productive member of society

Last night at Grendel's Den in Harvard Square, I overheard, as one does, some Harvard-connected people having some Harvard-connected conversation. Apparently, one of them knows an undergraduate busted for possession of cocaine with intent to sell. Pretty serious stuff. My fellow restaurant patron was commenting on how this undergrad was going to get off with a slap on the wrist, which is terribly unfair, he said, since a teenager from East Cambridge in the same situation would almost certainly face harsher penalties. (FYI for my non-Cantabridgian readers: "A teenager from East Cambridge" is a euphemism for "a local black or latino teenager" who would be in the same jurisdiction as our friend the Harvard kid.)

"Of course," said the dude telling the story of the Ivy League coke dealer, "this guy will be scared straight and then become a productive member of society." Implying, perhaps unintentionally, that the East Cambridge drug dealer SHOULD have the book thrown at him, because he's demographically incapable of being scared straight or becoming a productive member of society.

A productive member of society. Interesting. An entitled young man with enough criminal connections to have a quantity of cocaine intended for resale distribution who gets a slap on the wrist when busted at Harvard is somehow sure to be both "scared straight" and converted into a "productive member of society."

I was so mad I almost butted in. Had I done so, I would have said this:

"Hello, excuse me, hi, I was just wondering, what the hell about the current horrifying idiotic global economic shitshow indicates that overconfident Ivy League dudes who've gotten away with pretty much everything they've ever done wrong suddenly become these awesomely 'productive' members of society?"

If you take a look at this commentary, you'll find some stats at how disproportionately Ivy Leaguey Wall Street had become in the couple of decades leading up to the financial-products-induced meltdown. If you look at the trajectory of these financial firms over the past decade, it's easy to see that the individuals working in the sector were either massively delusional or directly negligent (or worse) in everything from their entanglement with CDSs to their deliberately inflated and conflict-of-interest-laden ratings systems. They thought they could make lots and lots of money out of pretty much nothing. Instead, they broke their balance sheets. They screwed everything up. Real, real, real bad.

Now, I'm not saying that every Ivy Leaguer is a narcissistic delusional planet-destroying douche. Far from it. But if you were already getting away with selling cocaine (which we all know is a drug that appeals to a very specific undergraduate demographic: rich, white, rich, mildly disaffected, extremely rich) at Harvard, what kind of Ivy League alum are you most likely to become? If you said "narcissistic delusional planet-destroying douche," you win a half-price entree from 5 to 7:30 pm!

And what are the consequences of the "products" of these particular members of society? According to (my hero) Kristof's column today, "the global economic crisis will cause an additional 22 children to die per hour, throughout all of 2009."

putting the letters where they go

Last week I went away to a four-day writing workshop at the Kripalu retreat center in the Berkshires.

I constantly think of myself as becoming a writer. I have a hard time conceiving of myself as a writer already.

So please indulge me while I make a list of what I've written and co-written:

a feature-length screenplay (co-written) that won a film festival

a 90-minute stage show (co-written) that sold out a show in Harvard Square recently

several articles on music (when I was 19 and 20 years old) (and there were a lot more)

a film review (scroll down) that is apparently quoted on the film's website

hundreds of blog entries (though I can't seem to find my old Harvard ones)

some jokes

about 10,000 emails

setlists setlists setlists (setlists in my pockets, setlists in my lint tray...)

journals

this list

...and I'm still not sure if I'm a writer.

the meaning of wife

For those of you who followed this blog all the way through its "Worst Bride Ever" days, here's the promotional video for my two-woman show "The Meaning of Wife:"

time time time

The closest thing I have to a new year's resolution is to try my best to accept myself as I am and stop conceiving of myself as a work in progress. My wise friend -- who has watched me struggle for years with setting rules for myself and constantly trying to reinvent and drastically alter my self, self-image, habits, lifestyle, and priorities -- had an interesting question. "Wow," she said, "What are you going to do with all that extra energy?"

Yeah. I hadn't thought of that.

