Meade wielded the Flip camera and I edited this. I also appear now and then as the blonde-haired photographer in the black coat, walking against the direction of the marchers. We begin with some women dressed as vegetables:
Other highlights:
1:01 — a man yawns. 1:10 — the WTF sign. 1:28 — doggie. 1:38 — "HITLER STALIN WALKER." 3:22 — "In the old days, we knew how to deal with peasants!... Burn you like marshmallows!" 4:18 — squirrel costume. 4:32 — "Is Cat Stevens here?" 5:05 — "That's Peter Yarrow." 5:32 — Toilet paper on the "Forward!" statue. 5:52 — The "Yin/Yang" sign. 6:27 — I get in the way of 2 ladies who are trying to take a picture of 3 guys in "Star Wars" costumes. Since they don't have a wide-angle lens, they need to stand way back, and feel entitled to a big stretch of empty sidewalk. 7:10 — "I've been fingered as a Walker supporter because I walked in front of her picture of the 'Star Wars' characters!" 7:41 — A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty has duct tape on her mouth. Not on the video: I say to Meade, "I'd ask her why she has tape on her mouth, but she has tape on her mouth," and Meade says, "And if she didn't have tape on her mouth, and you asked her why don't you have tape on your mouth, she would remain silent." 8:00 — big Teamsters truck. 8:33 — Meade talks to the women with the "Obama, Where R U?" sign (which was the only reference to Obama we noticed today). 9:00 — Finally, a giant puppet! 9:12 — Meade gets a look into the soul of the puppet.
"... there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes. I do remember the first time I saw bright orange lawn trash bags decorated with smiley pumpkin faces, which was about ten years ago; I thought they were kind of clever and festive, if a bit commercial. Now they seem quaint, compared to, say, yard decorations like Demonica Zombie Baby ('a latex skin foam filled child with sound and motion activated flashing eye lights,' in stock and ready to ship for $39.99) or a life-sized Hellraiser Pinhead Animatronic (a big investment at $279.99)."
That's Susan Orlean, who also bemoans the trend toward Halloween as a time for adult revelry: "when I was young, Halloween was a holiday celebrated only by children." That made me look up Orlean's age — 54 — and city of origin — Cleveland. The trend toward Mardi Gras-style street parties and parades for adult revelries goes back to the 1970s. That's when Freakfest began here in Madison, Wisconsin and the time of the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in NYC. I remember those parades in the late 1970s, when I lived in Greenwich Village. It was a continuation of the counter-culture of the 60s, isn't it? They called us Baby Boomers, and we internalized the concept of "baby." You'll just have to deal with it now.
ADDED: Orlean... Mardi Gras... Maybe that has something to do with her annoyance at the migration of adult revelry to the autumn holiday. That and the fact that — as she reveals in the article — Halloween is her birthday.
It happens to be something that would be good for us. (Eating vegetables.) But our resistance to doing things the government eagerly and earnestly promotes is a strength. Don't be disappointed. Be encouraged.
"There are no expensive cuts here, no real steaks," he said. "The best you've got is the flank steak on top of her head."...
"It's the cheaper end cuts - not including her. You got about $100 of meat there," said Mark Cacioppo, 30, of Queens....
"It ain't refrigerated. It's probably stinking bad. She's in the lights: It's cooking," said Peter Cacioppo....
"What's next: the family cat made into a hat?" asked Ingrid Newkirk, head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA always uses that rhetorical move. Instead of that animal you don't care about, picture the family pet.
Anyway, Lady Gaga went on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" — too bad YouTube hasn't yet perfected the internet equivalent of Smell-O-Vision — and explained herself...
... with delightful incoherence. She doesn't want to be "just another bitch in a dress." She claims it has to do with her opposition to Don't Ask Don't Tell, which flummoxes the poor vegan Ellen.
I love the part where she proclaims herself "The most judgment-free person on the face of the earth." Ha. When did "judgment" acquire a 100% negative meaning.
"It's about what makes them feel ancient. It's not about how college students think at 18; it's about how we think at 40 and 50 and 60. It's about how we think about the markers we once drove into the ground to mark what we considered Now, and how alarming it is to note that they are farther away than they used to be."
