By Lauren Mayer, on Wed May 21, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET I’m probably dating myself by referencing that antique, fairly offensive Virginia Slims tagline, encouraging women to embrace feminist progress by flaunting their own florally decorated brand of cigarettes. Now it comes across as hideously dated, but in the 1960s, the idea that women could do anything that men could – including poisoning themselves with nicotine – was both novel and incredibly exciting. When I was around eight years old, I remember struggling with whether I would prefer to be a world famous concert pianist or the first female president. (Yeah, I was thinking small . . . . )
I got a taste of politics as a college intern in Washington (although no one made a pass at me except for a bartender with bad breath. . . but I digress), and learned fairly quickly that I didn’t have a thick enough skin to survive in that arena. But I always wondered whether I’d get to see someone else achieve that ‘first female president’ goal.
Like all good starving artists, I was working as a waitress in New York when Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro as the first female member of a major party presidential ticket, and all of us called our mothers in a collective burst of feminist solidarity. So by 2008, I was ready for some more groundbreaking – excited for Hillary Clinton to be even a viable candidate, and thrilled that I resembled Sarah Palin enough to come in 2nd in a lookalike contest.
But now it’s looking like Mrs. Clinton isn’t just a possibility, she’s already assumed to be the de facto nominee for 2016 (if she chooses to run; the suspense over that choice has been as gripping as any of the soap operas that have gone off the air). It’s fascinating to see how people react. If nothing else, she has proven that she definitely has the resilience, thick skin, and quick reflexes to rebound from whatever gets thrown at her, from insults to conspiracy theories to random shoes (to insulting conspiracy theories about how she was somehow behind that shoe throwing . . . )
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon May 19, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  Uh-oh…
I tried to set my iPod in my car on a “Loop” to play the same 5 songs repeatedly.
It worked but I just noticed my mind seems to be stuck on a loop with the exact same 5 thoughts. (And they are not songs….I mean thoughts that I would have picked to put on a thought loop.)
I have disabled the looping feature on my iPod but am still having the same 5 thought loop playing over and over in my head.
Does anyone out there have experience with iPods and thought loops getting stuck?
===
Here I go again…
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed May 14, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET . . . and all the men and women merely players, in the immortal words of William Shakespeare (or of Christopher Marlowe, if you subscribe to that theory; or of Family Guy, if you’re like my sons and get most of your cultural references from that show’s parodies). So much of what we do is for public show, from dressing for a special occasion to posting on Facebook to making a speech on the House floor. (And you were wondering how I’d segue from theatre to politics!)
Actually, politics and theatre have merged before, and not just in plays like The Best Man (the 2012 all-star revival of Gore Vidal’s classic about the 1960 President primaries, which I saw with my boys, who weren’t impressed by Angela Lansbury, Eric McCormack, Candace Bergen, or John LaRoquette, but who loved seeing James Earl Jones, a.k.a. Darth Vader . . . but I digress). There have been a few musicals about politics, like 1776, Fiorello, or The Cradle Will Rock – not to mention the political undercurrents in Urinetown, Les Miz, Miss Saigon, Evita, and so on. Meanwhile, Congress seems to be getting more and more theatrical, with hearings, speeches, and posturing taking the place of actual legislation.
So before someone beats me to the punch, I thought I’d better jump in and stake out my own territory here.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed May 7, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Who’d have thought that the latest celebrity would be a mild-mannered economics professor? Whether you agree or disagree with it, no one can dispute that Thomas Piketty’s Capital In The 21st Century has become a major sensation. It is the number one best-selling book on Amazon.com, and demand was so high that it’s sold out and Harvard University Press is scrambling to print more. (Which is not a common occurrence for the home of works like Homeric Performance in a Diachronic Perspective, Molecular and Cellular Physiology of Neurons, and Proceedings Of The Harvard Celtic Colloquium.) (And I mean no disrespect to academic publishing, so don’t react like art history majors did to President Obama’s semi-insult. It’s just that academic books don’t tend to outsell murder mysteries, diet books, or bodice-rippers!)
Since the book is on back-order, we all have an excuse for not reading it (although several reviewers, who one assume got copies, managed to trash the book without reading it as well . . . ). But in a nutshell, he uses 200 years of data to show that when the rate of return on investment (which helps the wealthiest) outstrips the rate of economic growth (which boosts the rest of us), wealth inequality gets even more entrenched, in ways that are not good for society or the country, which is why we’ve entered a ‘second Gilded Age.’ Oh, and he disproves the Kuznets Curve (which was a 1950s graphic illustration of the way market forces supposedly straightened out income inequality all by themselves).
