CommuniKate

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, he of the Madoff mane, alleged rapist and head of the International Monetary Fund – talk about branding! - is not too big to jail. Tant pis.

Wait, wait, there’s more.

Arnold reveals he fathered a child ten years ago with a member of his household staff. Charlie Sheen is devastated to be replaced by Ashton Kutcher. Aww.

ABC of course picked up Tim Allen’s sitcom “Last Man Standing” about how hard it is to be a man [the straight and white is understood] in this crazy modern world.

Men are feeling vulnerable and assaulted. Which is generally when they like to invade the wrong country, just cause. What do they always tell us this is? Ah, yes, a “growth opportunity”.

If it weren’t for all the women who have been trampled, I could enjoy this more. But the schaden is off my freude.

Thirty years ago, I was a young radical lesbian feminist separatist quite fevered about taking down the patriarchy. I’m still on it. Who knew the guys would be such a big help?

Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma or Mars, who said on the floor of the House:

“We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that’s tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don’t want to study as hard in school? I’ve taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.”

She has apologized. Saying the usual “I’m sorry you found that offensive.”

The award is carved out of suet and is quite pleased with itself.

The King’s Speech was the royal carpet-bombing to get subjects in the mood for the big same-old-sex nuptials between the prince and a commoner. A very wealthy commoner, but common nonetheless. The movie didn’t do that for me, but my Irish heritage sometimes gets in the way of full-throated appreciation of English royalty.

The Royals’ timing couldn’t be worse. The big April 29th royal wedding is overshadowing the Papals’ big May 1st Vatican happening. Is there no WE-Calendar syncing between the monarchy and the paparchy?

On May 1st Pope Bennythedict is fixing to preside over the beatification of Pope John Paul. Not to be confused with beautification: that’s wild flowers, highway medians, Lady Bird Johnson. That’s prettification. Beatification is putting Pope John Paul on the fast track to sainthood. Faster than Mother Teresa!

It was a promise then-Cardinal Ratzinger made shortly after the white smoke puffed out of the papal chimney and was certified not to be from Italian correspondent Sylvia Poggioli’s cigarette.

Pope B might actually be grateful for the scheduling conflict. To be beatified, if I’m reading the beati-regs correctly, a saint-to-be must have performed a miracle. With all the international tsuris the church is having, Pope John’s miracle of making the pedophilia scandal disappear might not be something to be beatified.

Somewhere those end-time rapturists are kicking back with a big stogey, an Armagedda-tini and a big fat smile on their slab faces. Bring it on.

The Obstinance-Only Teabagging GOP is determined to fulfill their promise to shut down the government. Then what? WI Paul D. Ryan, another i.e.d. of demagoguery, is bravely taking on solvent government entitlement programs for the poor and the elderly. He’s AMAZING. And now Michele Bachmann has found her Jihad spot.

Meantime President Obama kicks off his re-election campaign and it’s all about how he has to raise a billion dollars. Which will be more than matched by the Citizens United Cock Brothers and Dick’s Armey. Which will keep the useless [except for Rachel] “we didn’t see it coming” news media alive for a few more pointless years. Lean forward. Bend over.

Day after day it’s throngs of men – the opposition, then the loyalists, then the opposition again, dang it’s the loyalists again, I can’t tell anymore – screaming, chanting, marching and shooting weapons we’ve sold them. Don’t believe me? Check the receipts.

It’s finally a sunny day in NYC. I’m going down to the river to check on the cherry blossom buds. Hope it’s not the last spring for them.

What an interesting Women’s History Month. They must have hired a new publicist. It’s as if Mad Men’s plucky Peggy Olsen took over the account and decided to shake things up. I don’t know how the new branding will play out, but heck, at this point in the war on women, give it a whirl, girl.

No more laser-like, in-depth looks at Planned Parenthood or women’s health or the continued assaults on women in the name of budget-slashing. Hohum. No more gauzy Ken-Burns-effect stories about famous women. Sigh. Even the Tiger Moms and Grizzly Mamas thing is so last decade, so kay-pro feminism.

They are trying a new direction. The new plan is to keep the focus on men for Women’s History Month, to put a face on misogyny and violence against women, to make individual men the “that’s-what-I’m-talking about” cases in point.

Though I was skeptical at first, I for one love what they are doing with the whole Charlie Sheen thing. Even a catfight between Kathy Griffin and Sarah Palin can’t break through the wall of Charlie’s Sheen. He is an abusive, narcissistic, violent, insane boor who likes to beat the women he loves. The good news: he promises no more children.

