Yet Another Reason to Love Jon Stewart

The awesome Jon Stewart and the Daily Show reminds us that while conservatives are now up in arms over the sexist attacks on Sarah Palin, they were singing a very different tune just a few months ago. Watch how Bill O’Reilly’s attitude to teen pregnancy has miraculously changed, while other conservative pundits and policy advisors have suddenly become passionate critics of the sexist double standard.

Link from Jezebel.

Edited to continue the Palin theme: Rob Rummel-Hudson writes as eloquently as usual on why Sarah Palin is not a really supporter of parents of children with special needs (she cut funding for special education programmes by 62%), and in the Irish Times, Mary Mullin, also the Alaskan mother of a child who has Down’s Syndrome, writes about why she’s not supporting her suppposed “soul sister” (thanks to Q for that link).

When Will the News Catch Up With Corrie?

There are many reasons I love Coronation Street. The sheer quality of the writing (never will I forget Norris describing Rita “fanning herself with the People’s Friend like something out of Les Liasons Dangereuses“). The funniness. The wonderful characters (Becky! Blanche! Eileen! Any one of that trio alone would make a programme worth watching). The way that characters who would be the butt of jokes in lesser programmes (like the wonderful Roy and Hayley) are treated with respect and affection.

Viva Blanche!

But one other great thing about it is the fact that it’s one of the few high-profile television programmes where you see older women who actually look like, well, older women – and who get proper characters and storylines instead of just being doddery old grans.

The older Corrie ladies, Rita, Blanche, Emily, Betty, Audrey – hell, even Deirdre and Liz (not that she’d like to be included in this group), are opinionated and funny. They’re not just sitting around waiting to die. Some are sexually active. Some are happily single. But all are complex, interesting people - albeit complex, interesting people who happen to live in the heightened reality of Wetherfield.

But while game old birds might be thriving in soapland, they’re not doing so well in the more serious media. In yesterday’s Guardian, the legendary Joan Bakewell writes about the lack of women over 50 in our news programmes – and how they’re starting to fight back; 57-year-old Selina Scott is taking Channel 5 to court for age descrimination, claiming they went back on an offer to cover another (younger) female newsreader’s maternity leave. Bakewell remembers the optimism of the early ’80s, when she and her peers “joked about how the tough older male would always be lead presenter, while a woman was given the secondary role - softer stories and knowing her place. We joked, too, about the obvious stereotypes: the craggy world-weary buccaneer male reporters - Sandy Gall, the late Charles Wheeler, and Newsnight’s younger trim female presenters whom we dubbed the “programme wives”. I was one such. So was Jenni Murray until she went off to enliven the more feminist corridors of Woman’s Hour.”

Bakewell and her female colleagues assumed this would all change. But nearly 30 years later, it hasn’t.

But where today are the wrinkly female equivalents of Trevor McDonald and Peter Sissons, Nick Owen and Jon Snow? Kirsty Wark stands alone, and she, after all, is merely middle aged. Older women are missing from news and current affairs.

Bakewell suggests, and I think she’s right, that this is because TV is not only obsessed with youth but increasingly run by younger people (”The only people of 60 they know are their mothers”). And she points out that their reluctance to show older people, especially women, on screen, makes bad business sense - why ignore a potentially huge audience?

But in her final paragraph, she reminds us why it’s important to show women of all ages on screen.

One entire segment of the public - women over 55 - never see their like on serious programming. They may be part of the content - victims of crime, sufferers from disease or lottery winners, but they are never there as the professional equivalent of older men. I rejoice that there are older people on the screen: David Attenborough and Bruce Forsyth are wonderful. But I rejoice too that Selina Scott might force the industry to take charges of ageism seriously.

The fewer ladies of a certain age we see on the screen, the more the idea that men somehow age “gracefully” while women become pathetic and hideous once they hit the menopause is perpetuated. So let’s hear it for the older ladies. After all, if we’re very lucky, we’re going to be them some day.

The Anti-Room Bookclub…

As a gale howls outside my door, I’m already drifting into hibernation mode, grumbling about the summer failing to appear and digging out a polo neck jumper to wear today. Given Honoria’s ‘switch it off’ post yesterday and an idea that arose in the comments section of this post, I’m proposing an Anti-Room bookclub - anyone can join in - to get us curled up in our abodes with a classic, blankets, tea and biccies over winter. Have no idea how this will work, but here’s a suggestion to kick about. How about meeting up online at TAR, at a specific time, maybe every two months? Your suggestions/feedback on the following would be appreciated.

- How often should it be held? Every two months?

- Should we stick to the classics (19^th century and further back) or expand it out into Modern Classics (Virago type books, classic 20^th century reads)?

