The Teen Pregnancy of Zoe 101...

I can hear the whispers of the masses rolling eyes, (and Jill screaming,) but I'm afraid that I'm gonna have to say a little something about Jamie Lynne Spears and her unfortunate pregnancy. As repugnant as I find that family's embrace of the trailer park life and their across the board misuse of a huge platform that could be used for some sort of good in the world; as stupid I think she is, and as annoyed as I am about the immediate pile on (well, Huckabee so far,) of the religi-tizing and politicizing of the issue of a young girl deciding to announce to the world that she is having his love child, as opposed to deciding to quietly take care of it, or drop out and have it and adopt it out, or pass it on to a family member, (hopefully not her mom, she seems sort of inept in the parenting department,)there are a few points that Willie Giest and Morning Joe aren't bringing to the table on this; we may have to wait for Oprah, y'know, because she tends to represent the other side of this coin....sometimes....depending on how it spins and where it lands. Heads you're a hero, trailblazer, and tails you're a pathetic victim.

It was my nephew who mentioned it last night as we talked about Christmas on the cell phone. It was a quick turn from him helping Will and Ben set up the Xbox 360 Live, and then a quick mention...had I heard? Of course I had, but 13 year old boys, (as nephew is too,) don't pay much attention, unless its an opening for a cautionary tale of stupidity; that is, unless they have a much younger sister who watches these shows. Suddenly tasked to say the right thing, I tend to do OK, because I believe in treating kids like intelligent beings who have a certain developing moral and ethical core. So, I quickly had to get past the 'stupid trailer-trash' nastiness that goes through my mind whenever certain people fuck up, and get to asking him what he thought. Ah, kids these days....The answers are not far from what you hear on every talk show, except that no one is all that surprised; they are more surprised that she got caught and that she didn't just handle it quietly.


I'm not sure how well this sort of thing goes over these days, in a world where the heroine's sister acts out so badly, and taking into account that, in some part of the culture of their people, it happens and its expected. But in this day and age, its probably worth it to scream the basic fact that these people are incredibly wealthy and they have the luxury to handle this in any way they see fit. That is definitely not true of most young girls in this country. If Jamie Lynn is to be applauded for having a child at 16, and keeping it...even marrying the father, then as much time should be given to the truth about what this situation is outside of the Disney life that these kids are living. Even the Nwe York Times didn't delve further into this than Jamie Lynn's own statement:

''I definitely don't think it's something you should do; it's better to wait,'' she told the magazine. ''But I can't be judgmental because it's a position I put myself in.''

I applaud her realizing that she put herself in this spot, but I cant see how she can just leave that hanging without more than this:

''It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected,'' she said. ''I was in complete and total shock and so was he.''

Oh really? Well, then your tutor didn't do a very good job of explaining what happens when you have unprotected sex, or the condom breaks, or you forget your pill. This was an opportunity missed. So many young girls look up to this kid, and she acts like she had an unexpected visitor from out of town or something.

In a second article, The New York Times covers how this is maybe a good thing because everyone is talking about it; cue Linda Ellerbee for a special program being developed by Nick. But its clear that who is discussing this a New York Times reporter looking on, are older kids who are concerned with their younger sibling's reaction when they find out what Zoe 101 is up to in real life, and the actual younger siblings with a concerned mom present. You see, Zoe is apparently one of the few girl's characters who is empowering to young girls; who has her shit together. As the older girls (and my sister this morning,) are hoping that the younger ones just wont find out, its probably worthwhile to point out that its nearly impossible to stop this news from passing through every school lunchroom in the country. But I'm less worried about girls who are discussing this with their Moms or any sane adult person. Its the ones out there who have to be independent too early, and who are making decisions on the fly with no real base of reality. Its the kids who want someone to pay attention to them and to love them, and who want a dress up doll like Jamie Lynn will no doubt display on the cover of OK and Enquirer. And its every kid who thinks that they are madly in love at 16 years old and who dreams of getting married to that boy. How are they supposed to parse this?


In the real world,so many people, (even blond people,) are not working, and if they are its at some minimum wage job, or jobs, because in most places no one can make ends meet on what you take home from a full time, minimum wage job. If no work can be found, welfare pays only around $350 per month, per kid, and you have to work for that eventually anyway, (like when the baby is 6 weeks old, )so be prepared for the baby to be in daycare beginning quite early. Then, if you can get section 9 housing, you have to pay rent according to what you make, which is a little too high to give you any sort of cushion for anything extra. One kid orders pay per view movies and runs your cable bill up and you're sunk for that month at least, probably much longer...forget the ring tones and all the other trouble that comes up and can totally derail your finances; forget illness, and doctor visits, and transportation, and food...forget it all...$350 per month hardly buys diapers and some food; forget the rest.

