Part 6 (1/2)

Every moment of that process, she has to be thinking of me, and how I've forced all of this on her-exercised my ability to bend her life away from what it was to what I've made of it. Me exercising my control.

I gotta tell you, it feels awesome.

But! You know what would feel even more awesome? The knowledge that, if you get your way and abortion is outlawed even in cases of rape, that my control of her will continue through all the rest of her life.

First, because she'll have no legal choice about whether to have the baby I put in her-sorry, dearie, you have no control at all! You have to have it! That's nine months of having your body warp and twist and change because I decided that you needed a little lesson on who's actually running the show. That's sweet.

Once the baby's born, the woman will have to decide whether to keep it. Here's an interesting fact: Of the women who have gotten pregnant from rape who give birth to that baby, most keep the baby, by a ratio of about five to one. So my ability to change the life of the woman just keeps growing, doesn't it? From the rape, to the nine months of the pregnancy, to the rest of her life dealing with the child I raped into her. Of course, she could put the kid up for adoption, but that's its own bundle of issues, isn't it? And even then, she's dealing with the choices I made for her, when I exercised my control over her life.

Best of all, I get to do all that without much consequence! Oh, sure, theoretically I can get charged with rape and go to prison for it. But you know what? For every hundred men who rape, only three go to prison. Those are pretty good odds for me, especially since-again!-folks like you like to muddy up the issue saying things like ”forcible rape.” Keep doing that! It's working out great for me.

As for the kid, well, oddly enough, most women I rape want nothing to do with me afterward, so it's not like I will have to worry about child support or any other sort of responsibility...unless of course I decide that I haven't taught that woman a big enough lesson about who's really in control of her life. Did you know that 31 states in this country don't keep rapists from seeking custody or visitation rights? How great is that? That's just one more thing she has to worry about-me crawling out of the woodwork to remind her of what I did, and am continuing to do, to her life.

Look how much control you want to give me over that woman! I really can't thank you enough for it. It warms my heart to know no matter how much I rape, or how many women I impregnate through my non-consensual s.e.xual battery, you have my back, when it comes to reminding every woman I humiliate who is actually the boss of her. It's me! It's always been me! You'll make sure it'll always be me. You'll see to that.

I am totally voting for you this election.

Yours, Just Another Rapist.

P.S.: I love it when you say that you ”stand for innocent life” when it comes to denying abortions in cases of rape! It implicitly suggests that the women I rape are in some way complicit in and guilty of the crimes I commit on top of, and inside of, their bodies! Which works out perfectly for me. Keep it up!

No, seriously, keep it up.

-JAR Forrest Plumber Feb

3.

2009.

Wait, what?

Fresh off his stint as a war correspondent in Gaza, Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.

When GOP congressional aides gather Tuesday morning for a meeting of the Conservative Working Group, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher-more commonly known as Joe the Plumber-will be their featured guest. This group is an organization of conservative Capitol Hill staffers who meet regularly to chart GOP strategy for the week.

Wurzelbacher, who became a household name during the presidential election, will be focusing his talk on the proposed stimulus package. He's apparently not a fan of the economic rescue package, according to members of the group.

I think it's nice that the GOP has found its new BFF with Joe the Plumber, but if memory serves correctly, every time Mr. Wurzelbacher opens his mouth on the issues of the day, ignorance vomits forth in rus.h.i.+ng gouts. I believe the GOP is packaging this as ”wisdom from the heartland,” but speaking as one in the heartland, dude, it's just ignorance. And what's not ignorance is a GOP talking point, so I expect from the GOP point of view, whatever Joe says is going to be pure gold. He makes so much sense! He's saying things we've always believed! Well, yes.

This is not to disparage Mr. Wurzelbacher for being an opportunist, incidentally, and if you are of a mind to, here's a quiz for you: Hey, you're a bald, chunky, blue-collar n.o.body from a c.r.a.ppy little midwest town! By chance, you find yourself thrust into the national spotlight and have a chance to do something more interesting with your life than sit in your c.r.a.ppy little midwest town and get balder and chunkier. Do you: a) Say, ”no thanks, I'd rather stay a n.o.body”; b) Do all the wacky c.r.a.p everybody asks you to do for as long as you possibly can, because in your heart you know it will never ever get any better than this for you for as long as you might possibly live.

Take your time on that one, people.

So, no: I don't blame Joe the Plumber one bit for taking up the invitation to talk strategy with the GOP, or fly to the mideast, or any other thing he might be offered to do that sounds interesting to him. Dude's living the dream, man. As long as they keep letting him, why shouldn't he. I support Wurzelbacher milking this thing. Good for him. I hope he's having fun. I suspect he is.

The real question is not what Joe's doing, but what the h.e.l.l the GOP's thinking. Maybe they haven't been keeping up with current events, but the last guy who hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber found that wagon in the ditch. Joe the Plumber is an everyman, perhaps, but he's the sort of everyman who got outvoted by all the other sorts of everymen out there, and whose numbers appear to be shrinking as time goes on in any event. Which is to say that it's good for Joe the Plumber that the GOP wants to hear from him; it's probably not so great for the GOP.

Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment To Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan's Festering, Baby-Eating Soul Jun

12.

2008.

