Tagged: Elayne Riggs

The Oppression Olympics, by Elayne Riggs

The Oppression Olympics, by Elayne Riggs

As much as I’d like to use this column’s title to segue into a discussion about Beijing and Tibet and Stephen Spielberg and so forth, that’s not my chosen subject matter this time. Although I reserve the right to swipe my own header again once the XXIX Olympiad gets going. No, the title refers to the phenomenon of all kinds of different people believing, and loudly proclaiming, that systemic discrimination against the particular group with which they identify (and sometimes, if they’re "concern trolls," against a group of which they’re not a member but with which they’ve chosen to sympathize to the point of condescension) is "the last acceptable prejudice."

A few weeks ago, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wrote and presented his now-famous speech about dealing with questions of race as though citizens were, you know, adults. As hoped for, it started a lot of interesting discussions, as adults who’d been speaking about race and gender and privilege all along were once more thrust into the consciousness of others who hadn’t. One of the more interesting comments I read came from a Native American rights activist who was disappointed that the speech seemed to define the issue of race as, once again, mostly a black and white divide. While I believe Obama did include Asians and Latinos in his speech, I’m pretty sure Native Americans received no mention. However, I’m not prepared to ascribe this omission to deliberate exclusionism; any orator knows there’s a point where your rhetorical cadence gets bogged down by too many "and"s.

And yet, that commenter had a point. When we’re talking about rights and justice for everyone in this country, it’s not a good idea to leave out an entire series of cultures that flourished on this continent before Europeans came along, many of which have managed against all genocidal odds to continue to exist. Nor is it a good idea to belittle those same cultures in bad analogies. Even speeches about racial divides can’t "win" sometimes. It’s a tricky tightrope we all walk, ever since the days when "politically correct" was defined as "well-meaning (usually white) liberals who bend over backwards so much to include everyone that they wind up saying nothing at all." There were jokes about breaking down identity politics into such absurd subcategories one wound up worrying about catering to one-eyed left-handed lesbian Inuit vegans. At some point, most of these subcategories must be assumed to exist for purposes of receiving social justice, without needing to be the recipient of shout-outs at every single turn.

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In My Ears and In My Eyes (Part 2), by Elayne Riggs

In My Ears and In My Eyes (Part 2), by Elayne Riggs

So as I was saying last week, by the time I hit college I went full-force into my first round of Beatlemania. I must have frequented my share of Beatlefests (as noted in the comments to last week’s column, there’s one coming up in NJ this weekend), but really only remember going to one because that’s where I got Harry Nilsson’s autograph, on the cover of his album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (for a reason I no longer remember, I have Jimmy Webb’s autograph on the back). From what I hear, they’re still going on. But the Beatles started influencing pretty much everything else in my life.

I named my fictitious corporation Pen-Elayne (wordplay on "Penny Lane" and "the pen of Elayne") Enterprises, which pun I borrowed again for my weekly comics reviews Pen-Elayne for Your Thoughts and my current blog Pen-Elayne on the Web. Penny Lane really became my theme song; I’d always envisaged something I can only describe as God’s Hidden Camera following my every move, so the line "And though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway" really resonated. Particularly now with Google’s Street View!

Having already gone through two years of Shakespeare in high school, I was primed to expand my Anglophilia, and the Beatles were a perfect outlet for my fascination of all things English. That interest has since culminated in marriage to an actual Englishman who, although four years my junior, is probably more knowledgeable about Beatles trivia than I’ll ever be, has hundreds of bootleg songs, keeps up on all the news items of what’s happening with their music, and generally makes my head spin. Oh, and even though Robin is a southern country boy, we like to goof around with pretty bad imitations of Liverpool accents (okay, his is better than mine, as you’d expect). Through Rob I also met artist Alan Davis and my lettering goddess Pat Prentice, who both share a birthday with Sir Paul. I seem to remember Alan introducing me to Pat by joking that she "sounds like Ringo," since she’s also from Mersey-way. (She doesn’t, although I find a female Liverpool accent as cute as a male one.)

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In My Ears and In My Eyes (Part 1), by Elayne Riggs

In My Ears and In My Eyes (Part 1), by Elayne Riggs

Last week we were casting about, as usual, for something interesting to watch in the 100-200 channel range of our cable system. The local PBS stations were hip-deep in pledge drives, which meant 20-minute breaks between segments of shows that would otherwise have been enjoyable but which we’d mostly seen anyway by this point. (Did anyone else think it just a tad disconcerting that WLIW, the Long Island-based PBS station, could afford to send its two high muckety-mucks out to broadcast from Innsbruck during the pledge breaks for Visions of Austria, but made sure to keep reminding us that Viewers Like You made all that possible? Oh great, I should give to their station to sponsor their executives’ vacations?)