So now you can participate in the incredibly heated discussion – liberals swoon over Piketty, while conservatives accuse him of being a socialist wealth-hater who is the second coming of Karl Marx. Naturally, as a liberal, I’m a fan – but I also love the fact that his writing is surprisingly accessible and he even manages to include references to Jane Austen. Plus he’s boyishly handsome and French! (Although he had me at the Jane Austen . . . .)
Since – to the best of my knowledge – no one has ever written a love song to an economist, I thought it was about time.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Apr 30, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Many of the most interesting, accomplished adults I know were nerds in high school, high achievers with inversely proportionate low social status. Revenge for us usually comes in the form of high school reunions – you know, seeing the head cheerleader who snubbed you suddenly be impressed by your business success. (Or in my case, I ran into the object of my freshman year crush – at a school dance, I’d summoned up all my early feminist initiatve and asked him if he wanted to dance, and his response was “Yes, but not with you.” When I reminded him of this exchange 30 years after the fact, he apologized and said he’d been an idiot, and I barely restrained my urge to shout from the rooftop, “Unhappy teenage girls everywhere, sometimes dreams DO come true!”)
Sometimes ‘good student revenge’ comes in the political arena. While I acknowledge that there are two sides to every story, and that political fanatacism and narrow-mindedness come both right- and left-flavored, it has seemed lately that the far right has gotten intellectually lazy, ignoring facts that contradict dogma, and not bothering to check into the stories about voter fraud, welfare cheats, and the complete eradication of racism that fit their agenda. So it’s been pretty amusing to watch the pundits and politicians who championed rancher Cliven Bundy suddenly stampede away from him once his racist views came to light (on the national stage those same right-wingers had created for him). As Rachel Maddow and other liberals have pointed out, Bundy’s statements about only acknowledging sheriffs but not federal government officials was a hallmark of the ‘posse comitatus’ movement, which was based on southern racist resistence to integration, beginning after the Civil War and continuing through Jim Crow laws up to the present day. This doesn’t mean that every rightwinger who defies the federal government is a racist, but it does point out the importance of doing a little background work. (Confession: I learned this myself after voting for John Edwards in the 2008 primary, because he advocated a single payer health system, but before I’d bothered to look into a few of his personal issues. However, I like to think that I would have been a little more thorough if I’d been championing him on national television.)
Therefore, liberals have been indulging in some delicious schadenfreude (look it up if you’ve never seen Avenue Q), and in my case, I set that gloating to music so I could have the ultimate nerd revenge – using “posse comitatus” in a song lyric.
Many of the most interesting, accomplished adults I know were nerds in high school, high achievers with inversely proportionate low social status. Revenge for us usually comes in the form of high school reunions – you know, seeing the head cheerleader who snubbed you suddenly be impressed by your business success. (Or in my case, I ran into the object of my freshman year crush – at a school dance, I’d summoned up all my early feminist initiatve and asked him if he wanted to dance, and his response was “Yes, but not with you.” When I reminded him of this exchange 30 years after the fact, he apologized and said he’d been an idiot, and I barely restrained my urge to shout from the rooftop, “Unhappy teenage girls everywhere, sometimes dreams DO come true!”)
Sometimes ‘good student revenge’ comes in the political arena. While I acknowledge that there are two sides to every story, and that political fanatacism and narrow-mindedness come both right- and left-flavored, it has seemed lately that the far right has gotten intellectually lazy, ignoring facts that contradict dogma, and not bothering to check into the stories about voter fraud, welfare cheats, and the complete eradication of racism that fit their agenda. So it’s been pretty amusing to watch the pundits and politicians who championed rancher Cliven Bundy suddenly stampede away from him once his racist views came to light (on the national stage those same right-wingers had created for him). As Rachel Maddow and other liberals have pointed out, Bundy’s statements about only acknowledging sheriffs but not federal government officials was a hallmark of the ‘posse comitatus’ movement, which was based on southern racist resistence to integration, beginning after the Civil War and continuing through Jim Crow laws up to the present day. This doesn’t mean that every rightwinger who defies the federal government is a racist, but it does point out the importance of doing a little background work. (Confession: I learned this myself after voting for John Edwards in the 2008 primary, because he advocated a single payer health system, but before I’d bothered to look into a few of his personal issues. However, I like to think that I would have been a little more thorough if I’d been championing him on national television.)
