The Padrone Society and the Great Republican Crack-Up

M. Boulanger has a warning for us all: 

Reports of the Republican party’s crack-up may well prove to be premature.  The economy is still staggering about like an oblivious drunk on the edge of a pool, and a second dip would make it possible for anyone—yes, anyone, and that means you, Rick Santorum—to defeat President Barack Obama come November.

Yet it is stunning to see the turn that the Republican primary campaign has taken, heading into the last week of February.  I don’t think any major party has ever fielded a collection of candidates who were quite this radical, not to mention mean-spirited, belligerent, and solipsistic.  Debate after debate, primary after primary has gone by with this Klown Kollege of Kandidates blithely demanding a war with Iran, accusing the president of being some sort of bizarre alien to American life, and threatening to drastically scale back or eliminate altogether Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, housing programs, any and all financial regulations, abortions under any circumstances, equal rights for gays (and even, in Ron Paul’s case, for people of color), and now your right to buy birth control.

Taken together, these agendas—which are actually remarkably similar, for all the squabbling among the ambitious little men proposing them—would not set America back to the Dark Ages.  It would put us in a state that no nation has ever quite experienced before, an “anti-society” of sorts, in which we would combine the worst of both worlds:  a large, heavily armed, aggressive federal government, that would be employed only in the service of the wealthiest and the most powerful.

How did we come to the point where a major party—one representing roughly half the country—pushes this out as the best it has to offer?

Historically, Republicans have—for better and for worst—always been the most radical of the two major parties.  Sometimes, this has been a very good thing, as when Lincoln reluctantly resolved to go to war and then remake the fundamental workings of the United States rather than let the slave states secede, or when Teddy Roosevelt pushed far-reaching Progressive reforms onto Social Darwinist America a century ago.

Too often, though, the GOP has violated the most fundamental, Burkean tenets of conservatism by advocating utopian ideas that were bound to rip apart the social fabric of the nation and even the world, for no good purpose.  Prohibition, restoring “don’t ask, don’t tell,” bringing back orphanages, privatizing prisons, defunding Amtrak, de-regulating Wall Street, “letting Detroit fail,” invading and nuking China, invading and nuking Cuba, and now, invading and nuking Iran, are just a few examples that spring immediately to mind.

But this year’s collection of looney tunes has gone well beyond what most of the party elders seemed to want.  The nominee was supposed to be Mitt Romney, a typical Republican candidate, which is to say a handsome, respectable individual who can mouth the most ridiculous, radical right-wing slogans in the most moderate and appealing way possible.  Romney paid his dues, going through a losing primary season before, and spending years denouncing his own moderate record and building up an enormous war chest.

And yet, what should have been a cakewalk of a nominating campaign has instead wandered off in all sorts of impossible directions.  One plainly crazy or narcissistic candidate after another has topped the polls, with loose cannons such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum even winning primaries.  Romney may yet pull out the nomination, but there is now an excellent chance he will not be able to win a majority of delegates before the Republican national convention in Tampa, at the end of August.

This would be a disaster for the party’s November prospects, guaranteeing almost three full months of infighting between the last major primary in early June and the convention, and leaving President Obama free to play off the still further right-wing stands and pronouncements they will utilize to pander to the party faithful.

How did this come about?

It says here the real answer lies with two practices the Republicans always claim to love when it comes to business, government, and society in general, but which may not be working out so well for them as a party.  That is, “outsourcing,” and “privatization.”

Thanks to years of Republican policies, the party’s campaign this year has been largely outsourced.  Its main opinion shapers are not Republican leaders or elected officials but ranting radio jocks and Fox News celebrities, the Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, Anne Coulters and Mike Savages of the world...who have proliferated ever since Republicans led the charge to end the Fairness Doctrine and allow massive media monopolies.

