AddieStan

F'n A! Governor McGreevey Comes Out; Steps Down Holy Cannoli, Batman! Your blogstress could barely believe her ears, listening to the governor of her home state come out, at the age of 46, on national television ( video here ). No, James McGreevey is not the first politician to admit to being gay when the wolf was at the door (with some sort of seedy evidence, no doubt, of a same-sex tryst). But it's a first for Jersey, where your cybertix knows from personal experience that ethnic queers generally marry members of the opposite sex in order to stay members in good standing of the quaint, foul-mouthed, family-centric, corrupt, congested, multi-cultural culture that has spawned such fantastic figures as Queen Latifah, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan, to name a few. Now, your blogstress never was a big fan of McGreevey's, though she did appreciate his support for Jersey's domestic parnership bill. You see, she spent much of her adult life in the county of her...

On the rag As promised, more from the president's appearance before the Unity conference of journalists of color. (Astute readers may recall that your blogstress noted this one in her initial report on the president's remarks , but it's so good that it bears repeating. And your cybertrix promises to pull out a fresh one later in the day.) "Look," said Mr. Bush to the journalists assembled before him, "you can't read a newspaper if you can't read." Which would appear to explain why our president does't read newpapers ... NOTE: Scroll to almost the end of Brit Hume's exclusive Fox News interview with the president, linked above, for his answer to Hume's question, "How do you get your news?"

Bush on tribal sovereignty: This just in from Indian Country For the Native perspective on Bush's fumble on tribal sovereignty (reported by AddieStan on Friday ), go to Indianz.com . There you'll also find links to video clips of the Bush appearance before Unity, as well as to the whole banana. Many thanks to our dear friend, Marlon Fixico, for steering your blogstress to this informative site.

Brilliant person Your blogstress begs the reader's forgiveness for having fallen down on the job of deconstructing the president's remarks to the Unity conference , a gathering of journalists of color, last Friday in Washington, D.C. The reactions of the audience of journalists to both President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry the day before have become a matter of some controversy, seeing as Kerry received more than polite applause, while the president received some unstifled titters. So, a debate rages on Romenesko , the site by which journos live and die. Because a rigorous desconstruction of the Bush remarks now appears to require the effort of a doctoral dissertation, your blogstress will simply highlight one quote each day, until all the good ones are exhausted. So here's the Bush Unity quote for August 10th: "You look at my administration, it's diverse...When I see Condi [Rice], I think 'brilliant person.'...

One thing perfectly clear Now, listen up, because (hopefully) I'm only going to say this once. And, in homage to our bescandaled 37th president, whose resignation was recalled in a previous post , your blogstress will borrow Nixonian syntax in order to make a rare lapse into the first person: Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not a terrorist. Why, you may ask, would your cybertrix feel the need to make such a statement? You see, dear reader, a blogstress will do many a shameful thing in order to support her writing habit, and yours, alas, worked at the World Bank for a year, beginning in 1998--not long after her return from Peshawar, Pakistan. Talk these days in D.C. is all about how the F.B.I. intends to comb through the employment and contracting records of the World Bank, and cull those that jibe with "suspicious travel," according to Pierre Thomas of ABC NEWS. And having traveled to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan just months ...

The politics of terror Slowly making its rounds through the tunnels of the internet is this amazing story of how the Bush administration burnt computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, the undercover al Qaeda source for its latest production, the August surprise. You'll recall that The New Repubic had predicted that the Bushies would capture an "important" al Qaeda figure and trot him out in a July surprise during the Democratic National Convention. And so reports of the capture of a high-value person of interest, one Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, appeared as predicted, just before Kerry's speech. Not content with its less than bouncy bounce out of its apparent coup , the administration announced, in the personage of First Toady Tom Ridge, an impending major al Qaeda attack, based on the computer records of Khan, another captured high-value person of interest, whose July arrest may have led to the apprehending of Ghailani. Ridge's announcement, in which...

More beatin' 'round the... Your blogstress asks your forbearance in keeping her promise to deconstruct the whole of President Bush's remarks last week to the Unity Convention, a gathering of journalists of color at which the president dumped a motherlode of material for late-night comedians and mean-spirited cybertrices. There's just so much that your humble écrivaine finds herself a tad overwhelmed. And then there's that little problem of earning a living that keeps getting in the way. Unfortunately, a suitable patron has yet to be found for the bohemian, blog-centric lifestyle to which your gateau-de-cup aspires.

