It’s the last place you expect to hear a story of children being denied the opportunity to swim in a pool because of the color of their skin, right?

Wrong.

The kids from Creative Steps Inc. day camp were turned away from the Valley Swim Club pool in Huntington Valley, Montgomery County, a wealthy white suburb of Philly, after they had paid $1,950 to use the pool for the summer. The president of the swim club released a statement saying: “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”

A Philadelphia Daily News columnist wrote:

According to 14-year-old camper Dymir Baylor, with whom I spoke yesterday, some of the comments were heartless.

I heard a white lady say, “What are all these black kids doing here? They might do something to my child,” recalled Dymir, who says he lives in a neighborhood so diverse, he’d never heard anyone speak like that before. “It was rude and ignorant.”

While the story breaks my heart, it does not shock me. I volunteered for Barack Obama in Pennsylvania during the primary campaign and the general election, both times against a white opponent. Over and over again I heard overtly racist comments—not just the coded dogwhistles about Muslims and flag pins and birth certificates, but people who said frankly, “I won’t vote for a black man,” or “I can’t believe I dragged myself out of bed to vote for a n****r.”

Some of the people who said these things were hostile to us as well, the white people carefully prepared before being sent into these white neighborhoods. Others, though, said them calmly, openly, not expecting any sort of shock or horror from us. Racism was just a fact, a given, even in Northeast Philadelphia—and once you stepped outside of the city, it only got worse.

There were times I had to cajole white volunteers for Obama into heading into African-American neighborhoods to knock on doors. Even the people willing to drive hours away from home to volunteer for the black candidate were unnerved by being surrounded by people of color. Why are we surprised that suburbanites, many who left the city in “white flight,” are put off by the skin tone of the kids in their pool?

I hurt all over again for these kids—every memory I have of hearing those words fall casually from the lips of white people of all social and class backgrounds welled back up when I heart this story. I want to deny that this could happen in Philadelphia, but I can’t. I’ve seen it too many times with my own eyes.

I wish I were still in Philadelphia to join the protests outside of the pool. I think that one of the most important things that can happen right now is for white people to repudiate the racism of the Valley Swim Club. I want to stand outside of that club and say “No. You are not free to assume solidarity with me because I am white. You do not get to give that shrug and whisper ‘you know,’ implicating me in your bigotry. I am not like you.”

This event is easy to repudiate. It’s easy to know that this is wrong. It’s easy to be shocked by the casual use of the N-word. We shiver when we find out that someone we thought was on our side still holds those views—not just the Joe Biden generational “clean and articulate” comments, the stupid, hurtful but ultimately forgivable blunders of people who live in a segregated world that it’s never occurred to them to fix – but the views that would lead someone to drive a group of summer camp kids out of their pool because they might change its complexion.

The words themselves are so telling. Does the president of the swim club somewhere deep down realize that race isn’t a real concept, does he think the boundaries so permeable between black and white that the kids’ skin color would rub off in the water onto him and his members? If race truly separates us, why do the borders need policing?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell wrote at the Nation about her own experiences with racism—and her daughter’s first experience.

Many black adults who carry the wounds of our childhood encounters with racism have gone on to live successful, meaningful, happy lives. We don’t spend all of our hours fretting over the ignorant 6th grade bullies who called us “nigger.” Many of us have stories of white allies and advocates who have been important in our personal and professional lives. When my daughter was hurt by her friend’s racial comment, it was her white grandmother who held and comforted her. But the scars remain. The damage is real. And the racial distrust and division in our nation are cemented with these acts of racial cowardice and avarice.

Any progressive activist worth her salt can talk about institutionalized racism until she’s blue in the face. But we need to go further. We need to go further here than just protesting outside of a pool. Not long ago, Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black Attorney General, called the US a “nation of cowards” when it came to talking about race. In part, he’s right. But in part also, we’re lazy, and too many of us have it too easy.

White people need to do more than just stand outside of a pool with a sign. We need to prove to those kids in Northeast Philadelphia and kids everywhere like them that we are on their side, not just today when they are thrown out of a pool, but tomorrow when the schools they attend are still, more than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, largely separate and unequal. We need to do more than shove racism under the rug with our occasional shock and outrage or vindicate ourselves by our vote for a black president.