It turns out that, other than criticizing myself and resolving to change change change every single day and designing complicated disciplinary architectures for executing this vaguely desired change, I don't really have many hobbies. I like reading. I like writing, but that's something I view as an arm of my professional comedy career (because I write hilarious shit like this sentence, see?). But especially now that my comedy job is my main job and I don't have to work 35-hour weeks on top of nights spent on the road and at clubs, I find that I have a lot of extra time. And, as my friend suspected, I have a lot of extra energy.

Of course, my impulse is to use all this time and energy to enact MAJOR CHANGES and OVERHAULS on myself!

So what's the deal with the thing and the habits and the dying hard?! And so on.

Maybe I should just take up macrame.

I inspire so little confidence

Number1Mom48267: I'm pissed off that I didn't tape Oprah today
I wanted to watch her mea culpa

me: what is today?

Number1Mom48267: monday, jan 5

me: no I mean what is on oprah today
I know what day it is mom

so what is art for?

2009. It's a new year. And...here we go:

I finished Infinite Jest, and after reading it I agree with the first half of the title. I picked up the book (with both hands, exerting considerable force to heft its 1079 pages) in March, put it down (ahhhhhhh!) in late March, then picked it up again after David Foster Wallace's suicide in September.

It was...good!

I'm not the only one who thinks so.

But there are so many issues. And several different kinds of issues, which is why it's still bugging me. There are plot-related issues that arise when one finishes the book, such as:

* Wait. Is that IT???
* What the fuck just happened?
* Well then what the fuck happened in the middle?
* Wait, but this part and this part and that part were real, right? RIGHT!?
* Well how does he know him if he never met him?
* What the hell happened to that one guy then?

And so on.

And then there are philosophical issues, like:

* If everything was really that bad, would everything really be THAT bad?
* Is it just me, or does anybody else who's read this think it's not okay to be that overtly fucking racist?
* Are women really just moms and hot girls, especially to post-reductionist reductionist pomo white dudes?
* Obsession: is it all addiction, or can some of it be real achievement?
* Can we find redemption in life? Can we find it in the legacy of our art?

And of course those last two lead into all the art-philosophical issues, including:

* When we create, is it a project of taking down or building up?
* Do we have a human obligation to put some hope into our creations?
* Is the project of describing the brutal, the painful, or the tragically banal ever complete, yielding that energy to other pursuits?
* Should art make us suffer? The consumers? The creators?
* Do artists need to suffer for their art?

I feel like I could go on forever listing all the issues raised by the act of creating Infinite Jest and then killing oneself. Of course, as I mentioned in my earlier entry on DFW's suicide, this would conflate the artist's work with his psychological problems, which is a perilous leap of causality (for either) at best. But when we have great big brains full of great expanses of understanding and comprehension and empathy and possibility, is it inherently deep to use them to plunge the depths of complex dysfunction? Are we all just chasing Tolstoy, being delightfully distinctive by the personal ways in which we're fucked up? And didn't Wallace seem to think that everybody who was fucked up had more in passé-ass common with other fuckedupwads than they might think, and wasn't that at least some passing part of his whole thesis?

Depth conflated with pain, art conflated with suffering, geniuses who espouse the value of banal aphorisms who still ultimately meet demise through a plague of thought. These are the stakes. Ideas have consequences. As development economists will surely tell you, a misconceived theory can kill, and that obviously applies in other disciplines, from abstract-ass art to concrete-and-hilarious-roadrunner-ass physics.

So it boils down to this: I'm an artist. And I pretty much wanna be deep, but I pretty much don't wanna die. Can you dig?

Evil-gelical Christians

Rick Warren has been chosen to pray at Obama's inauguration. A bunch of gay folks are all up-in-arms about this, mostly because of Warren's comments and Saddleback Church's activities with respect to Proposition 8 (and any other gay rights issues). Personally, I'm mostly disappointed by the Billy-Graham-esque theology that Warren espouses. I think evangelical Christianity is....well, I think it's unconscionably cruel and heartless. At best.

When I was a small child in Brooklyn, I only knew of three kinds of people: Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. I had a vague notion that a couple of my second-cousins were Protestant, but in my neighborhood I didn't know any non-Catholic Christians. When I moved to Texas at age ten, my ideas about religion got all flipped around. Other kids would ask me if I was Christian, and I would naively reply that yes, I was Catholic. "But that's not Christian!" they would inform me, much to my (and the Pope's) surprise. Apparently, in the parlance of the Bible Belt, there's Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, etc., and then there's Christian. Christian is generally a stand-in for non-denominational evangelical Christian. You know: mega-churches, movie theater marquees, Wednesday night Bible study, hellfire, brimstone, judgement, Republicanism.

