Another post from the archives, this one from a more innocent time: 2007.

May 2007

I am happy to admit it, totally honestly, without a trace of irony: I’m a Fanjaya. That is, an honest to goodness fan of Sanjaya Malakar, the 17-year-old American Idol contestant whose wacky hairdos and wobbly vocals made him a target for derision from the web to the grocery tabloids to network news. I participate in pop culture silliness as much as anyone (I still have my Spice Girls dolls), but I really do love this kid. In fact, I’ve had a mom-crush on him ever since his first audition in Seattle, long before he shocked the nation with his pony-hawk.

Shall I break for another pop culture definition? A mom-crush occurs when an adorable kid provokes a powerful desire to pinch the object’s cute cheeks and serve him or her homemade cookies. In common usage, one might say: “I hope they never recast the stars of the Harry Potter movies. I have a mom-crush on all three of them.” And Sanjaya definitely had the toothy grin and the goofball charm to win over the stoniest mom in America. When he wept openly after his older sister was cut from the competition, I felt a bit teary myself. Who sees a boy cry on television any more, much less out of genuine tenderness and emotion? I loved it. He was my Idol pick, no matter how he styled his hair.

But fellow moms and Idol geeks like my friends Pam and Liz thought I was nuts when I confessed that I was dialing for Sanjaya. “Are you serious?” Pam squawked. He was terrible! Liz e-mailed. These are sensitive, loving women who are both capable of serious mom-crushing. But eventually, I realized what made them immune to Sanjaya’s charms.

Neither were mothers of sons.

Now someone else’s son is in the news, and for something far more disturbing than off-key singing: on April 16, 2007 Seung-Hui Cho opened fire on his university campus in Virginia and killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself. Media coverage after the massacre followed a predictable pattern, with a parade of pundits expounding on gun control laws, why students ought to own guns, pervasive mental illness, the rights of the mentally ill, violence on television, violence in video games, the logistics of campus lockdowns, and more. All that changed the day NBC announced it had received a package from the killer himself, containing videos and photographs of himself decked out in his murderous finery. In one image, Cho brandishes two firearms, holding them from his ammo-clad body at right angles, his face glowering with rage. It’s too perfect. It could have easily come from any grindhouse movie; hell, it could have come from the movie Grindhouse. This is not to blame Hollywood, but to recognize the image’s brutal allure. In America, we love power. We need it; we feed on it. The power that comes from violence is the cheapest and easiest available to those who are the weakest among us.

I was pregnant with my first child when the home video footage made by the two Columbine killers was made public, to be shown 24/7 by news outlets in a desperate attempt to understand what these boys had done. Not long before, a fuzzy black and white ultrasound had shown that I was going to have a little boy of my own. Two television screens, showing two separate images of boys in America. My typical first-time mom jitters gave way to full-blown panic. There was no chapter in What to Expect When You’re Expecting about this. What on earth was I going to do with my American boy?

Fast forward seven years and I still don’t know. No one else seems to either. Seung-Hui Cho, despite a youth spent in South Korea, idolized the Columbine killers as “martyrs.” I adore my boy, but I fear for him. No talk show or how-to book is going to sort this mess out. But maybe one boy’s spontaneous tears on the country’s most popular television show will help.

I know I had best not pin all my hopes on this one American boy, a reality TV star at that. Of all media icons they tend to have the shortest shelf lives. I have a lot of difficult, ugly parenting work ahead of me, and Sanjaya will be busy just growing up. I thank him for the courage he displayed on the show week after week—and I’m not talking about the spectacularly funny hairdos. It takes guts to be yourself in America these days. It takes strength to take chances, to stand up to criticism, and to cry when it’s all over. That’s a kind of power that is neither easy nor cheap, but it will last him a lifetime.

I hope his mother is proud.

From the Upajjhatthana Sutta:

Birth will end in death.
Youth will end in old age.
Wealth will end in loss.
Meetings will end in separation.
All things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent.