- How do we select the books? Should contributors take turns or should we bung in a load of suggestions and have a vote?

- Is everyone happy enough to meet up online here at a designated date and time to have a discussion?

- Suggest our first book.

Feedback, ideas, suggestions, s’il vous plait!

Internet gone, free time rediscovered

How can something so cute be such a time vacuum?

Phew! My internet was dead for a whole ten days last week and it felt like part of me was dead too. I still had access in my job, but it didn’t feel like enough. At the same time, all of a sudden my life didn’t feel as bitty as when I have internet access, if that makes sense. My evenings stretched out in front me as I pondered what I might do to pass the time – read a book? Watch a film? Go for a walk? The thought of hours and hours of unoccupied time scared me a little. Usually, when I’m with internet, my computer is constantly on in the evenings and I’ll go back and forth to it in between doing other things. So I’ll prepare some dinner, have a browse of some forums while that’s cooking, eat some dinner whilst watching a Frasier, think of something, put dinner down, run across to the puter, check what I wanted to check, come back, finish dinner and Frasier, mooch around, check some more websites, listen to some podcasts. All through the evening, the computer acts as a magnetic pole that I return to. Before I know it, it’s 12.30am and time for bed.

Since the internet has been back, I’ve felt less tempted to turn it on in the evenings, because of how it eats into my time. I just got me wondering, if there are many people in this day and age who don’t have internet access at home and if so, what are their evenings like. What if you only used internet for email (work-related and during working hours)? Would you be a more productive person? Would you be happier?

Is Sarah Palin a granny?

John “I can’t remember how many houses I have” McCain is a canny man. Not content with stealing Obama’s thunder by announcing his vice-Presidential running mate less than 24 hours after the Democrat convention, he reveals that - gasp! - it’s a woman. Sarah Palin - an easy-on-the-eye “hockey mom” (albeit one who earned the nickname of “Barracuda” in her school hockey playing days) - is a gift from the PR gods. Married to a working man, NRA member, and mother to five children including a son about to deploy to Iraq and an infant son, Trig, with Down’s syndrome, she checks a lot of demographic boxes.  Even for the Republicans, this is a cheap, calculated move to try and hoover up the millions of disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters. But over the weekend, the Daily Kos reveals that perhaps Palin IS too good to be true and alleges that she is NOT Trig’s mother - she’s his grandmother, and that she’s covering up for her 16-year-old daughter Bristol. You can read their very lengthy post (including photos of a very unpregnant looking Palin at seven and eight months) here.

Whether it’s true or not, it smacks of a new low in political point-scoring, of poking around someone’s family life and casting aspersions on something that is obviously private. While it’s unlikely it came from deep inside the Obama camp, there’s no doubt someone with Democrat leanings started this particular rumour. Why not point out her political inexperience? Take issue with her environmental views? Or that she is anti same-sex marriage and pro-life? There’s something smeary and deeply sexist about this type of rumour, and while we all know politics is a dirty game, this is particularly grubby.

Update: Bristol Palin is pregnant and plans to marry her baby’s father.

Music Therapy

I used to not have much time for Pink. When the former Alecia Moore first emerged in the late ’90s, she seemed like yet another pop starlet, but one with a contrived, “alternative edge”. Her music was cheesy, bland pop, but she had tattoos. Ooh, edgy! There are few things that annoy me more than manufactured alternativeness (see Lavigne, Avril). But over the last decade, I’ve grown to kind of like her. Sure, her music was much blander than her supposedly rebellious image suggested, but Pink herself seemed kind of funny and cool; she didn’t take herself too seriously and some of her singles weren’t half bad, in a cheesy way. And her ridiculously catchy new single, ‘So What’, and its accompanying video, makes her like her even more.

Pink recently broke up with her husband Carey Hart, and the song – and video – are all about the breakup. It’s kind of an awesome break-up song, the perfect mixture of triumphant “screw you, I’m brilliant!” and angry “waaaaaah, I feel so sad and bitter!” But what really makes the video extraordinary is the fact that the tattooed bloke Pink sings to throughout the video is the man she’s actually singing about - her ex. Despite the rage and bitterness of the song, it seems like the couple have managed to deal with their breakup and stay friends. Which I find strangely touching. Want to see for yourself?

