JavaJennifer

Posted By javajennifer on July 8, 2011

Justice isn’t a cold glass of water served in a pretty glass to the thirsty masses.  Justice is the reluctant acceptance of an imperfect process that represents the best and worst of our legal system.  As Casey Anthony spends a few more days in jail serving out the terms of her entirely too-brief sentence, the volatility surrounding her release and the complexities of the feelings she engenders are fascinating.

As I watched this case take shape over the last 3 years I was certain of two things: Casey Anthony killed her daughter and Casey Anthony would embody what it means to be both not innocent and not guilty.

How did Susan Smith watch her car float into the water with her two boys strapped inside?  How did Andrea Yates drown her 5 children?  How do you leave your child locked in the back of your car on a hot summer day?  The better question might be, at what point did we start lying to one another about the difficulties of motherhood?

Isn’t is possible, likely even, that you can love your children with the whole of who you are and still have moments when you long for certain aspects of your life before you had them?  A few women I know are willing to get honest about this, acknowledging how those feelings can coexist alongside a love so great that they would rather die themselves than see their child harmed.

A mother I know slipped a tablespoon of Kahlua into her 4-year olds’ hot chocolate last winter because she “needed” her uncooperative child to take a nap.  Another mother confessed that she had dosed her non-coughing kid with some Tylenol with codeine to get her to go to bed early one night.  The women I’m referring to are  college educated and financially stable some of them with ambitious careers,  women now in their late 30’s early 40’s whose own mothers may have served them tea with a bit of whisky back in the day…

Casey Anthony is of a different generation, fed a steady diet of CSI and Law and Order where victims are chloroformed and live to testify in a tidy case that wraps up in an hour.  Her subsequent 84 searches on chloroform weren’t necessarily indicative of murder; it suggested  that this was someone fastidiously researching chloroform.

When you want to know the answer to something, you look it up one time.  But when you are researching something, you want to know everything about it.  And you look for it over and over.   Was chloroform relatively safe?  How would you dose someone with it?  What are the long term effects?   How long does it stay in your system?

For most of us,  using chloroform on another person is inconceiveable,  let alone on a child, but for a high-school drop out with the emotional maturity of a 16 year old, ill prepared for motherhood, living with an excitable, overbearing mother?   I had no trouble believing that Casey used chloroform so that she could go out and “party”.  Today’s chloroform is yesterday’s Benadryl.

The time frame for the chloroform searches further suggests that she had probably successfully dosed Caylee in the past.

This time… she got it wrong and Caylee died.

Panic.

And a choice:

Confess to using chloroform on your child and figure that no one will believe that yes, you meant to knock her out but no, you didn’t mean to kill her, that it was a horrible accident, OR do as you’ve done your whole life:  lie about it.

Though there was no testimony that Caylee was abused or that Casey was anything other than a loving mother, chloroforming your kid is not an act of love and would certainly qualify as abuse. The prosecution made what was, in hindsight, an unwise assumption that a jury would link Caylee’s death to abuse, be it isolated or perpetual.

And so begins the 31 day lie.  The ensuing party pictures were Casey’s ill-conceived attempts to show that she was unaware that Caylee was in danger because (per the lie) Caylee was with the Nanny.  She didn’t murder her daughter so that she could become a party girl.  She partied to substantiate her claim that as far as she knew, Caylee was initially fine and in the care of a Nanny.  At the point her parents discovered the car afoul and Cindy Anthony went bat-shit crazy,  the kidnapping lie started to both unfurl…and unravel.

But why chloroform Caylee in the first place?  If Casey wanted to go out and get her freak on, why not just take Caylee to her grandparents as she had done before?

Or better put:  How bitchy does your mother have to be before drugging your baby is a better alternative?

Mother/ daughter relationships are inherently complex but when the mother is now a grandmother behaving as a surrogate mother to her grandchild, the boundary issues in that family and the level of dysfunction was absolute.  The Anthony family, by all accounts was coming undone:  Cindy was constantly nagging Casey to get her shit together. Casey was tired of her mother interfering with raising Caylee but was simultaneously unable to get her aforementioned shit together.  They fought incessantly and with increasing and escalating verbal warfare.   Casey, lacking emotional maturity and sum zero in the sound judgment department likely thought, ‘Hell will freeze over before I let that bitch mother of mine babysit my kid’.  Caylee had become the only currency between them and I never ONCE heard Cindy Anthony take some small responsibility for contributing to an environment where between chloroform and Cindy Anthony’s shrill and unrelenting criticism, Casey chose the chloroform.

