Citizen Mom

Clothing Optional, II: Popped! Saturday By The Numbers

* 4 number of minutes it took for Gogol Bordello singer Eugene Hutz to lose the shirt

* 5 minutes ago is when the whole white sunglasses thing died
* 6 bands, out of 8, that I caught
* 7 free Skyy vodka drinks consumed in VIP area during the other 2 band sets
* $35 cost of fresh pedicure now thoroughly ruined from dancing on concrete

(yet more, later)

Clothing Optional

Saturday at Popped! Phiadelphia, Drexel campus
Many more photos and a full report later on Citizen Mom

EARLY WORD: Neither Freaking Nor Faking This

Look pal, I'm as sick of oh-it's-that-song-from-that-commercial bands (and the cute husband-wife thing too) as the next guy. But I'm down with the Ting Tings. And the Mates of State, come to mention it.

"Shut Up And Let Me Go," The Ting Tings

See you there!

 

MEOW MIX: Breaking! Michelle Obama's A Black Lady!; Lou, You Ignorant Slut; VeepSteak Wit; No Running, No Diving

* Last night's Anderson Cooper 360 featured a lively, if baffling, panel discussion about what Michelle Obama's racial identity is going to mean to her husband's supposedly post-partisan, post-racial politics presidential run. At one point, Cooper asked his guest whether there is some discussion needed on the fact that while Barack's multi-racial identity has been one of the campaign's most important cultural signifiers, "her racial identity is less mutable"?

Translation: He may be the Tiger Woods of politics but she's a black woman from Chicago, straight up. Since DoubleSecretThesis-gate didn't exactly catch fire, do we need to instead debate the cultural implications of a sista in the White House and make it all about who she'll have over for dinner and who'll she'll bring in to decorate the place? I don't think so. Because for one thing, Dave Chappelle did the whole Racial Draft thing years ago. And also? Because if she's been nothing else -- beautiful, glamorous, accomplished -- Miz O has been utterly authentic about who she is, where she comes from and how she looks at the world. Nobody should be running away from that important piece of this American story.

And while we're talking about muckraking potential First Ladies, can we stop with the Cindy McCain Valley of the Dolls crap? Because frankly, it all smacks of so much retro Hillary bashing -- get your Cindy pill holder to go with your Hillary nutcracker! Here's another news flash, boyo: Drug addicts do some shady shit. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for McCain, but how his wife copped her Oxys back in the day isn't one of them.

* Just when I thought New Jersey was about to go from The Vest to The Flag Pin, CNN white dude Lou Dobbs says he's not running for governor. And thank God -- I was starting to think we were going to need to build a border fence around Drumthwacket to keep him out. (Lou's hair continues to darken, though, like he's been hanging with Keith and Clyde.)

* Make of this what you will, but Ed Rendell is hanging tough in the latest round of VP Madness over on CQPolitics.com. This round ends on Thursday. We should vote with him just to mess with people.

* The city's rec centers are in need of an Extreme Home Makeover, with boxes of new fire extinguishers sitting unopened and doors bolted shut, even as city pools opened early and the campers are showing up at Hillside. (Pssst, dude. You do know they put that chemical in the pool that turns the water red if you pee, right? What, you didn't know that? Pass it on!)
 

The Mighty Quinn

A few months ago, Jack had to fill out one of those "tell us all about you" questionnaires. In the space where it said When I Grow Up, I Want To Be . . . he wrote in "A Father."

Hey Daddy-O

The one on the left is about 1975, at Aunt Lil's house on Fountain St. The one on the right, with Elvis Costello looking on in the background, is State College, the night before I graduated.
Happy Father's Day!
Love,
The Favorite

Next Stop: WallyWorld

Family vacation time for Citizen Mom -- won't be posting this week but will likely be Tweeting all the way.

EARLY WORD: And Man, You Know I Can't Begin To Doubt It

Tom Petty plays June 5 and 6 at the Wachovia Center, with Steve Winwood. See you Friday night!

What Would Alice Paul Do?