Trouble is, all the Rushes and the Coulters out there have no vested interest in the Republican party, per se, doing well.  In fact, the worse the party does at the polls, the more crazed callers and listeners they’re likely to get, spewing out their hatred and frustration, and their doomsday scenarios.  All they have to do is pander to these listeners by cleaving to ever more extreme, ever more alienating right-wing lines.

At the same time, the Republicans did the most to launch another political power base the party can’t control by systematically attacking and undermining all campaign financing laws for the last forty years.  Now, thanks to the rise of the SuperPACs, candidates can stay in a race as long as they can find a sugar daddy to back them.

In past years, discredited fringe candidates such as Gingrich and Santorum would long ago have run out of money and folded their tents.  But thanks to Santorum backer Foster Friess—you remember, the one who talked about women putting aspirin between their legs as a form of birth control—and Gingrich patron and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson, losing means never having to say you’re done.

Notions such as party discipline or having a long-term, general election strategy mean little to these feckless magnates (or to many others, such as the Koch brothers).  As the old song goes, they want what they want when they want it, and the tricky business of maneuvering through to November is irrelevant to them, at least compared to getting to watch their little darlings call down lightning upon various foreign peoples and offer to annihilate social structures and conventions that have held this country together for decades.

Call it the new Padrone system for America.  It’s one the right has been advocating in all sorts of ways, for all sorts of other segments of our society for years now.

Want that neighborhood park preserved while public funding is slashed away?  Better find yourself a group of rich people willing to pay for it—such as the Central Park Conservancy.  Want the litter off the street?  Don’t go looking to the Sanitation Department; beg local businesses to form a “Business Improvement District”—in which they’ll set the laws and treat the street cleaners as they see fit.

Rick Santorum has recently denounced all of publicly funded education as “anachronistic.”  Don’t have mysteriously large sources of income after twelve years of serving in the U.S. Senate?  Guess you’d better get some benevolent wealthy person to get that genius kid of yours into a good private school.

On and on it goes, quite the intellectual rage even with many people who don’t think of themselves as being particularly right-wing.  It’s a matter of faith with many internet devotees now that all or most intellectual property should be free.

Don’t worry about stealing music; the band will make up the money touring.  So will the author...somehow.  People are always flocking to those bookstore readings, big bucks in hand.  Same thing with movies.  Maybe the actors will travel around and re-create the best scenes.  I’m sure scientists can do something like that, too.

Or...maybe they can get a wealthy backer.  A padrone.  Everybody’s doing it now, beginning with Republican candidates.  Once again, the right wing is ahead of its time—even if just now it’s being hoisted by its own petard.  Free men and women coming together in free societies is so anachronistic, too.  Better to just throw a few more pearls before the swine.   

--M. Boulanger

One Hassle Away

It’s only Wednesday, and women around the world are not having such a great week. First, there was Tuesday’s piece in The New York Times by Graham Bowley about an Afghan woman tortured and murdered by her husband and mother-in-law (!) for giving birth to a third daughter.

In the same paper, Dina Bakst wrote an excellent editorial about a legal loophole that allows employers to fire women if they ask for accommodations at work during pregnancy, such as extra bathroom breaks—a judge in Brooklyn (!) ruled in favor of the employer on that case. Two New York State legislators, Liz Krueger and Aileen Gunther, are sponsoring a bill in Albany that will close that loophole in this state, and it is to be hoped it will pass.

Last but not least, there’s today’s Times story by Pam Belluck about the Susan G. Komen Foundation pulling its $700,000 grant to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings at 19 of PP’s affiliates.

Let’s take that last story first, a cautionary one in this time of “class warfare.” Nancy Brinker (!), sister of Susan and founder of the charity in her memory, is a longtime Republican: she was the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary during W’s presidency, among other things. So are we surprised that a charity run by a GOP true believer has finally had to sever its ties with an organization that provides abortions? Amazing it took this long. 