I really expected the daring Charlie Sheen maneuver would have backfired by now. If a woman NPR exec at a Starbucks, idly trash-talking Teabaggers – and she might just have been chai-ist - can get the ax so swiftly wouldn’t you think some straight white brotherhood dudes would have already done a face-saving intervention? “Sorry Charlie, we don’t want lunatics with bad taste.”

It’s not even the Ides of March. We’ll check the metrics at the end of the month and re-evaluate, but I’m impressed.

Congratulations to Annette Bening on her Oscar nomination in THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, for the role described by the NYT as “a controlling lesbian.” I say it’s about time! Time not just for Annette Bening to get an Oscar. It s way past time for controlling lesbian to be so honored.

Really, it’s an honor just to be nominated. And I’m not just saying that. Look at this year’s other nominated roles: really sad mom, have-you-seen-my-dad teen, really beautiful in love girl, nutzoid ballerina. We are honored just to be in the company of these groundbreaking roles, but since we so rarely get this far, I hope this really is our year. Unlike the Jets.

Make all the controlling lesbian jokes you want. Red carpet: “What are you wearing, Eddie Bauer flannel?” After-party: “YOU read Vanity Fair?” Post-Oscar: “Will you put your Oscar near your softball trophy?”

Of course there have been lesbians in film: British teacher lesbians, serial killer lesbians, nun lesbians, cowgirl lesbians, horse-loving lesbians, soccer lesbians. Just this year Angelina Jolie was one shoot-em-up, mankiller badass in SALT. But she never came out as a lesbian. She didn’t have to. Sue Sylvester is not Jane Lynch and besides that would be for the Emmy. This is a first for a boldly controlling open lesbian.

I’m working on some ideas for the controlling lesbian acceptance speech. Word to the wise: don’t you dare start up the band music while the she is thanking her gym teacher, Title IX, and PFLAG parents. That would not be pretty.

I know I speak for all controlling lesbians, when I say, “Let this be our year! Or else.”

My galpal calls it “Seasonal Off-Road Disorder”.

Every year after the Christmas digression, I like to invoke my personal hibernate function before I have to power up again and hit the road. I look forward to a couple weeks of feeding off my stored holiday body fat, shallow breathing in my desk cave and setting my metabolic rate to bovine.

And every year, instead of the desired state of fallow, creative receptivity, I become a twitch, a principle dancer in the local St. Vitus Day Troupe.

The energy is good for tackling long-postponed projects. I recently spent hours decommissioning tech-tritus – husks of old burned-out laptops, three pound cell phones, palm pilots still packing the original graffiti stylus and I-phones that sound like baby rattles.

Oozing green virtue, I unsnarled miles of cordage and put it all in a bag for the local Gadgets for Grannies electronics drop-off. When I stood back to admire the cleaned shelf, I noticed the bag of CDs I had collected for the LGBT Center Archives in last year’s cleanup.

Thankfully the Twitter valve is an outlet for any pent-up need to comment on the day’s news: the black bird die-off and the Angry Bird craze; the House reading of the Constitution and direction reading after assemblage; women’s real tears and men’s lower testosterone levels; kidney donating and parole.

Still the twitching. I do impromptu mini-performances for the five and two year olds across the hall. They are unimpressed with my ironic monster. I josh annoyingly with confused deli workers. At dinners with eye-rolling friends, they ask, “Are you trying out new stuff on us?” My dear galpal groans with every obvious pun, witty aside and bad accent, then asks, “When’s your first show?”

This commentary previously ran on AOL News and is being republished here.

At sunset every New Year’s, we make a bonfire at Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown. The crazy curve of the Cape affords a disorienting western view of sunset over water. And it has always been my contention that Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, MA is so far east, it is actually in a different time zone. The sun sets at four pm.

In the wan three pm light we drive to the beach with wood gleaned from the rump ends of friend’s precious woodpiles. Some pieces still crawl with gray roly poly potato bugs. We stand on the shoreline, guestimate the high tide line and dig a fire pit.

My secret for building a winter beach fire, especially in the wind, and there is always wind, is more Joan than Jack London. I start with what is known to Manhattanites with fireplaces as deli-wood, i.e. the duraflame log. We pyramid the real logs over the dura-log, cup hands around a Bic lighter and light our chemical yule log. Sue me, Mama Grizzly.

