By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Oct 15, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET Right now the best hope for any solution to the Congressional stalemates over both the government shutdown and the debt ceiling seems to be a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Susan Collins and involving several other senators, mostly women. Which doesn’t surprise me at all. Many, if not all, of these female senators are mothers, and once a woman has dealt with the range of challenges from toddler tantrums to sullen teenagers with body odor, she can handle anything.
Years ago, I would illustrate that theory by imagining a mom tackling the Middle East – “Israel and Palestinians, if you can’t find a way to share the occupied territories, neither of you can play with them.” But these days it feels like that conflict pales by comparison to Washington DC. So how would my motherhood experience help me deal with the issues that have led to governmental gridlock? Well, for starters, many Republicans have cited public image as a key factor, i.e. “We won’t be disrespected.” Moms have moved way past that concern, once they’ve had a preschooler in a shopping cart say something embarrassing and loud to a packed grocery store. (Most of my friends dealt with things like “Why is that lady so fat?” or “Why doesn’t that man have any hair?” My personal humiliation was when my 4-year-old son announced loudy, “Mommy, you know how you said babies happen when a daddy plants a seed in a mommy? How exactly does the seed get there?”) So it makes sense that there are no women chiming in about how important it is that they save face.
Another issue raised by Republicans is their fear that once Obamacare is the law of the land, we won’t be able to repeal it because Americans will become “addicted to the sugar,” in the immortal words of Ted Cruz. That wouldn’t bother any mom who has given up trying to get her kids to eat anything but pizza, nachos and Dr. Pepper. (Or in my case, that even extends to my husband, to whom I had to explain that a bowl of Froot Loops didn’t count as a serving of fruit.) Or there’s the concern that by raising the debt ceiling, the GOP will lose its chance to ‘teach Americans a lesson’ about fiscal prudence. Most moms of teenagers have given up trying to ‘teach lessons’ – logical consequences often work best when we don’t plan them (like when my 17-year-old forgot to set an alarm on the day before school started, when he planned to do all his summer reading, so he slept til 4 p.m. It was a new personal record for him, but he also learned his lesson – which was to ask me to doublecheck he was awake, so okay, he isn’t totally on his own yet . . . . but I digress.)
Perhaps the biggest problem right now is the inflated language on both sides, comparing each other to Nazis, terrorists, etc. Moms know that yelling and name-calling don’t work (as tempting as they are), and often humor can be the best response. Plus we know that when our kids are young, they learn best when things are set to music, like the ABCs or the names of the states in alphabetical order (anyone who ever had to learn the “Fifty Nifty” song knows what I mean – I can’t complete a crossword puzzle without singing that song!). So here’s some humor, set to music, to explain why it might not be such a good idea to let the radical fringe take control of a party. (As one op-ed columnist noted, of course there are extremists on both sides, but there aren’t any Occupy Wall Streeters or throwing-paint-at-fur-coat-wearers-activists in Congress . . . )
“Join The Tea Party and &%@! The Facts”
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Oct 8, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET I often tell people I have 3 boys, ages 17, 20, and 47 – like many men, my husband is an overgrown teenage boy when it comes to some things, particularly his sense of humor when he’s around my actual offspring. They share a love of sophomoric and off-color jokes, ranging from flatulence to ‘that’s what she said,’ and none of them miss an opportunity to point out when an object or a name has any sort of phallic connection. And it’s not just the obvious – e.g. Anthony Weiner jokes. For example, in one recent morning paper I saw a reference to the short-lived Cory Booker scandal – apparently the Newark Mayor and Senate candidate had engaged in some harmless but flirtatious texting with a woman who worked in a vegan strip club. I thought that was funny and read it out loud to my husband and 17-year-old, and after they exchanged a series of lines about what kinds of meat were off-limits, my son chimed in, “So are people who go there vagitarians?” (When my boys were younger, Husband 2.0, who is not their dad, decided he had a novel way to cure them of inappropriate language. One night when I went off to a gig, he informed us all that they would have ‘swearing night’ over dinner, so they could get it all out of their systems. As you may suspect, not only did it not stop the swearing, it actually enhanced their vocabularies. But I digress . . . . )
I don’t have many ways of distancing myself from the frat house atmosphere in which I reside, so when I find one I take advantage of it. I painted my office a distinctly feminine lavender, I listen to classical music in the kitchen, and up til now I refrained from humor about the Speaker of the House, with his teenage-boys-find-hysterical last name. However, his role in the government shut down provides too much inspiration for me to ignore any longer. (That, and I’m probably worn down by the endless Family Guy quotes exchanged at my dinner table . . . )
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET I’ve always prided myself on both keeping an open mind and having strong opinions – sure, it’s a tough balance, but as a former high school debater I still remember the skills we developed having to argue on both sides of any issue. And while I believe I’m in the right about most things, I have always tried to consider the opposite point of view.
