The Sardonic Sideshow

In case you missed it on TV - I was on channel 35’s LA Cityview’s show about politics and comedy. You can go to the site and on the right side there is a link for show #36. Just click that and watch.

The producer said it was the funniest show they had ever done.

Of course, that’s on par with being the tallest kid in pre-school…

Not to degrade anyone’s opinion of the LA Weekly, but they hired me to do some local stories.

One on the Silver Lake Meadow and another on the Pico-Olympic One Way.

I’ll post more…later.

Hey All!

I’m blogging over at Mediabistro’s Fish Bowl LA. Come by and say hi!

I spent a week in DC. Great times. Great town. This is what I have brought back to share with you all:
This is the Department of Education building on Independence Avenue - right down the street from the Capitol. They’re little red school houses to celebrate, maybe? Promote? Trivialize? Bush’s education policy.
Look - No Child Left Behind - is literally a facade.

This was in the LA Daily News and The Beast.

Maybe it’s another Clinton running for president or maybe its American Gladiators being back on television or maybe it was the late night monologue jokes during the writer’s strike – but I’m suffering from some déjà vu. It’s all sounding vaguely familiar – I’ve seen this – heard it before.

The story is this: Young voters are being galvanized and energized…more than ever…this time.

Time Magazine ran a story of the youth vote on the cover, “Frustrated by feckless Washington, energized by the unscripted, pundit-baffling freedom of a wide-open race, young people are voting in numbers rarely seen since the general election of 1972.”

In 1970 congress extended the Civil Rights Act of 1965, it gave 18-year-olds the right to vote for federal offices. In the general election in 1972 between George McGovern and Richard Nixon young people for the first time were able to cast their ballots. The war in Vietnam was raging. There was, after all, a draft. The average age of a GI in that war was 19. They could go and die for their country but couldn’t have their vote counted. This was their moment. History was calling upon the young people of American to step up and change the course of history!

That year 1972 will forever be plugged as the year for ‘the youth vote’. It is the young voter’s election that all other young voter’s elections will be judged by.

What happened? Only half of those 18, 19 and 20 year olds that became eligible turned out to vote and Nixon won in a landslide.

Which poses the question: Why would we still want that demographics’ participation?

In 1992 when running against the first George Bush, Bill Clinton was roughly the same age then as Barack Obama is now. Early to mid-40’s. JFK’s age. Clinton, as a presidential candidate went on MTV. That had never happened before. President Bush at first refused. All the reports said that it was the most young people energized by an election since 1972. It was exciting. The numbers? According to the census bureau about 48% of young voters (18-24) turned out as compared to the 30 and over crowd, of 72.4%.

And let’s not forget the 2004 youth vote. “Vote or Die!” The word ‘blog’ was being used by pundits for the first time. Howard Dean and blogforamerica.com had excited the youth vote and there were more young people energized by an election since 1972! It was exciting! MySpace had just blown Friendster out of the water and grass roots had taken hold on this thing called ‘the internets’. What happened? Less than half (46%) of the youth voters turned out – way below national average of 61% of that year. And we re-elected a man that was nearly killed by eating a pretzel.

I’m not a cynic. I want all to be involved. Young, old – willfully uninformed – I say let’s all get together! I’m just cautiously optimistic. We as Americans have been stood up on prom night by young voters before. And then every couple of years we collectively forget, forgive and re-hype the next batch of flaky young people.

I know. I know. As we think every time we are about to get duped again. “This time it’s going to be different.“

On Super Tuesday I went to the polls half expecting the turn out to look like a Hannah Montana concert. When I got there it looked more like “Hannah and Her Sisters” reunion. There was a group of young Latino males exiting as I walked up. They had shaved heads and baggy pants. At first glance, they looked like gang bangers. As they approached I could make out their “I Voted” stickers on their hoodies. As we passed in the hall, one of them whispered towards me with a giddy skip in his step, ”Eh – vote Hillary!”

Different? Yep.

This ran in the LA Times.

As long as our elected officials have plush health insurance - the system will remain broken.

The other day, I admitted to a friend that I don’t have health insurance.

“What?!” he gasped. “But you’re married. Isn’t that part of the deal?” He reacted as if I had just told him that I believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the flat tax — something embarrassingly ridiculous. Because that’s what being uninsured is these days — a character flaw. It’s how you can pay taxes, volunteer, subscribe to public radio and still be considered a drain on society.

You may be wondering, “Seriously, how can you not have health insurance? Don’t you work? Are you illiterate? Do you have no self-worth whatsoever?!” The short answer is, my husband and I are both freelancers so we have no workplace insurance. And the $500-plus monthly premium? You might as well say our health depended on our adding a new wing to our apartment.