Those good ole boys were drinkin' Whiskey and rye... Thirty years after Richard Milhous Nixon resigned the presidency, your blogstress found herself moved to a profound and wistful melancholy when the deep, manly tones of the Nixonian swan song came wafting through her radio last night as she rolled paint onto her living room walls. It was a sound that transported her swiftly back to the day and place when she learned of the deal--the way the scent of a bar of Palmolive soap brings her back to her grandmother's pink-and-black tiled bathroom. As the voice of the Great Disgraced began his farewell address, your Webwench could feel under her nails the yarn of the cherry-red wall-to-wall carpet of the family living room in Clark, New Jersey, where she sat on the floor in front of a dated, tube-set high-fi, breathless and bewildered at this latest turn of the national screw. Dressed for a date, her long hair, ends curled on hot rollers, artfully splayed across her shoulders, ...

Flubbo op President Bush unscripted In a Q&A before thousands of journalists of color today in Washington, DC, President Bush proved why his handlers avoid, usually at all costs, putting their man in any situation that requires spontaneous speech. Though the crowd, gathered in the nation's capital for the annual Unity journalism conference, was largely polite, some of the president's answers to questions posed by a panel of four journalists were either so awkward, empty or preposterous that they drew snickers of disbelief. And it seems that, under the artful questioning of one journalist, Roland Martin of the Chicago Defender , Mr. Bush inadvertently called for the end of college legacy admissions of the sort that enabled him to attend Yale, based not on his lackluster academic history but, rahther , on his family history. (Question of the day: will he try to back-pedal on this newfound stance?) The president opened his remarks by telling the assembled crow...

Check-point city Code Orange living Living, as she does, within blocks of the headquarters of two of our three branches of government (the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol), your blogstress finds her neighborhood resembling Berlin before the wall fell. Though no wall yet exists--just lots of fencing and jersey-wall barriers-- checkpoints abound , with every car being stopped on virtually every block within a ten-block radius of the terrorists' presumed high-value targets. People with guns sport a variety of official costumes, the most common of which is a navy blue shorts outfit, dayglo yellow vest and a 9mm pistol. Not particularly attractive. Note to self: remember to wear an ID badge while walking through nabe. Any kind of ID badge is preferable to none--unless, of course, one sports an employee ID issued by the Arab-American Anti-Defamation League. The walk from East Capitol Street, on which the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress sit, to Union Stat...

Don't know much about algebra... Ordinarily, your blogstress, who prides herself on making self-induced poverty look glamorous, is in no position to advise the less glamorous on financial matters. However, this AP report about Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's impending resignation counfounds her: Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary... Ridge owns an $873,000 home in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Michele, which they bought last year with a $784,800 mortgage, according to property and banking records. Ridge's most recent financial disclosure reports, filed in early 2003, showed that he owned between $122,000 and $787,000 in stocks and funds, including modest ownership in The Walt Disney Co., General Electric, Nike, Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. Memo...

Below: The first in an occasional series whereby your blogstress singles out for note a sentence for nothing more than the quality of its craft. Sentence of the day From David Remnick's analysis in this week's New Yorker of John F. Kerry's speech to the Democratic National Convention: The greatest similarity between the first J.F.K. and the current one lies not in their Ivy privilege or clambake geography but, rather, in the fact that both built a Presidential campaign narrative from acts of Navy heroism.

What goes with orange ? Dressing for the apocalypse You'll be happy to know that your blogstress's knee is healing nicely after the escalatorcapade on which she embarked while evading security personnel at the Democratic National Convention. Though she spent the weekend limping around, her undulant gait has, as of today, returned to normal, allowing her to, once again, swing so cool and sway so gently. As it turned out, the icky wet spot on the knee of her spandex-blend pants was indeed blood, so her knee now sports the scabrous imprint of the tread from the moving stairs. Curiously, while her knee was cut by the stairs, her tech pants by Isaac Mizrahi for Target remained miraculously in tact. Well worth the $29.99 they set your Webwench back. With orange apparently set to be the big color for fall, one suspects your cybertrix will sporting those trousers often. If one runs the everyday risk of being blown to smithereens here in our nation's capital, cloth...

