Soapbox

According to an essay brought to the attention of a sinful nation by that tireless guardian of our morality,  Pat  “9/11 Was-Caused-by-Abortion” Robertson, if you haven’t yet put out your Hallowe’en candy or gone for a hay ride, there may still be time! For the rest of us…. better start getting used to that sizzling sound!

You see, candy is a demonic portal at this time of year.

Wow.  I mean- who knew?? Well, thankfully, someone did, and it’s a tale to curl your hair!

          “…During this period demons are assigned against those who
participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are
automatically drawn to the  fetishes that open doors for them
to come into the lives of human beings.
For example, most of the candy sold during this season has
been dedicated and prayed over by witches.”

Holy s***!! Does M&M Mars know this? Are they in on the plot? I mean, the witches would pretty much have to be at the actual manufacturing facilities to be able to pray over all that candy, wouldn’t they? And there would have to be a whole army of them to get the job done, because America consumes a lot of candy! Look around you! (Heck, look at you! I bet you’re thinking about a snickers bar right now.)
Oh but wait- I’m thinking with my demon-infested brain and not listening to the word of the prophets sent to warn us! So sorry. Please continue.

        “…I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent
through the tricks and treats of the innocent  whether they get it by
going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store.
The demons cannot tell the difference.”

Dumb-ass demons!
Well thank God that  someone is out there to clue us in on all of this! I already knew that allowing my child to dress up as a dinosaur or ghost was a pathway to perdition, but as to the overall candy menace, I confess to being blissfully ignorant up until now. In fact, perhaps you should not even be reading this folks: I ate a Nestle’s Crunch from the trick-or-treat bowl last night!! I may be infested right now!

Snacking down the road to damnation

But the woman who wrote the article to which Roberston called our attention, clear-seeing though she is, leaves unanswered a few important questions in her warning to the un-holy among us:

1)  When does candy start being cursed? Should we hoard candy starting in, say, August, to get us through the danger period?

2)  When will we get the all-clear to once again enjoy our morning ritual of a bag of M&M’s and a cigarette  for breakfast? Surely by Christmas the angels are back at work blessing the little Christmas peeps!!

3)  I notice that she says “most of the candy” is cursed. Are there certain brands that won’t make our heads spin around and pea soup fly out? (please say “KitKat”, please say Kitkat!!)

Terrifyingly, the demonic attacks don’t stop at the candy bowl!

“… Mother earth is highly celebrated during the fall demonic harvest.
Witches praise mother earth by bringing her fruits, nuts and herbs.
Demons are loosed during these acts of worship. When nice church folk
lay out their pumpkins on the church lawn, fill their baskets with nuts and
herbs, and fire up their bonfires, the demons get busy. They have no respect
for the church grounds. They respect only the sacrifice and do not care if it
comes from believers or non-believers.

Holy freaking mother of God!  Just think how many unsuspecting Christians out there have placemats with pictures of acorns and oak leaves!  And all the grandmas hugging their grandchildren while wearing sweaters decorated with pumpkins and vines!
Run, kids! Save yourselves! Granny may be little more than a demon, trying to tempt you with cookies!! Why, if you have gourds and leaves in your  thanksgiving centerpiece, Satan is laughing the whole time you are thanking God! In fact- it sounds like even thanking God at all for the bounty of the earth is highly suspect!

        “…Even the colors of Halloween- orange, brown and dark red- are
dedicated(to Satan).”

Damn- Satan even owns colors? That hillside forest you were admiring last week, ablaze in red and orange? Brought to you by Lucifer.
The threats to our eternal souls continue to mount. No wonder autumn can be such a drag- and I thought it was just all that leaf-raking. Heaven save us- is nothing safe this time of year? Should we all just go into hibernation until the Christmas carols start pealing (November 1st) ?

I first came across this story on the “Comedy” page of the Huffington Post, so I thought it was a headline from the Onion. In fact, I hoped it was a headline from The Onion.  It’s not. It’s a story from the pages of  “What in the hell is wrong with people?”