The late fall is a very difficult time for me, for evidence of our cyclic existence is everywhere. As the leaves fall, we attempt to laugh at the specter of death by hanging plastic skeletons from trees and sticking gag gravestones in the dirt. I eat tiny Milky Ways by the bagful to keep my anxieties from taking me over.

Today is the 8th anniversary of the death of Paul Wellstone, and an essay I wrote for the occasion is up at Minnesota Public Radio News, called Paul Wellstone, a teacher in life and also in death. Wellstone is only the most famous person I mourn in October. On the 29th I remember the last time I spoke to another Carleton friend, Liz, who called from her hospital bed in 2007 to wish me a happy birthday. My grief for her feels so fresh that I remain shocked that three years have passed since she died.

I like Buddhist philosophy for its insistence that all things are connected. Death exists because life exists, and life is a good thing. Fear exists because hope exists. Chocolate exists! My children anticipate Halloween so intensely they quiver, just like I did in the days when I could disconnect skulls from the heads they used to live in.

The Uphajjhatthana Sutta also includes this reminder: [The Buddhas] cannot remove our suffering with their hands….I am my own protector.

That’s the way my essay on Paul Wellstone ends. I just wish that mourning Liz were as easy as joining a campaign.

Agreeing with Rush Limbaugh is like getting a root canal; it’s astonishingly, even mind-bogglingly painful, but rare. Still, it does happen. And I agree wholeheartedly with Rush when he says that liberals who opt out of public schools are big fat hypocrites.

A core tenet of American liberalism is a support for fully funded public education, from Head Start to college. Yes?

1992, Bill and Hillary Clinton shopped around the whole of the District of Columbia to find a suitable school for young Chelsea. Did they visit Amy Carter’s alma mater, Rose L. Hardy Middle School? No. For in 1992, DC schools were generally assumed to be disastrous, failing, underfunded, and worst of all, unsafe. Chelsea would matriculate at Sidwell Friends, a highly ranked private school. Thomas L. Friedman wrote the following in the New York Times on January 6, 1993, shortly before Clinton’s inauguration:

Friends of the Clintons said today that the decision was based on their conviction that they simply would not sacrifice their daughter’s education to make a political point. The District of Columbia school system is notoriously underfinanced, overcrowded and far from ideal, and many parents in the District — white and black — who can afford to do so send their children to private schools.

What sacrifice, exactly? Did anyone wonder if the presence of Secret Service officers might help maintain peace at George Washington Elementary? And really, was there any doubt that Chelsea’s preteen intellect would dwindle and die if she were to attend such a school? She was, after all, the daughter of Yale Law graduates who could lay the world quite literally at her feet. Would she lose IQ points at Rose L. Hardy, or would the school, energized by her presence, rise to meet her?

Like it or not, the children of politicians need to put up or shut up as much as their parents do. I would feel differently, perhaps, if the Obama sisters were hidden from the limelight as strenuously as the progeny of the late Michael Jackson, their faces covered even while dangling from hotel balconies. But everyone remembers that the children of the candidates in 2008 were officially a Big Fucking Deal. Chelsea Clinton flat-ironed her hair and showed the world she was All Growed Up. Adorably round Sasha Obama had dimples so deep you could serve soup in them. Meghan McCain blogged and Tweeted her fingers off in an attempt to prop up her doddering old man. Joe Biden and John Edwards both lost children in terrible accidents, as the pages of ladies’ magazines recounted in breathless, image-softening detail. Then there were the antics of Track, Bristol, Pillow, Trigger, and Bamm-Bamm Palin, public relations disasters all.

If a child is offered to the public, the child can be parented by the public. If a child is trotted out as part of the campaign, the voters can expect that child to live that parent’s ideology. Am I surprised that the little McCains went to private schools in Phoenix? Nope. Am I gravely disappointed when the Obama girls march into an elite prep school that native District of Columbians cannot access? Yep.

