The Oscars made me sick. Not because my George Clooney did not win and attended with that faux-galpal-arm-candy instead of me. Not because Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win Best Director, was so ditsily girly at such a historic moment. But because the tribute to horror films was an unrelenting filmic homage to violence against women. The wink wink nudge nudge "it's just a genre" disclaimer did not work for me, especially after news footage of the actual horrifics of femicide in Nigeria.
A week later and I'm still sick to my stomach. It could be the Boniva my doctor prescribed to aid in the absorption of calcium. I took it just before I read the studies someone finally got around to doing. The drug shilled everywhere by Sally Field, the Flying Nun for god's sake, causes shattered femurs in women users. Images of Sally Field collapsing in a heap of bones on the set of Brothers and Sisters, taken out to the back-lot and euthanized. "You like me, you really really . . . blam." I'm not taking it anymore.
Nor am I taking the blame for health care reform fights over the vexing - for whom? - issue of abortion funding. If I have to spend one more dinner listening to progressive men talk about how difficult it is for them to decide yay or nay -- weh weh -- on health care, I'm going to fork-stab their thighs. As a Vagina-American (it's a pre-existing condition) I'm sick of Viagra-Americans not supporting women's choice.
The Oscars showed graphic violence against women to an audience of 41.3 million. Big Pharma knocks the legs out from under women. Legislators make abortion funding an annoying deal-breaker. It's the stuppak pits. And my Milk of Amnesia doesn't work anymore.
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And that was the worst set I have ever seen. Better on a bare stage.
Maybe its time for a second "Names Project". Remember all those quilts of the names of people who died of AIDs? It took a nation by surprise. It showed the enormous numbers, something the average person and the politicians could ignore or deny previously. I think if each city could get the names of people who died because they did not have insurance, or were underinsured, or denied insurance, and we could line streets with them on some important days, ... like the days we vote. We could push to get health care back on OUR table. Pelosi, and the corporate government do not own "the table".
A middle school graduate could do the math. Between now and 2017. when the proposed health care reform will go into effect, one third of a million uninsured Americans will have died prematurely. Do our members of Congress need remedial math, or remedial love?
Carol Isaac