It took me years and years beyond that initial confusion to grasp their theology, and once I finally figured out what these people actually believe, I had nightmares for 18 months. I'm not kidding.

First of all, they believe that John 3:16 is the most important thing in the Bible: believe in Jesus and you will go to Heaven. Don't and you go to hell. And the idea is that you have to ask Jesus Christ to be your "personal" savior, which then leads to basically a lifetime of having an idealized version of yourself agreeing with all of your decisions...like when your personal savior tells you to invade Iraq or accept the Vice Presidential nomination or whatever.

The chilling part, of course, is all the damnation: every non-Christian -- including all the ones who've never even heard of Jesus -- dies and wakes up in hell. This fails to really bother most of the evangelicals I know. They just don't think about it. One guy I knew in Texas told me that it was blood on the hands of Christians, but once they get to Heaven they don't have worries anymore, so the real impact of all that hand-blood is still unclear to me.

So yeah, they worship and praise a God that sends billions of people to hell over centuries with no recourse to burn for all eternity. Every baby Buddhist, every adolescent Indonesian Muslim, most Holocaust and Iraq war victims. Hell. Burning. Forever and ever. For the crime of not being born in the Bible Belt, more or less.

Like I said, most evangelicals don't think about this too much. They're too busy trying to muddle through their lives with Jesus watching their every move, and they're mostly concerned with the religious deliverance of those immediately around them (homosexuals, athiests, and other local Americans who are more easily comparable to themselves and damnable to eternal ETERNAL burning FOREVER for the crimes of non-savior-acceptance committed in our lives).

Personally, I can't really think of a more horrifying world view. It's scary that these people barely even realize or think about the other billions of people on this planet, or throughout history (remember, this brand of Christianity with the charismatic savior-accepting salvation is only two or three hundred years old). At least the Jehovah's Witnesses believe we non-saved go through one shitty day at the end of the world and then die. That's a hell of a lot cuddlier than sending every four-year-old Hindu child who dies of malnutrition into the fiery furnace FOREVER and EVER.

With all the Jesus-focus of this type of Christian, you'd think they'd be more kind and loving, right? Didn't Jesus wash the feet of the terminally uncool and tell of the Good Samaritan (the Samaritans of course being widely ostracized for their religious differences)? In fact, the only thing that really seemed to enrage Jesus that I can remember is all that commerce going on in the temple. Has anybody seen the balance sheets for Saddleback Church lately?

Rick Warren is a homophobe, and he doesn't believe in evolution, and he certainly has plenty of money changers in his temple. But what really bothers me is that the guy who'll be praying for our cool new pluralistic president believes I'm going to burn in hell forever and ever, along with Obama's father and Anne Frank and Gandhi and most everybody who has ever lived. Is it strange for me to be very, very bothered by that?

Having survived those 18 months of nightmares and horror at the specter of such a cruel, cruel God as these people believe in and worship, I was particularly moved by this story from This American Life. It's the story of Carlton Pearson, a protegee of Oral Roberts who built a huge ministry based on the evangelical idea of salvation through accepting Jesus. Then one day he was watching refugees in Rwanda and realized the absurdity of believing every non-Christian was damned by God to hell. So he changed everything. It's an incredibly inspiring story, and it gave me a lot of hope.

I think Reverend Pearson, with his loving, open, humble, Christ-like perspective, would be a much better choice to pray on January 20th.

Some Reasons to Support Gay Marriage

I'm writing this in response to the exciting conversation over at Jack and Jill Politics about gay marriage. Several people in the comments section of the original post have mentioned that the pro-gay marriage movement is elitist and ignores the concerns of minority voters. I don't have a ton of time for this, so please excuse my obnoxious PowerPoint style here:

A few of the material benefits:

* Full marriage equality is especially important for working-class and poor gays and lesbians because it grants them necessary spousal benefits, from health insurance to social security (once DoMA is gone).