[My friend, a bleeding heart liberal in the same socioeconomic class as the Obamas and Clintons] also swore that her daughter’s education would not be sacrificed to an ideology, but when she made this proclamation, Hannah was only three years old. Nowhere on the Expensive Private School website did I see the curriculum for Advanced Placement Play-Doh, nor did I see an offering for Accelerated Tag. She wasn’t fooling me, and I told her so.

Shortly thereafter, my best friend of fifteen years stopped returning my calls.

I have to admit, losing the Kennedy seat to a tea bag in 2009 is not as bad as when we lost the Wellstone seat to a d-bag in 2002. Still, it rankles. But on a positive note, I thought, I can see this guy naked.

HEY! WHERE’S THE BEEF?!!

I’m having a flashback to another right-wing wang I wanted to see….

I want my money back.

… this is the chapter tentatively entitled “WHO’S THE BEST FEMINIST IN AMERICA?” And for the record, I am still accepting nominations.

…is it glamorous Gloria Steinem, perhaps? Betty Friedan? Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon?

Or should we go way back to the suffragettes? A liberal feminist like Susan B. Anthony, so likeable she got her face on a coin nobody used? Her partner in crime Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Would you prefer a radical, like hunger-striker Alice Paul?

Speaking of Alice, what about Alice Walker? Her estranged daughter Rebecca Walker? Or other well-known feminist writers: Robin Morgan? Susan Faludi? Naomi Wolf?

Did I forget Margaret Sanger? I did. Sorry.

Would you choose Congressional ground-breakers like Shirley Chisholm and Carol Moseley Braun? Or judicial sheroes like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor?

We could choose a Third Wave hipstress like Kathleen Hanna or Diablo Cody, both former strippers who make Ms. Dworkin’s blood boil. Madonna’s never called herself a feminist, but Courtney Love has. The latter also made the memorable remark: “Gloria Steinem never helped me, but Larry Flynt did.” Moving along, then…

Third Wavers, make yourself heard. Debbie Stoller, founder of Bust? Andi Zeisler and Lisa Jervis, founders of Bitch? Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com? Carrie Bradshaw, founder of…Manolos?

YOU SAY YOU’RE PRO-CHOICE, SO PROVE IT! WHO WILL IT BE?

Reclaiming Mama Plath: a review of Ariel, the Restored Edition and The Collected Poems
by Shannon Drury

In Literary Mama, a literary magazine for the maternally inclined

Whats follows is a post from my ancient MySpace blog, published on Friday, April 3, 2009. I thought it might be appropriate to revisit, as my thoughtful essay for Literary Mama that grew out of it is due to be published any day now.

Just like mom & daddy did.

Even before I scored Sylvia Plath on the “What crazy bitch are you?” Facebook quiz, the recent suicide of her son has been on my mind. The good ladies of Jezebel.com used the occasion of Nicholas Hughes’ death to open a discussion on whether those with mental illness feel it’s appropriate to have children, given the likelihood of the disease being passed on. The commenters fell out predictably.

PRO-KIDS: good lord, no one knows what combination of DNA you’ll pass on. Don’t be so hard on yourselves. Parenting is a big fat crapshoot. So breed if you wanna, and don’t worry about it!

ANTI-KIDS: good lord, I am miserable enough without taking on this load of guilt. No way would I hang this noose around my own child’s neck. This dies with me.

It should be noted that Nicholas Hughes left behind no partner and no children. Sylvia, on the other hand, had been suicidal since her college years and still had two kids. Why?

A few days ago I dug out Paul Westerberg’s second solo album, Eventually, and thought about this some more as the song “MamaDaddyDid” came up. From the lyrics:

Decided not to have any part of
Wonderful lie of (life) love

Decided not to raise some goddamned kid

Just like ma-ma-mama daddy did

Yes that was their way no it ain’t mine

Guess they did ok at least they tried

This record came out in 1996. Paul and his wife had a son named Johnny two years later. His lifelong struggles with alcoholism and depression are well-documented.

