The Chance to be better...

It's no secret that I am a HUGE fan of Rachel Maddow. And I take pleasure in the knowledge that others are discovering Maddow's geniusness/fantasticness/adorableness. AfterEllen posted an article about Maddow at the Television Critics Association Winter Tour (she attended last week). She spoke eloquently about a variety of topics, but it was this statement about the Obama Inauguration that brought a tug to my heart.


What this inauguration means is that in front of a White House that was built with slave labor in an inaugural week that starts at the Lincoln Memorial, where the second inaugural address is etched into the wall, which is about our country shedding a drop of blood by the sword for every drop of blood that was drawn by the lash, in this country, we are electing an African-American president.

Certainly Maddow isn't the only person to make this connection - the 1 to 3 million people that are expected to visit DC this Tuesday know it, too. But her ability to wrap it up in a beautiful package is so utterly astute.

Maddow has proven to be a brilliant communicator. She has that rare ability to take book learnin' (Stanford, Rhodes Scholar) and reshape it so that it is accessible to us all.

She has the tenacity of Hillary Clinton, but she dresses like Barack Obama

I didn't come up with that title myself...it is one of the blurbs on the Rachel Maddow Show (radio version) that they play at the beginning of the hour.

Here is what Rachel said about being out on AfterEllen.com.

“I think the responsibility that we have as gay Americans,” she says, “is to the extent that we can - and we ought to be really ambitious about the extent to which we can - we have to be out.”

“That’s the thing that we owe the people who came before us who are the pioneers, and that’s the thing we owe the next generation of gay people in terms of clearing the way and making life easier for them. I think that there is a moral imperative to be out, and I think that if you’re not out, you have to come to an ethical understanding with yourself why you are not. And it shouldn’t be something that is excused lightly. I don’t think that people should be forced out of the closet, but I think that every gay person, sort of, ought to push themselves in that regard. Because it’s not just you. It’s for the community and it’s for the country.”

Thank you, Rachel. I think you summed it up perfectly!

That explains the hat...

(Her hat says "Hillary for President", thanks Katie for the picture that I clearly stole)

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls contributed $1,382 to Hillary Clinton.


Is that a weird amount, or is it just me? I wonder how much she donated to the Pretenders, because she sure gets a lot of mileage out of that shirt.


Chrissie Hynde would have made a nice VP choice...oh well.

Then days so still the beauty gives you pain

It's time for another "Emily Saliers is a Genius Moment" here at The Name of Your Band...

From what I understand, this song was written by Emily about her late sister. She has an incredible way of expressing loss - what it is like to live without someone, even while the world keeps turning.

She's Saving Me (Indigo Girls)

We were sitting round a dying fire, somebody lit incense
somebody lit a cigarette and passed the bottle around
It was just strawberry season, backbreaking pickers in the patches
everything's burning down to ashes and down to the ground
She's saving me I don't even think she knows it
It's a strange way to show it as distant as last night's dream unravels
She's saving me I'm a very lost soul I was born with a hole in my heart
The size of my land locked travels
I try to put it aside but it's too much bigger than me there's a big brown hawk in the tree
Lighting and leaving
There's tea leaves tossing, heads up pennies in my pocket,
dead star like a rocket, the arc of my grieving
She's saving me I don't even think she knows it
It's a strange way to show it as distant as last night's dream unravels
She's saving me I'm a very lost soul I was born with a hole in my heart
The size of my land locked travels
The sky pours out biblical rain
Then days so still the beauty gives you pain
The heatwave kills the green and she remains unseen
But colors up my dream with all things blooming
This is not all there is it's not a kingdom it's not an angry god
It feels like her
It feels like no fear, it feels like no doubt, it feels like inside out
The ashes stir
She's saving me I don't really think she knows it
It's a strange way to show it as distant as last night's dream unravels
She's saving me I'm a very lost soul
I was born with a hole in my heart as wide as my land locked travels

Maddow Giddiness...

At this moment my heart is swelling with pride. Rachel Maddow is a rock star.

I just (again) watched Rachel spank Pat Buchanan on national television. I love it when she does that.