* Immigrant and foreign citizen gays and lesbians cannot be sponsored for a green card by their American partners. This disproportionately effects poor and working-class gay people who cannot afford to immigrate on student visas or spend years in this country without working.

* State and federal tax breaks afforded to married couples would help working-class gays and lesbians.

Psychological and social benefits:

* One reason that gay people are concentrated in certain areas (New York, San Francisco) is because of homophobia in people's communities of origin. For many gays and lesbians, the difficult choice is to leave their communities to live openly or stay close to home and remain closeted. The legitimacy and dignity of full marriage equality brings us closer to a time when various communities accept sexuality diversity and gays and lesbians can live openly in their communities of origin.

* The children of gays, as I mention in my previous post, are not a hypothetical but an existing group of people. When these partnerships are not granted the same rights and dignity as straight partnerships because of homophobia, this has a negative effect on the self-esteem on the thousands of children of gay families.

* According to Dr. King, unjust laws are those that take the rights away from a certain group that are afforded to another group. An unjust law "gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority." Because heterosexual adults are allowed to enter into civil contracts called marriages, the California Supreme Court decided that it is only fair to allow any two adults to enter into a civil contract called a marriage. The active retraction of that right by California voters represents a step back towards separate and unequal.

A couple of additional comments:

* Many people believe that the pro-gay marriage movement's use of the term "civil rights" is meant to evoke the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. While I agree that the term is evocative of the brilliant struggles of that time period, it's also the correct term for the rights granted to individuals in our society for the nonpolitical conduct of their lives. Marriage rights, adoption rights, and property ownership rights are all examples of civil rights.

* The will of the electorate is not always used to decide issues of expanded civil rights, and with good reason. In cases where a majority seems intent to strip the rights of a minority, it is the responsibility of the courts to decide if laws that exclude the minority group are constitutional or not.

* In the case of California, the "No on 8" (pro-gay marriage) people were on the defensive. It is simply a different psychological position when you're trying to ask voters to grant rights than when you have some rights that voters are being given the opportunity to take away from you. It was not a passive or status-quo-maintaining choice to outlaw gay marriage. It was an active choice to remove rights, and I think that a "Why did you do that?" response is to be expected.

* Hopefully, after this tragic defeat of equality, the pro-gay marriage movement will adopt a positive, awareness-raising stance rather than one of scapegoating of various groups and lashing out. Gay voters were big Obama supporters, and he mentioned the contributions of gay Americans to his campaign within the first moments of his victory speech. That bodes well. We can reconcile our differences, but only if we continue to talk to each other respectfully. Scapegoating is wrong and unproductive. However, if a group of people (in this case, African-American voters) has taken a pretty strong stance against the rights of another group of people (gays who seek marriage equality), we have to be able to have dialogue. African-American voters effected the outcome of this proposition, and so what that means to me is that it's time for some serious outreach to the African-American voters and communities in this country. As long as the conversations are respectful, I see no reason why non-Black gays and lesbians cannot engage in them. It's unfair to Black gays and lesbians to ask them to launch and execute a behind-closed-doors PR campaign for Black voters all on their own; that simply does not make sense. We're all Americans, and we can all talk to each other.

Prop 8 Bigots: The Worst Americans

Dear friends,

I would like to name some names. From the caption of this photograph in the LA Times, "Bob Knoke, of Mission Viejo, Amanda Stanfield, of Monrovia, Jim Domen, of Yorba Linda, and J.D. Gaddis, of Yorba Linda, celebrate returns for Proposition 8 at an Irvine hotel."

Dear Bob, Amanda, Jim, and J.D.,

How sad it is that you have marred this beautiful, historic election with your unbridled elation at the triumph of bigotry and hate (by however miniscule a margin). Like videos of smug, self-satisfied racists chanting "2-4-6-8, we don't want to integrate," this image of the four of you celebrating the stripping of rights from a minority group will be viewed by the eyes of history with disgust and shame.

All day, we have been hearing incredible stories of the children and grandchildren of former slaves voting for a black man, of people who attended segregated schools and marched with Dr. King seeing a day they never thought would come in their lifetimes, of the kinds of bitter and casual racism in people's day-to-day lives that was soundly rejected by millions of people across this nation yesterday. Well, now I'm going to tell you my story.

