It’s Our Time: Gen-Xers and the Election of Barack Obama

As a member of Generation X, my generation has been defined and categorized by others: boomers and millennials in particular. Boomers labeled us lazy and disaffected while doting and hovering over lazy and disaffected millennials who did little else but just show up.

With the onslaught of campaign post-mortem and the gearing up for the 2010 election, boomers and millennials are once again at the center of this analysis, while Generation X, my generation, the generation coming of political age in the Obama administration, continues to get passed right on by.

Xers have the unfortunate luck to be situated directly between two population booms.  We are, by sheer fact of our numbers, incapable of matching the self-aggrandizing of the boomers and their lauding of the millennials.  Our collective voice, no matter how strong, just cant shout loud enough.  Thankfully for this country we realized there was no need to compete.  And once the rest of the world took notice, things began to change.

That's right.  I'm doing something very un-Xer like.  I'm taking credit for the vision of change promised by the Obama administration.  You see, we Xers gave up long ago trying to play by the political rules crafted by the boomers.  I'll admit, we flirted with them briefly during the first Clinton administration, but once we saw that administration as the same old same old boomer crap we checked out.  But if we checked out, how then could the election of Barack Obama possibly be about, let alone driven by, the slacker generation?

For starters, one great benefit of consistently being overlooked by the boomers meant the creation of our own political counter-insurgency in the private sector.  My generation are the business leaders of the green economy.  We created those private sector models designed to tackle the looming environmental (and related geo-political) catastrophes.  Same goes for poverty eradication, education, and finance.  Those industries that have remained in the boomer charge-- I'm looking at you auto, airline, and banking -- have come crashing down under the weight of their own avarice.  We know how to tackle the big issues of the next decade and will lead that change.

My generation has now fought in three wars- Gulf War I, Afghanistan, and our current debacle.  We can throw in Somalia and the Balkans as well, just for good measure.  We know the human toll, the human sacrifice.  We can talk about war other than Vietnam.  As a product of divorce and custody battles we are natural diplomats.  We spent a lifetime negotiating with warring parties.  This perspective, these skills, will get us out of Iraq and usher in a new era of global diplomacy.  Sound crazy?  Just watch.

Being on the front end of the technology boom, teenagers and college students at the advent of email and the World Wide Web, means we are rooted in the actual world as we branch out to the virtual.  Unlike our little brothers and sisters the millennials, we remember a time when life was not digital.  That realism will serve us as we advance the goals of equality in this digital age and assist developing nations.  We will keep the human in humanitarian.

We are a post-identity politics generation and have laid the foundation for the awakening of a new age of liberalism.  But this is not your father's liberalism.  No.  Living through recessions, war, divorce, and raised in the shadows of Vietnam and Watergate made us inherently skeptical of bold institutional promises of anything, let alone substantive change.  We know that government cannot do it alone so we will not expect nor demand it to.  

Our heroes and peers in the chattering class have set the tone for the critical, engaged, but ultimately still hopeful political rhetoric of this new age.  Through the lens of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Rachel Maddow we will keep our institutions honest.

And by now we are used to the millennials getting all the attention and taking all the credit.  That's fine.  Go on boomers-- keep applauding your legacy and praising the millennials simply for showing up.  This is our time and we've got work to do.

Voter Suppression and the Thugs Who Support It

Patriotism is about as close to a defined religion as I get.  I do believe that at our best, this country is a beacon of light for the rest of the world, proof that idealism mixed with hard-work can break down any barrier.  The foundational texts of our democracy-- the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, these are my versions of the King James, the Torah, the Koran.  The principles they espouse- liberty, equality, common good- form the core of my morality.  The idea that our government is simply an expression of our common consciousness, a realization of communal aspiration rather than a power derived by god moves me every election.  This is not jingoistic love.  This is romantic love.

That's why I geek out over voting.  I'm not going to preach about how people all over the world still die for the chance to live in a participatory democracy, and I'm not going to scold you for not participating because I also believe there's power in abstaining as much as their is power in participating.  

But abstention is a far cry from suppression, and this is after all a post about suppression.  About coordinated efforts by the Republican party to disenfranchise US citizens.  Not black voters, not latino voters, not women.  Just voters.  And I'm sorry, but its a disgusting, un-American practice and needs to stop.