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
That's the famous quote I was looking for. But read on:
... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.
So Dan Quayle gets a boost from Thomas Jefferson. (And so does Tom Coburn, who recently pressed Elena Kagan with the question: "If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day and I got it through Congress and that’s now the law of the land, got to do it, does that violate the commerce clause?")
ADDED: I found the facsimile of the manuscript on line and determined that Jefferson did write "potatoe." See for yourself.
After the Spain trip brought the first extended bad press of her time as first lady, the White House, and some of its allies in the press, pushed back by claiming Mrs. Obama will still be much in demand. News accounts suggested her "sky-high popularity," her role as "cultural and fashion icon" and her "incredible force" will boost Democrats across the country.
Key words: "of her time as first lady." Michelle Obama got bad press galore during the 2008 campaign. She got her image readjusted — feminized, really. She became the wonderful mom, fashion icon, and purveyor of vegetables. You can just imagine how much she liked doing that. But as she stretched out within the hyper-feminine role imposed on her, she got into the manifestation of femininity that rubs people the wrong way. Too much shopping and free-spending on superficial, materialistic pleasures. It's the classic feminine protest against confinement in a feminine role. Don't like it? Then don't limit powerful women that way. But if Michelle Obama isn't limited, most people won't like her. We saw that in 2008. I mean, I liked her, but it didn't play well generally.
Robin Givhan writes about the body acceptance movement. Most of her essay is about the desire for cutting-edge fashion in plus sizes. (She embarrasses the president of Lane Bryant for saying his customer is mainly concerned with comfort and "might be a year behind" on style.) Tucked away at the end is the part about Michelle Obama. The First Lady has been Givhan's prime subject these days (unfortunately), and it's surprising to find something critical of her in a Givhan column (even if it is given low prominence). Let me highlight it:
What some currently see as the most distressing assault on their dignity is first lady Michelle Obama with her fight against childhood obesity.
"I'm really appalled at the first lady's campaign. I think it will do more harm than good," says Linda Bacon, author of "Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight." "I applaud her for some of the specific programs, but when it's done in the name of obesity, it's going to backfire on her."
Bacon was one of about a dozen researchers and authors who signed a letter to Obama voicing concern that her emphasis on weight was stigmatizing a population rather than dealing with the broader health issues. "I think it's great for kids to have a better connection to their food," Bacon says.
Bacon. Great name. No seriously.
A grand and lustrous name. And if you thought a joke was in order, you should be ashamed of yourself... of your mind. Not your body, of course. Love your glorious, ample body.
Back to Linda Bacon:
But by focusing on weight, "you're teaching kids that they did something wrong to get the body they have."
The women do not dismiss decades of scientific research on obesity, but they are distrustful of the conclusions as well as the methodology. They know they exercise; they feel healthy. One young woman shared that she was a vegan and has always been a big girl. Mostly, however, they argue that everyone should eat better and move more -- not just the overweight. So why point a finger at fat people?
Givhan has the access to extract a response from Michelle Obama. The questions I'd ask: How can you talk about taking personal responsibility when what people hear is blame? If people are saying they feel good about themselves, do you really want to make them feel bad? Even those of us who don't favor inspiring self-esteem all the time want to know why you want to tear people down in the effort to get them to do something they'll probably never be able to do very well? But Michelle Obama is someone who's big on promoting self-esteem, so she's got a particularly difficult problem achieving coherence. You can't just be for everything that's good. Everyone must feel good and be virtuous. How does that work?
I assume Givhan will get back to us with the First Lady's response. Until then, let's speculate. I predict she'll go on about her garden and how delicious vegetables can be: If only these women would taste vegetables — really taste her most excellent vegetables — then they will love eating right and all the incoherence will melt away. You can love yourself, love your body, love all your food and eat right and be healthy — feel healthy and be healthy. Of course, that's emphatically not true, but one feels so pretty saying it. And that is what we want — to feel pretty.