And after the horror of realizing Caylee was dead, a single piece of duct tape applied across that sweet face  further bolstered her claim that it was a kidnapping , was part of the lie, not an instrument of Caylee’s death.

Criminal defense lawyers will tell you that the “she died by accident in the family pool” defense strategy is something that you learn during your first year of law school.  When you have a client that that’s difficult to defend, you start running your fingers around the edges of their life looking for a weak spot.

Gathered around a table, Jose Baez asks, “Could Caylee have drowned in the family pool?” .  Not did she but could she.   I don’t know any reasonable person who thinks that baby drowned in the family pool.  But could she have?  Sure.  I didn’t go to UMKC for my degree.  I could have.  I lived 2 blocks from campus.  But I didn’t.

The Anthony home had an above ground pool, they admitted that they were sometimes careless with the ladder.    Could Caylee have climbed the ladder and drowned?  She didn’t drown.  But yes, she could have.

The defense obviously didn’t have to prove that Caylee died in the family pool which is one of the reasons why the jury didn’t convict on the aggravated manslaughter charges.  Even if you believe (as I do) that Caylee died by accident as a result of Caseys negligence, she didn’t die by accident as a result of drowning in the family pool.  Not just because she actually didn’t, but because there was no evidence introduced that supported the defense’s claim that Caylee died in that manner and therefore no way for the jury to convict on that charge.

People with narcissistic/sociopathic tendencies walk among us and they no more or less mentally ill than you or I.  They have a different set of criteria that serve as their compass in life.  When the State of Florida made this a death penalty case, they stopped trying to find the unique set of switches and pulleys that would have resulted in a full confession from Casey Anthony.  Doing so would have put the trial focus on the correct charges which, in turn, would have resulted in a conviction.  The State of Florida did a fantastic job, no criticism with respect to their efforts.  Though I’m confident that they had the right defendant, I’m not convinced that they were trying to convict Casey Anthony of the right crime.

You don’t reason with a sociopath.  And you don’t yell at a narcissist the way detectives from the Orange County, FL sheriff’s department are heard yelling at Casey Anthony on tape.  Casey had been yelled at by her mother for years and that had proved equally ineffective, particularly since yelling doesn’t play a factor in Casey’s matrix of reward and punishment.  The more you yell at Casey, the further into herself she retreats and the more apt she is to lie.

At the point when the State said in effect,  “You’re going to die by lethal injection”, they had effectively removed all motivation for Casey to cooperate.   If in fact, Caylee’s death was an accident, Casey believed that even had she told the truth from the very beginning, the result was the same: First Degree Murder with the possibility of the death sentence.  It’s one of the reasons why Jose Baez opposes the death penalty on both moral and legal grounds.  Moral, because, “we all need to stop and look and think twice about a country that decides to kill its own citizens. Murder’s not right no matter who does it, whether it’s a ritual killing or someone becoming a victim in a drive by shooting. It’s disgusting and I think, if this case gets any attention, it should focus on that issue” and Legal because it neither acts as a deterrent against capital murder nor does the threat of the death penalty elicit cooperation from the accused.

People lie for a variety of reasons and only one of them is because they are unwilling to bear the consequence of truth.  If you take a moment to reflect upon a lie that you told, a real whopper, you may discover that the lie had as much to do with the person that you lied to as it did whatever the particular lie was about.  Each of us has known people who made us want to be less than honest. Did you lie to protect their feelings?  Did you lie because you didn’t feel safe telling the truth?  Maybe you lied because you realized that people liked the lies better than the truth.  Or because in the act of lying you hoped it might become the truth.

Casey Anthony’s lies didn’t start with the death of her daughter.  She’s had a lifetime of untruths but what’s interesting about her as a practiced (if unimpressive) liar is her body language during  some of the testimony,  particularly related to the meter reader, Roy Kroink and a car that did or didn’t stink of human decomposition.  She seemed to, in turns, smirk, shake her head in disgust and feign boredom … because if there’s one thing that pisses off a narcissist it’s when people get it wrong…when we fail to be moved by the veracity of their lies.

On some level , Casey may have been willing to face a conviction, but not because some goofy meter reader moved Caylee’s remains 3 times over a nearly 6 month period, or because her mother perjured herself or because Casey left a bag of trash in the back of her car.  But what really seemed to raise her ire was her father’s testimony.