My previous post mentioned my experience as a poll watcher-- a position only made necessary by the phenomenon of the GOP's use of "challengers" set up to delay, intimidate, and obstruct the voting process.  GOP challengers are only one weapon in the arsenal of GOP voter suppression tactics, but they are a powerful and particularly odious one.  They sit in the polling places and literally identify who they believe to be legitimate voters.  If they don't think you are a legitimate voter, they notify the election judge who then decides whether or not you can cast a ballot.  In Minnesota, thankfully, the basis for a challenge is extremely limited-- you must be a Minnesota resident, your challenge must be based on personal knowledge that a voter is ineligible to vote in that specific precinct, and the challenge must be reduced to writing in the form of a sworn statement.  This is a change from the previous election and a result of the GOP sending in legions of attorneys from Texas and D.C. to man the polls and challenge voters.  For real.  In order to be a challenger, or a vote protector, one must go through a training session and receive a certification from either the GOP or the DFL that they are that party's official representative.  My point is, if you volunteer for either of these tasks, you are well versed in election law before the voting actually begins.

Heading to the polls at 5:45 am on election day I was the crazy combination of tired and wired, and when I got to my precinct and saw a line of voters an hour before the polls opened I knew it was going to be a big day.  For twenty minutes I sat there, chatting with election judges and thinking, for just a moment, that my presence was going to be a waste.  There was no GOP challenger in sight and the election judges were psyched for high voter turnout and to be part of a historic election, irrespective of outcome.

And then he showed up.  The challenger.  A Vietnam veteran living on acres of land in booming Dakota County.  The basis for his support of the GOP comes from his evangelical roots.  Here we were-- a feminist and an evangelical.  Sitting side by side at one table.  For the next 14 hours.

Election day got off to a bang.  Right as the polls opened and the voters started streaming in we hit our first issue.  Mr. Challenger tried to set up shop at the new voter registration table because he was intending on validating the identification of every new voter that registered that day.  That's right.  He was checking id.  I realize I've said a lot, so if you need to go back up and look at the extent of his authority as a challenger on I understand.  You will not see on that list "verify identification."  That is what the election judge does.  Not a partisan representative.  And he knew this.  

He knew he wasn't allowed to check id's.  But he also knew that starting a fight with me and the election judges would delay the vote.  Most people were trying to get to work, and if the line stopped moving, they'd probably leave and not come back.  For the challenger and his party it was not about winning that particular battle, it was winning the war of voter turnout.

Well, I was not taking any of that shit, and thankfully, neither was the election judge.  Rather than debate the law which we knew he was versed in, we called the city.  They sent down a city representative who let our challenger know that any more stunts like that and he'd find himself on the curb.  Cudos to the city for not putting up with any of that crap.

For the next 13 hours I saw him bristle at every minority voter that registered, particularly those who spoke with an accent.  I overheard dejected calls to GOP headquarters that turnout was high and that he had been pinned.  I heard him have conversations with election judges about the dignity of civic service and his pride in his country.  

And, had the statute not prevented me from doing so, I would have asked him how on earth he reconciled those feelings with his role as voter gestapo.  How he could call himself a patriot while he sneered at the 200 new voters that waited in line for the chance to have a say in the governance of this country.  

I just don't understand it.  Sure, we could stereotype the voters he'd challenge as likely DFL voters, but we have no proof of that.  I was stationed in a heavily republican district- wouldn't you think it was possible that some of those new voters would vote GOP?  If the past eight years have taught us anything it is that people do not always vote in line with their economic or cultural best interests- they often just vote for who they'd like to go drinking with.  Why would a veteran, a self-confessed patriot, strive to undercut the basic foundation of a country he could have died for?  

It really makes you wonder why the GOP is so scared of a fair fight.  I guess we will see if these tactics continue as the republicans work to rebuild their party and what place these extremists hold in the new republican brand.  But so long as the intolerant right serves as foot soldiers of the election they will have to tangle with Hegemommy because even one vote suppressed is a crack in the foundation of our democracy, and something I just can't sit back and watch happen.  So in the meantime, bring it on boys.  Until you are willing to go voter for voter in a clean, fair fight I will sit at the polls, 14, 16, 18 hours an election, as will my own army of hegemommies to stop your treasonous strategy.  Bring it on.