I remember sitting in my 11th grade Advanced Placement American History class at Plano East Senior High School in Texas. My teacher (let's call her "Mrs. B") was asked about some of her political beliefs. She wouldn't talk about abortion or the death penalty, saying they were too volatile and that her opinions might upset people in the class. Then, "Ah!" she said, remembering a belief that she was sure would be uncontroversial. "I don't think gay people should be allowed to have children."

I sat there turning red. Only one close friend of mine in the class knew that I lived with my mother and her female partner, who raised me together for most of my childhood. As Mrs. B elaborated on the dysfunction that she surmised would befall the poor children of gays, I shuddered at the idea of being discovered. I desperately wanted to defend my own existence as a successful young person with the very background she was maligning, but I could only do so at my social peril. Despite the fact that most of my friends suspected the truth about my family, I was too afraid to reveal it. The climate was too charged with hatred and fear. I felt so frustrated and ashamed at myself for not being brave enough to tell my teacher the truth. I felt so afraid of the harsh judgment of those around me, especially religious Christians. I felt degraded and dismissed, and I sat there with no recourse, a 16-year-old gnashing her teeth with fear and shame, frustration and self-loathing.

With Prop 8, there has been much talk of "the children." These children are always hypothetical. Well, we're not. We're real, and we exist, and we are AWESOME. We're successful and balanced and productive members of society. And we will raise our children alongside yours, teaching them to be proud of their diverse backgrounds. We will do this so that no child will have to feel humiliated, marginalized, invisible, as I did in my 11th grade history class that day.

The only problem the children of gay people have is bigots like you.

So, back to your legacy, Bob Knoke and Amanda Stanfield and Jim Domen and J.D. Gaddis. On a day when America broke through some of its most painful discriminatory legacies, you stood for bigotry. On a day when the nation defied the expectations of the world, you became justice's worst nightmare. On a day when thousands of children might have been elevated to dignity with the validation of their family bonds, you reduced those children to second-class citizens. While we stood up to believe "Yes we can," you blocked the door to equality and viciously replied, "Actually, no you can't, you gays." (Perhaps you used stronger words than "gays.") But that is no matter. We have heard it all, and we have survived.

My people -- gay people, the families of gay people -- will not be defeated. We will continue to live our lives, build our families, contribute to our society, and live with dignity. You may never be convinced of our equality, but your children or your children's children will be. I hope for the day when you see the error of your ways, but I also know that if that day does not ever come, your ideologies will nonetheless be defeated. I believe that unjust laws must be destroyed, and if you don't, I suggest you read what I read every single January:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Erin Judge

dead blogging the debates

10:28 - Boom! "Second Holocaust." The weirdest Republican refrain ever. If Iran attacks Israel in a border incursion, I'm pretty sure the freakin' huge-ass Israeli army will have a prepared response. I mean, isn't Israel kind of insulted by this "second holocaust" thing? It's not Schlomo chillin' in the schtettle in Poland in 1936, yo. Schlomo has an uzi! And the bomb!

9:49 thru 10:27 - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........talking points vs. talkin' points..................

lizzive blizzog

9:48 - So...Obama's the black guy, right?

David Brooks, Give Me Your Column

I'm sorry to keep harping on this, I really am. But I just read David Brooks in the NYTimes talking about how successful Palin was, what with her believable folksy chatter and casual manner. He argues that she proved that she could hold her own.

Allow me my own colloquial response:

Dear Mr. Brooks,

Are you high? Dude, can you honestly say that Palin proved she was qualified to immediately take command of this country if the President checked out? On economics, she proved that she knew that $300,000 was more than $100,000. No doy. Furthermore, she said the commander in Afghanistan was McClellan (as in, uh, Scott??) when the dude's name is McKiernan. When you're careful only to mention 2 or 3 specific names all night and you get one of them dead-ass wrong, that's a red freakin' flag!

All the "shout out"s and "doggone it"s in the world don't make a person relatable, nor do they bespeak a qualified candidate when they're not also surrounded by sound, consistent analysis and a clear understanding of and engagement with national and international politics.