Anyway, it’s been a while, thank heavens, since I’ve needed the services of a break-up song. But I did spend the entire summer of 1996 listening to ‘Halah’ by Mazzy Star (anything by Mazzy Star, really), ‘You Will Miss Me When I Burn’ and ‘(Thou Without) Partner’ by Palace Brothers, ‘Everybody Has Been Burned’ and ‘I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better’ by the Byrds, ‘Oh, Lonesome Me’ by Neil Young and ‘That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’ by Leonard Cohen. When I felt particularly angry I listened to PJ Harvey’s ‘Rid of Me’. I also smoked loads of Consulate cigarettes and wrote angsty letters to my friends who were enjoying themselves in foreign parts while I was stuck at home in pre-boom Dublin, my summer plans scuppered by the fact my ex had broken up with me the day after I finished my exams. My best friend had been dumped by her boyfriend as well, and we spent our days listening to the music above and feeling sorry for ourselves. It was a fun summer, as you can imagine.The next breakup, a few years later, was one of those slow, dragging out ones and saw me just listening miserably to music that reminded me of the good old days, so there was more ironically jaunty Arthur Lee and less Will Oldham.

But although in retrospect that list of ridiculously angsty songs seems slightly embarrassing, at the time listening to music that really seemed to reflect how I was feeling made a huge difference. Some of the more optimistic songs gave me (slightly ill-advised, as it happened) hope that things would out with me and my ex, some of them gave me hope that I would get over it (I did, obviously) some of them reflected my miserable bitter rage, but all of them made me feel better. They made me feel less alone. Which is one of the best things art can do.

So now I’ve confessed, to both smoking Consolate in my youth and sobbing along to Neil Young warbling about everyone else was out there having fun while he was a fool for staying home and having none, what tunes have you turned to for consolation in your hour of need?

Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad

One of the worst things about the weather this godforsaken summer is that I can’t cycle into work every day (well, I could, if I wanted to cycle in lashing rain, but I don’t). When I got my bike last year and started cycling regularly for the first time since I was in college, a few people told me that once you start cycling, you realise how often it doesn’t rain, and over the winter months I discovered that they were right. I actually cycled to work more often in February than I have over the last month.

Me on the way to work, yesterday

So, although I did take the bike to work yesterday and today, I feel like I’ve been on the bus far too often recently. I miss my bike. As someone who can’t drive, I was surprised by how liberating it was to get back on the saddle last year. Back in the late 19th century, the bike was seen as an important tool in the cause of women’s emancipation - for the first time, ordinary women could travel under their own steam and go where they wanted. When I started using a bike again, I understood how they felt. At last I was free from the tyranny of Dublin Bus and its whimsical attitude to timetables! If I left the office at 5.40, I knew I’d be home by ten past six at the latest. Sure, I’d have to cycle up a hill to get there, but it was better than standing at a bus stop for up to forty minutes and then squashing myself onto an overcrowded bus.

Cycling would, of course, be easier if it weren’t for all those pesky cars. And potholes. I don’t really know which is worse. Potholes are bad enough when you’re actually in a car, but on a bike they’re potentially fatal. Also, whenever there are roadworks that are covered over in tarmac, the workpeople seem to have given up on, I dunno, smoothing the tarmac out and seem content to let it just lie in whatever lumpen state it lands on the ground. That’s the only reason I can come up with for why there are so many random lumps and dangerous bumps on the verges of our urban roads.

And then there are the cars. I’ve got to admit I was secretly almost glad to have my prejudices confirmed when I realised that the most arrogant, cyclist-unfriendly drivers seem to drive vast SUVs. There are a lot of SUV drivers on my route to work, and they do lovely things like drive in the bike lane (perhaps because their ridiculous tanks take up most of the road), park in the bike lane, and drive so close to the curb that a cyclist is in danger of being pushed off her bike.

Of course, the real danger comes from the huge articulated lorries that rumble through Dublin suburbia, unable to see small cyclists trundling along in their blind spot. The first time I cycled to work last year, I was so freaked out by every lorry that tore past me that I was tempted to just dump the bike at the side of the road and start walking. But I persevered, and now they only scare me a little bit, instead of sending me into a state of mortal terror. Progress!

Despite the potholes and the arrogant drivers and the vast trucks of terror, I love my bike. It’s served me well over the last year. And although there are few experiences more miserable than cycling uphill in pouring rain, there’s nothing more exhilarating than zooming down a hill on an empty road on a fresh sunny day. Now all I need are a few more of those…

“Of course, they ALL have lovely bottoms”

"I love eye-er-land, Fenian rebel songs and tiaras!"

Tonight on RTE 1 the beauty pageant relic that is The Rose of Tralee kicks off. Growing up I loved its beauty-with-brains-and-jigs approach to making women don pastel coloured dresses and compete against each other. This was mainly because along with the Eurovision and the Late Late Toy Show, it was one of three events in the calendar year you were allowed to stay up late for. It was full of OTT ex-pat Nationalism, woeful poems about people’s grannies missing the oul sod of Ireland, women singing Danny Boy in the style of a constipated cat, bad party pieces and lots of ostentatious shoe-removal to dance out-of-time hornpipes. And I always assumed they were all banging their escorts senseless. I’ve heard stories you know.