By AMY Z. QUINN

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say Alice Paul, OG suffragist and Jersey Girl nonpareil, would not vote for John McCain as some protest of how the Democratic primary played out. Women's rights and the struggle against racism were -- are -- too inextricably linked to think she'd hold a grudge against Barack Obama.

Neither should we.

Hillary Clinton always said, and I believe her, that she would enthusiastically support the Democratic nominee -- even if it wasn't her. I told someone Wednesday that there are two sure ways to anger a woman: Ignore her or underestimate her. What I wrote about in "Damn Right I'm Bitter" was mostly about how Clinton's candidacy and supporters had been continually minimized and underestimated in the primary fight, and how her victories were ignored.

And sure enough, from Jeff Toobin on CNN talking about "tone" to the editorial finger-waggers at the Inquirer to everyone who got the "rained on his parade" memo, people were just scandalized by the fact that she didn't prostrate herself in humility before Obama's "divinely ordered" victory. She -- and by extension, everyone who yearns to see a female in the Oval Office -- is begrudged even a moment to savor her own historic achievements. She is refused, after 30-plus years of service to the country and the party, even the chance to, in her own time and in her own way, see her own dream deferred. I agree with Susie Madrak -- Clinton deserved her moment.

Do Obama supporters believe that Clinton's female backers don't grasp the significance of his win, or that we ignore the pride in our country that should come of it? I'll cop to shedding tears of joy seeing that report on ABC in which young black men -- the kind of guys I'm too often reading about in Jeff Deeney's columns -- talked about waking up Wednesday morning feeling like, at long last, The Dream had come true.

Again, stop underestimating us.

I don't think a vote for McCain is the answer, and a write-in for Hillary may be satisfying in the short term but potentially disastrous overall. I am not encouraging anyone to support McCain instead -- especially women who care about their reproductive rights. A vote for a Republican president is still a vote for a Republican president, who will likely have the opportunity to nominate at least one Supreme Court justice. The value I place on my reproductive freedom far outweighs any bad feeling I'd carry from the primary campaign.

Uh oh, am I voting with my vagina?

RELATED: The Hillary 1000, which exists in part to tell HRC supporters Why A Vote For McCain Is Not A Protest Vote For Clinton.  

PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME THAT OUR TEPID OR LACK OF SUPPORT OF OBAMA MAKES US VINDICTIVE TRAITORS. WE LIKELY CONSIDER OUR REASONS LEGITIMATELY RELATED TO HIS POLICIES, CAMPAIGN, LEADERSHIP OR EXPERIENCE AND WOULD LIKELY EXPLAIN THEM TO YOU IF YOU WOULD STOP CALLING US NUTS, CHILDISH, HYSTERICAL, TRAITORS, DERELICTS, AND THREATENING US WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF US EXERCISING OUR FREE WILL.

***

Thanks to all of you for the love and links. Annie Heckenberger gave over her whole screen,  Will Bunch took the gentle tweak I gave him with class, as always. We felt the old-school Blinq love from Dan Rubin, and CQPolitics.com gave us a nod.

You're Damn Right I'm Bitter

BY AMY Z. QUINN

Yes, it smarts.

Yes, I'm angry and disappointed today.

And yes, I'll still vote for Barack Obama in November. But you should understand why I'm not feeling great about it this morning.

Now that it's over, now that everybody's been able to run their ecstatic headlines, can we all just admit that the MSM and the Yes! We! Can!-crazed online world had a deep desire to see Obama win, if only so everyone can soak in the aura of  the New Kennedy or the first black president or the generational shift, or to have anything but the Clintons to write and talk about for another four or eight years?

Hillary Clinton's announcement in her speech Tuesday night that she would be neither conceding nor endorsing Obama just yet seems to have mystified or angered a lot of people. Even my respected colleague Will Bunch seems to have got it  very, very wrong.

Here's what that non-concession sounded like to my ears:  Obama may have garnered a sufficient number of delegates to secure a historic nomination for the presidency. He may even beat John McCain, with the support of many Democrats who cast their primary ballots for Clinton -- including me. But he certainly hasn't "won" my vote.