But when we all don our pink ribbons and run for the cure—a cure that will presumably be offered to ALL women—we should now remember that there are strings attached. Like Grover Norquist’s tax pledge, all Republicans, whether candidates or power brokers, must eschew reproductive rights. And the ostensible reason for the grant cut—that PP is being investigated by Rep. Cliff Stearns, REPUBLICAN of Florida, just proves the point. (Really, these anti-abortion people are the witch hunters of our time.)

The last line of the piece quotes Leslie Durgin, senior vp of public policy for PP, who says that many low-income women use PP for their primary health care needs, and that having to go elsewhere could delay timely treatment. “A lot of our clients are just one hassle away from not getting services at all.” 

And that’s where the class warfare comes in. As the wealthy increasingly take over roles that the government has filled in the post-WWII era, such as expanded school funding (charter schools), and health care (Gates & Co.), recipients of their largesse will have to check their beliefs at the door. Not what the founding fathers had in mind when they guaranteed freedom of religion—in fact a radical departure that continually goes unchallenged in politics and the media. (Read this good piece on the American God thing by Kevin Kruse)

And so the fight continues for freedom of all kinds for women. And what do these (!) mean? In each of these cases—a mother(in-law), a judge from Brooklyn (bastion of feminism!), a woman of means and power — people who we typically think might be sympathetic to the plight of women, done their sisters in. If we can’t stick up for each other, who will?

Newt: A Rant

Mme Morningstar can take no more:

For many of us who were born after World War II, the America of our expectations is no more.  It was a time of expanding social and civil rights, an opening of society that had never been seen before.  And  it seemed that the growth would only expand. 

Even with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, who could have guessed that America would begin to move backwards, as it has in so many ways?  It was under Nixon that the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and political relations with China were normalized, after all. 

But the times, they have a’changed for good and all, it looks like.  The popularity of Newt Gingrich is as regressive as politics get.  For he brings to mind the most retrograde of all modern political figures—Barry Goldwater.  It was Goldwater, who pledged in his 1964 campaign, that if, elected president, he would drop the nuclear bomb on Viet Nam. His race-baiting appeal was so generally unappealing that he won only 6 states in the November election.  President Johnson clobbered him with a greater majority than FDR received in 1936—which was the highest majority up until that time. 

It is beyond common knowledge that Newt Gingrich is not a good husband.  Asking two women for divorces while they were seriously ill is not good form.  It is, in fact, the worst. 

So, why isn’t Newt’s so-called religious constituency appalled? We are in an age that is beyond hypocrisy, it would seem.  While Bill Clinton’s behavior with women wasn’t exactly admirable, he didn’t divorce two sick women to indulge in his vices, while publicly proclaiming the unacceptability of others who do the same.  It is true, of course, that contradiction is not exactly new to presidential politics, but Newt Gingrich takes it to new extremes of immorality and rhetorical absurdity.

Clearly, Newt Gingrich is a repulsive human being—a fact that is verified by eye and hear every time he opens his mouth.

And it’s not just Newt’s foggy notions of personal responsibility that make him so. Let’s discuss his so-called ideas for a moment.  It is often said about Newt by some journalists and fellow politicians, that he is a “genius,” who constantly offers many, many ideas for improving America, only some of which are actually workable or even credible. 

The latest piece of nonsense he is promoting on the primary campaign stump is the possibility of a colony of Americans living on Mars, that, he would allow to become the 51^st state if president (should there be at least 13,000 residents).  This is so silly, so inane, as to come from the mind of a goofy, lonely sci-fi nerd, circa the mid-1950s.

I have never heard one useful thing Newt Gingrich has had to say.  Ever.  And he has been around for quite a while. Recently, he opined about firing school janitors and hiring children to work in their place, to show those kids what it means to work, since their own parents aren’t employed and can’t demonstrate it to them.

This racist and numbskull notion has two objectives.  One is typically conservative union-busting where unionized school janitors would be fired, to be replaced by young people who can do those jobs for a much more modest “salary.”  But even worse, the second goal is to signal to poor children that they are not worthy of a truly free education.

May I just rhetorically ask, “What the hell is up with that?!”

