The world is far from perfect, but even 15 years ago when I was in high school, the thought of having a mainstream popular television show with a gay main character who is treated like any other character on the show, not just regelated to “A Very Special Coming Out Episode” or turned into a punchline (sorry “Will & Grace”, I appreciate what you were doing at the time, but when I watch old episodes now it’s sorta gross how you exploited homosexuality for punchlines. But, to be fair, you exploited a lot of things for punchlines. You were a sitcom) was unthinkable. Sure, Glee is arguably the gayest show on tv even without Kurt’s storyline, and maybe we’re a few years away from having a gay protagonist of the next “CSI: Somewhere” but we’re getting closer. And I think someday soon we’ll accept as normal the idea that a character’s sexual identity is just one of the many things that define him or her.

Also, if someone can get me to like “Baby it’s Cold Outside”, and not just think it’s just weird and psuedo-date-rapey, that person wins. So there’s that.

Baby It\'s Cold Outside…

This is what I wrote.

They published it.

So I guess someone liked it.

1. Yosefblog has been reading David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. Dina saw it on his bedside table and asked:

Dina: What’s this about?

yb: Well, it’s about infinity, and how lots of people used to think that if you thought about infinity too much, you’d go crazy.

Dina: I’ve been thinking about infinity my whole life! Are you telling me I’m crazy?!

2. I came home from a particularly trying day working with a pilot program at my school meant to create a values-based education curriculum.

Dina: So, how was your day at school?

Me: To tell the truth, a little stressful. I’m not sure how I feel about this values-based curriculum.

Dina: Why?

Me: Well, what might be some of the problems you encounter with trying to teach students to be “good people”?

Dina: Well, what if they’re just really bad people and they won’t do it?

Me: That could be a problem. Or, what if their idea of what’s good in a certain situation is just different from what we’re teaching? Should we make them do it the way the school has determined is best?

Dina: No, you should let the students decide for themselves.

Me: But then, sometimes, they might make decisions that would really hurt other people, or themselves. So this is the issue I’m struggling with.

Dina: Ahhh…I see…

yb and I decided that a more fitting and accurate billboard would be simply this: “If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have unprotected sex.” And then just let people work out the details for themselves.

ps: If you don’t want to read the whole article, here’s the piece that caught yb’s eye: “And many young people are in “the fog zone” in which their beliefs about pregnancy don’t match their behaviors”.

Me: What?

Bassie: If someone says “it’s cold outside”, you can’t respond by saying “It’s”.

Pause…me thinking…

Me: You’re right, you can’t. And if I ask you “have you done your homework?”, you can’t respond by saying “I’ve”.

Pause…her thinking…

Bassie: No, you can’t.

Me: That’s weird. Because those are both technically sentences with subjects and predicates.

Bassie: Yeah, but you can’t say them.

Me: No, no you can’t.

Silence.

Me: Hunh.

Bassie: Weird.

The point is, I was just reading a particularly well-written and no-holds-barred critique of the anti-vaccine movement in WIRED, and it just got me so mad.

Mad at the parents who, in the face of what must be a terrible mix of helplessness, guilt, and fear, would rather blame the closest correlative data they can get their hands on or spend the bulk of their waking hours protesting science and medicine than attend to the issue at hand: the fact that their child has special needs that require special attention and empathy. Mad at the parents who, by crusading against the “boogey man” of the vaccine industry, are basically telling their children: “You have an illness. This isn’t ‘you’; it’s some sickness inside you. If we could find a way to ‘cure’ you, you’d be ‘normal’ again.” It almost makes me cry.

And, you know, I get, on a very very small scale, what they’re going through. When Bassie was 3, we realized she could barely see: she was squinting at her little board books and sitting inches from the tv. We took her to the eye doctor. It could have been something really terrible. But it was just far-sightedness. Extreme farsightedness. As she got fit for her tiny little 3-year-old glasses I looked into her big, blue eyes that, with the magnification of her new lenses, looked like they were out of some animae cartoon. My eyes welled up with tears. Had I given her some genetic disposition to this? Had I somehow contributed to this in my raising of her? She’s going to be that nerdy little kid with glasses, and it’s ALL MY FAULT!

But then I looked at her again. She looked cute. She was smiling. She liked the purple frames with the orange trim. There wasn’t anything “wrong” with her; this was her.

Now, I know autism is a far more pervasive condition. And I know you can’t just slap a pair of glasses on a child and make him act “normal”. But following this red herring against vaccines only reinforces a parents’ own perception that there is some sort of sickness making the child act this way; like there’s a “real” child, stuck inside this fever-dream, waiting to emerge, wrap his arms around his loving mommy and daddy and say “My, God! How long was I trapped in that nightmare? Thank you for saving me!”

And this is just not the case. If you want to understand autism, you can learn a lot from people who are on the spectrum, but can communicate enough to share their experience, like Temple Grandin. They take in stimulus differently from most of us, and to varying degrees; and they process it differently. In some severe cases it’s hard for them to do very much taking in and processing at all. Yes, it’s abnormal. No, it’s not some “bug” you “catch”. It’s just a way you are.

And, oh, Jenny McCarthy. Look, we all remember you from “Singled Out”. You’re snarky and feisty and that’s great. But you’re not a scientist. You’re not a doctor. You’re the worst possible person to get involved in this discussion: you’re a mother in pain. And mothers in pain are not rational beings. Mothers in pain are not known for their restraint. Mothers in pain are sometimes able to tap into some reservoir of super human strength and lift cars off of their dying children to save them. Do not cross a mother in pain.

So, I know it’s tough, but stop blaming the shots your kid happened to get around the time he began to develop signs of autism, and maybe use your celebrity to help us understand more about what autism is, and how we can help children who are autistic, not try to make their “sickness” go away.

But really, you know, thank God they’ve got the zinc on under their eyes. Safety first, right?

(Now, um…whatever shall I do with this crisp dollar bill?)

Really, after that, there’s not a ton more for me to say, so I’ll just do a few quick soundbites:

1. Sure, put a normal looking girl in a 3″x3″ picture on p. 194 of your magazine. Viva la Revolucion it’s not...

2. But let’s not all go off about how excited we are to see a woman who is “the dress size of the average American woman” in a fashion magazine and then ignore the fact that obesity is a real problem in America. No, not for this girl; she looks great. But she’s also, like, what? 5’10″? 6′? And a size 12. I mean, she is just a big girl, every which way. But the average American woman is not that tall, and she’s still a size 12. Which can also be okay, if you’re healthy and that’s just the size you are (God knows I know from whence I speak, for lo, I have seen the valley of the skinny girl but have not pranced through her fields; have seen the glistening size 2 rivers, but have not drunk from their waters), but, like, we are a fat nation, and that’s a no good-a. So let’s not use Hottie McAmazon here as an excuse to let ourselves go completely, America!

3. Bassie and Dina call this look the “squishy mommy”. Nice. (At least they know the fate that awaits them…)

Bassie: (not missing a beat) Then what is the trash heap for?

…and all three of us stand silent in contemplation.

*This from the same person who noted that if ‘each day [Calliou] grow[s] some more’, he should no longer be four. She’s a lyric-parser extraordinaire. Wonder what she’d think of ‘Miss American Pie’?