Until now . . . the GOP antics about the debt ceiling and government funding have left me unable to comprehend how they can simultaneously argue that it’s already destroyed the economy and killed people while also insisting we have to stop it now before people get addicted to it. And don’t get me started on the congresspeople who have compared it to Naziism, the Fugitive Slave Act or a mass outbreak of cellulite in Hollywood. (Yes, I made up that last one but it makes just as much sense as the others!)
When I contemplated writing a song about the latest from the GOP, I started to worry that I might offend people. And yes, some of my best friends actually ARE Republicans. Of course, I’m in the San Francisco area, so Republicans here tend to be pretty moderate, particularly about social issues like marriage equality, medical marijuana, and reproductive choice. (One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a woman telling her friend about her last date: “He says he’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal – that means he’s cheap and he sleeps around!” – but I do believe my friends who describe themself the same way . . . )
However, when the subject of politics came up, a friend of mine said, “I’m a registered Republican, and I’m thoroughly disgusted with my party these days!,” and I don’t think she’s alone. So if you look at it that way, making fun of the GOP actually IS bi-partisan . . . .
“The GOP Says No!”
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Sep 24, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Most young girls become infatuated with pop stars at some point – and reflecting back on those initial crushes reveals a lot about who we are (and how old we are). For example, there were the bobby soxers who squealed over a young Frank Sinatra, the girls swooning over Elvis the Pelvis (before the Vegas sequined jumpsuit days), and teens fainting at Beatles’ concerts. In my day, we were too young to go to a Beatles concert but not too young to pick our favorite – the popular girls all liked Paul, cool girls worshipped John, out-there individualists picked George, and I was probably one of three girls who had crushes on Ringo. (Because he was the funny one – that’s the same logic that drove me to pick Peter as my favorite Monkee . . . . but I digress.)
As we grow older, our crushes evolve – often to include movie stars (while all my friends admired George Clooney, I always had a thing for Kevin Kline – again, he was funny), even comedians (the funny thing works for a lot of us) and political leaders – whether it was liberals admiring Barack Obama in 2008, or conservatives swooning over Paul Ryan last year (or my parents’ generation who loved JFK). These more adult crushes tend to include substance as well as appearance, admiration of talent or accomplishment or potential (like when I was one of lots of people, men and women, fantasizing about Nate Silver, doing statistical analysis with me in a dimly lit office, softly murmuring demographic data in my ear . . . . . . and YES, I know he’s gay, but hello, it’s a fantasy, I’ll never meet him anyway so what difference does his orientation make?)
Where was I? Oh, my latest crush, which seems novel to me, although my friends who grew up Catholic remind me of their crushes on priests, and there were some pretty hot scenes in the Thorn Birds between Meggie and Father Ralph. Still, I’d resisted the appeal of a man in clerical dress (and don’t tell me it’s a cossack or whatever, it looks like a dress to me) until the new Pope started blowing fresh air into the Vatican. The last time people were this excited about changes within Catholicism was Vatican Two – which inspired Tom Lehrer’s immortal “Vatican Rag.” So I figured it was time for another musical salute to the Pope . . . .
“Oh Francis (I’m A Jew Who Has a Crush On You!)”
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Sep 17, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Every now and then, a situation arises in which seemingly disparate elements come together in perfect unison, like some cosmic Venn diagram (if you haven’t seen this on elementary school homework lately, it’s a diagram invented by John Venn in 1880 using overlapping circles to illustrate logical relations between a finite collection of sets). (See, some of my digressions can be educational!)
It could be that day your schedule works out perfectly with 3 successive appointments all being right next to each other, or receiving a sample of car air freshener on the day both your boys decide to take their shoes off in the car after a long hot day, or noticing that several news stories all relate to a common theme. (Although I must admit, the car air freshener was wishful thinking – any parent of teenagers can probably relate . . . )
Last week’s news provided that perfect convergence for New York Times-subscribing opinionated liberal musical humorists who write for a site advocating bipartisanship, who are embarrassed by how rarely they tackle international news, who find no humor in the situation in Syria, who played a lot of music by Russian composers as young piano students, and who feel particularly strongly about gay rights. (Okay, maybe there’s only one of us . . . . but you never know!) In case you are another “I-should-read-the-world-news-but-I’m-in-a-hurry” type, Vladimir Putin took John Kerry up on his slightly facetious offer to have Syria give up its chemical weapons, talked to his buddy there, and may have helped avert a showdown in Congress about military action. But just as we were feeling relieved and even maybe grateful, Putin then published an opinion piece in which he blasted us for thinking America had any real role in the world and lectured us on how all people are created equal (but apparently not if they’re gay?) At any rate, from my rather odd perspective, there was something so irresistible about the combination of a Russian leader helping avert a crisis while simultaneously advocating anti-gay laws and then writing an anti-American op-ed which produced irate responses from both Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner. Now that’s a remarkable achievement!
