El L Palabra

The second season of The L Word begins on Sunday night, and I have decided to watch it.

I make it seem as if there was any question, but the truth is, I will watch just about anything they put on TV, with the exception of most things on ABC and many things of Fox. Desperate Housewives? No way. But the latest Real World/Road Rules Challenge? I'm there. Ugh. The things I must be doing to my brain, my eyes, my vocabulary. I could conduct my own reality TV wrap up (and I probably will, just wait), and I don't even like most of it. I had Tivo for a week until it insulted me. You know what that fucking thing auto-taped for me, judging by my tastes? A Wedding Story on TLC!!! Anyone who knows this show will understand my horror. No you did not, Tivo!

I should blame my husband, because for the past eight months or so he has been working nights, so I have little else to do. But I have to admit that I was addicted to crap TV long before I met him. Proof? My brother and I still remember theme songs to a variety of C-level TBS sitcoms that we used to watch after school (after school in California is prime time in Atlanta, where the station was based): Safe at Home, Rocky Road, and one about a flapper from the '20s who is reincarnated as a maid in the '80s. I can't remember the title, but I remember every last word of the song... Wait, I just remembered the title: Down to Earth (it's a good thing, because this link actually includes some good information, as well as the lyrics to the theme song). Priceless! Does anyone else remember these terrible shows? Rocky Road was my personal favorite because it was set at the beach and I loved everything about the sun and tanning and bathing suits (thank goodness I escaped California). I see some of the cast members scattered throughout real TV from time to time, doing their best to fill bit parts, and I have to smile. They may not have made the big leagues, but at least they are finally in some sort of league. (Note: I just Googled these shows to come up with a link, and discovered that the father on Rocky Road was Lewis Arquette, father of my favorite female star, Rosanna Arquette, who was also a guest star on The L Word!)

Back to the L Word. My initial impression after the first episode of the first season was that it was trite and base and semi-boring. People complained that the cast was selected for the purposes of turning men on, but anyone who watches the show would likely agree that the show is not interested in fulfilling any male fantasies of lesbianism. Yes, the women are gorgeous and, for the most part, lipsticky, but they clearly are not into men. They don't want to be watched or threesomed, just left alone together. I think that's hard for men to take. After a few episodes, I was hooked. Granted, I still think much of the show is silly, but I can't stop watching.

I have friends in LA who are obsessed - one is even throwing a party on the night of the premiere. We brainstormed about what to serve that screamed "lesbian." I chimed in with tuna, cherry pie, maybe some of those coconut-covered snowballs served in suggestive pairs? I just met a gourmet New Yorker who ran with the lez-themed food idea, thinking crabcakes topped with hijiki pubic hair. Sounds yummy and distasteful at once. (She also poo-pooed the snowball idea, pointing out that lesbians don't like breasts, but I'm not sure I believe that one.)

The obsessed LA women are lesbians (or have lesbian tendencies - I don't want to out anyone), but I know of quite a few straight women who watch the show. I think it's a hit, so there must be many straight viewers tuning in. Why? Maybe we all miss Sex in the City, which was a much better show but had similar fabulously decorated living quarters and awesome outfits and cute hairstyles and dating conundrums and... yes... sex. SITC's ladies may have been man-hungry, but viewers saw a lot of breasts. Not much different from what L Word exposes (though, there have been some scenes where I was like, whoa). Plus, the women are generally gorgeous, and women like looking at gorgeous women.

I don't think I'm speaking for myself here. Women are the ones who buy fashion magazines and fetishize over models. Women made stars out of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly and Julia Roberts (men made stars out of John Wayne and Vin Diesel and Jenna Jameson). Do you know one man who watches America's Next Top Model? I started buying the SI Swimsuit Edition when I was 14, and many of my friends still do. As a kid, I idealized Marilyn Monroe (had posters ALL OVER the wall), then Gypsy Rose Lee, then Bridget Bardot (and all of the lovely ladies in Rodger Vadim's Bardot Denueve Fonda, my favorite book at age 15), then Rosanna Arquette, and so on. Rachel Weisz sunbathing nude in Stealing Beauty is still a breathtaking sight, but it's not like I want to do anything about it. Women are creatures of envy. We want beauty. We want to look at it, to face it, to know it. Men may drool over Britney Spears, but women - or, in this case, girls - buy the crap that she peddles. (Ok, gay men do too. But for the purposes of this argument, I'm lumping them in. And you know gay men do not want to go anywhere near sex with Britney.) This is also the reason that women are heinous bitches to each other. We are so critical of what we expect of beauty. To this day, I will take the slightest compliment from a woman over gushing praise from a man. Men like anything. Women are a tough audience to crack.