There are so many real tragedies going on out there… so many ways in which people get “lost”, in which people hurt themselves and others that we could be focusing our energies on! For instance, the tragedy of people who demonize and condemn others because they have different traditions, and people who use fear as a tactic to intimidate and cow others into following them and thereby giving them power.
Why couldn’t  you folks spend just a little of your time and energy on some of the very real, very dangerous threats facing us poor, fallible humans?  Pat, Seasonal Affective Disorder is such a problem this time of year- so many souls are torn apart by it. Why don’t you advocate for better mental health care and treatment instead of wasting everyone’s time screaming of the dangers of pumpkin lattes?

Boo!

It’s really none of my business what kind of shit you choose to believe:
alien abductions… faked moon landings…
…a government conspiracy to subjugate us all by providing decent health care
…Mayan end-of-days prophesies
…people who talk to ghosts or heal strangers through their TV set,
…the evils of buttons and dancing.
You have the right to believe what you choose to believe,
Even if it contradicts what I believe,
even if it twists and perverts everything I believe.
That’s the way the world is supposed to work.

So if you want to believe that some people are superior to others
simply because of how they look or the country where they live,
or how they call to God-
Have at it, friend.
And if it validates you to refute decades of proven research
in astronomy, geology, astrophysics, chemistry and paleontology
and insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old,
that it totally your business.

If you feel more secure when you remove your children from public schools that pollute young minds
with radical ideas about diversity, tolerance and evolution,
go ahead. Knock yourself out, son!
It is not my place to say if you are right or wrong in matters of faith and the heart.
See how that works? It’s called ‘respect”.

But …
when you insist that my children be force-fed your doctrine of willful ignorance,
based on mere supposition, which flies in the face of all the empirical evidence-
….that is not OK.
If you need to believe that global climate change is a myth, believe it.
But when you try to make us all live under laws
that will mean my grandchildren will inherit a poisoned, dieing planet,
when you try to coerce our leaders into placing your theology, opinion and political ideology
over actual, you know,  facts–
you go too far!

You see, science is not a democracy!
You don’t get a vote on evolution, or physics or genetics
any more than when I let go of an apple
you get to vote on whether or not you want it to hit the ground.
In a torrential downpour, you may stand on the corner and scream that it is a sunny day
but how dare you try to make it illegal for the rest of us to take an umbrella?!

If you choose to condemn people I love without ever knowing them
beyond some label you put on them,
you can do that.
I pity you, but I won’t try to pass a law to stop you
for that’s how you and I are different.
Hate, if you must, but do not think that I will remain passive
if you try to make your prejudice  the law of the land.
When you insist our nation withhold certain basic rights
from some of our children
just because you have  managed to convince yourself
that such human rights are an abomination,
I will fight you with the last breath in my body.

You have a right to believe what you choose to believe
and to live according to those beliefs.
You have no right to force anyone else on this planet to believe your shit,
or to live under laws that are based solely on your shit.

The times are, indeed, a-changing.
You don’t have to move forward with us into the future,
toward enlightenment, acceptance and love
and away from greed, fear and entitlement….
but you will not stand in the way of those of us who do.

This weekend, while wandering through Walmart with my kids, I came upon something that I found disturbing.
Actually, just wandering through Walmart is somewhat disturbing for me, but in some small towns, and for some items, one has few other options. Which is, of course, their entire corporate goal in a nutshell. But I digress.

There, taking up an entire endcap in the toy department was the newest offering in the Barbie line of fake womanhood marketed to American girls: Biker Barbie. She is some sort of Harley Davidson tribute/wetdream/nightmare, resplendent in pink leather chaps no less, over blue jeans, a tight, lace-up corset style leather vest (half-way unlaced!) and a huge Harley tattoo across her upper back and shoulders.  (And yes, I understand that this doll is, in theory, marketed for adult “Collectors” but it was on an end cap in the toy department)

Biker Barbie has somewhat “edgier” platinum blonde hair and make-up, but rest assured that she still sports that sexy yet sexless feminine ideal that women and girls are supposed to embrace and emulate: utterly hairless body, disproportionately long legs, impossibly narrow, almost boyish hips and waist, huge thrusting breasts and overly large, cow-like eyes. Behind her, in image only, is her own hog, making her the queen of the road.
Is this liberation? Barbie meets the open road, commander of her machine, true master of her destiny!? Perhaps. I certainly do not, in theory, have any issue with an adult doll who rides a motorcycle, and while I’m not sure a massive tattoo is something I want little girls to be encouraged to get, plenty of wonderful people whom little girls look up to in real life have them. So why not Barbie? But….