 

 

What I Saw

So I know I'm off schedule with posts, and I'm going to do my damnedest to make up for lost time in the next couple of days.  This may not be a traditional Hegemommy post, but I'm just overcome with a sense of immediacy and I don't want to over-think this experience, so I'm breaking a rule and just putting it out there.  

Last night I worked as a vote protector.  I was an official representative of the DFL and my job was to make sure every eligible voter who showed up to vote got the chance to.    There was also a GOP representative there, except he had a different job and a different title.  He called himself a "challenger" and his job was to challenge voters' eligibility to vote.

I promise in the next post I will get into what happened at the polls, and the nitty-gritty of voter suppression tactics (and how they were SQUASHED! by the way), but for now I just want you all to catch a glimpse of why the Republican strategy of voter deterrence is tantamount to treason in Hegemommy's world.

At 6:00 am there was a line that wrapped down the hall and around the corner of my assigned poll.  Polls open at 7:00.  This particular polling place was in the basement of a nursing home.  None of the people in line were nursing home residents.  

Yesterday I saw an African immigrant cheer and almost cry when she turned in her ballot after voting for the first time as a citizen.  I saw parents come with their adult children to cast ballots together.  I saw hoards of senior citizens, some from the facility and some not, wait with oxygen tanks, in wheelchairs, and some with helpers to read or write for them, just to vote.  I saw  group of young African-American men proud to show off their "I VOTED" sticker.  I saw people who had come to register that day COME BACK with neighbors, family members, friends, to register them as well.  I saw voters who had waited in line for an hour at a polling place only to find out they were in the wrong precinct wait another hour to vote at mine.  At 7:57 I saw a single mom running down the hall with her toddler to get to the poll by 8:00.   Her son was in his featie pajamas, and as I played peek-a-boo with him while she filled out her registration card, I heard the Election Judge comment that this was the first election where this mom was eligible to vote.

Yesterday over 1200 people voted at my polling location.  We registered over 200 new voters.  My side didn't get all 1200 votes, but all 1200 people who showed up to vote were able to.  

Please Make Palin a Contender in 2012. Feminism Could Depend On It.

I know.  I can't believe I just wrote that either.  The current Palin candidacy has me very worried, and not for the reasons you may think.  I'm worried that no matter how the election cuts her status as the beauty queen of the religious right political movement just Barbi-fied the very real gains in politics made by all sorts of women, including Palin.  Gains made thanks to feminism.  

Palin calls herself a feminist, and for some reason, I believe that she really does identify as one. I understand that the difference in Hegemommy's feminism and Palin feminism stems from a difference in, oh, everything, but I absolutely respect the fact that she's scrapped her way up the food chain from broadcast reporter to vice-presidential candidate.  She's one of a handful of female governors, she's clearly comfortable on the national political stage, and fierce at riling the darkest corners of America's heart.  All notable feats to be sure. 

Yes, Sarah Palin is a pretty darn good politician, but the big questions around her candidacy- Is she qualified?  Can she do the job?  What did she just say???- those pose the biggest problem for any gains women have made from the likes of Libby Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Hillary Clinton, Olympia Snow.  

This is how it cuts.  If McCain wins the election and Palin becomes Vice President, that is in itself a victory for feminism.  Less than one hundred years after being granted from the male political establishment the right to vote and an ability to have the voice of a citizen, a woman would hold the second highest political position in the nation.  That's a big deal and there will be a lot of talk of  history making.  Put ideology aside and ignore political platforms, do we want Palin as the Exhibit A to the gains made by feminism on the political landscape?   Should she be our history maker?

It's absurd to think that a Palin Vice Presidency would be the culmination of a race to the top by the brightest, most capable female politicians of the right.  She just is not in the leagues of Dole, Hutchinson, Snow, Whitman, O'Connor, Noonan.  On Sarah Palin, even Peggy Noonan and I agree.  My god that hurts to type, and this is gonna hurt even more - -bravo for having the tits to call out the shallowness of the Palin candidacy, Noonan.  