You say she's running against the East Coast. How adorable! That's where our top universities are, and our financial center, and our nation's capital! Fuck all those guys! The Republicans disdain their support, or their high-falutin' "education" and their Washington insider ways! Like John McCain, who's only been in D.C. for 26 years: he's no "insider!" It's somebody from the outside who doesn't know shit about how anything works AT ALL who can bring REAL change!

It horrifies me that you, David Brooks, can be comfortable with this person as a candidate. Are you just afraid to hold her to a realistic standard because she's a chick? If so, yield your column to a serious man or woman who's willing to call out a candidate regardless of demographics on the fact that you have to know what the hell is going on in a country in order to help run it.

Peace out,
~Erin

What's Worse Than "On Message"?

Sarah Palin is such a logical disaster that I don't even know where to start. When she's on the spot, she says whatever she thinks sounds nice. She would "counsel life" but that is WAY different than making abortion illegal, as it would be in lots of states if Roe v. Wade was overturned, which is her official position. Yet, when pressed, she says she would "counsel life" and not send anybody to jail. What does she think "illegal" means? And last night, she was suddenly FOR same-sex unions? Or does she not know that hospital visitation is, in many critical cases, an exclusive spousal privilege and is currently not available to same-sex couples in many states?

Here are some more Palin pie-in-the-sky contradictions:

* Stop global warming, yet burn all the coal

* Cut taxes, yet improve our infrastructure

* Send more troops and resources to Afghanistan, yet keep troop and resource levels high indefinitely in Iraq. Oh, and did she mention "cut taxes" too?

* Return more autonomy to the states, yet make education not just a federal but an executive issue

* Regulate the hell out of Wall Street, yet get government out of the way of business

So, we've finally discovered something worse than being "on message" with the Republican talking points all the time. At least with that nonsense, there's some (skull-numbing, relentless) consistency. This Palin chick just doesn't want to sound mean or nasty or rough or unpopular, ever. So she simply refuses to hold a position.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's a difference between "maverick" and "loose cannon." Or, you know, "convenient liar."

Is it over yet?

10:26 - I'm red-faced with loathing for Sarah Palin. She's campaigning like my opponent did in the 3rd grade election. He promised to abolish homework and let school end at like 11:30 in the morning. I was beside myself with frustration because he didn't have that authority! The teacher just let it slide. When he won, he had even less power than the kinds of changes I suggested I would make (something about cooler markers and free milk). But I stand firm on my 8-year-old lesson: people who just say whatever is popular, no matter how inconsistent, in the lead-up to an election...well, those people are douchebags.

Gwen, throw some terminology at Palin

10:22 - She appointed people regardless of party in her cabinet, but not regardless of their personal relationships.

10:21 - I'd love to see Gwen Ifill ask a question that was really technical. Just one. Please.

Exception!

10:19 - We are an exceptionalismastic nation that involves in exceptionisticalness.

Cheney

10:17 - Vice President Cheney = most dangerous VP ever = AMEN DOT COM! Thank you Joe Biden. Thank you for talking about the Constitution of the United States.

Home Depot

10:12 - "Her reward is in heaven"?? Did Sarah Palin just threaten to KILL Joe Biden's wife?

10:10 - I am just baffled by Sarah Palin. I can't remember a thing she says a few minutes after she says it. Something I wanted to quote just floated away. Something about "government get out of the way."

Heartbeat away

10:09 - A team of Mavericks?

10:08 - I don't want to hear about Sarah Palin being the president. Let's not even go there in a fantasy land.

10:07 - I want to know what she thinks about a line in the sand for military intervention...but no, we're not going to talk about that. We're gonna talk about heartbeats.

There's no comparison

10:05 - She sure is an advocate of Alaska doin' shit, that's for sure!!

10:04 - It sure is obvious that you're a Washington outsider, Sarah Palin!!! Also, there was not actual a vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. It was a vote to authorize the president to use the military to oppose terror. Was it stupid? Sure. But it wasn't a "let's declare war" vote.

10:02 - Biden has all the context. He is fluent in the events of the last decades. And I'm interested to hear him talk about Darfur.