It has always been easy and convenient to blame the poor for their plight, and to conjure ways to punish them.  But when Newt Gingrich refers to President Obama as the “food stamp President,” it is not only factually wrong, but beyond the pale, even in an election year.

Newt represents a pre-Civil Rights-era America in a barely disguised Barry Goldwater costume.  And in fact, the folks who cheer him know exactly what he is dressed as, and express themselves in loud and fervent agreement.  That the national representatives of the Republican Party know that they cannot get elected without always resorting to the publicly grotesque says too much about that party and those representatives.  And, too much about the voters who welcome them in.

Should there be a God, New Gingrich will not be our next president, but it is not impossible to posit such a hideous outcome.  The kind of slash, crash, and burn attitude that has ripped through American party politics, creating the do-nothing Congressional nonsense that goes on today, was created by the Newt himself in the 1990s.  And he still revels in it, sinking our country into the mud and filth of his cant and cynicism. Surely it is past time for Newt Gingrich to shut up and get permanently lost.

--Mme Morningstar

You can't go home again--nor should you

As promised, I’ve prevailed on one of my learned friends to write here in the spirit of a bluestocking gathering—although 18^th century drawing rooms did not have movie chat to enliven things. Presenting Mme Morningstar, who I hope you will be reading more from in the future…..

Young Adult

“Young Adult,” starring Charlize Theron, recently opened to good reviews, but not great business, as I understand it.  Once you see the movie, the reason becomes clear.  Movie goers are very reluctant to see a beautiful woman looking scruffy and acting mean.  It upends their understanding of movie heroines as well as movie stereotypes, and makes viewers generally uncomfortable.

But this movie is something else again.  Here is Charlize Theron, who received a predictable Academy Award for playing the man-killing lesbian-with-an-overbite/sometime prostitute Aileen Wuornos in “Monster,” (2003), looking as unattractive as a beautiful woman can look in American movies.  In “Young Adult,” Ms. Theron, as Mavis Gary, is again willing to look unappealing.  Every morning, she wakes up flat on her face in bed, often still in her street clothes, the TV droning, her little Pekenese (I think) dog hungry and lonely for her.  She is a mess.  She is any one of us who drank too much, got a rotten night’s sleep, and, upon awakening, instantly regrets whatever half-remembered adventure of the night before.

But then, we watch, as Ms. Theron, playing a ghost writer of young adult fiction, having escaped small-town life and living in the big town—Minneapolis!--dolls herself up.  Not in a creepy Kardashian way, either.  But in the way that pretty girls have always known how to do.  Without thinking about it, she chooses the right eye shadow for day or night wear, the perfect glossy (not too-glossy) lipstick of exactly the right shade to complement her coloring, the perfect foundation that blends her facial imperfections, should she have any.

And she is a pretty woman.  Which is part of the point of the movie.  Mavis is one of those who made it out.  She was the high school prom queen, the most popular girl, the one who everyone in school adored and loathed.  She doesn’t even remember the guy who had the locker next to her for all four years, but he sure remembers her.  She was barely conscious of anyone except herself during her youth, but she does remember one thing.  It was the best time of her life.  It was the best of her.  She was at her most beautiful, her most hopeful.

I saw the movie with a female friend, a very pretty former high school cheerleader, of course, who knew all about that beauty stuff in high school, but knows how to be a good friend and is a lovely person.  At one point I whispered to her, “She’s like your evil twin.”  She didn’t deny it, but only said, “She’s so much prettier than me.”

Mavis never had any intention of returning to Mercury, Minnesota, if she could help it.  She lives in the Big Town—Minnie-apple—as it is called.  It is not love that calls her home, though she does return intending to “save” her former boyfriend by wrecking the life he has made for herself.  She is bored, she is late on a deadline and mostly, she is procrastinating.

And she has somehow forgotten that nothing shouts boredom so deafeningly as your past.