I think more condemning than Noonan's remarks (she is a paid commentator, so, well, she makes money saying stuff) is the stark silence from the leadership, or even the rank-and-file, of the feminist right coming out in praise of Palin.  Her candidacy is an exercise in vulgarity and they know it.  How insulting it must be to all those qualified women to be overlooked and instead have the cheerleader of the far-right male political establishment on the ticket.  

If Sarah Palin is sworn in as Vice-President that is a victory for style not substance.  Women will remain relegated to the image of supporter rather than equal.  Young girls will be given the image of the beauty queen who grinned her way to political prominence.  A leader that was so darn cute it didn't matter if she wasn't that smart.  We didn't expect her to be.  In fact, sometimes being too smart is a liability, so when in doubt, avoid it.  Try to be pretty instead.  It will get you further.  If only that was simply my tinfoil hat paranoia talking again.  I was actually given that advice by some wealthy women when I was 12.  I have no doubt those who gave me that advice years ago today plan to vote McCain.  And they'll call Palin a feminist too.  

If Palin loses, it cuts along similar lines.  By now her lack of an even basic grasp of historical reality, foreign policy, or time on the national political circuit is well documented.  No one even pretends that she is of a political mind and freely discuss her only a political image.  Her lack of substance will be named McCain's liability.  It already has.  As pundits dissect the campaign they will shred Palin.  Who knows how that will play into the subtle sexism still infecting politics- the sense that the women have a hard time winning national elections in part because of a lack of "qualified" candidates.  

Which is why I hope Palin makes an appearance in 2012 as a serious political candidate, and not as the current candidate Palin.  I want her to be educated on the issues, even as I shout at the tv as a result.  I want her to prove wrong the premise that she simply is Falwell's promised one, because I want to believe that this country is beyond simply voting for homecoming king (or queen) rather than president.  I want Palin to redeem the feminist right, to slap back at the misogyny in its own party that would elevate Palin as its standard bearer, signaling to all the truly brilliant feminist minds of the right that "this is what it takes" to get on the ticket.  Not merits.  Personality.

 

I Promise You, Palin Wears the Skirts on Purpose

Oh Sarah Palin.  Can you believe we are this close to the election and I have yet to really tackle the persona of Palin?  Me either.

Now, normally the idea of critiquing the fashion sense of any female politician is repugnant and one of the few areas where I get all bitchy feminazi.  But Palin's case is different.  And no, it's not different because I think Palin is a nutjob.  It's different because what strikes me as so fascinating is her constructed identity, and in that sense, the skirts, the heels, all of it is fair game.

Say what you will about Palin's apparent lack of readiness, her blatant disdain for all things intellectual, this is a woman who knows her political base.  She winks.  She flashes a toothy open-mouth smile, and she wears a lot of skirts.  She's teasing the right with her anti-intellectual lapdance and has made herself the walking, talking blow-up doll of the religious right.  I half expect to see the pull-string peeking out from one of her silky blouses.  She is the right's  antidote to Hillary Clinton's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits.  And she's doing it on purpose.

A lot of feminists have decried Palin's treatment by the press, and by other women in particular, as playing out another version of Mean Girls-- girl-on-girl hate crimes that hurt all women.  That would be true but for several factors, only one of which I can get into here.  The rest will have to wait for a future post.  

First, and most obviously, Palin is entirely complicit in her constructed political image and she works it with a savvy that the McCain folks either did not understand or totally disregarded.  When McCain first announced his pick the Republican base lit up like Christmas in Vegas.  The fringe of the party that had spent the better part of the twentieth century actively advocating against the rights of women heralded Palin as their champion.  And she took the crown with glee.  That snapshot allowed us to see what the religious right saw as an image of female leadership.  She was perky.  She was scrappy.  She was attractive (especially by political standards).  But she was also willing to cede all power, authority, and leadership to her male elder.  She was, at the end of the day, no threat to the male political establishment and never would be.    

But I have to give Palin credit.  She's just not mistress material.  As the McCain campaign derails pundits now complain about his inability to "control" Palin.  Her vicious race baiting (again, in stark contrast to the subtle race-baiting in the Democratic primary practiced by the Clinton campaign, but that is also another post) brings all the fever of a Pentacostal revival with none of the soul-saving.  It doesn't sit well with the Lutheran roots of mainstream America- it's too loud and too honest in it's bias.  