Just to clarify. I'm not a lesbian. I haven't had a lesbian experience. I don't even think I've come close, despite the fact that I went to a liberal arts college in the '90s. If I have come close I was not aware of it. I'm generally clueless about reading any signal that does not fit into my delusional, comfort-zoney status quo.

I tried to find something on WJC's faux daily diary regarding lesbians, but the best I could come up with was a passage about Hillary. Sorry Hillary, I don't want to insinuate anything. I don't know if you are a lesbian but you would make an excellent guest star on The L Word. (Just don't bring your husband - we all know he is definitely not a lesbian, because he LOVES breasts.)

WWWJCD:

I don’t understand her. Well I do understand her, but I don’t like it. My wife wants her own legacy, apart from me. That’s ok with me. It’s just sometimes the politician takes over from the human being.

I remember very well what kind of role health played in my first presidential election. George Bush Sr, not long before the election had gone to Japan. He became ill and vomited and passed out during an official dinner. This was caught on film. Bush never managed to shake off this moment of vulnerability. I know Hillary feared something like that might happen to her if she allowed herself to be overpowered by her illness. A politician can’t look weak. People know Washington is a vipers’ den, they will never vote for a person, who seems weak. So even when I pleaded with Hillary to go to the hospital, she said no.

She almost seemed like a tiger protecting her territory, in this case in Washington. She worked hard for her seat in the Senate. That’s for sure. She isn’t a natural politician. She doesn’t connect with people like some politicians do. Like some people say I do, or this president Bush does. Hillary is all about issues. To her being in the Senate isn’t a job. It’s a way to affect policy on issues she holds dear.

I think she is afraid of not being reelected. I understand the fear. After I was elected governor of Arkansas for the first time, I lost the reelection. It was one of the most depressing times in my life. I have never forgotten that. I was full of ideas how to change things. But I walked too far ahead of the people in Arkansas. I made one big mistake. I never took the time to educate them on why policies had to change or couldn’t stay the same. This is a mistake a lot of left leaning liberals still make. They assume everybody understands that the changes in policies they want are good for Americans. So changing laws using the courts seems the right thing to do to them. And when the majority of Americans don’t want their policy changes, they get angry. They must learn the lesson I learned. Educate people, take the time to educate people about the reasons why policy changes are good for them. I learned this lesson and got reelected a few years after my defeat. I stayed governor till I ran for president.

Coming back to Hillary and her reelection. It’s going to be tough. The Republicans are aiming their big gun at her Senate seat. It’s not official, but I don’t think you need to doubt the information. Rudolph Giuliani will be running against her in two years time. He is very popular in New York City and upstate New York. This Senate race will probably, no certainly be the most difficult and most talked about race in two years time.

I understand Hillary, but I’d rather see her home or in hospital, so she could recover. I worry about her, but that’s my right.


Oh, person-who-has-stolen-WJC's-fragile-identity, your words are more delicious than crab cakes with hijiki pubic hair. Why have you forsaken me?

Moonies, Taxes and the Amoral Media Majority

I am saddened to report that Bill Clinton's Daily Diary is a sham. Worse, it is no longer going to be published. I am a little late in finding this out. After praising the site in my first post, I decided to do some due diligence. So I tappity tapped a quick Google search and the first article I found, from August of last year, exposed it as fraud. Even if it was some evil Republican operative writing in WJC's voice, that person was doing a damn good job. Herr Guitar and I were convinced that it had to be Clinton, because:

1. He's clearly insane

and

2. No one is as brilliant.

The daily diary reflected both aspects of the man's unique personality. Now it's fake and gone. Oh well.