The few writers’ strike-delayed shows that we usually watch on the networks haven’t begun running new episodes, and in their place were the same tired crop of cringeworthy reality shows. Keith Olbermann and MSNBC are turning into FOX-lite (but that’s another column). And how many times can I watch the Ghana episode of Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations? (Not including subconscious reruns during REM sleep, approximately ten, but not consecutively; give me a break, Travel Channel!)

So it was that we found our way up the dial to a delightful programme all about amber hosted by "Dickie-Love’s" brother David Attenborough — and now little impressionable ol’ me suddenly wants some new amber earrings — which we then followed up with a Biography Channel episode on The Beatles’ Wives, which itself preceded two recent Paul McCartney concerts, one from 2005 and the other from 2007, on that same channel, both horribly chopped from the originals. And suddenly there I was, fascinated all over again.

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Confessions of an Armchair Feminist, by Elayne Riggs

Confessions of an Armchair Feminist, by Elayne Riggs

Last Saturday was International Women’s Day, the first IWD where women in the United States were facing the very strong possibility that an Estrogen-American would become their next President — and the equally strong reality that lots of people (mostly men, but a surprising number of women as well) are committed to seeing that she never breaks that ultimate glass ceiling. Not because they (like me) don’t necessarily consider her the best person for the job; it’s not like the Presidency has been a meritocracy for a long time. But because many harbor a deep and irrational resentment of the very idea of a woman in power, particularly wielding the type of nigh-imperial power that the current administration and its cronies in the other two branches of government have ceded to the executive branch.

This resentment, nay, this seething hatred, has manifested itself in some scary ways that us second-wave feminists could have sworn went out with disco. One prominent pundit speculated that Senator Clinton was "pimping out" her daughter for working on her campaign, like pretty much every adult child of a candidate from Mary Cheney to the Romney boys has done. That same daughter was once the butt of a particularly nasty joke from the current Republican Presidential candidate, who made the sexist jape a two-fer by including a reference to the "manliness" of Janet Reno. These days it’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who receives remarks about how cadaverish she appears (funny, she looked fine to me when I saw her on The Daily Show last month).

Of course, the progressives who once espoused Stokeley Carmichael’s adage that "the only position for women in [the movement] is prone" aren’t immune from sexist remarks either. Folks who should know better choose to attack right-wing lunatics like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin not on their lunacy but on their looks. Even for some on "our side," biology would appear to be destiny.

And while a part of me seethes at all this with the same rage I felt in high school and college every time I heard "women can’t" do one thing or the other, with no further explanation needed but that we were women — I also confess that a part of me just doesn’t care any more. After fifty years of this stuff, I’m more than suffering from outrage burnout.

 

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The Lost Art of Longhand, by Elayne Riggs

The Lost Art of Longhand, by Elayne Riggs

8:30 AM, Bx7 bus southbound to subway: It’s favored by Luddites and techies alike. Early adopter Neil Gaiman, for instance, writes all his first drafts this way, using various fancy pens. (Me, I use my Uniball blue roller ’cause it’s what I carry in my pocketbook.) It’s physically draining, at least if you’re not used to it. It requires both concentration to keep your hand steady, and a heightened awareness of your surroundings, particularly on moving vehicles. It certainly isn’t for everyone; I’d rarely recommend it for myself. But a pad of paper is a lot lighter and more flexible than my laptop, and not having the distractions of checking email and blogs and playing online games forces me to focus on the here-and-now of completing this week’s column. Besides, I need the practice in transcribing relatively illegible handwriting.

My Dad had beautiful longhand. Which amazed me, because he was naturally left-handed which was a no-no in hyper-superstitious Romania in the ’30s. His schoolteachers beat that left-handedness out of him — not entirely, I think he still shaved and did a few other things lefty, but he became right-handed for purposes of writing. I inherited his "sinister" gene, but by 1960s secular America children were allowed to retain such peculiar proclivities.

8:55 AM, "1" train southbound into Manhattan: Unfortunately, I never inherited Dad’s longhand flair. I can add a few flourishes here and there, but only if I slow down and write very carefully and deliberately, and that starts my hand aching again. I figure I’m okay as long as I’m just legible enough to make out a check (I’m mired enough in the 20th century to still use checks on occasion). Damn, I have to put this away now, someone just sat down next to me and I can no longer comfortably use my right arm to prop this up…

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I, the Jury Duty, by Elayne Riggs

It’s been a hell of a winter for me. Under the Lennonesque heading of life being what happens to you whilst you’re busy making other plans, the latest in a series of stumbling blocks that have come between me and my ability to participate more in ComicMix’s news section — including the still-ongoing detox from my former job (which kept calling me back in through the end of last year), the nearly-full-time search for a new means of income, and a nasty lingering flu – was last week’s call to jury duty. It was inevitable, but given my temporary unemployment period I’m glad it happened when it did. It’s been over four years since I last served, and now it’ll be another four years at least until they call me up again, which should gladden any potential employer.