Because for weeks now, I've watched Clinton rack up decisive wins in key battleground states, securing blocks of voters Obama will desperately need in November. Then I listened as each of those victories was called meaningless, simply unneeded because some formula spelled out in the daily Obama campaign email and understood only by cable news anchors had already determined that "mathematically, she can't win."

I heard the voters who chose Clinton in Pennsylvania dispatched with the descriptor "blue-collar whites," which is a polite way of calling people of a certain socioeconomic status -- my parents, I guess -- some uneducated racist white trash. Or in the case of West Virginia, Dogpatch hillbillies who shouldn't even be allowed to vote.

Was that elitism, or just politics? I can't decide, but I'm damn sure that's what Clinton was talking about when demanded for "the 18 million people who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and to no longer be invisible."

I watched, with genuine emotion and pride in our country, as ladies born before women had the right to vote cast their ballot for Clinton. Then they were lumped in with the rest of the women who were just voting with their vaginas. At the same time, I read about African-Americans only a few generations removed from segregation who talked about how moving it was to cast a vote for Obama, and I saw many black superdelegates who had supported Clinton for years simply switch their allegiance, yet none was accused of "voting race." I read story after story about how the popular vote didn't matter anyway, because the coming tidal wave of superdelegate endorsements would put Obama over the top. How she might as well just drop out now and stop all this nonsense.

I was still waiting for that tidal wave of endorsements  Tuesday night when Obama staggered across the finish line, at the last possible second, as the last votes were being tallied in the last states to hold their primaries. This is a mandate?

For weeks I've listened to Clinton be accused of tearing the Democratic party asunder -- of damaging democracy itself -- by winning. I've heard her viciously criticized for attempting to deny Obama, so clearly a special, once-in-a-lifetime candidate, his destiny by being obstructionist enough to win as many, and often more, votes as he.  I watched TV pundits driven to near-maniacal ranting because Clinton had the astounding arrogance to inspire as many people to believe in her ability and experience as believe in Obama's magical historical mandate.

Was that sexism, or just politics? I'm not sure, but I do know that Keith Olbermann can bite me.

Last Saturday, I watched the DNC Rules Committee grudgingly give Clinton half of what she fairly won in Florida, and penalize her -- stripping her of delegates -- in Michigan, then give them to a candidate who chose not to have his name on the ballot. I watched startling assumptions, obviously designed to benefit Obama, be made about the true intentions of thousands of people in Michigan who had already made a choice by voting Undecided. Hell, there weren't even any dangling chads to go by, just exit polls and the desire for it all to be over already.

As for former President Clinton, yes, dude was off the hook at times, but be clear about the fact that he was often absolutely correct. Many in the media were already against Hillary even before they fell so giddily in love with Obama.  Obama's campaign did allow others to do their dirty work, and Obama's half-hearted attempt to distance himself from the hate being preached at his church was, in fact, pretty damn slimy.

Some of Obama's most passionate (and annoying) supporters refuse to believe -- simply cannot fathom -- that their guy would lower himself to engage in time-tested street politics like good old-fashioned shit talk. Look, when I first heard about that Rev. Pfleger thing, even I was like "Oh come on, where did they dig this one up?" I kind of agreed with Obama's dismissal of the whole thing as gotcha politicking.

Then I realized this wasn't some nugget culled from the nether regions of YouTube: This shit happened two weeks ago. And if we're going by the reaction of Obama's (now-former) fellow congregants at Trinity United who clapped, cheered, leaped to their feet to express their enthusiastic agreement with a Catholic priest who stood in their consecrated space mocking Clinton's ambition as disgusting entitlement, her desire to win as some racist inability to believe that a black man would dare to defy her, well, then it's hardly she or her supporters who are dealing in personal destruction.

Was that sexism at work, or just politics?

It was certainly repulsive to me as a Christian. Offensive to me as a woman.

But mostly today, it's all just disturbing to me as a Democrat, who will now be expected to shut up and fall into line behind Obama. Talk about a massive sense of entitlement.