Racism isn’t gone because Obama is in the White House, and it will not be until those of us who do not feel its sting, who will never be tossed out of a swimming pool because our skin is the wrong shade understand that it is our job to make the real changes happen.

Words like “menacing,” “threatening” and “aggressive” are often associated with Serena. While these may not seem readily damaging, when one considers that Black women have historically been understood as “unwomen”; this language is an indication of a disturbing trend. Additionally, the epithet “tranny” is often used to insult Serena, thereby asserting that she is not a “real woman.” Though the category of woman is understood to be universally oppressed, white womanhood is perceived to subsume all that is good and desirable about femininity. This is a quagmire that women of color must negotiate to form any basis of self respect or agency.

Since the days in which Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman was forced to reveal her buttocks and labia to curious Europeans in a human circus, the bodies of Black women have been scrutinized and uniformly judged as lacking and/or sub-human. While our bodies may no longer be on display, the fixation with the buttocks of Black women reveals that the “The Hottentot Venus” stereotype is still very much a part of social discourse.

Fox News recently ran a story on Serena in which the author, Jason Whitlock, referred to her as an “underachiever” and called her derriere a “back pack.” It would seem that though she is ranked number two in the tennis world, it is acceptable to claim that her athletic frame is little more than “an unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber,” because her body does not conform to what is understood as the beauty norm. When Topix ran a survey on who was considered the most beautiful woman, white women received 443 votes or 28% and Black women got 185 or 11% of the vote. While this survey is not necessarily scientific, it does suggest that women of color continue to be understood as occupying the bottom of the race and gender hierarchy.

A person of color must be an overachiever to be understood as successful. The fact that there is even a discussion of the possibility that Serena is not fulfilling her potential reveals the very different standards we have for white and black women. For example, summa cum laude Princeton University graduate Michelle Obama, was not considered socially acceptable until she was constructed as a modern-day black Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This is particularly jarring when we consider that at the time that Jackie O was First Lady, her only “social achievement” was marrying into the Kennedy family.

Social theorist Patricia Hill Collins explains that,

“At the heart of both racism and sexism are notions of biological deteterminism claiming that people of African descent and women possess immutable biological characteristics marking their inferiority to elite white men.”

In 2007 at the Sony Ericsson Open, a white male fan yelled out, “Hit the ball into the net like any nigger would.” Clearly the use of the N-word is offensive, yet it was up to Serena to demand that this bigot be removed from the event. The referee and the fans had no issue with his abusive behaviour until she stopped the match and demanded his removal. This signals the audience’s willingness to tolerate even the most abusive forms of racism for the sake of entertainment.

Even as Serena continues to dominate the sport of tennis, she remains a problematic figure because of the social constructions of Black womanhood. The meanings which we have created to support our hierarchy of bodies are inescapable, even to those who have proven their worth and ability on multiple occasions. Serena’s body is representative of the ways in which stigmas interact to create diverse oppressions, or what is known as intersectionality. Until we can divorce ourselves from the idea that race and gender provide grounds to demean, or otherwise oppress, we will never achieve a post-racial or post-feminist world.

But for that instant, and for many more that followed, the questions were almost irrelevant. During the immediate aftermath of the most spellbinding tennis match ever played on Center Court, it seemed cruel to shift attention from the other man who was very much a part of this historic day, the man who took nothing from the Championships except the nightmare of a missed backhand volley that would perhaps haunt him for the rest of his life, and the runner’s up trophy for the third time in a row.

There is, perhaps, very little that can make an all-time grand slam record more special. And to that, Roger Federer owes Andy Roddick.

For after four hours and 16 minutes of play, when the Swiss legend leaped into the air following a mis-hit forehand from his opponent and raced to the net, there was little question that he had truly earned it. Following a year of being doubted about his predominance owing to an unflappable virus and an even less relenting Spaniard, Roger Federer was still charting the course of his resurgence.

But on Sunday, Federer had little to prove against his American counterpart, a man he had gotten the better of in 18 of their previous 20 meetings, and thrice on this very court.

So it was no surprise that when Roddick finally took the first set from Federer after battling four breakpoints on his own serve there were still few who would give the edge to the American.