I had no excuse to postpone this, but I still wasn’t looking forward to it. The one time I’ve actually served on a jury was on a criminal case, a murder trial, and we wound up convicting the accused, during a time when the death penalty was still in effect. The knowledge that I and my fellow jurors may have contributed in sending this guy to the electric chair, however guilty we may have thought him for his crime, unnerved me to the point where I don’t think I can ever serve again on that sort of a criminal case.

I was lucky in subsequent call-ups, in that most of the cases where my name came up for the jury pool were civil ones. One was settled before it commenced to trial, and I got out of the pool for the other one, I think, because I knew Cheryl Harris. You see, folks, you never know when your comic book connections will come in handy! Cheryl and I had both held the Membership Secretary position on the Friends of Lulu National Board, and saw each other socially besides, ever since our CompuServe days. But in this case I had to admit, during the initial jury questioning from the attorneys and the judge, that I also knew that she worked in the Bronx County court system, and so I was excused back to the jury assembly room and my name wasn’t picked again during that round.

In those days I think the typical jury service, if you weren’t picked to go on a case, was three days, and you got $15 per day which the state sent to your employer and your employer deducted from your paycheck, or something like that. It works differently with each state, and the rules seem to change all the time. As a matter of fact, this round even the venue changed.

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TV Back Talk, by Elayne Riggs

TV Back Talk, by Elayne Riggs

Many people in this country are experiencing the age of interactive television for the first time. In other countries such as the UK, they’ve had a version of this for some time, in the form of a curious informational additive known as teletext, a useful imp that lives in the bands of the picture that we don’t normally see, and which can be accessed by Brits wanting to know the local weather, transportation timetables, sports scores, and lots of other stuff that most of us in the US can only get online or through cable systems. Here in the US I’ve just discovered my digital cable system has interactive channels that can personalize my weather, traffic, pretty much whatever I want. And that’s not even counting the on-demand entertainment, a tiny percentage of which is available at no extra charge!

And bully for the 21st century and all, but I’ve been interacting with my TV since I was a kid. And I’m not just talking about Winky-Dink.

Romper Room aside, I think I always suspected the people on TV couldn’t see me or talk to me. I understood the idea of shows being recorded for anyone to tune in to, or not. The shows were still there even when I wasn’t watching them. But none of that prevented me from talking back, from letting what I saw affect me to the point where I had an immediate, visceral reaction. As I recall my Dad couldn’t stand it, he’d be there constantly reminding me "they can’t hear you!" Then again, maybe that’s Mom. Dad was the first person on his feet cheering whenever the Yankees took the lead, and yelling about what a bum the umpires or managers were when the game wasn’t going well. So it’s not like the apple fell very far from the tree there.

One of the great things about being married to Robin is that we have many of the same pet peeves about what we see and respond to on TV. One of my biggest annoyances is the increasing use of subtitles when the person being subtitled is speaking English. Occasionally the speaker will have something of a thick accent, but I’ve seen subtitles used with Scots and Irish and even Americans from southern states. Now come on y’all, a lot of that down-home drawl does get to be a bit much, but it’s not a foreign tongue! The only thing subtitles have in their favor is that they, like news crawls on the 24-hour cable stations, encourage reading. Even when they’re misspelled.

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The Dancing Bear Expose, by Elayne Riggs

The Dancing Bear Expose, by Elayne Riggs

Have you heard of the proverbial dancing bear? It’s apparently a Russian expression, which has its origin in some folk tale or other, and holds that the amazing thing about the performing animal isn’t how well it dances, but that it dances at all. This metaphor (sometimes substituting "dog" for "bear" after the Samuel Johnson quote comparing a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs) became very popular in the heyday of "second-wave" feminism, whenever some consciousness-raising battle appeared won and another hurdle reared up in its place, when the very act of being female and expecting to be treated as human beings at the same time felt Sisyphusean in its difficulties. Sadly, the bear is still rearing its head, howling, dancing backwards and in high heels.

