Someone needs to tell me why cops have tasers. Are they for when a kid kicks them in the shin? Or maybe when a woman starts to argue about being pulled over for doing 66 in a 65. Is that what tasers are for? Heck I’m so old I can remember when there was no such thing as a taser. Only on Star Trek. You know, when their ray guns were set to “stun” instead of “kill.” Seems like the guys on the Starship Enterprise knew when to set their guns to either level. If only cops were as smart.
Or as courageous. I think I remember when cops had courage. Been a while though. Now when an “assailant” is 25 feet away with a knife, and that assailant is on crack or heroin or meth and can barely speak or move, it’s…
It’s been far too long since I’ve posted to TWW. I sincerely apologize, but there is a very good reason. In short: I’ve been quite sick. I am not referring to a bout of fibromyalgia, although I am currently experiencing that now due to the additional stress on my body. I am referring to the fact that I have a type of tumor that is usually benign and usually doesn’t cause problems but, in my case, is still probably benign, but is most definitely causing problems.
I attempted to deal with my symptoms by myself for about six weeks. Finally, it became clear to me that I needed help and phoned one of my doctors. By that time, I was weak and in pain. We made a decision to try to manage the most obvious symptoms via drug therapy. Unfortunately, the original prescription was for a drug that was nearly $200 and I simply could not afford it. The pharmacy didn’t tell me there was an alternative and, at that time, my ability to reason was faulty, to say the least, so I didn’t ask my doctor. It took about a week, but eventually I phoned my doctor again and told her that the medication she’d prescribed was very expensive and asked if there was an alternative. Fortunately, there was. I filled the second prescription a few days later.
It took days and days for the medication to begin to work. While waiting, I became more and more ill, but I also vaguely began to put some of my symptoms into a coherent picture. My doctor’s diagnosis was only half correct. She wasn’t dealing with the entire picture. As sick as I felt, I knew I had to find a way to make a rational argument for what I believed to be happening to my body.
I went to a follow-up appointment feeling dizzy, exhausted, confused and very out-of-sorts. After blood tests were performed, I was diagnosed as being in the mid-range of moderate anemia. I was anemic enough to experience symptoms, including a constant headache, pounding heart, muscle aches and confusion. As borderline incoherent as I was, I did make her understand that there was something else afoot. A simple test proved that there was a really good possibility I was right. However, being right meant that I needed surgery. My whole world turned upside down. The anemia symptoms, in and of themselves, forced me to keep WickedWomanMag.com down after being temporarily closed for other reasons. I couldn’t write, edit or monitor the site. I’m still not really up to it. That is an enormous problem that affects everything else in my life, including my need for surgery.
I have lost a lot of the people to whom I was closest in Cleveland over the last six years. These were true family members I could count on to support me and help me in a time of need. Even though my mother had dementia at her death, she would have been supportive of my illness as she finally acknowledged her own. Having a chronic condition is isolating. Therefore, I have a very limited number of friends to count on. My closest is totally allergic to dogs and there is no one here I trust with my canine family. I used to be very involved in the dog fancy in the Cleveland metro area, but haven’t been in over a decade. There are still one or two people with whom I’ll speak, but a lot of my friends have passed on as well. My best doggie friend lives in the Twin Cities area and suggested that I move to Minnesota over a year ago. She saw that I was struggling and could use the support. There is a very strong breed community in the area and I know several of the members. Indeed, my last three Airedales were born in the area. At the time, all I could think about was the cold and dismissed the idea. However, because I routinely need top-notch medical care, am faced with needing surgery in the next several months and have no support system here, suddenly the cold, white North isn’t looking too bad. The University of Minnesota Medical Center is there as is Mayo Clinic, although a bit farther south of the Twin Cities metro area. They would fulfill my medical needs.