And this trip bashes another movie trope, thank heavens. The “it’s-always-better-back-home-you-know-it-is” myth.  If it were so good, why would all those smart, clever, and creative people who used to write those movies have left to go to Hollywood and write those movies?  The yearning for small-town life, for old-fashioned values, as the Republican Party has been calling it since Richard Nixon, doesn’t exist and never did.  That’s why people leave.  Mavis’s Mercury is no different.  Had she stayed, her life would have been no more fulfilling than it is in the city.  As I used to tell a friend of mine who hated every town she ever lived in, “It’s not the town.”  Unstated, of course, was the truth of it:  “It’s not the town, it’s you who isn’t trying harder to be happy.”  Or, better, “It’s you, who isn’t recognizing happiness when it accidentally finds you.”

Ms. Theron makes such a complete transformation from beast to beauty and back to beast, both internally and externally, that the view is quite enthralling.  She is an uncompromising character in an uncompromising movie.

Written by Diablo Cody, the screenwriter for the rather over-praised but cute enough, “Juno” (2007), we are witness to a different kind of Hollywood story.  One without a Hollywood ending.  Oh, there’s a bit of hope, maybe, but the bad girl does not necessarily learn her lesson, come to her senses, or change. 

“No hugging, no learning” was said to be the idée fixe behind “Seinfeld.”   Perhaps “Young Adult” is the romantic movie for the post-“Seinfeld” age.  There’s not much romance in it. 

And for a bad girl, Mavis is not the worst.  She’s not nice. But she’s not terrible.  How refreshing to see a mean girl as we know mean girls to be.  They were like this in high school, and they’re like this 10 years later, just with better hair and clothes. Not everyone can change.  Not everyone wants to change.  In their view, it’s the rest of the world that should.  For once, a movie tells us what that life looks and sounds like without flinching or fibbing.

Mme Morningstar

The thrill of reading for the first time

I’m an urban woman of a certain age, lifelong book addict and culture vulture, and I've long wanted a place to talk about what I'm reading, watching, looking at, and thinking about with like-minded women (and men too). Though we may be rich in experience and ideas, we are poor in time, and I hope Mme Bluestocking will give me a chance to engage with others whenever convenient, to read or write about the pleasures of culture high and low, and honor the original gatherings of what became known as the “bluestockings” (though it was their male guests who wore the casual blue leg coverings!) These English women in the 18th century invited the (male) luminaries of their day to give talks and spark discussion, when formal education wasn't the done thing for girls and women. In that spirit, I hope to tempt some of my (female) contemporaries to write in this space. And since I've worked in book publishing for almost 30 years, I’d like to provide a little behind the scenes intelligence and my own thoughts on an industry that through technology is becoming open to all. Just as the ladies of the 18th century portended universal education—though we still have quite a way to go to achieve that…..

Reading and re-reading

Just before Christmas I was surprised to see Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James on the New York Times bestseller list. I’d heard nothing about it coming out—a December drop-in from Knopf? —and as one of my colleagues said, it sounded delicious: a murder mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice. I downloaded immediately.

Of course no one can imitate Jane Austen, but James gives it a go. After a too-long, dialogue-less beginning of imitation Austen, I almost threw up my hands. Then James turned to 19^th century English law, the courts, a legal drama, which is what she does best. Nice twisty ending, and a fun cameo by characters from another Austen novel I won’t spoil.

Which got me thinking: when I love a novel as much as I do P&P (or Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, all of which I’ve read several times), I keep longing to have that first experience again. That’s actually the highest compliment that I can pay a book: I wish I could read it for the first time again. And writers must feel it too; why else attempt prequels, sequels and the like of famous beloved novels that can never be duplicated?

James’s Pemberly did evoke Austen, and made me want to read P&P again too. After all, it spawned an entire genre of novels that follow the drama of making a marriage—what we now call romance, women’s fiction, chick-lit.  But even though Austen can’t be bested, I’ll still give anyone a shot who tries. And on that note, can’t wait for the second part of Downton Abbey to begin….