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White House Switchboard

White House Switchboard

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Political comedy email making the rounds…

“Thank you for calling the White House switchboard. Our new voice activated system will help direct you to the proper office.”

“If you are calling to complain about the mishandling of the war in Iraq, press one.”

“If you are calling to complain about the abuse of prisoners and the White House’s endorsement of torture, press two, and then say the name of the torture site that you wish to complain about (and please note for the sake of the voice mail system that it is pronounced Abu GRABE, not Abu grahb).”

“If you are calling to complain about illegal spying on American citizens and the abuse of FISA laws, press 3, but do know that these calls will be recorded.”

“If you are calling to complain about the disastrous mismanagement of the hurricane Katrina recovery, please press 4, and your call will be directed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If you wait for more than 48 hours without anyone picking up the phone, hang-up and send a letter. We have been assured that all letters will receive a prompt reply within one year.”

“If you are calling regarding the administration’s unwillingness to enforce immigration law, press cinco, por favor, or direct any thanks to your local chamber of commerce office, which can explain why we like cheap labor that can’t vote and where you may be able to find willing illegal day laborers in your local area.”

“If you are Jack Abramoff or any Saudi prince, please call the private line * it is always open.”

“If you are calling about the Medicare prescription debacle, please press 6. If you are having a medical emergency, you should proceed directly to your local emergency room, although please understand that your health coverage may not pay for the visit and you can no longer get out from under the bill by declaring bankruptcy.”

“If you are calling about the ballooning federal deficit or the recent hike in the debt ceiling to $3 trillion, please press 7, unless you are Bill Clinton calling to brag about the surpluses under your administration, in which case we don’t want to hear about it.”

“If you are calling to complain about the White House’s efforts to block stem cell research, please press 8, and then say the disease that you are most concerned about that may ultimately be cured through scientific
research. If you are a scientist calling with new research findings or important clinical data, please hang up, we don’t want to hear from you.”

“If you are calling to express concern about global warming and our efforts to roll back environmental laws, please press 9, unless you are a government scientist, in which case you are forbidden to talk without first clearing it with the oil lobbyist we hired to screen and edit your research. He can be reached at Exxon 4-2611.”

“If you are calling to complain about the President’s efforts to “privatize” social security, please press 1 and then the pound key, and your call will be redirected to representatives at Merrill Lynch, who will explain the
virtues of putting all your savings in the stock market.”

“If you are calling about the need for more prayer in public schools or any other faith-based initiatives, please press 1 and then the star key, and Reverend Falwell will be with you shortly.”

“If you are calling to lobby for more Supreme Court Justices who will block a woman’s right to choose, please stay on the line and the President will be with you immediately.”

“If you are calling about all the tax breaks for the wealthy, press *1 if you have ideas for more loopholes and are making more than a million dollars per year; if you are earning less than a million per year but have ideas for how you may help the wealthy, press *2; if you are earning less than a million per year and just want to complain that all the burden is now falling on you, please call back in a couple of years.”

“If you voted for President Bush and are now concerned that over 12% of the U.S. population now falls below the poverty line while the top 1% has wildly increased their wealth, please understand that we are not laughing AT you.”

“Press zero at any time if you would like to hear these options again.”

“Thank you for calling the White House. It is our pleasure to serve you.”

(Thanks Corinne!)

Woman as “Pre-pregnant” Incubators

Woman as “Pre-pregnant” Incubators

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We can’t give you that cancer-fighting chemotherapy. It would endanger the pre-fetus. You’ll just have to die and make room for more efficient femfactory production units.

The pre-pregnant. The pre-pregnant?

Well, if all women of reproductive age should consider themselves pre-pregnant, then I guess there will have to be a resurrection of real sex education and easily available birth control. Prenatal services and care for women will take top priority, and corporations will immediately address exposure to environmental toxins in the workplace. Mercury in fish, overuse of antibiotics in beef and chicken, the pesticides on our fruit and vegetables – all of this will be addressed to protect the “pre-pregnant.” Right? Right?