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by Adele M. Stan This piece originally ran on the New York Times Op-Ed Page on December 17, 1993. WEEHAWKEN, N.J.--Were it not for an event in my own life, I might view the current debate over date rape and the rape crisis movement with detached amusement, the way one does whenever opposing pockets of the intellectual elite have a go at each other. But for me, the issue runs far deeper than that, and it seems to me that neither side has really got it right. In 1978, I was raped by an acquaintance in my college form room. This was no murky instance of date rape; I was asleep when the perpetrator, a guest at a party my roommate was giving in our campus apartment, let himself in, gripped my arms over my head and bored his way into me. Of course I protested, but I was afraid to do so too loudly, for just outside the door lurked the beer-soaked players of an entire hockey team, and I had heard too many boasts from athletes about girls who had “pulled the train” for a team, who had servi...

Orange ya glad for the president's leadership? It's one thing to use past tragedy for political gain, but quite another to use the president's homeland security director to laud "the president's leadership in the war against terror" when turning up the terrorism alert in the midst of a presidential campaign. (See full quote, below.) It's been a while since the alert was kicked up to orange, so we surely were due. I don't doubt that the New York Stock Exchange or the World Bank are in the terrorists' sights. And if, indeed, an imminent attack is averted by the vigilence of citizen, official and law enforcement officer, that's a laudable accomplishment. But to have Ridge, the man entrusted with the nation's safety, using a threat against American lives to tweak the president's poll numbers, well, that's just despicable. Ridge has been reportedly telling colleagues that he's ready to step down , weary of the work of com...

by Adele-Marie Stan THIS IS THE PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION This piece originally appeared in the December 1985 issue of Ms. magazine. Their Christian values compel them to challenge the church, say Catholic feminists. It is a church rife with powerful and mysterious symbols, symbols that have, throughout the ages, captured the imaginations of even those from other religious traditions. Artists and writers have long been intrigued by the Roman Catholic Church with its taboos and secrets, and the church has always provided the world with entertaining theater; its secret sensuality--the smell of the incense, the taste of the wafer, the sound of its glorious music, the elaborate settings of its altars, the silk and velvet vestments--provides the means through which the congregants are seduced from childhood. Yet despite the ceremonial indulgence, it remains an institution that makes grave distinctions between the needs of the spirit and the flesh. The church is an immensely wealthy institu...

Print-friendly This piece originally appeared on Salon.com during the platform hearings for the 2000 Republican National Convention. Inside the Republican pro-choice coalition Meet the women who are vowing a floor fight in Philadelphia over abortion. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Adele M. Stan July 29, 2000 | PHILADELPHIA, PA--As the delegates to the Republican Platform Committee strode into the Pennsylvania Convention Center yesterday for the party's quadrennial assessment of its mission, they found themselves greeted at the door by the welcoming committee of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition (RPCC). Politely applauding the approach of each delegate, the ladies cried out, "Yay, delegates! Help us out!" With one of the group's signature yellow T-shirts pulled over her smart black outfit, Carole Harper, president of the Morris County (N.J.) Republican Women's Club, held open the door for Chuck Cunningham, former field director of the Christian Coalition and current ...

Comrades in Blogs WASHINGTON, D.C.--Having spent the last five days angling for ways to get into the Fleet Center in Boston while getting lost in the amusement park inside her brain, your blogstress is only now catching up with the brilliant work done by her fellow bloggers during the Democratic National Convention. For unabashed fun, you'll need to visit Tom Burka's Opinions You Should Have , where a raft of laugh-out-loud satirical news items reside. My favorite? "Hope Delayed At Security Kiosk Outside Fleet Center" (July 28). Our favorite librarian , Jessamyn Charity West, informs us that, yes, Virgina, there are real roots on that grass. Check out her item, "Who Says There's No Grass Roots?" (July 29), and note the listing for the Democratic Swingers. (Smoking jackets, anyone?) Nathan Paxon is a brainy, and for the most part, sober fellow, but he had the good sense to post on his blog, NateKnowsNada , this delightful item from a ...

Lockdown BOSTON--Your blogstress should have known better. She had, after all, just gotten a call from her colleague, Lou Chibbaro, Jr. , staff reporter for the Washington Blade , from the convention floor, who said, "We're in some kind of lockdown here. They won't let me off the floor." She figured he just meant the convention floor, closed for the customary sweep. But no. Being bad girls, blogstresses occassionally need a smoke, and yours made the fatal error of stepping outside the building to inhale. Delegates were being held back by barriers at the foot of the stairways and escalators, but no cue was taken. It's just crowd control, n'est-ce pas ? It was still early, and the candidate wasn't scheduled to begin droning until 10:00. Upon returning to the building, your intrepid muse was met by phalanxes of police officers or some sort of law enforcement in black hats, as well as regular Boston cops, everywhere, and nobody, not even your blogstr...