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Confession time: I have a crush on Rachel Maddow…

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and I am not gay!

I think the crush is the kind that you have for an extremely intelligent and articulate person who you know you will never be able to win a debate against, so you simply capitulate and give her all your admiration, starry eyes and all.

So far, I have only seen her shows twice since we do not have cable at home. Now I want it!! Or, I can manage to travel more frequently so I can watch her show while eating a quart of ice cream in the hotel room. (Shhh, don’t tell my kids!) I have never seen a cable news show where I laugh out loud almost through the entire show. He wry sense of humor is superb. Simply divine.

It is so strange: I have never even heard of her before until one day, she was a guest on Conan O’Brien. (Conan is another one of my favorites, deceivingly simple and anti-intellectual, yet I believe that there are lots of well-functioning brain cells under that coif of his…) Even just chit chatting, she exudes intellect, wittiness, and grace. (I know, “grace” is an odd word of choice to describe a butch lesbian… But that’s exactly the word came to mind when I saw her…)

Am I gushing?

But she also decidedly has that “girl next door” charm. Only that girl has a Doctorate from Oxford and is extremely well versed in world politics and any cultural subject you can throw her way, that you just want to shut up and listen to her, and be entertained.

Below are some of my favorite parts from the New York Magazine article on her published this November:

This well-written article started with Dr. Maddow’s 12-second explanation of what Dadaism is to the cable audience (as she was trying to make an analogy between Dadaism and McCain’s fixation on Joe the Plumber. Try that at home, I dare you!)

Ever heard of something called Dada?”

Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy. It’s mid-October, two weeks before the election, and the MSNBC host is comparing the McCain campaign’s recent fixation on “Joe the Plumber” to the anti-bourgeois cultural movement of the early-twentieth century. But this is prime time, and Maddow first has to define Dadaism in as colloquial a way as possible. This is something of a challenge considering she only has about twelve seconds.

“Deliberately being irrational, rejecting standard assumptions about beauty or organization or logic,” she begins. “It’s an anti-aesthetic statement about the lameness of the status quo … kind of?” She twists her face into a cartoon grimace that morphs into a wide smile. “Why am I trying to explain Dadaism on a cable news show thirteen days from this big, giant, historic, crazy, important election that we’re about to have?” she asks with a self-deprecating laugh, as she recognizes the Dadaishness of her own quest. “Because that’s what I found myself Googling today, in search of a way to make sense of the latest McCain-Palin campaign ad!”

As I was trying to figure out WHY I immediately gravitated towards her show, New York explains on my behalf:

“There’s something about the mix of personal details that is—to a young, educated, left-leaning, cosmopolitan audience—instantly recognizable. As one New York acolyte told me, “She is more like one of my friends than anyone else on television.” And her ratings have been astounding, especially in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic. Maddow averaged a higher rating with that group than Larry King Live for thirteen of the first 25 nights she was on the air, enabling the network to out-rate CNN in that time slot for the first time. It’s an impressive feat, even given the fact that the show started two months before the election when political interest was at a fever pitch.”

So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy??

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Am I a bad mom? Sometimes I worry that in an effort to bring up children that are progressive, tolerant, self-aware, and self-reliant, and to make sure that they become “contributing members of a civil society” in the future, I may have pulled a cloud over their childhood. If they are fortunate enough to not to know about “the world out there”, who am I to ruin their parade by telling them the “truth”?

So my 10-year-old had to do a research report on this presidential election. One of the projects was to interview a democrat and a republican, ask them this one question: “What do you think a Democrat (or Republican) believes?” I felt bad for putting our loved ones on the spot: voting is a private matter, in my opinion, and sometimes the true reason someone votes for this party vs. the other is for that person’s conscience to know, and their conscience only. The people we ended up interviewing over the phone, surprisingly or maybe not so much, gave similar answers with regarding to almost everything: such as “A democrat/Republican believes that the middle class should receive tax reliefs.”

The differences we learned from our friends and families are, based on their own subjective opinions of course, “A Republican believes in a smaller government, whereas a Democrat believes in more taxes,” and “A Democrat believes in equality in all people and the responsibilities of the government to come to its people’s aid when they are in need.”