Former Playmate and current Jim Carrey date-mate Jenny McCarthy is out with a new book about what causes autism and how it can be “healed.” (I find many of her opinions to be utter bullshit, and I believe that having a son on the spectrum gives me some authority on the matter.) This book tour, however, she’s trotting out a doctor who says there’s link between mental illness in the family and an increased risk for autism. Hmmmmmmmm.

Liz’s birthday is coming up in a few days, so she has been in my thoughts more than usual. Before she died, she fretted that her daughters would have to start getting colonoscopies in their twenties and would forever live with the fear of inheriting what killed her. I never asked if she regretted having them. I think I could guess her answer.

I suppose I picked a side when I had a biological child nine years ago, but the decision was not an educated one. Would I have listened to a reasoned argument on the matter, though? Did someone try to talk some sense into Sylvia Plath? She seems like a pretty clear-cut argument for not procreating. But who am I to judge what makes a life worth living? Sylvia’s daughter seems to be doing okay. Nicholas Hughes seemed okay too, until he quit his professorship to become a potter, then hanged himself.

Parenthood is so terrifying.

Celebrity deaths for which I actively mourned (that is, cried):

Princess Diana
Her life and death were a tragedies of truly epic proportions. To not cry over her sons sadly marching behind her coffin was to have no heart!

Paul Wellstone
My god, I cried for days. Everyone in Minnesota felt like Paul belonged to them. To perish with his wife and daughter, in a plane crash no less (one of my neurotic fears) made terrible news that much worse.

George Harrison
This man wrote “Here Comes the Sun.” If that isn’t a gift to all humanity, I don’t know what is. I would have cried when John Lennon died, had I understood what it all meant–I was only nine years old at the time.

Kurt Cobain
This man wrote some classics himself, yet died in misery and pain, unlike George. I have great sympathy and compassion for those who succumb to intractable mental illness.

Michael Hutchence
Never wrote a classic, but had a hand in some quality, brain-numbing pop. I was a big teenybopper fan of INXS in my pre-punk, junior high days. His death was pretty weird, too.

Bob Stinson
Merely a local celebrity, yes, but a man of great, raw musical talent who fell victim to his addictions. I attended his funeral, sneaking in the back so I wouldn’t take a seat from any of the Minneapolis rock luminaries who came to pay their respects. It was one of the most moving and heartfelt services I’ve ever been to.

All this is to make clear that I have not shed a single tear for Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, that OxiClean weirdo or any other celeb who shuffled off this mortal coil in this very unlucky month. Sure, I spun “Off the Wall” on my iPod, and mulled over the consequences of our culture’s obsession with child prodigies. Frankly, MJ’s death made me think more of Judy Garland, the first of the child star flame-outs. Her handlers pumped her full of drugs too, and kept her performing long after she should have stopped to dry out. When she dropped dead in June 1969 at the age 47, a group of her fans gathered to drink a cocktail to her memory at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. When the police raided the bar, her fans said what Judy never could: enough is enough. The modern gay rights movement was born. Michael Jackson was more than likely a gay man, whose warped childhood kept him squarely in the closet, unable to form relationships with consenting adults. Thanks to his abusive parents, the benefits of Stonewall passed him by.

Can the death of any celebrity affect change? There was talk, the the wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s overdose, some rumblings about tightening restrictions on doctors who overfill celebs’ prescriptions. John Lennon’s assassination didn’t do much for the cause of gun control. In the wake of Wellstone’s death his colleagues were sufficiently moved to pass the Wellstone Mental Health Parity Act, which could help young people much less famous than Kurt Cobain gain access to the therapies that could save their lives. Troubled guitarists less gifted than Bob Stinson might be able to find the rehabilitation program that could keep them clean and healthy. Maybe.

It’s unlikely to happen, but I do hope that the spectacular crack-ups and flame-outs of child performers like Judy, Michael, and their logical heirs, Britney and Lindsay, give people a moment’s pause about what the American culture machine does to talented children and the parents who want to use them.

God forbid Kate Gosselin discovers a singer in that bunch.