Cool!

HarrietMiers.blogspot.com has been rendered obsolete by the actual documents of the actual Harriet Miers, which hit the smoking gun today: funnier than fiction. Harriet rocks with that Anne Geddes stationery like “whatever.”
When I was living down in the Bible Belt, a midsize city smack dab in tent-revival territory, often the Miers type of evangelical churchlady would stop me on the street, say hello, then breathlessly inform me she’d “pray for me,” if I appeared sullen or depressed. There was no motive for conversion; it was presumed I was already Christian. It was more like a borderline-exhibitionist expression of godliness (and, by that token, the inherent superiority of la vida pura) in a city where “Jesus” loomed at all times and how down you were with said Jesus was your prime well of cultural capital. Where your steadfast affiliation with god defines your social “value,” making godliness a particularly frightening kind of social contest. (Hence the doling out of prayers like Jay-z flings dollar bills: baller status depends on how unfuckwithable your roll. The deeper you go with Young Jeezy, the better the odds of building with the god when he comes out of retirement. Et cetera. Sorry.) So these interactions were fairly common, and infuriating… but I was obsessed with the telephoto absurdity and well-meaning condescension of women who cared enough to ask Jesus for my moodiness to subside. Many of the women I knew there were clearly harboring some deep, neglected emotional pain, numbed by their blinding devotion to Jesus. But the same evangelical nice ladies will shank yr ass with a tract real quick when you tell ’em how you feel about abortion, premarital sex, communism, the book you’re reading, living “in sin,” et cetera. (As an aside, people get married RILL young in the bible belt, I think mostly cause they wanted to have sex but still “be Christian.” I had a cache of acquaintances who’d been married and divorced by 21 for this very reason.)
I feel like Harriet Miers has some of those qualities… though she burns at low-wattage, she seems like a “nice person”… her character judgement of bush based on his chauvinist dictatorial charm rather than his chauvinist dictatorial policies… numbed by her blinding devotion to Jesus… hence, uh… the sheer terror of Dr. and Mrs. “Best Governor Ever” directly affecting our lives for the next 32 1/2 gazillion years. Obviously, I would not like to see Harriet Miers, official presidential mouthpiece, wielding any kind of judicial power. I would maybe like for Fox to give her an Everybody Loves Raymond style sitcom that I could watch only once, before flipping over to the Discovery Channel special Chimpanzee Behavior in Relation to Humans as narrated by Pharrell Williams.
So yeah we do know about Ms. Miers’ abortion stance, courtesy Bush’s hearty touting of her commitment to her conservative right-wing religion (unless WHIG planted the story, that is). P.S. Karl Rove and James Dobson in a room together alone for any length of time is another scary fucking thought.
According to tiny.abstractdynamics.org, the weblog run by my best friend and colleague Jessica R. Hopper, the new issue of Hit It or Quit It magazine will make a satisfying snap sound when it hits your front stoop by Halloween. Hit It or Quit It magazine is America’s only feminist music magazine (inclusive of hip-hop and men), and it is edited by Hopper, myself, JR Nelson, Miles “Standish” Raymer, and the Ghost of Chris Ryan. Release party in a phone booth on the Seychelles sometime around Nov. 1, also if anyone wants to sell a karaoke machine, we’re still buying. My roommate has already magneted her list of potential karaoke jams to the fridgidaire–“Im a Woman,” “Heartbreaker,” “Don’t rain on my Parade”… “anything by TLC, Suzanne Vega, or Hole”–written in cursive letters with a kelly green pen on notebook paper. How can you resist such a document of hope! Sell us your karaoke machine! It will be “Cool!”