Therefore, liberals have been indulging in some delicious schadenfreude (look it up if you’ve never seen Avenue Q), and in my case, I set that gloating to music so I could have the ultimate nerd revenge – using “posse comitatus” in a song lyric.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Apr 23, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET When I first started publishing my weekly political comedy videos on youTube, I knew I was tackling some fairly sensitive issues. But I still wasn’t prepared for the deluge of hate comments I would get, calling me horrid names, casting aspersions on my character, and wishing all sorts of misfortune on me. At first I was quite distraught – until I realized that the meaner the comments, the worse the spelling and grammar.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “All generalizations are false – including this one.” But it’s hard not to jump to general conclusions when so much outrage on the far right seems to lack basic language skills. Which is why I was thoroughly entertained by the recent standoff in Nevada over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay over $1 million in grazing fees, taxes and fines. Don’t get me wrong, the prospect of hundreds of well-armed crazed militia-types aiming at government officials is pretty horrifying. But their firm stance was a bit undermined by protest signs refusing to “surve” under a “facsist” government imposing “Marshall law.”
I know not everyone grew up with an English teacher for a mother, so most people are not horrified by split infinitives, but I like to think basic skills are still important – there’s no spell-check program for a hand-written protest sign. And the poorly spelled signs are a pretty good metaphor for a mis-informed faux rebellion (Bundy refuses to recognize the federal government and claims he’ll only obey the laws of the state of Nevada – I guess he forgot to read the Nevada state constitution which explicitly defers to that same federal government). But if we’re all dispensing with accuracy, what the heck – this suburban Jewish mother can turn into a faux country star to sing about it!
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Apr 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
Feminism is a complicated, messy topic, and if you ask 3 women about it, you’re likely to get 4 different answers. Some women don’t want to define themselves as feminist because it sounds anti-male, others disagree about how much sexism and discrimination exists, and you can always count on folks like Rush Limbaugh to disparage ‘feminazis’ as freeloading sluts who want Uncle Sugar to provide unlimited birth control and abortion on demand. And it’s a tricky issue around my house – my 17-year-old son feels like girls get all the breaks because he’s experienced classic educational bias against boys (everything from early school environments being more conducive to how girls learn, to a cliche-but-real male-hating gym teacher who informed them during the square dance unit that ‘the girls had her permission to slap the boys around if they messed up, because everyone knows boys can’t dance’). My 20-year-old started dancing at age 4, and he was teased mercilessly about it (until high school, when his classmates saw how cute the girls were in dance class, not to mention the revealing dancewear).
So I know there are ways in which it’s harder to be male. But I still believe women have not completely caught up – as the old expression goes, like ballroom dancers, we’re doing everything guys do, but backward and in high heels. (Note to my husband – that expression started as a cartoon about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and then was popularized by former Texas Governor Ann Richards. It did NOT originate as a line for Angel in Rent. But I digress . . . ) And as far as whether or not to use the dreaded ‘f’ word, I love the way writer Caitlin Moran summed it up in her book, How To Be A Woman: “Here is a quick way of working out if you’re a feminist. Do you have a vagina? And do you want to be in charge of it? If you said ‘yes’ to both, then congratulations, you’re a feminist.”
Sure, we’ve come a long way, baby (and we no longer need ‘our own cigarette’ using that phrase . . . please tell me SOMEONE else remembers those hideous ads for Virginia Slims!) But we still have a long way to go, whether it’s the pay gap or minor cost differences at dry cleaners. And many male politicians seem to want to go backwards, whether it’s Todd Akin-type idiocy about pregnancy, Mike Huckabee explaining “Men like to hunt and fish together, and women like to go to the restroom together,” or the Texas legislature permitting concealed firearms in sessions but banning tampons and sanitary pads for fear of them being thrown in protest against an abortion ban (yes, that really happened).
So here’s a musical reminder to these misogynist guys that outdated attitudes towards women just might affect how we vote.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 14, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  The author at the Billy Joel concert with some nudnick and two beautiful women  The first two music albums that I fell in love with were Billy Joel’s The Stranger and Steely Dan’s Aja. I was 13 years old. Over time I came to like Aja better but initially The Stranger was my favorite. First favorite albums always have a special place in your heart and which is why I was so excited to attend my first Billy Joel concert at the YUM center last week.
The first thing I noticed was Billy Joel looks a lot different today than he did when I was first introduced to him in 1977. He even joked when introducing himself that he was really Billy Joel’s father. A lot of time has passed since The Stranger was released –37 years to be exact. But as I was treated to a generously long lifetime of songs from the legendary Billy Joel I couldn’t help but notice that –at least in my opinion—almost all of Joel’s greatest songs came from The Stranger (1977) or earlier works.
The 37 years that followed had produced some memorable and even exceptional songs but none that rated, again in my opinion, as classics or truly extraordinary pieces of music.