The short of it is that I am going to try harder to get well enough to finish writing the one article that is keeping WWM closed for so long. It’s one thing to write a blog post. It is quite another to take research, synthesize it, organize it and put it into a form that is both understandable and entertaining. It takes organizational skills I don’t have right now. There is some evidence the anemia is resolving, but I have gone into a fibromyalgia flare due to the stress my body has suffered since, really, April or May. In this particular flare, I am experiencing intractable insomnia. It takes everything I have to get out of bed some days. The only reason I do is because my girls need to be fed and pottied. Otherwise, I’d lay there and not care whether I ate or drank anything at all. As illustration, it took me 11 days to begin to go grocery shopping for the month. In the interim, I ran out of every staple in the house. If I did find something to eat, it was invariably fried, something I almost never do, but did so in these cases because it was quicker than broiling or baking. When I couldn’t even manage that, I ordered in. A lot. It wasn’t something I could avoid because I was just too tired and weak to stand in front of a stove.
Because I have no real support for being truly sick here; no support for my girls, and; because I do not believe I am getting the best care from either of the world-reknown hospitals in town (one of which is rated #4 in the entire country), I need to move. The caveat is that I can’t move if I can’t raise money for WWM so that I can hire an associate editor, pay myself, the freelancers and cover all of the other things for which capital is needed for a start-up. If I can get WWM open, then I can probably raise funding. My plan has been to run a crowd funding campaign. Believe me, doing so isn’t nearly as easy as many make it sound. I’d still need a business plan, but I have had that plan circulating in my head for over a year. My illness cost me my business consultant, but he taught me enough to continue on by myself. Still, I’d have to try to stay on top of the campaign and interact with donors. My energy is quite limited because I cannot get enough rest. If my rheumatologist can find the right medication to help me get restful sleep, I can accomplish my goals.
Even if I don’t move to Minnesota right away, I still have to move out of the family home because my mother made disastrous decisions while she was ill. (Yes, I knew she was sick and tried to get her help. Her brothers interfered and she got none even as she became progressively worse.) I have to dispose of or pack up over 40 years worth of stuff all while I feel like hell. There are probably some friends of my mother’s who have sons or grandsons who can help with the heavy lifting, but they need to know what to lift. Over two years after she died, I still haven’t gone through all of my mother’s belongings. Her clothing is more or less where she left it the day she was taken out of the house via ambulance never to return. I wasn’t strong enough to do it until just shy of the second anniversary of her death. By that time, I was hip deep in WWM and didn’t have time. Now, I don’t have energy, although I am trying to do bits and pieces here and there. No one else can do this but me because I’m the only person who knows what’s important and what isn’t.
To summarize: I have been sick; I am sick; I have to find the strength to re-open WWM; I have to raise funds for WWM so that I can support myself and my canine family; I have to decide whether I can afford to move or will be forced to stay in town with almost no support for being truly ill, especially in the weeks and months after surgery.
There is so much going on in the world right now that I deeply yearn to write about. There are days that are better than others and I can manage a blog post. Now that I’ve updated readers on what’s going on, I will try to write blog posts here. At least that way, people won’t think that I’ve fallen off the edge of the Earth.
I checked the stats on this blog for the first time in a couple of months. To my great surprise, even though I haven’t really paid TWW much attention and have focused almost all my love on WickedWomanMag.com, (WWM), the blog has hit a major milestone. As of Tuesday, December 17, 2013, there have been 50,000+ hits. As of an hour or so ago, we were well on our way to 51,000. This makes up for the absolutely rotten holiday season I’m having . . . kind of.
I’ve been transcribing an interview I conducted with one of grassroots politics’ unsung sheroes off and on for weeks. It isn’t that no one knows about her, believe me, they do. It’s that she isn’t known to people who are: 1) outside the Beltway, unless they’ve worked with her, or; 2) totally removed from social justice issues. Her name is Mandy Carter and she is one hell of a woman!
