So I Get A Little Bored....

Thanks to my Hell's Kitchen agent, I'm perpetually reminded that I haven't written a thing in two years. To review what we've missed together:

Go, Hillary, Go!
Sarah who?
She can't be that stupid. It's an act.
Congratulations, Mr. President!

There. Now we're caught up. It's a different world today than the bygone era of 2009 when last I wrote. Republicans are no longer people of good will with bad ideas. Now they're plain evil with bad ideas. Democrats are developing a spine at the same rate as the slower evolving species. This could get tedious.

We are still amazed at the willingness of the masses to advocate against their own best interests in the name of loyalty to a cause. That's noble when the sacrifice is for a greater good. It's just plain stupid when the sacrifice is for the greater profit of some folks who will never invite you to dinner. Are you listening, Wisconsin?

Japan is melting down. It was inevitable, I suppose. They're the only island in the world not considered a hot vacation spot. If you had to nuke one - even accidentally - this is probably the one you'd choose. We feel for the Japanese people, but perhaps next time they'll invest more heavily in beaches of the nude variety and rely less on dicey technology that has no solution if something should go terribly awry. (See: earthquake, BP, or John Kasich.)

House Republicans are reveling in their opportunity to re-christen the U.S. a theocracy. It's sad watching people in the dying throes of a losing effort. We do admit, though, that gay sex was this much hotter when sodomy was illegal. So we watch with a smidgen of ambivalence as they tilt at windmills.

Either a rhinovirus or Ebola has invaded our home in the last 24 hours, so we leave you with best wishes for your basketball bracket (we took Kansas to win it all) and an encouragement to send $10 to the effort to recall the Republican assholes who dismantled collective bargaining for most public employees in Wisconsin. You can donate here: https://wi­sdems.ziss­ousecure.c­om/contrib­ute/Recall­Republican­8” .

More later...

Apparently She DID Cut It Off

Go back in time with us to a darker time in American History - the time when the name "Wendy Vitter" entered the national lexicon.

It was post-Lewinsky when Madame Vitter pronounced that if HER husband were ever found to have dallied outside her wide open legs and mouth, she would "cut his dick off". (Actually, she said, "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary Clinton." Same thing.) It's only Christian, after all.

It was only a few years later when Mrs. Vitter got the karmic "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" moment that we all knew would come: Her husband, Sen. David Vitter (R-of course) of Louisiana, admitted to a series of prostitutional encounters - including S&M and diapers. (We don't judge. We simply repeat.)

Mrs. First Lady Senator Secretary Of State Designee, Hillary Clinton, never dignified the wide-mouthed Mrs. Vitter's condescension with a response. She simply stayed with her husband, endured what life threw at her, and proceeded to become more rich, more powerful and more loved than Wendy Vitter. Plus, she never had to explain a photo like this:

God does look out for the put-upon, we think.

Come to today, when Mrs. First Lady Senator Secretary Of State-Designee Hillary Clinton's confirmation was voted on by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on which the presumably dick-less Sen. Vitter sits (gingerly, we're sure). How many votes against confirming Mrs. First Lady Senator Secretary Of State-Designee Hillary Clinton?

One. Guess who.

Looks like that whole sad Louisiana family has a problem. But like Martha Washington said at the first presidential inaugural ball, "Not getting caught at a press conference in a leopard print dress from Hookers 'R Us while your husband is explaining his hooker problem... is the best revenge."

Far be it from us to gloat.

Bitch.

For Those Who Would

Today brings the news that Connecticut will wed our kind. We don't know that they're given to outbursts of any kind in Connecticut. Our general impression has been that Connecticut is where New Yorkers go to avoid outbursts. But there will be many private, subdued expressions of mitigated, muted joy among Connecticutians who can finally and fatally bind themselves to someone else through better, through health, through richer, to have and to hold until wandering eye they do part. Good on them.

It's a minor salve to a major wound inflicted in California, Arizona and Florida. But if we're honest, from the confines of the good chair, it doesn't directly affect us anymore than Charmin's appearance on Russian market shelves did. We are not, as they say, "husband material". We are to marriage what those infuriating lookie-loos are to Bergdorf Goodman. We look like we might take something home, but we generally don't.

Not for lack of trying. In fact, it's the trying that has proved so trying that we no longer Bergdorf for a Good Man. We J.C. Penney for the low-hanging, quickly-passing fruit. We eat the part we want and throw the peel away - once a year or so. Our relationship disasters are Item #1 on Things That Make Us Laugh in that old gang of mine. The tragi-comic serial failures of our attempts at lasting union are the stuff of bad novels.

There's the one who wasn't really that gay.
The one who already had a keeper, though this was kept a secret.
The one who punched when he got drunk.
The one who kissed us goodbye - for good - in a hospital.
The one who admitted that he'd only been on a virgin hunt. Mission accomplished. And goodbye.

