The Voice of Treason

I should be buying and reading the David McCullough book, 1776, but I really have to revise my resume. Where is my resume? Anyway, I saw David on Tim Russert’s show, and he was talking about how history just isn’t taught anymore. He noted that teachers, in some cases, aren’t expected to specialize in anything - they just have very general Education degrees. This is odd. When I was earning my teaching credential I specialized in coursework that combined English and Theatre. My intention was to teach Composition, Grammar, Literature, and Theatre-Arts at a high school level. I was twenty-one, so what did I know?

But I understand his point. Like me, he feels that teachers have to love a subject and get excited about it. I could spend a lot of time here talking about the teachers who influenced me over the years and inspired me to learn and study hard. My history and English teachers were some of the best. There was a time I remembered all their names, but now I have a new game. Instead of my body getting lost like when I was a little kid wandering the streets of Chicago, I let my mind get lost. I’ll forget the name of a book, or movie, or politician, or teacher, but I won’t give up trying to remember it. Sometimes, days later, it’ll come to me.

I’ve talked about my French teacher. One reason I lost interest in French is that she was fired. Another teacher, who taught Spanish and had a “special” relationship with the principal, started teaching French as well. She was a terrible French teacher. French started sounding like Spanish to me, and I soon lost interest. I was peeved that a talented teacher lost her job and a mediocre one retained hers because of workplace politics. My first taste of who-you-know is sometimes worth more than what-you-know. I won’t play that game, and it’s cost me.

Another teacher, Mary, was a great influence. She used to teach at my high school, but she left for a period, then returned. She seemed so unusual, so fragile. She reminded me of Tennessee Williams’ Laura. The world was too harsh a place for her - what was she doing at my high school? She made us read the best writers and she encouraged me and my friend, Lorraine, to start a school literary magazine. She invited groups of students to her apartment. There was a piano, and a table full of strawberries, sour cream, and brown sugar. She showed us how to dip the berry in sour cream then roll it in the sugar for a life-changing experience.

We’d talk about life and our futures. We all thought we were imperfect in some way, but she had an encouraging word for everyone. She told me that I’d be devastating and my life would be wonderful. All I had to do was wait ’til I was twenty-seven. Memory fails, but I might have been an interesting twenty-seven year-old. Or not. Anyway, it was something to hold onto.

One day, she left our school. No reason, she just disappeared. I later discovered the reason she left the first time. She’d been walking down a school corridor and a student grabbed her, pulled her into a classroom, raped her, and beat her. I didn’t know this when I was in her class. I imagine it’s why the system lost her again. And what a terrible loss.

Article in today’s paper about local bloggers. Seems everyone who has access to a computer is blogging. I do it because I’ve never been successful at keeping a journal. I have stacks of blank books that will never be filled. I tend to keep e-mail journals, but every time I leave a job or a computer crashes, I lose a chunk of my life history. I need to ease off The Voice of Treason and concentrate on getting a job. Technically I’m still at my job, but I don’t expect to see a paycheck. I know, I know - why am I still going in there if I’m probably not going to get paid? It’s a long story. I gave two weeks…and I’ll see if I can stick to that. My last day is the day before my three year anniversary. I’m a bit anal: I like even blocks of time on my resume. Which I should be updating instead of doing this. Treason number twenty-seven: Always keep an updated resume on hand.

I don’t know where I’ve been, but I’m happy to report that that’s not the case. I just saw her sister Vanessa interviewed on Larry King Live. Generally I don’t watch CNN and I try to avoid Larry, but Bob Costas was filling in so I stopped to watch. I think Vanessa is a beautiful woman. There’s something odd about her, but she was pretty when she was younger, and she’s become a handsome older woman. Like Anne Bancroft, she has won an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy.

I think it’s safe to say that she is a talented actor. But she is politically retarded. However, her anti-war stance is justified, I guess, if you consider she had bombs falling on her head when she was little. She swears she isn’t an anti-Semite, but she’s been sucking Palestinian terrorist ass for years. You would think that if she was traumatized by WWII, she’d be anti-Nazi, and because of the way Jews were treated, pro-Israel. But that’s a little simplistic, and she is much more…uh, nuanced. (To be fair, she has chosen some battles that I support: independence for Northern Ireland and freedom for Soviet Jews. And I don’t condemn her for her roles in Julia or Playing for Time. Call me nuanced.)

