Today, British Toff-in-Chief Prime Minister David Cameron decided to wake up and smell the coffee, suddenly recognising what's been the bloody obvious since the Middle Ages: Britain has a severe alcohol problem, and - surprise surprise - it's affecting more and more young people.
On a visit to a hospital in north-east England, he promised to tackle the "scandal" of drunkenness and alcohol abuse that costs the NHS £2.7bn a year.
He suggested the use of US-inspired "drunk tanks", cells to house people overnight while they sober up.
The British have always had this problem. It's one of the reasons so many French cities capitulated to Henry V, before Joan of Arc got the wind up her sails - they wanted the drunken Brits out of sight and out of mind. Even now, it's embarrassing to nip across the Channel for a day's shopping to see rat-assed Brits wobbling about and puking in the gutters of Calais and Boulogne.
Classy.
Cameron's even enlisted the aid of Harry Potter, himself, Daniel Ratcliffe, all grown-up and admitting to having an alcohol problem, himself (treated expensively and privately, of course).
Maybe Cameron needs to listen to some music. I suggest the Kaiser Chiefs, from Leeds, some way North of the prosperous Southeast bubble. They identified that the real alcohol problem is what happens in city centres every Friday and Saturday nights, making them virtual war zones: binge drinking.
Here's the words of their song to ponder, followed by the song, itself. (And by the way, much of the cause behind last summer's riots was down to alcohol and alcohol alone).
"I Predict A Riot"
Watching the people get lairy
It's not very pretty I tell thee
Walking through town is quite scary
It's not very sensible either
A friend of a friend he got beaten
He looked the wrong way at a policeman
Would never of happened to Smeaton
An old leodensian
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I tried to get to my taxi
The man in a tracksuit attacks me
He said that he saw it before me
And wants to get things a bit gory
Girls scrabble round with no clothes on
To borrow a pound for a condom
If it wasn't for chip fat they'd be frozen
they're not very sensible
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
And if there's anybody left in here
That doesn't want to be out there
Watching the people get lairy
It's not very pretty I tell thee
Walking through town is quite scary
It's not very sensible
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
And if there's anybody left in here
That doesn't want to be out there
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
I predict a riot
Lord, I hate to do this, but it's time to call a daughter home to the Commonwealth. Especially since she has a job to do.
I'm not talking about myself, although the Commonwealth has been screaming for me to come home for donkey's (as in Democratic) years, but for my sins I'm doomed to bide my time in Kent and hope I don't end up pushing up daisies in Kentish dirt alongside Nancy Astor and Pocahontas, two other Virginian women.
I'm talking about that Virginia gal with the prescient name of Krystal Ball.
Krystal was the Democratic candidate for Virginia's 1st Congressional District, which runs from Fredericksburg down the Tidewater coast and encompasses the historic cities of Jamestown and Williamsburg. You'll recall that her campaign, in which she hoped to become the only woman representing the Commonwealth on a national level, was blighted by the publication of pictures taken years ago on a cellphone at a private Christmas fancy dress party, which showed Krystal dressed in a halter top andn short skirt, leading her then-husband by a leash. The husband sported reindeer's antlers and a red dildo as a nose, which Krystal was later photographed licking.
Honestly, I've been photographed doing worse at fraternity parties thirty-five years ago. But the pictures, published on a conservative website (where else?) sought to portray a pejorative image of a promising young woman intent on a political career. To her credit, Ball responded, quickly and forcefully, to her detractors:-
Politics is a nasty game. I knew that coming in. I thought I could take it. But the day that I bought my first radio ads, my opponent called the station and inquired as to the size of the advertising buy. Two hours later, these photos were released by a right-wing smear blog with close ties to my opponent. I don’t believe these pictures were posted with a desire to just embarrass me; they wanted me to feel like a whore. They wanted me to collapse in a ball of embarrassment and to hang my head in shame.