After all, the contest from five years ago was all too vivid to tennis fans. With the match leveled at one-set all, and trailing by a break in the third, a resurgent Federer had taken advantage of a rain delay to quickly turned things around on a hopeful Roddick and deny him the elusive Wimbledon crown.

But this year’s Roddick was different. With impeccably-placed first serves, almost Federer-like anticipation, and his recently-perfected two-handed backhand, when the American number one reinforced his first set win with a commanding 6-2 lead in the second-set tiebreak, things began to look bleak for Federer.

Not literally, however. For rain had no intention of saving the Swiss man’s day as the sun shined convincingly over the English skies, and the newly installed retractable roof looked ready to unfold at the slightest hint of precipitation.

With the backing of four set points behind him, the American unleashed a powerful forehand that would have wrong footed a lesser man. But as is often the case with iconic sportsmen, it is at moments such as these that they remind you what they’re made of. An audacious backhand flick of the wrist was all that was needed from the Swiss man to send the ball sailing crosscourt over the net and into the open court. He was still under the weight of three set points when he reeled off the next two with impeccable first serves.

And then, helpfully, a force more powerful than Roger’s forehand intervened. Still with one set point, and on the brink of wrapping it up, as Roddick approached the net following yet another phenomenal serve, it could all have ended quickly for Federer, except that the American mis-hit an easy backhand volley to even the tiebreak at 6-all.

The fact that Federer immediately seized on this gift from his opponent, and used two stellar service winners to level the match at a set apiece was no more the hand of Lady Luck as it was Federer’s own.

It was, perhaps, Roddick hesitating at the nervous realization that he was about to go up 2 sets to none against an opponent he had never beaten at so significant a contest. Or, as he claimed later, it was the fact that the wind had drifted the ball slightly further than he intended.

Regardless of what forces had come together to devise Federer’s narrow escape from a 2-set hole, however, the Swiss man did not need to call upon anything more than his own sublime talent to race to a 5-2 lead in the third-set tiebreak. It was Roddick’s turn to save two set points on his own serve.

But Federer managed to wrap up the set after dispatching a thunderous serve, and following it up to the net with an artful volley, seemingly in honor of the on looking Pete Sampras, who had graciously made his way to London to witness the potential surpassing of his own grand slam record.

At 2-1 in the fourth set, Roddick displayed some finesse of his own at the net, executing a deft volley–no hesitation this time—to earn a breakpoint. This was followed by an exquisite double-handed backhand–by no means his first of the kind, and one that the Swiss man was yet to find an answer to–setting the stage for one of the longest sets in the sport’s history.

Other than bearing the burden of being the deciding set for this phenomenal clash, the fifth set was relatively uneventful owing to incredible precision by both men. A crucial point came at 8-9, when Federer found himself down two breakpoints, but adeptly fended them off with classic serves and volleys.

The next breakpoint came with the weight of a match point for the Swiss man. Unfortunately for Roddick, this classic combat had to end some time. At deuce point, down 14-15, the American hit a forehand long. Federer forced an error on the next point, as Roddick complied, sending the ball into the sky.

And in that one instant, Roger Federer had created tennis history. He had won his 15th grand slam title, surpassing the indomitable Pete Sampras — quite fittingly, against the backdrop of Center Court, for only the cathedral of tennis could be equal to such an event.

“It’s not a goal you set as a little boy,” said Federer after the match. “I don’t play tennis to break records and it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop playing. I hope to come here and play some good tennis in the future.”

Thank goodness for the tennis world! And thank goodness for Roddick, for after his phenomenal performance Sunday, he’s probably thirsting for a rematch.

When Andy last made it to a final at Wimbledon in 2005, he was treated to a decisive beating at the hands of the man whose shadow he has trailed for many years. “Maybe I’ll just punch him or something,” the affable American joked after that match, echoing the frustration many feel at their inability to counter the Swiss man’s flair with a racket alone.

Four years, several coaches, and a vastly improved game later, Roddick didn’t need to swing a fist to come within points of beating his longtime nemesis.

Chants of “Roddick, Roddick” rang through the arena, as the crowd came to terms with the epic match it had just been witness to. “I’m one of the lucky few that gets cheered for so thank you, I appreciate that,” said the ever-gracious American, quickly overcoming what was clearly a heart-wrenching loss for him. “I want to say congratulations to Roger: well done, he deserves it.”

