The Menopause of the "Monologues."

"The Vagina Monologues" is — at long last — not a fertile text.

Young people have moved on and need to write their own plays, express their own ideas. They should feel free to steal the secret of the structure of Eve Ensler's play: 1. a set consisting of nothing but stools (it's cheap, actors conserve energy, and there's none of that crossing about the stage that requires directing and rehearsal), 2. lines read from index cards (so no one has to memorize lines or even pretend that they're not just reading), and 3. a series of monologues (so the actors just take turns instead of having to relate to each other, and the audience is distracted from the absence of a story arc).

When I wake up in the morning, I look at Memeorandum to get up to speed on what stories everyone's blogging about, and I see this one about Mount Holyoke ending its annual V-Day production of "The Vagina Monologues" because — as one blogger has put it — "it's not feminist enough," and I think: 1.  This is the ready-made bloggable story of the day (the story that prompts commenters to profess incredulity about its not yet having been blogged, so that I feel dogged into blogging it to keep you from thinking I'm out of touch), 2. The usual anti-feminist crowd is going to blog this the wrong way (so even though I could resist the pressure to blog it because it's the bloggable story of the day, it feels like my job to push back the inevitable misblogging), and 3. "The Vagina Monologues" was ALWAYS a bad play (certainly undeserving of annual productions everywhere, so congratulations to the young people who finally got the guts to say NO).

"Most girls don't think I have a penis at all at this point, so if they find out that I do, it's kind of like, you know, 'Oh, well look at that! It's actually there.'"

"It's like a homeless guy bringing you home to his mansion, like, 'Whoa, where did this come from?'"

Says Patrick Moote, a man who was publicly humiliated in a viral kisscam video of his marriage proposal getting rejected by a woman who (later) told him it was because his penis is too small. He's made a documentary — which he calls a "cockumentary" — called "Unhung Hero."

When life gives you lemons a small penis, make lemonade a documentary about your small penis.

"I’ve known what communism is and when the people depend on government, that’s wrong; then the government has control over you."

Says Maria Conchita Alonso, explaining her support for Tim Donnelly, who's seeking the GOP nomination in the California gubernatorial race, which got her ousted from a San Francisco production of "The Vagina Monologues." She portrays her departure as non-involuntary:

"I said, ‘Well, you know the ... production doesn’t need to be hurt by me,... I told them, ‘Listen, it’s the best for everybody.’ ”

She also doesn't like being accused of doing a Latina stereotype in that Donnelly ad, especially the focus on the Chihuahua:

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God!... I rescued her from a shelter three years ago. I named her Tequila because we went to the shelter and I was kind of drunk. I was tequila-ed out. That’s the true story.”

Those who are pushing outrage over ousting Maria Conchita Alonso from "The Vagina Monologues"...

… remember "Veterans Boycotting 'The Butler' Over Jane Fonda's Portrayal Of Nancy Reagan."

Don't be hypocritical!

Maria Conchita Alonso booted out of a San Francisco production of "The Vagina Monologues" after appearing in an ad for a Tea Party candidate.

In the ad — which we talked about here — she said, expressing antagonism toward big government — "We’re screwed." She said it in Spanish. "The Vagina Monologues" production was also to be in Spanish. I don't know how to say "screwed" or "vagina" in Spanish, but the producer of the show, Eliana Lopez, wife of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, said: "We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately."

And Jim Salinas, "a long time Mission resident and former president of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club," noting the sexual language in the ad, the chihuahua named "Tequila," and predicting boycotts if Alonso remained in the cast, said:

“We don’t act like that. First of all, that is not a typical Latina... First Amendment rights, we all have the right to say something. But it’s also our right to say we object to that.”

If you're a member of a minority group and you speak in a setting that seems to be conveying the message — politically leveraging the message — that you are a typical member of that group, you will attract criticism, and that criticism can also be criticized.

And criticize that play too. It sucks.

"Perhaps Regina Marcia Benjamin should suggest teaching pro-abortion-rights bloggers that masturbation is part of human sexuality."

Says Meade, here, in the discussion of the ugliness of the mockery of the "masturbating fetus," and alluding to Benjamin's predecessor in the role of Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, who was fired by Bill Clinton in 1994 for saying that children should be taught that masturbation "is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught."