It doesn’t matter what the endeavor, career or hobby. Whether Presidential candidate or comic book writer or movie subject matter or just-plain blogger, a spate of "dancing bear" articles that appears like clockwork in the mainstream news, every few months or years, mining the same territory that comes down to "Look, women are doing things!" As if we need to be reminded we exist. It’s not how well the bear is dancing, it’s that it’s doing it at all! A fellow blogger once remarked that she could practically tell the changing of the seasons by how often she came across male bloggers wanting to know where all the female bloggers were, as a different male blogger posted this in almost exact 90-day increments.

Likewise, now that Gail Simone is writing Wonder Woman, DC’s longest-running, highest- profile book featuring a female character, we’re starting to see features pop up in all sorts of magazines pointing to the dancing bears again. "Pow! Zap! Women can write and draw!" And imagine, we can breathe and think as well!

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Birds of a Feather, by Elayne Riggs

Birds of a Feather, by Elayne Riggs

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already burnt out on the 2008 primary season. Okay, to tell you the truth I was burnt out sometime last autumn. The other day I was watching Tom Brokaw’s documentary about 1968 (highly recommended) and one of the political facts mentioned was that Bobby Kennedy didn’t even enter that year’s Presidential race until after the New Hampshire primary! Can you imagine such a thing today, a candidate not even declaring until after an "important" primary has already been run? This year almost all of them dropped out before yesterday’s Super-Duper Pooper-Scooper Fat Tuesday.

It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of Catholics out there are considering giving up following politics for Lent. It’s not like there’s anything in it for us any more. People joke about the campaigns turning into another version of American Idol, but if you think about it the parallels are valid. You have performances evaluated on TV by a bunch of millionaires, and you’re given the illusion of choice among a very narrowly-acceptable band of telegenic hopefuls running more on the basis of style over substance (hey, they have machines now that can "correct" even live voices so they all come out on-key and synthetically perfect). The big difference with politics, besides the sad reality that the results of this contest matters to our lives and the future and the rest of the world, is that the contestants are also millionaires. Have to be; they wouldn’t be considered "viable" candidates otherwise.

"Viable" is one of those nebulous, never-defined vagaries like "freedom" that means whatever the person using it wants the people hearing it to think it means. The less you define something, the less you can be pinned down and expected to stick to your definition. So when you assume everyone believes "freedom" means the same thing, when most of the time those who employ the term equate it with "unfettered capitalism and false consumer choice" even though others still consider it to mean "having bodily autonomy and not being homeless nor starving nor spied upon nor told how or whether to worship," they’re able to completely circumvent actual communication and not have anything they say be actionable! And "viable" is a media-created term — they don’t have to admit that their use of "viable" means "rich and part of the political machine and accepted by the corporations we’ve allowed to actually run this country" if they can get us to believe it means "intelligent and experienced enough to be taken seriously despite their income level or circle of cronies." I mean, we should have known that ship had long since sailed when the last guy got elected despite having mostly negative experience and far too little intelligence for the job.

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Death, Warmed Over, by Elayne Riggs

Death, Warmed Over, by Elayne Riggs

As I type this I’m struggling through a pretty bad flu, which I am convinced I contracted on Thursday. That’s when I went for a job interview at the World Financial Center, a hermetically-sealed office and mall complex sandwiched squarely between the Hudson River and the now-cavernous World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan. I’m unsure whether it was the biting winds or the horrendously long "pedestrian walkway" past the gaping hole of Ground Zero and back to the nearest subway that could get me home now that the Cortlandt Street stations are, it seems, permanently closed, but I haven’t been the same since I shrugged off the interview suit upon my arrival home. The next day Robin met his latest deadline, and we were looking forward to a somewhat active weekend — and then it hit. And it’s still hitting me, and has started hitting him. Funny how, at my age, "lucking out" translates into "thank goodness Robin and I got sick whilst I’m unemployed and he’s between issues!"

But you know, in the back of my head I can’t help but wonder whether I got ill, in part, from breathing in dead people. After all, we all know how the EPA of a government renowned for its repeated lies about everything else also lied to citizens about the air quality in that area. I know it’s over seven years later, but there’s still a ton of construction kicking up dust in that area, and the "walkways" offer scant protection, particularly on a cold and windy day.

Living through 9/11, being in the city the day the towers were attacked, one learns never to take life for granted. This is my 50th It’s All Good column for ComicMix, a milestone number of sorts, and so it seems fitting that I come back around to a subject touched upon in my first column here last February 15, scarcely a month after I’d lost my best friend. In fact, this would have been It’s All Good #51 but for the untimely death of my father. Sometimes the Reaper seems inescapable. Because in the end, of course, it is. And as it touches us all in real life, personally or otherwise (as with Heath Ledger’s recent demise), some of us find much less entertainment and amusement in its fictional counterpart.

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