Her contemporary, Jane Fonda, too, is politically retarded. Unlike Vanessa, Jane behaved on awards shows. (Jane always behaved. She did whatever any man she was supporting told her to do. Okay, maybe Ted had more money, but she changed for him, too. I tell you I had to stop watching baseball when Braves games were becoming Ted and Jane’s Excellent Adventure. Ugh.)

Anyway, for 1966 Oscars, Vanessa and her sister were nominated: Vanessa for Morgan!, Lynn for Georgy Girl. Liz Taylor won for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In 1960, Liz won for Butterfield 8, not because she deserved it, but because the Academy thought she was dying. Typical. Paul Newman should have won for The Verdict for 1982, and the Academy knew it but they gave it to Ben Kingsley (a wonderful actor, too, and I love him in just about everything he’s done from Schindler’s List to Sexy Beast), and then they tried to make it up to Paul by giving him one for The Color of Money which he didn’t deserve. But they thought he was dying. Remember that Peter O’Toole (also nominated along with Kingsley and Newman for 1982 Oscars) never won one - unless you count that honorary one they gave him a couple years ago when they thought he was dying. (He only looks like he’s dying, and all his old drinking buddies have assumed room temperature, so the Academy is thinking his days are numbered, too.) People assume he won for Lawrence of Arabia, but that was a year when everyone in the category should have walked away with it. No. Becket? No. He should have won for The Lion In Winter, but he was robbed. Since that moment I’ve taken the awards with a grain of salt. Actually, the Tonys are much more fun to watch and the show has much better production values. It certainly goes by faster.

At any rate, I have always liked Georgy Girl. The film remains one of my favorites, and everyone was wonderful in it. James Mason and Alan Bates - always fun to watch those two. (Fun film fact: James Mason and Charlotte Rampling were in Georgy Girl and The Verdict. Zzzzzzzzzz.) Anyway, unlike her sister, Lynn - a naturalized U.S. citizen — was always very American in her mindset. Go to America, do it all - from stage to screen to game shows — and make as much money as possible. Practical. Like Olivier, she couldn’t say no. But Olivier knew an actor’s shelf life was limited and he had a family to support, so he held his nose and did what he had to do.

Truthfully, I can separate the performer from his or her politics. I have to. If I held a grudge against every liberal actor and boycotted their films, I’d probably never see another movie. For instance, I like Johnny Depp. Another political retard, but he’s interesting to watch and I admire the choices he’s made. Barbra Streisand, a definite PR. But I’m not going to say she isn’t talented. Funny Girl is another guilty pleasure of mine. Okay, I admit it - The Way We Were - if I’m channel surfing I’ll pause and watch. But would I walk across the street and buy a ticket to see her in concert? Probably not. I don’t want a portion of my money to go to some political cause and I don’t want to be lectured from the stage. Like Laura Ingraham says, “Shut up and sing!” And no, I don’t think artists should be muzzled. I think they have every right to make asses of themselves. But what is their first love? Their craft or politics? I think they can be more effective if they choose the right script and give a powerful performance that sways the audience. Dressing like they just rolled out of bed, wearing tiny eyeglasses, avoiding shampoo, and babbling about how one candidate will be responsible for the end of civilization as we know it has become…well, a little boring. I don’t like to be lectured about the poor by the rich.

I am the lone conservative where I work, the token Republican. Do I dislike my Liberal coworkers? Of course not; in fact I’ve stayed at that job, which from the start was an impractical choice, because I really like the people I work with. They’re smart, funny, like dogs, and know enough about every topic to make our staff meetings an adventure. But their perspective is different from mine. They love the arts. I do, too. They believe a society should support the arts, therefore government should pay for it. (When we say the “government” we mean you, the taxpayer.) I disagree. I support a liberal arts education and I think that the world would be a better place if everyone one listened to Vivaldi, hung Hopper on their walls, and went to the theater every now and then. But theater is a business, and if you want to remain in business you have to sell a product and not act like a charity, depending on the kindness of strangers. Theater, PBS…supply and demand. If people are willing to pay for something you have to offer, fine. If not…well, it’s why I’ll be job-hunting again.

My Dick told Patrick Leahy to f*ck off. This Dick just told that to America.

“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”

Again, a Democrat taking advantage of a dumbed-down America. Someone somewhere is going to believe this because they don’t know what a “pol pot” is. (Is it something you cook in? Put a philodendron in? Smoke? Well, it must be something awful, because Dick says so. But we’re worse!)