(She meant taught about, but there was much mockery, as people assumed or pretended they believed that she thought that school teachers should be showing children how to do it, as opposed to simply teaching that it's something that many people do, that isn't physically harmful, and that avoids pregnancy and disease.)

This mockery of masturbation is quite fascinating. I'm drawn to Scalia's notorious dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he defended the state's power to criminalize sodomy:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices.

Imagine a state today attempting to prosecute the crime of masturbation. Of course, the defense would be the right of privacy, and the courts would hear masturbation described in the loftiest terms. It would parallel what we heard — over the past few decades — about homosexuality, which was initially viewed as a lowly or ridiculous matter that didn't belong in the treasured realm of constitutional rights.

Given the importance of privacy rights to the pro-abortion-rights bloggers, I think their laughing at the masturbating fetus shows the poverty of their understanding of the very rights they'd like to pressure others to believe in.

By the way, that much-produced theater piece "The Vagina Monologues" gets reverent about masturbation:

I lay back and closed my eyes. I put the mirror down. I watched myself floating above myself. I watched as I slowly began to approach myself and re-enter. I felt like an astronaut re-entering the surface of the earth. It was very quiet this re-entry, quiet and gentle. I bounced and landed, landed and bounced. I came into my own muscles and blood and cells and then I slid into my vagina. It was suddenly easy and I fit. I was all warm and pulsing and ready and young and alive. And then, without looking, with my eyes still closed, I put my finger on what had suddenly become me. 

As the Supreme Court said: "one's own concept of existence." Or as the commenter at the fetus-mocking pro-abortion-rights blog said: "'I fap, therefore I am'? Sounds like a plausible slogan for today’s GOP wankers. Jesus God." Exactly. Jesus. God. Cosmic.

At the UW-Madison: Who pounded on the window and made a lewd gesture during a performance of "The Vagina Monologues"?

"Actors in the play asked for a public apology from a sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, whose members were filing out of a bus and in the area near the Brink Lounge, 701 E. Washington Ave., when the disturbance occurred."

“It came at the absolute worst moment, when women were putting themselves out there and telling stories of real pain and violence,” said Aliza Feder, a UW-Madison senior theater major who was part of the cast.

It’s not clear that the people who disturbed the play are part of the sorority, said Kevin Helmkamp, associate dean of students.

Sorority! Is there a rift in the enormous sisterhood of women?

It’s also unclear whether they knew it was a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” the popular play by Eve Ensler about women’s empowerment.

Well, then I guess it was also unclear — if they did know it was a performance of "The Vagina Monologues" — whether their pounding and gesturing expressed their objection to the message of empowering women, their wild enthusiasm about vaginas, a thoroughly justified aesthetic opinion that the play is bad, an alert to the audience members that it's not the 90s anymore and it's time to come out and have some fun, or maybe it was a protest against the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described 'positive healing' sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman," in which case it was unclear whether they knew if the line "If it was rape, it was a good rape" was censored from the play in this particular performance.

The show was held in the basement of Brink Lounge. Near the end, a bus parked on East Washington Avenue let out members of the sorority for their spring formal to be held in a basement lounge adjacent to the theater space. A large window forms part of the back wall of the theater fronting East Washington Avenue. 

The majority of sorority members walked by without incident, Feder said. One woman allegedly starting pounding on the window as the scripted portion of the play was concluding, she said. After a brief lull, other young men and women joined, with most pounding on the window and one woman briefly lifting up her skirt, she said.

I'm guessing wild enthusiasm about vaginas.

"'Yoni Ki Baat,' loosely translated as 'Talk of the Vagina,' is a nationwide theatre ensemble..."

"... dedicated to creating a space in which womyn of color can express their own views on sexuality and their bodies - topics which are traditionally kept 'hush-hush' in many of our cultures and communities.... YKB also aims to end the silencing of violence against womyn, especially in diasporic cultures around the world."

Email inviting me to a (free) theatrical performance which will take place at Madison's glitzy Overture Center.

We are proud to present UW-Madison's fifth production of YONI KI BAAT, also known as the womyn of color Vagina Monologues. We will be performing the narratives and stories of womyn in the diaspora, some of which have been written by the performers themselves.