Which made me think to myself that perhaps in music—and other professions—the key is to have a huge creative burst in your late 20s and then you can coast the rest of your life by replaying your greatest hits, so to speak, to sell out crowds. In other words, I asked myself, Was Billy Joel and so many other of our greatest artists their own version of Orson Welles –who stunned the world with his prodigy and prodigiousness in his early career before falling relatively flat during the ensuing decades?
But as I remained entertained and even entranced by Billy Joel I knew something more was at play. Perhaps for some artists they do flame out early and coast for many years after that. But that is not what we were witnessing with Billy Joel. Yes, his greatest music perhaps was written when he was a younger man but we were not watching a man who was past his prime. He had matured from a great song writer to one of the greatest entertainers of our time. Joel may have been at the apex of his creativity in his 20s but now in his 60s Joel was still peaking as a performer and master musician.
So, as we were slowly filing out after the concert, I wondered to myself what this all meant. Perhaps it was that great creativity and breakthrough originality are breathtaking to experience but like all things that take your breath away are hard to sustain. But real passion and dedication that lasts not for months or years –but for decades –and is nurtured while honing your life’s work, may not take your breath away, but does elicit something even greater—an awe and respect as well as a record of sustained excellence that is even rarer and more special than moments of genius.
The author at the Billy Joel Louisville concert with some nudnick and two beautiful women I learned, I suppose, that the depth of our devotion is more profound than the height of our creativity. In music. And in life. The former can create one of the great albums of a generation. But the latter can establish one of the greatest entertainers of our lifetime. And made me glad that the Billy Joel I finally got to see live wasn’t the brilliant 28 year old at his creative flashpoint, who would have still been very exciting to see, but rather was the 65 year old master of his craft and consummate musical performer, who truly was amazing to behold. And who also taught me an important lesson about life.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Apr 9, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET As a political humorist, I gravitate toward bad news and schadenfreude. This is hardly surprising since satirists are often inspired by idiotic comments, horrible laws, and ludicrous judicial decisions.
I’m getting ready to record an album of my “greatest hits,” songs from my weekly videos going back to the 2012 election, and I’m noticing how many of them were inspired by things that would have otherwise made me angry. These include Todd Akin’s “shut that whole thing down,” Paul Ryan blaming poverty on lazy inner city men, the NRA’s response to Sandy Hook, and the dire need for a minimum wage increase. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this— humor has always been used to cope with difficulty by ridiculing authority, highlighting hypocrisy, and helping people laugh at what might otherwise make them cry.
However, it’s nice to change things up a bit. As my dad used to say, “Moderation in all things, including moderation.” (Which is either brilliant, or weirdly redundant. As were most of his aphorisms, including “Eschew obfuscation” – if you need a definition, ask a teenager who just finished SATs. But I digress.)
Last week there was still plenty of news to inspire dark humor, but the ACA enrollment news was surprisingly good. Add that to my love of word play and seeing a short-lived internet pun, and I decided it was time to celebrate instead of skewer. (Okay, I took a few digs at the Obamacare nay-sayers, but gloating is too hard to resist!)
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET like to joke that I have 3 boys, ages 17, 20 and 47. (One is my husband – cue rim shot.) Husband 2.0 came along when I was a single mother with really young kids, and he proceeded to endear himself to them by doing silly impressions (his Yoda and Scoobie-Doo sort of mesh together) and inventing a game he called ‘Dodgeball In The Dark,’ in which they raced around the backyard throwing whatever wasn’t nailed down. But he really bonded with the boys via male humor – first Simpsons, then Family Guy as they got (almost) old enough, with a healthy dose of “that’s what she said” jokes thrown in.
Many writers have weighed in on why women are less amused by this type of humor – in fact, Google “Why men love The Three Stooges and women don’t” and you’ll get over 2 million entries, with a wide range of explanations. I’m constantly trying to give my boys a bit of refinement and elegance, and moms are traditionally the ones who discourage rough-housing and bad language, but there is also something to be said in favor of letting our hair down a bit – especially since at my house it’s a losing fight anyhow.
I’ve learned to enjoy Family Guy (okay, it can be horribly offensive, but also really funny, and the song parodies are a riot), and I’ve been known to crack an off-color ‘that’s what she said’ on occasion. Plus this week, when I was at my wits’ end trying to figure out a topic for my song, Husband 2.0 suggested I do something juvenile with the rhyming name of Hobby Lobby – and this is the result. (Maybe we’re the reverse of the old saying about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, that he gave her class and she gave him sex appeal. . . I give him class and he gives me bawdy humor suggestions?)
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