commentary: Charlie Brooker Calls On Women To Rule The World.
Categories: Advocacy · Behavior · Columnists · Courage · Economy · Empowerment · Equality · Gender · Gender and Identity · Global Economy · Global Warming · Hermanity · Hope · Identity · Ignorance · Learning · Legal Theory · Men · Old Baggage · Politics · Popular Culture · Power · Psychology · Redemption · The Guardian · Women · Women's Subordination · Womyn · Writers · Writing
Tagged: Advocacy, Commentary, Gender, Hope, Imagination, Men, Political Commentary, Power, Reality, Save the Planet, The World, Truth, Women