Poll Results

I'm dismayed to report that Cash Rules Everything Around Me. This according to the latest Clebilicious poll numbers. When asked whether cash rules everything, respondents answered as follows:

• 57%: Tremendous cream, fuck a dolla and a dream.
• 42%: I'ma tell you like Wu told me.
• 28%: Dolla dolla bill yall.
• 14%: No.

Sampling error: +/- 78%.

Thanks for your participation. Best stay steady on the grind.

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Obama and My Gay Cat

Paulie was fresh off one of his Chubs & Chasers events, in a good mood, so it seemed like the right time for The Talk. (By the way, don't bother asking whether he is chaser or chub. He says they hate being boxed in like that.)

I tell him it's about Obama, and he says, sweet Jesus, no more of the epic race speech, please. Enough with the human hangups. He says his sister is Abby Tabby--part Abyssinian, like Obama--and it's never been an issue in their relationship. I cringe of course, and he laughs. Typical human.

I try to explain that we don't say "Abyssinian" anymore and that even if we did, it would suggest Ethiopian, not Kenyan, but he tires of this. Cut to the chase.

So, okay. I really do think Obama is a staunch advocate for gay rights, Walnuts, I really do. But gay marriage isn't on his platform. Civil unions. Not marriage.

His eyes narrow. You could have told me this before I started my Log Cabin Obamican Kitties page on Facebook. (He has a lot of friends there; you'd be surprised.)

I say, I mean, you know why. He says it doesn't make his disappointment in his leader any less keen to know that his cowardly position is rooted in political expediencies that are in turn rooted in the very prejudice that singes his fur on a daily basis. This, he says, is the civil rights struggle of our time.

He has a point, but I soldier on and read him Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish post on why Obama is the "urgent, clear choice for gay voters." He's purring again. If there's one thing Paulie loves more than tooney fish, it's Andrew Sullivan's big, bald head.

But he still wishes everyone could love him as much as he loves himself.

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Kardashi-hens

ON tomorrow's episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the notoriously callipygian family adopts laying hens. I did not expect this confluence of my more outlier interests and I'm not sure how to feel about it. My disgust is arguing with my delight.

The Kardashians kinda remind me of a flock of chickens anyway, with the high female to male ratio and the pecking and the discomfiting intrasexual vibe.

My chickens also live in a Calabasas manse.

Teasers of the ep show five or six hens huddled in the bathtub--presumably the result of Krazy highjinx on the part of Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall, Kylie or perhaps mom Kris--and a hapless Barred Rock crapping on the very well-polished floor of the Kardashian Kompound. (Cut to close-up of the crap; looks a bit less than solid and healthy to me.)


I WANTED to get Hennessy and Camilla's take, so I went out to the coop and explained to them that humans have this thing called reality shows and someone named Kim Kardashian, who is, to quote Joel McHale, "famous for having a big ass and a sex tape," stars in one, along with her large, wealthy family, which includes stepdad Bruce Jenner, a de-balled former Olympian. And that they had introduced chickens, high jinx, and so on.

Camilla squatted for a dump and took off in the direction of the compost bin. But Hennessy just stood there staring at me. Her head tilted jerkily to one side, then the other, then back.

As if to say, I can't believe I even have to explain to you how deeply this offends me.

It might just be jealousy; rappers are more into Kim these days.

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Chitown Brawl

CAN Lupe Fiasco please start liking Barack Obama?

It's not about you, Lupe. It's about me. The Clebster cannot handle cognitive dissonance. You're making it so I can't be into both your music and Barack Obama's political message. When "Superstar" comes on the radio, my brain short-circuits because I want to groove around the kitchen, but I don't want it to mean "No, We Can't."

This is really awkward for me. Please fix it.

IF YOU haven't heard "Kick, Push" or "Daydreamin'"--and you'll enjoy both unambivalently if you hate hope--Lupe Fiasco is a brainy, young rapper from Chicago. His lyrics are brilliant and his breathy inhale before verses makes him sound like an excited kid desperate to get everything in one breath. This is from "American Terrorist," off his debut album Food & Liquor:

Don't give the black man food, give red man liquor

Red man fool, black man nigga

Give yellow man tool, make him railroad builda

Also give him pan, make him pull gold from river

Give black man crack, Glocks to teens,

Give red man craps, slot machines

HE HAS publicly rejected/denounced Obama, saying he doesn't deign to vote, but if he did, he'd vote for Hillary Clinton. Which is deeply lame. And, unsurprisingly, he doesn't have a real reason for taking this stand, just mumblings about how Obama wants to bomb Iran. (No one knows where he got this mistaken impression.)