I’m not sure that George Anthony molested Casey but I thought that his conduct over the last 3 years was, creepy… and a little suspect.  The suicide attempt, the alleged affair with River Kruz…an inability to sustain eye contact during his testimony would have been troubling for me had I been a juror.  It doesn’t mean that he is in any way responsible but as 93% of communication is non-verbal, I think for the defense to not have seen and acknowledged his creepiness during closing arguments was a mistake.

It wasn’t the prosecution’s only mistake- they made several which given the 3 years they’ve had to prepare was a little surprising and for which they could have avoided by trying to figure out what actually happened to Caylee vs. trying to make the evidence they had elicit a conviction.

To be clear, there should have been a conviction in this case.  I absolutely believe that Casey is responsible for the death of her daughter and that she should have born the punishment for that through our legal system and not, as I now fear, at the hands of some whack job.

The First degree/ Felony murder charge, where the prosecution spent the majority of time building a case they were not able to prove was the State of Florida’s own contribution to the “miscarriage of justice” that Nancy Grace is going to be yapping about for the next 50 years.

Had the lead investigators and prosecutors used Casey’s narcissism to their prosecutorial advantage, I believe they would have succeeded in charging her with and convicting her of Aggravated Manslaughter of a Child: for causing the death of Caylee by culpable negligence (the chloroform).  The maximum sentence would have been 30 years in prison and it’s estimated that the minimum sentence would have been 16 years and 6 months with 3 years served.

Juries are willing to convict on circumstantial evidence.  The trial and conviction of serial killer Richard Grissom is an example of  a conviction where the evidence was at times either absent or thin- it wasn’t a death penalty cases.  And in order to understand what seems to have gone so terribly wrong in the trial of Casey Anthony,  it requires an understanding of the death penalty that goes beyond our biblical understanding of “an eye for an eye”, Exodus 21:24

Instead we are all waiting for that cold glass of water in a pretty glass to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for justice for the death of a little girl whose name we will never forget.

“God sees all, knows all, and can reconccile all. Into His arms little Caylee was delivered and ultimately by His hand those responsible will be judged and held accountable for their actions”- STC, Facebook, Tuesday, July 6th

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Posted By javajennifer on January 27, 2011

On every level, I consider myself a writer first, which is weird because I’ve done so little of it as of late.  That and my “day” job which feeds me in a different but equally important way, needed to assume its rightful priority.

I am however, always writing, the words scrolling across my brain like a banner flown high over the ocean.  Sometimes, a word or two would slip out and make its way onto a napkin, a scrap of paper, a journal or into my computer, then almost immediately be lost on purpose or deleted. 

I wanted to write, even needed to.  Absent the regular discipline of posting to my blog or to Examiner.com, my mind became the repository too much unsaid. A dispute in my family toward the end of 2009 was so massive that I couldn’t feel around the edges to move it out of my way.   I lived with crushing grief, and prayed for grace. Writing should have been a ladder out of the hole I was in, but its rungs were too far apart and the rope people threw me only made a tighter noose.   I sat in the dark for almost a year.

The only thing worse for a writer than not writing, is a close tie between writing something you know is poor or doing a type of writing you don’t enjoy.  For me, the latter was a factor in what had become a growing, if unacknowledged writers block, my inability to write an interview or a critical review. 

I enjoy interviewing people, my natural curiosity and propensity to find common ground makes me adept at getting people to open up.  But taking an hour-long taped piece to an insightful 600 word interview required a skill set I not only didn’t have, but wasn’t interested in developing.  They are “out there” these reviews of mine and best resemble a primer of  ’Dick and Jane go to the Movies’.

My final aborted review effort was this past December when I was asked to write a column on Love and Other Drugs after an advanced screening of the film.  I had a brief, unrequited crush on my seatmate which didn’t help.  Plus, I hated the move.   But I had hated The Ugly Truth too and still managed to cobble together a review.

But when it came time to write the article for Examiner.com, I could only think of one thing to write.

 “Oh for fuck’s sake, put some clothes on.”

This does not a review make.

Adjunct to writer’s block, I started a new job at the beginning of 2010.  Minus my previous professional swagger in an economy where I knew I could be replaced by someone thinner and younger (though not with better hair, I need to be clear on this point) made me reticent to write about my more controversial positions.  I still think Sarah Palin is a doofus but I felt then, and now that more judicious self editing is appropriate.