Andy Roddick has the fastest serve in tennis, has been America’s number one player since 2003, and has finished among the top ten for the past seven years, but what he has done better than anyone else in the field of professional tennis is take defeat with a smile. No matter how decisive the beating, no matter how painfully close the victory.

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same,” reads a sign above the entrance to Center Court.

The American may not have his name on the coveted prize of the tournament yet, but boy, does he live by its most stringent rule.

“In my own circle of writers and rock fans…populism had another meaning: it derived from pop.”

-Ellen Willis, Introduction to Beginning to See the Light

To be a leftist in America in the days since the last true liberal president—probably Lyndon Johnson, despite Vietnam—usually meant being in a permanent defensive crouch. With Barack Obama, the president with the most potential since Johnson for real systemic change, the left is still terrified to come out of its crouch, to expose its underbelly to the world.

Leftists snipe at each other, often in some strange desire for a purity that can never really exist. The compromise necessary to create a mass movement to elect a president is anathema to a section of the population that for a while felt itself shriveled to a tiny but ideologically-unified group. The safety of that small group is hard to leave, especially in a media culture that has made it so easy to self-select only that which reinforces your beliefs and to connect with those that think like you across state and national borders and to police out those who dare think differently.

Which came first, really? Nixon’s “Silent Majority” and the retreat of a real solid progressive movement leading to the Reagan Revolution and faux-populism used to convince people to vote to give their money to the rich, or a fragmenting media culture that killed off the chance for a true mass bond?

It is no accident that the last real pop superstar, Michael Jackson, hit the apex of his popularity in the Reagan years. There was at least an idea of a mass consensus in this country, even though no one really could’ve defined what that consensus was, and yet while we had a white man in office slowly hacking away at the rights of people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and anyone who didn’t fit into a nuclear-family, gender-binary, reactionary ideal of an America that never really existed, our number one superstar was a man celebrated and loved not in spite of his fluid sexuality, racial ambiguity, and androgyny, but because of it.

Michael Jackson: pop superstar, appealing to men and women, old and young, and subversive as hell.

And yet when this symbol of everything Reagan fought died two weeks ago, some on the left were eager to condemn others for pausing in the midst of re-tweeting news of a popular uprising in Iran to talk about the last real uniter of American culture.

Ellen Willis, social critic, feminist, and lover of pop culture, wrote in the introduction to the second edition of her collection Beginning to See the Light,

“There is a common theme in leftists’ reductive view of bourgeois liberties, their contempt for mass culture, and their dismissal of sexual politics. I think all of these antipathies reflect a puritanical discomfort with the urge—whatever form it takes—to gratification now, an assumption that social concern is synonymous with altruism and self-sacrifice.”

Yet Willis also connected that same impulse, that contempt for mass culture, to an idea that populism and radicalism were intrinsically different; that once something became popular, it was no longer subversive or radical. We can see this reaction in the critique of popular reaction to Michael Jackson and to Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has been derided for his celebrity status, but it not only put him in office, it brought two million people to Washington, DC to see him inaugurated. More than anything we’ve seen since the fracturing of mass culture brought on by cable TV, deregulated radio, and the advent of the Internet, Barack Obama was a mass culture phenomenon, and elitists on the right and the left decried that phenomenon while trying to steal for themselves the cloak of populism.

None of this is to say, of course, that figures of the popular culture are not deeply problematic: Jackson’s court cases certainly prove this. This is not an argument that one should not critique popular culture—if anything, one should take the pop culture seriously enough to engage it and critique it. To throw it out entirely in some misguided idea of purification is as silly as writing off entirely a president who might be able, with popular support, to make significant changes despite his failures on all-too-real issues.

Puritanism is always an essentially conservative tendency, even when it crops up in so-called radical movements. It is not the radical streak in feminism that leads women to police each other’s clothing and sexual behavior for proper adherence to the rules. A truly radical feminism would be a truly liberatory feminism—one that feels no need to deny women the freedom to dress how they want, enjoy their sexuality how they want, marry or not marry or have children or not, depending on what works for them. Liberation doesn’t look the same for everyone; neither does subversion.

By the same token, a true liberal movement would take a stand against sexual policing of politicians whether they’re on the right or the left—would hold true to an ideal whether or not you like the person’s politics. Far from the moral relativism the left is always accused of, this would be a solid moral stance: in favor of freedom.