Let's talk about how amazing this person is as compared to me. I am almost 32 years old; Rachel is 35. I have $67 in the bank and am unemployed; Rachel is the host of a successful radio show, regularly appears as a political pundit on MSNBC, and was just given her on show on the same network. I'm sitting in a house I don't own playing with cats that aren't mine watching the Democratic Convention on TV; Rachel is part of the political roundtable in Denver AT THE CONVENTION and she was just complimented on her intelligence by Kathleen Sebelius and Tom Brokaw in the span of 30 seconds. I suck.

Seriously though: I'm proud. Proud that a person - a woman - a gay woman, at that, is receiving so much publicity and respect because she is SMART. Not because of her looks or her funniness (although I do think she is both hot and funny), but because she is a Rhodes Scholar and an outstanding politcal commentator. I'm proud because she is an out "mannish woman" lesbian (her words!) and that a representation of me and the people that I care about is finally a part of mainstream television news. Maddow doesn't flaunt her sexuality - it is just a fact, like the air she breathes or the color of her hair.

Thank you, Rachel.

And you could hear the pages flapping in the wind blown book of my days

A few weeks ago my GF and I spent a drunken weekend at the beach in Rehoboth, DE. During a particularly snockered moment, I decided to sing karaoke. There were two Indigo Girls songs in the book to choose from - Fill It Up Again (which I "sang") and (SHOCKING!!!) Closer to Fine. Why FIUA? I don't know...seemed random, but whatev. So, in my inebriated state, as I publicly slaughtered the song that Emily Saliers probably spent months, if not years, crafting, I recall having this thought:

"I had NO idea that these were the words to this song!"

SO! - In honor of Emily and her genius, and because of the fact that I have not given her lyrics the attention that they deserve, I am posting them here. Enjoy.

Won't have you see me as your sad sack Lost my something and I can't get it back
Or a kill on your trophy rack I checked my schedule now my train is rolling down a track
Past the sadness of the salt flats To the prospect of the land fat
Or just a lazy orange house cat On the sofa where I'll be put up
You've been the hole in my sky, my shrinking water supply
Before my well runs dry I'm going round round round the bend
Fill it up again
I'd like to say that it was clear to me Love triangle geometry
But in the end it's still a mystery The placement of affection and the disarray
I gathered up the courage that it took Made that bed and took one last look
And you could hear the pages flapping in the wind blown Book of my days, my days (refrain) One tank gone second thoughts are on my mind
What's this trip gonna cost me this time
The devil I know is starting to look awfully kind
But the new road is an old friend
Fill it up again (refrain montage)

Jennifer is a military wife and a mom...

I suppose that there are a lot of women out there that consider themselves, first and foremost, a wife and a mother.

On this week's How to Look Good Naked, Carson Kressley will be "making over" a woman named Jennifer that "lived a vivacious and out-going life until post-baby body woes rained on her parade." I will not watch the episode, nor have a ever watched the program (I saw the ad for it while watching reruns of Will and Grace..yeah, I still love that show), but something about this catchy tagline bothers me. TV is notorious for compacting information to 15 second sound bites... but what about Jennifer? This blurb that is supposed to wrap up Jennifer's life in one quick sentence only describes her in relation to others. Why can't the description of Jennifer describe... oh, I dunno...JENNIFER.

"Jennifer is an amateur body builder that has seen the Grateful Dead in concert
25 times and has a regrettable Tweety Bird tattoo on her left ankle."

"Jennifer is an avid model train collector and spends her weekends volunteering
at a homeless shelter."

So why does this bother me. Is it because the media does not do this to men?

On the website for NBC Nightly News, there is a 15 paragraph biography of Brian Williams - here's the last sentence of that bio:

"He and his wife, Jane Stoddard Williams, have two children."

And just to bring it a little closer to home, here's Lifetime TV's description of Carson Kressley:

"Accomplished stylist, breakout television star, equestrian, author and now fashion designer, Carson Kressley is out to make over the world."

Or maybe I'm upset because Lifetime, THE NETWORK FOR WOMEN, easily tosses aside the individuality of a woman in the hopes that portraying her as supportive and submissive somehow makes her more appealing to the masses? Gee, let's take a look at some of Lifetime's programming:

Army Wives
All The Good Ones Are Married
A Mother's Fight for Justice
For My Daughter's Honor
Secrets of an Undercover Wife

Okay, you get the picture.

So how about this:

"Jennifer works hard to raise a happy, well-adjusted child with her military husband."