From the Bush administration? Dream on. If you haven’t caught the similarity to the new word “pre-born,” you haven’t been paying attention. This is a working example of the inscription of rhetorical, cultural, and even legal precedents for the prioritizing of a potential (not even actual) pregnancy over the life of the mother. We are allowing a woman to be defined solely as a baby-making machine, valued only in the capacity of being a potential mother.

It’s one thing to encourage all women of child-bearing age to take folic acid, have checkups, etc etc. But there are many other implications (one of which will clearly _not_ be holding men responsible for anything). It’s one of the many building blocks in the anti-choice and anti-woman agenda (these are two different agendas, but they get more and more overlap).

Once these are fully in place, I can see scenarios in which, for example, a woman could be held criminally liable for drinking or smoking, just in case she might become pregnant. I can see women becoming property again, with husbands or fathers as the “stewards” of the breeding stock.

Where is the parallel term for men? It would only be fair, would it not, to discuss the “pre-paternal” guidelines? Last time I checked, male genetic material was included in the process.

The example of health guidelines is relatively benign (I take folic acid every day), but I think women are right to object to the inherent implications of the term.

There is, first of all, an aesthetic objection to be made. “Pre-pregnant” is silly and it sounds stupid. Ick.

This is so ripe for a George Carlin or Lewis Black or Chris Rock routine. It’s next in line for Carlin’s sketches on “pre-boarding” a plane and the historical vocabulary series from “shell-shock” to “post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Think of what it actually means to categorize women (and girls) as “pre-pregnant” for some 30-45 years of their lives, which is the reproductive span of women from first menstruation to the end of menopause.

A little satire can point to some of the problems with using this kind of vocabulary. Imagine some other words:

  • pre-baptised
  • pre-raped
  • pre-inseminated
  • pre-productive
  • pre-taxed
  • pre-educated
  • pre-civilized
  • pre-terrorist
  • pre-wounded
  • pre-bombed
  • pre-radiated
  • pre-dead

You don’t have to be a linguist or a political junkie or a discourse analyst to see some of the implications of using words like these.

Are there actually women who accept being envisoned as valuable only in terms of being a walking uterus/incubator? Pop one out for Bush und Gott? There are real effects on women’s lives already. Here is an example:

“I have been unable to obtain adequate medical care for my epilepsy because I am what they’d call pre-pregnant. As my neurologist puts it, I am a woman of child-bearing age. As such, they flat-out refuse to try me on any medicines other than the ones proven least likely to affect a fetus (read: the ones that are paying off my neurologist). Despite the fact that I have declared my belly a no-fetus zone. My neurologist does not trust me to not get pregnant. My neurologist puts a potential fetus’s potential health over my health. And now the government wants to officially sanction that.”

Once we get used to thinking of women as “pre-pregnant,” it opens the doors to wider acceptance of even more anti-female legislation than is already on the table with attempted definitions of the “personhood” of the fetus and abortion bans (even in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the life of the woman). The disappearance of family planning clinics, incitement to hate and violence against doctors who perform abortions, and the proliferation and funding of fake clinics across the country should already have shown us what is happening here.

The CDC guidelines seem to be aimed at health education (at least primarily), but the slant in the Washington Post article is chilling. Is there anyone here who can really doubt that the very vocabulary here is indicative of the political and cultural influence of the pseudo-religious, dominionist right-wing?

The Handmaid's Tale : A Novel Eternal Hostility : The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

The kind of men who need to dominate and control women (as these folk seem to want to do) are pathological – and boring – and make terrible husbands, fathers, brothers or friends. Just my personal opinion.

Wherever you are in terms of your beliefs about pregnancy planning, education, abortion – I do hope that the women and men of this country are not really quite willing to turn back the clock on women’s “personhood.”

Aren’t we claiming to “spread democracy and freedom”? Ask the women of Afghanistan and Iraq, or for that matter, across much of the world, how we’re doing on that.

I do hope you’ll be voting and supporting more progressive candidates (or even running for office yourself).