After all, when you are a woman named Krystal Ball, 28 years old, running for Congress, well, you get the picture. Stripper. Porn star. I’ve heard them all. So, I sat in my husband’s arms and cried. I thought about my little girl. I couldn’t stand the idea that I had somehow damaged the cause of young women running for office. I couldn’t stand the idea that I might shame my family, my friends or my supporters in some way.
The tactic of making female politicians into whores is nothing new. In fact, it happened to Meg Whitman, one of the world’s most accomplished business women, just last week. It’s part of this whole idea that female sexuality and serious work are incompatible. But I realized that photos like the ones of me, and ones much racier, would end up coming into the public sphere when women of my generation run for office. And I knew that there could be no other answer to the question than this: Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.
…My biggest support during this whole sad episode of my life has come from supporters of Hillary Clinton. In effect, they have been telling me that what happened to me could have happened to one of their daughters. They will not see their daughters called whores when they run for office just because of some college or post-college party. They will not watch the tide of everything they fought for washed away by the public exposure of female sexuality. Once again, like the heroes that they were a generation ago when they made their careers, they are stepping up to protect young women like me and to support us and to help us to grow up. We are young women. And we are dedicated to serving this country. And we will run for office. And we will win.”
Needless to say, I wanted Krystal Ball to win that election - which, of course, she didn't. But, when she lost, I had hoped to see her try again. Maybe for the Virginia House of Delegates or the State Senate, get a name there. Goodness knows, I wish she lived closer to Fauquier County than Fredericksburg, considering my State Senator is the incredibly vile Republican Jill Holzman Vogel.
However, it seems like Ball's moved onto pastures - or rather pavements - new. She's now employed by MSNBC and billed as a Democratic strategist.
Yes, a strategist.
I'm sorry, but a strategist is someone who has an organised and extensive plan, mapped out intricately, with a view to achieving a goal. For a political strategist, the goal is to help the candidate of his choice achieve office. James Carville and Paul Begala come to mind as political strategists. Karl Rove (and I choke on saying his name). David Axelrod. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's guru in the UK. They all worked the backrooms and turned their men out successfully on the day.
Whatever Krystal's strategy was, it clearly didn't work. Maybe that was something to do with the pictures. Maybe it wasn't. But her strategy didn't work, because she lost. So now she's - what? - a Democratic strategist.
Right.
Well, according to the Washington Post, here's her current strategy in a nutshell:-
After her campaign ended, Ball appeared several times on Fox, often as the Democrat on a panel filled with Republicans. She also went on CNN. Now she has a paid deal with MSNBC and is essentially on call for that network.
Ball, her husband and their 3-year-old daughter spend the bulk of their time in New York, close to MSNBC’s Manhattan headquarters. She no longer has a house in Virginia, though she can stay with her parents back home in King George, 20 miles east of Fredericksburg, when she’s in the area.
Her recent booking was about the latest jobs numbers, but Ball also has to be comfortable talking about anything from Libya to labor policy. On Friday, she got the day’s topics roughly two hours before the show, giving her time to scroll through a few articles on her pink-cased iPhone.
“You pretty much have to be prepared to talk about whatever the news is,” she said. “Running for Congress was good practice for that.”
Ball’s sole political experience is her congressional bid. She has never advised, been employed by or volunteered for any other campaign or elected official. But the more she appears on television identified as a “Democratic strategist” and political expert, the more she is known as one.
OK, so now I understand (and really, I've been away from home too long, so forgive me) ... as long as a person appears enough times on television - cable or mainstream - and is identified by persons who should know (nudge nudge wink wink), then if they are called a Democratic strategist enough, they'll actually be one.
Gee, if I got enough screentime on the old telly and had someone regularly call me "Mrs George Clooney," do you think I'd be in with a shout of actually spending time with the man?
But I suppose that's the way it is now in America. As for Krystal, she hasn't ruled out a future run for political office:-
Ball is definitely not running for Congress or anything else in 2012, but the future is less clear.
