True Colors

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

All our discussion about being authentic, finding ourselves, shaking off old parental programming and social conditioning, is being reflected in the zeitgeist of the moment, people in the public eye letting it all hang out. The public eye, of course, is pretty jaded, and what it will do with all this information is the question. Some of the revelations will simply confirm what we’ve assumed, but — fair warning — the old saw about ass and you and me remains valid. At minimum, this unlikely rash of candor should shake up what’s cookin’, which is how I see each new day: the diversity of ingredients thrown into the pot produces a tasty, or not, product to be consumed and digested before we start all over again. And, lest we forget, we are what we eat.

Let’s begin with Martha Stewart, domestic maven and marketer. How many of us would have guessed that Martha had participated in a three-way? Moreover, how many would guess she’d admit to it? Can we assume prison broadened Martha’s horizons, or is that just how they roll in the Hamptons? And while passing along her red-hot admission to inquiring minds, I wonder how many of us will think back on Martha’s punishment for insider trading, a tiny stumble on the steep climb to fiscal Nirvana produced by the criminal class on Wall Street. I wonder how many will think of her, in retrospect, as easy pickins, a scapegoat of fiscal accountability in a financial empire grown “too big to fail” and too corrupt to topple. And will any of us ask ourselves, eventually, what might have happened if Martha hadn’t been a glaringly successful woman? Hmmmmm?

There were other women standing tall this week. Without rehashing what Fe so movingly wrote on this topic, we have an example of spontaneous ethical eruption from Texan Wendy Davis, a woman of both impressive chutzpah and astounding bladder control. As the clock ran down just before midnight, the political maneuvering that attempted to evict Ms. Davis from the podium and end her filibuster brought a loud and impressive response from the gallery, filled with voters who were determined that women should have choice over their bodily functions and sexual choices.

Early the next day, Governor Rick Perry quickly pronounced the explosion of emotion from frustrated constituents a “breakdown of decorum and decency,” and scheduled a special legislative session this coming week to see the abortion legislation safely passed. I wonder how indecent he would have thought it had the gallery been filled with religious-right, pro-life constituents determined to be heard in defense of the unborn? Or just how compliant he himself would be if his every sexual act carried a potential nine-month penalty and lifetime’s responsibility?

One thing’s for sure, Perry’s continual assertions that he is the voice of the people of Texas grows more questionable daily, given the speculation that the Lone Star may no longer be a red state in the near future. And displaying its signature dysfunctionality, the Republican House of Representatives is doing little to change that projection, given its lethargy in configuring an immigration bill to link up with the flawed but historic version the Senate just passed (with 68 yeas including McCain, Graham and Rubio, no less.)

Speaker Boehner, masking his inability to herd his (tea party) cats by appearing as casual and leaned-back as Dean Martin, martini in hand, is doing little to impress potential Latino constituents. According to Huffpost Hill, “The speaker is being more stubborn than the cork in his favorite bottle of Merlot, which he’d much rather be decanting right now than dealing with this crap.” Boehner has worked hard at appearing to be in charge of an impossible collection of ill-informed extremists, and failed handily. Despite the bluff, I think the authentic Mr. Boehner is likely counting the days until he can retire an influential politico and spend his days with a golf club in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The Supremes — trendy newsmakers themselves, this week — are hastening the Texas shift to blue as well. They threw out lower court rulings that had blocked a Texas voter ID law, and a previous decision that determined that plans to yet again redistrict were discriminatory in nature. Can it become any clearer that Texas, which enjoys a surprisingly diverse ethnic population, is making every effort to secure a white Republican voting majority in the face of growing discontent? Mr. Perry follows in Bush’s footsteps as a soon-to-be forgotten politician (except for the jokes).

The separate Texas rulings came as a required response to the Supremes’ earlier damage to the provisions of the Voting Rights Act, virtually ending the strict supervision of elections in states with a history of voting discrimination. Once again, the Federalist members of the High Court came down in favor of states’ rights by pretending that there isn’t continued racism across the country, especially in the south. At 80, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — herself a young attorney during the turbulent, bloody years that made such an act necessary — wrote the dissenting opinion, and these quotes are being passed around not just as the progressive opinion but the only opinion that makes any sense at all:

“Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination.”

“In 2001, the mayor and all-white five-member Board of Aldermen of Kilmichael, Mississippi, abruptly canceled the town’s election after ‘an unprecedented number’ of African American candidates announced they were running for office. Department of Justice required an election, and the town elected its first black mayor and three black aldermen.”

By saving up all their decisions until the last minute, the Supremes have once again sucked the air out of other news and — this time — revealed themselves not just as judges (with lifetime positions,) but a motley crew of diverse personalities, some eager to inhabit the very activism they so eschew. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, no raving progressive, went after the hubris of the Roberts court — and the decision offered by Roberts himself, decisively weakening the Fifteenth Amendment — as a slap in the face of Dr. King and those who suffered the long march from Selma to Montgomery, one Bloody Sunday long ago.

Seems to me that the black/white thinking that suggests the statistics show voting no longer a problem is similar to the contention by one conservative, recently, that if you have an air conditioner, you’re not poor. I would suggest it isn’t HAVING that’s the problem — it’s USING: having a vote but no picture ID, no transportation, inadequate polling places and no day off to use them anyway, is the same as being unable to afford the electricity to keep you cool. And this kind of thinking has dug our hole deeper these last few years, causing the public to examine the SCOTUS justices as representatives of the Rule of Law itself now found wanting. These findings are not hopeful; but they are significant if we are to hope for change in the future.