I was in the process of transcription, but had TweetDeck minimized, when I saw a blurb from Time magazine that read, “Kelly Clarkson: I’m not a ‘feminist.’” I shook my head and kept listening to Mandy speak into my earphones. She reached a point in the narrative where she referenced the beginning benchmark of her political activism: the Poor People’s Campaign that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been working on when he was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. I was barely in elementary school at the time, so I didn’t have any first- or even second-hand memories except what I’d read in books in high school and college. The only reason I read about the Poor People’s Campaign at all is because I was not as foolish and willfully ignorant as so very many people are today. I knew that there was a history largely untaught in traditional textbooks. For example, I knew that there was far more to my background than the fact that, according to textbooks, my Negroid ancestors first reached Europe and this continent because they were kidnapped from their homelands and enslaved. I had all kinds of intellectuals around me throughout my life, especially my mother and, therefore, knew that society didn’t just magically happen. People worked, fought and died for the rights that would otherwise be denied me. That led me to take Black Literature classes and Black History classes in high school and college, but even that was not enough. No, as Mandy spoke, she got to a point for which I had no reference. She was speaking about not only the Poor People’s Campaign, but “Resurrection City.” She knows about it because, at 18 years old, she was there.
Resurrection City was an encampment set up on the National Mall to house people who’d come to, again, march on Washington. It was organized by King, Bayard Rustin, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and others to fight for economic justice not only for blacks, but for poor people regardless of race, color or ethnicity. Even in the freshness of her mourning, Coretta Scott King led a Mother’s Day March that attracted thousands. Resurrection City grew to include over 3000 people from across geographic, economic, racial and ethnic divides, lasting for over a month. If you don’t know who any of these people or organizations are, wait a while and check this space for an announcement that will lead to higher learning on the matter.
In the years since I graduated from Kent State University (’83) and managed to finish two years of a three-year law program while truly and unknowingly ill in the months before the Americans with Disabilities Act had any regulations, I’ve learned that so many things were purposely kept from me as a black person; as a person of color, period; as a woman, and; as an American citizen. My first real proof that things were far more than they seemed came as I researched in preparation for writing a sci-fi/fantasy novel based on historic fact cum alternate universe. The novel was set largely in East Africa, but did include a fair amount of Southern African culture as well as a smattering of West African culture. Many, many African ethnic groups were matriarchal until the damn Jesuits and Anglicans got to them. I read a lot about goddesses from not only African societies, but from all over the world. I kept coming up with the same question: Why didn’t I know any of this? I didn’t know because men wrote and published the textbooks.
As I came to the answer of this fundamental question, I began to get angry. The more I read about African history, even though I’d had a bit of it in undergrad, I became angrier still. There came a tipping point where I could no longer hold it in. I literally screamed as loud as I could, crumpling to the floor deeply hurt I, as a black, queer, woman, was so hated. However, the pain and damage didn’t stop with me. There was an attitude of bigotry out there that kept everyone as ignorant of the truth as was possible. If it were left up to white men, women; non-whites, (who are, by the way, the majority of the world’s population even though we possess extremely little of its power), and; those of us in the LGBTQ spectrum would remain ignorant. Fortunately, there have been people through the centuries who have simply said “No.” In doing so, they were ostracized, beaten, trampled, attacked by dogs, imprisoned, forced to recant, tortured, literally run out of town (as my great-grandmother, a newly widowed teacher with five small children, was run from Rockmart, GA when the Klan came looking for her dead husband who had the legal right to vote because he was educated and owned property) and academically repudiated. Lives were ruined–utterly, completely and irrevocably.
Historic monuments were destroyed or made inaccessible such as the ruins of the Kushite Empire that lie under the High Aswan Dam and its reservoirs on Egypt’s southern border with Sudan. Try as they did, true and honest historians, archeologists and anthropologists of all races and ethnicities could not retrieve all that was laid waste before the bulldozers and water came. They never will and that part of history is probably lost to the world forever. How many of you even know there was a Kushite (or Cushite, depending on what you read) Empire? I’d wager that very few of you could raise your hands. Another question: How many of you believe, based on logic and evidence, that civilization flowed down the Nile and not up? How many even know that the Nile runs south to north and, therefore, south is up and north is down? Does anyone reading this know anything about the Great Rift Valley? What about ancient Zimbabwe and its ruins?