Most of the parents I know who are living in what is the inner city here, are trying very hard to watch their kids and stay involved, even though they have to work more than full time and keep house. They also have to trust dwindling government programs and charities to keep the children occupied while they work those long hours. So much falls between the cracks and so much is lost, including some of the children, who make mistakes at a much higher rate than they would if they were raised by at least one parent who has some time. Children definitely act out more and get in more trouble if parents are stretched beyond their ability to cope and if they have to endure long hours at after-school programs. I don't know what the studies say, but I do know what I see all around me, even in a more affluent area where many people work because it takes 2 incomes to make it here.

I suppose you can congratulate any 16 year old boy who wants to marry the mother of his kid, but that is as destined to fail as is the father who is only peripherally involved. It is the rarest of 16 year olds who have the patience or selflessness to take care of a baby, much less raise a child to adulthood. It must be nice to have a financial cushion so that you don't have to go to school, work, and then come home and care for your child; it must be nice.

In reality, having a baby in the best of circumstances is the hardest thing any of us will ever do. They need so much attention and require so much sacrifice. They also give alot of joy. But I cant imagine, having raised one alone but with independent income, what it would be like not to have any financial resources, trying to make ends meet, and to have to work the way I'm seeing people work, if they can even find jobs. Its a wonder that people can find any joy at all in lives that must seem pretty bleak, and its a wonder that more people aren't throwing their babies out the window, with how very difficult it is to care for an infant, even with 2 people helping each other.

I'm sure that the early tribal model of sex separated long houses worked better for raising kids because the whole society pitched in and fulfilled specific purposes, with the babies being cared for by large groups of supportive women, and the men taking the boys as soon as they got a little older. I'm not espousing any societal model, but, it seems like the nuclear family's breakdown has led to this destructive cycle of kids bound to repeat the actions that they've lived through, no matter how much their parents try to protect them. Some of this is because the education system is screwed up, and we need to infuse it with money of the kind that has been pissed away in Iraq, but more of it is the troubling truth that its unclear to kids what they can be, and where they fit in society anymore. If kids dont have a strong sense of self and worth, how can they want to go further than the walls of their own personal barrio? There are no jobs, really. What are kids supposed to aspire to anymore? We cant even offer a secure factory job, much less technical jobs...forget it. Everyone seems to be dreaming of being a star and winning the lotto. There are no more realistic aspirations for the majority of kids coming out of the government system.

So, while Nick scrambles to serve the stockholders, as sponsors jump ship, and while the rest of us talk about how stupid and trashy the Spears family is, lets keep in mind that even if we say its bad, someone out there will think that its OK and even possible because Zoe 101 did it. This is an opportunity to talk to kids about this and to have a real conversation. This is about the structure of our society; Huckabee wants the church to embrace and forgive her? How about a strong statement about how to fight poverty and stem this problem by allowing more wiggle room for parents to be with their LIVE kids, and about actual money pledged to allow the existing kids in this country to have more life experiences that indicate to them that there is a future out there and that they can make choices that effect their lives in many ways. They have a choice and they have control of deciding NOT to take stupid chances that will change the entire course of their lives. The power of making choices with an eye to the long term and the importance of critical decision making, is something that is missing in a society where its easier to redistribute society's wealth when you have a population that is undereducated, poor, and scared. In taking the easy way out, we are exacerbating the problem. Its penny wise, (and not even,) but pound foolish!

This is not about a foolish rich girl doing something stupid. Its about the reverberations that shift our culture more and more towards a helpless model of despair, (i.e. learned helplessness,) on every level of society, and which will impact each part differently, but ultimately effect us all.

Edwards Gains Ground, as Obamarah and Billary Slug it out...And On the Other Side? Cue the Circus Music, the Left Behind, and the Swimming Monkeys!!

Sunday: Life after the morning shows?
Planet Earth on Discovery Channel.....
The world outside seems pretty big sometimes.... and the pathological bullshit going on in here is sort of unbearable in the face of this:



These guys can stay down for up to 30 mins!
Forget the tiny pandering of the animals with the biggest egos on this planet. we've got nothing compared to the survival skills that are evolving every day out there on Planet Earth...Pick your nature show, folks, and sit right down for a heart warming HD journey into how small we really are in the scheme of things. Maybe I'm getting old, and maybe its that I resisted the new technology for so long, but high definition really is the new hallucinogenic for people of a certain age.