Meanwhile, we’ve gotten to know these people pretty well, defined mainly by their personal foibles. For instance, the welcome reversal of the Defense Of Marriage Act caused Justice Scalia, no stranger to controversy over regressive opinions, to protect hearth, home and defend the sanctity of his own marriage and nine children by railing against the loosening of laws that allow for “homosexual sodomy.” Calling the DOMA decision “legalistic argle-bargle,” Antonin channels his inner Dick Cheney. The two men shoot together from time to time, hopefully not friends.

Justice Thomas proved, once again, that color is only skin deep by issuing his own dissenting opinion on the evils of the Voting Rights Act that helped secure a vote for Americans of all stripes for 43 years, and particularly for relatives of his. Ahhh, but Thomas has a unique way of looking at the world, albeit whiney and sour. I wonder what, besides his position of power and his high-profile, tea party Caucasian wife, makes Clarence Thomas think his fellow conservatives accept him unconditionally? I say we ask Paula Deen which slave position she’d want Clarence to play in that antebellum wedding extravaganza she was planning.

(Oh dear, the snark is thick today. Don’t hate me because I’m snarky.)

Meanwhile, Justice Kennedy, by being the deciding vote in the DOMA decision, has once again branded himself ‘gay friendly.’ This has caused Pat Robertson to question whether he has had any ‘gay clerks,’ suggesting something dark and smarmy, no doubt, but who knows exactly what. He might have more appropriately charged that Kennedy was a Californian, raised in the land of fruits and nuts. (I hear it all the time, here in the Pea Patch. Nothing scares my neighbors more than gays and/or libbers, unless it’s gay libbers for gun control.)

Justice Alito, the man who dared make faces and mouth objections to Obama’s criticism of the controversial Citizens United decision at a State of the Union speech, is still doing so, this time during the reading of dissenting opinions from among his fellow judges. Causing gasps from on-lookers, this behavior has been deemed a “mini-tantrum” and “display of rudeness” by longtime Supreme Court observer Garrett Epps. Snark is allowed in many places (hopefully here,) but the High Court of the United States is not one them. Makes one reconsider the maturity of the man, one of nine people who hold the fate of the nation in their hands.

I suppose you could say I went after the particulars of the right-leaning justices in this post, but they are the ones who have made targets of themselves with their personal biases. Can anyone tell me the political hopes and dreams of Elena Kagen, for instance? Do we have any notion about what makes Sonia Sotomayor or Stephen Breyer tick? Have they revealed their personal belief systems, over and above their understanding of jurisprudence, in their arguments? If they have, the public hasn’t noticed, which means there isn’t much radicalism going on there. I would also have to say that although they favor a progressive stand in most instances, they have not been activists, as feared on the right. They have done their job without infamy, as has a widely admired Ruth Ginsberg.

Yes, I think we’re looking at things more clearly than we used to, not so asleep to how much everything has changed. When you’re in a new place, you need to keep alert to what’s going on around you; we’re in a new place, not our grandfathers’ democracy or even our fathers’. The air is electric with dissent and frustration, and we’re no longer taking everyone at their word. We’re finally looking around to see how this time in history is unlike what it used to be, what we thought it was until recently. We’ve been slapped up the side of the head too often in these last years to believe things just because authority says so, finding later that laws have changed and political deals have been cut. We have developed a keen ear for hypocrisy and a nose for spin.

Still, the political process CAN work. It has in the past and it can be made to do so again. Don’t despair the revelations of the NSA; now we see what we’re up against. Don’t sorrow over the loss of Voting Rights; the laws needed updating anyhow, given how often they were challenged, and to little effect in two critical elections. Facing extreme heat that is already breaking world records, let’s get behind Obama’s new environmental policies and his pledge to turn away the XL Pipeline should the State Department find it contributes to climate change. This becomes a clearer win when we consider the consistency of John Kerry’s environmental advocacy, and his new clout as head of State. It doesn’t hurt that Al Gore is  encouraged and in a position, as are we all, to push the president on this promise.

The process of change has its rules, and one of them is the glaring ineffectiveness of whatever needs changing. We’re clearly there. It also requires us to lose our ingrained obedience to prevailing thought. We’re there, too, informed by years-long observation of the two-step that politicians dance to try to sway our support. The players who once seemed easily elected have proven largely untrustworthy, servants to a system no longer responsive to the people. Once we begin to question authority, to clearly observe the feet of clay that have walked us into such narrow constraints, we’re half-way home, the rest is just carry-through. When these factors come together, it’s lightning in a bottle, due to explode eventually.

We’ve been called back to the responsibilities of citizenship, as part of our exploration of authenticity, as spiritual advocacy for ourselves, one another and our planet. Our true colors run the gamut from those of global citizens to active residents of our towns and cities, the same true colors that show up in Old Glory, in the Rainbow flag, in all the flags of nations eager to improve the lives of their citizens and their neighbors. We have worked hard to come back to ourselves, to find the true colors reflected in the principles we all insist upon, and — as we continue to do our loving best with each thought, word, act and reaction — in the face we see shining back at us in the mirror.