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….