Americans need to be offended when they’re compared to Nazis and Stalinists. History proves that it was Americans who crushed the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. I realize this isn’t taught in our schools anymore, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

Aruba. Ahhruuuuuu-bahhhhhhhhhh. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but am I the only one who’s bored with this? I can see now why there’s grumblings of racism every time one of these stories surfaces. Oh, another missing blonde girl! And what’s worse, this time it’s a young blonde missing in a place where she might have might abducted, raped, and murdered by…well, non-blonds. Or she could have been so drunk and disoriented that she staggered into a large body of water and drowned. Yeah - maybe the non-blonds had nothing to do with her disappearance.

At least it’s an opportunity for the average government school educated American to learn a little about geography and history. Aruba is the Sicily of the Caribbean. It’s “changed hands” many times and has been back in Dutch hands since the 1800s. What could be interesting about this is now we get to see how the Dutch system works - or doesn’t.

And at the heart of this story is real sadness. Aruba doesn’t need bad press - it needs tourists. They seem to be having trouble dealing with trouble in paradise. And, of course, this has to be a nightmare for Natalee’s family. And an unexpected expense.

See, all this could have been avoided if Natalee had been born into my family. When I was little, growing up in Chicago, I would take the long way home from school. That means that I would intentionally leave the building and go the opposite direction from home until I was in a completely unfamiliar area. Most times another kid would ask if I’d want to walk him or her home and I’d do it, just so I’d have the opportunity to get lost.

My family never knew this. Usually my mother would be at work, and the only sibling at home would be my sister, who wouldn’t be wondering where I was. So I took advantage of the situation. I’d do the same thing when I’d ride my bike. I’d peddle as far as possible into new neighborhoods, trying to get lost just so I could find my way home. I don’t know if this was some kind of Wizard of Oz fantasy, or if I was just trying to find Wrigley Field.

Good thing my mother didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t allowed to go off and be independent or sleep over at friends’ houses. My mother was convinced that I would be abducted by perverts, cut into small pieces, and those pieces would be tossed into the Chicago River. My siblings backed her up on this. My brother said the river was a filthy, feces filled, rat infested sewer, and I should avoid being abducted because I would definitely end up in the river with excrement in my ears, eyes, and mouth. He tried to make it sound like a big bath tub with a drain that sucked little kids down, down, down into the muck, never to be seen again. The weight of the human waste just sucked them down so they couldn’t swim to safety. This was the 60s - he could have been talking about Lake Michigan, which was only a block away, but my family seemed to have no fear of the lake. It was the Chicago River that would get me. Message: stay close to home and don’t wander. So I wandered.

In elementary school, they devised a plan to separate the kids into groups. Smart, smarter, dumb, and dumber. I was annoyed that I didn’t get to go into the group that was allowed to paint and draw. I was put into the group to learn French. This was fourth or fifth grade. Mon Dieu! Why French? But in those days you just went along with the program. I learned French. Then we moved to Arizona and I was forced to learn Spanish. Then we moved to California and I had a choice. Spanish, French, or German.

In high school, my sister studied German and my brother studied Russian. I think my other sister went with Spanish. So, thinking that one day I’d be spending a lot of time in Montreal and Europe (ha!), I went back to the impractical French. I think I went back to it in junior high, then had it all four years of high school. There was a brief time in college that I considered a French minor, so I took a university French class. I think that’s when I decided that Spanish would have been the smarter choice, and I never studied French again.

One reason I stayed with French, was that I had a wonderful French teacher in high school. She was short, dark, and hairy. Wore beautiful plaid skirts and Aran sweaters that she’d bought on her annual trips to Europe. Odd choice, because there was nothing Celtic about her. She was exotically Armenian, and her younger, Oxford educated husband was British.

She was tough. I studied like a maniac and was one of her favorite students. Why did I devote myself to a language I really didn’t care about? Because there was something utterly fascinating about this woman. No one liked her. But I did. Eventually we formed a French Club and she took us out for an evening at a French restaurant. We met at her apartment in Palo Alto, near one of my favorite neighborhoods. Her husband was there, and did a very good job of pretending that we weren’t an annoying bunch of high school girls. He chatted with us briefly, then excused himself because he had to go back into the study and pursue things intellectual. At that time, we were all Anglophiles; our teacher’s husband was devastatingly attractive. The other girls were cruel. They speculated on the marriage: how could he have married that troll?