Elitism too is a conservative tendency—it exists to preserve the status quo, to erect boundaries and keep the rabble out. And to decry others as not properly radical or as selling out is just as elitist as saying flat out “I’m better than you.”

Willis recognized this tendency in the left and the cultural elitists, writing,

“Changing times forced clarity upon us: increasingly we had to choose between populism and radicalism, both politically and culturally…I was, no question, with the avant-gardists, even as I missed in my nerve-ends that unique thrill of ecstatic commonality once so integral to the pleasure of rock’n’roll—and the tension struck me as emblematic of my overall situation. I still honored that commonality; I believed that it represented something real, something potentially liberating, and that aristocratic fear of the mob was death to genuine radicalism.”

Fear of the mob to some degree is eminently rational for the left—Reagan and Nixon were both elected by large popular majorities, after all. It’s easy to say that the majority of the population was deluded and that in fact the left has been vindicated in the collapse of the economy and the leftward shift of American voters. But the same tendency is coming out now, both from the right—witness the tea party protests—but also from the left, in the self-righteous declaration that Obama is just like Bush, that nothing will actually change.

Without popular support for policy changes, the cries from the right to preserve the status quo will drown out those from a self-anointed revolutionary vanguard. This will happen if the vanguard is more concerned with throwing out the people who are genuinely saddened by the death of a pop superstar, if it can’t understand the connection, the magic inherent in a country that for a few days united not around politics but around a pop song.

There’s something to be learned from this kind of cultural moment, that kind of unity and belief and inspiration. It should be admired, not shunned. As Willis said, what are we working for if not for the right to be happy, to have pleasure, to make music?

ii.
They save their best dress
Not for church, not for a dance.
They wear it when someone
in the family dies
so it’ll get some sun.

Tammy Ho Lai-ming

Tammy Ho Lai-ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, United Kingdom. She is a founding co-editor of the first and only Hong Kong-based literary publication, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. You can find out more about the author by visiting www.sighming.com.

The Jacksons were the little family from Indiana that rose from obscurity under the steel will of Joe Jackson. Today we are in the awe of the musical legacy left behind by their greatest star – Michael. In this time of mourning we are left to consider the cost of the gift that he left us with.

Michael paid for celebrity by sacrificing his childhood. He put his feelings to music in the song “Childhood”:

People say I’m not okay
‘Cause I love such elementary things…
It’s been my fate to compensate,
for the Childhood
I’ve never known…

Have you seen my Childhood?
I’m searching for that wonder in my youth
Like pirates in adventurous dreams,
Of conquest and kings on the throne…

Before you judge me, try hard to love me,
Look within your heart then ask,
Have you seen my Childhood?

The loss of his childhood would haunt Michel to his dying day. It was a sacrifice that his father Joe Jackson felt was necessary. Joe has enjoyed the role of patriarch and the second-hand fame he has achieved through his children. When BET held a tribute to Michael, Joe was the only family member in attendance.

Joe Jackson has taken every opportunity to raise his public status. When asked what the next step was by Don Lemon of CNN on the red carpet, he immediately began to speak about a record label he was attempting to promote, rather than discussing funeral plans for his son or the future of his grandchildren. He claims that he took the opportunity to promote his record company because that is what Michael would have wanted him to do. He further stated that he was crying on the inside. Each person deals with grief differently; however, it is quite incomprehensible that a loving parent would so easily cast aside the death of a child to promote a business venture.

Michael was a success in spite of Joe and not because of him. When one examines the life that Michael led, it is clear that it was filled with issues stemming from a very troubled childhood. What is ‘Neverland” but a palace dedicated to loss and suffering in the guise of play and whimsy? If Joe’s so-called methods were great, why did Michael feel the need to dedicate millions of dollars to attempting to escape his father? Why did Michael state that even as an adult the sight of Joe was enough to make him vomit?

Michael and LaToya have both spoken of being beaten with belts as children. Beating a child with a belt is not a form of discipline, it is abuse. Though Barry Gordie, the head of Motown records, claimed to have no knowledge of the violence in the Jackson family, it is hard to believe that such a terrible secret was not more widely known – and summarily ignored for the sake of profit.