It’s never been the same since Uncle Gaybo stopped presenting it and I can’t ever think about it without the Father Ted send up, The Lovely Girls, elbowing its way into my brain. Rememember the qualification rounds of “walking”, “sandwich making” and the “lovely laugh tie-break”? The same episode also features the feminist singer who is obviously modelled on Sinead O’Connor (”What’s ‘clit power’? I knew a Father CLINT Power once”).

F&Run

So, all this talk of Liz Phair’s album yesterday got me thinking about some other stuff, most notably, fuck and runs. We’ve all done them. Hell, I’ve even done the middle-of-the-night dash, which is, in my opinion, the worst of all. I had the good grace to feel bad about it after. Romantically speaking, I don’t think there is anything worse than the feeling of someone edging you out of their gaff after a night of passion. Unless that is the feeling of trying to get rid of someone from your gaff after a night of passion.

Liz Phair’s song details all the excuses that we come up with to make an awful situation better - I’ve a lot of work to do today; you should call me… sometime. There are lots of great things about one-night stands but there are lots of bad things too, such as the morning after awkwardness, and, of course, the ‘walk of shame,’ the cringe-making journey back to your own place with flaking make-up, panda eyes, inappropriate evening dress in the cold light of morning and catty breath. Shudder.

My worst fuck and run was with a guy who didn’t really even like me but I loved him and hounded him until he took me back to his place (not my finest moment) and the next day, in a fug of hungoverness and sleep-deprivation I made the mistake of going into town, whereby I bumped into him and spilled coffee all over myself. My loss of dignity was complete. But we’ve all been there. Right?

I Want To Be Mesmerising Too

I fell in love with Liz Phair in January 1995. It was a year and a half after the release of her debut album Exile in Guyville, but until a friend lent me the album I hadn’t had much interest in listening to it. Phair had received scant attention in the British music press (which I still took very seriously in those days, being a devoted reader of NME and Select), and what little attention she did get left me with the impression she was some sort of crappy poor-woman’s-PJ-Harvey. Also, she had what I considered to be “an annoying face”.

So, yeah, I didn’t really care about Liz Phair. When my friend gave me the album, he warned me that it was a genuine grower and that it would take a few listens for me to really get into it. He was right. I listened once, and wasn’t really impressed. The music seemed boring, and Phair’s deadpan delivery didn’t impress me. But I persevered, putting the album on in the morning while making my breakfast. And as my friend had predicted, the album grew on me. After a few days of casual morning listens, it suddenly struck me that ‘6′1″‘ was one of the best songs I’d ever heard. There was no going back.

Maybe it was because Exile came along at the perfect time in my life. It became the soundtrack of my melodramatic, angsty yet incredibly fun second year in college. In almost every song, from ‘Divorce Song’ to ‘Flower’ to ‘Fuck and Run’ to ‘6′1″‘, Phair’s lyrics summed up all the drama and romantic messiness of my 19 year old life. It was harder to be friends than lovers, and you shouldn’t try to mix the two! All the bridges I’d blown away did keep floating up! I did want to feel like I was standing 6′1″ instead of (my actual height, conveniently) 5′2″! And yeah, when I saw the faces of certain boys…well, you know the rest.

Musically, Exile is brilliantly lo-fi - mostly it’s just Phair and her raggedy electric guitar. She uses an electric where most singer-songwriters would use an acoustic, and this arrangement is the perfect setting for her stark vocals. She’s sometimes joined by drums and bass, sometimes just drums, sometimes keyboards, and the result is startlingly immediate and raw. Which is probably why so many women of a certain age (ie mine) feel such a strong connection to this album. Maybe Phair’s not being honest when she sings so frankly about unabashed sexual desire, about being friends with your ex, about fucking and running, about asserting yourself, about stupid boys, about wanting a boyfriend for “all that cheesy old shit, letters and sodas”. But it sure feels like she is.

Liz Phair never made anything as good as this album again. Whip Smartwas pretty good, and even whitechocolatespaceegg had its moments. Then came the cheesy collaborations with Avril Lavigne’s songwriters the Matrix and the depressing metamorphosis into a sort of Sheryl Crow who sings about sperm. And yet there’s hope - a few years ago, unreleased songs from the original sessions for her funderwhelming self-titled 2003 album made their way online, and they were amazing. Sadly, her follow-up album Somebody’s Miracle was more cheese. But whatever Ms Phair does next, we’ll always have Exile in Guyville. I still know all the words to every song. And it still makes me feel tall.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of its release, Exile in Guyville is being rereleased on August 25th with extra tracks and - yay!- a documentary. So if you’ve never heard it before, now’s your chance.