Ah, youth. I saw what he saw, I guess. She was brilliant, interesting, knew something about everything, and had a certain sensuality that was palpable. The other girls missed it, but I knew my teacher was passionate. She was passionate about her job, language, travel, food, experiences, life. So when she invited us on one of her trips to Europe, I was thrilled. I knew this teacher had changed my life; I knew this trip to Europe would, too.

It wasn’t expensive, so I assumed my mother and stepfather would be happy to get rid of me for the summer. When I approached them, they didn’t say no. I started thinking about what I would pack. Then my sister pulled me aside one day: You can’t go.

I thought she was kidding. Her point was that if I were to go to Europe, my mother would resent me. It wasn’t right for me to go because my mother had never been there, so I should just forget about it. My theory: why would you not let a child experience something like that? But then I remembered what family I was in, so I dropped the whole idea.

The media tells us that we shouldn’t blame the victim. But she got drunk, then maybe got into a car with strangers. I wouldn’t have done that. My mother would have killed me. But then, there was no way I’d be allowed to go to Aruba anyway.

Today I resigned from a job that I truly love. I have a mortgage and two geriatric dogs. I depleted any savings I had to exist at this job. I have a 401(k) from my previous company that I’d really rather not touch right now. I don’t have another position lined up. I’m not even sure what kind of job I’m looking for. I know that I will get a job that I’ll eventually learn to hate.

It’s never been the work. When a job goes bad for me it’s always because of a handful of people who are…well, evil. This is the first job I’ve had where I’ve gotten up in the morning and looked forward to going to it. I don’t dread Mondays. I genuinely like and respect the people I work with.

But in two weeks it’ll all be over.

I am a slave to marketing. I don’t run out and buy the latest trendy thing, but I do occasionally fall victim to packaging and advertising. I find that I like certain bottle shapes and colors. Sometimes I’m more attracted to the package than to the actual product. With shampoo, scent is extremely important to me. I’ve tried to pare down my collection of toiletries over the years, but I’ll never be able to live with one type of shower gel. I require a variety of flavors. One signature scent? No, but I have managed to reduce my cologne collection. I like the “Oriental” fragrances like Shalimar; florals smell like bear grease on me. There are probably half a dozen scents that don’t make me - and those around me - wretch.

But I’m also a creature of habit and I’m loyal as a Labrador. As much as I like the GEICO ads, I’ve been with my car insurance company since I was sixteen and have no intention of switching. I used to buy Pedigree kibble, but switched to Iams when they were running the Charlie commercial. That’s the one where the little girl is calling for her puppy, Charlie. He runs clumsily up the stairs. Next shot, the girl is older, and she calls Charlie again. He’s in his prime and he dashes up the stairs to her. Next shot: the girl is older and Charlie is old, slowly making his way up the stairs, not wanting to disappoint her, not running, but determined to get to her. I burst into tears every time they aired that commercial.

I’m buying Pedigree canned and Iams kibble for one dog; her diabetic brother is on w/d exclusively. I like the recent Pedigree ads: “Dogs rule.” I also like the Target ads that feature dogs and dog products. I like that they use a Bull Terrier to represent their company.

I liked Quizno’s spongmonkey ads. The talking baby ads make me slightly ill, so the last thing on my mind is getting a sandwich. The problem is that I often get used to buying a product - like Iams - then discover that animals were mistreated, even tortured, in order to test and manufacture the product. Do I immediately boycott the product or do I investigate - subjecting myself to more horror stories? When I was younger I’d stop buying any product once I discovered the company tested on animals. Wasn’t I smart? But then I’d discover that the product I switched to was buying ingredients from companies who were testing on animals. So same difference.

Do I want to read all the PETA reports that document the horrible experiments dogs were subjected to? Or do I just want to give my dog the kibble she enjoys eating? It’s complicated. In college I knew someone who was majoring in Biology. He worked in the school’s lab and experimented on mice. Part of his job was to kill the mice after they’d fulfilled their purpose. He had to kill hundreds of mice. It was monotonous work, so he devised creative ways of doing the mice in. One method was to pick a mouse up by the tail and spin it around in the air, then slam its head into the tabletop. (I imagine Nazis looked for clever ways to exterminate Jewish prisoners of war.) At some point my friend realized what he was doing and he changed his major. He had chosen Biology because he loved animals. Then he discovered that a career in that field would mean he’d sometimes be killing them.