Back in the day-you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white-news organizations called potential First Ladies ”wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it's basically fine for Fox News to use ”Baby Mama” for Mich.e.l.le Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, ”some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can't stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they're all relaxed about that s.h.i.+t, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it's not Fox News that's calling Mich.e.l.le Obama ”Baby Mama,” it's outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn't want to use the term ”Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

Meanwhile, over at her personal site, Mich.e.l.le ”Fox News' Ethnic s.h.i.+eld” Malkin defends Fox News' use of the ”Baby Mama” phrase by essentially making two arguments. First, Mich.e.l.le Obama once called Barack Obama her ”baby's daddy,” and as we all know, a married woman factually and correctly calling her husband her child's father is exactly the same as a major news organization calling a potential First Lady some chick what got knocked up on a fling. Second, the term ”baby-daddy” has gone out into the common culture; heck, even Tom Cruise was called Katie Holmes' baby-daddy, you know, when he impregnated her and she subsequently gave birth while the two were not married, which is exactly like what happened between Mich.e.l.le and Barack Obama, who were married in 1992 and whose first child was born six years later.

So by Malkin's reasoning it's perfectly fine for Fox News to call Mich.e.l.le Obama the unmarried mother of Barack Obama's children because an entirely different phrase has to her mind entered the common culture, and there was this one time that Mich.e.l.le Obama once uttered something that sounded like that entirely different phrase, which is not the phrase that Fox News used. But wait! Malkin also points to someone in her comment thread saying that one time, Mich.e.l.le Obama actually used the phrase ”baby daddy”! No apostrophe! It's in a comment thread, so it must be true. Therefore, Mich.e.l.le Obama apocryphally using a piece of urban slang makes it perfectly okay for Fox News to use an entirely different piece of urban slang. And that's why, you see, it won't be a problem for Bill O'Reilly to refer to Barack Obama as ”my n.i.g.g.a” on the next O'Reilly Factor.

It's s.h.i.+t like this that makes a different story on CNN, about whether Barack Obama should be considered black or biracial, an absolute hoot. Here's a quick test on whether Obama should be considered fully black: Poof! Barack Obama has been magically transported to a KKK meeting in deepest, whitest Klanistan without his Secret Service detail. There's a rope and a tree nearby. What happens to Obama? If you say, ”why, Barack Obama walks out of there alive, of course” then sure, he's biracial. Also, you're a f.u.c.king idiot. To everybody who cares about Obama's racial ident.i.ty, either positively or negatively, the man is a black man, married to a black woman, who has black children. Black black black black black black black black.

It sure as h.e.l.l matters to Fox News, which is why it's dog whistling about Barack so loudly that it's vibrating the windows. Calling Mich.e.l.le Obama a ”baby mama” isn't just Fox News having a happy casual larf; it's using urban slang to a) remind you the Obamas are black, b) belittle a woman of considerable personal accomplishment, and c) frame Barack Obama's relations.h.i.+p to his wife and children in a way that insults him, minimizes his love for and commitment to his family, and reinforces stereotypes about black men. Someone at Fox News just ought to call Barack Obama ”boy” at some point so we can have all the cards right out there on the table.

This will keep happening. Fox News will keep finding ways to remind its viewers that the Obamas are black (and possibly Muslim), Mich.e.l.le Malkin will continue to make excuses for Fox News' dog-whistling racism that expose the fact that she's about as familiar with logical thinking as a rainbow trout is with knitting, and eventually some portion of the Fox News audience will get to the ballot box in November convinced that they're not really racists, they just know that there's something about that Obama boy they just don't like. This is how it will go. Let's not pretend it's not part of equation, this election year.

Friends Nov

23.

2011.

My oldest friend who I still know and stay in contact with is Kyle Brodie, whom I met in the second grade. We hit it off on the first day, not in cla.s.s but on the bus ride home. We started having a conversation and we both found each other so mutually clever that we just knew we were totally going to be best friends. And we were, until he moved away, as people do. But we kept in touch here and there and have genuinely reconnected again in the last couple of years; he's still as clever as ever and I'm delighted that 34 years ago I made the right decision to be his friend (and he to be mine).

The newest friend I have I made this last weekend; it's Adrienne Kress, an author I met at SFContario 2 in Toronto, and much like Kyle in second grade, it was her humor and cleverness in conversation that made me feel like I could have a connection with her, and encouraged me to spend time with her over the course of the convention. It is of course far too early to know if this enjoyment of her company and liking her as a person is going to mean I'll be friends with her as long as I've been with Kyle, and honestly, it would be totally unfair of me (as well as possibly creepy for her) if I had that expectation. And you know what? I don't. We'll see how it goes. But in the meantime, I'll consider her a friend, and happily so.

In between Kyle and Adrienne are some hundreds of people over the course of my life with whom I have been fortunate enough to be friends, to a greater or lesser extent.

”Friend” is an imprecise term, mind you. Cla.s.sifying someone as a ”friend” is a little like cla.s.sifying them as a ”mammal”-it's probably correct but it doesn't actually tell you much. There are all sorts of different types of friends, from the sort of friend barely above the level of casual acquaintance to the sort of friend who, when they call and say ”I have a problem, bring a shovel,” you bring a shovel and deal with the problem without so much as a second thought. The taxonomy of friends.h.i.+p is exhaustive and even then doesn't take into consideration that nearly all friends.h.i.+ps are in motion. Your best friend in sixth grade may be someone to whom you barely speak anymore, for no other reason than life happens. The person with whom you shared mostly only a friendly pa.s.sing relations.h.i.+p for years may unexpectedly become one of your most important friends. Friends you may see in real life only once a year-if that-may share a bond with you of surprising warmth. Time and circ.u.mstance and the fact we are ourselves always changing means our friends.h.i.+ps are always changing too. New ones are added. Old ones trail away. Sometimes they return. Sometimes they don't.