The yoni (Sanskrit word for "vagina") has long been held sacred in Hindu mythology, but through years of patriarchy and colonialism, it has rarely been allowed to speak its mind. In 2003, South Asian Sisters, a collective of progressive desi womyn, decided that the yoni needed a chance to get on stage and tell its side of the story. Thus, "Yoni ki Baat" (YKB) was born.

Thanks for defining "yoni," but what about "diaspora"? The OED (which I can't link, unfortunately) gives only one meaning of "diaspora," and it relates to the Jewish people:

Freudian slip of the day.

In the previous post, I was writing about women who need to be "continually push[ed] to value their insights," and it came out as one of those near-homophone typos: "continually push[ed] to value their insides."

Didn't mean to wander over into "Vagina Monologues" territory.

"The Most Feminist Place in the World."

You know it's got to be Iceland.

[A]ctivists from Stigamot, the rape crisis center in Reykjavik, gave Knut Storberget, Norwegian justice minister, black boxer-briefs with the words I Am Responsible written down the crotch....

Feminism, or at least the notion of gender equality, has so infused politics that, a couple of years ago, women members of Parliament performed The Vagina Monologues....

There are also new feminine spaces in the economy. As the economy went into overdrive, Kristín Pétursdóttir and Halla Tomasdóttir, who had been warning of disaster from her position at the Chamber of Commerce, founded Auður Capital, a “financial service company emphasizing feminine values and social responsibility.”...

Oh, the things people search for.

Referring search words ranked by visits -- as captured a moment ago:


Yes, I clicked on "vaginas." My blog is hit #3 in an AOL search for that term. I also found this there, from AdFreak:



Apparently, the ad seemed like a good idea because "The Vagina Monologues" was in town.

This post is purely for amusement purposes and not a sleazy effort to attract more traffic from the search term "vaginas."

UPDATE: Time Magazine reports on the Googling for "hot" pics of Sarah Palin.

Update on women I've talked about recently.

1. Heather Mills gets a mere £55 million. And she binds herself to never tell the story of what went on between her and Paul McCartney. It's a settlement of the case, and Mills was proceeding without a lawyer. As you can see from the previous post, Mills had already received a £55 offer and asking for £70 million to £80 million. I speculated that she was going for more money and representing herself to make the movie story of her life juicier with that confrontation in court — remember Angela Bassett telling off Laurence Fishburne in divorce court? — but the secrecy deal rules that out.



2. Jane Fonda apologized. After I lauded her for that deliberate enunciation of the word "cunt" on "The Today Show."

"She didn't say it to be shocking. She was just quoting the title of her scene in 'The Vagina Monologues,'" said Fonda's flack Pat Kingsley. "She didn't come up with the word."

Kingsley said the "Barbarella" actress, who was scheduled to perform the play last night at Madison Square Garden, regretted using the word, insisting "it was a slip."

"She certainly meant no disrespect," Kingsley said.

Oh, bullshit. But kudos to The Daily News. "Flack" — great word. And: "the 'Barbarella' actress." Ha ha. That's not pristine journalism, but so what? Fonda saying "cunt" is not really news.

Congratulations to Jane Fonda!

She's got herself in the news again. You've got to give that woman credit for finding a way — one way or another — to make herself newsworthy decade after decade. The lady is 70. She's some kind of media genius, right? She goes on the "Today" show on Valentine's Day with Eve Ensler, and they're promoting that tired old theater piece that gets reeled out every year to put a damper on Valentine's Day enthusiasm, and they know this means they can say "vagina, vagina, vagina," because it's the name of the play. And then clear as day, knowing absolutely what she's doing, Jane Fonda says "I was asked to do a monologue called 'Cunt.'"

Here's the NSFW video, which includes Meredith Vieira's instant apology: "It was a slip and obviously she apologizes, and so do we. We would do nothing to offend the audience." But it wasn't a slip, and by what authority does Vieira apologize on behalf of Fonda? Let her apologize for NBC, but recognize that Jane Fonda has a mind, the mind of a media genius — a media whore. (I think that's a fair expression.) She did what she wanted to do: Sit there on the couch, looking prim and protesting that she lives in Georgia — as if she's channeling deep-rooted Georgian values — and then crisply enunciating the word "cunt."