Struggling to find wit and wisdom and with personal losses mounting, I had clearly lost my sense of humor, and I noticed that certain subjects had become decidedly unfunny.  I can’t un-ring the blogger bell, and I’m not sure I want to.  But I was part of our collective uncivil discourse and I feel differently about that today.  We are either all in this together, or all against the other; the former builds bridges, the latter blows them up.  Though I in no way blame Sarah Palin for the too oft said, Tragedy in Tuscon, I think her brand of rhetoric makes an impression on a certain disenfranchised element of our society. 

All of the clichés we come to understand about the passage of time proved true.  The new job is now one I’ve been proficient in for a year.  The wound in my heart formed a scab strong enough to draw that part of my family close again.  I raised $2700 and completed the 3-Day, 60 Mile Susan G. Komen For the Cure.  In fact, amidst some losses were great gains: I treasured new friends, discovered other creative outlets and took some significant steps toward creating a very different kind of life for myself.

Moving to California is by far the most visible change from the previous 14, almost 15 years.  I’ve started running again, and with this post, writing again and in my first attempt, more cautious, less caustic.

It’s a start. 

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Posted By javajennifer on March 11, 2010

Sandra Bullock’s academy award win on Sunday came with the certainty of the red carpet itself.  Her role in The Blind Side was, in every way, the equivelent  of Julia Robert’s Oscar-winning performance in 2000′s Erin Brokovich: an adequate, if predictable portrayal of a stubborn woman, that involved dying one’s famous tresses from brown to blond.

There are some actresses, Sandy and Jules are two of them that have a likeability quotient that surpasses whatever talent they may have.  Meg Ryan had this quality too until that nasty little affair with Russel Crow when they made the altogether forgettable movie, Proof of Life. 

I liked The Blind Side in large part because it is a sweet story with a happy ending and there are far too few of those on screen and in real life.

But did Sandra Bullock deserve to win?  Based on what was easily her best on-screen performance to date? Yes, though personally, she broke my heart in the film 28 Days.  Based on other performances by nominees Gabourey Sidibe, Carey Mulligen, Meryl Streep and Dame (Damn!) Hellen Mirren?  Nope.  Not even close.

Gabourey Sidibe should have won and didn’t simply because the academy voters don’t believe that a fat, happy (by all deliberate and exhaustive accounts) black girl playing a fat, miserable one, consititutes “acting”.

If the academy didn’t believe that Sidibe is exuberant at more than 350lbs,  then they likely questioned the authenticity of her performance as simply not being that difficult to pull off.  To be that fat is to be that miserable…and therefore not as big a stretch to play miserable on screen.

In the land of before and after pictures, Hollywood loves transformative roles; Renee Zellweger was lauded for her (gasp) 20lb weight gain for Bridget Jones’s Diary and the lovely Charlize Theron was later awarded an Oscar for her role as doughy Aileen Wuronos in 2003′s Monster.  In order for Sidibe’s performance to have been rewarded with a much-deserved Oscar,she would have had to have started out thin, gained 200lbs, and lost it in time for the fall press junkets.

Even so, it may have been difficult to trump Bullock’s likability.

And nice… matters.

If you don’t believe me, ask James Cameron. Consider that that his films, The Abyss, Titanic and Avatar, have moved the motion picture industry into new areas of development that didn’t exist until James Cameron made it so.  Avatar is the equivalent of the Quadruple Axel and should have won Best Director and Best Picture no matter what metric the academy used to measure, but for one: James Cameron is a douchebag. 

That Avatar didn’t win Best Picture and James Cameron didn’t win Best Director is less about The Hurt Locker being the superior film as it is that Cameron is an ego maniacal, philandering butt-head whose reputation for creative brilliance is eclipsed by his narcissism and cruelty.

I side with Howard Stern, Sidibe’s 15 minutes are ticking and nothing short of significant weight loss, preferably done front-and-center on a reality television show are going to shore up her options for more film work.

But Gabby seems to have the best of all things on her side: she is nice.

Maybe that will rub off on James Cameron before he starts work on the Avatar sequel.

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Posted By javajennifer on January 18, 2010

It is always difficult to argue with people who site “God’s Plan” as their justification for what they do or don’t do, isn’t it?