“I haven’t ruled out another run for office at some point,” Ball said. She doesn’t think her move to New York would imperil her prospects back home: “I’ve lived in the state almost my entire life, so I think if I ever wanted to come back and serve in Virginia, it would be pretty hard to paint me as a carpetbagger.”
Look, I'm no politico, but I'm an older and wiser Virginian, and I have some strategical advice for Krystal Ball.
Honey, it wouldn't be hard at all for Virginians to paint you as a carpetbagger. The longer you stay away, even if you go back two or three times a year and stay with your parents, the longer the locals are going to identify you with the place where you live. I've lived in the UK for 30 years, making sure I make an annual pilgrimage back to Virginia, and there are scores of people there who identify me as British. So, it stands to reason, that the good folk of the Old Dominion are going to come to identify you as a creature of Manhattan. Worse than a carpetbagger ... try scallywag.
I think it's wonderful what you're doing with the She Should Run program, encouraging more young women to get involved with politics, and I hope you're standing tall as a Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Virginia - if not in 2016, then in 2020, when President Kaine or President Warner is running for his second term in office. But you have to realise that one of the reasons Sponge Bob and that poor man's Fonzarelli are doing so much damange to women's rights in the Commonwealth is because they were elected by Virginians. Yes, they were carpetbaggers. The worst sort. But they lived here long enough to be identified with the place where they live.
Hell, Bob McDonnell even sounds Southern, and his South was South Philly.
You have to come home. You have to get involved with a political campaign or working for a politician - Tim Kaine or Mark Warner or Bobby Scott. Gain their ear, learn from their expertise. And go out amongst the people of the Commonwealth - up and down the Tidewater coast, your district. Into the rural belly of the state, that long stretch of countryside from Charlottesville down to the Carolina border. Into the Roanoke and mountainous Blue Ridge Southwest so dear to James Webb's heart. Come on up to rural NoVa - Fauquier, Warren and Frederick Counties, near to the West Virginia line. That's one of the reason's Virginia's so unique - you can go from cosmopolitan to "down home" in twenty minutes.
Talk to the people. Listen to them. Talk about their health concerns, their economy, their fears, what they hope to achieve. Talk to them.
You can't do that from New York, and you can't do it coming home for a visit. Virginia isn't New York; if we can't have our politicos born and bred here, we, at least, like them to live amongst us and adopt our ways.
And one final piece of advice ... get another type of Valley Girl accent ... the Shenandoah variety.
Today, we learned that the UK most likely will lose its coveted AAA credit rating.
This is Billy Bunter, the archetypical greedy, loutish, selfish, fat public schoolboy, destined never to work a day in his life, but to make his living playing with other people's money and livelihoods.
And this is George Osborne, the archetypical greedy, loutish, selfish, fat public schoolboy, who really has never worked a day in his life, but whose sole purpose in life now is to play about with other people's money and livelihoods.
The difference between the two is that Billy Bunter is a cartoon character, and George Osborne is the current Chancellor of Exchequer - that's British for Tim Geithner.
In case anyone's wondering, the Conservative Party here in the UK is the soul sister of the Republicans, and don't let that nice David Cameron fool you. Were he American, he'd back Santorum, and you can see what his policies have wreaked here.
I remember brokered conventons. Political conventions, when I was a kid, were boring affairs in the summer which took up valuable television viewing time in the evenings. No Star Trek. No Flip Wilson. Just a lot of smoke and parades.
Then came 1968, Chicago, a lot of smoke, parades, protests and police.
Ezra Klein, sitting in for Rachel Maddow, is at his wonkiest in educating the public, many of whom were too young to remember or just too ignorant to understand, in the fine art of a brokered convention and what it would mean.