“To my knowledge, there has never been an administration that has been more hostile to women’s equality, to reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right, and has acted on that hostility. They certainly have pursued abstinence-only sex education programs and gutted and gotten rid of comprehensive sex education. They’ve pursued the gag rule that uses U.S. foreign aid to suppress reproductive information, and that has literally endangered and damaged the lives of millions of women in poor countries. And they’ve suppressed AIDS information and emergency contraception. In addition to their clear drive to criminalize abortion, there has been no opportunity of which I’m aware that they have not taken to restrict women’s rights and to oppose reproductive freedom.”

— Gloria Steinem, 2004

Yes. Thank you Colbert.

Yes. Thank you Colbert.

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I’ve been waiting a bit to comment on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. There are a lot of opinions out there, and I’m happy most of all that people are talking and writing and thinking about issues, humor and satire vs. criticism and insult, comedy as news, the role of a court jester, and so on.

Steve Bridges did a great imitation of Bush, and was obviously Bush’s own choice (for his own roast, he gets to choose?). I’ve heard that Bridges can do Clinton just as well. That was the light side of the dinner, although there were a couple of low-grade zings in that one, too.

But I have to say that I think Colbert’s performance was the more important. I did actually think much of it was funny, in the traditional way of a roast. As it went on, he transitioned through court jester, and went all the way to performative critique. The film clip of Colbert pretending to be the White House Spokesman forced the viewer to dwell in a fairly unpleasant space – it even made me a little anxious because of the genre of suspense, the music, the way it was drawn out. It was meant to make people squirm. It worked for that, but I could almost hear the pulse of a pounding vein in Bush’s own head by the end of it.

The video wasn’t funny – but it was performative, dramatic, and scathing in its depiction, and that was even better. Scott McClellan probably had the most right to feel attacked…. wasn’t that pretty much a depiction of him?

It focused on a single question, finally: Why did we really go to war in Iraq?

Helen Thomas herself – I swear I saw her wipe a tear. I was glad to see someone stand up for her, and for the questions she’s not been allowed to ask anymore despite her long history as the media hardnose to the President. And I was glad to see someone stand up for us, we who are being fed a bunch of hogwash propaganda day and night, straight from the White House to Fox News, etc.

Anyone who has watched the Daily Show or the Colbert Report would know what his humor was like. Remember, he was invited.

I fully expected Colbert to pull a Family von Trapp while the film clip was playing, but to my shock and admiration, he was still standing there at the end.

Thank you Stephen Colbert

The Speech Video

Stephen Colbert Musical Extravaganza

The Colbert Report

Colbert Clips on ifilm

Yes, I approve.

Why? Because I’m angry at his administration – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al. – as well as its bullied, corrupt, or spineless members of Congress, the controlled or cowardly media, and the American people themselves – who have allowed our country to be twisted and trampled into something it should never be. If we continue on this path, our future is dismal.

William Rivers Pitt puts it pithily (when angry, spitting and sputtering are common) – Why the anger?

Because millions of people are staggered by the idea that, yes Virginia, we have to go through this again. We have to watch soldiers slaughter and be slaughtered for reasons that bear no markings of truth. We have to watch the reputation of this great nation be savaged. We have to watch as our leaders lie to us with their bare faces hanging out.

Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children’s future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

You cannot fathom anger arising from this?

There is at least a small amount of comfort in knowing that that the President had to hear, at least once, a few of the reasons why those approval figures are so low.

PR Strategies for the VP

PR Strategies for the VP

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P.R. 101 for Vice-Presidents: Handy Tips for good P.R. when you accidentally (woops!) shoot somebody in the face.

  1. Take at least 18 hours to try to figure out what the heck to say to the Press
  2. Don’t drink any more alcohol.
  3. Send off a check soonest for the quail hunting license you were supposed to have had.
  4. Don’t call the police.
  5. Have friends publically point out the virtues and wonderfulnesses of the shooter.
  6. Blame the bird.
  7. Blame the victim. What the Sam Hill was that doofus doing there anyway, getting in the way of a perfectly good shot? DANG!
  8. Make sure media outlets use the right language. Don’t allow any rhetoric of violence that might make people feel queasy about the VP. Instead, say "he got peppered pretty good" –which sounds folksy, sort of fun, and brings to mind the pleasant subject of cajun cooking.
  9. By no means should either the victim or the VP make any personal statement to the press. Let jokes fly all around so that a sense of comraderie is established. After all, no-one was actually killed. A little pepper just adds spice.
  10. Have someone ask the White House spokesman whether it is inappropriate for even a properly Rove-tutored private citizen to have reported it to the press or for a newspaper to have reported on it before any official press release was distributed. Plant that that seed of doubt about whether freedom of the press is really such a good thing rather than dwelling on how different the scene would have been if the shooter wasn’t Cheney.
  11. Don’t sweat it too much; NRA buddies will fully understand.