I was pleased to hear that Sarah Palin had joined the Fox New news team.  It would seem now that my exposure to her propogatin’ and talkin’ about what weighs on the minds and hearts of the American People,er, uh,  her loyal fans, is mitigated by the fact that I don’t watch Fox News.  Not ever.

The broader speculation is that Palin has officially taken a 2012 run at the Presidency off her salmon burger serving table, believing that God’s Plan for her is to advance the national conservative agenda from the Fox News studio rather than the Oval Office.

During Palin’s campaign run, False Auntie once commented that among the complex reasons that Palin was a weak Vice Presidential candidate is that she lacks  intellectual curiosity.

It’s not that Sarah Palin isn’t capable of articulating her opinions, or that her opinions aren’t valid, but rather that her opinions and her depth of knowledge is equivalent to that of a middle-school-er.  She lacks the critical thinking and analytical skills that make for both good pundits and good politicians.

I can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, but he holds his Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  Ann Coulter scares me to death, but has her JD from the University of Michigan Law School and was the editor of the Michigan Law Review.  Sarah Palin has a borderline speech impediment, admittedly doesn’t read and as such has a limited vocabulary, and has a sketchy academic track record that includes 3 marginal universities before graduating with a communications-journalism degree and a minor in political science from the University of Idaho.

On Fox, Palin won’t be able to conceal that which she does not know, which is plenty,  and she’s lost “campaign stress” as a possible defense.  She won’t be able to keep up with O’Reilly who will tire of her pedantic, tea-spoon depth of understanding and of lobbing her softballs.  I predict Sarah’s stint on Fox will be short lived and that as she makes more appearances, her growing insecurities will flare when she’s challenged or questioned on inaccurate statements she will undoubtedly make.  Palin will eventually resign, because conveniently her, up until this point, incredibly capable and independent family will need her.

That too, will be God’s Plan, won’t it?

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Posted By javajennifer on January 6, 2010

The temperature gauge in my car reads 3 degrees at too-early-in-the-morning as I make my way to the airport for a flight that few people know I’m taking.   It’s been a rough few months and despite the freshness of the New Year, I find that I’m still licking wounds from 2009 when I approach the intersection where a left turn will take me to the airport.

The same homeless guy who’s always there, is there again this morning and he’s dressed not near warm enough, wearing a jacket from Good Will, the words ‘President’s Club’ in yellow script across the breast suggesting the previous wearers successful achievement in a now irrelevant sales pursuit.

It is crispy -nostril -hair kind of cold and even as I’m cursing myself for not having stopped at an ATM for cash that I will need to pay tolls later today, I’m digging through the change I keep in my car.  I come up with less than a dollar.  My car window cracks open in protest sounding like angry Rice Krispies and I motion the man to my car, apologizing for what little I have to offer, not wanting to offend him with such a small amount.

“I can use this to buy coffee” he tells me in the blast of arctic air between us.

When the light changes, I’m not even over the bridge before I’m staving off the wellspring of tears that never seem to be too terribly far from my eyes these days.  I don’t have any make-up with me and can’t afford to be both fat and mascara stained today; the former I can do nothing about so I focus on the blink, blink, blink of the latter until the feeling passes.

I’ve been so caught up in the giant sucking sound that is my life right now that I’ve lost perspective.  Irrespective of my job, my Bedouin life, or the failed and estranged relationships that litter my path like too many Starbucks sleeves, I’m not (yet) panhandling in 3 degree weather.  So, you know, there’s that.

If love is fickle, hope might be one of life’s great constants.  Certainly I hope the best for the people I love.  I hope the best for our country and its leaders.  I hope that the man I gave the spare change to finds some comfort from a warm cup of coffee… or a stiff drink. 

Dogs and cats lick their wounds because their saliva has healing properties in it.  So it is true with we two-legged creatures as well; we metaphorically lick our wounds, and find that there are opportunities for healing in unexpected places.

I found mine at the corner of Can’t Go Back and Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself.

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Posted By javajennifer on November 25, 2009

When former Miss California, Carrie Prejean abruptly settled her  libel and defamation case,  in which she cited religious persecution against Miss California pageant organizers amid rumors of a sex tape, my reaction was, “serves you right, you noxious twit.”

I don’t have an issue with conservative women or the conservative agenda per se, but rather the cake-and-eat-it too mentality that seems to plague the more famous or infamous of them.

So called “conservative women” ought not send video- taped masturbatory sessions featuring oral copulation of a foreign object with the same mouth that denounces same-sex marriages on a nationally televised beauty pageant.  If the former is little more than a young woman who should have known better, and didn’t then the latter is, well, a young woman who should of known better, and didn’t.

