Life since my last update has been interesting (Dmitry and I broke up. I do not want to talk about it), but that's not what I'm going to write about. What I'm going to write about is:
1. Obama won the election!!! I kind of wish I had been home for it. But people here are happy, too. A McCain win would have destroyed our credibility, at least here in Russia (and, yes, I do know how that sounds). Some of them are worried that I'm going to go back now. What I was really waiting for was health care, so...maybe?
2. Proposition 8. I...have no words for this. But look here. Second picture, middle sign, awesome. It kind of made me wish that my parents were fundamentalist nutjobs so that I could marry that guy just to prove a point.
And I understand that lots of otherwise good people are opposed to gay marriage, I assume because their churches say so (like mine, though I manage to form my own opinions on this issue despite that) or because they are just uncomfortable with it (that would be the entire population of the country that I choose to live in). It's the voting against it that I have a problem with. That's basically going to the polls and saying "I do not want people who I will never meet and who have no effect on my life to be able to visit each other in the hospital when one of them is seriously ill." Who DOES that?!?
It turns out that I do have some words for this.
3. Talking to my friend, an Evangelical Christian, about Sarah Palin (this was before the election when it was relevant):
O: See, she's one of those scary Christians.
M: Ye...what, what?! You have to explain that because as far as I'm concerned YOU'RE one of those scary Christians!
O: [uses the one issue that I actually, KIND OF, agree with Palin on to illustrate her point]
M: Oh...my. This means that someone out there thinks I'm a scary Christian, too.
O: Yeah, they're called Episcopalians.
M: Ooh...I bet they do.
O: But who thinks Episcopalians are scary?
M: Unitarians!
And then you come full-circle because I imagine that the Sarah Palins of the world find Unitarians scary. Or...it might be more of a line than a circle.
4. I am currently scraping the money together to go visit my brother in Berlin. His blog is updated more often than mine. His post about contractors reminds me of some of the people I work with, except we make a lot less money. But the lifestyle is similar.
5. Points if you know where I got that title from (it ties the whole post together, though 3 is kind of a stretch).
If I weren't who's to say
15 years ago
6 comments:
You clever little thing with that title. I had to actually look it up, even though I have the song.
Sorry I'm not a fundamentalist nutjob, even though the sign-carrier is kind of cute and would have made a great son-in-law. We could probably cook together and watch Bravo. I can't even get too upset about people from out of state giving tons of money in order to stop people from living their lives the way they want to because a couple of my friends sent handwritten cards to voters in Ohio to encourage them to vote for Obama. (Though none of them actually lied in the cards). Did you hear there was a commercial for Yes on 8 that said that a teacher in San Francisco took her first grade students on a field trip to a gay wedding? It turns out that the teacher took the day off work to get married, informed her students' parents about it, and several of them took the day off to take their children to their teacher's wedding.
If I wasn't so irritated I would be amused by the endless commercials that complained that voting no on prop 8 would force kids to have to learn about gay marriage. Since the commercials were on every hour of the day, I figure probably every kid in the state has heard of gay marriage by now.
You probably would have like the no on prop 8 commercials, which pretty much made the same point you did: it doesn't really matter how you feel personally, but do you really wish to take rights away from your neighbors?
I can say this much for Sarah Palin--I think she actually lives her beliefs. The rest of the Republican Party seems very cynical. I never believed that Bush actually believed in any of the things he said in order to gain votes. I wouldn't call Sarah Palin a scary Christian so much as a scary candidate. I like my possible Presidents to know that Africa is a continent and to understand that the Earth is more than 6000 years old.
Enjoy Berlin. I wish I could be there with you two.
As your godfather, I'm very proud that you can make fundamentalist/Catholic/Episcopalian/Unitarian jokes. Funny ones, too!
One of the NY opera bloggers went to a protest there with a sign saying, "I Can't Get a Date, But I Demand the Right to Get Married!" He didn't report if the sign got him a date, though. As for the sign carrier in your link, just remember that ALL the cute nice guys are gay, unless you're gay, in which case they're ALL straight.
V, Though I have quoted you several times on the ad thing, I have to disagree with you on two points:
I do see a different between trying to influence voters in a swing state in a national election versus donating to an out-of-state proposition. Ohio's choice for President directly affects us, but California's propositions do not directly affect residents of Utah. (Setting aside questions of the truthfulness of the Pro-8 ads, and also the effectiveness of postcards from strangers telling you how to vote, even if said postcards are hand-written.)
But I don't think the powerful wedding industry in California is going to take this lying down, and no, I'm not kidding.
The second thing I disagree with is about Palin living her beliefs. Well, I guess I have to qualify that slightly: I'm not sure she has any beliefs other than self-aggrandizement. In which case, yes, she does live her values.
Enjoy Berlin! I'm very envious. We'll miss the two of you at Thanksgiving: I've already put the down payment on a heritage turkey (again, I'm not kidding). I'm going to make the coffee buttercrunch pie for dessert.
I meant to write a blog entry about the celebrations that went on in Germany over Obama getting elected. It was big news among the locals, with smiling faces everywhere.
Of the guys I'm working with here, all but one are declared republicans...and all but one actually crossed their party to vote for Obama.
I'm kind of glad I left California when I did, I left just before all the Prop 8 protests and commercials hit their peak. However, I was around long enough to see the commercial with the little girl running to her mother to say "In school I learned that I can marry a princess." The yes-on-8 announcer then takes over the dialog while you can see the mother sitting down with her daughter and having a very serious conversation. Every time I saw that commercial I tried to imagine what the mother was saying to her daughter: "Well sweetie, you could...but then your daddy and I would be very sad and we'd never talk to you again...Is that really what you want?"
Well, my answer to "I can marry a princess!" would be "Like Hell you can!" But that would apply to male children, too.
I agree that handwritten cards about a national election are completely different from ad campaigns about a state election. Handwritten cards are charming, no matter what side they come from!
I don't intend to write any more about it, but I got to thinking that Dmitry and I probably would have broken up over prop 8. Gay marriage isn't even really a concept here, and I understand that, but there's a difference between "gay people want to do what now?" and "you want your government to encourage people to be gay!"
Though I've seen many relationships thrive on what seem like incredible political and philosophical differences, I think I might have thrown in the towel on that one, too.
I definitely wish that you and your brother had been here on election night, and I think you'd be touched by most of the reaction to prop 8, too. The yes people are being very quiet and people who never seemed very political are fired up at the unfairness. Yesterday, the CA Supreme Court decided to hear three cases about it, which is a very good sign.
I love your comment about, "I can marry a princess," and Cameron's cracks me up because what he imagines the mother saying, while not something I would ever say, is said in that calm, "you can make your own decisions, but" way that I would say it.
I fold on the handwritten cards. I wanted to like the idea anyway because my friends who did it worked for hours and were so sincere about it.
Happy Thanksgiving to you! We'll be thinking of you and CMB tonight. . .
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