Dear Friend and Reader,
There’s a saying I picked up while living in Dublin that doesn’t go down very well State-side, but it’s apt for today’s news, so I’m going to use it despite the misinterpretation and consternation that I’m speaking negatively about breasts — I would never.
Everything is going tits up (slang for “completely failed so as to become inactive”).
I’ll try to limit my definition of “everything,” for now, to: the environment, the McCain/Palin ticket and OJ Simpson. And, since it’s Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement (also known as the day I tell my grandparents I’m fasting while I munch quietly on a bagel), I’ll deal with this list Hebrew style: right to left.
It’s not often I feel sympathy for murderers, but I actually feel bad for OJ Simpson. Imagine you’re a black man who murders his white ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend in a jealous rage, and you, by the miracle of god and, well, lots and lots of money, get away with it. Considering the fear of black-on-white violence in America, combined with the fact that 39.5 percent of inmates are black, while they only make up 12.8 percent of the total US population and the fact that he was guilty, OJ got pretty lucky.
The OJ Simpson murder trial went on when I was 11, and I remember walking home from school, making myself a disgusting snack that I could only get away with in the 30 minutes before my mom got home from work (popcorn drenched in butter, giant plate of pretzels with cheese melted in the microwave?!), and watching the details of it on the news. Everyone was obsessed with it: everyone at school, in the grocery store, The New York Times, the tabloids.
At first, I was into it because it was the murder trial of the Naked Gun guy (33 1/3 was released the year before). But then I was engrossed for the same reason as the rest of the country. We were obsessed because we knew. We KNEW he did it.
And when he got off, when that bloody glove was inadmissible, we were shocked, because it was the most obvious loss of justice. He swore to search for the rest of his life for the true killers. “Instead,” as The Statesmen writes in its op-ed, “he has spent inordinate time over the last decade searching amid the nation’s golf courses and resorts.”
Then he wrote a book about doing it, called If I Did It, which documented the gruesome, and accurate, details of the murders. It’s release was canceled in November 2006, but leaked online two summers ago.
Which is why, after all of this, I was so surprised to hear that he’s been convicted — 13 years to the day after getting off scot-free for double homicide — for armed robbery and kidnapping. Because some OJ sports memorabilia got him angry. Maybe his luck ran out, maybe the evidence was better this time, or the all-white jury had something to do with it.
He probably was nailed this time, though, because he already used his get out of jail free card. The timing is impeccable; does this guy have an egg timer in his brain for violence? 13 years to the day.
And speaking of anger, the crowds at Palin/McCain rallies are getting out of control. It’s always been strange that presidential candidates try to convince us that their opponents — who, whether you agree with their policies or not, have devoted their lives to running the country — are unpatriotic. But now, with Sarah Palin running loose, misquoting Madeleine Albright off a coffee cup and contemplating an appearance on Saturday Night Live, she’s likened Barack Obama to a terrorist. (You have to watch Keith Olbermann’s response to her here, he nailed it.)
Obviously, the propaganda is working because, at a rally this week where John McCain was going for the softer, ‘let’s-call-him-a-liar’ call-and-response route that only went slightly worse that Biden’s at the DNC convention, someone in the crowd yelled back that Obama is a “terrorist.” Yes, the man that’s leading in the polls for President of the United States apparently wants to bomb the hell out of us. Thanks, Sarah. Way to go.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVFWahLTdUo[/youtube]
Look at McCain’s confused/worried face when he heard that from his audience. He may well have been thinking: I’m getting too old for this. He certainly looked old and cranky next to Obama during Tuesday’s debate. And he came across completely geriatric, when he had to as Tom Brokaw to repeat a simple question so he could write it down.
BROKAW: There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?
Sen. McCain?
MCCAIN: The three priorities were health…
BROKAW: The three — health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?
And speaking of end-of-life issues, close to half of the world’s mammals are now threatened due to climate change, habitat loss, pollution and mile-wide, catch-all fishing nets in our oceans, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports. Their red-list of endangered species includes most primates, whales, dolphins and porpoises, in addition to many other mammals. “At least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction and at least half are in decline,” The Telegraph explains.
Arctic animals are among those at highest risk for extinction, as the polar ice caps melt, resulting in less land mass and leading to animals like polar bears swimming further for mating and feeding, and drowning in the process. But there are other, stranger, explanations for species decline, including the Tasmanian devil’s curiously contagious facial tumors, resulting in the animal’s death within six months of presenting. This cancer has killed off nearly 50 percent of the population in recent years.
We’re losing the world’s primates, our closest cousins in the Animal Kingdom, our most-basic courtesies such as respect for an opponent and, in the case of OJ, the head off our shoulders (presuming there was one to begin with). That’s our phrase for the day: tits up.
Yours & truly,
There is no difference between what OJ did and an Honor Killing. I don’t have any personal feelings about Mr. Simpson but I was always just amazed he wasn’t convicted. The things you can get away with if you’re a football hero.
~j
Dublin? Wow, I didn’t know I lived in Ireland.
I started using ‘tits-up’ in the mid-1980s during my brief, embittered experience as an ad agency writer.
It was my contribution to the lexicon, along with the term –in a happier space– ‘enfoldment.’
But Rachel, it was never meant to be a perjorative, just the starter-phrase for the udder importance of prolactin. “Tits up” would mean whole lot more in a world without Similac.
***
The McCain 3lostfulness was also noted by our local peanut gallery. Yep, it’s hard to prioritize what you can’t remember. But Obama’s answer wasn’t too impressive either. I have to say across the board, the Golden One sounded like he was treading water with many of his answers. But his fatigue can be cured with rest. McCain’s problem requires something a little more drastic, like sheep placenta.
But just visualize those two working *well* together after the election. It’ll happen, especially if, as Fe keeps urging, we can pull a landslide.
Hi Rachel – great piece. Hits home. Here in Scotland we have a saying (which I don’t think would go down any better stateside, which is ‘arse over tit’ (in USA might well be ‘ass over tit’). But, whichever, the meaning is the same. Well said. Hazel.