I suspect the truth is that Fiasco is so perfectly in Obama's demographic--young, black, famous, smarty-pantsy, hailing from the South Side--that he opposes him just for spite. Because he's too damn clever and has to defy expectations.

He was raised by Black Panther-y, Muslim intellectual parents who are, in his words, "damn near anarchist," and it would just be so tacky and mainstream to support Obama. (Anyway, Hillary Clinton is the obvious choice of any self-respecting black nationalist.)

SO Obama takes the fall. Which is so not fair to me.

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Krugman WTF?

Does anyone know what Paul Krugman is smoking? Is he drinking Contrarianberry juice or just plain old Haterade? I mean, okay, criticize Obama, fine. I get it. The media's giving him a free pass and Krug patrol is here to collect fare. Try to counterbalance the hope-mongering Rich-Dowd Dream Team. (Psh, as if.)

Do what you gotta do, Krug. Fine.


But to call Obama "an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg" is just disengenuous. No one seriously thinks Bloomberg is an ineloquent Obama. Bloomberg's a short, Jewish, billionare businessman; he and Obama have about as little in common as two people can. (That said, endorse away, Mr. Mayor!)

The real accusation, of course, is that Obama is, like Bloomberg, a centrist. Which I guess is what Obama is if you insist on measuring people's politics with some kind of left-right pH test kit. Barack Obama's Senate votes give him a damn pH of 7. (Maybe 8, slightly on the sweet side?) But it's patently obvious to millions of people the nation over that he's more than that. And specifically, that he's more than that in terms of progressivism.

And wait, who are we comparing him to again? Like Dennis Kucinich or something, right? Bernie Sanders? Oh. That's right: Krugman is calling Obama a centrist compared to Hillary Clinton. The word "Clinton" has like eight definitions, but I'm pretty sure one of them is "n. centrist."




You feelin okay, buddy?

But none of that matters. Why? Mandates! Mandates! Freaking mandates, they're all Krugman can think about! His obsession with the health care mandate issue is incomprehensible to me, especially since he's an economist.

He's swinging away at the mandate piñata again today, referring to Obama's "adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care." (At least, I assume he's referring to mandates there. Otherwise, we'd have a Krugman column free of mandate references, and that just wouldn't be right.)

Here's what a damn mandate is: it requires people to buy health insurance, just like we Californians have to buy car insurance. Hillary Clinton's health care plan has a mandate. Obama's doesn't. Otherwise, their plans are virtually identical.

Clinton has seized on the difference. She is shocked! shocked! that anyone calling himself a Democrat would propose a health care plan that "leaves people out" and "isn't universal." If you've watched any of the debates recently, you know this is totally her favorite riff.

I'm not a health care expert and don't presume to know whether mandates would be helpful in getting more people insured, but I do know that advocates of single payer (total, all-out, "SiCKO"-approved, publicly-financed health care) think mandates are total bullshit.

Here's why: if you require people by law to purchase health insurance, you have to penalize them for not doing so. So when you're dealing with poor people, it's kind of a doozy. Do you exempt them from the mandate? (Oh my god, then it's not universal! Gotcha, Hillary: You're leaving people out, too!) Or do you leave people who can't afford to buy insurance to pay a fine for noncompliance? (Then poor people are paying out for a fine and they're still uninsured. Sucks, don't it.)

And that's exactly the explanation Obama has given in debate after debate. (I mean, not in those exact words.) But it's all so tedious that one starts to zone out when they argue about it and the audience is left with the vague sense that Clinton's plan somehow keeps it realer.

And, wonder of wonders, Paul Krugman, Princeton lefty economist, seems to agree.

See, I can make it all about mandates too. Uh! Who's the centrist now, byeeitch?

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Is "Obamedia" the New "Liberal Media"?

Yes it is.

Remember the good old Liberal Media? Conservatives bitched and moaned about the media's "liberal bias." Many media outlets absorbed the shame-dumping, got all self-conscious and needed to prove the critics wrong. So when Bush took us to war in Iraq, it was, gosh, just a fine idea.

The very concept of truth got mushed into a spectrum with opposing opinions on each end and the accepted truth lying exactly in between. Reality was the median point between Ann Coulter and Michael Moore. Call it the Crossfire era. Weenie Democrats like John Kerry and liberal castrati like Alan Colmes couldn't win that tug-o-war.

Now that three-quarters of the nation agrees that Bush sucks, I guess "the media" can too. The Crossfire era is so over.

