Single women least likely to vote? Not on my watch, sister.
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Political Party Girl: Diary of a Campaign
November 3, 2004
Hmph.
October 26, 2004
I like this article from the Washington Post about how Bush reacted when he first heard about the terrorist attacks on 9/11...
Getting Bush's Goat
A primer on priorities
By Gene Weingarten
President Bush has been taking some heat for having failed to respond instantly to the 2001 terrorist attacks. The movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" points out how Bush just sat in that second-grade classroom in Florida for seven minutes after he learned America was under attack. He was helping the children read "The Pet Goat."
I, for one, think this criticism of the president is terribly unfair. It's as unfair as criticizing "Fahrenheit 9/11" just because the director looks like one of those 750-pound rural dimwits in bib overalls who are occasionally photographed being removed from their houses by a crane as neighbors stand by and tsk.
My point is, we ought to be fair. Maybe, just maybe, our president had a compelling reason to remain in that classroom for those seven minutes on September 11, a reason heretofore overlooked by the so-called "responsible" press.
Shockingly, this journalist is the first to obtain a copy of, and to review, "The Pet Goat."
The Pet Goat
A McGraw-Hill publication
Reviewed by: Gene Weingarten
In this uplifting allegory of prejudice redeemed, a girl gets a pet goat. The girl is never given a name -- she remains always "a girl," imparting a universality to her plight, and a timelessness to the tale. She is anygirl, and her goat is anygoat, and what befalls them could befall any of us who happen to live in an area where pet livestock is allowed, such as certain portions of Fauquier County.
The goat is an undisciplined pet, with a most extraordinary digestive system. To quote: "The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps."
The author of this tale, which is contained on pages 155 and 156 of a reading workbook, is never identified. This is tragic because one cannot help but admire the author's skillful minimalism; as in the short stories of Ernest Hemingway or Eudora Welty, the reader is provided tantalizingly sparse detail and is invited to draw revealing conclusions. What are we to make of a household with "canes" and "capes"? Is this the home of a magician?
The magic, we soon see, is in the hands of the storyteller.
It turns out this household also contains a "dad" who is "mad." The dad orders the girl to get rid of the remarkable pane-eating goat, but she pleads with him to let her try to cure the animal of its dietary excesses. And she does. With this restoration of order, one might expect the story to end, but here is where the author's narrative mastery comes in. Here may well be where the president elected to set a spell, spellbound.
A robber arrives to steal the dad's red car! But the goat butts the robber and saves the day. The delighted dad is no longer mad. Now he is glad. He declares that the goat may henceforth eat whatever he wishes. And so: "The girl smiled. Her goat smiled. Her dad smiled. But the car robber did not smile. He said, 'I am sore.' The End."
(The eclectic reader will find unmistakable parallels between "The Pet Goat" and the national bestseller Walter the Farting Dog, published shortly thereafter. Walter is an unpopular pet whose flatulence foils a home robbery and restores the love of his family. Cynics might charge plagiarism; I am content to call it homage.)
In the end, "The Pet Goat" is the story of an authority figure -- the dad -- who learns to exercise his powers with restraint. When the security of his home is threatened by the goat's appetite for mass destruction, the dad's initial impulse is small-minded and simplistic. He focuses on one evildoer -- the goat itself -- to the exclusion of anything else. He thinks he knows goats, and they're trouble. Other voices -- specifically, the girl's -- raise less drastic possibilities: Possibly the goat can be reasoned with, or coerced, into altering its behavior. Possibly the goat is not the threat the dad thinks it is. Possibly the family is even complicit, for having trained the goat poorly. Possibly the goat is really . . . a scapegoat.
The dad proves a wise enough leader to heed this advice. In so doing, he avoids a costly overreaction, since, in the end, taking any action against the goat would have let the car robber get away scot-free. The car robber is the real enemy, and because the dad was so smart, the car robber was captured.
It should come as no surprise that the president chose to stick around for the end to this riveting story. Only the petty or small-minded could fault him for it. After all, there is much to learn from literature.
October 5, 2004
Good news about new voters registering in droves.
October 1, 2004
So Monday's the last day to register to vote. Please do so if you haven't already.
What did everyone think of the debate last night? George's attitude toward women was best exemplified by his comment about wanting to keep his daughters on a leash, I thought. Of course my man Kerry said he didn't think that was such a great idea. Perhaps someone should keep Bush's good-ol'-boyism on a leash.
Has anyone else noticed that we've had only First Daughters for 15 years and will have for at least four more? At least there are women in the White House, I guess.
August 24, 2004
Today I was looking at a map of how Kerry is trouncing Bush and I realized that I've only lived in blue states: Minnesota, California and Washington. I was at a barbeque a few weeks ago and some of the guys swore that the colors switched at some point, that blue wasn't always for Democrats. Anyone?
August 3, 2004
Bitch magazine and I are doing a link trade for the month of August in honor of the Suffragette campaign, so go check them out immediately!
July 30, 2004
So apparently the Kurt the Cyberguy thing didn't run during the Democratic convention, but will instead air during the Republican convention at the end of August. Tune in for my musical tribute to the current president entitled "That Naughty Little Dubya, Oh How I Loves Me a Texas Man."
July 19, 2004
I taped an interview for Kurt the Cyberguy's feature. It's on Fox and the WB morning news and is seen in like 155 cities or something. I was very pleased with how it went. They asked good questions about the Suffragette campaign and I got the big television studio all to myself. Plus the lighting was good.