She makes the point in her book, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate and Political Attacks that she’s just another conservative woman who is a victim of liberal media bias and that she’s been “Palinized” by the same.  Prejan’s position is that her rights to free speech have been violated as she has been surreptitiously undermined by the media, Donald Trump, the pageant organizers as every facet of her life has been scrutinized.

It may surprise my 10 remaining blog readers (down from my high of 12 readers) that I believe that her free-speech rights have in fact been compromised because she had the courage nee stupidity to express an opinion that today is held by a majority of Americans: that the rights of marriage should only apply to one man and one woman foolish enough to believe that they will emerge on the other side of the divorce statistic. 

I kid, I kid. Prejean expressed an opinion and she’s been punished for it. 

The reason I find conservative ideology so terrifying is because of its want to restrict other freedoms. 

At almost 40 years old, I would not have an abortion; I object to it for reasons that are part political and part spiritual.  However, I acknowledge that I couldn’t possibly know every circumstance where abortion might be viable and that it’s arrogant to think that I or my government can legislate against something that we’re not meant to have the answers to. 

Starbucks coffee to any conservative friend who can provide a biblical and rhetoric-free explanation on how the same conservative agenda that promotes Pro-Life can also be in favor of the Death Penalty.

Where same-sex marriage is concerned, again, it isn’t a choice I would make for myself, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that I am the authority on what people should be “allowed” to do with one another behind closed doors.   If you believe the biblical perspective that homosexuality is an abomination against God, I’ve yet to find the scripture that says that Anne Coulter,  Rush Limbaugh and their like- minded ilk are empowered to make those decisions for the rest of us.

But if I have the right to discuss my beliefs then, so should Carrie Prejean, so should we all.

What I ask myself as a writer and as a liberal is this: does the fact that her opinion is repugnant to me give me the right to be especially pejorative?   Did her answer during the Miss USA pageant which clearly came from her heart, warrant the backlash that she has since endured?   Or have her actions since (semi-nude modeling shots, a sexting video and behavior that have ran the gamut from petulant and unprofessional to just plain bizarre) set a course apart from her pageant answer?   How, can she claim the “conservative woman” title with so much of her behavior anything but? 

It would be like me affirming my own political correctness, or second virginity or republican leanings.

On the subject of free-speech, her rights have clearly and absolutely been compromised and she’s owed a collective apology for that.

She owes us an apology too, for being less, much less the woman she portends to be.

By my math? We’re even.

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Posted By javajennifer on September 23, 2009

It’s been so long since I’ve posted… anything and I would urge you to keep fairly low expectations for this entry. 

Though I would very much like to write about Mackenzie Phillips ill-conceived tell all book and couch-side sit in with Oprah, I’m glued to Facebook with a now empty bag of Peanut Butter M&M’s and a house full of someone else’s cats, half watching Glee.

I’ll start with this:  I loved not working.

From the first spring flowers that pushed up between the cigarette butts in McPherson Square to the first leaf that fell outside the condo, I loved every minute of not working.  Oh sure, I’d have liked to have made a dent in the 100 or so lbs I need to lose, or to have finished the outline of the book I’d like to write.  I find though that in large part what I needed was to do absolutely nothing. 

And to do it with Jerry Springer playing in the background.

Which I did, for 5 months.

With funds diminishing,  and yet determined not to go back into a sales career,  I accepted a position that has me (for all intents and purposes) commuting from DC to KC until at least March 2010.   As I’ve signed enough Non-Disclosure Agreements to wall-paper my infamous 740 square feet, I can’t divulged what exactly it is that I’m doing apart from to say that my clothes remain on at all times and despite having grown up in Kansas City, I am seeing parts of this town that were, until recently as foreign to me as well, a foreign country.

Being “home” is wonderful for many reasons.  As TS is from here as well and currently looking for work in DC,  he can travel with me and pick up some additional work in KC to sustain him until something more permanent comes his way.  Although my travel expenses are reimbursed, I can stay with the False Auntie and Uncle where there is, in no particular order, 4 cats, 2 refridgerators and 1 bag of Gumi Bears at any given time.

So why am I so restless?  As Reese Witherspoon quipped in the otherwise forgettable Sweet Home Alabama (Ok so I watch it every time it’s on FX, but whatever) “I’m happy in (DC) but this (KC) fits too”.  With one foot in both places, I’m not all that happy in either of them. 