And everyone talks about her. Some will tsk. Some will spew. Some will preen with a ridiculous air of superiority and offer a tedious lecture about how "Cunt" actually is the name of a monologue in the play that is all about saying the word "cunt" over and over to transform us through the catharsis of theater into enlightened beings who don't mind anymore if someone says "cunt." So if you had only seen the play — if you weren't so illiterate — you would know that you look terribly ignorant to people in the know who have seen "The Vagina Monologues."

Well, I've seen "The Vagina Monogues." Who hasn't? It plays everywhere, since it says things a lot of people want said and it's so easy to produce and perform — 3 women sit on stools and get to read their lines off index cards. Ensler is a theater genius for thinking it up, and I congratulate her for devising such a brilliantly successful money-making writing project. But it not a very good play, and no one needs to feel inferior for passing it up. It's not like never having seen "Hamlet." And anyone watching "The Today Show" clip can easily see that Fonda is saying the name of her monologue in the play. That's all beside the point. She said the baddest bad word, and she planned to say it. She's not out of control. She did exactly what she wanted to do, and she's got your rapt attention — something she's done for 5 decades.

Object to the content all you want, but give her credit. She's a first-class media genius. For purporting to apologize for her, Meredith Vieira owes Jane Fonda an apology.

Audible Althouse #68.

In the new podcast, I stumble into a marijuana festival, I submerge myself in a comparison of Foleygate to "The Vagina Monologues," I stare too deeply into a postcard photograph of my grandmother, and I end up wondering what song to have played at my funeral.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the transgressive rebel artists are subscribing on iTunes:

Monologues dialogues.

David Brooks's column yesterday began this way (TimesSelect link):

This is a tale of two predators. The first is a congressman who befriended teenage pages. He sent them cajoling instant messages asking them to describe their sexual habits, so he could get his jollies.

The second is a secretary, who invited a 13-year-old girl from her neighborhood into her car and kissed her. Then she invited the girl up to her apartment, gave her some vodka, took off her underwear and gave her a satin teddy to wear.

Then she had sex with the girl, which was interrupted when the girl’s mother called. Then she made the girl masturbate in front of her and taught her some new techniques.

The first predator, of course, is Mark Foley, the Florida congressman. The second predator is a character in Eve Ensler’s play, “The Vagina Monologues."

Foley is now universally reviled. But the Ensler play, which depicts the secretary’s affair with the 13-year-old as a glorious awakening, is revered. In the original version of the play, the under-age girl declares, “I say, if it was a rape, it was a good rape, then, a rape that turned my [vagina] into a kind of heaven.” When I saw Ensler perform the play several years ago in New York, everyone roared in approval. Ensler has since changed the girl’s age to 16 — the age of Foley’s pages — and audiences still embrace the play and that scene at colleges and in theaters around the world.

Today, we get the letters to the editor. Gotta defend the iconic monologues, you know. The first letter says Brooks "misses a key point, and that is power":

Mark Foley, a congressman, had a certain amount of power, and many of the pages were responding to that power. Most were afraid to offend him or to break off communication because Mr. Foley might become an important ally in a future career.

In my mind, this is more a story of abuse of power and covering up that abuse of power by the Republican Party.

But power is always the problem when an adult goes after a child!

The second letter makes the big art/life distinction. "The Vagina Monologues" is a play:

Does David Brooks mean to suggest that it is not the job of the theater to provoke us, to be equivocal, to reflect our best and worst selves, then leave it to us to choose good behavior when we exit the lobby?

If so, then Mr. Brooks is asking for the ostensible rectitude of propaganda.

But "The Vagina Monologues" is presented as propaganda, isn't it? Brooks made a point of the audience's approval. And consider the extreme enthusiasm for producing this play, which is out of all proportion to its artistic value.

The third letter notes Brooks's omission of the "simple point" that what Mark Foley did was "real" and "The Vagina Monologues" is "make-believe." But, again, the enthusiasm for "The Vagina Monologues" is very real.

IN THE COMMENTS: Some blogger's minions come by en masse to call me (and Brooks) idiots for not knowing the difference between real life and fiction (rather dimly redoing the NYT's letters that I'm writing about in this post). Palladian says something really smart:

No one's pointed out that the Foley's instant messages are, in one way, exactly analogous to a monologue-style play in that they were written words; dramatized sexual conduct rather than physical acts. This is not a defense of Foley, merely an observation that Brook's analogy (yes, he was making an analogy!) is not as far off as the suddenly fundamentalist, literalist "liberals" are suggesting.