July 4, 2004
If you thought I was going to do something special and patriotic to celebrate this great country's independence then you haven't been reading my site for very long. Happy 4th anyway!
July 3, 2004
Fox/WB emailed yesterday to ask if they could interview me for a morning feature on Suffragette. Yay!
June 26, 2004
So I had dinner with a political consultant the other night and among other things he told me that I should be partisan because it shows more passion and also people can pretty much see that "getting single women to vote" means getting votes for Kerry since 95%+ of that group votes Dem.
I thought up a new Internet-appropriate campaign slogan, "Single Women Should Shave Bush," and then some guy on craigslist in New York said I should call the campaign Suffragillette and the City.
June 13, 2004
In the film Repo Man, Harry Dean Stanton tells Emilio Estevez about cosmic unconsciousness… the theory that someone will mention something like a shrimp plate and suddenly you constantly hear references to shrimp plates where you never noticed any before.
Political groups are my shrimp plate. Everywhere I go I see activists.
I was at a big party the other night and there were two voter registration volunteers with a table set up in the corner. They told me I should contact a local group called Mothers Opposed to Bush ("the MOB") and I asked if they were funny, because most of these political action groups seem pretty dry. They also told me you can print voter registration sheets off the Internet and anyone can be a voter-registration person. Cool. And weird.
A few days later I was going to a neighborhood yard sale and a woman got out of a car with a big sign that said League of Women Voters. I gave her my whole spiel and she gave me their info. Then I went to this uber-hip rummage sale that an edgy theater was holding and a woman wearing silver antennae on her head recommended that I contact NOW as she used to raise funds for them and they take small organizations under their wing. I bought a bunch of kitshy stuff to sell on eBay -- an old Coca-Cola bottle, Disney stuff still in the package, an NYPD hat.
It is American Kitsch week on my eBay. Please buy my stuff even if you don't need it, because my finances are giving new meaning to the term suffrage and I really need your support, shrimp plate!
June 12, 2004
I got Suffragette and the City's ID number from Washington State and set up its bank account so it is a separate entity from my personal account. They gave me checks and a debit card with Suffragette and the City on them. Surreal.
I also set up a PayPal account, please make use of it:
June 9, 2004
Good lord, people are being peachy about advising me on my campaign. My friend Dwayne runs a non-profit and told me all I need to know about drawing up a proposal. Then the good peeps at Washington Citizen Action counseled me further. They were talking about line items and budgets while I clipped a hangnail, but thank God anyone will talk to me at all since I am like the guy in that one movie where he would say things like "Water is wet" because he was somewhat slow and everyone took it as profound thoughts and Peter Sellers played him. I totally feel that way when I am featured in the Technology, and now I guess Political, section of the news.
June 8, 2004
The Dems called me back and said I have to submit some sort of proposal with a cost breakdown as they don't really give away money over the phone. Is 35% too much to allocate for wine and food for my future staff and me?
June 7, 2004
I left a rambling message on an answering machine at the Democratic National Committee here. Hopefully someone will be able to make sense of it and call me right back. They are probably getting together the feather boas I need for my street team even as I type this. I'm currently leaning toward red and not pink as I originally planned. No final decision has been reached on marabou vs. ostrich, however.
May 28, 2004
Ran into some kids from the Democratic Party street team and they basically assured me I would get a big donation plus my own street team from the dems just for asking. I will let you know next week what the actual Powers That Be say.
May 24, 2004
Today I found two single women who are very enthusiastic about voting: one who can't wait to turn 18 and one who is not a U.S. citizen. Is it possible that thirty- and-fortysomething American women are cynical about more than just men?
May 22, 2004
In an effort to see what I'm up against, I've started asking women who may be single if they voted in 2000 and if not, why not. My first victim was a college girl who works at my usual coffee shop. Bright and educated, she said she is purposely not registered because she doesn't have time for jury duty and that most of her girlfriends feel the same way.
This project is going to be harder than I thought.
May 18-21, 2004
Talked to the IRS and everyone they referred me to about how to legally set up Suffragette and the City. Ended up having to do it as a for-profit association, since non-profits take at least six months to set up and tend to get in trouble if they do political things (Google Greenpeace).
May 20, 2004
Called the EMP (Paul Allen's Hendrix museum) to see if I could throw a party there on Election Night. They wanted $5,000, even though I explained it was for charity. I feel really disheartened, since so far I'm paying for this project out of my own pocket even though I haven't worked since 9/11, and even if they donated the space they would still make money from alcohol, plus it's a Tuesday night, so doubt they'd be booked anyway.
May 18, 2004
Was interviewed by Grist magazine, a environmental publication with the slogan "Gloom and doom with a sense of humor." Am considering dating them.
May 15, 2004
Had one of the DatingAmy readers offer to pay for a graphic designer to do the Suffragette logo and then ended up thinking of one myself and having a friend in L.A. put it together.
May 13, 2004
I partnered with Rock the Vote! They asked me about my dates.
May 12, 2004
I read this morning that single women are the least likely to vote. I was horrified. While I naturally assume not being given a voice by men, I had no idea we were not giving a voice to ourselves. I immediately started not only a web page on DatingAmy but a national campaign. It is called Suffragette and the City after the David Bowie song and the Sex and the City demographic I'll be targeting.
Contact Amy at
Suffragette and the City