What Clarkson does not comprehend is monumental and two-fold: 1) the enormous impact of her statements because Americans are basically historically illiterate and others agree with her as a matter of longing for an antebellum lifestyle swept away by Sherman’s army, even though he was a racist himself, and; 2) how ignorant she is about everything, bless her little Southern belle heart. I bet she would learn how much of a feminist she is if a concert promoter were to suddenly decide not to pay her as much as a male country singer with a similar fan-base and record sales for each posterior she put in a venue’s seats. Would she feel differently if the royalty payments she receives from RCA were halved because she “didn’t have to support a family”? How about going to a doctor and being told that she could not have a prescription for birth control at all, even with her husband’s consent? What if her husband had the right to non-consent? How would she react if the world decided not to buy her records because she was a “slut,” “whore” and “fallen woman” because she lived with her husband and, one would assume, had sex with him, before they were married? Would Clarkson then be a feminist? Why does she think those things, with the exception of name-calling, don’t happen legally now? They don’t happen because women said, “No. No more!”
Kelly Clarkson, are you a feminist now? If not, may God bless you and help your husband keep you safe from life’s gross inequalities. Should there ever come a day when you are no longer married, I’d suggest having an army of male attorneys at your beck and call who won’t presume to judge you to take care of your anti-feminist self. I am going back to listening to and writing about a feminist–a real woman the likes of whom you’ve never even contemplated.
For the few people who’ve been living on that planet-type thingy called “Pluto,” soul/R&B singer Robin Thicke’s single, “Blurred Lines,” is burning up the charts and taking no prisoners. Although it was released on March 26–19 weeks ago–as of August 6, it’s hit #1 on charts in an astonishing 80 countries and will no doubt get an assist from the second track from the Blurred Lines LP, “Give It 2 U.” The LP is currently #9 on the iTunes Album Chart while the single is still atop the iTunes Singles Chart.
The “Blurred Lines” single was produced by Pharrell Williams who wrote and recorded it with Thicke in about two hours, later adding rapper T.I. to round out the scene the song portrays, according to a May 7 article on the GQ website. “Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up.’ I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.'” And so “Blurred Lines” was conceived, baked like a bun in the oven and delivered . . . straight into controversy.
“Blurred Lines” single by Robin Thicke (featuring T.I. + Pharrell)
As a music reviewer, I’m supposed to know everything there is to know about the music I’m reviewing. However, in this instance, I am at a complete loss as to why the song and the video created such an uproar. Seriously, I had to look inside and ask myself if I was missing something. I must have listened to “Blurred Lines” at least 30 times in the last week, at a minimum. At least five of those times were with the words sitting right in front of me so that I could make sure I hadn’t misheard a line or 20. It turns out that my sense of female power and my sense of hearing are both intact. It’s the individuals who called the song and video “sexist” and “degrading to women” who seem to have issues. Those issues primarily have to do with sex and, perhaps, a little bit with non-white, working class culture. Please allow me to explain.
Although a parody, “Blurred Lines” very obviously speaks to the madonna/whore dichotomy that still exists in the United States. Many women and men still believe that a woman is a slut (a word I detest, btw) if she seeks sexual pleasure in a manner that satisfies her and discards some pronouncement somewhere by someone who probably has “three legs” that women have to hide who they are as sexual beings in order to be considered morally acceptable. The blurred lines of the title refer to the idea that “good girls” shouldn’t be sexually forward, sexually alluring and sexually free, but those characteristics are there even though she’s trying to be a “good girl.” I have a problem with that idea first and foremost because there are already too many people trying to tell me what I should do with my body. (Anti-choice activists, anyone?) The second reason I have a problem with the false madonna/whore, “good girl”/”bad girl” dichotomy is that all of the onus is on women to control themselves as opposed to the reality that her partner, if straight, is going to be a man. What is his responsibility? That’s always been a question I’ve wanted to ask an imam about sharia, but that’s another post.