All are welcomed to our blaze. Many come. Bundled against the cold, it’s hard to recognize old friends, summer friends, regulars, first-timers. A couple southern friends sit in their car, heater roaring, grousing about this bizarre northern custom. Just before sunset, they trundle out, polar-fleeced, to join us. One always claims to have seen the emerald flash at sunset.

After sunset, we throw folded pieces of paper into the fire. On each paper we have written what we want to get rid of from the old year. One year, near blizzard winds caught our offerings as they arched to the flames, and then bounced them down the beach like mini-tumbleweeds. One friend gave chase, shouting, “My arrogance!” and finally tackled and trapped her paper. We all admired her effort.

Our ritual of burning things from the old year signals a hope for the new year. We make room for the new. So far, I am not a fan of this century. The first decade, still without a tag name, witnessed a stolen election, a terrorist attack, two wars, a desperate church, a collapsing economy, an historic election, seditious gridlock, obvious racism, teabaggery, and disheartening presidential diffidence.

Thinking about my origamic good riddances, I feel schizoid, much like standing at a bonfire: bright hot front, chilled cold back. This year, on the cusp of our teenage decade and the far edge of our dear country, I am going to make one of those folded paper fortune-teller thingies. You remember cootie-catchers? That way I can load it up and guarantee it will make the fire. Though it’s not good form to tell what you’ve burned, mine are usually the same year to year: fear, loathing, selfishness, impatience, perfectionism. This year I guess I’ll have to add sanctimony. There are going to be good embers this year. Bring marshmallows.

The mid-term auction kicked my ass. The gushers of money, the belly-up Dems, the betadyned Reps, the gloating media, my bummin’ friends. At first I tried to be cheery but the jowly seditious Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Michele Bachman’s pretzel logs of thought, the face of W on his book tour and the fact that people are buying it, kicked me to the curb.

Then this morning I read that NY’s jolly old rabid anti-choice, anti-gay marriage Bishop Dolan got picked to head the US Conference of Bishops.

My inner Pollyanna was having a hard time.

Then I remembered that my Dad would have been 99 years old today.

My Dad lived through the Depression and World War II. Because of bad eyesight and extended family obligations, he received a military deferment. His friends all served and he took care of the young wives and families they left behind. He lived through the revelation of the Holocaust, McCarthyism, the 1960s, Nixon, Watergate, Reagan. He worried about the Reagan deficits and never trusted the Clinton surplus. His senile dementia prevented him from understanding the Bush stolen election, 9.11 and he died before our reckless entry into two wars.

He was a humble Golden Rule, just-do-it kind of guy who would have been embarrassed by all the Greatest Generation talk. He died seven years ago. I still reach for the phone to call him, though toward the end of his life we mostly talked about the weather. I miss him. There’s a front coming and I need to ta

Because of a long-standing prior commitment to some darling lesbians and a boat, I will not be performing at the Restoring Sanity Rally in DC this weekend. Not that anyone asked.

While I believe that humor can do serious work, I’m worried that the Restoring Sanity Rally will be a bit too ironic for its own good. I’ve read Comedy Central’s disclaimers that they are going to try not to be political. I hope The Restoring Sanity Rally is not political in the same way that cry-baby booby Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally was not political.

The whole notion of restoring sanity relies on the lovely if naive premise that there was some baseline of national sanity in the first place. Perhaps a displaced but witty Native American will give the opening blessing.

The Restoring Sanity Rally sounds like a huge national Alcoholics Anonymous Round-Up with a focus on AA’s second step: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Unfortunately many believe that greater power is Sarah Palin.

If you think of our dear nation as a child, and of Europe as our qualifying, crazy-ass, violent alcoholic parents, the Sanity rally has perhaps more of an ACOA spin. As an adult children of alcoholics nation, we have been trying to make the world safe, through hideously inappropriate behavior: pre-emptive wars, nation building, ‘free’ trade. We owe the whole world an amends at this point.

I’ll try to TIVO the Sanity Rally and the Keep Fear Alive March. I’ll get the on-the-ground scoop from my friends, but I hope [not Beck-restored hope] that the rally does not dissipate real political anger. It already has siphoned off a lot of last-minute door-to-door get-out-the-vote volunteers. Of course I would prefer incitement to riot, without the guns or tear gas, to enticement to rally. At this particular moment in our nation, ironic bonhomie is no substitute for making a stone cold sober decision to turn our political will into greater political power. That is also a good starter amends.