Livingston, I Presume

Best. Talking points. Ever.

We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”

--Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, attempting to employ waaaaay too many hip buzzwords all at once, in an interview with the Washington Times.

And it gets better:

“It will be avant garde, technically. It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook."

Things like, weirdly employed French phrases?

"I don't do 'cutting-edge. That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge.”

Translation: We totally found out about Facebook, and we're not just using it to look up our high school girlfriends.

Somebody needs to set that to music, stat. Preferably with a urban-suburban hip-hop feel.

(H/T to Paul the Spud at Shakesville.)

Davy Crockett (the very expurgated version)

As sung by Connery, age 5:

Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free,
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree
Killed in a bar, when he was only three.

Kinda makes the rest of the story problematic.

Nah, it's just to get out of jury duty

Per usual, I have been casting glances toward the Montana legislative session only as often as sanity allows. I did call in a few weeks back to support Bozeman Representative Franke Wilmer's attempts to pass a law that would grant a jury duty exemption for nursing mothers. As it stands now, nursing moms are expected to serve on juries with no regard to their unusual situation of being the sole food-giving source for another human being--and no accommodation made for, say, pumping, which could allow a woman to serve effectively.

I wondered when I first heard about the bill whether there was a story behind Wilmer's decision to introduce the legislation, and it turns out that there most certainly was. Today's Bozeman Chronicle describes the predicament one nursing mom found herself in when she was called for jury duty:

The Bozeman woman tried to get out of it, submitting an affidavit stating she was a new mother who, for obvious reasons, couldn’t be away from her son for long periods. The request for exemption was “summarily denied,” she said, and Roche was selected to serve on a jury in municipal court.

What happened thereafter, Roche told a House panel on Tuesday, highlights why it’s bad policy to make breastfeeding mothers serve on juries: Her babysitter was 10 minutes late picking Clyde up, so Roche brought him into the courtroom. When the baby started to fuss, the judge ordered that Clyde be taken from Roche, she said.

“He got upset and I got upset, as you can imagine,” Roche said.

When Roche’s babysitter did arrive, Roche tried to hand her car keys off to the court clerk. That was the last straw for the judge, who charged Roche with contempt of court. She was fined and given 24 hours jail time (all of the jail time was suspended.)

Wow. How many different kinds of asshat was that judge? Here is a woman trying desperately to give her all to her baby while still fulfilling her civic duty--going so far as to have the baby brought to her so that she can feed him on breaks, presumably at her own expense--and being smacked down by a judge who, apparently, had all his compassion surgically removed in law school. (I'm assuming the judge was male, but I can't rule out a woman being this dumb, either.) What gives, your honor? I really don't want to think about someone that petty deciding the fate of others on a daily basis.

According to the article, no one spoke against the bill during the hearing, although it goes on to say that "members of the panel did wonder aloud if the bill would help people skirt their civic duty."

“This looks like an easy-out for a parent,” said Keith Regier, R-Kalispell.

You're darn tootin', Keith. I know that, personally, I would have given up breastfeeding ages ago if not for my intense fear of jury duty. Continuing to nurse my daughter is totally easier than serving on a jury--provided that the trial goes on for at least a year and requires me to allow another human being round-the-clock access to my boobs.

This is a common-sense bill that, frankly, would not be necessary if breastfeeding were not regarded in some quarters as the kind of deviant behavior that only hippies engage in. It boggles the mind. May the committee see the light.

Husband, may I?

Some days I think that Chip's identity is too safe. Yes, I know that identity theft is a huge and growing problem and that privacy safeguards are supposed to protect against such nefarious schemes, but is it really necessary that he be protected from me?

I’m talking specifically about the designation within joint accounts of one person or the other as the “primary account holder.” And while I don’t want to cry sexism where it’s not deserved, it seems to me that primary account holder status generally defaults to the possessor of the penis in the relationship. (Or, as I have started thinking of it, the holder of the magical wang.)