The second seeming misinterpretation of “Blurred Lines” lies in the probability that most of those who’ve condemned the song are white. I can hear it now, “Well, Robin is a blue-eyed, white man, too.” Yeah, well, truthfully, I think he’s just a very light-skinned black man. 🙂 He’s got a greater understanding of black culture than about 99.5% of whites in this country. That is partially because, for whatever reason, black culture attracted him. If I remember correctly, it was his mother, soap actress Gloria Loring, who fostered his love of Motown, Philly International, Stax and Atlantic’s R&B catalog while his father, actor Alan Thicke, fostered his knowledge of rock. Now, add to that the fact that he fell in love with a black girl, now his wife, actress Paula Patton, when they were both in their teens, thereby making him an honorary black man. I don’t mean that as a joke or as something another person, be they black or white, would be pleased about.
Personal experience has taught me that black men with white women have a more difficult time with attitudes of family, “friends” and colleagues than white men with black women. However, that doesn’t mean there’s smooth sailing for either of them. In this instance, Thicke had to see the pain inflicted on the love of his life just because of the color of her skin and has written songs about how it makes him feel. The first was in the track “Dreamworld” from his 2008 LP Something Else and then on his 2011 LP Love After War with the track “I Don’t Know How It Feels To Be You.” Although Patton is biracial, she identifies as a black woman. That is also how the rest of the world sees her. It doesn’t matter that her mother is white. Patton’s skin color is a lovely café au lait. In addition, since giving birth to her son, Julian, a couple of years ago, her body reflects more of her black heritage than it did before. Personally, I’m not complaining about that one bit! In fact, I’m thanking the good Lord for deciding to play up those genes, but I digress.
Within black, working-class culture, it is not at all unusual to see a group of men hanging out on the corner talking smack, smoking whatever and flirting with pretty girls and women. If we were truthful, we’d admit that we like it as long as talk doesn’t turn to physical or verbal violence. What woman doesn’t like to be appreciated under appropriate circumstances? It gives us power and we love it! I’m of the belief that all girls need to begin to learn about the natural power they have starting just before puberty. Otherwise, they’ll be ill-prepared to deal with men OR other women. Sex is one of the most powerful gifts given to all creatures, but particularly mammals. Why on earth shouldn’t we be happy men want to “talk” (also known as “rap”) to us? Oh, right. It’s sexist and degrading. Hmph! Then call me a victim of sexism and degradation because I am not complaining. I thoroughly enjoy harmless flirting with and by men and women.
That just leaves the maelstrom (I borrowed that description from Daddy Thicke’s interview in the August 5 online edition of The Daily Mail because it so accurately describes the fuss) that followed once the video was released. Oy! Not only were Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell accused of being sexist and degrading, the original video was banned from YouTube! In all fairness, it did have three topless models walking around; mylar balloons that said, “Robin Thicke has a big dick,” and; YouTube has viewers of all ages. Nevertheless, I’m of the opinion that it isn’t content providers’ place to police the Internet. That job belongs to the parents of the children who may actually be harmed by something. There are at least two versions of the video and I believe there may be a third. Video service vevo has an edited and an unrated version up. I would have embedded it, but WordPress apparently has security issues with the service. YouTube eventually relented and put the edited video up with a parental advisory.
Eh. The entire controversy is ridiculous in the first place. Parody such as the “Blurred Lines” video is perfectly legitimate. Unfortunately, I had to thoroughly address it before going on to do what I really want to do and review the LP. Due to this faux controversy crap, there are precious few words left in this posting.