Sounds like a cakewalk for the Democrats, right? Klein is right to reference Adlai Stevenson, but he should also remember 1952, for the Republicans, was also a brokered convention, which saw Dwight Eisenhower being drafted into a candidacy to defeat the ueber conservative Robert Taft. Eisenhower went on to serve two terms in the White House.
Very true what Klein says at the end - that if a GOP saviour emerged and wrested the nomination from the cold, rich hands of Willard or the righteous, religious paws of Rick Santorum, he or she would have two months to match the Obama campaign in funds, messaging and general momentum, plus the added disadvantage of running against an incumbent.
However ... never underestimate the Republican party. They play to win, and that's what scares me. As far as finances are concerned, the Koch brothers are standing in the wing with a bevy of blank checks, and all it would take to unite the party faithful who are decidedly indecisive in the face of unpopular, dishonest or downright lunatic candidates is one name, familiar yet unfamiliar ... Jeb Bush.
Be careful what you wish for, says the old saying ... You just might get it.
Well, not really, but almost. I guess I'm ashamed of the government, duly elected by the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 2009, people stayed home and shrugged and didn't bother to vote, and that gave us our illustrious Governor Robert "Lil'Bob" McDonnell, and his erstwhile Attorney General, Ken "Jersey Shore" Cuccinelli.
Lil'Bob, to whom I refer as "Sponge Bob Square Pants" is a Rightwing Catholic and a Carpetbagger from Philly. The Jersey Shore boy stayed on after my alma mater made the biggest mistake of its history and granted him a law degree. Jersey Boy makes Rick Santorum look liberal.
You'd think Lil'Bob would learn, but he hasn't; and now he's about to sign into law legislation that would prohibit gay people from adopting. As far as same sex marriage is concerned, as Ken Cuccinelli would say (and probably does): Fuggeddaboutit!
That angers me, if for nothing more than a personal reason. Here's why:-
When I was growing up in Virginia - yes, Bob, I was born and raised there - I had three best friends. We all met in seventh grade and spent all sorts of girlie hours - gossiping, sighing over boys and generally bitching - all through high school. We all went to different univeristies and pursued different paths, but guess what? We're all Democrats.
One of us became a successful businesswoman and lobbyist. One is an accountant. One is an environmentalist. I pursued linguistics and a career, first in education, then in translation. Three of us married, two of us twice. One of us had children. Three of us didn't. One of us is a lesbian.
In between staying up all night at slumber parties or riding up and down the Route 29 Bypass on a Friday nights, yelling at boys in other cars, we all used to talk about getting married one day and made solemn promises that we'd all be bridesmaids at each other's wedding.
The first to marry did so in 1974, one year before finishing college, and we all traipsed down the aisle in front of her in green muslin dresses straight from Miss Scarlett on the front porch at Tara. The second to marry did so in 1977, six months pregnant in her parents' living room and the rest of us in attendance to throw confetti. My turn came on a snowy day in January in 1981, with the other three in scarlett red velvet concoctions.
Our last friend has been with her girlfriend for 25 years. They live in Prince William County. They would love to get married - nothing big, you understand, just tasteful and understated. Of course, DC, where it would be legal, is only 45 minutes away, but Virginia wouldn't recognise their union.
None of us are getting any younger and one of us is about to become a grandmother, so we'd dearly love to see our friend and her partner wed before they have to be wheeled down the aisle and we have to attend on Zimmer frames.
But as long as we've got these two phony neo-Confederates in Richmond, pandering up the fundamentalist meanies, it just ain't gonna happen. And that makes me angry.
This is like the Civil War, and Lil'Bob needs to realise that equal rights, completely equal rights, for the gay community is a given and the last hurdle which must be overcome in the Civil Rights movement. It's high time Virginia's governor and its Republican-controlled legislature admits that the times, they are a-changin' and this is one war, like the Civil one, that you lost.
Get over it.