I remember when they introduced Dr. Barbie when Katie was little, and I felt so… cheated. Barbie is a doctor now! Good for her! She’s smart and professional, with dreams beyond just snagging Ken and driving around in that stupid pink convertible! So… why is she wearing a micro-miniskirt under her white lab coat and tottering around in pink stiletto slut pumps? How can a doctor possibly do rounds like that? What patient is going to listen to what she is saying when she’s flashing that much leg?

This is progress? It reminds me of the Virginia Slims commercial: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Sure! Now women can get lung cancer from fashionablecigarettes! Wow- lucky us!
What kind of message are we sending? It’s OK to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or even to ride a motorcycle, ladies- as long as you wear pink and keep yourself looking like eye-candy at all times!
It would have been too much to expect to see Barbie looking like a strong, independent leather-lesbian biker. I get that. But God forbid Barbie ride her Harley in a t-shirt and jacket. Or wear a helmet!

All the “professional” Barbies I have ever seen retain that hyper-sexed image in some way. And, for every Barbie doll who is an artist or a volleyball player, there are 5 or 6 Barbie Dream Princesses with tiaras and permanent eye shadow. I’m sure Mattel marketing would tell us that is what they offer because this is what little girls want: the princess bride fantasy. But I would argue that this is what girls want mostly because this is what we tell them, over and over, in a hundred ways both subtle and overt, is the best they can aspire to!

Consider almost every Disney teen awakening movie you have ever seen, featuring the mean, beautiful rich girl who is cruel to but eventually vanquished by the sweet, honest plain girl… who even gets the mean girl’s boyfriend when someone shows her how to put on make-up and it turns out that she is beautiful too!!
Ta da! How convenient.
I think of all the popular female singers out there- some quite talented, who cannot seem to open their mouth without first baring their breasts and shaking their ass for the camera. Do they have so little faith in their own voice that they think no one will listen to them if they don’t put on a soft-core porn show? Or do they consider a singer’s voice to be of secondary importance to her looks? Once again: be whatever you want to be girls,  reach for the stars– just make sure you are flashing some cleavage at all times.

What are we telling our daughters? When Hillary Clinton was running for president, remember how many people sniped~ not about her policies or programs, which were legitimate targets- but her thick ankles and the clothes she wore?! Elena Kagen got the same treatment. Who would want a president or supreme Court justice that doesn’t look like a Barbie doll?!

This issue neither began nor ends with Barbie, Biker bitch or otherwise. Barbie is only a symptom of a low-level but chronic malaise in America.
We confuse and frustrate our daughters, bombarding them with impossible ideals of the beautiful, thin, big chested, perfect nosed, elegantly coiffed women who wake up in the morning with lip gloss on and can walk all day in 4″ heels, in slow motion, with their hair blowing sexily in the wind… even indoors. Every police force, law office and hospital on television is populated by women like this (and only women like this), all wearing tight, half-buttoned clothes with perfect eyeliner and lipstick after a 12 hour day, and we are told it is “realism” because their character occasionally worries about her sick kid. Yeah, thanks, that makes them just like us!
We tell our girls, “Go to college! Be smart! Make something of yourself…. but you’d better be hot while you do it, or you’re a failure.” Without “the look” you’re just a sweet old maid cat lady.

I know- I need to get over it. America will always value the beauty queen over the scholar or leader; the Victoria’s Secret “angel” in garters, stilettos and pouty, bee-stung lips over the Secretary of State who merely prevents a war. And while the TV beauty isn’t always insipid or stupid, looks are clearly the important part of the package, more important than brains, or heart.
It starts with the baby beauty pageants, where the contestants sport tiny wigs- because a 10 month old isn’t actually beautiful if she doesn’t have a full head of wavy, sexy, adult hair to blow in the wind… even indoors.

You know when I will begin to believe that things are truly progressing for American women? When they come out with  a Michelle Obama Barbie: feet flat in cute, practical shoes, strong arms, smaller breasts, clothes off the rack from Old Navy-  proud and smart and out to do good and change the world. That’s what I’d like to see on the shelves of Walmart.
Yeah. I’m not holding my breath.