I had no intention whatsoever of liking Thicke’s new LP, Blurred Lines. I’d read that it would be heavy with dance/pop music and I wanted more of the soulful ballads by which to make babies. I live for my Robin Thicke ballads! I was all prepared to ask the music gods, “Why, why, why did you let him let me down?” as tears flowed forth from my eyes like the Nile. I don’t like to admit it, but I was wrong. Indeed, I was very wrong. The LP dropped July 30; I downloaded it August 1, and; I haven’t stopped listening to it any time I’ve got music playing, which is most of the time.
Taking his cue from the cute, danceable and sexy single by the same name, Blurred Lines, the LP is quite sexually explicit. Mind you, I don’t have any problem with that at all, but I’m a grown woman who could probably teach the Thicke-Pattons a few things about f . . . er, making love. I love it when Thicke sings about getting his/their freak on. Is it any wonder that my very favorite of his six LPs is Sex Therapy? That’s just who I am and another reviewer might say that there is too much emphasis on sex. OK, so let’s concentrate on dance.
The first few seconds of the second track on the LP, “Take It Easy On Me” made me remember my days in undergrad. Not only was I a disc jockey on the NPR station at Oberlin College my freshman year, my boss and the head DJ at the campus disco was my lover from his junior year until long after I’d transferred and graduated from Kent State and he’d graduated from Oberlin. My show at Oberlin was a combination of jazz and disco. Yes, I know that it looks weird on paper, but it works. The show was popular at Oberlin and at Kent’s smaller, closed-circuit radio station where I landed after being turned down by Kent’s NPR station.
My now-former lover’s blood cells should be shaped like a treble clef. The man is made of music, no matter his other characteristics. He taught me a lot and watched me/heard me mess up so much it was embarrassing. But by the time I got to Kent, I was pretty good at crossfades and mixes. Until Thicke’s LP, I hadn’t realized how much I miss the music.
I mention this portion of my private life as background for what I’m about to write. This LP is pure late 70s through mid-80s dance music. Disco is NOT dead! Right now, I’m listening to “Get In My Way” and thinking that it would mix well with The Brothers Johnson’s “Stomp” sampled underneath. Don’t believe me? Here’s the YouTube video of the latter.
The beats are just a smidge off, but that’s easily fixed, as is matching keys. I wonder if anyone has tried to do that as yet. I can’t see how anyone who has ever spun professionally and been around during the disco/dance days could not hear it.
There is another song on the LP that I’ll mention briefly because the idea is cute, although the execution didn’t completely thrill me, although it is growing on me. “Ain’t No Hat 4 That” is a song about women taking consolation in the material things they can buy because they’ve spent so much time and energy on their careers they haven’t landed a love interest. I admit to knowing a whole lot about women like that, especially since WickedWomanMag.com will have them as its primary target readership when we launch October 1. The hook, “Ain’t no hat 4 that,” refers to the loneliness and sadness that can only be lifted by opening oneself up to possibilities and not by buying another accessory to stuff in an overcrowded closet. That’s well and good, but the thing that I truly loved about this track is that three generations of Thicke men played a part in it. Robin’s father, Alan, has a writing credit and his son, Julian, speaks “Ain’t no hat 4 that” with the most adorable little voice I’ve heard in ages.
The last song I want to highlight is “For the Rest of My Life.” It is classic Robin Thicke and I am so, so glad, even though I really do love this LP. Here, he’s singing about how he and his wife got together as kids. Yes, he’s sung about their relationship before, but he’s never revealed so much of their genesis in such detail. I am a hopeful romantic, so hearing how he got together with his wife let’s me know that there are still romantic males out there. Like most women who like men 100% or, in my case, somewhere averaging 30%-40% of the time, I need that reminder occasionally. Thanks, Robin! You’ve definitely killed it–but in a wonderful way–on this LP!
Words From A Wicked Woman 
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