And a couple comments later, on seeing a sexist insult hurled at me by one of the liberal blogger's minions:

Wow, not only do we have "liberals" on a moral crusade against a gay man, and asserting that art is meaningless, but now they're making sexist insults toward a woman with whom they disagree.

Have I fallen into some weird alternate dimension? What the hell?

ADDED: This post is getting a lot of attention, and I feel bad that you can't read Brooks's whole column. I wish the NYT would have some way to release a TimesSelect piece for general viewing once there's a big blog discussion going on. It seems unfair to Brooks that everyone can read the letters (and blogs) criticizing him, but they can't see exactly what he said. I'm not going to reprint any more than I already did, but let me summarize what he says.

Brooks wonders why the sexual predator in the play makes people cheer when Mark Foley brings hoots of disgust. Noting first that female predators tend not to scare us, he observes that in the play, we are seeing things from the minor's point of view and that she presents herself as breaking free from social conventions and finding personal fulfilment doing something that society tries to suppress. She's the feisty rebel who evinces the "moral code" of "expressive individualism."

The news about Mark Foley is told in terms of a more old-fashioned moral code that defines people by their social roles. (We certainly don't hear the teenager's point of view.) This code categorically rejects adults in sexual relationships with youngsters. In this way of thinking, there is never a rebel to cheer on. Our reaction is to feel ever more strongly committed to preserving the moral order. Since the real significance of the Foley story is as a reminder of the grave threat to the conventional moral order, Brooks thinks, the way for a party to benefit from the scandal is to present itself as the champion of the moral order.

Now, what's my reaction to that? First, I don't think people (or parties) have to adopt one or the other of these "codes." Like many from my generation, I am very strongly dedicated to the ethic of individual expression. That does not, however, in any way make it hard for me to acknowledge the absolute rule against adults doing anything sexual with children. I think you can flatly reject what Foley did and still believe in the value of individuals finding their own way around conventional morality and making their own rules about what is good. Obviously, social conservatives are the big champions of the moral order, but that doesn't mean that to oppose what Foley did requires you to become an all-out social conservative. A responsible, freely expressive individual recognizes the need for some rules.

But I do think there is a danger that liberals are getting so jazzed up about making political progress over Foley's folly that they carelessly present themselves as champions of the moral order, something they really don't want to do in the long run. They surely ought to pillory the social conservatives whenever they get caught violating their own moral code. Pointing out hypocrisy is usually an excellent move. But they should be careful not to stumble into hypocrisy of their own by overdoing the sanctimony about sexual morality and making it seem as though they are the social conservatives. Ugh! I'd like to end up with less social conservatism through this episode, not more.

Oh, the pain of being a theater reviewer!

Anita Gates, in the NYT, reviews a play that seems to be hoping cash in on "Vagina Monologues"-style title titillation by calling itself "Orgasms."

[The actors] have obviously been directed, by the playwright, to exaggerate their behavior like children's-show performers. At times they speak with the pseudo-amazed random-word emphasis of some television news anchors. "Here is a possible conversation between the - penis - and the - vagina," Ms. Fadem says. Yes, the audience is also forced to watch talking sex organs.

Gates also reviews the audience:

The worst case of overacting ... was in the audience. Two women to my right were either employed by the management as professional laughers or under the influence of some dangerous new recreational drug (maybe some of that super-fast-acting marijuana from "Reefer Madness"). Or they were just odd.

One found the strangest lines hilarious - including "Let's take a simple situation" - and laughter was not enough to express her delight. She continually clapped like a child watching a magician at a birthday party, sometimes calling out "Yes!" to dialogue that particularly pleased her. This was all very strange, since there isn't a single genuinely funny line in this overlong one-act would-be comedy.

And then there's that horrendous curtain call, when the playwright's wife, the show's producer, barges in to "bully the audience into staying for a discussion of sexual dysfunction and psychological issues surrounding the female orgasm."

Here's the play's hideous website.

"There are some who are stuck back there."

So said Jane Fonda on Bill Maher's HBO show last week, referring to the Vietnam veterans who are still angry at her for her activities in North Vietnam during the war. When I pause the show to write down her quote, the freeze frame of her face is maddeningly prissy and smug. Maher has just said that since a veteran spat on her at a reading, she can say that's "penance enough." Fonda says "hundreds" of Vietnam vets have come to her readings in the last few weeks "and they've been fabulous... They have forgiven me. So there are some who are stuck back there. But most are not." Then Maher has this:

Yeah, it really is on them at this point, isn't it? If somebody can't get over something in 35 years.