Take a leaf from the book of personal experience, exemplified by Washington state representative Maureen Walsh, a Republican who bucked her party's policy regarding same sex marriage, realising that her gay child should never ever be regarded as a second class citizen. You can watch her speak eloquently of her ephiphany below:-
Lil'Bob could draw on personal experience too. His wife's sibling is in the process of changing gender, but I suppose Lil'Bob is ok with this person going to the back of society's bus.
Rick Santorum and I were born in the same decade in the same town in the same hospital. We were probably christened in the same church and probably shared the same pediatrician. But that's as far as it goes.
During the late Sixties and early Seventies, when I came of age and Rick was probably still in middle school, I actually embraced the feminist movement. I loved that these women were telling me I was the intellectual equal of any man. I liked that I was encouraged to control my sexual life, my professional life and my personal life. Even my mother, who was raised to marry and marry well (and who did so straight from high school), preached the feminist mantra to me, reminding me that women of my generation had many more opportunities than she or her sisters did.
And all of that took place in Virginia. In the South. By which time, Rick Santorum and his folks had moved North.
I suppose Rick grew up more firmly ensconced in the bosom of Holy Mother Church, or I guess my Sicilian grandmother couldn't have been that Catholic or she wouldn't have raised the passel of heathens and atheists, which included my father and his siblings. Because whilst I was raised to look forward, Rick was raised with his head turned so completely around, I'm surprised his mamma didn't call for the Exorcist.
Here we are in the 21st Century, finishing one war and winding down another, and only now does Rick Santorum, running for President, present an antiquated, condescending and, frankly, insulting attitude toward women in the military. Actually, it's kinda sexist. In fact, it's so sexist, that even my governor, Lil'Bob McDonnell - a man with whom I rarely agree - thinks Santorum's whacked on this one; after all, Lil'Bob's got a daughter who served in the military and in frontline combat. Speaking over the weekend at the Klown Konference CPAC, Lil'Bob remarked:-
“I like Rick Santorum a lot. I just disagree with any inference that he might have made that somehow women are not capable of serving in the frontlines and serving in combat positions. And I base that in part on my own daughter’s own experience as a platoon leader in Iraq with 25 men working with her,” McDonnell said on CNN. “She did a great job, was in some risky situations, and yet endured and led and I’m proud of her.”
(snip)
The governor noted that his daughter has “probably experienced some of those kinds of comments in the past, that somehow women in leadership positions in the military aren’t as much up for the job.”
“Look, she doesn’t pay attention to that and I think most women in leadership positions don’t. They go forward and lead and do well and serve our country in its highest tradition. So I don’t think it bothers them anymore,” he said.
Then, there's Rick's somewhat peculiar attitude toward women who are victims of rape. In a nutshell, according to Rick, a woman really needs to "make the most of a bad situation." I guess that means, lie back and think of the Republican Party. Or Jesus. Or making lemonade from the lemon you've just been handed.
And that's not only sexist. That's actually pretty mean.
Finally, he opines that the basic problems the family faces today are down to modern feminism. I guess this means that, in Rick's ideal world, women would be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen; but when confronted with his remarks concerning this, Rick punted ... and blamed his wife for writing that particular section of the book from whence it came.
Sexist? Yep. Mean? Certainly. Cowardly? Most definitely.
However, Rick Santorum has an unlikely champion and one who can claim to have been one of the original radical chic present at Leonard Bernstein's infamous dinner party for the Black Panthers all those years ago ... Baba Wawa, AKA Barbara Walters.
In the most recent edition of The View, Walters, who was one of the first women in the news media to front a daily news and information program at a time when most women her age were ... well, barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
You can watch Walters's defence of Saint Rick, the latest darling of the fundamentalist Right (who normally have no truck with Catholics), below.
Me? I'm with Whoopi. If the country goes mad and Santorum ends up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he's going to have one "big ol' problem." And so will the country.
OK, I'm not a believer at all, but in no way do I buy her assertion that the base is secular. I guess as well as African Americans, she resents people who practice a faith being part of the base as well.