The uninsured are a puzzling group for California lawmakers. Telling the uninsured not to be uninsured, for example, is the solution they came up with. And taxing smokers (banking on their inability to quit but sufficient longevity to make it profitable) to pay for the poor is how lawmakers proposed to fund it. They called it ABX1 1.

This wasn’t good legislation. Good legislation has supporters; ABX1 1 had apologists. And it came to an ignoble end last week, killed by an 11-1 vote in a state Senate committee.

Even though I’m not for radical change, I do favor radical improvement. ABX1 1 was neither. It came around on its face: It appeared that the cure was the same as the disease.

Personally, we make above $47,000 a year, the cutoff for subsidized policies under the plan. We also live in a city where median home prices are still about half a million dollars. Now, while Countrywide Financial Corp. may have happily approved us for a loan a couple of months ago, that doesn’t mean we have any money. So the mandate to buy insurance would have fallen on a lot of broke ears.

Healthcare costs in this country, according to the World Health Organization, are the highest in the Western world. And the chasm between medical care for those with money and those without is potentially deadly. I once had a plantar wart that was near-fatal. True story. Some people gamble at casinos for kicks; I eat uncooked fish. There isn’t a moment that I don’t know that I am one accident or diagnosis away from complete financial ruin. Where are the riots? Where’s the outrage? Didn’t Michael Moore do a documentary on this?

The uninsured and the underinsured need true political advocates. There’s only one way I see that happening. We should force all our elected officials in California to live uninsured for at least 2 1/2 months of the year. Believe me, healthcare will get reformed quicker if their lives and livelihoods depend on it. One in five Californians are uninsured — so all our elected officials should be uninsured for one-fifth of the year until they fix the problem.

What good would that do? In 1993, San Francisco passed a nonbinding measure encouraging public employees from the mayor on down to take public transit at least twice a week. How’s that city’s transit system now? Among the best in the country.

People take vows of poverty to learn humility. People fast to learn gratitude for abundance. People live off the grid to learn — I don’t know — candle-making skills. Living uninsured can teach our elected officials to care for the healthcare system. (Lesson one — negotiate prices. There are more Californians on this planet than Canadians. Hint. Hint.) Call it a fact-finding mission. Make it sound heroic. It’s no more absurd than what they came up with.

Okay, I really could care less if you want to advertise your beliefs on your car. I don’t care if you have bumper stickers for candidate. I don’t care if you have some quirky platitude about random acts of kindness. I don’t care if you want to put a sticker of Calvin peeing on something. Really - I’m all for self-expression. Go on - express!

But…

Really? It’s like in case someone didn’t know that the fish was a Christian symbol - in order to spell it out - there’s a holy cross for the eye?!

It makes it look like a dead fish.

Exhibit A:

Sigh.

I might be over thinking it - I have considered that it could be some ironic hipster thing. Because I’m an optimist. And I often think the smartest of people until I am inevitably proven wrong.

It was not intended to be the trucker hat of bumper stickers.

The funny thing is: Christians have told me (over and over again) that I am offensive to them. My work. My humor. Me as a person. Is offensive to some Christians.

But a sticker that looks like a dead fish? Naw. Perfect gift idea!

I’m posting this picture for a few reasons. One, to prove that I was there at the Kodak theater. And the other to prove that the iPhone is many things - but an acceptable digital camera it is not.

It’s like in the movie Titanic, where there are the different classes on separate levels of the ship.

They kept the press quarantined on the third floor away from decent folks, the candidates and the shrimp cocktail.

I’m blogging from the debate tonight at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood over at LA Daily’s Friendly Fire.

She’s running for president, people, not Prom Queen.

This piece ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Huffington Post and LA Daily News.

My grandparents just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. They got hitched right after Grampa got back from the war. They’re both educated professionals. They’re proud Americans. We come from a long line of Southern Democrats. My grandparents, the mavericks, are first generation lifelong Republicans. Grampa has a portrait of Ronald Reagan in his bathroom. Not in the place that would make ‘trickle down’ literal - let alone actually manifest. The portrait is near the sink, where he brushes his teeth. Every morning he wakes up, and The Gipper is proudly smiling at him.

With that being said, for my own amusement, the other day I asked Grama what she thought about Hillary Clinton. Now it may have been a bad cell phone connection, but I think I heard my otherwise sweet little Grama actually growl before saying, ”That woman.” She said disapprovingly. “Ambitious.”

Which is EXACTLY what Clinton basher Christopher Hitchens says about Hillary. He notes her ‘overweening ambition’ in his otherwise thin ‘case’ (think grudge) against her in his latest Slate.com article.