It’s perfectly understandable that someone like Vice President Dick Cheney could shoot a 78-year-old lawyer in the face after mistaking him for some sort of orange-vest-wearing bird. Shucks–what’s a little buckshot between friends?

The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History (Dick Cheney)

(Adapted and expanded from an email sent to me by Aunt Elaine)

Satire and Anger

Satire and Anger

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The satirists are at work already. The court jesters tell truth to King George.

Responding to Hurricane Katrina: President’s Remarks Announcing Extremely Belated Launch of “Operation Bureaucratic Clusterf**k” – whitehouse.org

In The Wake Of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush Addresses Trent Lotts Loss – Unconfirmed Sources

President Bush To Survey New Orleans Destruction Using Google Earth – The Daily Farce

Bush Missing 404 error – Mad Kane

Bush Offers New Orleans Back to the French – Soup Yet

Hurricane Bin Laden to Invade New Orleans – Twisted Straight

Even while I seek out my most reliable remedy – humor usually puts my sadness and anger in a different, more manageable, context – it is clear that it won’t work this time. I believe that when people lose their sense of humor they have also lost their sense of perspective and their humanity – they are the fanatics, the terrorists, the hard cruel ones. But this time I find myself too angry and too heartbroken and too ashamed for this country to be able to recontextualize at all. There is no other frame. Torture, loss of civil rights, the invasion of Iraq, greed, acquisition of the electoral process – and so on and so on – all these were slo-mo catastrophes. Willingly blinded people did not believe what they did not want to believe. This time, it’s in your face. Watch reporters shout back, rant and rail, even cry – see those photos, hear what people there are saying, and then try to tell me about “compassionate conservatives.” Wake UP.

What I noticed today was that the word “FINALLY” appeared at the top of the front page for most newspapers in the country. FINALLY help arriving. Finally.

Colbert King at the Washington Post has an article called “A Time for Action, Not Outrage.” Well, I think it’s time for both action and outrage, although plain old rage is working just fine for me. Why did Bush want a high flyover and a couple of contrived photo ops? Is he still more concerned about oil interests in the area than he is about the people there?

These are real quotations.

"I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." –President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005
— Oh yes they did, and the levees broke right where the repairs should have been done already. Everybody expected the breach – that’s why there was an evacuation order. The Bush administration and our representatives just didn’t think it was a priority. They should have helped people get out of there.

“I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR’s "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005
— “Have not heard a report” – on Sept 1? This guy is in charge of Homeland Security. He is supposed to be the one coordinating the efforts of other agencies. They couldn’t even discover what was on the news. They couldn’t even put a couple people on the ground with bullhorns, or drop in some water. Their idea of security was to lock people in at the bridges.

“We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC’s Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005 – to which Koppel responded " Don’t you guys watch television? Don’t you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today.
— Brown is in charge of FEMA, which used to be pretty well-prepared before Bush started making us more prepared.

"Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job." –President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005
— Guess who put “Brownie” in charge?

"You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals…many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." –CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, on New Orleans’ hurricane refugees, Sept. 1, 2005
— So black? That’s a new one. I wonder which questions that Blitzer has in mind.

"We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do … The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) —President Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005
— Yeah, it’s real funny. Let’s just make sure Lott’s house is okey-dokey. Why not just let Bush walk around New Orleans and “talk to the people”? I’m sure that he would become educated right quick.

"…for the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap – you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there’s not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?" Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005
— I get it Mary, and thank you for having a spine. Please start talking to your colleagues. Perhaps some field trips are in order.