I wonder, were this project to be based in California (near my mother and brother) or in Denver (near my brother) would I be as  conflicted about “home” as I am now.  And if I’m as conflicted about being here is what I’m alleging, then why haven’t I just moved back to Kansas City where I can plug into a life- a good life- without having to wage war during my commute to Fairfax and without having to speak 4 different languages in order to pick up my dry cleaning and order a cup of coffee?

This is what keeps me up at night.  That, and the pot of coffee.

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Posted By javajennifer on August 7, 2009

… finding your purpose.

Review of Julie and Julia

Considering the Mullutt

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Posted By javajennifer on July 29, 2009

I sometimes wonder if the sum total of False Auntie’s and my Mom’s activities for the week surround their superhuman ability to read and disseminate information.   I read, but at a second- grade level compared to the two of them who read so much that they’ll sometimes buy a book and discover two chapters in that they’ve already read it.

False Auntie sent me a link to a Time Magazine article about Bush’s decision not to extend a Presidential pardon to Scooter Libby despite the enormous pressure that VP Dick Cheney put upon him to do so.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1912297-1,00.html

If you’ve not read the article, this one provides a succinct overview of  ‘Plamegate”, the disclosing of CIA Operative Valerie Plame’s identity as a retaliation for anti-Bush comments regarding the war in Iraq published in an Op-Ed piece by Valerie Plame’s writer husband that subsequently ended her career with the CIA.

The Time Magazine article asserts that by Bush’s second term, he had begun to part ways with Cheney ideologically on many issues.  As Cheney looked around D.C. he found that most of the good-’ol-boys network had moved on to other pursuits and he found himself at odds with nearly everyone particulary Condoleezza Rice who was making some diplomatic progress in areas that Cheney had sought to squelch during the  first term. 

Bush suggested that if he found out that anyone in his administration was responsible for outing Valerie Plame, that individual would be fired. Scooter Libby wound up with a criminal conviction, a fine and a 2 year sentence which Bush later commuted.

Ultimately, Scooter didn’t receive the pardon.  Bush held his ground on an issue that was a clear embarrassment to him and his administration.  It was nanny-nanny-boo-boo politics within his party and the article makes it clear that Bush understood that. 

Either Scooter Libby leaked Plame’s identity on his own, or (as I believe), Cheney instigated the leak under the supposition that anything conducted under the umbrella of National Security was pardonable.  Scooter would have have had plausible deniability because in truth he may not have leaked Plame’s identity directly but rather may have agreed to take the fall for Cheney based on a many year friendship and that they were and are “right-fighters”.

Bush had outside parties review, and then review again trial testimony and all  concluded the same thing: that Scooter Libby had perjured himself  and obstructed justice in the matter related to Valerie Plame…because to have told the truth would have implicated Cheney and completely derailed Bush’s eight years in office.   Bush connected the last dot himself: that Cheney had betrayed the office of the President.

The only way for Bush to be certain that Cheney “got it”, without point blank stating the obvious, was to deny Scooter’s pardon; something that Cheney had likely promised to Scooter.

Although Scooter couldwipes his hiney with the amount of money represented by the fine and thanks to the President, didn’t serve a day of his 30 month sentence,  the felony conviction resulted in his disbarment from Pennsylvania and D.C. and he’s become a pariah in a town where he was once both respected and feared. 

And I think it’s fair to say that Cheney and Bush aren’t going to any church pot-lucks together this summer.

When Bush’s memoirs are published next year, I think we’ll be reading about a man who, particularly during his last term stopped letting Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney run the White House like a University of Texas Fraternity.  If you take the position that minus the “brains” of the organization, Bush was unable to manage the war on terrorism and the economic muck we’re now mired in, you can argue that Bush needed them.  Like drinking coffee even though it gives you the runs: the need for caffeine is greater than the negative effects.

With every President we’ve elected during my lifetime, there has been a tremendous difference between the man who walks down Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day and the man who takes his last ride on Air Force One some 4 or 8 years later.  Most of the time, the President rides in on a magic carpet and leaves on a mule.

 I wonder though, if Bush is different.  He didn’t ride in on a magic carpet having lost the popular vote and won the election amid voting controversy in a state governed by his brother.  During his 8 years in office it seems he was betrayed over and over again by people who were supposed to be trusted advisers. But in his final 72 hours in office, he demonstrated the character and strength of a President.