I guess “joint” just doesn’t mean what I think it means. To my mind, a joint account implies that two people have chosen to enter into a contract--together--with a bank or a cable company or a credit card company and that both people are responsible, reliable adults. Instead, this new phenomenon creates a sort of junior partner status in which the non-primary person cannot do even simple things without the senior partner’s “approval.”

Here’s an example. Over the weekend, I went to a mobile phone store to look at some options for an upgrade. When I asked the helpful salesperson which phones were discounted for me, he couldn’t access my account to tell me because I was not there with the primary account holder, i.e. Chip. Only by producing a code could I prove my worthiness.

You know, I don’t want to launch the space shuttle. I just want to look at mobile phones. To my mind, that should not involve a single code. But I called Chip anyway, to ask if he had the code. He didn’t.

Then, today, I got a credit card statement in the mail with an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. Seems that the payment I sent out from our Internet bill payer service before New Year’s didn’t quite get to Delaware in time, and we’d been assessed a $39 late fee. So I called the company.

I gave our account number and answered the security question and then explained my problem, asking her to take off the charge. But the friendly woman could not help me with that because I am not the primary account holder. Only Chip, she explained, could make a request of that nature. Right. Because clearly I might be calling for my own nefarious purposes and thwarting Chip’s desires to wrack up maximum late charges.

Look, I get that these measures are supposed to be for our own privacy and safety, but I’m not asking to up our credit limit because I went out and bought a few too many dresses without asking “permission” from my husband like some bad episode of a 1950s sitcom. I’m trying to accomplish something that he would doubtless do on his own, if he had picked up the mail first today. It’s ridiculous to think that he is the only one on our “joint account” who can take care of these sorts of things—especially when I’m the one in our relationship who usually does.

Our money is just that: our money; we both put into the accounts, and those are our names—signed together—on the dotted lines when we apply for credit. Just because his name comes first doesn’t make it more important. Or at least it didn’t, before the age of the “primary account holder.”

NB: A version of this piece--sans the bit about the magical wang, natch--appeared in this morning's Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

I hawk things

I figure that since Connery and Emerson will not be joining the Boy or Girl Scouts that I've probably dodged a major children-selling-things bullet. That means I'll never pimp my blog to try to sell you Thin Mints or popcorn. I will, however, take this one opportunity to try to sell you a raffle ticket to support my son's Montessori. Tickets are $10, and the winner gets $500. Since the school only has a hundred kids, I would think the odds will be pretty good. So buy one! To sweeten the pot, I'll enter everyone who buys a ticket in a mini-blog drawing for a shipment of homemade cookies.

You can leave your email in the comments or contact me directly at rosenleaf(at)aya(dot)yale(dot)edu. I take Paypal, and I'm not too proud to beg.

Guess I won't be buying that book

I really thought I had exhausted my thought process on the octuplet mom, who has now been revealed as Nadya Suleman, when I ranted discussed her choices on Friday. But then I saw the inevitable headline this morning that she has a publicist and is weighing a number of television and book offers.

Oh, I know I shouldn't be surprised--much less disgusted--but I just can't help it. (The article mentioned that one of the television offers involved this mother of 14 hosting a show about parenting. I can't even contemplate that without wanting to scream and throw things.) I can name 10 bloggers off the top of my head (and I swear that I don't consider myself one of them!) who should have had book deals years ago but continue to struggle, even with formidable talent.

Have you read Breed 'em and Weep lately? My God, that woman could write circles around 99 percent of the English-speaking population and she's trying to decide whether to go to nursing school or become a paralegal or something just so that she can pay her bills. Where is her damn book deal? Melissa McEwan writes like a house on fire and runs one of the most successful group blogs and Internet communities anywhere on the left. I'd love to see her face on the back of a book.

Look, I know that success is not a finite quantity and that, in theory, everyone with enough talent should be able to succeed in the field that they've chosen. But there are a finite number of publishing deals to be made, especially in this economy, and it's discouraging to see amazing women who have accomplished great things with words--the sort of people who should be writing books--struggle to stay afloat, while a woman whose talent appears to be based solely on bearing 14 children in seven years is awash with offers.

Women are more than the bearers of children, and fame and fortune should not be the automatic province of those who choose to be super-fruitful.