With all due respect to Grama, there has to be something dark and twisted about the human psyche that only wants people that don’t want power to actually get it. Or maybe its that men are go-getters and women are ambitious. Or maybe it’s just Hillary. She has turned into a black light for Americans. Highlighting our dandruff and other things we would care not to have mentioned. Like the fact that we have no restraint when it comes to our viciousness toward her and can‘t come up with a good reason for it.

Her critics are starting to get really freaky with vehemence. People are starting to foam at the mouth. Chris Matthews, for example, was starting to look like Old Yeller right before they put him down.

For those of you not following the election that close because your more humane hobby of setting ants on fire with a magnifying glass is taking up most of your time, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, on Morning Joe the day after the New Hampshire primary he said, “The reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.” Then he went on to say,” She didn’t win on merit. She won because everybody felt, ‘my God this woman stood up under public humiliation’ - that’s what happened.”

So it’s not that voters really dig name recognition (cough - Schwarzenegger). It’s that she got a host of sympathy votes? When has Hillary Clinton ever - ever gotten sympathy? Her enemies are so quick to hit below the belt that neutrality is the best I’ve seen for her.

Matthews later defended his comments and said that he was not sharing an ‘opinion’ just historical interpretation. It’s like saying that it was not eggplant - it was aubergine. It’s really the same thing.

Then after what was a week’s long outrage for his remarks he finally gave up. On his show Hardball he said, “Saying that Senator Clinton got where she’s got simply because her husband did what he did to her is just as callous, and I can see now, it comes across just as nasty, worse yet, just as dismissive.” That was big of him, but that comment was hardly isolated. He never thought that calling Clinton supporters “castratos in the eunuch chorus” was nasty and dismissive?

Politics is a blood sport, but even blood sports have sportsmanship. But not when it comes to Hillary. Back when her husband was running for president, back in 1992, a television reporter from Columbus, Ohio asked her, “You know, some people think of you as an inspiring female attorney mother, and other people think of you as the overbearing yuppie wife from hell. How would you describe yourself?”

You may be wondering the answer to that question. I’ll quote from A Time to Kill, “Now imagine she’s white.” Think of that question to anyone other than Hillary. Could you imagine another first lady hopeful, on the campaign trail EVER being asked that? Could you see anyone asking Barbra, Nancy or Laura that?? Hillary’s rapport with the press started way back then. Way back then in what the press dubbed “The Year of the Woman”.

But just the word ‘ambition’ used in the pejorative is baffling. “I disagree with her wanting to do anything with more prestige than she has right now.” In other words, she needs to know her place. And because she doesn’t know her place - don’t hold anything back. It’s not regular criticism. It’s like a reprimand and to used Matthews’ words ‘public humiliation’ for not being more demure.

It’s as if she’s not liked because she’s a know-it-all. She’s running for president - we want a president to KNOW IT ALL.

It’s not even a double standard - it’s a special standard - just for Hillary Clinton. It’s the Hillary Standard. And who can hold up to the Hillary Standard? No one. Not even Hillary.

It’s a reality show where otherwise, rational, intelligent people are showing their prejudices and blinding contempt. It’s tired. It’s boring. And it’s not discourse. It reminds me of the ironic quote by Voltaire, “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” Done.

I was at a comedy club one night with my friend who is also a female comic. We were hanging out at the bar when a guy approached us both and asked, ”Hey, why are female comics all so butch?”

To which I said, ”Why are female firefighters so butch? Because you want them to be - believe me.” At least that is what I would have liked to have said.

Instead it threw me into a panic and I immediately thought that in all the hubbub of worrying about being funny, I had forgotten to worry about being too butch! That and my imperfect mid-section were now moved to the top of my queue of reasons to feel bad about myself.

What actually happened is I said what I say every time someone brings up “women” and “funny” in the same sentence. I say, “Kathleen Madigan is funny.” And that usually ends it. This time I said, “Kathleen Madigan is femmy.”

Bigger ashtrays.

The piece ran in the LA Daily News and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I was born into the group the Children of God (COG) or as they are called now, the Family International - a Christian cult that started in the late ‘60’s made up of dropout hippies in Huntington Beach. They went ‘international’ after the leader was sought for kidnapping and tax evasion. I’m in denial that anyone has heard of them. I pretend like they’re obscure. Many will remember the 2005 suicide of their heir apparent Ricky Rodriguez, right after he killed his childhood nanny Angela Smith. That was sensational enough to make headlines and inspire a “Law and Order” episode. Recently author Don Lattin released a book about the cult’s history titled “Jesus Freaks.”