So we have no dog in the Gay marriage hunt - regardless of the state. It's a little like being banned from NASCAR races. We hope to never attend one. But it would piss us off to be told we couldn't. So we sympathize with those who really, really want to tie the(mselves in a) knot. And on some level we're a little jealous of those who have a partner at the precipice of wedded bliss(ful ignorance). We don't. We most likely would. But we don't.

So we cheer and cry for those who can and those who can't. Mostly, though, we cast our lot with the other bunch...

The ones who would.

Death Becomes Her: 2012 in Preview

This is After Therapy's first-ever political endorsement and letter to Santa Claus all in one: We would like to see Sarah Palin run for President as a Republican in 2012. There, we said it.

Since we have dedicated ourselves to the death of conservatism as practiced by Ronald Reagan and his ideological heirs, we can think of no one more capable of driving a wooden stake through the heart of the party than Governor Of A State With Less People Than Memphis, Sarah Palin.

We want the Republicans to run someone who has to defend whether or not she knows a country from a continent. We're jazzed about running against someone who spends weeks talking about who did or didn't want the fancy clothes. Bottom line: We didn't think they could do any worse than George W. Bush. And we were wrong. That well is deeper than we'd imagined.

Yes, we think Todd Palin is hotter than asphalt in a Tulsa summer, but that's in the second tier of reasons we support Gov. Palin for the Last Candidate Ever Nominated By The Republican Party. Mostly, we think that lengthy political campaigns should give us something to laugh at. And she fits the bill to a "T". What's better... A wide swath of conservatives thinks she's capable of being Leader of the Free World. We love it when movements implode under the weight of their own stupidity. This is like Christmas and losing your virginity all in one.


We also want to go on record as saying that while we think he won't - because he's greedy and unprincipled under that shiny, principled, I-Don't-Campaign-On-The-Sabbath veneer - Joe Lieberman should leave the Democratic caucus of his own accord and wallow in the oblivion he's earned. His last months in the Senate should be among his friends, not among the powerful Democratic majority on which he turned his back twice: When he said he wouldn't run if he lost in the primary and when he inexplicably campaigned against Barack Obama. The message to Lieberman: Keep facing that direction and remember all the good times on the Homeland Security Committee.

We are given to gloat around here. And we are given to grudges. Sarah, meet Joe. Joe... Sarah.

God, this is going to be fun.

This is Going To Get Ugly

Because we're Liberals and the only way we know to celebrate success is to eat our young, we will doubtless seize this opportunity to start a long, public battle royale among the Identity Factions. Black and Latino voters who voted by wide margins to nullify the marriages of 18,000 Californians have thrown down the gauntlet at Gay voters who voted by wider margins to elect the first African-American president.

Not that anyone's counting.

Don't think for a moment that this will be a flash-in-the-pan dust-up. This is the stuff of movements. While a majority of white voters supported Gay marriage - and Barack Obama - the Black community, especially, used the same rationale as its old white oppressors (Religion) to kick the Gay community in the balls.

If we know Gay folks like we think we know Gay folks, this ain't over.

There will be lots of calls to make nice and enjoy the Obama delirium. For a minute. But then we're going to need a long conversation about who's supporting whom...

And why not?

Joy Comes In The Morning

We got a little exorcised this morning over our Co' Cola and Pringles while reading the morning (Kansas City Star) paper. It was at the end of our morning routine - Sports, Front Page, Editorials - that we saw this bottom-of-the-page and bottom-of-the-barrel cartoon inside our own home.

Bein' as we're not morning people and our sinuses go haywire this time of year, we sat down and had us a one-sided chat via e-mail with the Vice-President, Editorial Page of The Kansas City Star, one Ms. Miriam Pepper (mpepper@kcstar.com). We then copied our mild thoughts to every single member of the editorial staff. No need for you to be left in the dark...

Miriam,

This is not for publication, it is simply a personal note.

I want to commend you and your staff for the enjoyable read pertaining to so many of today's issues. I was riveted by the feelings for/against/ and ambivalent toward President-Elect Obama. I was, as usual, amused by the incisive wit of Lee Judge's Funkhouser/Squitiro send-up. Then I saw the Steve Breen cartoon that you made the decision to include: "Fuzzy Math".

You made a bigoted, mean-spirited, factually incorrect statement in your Opinion section. As a native here, I understand when street people do it. I don't understand why you made it. Has some gay or lesbian person harmed you in your life to such an extent that you would posit all gay relationships to be factually incorrect? The graphic points out incorrect sums of two numbers. We are to believe that YOU believe that two people of the same gender in a marriage is an incorrect outcome.