In 2001 Joe went on the record to defend his behaviour in the German-language publication Daily News:

“There wouldn’t be so much crime these days if parents were prepared to punish their kids a little and take care that they stay on the right track.”

When Joe Jackson expresses a desire to be the legal guardian to his grandchildren, one cannot help but wonder if he has already begun to count the potential economic advantages that guardianship could entail. Forty percent of the trust will go directly to Katherine to revert to his children after her death and forty percent is to go directly to his children. Joe is a man that is clearly used to having his will obeyed and any objection on the children’s part may lead to a repeat of the experiences that their uncles and aunts survived.

Today, as Joe publicly claims to love these children and professes a desire to see that they get an education, one must ponder how much of this is posturing for the benefit of the cameras. At the peak of the Jackson 5’s fame, the family was regularly portrayed as happy and close even though their home was filled with violence. How many people would have bought their records, if they knew that behind the charming smile of their lead singer Michael there was a lonely, terrified, and abused child? Joe, like most abusers, made sure that his behaviour remained a dark family secret.

Children are defenceless and depend upon adults to advocate on their behalf. Placing the Jackson children with anyone who has a history of abuse would be a mistake.

Just because someone is related to you by blood, does not mean that they will have your best interests at heart. For Joe Jackson, his children were a meal ticket and a passport that whisked him away from brutal labour in a factory. It did not matter what the cost was; for Joe, any penalty was justified, if it equalled economic advancement.

Children are not the equivalent of property and therefore one cannot simply assign them in a will. It will be up to a court to decide whether or not to uphold Michael’s decision to place them with his mother. Though Kathryn and Joe have lived separately for years, they still occasionally share the same abode and Joe’s influence is still very much apparent in family affairs. Kathryn was unable to protect her children from his violence and therefore it is plausible to suggest that she may fail her grandchildren in the same manner.

Joe was never formally charged with abuse and therefore it is questionable whether his past actions will be taken into account; furthermore, if no one stands up to contest the placement of the children with Kathryn and Joe, it is doubtful whether a full fledged inquiry will be launched. In their father’s death, Prince, Paris and Blanket may gain a legacy that was his worst nightmare.

In the Antarctic, white sea-spiders sit in shallow blue waters under a thick layer of turquoise ice. Five, six, maybe ten bleached bodies rest upon eight-legged thrones, each spindly limb standing up on delicate tiptoe, paused, ready to scuttle, to kick around and break the suspension, but not just yet. They are frozen; for several minutes there is no movement at all, energy accumulates. And then, suddenly, a long segmented icicle-leg lifts, and replaces itself an inch from its original position. The clustered vigil lets time pass through it, eerily ambivalent, dismissive of our gaze. Theirs is a passive existence, patient, paradoxically self-aware and superior. It is only a matter of seconds before some activity will begin, inspired by instinct, nature, necessity perhaps, but free from the heavy awkwardness that humans call living.

Briege sighs. She has read about them and seen pictures in books, spending hours musing on their abstracted existence, wishing that they were not so distant, wishing that she could know them, wishing almost that she could be like them. She has brought her book with her, an encyclopaedia of sea life, and it is mostly useless. She knows of almost all the animals inside, and the attempt at classification does nothing but increase her exasperation. For every small plankton or mollusc there is a population of millions, most of which will remain unknown to the whole world, which can only know them in plural form: plankton, sea slugs, mussels, limpets, crabs, jellyfish, starfish and anemones in their multitudes, individually neglected.

The picture of the white sea-spiders is the only good thing about the book. Of course the editor is clearly an idiot, since he has reduced the picture to a thumbnail image in the corner of a page near the back of the book (being ’s,’ and with the dictionary being organized by common name, the matter of its position is more understandable). Still, she can conjure the beings up into her mind and tread water around them, relishing the pleasure she gets from watching what she secretly desires – like any true voyeur.

She can’t concentrate though. It’s too cold, and she’s in a caravan. There’s a rustling noise coming from outside, and Briege is imagining a varied cast of contemporary criminals congregating outside her van; burglars, serial killers, axe-murderers. This breed probably hangs around caravan parks, rustling the grass, ready to go fishing for young girls.