Does buying Iams kibble make me an accomplice? Do I believe the activists or do I believe the Iams website? Wait. Who makes Iams? Ah…Procter & Gamble. Why is it that P&G has been a target for years? Are they really subjecting animals to vile experiments in their labs, or is someone just out to get them? I can research this forever, but will I ever discover the truth? Just one more thing that makes life difficult. I have so much on my mind right now…do I really need to be reminded every time I scoop kibble of yet another moral dilemma?

At the end of the film Se7en, Morgan Freeman’s character, William Somerset, speaks these lines:
“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”

Me, too.

Michael Jackson has been acquitted of all charges. Is there any chance that he will salvage his financial situation, take his kids and move far away from Neverland, and get some professional help? I suggest that he get out of the spotlight, tone down his look, ease up on the makeup, start eating, give up any hope of having a career, and just live quietly in an undisclosed location and raise his kids. If he chooses not to have a normal life after getting the gift he got today, then there’s no hope for him.

And that woman who stationed herself outside the Santa Barbara County Courthouse with a cage full of doves… Phineas Taylor Barnum would have been envious.

The word must be out that it might just be possible that Condi Rice will be the Republican candidate in 2008. Why? Because positive stories about her are getting buried. Turns out that she was at Kennedy Center yesterday, accompanying a young soprano battling a terrible disease.

They’re calling it “Rice’s rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano.” I’ll say. If Hillary had been there, it would have been front page news. The tiny blurb I found today stated that Condi, a pianist from the age of three, played several selections to accompany Charity Sunshine, a 21-year-old singer who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension just over a year ago.

What’s interesting about this story is that the ailing soprano is a granddaughter of California Rep. Tom Lantos and his wife, Annette, who Rice has known for years. Lantos is originally from Hungary, and left his home country to avoid the horrors of the Holocaust. He is a Democrat.

Lantos introduced Condi to the audience as “a warm friend” and said the concert was her idea, describing how her eyes filled with tears as he told her about his granddaughter’s illness. “We have to do something about this and enhance public consciousness,” he quoted her as saying. “Let’s have a concert and I will accompany her at the piano.”

Let us analyze this for a moment. Tom Lantos is from Hungary. He stills speaks with a heavy, exotic accent. That makes him different as a California politician - unless, of course, you consider the governor. He is a Democrat. Well, that makes him very different. He described Condi as “a warm friend.” A friend, and a warm one. She teared up when she heard about his granddaughter’s struggle and offered her help. Hmmm. See, I’m trying to spell this out with a Big Chief pad and purple crayon for Dr. Dean so he won’t miss anything.

Condi is friendly. She is friendly to different kinds of people. Does she look like all the other white Christian Republicans out there? No. She has much better legs than most of them. And they look especially good in black leather, stiletto-heeled boots.

No wonder Dick Morris is so excited.

A friend and I went to see A Man of No Importance last night at one of our many community theaters — one I’m especially fond of, but I’ll discuss that another time. Ran into several other friends - one of them a Log Cabin Republican. He’s currently wearing his hair in a completely indescribable way. It’s somewhere between Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein and Don King. I told him it reminds me a little of Tova Borgnine’s old ‘do. But much, much bigger.

He was complaining bitterly that the organizers of Pridefest didn’t want the Log Cabin Republicans to participate in today’s Pride festivities. Why, that smacks of discrimination, I told him. He was also miffed because he’s taken a second job (Calling Dr. Dean! A Republican who’s working more than one job, Dr. Dean!) at Starbucks, and he made a generous offer to Pridefest organizers. A gay Republican barista with a crazy new ‘do. And he’s pissed.

Turns out that the organizers of Pridefest didn’t warm up to my friend’s offer. Starbucks, the same company that wouldn’t hand over free water so that victims of September 11 could rinse the cement dust from their eyes, was more than willing to hand out free Frappuccinos to Pridefest participants. They’re a big corporation, and Pridefest doesn’t want to be associated with capitalists.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that gay people were starting to sound a little like Islamic terrorists. Not very loving or friendly. But since I know so many who are - and they have no fear of dog spit - I have to deduce that this is an anomaly. I also know that gay people do not all behave the same. They do not all look alike. And some of them are - gasp! - Republicans.

I do wish the Log Cabins would ask to meet with Dr. Dean in order to point that out.