And Palin is too ambitious, again, a fatal flaw in the religious right's image of acceptable female leadership.  She's had a taste of the national spotlight and trust me, she's looking for more.  Think it was a slip when she referred to the "Palin/McCain ticket"?  I don't.

As the campaign draws closer to election day, and the pitch continues to elevate, and as the Grand Old Party sinks deeper in despair look for Palin's shirts to get a little tighter, the skirts a little shorter, and the hair worn down more than up.  Just a hunch.  

It's actually a game I'm pretty familiar with, but the thing is, Palin is no Hegemommy.  See to really beat the big boys, and I have no doubt that Palin aspires to beat them, you still need to be smarter than them.  The skirts, the winks, the toothy smiles are all the tools to get you past the cronyism, to let you in to the boardroom.  It's the substance that keeps you there.  On that point, neither the GOP nor its current fetishist Palin seem to get it.

Words Matter. And It Takes Tits To Say That.

Okay, so you've heard that I'm in one of those "transitions."  Yes, I gave up my lucrative career as a nut-cracking litigator to string words together for a living.  When I first announced this decision one of the more common responses from my peers (male and female) was: "Wow.  Good for you.  That takes a lot of balls."  Not everyone said this with the same tone, but I took the statement to be variations on a theme.  Balls.  Bravery.  Guts.  Maybe even slightly stupid.  But all interchangeable parts, right?  

For the first time ever this phrase stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, it's not like this was the first time I had heard it, let alone used it.  I always talk about needing balls to do this or the balls to do that.  I employ it ironically and not-so-ironically.  Sometimes when I talk about having balls to do something I mean courage, and sometimes I mean recklessness.  But it is always associated with action, with putting yourself out there consequences be damned.  But here I was, about to strike out on my own, to make my own name for myself, and all of a sudden this phrase took on a new complicated complicity.  Did I really want to have the balls to do anything?  What did that mean????

Words matter, and am I not the first to point out the interesting association between these shorthands for power and action, and human anatomy.  After all, sex is power, and when we want to create an appropriate visual of that source of power, the default should be to those organs.  It is beyond stating the obvious.  I mean, without such a truism there would be no Hegemommy.  Go back through this sad little blog and find a post, aside from the disclaimers and re-starts, that does not have as it's central premise the connection between sex and power.  See.  Told ya.

 The shorthand works just as well in reverse and speaks volumes to our collective unease with female sexuality.  Pussy.  Weak.  Cowardly.  Passive.  Once again, a shorthand I've employed as a slur for someones perceived weakness.  But now, as someone who depends on words for survival, let alone identification, these shorthands are becoming increasingly problematic.

This is complicated turf.  I see creativity coming from that same vat of primordial goop as sexuality-- a raw and charged power source that defines many different aspects of personality.  So as a writer, my creativity is undoubtedly linked to my sex and my sexuality.  How could I then continue to employ language shorthands that diminished the very power source I rely on to keep my lights on?

I've decided that I can no longer be complicit in the cultural demegoggery of  female sexuality and power, and I'm taking over my own shorthand.  Feel free to use it if you like.  Pass it on.  Like all things cultural, it may gain its own cache, find its niche, and create the counter-narrative to the presumption that an active display of power is a masculine trait.  That's right.  It takes tits.  Not balls.  Tits.

Once said out loud, the choice seemed ridiculously obvious.  

Here We Go Again. On False Starts and Starting Over.

Okay, so some of you may recall that I promised a brand new Hegemommy, and vowed to post with fury.  Well, ugh.  It didn't quite work out as I had hoped, so, once again, I'm here to say, it's a brand new day.

A lot has changed since those first naive posts.  A lot has not.  Hegemommy has learned to trust her instincts more and rely on others less.  All good things, but not worth spending more than a small paragraph discussing.  Moving on.

I'm now officially a full-time writer, so, I guess I better write.  This will be a good forum for those thoughts that rattle endlessly in my brain.  And really, Palin is the gift that keeps on giving, so I figure I have at least a month of great material to help hone my craft.

So, once again, I'm posting a transition post.  One that helps lead from one idea to the next.  Only this time Hegemommy has put her money where her mouth is.  Literally.