Why was Aretha wearing that hat?

Because she IS Aretha, and, yes, she can wear any damn hat she wants. I also appreciated the subtext of shout-out to Marion Anderson.

As I noted elsewhere in Blogistan, I was watching Tuesday's ceremony in our conference room, on ABC, because that's the channel our TV-plus-rabbit-ears received the best. (We do not have cable at work, apparently, so we rigged this up so people could watch.) One of the blatherers commentators said, on seeing Nancy Pelosi and Senator Feinstein and the President-elect come on to the porch, that we would not have seen that tableau a hundred years ago. I blurted, because I could not help myself, that we would not have seen that tableau FIFTY years ago. There was general agreement about what I said, but the fact that the commentator was so ahistorical still kind of amazes me. Seriously: how can you claim to be a journalist and say something that fucking stupid?

Tuesday was also my first exposure to Rick Warren, and what a tool. At least I got a shout-out in Obama's speech. Incidentally, w/r/t the former, a number of my non-atheist friends were completely offended by Warren's recitation of the so-called lord's prayer (including my boss the ex-priest). It took me awhile to figure that one out, because, on some level, to me a prayer is a prayer is a prayer, and I find pretty much all public prayer offensive, particularly at sporting events and official government functions. (If you want to pray at any time, please feel free--I will even, you may remember, make space for said activity at my own (possibly) damned dinner table; but invocations of a deity at sporting and government assemblies are an enforced religious observance that annoys the fuck out of me.) However, I have learned that that particular prayer is profoundly christian, and, thus, at least potentially offensive to anyone who isn't christian but is religious in some way. Apparently there's a dispute within christianity, as well, as to whether one is supposed to have one's debts or one's trespasses forgiven; ah, sectarian disputes.

I believe we have "godless communism" to blame for much of this. I know you can find piety and references to deities all throughout U.S. history, but the upheavals of the beginning of the last century ratcheted everything up a notch. Communism, socialism, and anarchism, and, with all of them, atheism: many Powers regarded them as pure evil, and anything that could be associated with any of them, and anyone who didn't sufficiently despise all of those isms and anything associated with them, could be denounced freely. Same with labor unions, in part because the early labor movements were related, philosophically and sometimes politically, with the isms; all of them had as their goal a kind of liberation and justice for the common person.

Marx's historical analyses may well have been mistaken--that is, though the workers of the world may well unite at some point, I don't foresee that OR the withering of the state occurring any time soon. In addition, the attempts to create marxist-influenced society in eastern Europe/Russia and China were wrong in practice and possibly in theory as well (I do not claim to be any kind of expert on marxism/leninism). Nevertheless, Marx's analyses of capitalism and the oppression of the workers that results from it have much to recommend them. Some teacher along the way pointed out that Smith's and Marx's analyses of industrialism weren't all that different; rather, Smith is less disturbed by the oppression of the working classes that is a necessary facet of capitalism. If that's true, it is thus hardly surprising that the monied powers that be regarded any of the spawn of Marx's analyses as a danger. (Stalin and his evil ilk basically played into the hands of the anti-communist and anti-socialist forces by providing reasons for condemnation--reasons that had nothing to do with the message of liberation and justice that is at the heart of the marxist analysis. Whatever else Stalin was about, he was not about justice or liberation.)

On a completely unrelated note, it's been kind of strange to see Caroline Kennedy in the news of late. She's very close in age to me, and she was most frequently in photographs in women's magazines, either the ones my mom got or the ones I was reading for my dissertation, in the 1970s or so, i.e., when she was quite a bit younger than she is now. The current photographs show a middle-aged woman, which is a very striking reminder that that's what I, too, look like these days (and, let's face it, I don't have a stylist of any kind). Somehow, in my head, I'm still somewhere around 35. I'm trying to figure out how to revise that.

Some of it I know has changed: the other two women that my boss manages are in their mid-to-late 30s, and they're just in a different place than my boss and I are. I can definitely enter the rant zone, I can definitely go off on a tear, but the past five years seem to have made a major change in me. I don't feel as though I've finally reached some end spot, but I also sense that I don't get wrapped around the axle in quite the same way any more. I can't explain it very well, especially because most of you either don't know me IRL or haven't known me all that long, and I know that even to people who know me well IRL it may not be obvious, because, really, I am still capable of ranting like nobody's business.

But it just doesn't matter.

I guess part of it is that I've stopped believing that I'm ever going to do anything that matters or lasts, and I've stopped believing that I'm going to get to do any of the things I've dreamed of doing. Every one of my plans has, after a certain amount of effort and expense and time on my part, gone to shit. I'm doing basically the same work I was doing in 1986 when I left the east coast for graduate school in the city in which I still live. Yes, I have done some fun things--and paid dearly for them, in several senses of "paid," as well as met some wonderful people--so I don't want to sound too poor-pitiful-me, because that's not where I'm going with this. I've also foregone a number of things that might also have been fun--having kids, for example, which was something that I wanted to do only if I had (a) a partner (b) who also wanted to have kids. Having a kid by myself while I was in grad school, for example, or immediately afterwards, when I was deeply in debt and unemployed, seemed like a very bad idea.

So, given that, what am I going to do? Sit around and feel depressed and sorry for myself because I'm a loser? Yeah, okay, whatever; that doesn't sound like very much fun to me, so, no, thanks, I'll skip that. I've experienced depression several times in my life, and I have to say that I found it profoundly boring. I can expound on that if anyone cares, but I really did find it boring.

Okay, so no job I really want; no well-paid sinecure; no kids; no meaningful and fun work (though I do like my coworkers and my current job). I can either be happy with what I have--which is nice, relatively speaking--or I can be perpetually dissatisfied and depressed and crabby. Eh; the latter sounds like too much work. I'd still like to write a book, and I'd still like to start doing needlepoint again, but I don't know whether I'll manage either of those things. I'd like to live in a nicer space at some point, but the thought of moving makes me cringe, and I really don't want to pay all that much more for an apartment.

Whatever. I've resigned myself to being a loser. As noted, it just doesn't matter, so this doesn't disturb me nearly as much as it might have when I was younger.

One final note before bed: I constantly threaten my boss that he's going to be in trouble when I win the lottery. When things get really crazy, I inform him that I'm going to drain my savings account to play. Today he informed me that I'm never going to win, that he has called in all karmic debts to ensure that it doesn't happen. Which cracks me up--the thought that he's praying that I NOT win just amuses me to no end (though I don't know that he prays or even believes in a deity, per se, any longer).