My parents left the sect when I was five, while my uncle and cousins remained members for the next 20 years. I obsessively follow any press that the group gets. While watching CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” report detailing Rodriguez’s death and the group’s well-known child sex practices, Anderson said, “Well, that has nothing to do with Jesus!”

This is how the public has always reacted to the COG. It’s upsetting and so it’s dismissed outright as not actually Christian. It’s a quick effort to make sense of it.

That is how we deal with things we don’t like in religion. We reject all unpleasant elements as being frauds. Calling for the death of a teacher because she agreed to name a teddy bear Muhammad? That isn’t actually Muslim. The wide spread molestation of boys by priests? That isn’t actually Catholicism. The institutionalized and systematic abuse of lower and lowest classes? That isn’t actually Hindu. We even go so far as to tout pre-Columbian religions as being peaceful and passive. If we sidestep all the human sacrificing and war-making, they were.

We spend so much time revising and rationalizing the track record of religion that we lose track of reality in the process. It’s like debating the atomic structure of the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, sure, we’re technically discussing the volumes - but we’re also completely missing the point.

Religion is a very effective way to control, manipulate and convince people to do almost anything. It’s more obvious in smaller cults. But it applies to the bigger denominations as well. Consider the fact that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality outside of religious belief. The same goes for Jews. And as best I can see it - science.

Because when everything is subjective - well, everything is subjective. There is no need for evidence, logic or fact. That means that hysteria is on a hair trigger. Which is fine - as long as you, your friends and anyone you care about are all on the right side of the wrath when it comes.

So if the COG has “nothing to do with Jesus,” then what does have to do with Jesus? The Crusades? The Inquisition? The Conquistadors? The witch hunts? The slave trade? Manifest destiny? The Holocaust? Miscegenation laws? Fred Phelps? Crimes against women of questionable virtue? The entire presidency of George W. Bush? They all have to do with Jesus because they were all justified by Christianity. Just like the COG’s prostitution and child abuse was justified.

When you say you are a Christian, you become everything that is or was Christianity. Good, bad or indifferent - it’s ALL Christianity. A drop of water doesn’t get to claim autonomy while swimming in the ocean - even if that drop of water happens to be Mormon and running for president.

The alternative is a skewed and inaccurate, albeit a more comfortable, belief in one’s faith. Like Sherri Shepherd on “The View,” - going one step further than regular creationists who believe that the world was created 6000 years ago and insisting that nothing existed before Jesus (2000 years ago). That’s the new iTestament where you can customize your beliefs so you can stand out among your friends. And why is that so bad? What could go wrong if we forget history under the guise of glossing over what’s objectionable? The first answer is that we can repeat it. We can have another preemptive invasion in the Middle East just like in the First Crusade. Shudder. If we wear rose-colored glasses and refuse to see the problems, then we will NEVER solve them.

When the faithful aren’t aware of the true, unflatteringly lit, warts-and-all history of their religion, its past follies and its vulnerability to mistakes - it leads to the insistence that America is and should be a Christian nation. Our Constitution is a product of the era of The Enlightenment where the foundation was reason. But we are told that our Constitution “rests on a foundation of faith.” This type of revisionist history causes the line of church and state to be blurred, which is precisely what our Constitution tries to guard against. And there is plenty of evidence that when that happens, it isn’t beneficial to the church or to the state.

So when stories of cults and abuse in the name of religion make national news, let’s look at the similarities instead of dismissing them because they don’t apply to us. See what they can teach us. And be open to the answers.

Hunter S. Thompson used to say that elections are the Super Bowl for political junkies. That’s must be why immediately following debates the question that is asked is, “Who won?”

I know we call it a debate, which denotes discussion and considering opposing arguments. That could lead to a winner. What we really have is 90 minutes of self-promotion and front runner flagellation. That’s not a debate - that’s the “Real World: Washington DC”…with a fraction of the nudity and public drunkenness (but that could change after the Iowa caucus - yeehaw!).

Anyway, the new thing for those that watched the ‘debate’ on Fox was the “Voter’s Voice” chart.

It’s the real time opinion of Republicans watching the debate. It soared for Romney and shrank for Paul. The it went back up for Huckabee and down for Giuliani. And then I wondered if the voters were listening to the debate or reading the crawler. “Clinton leads in NH by 31%.” Down. “Meanwhile, Chertoff says terrorist threat from abroad not abated.” Up. “Islamic terrorists enjoy pouched kittens for religious festival.” Meh. You know crawler stuff…

My point is: leave it to Fox to fast track opinion over content.

And its like the super hot blond anchors on Fox - can’t see how it’s relevant - but it is effectively distracting.