Somebody? Something? Maher didn't go to Vietnam. Who is he to say get over it? Sure, there are "things" that if you're still stewing about them 35 years later, you've got a problem, but if you haven't gone to war, have the decency to refrain from telling people who have that they need to get over it.

Who is Fonda to tsk at people who are "stuck back there"? She does a big shrug and says, "Well, you know the problem is, we've never really come to terms with the war," and proceeds to lecture us on a whole string of political topics and to tout her version of Christianity that isn't "angry" and hostile like the religion of those who oppose abortion and gay marriage. The interview ends with her describing how she designed the entryway to her loft in the shape of a vagina to protest against all the doorways and hallways that are squared-off and masculine and to commemorate her performance in "The Vagina Monologues."

Countering V-Day with P-Day.

Christina Hoff Sommers describes the College Republicans' response to the overpromotion of "The Vagina Monologues" at Roger Williams University and the predictably repressive/humorless response from the admininstration. Read the whole piece (in the National Review), but here's a funny excerpt:

The week before V-Day, the Roger Williams campus was plastered with flyers emblazoned with slogans such as “My Vagina is Flirty” and “My Vagina is Huggable.” There was a widely publicized “orgasm workshop.” On the day of the play, the V-warriors sold lollipops in the in the shape of–-guess what? Last year, the student union was flooded with questionnaires asking unsuspecting students questions like “What does your Vagina smell like?” None of this offended the administration or elicited any reprimands, probations, or confiscations.

The campus conservatives artfully (in the college sense of "artful") mimicked the V-Day campaign. They papered the school with flyers that said, “My penis is majestic” and “My penis is hilarious.” The caption on one handout read, “My Penis is studious.” It showed Testaclese [the P-Day penis-shaped mascot] reclining on a couch reading Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America....

It is easy to understand why school officials would not want a six-foot phallus wandering around campus; nor why they would ask students not to paper the college with posters describing all the things it likes to do. But that is just the sort of thing the vagina warriors have been doing, year after year, on hundreds of campuses.

Very funny! Seems to me the university shouldn't be engaging in viewpoint discrimination. There should be vagina/penis parity. Quite aside from all of this, why isn't everyone tired of "The Vagina Monologues" by now? It was always a bad play.

UPDATE: Be at Bebere has an answer to that last question.

She "worships the female sexual organ, seeing it as her god."

Uganda denounces Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues."

The Ugandan government has condemned "The Vagina Monologues," which is to be staged in the country later this month, saying it is part of an international effort to corrupt the moral fabric of Ugandans. The state minister of information, James Nsaba Buturo, said the government had no plans to ban the play, but said the title "is undoubtedly indecent and tasteless" and the content "promotes values that are a threat to our country."

Well, good for them for not banning it! Myself, I think the play is awfully bad, though I couldn't care less if Ensler "worships the female sexual organ."

(Political theology might be this blog's theme of the day. See previous post.)

UPDATE: In the end, Uganda did ban the play.

Things about the Republican Convention I'm already sick of.

It's just starting, and I will be blogging, here in Madison with my iBook and my TiVo'd C-Span, but I'm just watching a little MSNBC Chris Matthews-moderated pre-show, and I realize I'm about ready to scream from the over-repetition of a single tedious-the-first-time observation: Republicans don't seem to belong in NY. Let me quote a choice example, as spoken exultantly by a commentator I was sick of the first time he opened his mouth, Ron Reagan:

In Boston, of course, the Democrats were home, you know, Boston is a Democratic city, like New York is, but here we have people like we just saw on television, the woman with the very large cowboy hat, plunked down into the middle of Manhattan, which has gotta be like droppin' somebody onto Mars for these people. Can you imagine her walkin' by, you know, an ad for the Vagina Monologues, and just freakin' out. That's what's interesting.

As if "The Vagina Monologues" hasn't been playing outside of New York. It has been playing everywhere, for years! What planet is he on? The only one "freakin' out" is you, Ron, from the sight of a woman in a cowboy hat. Do you think you could pull together a slightly more cosmopolitan attitude of ennui?