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Sep 10, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Combing this past week’s news stories for a song idea was fairly discouraging – I can’t find anything funny about the possibility of air strikes against Syria, not to mention the human rights atrocities there. I’ve already done a song about Congressional gridlock, the sequester just keeps getting more depressing, and while Anthony Weiner has made a few headlines, it’s been for rage-aholic rants, not for titillating texts. Moreover, I realized many of my weekly songs are my way of responding to unpleasant news, hoping to find some humor in what otherwise would have me yelling, Weiner-style, at the computer, t.v. screen or newspaper.
But one happy story popped up, and not only is it good news, it’s also completely bipartisan, non-political yet totally newsworthy, and makes me smile whenever I think about it – Diana Nyad’s record-shattering swim from Cuba to Florida. After finally achieving a feat she’d been attempting unsuccessfully since 1978, as she emerged from the water she made three quoteable points, including a graceful acknowledgment of the team supporting her, but the one that struck me was “You’re never too old to chase your dreams.”
We have longer life expectancy today than ever before, and yet our culture still puts such a premium on youthful achievement that we feel like failures if we haven’t won a Tony Award or been a celebrity guest playing ‘Not My Job’ on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” by the age of 30. (Or made our first million, or won an Olympic medal, or dated a member of One Direction, or whatever your particular dream happens to be.) So to celebrate the achievements of a woman who’s been eligible for AARP for 14 years gives me renewed faith in possibilities for those of us over 50. (Which is when you start getting those AARP mailers, as if it wasn’t hard enough to hit that milestone!)
So I am celebrating Ms. Nyad’s accomplishment in song, as well as acknowledging other feats achieved by AARP-eligible folks. And sure, I haven’t really had any videos go viral (despite the line I love to use from my 17-year-old, who saw that a few had topped 1,000 views and informed me that it was ‘viral for old people’), but who knows? It took Diana Nyad 35 years from her first attempt to achieve her dream – and posting youTube videos is much less strenuous!
“Diana’s Song (You’re Never Too Old To Chase Your Dreams)”
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Sep 3, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET It’s a classic rite of passage every fall, parents taking their kids off to college and saying goodbye (after spending way more than they’d budgeted for dorm room essentials like bedding and Starbucks cards). And it can be an emotionally loaded experience, especially for moms like me who cry at the drop of a hat. (I tend to weep at the oddest moments, like the first time I saw my son tap dance in the opening number of ’42nd Street’ -that iconic moment when the curtain just goes up enough to see the ‘dancing feet,’ which is one of the most upbeat, cheerful scenes in all musical theatre. But I digress… )
For many parents, this is their first realization that their babies are leaving the nest, and it can be hard to let go. But I’m okay with that since I also went 3,000 miles away to college, and I’m thrilled for my son to have that experience too. The hardest part for me is feeling old – in my gut, I still feel like a college student, but walking around campus, I am clearly part of a troupe of aliens, adults who are irrelevant and unnecessary – and old. Of course I want to age gracefully, not to be one of those desperate middle-aged women who wear inappropriate clothing and overdo the cosmetic procedures. (As my hairdresser says, “Bangs, not Botox!”) But being a parent at a college campus is a huge wake-up call, reminding me that the ‘aging-gracefully’ time period I’d anticipated is actually now.
Plus there’s a heady sense of freedom at a campus – these kids are at the beginning of their adulthood, surrounded by interesting people, with opportunities to develop their minds and to train for their careers, with everything still being possible and nothing out of reach. No worries, no limits – who wouldn’t envy that? Fortunately, part of being a college parent is helping my son move into his dorm, and once I looked at the small, unairconditioned room and thin extra-long twin mattress, my envy strangely disappeared.
So this week’s video is dedicated to all parents who are taking kids to college, and all moms who cry . . .
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Aug 27, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET For anyone who doesn’t known someone in 12-step recovery or who doesn’t have a folk-wisdom-spouting Bubbe (or Nona or Grammy or Nana, etc.), “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” This perhaps-overused aphorism has so many useful applications, I won’t bore you with too many. (Let’s just say in our house, it applies to everything from why I don’t keep Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the house, to our current search for an alarm clock guaranteed to wake a 17-year-old boy.)
In politics, however, very few people seem to follow this wisdom. I imagine it’s partially because everyone is ‘preaching to the choir’ (another folk aphorism, although not one I ever heard from any Bubbe, which is Yiddish for Grandma . . . but I digress). That is, public figures mostly give speeches to please the people who already agree with them, which makes sense – constituents or fans know what to expect, and it also makes life much easier for political comedy writers who all start salivating whenever Donald Trump says he’s going to make any kind of announcement.