But I'm hearing echoes of it in the Democratic primary race. The Clintons, ever the Karl Rove copycats, are crying favoritism. MSNBC, in particular, supposedly hates Hillary Clinton and is all ga-ga for Barack Obama. So, of course, when MSNBC hosted the big number two-oh Democratic debate on Tuesday, moderator Tim Russert had to prove it wasn't so.

Hence a big, scary question for Obama about Louis Farrakhan supporting him. (Obama faltered a bit at first, but then knocked it out of the park with his "reject and denounce" line.)




Which made me wonder, where can I get a Jews for Obama shirt? Or perhaps

יִדן

פֿאַר

!אָבאַמאַה

would be better. (It's Yiddish: Yidn far Obama!) I could send one to Joel Stein! Sorry if the vowels show up funky on your screen; did my best.

Oh, and Chris Matthews' humiliation of Texas State Senator and Obama supporter Kirk Watson after last week's debate? Same shit.


I'd like to thank Crimson for the term "weenie Democrat." So apt.

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Ceding Telegraph

WE were strolling down Telegraph Avenue, popping into Amoeba and Rasputin and all the little hipster shoe stores and tattoo joints. Each place had a nook that I would have otherwise ignored where stacks of high-gloss fliers sat, neatly or messily, depending. They advertised events at Shattuck Down Low or Luka's or clubs in the city. Brian added a stack of his Influence fliers to each collection.

The walk was so familiar (Dwight...Haste...Channing...Durant) but something felt off-kilter. And it wasn't just my "It's Spring!" outfit of denial, which was leaving my toes cold.

I used to own this street. A decade ago, I would pound my way to class to the beat of Drummer Larry, and if my hips were swaying, well I just couldn't help it. Shades on, hair bouncing: I was on my own and on my way. I'd trade smiles with the guy selling Rasta hats and grab coffee at C'est Cafe and take a mercy "Dollar Off at Amoeba" card from that lanky dude who looked like an Addams family cousin. I dined at Mario's La Fiesta and the old Pasta Pomodoro. I treated myself to custom-scented lotions at the OG Body Time. I even enjoyed my quiet irritation with the old hippies hawking bumper stickers and tie-dye onesies.

There are plenty of eulogies for Telegraph these days, after Cody's, but they mourn a place I never knew, a memory that the gray-ponytailed street salesmen render into nostalgic tourist wares. On that mythical street, students in berets and bell bottoms debated anti-war strategy in cafes and pored over philosophy books in Cody's and threw molotov cocktails at campus police.

My Telegraph, with all its thumping vibrancy and Tupac shirts, was a disappointment to sixties Berkeleyans. A sad hangover.


AS I walked down the street last weekend with my latte and my inappropriate sandals, I realized that I was an old lady. Everywhere I looked was a new breed of Telegraph rat. Punky girls in black skinny jeans and preppier girls in leggings shimmied along with effortless sass. A tribe of gay black teenagers dodged in and out of the sneaker stores alongside us, one guy sporting a big gold handbag. A table of students in Peet's argued over a brain teaser in adorably pompous tones. An Asian guy walked hand-in-hand with a white girl, white guys flirted with black girls. There were lots of those Bay Area kids whose ethnicity is so delightfully indistinguishable.

I had just read that morning's Frank Rich Times column, so I knew what I was looking at: millennials. The smoke shop and the Wet Seal and the slick new ATMs--all crawling with millennials.

"The so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included," Rich explains. He adds that "roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign."

Most interesting.


OF COURSE one's initial instinct in revisiting an old haunt or alma mater is to poo-poo the new population and lament the ruin they've brought to the place that was so perfect. That inner grump saw my funky Telegraph replaced by a teen shopping Disneyland, scrubbed of seriousness and homeless people, just as the boomers before me saw their lefty mecca overrun with apathy and street punks.

But if there's one thing I hate it's being hated on by baby boomers. So I wasn't about to do my successors like that. When I set adrift my feelings of being a dork and belonging to a bygone era, and opened my eyes a bit more, I liked what I saw.

These millennials, they're very charming. It appeals to me the idea that each new generation will make progress, that my children will evolve beyond my limits. Millennials have something going for them in that respect: a personal swagger, an open-mindedness, fewer hangups about race and gender and sexual orientation. And of course they are great followers of Obama: supporters, but also heirs.

Maybe it was nothing more than a big gold purse confidently tossed over the shoulder of a black teenage boy that won me over. That's doing sixties Telegraph proud.


SO, no back-in-my-day grumbling from me: I'm ceding Telegraph to the millennials. It's as it should be. My thirtyish brethren and I can hit up the Lakeshore Farmer's Market and go to the clubs on the fliers. Telegraph is theirs now. I'll trust millennials to do their thing, and watch with curiosity.

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