I'm late on a lot of things these days. I'm regularly late to work. I'm always at least one day late meeting deadlines. I was late in getting my roof patched up before the next monsoon came along. And, as you can tell, I'm late in hopping on the blog bandwagon. I have yet to expose a scandal or bring down a top-level exec. I didn't even bring down the Bill Clinton diary guy - in fact, I propped him up for a few days before finding out that he had been brought down eons ago.

Don't get me wrong, I have it in me to expose something. I'm a total paranoid. No theory is too off-the-wall, no soul too dark. I do not believe in the inherent goodness of man - especially not of greedy, power-hungry men who prey on people's notions of their own inherent goodness. I read Harper's and buzzflash.com and Daily Kos. I know about the Reverend Sun Yung Moon's moneyed grip on the Republican party. I know how American business interests are destroying Iraqi corporations in order to buy them on the cheap. I know how Anna Wintour's assistant broke up the hot design team behind Proenza and Schouler. Ok, it's true that I know none of these things for a fact, but I believe them. They make sense.

I do not believe in a liberal media bias. Granted, I live in New York, work in the media, and am about as liberal as they come. But when I write about the filthy rich, I get inside the mind of a rich person and really try to tell them a story, to give them some tips. I get to know them, become one of them, and tell them what to do. I don't think about how their evasion (or "avoidance") of taxes is hurting me or the rest of the country, I help them find the best trust to in which to stash their zillions. That's my job. I write for a magazine that talks to those people, so I adopt the magazine's voice and I start chatting. I don't report on politics, but I believe other journalists are very similar. We may be liberal, conservative, independent or libertarian, but most of us know how to do our jobs. Even if most of us are liberal (though I do know quite a few libertarians in the media) I think that we overcompensate for our own views by writing too much in the other direction. That's why The New York Times and CBS both seem really pandering and conservative lately. Sure, they are extreme examples because both are scandal-bruised, but if similar scandals happened at the New York Post or on Fox News, would their reporters overcompensate in the other direction?

The problem with the media is it is afraid. Not of missing out on a hot story, but of losing readers and viewers. Magazines suck because a few years ago, some genius with a focus group discovered that people have shorter attention spans - we need "bitsy" "servicable" "takeaway" items rather than in-depth stories. Articles that used to run 2,000 words now run at 400. With the cute opener and the even cuter kicker, that leaves about 100 words to explain what the hell we are talking about. And don't forget to include plenty of statistics! You know those have to be accurate and relevant because they can be found swimming in the cesspool that is the Internet. This all started before W. took office. Now it's even worse. Television news programs are so afraid that their audience includes the "moral majority" that Katie Couric can't even say the word feminist without apologizing for it (or prefacing it with the term "bra burning" and making it very clear she is not one, which is the same thing). But don't get me started on Katie Couric.

The thing is, the media and the public are being fooled by the idea that people are felling more moral these days. It's bullshit. Frank Rich pointed out that while 22 percent of voters did cite moral or ethical values as a prime concern, the number of voters who did so in 2000 was 35 percent. In 1996 it was 40 percent. That means our country is less concerned about moral values than it was nine years ago - by almost half!

As for magazines, the great hoax there is we made everything shorter and bitsy-er, and now everyone is glued to the Web, reading long, overwritten blogs. Again, I say Oh Well.

Let's end things with a quote from the archives of our dear if insincere WJC, in our still-going-strong feature, WWWJCD:

The interview with Larry King, Mr. Live! was lousy. I don't like critisizing people, but the level of the chat was sub par. What kind of questions were those? Those are questions you ask some teenage pop tart. “What was your lowest moment in office, what was your highest moment in office, what's your favorite color.” I used to be president. I wrote a 957 page book. What do I get? Obligatory questions. I don't think he prepares his interviews. What did he ask me that viewers didn't know already? It just went from bad to worse and at the end, during the commercial breaks we weren't even talking anymore. Hey if somebody is too lazy to prepare himself and do a REAL interview, there is nothing much I can do. So if you saw the interview and decided not to buy the book, because I was boring, I ask you to give the book a chance. It wasn't my fault.