What strikes me the most was the fact that women from both parties see “Roe vs. Wade” as the main dividing line that separates Republicans from Democrats: one mentioned that Republicans believe in the “Right to live”, the other, Democrats believe in “Roe vs. Wade”. My son, being 10 years old, naturally had no idea what they were talking about, and our friends and families, bless their heart, naturally did not want to go into details.

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So, how do you explain Roe vs. Wade to a 10-year-old boy?

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This was why I woke up with self-doubt for my ability to be a good mother this morning: I actually gave it a try last night by giving him a general description of what Roe vs. Wade was about. How successful, I am not sure. My son understandably was disturbed by the concept of abortion, which I didn’t go into too much detail of course. He does not even know how women become pregnant yet, oh my goodness… {{surge of more self-doubt}}

At one point, I could see in his face his regret for supporting the Democratic Party (i.e. Obama in this election: he thinks Obama is the man, and the democrats will bring equality to the society, without me or my husband steering him either way… in fact we were quite puzzled by his interest in this election since we didn’t talk about politics in front of the kids until he himself showed interest in the topic… ) And I was upset with the teacher’s naivete in giving them the homework assignment: how does one talk about this presidential election, I mean, really talk about it, without getting into a discussion on the two sides over the “Roe vs. Wade” issue? How am I supposed to explain to my 5th grader, who despite his uncanny maturity still hugs stuffed animals at night?

I know a lot of people would argue that this is the reason why there shouldn’t be abortion allowed, period, if you don’t know how to explain such a procedure to a child. This way you don’t even need to explain it. To me, this is the reason why the issue of abortion should not be made to hijack the public political debate. It is a personal choice, and yes, I believe that women should have the right to choose. It is ironic to me that Republicans, for all their push for a smaller government, desperately want to extend their control over private matters such as gay marriage and this, and leave public health care issues to strictly between “patients and their care providers”…

What I learned from my 5th grader’s homework this weekend…

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My 10-year-old came home with a 10-page homework packet last week, a research report on this presidential election. (Let me not start with the fact that the packet is from 1997 and asks for an example of a printed ad in newspaper or magazine. I don’t remember the last time I saw any candidate spending their money on a printed ad, at least, not in publications that we read at home, e.g. The Economist…)

Here is what I learned:

1. It is not easy to find out what exactly the Democratic party and the Republican party stand for.

We went to both parties’ websites and we ended up frustrated and confused. The “party platform” manifestos put out by both parties read so similar: they both use the same vague, generalized statements to show that they are THE party that will watch out for the little guys, the working American families. Both parties believe in education, better teachers, and the freedom for parents to choose the best education for their children.

I had to explain to my son that nobody will come right out to say, “Oh, yeah. We are going to raise your taxes, and we are not going to do anything about the education system nor the health care crisis.”  You just have to read between the lines.

Here is one great example from the “Republican Party Platform 2008” document:

“It is not enough to offer only increased access to a system that costs too much and does not work for millions of Americans. The Republican goal is more ambitious: Better health care for lower cost.

First Principle: Do No Harm

How do we ensure that all Americans have the peace of mind that comes from owning high-quality, comprehensive health coverage? The first rule of public policy is the same as with medicine: Do no harm.

We will not put government between patients and their health care providers.

We will not put the system on a path that empowers Washington bureaucrats at the expense of patients.”

(By the way, how many people actually read this document?  It is entirely fascinating the wordsmith effort that went into this…)

The GOP certainly did not state that they are against “health care for all” since that, on the surface, will certainly provide bad PR and negative sound bites.

2. The symbol for the Democratic Party has been a donkey since the 19th century:

nast_gop

The donkey has its origin in Andrew Jackson‘s campaign in 1828 when he was called a Jackass, and Jackson, true to his larger-than-life persona, adopted the image of the strong-willed donkey for his campaign. The symbols of elephant and donkey were later popularized by Thomas Nast’s political cartoons, (in which neither animal was portrayed in a positive light, therefore, it’s indeed curious that both parties readily adopted the images!)