The insanity of repetition gets a bit out of control when it comes to legislation. It’s one thing for gun control advocates to come up with a variety of new laws, or for abortion foes to get creative in how they make it difficult for clinics to stay open – whether you agree or disagree, at least those groups are trying to adapt to reality instead of doing the same thing over and over. But what’s with the 40 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act? On top of the fact that it’s getting to be a punch line, and these repeal votes are clearly fruitless, it does seem somewhat hypocritical for a supposedly fiscal conservative bunch to be wasting so much time and taxpayer money. (According to a CBS estimate, based on nonpartisan data about the cost of a congressional work week, each repeal vote costs $1.45 million, which makes the total over $50 million so far.) I don’t even want to think about how $50 million compares to my financial situation . . . but at least, on the brighter side, it makes the expenses for my college-bound son seem pretty reasonable by comparison.
At a certain point, it’s prudent to give up fighting and ‘surrender, Dorothy’ – so to help the GOP get unstuck, here’s a musical reminder that “Obamacare Isn’t Scary!”
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET (That title makes more sense if you hum it to the tune of the line, “You say either, and I say either”)
Within moments of the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, it seemed like every solidly red state jumped at the chance to reinstate the kinds of laws that the invalidated section of the act had kept in check. Stringent ID requirements, cutting voting hours, eliminating polling places in predominantly Democrat-leaning neighborhoods, and refusing to let college students continue to vote in their state of residence. (Which, by the way, is unconstitutional – there’s nothing in the residency requirement that says an address doesn’t count if it’s a dorm, frat house, or off-campus house no matter how many empty pizza boxes are in the kitchen.) (Which, by the way, you’d think Tea Partiers would remember since they like to quote the constitution so often . . . but then again, homophobes who use the bible as their justification are good at conveniently forgetting the other things the bible forbids, such as mixing fabrics and getting tattoos, much less death penalty for cursing your parents or pulling out during intercourse . . . but I digress)
The speed with which southern states jumped into voter suppression after the decision prompted many people to use the analogy, ‘the body wasn’t even cold yet.’ It reminded me of the urban legend about savvy New Yorkers finding apartments by combing the obituaries. But I was less offended by the speed than by the overkill. There are a variety of studies of actual voter fraud, but the number of proven cases is between 10 and 15 – that’s from 2000 to 2010, with approximately 600 million votes cast during that time. Meanwhile, there are multiple cases of politically-appointed state election commissioners going to great lengths to ‘cleanse’ the voting rolls, harrassing tens of thousands of people and winding up not finding more than a couple of cases – not of voter fraud or dead people voting, but typos and other clerical errors. Changing voting requirements to prevent the rare case of fraud is like using a nuclear weapon to kill one cockroach in your kitchen. (Mind you, I lived in a few rundown apartments in New York for 5 years and would have considered it, especially the night I was awakened by a noise in the kitchen and saw a foot-long tail coming out of a box of Rice Krispies . . . .but I digress)
Since claims of voter fraud are either incredibly inflated or just plain fraudulent, I decided to fraudulently turn from a suburban Jewish mom into a blues singer to complain about it. (And as a result, I finally learned the word for that phenomenon when you say a somewhat unusual word over and over again, like ‘kidney’ or ‘detrimental,’ and it starts to sound weird and lose its meaning . . . check out the song to find out!)
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Aug 13, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET That isn’t actually a rhetorical question – I’m at the age when many women are experiencing heat waves unrelated to the weather. But these days it seems like we’re not alone. So is menopause contagious, or is global warming real?
That one WASN’T rhetorical, because the scientific evidence is overwhelming – not just fluctuations in average temperatures, but polar ice cap melting and rising sea levels are hard to ignore. At this rate, before too long houses in Fresno will be considered beach-front property.
But yet again, there are some politicians who almost willfully ignore the facts. I can agree to disagree with people on the best way to protect the planet, cap-and-trade vs. government regulations vs. investments in smart energy, but it’s hard to have a rational disagreement with someone who claims that since lots of places had snowstorms this past winter, global warming is a liberal hoax. And those people tend to have equally delusional facts-be-damned views on things like Obama’s birth certificate or the benefit of abstinence-only sex education (see Palin: Bristol).
I’m all for gentle delusion when it doesn’t hurt anybody – e.g., I won’t complain when my husband tells me I don’t look a day over 35, and I’ll let it slide when my son insists his room IS organized. But there are real-world consequences toward sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to our environment – I’m hoping that eventually, climate change deniers will be as archaic as those old t.v. commercials where doctors are recommending cigarettes. So here’s a song in honor of debunking deleterious denials…
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