I am above taking the bait to comment on your marriage, of which I know nothing. It would speak well of your education and position if you did the same. The logical conclusion from the graphic YOU chose to run is that marriage consists solely of chromosomal variety. You know better than that. Whether you threw a bone to your ignorant subscribers or just needed to throw a haymaker at the last acceptable target for ridicule and diminution, you hit your mark.

You're likely not talented enough to create your own graphic, but as Editor of this section, you may as well have created this one. We get that you don't embrace us. We get that you think our relationships are fodder for mockery and contempt. We get that you experience some internal, reflexive revulsion at the notion of us. You're entitled to all that. And we don't need your embrace, approval or support.

But if I'm going to get your thumb in my eye every time you bubble over in your hatred and use someone else to yell, "YOU'RE AN INCORRECT, ABSURD BEING!", then I will consign you and your paper to the collection of influences not permitted in my home. If you're going to suggest to my family and I that we are absurd enough to be on a par with 1 + 1 = 7, then I'm going to be bold enough to say,

Fuck you and your newspaper. Who needs either of you?

Rough language? That's what we thought when we read, "Fuzzy Math". Welcome to the club.

--The After Therapy Gang

Things We Need To Discuss

Exit polls for The Associated Press found that Proposition 8 (California's constitutional revision banning gay marriage) received critical support from black voters who flocked to the polls to support Barack Obama for president.


Nice.

We Couldn't Help It...

In one last jab at Democrats, Sarah Palin empties the underbelly of her campaign plane.... all over Michelle Obama, apparently. We get the whole Dress Matches Kids motif. Now don't do that anymore.

The very fabulous Mrs. Obama may be the only person on the planet who could halt dress designer Narciso Rodriguez's career with ten minutes of stage time. We prefer the Michelle who admits to ordering dresses online.

One For The Others

Dear Y'all,

You've run everything but the NAACP, GLAAD, and several reservations in the Midwest since your great-greats stepped off the right kind of boat in the 15th Century. You'd do well to show a little humility in the weeks and months to come while we indulge our urge to gloat a little and to thank your Jesus that one of us made it.

No, we at After Therapy are not African-American, but we are equally Other. We stand on the outside of society and look in at folks who have things we aren't allowed to touch and that we should refrain from wanting. We sit outside hospital rooms while our partner's family makes decisions as though we hadn't shared twenty-some years with the man in the bed. We tend to weddings - hair, makeup, flowers, gowns, music, cakes, catering, decorating and planning - like the house niggers of old who worked in houses they could never own. We know that every day on the job could be our last because of who we love - or who we'd like to love. And in a majority of our nation, there is no legal recourse for it.

We can be laughingly denied an apartment, a job, public accommodations and simple dignity because our nature defies the norm. And our only recourse is to pack a briefcase full of cover stories. As the First Lady-To-Be said during primary season, "People who love you tell you... wait..."And we got it. Because we've been lovingly urged to wait on things that most folks are born into.

Barack Obama's election is one for the Others and those tired of waiting. History will report whether our brand of Other was bettered by his service. But we understand this moment intuitively. Like we understood Judy Garland, Harvey Milk and Cher. It's a DNA thing.

It will be a moment for the memory book when, in January, we can look through the White House windows and see an Other looking back with that million-watt smile. "Wait" gives way to "Next!".

Get This Woman Some Choos

Joe Six-Pack, meet Sarah Six-Figures. Comes of late the word that the RNC (Really Nice Clothes) has spent north of $150,000 on nice duds for their VP (Very Pretty) Candidate, Sarah Palin. We say, "Well done!" But why stop there?

We noticed Cindy McCain trying to fight her way through a Botoxed facial coma to raise an eyebrow at the expenditures. "$150,000? Didn't they get her any shoes?" she seemed to ask. We applaud the bald revealing of conservative family values: Mother of 5? Spend $150,000 on your power suits while sneering at middle-class tax cuts as "socialism". Somewhere, Imelda Marcos is smiling. And buying shoes.

We are pleased that the RNC is investing in lipstick for their pig of a campaign as opposed to spending money running ads for embattled candidates like Michele Bachmann (MN), notoriously anti-gay Marilyn Musgrave (CO) and Norm Coleman, who, it appears, will lose to Al Franken/Stuart Smalley (also of MN) - a political death of biblical proportions. The quandary at NBC is who will play Franken while Franken plays Senator.

We encourage the RNC to continue the expenditures by upping the fashion ante. We highly recommend Hugo Boss, Chanel, Gucci, Prada and Vera Wang all be beneficiaries of this Republican stimulus package.

After all, in 2006, the joint income of the parents-of-four only reached $128,000 - not beating the RNC VP wardrobe budget until 2007 thanks to her governor's salary ($166,000). We believe that if you ask any family of 7 what would benefit them most, all but the Anti-Americans would say "Buy mama $150,000 in new clothes!"

It would have been cheaper to put her in a t-shirt that reads "Let Them Eat Cake".