And on that cold day this past January,  if not a magic carpet, I’d have given him keys to a scooter.

Category: Politics and Poop | 1 Comment »
Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Politics, Scooter Libby

Posted By javajennifer on July 23, 2009

The older I get, the more persnickety I become over words and their usage.  Most days, I make a poor excuse for an English Major in that my spelling and punctuation, even with spell check and grammar check are inconsistent.  I drives TS crazy and he begs me to let him edit my work before it goes on line. 

There are two kinds of writers: ones who happily show first drafts of their work and ones who would likely pry that same first draft from the readers cold dead hands.  Regrettably, I’m in the latter category.  That, and the immediacy of on-line writing is such that if I were to edit and then edit again everything that I write, I’d never get anything posted.

This is what I tell myself.

By way of bringing current my few readers who aren’t friends with me on facebook, I made a status update last night during Obama’s press conference suggesting that “incentivize” which he used no fewer than 4 times in his hour at the podium, is not a word.  It was a Blackberry update from my perfect blue sofa so when I immediately got a reply that the word is listed in the American Heritage Dictionary, I was nothing if not chagrined.

Linguistically, I expect and appreciate that the English language evolves.  As a lover of words, I celebrate the distinctions between slang, colloquialisms and common vernacular.  For example, if I send a package to my mother in California, I’m not going to say, “I sent that package using a service that guarantees she’ll have it in 2 days”.  Instead I’ll say, “I Fedex-ed that package to my mom”, even if I sent it UPS “Blue” or USPS Express.  Fedex has become the commonly accepted word for expedited package delivery so much so that Federal Express legally changed their name to Fedex.   All facial tissue is “Kleenex”, even if the brand is “Puffs”.  Fedex and Kleenex aren’t really words, except that they are. 

Then there are made up words to describe ideas or in many instances items that didn’t exist 50 years ago and include words such as “motherboard”, “walkman” and ”iPod”.  We know what these words mean because we understand the item that the word references.  iPod isn’t really a word either, except that it is.

“Incentivize” and the two other cringe worthy words that peeve me, “enthused” and “horrific” may be listed in one dictionary or another but in a good, better, best articulation of a concept or an idea, these words are better left for any member of the Bush family as well as the Alaskan Princess, Sarah Palin because each is a bastardization of the correct word.  Smart people (and I mean you, Mr. President) use the correct word or tense of the word, “to incent/incentive”, “enthusiasm/enthusiastic” and “horrifying”.   That “incentivize” specifically isn’t a word, I base on the fact that the correct word exists.

“Americans need to be incentivized to make better health care choices” should simply be, “Americans need an incentive to make better health care choices” or “As President, it’s my responsibility to incent Americans to make better health care choices”.

“I am so enthused about my sex life” is correctly said as either “I have enthusiasm about my sex life” which is admittedly awkward or “I am enthusiastic about my sex life”.

“That plane crash was horrific” is better said as “That plane crash was horrifying“.

Speaking of that which is horrifying, very few things are.  In reaching for and using the most extreme words to describe the ordinary, we’ve become a society of emotional illiterates.  September 11th was horrifying.   You in a fender-bender on the Courtney Campbell Causeway, not horrifying.  Scary? Yes.  Inconvenient? Probably. But not horrifying.  It’s sad Walter Cronkite died this summer. Sad, but not tragic.  Not every life experience is devastating, some are merely dismal.  Yet over and over again we reach as a collective to the most extreme ends of human emotion to express how we’re feeling.  We’re no longer “tired” or “sleepy”, we’re mentally, physically and spiritually “exhausted”.  In using word polarity, we become numb not only to how we are feeling but we become numb to how other people are feeling as well.  To be clear, I’m not suggesting an opinion over an expressed emotion.  It’s possible that you were personally “detroyed” over Michael Jackson’s passing and if that’s the case, I’m sorry for your pain.  I wonder though, might you really be feeling, “disturbed” or “nostalgic”?

Words matter.  Unlike the McDonnalds McCafe commericals, you can’t add an ”e” at the end of the word to jazz up the connotation.  When, “my lips need some chapstick” turns into, “my lips need to be chapstickavated” or “Judge!  I’m innocent” evolves into “Judge, I’m innocentavized”, we dilute meaning until it’s a wonder we can understand one another at all.

Category: Blog Blend | 7 Comments »
Tags: Words