And that drowning feeling? Well, after long strange dreams about swimming in the tropics with old ex-friends who I hope to never see again, I was brought back to Mitt Romney by Frank Rich, who shines a light once again on the should-be criminal ball-dropping of the pundits and press in this country. The frustration of that on this icy morning, chipping away at the path, and fuming about how a swift boat attack is all that could stand between us and a Romney presidency, is just too much for my weakened sensibilities!
Surely, its our fault because we give them the ratings, but then, we also don't have much choice, do we? Why would it be so wrong to bring back some type of fairness doctrine? What are they so afraid of if they are so right...?

So, we watch the same old corpses, and hope for an explosion by the likes of Larry O'Donnell, who has been as much as pooh-poohed this week for his temper last week, as opposed to looking at what it was that he said that was just so unseemly.
According to Frank Rich in today's New York Times:

Pushed over the edge by his peers’ polite chatter about Mitt Romney’s sermon on “Faith in America,” Mr. O’Donnell branded the speech “the worst” of his lifetime. Then he went on a rampage about Mr. Romney’s Mormon religion, shouting (among other things) that until 1978 it was “an officially racist faith.”

That claim just happens to be true. As the jaws of his scandalized co-stars dropped around him, Mr. O’Donnell then raised the rude question that almost no one in Washington asks aloud: Why didn’t Mr. Romney publicly renounce his church’s discriminatory practices before they were revoked? As the scion of one of America’s most prominent Mormon families, he might have made a difference. It’s not as if he was a toddler. By 1978 — the same year his contemporary, Bill Clinton, was elected governor in Arkansas — Mr. Romney had entered his 30s.

The answer is simple. Mr. Romney didn’t fight his church’s institutionalized apartheid, whatever his private misgivings, because that’s his character. Though he is trying to sell himself as a leader, he is actually a follower and a panderer, as confirmed by his flip-flops on nearly every issue.

Polite chatter. That's what gets me. Its politeness that got us where we are now...so, for Christ's sake, lets at least look at the truth before we install another idiot president in place of the current one. The words that we shall not speak are the ones that need to be spoken, so lets look at the skull and bones underpants of this thing. The Iraq war shows us that if we keep quiet in the runup to a disaster, it can be nearly impossible to disentangle ourselves from the ensuing mess.

Racism; I keep hearing it mentioned as a cautious point on why we shouldn't support Obama. He might not be able to win the general. But that caution belies a disconnect with what is really going on out there.
Its evident in how the press and other candidates on both sides underestimated the Oprah-Obama factor. Its evident in the condescending way with which Oprah, who is arguably a spokeswoman for not only African Americans in general, but American women and her fan base, which spans larger than most of us realize, was dismissed as a pop-icon with no real weight in something as heady as an election. Think again. The woman who decided to turn her back on trash talk, and who got the country reading again, is more powerful than maybe Jesus, and probably, at least as powerful as the M$M's script for this thing. At least she knocked things around a bit and made the contenders show some of their real colors. This is not Springsteen or Bon Jovi rallying the kids; Oprah is another animal altogether and she speaks to a different place in the psyche of real people who are struggling to get by. Why? I really don't know. Call it a mysterious phenomenon; but don't disregard it.

Oprah is a populist who has taken chances for her convictions, and as much as she turned her back on the wrestling masses that Jerry Springer gave a stage to for ratings, she still has been a forgiving force who finds the common ground that represents every person in every trailer park, every upper east side matron, and those in-between. Its uncanny how she has built on that and has managed to remain above the fray in her objectives, and its not something that anyone could have predicted. But, I would think that people who watch this stuff for a living might be a little more aware of who Oprah is.

Even as Oprah represents the black thing when she goes into her hey girl! ghetto voice or does her MLK I have seen the mountain tone,she crosses a line that white America cant cross; not even Hillary as the wife of the "first black president," or whatever he was....but as she crosses those lines, she does it as if white and brown America are right there with her. She makes people of all colors warriors in a battle that is more intellectual than anyone realizes. She is talking about racism, which is absolutely knee-jerk visceral in those who grew up in places where it was ingrained, but she does it as if we were all in the battle together against what might even be something even within ourselves. What works about this is that she has a tone of self-forgiving and understanding, which makes it all more understandable and acceptable as something that we all need to change. I say all of this as someone who doesn't much watch Oprah and who is not much of a fan, unless she has on a specific subject that I want to see.