All her life, she has watched crabs, cuttlefish, and prawns being hauled up in their nets by the thousands, by the local desensitised fishermen with their big, homogenous hands, numb extremities attached to something called men. She has agonised over the creatures, which they only valued when dead, mostly to be exported, and eaten. After her parents had put her to bed she would close her eyes, and bring the dead sea-creatures to life, watching them in their aquatic world, moving with them through the seconds of her sleep, feeling connected to each and every one of them. She tries now to close her eyes and reach for some comfort in the vision, but she has grown up a bit and lost some of the ability. Anyway, the rustling is too loud.

Eager not to prolong her fate, she decides to see who it is that wants to eat her, and draws back the curtain of the van. There is a man, bearded, hunched beside the next van. Briege inhales quickly and averts her eyes to the mounds of black, which are horses sleeping in the moonlight, or maybe not. She wishes that she was one of them, instead of the girl about to be fished.

She closes the curtain, for this is actually happening. He not only looks like a murderer, he also resembles a fisherman. Her fate is sealed. She courageously peers out again and sees this time that he is going into the front door of the adjacent caravan. Actually, he falls into it, his legs still protruding from the step.

It’s been three minutes, and the man has not moved. Briege, still at the window, hardly breathing, realises that the man is no longer a threat so there is only one thing to do. She goes outside with her sketchbook and her enclyclopaedia. She hunches on the grass to the right of the legs and begins to draw the man, with big sweeping movements. She cannot see his face, but reassured of his vitality by his snores, she proceeds to capture his form, leaning the pad on the encyclopaedia, which is also a ready weapon should the man wake up and try to fish her.

What?

OK, no one really believes that. But no one really expected Palin to announce, on July 3rd, that she was stepping down from the governorship of America’s northernmost state. It’s been widely believed that Palin would run for president in 2012, as she hasn’t exactly been circumspect about her ultimate goals.

The biggest criticism of Palin on the campaign trail—and after it—was that she was unqualified, that her single unfinished term as governor of a sparsely populated, oil-rich state didn’t prepare her to deal with the complexities of running an entire country. John McCain’s aides have continued to drop comments into the press about Palin’s incompetence months after his opponent took office, but as other GOP hopefuls drop off the stage (paging Mark Sanford), Palin seems to have decided that now was her chance to seize the spotlight… by telling America that she was going to forego the chance to gain more experience.

In a spectacularly incoherent speech, loaded with bizarre basketball analogies and claims about the wonderful things she’s done for Alaska, Palin declared that she would not run for reelection. Then, because apparently lame duck governors always run around the country ignoring their state, and doing that would be unfair to the people of Alaska, she declared that she would turn power over to her lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell.

Nowhere did she mention a third option, which would’ve been to finish out her term and keep governing, bringing more of those Ethics Reforms (capitalization straight from the governor’s Web site) that are apparently her specialty. From her speech:

“We need those who will respect our Constitution where government’s supposed to serve from the BOTTOM UP, not move toward this TOP DOWN big government take-over… but rather, will be protectors of individual rights – who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have drastically changed and are willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it’s time so the team can win! And that is what I’m doing!” [Once again, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation straight from the governor's site.

Will Inglis, a political activist from Alaska, said,

“This proves what a lot of people have thought since she ran for VP; that the governorship had taken a back seat to her national ambitions. This shows an incredible lack of character for her to not finish out her time in the office that she was elected to. She hasn’t accomplished any of her stated goals such as lowering energy costs for Alaskans and getting work started on the natural gas pipeline. She obviously wasn’t cut out for the job, and has demonstrated that she is not qualified for any higher office.”

Palin is such an easy joke that it’s easy to sit back and laugh at her, yet one has to assume that she has some sort of team advising her on issues like this. Speculation started almost immediately upon her announcement that perhaps she had a job offer as a Fox News analyst or perhaps an eye on the Senate seat held by Lisa Murkowski, but I’d be willing to bet that the target of Palin’s intentions is still the White House, and in her thoughts this makes her look even more maverick-y and thus, in some way, more appealing to the rest of the country.

Either that, or she just can’t stand one more minute in Alaska.

It’s hard to see how this move can work out well for Palin. She’s got her hardcore supporters—probably a good portion of the tea party protesters scheduled to come out again in droves on July 4 to declare independence from some nebulous socialist fascism defined by a government spending money to try to keep people from starving in a recession teetering on the razor’s edge of depression. Beyond that, though, she’ll have to win over Americans who didn’t buy into “drill, baby, drill” as an energy policy and weren’t won over already by folksy comments about her kids.