Ha. I hate getting hit by stray bits of food. I once sat in the front row of a play that had a small refrigerator right in front of where I was sitting. There was a lot of talk of food, and much opening and closing of the refrigerator, putting things in. As might have been predicted, the climax of the show involved stuff coming out of that refrigerator.
Artichokes, huh? Smells like stale piss. Never was big on vegetables myself. I'm a steak man. "Meat and blood," that's my motto. Keeps your bones hard as ivory.
Do artichokes roll when they hit the pitched floor of a stage? Yes, so don't sit in the front row.
I wouldn't have been lying there to notice that if you hadn't made the lawn so plush and lagged behind when it was 6 p.m. and finally cool enough to leave the homestead. Then we set out. Into the woods:
But then after I thought that and thought the Instapundit thought (that men have a shorter life span), I saw the First Lady's point. Women may depend more heavily on the health care system, especially early in life when they need to manage their fertility. Childbirth and its alternatives — other than celibacy — require medical help. And babies and young children need their doctor visits, and a lot more women than men take responsibility for getting them.
[N]ew research into why the gap in male and female life spans exists suggests that a natural male propensity toward risky and daredevil behavior may be one reason men don't live as long as women....
More men than women die in car accidents, other types of accidents, homicides, and suicides, the researchers note. They add that in the U.S., the gender gap in death rates peaks in young adulthood and is mainly due to behavior.
And let's not forget that some of that male violence is directed at women — another reason women seek medical care.
Moreover, without advanced health care, the male life span would be greater:
“Up until very recently in human terms, life expectancy for men was greater than for women,” [said] Carol J. Hogue .... a professor of maternal and child health and of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health....
Why did women overtake men in life expectancy?...
“The major killer in early life for women was maternal mortality, and that has been tamed considerably, whereas the major killer for men is violence and accidents, and that has not gone down as dramatically as childbirth deaths have gone down,” Hogue says.
Women shouldn’t take their longer life expectancy for granted. The 2004 gender gap in U.S. life expectancy was the smallest it’s been since 1946. If women continue to adopt unhealthy habits like smoking, the gap may narrow further....
So, I'm going to say that Michelle Obama is right, that health care has a special women's angle, and it made sense to mobilize the rarely-seen female figurehead to tell us so.
If she could just squeeze that crying tone out of her voice. Stop hamming it up. Talk straight using real facts and tie it to actual provisions in a legislative text so we can check your work.
***
As for that belt. I know everyone is talking about the belt MO wore. Some people are perceiving a 3-D quality that make it look like it holds bullets. But it is flat, and it just happens not to be flattering.
Somebody has apparently decided that MO should accentuate what might be the narrowest part of her body, the very high waist. This theory has been taken to an extreme with wide leather belts. But the circumference isn't that small. And the "waist" at that level includes the rib cage. It's right over the diaphragm. You can't cinch that belt tight without restricting breathing. I'm thinking the belt looks bad, worse than her stylists realize, because she's giving herself breathing room.
I'm guessing Michelle is feeling chafed and constricted by a lot of things, and that belt isn't just literally suffocating her, but it's reminding her of all the many ways she's being reined in and tied down. It makes you want to let that belt out another notch. Or take if off all together. Use it as a whip. But no, she really can't. She's got to be First Ladylike. So here she is murmuring feelingly about women's health.
Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.
The first lady, in gray slacks and blue sweater, marveled that the people were "so pumped up" despite the rain. "I have never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables!" she said.
Did she say that with admiration? I'm sure she tried. I imagine her thinking: They made me do this. They've consigned me to the vegetable department. Why the fuck are you people here?
The first lady picked up a straw basket and... she loaded up with organic Asian pears, cherry tomatoes, multicolored potatoes, free-range eggs and... two bunches of Tuscan kale. She left the produce with an aide, who paid the cashier as Obama made her way back to the limousine.
There now. Are you satisfied? I am not carrying this thing, and I am not doing any money transactions. Now get me the hell out of here. Where's my limousine?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking her. I sympathize. All this feminism for all these years and the First Lady — the First Lady with a Princeton and a Harvard Law degree and who had been the prime moneymaker in her family — gets squashed in the vegetable bin and squelched by an ugly belt to the solar plexus.