According to Rich, though, the worry about ingrained racism shouldn't be that much of a problem for Obama:

Race is certainly a part of the groundswell, but not in a malevolent way. When I wrote here two weeks ago that racism is the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign, some readers wrote in to say that only a fool would believe that white Americans would ever elect an African-American president, no matter what polls indicate. We’ll find out soon enough. If that’s the case, Mr. Obama can’t win in Iowa, where the population is roughly 95 percent white, or in New Hampshire, which is 96 percent white.

I’d argue instead that any sizable racist anti-Obama vote will be concentrated in states that no Democrat would carry in the general election. Otherwise, race may be either a neutral or positive factor for the Obama campaign. Check out the composition of Oprah’s television flock, which, like all daytime audiences, is largely female. Her viewers are overwhelmingly white (some 80 percent), blue collar (nearly half with incomes under $40,000) and older (50-plus). This is hardly the chardonnay-sipping, NPR-addicted, bi coastal hipster crowd that many assume to be Mr. Obama’s largest white constituency. They share the profile of Clinton Democrats — and of some Republicans too.

And that sticky religion thing? The things that we might prefer not to mention? Oprah and Obama both come off as pretty heavily religious, but they are not exclusive or freaky, like the underpants that Romney and his folks wear:

“Church free” is the key. This country has had its fill of often hypocritical family-values politicians dictating what is and is not acceptable religious and moral practice. Instead of handing down tablets of what constitutes faith in America, Romney-style, the Oprah-Obama movement practices an American form of ecumenicalism. It preaches a bit of heaven on earth in the form of a unified, live-and-let-live democracy that is greater than the sum of its countless disparate denominations. The pitch — or, to those who are not fans, the shtick — may be corny. “The audacity of hope” is corny too. But corn is preferable to holier-than-thou, and not just in Iowa.

I don't know about anyone else, but the idea of an Obama candidacy seems sort of nice to me. I don't want another Clinton crammed down my throat and I want real chance. I'm willing to, at least, pretend that there is some choice and that big corporations and oil interests don't control everything. Whats the worst thing that can happen? Hasn't it all happened already?

In an absolute reversal of the prevailing news blackout on John Edwards, this week's Newsweek calls John Edwards The Sleeper and The Road Warrior, and talks about how he really could win Iowa and become a contender in the big show:

But it's worth keeping in mind just how wrong the media echo chamber can be when it comes to predicting winners and losers. At about this time four years ago, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was the press-anointed darling who could seemingly do no wrong in Iowa. Dour John Kerry was scorned by reporters as the should-have-been who had blown it and couldn't possibly win. But on caucus night, Kerry wound up the victor—and Dean wound up screaming. Reporters were left to wonder what they had missed. One story the talking heads may be missing this time: just how badly John Edwards hates to lose.

I'm so tired of being told who my candidate is gonna be. I'm so tired of the likes of Chris Matthews and his ilk bleating on about how Hillary cant possibly lose...so, why bother even voting? It seems to me that as the networks have a responsibility to not give results too early on election day, they should try to act like there is a choice and try to encourage people to vote. The problem with them is that their responsibility is to the shareholders and not to the process. Every time I get the feeling that I'm being told to not bother any longer, I send Edwards some money. I honestly think he is the best one for the job at this time, and I honestly think that he has a chance. I also would like to make Chris Matthews and Tim Russert wrong (even though they have started to change course already...cue Sam Seder's backup beep!)
Its just nice to see a little coverage of Edwards, as if he were there and an entity in this race, and its also a nice article. It acts as if he is some new guy that no one knows about...but the background never gets old in a race like this.

Huckabee is on the cover of the New York Times Magazine this week and if you needed any further evidence of his particular brand of insanity, just look to the third paragraph for Huckabee's joy at the endorsement of Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind series and game. I wrote about the game a year ago here, and, really, if Huckabee believes in the wrathful Jesus of the Left Behind series, and that our kids should be playing a game that allows them to ride at the side of the angry Jesus and kill those who were not raptured up to heaven (your choice of automatic weapons!)...you know, the left behind...kill 'em all! This is when I start to wonder what the fuck is going on in the republican party; what could they be thinking?

Chris Matthews played a video today of a fake Huckabee commercial that is supposedly posted on Andrew Sullivan's site. I didn't see it there, or on YouTube, but I am looking for it.