Calhouns Can(n)ons

Top National Beauty Secrets

“That’s not change. That’s just calling the same thing something different. But you can’t put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. . . .”
Barack Obama, criticizing McCain’s policies

“I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
John McCain, criticizing Hillary
Clinton’s healthcare plan last year

Ah, but the question of NATIONAL IMPORTANCE in this critical national election is, what KIND of lipstick was it? Revlon’s “Yummy Mummy Red?” Max Factor’s “Bitch Broad Burgundy?” Cover Girl's, "Moose Shooter Melon?" That’s what this country needs to know. We don’t need to discuss energy policy or the economy. Nope. We need to spend one whole news day reporting on the Republican’s faux OUTRAGE about lipstick.

Like Sarah Palin now has a copyright on the word lipstick when it’s used in the context of putting it on an animal, such as a pit bull? Or when John McCain uses the phrase, he’s using a familiar, folksy phrase to describe Hillary’s policy but when Obama uses it, he’s a SEXIST BEAST WHO’S CALLING SARAH A PIG AND WHO MUST APOLOGIZE FORTHWITH! Stamp-feet, pound-table-Puff, Faux Faux Huff, Faux Huff, Faux Huff.Paff-paff-paff- for one full news cycle.

And then have McCain stand up there and whine that this negative campaigning (his own) is all Obama’s fault because he wouldn’t go on a Dog & Pony show town-hall debating tour with him. Boo-hoo, poor me, it’s all his fault.

This my friends is what happens to you when you hire Karl Rove to “help” with your campaign. Rove poisons and corrupts and kills everything he touches. John McCain had already sold his soul when he hopped up on stage to hug President Bush, the man whose Rovian minions had already trashed his family. That’s how desperately he wanted the Presidency. Hiring Rove now for his own campaign can’t really do any more damage to the man’s soul. Rather it’s just like putting lipstick on a zombie.


9/11

It is a day that will, again, hurt the heart.

A Brief For The Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island; the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back in is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

-- Jack Gilbert