Simply put, Palin’s image problem isn’t that she doesn’t have a national profile, like so many other governors who dream of DC. It’s that she has one—and it’s bad. It’s hard to see how quitting her job early, with no plans to gain political experience in the next three years before the next presidential election, will improve her profile.

There really is nothing new or shocking about Sanford’s story. Each day, countless people are unfaithful; according to The Monogamy Myth by Peggy Vaughan, statistics show that approximately 60% of husbands and 40% of wives will have an affair at some time in their marriage. Today, it is often more shocking to find that a husband is not a lecher. The only real twist to this drama is the reaction of Jenny Sanford, Mark’s wife.

When Mark Sanford made his predictable atonement plea, he was standing in front of the cameras by himself. Jenny Sanford seems to have declined to take on the role of long-suffering wife awaiting the return of her fickle lover. Dina Matos McGreevy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards all stood by their men, allowing the public to feed off of their grief like suckling pigs. Edwards and McGreevy even went as far as to write tell-all books, just in case somehow, in all of the public commentary and accusations, you missed essential points of their rise to public martyrdom.

In Sanford, we have been introduced to a woman that not only declines to express shame for her husband’s actions, but summarily declares the importance of maintaining dignity and respect in the eyes of her children. Unlike the women that have gone before her, political ambition was not her foremost thought. There were no ambitions of running for president one day or retaining the power that comes with being the first lady of a state.

Jenny Sanford’s response to her husband’s infidelity has introduced an image of the political wife that’s rather different from smiling doormat. Jenny Sanford, instead, appears as a self-assured and dignified woman. Though she has not displayed any of the anger and betrayal that she must surely be feeling, her curt responses to the media make it clear that the shame of this incident does not belong to her and that she is unwilling to sacrifice her self-respect while enabling her enamoured husband’s midlife crisis.

Unlike other cheated-on spouses, Jenny Sanford’s response has engendered empathy as well as admiration. Political wives have been forced to perform a very specific form of womanhood, and by refusing to wear the scarlet letter of shame, Sanford is viewed as a trailblazer by many.

Feminism is about choice and even while claiming this as truth, the decisions of Edwards et al. to stand behind their men always seemed a problematic choice. A decision that reflected such complete passivity hardly seemed informed by any real agency; rather, it reflected a social demand that a woman be subordinate to her husband. By separating herself, Sanford’s decision is easier to own as feminist even though she justified her actions by claiming to desire the respect of her children rather than her own self respect.

In the end, what happens in the Sanford’s relationship is really no one’s business. Both parties have asked for privacy for the sake of their children, though Mark continues to feed the media frenzy with more revelations. Perhaps what we should all take away from the Sanford affair is that no matter how powerful the husband in question is, women have a right to respond in whatever way makes them comfortable. Even as emails from his lover continue to titilate, we can still choose to turn away from such media coverage and focus on the example of Jenny Sanford, one wife in the public eye who won’t “stand by her man” without a damn good reason.

As on drunken nights aplenty
Since before the age of twenty;
Alcoholic cognoscenti:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Once our numbers swamped the tables,
Packed the snug up to the gables,
Filled the air with jokes and fables:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

But in ones and twos and threes
Young blades fell to love’s disease;
Moved to Surrey, if you please.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

By coup de main or escalade,

Sniper’s shot or cannonade,
Cupid drew them in his shade:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Just we few still gather gladly,
Sing the old songs somewhat sadly,
Drink and laugh a little madly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

We who, shunning home and sleep,
The rites of Dionysus keep
And laughingly refuse to weep.
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Cheery, beery, worldly, weary,
Playing out our revels dreary,
Hair and numbers thinning yearly:
Gentlemen of Bacchus.

Sooner than we care to think,
As our numbers fade and shrink,
One alone will sit and drink:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

Shorn of satire, robbed of farce,
He’ll watch the leaden moments pass
Reflected in an empty glass:
Gentleman of Bacchus.

The water in his bleary eye
Will mutely question how and why
We let the youthful laughter die,
Gentlemen of Bacchus.